Author's Note: I take acouple of smallliberties with canon in this story. It's set during Gatchaman II, so Joe's a cyborg...but they still have their original vehicles and weapons, and a life outside of G-Town. Apologies to Tatsunoko... :-)
Standard disclaimer: I adore them, but sadly don't own them. Sigh.
THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA
PART II
The lights were off.
Strange, Ken thought, Jun never turned off all the lights...she believed that having some kind of illumination even when the Snack J wasn't open helped discourage burglars. And it was early yet...the bar should still be open. He frowned a little as he realized that the street was unnaturally quiet, too...no traffic, nobody on the sidewalks. Where was everyone?
He pushed on the door. It opened easily, and he stepped into the gloom. Dust motes danced in the bright shaft of light that streamed in through a side window from the street lamp outside. He squinted, but in the darkness beyond it the Snack was deserted, just like the streets.
Ken's fingers tightened on the edge of the door. "Jun?"
"Baka, Jun's not here. You know that."
Ken jumped at the sudden rumble of Joe's voice. He blinked...a moment ago he could have sworn that there was nobody in here, but now he could see his gunner sitting at the counter in his familiar spot. "Where...where is she, then?" he asked. "And where is everybody else?"
Joe shrugged expansively. "Hey, I mind my own business. All I know is there're just the three of us here."
"The...three of us?"
"You, me and the bartender."
"The bartender?"
Joe fixed him with a look. "Are you going to keep repeating everything I say? Because if you are, it's going to be a long night."
Ken opened his mouth, thought better of it, and shut it again. He peered around the semi darkness of the Snack's interior. "Is Jinpei around?"
Joe sighed. "What did I just say? You, me..."
"...And the bartender. Got it." Ken glanced at the opened beer in front of Joe. "How many of those have you had?"
"Not nearly enough," the gunner grunted, picking up the bottle for another long swig.
"Joe!" Ken stared in horror as the frothy liquid began to pour out from a gaping wound in his second's abdomen.
Joe looked down, his expression mildly annoyed. "Shit. Happens every time. How am I supposed to get drunk, that's what I want to know?"
The liquid had turned the color of blood now, dripping on to the floor in splashes of bright red. Ken backed away, breathing hard, ice clawing at his spine. "What the fuck is this? Where are we? Who the hell are you?"
Blood had begun to trickle from the side of Joe's mouth now. He grinned, wiping it away with the back of his hand. "What's the matter, Ken? Can't take the sight of a little blood? I thought Washios didn't cry..."
Steel fingers grabbed Ken's heart and squeezed it hard, choking off his breath. He remembered it all now..the nightmare, the mecha, the explosion of light and sound, and then...then...
Baka, Jun's not here. You know that.
"Joe, are we..." his voice was a whisper. He couldn't finish the sentence.
"Dead?" Joe grinned. "Naah. Not yet, anyway."
Ken stared at him. "How do you know?"
Joe jerked his thumb behind him. "Bartender told me. And if you can't believe your bartender, who the hell can you believe?"
Ken looked beyond him...and his jaw dropped. At the other end of the bar, towel over one arm, polishing a glass, was the tall purple-clad figure of Berg Katse.
Katse waved, smiling brightly.
Ten miles, straight down.
Ken couldn't get breath into his lungs. He stood there, frozen, staring.
And then the blackness reared up and smacked him back into oblivion.
It was dark and cold, and he hurt like hell.
During the first war against Sosai X, the Kagaku Ninja Tai had gone up against the King Dragon, a mecha with such superior weaponry that it had wiped the floor with them in their first encounter. The Phoenix had crashed into the ocean, nearly killing all those aboard, and only the quick thinking of the ISO retrieval teams had rescued them from their crippled, flooding ship. As well as the emotional agony of the defeat, Ken remembered only too well how he had felt physically the next day...bruised and battered, black and blue from the pounding of gravitational forces and the trauma of the crash. Walking was an effort...hell, breathing was an effort.
He felt like that now, here. Wherever "here" was.
Something touched him, whisper soft. Ken's wired nerves recoiled in shock, his eyes snapped open and he stared straight into the purple masked face of Berg Katse.
He howled in surprise, stiff-arming the apparition away. His gloved hands ripped through something that gave like thick paper. What the hell...?
Agony bloomed in his chest, kicking the breath out of his lungs, sparking white at the edge of his vision. Ken gasped, sagged back against the ground. He knew that pain. Ribs, could be broken - maybe only cracked if he was lucky. It was going to hurt like a sonofabitch but it wasn't anything he hadn't dealt with before. He would have to find something to strap them up until he could get out of this.
Whatever "this" was.
Pieces of the whatever-it-was he had shredded were settling back to earth beside him. Movement above him caught his eye and he realized that more were falling - poster-sized snowflakes drifting slowly to the floor all around him, littering the ground like debris after a parade. Try as he might he couldn't see where they were coming from.
He reached out carefully and caught the edge of the nearest one. His stomach lurched as he turned it over and recognized it. Propaganda poster. Katse had dropped millions of them during the first war - usually after he had bombed half a city and was wanting to spread the gospel according to Galactor to intimidate the living shit out of the other half.
But what were Berg Katse's propaganda posters doing here, now? And where the hell was here?
Ken lay still for a moment, extending his trained awareness into the darkness, feeling for the presence of others. Nothing. He turned his head, staring into the gloom. There was a thin, cold light coming from somewhere, just enough to lend relief to the shadows and let him see that the place he was in was cavernous, littered with mounds of twisted debris. The floor was cold and hard under his back, and he couldn't see the ceiling.
Slowly, carefully, he tried to sit up - and instantly found he couldn't. There was something very heavy lying across his stomach and upper thighs. He slid his hands underneath the top edge, pushed as hard as he could.
He'd forgotten about the ribs. He bit back a cry at the fierce searing pain, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment - willing the thick, choking rush of nausea to subside. It did, after a long few moments, and he braced himself to try again.
Three more unspeakably agonizing attempts and the large chunk of metal debris slid sideways enough for him to slide out from under. By that time all he could do was roll over on his side before throwing up violently. For a long time - it could have been minutes or hours, he was in too much pain to know - he lay there dragging in shallow gulps of air, shaking and sweating and waiting for the gray-out to clear.
"Ken..."
The familiar voice snapped him back to awareness. Ken stared around him. "Joe? Joe, where are you?"
The rumble of Joe's laughter choked off in a rasping cough. "How the hell should I know? Where are you...?"
Ken dragged himself painfully to hands and knees, grabbed the edge of the chunk of metal that had pinned him down. He pushed himself upright through sheer force of will. "Keep talking... I'll...find you."
"Thought that had to be you puking your guts out over there. Are you hurt?"
