Folie a Deux, Chapter 12

by Technomad

Slowly, very slowly, Kazuhiko put his lockpicks down and raised his hands. Inwardly, behind his impassive expression, he was raging. Stupid, stupid, STUPID! We lowered our guard, and now it's all over! Then he noticed something. Shogo was lowering his shotgun, and pulling out a pad of paper and one of the pencils they all had been issued with. He wrote something, very quickly, and held out the pad. Kazuhiko and Sakura both read it, and their eyes went very wide.

Shogo had written: Do NOT make a sound! We're friendly!

Kazuhiko hadn't expected that, and, to judge from her expression, neither had Sakura. They looked at each other, and, wordlessly, came to a decision. Kaz picked up his picks, and held them out, a questioning expression on his face. Shogo smiled for the first time that Kaz could remember, and it transformed him. Kaz cut his eyes quickly to Sakura, and saw that she was quite pleased with the change. Even though they were devoted to each other, they both accepted that they'd find others attractive sometimes, and it didn't bother them; considering that they had no problem with Sakura going to bed with other men, either as a straight cash-for-sex deal or as part of a scheme to entrap them, they'd have had to be idiots to worry about such things.

Kaz gestured Shogo closer. When Shogo was within hands' reach, Kazuhiko went to work on the lock holding his explosive collar shut. By this time, he had the locks figured out, and it didn't take him nearly as long as it had the first few times he had worked on a collar lock. In no more than a minute, Shogo's collar was off, and then came Noriko. She submitted to Kaz' ministrations without a trace of fear, despite the real danger they were all in. Kaz raised a quizzical eyebrow. There was apparently a lot more to Noriko Nakagawa, whom he had always more-or-less dismissed as a typical "good girl"-someone of no interest to him or Sakura, who had nothing they could use and no place in their schemes-than he had believed.

Finally, Shuya, who had been keeping the watch that would have saved Kaz and Sakura the surprise of having Shogo and his friends come upon them unexpectedly, stepped up. A few quick moves of the picks, and his collar fell off him. Shuya rubbed his neck, looking like he'd been reprieved at the foot of the gallows. Before Kaz could stop him, Shuya hugged him hard enough to make his ribs creak. When Shuya let go, Kaz could see tears in his eyes, and when he looked at Noriko, she was also silently crying.

Kazuhiko felt a moment's uncharacteristic embarassment at seeing anybody else's emotions shown so openly. He was Japanese, and used to living his life behind the mask of his face. Even if he hadn't been a criminal, and he and Sakura had been a normal, loving young couple, they'd have almost never shown much affection to each other in public. Now Shuya and Noriko were clinging to each other, silently sobbing. Shogo was watching them, a wry grin on his face. Kaz looked at Sakura, and saw tears in her eyes.

Kaz picked up Shogo's pad, and wrote on it. Let's get into the forbidden zone, and hole up, out of sight of the cameras. I think we need to talk. He held it out, and everybody nodded. Silently, they picked up their bags and filed into the forest.

Not far into the forbidden area, they came across a gory sight. Sho Tsukioka was lying there, or at least most of him was. His head was at a distance from his body, his face strangely peaceful, and there was a huge gout of blood between them. His bag was lying close by, and Sakura absently picked it up. When she saw the others staring at her, she whispered, almost too softly to hear: "Waste not, want not!"

After about fifteen minutes, they were far enough into cover that the all-seeing cameras recording everything couldn't possibly spot them, and the trees were thick enough that overhead cameras, assuming that they were there, couldn't have possibly seen them. They found a couple of fallen logs, and sat down, with Kaz and Sakura on one log facing Shogo, Shuya and Noriko on the other.

For a few minutes, nobody said anything. Finally, Shogo shook out a cigarette from a battered box of Wild Sevens, stuck it in his mouth, and lit up. Kaz and Sakura showed no surprise. They'd both seen Shogo smoking, even on school property, ever since he'd transferred into their class at the beginning of the year. He noticed them looking at him, and held out the box. They both shook their heads; part of what had kept them unsuspected for so long was their perfect adherence, in public, to the "good little boy/girl" images they cultivated so assiduously, and smoking would have ruined that the instant they were seen doing it.

Shuya spoke up. "Before anybody else says anything, I have something to say. Thank you, Kazuhiko. I thank you from the very bottom of my heart. No matter what, I owe you big-time for what you just did."

Kazuhiko grinned. "All part of the Kazuhiko Yamamoto service package. No tips necessary."

Shogo gave Kaz a very penetrating look. "Look: there's more to you than ever met my eye, isn't there? Those picks were professional-quality; I've seen things like that before. My dad ran a free clinic in the poor part of Kobe, and I've seen locksmiths at work before." Shogo leaned forward. "What are you-really?"

Kaz looked at Sakura. Sakura looked at Kaz. "What are we?" Kaz spread his hands. "More than we seem. A great deal more than we seem."

