Notes: Mm, well, here's where the story takes the biggest change you'll ever see. If anyone was expecting this, you definitely get a cookie. No, a truckload of cookies! …and for everyone that didn't see it coming, well, let me assure you: you are not alone.
CHAPTER ONE
Cho and Toshi were exchanging worried looks over a desk of paperwork.
"There aren't any rooms open," Cho was saying, flicking through the papers and occasionally stopping to lick her fingers before she resumed, "there just aren't."
"What are we going to do with him?" Toshi asked, seriously. She was leaning her elbow on the polished wooden desk, her hand pillowing her chin. They were in Toshi's office, which was further inside the building, but still sharing a wall with Cho. Her ankles were crossed, and she had her eyebrow raised as if to say, "What the hell do we do now?"
"I don't know," Cho said, and quite honestly, she didn't. "We've got an abandoned sixteen-year-old sitting in the next room whom we know absolutely nothing about, and we haven't even got a place to put him."
"We know his name is Daisuke," Toshi pointed out. "And we don't even know he's sixteen. He just looks like it." Cho made a face.
"You just had to correct me."
And indeed, she had. That's just the way Toshi was, you see. All smug smiles, filled to the brim with arrogant corrections. But everyone loved her for it. Or almost anyone, anyway.
"True," Toshi said, and her teeth were white when she smiled. "But we really do have to come up with a solution, here." She paused, and her smile grew. You know, I hear you've got extra room in your apartment -"
"No."
Suddenly, Toshi was smacking her hands down on the desk, and the sound resonated around the room menacingly. Her glasses caught the light when she raised her head, and her voice had her trademark "higher-than-thou" tone.
"Listen," she said, and her voice was as cold as her almost black eyes, "we have a teenage boy in there with nowhere to go. He's soaked with rain, his sister - at least I'm guessing his sister, because it would be a sin if she were a mother to him that young - has just abandoned him, and he's probably very confused. Or at least a little bit scared." A full, pregnant pause. "Are you just going to abandon him like this?"
"Hey," Cho said, raising her hands to defend herself, "your apartment's bigger than mine, you know, so you're abandoning him, too!"
Toshi was suddenly calm again, leaning back and tapping her lower lip with a pretty, pink manicured nail. Then, she said, slowly, "I'll dock your pay your pay if you don't."
Cho glared. "Fine," she said, "but I won't like it."
---
At that moment, Daisuke was pulling his ear away from the wall (the little eavesdropper), and he was smiling.
"Way to go, stupid," he whispered, in fond reference to his sister, and sat in the same chair that Cho had occupied earlier. This plan was going to work well, he decided. The door opened, again producing Cho and Toshi - in that order, and the smile quickly dropped.
Cho paused in front of him, her dark eyes watching him with what she considered a friendly look while she ran tired fingers through her stringy hair. Eventually, she sighed, gripping the edge of the desk and speaking softly, "We don't have room for you at the school."
His hopes fell, but his face remained intact.
"But..."
And just like that, with that one tiny word his hopes inflated again. He was struck by a funny mental image of it, but he didn't let himself laugh at it. Once, just this once, he had to stay serious and not let them know they - he and Jun - had this planned.
But you guys knew that all along, huh?
"But?" he echoed her.
Parrot, his mind supplied in its familiar quirky way.
"But," she sighed, and her bangs blew about her face for one frenzied moment, "you will be staying with me, and you will still attend the school. You will ride with me every morning, since I work here, so you'll be early." Suddenly, she glared, and her dark eyes weren't so friendly anymore - by anyone's standards. "So you'll have no excuses if you're late. Just because you live with me, we won't take it easy on you. Consider yourself lucky."
Toshi, from behind Cho, was smiling at him from underneath her thick-rimmed glasses. She extended a hand, and he gripped it, watching with fascination the way her pink nails caught and reflected the light. Jun's nails had always been a little grungy, but they'd never had much money, so he supposed that was acceptable. It had taken a year of saving and a lot of pick pocketing - he was a natural, you know; a good, fast lift - to get the money for him to stay here while Jun went off to do God knows what, but they had.
"I'm the headmistress, Akimoto Toshi," she introduced herself, and tucked a piece of brown hair behind her ear with a swift, practiced ease, and he had to admire her again, because he'd never been that graceful or that swift. He was a little - actually, a lot - clumsy, much like his sister.
Well, in everything but pick pocketing, that is. You have to keep in mind the essentials, here.
"Motomiya Daisuke," he said, and he grinned the same grin he'd given to Jun before she'd left, his teeth just as white but without the dramatics of the lightning, and Toshi relaxed a little. He didn't seem like any trouble at all, really.
She said, "Pleased to meet you. School starts in two weeks."
---
The school uniform wasn't exactly flattering, but then again, none are, as far as school uniforms go. The blazer was dark blue, so at least he liked the color - because everyone likes dark blue, right? He was instructed to wear a white button-up dress shirt beneath it, but he'd left the top two unbuttoned, just for fun, and was currently wrestling with a tie that matched perfectly the blazer. His pants were black, and in much better condition than the ones he'd been wearing for the past two weeks. Black, relatively shiny shoes would complete the outfit, but they were currently waiting on the mat by the door.
Cho had grudgingly had to buy him the shoes, of course, since his old ones were scuffed and brown - the complete wrong color, you know. Toshi had told him about that.
