Last Heaven I: Chapter 4

"So..you both decided to risk your priceless lives to give me..this? It seems Reita has been putting a little too much faith in his favorite toy soldiers." Takanori threw a thin stack of documents on his desk. He glared furiously at Kai, who had began to sweat slightly through a stern face. Aoi stood to his right and reached into his computer backpack for a disk and a small document chip. He nervously placed them on the desk a few meters in front of him. The impatient commander raised a brow and took hold of the disk. "Good work boys." He gingerly placed the disk into the control panel behind him and a strange array of decoded Russian documents covered the screen.

The two agents glanced at one another. Kai shook off his self-doubt as the smaller official turned back to face them. He gave them a sly smirk as he got all of what he needed, or wanted. It seemed he wasn't wasting his time with these two after all, though he couldn't be completely honest with them. He stood looming over his desk and shoved the nearly useless stack of paper documents into a drawer to the side. Aoi and Kai turned to be on their way to their quarters. "Yuu..Yutaka." They both stopped in mid step and returned their attention to see a slightly on edge Ruki inch closer to them with what looked to be a clear seringe. He loosely brought his armed right hand eye level to give the two agents a flash of reality.

They both took a short step back, unsure of what they had done wrong, if anything at all. The odd leading officer stopped within a couple steps of coming in to personal contact with them. He could almost taste their pride slowly diminishing in front of him. The silence of the room creeped through their bones and filled the space between them and a sterile needle. Aoi felt an urge to just turn and run out the door. Kai, however, didn't know what to think. "Now, I'm sure there shouldn't be any reason for me not to trust you boys.." He took a short step closer looking through their warm brown eyes with a narrow cold stare. They barely flinched at his sudden movement.

Much to their relief, they watched as Ruki slowly hid the seringe in a pocket inside his dark suit coat. They sighed quietly in their place with their gaze solidly locked onto the unusual man before them. "Now that we have an understanding-" His face turned pale and eye dark. Another migrane was on its way. Ruki turned forcefully to avoid any further eye contact with the younger boys and made his way back to the simple metal desk at the back of the control room. This one seemed to be less threatening of a wave than his earlier attack. He decided to pretend there was work to be done as he took out a thick stack of what looked to be documents and graphs.

He signalled Aoi and Kai their release from the room. He didn't actually stop to think that there were two witnesses to glance upon the papers neatly separated in stacks in front of him. They made their exit as if nothing strange had happened at all. Right as the door shut behind them and sealed the security lock, they began walking rather fast to the base living quarters. It was a shorter distance by elevator, but they took no chances at being stuck next to open ears and a security camera. They hurried side by side down plain steel hallway to a door at the end that led them to a spaced stairway. The further they were from that control room, the calmer they soon felt.

Kai took the lead and swung the door open widely. Aoi followed and kept his eyes on the black rifle case in front of him. His heart was racing due to something he accidentally glanced upon on Ruki's desk. His dark grey eyes still peirced through his mind. He stopped mid flight on the stairs to gather his thoughts. Kai noticed and looked back with concern as he saw his commerade staring at his feet with a blank expression. Aoi couldn't hide his thoughts all night and he knew it. "Kouyou's agent name was on those papers.." Kai's eyes widened. He hadn't seen what was taken out of that desk drawer just before he left the room.

Aoi turned his sinking eyes to his friend from below. His childhood friend was being..experimented with? He couldn't believe his own thoughts. The documents stained his mind as if they had been manually implanted. The one covering the stack read Project PEACE ANGELS Agent Uruha - Mental Transfusion Complete. Memories intact. Vitals restored. Another scattered to the side read what may have been the surgical report. A sudden wave of fear crashed through Aoi's senses. Kai felt the same wave in needles through his spine. He stepped halfway back up a flight of stairs to face his friend closely. He couldn't think of what to say at this point and placed a hand on his shoulder for reassurance.

They had been warned before of the mentally unhinged head commander of this secret organization plenty of times, but could do nothing but keep their mouths shut. Those same soldiers they once knew as close alliances mysteriously disappeared just a month apart from each other. Trying not to fear the worst with his reeling mind, Aoi willed himself down the stairway alongside of his now remaining childhood friend. To come this far, and they were barely past twenty-three, they thought. They kept to themselves as they neared the next door a couple flights away. As they came through the cold door to the dorm hallway, all was calm as if they had lived there their entire life, which wasn't much different than any other day the two returned to the base.

