Title: Life, Mark 2
Pairing: Kakairu
Based on characters created by Masashi Kishimoto
OOOOOOOOO
Harsh pants echoed around the dimly lit hallway syncopated by frantically pounding footsteps. As he passed under the flickering lights, the dubious illumination exposed an ordinary looking man in dark gray dress pants and a green striped button down shirt that were both well-worn, but only showed it under close inspection. A series of shut, warped doors with crooked numbers lined the hallway and garnered not even a single second glance. Neither did the greenish puddles of water that clung to the deep corners. The skinny figure slammed hard against the rusted crash bar at the end of the corridor and exploded out into the bright sunlight.
A hand came up to shade his eyes as he squinted against the harsh rays. The daylight revealed the man's one, atypical feature – a horizontal slash of darker skin that ran from cheekbone to cheekbone.
Scars were unusual in the world at large, but here, they were unheard of.
The whitewashed walls of the surrounding buildings contrasted harshly to the decrepit interior, and the specular reflections were so bright that he was forced to pause on the doorstep to allow his eyes to adjust. With the roof he'd stumbled out onto being roughly the same color as the walls around and the streets below, if he didn't take that time, he'd likely miss a jump and fall.
The momentary hiatus almost cost him his life.
The far stairwell he'd emerged into the hallway from was almost completely hidden in shadow. He'd jammed a broken and splintered chair against the door handle, knowing full well that it wouldn't do much good. There was still the vague hope that it might slow them down.
Chair and door disintegrated as they were struck violently from the other side. Red nostrils flared to catch a scent as a stubby muzzle poked through the hole. The broken fluorescents reflected in the black-on-black eyes that focused on the brilliant heat signature its prey was casting. The paint job on the outside was annoying and blinding, but it absorbed none of the thermal energy from the constant sunlight. Human beings – and any living creature, for that matter – stood out like a sore thumb.
The enormous creature came roaring through the shattered doorway, bristling with short dark hairs that barely covered the pasty skin and weeping sores. It let out a bellow and dropped to all fours, shoulders and haunches wedging against the walls as it struggled through the narrow passage.
In the open, the thing moved like a cheetah, easily reaching 100 miles per hour as it's massively muscular legs propelled its bulk into an unstoppable charge. The enclosed space bought him several precious seconds.
He whirled and sprinted for the nearest edge, skidding to a stop at the raised lip and peering over the edge as he slung the black messenger bag he carried across his chest to secure it. A narrow alleyway and about a ten foot drop separated this roof from the next – an easy jump to make with a modicum of momentum, but he had no time to back up and make a running start.
With a hiss of dismay, he shoved his left sleeve up to expose a shiny white plastic cuff that covered half of his forearm like a second skin. Two quick taps, and a row of flashing lights appeared across the wristband. A third tap and three quarters of the light glowed green.
The beast clawed the doorway, digging deep parallel marks in the molding. As it finally found purchase, it shot from the opening like a cork from a bottle and crossed the roof in three bounds. It reared to its hind legs to free the massive front paws that had been designed for one thing – rending.
He threw himself backwards off the roof and wrenched his head back as the claws raked a swath in the air scare inches from his nose. The beast caught itself on the wall, dangling over the lip with its claws embedded in the brick to keep from falling farther.
It howled in fury and confusion as its prey seemed to float. The human fell in apparent slow motion, and when he hit the white tarpaper on the other side, his knees barely even bent to absorb the impact. He didn't bother to spare a glance back at the screaming beast.
Pride was a faster killer here than even the beasts.
Had he looked back, he would have seen the furious flaring of nostrils and narrowing of pupils. The rage was unmistakable – the recognition of another predator that was about to steal its prey.
He covered the roof in an easy lope, fiddling with the gadget on his wrist as he ran. Six more hours left, or he would be too late. If he stuck to the roofs, he would be safer - fewer of the beast patrolled up here – but it would take longer. With a jump, he turned his body sideways and skidded to a stop.
Wrong turn.
The roof of this part of the building didn't butt up against anything. The closest one to his location was on the far side of the street below and only one story tall. A 30-foot drop combined with a horizontal distance over 50 feet was too far even for him to make. He risked a quick glance behind him before striking for the other wall.
The large air vent in the center of the roof creaked ominously as immense feet wrapped around it. The metal snapped as the beast mounted the structure. Lither and more slender than its cousin still yowling its dismay on the roof of the other building, it moved more like a cat and less like a bear.