Pain stabbed though Ken's left leg like a hot wire, all the way to the hip. More good news. "Baka, of course I'm hurt. We fell, what, ten miles?"
Joe laughed again, more carefully this time, Ken noted. "And that was before we hit the water."
The leg would bear his weight. Ken made his protesting body move in the direction of Joe's voice. He stumbled over an obstacle almost immediately, low to the ground. Shit, it was so dim in here, if only he could see where he was going a little better...
Of course. The flare globes. Cursing himself for not remembering sooner, he reached into his belt and brought out a tiny globe. He twisted the top half of it and bright light flooded out in all directions.
"I was wondering when you'd remember those," Joe said, annoyingly.
Ken ground his teeth, the pain making his temper short. "Yeah? Funny, I didn't notice you throwing any light on the subject."
And then he looked up, and the blood drained out of his face as he saw the reason why.
His second was immobilized, pinned hard upright against a bulkhead by what looked like an entire instrument panel from the wrecked command center. The crumpled hulk of metal completely hid him from the shoulders down.
Ken scrambled over the debris toward him, his own injuries momentarily forgotten. "Kuso, Joe, you're asking me if I'm hurt?"
"Only because I know what a wuss you are."
"Sure, sure. You just keep telling yourself that." He reached the gunner's side, finding with relief that he could get within a couple of feet of him at the right hand edge of the panel. "How bad is it?" he asked.
Joe's mouth twisted. "I don't know. I'd look, but there's a great big piece of metal in the way."
"Can you move at all?" Ken frowned at the trickle of blood that had congealed in a thin trail over his chin from the corner of his mouth, stark against the gunner's pale, waxy skin. Joe was breathing in short, shallow gasps, but then that wasn't entirely unexpected considering he was pinned in place by a ton of metal panel.
Joe shook his head. Ken reached out. "I'm going to take your helmet off...okay?"
Joe nodded. Ken reached over and carefully began removing the helmet. Once it was clear he checked Joe's neck, found to his relief that there didn't seem to be any damage to the cervical spine. "Wait a minute," he said suddenly. "You should be able to push this thing off yourself easy, with your strength. Just..."
Joe looked at him, and the expression in his eyes stabbed fear through Ken. "Baka. You think I wouldn't have done that if I could?"
It was then that Ken noticed the dark, sticky stain on the floor beneath his boots.
Oh, no. Oh, God, no. "Joe," he said slowly, fighting down the sharp flare of panic under his diaphragm. "Tell me the truth."
Joe was silent for a long moment. Then: "I don't know...I can't feel much. I think...I think a piece of this fucking thing's gone right through me."
Shit, shit, shit... Ken's mind was racing. He knew without a second's doubt that if his gunner had been a normal man instead of a cyborg, he would already be dead. "It's going to be all right," he said numbly, automatically. "We're going to get you out of here."
Joe laughed, the sound almost instantly breaking off into a choking, wheezing cough. He got hold of it quickly, eyes closing with the effort of bringing his breathing back under control. "You don't even know where we are," he said at last.
"You mean apart from under about a thousand feet of water?"
Joe shook his head impatiently. "No, I mean where we are." He threw a glance up toward the ceiling, somewhere far up in the gloom beyond the reach of the little flare globe's light. "This is so much bigger than..."
Understanding flared in Ken's eyes. "The command center detonated," he said. "I remember the explosion."
Joe nodded. Ken said: "That means some of it must have held together - if we'd hit the water without some kind of protection we would have been smashed to pulp."
"So how the fuck did this happen?" Joe indicated the cavernous space they were in.
Ken held up the flare globe, trying to see more of their surroundings without much success. "We're still in the mecha, we must be...at least some part of it, anyway. There are a bunch of Katse's old posters over there where I woke up."
He moved down the wall slowly, running a gloved hand over its surface. "You know what I think? The rest of the mecha must have fallen on top of us."
"Uh huh." Joe's grunt sounded unconvinced.
But Ken was warming to his theory now. "Yeah...when it hit the surface it must have trapped a whole bunch of air in its decks - like when you push a glass down underwater open end first. Remember those experiments we did in school with insects that live on water, the ones that trap air in bubbles so they can breathe? When it hit bottom it was so big it covered us completely and dug down a few feet into the sand, sealing the air inside."
Joe looked at him for a long moment. Then he started to laugh again. "Ken, you've been hanging around Hakase's lab again. That is the stupidest explanation I have ever heard."
"You got anything better?" Ken challenged.
Joe grunted and looked away. "I didn't think so," Ken nodded, with the ghost of a smile.
A deep groan shuddered through the metal structure around them. Both men froze as they felt the floor shift under their feet. Somewhere nearby something very large crashed to the floor, the impact sending booming echoes through the semi darkness.
"Shimatta," Ken whispered under his breath, when at last the wreckage of the mecha was still again.
"You know," Joe said, with an attempt at a conversational tone, "if this thing splits apart, the pressure's gonna crack our ribs like an empty beer can."
Ken flicked him a dry glance. "Yeah, about five seconds before we drown."
Joe did his best to shrug despite being almost completely immobilized. "Either way."
Ken leaned back against the wall beside him, breathing shallowly to try to ease the agony in his ribs. He studied Joe's profile, the lines around his eyes and mouth that told the truth about how much pain his second was really in. "We're going to get out of this, Joe," he said quietly. "Jun and Ryu saw us go down. They won't stop looking until they find us."
Joe didn't answer. Ken looked away, trying not to think about how big the rubble field had to be, for a mecha the size this one had been. Or about how the others couldn't get a lock on their bracelets through these walls.
With a sick, sinking clarity, he was realizing that he couldn't count on outside help reaching them in time. If they were going to get out of this one, he was going to have to make it happen alone.
"Katse?" Joe asked suddenly.
"What?"
"What are Katse's posters doing on this mecha? He's been dead more than two years."
Ken's head was beginning to ache, whether from the way his damaged ribs were forcing him to breathe or from the tension of the situation, he couldn't tell. "I don't know. Maybe Jinpei and Ryu were right...they put this thing together from partial builds they had left over from the last war. It sure was ugly enough."
"Then there's a chance," Joe said.
Ken looked at him. "A chance of what?"
"That there's another escape pod," Joe continued. "If another section of this mecha had one..."
"Yeah, if I can find it in time, if it happens to be somewhere in the part of the mecha we have access to..."
Joe snorted. "You want a map, too?"
Ken almost grinned despite the hard ache in his ribs. "If it's here, I'll find it," he promised.
The shudder that ran through the deck plates beneath them was worse than the first time. Joe grunted in surprised pain as the panel that was pinning him shifted. High up in the darkness an ominous creaking sound came and went.