Allied soldiers passed them with either welcoming or distasteful greetings. They were blankly ignored. All the two darkly dressed agents forced through their minds was the next mission they were to wake up to the next morning. Before they knew it they found their dorm and Aoi quickly and nervously unlocked the security code by the doorknob. Snobbish remarks flew past them as a few under-ranking soldiers from down the hall noticed their return. The dorm room door was shut harshly as if to keep the outside world away for good. The lights at each corner of the room dimly shone as two familiar presences were sensed.

The air between them remained uncomfortably still in the perfectly white square of a room. Aoi set his laptop backpack gently on the floor at the foot of his simple wire framed bed. Kai slid his precious rifle under his almost identical bed. They both sat and untied their scuffed black combat boots. Aoi decided he would changed in the morning and slipped into a thin grey blanked and pulled a black hood over his head to hold his lengthy hair. Kai unzipped his simple dark jacket and threw it to the side. Just as he prepared himself for what seemed to be a sleepless night, Aoi lifted himself from a small white pillow. "Yutaka..I don't feel safe here anymore."

Kai saw the concern in his friend's weary eyes smudged with thick black eyeliner. All he could think to do was to give him a gentle smile and wrapped himself in his grey blanket. "As long as I'm still here, you'll be a little safer." Aoi lowered himself back down and held his gaze as much as his tired eyes would allow him. "Just..remember our time together if something happens and you'll be okay." Both were still smiling as the lights in each corner of the room became dimmer. Kai shut his eyes with a deep stinging. Dangerous thoughts swept through the edges of his mind of their old friend and allied agent Uruha. It haunted them both for the rest of the night until exhaustion took its toll on their bodies.

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"Yuu..Yuu Wake up, lazy ass! We have an hour" Kai threw his only small pillow across the room at Aoi's head and recieved only low grumbling and moaning. They both weren't much for being woken up by force, or at all for that matter. The military hadn't rubbed off them enough to enforce this just yet. Aoi figured he'd wait a moment to ignore the early morning headache of his close ally and then simply whipped around to face him. Kai had gotten a head start with his boots already tied, eyeliner in hand in front of a plain wall mirror on the wall opposite of the door. His dark hair was in all directions but he didn't seem to care, considering it looked that way most of the time anyways.

"Anyone alive out there?" He lightly taunted Aoi as he stumbled to his feet to reach for a hair brush on a small square metal table provided at the side of the bed. This was the normal morning scene for them. The longer he tried combing out the tangles of his streaked black hair, the more annoyed he became, leading to a bad mood for the rest of the morning. He decided to do a half-job at fixing his hair this time and reached for his own stick of eyeliner on the same table. "Alright, good." Kai moved away from the mirror after finishing a new thick layer of black around his deep coffee brown eyes and glanced at his wreck of a friend. The walked back to his bed to retrieve the protected rifle and placed it on his lap.

Aoi then took over the mirror for a moment to wipe away the remaining smudged darkness from his face. He constantly yawned as he tried his best to focus on creating a simple line around his eyes. He glanced back to see Kai quickly cleaning the barrel of the rifle. "Still got that hotel key?" In no less than a minute he slipped his gun back into the sleeve of its case. "Right here." He pulled out a small card attached to a gold key from his back pocket. "We're to report to commander Suzuki at the gates at 7 sharp." He reminded Yuu of the plan ahead knowing his mind was still a bit hazy. He watched as he shuffled his way back to his bed and reached for his boots.

There was a certain tension between them as they checked their weapons and gear for their departure. Aoi knew he wouldn't handle it for long since they'd be separated for about an hour on trains set at opposite corners of the city. He set his laptop bag on his lap and froze as he felt a sudden grieving feeling in the bottom of his stomach, as if this would be the last time together they would have. Kai noticed after taking a few moments to make sure he had everything he needed. He didn't feel like bringing up the previous events from yesterday's encounter, but he also felt a deep longing to remove the tension from his best friend.

Without any second thought he turned to walk to Aoi's side and wrapped his arms around him. It seemed to snap him out of his hopeless feeling as he too held his friend standing above him. "Whatever happens from here on..I need you to keep your head up." With this he took a step back to meet slightly warmer eyes and an unsure smile. It seemed Kai had succeeded in lightening the mood and continued on with the inspection of his smaller weapons of choice back on his end of the room. Aoi stood ready with his backpack slung heavily on his shoulders and black hood hiding part of his face. He held the door for Kai and they made their way back down the eerily quiet hallway ready to take on the next mission.

