Full Title: The Many Ways Mikado and Masaomi Didn't Meet But Totally Could've.
Oh god another one. I know.
This is my creative outlet specifically for Kida/Mikado or Mikado/Kida AU drabbles/oneshots. It won't take away from any of my other fics, so worry not!
I just love AUs. So much. ;_;
Written to: My Mind Rebels At Stagnation by Hans Zimmer, from the Sherlock Holmes soundtrack.
CHAPTER ONE
Post-Apocalyptic AU (In which Masaomi is the leader of the rebellion and Mikado is a mysterious new human)
It had been three years since Japan had fallen under the terror of the alien race, and Masaomi still had nightmares.
He would relive the last moments of panic, when the world finally realized that this race, these 'Rane' aliens, had the technology to change the weather.
There was no working against how they flushed out the weak and the disabled with tsunamis and floods, stabbed the inattentive with forks of lightning, blew away those with no safer cover.
Only the lucky survived.
But even now, the Rane watched over their conquered planet, and the only rain that fell was acidic to burn the remaining survivors, destroying buildings and plants and history, leaving only sparse emptiness and a fading will to live on.
Masaomi hadn't believed his grandfather when he warned of this approaching doom so many years ago on his deathbed. He spoke of his dreams, visions rather, of a Japan with only the broken remains of buildings and not a blade of grass in sight. How the sky would flash and rumble black as the rain fell, corroding everything in its path.
The last thing he said to him was to check the attic chest when the time came.
Stupidly, Masaomi had brushed it off as the hallucinations of a dying man.
Only to be proved wrong and his grandfather right. He shouldn't have been surprised. His grandfather was always correct; a brain tumor didn't change that.
It started with static.
Televisions, computers, phones. Nothing could be seen or heard but static. Humans turned to radios for answers, but all the governments understood was that something was slowly beginning to encroach upon the satellites.
Masaomi recalled lying on the floor of the attic, playing with the knob of his grandfather's old antenna radio until he found a station that was still working.
"We have received news that our satellites fzzzt been infiltrated by fzzzt sort of phenomena. People are advised fzzzt stay inside and be prepared fzzzzzzzzt emergency."
The three-years-younger Masaomi grimaced, sitting up with a deep feeling of dread and foreboding in his stomach. He didn't want to believe anything the radio said, but all he could think of was his grandfather's prediction.
He had biked over to his grandfather's house just to say goodbye to everything before it was donated to charity. But he couldn't leave without checking one thing.
Lying down on his stomach, Masaomi peered underneath the collapsible bed, the floor covered in a thick layer of dust below where he used to sleep when he visited all those years ago. He used to store board games there, and every afternoon he and his grandfather would take out a new one to play while his mother was out bedding a new man.
But now, instead of Monopoly and Pictionary, there was a small chest that Masaomi recognized from his grandfather's study. Reaching out, he slid it towards him, leaving a long track in the dust.
He couldn't have been right, Masaomi thought as he blew the grime from the lid. I'll open this chest and all there will be is a note saying 'gotcha!'
…Then why do I feel so afraid?
Masaomi took a deep breath, coughing a little on the musty air, then flicked the lock open and jerked up the lid.
There was a note.
But not just a note.
A note, a map, and a key.
He picked up the note first, his grandfather's careful handwriting uncharacteristically panicked and hurried.
Masaomi,
There is not much time left. If you are reading this, it must mean the tumor has spread and I have passed from this world. Please read what is next very carefully: it will mean the difference between your life and death.
In my long life, I have seen many things. The most worrying is a vision I had when I was just your age: a new Japan, where nothing stands but the skeletons of metal buildings. Acid rain falls and there is no sky, only clouds. It is a world where something dire has occurred, and none have survived.
I cannot let this transpire.
You must take the map and the key I have given you. The map is marked with the location of an underground bunker I spent my whole life creating. In it is all you should ever need to survive. No one knows of it but I, and now you. Bring any and all you can to this bunker. Threaten them, blackmail them, do whatever you must to convince them to come with you. Bring as many animals as you can, as many seeds and signs of life. There is a large chance that those you bring to the bunker will be the only beings left in existence on Earth.
I do not know what will cause the Japan we know to become this way, but I know whatever it is, it has a much larger power than us.
Be safe. I wish you luck.
Your Grandfather,
Kida Kaito
He had followed the instructions. Took a train to the place, followed the information on the back of the map to get inside (a password, then voice recognition), and was met with the results of his grandfather's lifelong labour.
