Disclaimer: Characters not mine.
AN: Reference shout-out to my sis, MangKulas, who not only issued me a challenge but wrote in a delicious reference of Spiral City in her new story. Go check it out and rave over it as I have. Dear sis, it was awesome pounding out the details of your world and you are definitely finishing it. (Also, she's the one kicking my ass over this to finish it.) I'm sorry this is late. I have not forgotten you.
-10101010
"Life becomes like molten metal, old customs crumble and instability rules,"—Samuel Henry Prince.
0101010
010101010
010101
It was like waking from a deep sleep, from drowning underwater—then the shock of breaking through the surface.
Tsuna took several shuddering breaths, as Yamamoto placed comforting hands on his shoulders, because Tsuna could not break down here, not at this point. And there would be time later, time enough to deal with the fact that Tsuna's own father had somehow come back from the grave with a multi-billion franchise of invasive Freudian videogames, without even contacting his own son. And god, wasn't that a stupid thought. What would the man say after the dial tone (because Tsuna would never get the courage to pick up that damn call with his name on it)? Hey, I'm alive and kicking and I still kinda love you even though I went nuts and killed people and abandoned you when you were ten years old and still reeling from your mother's death.
Later, he promised himself. Later.
"We need to call the Numbers Headquarters," Tsuna said, his hand already fitting on his headphones. "We need to contact somebody, anybody. Reborn. Reborn would know what to do." If that bastard hadn't gone underground, of course…
"Why?" Yamamoto stared at him then narrowed his eyes. "You found something about the King Industries."
"I know who they are," Tsuna said as his fingers fiddled with the number wheel. "God, I was so stupid. I can't believe I didn't realize it. I mean, their logo is a fucking lion."
Yamamoto's hand shot out—stealing Tsuna's hand away from completing his call.
"Hey. You sure? You don't wanna just charge in there, guns blazing with the slightest chance that you're wrong."
Tsuna tugged ineffectually at his hand from Yama's vice-like grip, glaring at his student. "I know what I'm doing. Let go."
Yamamoto squeezed his wrist-bones gently, his eyes like flint. "I said, we should proceed with caution. You know? You just got out of the hospital and right now, you sound pretty upset."
"I'm not fucking upset."
"Calm down," Yama told him, still holding his hand. "Tell me then—"
The confused rumble of the crowd around them drowned out their conversation as every single official channel on all hanging public screens switched from "—and even Governor Timoteo came out today to celebrate—" to the King Industries Logo, a crowned lion on a shield. A manic voice boomed out of the speakers, addressing them. "BACCANITES, here is a toast, just for you lucky revelers right here in Spiral City."
It played the sfx of a popped wine bottle, the faint sound of frothing wine hissing out of the vids.
Masks and tattooed faces looked upward, all of them staring at the logo on the vid, transfixed, murmuring excitedly. Tsuna shook his head. That wasn't his voice. Too high. Tenor, even.
"For coming out on the streets for the parade and for spreading your love of Urban Legends on the net. Our thanks and our love, and nope, we ain't just gonna leave it at that, folks."
But he could feel the panic begin to seep in, his breath rapidly increasing, the realization dawning on him. Somewhere in the god-forsaken King Industries was Iemitsu. And Reborn had known it. Reborn would have realized, as soon as he'd heard the rumors. That was why Mukuro knew.
And Tsuna had to find Iemitsu, before Reborn did.
Because Tsuna knew now that not only were they hunting down the Varia, but Iemitsu as well.
"You really want to know?" Tsuna asked Yamamoto, tugging at his hand. "I went to see Mukuro, the coma patient. He was working something for Reborn. I need to contact Numbers. I need to find Reborn to—"
"That guy again," Yamamoto said, almost irritated. "You really like him that much? He's practically ancient."
"I don't have time for this," Tsuna said as he jerked his hand back to dial the last digits of Fuuta's channel, ignoring his voicemail notifications, ignoring Yamamoto's behavior, ignoring the prickle of paranoia.
If Reborn found Iemitsu first, there wouldn't be anything left for Tsuna to mourn.
"You may have heard about our dear Governor's factory recall of the Cube because of concerns about side-effects, that was all a selfish lie, by the way, as you'll see there are absolutely none in the public records," There hadn't been any records. All the documents had been sealed. "—BUT. We don't care! They can take our Cubes, they can take our offices, and they can even have that broken expresso machine—because, lovely citizens of Spiral, we do not need such TOYS."
