"He has to be somewhere," Shinnosuke said, frustrated. The Drive Pit was crowded, Kiriko standing by Kano, Kyu and Rinna hovering at the edge of the room, Otta standing as if on guard by the door. "The call just – just cut off."
Shinnosuke had been woken in the early pre-dawn by his cell phone buzzing in his ear; he'd been deeply asleep, and the call had nearly gone to voice mail before he'd gotten to it. He'd been jolted wide awake by Go's name on the screen, though, and that Go hadn't technically answered when Shinnosuke had said hello had sent a shot of adrenaline straight into his gut. By the time the call abruptly ended, Shinnosuke was on his feet and pulling on the closest set of clean clothes he could find, and Kiriko was right beside him.
Finding that Go had sent a text maybe forty minutes before he'd called hadn't calmed either Shinnosuke or Kiriko down in the slightest; they'd left Eiji with Kiriko's retired neighbor – something the lady in question had agreed to in case of emergency, and emergency only – and made tracks for the Drive Pit. Shinnosuke had started calling everyone else before he'd actually gotten out the door, reluctantly relinquishing his phone to Kiriko only when he got behind the wheel.
Chase was nowhere to be found, and he wasn't answering his phone either. Shinnosuke had tried him first, sending a text when the first call hadn't gone through. The second call had gone straight to voice mail, which made trying to get through an exercise in futility. Shinnosuke kept trying anyway, up until he walked into the Drive Pit, and everyone else had raggedly assembled.
"Track the cell phone signal," Kiriko said finally. "It's not technically a misuse of police resources."
Knowing where Go had been searching – at least, where he was supposed to have been searching – narrowed down the area a little, and finding which towers his cell phone had routed through narrowed it down further.
"What was he doing out there?" Shinnosuke slammed his hand on the desk in frustration. The area was at the edge of where he himself had already searched, and it looked like Go had been moving right into the heart of it. "Can we track the Mach Driver?"
"Not until it's activated," came the answer from Krim, better known to Shinnosuke as Mr. Belt. Or at least that was how he always thought of it – him – inside his head. "You know that."
"I know, I know." What was worse, they couldn't detect a heavy acceleration field in the area, and the jury-rigged detector was with Go. "I'm heading out there."
"Shinnosuke," Kiriko said, and then just, "Be careful." She brushed her hand lightly against his, even that much of a gesture too personal, too private to be done in public.
"Keep trying to reach Chase," Shinnosuke said. "Let me know if anything changes."
"I'm coming with you." That was from Kano, dressed impeccably despite having been dragged out of bed before dawn, lips drawn into a firm line. Shinnosuke hesitated for a second before nodding; Kano would, at the very least, not get in the way.
Tridoron made short work of the city streets, quieter at this late hour but never empty, and Shinnosuke reached the district he'd already searched in record time. The Ride Macher was almost immediately visible, knocked over on its side. Shinnosuke set it upright, but there was no other sign of Go in the immediate vicinity.
"He said he found something weird," Shinnosuke said. "Weird, how?"
"You don't think it was a Roidmude?" Krim asked. Kano remained silent, pacing some sort of perimeter around the downed Ride Macher.
"He would have said." Shinnosuke shook his head. There was nothing out of the ordinary that he could see, the area full of warehouses and train tracks and very few streetlights, the pale gray of true dawn casting some areas into deeper shadows while illuminating nothing.
"Are you sure?" Krim apparently wanted to play devil's advocate today, and it was not helpful in the slightest.
"He was chasing something," Shinnosuke returned, biting back the urge to snap. "Or he wouldn't have come back here, to an area I already searched. Dammit, I thought the detector was supposed to be working."
"So you think he was chasing something that might or might not have been a Roidmude," Krim said.
"Maybe." Shinnosuke put his hands on his hips and turned, slowly, looking over the area.
"Here," Kano said, popping up beside him with something in his hand. "His phone's been smashed." He beckoned Shinnosuke over to an otherwise unremarkable piece of pavement, where bits and pieces of what Shinnosuke knew was a sturdy screen were glimmering on the ground. The bulk of the phone was nowhere to be seen. "That's why we couldn't get an exact location off of it."