Underground, a whole village, all made of metal and glass, equipped with anything needed to support human life. Plumbing, lights, hydroelectricity. A room full of rows upon rows of plants, vegetables and fruits and trees and shrubs and flowers and grass, growing with the power of an irrigation system and fluorescent lights. A whole infirmary, stocked with medicine his grandfather must've stolen during chemotherapy. Storage rooms full of weapons, food, fabric, building materials. Two halls of bedrooms. Windows that you could see out but not in. Even a garage, with a car plated in some sort of metal Masaomi had never seen before.
And the most impressive:
A deep underground well.
Deep below all of the manmade rooms and halls, a cave of water so bottomless that Masaomi couldn't fathom its depth. The only way to reach it being a walkway high above that led to a stairway curving down the side.
He couldn't possibly see all of this and not believe his grandfather.
And so he did as was asked. For the next week, Masaomi sent e-mails out to strangers, left messages on chatrooms, flyers on street lights, anything he could, asking anyone who believed his story of the impending apocalypse to board the nearest flight to Tokyo. He dragged his friends to the bunker. His mother. He convinced his aunt to join, but none other from his family. He ran down the streets, desperately trying to grab anyone he could and plead with them to come with him. Even went as far as waiting outside daycares, speaking to the children who either believed him or not, making them pinkie-swear to join him when he came for him. He went to farms of all kinds and stole animals that he kept in the pens his grandfather built. Used his grandfather's connections to get seeds and embryos from science labs that he stored in the refrigerator designed just for this purpose.
By the end of the seven days he had seventy-two people waiting for his instruction.
Twenty-two from overseas, eight children, ten parents, ten friends, four teachers, sixteen strangers from the street, and two from his own family.
It was plenty. But he despaired for those who didn't believe him. Those who shrugged off his anxious fingers, those who wrote him off as a family disappointment, a whore's son. Those who couldn't cast away the blind belief that their own parents would protect them no matter what.
And so he knew, when the flooding started at the tip of Hokkaido, that it was time to put his plans into action.
He called all those he had set up, gathered them all to meet him at the train station wearing something to distinguish themselves: a yellow scarf.
His head count was accurate when they all arrived, and he was filled with relief that none had decided not to come. The majority of the believers were teenagers or young adults, with several adults and a few scattered elderly and children.
And his mother, whom he'd forced to join, threatening blackmail.
It didn't matter anyways. They'd all believe him soon.
Together the group of them took the train to the bunker, watched in awe as he brought them in, made them swear to be vigilant and trust no one but those with them from then on.
He found out that there were two doctors and one nurse-in-training, which was more than Masaomi could've hoped for. There was an engineer too, though he was quite old. Most of them, save the children and some teens, knew how to cook. One college student particularly loved technology, only as a hobby, but enough to be useful.
It was the next day that they all sat together in the main entrance room that branched off to all the other segments, huddled around the old radio Masaomi had brought from his grandfather's house. The tension was palpable. Even the children sat quietly, huddled at their parents' laps, save those without parents who sat near Masaomi or his mother, both Kida's naturally trustworthy to children.
Masaomi turned the knob as he tilted the antenna, all of them watching fearfully as the static persisted. The blonde adjusted the radio constantly for five minutes until…
There!
"News live from Tokyo. Freak accidents have come to a head. Tornadoes, tsunamis, flooding, hurricanes, wildfires, mudslides, earthquakes…everything that could go wrong has in every corner of the globe. Citizens are advised to – OH MY GOD! IT'S –"
The broadcast suddenly cut off with a burst of static. Masaomi frantically tried to fix it, but all stations he tried were full of the fuzzy blaring. He switched off the radio.
The silence was stifling.
Masaomi closed his eyes as one woman began to sob in the crowd.
He stood.
"Unfortunately, my grandfather seems to have been right. Something is bringing the end of this Earth outside these walls. Our home is no longer safe." Masaomi took a breath. "Because of the imminent danger, none of us will leave for a week. Only then will we return to the surface and survey the damage.
"As we are to be living with each other for what seems to be many years, I am going to set down some rules.
"One: leave here without my permission and you will never be permitted to return.
"Two: all decisions will be made through a census vote between all of those eighteen and up.
"Three: my grandfather left us ration plans and instructions. I will dole out those instructions and anyone who neglects to follow will be punished.
"Four: we are all expected to do whatever work we can to help this colony. There are few of us and it rests on our shoulders to survive."
Masaomi watched the crowd with sharp eyes, all too surprised by his intensity and organization to say anything. "If any of you disagree with me, remember this:" he took a deep breath. "We are likely the last of the human race."