Fuuta's channel connected, "-We're sorry. The number you have dialed is not in service."
"Shit, I can't, I can't connect with Numbers." Bewildered, Tsuna flicked at the headphones, hoping to jar it into connecting. "—sorry. The number you—"
Why was the channel off-line?
"Because we, at King Industries, will be giving you a FREE download of Urban Legends right here, right now—" the crowd roared its approval, screaming and stomping and pumping their fists, "We want you to hold up high your cellphones, your comm screens, your hacked gaming pieces, your tech toys, whatever is in your pockets and connect to our servers. In about fifteen seconds, we will connect you via electromagnetic mumbo-jumbo (our scientists' words, not ours) to reveal our biggest breakthrough—the VERY FIRST SIMULATED URBAN LEGENDS ON THE ACTUAL STREETS OF SPIRAL CITY."
Tsuna remembered the static in Spanner's eyes and Mukuro's voice whispering in his ear, their own ghosts.
He stared in horror at the hundreds of people around him already taking out various cells and pads. Yamamoto hauled him back from clawing out a Cat-Girl's pinkberry from her hands. It was a trap, the whole stupid game and Yamamoto was clamping a hand on his mouth from screaming at them.
She gave him a scowl, inching away from them.
"Sorry, sorry. He's just a bit upset," Yamamoto smiled at the girl, even as he clutched Tsuna close.
Nobody was listening; nobody was even looking at him.
They were all staring star-struck at the King Logo, raising phone after phone—lines and lines of glowing screens.
Tsuna fought Yamamoto's hold, biting and scratching and shoving at his shoulder because a green countdown timer had started underneath the Lion.
Fifteen seconds.
The public announcement systems began to tick off, the crowd counting in tandem with the digital numbers, their voices breathless and eager. "Fourteen, thirteen,"
That sixth sense of Tsuna's ran a clammy finger down his neck.
Why was Yamamoto so strong? Why had he tried to stop Tsuna from calling? Why had Tsuna been assigned a student when he wasn't even that high up in the Numbers' totem pole?
Why had Reborn given him Yamamoto as a student?
And why was it all hitting him now?
"Ten, nine,"
Tsuna stilled, because it wasn't possible. It just couldn't. He stopped struggling, curled both hands around Yamamoto's face, and pulled him close.
Yamamoto's black eyes blurred into feral gold as he let go of Tsuna.
"Seven, six,"
Nose to nose, lips barely brushing, and that color of gold taking up the whole of Tsuna's vision. Tsuna pleaded, "Cut the wires, disconnect them from the public vids."
"It won't cut them from the net. They'll still be connected."
Four, three.
Tsuna made a sound, a sob stuck in his throat.
He spoke into Yamamoto's half-open mouth, "…Help me."
One.
The download button popped up. The description underneath: Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we shall die. It was only visible for two more seconds before a baselard stabbed into the biggest screen. A gladius followed, then a claymore, one after the other shattering screens left and right. But as Yamamoto predicted, it didn't stop them, didn't stop the crowd of mismatched mythological deities, demons, and literary characters all converging on the streets, each glowing screen pinging Download Finished, the sudden static running through circuitry and jumping onto human flesh.
Screams burst out, mutating machines vomiting out their own wirings, and engulfing their helpless owners into the mouths of machines.
And Tsuna, idiot Tsuna, forgot that his headphones were still online and in a split-second, Urban Legends downloaded itself onto Tsuna's headphones, joining the chorus of Download Finished, the static blaring right through Tsuna's head, his headphones warping into pieces around him.
And Yamamoto, face snarling, hand already ripping through the swirl of metal.
The headphone wheels clicked before collapsing in.
Yamamoto shoved him out of the way, black wires latching onto Yamamoto's arm instead.
Just as Verde's psychic shockwave flooded over the city.
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Tsuna scrambled up from the ground, already too late.
And there suspended in time in a psi bubble was Yamamoto, metal plates soldered into his body, cables biting into his neck, and one eye gone golden, the other a static white. It hadn't finished changing. All around Tsuna were psi bubbles of people in various levels of mutating into the monsters of Urban Legends. It was a nightmare of contorted bodies, the teeth of metal, and faces caught in a rictus of pain.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Tsuna said to himself even as he dug his palms into his eyes. His hands came away wet with tears. "Tsuna, why are you such an utter failure?"
