Go wasn't entirely sure he hadn't been run over by a truck; he thought he remembered dodging the Roidmude's ridiculously overpowered hits, and he couldn't see any evidence of bruising, but he hurt all over. The pain persisted, lingering in his joints and muscles, twinging when he moved too suddenly and making it extremely difficult to film the climbing video he'd had planned. Chase had been there when Go had woken up, pretending he hadn't been watching Go sleep, but by the time Go showered and dressed, Chase had vanished again.
Shin's concerned look when he'd found Go in the Drive Pit conducting minor repairs on the Ride Macher had just fueled Go's insistence that everything was fine. Shin looked dubiously at him; Go straightened up and suppressed a wince.
"The third Roidmude," Shin started, very obviously changing the subject.
"We haven't found a heavy acceleration field, right?" Go said. The bike was fine; aside from replacing a fuel line, the only damage had been cosmetic. Even the fuel line hadn't been entirely unsalvageable – Go just didn't want to see it give way at some unspecified point in the future.
"Not once," Shin confirmed. "Kyu has some thoughts about how pinging the viral Cores, but I'm not entirely sure what he means by that."
Go thought he did. "Does he want some help?" he asked.
Shin tossed a half-melted lump of metal at him. Go caught it easily and then had to keep his arm straight for a long, awkward moment when his elbow protested the abrupt addition of extra weight. He bent it carefully, pulling what he could now identify as the second Roidmude's Core closer. "This one's in better shape," he said.
"Kyu's on his way down," Shin said, watching Go with an altogether too thoughtful expression. Go tossed the Core up and down a few times just to prove there was nothing wrong with him. "You're going to drop that," Shin said, just as Go nearly did.
"No, I won't," he said, just a few beats too late, remains of the Core safely in both hands.
"….and I told you that's not how it works!" Rinna came storming through the door, shouting over her shoulder, and for a moment, Go thought he'd horribly misheard Kyu's name. He was proven wrong when Kyu followed Rinna, gesturing wildly.
"That is exactly how it works," Kyu said, and then his eyes fell on the twisted lump of metal in Go's hands. "Look!" He yanked it away, and Go, surprised, let it go. "Hi, Go," Kyu said absently. "How's it going." Without waiting for an answer, he pointed toward the Core and rounded on Rinna.
"I'll, uh." Shin glanced between the arguing pair and the door. "I'll just leave you to it."
"Oh, thank you," Go said drily. Shin had the grace to look slightly embarrassed before he beat a hasty retreat, and Go found himself embroiled in a heated discussion of what would and wouldn't be an effective use of their limited resources.
The problem with Kyu's idea was that it required materials they didn't have on hand, and the problem with Rinna's solution was that it had a high possibility of disrupting the city's entire power grid. Rinna felt the risk was acceptable and that Go's description of the risk as high was excessive, while Kyu felt that Go's assessment of their probability of acquiring the necessary materials as minimal to be overly pessimistic.
"What's your solution, then?" Kyu asked, after the three of them had been over the same ground with no progress for what seemed like hours.
Go rubbed at his eyes; they felt sticky and he couldn't quite keep the different arguments straight. "I don't know," he muttered. "What we need is to figure out how to get a return signal from the code we already know is there."
"Huh," Kyu said after a moment, and turned to the Core. Most of their attempts to pull something usable out of it had failed; it was damaged beyond repair, even if it hadn't been an unholy amalgamation of multiple Cores to begin with. At least, that was Go's assumption and he was running with it, no matter what anyone else said about combining bits and pieces of no-longer-functioning Cores not being possible.
"You're right," Rinna said, and while Go was fairly sure he hadn't missed any verbal statements, he was utterly lost.
"What?" he said.
"Look." Kyu pointed, and when Go frowned, he pulled up another display. "See? Here."
The lines of code blurred together, refusing to stabilize into something that made sense. Go rubbed his eyes again, and then he thought he saw it. "You mean," he said, and pointed.
"Oh, yeah, that too," Kyu said, and launched into an explanation.
Go would have been insulted, except that he couldn't follow what Kyu and Rinna had apparently simply noticed until Kyu took him through it step by step. "That's brilliant," he said.
"No, brilliant is your little addition," Kyu said, grinning, and Go finally saw how it all fell together.
"If you're done congratulating each other," Rinna said, and Go peered over her shoulder. While they'd been talking, she had started to set up the program. "Kyu, you're going to have to do the fine parts here, but if I build the detector according to these specifications, we're going to be able to find the thing before it comes out of hiding."
Kyu rubbed his hands together gleefully. "Go, if you want to go tell Tomari that we've made some progress, I think we've got it from here."
It was entirely possible that either the coding or constructing the makeshift detector would have gone more smoothly with another pair of hands, but Go was tired enough that assuming the other two had things well in hand was the far more attractive option. "I can just text him, and give you a hand," he said anyway.
Rinna eyed him. "I'd rather have you on hand to smash that thing to bits, when we find it," she said. "Something about these Cores doesn't feel right, and the sooner we destroy them, the better. And frankly, you look worn out."
There were days when Go would argue that he had more to offer than being pointed at something in order to blow it up, but this was not one of those days. If Rinna felt she and Kyu were up to the task of creating a Roidmude detector, he was going to believe them. "Yes, ma'am," he said, with a half-sketched and sloppy salute.
Rinna smiled playfully. "Terrible," she said. "Go talk to Tomari and we'll let you know when the detector is finished."
"We'll be waiting," Go said. Shin wasn't hard to find, but he had more questions than Go could thoroughly answer. Go could almost see the thoughts whirling around his head, not quite falling into a reasonable pattern.
"I keep thinking we're missing something," Shin said, staring at the air around him as though a pattern would fall into place if he glared at it hard enough.
Go batted aside one of Shin's visualizations; it shimmered against the fall for a second before fading away.
"Hey," Shin said. "I was using that."
"When Rinna and Kyu find the third Roidmude, we'll be able to catch it," Go said. "We can act, instead of reacting."