There was nothing else to be gleaned from that particular bit of pavement. Shinnosuke shook his head. "Spread out and search," he said, although there were only two of them.
"You think we should split up?" Kano asked. He was politely trying to remind Shinnosuke that if whatever it was had gotten the better of Go, while he was presumably alert and looking for trouble, it could very likely overpower each of them as well.
"No. Dammit." Shinnosuke slammed a fist into his palm. "What the hell do you want?" he shouted at the empty stockyard. He didn't expect an answer. He got the barely palpable shift in air pressure that told him instinctively to duck. Experience gave him the dexterity to slide his Shift Car into the Driver and the presence of mind to shout at Kano to watch out before he hit the ground and scrambled to the side. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kano take cover, and then the transformation swept over him.
Shinnosuke's vision cleared in just enough time to dodge again; his assailant was the same Roidmude that had escaped the last time, he thought, but it had changed enough that he wasn't entirely sure. His previous opponent had been small, and fast, and more or less uniform in color. The figure currently trying its best to beat him into the ground was still fast – Type Speed's base form was Shinnosuke's second quickest and he was still having trouble keeping up with it – but it was taller and wider, jagged in color in a way that Shinnosuke couldn't quite parse until it gave him a moment to breathe.
The Roidmude stood opposite Drive, preternaturally still while Shinnosuke caught his breath. It looked raw, he thought – as if it were still in development and the rough edges hadn't been smoothed out. The number plate was still blank, looking almost singed at the edges, and none of its limbs quite matched. Where most of the Roidmudes Shinnosuke had faced had at least some sort of basis in a living creature, this one was a blank-faced amalgamation of nothing, and eerie facsimile of an unfinished doll come to life. It moved smoothly for all of that, without hesitation.
Movement out of the corner of Shinnosuke's eye caught his attention. Kano was doing something; Shinnosuke didn't think the Roidmude could see him from where it was, but he didn't want to take chances.
"You're causing trouble," he said to the Roidmude, which focused its attention back on him, and switched out his Shift Car.
"Shinnosuke," Krim said softly, warning in his voice.
"As long as I have Trailer-Hou, it'll be fine," Shinnosuke muttered back, and started running toward the Roidmude as one set of armor melted away to be replaced by another. Drive Type Formula was rough on the body and did strange things to Shinnosuke's perception, but its advantage here was that it was quicker than the Roidmude. At least, he hoped it was.
The Roidmude dodged neatly, glancing around in what had to be a pattern and what Shinnosuke had a bare half-second to hope wasn't a signal to heretofore unseen Roidmudes before he was swinging Trailer-Hou at its midsection. It dodged, grabbing his wrist and using his momentum to fling him off to the side. Shinnosuke stumbled, just slightly, before wrenching himself around and activating his weapon's Cannon Mode. The Roidmude was caught unawares, taking the first hit directly in the gut but slipping out of the way of the second.
"Watch where you're pointing that thing!" came Kano's voice.
Shinnosuke cursed. He wasn't used to fighting with noncombatants on the field, and for all that Kano was a highly trained and perfectly capable member of the Special Investigation Unit, not having a suit of armor made him a liability.
The Roidmude, to Shinnosuke's eternal disappointment, had been signaling its compatriots; seconds after Kano shouted, the field was swarmed with spindly half-there creatures. If someone had explained, poorly, how to mass-produce a Roidmude before leaving their hapless pupil to carry out its instructions, Shinnosuke felt the result would have looked like the crowd surrounding him and now Kano. Some of them were nothing more than a framework with the bare minimum of support, slow and clumsy. A few looked as though they were nearly finished, but they didn't move with anything resembling the finesse of Shinnosuke's original opponent.
"Get in the Tridoron," he called, because that was the safest place for Kano to be.
"Working on it," Kano called back, and Shinnosuke risked a glance over. The proto-Roidmudes – shock troops – were standing between Kano and the Tridoron, and Shinnosuke didn't think his temporary partner had a shot at clearing them out of the way.
