I'm back.

Some good natured ribbing. No more velocirator Kyo. Iori get's a nap.

Originally this chapter was longer, but I sliced it in half. Re-doing the second half currently.

The air was cool and clean.

A skylight overhead was spotted with morning dew. Soft light filtered into the room. He could make out the foggy shapes of foliage swaying in the wind as he stared outwards.

There was a dull ache in his arm where an IV was hooked in. That arm was velcro-ed to the bed. The rest of him was pinned down by a heavy blanket, which had been stuffed in beneath the mattress. Iori felt no urgency to free himself. He closed his eyes.

He took a deep breath.

He took another.

He hadn't realized just how beautiful air tasted until now.

Iori didn't know what Chizuru had done to him, but whatever it was, it was working. He had regained sight in his left eye - secretly he was afraid he might've lost it, his left arm was gradually regaining mobility, and sweet heavens he could breathe!

He just wanted to lay there on his little hospital bed, hooked up to whatever this magic liquid was, and enjoy breathing in peace.

But as always, peace eluded him.

Please, dear God… Shut the fuck up Kusanagi…

Kyo was pacing around his hospital room talking to very loudly to himself. He looked stressed out, his brow knotted into lines. His lips were turned downwards in a grimace and he seemed to be wringing his hands unconsciously.

Somebody else might have empathized with the clearly distressed man, but Iori had just woken up grumpy and… well, he wasn't a particularly nice person anyways. He did his best to ignore his rival, but alas, once Kyo realized he was conscious, he walked himself over to Iori's bedside and began droning about how badly they had messed up.

No shit. I freaking told you IKARI wasn't gonna experiment on us… now leave me alone.

The withering glare Iori cast in Kyo's direction had no effect whatsoever on the trajectory of the conversation. Kyo clearly didn't care that he wasn't interested. He was obviously just here to rant and get stuff off his chest. This sort of thing had never been tolerable, but in this case Kyo had woken him up from the sweetest sleep of his life and, naturally, Iori wanted to kill him.

Then again, that seemed to be the prevailing sentiment between them regardless of circumstances.

"Yagami, we seriously fucked up, man. I don't even know where to start! Like shit, we killed a man! We kicked the shit out of the Commander's daughter… I think I gave like eight people concussions… Gaah! Dammit… what the hell am I even supposed to say?"

"Get the fuck out I'm trying to sleep."

He didn't leave. He just kept going.

"And those guys who shot us in the car? They were trying to get blood samples out of us to test if we were infected or not. They weren't trying to experiment on us after all! Oh, and Chiz told me I'm probably not infected because I haven't gone nuts yet. Same for you. So we kinda did all this stuff for nothing."

Iori gritted his teeth and looked around for something to throw at his rival. He spotted a glass of water on his nightstand and snatched at it. His left arm was mobile enough to accomplish this task, but the action nearly dislodged the IV. The sudden pain caused him to drop the glass on the floor and jerk into a sitting position. The wound in his stomach began acting up and he felt himself become nauseous.

"It's even worse than that. Yanno Leona? The girl I throat-punched? She ran the entire rescue operation. Did you know she had to break protocol to save us? The rescue op was optional too. She didn't have to come for us. If she decided not to, we'd be fucking dead, Yagami! She saves our asses and we fucking kill one of her friends and crush her throat. I bet she's regretting ever knowing us."

"Go away or I'll kill you!"

Kyo took that as an invitation to sit at the foot of his bed and plopped down on Iori's ankle. Iori yelped and began kicking at him from beneath the covers. The man simply rocked sideways at each impact and continued to drone.

"Then it turns out Chiz (kick) set the whole thing up. I mean, I'm not (kick) sure what politics she has to deal with, but the fact we went nuts on (kick) IKARI definitely won't be good for her relations. She never tells us about her problems, (kick) but I'm pretty sure we've just generated a ton of issues for her."

Iori was becoming annoyed that his strikes didn't seem to hurt as much as he wanted them to. He had half a mind to light his colleague on fire, but Riot mentioned something about the bed, and he was reminded of it's flammability.

"Why are you even here Kusanagi! Go tell Kagura about your problems and let me sleep!"

Kyo responded to his snarling in an even voice, entirely ignoring his aggression. That pissed Iori off more than it should have. His cheeks were getting hot and he was pretty sure his face was turning red.

"Chiz? She, uh well she was actually pretty mad at me, I don't really want to talk to her right now… she tried to beat me up with a rolled-up newspaper last night. Um… then she told me to apologize to everyone."

"Then go do it you fuck! Leave me alone!"

"I was hoping you'd help me with that."

"No!"

Kyo Kusanagi had a way of ignoring everything he said. It was like he already decided what conversation he wanted to have, and held it regardless of whatever response the counterpart gave. It was the epitome of 'I'm ignoring you' and Iori hated to be ignored. Besides, he wasn't the kind of person you went to when you needed help composing your apology letters. He was only really useful when the sky was falling and you had some harebrained scheme to murder everyone.

"I need somebody to translate for me and Chiz is busy. Come on, I brought you a wheelchair. Just carry your IV thing."

"Don't you dare fucking touch me Kusana- LET ME GO YOU FUCK!"

"We should stop by the medical ward first- hey, stop flailing you're gonna hurt yourself."

Despite the state of his lungs, Iori decided it was important for him to spend the next several minutes howling whatever death threats and profanities his mind supplied.

Troll never ends

He's more serious in the next chapter.