"If they find it in time," Shin said with uncharacteristic pessimism. He glanced around the empty office, and Go could all but see him dismiss his visualizations until he could look at them from another angle or add another piece of information. "It might show up again before they're ready, if it takes them as much time as I think it will to put this new detector together."
"Yeah, but the Roidmude took some pretty heavy damage, didn't it?" Go's memory of the fight was a little hazy, but he was sure he'd seen Drive hit the Roidmude hard enough to leave some sort of mark at least once.
"And yet I'm the one with bruises," Shin muttered. "If Chase hadn't tried to smash it to pieces while I had it trapped, we would be having a very different conversation."
Go blinked. "Why did he –"
Shin shrugged. "I think it made him nervous. He seemed to think we wouldn't be able to keep it contained, and I didn't push. It didn't matter at that point." He gave Go the same considering look Rinna had graced him with. "What about you?"
"What about me?" Go returned. "You just said you were the one who ended up injured."
"Minor," Shin said, waving a dismissive hand. "You went down pretty hard afterwards. You sure there's nothing going on?"
Go could have screamed in frustration.
The nearly two weeks between the first revived Roidmude incident and the second didn't specifically count as a pattern, but Go found himself expecting the third Roidmude to return in the same timeframe anyway. He had to remind himself that there were no guarantees, and that these new composite Roidmudes weren't acting in the same patterns as their predecessors had. He found himself at the location of the second fight standing opposite Kano, still roped off two days later, searching for some sign of what their intent had been.
"No heavy acceleration field," Kano reported.
"Didn't expect one," Go said. Kano had all of the equipment and was actually taking measurements of the area; Go was simply there to see if he could intuit anything useful. So far, all he saw was that they'd smashed up the street distressingly well.
"I don't see anything that could constitute a target." Kano sounded frustrated, and Go couldn't blame him. For all that he'd gotten to know Kano fairly well before he'd revived Chase, it was still odd to hear him speak in natural human tones, as if Kano were the copy and Chase the original.
"They knocked out part of the power grid," Go said, not approaching the carefully roped off area. The power lines had been restored, but the cold made it difficult to do the same for the broken street. "That was how Shin knew they were there."
"But why?" Kano didn't quite kick the nearest piece of rubble in frustration, but Go saw his foot twitch. "If they had something to do, we never would have known they were here without the heavy acceleration field."
"I don't know." The area the Roidmudes had decided to demolish was mainly residential, although it had an NTT broadcast tower on one end and a temple with its associated cemetery on the other. The entire wall along one side of the cemetery had been broken, cracked where it hadn't been shattered when Go had been thrown into it, and the broadcast tower wasn't broadcasting until repairs could be conducted. It at least seemed structurally sound.
"Detective Tomari is sure there's a definite plan," Kano said.
"Of course Shin thinks there's a definite plan," Go said absently, staring at the broadcast tower. "They always had a plan, even when it wasn't the same plan that Heart or Brain or Medic had."
"It looks like they're actively trying to get your attention," Kano said.
Go blinked. "Like what, now?"
Kano tilted his head to the side in a very Chase-like gesture. "The first time they showed up, they created a lot of noise but not a lot of widespread damage."
Go thought he remembered water mains being broken and wasn't sure that counted as minimal amounts of destruction, but it wasn't on the level of bringing down entire buildings. There had been no deaths and almost no injuries, as far as he knew. "They were loud and flashy, but not." He let his voice trail off. "Huh. Same thing here?"
Kano nodded. "I was looking at some of the footage from this fight."
"What footage?"
"There's a security camera on the tower, there." Kano pointed. "Which isn't working now. And the two intersections there, and there, they both have traffic cameras. None of it is a particularly good angle to see right here, but I could see enough."
"Enough to say what?" Go prompted. He didn't think he was going to like whatever Kano was going to say.
"There were some differences from when the Roidmudes first showed up," Kano said. "Whoever built them made some changes. They were better prepared, better built."
"You're saying that whoever made them is using us to test the – the hybrids?" Go frowned.
"Maybe." Kano shrugged. "Or there's more of a pattern and I can't see it yet."
"Test the hybrids for a specific reason, or do they just want to hunt Kamen Riders." Neither option was particularly attractive. "If they wanted us dead or incapacitated, there are easier ways to do it."
"Not if they don't know who you are," Kano said.
"Everyone knows who Drive is," Go countered. "And it's not hard to find me and Chase by association."
Kano didn't have an answer for that one. "About Chase," he said suddenly.
"Hm?" Go looked up; he'd been about to tell Kano goodbye and thank you and drive back home, since they'd found nothing concrete.
"Are you –" Kano's voice trailed off, and Go glanced over his shoulder. Kano looked uncharacteristically uncertain. "Are you sure everything with – the Roidmudes didn't return until –"
"Hey."
Kano fell silent at Go's single syllable, the soft sound cutting across Kano's hesitant voice despite its low volume.
"Chase is our ally," Go said, in the same soft voice. Of course Kano was suspicious; the timing even made some sort of sense, and Kano didn't know Chase the way the rest of them did. It had to be eerie, for Kano to see a copy of his face and body walking around, and it was understandable that he would look at Chase with different eyes than the rest of them. "He wouldn't betray us. He's not involved in this."
"His programming has been altered before," Kano said, stubborn now and sounding much less uncertain. "I just think we should make sure."
"I checked his programming," Go said. He'd done the tests, he'd run through the code, he knew what was inside Chase's head, so to speak. "When we brought him back, before we left the Drive Pit. I wouldn't have let him leave if there had been something wrong."
Kano's lips thinned, and Go could read volumes in what Kano didn't say.
"You're not objective about him, either," he said, and jammed his helmet over his head before Kano could reply. The Ride Macher roared to life under him and Go drove away before he could say something he would regret.
To make matters worse, Chase vanishing the morning after the fight was turning into more of a status quo than a one-time incident. He had apparently devoted his energy to making himself scarce as February ran into March while Go waited for the Special Investigation Unit to finish work on the detector, or the Roidmudes to strike again, or for anything to break the tense holding pattern of anticipating enemy action. The weather warmed, the frequent rainfalls becoming merely chilly and unpleasant instead of resembling driving needles of ice, and Chase spent more time out of Go's apartment than in it.