He left a long pause. Everyone stared at him in a mix of awe, adoration, and fear.
And that look continued to this day, with a nineteen-year-old Masaomi the leader of what was now a group of seventy-four. Three babies had been born in the past years; the threat of complete extinction enough to make anyone desperate.
One man had died, shot down in one of their base raids.
He remembered how terrified they had been after that first week, crawling to the surface and seeing exactly what his grandfather foretold: an empty Tokyo with nothing but the remains of skyscrapers, the sky unseen past a constant ebony cloud cover, and the one hint that what they were dealing with was not of this world: a ship, round as a sphere, seeming bigger than the harvest moon in its nearness as it floated in the sky.
They had spent the last three years observing, the healthiest of them going out on missions as the aliens set up a few bases, buildings impervious to the acid rain, where they kept soldiers and items. They stole from the bases, so packed to the brim with alien technology and goods that they never noticed them missing.
Until one raid, where a twenty-some man by the name of Tom was shot down by a trap, running down the wrong hallway in search of food. Masaomi and the group had dropped all their spoils, grabbing his body as quickly as they could before jumping in the car to return to base. His body was buried safely, and the group was glad for Masaomi's orders to retrieve his corpse.
Because of both the sentimental value,
And the chance that the aliens might extract information from his own brain.
It was up to each of them to keep their new home safe.
So when the woman on look-out for the lunch hour shouted to Masaomi that something strange was out there and the rain was starting, he jumped to his feet and dashed to the front doors, everyone in the mess hall following.
Celty, her name was, a woman from Ireland, handed the leader a pair of binoculars and pointed out into the drizzle that was starting as it did every other hour. He peered into the eye holes, glaring out to the land when he spotted it: a lump, almost human-shaped, lying on the ground a soccer field away from the door.
"It's humanoid," Masaomi said.
"The rain is starting, Masaomi. We have to go save it," Tsugaru, a former professor and the main instructor for the children, said. There was no need for honorifics in a world like this.
Masaomi growled, cursing under his breath. "Someone grab me my acid coat. Shizuo," he jerked his head at a tall blonde, "Come with me, and bring a stretcher."
The crowd visibly relaxed a little; Masaomi had changed so much in the past years, some were afraid he was slowly losing the compassion he'd had at sixteen. As Shizuo ran to the infirmary to get the stretcher, Masaomi was handed his coat: a full-body garment that one of their own had created by use of the late Kida Kaito's infant drafts.
He opened the door the moment Shizuo returned with his own coat on, the both of them dashing out into the rain that was steadily growing heavier. Though the jackets were well-made, they were not perfect, and substantial rain could leave burns underneath. It was better not to leave the base at all.
Masaomi had learned this the hard way.
As they got closer, Masaomi could make out the body of a boy through his goggles. He couldn't have been older than twenty, and he was laying on the ground in nothing but a sports coat, jeans, and high-tops. It was as if he'd just dropped straight out of 2012 Japan.
There was no time to waste. Even light droplets were making angry red marks in the boy's skin. Masaomi draped an acid blanket he kept folded in his pocket the best he could over the boy as Shizuo heaved him onto the stretcher, the both of them running back to the doors, let in by Celty as the rest of the crowd backed away. Celty smacked a button on the wall as the doors closed behind them, a large cylindrical tank covering them and letting out a sudden minute-long burst of air, drying off the rain.
When the tank retreated, Masaomi and Shizuo ran the stretcher to the infirmary, the colony following as they went, Dr. Kishitani running at the front of the crowd to check the boy's pulse. "He's alive," the man informed Masaomi quickly, with an amount of respect for the younger boy that would've seemed ridiculous had they been back in regular society, where the blonde hadn't saved all of their lives.
"We need a full check-up," Masaomi panted as he and Shizuo set the stretcher down on one of the hospital beds, people gathering around. "Make sure he's human."
The leader turned to the throng. "All of you, please return to your duties. I will inform you of the situation come supper." All it took was a couple sentences and everyone was gone except Masaomi and Dr. Kishitani.
He watched as the middle-aged man hooked up the boy to several machines, taking notes in his clipboard and measuring various body parts. Masaomi stroked the angry red scar that webbed over the whole of his forehead to his right eye and upper right cheek.
It was a nervous habit.
He took this time to inspect the boy. He was Japanese, if the kanji on his jacket said anything. His skin was pale, apart from the red marring burns that Dr. Kishitani was rubbing salve on. The boy had minimal damage, aside from the burns. Remarkable, considering how they found him.
