She is counting down the seconds in her head. It is all the time she has left to live.
"Eyes on me, asshole!" Natsuki shouts and fires a shot at the abomination standing between her and her retreating comrades. She grits her teeth as the alien gives a furious roar. At such a distance, the buckshot only manages to graze its chitin shell. Its grotesque head cranes an impossible angle, mandibles dripping venom as it looks at Natsuki in frenzied, twitchy hunger.
Behind the monstrosity, Shizuru screams her name and thrashes as she is forcefully dragged to the evacuation zone. Natsuki's comrades will escape this hellhole. She draws comfort from this and stares death down unflinchingly as the hulking insectoid charges at her at an impossible speed. Suzushirou will get Shizuru out of here. This, Natsuki knows without looking past the beast to see the Skyranger take to the horizon.
Natsuki has one round left in the barrel and no time left to despair. Her heart pounds in her chest like a war drum. It is so close Natsuki can see the cruel, orange sheen of its inhuman pupils as it swings its scythed limb to strike her down. Not yet, not yet! She only has one shot at this. Natsuki braces herself to dodge and seethes as claws rip through the Kevlar armor and into her side. She hisses in pain at the sting of venom. The wound burns, but though her legs are weak, she is still standing.
In the split second after it attacks, its flank is totally exposed. Before it can deal a fatal blow, Natsuki strikes. Time slows to a crawl. The shotgun is a comforting weight in her sweat-soaked palms. She looks down its barrel at the Chryssalid's ghoulish face. In her mind's eye, Natsuki sees with perfect clarity how every step she has taken has brought her thus far. It all lines up like the perfect shot.
Natsuki holds her breath as she pulls the trigger.
1.
Time is a wheel of blood. Natsuki counts the days by chalking up how many enemies she has killed. She scratches it onto the metal frame of the Avenger near her bunk like a prisoner in a cell. It has been twenty so far.
Among the newest batch of recruits, she has raked up the highest kill count. Her call sign is "Crash" for the way she charges into battle with no regard for her life. Eighteen and already jaded, Natsuki is well acquainted with the harsh reality of their cause. They face impossible odds fighting an enemy that surpasses them on all fronts - numbers, technology and resources. All they have is their will to survive.
Backs to the wall, the resistance is humanity's last line of defense. They will very likely lose the war, or by a combination of sheer luck and tactical brilliance, win by the skin of their teeth. Either way, Natsuki has come to terms with how slim her own chances of survival are. It works out just as well. She has nothing to her name but her history and nothing to live for but the thought of revenge. Her mother died when she was but a child. Her father is dead to her.
Everyday, she dutifully cleans her shotgun and polishes her blade. Natsuki plans to leave this world the way she entered - bloodied, kicking and screaming.
2.
"What's the meaning of this?" Natsuki demands as she smacks the dossier down on her handler's desk. Documents spill out - counterfeit identification cards, a name, a photo, a set of orders. She slams her palms against the table immediately after. "You can't just bench me from the field! I'm medically fit to fight!"
"It is what it is. You have been deemed the operative best suited for the job. The success of every mission is paramount to our cause. Whether or not you agree is irrelevant, soldier." Reito says coolly, his smile immaculate, his demeanor not the least bit shaken as he neatly shuffles the documents back into place. "Every asset adds up." He explains patiently, as if talking to a child. Natsuki growls in response. "We cannot afford to be hasty. It is a long war we are fighting." He holds the dossier back out towards her with a smile. "If it helps, think of it as furlough. A vacation of sorts - reward for your recent promotion."
Scowling, Natsuki snatches the dossier back and storms away.
"You have two months." He says calmly as the door slams shut behind her.
3.
The year is 2035 and half the world is aflame. The other half is being brought to a slow broil.
In urban metropolises that gleam and shimmer, people live like lambs being fattened up for slaughter. Propaganda line the streets Natsuki walks past - golden statues of their alien overlords and banners erected by the ADVENT coalition. The Speaker is always on television: a bespectacled and slim young man, with sleek black hair and a reedy voice. She has seen that same face for more than a decade now. Natsuki swears he hasn't aged a day…
She had lived like that once with her mother, back when she still believed their lies about peace and co-prosperity. Natsuki was just a girl then, when her mother worked at the gene therapy clinic. Natsuki refuses to be fooled any longer. She swore it as she stood over her mother's grave, the wind howling with grief in the background.
(They have taken enough from her.)