"You're being dramatic," Go said, out loud, to himself, at the sight of his dark and cold apartment on the fourth night running. He rubbed his eyes; he'd been running in late afternoon rather than early morning, simply because it had been raining every morning for the past week only to clear up later in the day, and it was wreaking merry havoc with his general wellbeing. Coming home to find Chase not there wasn't helping. "Why is it still so fucking cold."
Despite the run, Go felt chilled down to his bones; he'd finally filmed the urban climb video beforehand and decided that a change of scenery was in order, instead of following his now-usual path near his apartment, and the rain had started again as he was driving home. His camera was safely dry and intact inside his jacket, and he left it on the kitchen table before stripping out of his damp clothing.
A bath was too much work, he decided; he had the video to edit, and the kotatsu was warm enough. Go showered quickly, dressing in the cool air of the bedroom, and settled in to get some work done. His thoughts kept drifting to Chase instead; it felt like the only time he ever saw his friend – boyfriend? his mind supplied – was when Chase crawled into his bed in the middle of the night. Sometimes he was still there in the morning.
As if on cue, the apartment door opened just as Go gave up on getting any more work done. His concentration was entirely shot, and he wasn't going to produce anything worth seeing. He closed the laptop to the sound of Chase's politely quiet footsteps drifting down the hall.
"Welcome back," he said, extricating himself from the kotatsu and walking toward the door.
Chase was soaked, from the tips of his hair down to the hems of his artfully distressed jeans, as if he'd been out in the rain without an umbrella and without the sense to keep himself dry.
"What happened to you?" Go asked.
"The weather is unpleasant," Chase said. It wouldn't have sounded like an evasion, but Kano's words had been echoing in the back of Go's mind for days.
"Yeah, but what were you doing?" he pressed.
"Working," Chase said, and that was a perfectly reasonable answer. He had been changing jobs with astounding rapidity since he'd been back. "I start classes in April, and then I will be less able to make financial contributions."
Go closed his mouth with a snap. "Oh," he finally managed. "Wait, classes?"
Still dripping all over the floor, Chase nodded. "I will learn how to be a paramedic," he said.
"What," Go said, but it made the kind of sense that Chase tended to make. "You did say you didn't want to fight," he added, and then the growing puddle on the floor reached his toes. Go yelped in surprise. "Go put on something dry!"
By the time the floor was less of a hazard and Chase's clothes had been spread over the unused bathtub in an attempt to dry them out, Go had managed to banish Kano's suspicions to the ether where they belonged. "Are you sure you want me to get dressed?" Chase asked, as Go re-emerged into the hallway and stared. Chase had declined to do so much as pull the nearest set of clean clothing out of the closet; he was lounging against the bedroom door in nothing but his own skin.
"I can think of better ideas," Go said.
Chase regarded him for a few seconds. "You're propositioning me," he said, sounding almost pleased. It was as positive as he ever sounded, and the corners of his mouth turned up in a tiny smile when Go smirked at him.
"Yeah, I am," he said. "You were inviting it."
"Yes," Chase said, and let Go pull him into the bedroom. His bed was closer to the door, and Go pushed him down on it. Chase went willingly, fingers hooked into Go's belt-loops and mouth pressed against Go's lips.
Chase's skin was soft and smooth under his hands, still damp and cool. Go trailed his hands downwards, one thumb brushing across Chase's nipple, feeling it grow hard and erect under his touch. Warmth began to build, displacing the leftover chill, and Go pulled back just enough to breathe.
"This seems unequitable," Chase said suddenly, and Go froze. "You're still clothed," Chase added, sliding his hands under Go's jacket and trying to tug it off. All that happened was a tangled mess, and by the time Go had gotten out of both the t-shirt and the hoodie, he was mortally certain they were entirely ruined.
"Is that better?" he asked, because he wasn't entirely sure Chase wasn't laughing.
"I like you like this," Chase said, completely serious, and warmth suffused Go's entire being.
"I like you like this too," he murmured, and Chase smiled with heart-stopping sweetness. Whatever price Go had to pay to have Chase was worth it, he thought fiercely, and Chase groaned underneath him. Go loosened his grip. "I – did I hurt you?" he asked, but Chase was looking at him with his pupils blown wide in an eerily human reaction.
"Do that again," Chase said, voice deep and rough, and Go didn't need any further encouragement.
Afterwards, Go curled around Chase, hands resting lightly on miraculously unmarked skin. "You're perfect, you know," he muttered against the back of Chase's neck, too quietly for Chase to hear. Chase shifted around to face him anyway, tracing the edges of the marks he'd left.
"Does it hurt?" Chase asked, and Go hadn't expected that at all.
"I like it when it hurts," he said after a moment. "I'll tell you if you do something I don't want you to," he added, because Chase was giving him a look that meant Go had said something he didn't like. It didn't quite clear Chase's expression, so Go kissed him again. "You make me happy," he said, and that seemed to help a little.
"I want –" Chase started, and then, maddeningly, fell silent. "I have to go," he said, when Go opened his mouth to ask him what, exactly, he wanted, and Go was left wondering if he'd done something wrong. Chase was back in his bed when he woke in the morning, though. Go tried and failed not to think about it too much at first, and then decided that it was something he needed to know.
Trying to figure out what it was that Chase wanted was surprisingly difficult; Chase seemed almost deliberately obtuse on the subject, answering as though Go was asking about Chase's state of mind at that particular moment and avoiding the topic of the future entirely. It wasn't reassuring, even if Chase was perfectly normal in every other way. Go began to reach the conclusion that Chase was seeing a problem that he wasn't, and he couldn't figure out what it was, and the stress of it was exhausting.
The day Go received a text that the detector was nearly ready dawned sunny and bright for the first time in what felt like weeks, and Chase was not only still there when Go woke up but elected to join him on his morning run. Construction on the route Go usually chose sent him down another street, and Go discovered what looked like a park with a basketball court. Someone had left a basketball wedged under the fence, and Go looked up and down the street before hopping over said fence.
"Go?" Chase was giving him that slightly lost look, the one that he had been showing less and less as he got used to life without – with minimal Roidmude interference.
