A/N_Hello everyone! I noticed the severe lack of KazuxEmily stories so I have decided to contribute! To start, I do not own Air Gear, it belongs to Oh! Great. I hope you all enjoy my story, but please, no flames. Constructive criticism is more than welcome, but if you flame, I'll flame right back. If you don't like Kazu, Emily, or KazuxEmily, don't read my story. Thanks.
Emily raced down the deserted street in the middle of the night like a manic because her life depended on it.
She didn't even chance a glance behind her to see if the AT team was still behind her because she could hear their wheels rolling hard against the pavement and them taunting her. She felt very much like a mouse being chased by a pack of hungry cats.
"Don't panic," she told herself, "This is Kogarasumaru's turf; you know it like the back of your hand!"
Unfortunately, as she turned a corner she didn't count on being flanked. This team had more members than she had been led to believe.
"No!" She screamed and braked hard, skidding against the road she heard her team jacket rip and felt a burning sensation on her arm.
As she attempted to recover, the leader of the team stood over her smirking maliciously.
"Finally got her, eh? It's about time. That took way too fucking long," he knelt on one knee to get a better look at her, "You're going to deliver a message to your leader for us. Its little challenge, you see. I'm known as Drake and I'm the head of the Flaming Dragons. We were going to formally declare war the normal way, but our teammates were shut down before they could even get the sticker up."
Emily smirked in recollection of the aforementioned incident but Drake struck her hard in the face, knocking her to the pavement creating another skid mark on her temple.
"What are you smiling at, bitch!" He screamed then grew strangely calm, "Give me the sticker."
A team member handed him the sticker and the two riders holding onto Emily forced her into a kneeling position. Drake rolled behind her and triumphantly slapped the sticker right over Kogarasumaru's emblem.
Realizing what he had done, Emily thrashed against her retainers and managed to kick the leader in the shin.
"Bastard!" She screamed and managed to injure the ones restraining her as well, but just as she tried to stand, Drake's foot caught her in the stomach sending her sprawling back to the ground.
"How dare you flock of filthy crows strut around here like you do? It's retarded, and I think that it's about time that someone puts all of you in your place," He approached her and slammed an AT on her injured arm, making her scream in pain, "Hey, that was kinda sexy."
He increased the pressure and she tried her hardest to hold her scream in this time, at least until he activated his wheels. She smelled burning flesh before she felt the pain, and she heard the anguished scream before she realized that it was coming from her own mouth.
"You keep turning me on like this I may have to do something about it," He stroked his chin, "What do ya think boys? Wouldn't that be one hell of a message for the stupid crows if we screwed with her?"
Emily's eyes widened when she felt his body suddenly over hers. Her legs felt like lead from her earlier sprint and the pain from her injuries made her head throb and her eyes see stars. She was spent, there was no way she could fight two dozen AT riders in her condition even if they were only C class.
She felt his thick fingers at the zipper of her jacket and it being trailed down her stomach.
"Don't touch me!" She screamed and tried to knee him but he caught her and roughly fondled her after putting a hand over her mouth, his teammates egging him on.
"Adachi!"
Her eyes fluttered at the sound of her name and her hopes soared. The hands were ripped from her mouth and from the zipper of her shorts and for a moment, she thought she was dreaming.
She was being warmed by flames that traced a path on the road and her crush was standing above her protectively emitting a killing aura only a King could pull off.
"Get out of here," Kazu said in a low voice that implied that they weren't worth his time.
"I swear we'll get our shot at you Kogarasumaru!" The leader shouted as he made a swift exit with his gang.
Kazu's attention was already on his teammate, carefully placing an arm under her knees and a hand on her back.
"Hold on, I'm going to take you to the hospital."
"No, wait," She muttered her voice hoarse from screaming, "I need to talk to Ikki."
Kazu hesitated but then nodded and pulled out his cell phone typed a quick mass message to Kogarasumaru then took off in the direction of the secret base.
When they arrived at the school, Kazu raced up the wall and landed in the hidden classroom causing the occupants to jump up and race up to them.
"Who did this to you?" Buccha asked after they assessed her condition .
"Nice face," Agito snickered.
Yayoi had whipped out the first aid kit but Emily held her off as Kazu helped her stand. Once she was on her own two feet she carefully removed her jacket and handed it to Ikki. He took it from her, turned it over to the back and regarded the defaced emblem calmly.
The room was silent when he asked, "What happened?"
"They got the better of me," She answered hoarsely with a straight and honest face; "There's no excuse."
"I see," He said and shrugged and tossed the jacket in the corner, "We'll deal with it in the morning. Get some rest, you look like shit."
Emily bit her lip to stop the tears from overflowing and nodded gratefully, "Asshole."
Ikki just grinned and laughed, "It's too late to go home now, I guess. Why don't we all stay here tonight? It's Sunday tomorrow so we don't have school."
In other words, they all translated silently, "Stay together so that this doesn't happen to anyone else."