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"You two know what to do this time. If anything gets in the way, search and destroy, just like before." Reita looked over his top soldiers and held a hand on the shoulder of both. He sighed, the freezing air showing his breath like smoke, and gave them an unusually sympathetic smile as he saluted their release from the base. The gates unlocked from a few meters away and a faint dread sank into the two agents. There was no turning back from this peculiarly simple mission. They kept their current thoughts to themselves and separated to a couple of cars ready to leave. Aoi and Kai stopped in place as they swung open a passenger door and glanced at one another for a moment. They nodded in unison and slipped into the cars. Aoi's grey car spun out on frosted gravel first and they were on their way out of isolation.

The bleak winter sunrise cast over a small frozen plain and shot through tinted windows and forced its way into stinging morning eyes. No more than ten minutes passed before the narrow road hit an intersection. Kai watched the small dark car in front of his take a swift left turn. He continued to watch the car leave until his took a right and was quickly out of sight. He wasn't quite sure what part of Tokyo he'd be dropped off in, but he knew he'd have to act as normal as possible. Aoi, still slightly shaken up from his discovery the night before, steadied his breathing and checked his front pocket for his military-issued phone. He kept his eyes on the road ahead to try to clear his senses. Kai's driver told him to leave his rifle as an order from their leading military commander and he kept a reluctant hand on the casing to his side.

Miles away from each other, Aoi and Kai boarded their assigned trains and chose a seat in the back out of habit. An unsettling thirty minutes had passed as they stared blankly through tall windows at passing lights and tall buildings with Alternative American music blasting in their ears. The phrase All we need is faith constantly haunted Aoi's thoughts as if he had heard it all his life. His heart rate calmed to the singer's unique voice. Kai closed his eyes to drown in the Arabian-style beat of Pyres of Varanasi from the same band. A sudden vibration from his phone woke his mind as he quickly answered to hear the military chief on the line. "There's going to be two buildings you and agent Aoi must infiltrate within three days. I'll send you both the coordinates when you meet up. Stay sharp. We can't afford any slip ups this time."

After the trains made it to the same station, the two agents shoved their outdated Ipods in their coat pockets. They walked at the same pace toward each other until they were able to see each other's faces. Aoi kept his hood on as to hide his own insecurity. He checked in his front pocket for his phone. He too recieved a similar message from Reita in text with the coordinates to their next destination. Time would change everything. As soon as their sights were set on course, they felt they could take on the day side by side like conquistadors in a city of lights and life. "The race is on." Kai smiled at the reference to the American band Thirty Seconds To Mars and checked his phone: seven-thirty and on perfect timing. Aoi took off his hood as they stepped out of the train station and through a gust of the congested winter atmosphere of mid-Tokyo.

They came to a sudden halt to take in the busy morning scene. They were hardly used to normal citizen life, let alone remembering the current day. They simply shrugged it off and found the nearest sidewalk to find their first hotel. They eyes wandered to every corner, window, and balcony surrounding them for quick escape routes and sufficient spying points. The sun had started to stain the side of shorter and shorter buildings until the road looked as if it were lit aflame. Then the boys recognized the coordinates to the first center to infiltrate. More important looking buildings passed their sight until they crossed a main road to turn on the next block to their left.

A certain glass-covered building stood in the middle of taller buildings with businessmen and high-class people took over the surrounding sidewalks. Security cameras were surely littering the area. They decided not to get near it just yet. Sure, their personal records were hard to come by in the Japanese Embassy due to joining a secret underground organization provided by a rebel force within the military, but they couldn't take any chances. They turned the opposite direction down a rather familiar street passing pretty faces and giving flirting smirks as if they were teens again. A couple of B-class hotels were just in their sight a block and a half away.

They both gave a sigh of relief as their legs gave slight fatigue from an unwanted long walk. The building didn't look too flashy, but they didn't mind. Just as they came to the entrance, a couple of well-dressed young girls with flowing ebony hair came past them with light smiles and giggled. "Damn.." Kai ignored them as he was trying to focus on the mission at hand until he took hold of Aoi's black hood to drag his eyes off the leaving attraction. "Hey!..Can't find any of that in a base full of shitty attitudes, neh?" He smirked and swatted Kai's hand away, causing them to laugh lightly.

"Apparently, my rifle should be up there by now..I'll make damn sure and we'll be on our way." Kai gave a suspicious look to the desk clerks and passing couples with their full suit cases. Aoi began to whine, as expected. "Could we at least find somewhere to eat first? I can't decode shit if I can't think." He heard the messy-haired agent rushing in front of him sigh in annoyance. He knew this would be a long day..