"Come on." Go had seen Chase play basketball on at least one occasion, although he didn't think Chase had kept the memories afterwards. Go felt privately that Angel had been the wrong name for a Roidmude who had wanted to bring about peace by literally eating her compatriots and raining destruction on everything else. "Then again, angels are supposed to be terrifying."
"What?" Chase said, perched on top of the fence.
"Nothing." Go hadn't realized he'd said anything else out loud. He waved broadly, trying to cover up his lapse. "Get in here."
"Are – is entry to this area permitted?" Chase hopped down inside the fence with economic grace, wasting no energy. Go watched appreciatively, and Chase started to eye him with wariness. "Did you have something else in mind?" Chase asked hesitantly.
"What? No!" Go was blushing again, he could tell. "I'm not an exhibitionist, I just – I like the way you move."
"How I move?" Chase blinked, wearing the bare edges of a nonplussed expression.
"Forget it," Go muttered, and crouched down under the fence to retrieve the basketball. It was almost no worse for the wear, although it had deflated just enough to be noticeable. He bounced it a few times, but it was still fairly usable. "You know how this game works?"
"I believe I'm familiar with the rules, although it requires a five-man team," Chase said.
"Well, you and I are going to play one on one," Go said, and took off down the court without warning. Chase picked up on the modified rules – such as they were – with the quickness Go expected. He was better at the game than Go was, too, his reflexes faster and his stamina apparently had no bounds. Go called a halt when he was more points down than he cared to think about and thoroughly out of breath. "Good game," he said, leaving the ball on the edge of the court.
"What is this?" Chase had come up behind him while Go wasn't looking, and when Go turned around Chase was close enough to cup Go's jaw in one hand and run the fingers of his other along Go's sweat-soaked hairline.
"What's what?" It was Go's turn to be confused. Turn about is fair play.
"You're wet." Chase's deep voice sent shivery little feelings through Go's midsection. "I have noticed it before," he added.
"Sweat," Go said, and then he had to explain what he remembered about how the human body kept itself in equilibrium, which was definitely enough to kill any sense of libido that might have been aroused otherwise. Go led them down the street and back towards home during the conversation.
"It has an interesting scent," Chase said, as they crossed the building parking lot.
"Yeah, that's kind of a side effect," Go said. "Sorry, I'll shower as soon as we get upstairs."
"I like it," Chase said, and Go blushed again.
"I don't have to shower right away," he said, because there were numerous other activities he could think of, and that was the moment his phone pinged with an incoming text from one of the Special Investigation Unit. Go groaned, pulling it out of his pocket. "Chase," he said, waving the phone. "They want you at the Drive Pit."
Chase had his own phone in hand, although Go hadn't heard it make any sort of noise, already tapping out a message. "I know," he said. Testing the detector required a Core, which meant Chase. Go opted to shower after all before following him, wearing a heavier jacket than his usual hoodie to keep the wind off. Blue skies did not necessarily mean warm weather, and the first couple of weeks of March still counted as winter in his book. Chase walked into the Drive Pit with completely blank body language, face expressionless. Go frowned at his back; not that Chase was ever expressive, but he'd been warmer since he'd come back.
"I'm ready," Chase said. "What do you need me to do?"
What Rinna wanted, it turned out, was for Chase to stand first in specific locations in his human form so the detector could be calibrated, and then to go somewhere within a certain range without telling them where so that the device could be tested. Go opted to stay in the Drive Pit, watching the test with interest.
The detector pinged off Chase's Core for both known-location tests, but when Rinna instructed Chase to, essentially, hide somewhere, the detector failed to pick up what Kyu had dubbed the Core's signature.
"Why," Kyu said, staring at the machine in frustration. "What are we missing?"
"The ambient radiation," Rinna started, and Kyu leaned over her shoulder to peer at the readout.
"What if," he said, and Rinna nodded.
"Tell Chase not to move," she said, and Go was fairly sure she was talking to him for all that she was apparently focused entirely on the screen in front of her.
It took over an hour for the two members of the Special Investigation Unit to declare the test a partial failure and release Chase back to his original plans for the day. Go thought he knew what the problem was, but neither of the others felt his ideas had merit.
"Fine," he said eventually. "Then let me have a copy of the code and work it out, and we can run it as a backup."
"You're going to break my machine," Rinna muttered under her breath. Go didn't think he was supposed to hear her, especially when she agreed in a louder voice.
It was almost nostalgic, sitting at his former workstation; Go hadn't cleared it away after he'd finally succeeded in resurrecting Chase, and no one else had rearranged the Drive Pit either. It was dusty, but the equipment booted up without hesitation, and Go slid into his seat with the ease of long familiarity. He had spent enough time staring over Kyu's shoulder to know exactly where he wanted to start working, and he fell into the rhythm of the previous fall more quickly than he'd anticipated.
"Go," he heard some time later, the single syllable layered with impatience.
"Huh?" Go looked up. He was almost finished with the first part of the solution. "Just a second." The last phrases went into their respective slots and he started the process of compiling the code. "Yeah?"
"Go," Chase said again, and Go blinked. Rinna and Kyu had migrated to the other side of the Drive Pit, and Chase was standing expectantly behind him. He wasn't dressed for the weather, wearing jeans and a solid purple t-shirt that Go vaguely remembered seeing in the closet, but it wasn't like Chase noticed the temperature as much as the rest of them.
"How long have you been there?"
Chase opened his mouth to answer.
"No, don't tell me." Go stretched. "What's up?"
"Your sister is expecting us," Chase said, and Go realized with a guilty start that he'd completely forgotten about his sister's invitation. She'd started back at work, which had gone as smoothly as Go might have expected – which was to say there had been unforeseen and tiny but numerous snags in the process – and he'd seen less of her as a result.
"Right." Go pulled at his own shirt; it was clean, and it wasn't as though Kiriko would expect him to show up looking pretty. "I can't do anything else with this right now anyway."
Chase eyed him.
"I'm not – look, I want this Roidmude stuff to end," Go said. "We were supposed to be done with it. It was supposed to be over."
Chase simply looked at him, and Go massaged the bridge of his nose.