He shook himself.
He couldn't stop here.
Tsuna needed to go on.
It started to rain. Sheets of water fell down on psi bubbles with muted plink plink sounds. Past sodden hair, Tsuna stared one last time at Yamamoto inside the bubble.
Tsuna had to laugh a little bit, laugh and laugh until his voice reached a hysterical high note.
Tsuna bit his lip to stop, until he could taste his own blood from biting too hard.
"I'm okay, I'm okay," Tsuna said to himself, "I just, I just need to think."
He had no form of communication with Numbers now that his headphones were infected. It had shielded him one last time but it had stranded him in a disaster. He needed to move fast. He needed a shield and a weapon other than his capricious pyrokinesis. Tsuna glanced around and found the wreckage of screens and pulled out the baselard. He looked longingly at the golfbag near Yamamoto's feet, practically overspilling with swords.
But Tsuna only needed one, something small and light.
The virus had affected all online communication systems. And when Tsuna spied the blue telephone booth, he wondered if it had affected the offline systems as well. It couldn't hurt to check, could it? Tsuna navigated around three Vikings who were caught in the same bubble, wires and metal tangling them together. Past a cop who had been frozen trying to smash his phone, and Tsuna could climb over the DoNotCross yellow tapes.
Inside, mounted on the wall was an old candlestick phone with a rotary dial, part of a resurgence of vintage Victorian fashion.
Touching it didn't affect him, didn't spark static into his skin.
So, it hadn't affected anything offline.
Tsuna began to dial.
000-000-000.
If Fuuta's channel was dead, then Tsuna had no other choice.
"You have reached Number Verde. If you are female and reasonably attractive, press 1—"
Tsuna dialed 1.
"Good evening, sweetling. And what can a dashing gentleman, such as I, can do for you?"
"Verde—don't fucking hang up—this is an emergency and I want answers."
Verde sighed. "Oh, it's you. I suppose it was too much to hope that you got caught in the time-freeze. What do you want to know then?"
"Status update."
"Varia still missing. Numbers 01-13 underground on Search and Destroy. Communication Lockdown to prevent King Industries viral download. Time-freeze expiring in three hours. Time-freeze contained all sectors. Numbers 20-26 on bodyguard duty. Remaining Numbers not incapacitated are ordered on patrol mode."
"…What's going to happen? How the hell are we going to keep containing this? How are we getting them out?"
Through the glass screen, Tsuna could see it. Like clear eggs the inside of which, monsters after monsters were in the process of being manufactured from the citizens of Spiral City. It was an army. Tsuna felt sick at the thought.
"Nonessentials are to be left in the time-freeze."
"You can't just—I need to extract someone. And a Numbers-issued headphones. And you didn't answer my question."
"Patrol mode, Number 27. Open the manual and read what it means. I'll be sending Spanner over in ten minutes to your location with your new headphones. And since Urban Legends essentially overloaded all our servers—as much as I hate to admit it—the viral codes are being passed on to our allies in Abaddon."
"The Dämon? It's a psychicbomb, how are they going to handle it when their Vatikan der Gottes decreed us a bunch of satanic followers?"
"Fuuta's working with them, so don't go bothering him either. Better the Vatikan think its demonic possession than the truth. You have your orders, 27."
"Wait, I still need information—," Tsuna stared in frustration at the handset, which beeped the busy signal at him.
The time-freeze was a temporary solution. And patrolling was just treating the symptom, not the root cause. Tsuna doubted Abaddon could easily dismantle Urban Legends, not with the shaky work relationship they had with the Numbers. And a second psychic pulse was impossible without destroying Verde's precision control. A time-frame of three hours then all hell would break loose.
Tsuna took a breath, calming himself, finding his center.
Three hours.
What is your priority, 27?
Reversing metamorphosis of citizens into their monsters.
Finding Iemitsu.
How to reverse metamorphosis?
Answers probably with King Industries. Alternative being worked on by Fuuta and Abaddon.
Where?
King Industries, likely. High chance, they've moved to attack, given how violent their creations are.