Ken realized he'd been holding his breath. He glanced over at his second, not liking the gray cast to his skin or the slightly unfocused look in his eyes. He didn't want to leave him, but there was no choice. "Joe, I've got to find a way to get us out of here. I'll leave this flash globe...I've got a couple more. Is there anything...?"
Joe coughed. A fresh trickle of blood covered the dried trail from the corner of his mouth to his chin. "We could do the birdrang thing again," he grunted, "but I've never tried throwing it with my teeth."
The words were like a sucker punch to the stomach. Ken stood there staring at Joe in disbelief as they kept echoing through his head, feeling like his second had just rammed a frozen fireplace poker through his chest. He couldn't breathe and his eyes, oh, God, his eyes were welling up. He swung away quickly, belatedly trying to hide his stricken expression.
Too late. "Ken," Joe said, "wait a minute...I didn't..."
With a superhuman effort Ken managed to summon his voice. "Forget it," he snapped. He fished blindly in his belt for another flash globe as he stumbled away.
"Ken!" Joe's voice boomed after him. "Ken, for fuck's sake..."
His voice broke off in a paroxysm of racking coughs. Ken flinched at the sound but it only made him push forward even faster. All he could think about was getting away, now, before...
He let out a choking sob as he rammed full on into a knee high chunk of twisted metal. His injured leg gave under him and he went down hard on one knee, stomach lurching from the sharp, almost nauseous strength of the pain. It felt perversely good. Something tangible to focus on, something real. Something that wasn't...wasn't...
No. Ken closed his eyes for a moment, concentrating on his breathing, getting himself back under control. I can't do this. I can't do this now. I have to get us out of here.
He reached for the hunk of debris in front of him and leaned on it, forcing himself back on to his feet. And stopped again as he heard the wet splashing sounds his boots were suddenly making.
There was an inch of water over the deck plates. The mecha was flooding.
He didn't know how long he'd been walking.
The burning pain in his chest was making it difficult to think clearly...or was it because the air was getting thinner? He didn't know anymore. The water level was approaching mid-calf level now and making every step harder and harder to take, his injured leg driving spikes of protest up into his hip every time his weight came back down on that side. His mouth was dry with thirst, but although he was splashing through acre after acre of water, of course he couldn't drink any of it. That was an irony that almost made him laugh.
Any kind of rest was out of the question, of course. He knew that, although after a while he actually began to fantasize about it - as if he was on some kind of bizarre mecha walking tour and there were green-suited Galactor soldiers at pre-arranged checkpoints, handing him bottles of water and pointing him to a convenient deck chair.
It suddenly penetrated his increasingly fuzzy awareness that he had no idea where he was. Had he made a left or a right at the last intersection? What about the one before that? He stopped, turning and staring back the way he'd come. All the corridors looked the same.
Worry stabbed at him, burning away a little of the exhausted, pain-filled fog from his brain. What if he stumbled on a way out of this pile of scrap and then couldn't find Joe again?
The remote. He fished it quickly out of his belt pouch, depressed the switch, and let himself relax a little as the display beeped comfortingly back at him. Thank God for a locator chip that still worked, left anchored to the entrance to the cavernous chamber where Joe was trapped.
He'd lost Joe once because he'd had no choice but to leave him. It wasn't going to happen again.
Joe had been right, the Frankenstein's monster-like construction of the mecha meant that there was more than one escape pod - he'd already found two. But they were useless to him, as long as he couldn't move that control panel off his second's chest. And if Joe was right about the metal having actually penetrated his body, then it would be incredibly dangerous to move it anyway. He had seen people run through and pinned by wreckage before, and been stunned at the speed with which they bled out when it was moved.
Jun and Ryu were their only hope, now. And it was up to him to tell them where they were.
He needed an airlock, some way to get his bracelet out into open water without getting himself crushed by the pressure. His zig-zag course was designed to sooner or later bring him to the outer skin of the mecha, where he hoped that he would find what he needed. It seemed to be taking him a long time to get there.
Something flashed past the edge of his vision. Ken's head snapped up. What the hell...? Was someone else trapped down here?
He held still for a long moment, but didn't see anything. He drew the birdrang slowly, snicking open its curved blades. If someone else were down here, and they were hostile, in his current condition it wouldn't be smart to get too close without being prepared.
He began to move toward the next intersection, which was about where he thought he had seen the movement. When he finally reached it, he looked carefully down both the right and left corridors. Nothing.
Maybe there hadn't been anyone there. Maybe he was seeing things.
Maybe that wasn't a long purple glove floating in the water three feet down the left hand corridor.
Ken froze, staring at it in disbelief.
It can't be. I must be losing my mind.
He stepped forward and bent down painfully, trailing his fingers in the water toward it as if expecting it to be nothing more than an apparition, a trick of the light. He almost jumped when his hand touched the solidity of fabric.
And then that flicker of movement again, further down the corridor.
Ken shoved the wet glove through his belt and lunged after it.
He couldn't catch up.
The figure was always too far ahead to see clearly, always just a flash of brightly colored cloak disappearing around yet another corner. Sobbing with a mixture of agony and frustration, Ken gave it everything he had, pushing himself harder and harder until the stabbing in his ribs and the slashing pain in his injured leg faded away and all there was, was the purple clad apparition ahead of him. Faster and faster, the corridor around him fading into swirling, sparking white, his vision tunneling down. He was lightheaded, euphoric, flying. Somewhere in the back of his mind a frantic voice railed at him, you're hypoxic, you're not breathing, you're going to pass out...but he wouldn't stop. He couldn't stop.
He had Berg Katse in his sights, and nothing on earth was going to make him stop now.
He's dead he's dead he's dead you know he's dead, the voice hammered at him. "No!" Ken gasped, leaning into his stride, pushing past the limits, needing still more speed. The lights were growing brighter, his vision blurring now, the edges disappearing into a thick pounding blackness.
Everything was slowing down.
He realized with a shock that the purple clad figure had stopped running. The corridor ahead of him dead-ended in a t-junction, and Katse seemed uncertain which way to go. The Galactor leader swung around, back against the far wall, looking right at his pursuer.
It was now or never. "Katse!" Ken yelled - and launched himself into the air.
Once again, he'd forgotten about his ribs.
The agony was instant and hideous, the force of the air pressure under his spreading wings tearing his chest apart. Explosions of red and white burst in his brain, and he dimly heard his own voice scream as the blackness smacked down and snuffed him out. He was unconscious long before he crashed into the far wall, crumpling down it like a great broken bird to the floor below.
"Ken, are you down there?" Joe's voice came echoing through the rock tunnel.