On silent feet, it slunk towards the running figure.
OOOOOOOO
The assassin crouched in the lee of a building, well hidden by the dark shadows stretching out from the wall at his back. The alley he'd holed himself up in was a small cul-de-sac – a seemingly poor choice for someone of his profession – but he left no trail for the hunters to follow.
The fragile piece of paper between his fingers had been creased and smoothed several times. He crooked up his knee and smoothed it out again over a black-clothed leg. A single name was printed in the center of the paper. Beside it were fifteen marks.
Each one designated a previous assassin given this target. All had failed.
He would not.
He had not botched a single assignment and was not about to start now.
A tiny voice in the back of his mind reminded him that there was no time like the present, and he pressed the heel of his hand to his covered left eye, willing it to cooperate and only pain him a little.
The black band dropped to hand loosely around his neck, and he opened his newly uncovered eye, wincing as the black pips in the iris began to spin.
Accessing. The neutral, computerized voice that had been his only companion for several months was almost comforting. Within seconds, he knew where the mark was, what they looked like, and their typical daily schedule.
A furious howl broke through his ruminations on the best strategy, and he flattened himself to the wall, looking upwards towards the cry.
OOOOOOOO
Only a soft ping of metal on metal from a loose roofing panel knocked into an antenna warned him that he was not alone on the roof. The new hunter bunched into a coiled mass of muscle, ready to strike.
He dove to the side, barely avoiding the strike. Both front paws dug into the bag at his hip, lifted him completely off the ground as the strap pulled tight around his neck, and flung him to the floor. He bounced twice and rolled to the edge of the roof. The beast snarled in frustration and chased him down, batting him from side to side, until it smacked him hard enough to throw him over the side. The force of the blow threw him into the wall of the far building, and his head snapped against the steel upright of the frame.
Darkness closed in as he fell.
OOOOOOO
The body landed a few inches from his feet. The assassin stepped back as the beast prowled at the perimeter of the roof. Its head swung heavily from side to side as it tried to find the fastest way down so that it could finish the kill.
Though the newest arrival looked nondescript, the black bag cradled in his limp arms clearly identified him as a Messenger.
He fingered the compact pistol at his hip. The assassin was undetectable and worked hard to maintain that low profile. Getting into a fight with the hunters would only provide his location to the administrators. On the other hand, the messenger was technically on his team, and if he didn't intervene, the other man would rapidly become cat scat.
The pistol was equipped with heat seeking bullets and a laser sight, as well as unlimited rounds in case the aiming aids still weren't good enough to help you hit the broad side of a barn.
He never used more than one shot.
To the eyes of the beast, the shadows below it seemed to swell and breathe. The last image burned into its retinas was that of a black-garbed figure emerging from nowhere, before the bullet found its brain.
For a few minutes, he remained in the dubious cover of the wall, straining to hear any sounds of other hunters coming to investigate. The area remained silent as a grave. He was unsurprised. The hunters pursued, fought, killed and died alone.
The messenger still had not stirred. A strong, gloved hand grabbed the shoulder of the man's shirt and flipped him over. Not someone he recognized, but he didn't associate with the messengers very often.
His still uncovered eye informed him of a defensible location on the third floor of the building two doors down, and he knelt and scooped up his comrade.
Only to almost pitch over backwards as the force he exerted was well beyond what was needed. The man couldn't have weighed more than thirty pounds. As he hefted the messenger higher into his arms, the man's arm flopped over his stomach.
The sleeve was hitched up to reveal a burnished cuff wrapped around his wrist.
An AGU. The assassin had heard of the Anti-Gravity Units, but this was the first time he'd ever seen one. Only one modification was allowed per person, and, for his job, the eye unit was invaluable.
And for a messenger, the AGU would be just as priceless.
He wondered how much this man paid for the modification.
A quick study revealed that the cuff around the man's wrist was blinking anemically. A "low battery' symbol was one of the things that tended to be universal, and he fiddled with the cuff in an attempt to find the off switch.
When the long bar of light appeared, he punched at the far end of it and watched as the entire bar went dark. His arms screamed in pain as his load's weight increased several orders of magnitude. The messenger hit the ground before he even realized he'd lost his grip. He shoved the arm over to reset the gravity unit, only then noticing the embossed letters reading 'MGU.'
Modified-Gravity Unit.
"Damnit, messenger. You really should label this damn thing." He set the level at the fifty percent mark and watched the lights glow twice before going completely dark. The messenger seemed to have regained his normal weight.