Ways of tracking Iemitsu?
Fuuta by way of camera-system. Viable? No, combing through hundreds of security tapes will be too long.
Dr. Kurokawa by telepathic sweep. Viable? Maybe. If not infected or in time-freeze.
Air surveillance for visible attack zones by Haru's plane. Viable? No, infected or in time-freeze.
Tsuna opened his eyes and stared across the street at the psycho-medicinal clinic where he'd just met Dr. Kurokawa. The most powerful telepath of her generation. With mental barriers that could probably withstand the time-freeze. And surely, she couldn't have been downloading Urban Legends right after work, could she? Most businesses closed shop during Baccanus but never emergency centers…
Only one way to find out.
Tsuna ran out of the telephone box, into the rain, and onto the street.
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"Dr. Kurokawa! Dr. Kurokawa!"
The clinic was similarly affected as the streets. The two receptionists were entangled in their mutating monitors. A nurse was fighting off a heart monitor sinking into a patient. An intern had dropped to the floor, wires choking him. All online communications had been infected.
Tsuna darted through the corridors, yelling his head off.
Hell, he'd take any telepath at this point.
The second to last room, Tsuna found Dr. Kurokawa in a time-freeze bubble.
No machines near her at all.
She was sitting down, staring at her planner. And about to reach her phone.
Tsuna stared at the sheen of the psychic bubble, the ironic iridescent rainbow glimmer of soap bubbles—considering it was the peak of all of Verde's strength as Spiral City's strongest broadcast telepath. Tsuna picked up his baselard and slammed the tip right at it.
He did it again and again, the sheer surface trembling.
If struck hard enough, anything can break.
His hands began heating, the sword began glowing red hot, and the next swing sang through the air.
The bubble burst.
The baselard sank several inches into the desk, wood singeing and smoking, the metal already cooling.
Kurokawa screamed and threw her phone at Tsuna's face.
"Ow!"
"What the fuck, you psycho, what do you think you're doing with that THING?"
"Number business—please don't hit me," Tsuna yelped from behind a wheelie chair. Kurokawa lowered her stiletto heel, but not enough that Tsuna was still watching the pointed heel ready to stab the nearest available wind-pipe. "Numbers—" Kurokawa snarled. "That explains you popping out of nowhere." She glared at the baselard in her desk. "Cracked through the psychic bubble?"
Tsuna winced and nodded.
Time-freeze—called so, not for freezing time, but for freezing people's sense of time—was disconcerting for those sensitive enough to catch the differences. Jumps in time. Numbers popping up where there was no one. Sudden construction zones erected around disaster areas. Verde usually kept the time-freeze for as much as seven or eight minutes. Nobody usually realized it. Everybody lost these kinds of minutes easily. Tsuna wondered how they were going to explain three lost hours to the civies.
"I need a sweep. For a man called Iemitsu. Or Reborn," Tsuna said. Whatever path Reborn had taken, at the end of it would be Iemitsu.
Dr. Kurokawa fitted back on her shoe and was inspecting the smoking hole in her desk. "Don't you have your own telepath to do sweeps?"
Tsuna shifted on his sneakers. "I can't—it's not officially Number business. And Verde won't help me."
"My external range is smaller," Dr. Kurokawa warned him. "I'm classified as an internal telepath."
"How small are we talking about?"
"Room-sized," she said.
"Oh," Tsuna sat down, thinking.
"If I had a broadcast satellite dish, I could probably expand my reach." Dr. Kurokawa added. "As it is, there's very few of that lying around. And they're all Number-issued. You'd need authorization regardless."
"I know someone who can rig something up," Tsuna said as he stood up. "Come on, he's coming to meet us."
By the time Tsuna and Dr. Kurokawa had reached the blue telephone box where Tsuna had called Verde, the rain had slowed and Dr. Kurokawa had stopped spitting invectives against the King Industries, against the useless Numbers, and more generally, against the world. She had known the effects of the game, of course. But to be suddenly confronted with it, its plague on her city, was infuriating. Tsuna would sympathize but the roar of a Ducati motorcycle was signaling Spanner's coming arrival.
Who promptly jumped off his motorcycle after killing it, rushed over to Tsuna, patted him down, and then inspected his face for a long and awkward seven seconds. Spanner then simultaneously shoved a lollipop into Tsuna's mouth and a lit cigarette in his own, cupping it to protect it from the rain.