For a moment, Ken thought about ignoring him, but he knew how pigheadedly stubborn Joe could be. "Yeah," he said. "But since I forgot to tell everyone, could you yell a little louder and save me the trouble?"
Joe snorted. As usual, the words rolled off him without leaving a mark. "Where the hell have you been? We were supposed to run the new obstacle course."
Ken didn't answer. He was sitting on the edge of the cliff near the mansion - or, rather, inside the cliff in their secret place, a tiny cave that opened about twenty feet down from the top edge. It was accessible only through a tunnel just tall enough for a man to stand in if he bent over a little, leading twenty-five feet back through the rock and emerging buried in the tangled roots of a huge old tree. They had spent many hours here since they were ten years old and Joe had discovered the entrance by accident, when he'd been wrestling Ken in the branches of the old tree and had fallen straight between the roots into the hole below. Ken smiled, remembering how he had panicked momentarily, thinking that the ground had opened up and swallowed the Condor whole.
The cave had seemed much bigger then. Three years later they had both had growth spurts, and now it was just wide enough for the two of them to sit side by side and dangle their feet over the edge.
Joe's footsteps echoed off the stone walls as he came down and dropped beside Ken, back pushed up against one side of the cave, feet propped up on the other behind the Eagle. A feather shuriken dangled out of the side of his mouth like a forgotten straw. "What's wrong with you? Are you sick?"
"No. I was...thinking."
"Thinking? Baka, you do enough of that already."
"Hakase hates it when you do that," Ken said pointedly, referring to the shuriken Joe was chewing.
"Yeah," Joe grinned. "I know."
Ken rolled his eyes. Then he turned back, staring out at the ocean far below their perch. After a moment he said, "There are other teams, Joe."
Joe's brows drew together. He either didn't understand, or didn't want to. "What you do you mean, 'other teams'?"
"Teams like us. We're not the only ones they're training."
"How do you know that?" Joe asked.
"I saw him."
Joe's frown deepened. "Saw who?"
It took Ken a long moment to force the words out past a throat that had gone unnaturally tight. "The other...me."
Joe snorted. "What do you mean, the other you? You don't know –"
"He was in birdstyle," Ken said in a very low voice. "Birdstyle just like ours...like mine. White wings, Joe. He took his helmet off and I saw his face."
There was a silence beside him as Joe attempted to digest the words. He picked up a piece of crumbled rock in one hand and hurled it in a high arc towards the waves. "Shit," he said at last.
Ken nodded. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, really. I mean, there's got to be some sort of failsafe, in case I...we...don't make it."
"Don't make it?" Joe growled. "There's no way you're not going to make it, Ken. They can take their fucking failsafes and shove them up their..."
Ken turned haunted eyes on him. "You don't get it, Joe. It's not about me. It's not about any of us." His gaze slid back to the expanse of glittering blue water, crested by flecks of white near the shore. "It's really going to happen. I mean, I guess I always knew it, but today, when I saw him...all of a sudden I really knew it. In here." He balled his right hand into a fist, pressing into his diaphragm. "Do you know what I mean?"
Joe nodded silently, watching him.
"There's going to be a war," Ken said. "A war unlike anything this world has ever seen, and we're going to be right in the middle of it."
There was something chilling about Ken's quiet words, the Eagle speaking instead of the friend Joe knew. It made him uncomfortable, and he grinned to defuse the feeling. "Bring it on. I'm ready."
"Stop it, Joe!" Ken said, eyes burning with sudden anger. "This is for real, not like training, or one of Ryu's vidgames. We're really going to have to go out there and kill."
Joe's eyes glittered. "I know," he said, voice hard and flat.
Ken glanced at him, remembering what he had momentarily forgotten - that an eight year old Joe had seen his parents shot to death in front of him, and had tried to kill the Devil Star assassin before she had thrown a rose bomb and stopped him. Joe knew only too well what killing was. Still...
He exhaled heavily. "That's not all, Joe. They could kill us. Ryu, Jinpei, Jun." He turned away again. "You."
Joe smirked. "Me? Never gonna happen. Not on a bad day in hell."
A strange, unpleasant feeling curled in the pit of Ken's stomach, sliding through his body to reach cold fingers up his spine. He tried to smile, couldn't quite make the corners of his mouth turn up enough. He stared back down at the ocean.
"Give me your hand," Joe said.
Ken looked back at him, startled. "What?"
Joe had brought his feet down and was now sitting cross-legged across from him, his hand out. "Your right hand. Give it to me."
"Why?"
"Fuck, Ken, do you always have to know 'why' before you do something?"
Ken's mouth twitched. "You say things like that out loud, and you wonder why they put me in charge?"
Joe's brows drew together in mock reproval. "Hand."
Ken brought his legs up from the edge, scooting around until he was sitting cross-legged like Joe and facing him. Still a little wary, he held out his right hand. Joe turned it palm up and cupped his left hand underneath it.
Then he took the shuriken out of his mouth.
"Joe..." Ken began, then gasped more from surprise than pain as Joe sliced the razor sharp point across the pad of his right index finger. Blood welled up in a thin, bright line. Joe switched the shuriken to his other hand and made the same cut in his own right forefinger. Then he grasped Ken's hand tightly in his as if they were shaking hands.
"Say it after me. I, Giorgio Asakura, swear on my blood and the blood of my family that if we die, we die together. We leave nobody behind, ever."
Ken's hand shook. He stared into the hard glittering fire of Joe's eyes. "I, Ken Washio, swear on my blood and the blood of my family that if we die, we die together. We leave nobody behind, ever."
Despite the warmth of the day the air was suddenly very cold, the sky darkening as if the sun had gone behind a cloud. Ken shivered, a chill running through his body.
Joe held on to his hand for a moment longer, then gave a nod of satisfaction and released it. "That's a Sicilian blood oath. Believe me, you don't want to break one of those!"
He stuck his cut finger into his mouth. Ken just stared down at the blood smeared across his palm as though his hand didn't belong to him.
"Stings, doesn't it?" Joe said. "Good thing that wasn't one of the poisoned ones." He paused. "At least, I don't think it was..."
Ken shot him a sharp glance, then relaxed as he saw the Condor's wide grin. "Sucker," Joe said.
Bloody hand forgotten, Ken launched himself at him.
But Joe wasn't there.
The sun snuffed out like a candle and he fell straight through the rock wall, plunging forward with a soundless scream into a great black hole.
Falling endlessly, wings in useless ribbons, the ocean coming at him hard and fast...
Ten miles straight down...
"Ken, get up. Ken!"
The voice was so familiar. Who...
The falling sensation was gone. With a tremendous effort, Ken forced his eyes to open. He groaned inwardly as he realized that far from waking out of a dream, he was waking back into one - and it was shaping up to be a world class nightmare.