"I wasn't talking about you," he said. "You're different. You're you."
"We're late," was all Chase said, but Go couldn't help feeling as though he'd made a misstep. He didn't think he was wrong, that was the problem; it wasn't that he didn't like fighting as Mach, it was that he wanted the Roidmudes gone. With the sole exception of Chase, and possibly Heart, they had been twisted creations bound up in his father's irrational hatred of humanity. Or the world. Or something. Go wasn't entirely sure, and he didn't care.
The conversation and resulting thoughts left Go in the wrong mood for socializing, but he plastered a smile on his face anyway before knocking on Kiriko's door. Shin pulled it open, balancing Eiji on one hip, and Go was able to return his wide smile with a more genuine expression.
"He's been fussy," Shin said. As if on cue, Eiji started crying. "No, no, come on," Shin said, and moved away from the door. Go followed, letting Chase close the door behind them. Shin dangled something plastic and brightly colored in front of Eiji, and that seemed to be enough of a distraction. Or maybe it was just that Eiji couldn't cry quite so loudly while enthusiastically chewing on the toy, it was hard to say.
Kiriko emerged from the kitchen. "Pizza," she said. "Work ran late today."
"You say that like I'm going to complain," Go said, and Kiriko gave him one of her rare smiles. "How's being back at work?" he asked. Kiriko took the bit and ran with it, talking nearly a mile a minute as she pressed both Go and Chase into ferrying dishes out to the table.
"It's a little strange," Shin said eventually. "Not what I expected, at first."
"You knew what you were getting when you married me," Kiriko said, but there was no bite to the words.
"I got exactly what I wanted when I married you," Shin said, with the most ridiculous smile, undampened even by Eiji flinging the solid part of his dinner across the table and giggling. Chase watched the byplay with a look that could only be described as curiosity, and Go couldn't help laughing at it.
"Don't encourage him," Kiriko said, and for a moment Go thought she was talking about Chase. Eiji's giggles got higher in pitch, and Go realized that his nephew had taken his laughter as approval of the flung pieces of dessert.
"Sorry," he said, trying to look contrite. From the expression on Kiriko's face, he was fairly sure he was failing miserably. Chase had gone from curious to the face he made when he was observing and storing information for later use, and Go made a mental note to find out exactly what Chase thought he'd learned before it turned into some sort of misunderstanding. Even if it was likely to be a hilarious misunderstanding. "I'll help clean up?"
"As if there was any question," Kiriko told him. Go shooed Chase into the living room with Shin and Eiji, feeling that too many people underfoot would slow down the process rather than expedite it, and by the time he and Kiriko finished with the admittedly small mess dinner had left, Shin had gotten Eiji relatively calm and quiet.
"Movie?" Shin said, waving a DVD case for one of Go's favorites.
Go sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the couch, pulling Chase down next to him. He had to be in the right mood to actually sit through an entire film; he got enough enforced idleness through half of his job to want to include it in his recreation, too, but even though he'd spent most of the day hunched over a desk, he didn't really want to move. He felt rather than saw Kiriko curl up behind him, and Shin settled next to her after dimming the lights.
Within a few minutes, Go felt that dimming the lights had been a mistake; it just reminded him that he had started the day tired and it hadn't improved from there. He suppressed a yawn as the opening credits rolled, and somehow found that he'd shifted closer to Chase. The other man – and when, specifically, had he stopped thinking of Chase as a Roidmude? – glanced over at him, the movement barely visible at the edge of Go's vision, and put an arm over Go's shoulder.
Chase was warm, and comfortable, and the next thing Go was really aware of was the lights pressing against his eyelids and footsteps crossing the floor. He blinked, eyes feeling dry and scratchy, trying to re-adjust to the brightness. "Sorry," he muttered, levering himself back upright. The end credits were scrolling across the screen; he'd managed to miss all of it.
Kiriko reached down and ruffled his hair. "Go home and sleep in your own bed," she said, playfully enough that Go knew she wasn't upset.
"Probably a good idea." He stretched, feeling the blood flow back into his fingers and toes. Some of the leaden weight of fatigue was gone, but the sandy sensation in his eyes persisted. He rubbed at them a little. "It's been a long week. Month. Day. Whatever."
"Your engagement in certain extracurricular activities has been putting a drain on your energy levels," Chase said unexpectedly, somehow managing to rake his gaze suggestively down Go's torso and back up again while keeping a completely straight face.
Go opened his mouth and shut it again; what Chase sounded like he was implying wasn't precisely what had been happening – or, it had, but that wasn't the reason he was apparently losing sleep, and it didn't matter anyway because his sister wasn't supposed to know. He tried again, but couldn't get a coherent word out beyond a strangled "Chase!" that wasn't helping the situation. He could feel his face flushing hot in what he couldn't deny was shame.
"Go," Kiriko said, and then, "Would you two give us a moment?"
There wasn't much space for Shin to give them; Go watched miserably as Shin pulled Chase to the other side of the room, and almost sullenly climbed to his feet to follow Kiriko toward the kitchen door. She was going to assume that he'd corrupted Chase, and if she didn't, Shin would. His stomach churned in anticipation of Kiriko telling him how much he'd let her down.
"You and Chase, then?" Kiriko said, voice oddly soft for the start of an unpleasant conversation.
There wasn't really any way to deny it. Go nodded, looking at the floor. "I shouldn't –" he started, and Kiriko put a finger against his lips.
"You're my brother and I love you," Kiriko said. "You know that, right?"
She was just making it harder. Go nodded without saying anything. He wasn't sure he would be able to keep his voice from cracking even if he did try to speak.
"Are you…" Kiriko leaned over to peer directly into his face. Go tried to look away, but she took his cheeks in both hands and forced him to face her head on. All he could do was direct his gaze to the side. "Go," she said, and now she looked exasperated. "You – there are things about you that drive me crazy, but you liking boys isn't one of them. It never was."
Wait, what? Go blinked, sure he'd misheard something. "What?" he said, and then something else struck him. "You knew?"
"Of course I knew." She let go of his face, putting her hands on her hips instead. "I'm your older sister. I know everything."