Only then did Spanner slouch back to his customary slacker posture. "You giving me white hairs here, Tsuna. Where's that traitorous student of yours?"
"What are you talking about?" Tsuna said, taking out the lollipop to talk.
Spanner scowled at him. "You didn't get my message? That bastard Yamamoto," Spanner shoved the lollipop back into Tsuna's mouth, "is a real big agent of the Varia. The missing Varia who've knifed us in the back."
"That's—" Tsuna said around the lollipop. "That's impossible. Yama-pi's not part of Varia."
"The Varia are missing?" Dr. Kurokawa asked, surprised.
"Need to know business," Spanner said to her as he took out a pair of headphones from his messenger bag. He fitted it on top of Tsuna, "Keep eating the lollipop. It'll give you a boost of energy and nutrients. And it's true. I found his sealed records—sealed with multi-layered locks—when I was snooping around Varia files. Explains his ease with his powers. He's trained, already, the shitface."
"No, Yama-pi's a good guy," Tsuna shook his head. "I'm sure of it."
"If you girls are done gossiping about the new guy," Dr. Kurokawa cut in, "We do have a crisis to confront. And two men to find."
Spanner opened his mouth to argue more.
"It doesn't matter," Tsuna said to Spanner. "We have more important things to do and we only have a window of three hours. Can you rig up a telepathic broadcast dish?"
Spanner looked around, tilting his head back to stare at the city skyline around them. He pointed at a building's rooftop. "That one. It has a dish antennae I can mangle to a telepath's specifications."
They smashed through the front doors, breaking into an apartment building. Climbing four sets of staircases let Spanner explain more about Urban Legends.
Spanner and a team of Number techs had ransacked the abandoned King Industries' offices and what they found there, behind the numbers, behind the datasheets, behind the drafts—was the madness of Urban Legends. A telepathic bomb in a sequence of numbers and codes that operated on a psychic and electromagnetic frequency like Verde's time-freeze or Fuuta's Channel X, affecting both machine and man.
With the sole purpose of creating monster to lay waste to the world.
Its tripwire, of mutating when observed too closely by engineer or psychic, was guaranteed that no one would find a counter soon. Mukuro, Spanner, and four civilian psychics were just casualties.
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How do you make a man a monster, a prisoner of his own nightmare, his own demons?
Push a man into the hell of his own making. And wait.
0101010
The biggest difference between normal life and the danger zone of Verde's time-freeze was silence.
Normal life was a cacophony of sounds and voices blending together to form the city's own music, a unique thumbprint of its citizens and its culture. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes mundane, and sometimes so awfully overwhelming.
But it was never empty, never bereft.
On the rooftop, with Spanner and Dr. Kurokawa working in silence over the spill of wires next to the satellite dish, the unnatural quiet of the city left Tsuna feeling alone and vulnerable in the dark. The rain had stopped at least. Tsuna leaned behind a water tank against the bite of the wind and stared past the rusted pipes next to him. Not even the stars had come out, tonight.
Tsuna held the baselard gingerly in his hands. Whatever else Tsuna could believe about Yamamoto—Varia, traitor, or not—the boy was kind. Tsuna would find a way to save him and all the rest of Spiral's citizens. Tsuna would find Iemitsu and—
Twenty-five minutes had passed since the start of the time-freeze.
And Tsuna was already trembling in his converse chucks.
Being alone, without Reborn or Yamamoto or the back-up of the Numbers—it was frightening. Tsuna didn't know what he would be facing, didn't have a scrap of information on what or who the King Industries were. Facing a future full of uncertainty just increased the fear until it was a tangible thing, cold and heavy and ice freezing up his veins. But Tsuna thought about Iemitsu—how he'd been alone too before he'd found where they'd kept the body of Nana.
And it was easy—past the fear—was the conviction that Tsuna had to find Iemitsu.
"We're done," said Spanner.
He beckoned Tsuna over.
Even if Tsuna wasn't an engineer, he could see it was a work of art for something constructed within such a short amount of time. Plugged into the satellite dish's naked motherboard, was Spanner's own hacking rubixcube littered with several colored chips. Dr. Kurokawa had three colored chips taped in an arc to the side of her head, a few centimeters above her left eyebrow.