He was half sitting, half lying in a crumpled heap against the corridor wall of the mecha. The water level had risen considerably - it was easily two feet deep now, lapping at his upper chest in his slumped position. One wing was trapped under his body, the other floated on the water's surface, crimson side up, like a feathered pool of blood.
He'd been lucky. If he'd slipped all the way to the floor he would have drowned.
Lucky was a relative statement, of course. He tried to move, almost crying out in agony. He was cold and stiff from being in the water, and his entire body hurt as if he'd been battered with a club. His ribs were on fire. He sagged back against the wall, trying to find a way to breathe that wouldn't feel as though the skin was being stripped off the inside of his lungs.
"Ken! Come on, boy, move!"
Oh, God. It can't be.
Father...?
He forced his head up, his helmet weighing a ton. Squinted in disbelief at the familiar red-clad legs planted squarely in front of him. Lifted his eyes higher, half in dread, half in anticipation.
Kentaro Washio was looking down at him. "You have to get up, Ken. You're not finished."
Ken just stared. "How...?" he whispered.
"That's on a need to know basis, son...and you don't need to know."
"Katse..." Memory flooded back and Ken tried to move again, bit back a sob of agony as something grated nauseatingly in his injured leg. "What happened to Katse...I had him, he was right there..."
The elder Washio shook his head impatiently. "You're talking nonsense, boy. Did you hit your head?"
Ken reached to his belt and grabbed the purple glove, waving it at his father. "He was here! I was chasing him. If he wasn't here, then what's this?"
Red Impulse snorted. "A purple glove. But what does that prove, except that we both agree it exists?"
Ken closed his eyes. He was in no shape for a philosophical argument with a ghost. "I saw him," he whispered, stubbornly.
"Katse's dead," Kentaro reminded him.
"So are you," Ken ground out.
"Well, at least I made it count. Not to mention managing to go out in a blaze of glory."
Ken made a face at his father's satisfied smile. "Is that all that matters to you?"
"Dying right is important, Ken," his father said reprovingly. "You need to think about that, especially in your position. You're Gatchaman, the great white hope." He smiled briefly at his own joke. "People need something to remember you by."
"K'so, you're just like Joe."
The elder Washio's mouth quirked. "Now that's what I call an interesting observation."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"Never mind. We're wasting time here, Ken. On your feet!"
Ken tried again to get his legs under him. His body cooperated only sluggishly, and the pain was excruciating. The last time he'd been hurt close to this bad he'd spent almost a month in the hospital, and this asshole was expecting him to leap to his feet as if nothing had happened. "I...can't..."
"Come on, boy, you want the world to remember that the great Gatchaman drowned falling out of a mecha?" Red Impulse glanced around him meaningfully. "An ugly mecha?"
"Why are you...so concerned...with what they put...on my tombstone?" Ken panted, scowling.
"Aren't you?" Kentaro raised one eyebrow interrogatively.
Ken met his piercing gaze for a moment, then looked away, face flushing angrily. "Fuck you."
"Well," Kentaro said conversationally, "at least that's better than 'I can't.'"
Ken gritted his teeth at the whining, cry-baby emphasis his father put on the last two words. "You think just because I find out two minutes before you die that you're my father, it gives you the right to..."
"Get with the program, soldier!" Red Impulse snapped. "You don't have a choice here! If you stay there you'll drown. And so will the Condor."
Joe. Ken forced his mind away from imagining all the things that could have happened since he'd left his gunner trapped in that cavernous hold. Joe had to be all right...he had to be. Leaning back against the wall for support, closing his eyes against the pain that racked his body, he managed to raise one hand towards his father. His shoulder screamed with the effort. "Then help me."
Kentaro shook his head impatiently. "Think, son. I'm not really here. Don't you know that?"
Ken opened his eyes, anger flaring white in his gut. He kept the hand extended. "What do you mean you're not here, you son of a bitch? You're standing right in front of me. For once in your miserable fucking life, help me!"
"Self-pity will get you nowhere, boy," Red Impulse remarked, unruffled.
Ken just stared at him. He dropped the arm, his shoulder no longer able to support the extension.
"I've helped you many times, Ken. You just didn't know it because you didn't know what you needed, and I did."
"You don't even know me," Ken snapped. "How the hell would you know what I need?"
Kentaro almost smiled. "You know that old saying about apples and trees?"
"I am nothing like you!" Ken growled.
"Aren't you, now." The elder Washio folded his arms, making it a statement, not a question. "I'm proud of you, though, for not repeating some of the mistakes I made. You and your mother..."
"Is that what I was? A mistake?"
Kentaro gazed down at his son, eyes dark and serious. "That isn't what I was going to say, Ken, and deep down, you know that. No man worth anything walks away from his family without it leaving a scar on him."
Ken snorted. "If we left a scar on you, it was someplace I never saw."
Kentaro nodded. "I kept it from you because I had to, Ken. I was a soldier, like you. I went where I had to, to do what had to be done. Like you."
Ken sagged wearily against the corridor wall, closing his eyes briefly. Rest. He just needed to rest. "Didn't you ever get tired of saving the world?"
"I've done my part, Gatchaman. It's up to you now."
"What kind of bullshit is... " Ken began, but stopped as he opened his eyes again. The corridor was empty.
And right where Kentaro Washio had been standing was a large door marked AIRLOCK.
He lay there for a long time, staring at the airlock door.
It was only perhaps eight feet away, but it might as well have been eight miles. You've got to move. If you don't, Joe will drown.
Move. That was funny. He couldn't even get a decent lung full of air.
Damn, he was getting punchy. Ken dragged his mind back to focus on the next step ahead of him, reaching that door. Gritting his teeth, he tried once more to get his legs under him. Trouble was, there was nothing to hold on to, no leverage on these smooth metal corridor walls he could use to help pull himself upright.
He fought down the despair that threatened to choke him after the fourth hideously painful attempt. Come on, dammit, you can do better than this. Think. There has to be a way.
He stared over at the airlock door again. It sat there mocking him with its stoic gray rivets and its stubby little...handle.
There was a handle on the airlock door. If he could just get to it...
Use the water. The thought brought with it a rush of hope. Of course...it was more than two feet deep now, which was plenty for his purposes. Ken switched gears, forcing his battered, pain-wracked body to uncurl, letting the water support his weight. Yes, this was better...this was going to work. One good push off the corridor wall and he floated easily to the other side.
Okay, now for Phase II. This part was going to be considerably harder. One of Sensei Hatsumi's favorite sayings came to him...Starve the imagination and feed the will. Couldn't get much more appropriate for this situation, he thought grimly. Not giving himself any more time to think about it, he maneuvered underneath the door handle and reached up. Locking both gloved hands around the smooth gray metal, he counted to three, and began the slow, agonizing process of hauling himself to his feet.