"But," he said.
"I want you to be happy," Kiriko said. "If being with Chase makes you happy, then I want you to be with Chase."
"But," Go said again. No part of this conversation was going as he'd expected; even in America, where the mindset toward non-standard relationships was as wide-open as the Arizona sky when compared to Japan, he'd gotten flack if he'd been openly affectionate with Ethan in public.
"Who exactly do you think you're talking to?" Kiriko said, and Go threw his arms around her. She hugged him back, and his fears suddenly seemed unfounded and silly. Kiriko was as much of an oddball as he was, Go realized, with her insistence on continuing to work even after marriage and a kid. Even if the rest of the world rejected him for what he was, he wasn't going to lose his family. Relief washed over him, leaving him light-headed in its wake.
"So," he said, after she gently extricated herself and pretended she didn't see him swipe a hand across his eyes. "Um. Chase. We, uh. Yeah." He felt himself smile, almost giddy in the release of tension.
"I see why you like him," Kiriko said, eyeing Chase speculatively. "He's very pretty."
"Kiriko!" He was blushing, he could tell. Kiriko giggled.
"The look on your face," she said, but it was nice to see her smile. "He really is pretty, though."
"Shin," Go said abruptly, gaze sliding to Kiriko's husband and his ersatz older brother. Shin was apparently deeply absorbed in conversation with Chase, who was wearing the expression that meant he wasn't sure whether or not Shin was pulling his leg.
"What about him?" Kiriko glanced over to the pair, following his gaze. "Oh, he knows. He's known for years."
Go padded across the room and pulled Shin into a rough hug mid-sentence.
"…and don't forget it," Shin said over Go's head.
"No groping my husband," Kiriko said from behind him.
"I wouldn't," Go muttered. Shin had hugged him back, too, without reservation, and the understanding that he really wasn't going to lose his family settled around him.
"What, he's not pretty enough to grope?" Kiriko was enjoying Go's discomfort entirely too much, he felt.
"Yes, I am," Shin said, and then, "No, wait."
"Rude," Go said to his sister, letting Shin go. She just smirked at him, which was uncalled for. "I'm going home," he added.
"Next week it's your turn to play host," Kiriko said.
"I don't remember agreeing to that," he told her.
"We'll see you at seven," Kiriko said, as though he hadn't said anything at all. "Tuesday."
"You know I'm going to see you at work before then, right? Both of you?"
"I'm looking forward to it." Kiriko reached up to ruffle his hair. "Get some rest."
Go resigned himself to his fate. "See you guys later," he said, and stuffed his feet into his shoes before Kiriko could surprise him with anything else. "Chase? You coming?"
Chase twitched slightly, as though he hadn't been paying attention to the byplay, but he followed Go out the door and down to the parking lot. "Shinnosuke has entrusted me with your emotional wellbeing," he said, hovering next to the Ride Chaser with his helmet in his hands.
"He did what?" Go was repeating that word far more often than he was comfortable with.
"He said." Chase paused, as if searching for the words. "I was instructed to ensure your happiness," he said finally. "And that Shinnosuke would be extremely disappointed if I mishandled you. I am uncertain as to whether or not that constitutes a threat."
"He likes you too, you know." Go pulled on the helmet.
"I don't see how that's relevant. Or explains anything." Chase finally climbed onto his bike.
"Do you –" Go hesitated, and then plunged ahead before Chase could drown him out with the sound of his engine. "Do you want to keep doing this? Us?"
If Go hadn't known Chase as well as he did, he would have thought Chase was perfectly calm, but the stillness before Chase carefully turned to face him told him that Chase was upset about something, and Go had no idea what it was. Unless Chase didn't want to continue with the relationship that they had, in which case Go was going to have to learn how to be miserable all over again. "I," Chase said, voice muffled by the helmet but still clear. "I want you to be with me for as long as you can."
The implications took a moment to settle in, and Go blinked. He hadn't ever considered that Chase was likely to outlive him; the Roidmudes were designed to outlast humans, after all, and even if that hadn't technically been tested, Go was familiar enough with their design to say that there was a very high probability of Chase outliving him by a wide, wide margin. "I didn't," he started, and then the rest of his train of thought caught up with him. He was going to get older, and Chase – wasn't. That's what he's been worried about, he thought. What he didn't want to say. "That's not fair to you," he said softly.
The Ride Chaser roared to life, and Go jammed his helmet on his head and went after it, still half unsure Chase really wanted him to follow. He lingered in the parking lot, the Ride Chaser parked and abandoned with Chase nowhere to be seen, before slowly climbing the three flights of stairs. His door was unlocked, and Chase yanked him inside as soon as Go turned the knob. Any thought Go had had about Chase wanting to get away from him vanished.
"Don't say anything," Chase said, holding Go simultaneously as though he were made of glass and so tightly that Go thought he could shatter under Chase's grip.
"I'm not going anywhere," Go said, and Chase made a sound of either disapproval or protest before shoving Go against the wall and kissing him thoroughly enough to prevent even the slightest semblance of coherent speech. It was some time before Go got the use of his voice back, and by that time he didn't care for talking in the slightest.
The following morning, Chase was gone again, but Go had almost expected it. If Chase was worried about outliving him, it was a problem that could be solved later; or at the very least, Go could demonstrate that he was going to stick around until Chase stopped dealing with the issue by running away from it. And Go, by association.
"Or maybe I just need to pin you down and sit on you until you actually talk to me," Go said to the ceiling. Decision made, he thought briefly about going back to sleep; it wasn't that early, judging by the light outside, but he still wasn't happy about being awake. He groped for his phone, finding it dark and silent and refusing to power up. "Why is your battery dead now," he said to it, and shuffled into the kitchen to plug it in and then toward the bathroom sink to brush his teeth while he waited for enough of a charge to be able to actually use the phone.
Go blinked when he caught sight of his reflection; there were bruises liberally scattered across his torso and one at the base of his throat that couldn't possibly be mistaken for anything other than exactly what it was. "Goddammit, Chase," he said. He didn't think they'd been quite so rough, but he couldn't bring himself to be unhappy about it, either. He was just going to have to find a relatively high-necked shirt. Or refuse to take off his scarf.
