Hello everyone, here is a fic about Scepter 4. I think I might be just about the first person on fanfic dot net to write about these two characters but I hope you enjoy none the less.
This is set in the same universe as my other genderbend K project fic Don't Wanna be your Enemy but you don't need to read that first to get this one.
Hope you enjoy!
I own nothing!
Chapter 1: Tatsuya Enomoto and Daiki Fuse
Tatsuya Enomoto, generally known as 'the Scepter 4 chick with glasses,' was having a bad day.
Not terribly bad, just consistently bad, it had started at the exact moment her alarm went off...
First, Tatsuya's alarm went off, that was bad in itself. Who liked alarms? Seriously, whoever invented them must have hated people, like a lot.
Second, after she turned the alarm clock off, she instinctively reached beside it and felt around, as she did every morning...
And her hand touched empty air.
Wide awake now she squinted into the air around her hand, "hey, Hidaka, can you see my glasses anywhere?" She asked, Enomoto was as blind as a bat without them and couldn't see a thing. She could see the pink smear of her hand and the black smear of her alarm clock on the background of the pale brown smear of her bedside table. But no matter how hard she squinted she couldn't see the little black smudge that was her glasses.
"Hidaka?" She squinted into the blankness of the room, her co-worker's bed was empty.
"The one day ever she chooses to go in early," the black-haired female muttered. She pulled herself out of bed and searched the area around the table, nothing.
She searched her desk and even her wardrobe as she put her uniform on and did up her hair by touch, no glasses. Giving up with a sigh, she'd find them later; Tatsuya opened one of her desk drawers and pulled out her spare glasses case. It was suspiciously light.
It was empty.
Tatsuya's dim eyes widened, no, there was no way, she was as neat and orderly as any responsible Scepter 4 member (no, Domyoji did not count, she said responsible Scepter 4 members), and as a responsible Scepter 4 member there was no way she'd displaced both sets of glasses including the set she never wore.
Enomoto picked up her work-issued phone and held it so close the screen was almost touching her nose and winced, she was going to be late! And when you were in Scepter 4 you were punctual, polite and efficient and didn't stick out. Or else.
And Tatsuya was a quiet girl who enjoyed not sticking out; she really, really didn't want the lieutenant on her case.
She could get there; of course, she had walked from the dorm to her work station so many times she could probably do it in her sleep (and was convinced some of the members probably did) but the problem wasn't getting there, it was what she would do when she was there, she would be no good to anyone if she couldn't even see her own hand in front of her face! And they were so busy since the death of the Red King that every single hand was needed in the field...
Tatsuya turned her room upside down, she didn't fix it afterwards, she'd do that later, and apologize to Hidaka for scaring the shite out of her when she walked back in and saw Enomoto's half of the room worse than her own.
Hey! The tamagotchi she'd lost last month! It was dead, of course, but still nice to find.
But she didn't find her glasses.
With a muttered curse (very unlike her) Tatsuya tore out of her room.
Enomoto reached the girl's bathroom and checked the area where she, Hidaka, Benzai and Domyoji usually put their clothes. Enomoto had taken her glasses off to bathe naturally, but she was sure she had put them back on! (It's not like she wouldn't have noticed if she wasn't wearing them but hey, they had to be somewhere!
But that somewhere wasn't here.
Heart pounding and not from running, Tatsuya walked quickly to the lost and found, a quick enquiry was all that was needed, no glasses of any sort had been handed in within the last 48 hours, Enomoto asked to see them anyway since she was not exactly certain of when she had misplaced her spare pair (or even that she actually had misplaced them). But none of the glasses were hers, great. This day kept getting better and better. And it was only quarter to seven AM!
With a distressed sigh Enomoto pressed the part of her phone screen that she knew would activate her speed dial and, squinting, mentally cursed the flat inconvenience, touch phones were wonderful... unless you couldn't see what you were doing and were relying on your sense of touch.
"Fuse?" She asked when her co-worker picked up the phone, he was the only one she could call, everyone else would have left or be readying themselves to leave on their own various assignments right now but Fuse was assigned to work with her and couldn't leave until she was with him.
"Hey Enomoto, are you ready to leave? I'm just finishing up in here and we'll go," he promised, there was a clinking sound, presumably of cutlery.
"Fuse I'm not ready to go anywhere," she admitted. "You'll need to go on without me." She took a deep breath, "I can't find my glasses or my spare pair anywhere. I've searched my room, the bathrooms and the lost and found; nothing. Fuse... I, I can't see anything," her voice shook slightly on the last sentence, the unthinkable horror of being late for work coupling with the dismay of letting her partner down, especially at a critical time like this, coupled with the inherent anxiety of being almost completely robbed of one of her five senses, and the one she relied on the most at that, was making her antsy and heart rate skyrocket.
Fuse, of course, didn't lose his cool for even half a second.
"Where are you now?"