"That's the understatement of the century!" Shuya burst out. In his usual impulsive style, like the time he'd been kicked off the school baseball team for protesting what he saw as unfair treatment of his teammates, he went on: "There's got to be an explanation for this! Where did you two get professional-quality lock tools? How do you know how to use them so well?"

"All very good questions. And we'll tell you all, dear fellow outlaws," smiled Kaz. He sat back, revelling in the looks that passed over Shuya's and Noriko's faces. "Yes, you heard me right...outlaws. Or had you thought beyond escaping the Program?" He leaned forward, spearing the newcomers with a hard stare. "The second those collars came off, you became criminals. Like Sakura and me. The difference between us is that Sakura and I've been criminals for a long time now."

"We two are largely responsible for the 'crime wave' that hit Shiroiwa," put in Sakura. Shuya, Noriko and even Shogo gaped at her like three gaffed fish. "Yes, that was us! Burglary, thefts, robberies...we've done it all! Even murder's no new thing to us!"

Kaz took up the tale, while Shogo, Shuya and Noriko sat there as if paralyzed: "We were both thieves a long time before we hooked up together, and we found that we could do a lot more as a team than individually. These days, I honestly think that we're the best damn burglary and second-story team in the Kanto area. We've got connections to fence our swag to, secret bank accounts in other names, sets of false identification and ways to get more, and even an apartment we rent in a phony name to hide out in!"

Shogo said: "So, nobody knows, but you two are the Bonnie and Clyde of Shiroiwa?" He shook his head. "That's a little hard to believe, no matter how good you are with lockpicks!"

"Think about it, Shogo. Where would a couple of ordinary ninth-graders get pro-level lock tools, much less know how to use them so easily?" Sakura's pretty face twisted into a rather evil smile. "And, frankly, it wasn't that hard to fool people. With Kazuo Kiriyama's little gang of hoodlums running around, or darling Mitsuko and her followers, who'd pay attention to a nice, well-behaved young boy and his girlfriend? So polite, we are, so studious...at least where others can see us!"

"Why are you telling us this? Why are you taking us into your confidence?" asked Noriko. She had been listening to everything, her eyes going very wide and her face going even paler than it had been. Absent-mindedly, she leaned down and rubbed the bandage someone had put on her leg, over the wound that Kamon had inflicted back in that hell-classroom. Kaz wondered who had put the bandage on; he suspected Shogo, since as far as he knew Shuya knew very little about first aid.

"Well, you did find us out, didn't you? You could have shot us right then and there, and nobody'd have said anything, would they?" Kaz tried to explain his snap decision, both to them and to himself and Sakura. "I figured that you'd be useful. Once we get off the island and back to the mainland, five of us will have a better chance than two would."

"Do you think we can survive?" That was Shuya.

"Look," Sakura pointed out, "you wouldn't have lasted this long into the Program without some kind of natural talent. We've seen other classmates of ours that we thought about taking into our confidence and expanding our little operation with, but the right time to approach them somehow never seemed to happen. You saw us with the 'mask' off, and did not shoot. That makes you potential recruits."

"Once we get back to the mainland, we'll be able to teach you what you need to know," Kaz assured them. "You'll be up to speed in no time flat!"

"But-criminals? You're going to make us criminals?" Noriko looked like she was about to faint.

Sakura looked at her, shaking her head. "Dear, just taking off that collar made you a criminal. And escaping or evading the Program's a death-penalty offense in itself. Care to just walk up to a policeman and confess? They do say that hanging doesn't hurt!"

Noriko recoiled, looking distinctly green. "No! No! I didn't do anything to deserve being thrown into the Program, and I don't deserve to die!"

"But they did throw you in here, didn't they? Don't they deserve some payback...all those people who sit back in comfort and watch kids like us kill each other?" Kaz raised an eyebrow.

Noriko and Shuya obviously hadn't considered it from that angle. It was interesting to watch their faces-at first, they visibly resisted the idea, but as it sank in, they changed. Shuya's smile became more of a predator's leer, and Noriko suddenly looked very shifty. Shogo, at least, didn't look like he had had any problem with this take on things.

"So, what's your plan?" asked Shogo.

"First, we stay holed up here, and listen for the announcements. Once they announce a winner, they'll relax. Then, we wait. The people who live here will be back in a few days, once they've cleaned this place up. Before then, we can swim to the mainland; we can steal car inner tubes and make a raft, if you can't swim."

"I can swim," Shuya assured Kaz. "Noriko's one of the top girl swimmers in our class, didn't you know?" Kaz shook his head. "I don't know about Shogo, though..."

"Oh, I can swim," Shogo said, "but a raft's a good idea. The moon will be dark in a few days, and the Program should be over by then. It'll be a few hours to the mainland, but we should be able to do it."

END Chapter 12.