In ADVENT-occupied Japan, she is Natsuki Kruger, an exchange student visiting the Tokyo university campus. Every step she takes as her alias feels like a betrayal of that resolve. Every hot-meal eaten in the cafeteria feels unsettling to swallow down. What do they put in the meat if it's been ages since anyone has seen a cow?
Regardless, Natsuki has a mission to fulfill. First contact had been made two weeks back when Natsuki planted the tracker when she bumped into her mark on the way to class. Natsuki had scowled then, muttered an apology and tossed her hair back as she pushed past the doors into the lecture hall.
Today, Natsuki eyes the woman from across the cafeteria and rolls her eyes. Her target was surrounded by fawning fan-girls as she sat, poised as ever and delicately ate her lunch. Sycophants. Natsuki grimaces and stabs into the mystery meat with her chopsticks. She reminds Natsuki far too much of her smug bastard of a handler.
Natsuki ignores how her own looks have drawn her an (unwanted) following of her own. Her scowl is enough to keep most of her admirers at bay.
4.
Inside sources had pegged her target a person-of-interest. Natsuki has yet to determine whether that meant she was friend or foe. Natsuki knew this though: the woman had a natural charisma that was both unnerving and infuriating, and an extraordinarily unremarkable social life. On weekdays, she stays till late: attending student council meetings and tinkering in the engineering lab. On Saturdays, she teaches students how to conduct traditional tea ceremonies. On Sundays, she practices with a Naginata at a dojo. Natsuki follows the graceful, flowing motions of the archaic weapon and wonders morbidly about how the woman would fare in close combat against a Berserker.
For three weeks Natsuki tails her from the shadows. There was no covert rendezvous, no smuggling of illegal contraband, no radioing of the resistance forces or informing on them to members of ADVENT. Nada, zilch, zip. Everything the woman did was completely on the ball. Her life was just so ridiculously mundane that eventually, Natsuki gives up and falls back to eavesdropping on conversations using her bug.
Natsuki attends classes dutifully on weekdays, always sits somewhere near the back, two seats away from a familiar head of chestnut brown hair. After class and before curfew, Natsuki roams the streets of her former hometown. It feels nothing like a homecoming. She draws her hood up to block the flashing neon signs of alien script, focusing instead on trying to commit the routes of different streets to memory. She thinks about where best to find cover should a skirmish breakout. She thinks about choke points and escape routes. On the battlefield, every tactical advantage matters. In the evenings, Natsuki trains, sometimes at the gym, sometimes at her dorm. Crunches and push-ups. 400 each, every day.
Today, Professor Ishigami rolls consonants gutturally and makes a series of strange, inhuman sounds while pointing to the alien symbols on the board. Could ADVENT be anymore obvious about their infiltration units? Natsuki chews on the end of her pencil, spacing out as the professor drones on about alien lexicology.
Humanity is fighting a losing war against time. The resistance is a dying ember of hope, its forces spread thin and living in the shadows like rats. In city centers all over the world, people are disappearing in droves overnight. It must all be linked somehow, the gene clinics, the missing people, ADVENT... Natsuki's brows furrow in frustration. Her superiors must know this, yet Central wants her to go deep undercover for one potential asset? This must be some sick joke. What is one life weighed against that of the world? Natsuki should be out there in the fight, getting bloodied and scarred like the rest of them.
Deep down though, Natsuki knows the reason why she is here. And it is not because of her hopelessly outdated knowledge of the streets of a city where she lived as a child. Natsuki is a liability they cannot afford on the battlefield. They promoted her because of her high kill count on her last mission, but the truth of the matter was that she frenzied, went wild and rampaged, killing ADVENT soldiers left and right when a Sectoid tried to hijack her mind. When the last enemy fell, her comrades had to pull her away because she wouldn't stop hacking apart its corpse.
If she concentrates hard enough, she can relieve that last skirmish... the blood filling her mouth as death hung like a miasma in the air.
Tears streaming down her face, Natsuki had screamed in fury and despair.
(They got it all wrong. Hell is here. It's here.)
Natsuki blinks twice in rapid succession and jerks her head back at the movement in front of her face. She brandishes the pencil she was chewing on in front of her like a sword, her body tense and ready to stab something. At the third blink, Natsuki's vision refocuses. She sees the quizzical tilt of a head and the bemused quirk of a delicate eyebrow. Her melodic voice says, "En garde?" as the young woman daintily picks up a ballpoint pen from Natsuki's pencil-box and taps it lightly against Natsuki's makeshift weapon. "Ishigami-sensei ended class early as he had something on." Shizuru Fujino says by way of explanation. "That must have been quite a day dream." She says with a mischievous wink.