"At the lost and found," Enomoto replied, cringing mentally. "I'm so sorry I-"
"Don't be silly. Stay where you are, I'll come help you look." He hung up, after politely bidding her goodbye for now, of course and ignoring all her protests.
Tatsuya took a few deep breaths, she needed to calm down, this was no way for a grown woman of almost twenty-three to act.
But seriously, what the hell? Where were her glasses? She couldn't, she hadn't, misplaced both pairs but she couldn't think where else they could be.
And without her glasses, her eyesight was terrible, seriously. She'd be sitting right next to Hidaka in the baths and unable to visually identify her. Seriously, less than an arm's length away. That's how bad it was.
Fuse arrived, "good morning," he said walking beside her as she walked back to her room
What's so good about it? Enomoto wondered but all she said was a shy; "good morning."
They checked her room again, or more like Fuse's sharp eyes checked while Enomoto clumsily cleaned up her attempt at ripping the room apart. Fuse didn't help her check the girl's bathroom, for obvious reasons, but he did call the lieutenant and explain why they weren't at their posts. Enomoto couldn't actually hear what Lieutenant Awashima was saying but she did not sound happy.
Fuse didn't say why they were running late, he just said that they were which Enomoto could tell the lieutenant didn't like, Tatsuya opened her mouth to protest, Fuse hung up.
"You should have told her," said Enomoto, it wasn't that she didn't appreciate Fuse trying to share the blame with her, it just that she would rather whatever punishment the lieutenant could cook up for her than the guilt of getting Fuse in trouble because she had somehow managed to magically transport her glasses to another
dimension or something.
"You should go on ahead," she said, "I don't know what I was thinking asking you to help me."
"You didn't ask, I decided to help you on my own," he reminded her.
"Yes I know that but I-"
"Enomoto!" Fuse reached up to the top of the wall that separated Scepter 4 from the nearby street and took something down, he held it out to her, "these aren't yours by any chance, are they?"
Enomoto took the glasses, the second her hand touched them she knew they were hers, the pair she wore every day, not her spare pair which had thinner rims.
"Yes!" She felt like hugging Fuse, but didn't because that wasn't professional, "thank you so much," she looked at the wall through eyes covered by her lenses, "how on earth did you get up there?" She whispered, more to herself than to her glasses or Fuse.
Maybe she had dropped them on the street? Someone walking by had seen them and thought whoever had dropped them might come back there looking for them but just decided to move them to the top of the wall where they wouldn't get stepped on? She couldn't have done that could she? Like she'd thought before, she'd notice if she wasn't wearing them, and she hadn't been near this wall in weeks.
"I don't even think I can reach that high," she whispered, she tried anyway but indeed couldn't. Fuse's 5'8 frame had just been able to reach the top of the high, thick fence but Enomoto's 5'5 frame couldn't quite make it.
"I didn't put those there," she told Fuse.
He shook his head, "I didn't think you did for a second."
Tatsuya absentmindedly tightened her ponytail, "then how did they get there?" She whispered again, "and what happened to my spare pair?"
"Tatsuya," the grave tone and use of her first name made her turn back to her companion quickly. He was looking... not nervous, but... unsettled?
"Can you think of anyone who might want to hurt you like this?"
Enomoto's eyes widened, he thought someone had moved her glasses on purpose?! She hadn't even considered that!
Tatsuya wasn't an idiot, had they been, for example, in highschool, that would have been one of the first things that she thought of, but this wasn't an institution filled with bratty kids (well, arguably wasn't), no one here would do something like that. This was a work place and a special, strict workplace at that. A regular workplace would probably forgive one late arrival due to misplaced eyewear, Enomoto however was expecting the lieutenant to cook them both over her blue flames, slather them with red bean paste and eat them alive.
Okay, that was drastic; they wouldn't be in that much trouble.
She might leave off the red bean paste.
But still... Domyoji and Hidaka often played pranks, occasionally on Tatsuya, but they were never malicious, all of her co-workers were good people, no one here would make her wander around (more than)half blind for almost two hours, even for shits and giggles. And other than members of Scepter 4, who else could even get past the front door, let alone to Tatsuya's things, let alone to the glasses she only took off to sleep and placed by her head in a room with another person in it behind a locked door?! In the girls' dorms!
"No!" She shook her head vehemently, "no one! It must be some kind of mistake or freak accident!" She checked her phone and her heart almost stopped beating, "thank you so much for your help but we need to go, now!" She bolted off, and, troubled, Daiki Fuse followed her.
As it turned out, when they saw the lieutenant later that day, she wasn't even angry, they started to explain (well Fuse did, Enomoto started insisting it was her fault, not his and was promptly talked over) but Seri
Awashima waved off their explanations and told them it was quite alright, everyone was allowed to be late. Once.
Scared stiff and wanting to make up lost time Enomoto and Fuse worked through their lunch hour so Tatsuya, having also missed breakfast, was starving by the time her circle met up after the day's end and headed into the cafeteria (for lack of a better word) for dinner.