Half an hour passed. The heart monitor was at a steady beep. Dr. Kishitani stood nearby, waiting with the blonde for the boy to awaken.
When he did, Masaomi was struck.
The boy had the bluest eyes he'd ever seen.
"Welcome back," Dr. Kishitani said kindly, a characteristic that never failed, and could be seen as either a flaw or strength in these times. "We found you outside. You're lucky we got there before the rain completely corroded you down to your bone marrow!" The doctor laughed, his true sense of morbid humour shining through the cracks.
The boy blinked and sat up. "…What? Where am I?"
"Let me ask a few question first," Masaomi said coldly, stepping forward and crossing his arms. He felt the boy's eyes – so blue and so wide and innocent somehow even through all of this – on the scar that covered his face, only serving to make him appear even more menacing.
"What were you doing out there, passed out?"
The boy paused in thought, then looked up with a barely-concealed panic in his eyes. "I…I don't know! I don't remember anything!"
Masaomi scowled and muttered, "Perfect," under his breath.
"Go easy on him, Masaomi," Dr. Kishitani said quietly into the shorter boy's ear. "He's definitely human."
"We can't be sure. Who the hell knows what the Rane are capable of?" Masaomi hissed back. He turned to the boy who was still watching them with wide, frightened eyes. "What can you remember?"
"I-I…my name is Ryuugamine Mikado," he stammered. "I was born in Saitama, Japan…t-that's all I know."
Later that night, everyone forgot their dinner in preference of participating in the daily meeting. Though it was usually short and sweet without any news, this time everyone was terribly curious over the newest member to the group.
"Not a member yet," Masaomi corrected as he spoke to the sitting group. "He remembers nothing but his name and where he was born. None of you will bother him until we confirm his true origins and his risk level."
"He's so tiny!" Delic, one of the main base raiders, called out from the crowd. "How can he be any kind of threat?"
"Nothing is certain!" Masaomi shouted back. "Remember that one weak link in our colony can make the whole thing fall apart! We'll have another meeting about this in one week, when Dr. Kishitani will have enough information for us to deliberate. Good night." And the conversation was over.
Of course, though everyone respected Masaomi, they didn't always follow his orders.
Throughout the three days, people walked past the infirmary, hoping to catch a glimpse of the new boy who had begun to interact with Masaomi and the doctors and nurse. He seemed a very shy, very kind person. Dr. Kishitani thought it wise to bring him out on the third day to interact with the others openly. Though Masaomi didn't agree, he knew that the doctor was far more trained than him; however, he followed closely to watch Mikado as he walked through the halls, bowing politely to all those he met, exchanging names and pleasantries. He made a quick friend to the children, who were instantly magnetized to his pure heart.
Masaomi scowled. No heart stayed pure for long in this place.
And by the time the week was up, the whole colony had voted that Mikado stay. Only Masaomi remained suspicious as everyone looked to him for approval; because even though decisions were made by majority vote, Masaomi always had last say. He scowled at them all.
"Fine."
And so Mikado's time there began. Masaomi watched his every move, even as the boy surprised him on a daily basis with the optimism of his thoughts, smiling despite the situation, spreading joy to those around him.
He was an enigma.
And Masaomi would be sure to figure him out.
AN: I definitely did not plan this to be so long, haha! I was more aiming for drabble...but I really love sci-fi, so...
Feel free to request an AU! I'll try to fill it sometime if it's something I'm familiar with :)
This is based off of 'Five Ways Kurt and Blaine Didn't Meet (But Totally Could Have)' on tumblr by questionable-morals.
I was originally planning to make it 5 ways, but then I had too many ideas. And I want to be able to go back to this fic and write more drabbles whenever I feel like I'm at a standstill with other stories or am struck with an idea. I repeat: this will not take any precedence over any of my other multi-chaptered fics.
Should any of these oneshots ever gather enough interest, I might (and that's a very tentative might) continue it into a small chaptered fic. But I'd have to at least finished 'Tangled' first before I tackled another multi-chapter. We'll see.
ALSO: If Masaomi and Mikado and were in Hogwarts, what houses do you think they would be in? *totallyhypotheticalquestion*
Enjoyed? Reviews are love! \(^w^)/
EDIT 26/07/11: I decided to switch the OCs with drrr characters. Moira is now Celty, Takeshi is Tsugaru, Dave is Shizuo, and I've added Delic. The only OCs remaining are Kida Kaito (Masaomi's grandfather) and Masaomi's nameless mother.