"Any word from Chase," he asked, out of a sense of morbid curiosity. His main opponent was just standing back, watching the shock troops settle into place, and Shinnosuke didn't like what that implied.
"Nothing," Kano said, more layered into his voice than Shinnosuke had the time or inclination to decipher.
"Right." Shinnosuke cracked his neck and glared at Roidmude standing opposite. He mentally dubbed it the general. "Don't die."
"Thanks," Kano said drily, and the fight was on.
The shock troops went down easily to a blast from the Trailer-Hou's Cannon Mode; if Shinnosuke could have perched above the field, he could have picked them off easily. As it was, he got off two shots to partially clear Kano's path before he failed to duck and the general caught him across the shoulder. Shinnosuke went flying, impacting with a freight car and dropping to the ground. Trailer-Hou slipped off his arm, and its protective capabilities went with it.
Shinnosuke dove for the weapon, fingers barely brushing against it before the general stomped down hard and nearly crushed his ribs. He had nowhere to dodge except back into the freight car, and the corrugated metal bit hard into his side, armor or no. Shinnosuke swung wildly with his left hand toward the general's torso in an attention-grabbing feint, and when its face tracked his movement, he drove his right fist straight into its gut. It staggered back just enough to let him re-equip Trailer-Hou.
Checking on Kano nearly cost him another point of damage; Kano was still alive and moving, but Shinnosuke wasn't far enough away from the general to safely divert his attention. It rushed toward him, grabbing him by the throat. The armor prevent it from gripping too tightly, and it realized its tactical error when Shinnosuke fired the Trailer-Hou three times at point-blank range. The general dropped him, backing off, armor smoking slightly, and the mass of shock troops turned their attention from Kano to Shinnosuke.
At least, Shinnosuke thought, several seconds or minutes or maybe hours later, Kano got into the car. At least, he'd seen Kano right up against Tridoron, and none of the shock troops were really paying him any attention. No, they were all focused on Shinnosuke, and even if they went down and stayed that way, there were so many.
"Mr. Belt," Shinnosuke said. "Shifting to Type Spike." A series of rapid blasts from Trailer-Hou didn't clear the field, but it gave him enough breathing room to shift forms again. The drop in speed was immediately apparent, but the rapid spinning of the Spike Tire made it nearly impossible for the shock troops to touch him without being shredded. "Try me now, you bastards," he said.
The general chose that moment to demonstrate why a loss of speed was going to hurt Shinnosuke in the long run; heedless of the damage to its hand, it bodily lifted him and threw him into the same freight car it had knocked him into earlier.
No, Shinnosuke thought dazedly, I went right through the damn thing. The Spike Tire was still spinning, kicking up dust and concrete chunks as he struggled to his feet, and then there was a sudden but welcome respite. Shinnosuke stood, hands on his knees, getting the air back into his abused lungs. The spots in front of his eyes faded, his chest loosened, and he took a running leap toward the now-destroyed freight car. He vaulted over it, landing on its top edge to see that Kano had somehow talked Tridoron into firing its weapons into what remained of the shock troops.
What Kano couldn't see from inside the car, and what Shinnosuke was too slow to prevent, was that the general had produced a cannon from absolutely nowhere and was aiming it toward Tridoron. "Kano!" Shinnosuke shouted.
Time seemed to slow, and Shinnosuke thought for a wild half-instant that the Roidmude had finally activated a heavy acceleration field. He didn't have enough time to reach either the Tridoron or the general, and there was really only one thing he could do. Shinnosuke flipped off the ruined freight car to put himself directly in the path of the inevitable weapons fire. With enough luck, he would make it in time.
The tip of the canon lit up, its glow visible in Shinnosuke's peripheral vision as he raced forward. It was only a few meters, but it seemed like an impossible distance to cover, and he knew that he wasn't going to make it in time. That Tridoron itself would survive was moot; without armor, Kano would be badly hurt at best, and Shinnosuke could not let that happen.
The cannon fired, a loud boom echoing through the stockyard, and Shinnosuke wasn't in position. He skidded to a halt, looking over his shoulder at the entirely intact Tridoron and the smoking hole in the ground on its other side, and swung his gaze back to the general.