Natsuki blushes heavily in embarrassment and shame before she snatches her pen back. "It wasn't like that!"
5.
The dossier had been comprehensive, but not exhaustive. Natsuki knows the kanji of Shizuru's name, her IQ, and blood type. She knows that Shizuru's parents died two decades back during the early stages of the invasion, and that Shizuru is here on a scholarship. She knows Shizuru's weekly routine to a T and so much more, but at times, it feels like she knows nothing at all. Shizuru will smile, mysterious and sad sometimes over a cup of steaming green tea as if she was a world away.
The days turn into weeks. Natsuki does not know how to feel about the strange friendship they have managed to strike up... Professionally compromised, for one. It just feels so different: looking at Shizuru through binoculars during a stakeout and having her by Natsuki's side, locking arms as they stumble back from a student mixer to the dorms, Shizuru's breath sweet and warm as it ghosts across Natsuki's face.
Natsuki lays Shizuru gently down on her bed. She smoothes back messy locks of chestnut hair to lay a hand over Shizuru's forehead. "You're so red. I'm surprised you're not running a fever." Natsuki says, halfheartedly chiding as she looks at the blissed-out expression on Shizuru's face.
In response, Shizuru giggles, entirely unabashed, and places Natsuki's hand by the side of her neck instead. "Natsuki should double-check. I feel like I'm melting into a puddle as we speak."
"S-Shizuru!" Natsuki exclaims in indignation and tries to halfheartedly tug her hand free. She relents in the end though. She always does.
"It's mine now." Shizuru insists in a remarkably serious tone of voice as she nuzzles against her calloused palm. "Natsuki is very warm." Shizuru says and lets out a contented little hum.
"Geez, you're so embarrassing." Natsuki sighs and cups Shizuru's cheek with her palm, her blush deepening at the way Shizuru unabashedly leans into her touch, chasing the warmth.
Time is running out, and Natsuki is no closer to fulfilling her objective. As infiltrations went, there were a thousand ways this could have gone better. There were a thousand different ways Natsuki could have conducted this mission. She could have cornered Shizuru in a dark alley weeks back, slit her throat after making her spill her secrets and slip away soon after. She could have broken into Shizuru's dorm after the first week, tossed it and make away with whatever secrets Shizuru was harboring.
It is impossible now, Natsuki thinks helplessly as she bites her lip. Shizuru wasn't a faceless mark anymore. The little things were what made it real, all the little idiosyncrasies that made Shizuru who she was. It was in the way Shizuru's eyes would sparkle with mirth when she teased Natsuki. It was in Shizuru's sincere fondness for old world customs, and her insistence that Natsuki try her hand at them as well. It was in how the tip of Shizuru's tongue would poke out when she was deep in concentration behind her computer monitor. The playful quirk of Shizuru's lips, the freckles of her eyes like stars in the sky, the dreams she spun when she spoke of the future - they added up to form a whole that left Natsuki a little breathless and more than a little heartbroken. Shizuru is too soft for the world they were living in, Natsuki believes that with all her heart.
Natsuki traces her thumb over Shizuru's soft, flushed cheek, bursting with fondness and utterly lost. "What will I do with you?" Natsuki breathes out in a shaky whisper.
"Stay for awhile, to start." Shizuru answers with a hum before she dons a dreamy expression. "I never noticed before. Your hands are... very calloused, but nice. You have very nice hands." Shizuru speaks like a drunken historian trying to interpret a tapestry.
Natsuki blinks, completely caught off guard.
"I... Thanks?" Natsuki lets loose an incredulous bark of laughter. "What a strange compliment. You tell that to everyone who brings you home?"
"No, just you." Shizuru smiles then, guileless and toothy, her face still flushed pink from the alcohol.
The world is still about them but for the faint ticking of a clock by Shizuru's bed. Time will never be on Natsuki's side, but right now Shizuru is before her, larger than life and bursting with something beautiful and fleeting and real. Natsuki holds her breath, afraid of breaking the spell. She gazes brokenly at the woman and swallows the words - her hopes, her fears, the truth - fighting to claw their way out of her throat.
Natsuki lets out a shaky exhale, stifled by the darkness in the room. The rough pad of her thumb rests on one of Shizuru's cheekbones. Natsuki bites her lip. Shizuru was looking at her with such tender affection. Natsuki sees it in the shy curve of her smile and her warm red eyes, unguarded and flecked with honey and gold, like all the colors of autumn. Natsuki drinks in the sight like she is sun-parched and tries to etch it into memory.