Making a strangled noise, he finally tugged the tie from his neck, crumpling it in his hand and leaving the bathroom - past the pale white walls of his currently barren bedroom (and it would probably stay that way, too; Cho was a little stingy) and into the main room, where Cho was waiting, tapping her foot on the carpeting.
"What's taking so long?" she asked, pushing back the fabric of her shirt sleeve to reveal her watch. "We should have left five minutes ago."
Wordlessly, he opened his hand to reveal the disheveled tie, and Cho only sighed, throwing her hands in the air as though the world were going to end and taking the necessary steps to walk reach him.
"You," she said, tugging the tie from his hand and into place around his neck, "are hopeless."
She paused, staring at the tie, and bit her lip.
"How are you supposed to do these, anyway?"
Daisuke only shrugged; said, "Hell if I know."
...needless to say, they were late for the first day of school.
---
He didn't like many of his classes. He didn't like bschool/b, for that matter, but for the sake of Jun - for the sake of the Motomiya family, and their honor, he would suffer it.
But only for a little while, mind you. Because when we say Daisuke didn't like school, we mean he did not like school.
His History teacher was getting horribly off subject in his lecture - he'd been going on about the Meiji Era for the past ten minutes, maybe, and Daisuke had stopped taking notes about twenty ago. Instead, he'd been fingering a small, creased photograph in his pocket, his eyes fixed on a soft, silky head of blue hair that was maybe two seats in front of him.
Daisuke grit his teeth, and his hand twitched, creasing the picture further.
It's him, he thought. He's really here. Jun was right. We came to the right school.
doki doki
It would be simple enough, he supposed. Jun had planned this all out, after all - and for all the boy obsessing and flaky exterior, he knew she always came through when it counted. They were the last two Motomiyas, after all, since...
doki-doki-doki-doki
This was his target. This was his reason to live. The Motomiya name would not be shamed, and Daisuke would finally sleep peacefully at night, without the weight of his parents' death settled firmly on his chest, and the thought of revenge living sinfully in his heart.
He rubbed his shoulder in thought. He was meeting Jun later that day, for a weapon exchange, then he would wait until nightfall, and then...
Daisuke smirked.
He would finish the job, then disappear, just like always.
---
School really hadn't been too bad, Daisuke concluded as he began walking down the front pathway of the school, past the dormitories and other students and to Cho's small black car. It was pulled up in front, and Cho was tapping her fingers on the steering wheel, waiting for him.
As he neared, he gestured for her to roll down the window, and she did. He tried to grin - look charming, or something ridiculous like that. Anything to make her agree to what he was about to ask next.
"Could I stay here - with a friend, for a bit? It's my first one in a while."
Cho opened her mouth to disagree, but he was already a step ahead of her.
"I promise - I'll find my own ride home, you won't have to come get me."
"Fine." She faced ahead of her, sighing as if she could care less, but he caught her slipping a look at him through the corner of her eyes. As an afterthought, she said, "Just don't get yourself killed."
Daisuke grinned again. "I won't."
She pulled away, and he waited for her to drive out of sight until he began walking steadily away from the school, pulling a slip of paper from his pockets that he'd had to transfer there from his original pair of black pants. He squinted at it with dark, mischievous brown eyes, and his smile never faded. After a moment, he crumpled it in his fist and deposited it in the nearest trash can.
"See you soon, Jun," he whispered to the afternoon air, craning his neck back to stare at the sky.
---
Jun stood, waiting, in the shadows of the alley wall, chewing on her knuckles nervously. An ugly habit, really, but at least she wasn't chewing her fingernails. Because that, as we all know, is a truly ugly habit. The air around her felt heavy, and looking at the clouds rolling around above her, she guessed it was going to rain again.
She smirked to herself, rubbing a spot on her shoulder absently. Rain was always nice on nights like these...
Another shadow emerged, suddenly from the alley wall, and stood next to hers, slightly smaller but emitting a flame that could not be matched.
Daisuke grinned. "So, what's going on?"
A glare. "Don't be stupid, squirt." Jun released her knuckles from her mouth, wiping them on her shirt before digging into a large pocket on the side of her pants. She handed him something small in a dark sheath. It flashed briefly in the light escaping the clouds when he pulled it out.
"Nice," he said, stopping for a moment to admire the dagger before replacing it in the sheath.
"I'm glad we found the right school," Jun murmured, relaxing against the wall of the alley. In the shadows, it was much cooler than the summer air around her, and she savored it, pressing her palms against the brick. "I was worried..."
"You?" Daisuke asked, raising both his eyebrows. "Worried? I don't believe it."
Jun only shrugged. "It's important that we get this one. He's the last..."
Daisuke put the dagger securely in his pocket, shaking his head. "He's got a brother, remember?"
She flinched. "Well, don't remind me, stupid! I haven't found him yet."
"Well, work on it." He made to leave, then paused to embrace her once, quickly. She gave him a bundle of dark clothes and smiled.
"I'll find him. Just...you don't screw up, okay?"
He nodded. "Good luck."
"Yeah." She mussed his hair. "You too, squirt."
Daisuke grinned and ran back into the shadows to wait for night to fall.
Well. Raise your hand if you were expecting that. *crickets chirp; no one does so* Ahh-HA! That's what I thought. Review if you want me to keep going!