By the time he was upright, his vision was shimmering white around the edges, every muscle was trembling convulsively and his body under the birdstyle was soaked with sweat. He was gasping for breath and leaning on the door for support, but he was on his feet, and dammit, he was going to stay there. He took a painful, shuffling step forward, paused for a moment, testing. Hurt like hell, but he could walk.
He allowed himself a small smile as he realized that heavy handed and bombastic as they might be, his father's tactics of keeping him in the game had worked yet again. I guess you're right after all, you old bastard. I am a Washio.
Mouth twisting, he made a mental note never to share any of this with Joe. His gunner would have a field day.
Joe. He glanced down at the water. It was up above his knees now, heading for mid thigh. His heart lurched as he thought of his gunner staring at the same rising water, only unable to escape its advance. You've got to get a move on here, Washio. You've got to get him out of there.
Time to get down to business. He turned back toward the airlock door. It was a reassuringly standard setup - green light for come on in, the air's lovely, amber for filling up or emptying out, red light for stop, if you come in here right now your lungs will explode. Happily, the indicator light was a steady, reassuring green. He hit the release mechanism.
Nothing. Frowning, Ken hit it again. Still nothing, no reassuring hiss of pressure that meant the door was going to play nice and open up. Ken ran his eyes over the edges, looking for anywhere that might indicate the cause of a jam of any kind. He didn't find anything. He triggered the release one more time, but the result was the same as before...zippo.
Fuck. He was going to have to blow the door.
He leaned his helmeted forehead against the smooth metal for a moment, resisting the urge to bang it repeatedly. This was far from a happy situation, since it meant that he was going to have to blow the outer door as well. The way these airlocks were designed, whether the outer door was in working order or not, it wouldn't open at all once he had destroyed the inner one. And the minute the outer door went, there was going to be a lot more water coming his way in a very big hurry.
Try as he might, though, he couldn't come up with an alternative plan...and time was running out.
Resigned, he reached into one of his belt pouches and produced a small charge, pressing it into place beside the locking mechanism. Then he set the timer and splashed slowly and painfully across the corridor to the intersection where he had just recently crashed. He put the corner in between him and the door and waited.
It dawned on him as the last few seconds ticked by that if the green light on the airlock was lying, he was probably about to die.
The explosion was sharp in the empty corridor, amplified by the metal around it. After a moment, when there was no roaring deluge of water, Ken stuck his head back around the corner. The airlock door hung drunkenly ajar on what was left of its hinges - the green light still lit, absurdly, although it was now flashing on and off like a glow worm with palsy. Using the wall for support, Ken made his slow way back across to the door, fished around in the water in front of it and came up with the cracked-off handle. He wedged it into the gap, braced himself, and began to lever the door the rest of the way open. The metal made an ominous creaking sound and he stepped aside just in time as the heavy slab broke off, splashing down hard into the water filled corridor.
Ken moved into the airlock, scanning it quickly. There were several handholds welded into the metal - the one on the wall above the outer airlock door looked like the best for his purposes. He withdrew another charge from his belt, adhering it to the door exactly as he had done with the inner one. He reached into a belt pouch and drew out a length of microthin cable that despite being the thickness of about three human hairs, was stronger than titanium. Holding one end, he braced himself, looked up at the handhold above the door and jumped.
He didn't make it on the first try, his injured leg screaming as he landed back in the water with a tremendous splash. It was rocky for a few moments there, but somehow he managed to stay on his feet. Gasping, fire in his lungs, he gathered himself and tried again. This time his fingertips brushed the handhold but he couldn't get enough of a hold to hang on. He crashed down again - this time his leg gave way and he went down on one knee in the water. Gray and shaking, spitting out water, he stayed there until he got his body back under control. Then he forced himself back upright, angrily, and tried again.
This time his right hand locked around the handhold.Pushing down the agony in his shoulder, he knotted the end of the cable around the handhold, tested it for strength, then let go and dropped back to the water.
He tried to land so that the water would help cushion him this time, and it wasn't so bad. But the worst part was still to come.
He looked at the outer door, then lifted his left arm and brought it down in front of his face. "Bird Go!"
He knew from past experience that detransmuting in his current physical state was going to hurt, but he wasn't prepared for how much. The blinding energy wrapped around him, freezing a scream in his throat as it tore his skeleton apart. A savage hand scooped out his insides, flung them aside and slammed his bones back together again hard enough to crack the joints. Then it was gone, its brilliant flare a burning afterimage on his retinas, and he doubled over, sobbing for breath, stomach heaving uncontrollably. Tears of pain ran down his cheeks, his body shaking so hard his teeth were rattling.
He hung on grimly, head down, eyes squeezed shut, and slowly the worst of it began to fade. As it did, he realized that the convulsive shivering wasn't just from his compromised physical state - with the birdstyle gone, he could now feel the numbing, penetrating cold of the water with a vengeance. His civvies, while much better than regular clothing, still had nowhere near the protective capabilities of his fighting uniform, and now hypothermia had become a real possibility. But there was nothing else to be done. If he didn't get his bracelet to where Jun and Ryu could pick up the signal, then it was all over for him and Joe.
For the first time, cold hard despair began to set in. He wasn't nearly home yet, and it was all he could do to stay on his feet. He was perilously close to the end of his endurance - he couldn't take much more of this.
Didn't you ever get tired of saving the world?
But it wasn't the world he was saving here, he reminded himself. It was something...someone... who meant far more to him than that. Some one who wasn't going to die this time, not if it took his last breath to prevent it.
He had to climb this mountain...there was no other choice.
His fingers fumbled as he unfastened his bracelet and tied it securely to the free end of the cable. Before he could think any more about it, he set the timer on the charge for ten minutes, turned around and pushed himself out of there as fast as he could go.
As he half-stumbled, half-waded through the deepening water, breathing in short gasps around the pain in his ribs, he fished out the locator remote. He stared at the slow, steady beep of the beacon...the only thing that would guide him back to Joe. He just hoped he could get there before the airlock door blew. If not...
Dear God, he thought, let them find us before we drown.
He couldn't find the hold where he'd left Joe.
It didn't matter if he turned right, or left, or went straight ahead, all the corridors looked the fucking same and the little bleeping dot on his remote unit never moved. It just sat there mocking him, never getting any closer no matter what he tried. His legs were so cold he could barely feel them anymore and he kept stumbling, reaching out to the wall to keep from going face down in the icy, fast-rising water. It was almost to his waist now and it took everything he had left to keep moving, like some broken wind-up toy that didn't know any better, even though he no longer had any idea where he was going. He stared at the remote, feeling his mind start to unravel as the white blinking dot turned into Joe's face, staring at him accusingly. Oh, God, had he broken it when he fell while chasing Katse? Was he now completely and utterly lost in this cavernous, metal maze? Had he killed them both?