"Thank you-" Natsuki says quietly, finally breaking the lull of silence when Shizuru starts to drift off. Natsuki looks down at her feet as she whispers, too embarrassed to look directly at Shizuru, "-for making me feel like… I'm enough."
"Natsuki…" Shizuru murmurs, voice still dazed with sleep as she rouses herself into a sitting position. Natsuki's whole body tenses in alarm. She isn't prepared for this. She wants to run, but Shizuru's grip on her hand remains firm, her eyes pleading as she urges Natsuki to sit at the edge of her bed. Natsuki complies, her heartbeat rocketing in her chest as she breathes shakily, panic rising like the world was about to crumble under her. Fight or flight. Fight or flight. It was how her body was wired to behave for so long that now she doesn't know what else to do.
"Natsuki." Shizuru says again, firmer this time, as solid and certain as nothing in Natsuki's life ever was before. "Look at me." Shizuru cups her cheek then, tenderly as she gazes into green eyes that were already bright with tears. Shizuru presses their foreheads together, their breaths mingling in the little pocket of space that they share. "You are. You're enough. You're perfect."
It hurts like a knife to the heart. It hurts but Natsuki has never felt so alive.
(...Had she cried in the wake of Shizuru's words? Natsuki can't remember... If she had sobbed then, openly (brokenly), the tracks of tears were wiped dry against the soft cotton of Shizuru's blouse. She remembers instead the steadying hand on the small of her back. She remembers instead Shizuru's words of comfort, like a balm.)
Things rarely go according to plan when Shizuru is involved, Natsuki will be made to learn, time and time again. Each discovery as piquant and startling as it was in the very beginning.
6.
Life is a constant battle against overwhelming odds. And time has never been on their side. Everything comes to a head the week after, on an otherwise perfectly uneventful Monday night in one of the university's fabrication labs. Fuck Mondays.
Natsuki sits slumped over a desk, watching Shizuru work. It was 2025 hours when Shizuru looks up from her monitor and smiles, triumphant, yet forlorn. Her eyes are sparkling with a quiet determination as she says, "I want to show you something."
In the stark, empty room, they sit quietly facing each other. The air-con unit whirls noisily in the background as Natsuki blinks down at the nondescript storage device Shizuru presses into her hand. It was an AI, or the skeleton of one - line after line of its code painstakingly written over a number of years. Shizuru talks about its possible military applications: its potential to increase the combat effectiveness of soldiers, the lives it could save on the battlefield by augmenting medical drones. The small package had such grand designs and it was in the palm of Natsuki's hands.
"Why are you telling me this?" Natsuki asks, her voice pained, the words thick in her mouth like ash.
"I trust you." Shizuru says determinedly as she curls Natsuki's calloused fingers into a fist around the device. "I'm entrusting this to you."
"I… don't. I'm not who you think I am." Natsuki looks at her in quiet despair. She doesn't want to think of everything they have been through as a lie. It wasn't. It wasn't just one elaborate, fucked-up long-con. Shizuru's life is worth more than just some fucking black chip.
"You are exactly who I think you are, Natsuki." Shizuru says resolutely, without an iota of doubt as she holds Natsuki's trembling fist in her gentle hands. "They offered me a job at ADVENT because of this. I know… whether I accept or decline, it will be the end of me." Shizuru smiles then, like she had known from the beginning that this was how her life would pan out. She smiles like a woman at peace with her fate. "This is the only copy. I know you will get it to the right people. My legacy will not be a mountain of corpses. "
It was like watching a lamb go willingly to the abattoir. Fucking martyr complex! Does Shizuru even understand what she is asking for? Natsuki thinks about Mai, the way the redhead sagged with relief at the thought of the medical treatment her brother would receive at the gene clinics. That was the last time Natsuki ever saw her. Natsuki thinks about the dead ADVENT soldiers she killed, pumped so full of steroids and chemicals during battle that their lips still pulled back in a maniacal sneer even as their corpse set into rigor mortis.
It makes her blood boil! Shizuru has her whole life ahead of her! Shizuru is beautiful and intelligent and off-key and good-hearted and she will change the world with her own two hands, even if Natsuki has to physically haul her self-sacrificial, deluded ass all the way up a mountain to get there.
"No! Shut up!" Natsuki shouts, then glares like Shizuru has just insulted Natsuki's mother and her entire way of life. "You don't mean that. You don't want to die, and neither do I. So stop smiling like an idiot and get it to them yourself!" Natsuki angrily jabs a finger at Shizuru's chest then drops Shizuru's life's work into her lap like a paperweight.