After Emily called her parents and told them that she was staying over at Yayoi's place that night, she finally let her best friend dress her wounds.
Ikki produced extra blankets from one of the desks and passed them around. After such an exhausting day, it wasn't long before they all fell silent.
Even thought she must have experienced the most excitement, Emily woke early in the morning shivering from recollection of the events earlier that night. She carefully moved away from Yayoi's side but kept her blanket wrapped around her body as she, after a moment's hesitation, went outside.
Onigiri's head shot up as if alerted by an internal sensor muttered, "Bathroom break?" and licked his lips in anticipation as he prepared to follow.
From his spot a few desks away Kazu said, "If you don't go back to sleep, I will mess you up."
Within seconds Onigiri was snoring loud enough to rival Buccha on the other side of the room.
After a little while, Kazu sighed and turned over to glance at his cell phone. Nearly fifteen minutes had passed and Emily still hadn't returned. Kazu got up and also went outside to check on her.
"Why does he get to go?" He heard Onigiri complain.
He didn't have to go far to find her. Emily was sitting at the base of the clock tower in the moonlight with her head buried in her knees.
"Adachi?"
Emily jumped at his call and her head shot up. He could clearly see that she had been crying.
"Kazu-sama..." She whispered averting her eyes.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and observed her quietly for a few moments trying to decide if he was bothering her.
"Are you okay?" He finally asked and watched as her eyes lost focus staring at the ground.
"I...," she started to say, but her face crumpled and more tears escaped, "I'm not."
Kazu walked up to where she sat while she continued to cry silently with tears running free even as Kazu eased into the spot next to her.
"You can, uh, cry on my shoulder if you want. I don't mind."
She looked up at him in bewilderment, but he was looking away with a slightly flushed face. Never the less, his offer touched her and she leaned toward him and placed a hand on his hoodie and grasped the fabric like a lifeline and continued to let her tears fall accompanied by silent sobs.
Kazu was at a loss of what to do, but figured he should at least try to comfort her and placed a hand on her back while rubbing it in small soothing circles as his sister had for him when he was little and upset.
As she cried, Kazu couldn't help but revel in how soft she felt. He had always thought of her as a member of the team, and with the way she acted sometimes, it was easy to see her as one of the guys. Except for the time when Kazu had recovered her bracelet, she didn't act especially feminine but her being completely helpless was a side of her he could not recall being exposed to and he wasn't sure what to think.
Nervousness settled in and he slowly became conscious of things such as how small her hand seemed gripping his hoodie, or how soft her hair looked and how slender her shoulders were. Observing these things, his pulse began to pick up speed and he had to force down the urge to fidget, instead channeling it all into the action of tugging on his beanie and suddenly he was in control again. This was still Adachi. His AT teammate and good friend, just like always.
He patiently waited for her to calm down and finally glanced at her when he felt her head lift up off of his chest slightly.
"I'm sorry, your shirt's all wet now," Emily sniffled and wiped her eyes in a half hearted attempt to look presentable again.
"Don't worry about it," He said.
They sat in silence for a few moments before Emily spoke again.
"They were waiting for me outside my house," She said in a small voice.
Kazu's eyes widened when she said this and listened intently as she continued.
"I brushed them off at first, since they hadn't issued an official challenge, but they were persistent. I handled the first batch that came after me, they were nothing, but then they started to pull out weapons. I knew that I would be getting in over my head if I tried to take on that many by myself so thought I could outrun them, maybe take a few out at a time, but they kept coming. Until they caught me," she let out a sigh that shuddered almost violently and Kazu instinctively tightened his grip just a little bit.
"I always thought of AT and being a Storm Rider as a separate world, you know? But I guess other people don't," She laughed bitterly, "I've always felt like I was the weakest person on the team, but I thought that I might still be able to make a difference. I guess I'm just a burden after all."
"That's not true," Kazu said, "I think you're amazing."
Emily blinked and keeping her head bowed so that he couldn't see her expression asked, "Wh-why's that?"
"You're pretty strong, you're smart, and you're fun to be around," He said pulling from memories of their time together. 'Pretty' was another word that came to his mind, but he didn't want to sound weird.
"Thanks, Kazu-sama," Emily said, smiling with a pink tinge to her face, "That means a lot. Hey, do mind if we stay here? Just for a little while?"
"Yeah sure, why not?" He answered and tugged at the corner of her blanket, "Got a little room to spare under there? It's cold out here."
"Y-yeah!" She detangled herself from the blanket and offered him half which he accepted. Once they were settled, Emily's heart was beating so fast she couldn't relax but then Kazu's arm was around her again.
"We still have a few hours before the sun comes up, why don't you go back to sleep?" He was yawning as he said this and she knew that he would fall asleep before long. So instead of fretting about their proximity, she decided to embrace it and with a small smile back on her face, she acquiesced to his suggestion by leaning her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes and drifting peacefully off to sleep.