This is all your fault. The thought stabbed him through the heart, mercilessly. Just like the last time. You will never be forgiven for this, ever...
His injured leg hit something hidden under the water and it went out from under him, throwing a hot stab of agony right the way through his body. Ken crashed forward, unable to save himself in time, hitting the water hard and going under. It was so cold it momentarily paralyzed him, freezing the gasp of shock in his throat. Panic galvanized him and he struck out for air again, coughing and choking as his head broke the surface.
And saw Berg Katse standing about thirty feet away, leaning against the wall of the corridor, looking right at him. He only wore one glove.
I did see him. I'm not crazy!
Baka, he thought. He's dead. Of course you're crazy.
He rose up slowly out of the water, cold and injuries forgotten. They stared at each other, reacting to each other's presence like two wolves with hackles rising, ancient enemies in a duel that hadn't ended even in death. Maybe it couldn't end. Ken wondered, briefly, if that was it...maybe he had died in that explosion up there, and this terrible place was the purgatory his soul had been consigned to. And like Sisyphus and his rock, he was now doomed forever to try to rescue Joe from a death he couldn't prevent - and pursue Berg Katse through the corridors of hell in the helpless, endless pursuit of a victory that could never quite be his.
Then he felt the deep rumble beneath his feet, and he knew it was all over anyway. The water was coming.
Katse felt it too, Ken could tell by the way the Galactor leader shifted focus suddenly, looking past him. Then he swung around and waded with amazing speed in the other direction.
Son of a bitch... Ken threw himself forward. The water made the going punishingly hard, if it weren't for his damaged ribs he would have made better headway swimming. But he didn't want a repeat of what had happened when he had tried to fly.
He blinked salt spray out of his eyes, cursing the fact that Katse's extra height gave him untold advantages in this race. Somewhere at the back of his mind the voice of reason was railing at him to stop, asking him why he was doing this at all, why he was locked in this pursuit when the game was already over.
He didn't know why. He only knew he couldn't help himself.
The sound of the oncoming tsunami was closer now - he could hear it roaring down the corridors behind him. He could see it in his mind's eye, smashing into the turns, shooting through the intersections, sweeping everything before its terrifying destructive force. Ahead of him, Katse stopped suddenly, half turning, listening. Then he vanished into the wall.
Shimatta! Ken stopped dead, staring. What the fuck?
He ploughed forward again, legs nearly dead from the effort, pain stabbing at his lungs with every burning breath. Just a few more feet, just a few more...
There was an open hatchway in the wall where Katse had disappeared. So, no magic after all, this time. Ken stared at it, hesitating, knowing full well it could easily be a trap. Katse could be waiting for him on the other side, and he was injured and unarmed...
But he was also out of time. His head whipped round as he heard the water smack hard into the far wall of the last intersection behind him. He caught one brief look at the wall of angry green and white foam as it rebounded and rushed in his direction with the speed of a bullet train, then he was diving headfirst through the hatchway.
The water was just as deep on the other side and he came up spluttering and spitting. He grabbed the hatch cover with shaking hands and the heavy metal rang as he slammed it closed. He hit the seal beside the handle, praying, then almost sobbing with relief as he heard the hiss of the watertight locking mechanism. He leaned against it, dragging breath into his tortured lungs as the tidal wave thundered through the corridor beyond, shaking the whole mecha with its brutal passing.
"Ken?"
Joe? Ken swung around in disbelief. It was impossible...it couldn't be.
But it was. A quick glance around confirmed that he was back in the cavernous hold where he had left his gunner. Ken's heart leapt with fresh hope. "Joe! Joe, keep talking, tell me where you are!"
"Baka, what the hell are you doing back here? Did you get lost?"
Ken stumbled to his second's side, almost crying with exhausted gratitude that he'd not only found him again, but that he was still alive. "Lost? Me? You're the one who slept through navigation classes."
Joe didn't look good. His skin was gray and waxy and his eyes burned with a light that didn't seem completely focused. "What went wrong? Didn't you find an escape pod...?"
"Two of them. But what good does that do when I can't get you out by myself? When the others get here, we'll..."
"Baka, listen to me!" Joe growled. "This place could go any second. You've got to get out of here."
"Hey, doing my best," Ken retorted. "As usual you get to lounge around while I do all the work." He was about to tell Joe what he'd done with his bracelet, when it hit him.
He turned slowly. "What did you say?"
"I said, you've got to get out of here."
"You've got to be kidding me." Ken gave a short, sharp laugh of disbelief. "You have got to be fucking kidding me."
Joe coughed, closing his eyes for a moment. He wasn't attempting to hide the pain he was in any longer. "I'm not going to make it, you idiot. Can't you see that? You have to go, save yourself."
"No," Ken whispered. He wanted Joe to stop talking, stop saying the words he didn't want to hear. "No. I'm not leaving you, Joe. I fixed it. I got my bracelet to where Jun and Jinpei can pick up the signal. They'll find us, they will..."
Joe stared at him. "Don't be stupid, Ken. Don't you see how fast the water's rising? There's no time. You have to get out of here, get back to the team. They need you."
"They need you, too." I need you. Ken looked away quickly to hide the sudden burning in his eyes.
Joe was silent. Ken glanced over at him, saw the closed eyes, the quick gulps for air. He frowned. "Joe?"
"Give me...a minute..."
Ken stripped off his glove and reached over, pressing two fingers against the pulse in his gunner's neck. He bit his lip, frowning - it was much weaker and threadier than before. "Talk to me, Joe."
Silence. Joe's eyes stayed closed, his breathing slowing down.
"Dammit, Joe, stay with me." Ken's fingers dug into his second's shoulder, gouging painfully. "Joe!"
A deep shudder ran through the gunner's body. His eyes opened again, glazed and unfocused. "Go, Ken. Please. There's nothing you can do for me, can't you see that?"
"No!" Ken shocked himself with the raw violence of his shout. He lunged forward, slamming his fists down on the metal panel with a force than dented the finish. "You do not get to do this, Joe, do you hear me? You do not get to do this again!"
Joe stared at him, startled into wide-eyed silence by the Eagle's sudden fury.
"Do you have any idea what I went through after Cross Karakoram?" Ken raged, the veins in his neck standing out like cords. "Do you know what it did to me to have to leave you there? Did you even think for a second when you charged off with your blaze of glory deathwish that there might be consequences for the people you left behind?"