"She needs to know the mental signature of whoever you're looking for," Spanner said, as he lit another cigarette and typed in their current location into the wirebox. "And while it's a private server we're on, I'd rather not risk another viral download so let's keep the hunt short. The chips won't last long anyway."
Spanner peeled open the sticky side of three more colored chips then slapped them on Tsuna's headphones.
Dr. Kurokawa nodded and closed her eyes.
Tsuna closed his eyes too and felt Dr. Kurokawa reach out to him, a question mark hanging in the air.
Tsuna ignored the icy dread in his stomach and pushed the name, Iemitsu, at her. With all the associated imagery, emotions, and memories of Tsuna's father—of a strong hand in his hair, of a smile brighter than the sun, of the color of gold gilding a mortal man—the disgraced Golden Lion of the Numbers.
For her part, Dr. Kurokawa didn't even pause and instead, started to broadcast a sweep.
The satellite dish began turning in a circle.
In the dark, the colored chips on Dr. Kurokawa began to glow. Feeling along his headphones, Tsuna knew his own three colored chips were also glowing, cherry-hot. And then there was the tiny mechanical voice on his headphones, whispering -Desrever Dnuos-
As Dr. Kurokawa began to sweep, odd slivers of sound came through Tsuna's headphones. A laugh cut short. The babble of old men stopping. A raven's cawing quieted. The creak of a playground swing shut into silence.
The satellite turned and turned and turned.
Spanner smoked, an old nasty habit, ash-grey trails in the air as his hands fluttered on his rubixcube.
Tsuna watched, listening to voices in other people's heads.
And out of nothing and nowhere, it hit them. This bone-deep magnetic hum that shook the earth apart from under their feet, rattled the insides of their skulls, and popped what little hearing they had.
Spanner curled around his rubixcube on the floor, hands clamped on his ears, eyes rolling wildly.
Dr. Kurokawa dropped to her knees, eyes still closed, and her hand still on the satellite as it turned.
Ears ringing with high-pitched white noise, Tsuna spat out the blood in his mouth. He'd bitten too hard again on his lips. He staggered up-right on knees that wouldn't cooperate with him.
There, in the distance between buildings, were flashes of intense light and huge columns of smoke.
Tsuna's vision flickered.
Into static.
Into a white wall facing a prison cot.
Into Reborn's face, angry and despairing and talking a mile a minute.
Into that white wall, a splotch of black paint in the middle. It grew and grew, the light fluctuating in the room as if time was jumping, until it had reached the floor and ceiling, a black hole swallowing the room, inch by inch, day by day, eon by eon.
And then Tsuna found Iemitsu in front of it, smiling with his eyes stitched shut, his entire body suspended from the ceiling by tenterhooks hole-punched into his skin. Behind him, the black hole rippled as if a living thing, as if looking down into a throat choking on itself.
Hair rising, Tsuna stumbled backwards, his heart stuttering.
Iemitsu tilted his head, the black threads pulling at skin like melted rubber. He opened his mouth but no sound came through. Only a secret soundless message found only in Gehenna, where their worm does not die and where children are sacrificed by fire.
[i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,mysweet)
And as Iemitsu opened his mouth for his last word, Nana, a tiny fly flew out of his mouth, buzzing with white noise.
And then there was hellfire. Nine Number corpses, their numbers written with ash on them. 02. 03. 04. 05. 06. 07. 08. 10. 12. The missing Varia in attack mode. Mammon, their telepath, dropping their veil of invisibility because they no longer needed it. A white-haired man with a manic voice, giggling.
And Iemitsu opening his mouth wide, where a black cloud of flies swarmed out, screaming for blood.
Towards the Governor's float, where a psychic bubble encircled it like a clear soap bubble.
Then Dr. Kurokawa slapped him, a sharp stinging pain.
Tsuna opened his real physical eyes to the view of Spanner, Dr. Kurokawa, and the dead satellite.
And then he buckled to his feet.
Spanner and Dr. Kurokawa scrambled forward to catch him and they were talking and yelling but Tsuna couldn't hear them.
Tsuna stared out at his city, his empty city where smoke was rising.
And Tsuna said,
"I need help."
End Chapter 4.
AN: Disclaimer: e.e. cummings not mine.