But, having avoided all form of punishment and/or scolding Enomoto was feeling pretty damn optimistic about the world, maybe today wasn't all bad.
This feeling lasted only until they made to walk through their work space to get to the cafeteria.
And stepped into a war zone.
There were papers everywhere all over the floor, the desks, the chairs, stuck to the ceiling, literally; glued to the ceiling. And the carpet. And the walls. And the desks. And chairs. And pretty much every other object in the room. Not one of them was undamaged. They were crumpled, torn, some ripped into confetti, stuck to things, coloured in completely with black marker...
Well hers' were.
All the piles of paperwork on her co-workers' desks were left as neatly (or messily in Domyoji's case) as their owner had left them.
Enomoto's paperwork was all over the room, along with the manila folders she'd kept them in. Her chair was also smashed in pieces around the room.
Enomoto heard Hidaka gasp.
Her desk, Enomoto's, not Hidaka's, had been scribbled on in black marker writing what looked like every single insult someone could possibly call someone else. But that was okay because Enomoto obviously wasn't keeping that desk because it also looked like someone had taken several swings at it with a sword, leaving long gashes and deep dents in the once perfect plastic.
There was nothing wrong with her computer though. Except that it was missing.
Amidst all the wreckage lay Enomoto's spare pair of glasses, one lens cracked, snapped in half.
A week later Enomoto was doing fine.
Sure, a week after the desk fiasco, no one could figure out who or why someone would do thing or why all the security cameras in that area had chosen a few hours that day to screw up.
Sure two days later her sword which she also slept with beside her bed had gone missing and wound up in the middle of the training room. Alongside all the ruined equipment, sure the day after that Enomoto had opened her locker in the training room and not one, not two, but three huge, hairy spiders had tumbled out to land at her feet.
The fourth had landed on her shirt.
Enomoto wasn't irrationally afraid of spiders like the lieutenant (and at least 30 percent of women and 20 percent of men, true fact) were but would be lying if she said that incident hadn't scared the life out of her.
And okay, maybe yesterday she'd walked out her door and been drenched in a bucket of ice-cold water.
Classic. Classic asshole move.
And yes, maybe now she was trying to stay calm as she walked towards the infirmary after dinner because she was pretty sure there had somehow been apricot, which she was mildly allergic to, in the pasta she'd eaten at dinner.
She really had no other explanation as to why she could feel her throat closing up.
But she was doing fine, really.
Or maybe not.
After the swelling went down Tatsuya gripped Fuse's hand tightly in one of hers as she sat on an infirmary bed and tried not to draw attention to the fact that she was doing so.
She was terrified.
She was no longer under any delusions that this was anything close to an accident, someone had it out for her, and they had it out for her bad.
Forget the paperwork, forget the desk, forget the sword and the spiders, heck, forget nearly suffocating! Enomoto didn't care what happened. She could deal with it.
What was slowly but surely destroying her ability to concentrate, to sleep and now to eat was the not knowing. To wake up every morning and have no idea what was going to go wrong next, only that something would go wrong and there was nothing she or anyone else could do about it!
Well, that was part of what was ruining her sleep. Enomoto just couldn't stop wondering just how someone would get hold of her sword or glasses.
But she did know it would involve being in her locked room while she and Hidaka both slept...
As though he could read her mind, Daiki squeezed her hand and regarded her with serious eyes, "we're going to figure this out, I promise," he said.
Tatsuya smiled, her heart warmed, "thank you."
He smiled back, of all her co-workers Enomoto truly did consider Fuse her closest friend and he cared for her, sometimes more than she thought she deserved.
Nurses wishes be damned she was going back to her dorm (at least for now), Fuse accompanied her. But when they reached the door with 'Enomoto' and 'Hidaka' engraved on metal plates attached to it, they weren't the only ones there.
The lieutenant and, what? Mr. Fushimi? Were standing in the doorway along with the four top members of the special squad, Akiyama, Benzai, Kamo and Domyoji. When they approached everyone shot Enomoto looks ranging from sympathy to worry. Tatsuya felt Daiki's hand, whether as protection or a restraint she wasn't sure, came to rest on her shoulder.
It was Fushimi who stopped her, that in itself was enough to make Enomoto inwardly reach full-on panic; if Fushimi was trying to stop her she knew it was bad.
Awashima licked her lips and swallowed, "let her pass."
When she saw her room Enomoto's mind blanked, she didn't know what to think except 'why?'
Hidaka was sitting on the floor, holding a broken silver chain and snapped silver pendant in her hands, Goto kneeling beside her. Enomoto recognized the necklace, Hidaka had once told her that it was the last thing her father had given her before he was shot in an armed robbery, she only ever took it off for training.
All of Enomoto's stuff was fine. It was Hidaka's side of the room and everything in it that had been mangled beyond all repair.
And on Hidaka's side of the room words were slashed into the wall.
People suffer when you're around Tatsuya.
Let me know what you think guys.
Bye!