7.
At 2040 hours, they run into Professor Ishigami in the corridor after exiting the lab. The slimy bastard was carrying a steaming mug of something. "In a hurry, are we?" He states by manner of observation, his neutral tone of voice giving nothing away. The light glinting off his spectacles promises something sinister as it fogs up from the steam. Up close, Natsuki can see the strange, scaly lesions of tissue on the side of his neck…
Fucking Thin Man infiltrators! Natsuki thinks as her fists clench at her side. She will blow his alien brains out on the spot if only she had her shotgun with her. As it stands, Natsuki mentally prepares to kick his crotch as hard as she can, pour the steaming mug of god-knows-what over his head and hope for the best.
"Yes, we are very eager to celebrate." Shizuru answers politely before Natsuki can step in and do anything rude, like try to snap his neck. "Natsuki has just agreed to be my girlfriend." Shizuru flashes a winning smile. Without missing a beat, she pecks Natsuki lightly on her lips like it was the most natural thing in the world. "See you tomorrow, sensei." Shizuru says agreeably and hurriedly tugs Natsuki away.
Natsuki blinks, caught off guard and more than a little dazed in the aftermath. Her lips were still tingling pleasantly when Professor Ishigami gives them a smile that never reaches his eyes and bids them goodnight.
"Sorry, it was all I could think of on short notice," Shizuru whispers into Natsuki's ear as she leads hem away. It was half apology and half explanation, though Natsuki could swear also hearing Shizuru mutter, "Plus, I didn't want to die with any regrets."
8.
Call her paranoid, but Natsuki holds no delusions about their safety. Their dorms may be swarming with Thin Men or ADVENT troopers by the time they reach, so instead, they make a beeline for a designated safe-house. Shizuru showers while Natsuki radioes the local resistance force about her situation. Afterwards, Shizuru sleeps while Natsuki sits by the old cherry wood desk and cleans her weapons - a silenced pistol, a sword and a shotgun. It would do little to help if they were swarmed, but the routine helps calm her nerves.
A standard issue Kevlar vest hangs forlornly on a hook behind the door. Outside the window, the crescent moon hangs forlornly as Natsuki stews in her thoughts for the second time that night. What they had was but a small reprieve. There is only one true escape from the war. When her time does come, Natsuki wants to go out on the battlefield as herself, not in the city as another faceless sheep in a den of wolves.
"Natsuki," Shizuru breathes, voice groggy and hair tussled from sleep as she rises from the bed.
"Sleep. You'll need the rest." Natsuki says morosely and cranes her neck to look at her. "Your life and everything you've ever known, you'll have to say goodbye tomorrow."
Shizuru stretches her stiff joints and quips. "I've never been a fan of ADVENT burgers. I'll miss my tea though." Shizuru wrinkles her nose. "It's on you if I get cranky."
Natsuki chuckles, "I may know a guy who can help with that." They look at each other, the air charged and heavy with unspoken words. "I'm sorry." Natsuki says finally, the words thick and clumsy in her mouth as she clenches her hands, white-knuckled around the barrel of a gun. "For lying to you for so long."
"It's alright." Shizuru smiles kindly, the corners of her eyes crinkling as she walks over, towards Natsuki. She gently coaxes Natsuki into relaxing her grip on the gun, then laces their fingers together. "We all have our secrets."
In the stillness of the dark, it feels right then like they are the only two people in the world who understand what that means.
"The extraction might go south." Natsuki says, frowning at the paltry, outdated equipment on the desk. "There's always a chance that ADVENT has intercepted our communications and set up an ambush." Natsuki looks down at their interlaced hands. "Do you still trust me?" Natsuki asks, a little uncertain, a little unsteady.
"With my life." Shizuru responds without a moment's delay, and closes the gap between them with a one-armed hug.
"Alright." Natsuki breathes out. Sagging with relief and cocooned by warmth, Natsuki grins as she tilts her head up to look at Shizuru. "Alright."
There is no time for regrets, no time for second guesses. In a few hours, everything is going to irrevocably change.
A/N: Hello, readers! I hope you enjoyed this (really) loose XCOM 2 AU! Please let me know whatcha think!
You don't have to play XCOM to follow the plot, but I do use terms from the game, so if I'm too vague, do let me know and I'll elaborate. :)
Things to expect in the future...
- At some point, they join the mile high club. It was a bumpy ride.
- Nao is everyone's favourite smartass psi-operative.
- Shizuru goes from ship nerd to field nerd.