Dressed and mostly presentable, Go stared at the coffee maker as it gurgled through its cycle. His phone started beeping with notifications before there was enough coffee in the pot to make a respectable cup, and with a faint sense of regret, Go picked up his phone to check his messages before getting any caffeine at all.
There were several texts, mostly from Kyu and Rinna and one from Shin, telling him that the detector was ready for testing, and would he please bring Chase to the Drive Pit. Go fired off quick replies, shutting down the coffee maker and drinking what had brewed so far both scalding hot and still black before dialing Chase's number. He didn't answer the first time Go called, and he found himself standing in the doorway, frowning at his phone with a burned tongue and one foot halfway into its shoe. "What the hell?"
Chase answered on the second try, sounding distracted, but he acknowledged the message and agreed to meet Go at the Drive Pit before hanging up abruptly. Go stared at the phone again.
"That was weird, right?" he said to his front door. It had no opinion. Go swiped his keys out of the bowl, put his other shoe on, and jogged down the stairs. He definitely needed to figure out how to get Chase to just talk to him; he'd work on it as soon as the issue with the detector was sorted out, Go promised himself, and they'd dealt with the last Roidmude.
Chase had beaten him to the Drive Pit, unexpectedly, and Go found himself standing behind both Rinna and Kyu as they explained the finer points of the test – again – and instructed Chase on where not to go.
"You're certain?" Chase said, and when Rinna nodded decisively, he turned toward the door. Go was standing between him and it, and Chase paused in front of him. "How are you?" he said.
"I – good, I'm good," Go said. "You?" He wasn't sure what to think of the textbook-polite socially-acceptable small-talk conversation opener, but Chase was looking at him as if he'd expected a different answer.
"Then I'll see you later," Chase said, reaching up to drop a light kiss on the corner of Go's mouth. He vanished adroitly out the door before Go could react. He turned to watch Chase leave, realizing only as he turned back that his mouth was stretched wide in a ridiculous smile. Rinna and Kyu were both staring at him, and the smile faded.
"So we'll give him fifteen minutes to get to wherever he's going," Rinna said, just as Kyu opened his mouth.
"Fifteen minutes," Kyu agreed, looking very much like he wanted to say something else.
"Go, I've loaded the secondary modifications you wrote yesterday," Rinna said, and Go blinked.
"Uh, right," he said, and she had argued against those modifications the day before, he was sure of it. "I thought you –"
"Not all of them," Rinna said, and when he leaned over to look at the display, Go could see where she'd taken elements of what he'd done and worked them into the framework she and Kyu had set up. "See?"
"That's actually amazing," Go said, impressed. "I think it's actually going to work."
"Of course it's amazing," Rinna said. "I made it." She picked up the handheld component of the detector and pulled out the cable connecting it to the desktop system. "Now." She hefted it. "There isn't as much range as we'd wanted, but it should work whether or not the Core is active."
"That's – we're going to have to run a search pattern, but that's not hard," Go said. "What's the range?"
The technical discussion carried them through the countdown until Chase should have been in whatever location he'd picked, and neither Rinna nor Kyu said anything about Chase's parting gesture. Go started to relax, assuming they'd perhaps misinterpreted or even missed it entirely, and then Rinna hesitated before giving him the go-ahead to activate the detector.
"What?" Go asked, fingers hovering over the controls.
"Congratulations," Rinna said quietly. Kyu studiously ignored the entire conversation for all that he'd enthusiastically participated in explaining what modifications they'd made to the detector, but he wasn't condemning, either.
"Uh. Thanks," Go said, trying not to be awkward and knowing that he was missing by a mile.
"Ready?" Rinna said, brightly this time. Kyu perked up at her tone, swinging his chair around.
"Here goes nothing," Go said.
For a long moment, there was as little reaction from the detector as there had been during the failed test, but after a tense second, its indicator light flashed brightly and the expected location appeared on the readout.
"It works," Rinna said, staring at it in disbelief, and grabbed Kyu out of his chair in a celebratory hug. She dragged Go into it, too, but Kyu stiffened just slightly when Go touched him, and Go pulled back. "It works," Rinna said again, apparently not having noticed. She poked Go in the shoulder. "Okay, text Chase to go to the next spot."
The detector passed the first three tests and failed the fourth, which was an attempt at the outer edge of its potential range.
"Still," Rinna said. "We're going to be able to find them."
"Pity we can't build another one," Kyu said. The parts just weren't available; Rinna had scavenged the remains of the destroyed Roidmudes to create the one detector they had, and manufacturing more would take time that Go was sure they didn't have.
"So we start looking," he said. The entire city could be covered in a couple of days, even if the composite Roidmude was moving around. It shouldn't be deliberately avoiding a search it didn't know was coming. "Did anyone tell Shin?"
What no one had told Go was that carting the detector around and watching it fail to register any sort of signal was going to be incredibly boring; Shin had taken the first circuit around where he thought the Roidmudes were most likely to be, and Go had picked it up for the second. Shin had looked tired and annoyed, and Go had tried to cheer him up. It hadn't worked.
Less than two hours into his own shift had taught Go in excruciating detail why Shin had looked so annoyed. "At least you got to do half of this from inside the Tridoron," Go muttered. It was cold after dark, no matter that spring was allegedly on its way and he had to keep the Ride Macher's speed down to a relative minimum so as not to overshoot the detector's capabilities.
Does Chase get to take a turn when I'm done, he sent to Shin, waiting at an intersection for the light to change.
Kano's taking round three, Shin sent back. Otta gets round four.
"Huh," Go muttered. He hadn't seen much of Otta, and idly wondered if the older detective was running the search because they didn't trust Chase or because they wanted him available to beat the Roidmude into the ground. "Kano's pessimism is catching." He sent a frowning emoji to Shin just to be obnoxious, but Shin had either put down his phone or was ignoring him deliberately, and Go was fairly sure Shin would have just left him on read if the latter were true.