OOOOOOOOOOO
The rotting roof above his head was not anything that he remembered, and Iruka sat up slowly, clutching the bag to his chest. The tenseness in his chest eased with the closeness of the package. Had he lost it during the fight…
He didn't want to think about it.
It wasn't until he stood and dusted his pants off that he realized he wasn't alone. The squeaky shriek, he told himself, was only due to the fact that he'd never met an Assassin face-to-face before.
If this could be called face-to-face.
The majority of the silver-haired man's face was covered in swaths of a shiny black fabric that looked suspiciously like silk. The luxurious cloth looked strange against the run-down nature of the surrounding room, and he backed away from the danger practically oozing out of the other man's pores.
"Are you afraid of me, messenger?" The voice made every hair on the back of his neck stand up. Silky-smooth with a hint of gravel in the consonants. It was how he had always pictured the voice of death.
Which, he reminded himself, might be why the assassin sounded like he did. Iruka swallowed hard and pulled himself up to his full height. "Why did you save me? I didn't think that was part of your M.O."
"Maaa, we are working towards the same goals, messenger."
His lips pulled back in the snarl of anger. "You kill people! I am not like you."
"I liberate people." The assassin pulled at his gloves, flexing his fingers against the tight fabric. "Would you rather they stay here?"
"I'd rather they go home!"
The lazy gaze pinned him. "Of course you do; that's your job. I only come in if you people fail."
He clenched his fists in an attempt to control the furious shaking and ground out through gritted teeth, "Then I better not fail." He stalked to the door and moved to slip through the permanent gap left from a previous attack.
"Who's your mark?" The look on the assassin's face suggested that he'd picked the word specifically to annoy the other man.
After a moment's hesitation, Iruka handed him a similar slip of fragile paper to the one he'd held earlier. He sank into a crouch next to the assassin and watched curiously as the other's uncovered eye swirled rhythmically. The gloved fingers came up to massage at the corner of his eye.
"It hurts?" Iruka queried sofly.
"Yeah."
"It shouldn't. I mean, this place…" His hands spread wide to include a greater area than the dingy room.
"They put a machine in my eye. The very small, irrational part of my brain believes that it should hurt. And so it does."
The messenger rubbed unconsciously at the edges of his cuff. The assassin might be different from him, but that much he could understand.
"1522, West 1st."
Iruka gnawed at the side of his lip. "Thank you. You didn't have to help me."
"Maybe if all of you would do your jobs, I'd be able to get out of here once in a while."
He left the assassin sitting in the corner of the debilitated room and bit out a couple of choice descriptors for the other man.
OOOOOOOOOOOO
An elegant woman with a sweep of golden hair wrapped up into a complicated arrangement on the top of her head, sat down gracefully across from him. "How can I help you….?"
"Umino Iruka." He folded his hands in his lap and tried not to shrink away from the arms of his chair.
"Umino-san." She reached across the table and patted his hand gently.
"I have a message for you." The ubiquitous black bag sat by his feet, and he reached into it, pulling forth a small, flat screen. "If you would please play it – I need to confirm delivery."
Painted nails clacked on the blank screen as she entered her ID code to validate her identity. She held it up between them as the delivery service's logo flashed across the display. Though the image was backwards, Iruka could see the message as it played.
A little girl with ringlet hair pulled into two miniature pig tails appeared in the center. "What do I do?" She asked someone off the screen.
"Look at the camera, sweetie. You're going to be talking to mom." A male voice instructed.
"Mommy?" The little girl peered at the center of the camera. "Mommy, we miss you. Please come home. I had a recital last week. I know I'm not that good, but I wish you'd been there…."
The message continued in the same vein. The man pleaded with his wife to return to their household, and both father and daughter were in tears by the end. Iruka stared at his hands, unable to watch.
"This must be a mistake." The woman's nervous titter got his attention.
"I'm sorry?"
"This message must be for someone else. I've never seen these people in my life! Your service should be more careful. The woman who this was meant for will certainly be missing it."
Iruka closed his eyes and willed the tears back. "Ma'am, do you know where you are?"
"I am at home." A servant bowed his way into their conversation and deposited a tray of food on the table between them. "Isn't it beautiful!" She turned to look at the surroundings, her eyes glimmering at the gilded walls and the white marble pillars. Her nails scratched gently against the velvet upholstery. "I always dreamed of having a place like this as a girl."
"This place…does not really exist."