He swung away, back against the cold metal of the instrument panel. "Of course you didn't. You never thought about things like that. You didn't think about how it would feel for me to find you like that, to know just by looking at you that there was nothing we could do, it was all over... I couldn't stop thinking about it, couldn't sleep for seeing it. There was so much blood..."
"Ken..."
He held up his hand for silence. "I nearly went crazy, Joe. Hakase didn't tell you that...I asked him not to. I was so happy to have you back...it was a miracle. I didn't want to look it in the mouth too hard in case..." He broke off, struggling for control of his voice. "I had to try to keep it together for the sake of the others, but it was real close for a while there. I don't know what they would have done, after losing you like that, if I'd gone off the deep end too. They needed me to be there for them. Jinpei had nightmares... I bet he hasn't told you that, either. He kept seeing you out of the corner of his eye, watching him, following him, bleeding all over the ground like something out of a horror movie. Took him six months after we came home to sleep all the way through the night again."
He fell silent, struggling for the words.
"I'm sorry, Ken. If I had it to do over..."
"You'd do exactly the same thing." Ken didn't look at him. "It's who you are, Joe...it's who you'll always be. I accept that...it's difficult sometimes, but I accept that. It was always much easier for you. You had no idea what it was like to have the weight of the whole team on your shoulders, always having to be responsible, always having to think of all five of us instead of just yourself."
"And I didn't have to go around wearing white and living up to being born to save the world."
Ken turned then, eyes dark, his voice low and bitter. "But I didn't save the world, did I? You did."
Joe stared at him. "Is that what this is all about? That I got my fool ass shot off instead of you? You think it should have been you dying on that grass at Cross Karakoram? For God's sake, Ken, listen to yourself..."
"I'm the leader," Ken said woodenly. "It was my job..."
"Your job? Your job to do what, sacrifice yourself for the cause? Jesus, Ken, you're Gatchaman! This team doesn't function without you. Far better I take the bullet so the team can survive. I'm replaceable."
"Not to us, you're not," Ken whispered. "Not to me."
Joe closed his eyes. "Look at the water, Ken. It's going to be all over soon. I've already done enough damage. Don't...don't make me do this in front of you."
The water was up to the middle of Ken's chest now. He grabbed for Joe's helmet. "Here...the breathing tube. That'll buy us some time."
Ignoring the hollow darkness in Joe's eyes, he settled the helmet back on to his second's head. He pressed the tube release.
Nothing. Ken pressed it again. Still nothing. Oh, come on...don't do this to me... He removed the helmet again, fished around inside the panel where the tube should have been.
Shit. Oh, shit, shit, shit. Not only was the tube missing completely, but the reserve oxygen container was split completely down the middle. Ken stared at it, his hands trembling. What in the name of God was he going to do now...?
And then, slowly, a feeling of calm settled over him - the way it had done up there in that mecha when he had thought he and Jinpei were going to die. It all came together for him...the nightmare about falling, being pushed under the ocean...seeing Katse, and his father. This was it, the end of the road. They weren't getting out of here.
He looked up at his best friend again, a deep sadness in his eyes. "I'm sorry, Joe," he said. "We've been through so much together. I always thought..."
"Ken, no." Alarm flared in Joe's voice. "No, don't do this to me. You have to go, you have to save yourself. Ken, this is all wrong..."
"No." Ken smiled. "It's all right, finally. Don't you see...I'm getting a second chance to put things right. The nightmares are over...my conscience is finally going to be clear."
"Ken, what the fuck are you talking about...?"
"We swore we'd die together, you remember that? All those years ago... I, Ken Washio, swear on my blood and the blood of my family that if we die, we die together. We leave nobody behind, ever. Remember that, Joe?"
"We were kids, Ken. What did we know about anything? You can't do this...you can't throw your life away for..."
"For you?" Ken laughed, shook his head. "Maybe there are other things more important than what they put on my tombstone. Maybe I'm just tired of saving the world, and losing the people who mean the most to me."
The ground shifted beneath them, a deep groan of stress echoing through the metal walls as the whole mecha tilted sideways. A wave of water smacked into them both, throwing Ken sideways down the instrument panel. Gasping with shock, he grabbed at the panel for support and hauled himself back up to Joe. "Joe! Joe, are you all right? Joe!"
Coughing, spitting out salt water, Joe managed to nod. The water was up to their necks now. The ground moved again, the mecha shifting, sliding further. Ken stared at Joe, seeing the façade cracking, the sudden panic underneath - realizing all at once how much his gunner didn't want to die. Not like this, his eyes said. Not like this, like a rat in a trap...
A cracking sound above them then, so loud it was like an explosion. Pieces of metal, breaking off and splashing into the water out there in the dark. A gasp of pain from Joe, and the wave surged back, higher and harder than before.
He was underwater. "Joe!" Ken screamed. "Joe!"
A split second of blind, unreasoning panic, a hot wire wrapped around his chest. Then he went into action. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with air, and ducked down under the water. He grabbed Joe's shoulder, signaled what he was going to do. Then before Joe could fight him on it, he clamped his mouth over his gunner's and forced air into his lungs.
Then he went back up for more.
The mecha was filling up with water like a dinghy in a storm. The ground shook and shuddered, groaning as the great ship tore apart around them. Chunks of debris swept past, borne by the waves that crashed over and back every time the mecha moved underneath them. Ken ignored it all. He had one task to perform, nothing else mattered. Keep Joe breathing.
Up to the surface, drag in air, dive again. Breathe the air into Joe's mouth. Kick back to the surface as fast as he could go, drag in more air. Up and down, over and over. Can't stop, have to keep going. Have to keep him breathing. He'll die if you don't keep him breathing. More air. Have to get more air...
He was beginning to gray out now. The trips were getting longer, he wasn't breathing enough for himself, and the edges of his vision were starting to go. Up again, get more air, dive back to Joe. Don't stop. Can't stop. Getting harder and harder to reach the surface, harder and harder to fight the current and the pounding of the waves, harder and harder to get back down to Joe. Pain in his chest, growing and growing until it was so excruciating he thought his lungs would explode. But still he didn't stop. He couldn't stop. He must not stop. There was only one thing left burning in his mind, all the rest of it unimportant, slipping away into oblivion. Keep Joe alive.
Suddenly there was something grabbing at him, pulling him toward the surface. Hands... He fought them wildly, twisting out of their grasp. They came back at him again, gripping his arms, trying to drag him away. No, you can't do this, you can't stop me now, you don't understand, he'll die if you stop me now...
An arm with a grip like a vise clamped around him from behind, and something slapped over his face. He tore at it frantically, kicking out, fighting it with everything he had left. Then something hit him, hard.
His last conscious thought was of Joe, drifting away into the dark water until he could no longer see his face. Then he didn't remember anything else.