More time driving slowly down each series of streets on a very conspicuous bike in the freezing cold of mid-March was draining Go's sympathy for Shin, particularly when Shin had at least had the advantage of a heater. The wind picked up just enough to make up for Go's lack of velocity when he stopped at a railroad crossing. He rubbed his arms, trying to generate some warmth, and cursed at it as creatively as he could in both Japanese and English. He didn't feel any warmer, but at least he felt a little better, and he saw movement that was clearly out of the ordinary.
The barriers across the street stopped blinking and rose back up to a vertical position. It would have been perfectly normal, except that the train was still rushing by. Go tightened his grip on the Ride Macher. The detector hadn't so much as peeped in the last few seconds, and he checked it again out of a sense of paranoia. It was dark and silent.
There's something weird going on, he sent to Shin, but the text didn't show as read, and Go shoved his phone back into his pocket in frustration. He thought for a moment about texting Chase, but movement between the train cars caught his eye; someone was standing on the other side of the tracks, gleam from the streetlights that weren't there reflecting off just enough of the outline for Go to tell that it wasn't a human shape. He smacked the side of the detector, but it kept telling him there was nothing to be found. The end of the train finally passed, the loud rattle of its wheels fading into the distance, and the tall figure on the other side of the tracks started running.
"No, you don't," Go muttered, stuffing the detector inside his jacket and revving the Ride Macher's engine. He could catch up with it; there was no way it could run faster than he could drive.
The maybe-Roidmude nearly got away at a five-way intersection, narrow streets barely visible for a block in any direction, but Go caught a glimpse of reflecting light just in time. The roar of his engine echoed through the alley, its claustrophobic confines slowing him down, and Go thought for half a second that he should leave the bike behind and continue on foot.
No, he decided. He was still faster on the bike, and he was catching up to whatever it was that he was chasing. Shin could find him easily enough, through the Driver. The maybe-Roidmude kept doubling back on itself, as if it was trying to lose him, and it was heading into an area of the city Shin had already searched.
Shin needs to know that the detector might not be reliable. Go couldn't text and drive the Ride Macher at the same time, though, and if he stopped even for a second, he was going to lose his opponent. He gritted his teeth and settled for paying very close attention to where he was – a commercial district, one of the loading zones for goods came into the city on a daily basis, with more train tracks than he cared to count and at least a lower chance of involving innocent bystanders in the middle of the night.
The detector beeped inside his jacket, and Go brought the Ride Macher to a screeching halt in the middle of the road. It was flashing multiple signatures at him, each one registering only briefly before fading. "What the hell?" It was too dark to see clearly; the sky might have been clear and the moon nearly full, but it was barely above the horizon, much less high enough to cast any sort of light into the manmade canyons of the city.
"Dammit," Go muttered, and put the detector away. He killed the engine on the bike; according to the detector, the area around him was swarming with Roidmudes, but he couldn't see anything moving. He took his phone out with one hand, keeping it hidden between his body and the bike, hitting Shin's number and trying not to look at the screen. With his other hand, he carefully pulled the Signal Mach Bike out of his pocket. The Driver was already belted around his waist, and he just had to push the jacket up to get at it.
For a heart-stopping second, Go's jacket caught on the edge of the Driver. He nearly dropped the phone trying to untangle it. That's what you get for not just wearing a hoodie, he couldn't help thinking, even if it was too cold for just a hoodie. Shin finally picked up the phone just as Go managed to expose the Driver.
"Go?" He sounded half-awake at best.
"I found something," Go said, and started to slide the Signal Mach Bike into its slot. He didn't get it more than half way before something tackled him from the side and knocked him off the Ride Macher and onto the pavement. Go rolled instinctively to the side, away from whatever it was that had hit him, but he heard the Signal Bike clatter away. He could see it, pale against the darkness, far enough away from whatever had pounced on him that he thought he could reach it. He dove forward, phone forgotten, and something he barely felt shoved him into unrelenting shadow.
Waking up was an unpleasant experience; it took a few minutes for Go to remember why he had been unconscious in the first place and then he was glad to be waking up at all. The space around him was quiet, rustling noises echoing in a way that told him it was huge and mostly empty. When he opened his eyes, the ceiling overhead was lost in the dim edges of the few lights.
There was nothing and no one around, except for the maddening sounds at the edges of his hearing. Go was tied to a chair, the edge of the rope digging into his wrists and ankles, but neither his feet nor his hands had gone numb. Either whoever tied me here doesn't know what they're doing, or I haven't been here long.
The Mach Driver wasn't belted around his waist, but the Signal Mach Bike was clenched in one hand; he could feel it denting the skin of his palms. Looking around a little more produced the sight of the Mach Driver on the floor, as though someone had flung it away in a fit of pique, or maybe they just wanted him to be able to see it but not reach it. Go tugged experimentally at the rope binding his wrists, and came to the conclusion that his assailant didn't know what he – or she – was doing.
There was too much give in the wrong places, and even without letting go of the Signal Bike, it was only a matter of time to work his hands free. The Signal Bike went into his pocket while Go worked the blood back into his hands and the stiffness out, not that there was much need for either, and bent over to untie his feet. Something passed just above his head, close enough to brush against his hair, and clattered against the floor behind him.
"What the fuck," he said, and worked faster. The chair got kicked in the direction of the projectile while Go made a run for the Mach Driver. He got his hands on it and fastened it around his waist, still looking to see what had come after him. There was nothing. "What the fuck," he said again, and the warehouse was dead silent around him.
The projectile, when he found it, turned out to be a small piece of spiky metal glistening with oily liquid that Go was very sure he didn't want to touch. He kicked it under the chair, trying to look in every direction at once, but the quiet was unabated. He slid the Signal Bike into the Driver without activating the transformation and moved to what might have been a sheltered corner. The silence was starting to give him a headache, dull pain pounding in time with his heartbeat.
His phone, when he pulled it out, was smashed beyond repair. The detector was still in his jacket, cracked around the edges, but when Go turned it on out of almost a sense of idle curiosity, it sent back a definite response. There was at least one Roidmude close by. "Well, there's something useful I can do," he said. Hopefully Shin would figure out where he was when the Driver activated; Go checked the direction, slipped out of the warehouse, and took off running.