The diamond bracelet jingled as she flapped a hand at him. "Oh, don't be silly."
"Have you ever heard of 'Life, Mark 2'?"
"That's the new psych-game, isn't it? I have a couple of friends who were interested in it, but I don't play those kinds of things." She raised a wine glass and sipped gently. Iruka swallowed hard to keep from gagging.
"We are in LM2, ma'am. You've been inside the game for almost a whole year now. These people," He grabbed the screen. "Are your husband and your daughter."
The nervous titter again.
"Your body is dying on the outside. You've spent ten months in a berth. Your muscles have atrophied. You are starving to death! LM2 activates a REM type state, and at that low level of activity, your body can survive for many months without sustenance, but you are reaching the end of that time. If you do not leave LM2 now, your body will begin to shut down. Your physical brain activity will decrease until you are no longer able to go back to the real world. In a few weeks, your consciousness will fade and merge with the programming here, and you'll just be a ghost made up of a few lines of code. Please!"
The gray eyes narrowed, and for a second he believed he'd convinced her. But then her eyebrows went up and she giggled. "Who put you up to this? A nice boy like you, you shouldn't be playing tricks on us older ladies."
"You don't believe me." It was not a question. Iruka was one of the best Messengers – a person brought into LM2 by a separate organization to convince those about to die from extended game play to log off. He had a knack for making people realize the truth.
Even so, there had been a few that he could not convert.
They haunted him still.
Because the ones who didn't leave willingly were given to the Assassins, as instantaneous death was vastly preferable to the slow fade brought on when the body died and left the mind behind.
"How can I believe you when I'm surrounded by something as real as this place? This is no game. You can see my house, so why do you…"
"No. I can't." Her eyes focused on him again. "LM2 is a marvel of modern coding. The game itself only has the basic framework for this world. Your thoughts and feelings are what produce the scenery around you. You desire an opulent palace and that is what you see. I know the truth about LM2, I have seen the terrors of body-less minds and withering remains."
"What do you see?" She whispered.
Iruka kept his eyes focused on her face to keep from looking at his surroundings. The walls were slick with grime under which were rusty colored stains that looked suspiciously like blood. Water stains covered the ceiling, and the floor was broken linoleum that had been peeled up in several places. The chair he sat in was thread-bare, stuffing falling from the open gashes in the arms.
The food on the table between them was hollow with rot, green with mold and, out of the corners of his eyes, he could see movement on the plate. He didn't dare look closer.
"You don't want to know."
The seriousness faded, and she giggled again. "My, you are good, aren't you? You really should consider being an actor. Oh, and if you would please make sure this message gets to the intended recipient. I'd hate for her to miss it."
"Of course, ma'am." Iruka rose, bowed slowly, averting his eyes to the corner of the ceiling, and retreated.
OOOOOOOOOOOO
The cover of the berth opened with a hiss of hydraulics. The two probes that connected to his temples lifted away from his face and he sat up slowly, massaging aching legs. He'd only been in the game for three days, but his body already felt weak.
He pressed his face into his hands as he remembered the woman escorting him from her house. The minute he'd been free, he'd staggered to the side of the road and was suddenly and violently sick.
"Is she going to be yours now, assassin?"
OOOOOOOOOOOO
The tall maple tree outside the 1st street townhouse made a perfect perch to observe from. Kakashi crouched in the crook of the limb, focused on the addicted woman the messenger had been sent to. When she none-to-politely shoved the skinny man out of her door, he felt his balance shift.
A quick search through his pockets revealed a new sheet of paper to match the two he'd seen earlier. This one matched the messenger's piece even down to the name written on it.
OOOOOOOOOOOO
"Sir." The voice held no emotion. "Another name has been added to the assassination list. The number of players on both lists has increased by twenty percent over the last month, and the number saved by the messengers has decreased almost thirty percent over that same time."
The bank of computer screens displayed the majority of Life, Mark 2's areas. The man monitoring them folded his arms and shifted his weight to his other him.
Had anyone else been in the room, they would have been able to hear the wheels turning in his mind as he did some calculations.
His lips parted and pulled away from his teeth in a sinister smile. "Good."
OOOOOOOOOOOO
Holy freaking god, it's an AU!
I have NO IDEA where this came from, but I've been writing for the last four hours straight to try and get it out before i forgot it.
This will be a multi-chapter, and I hope people like it. I'm never sure how to feel about AU stories...
Review, please! I'd like to know that I haven't gone completely off the deep end.