The Roidmude was in a heap on the ground, a dozen meters away, and Mach was climbing to his feet. "Did you miss me?" he said, radiating cocky certainty.
"Go!" Relief swept over Shinnosuke in a dizzying wave. "You're all right!"
"Never better!" Mach looked from Shinnosuke to the recovering general. "What about him?"
"Tag team," Shinnosuke said. "Kano, clear the field."
"Understood." The Tridoron picked its way across the uneven pavement, and Shinnosuke fell into step beside Mach.
"Anything I need to know?" Shinnosuke asked.
"Nothing that can't wait," Mach answered. "I woke up tied up in a warehouse. Heard you fighting when I got outside. That's pretty much it."
The Roidmude had regained its feet, cannon starting to glow again, and Shinnosuke lifted his chin. "Yeah, I don't think so," he said to it. As much as he could do on his own, there was nothing he couldn't do as part of a team.
"Take it alive?" Mach asked.
"No," Shinnosuke said. "Its base of operations has to be here. We'll search the area when it's gone."
"Understood." Mach bounced on the balls of his feet. "You go low, I'll go high?"
"That'll get the job done," Shinnosuke said, and charged forward with Mach right on his heels.
The Roidmude was fast, but Mach was faster, and every time he knocked it off balance, Shinnosuke was right there to hit it where it hurt. It was cracked in a dozen places almost before Shinnosuke could blink, leaking fluid that wasn't blood, and wavering under their combined assault. The few remaining shock troops were barely a distraction, hovering at the edges of the confrontation until a white blur tumbled onto the field between Shinnosuke and Mach.
"Chase!" Shinnosuke heard Mach shout, and their rhythm fell apart. Luck gave Shinnosuke a nearly disabling shot at the Roidmude right before it would have fired its cannon directly at Mach, and for the second time its finishing strike went wide. The Roidmude staggered, now shielded from Shinnosuke by the duo of Mach and Chaser, down but not out.
"Pay attention!" Shinnosuke shouted after Mach, but he was focused entirely on Chaser. When Shinnosuke really looked at him, he could see why; Chaser wasn't doing anything. He wasn't heading toward the Roidmude, he wasn't trying to mop up the shock troops, he wasn't even evaluating the situation – he was simply standing rigidly still, in the center of the battlefield, fine tremors visible along his limbs.
"There's something wrong," Mach called back, running toward Chaser. One of the shock troops got in the way, and Shinnosuke wasn't sure Mach even saw it as he knocked it sparking to the ground. "Chase," Mach said again, and a rustling noise caught Shinnosuke's attention.
The general had pulled itself together – again – and was aiming its cannon directly at Mach.
"Worry about him later," Shinnosuke said, trying to project urgency and command into the words, but he knew Mach could see the Roidmude and that if he simply got out of the way, the cannon fire would hit Chaser instead.
"Oh, this is it," Mach muttered, barely audible, and he switched directions mid-stride. Shinnosuke could see his hands on his belt, but he couldn't tell what Mach was trying to do until the Driver called out its transformation announcement.
"Signal Bike, Shift car! Rider: Dead Heat!"
Mach's armor flowed and reformed around him as he raced toward the Roidmude. "Get him out of here!" he called, and Shinnosuke muttered a curse under his breath. Chaser still hadn't moved, and Shinnosuke simply grabbed him by the waist and yanked him backwards. Chaser went limp for a half-second and then grabbed Shinnosuke's forearms tight enough to bruise through the armor.
"Stop," he gasped.
Shinnosuke's grip loosened for a fraction of a second and Chaser drove an elbow toward his ribs. "Stop fighting me!" Shinnosuke hissed, blocking the elbow, and then Mach's shout caught his attention.
The red and white armored form was spinning through the air in Dead Heat's version of Mach's signature full throttle finisher, but instead of extending a foot straight outward to drive the maximum force into the Roidmude, Mach simply crashed recklessly into it. The resulting explosion shook the ground, and Shinnosuke threw a hand in front of his eyes to shield them from the bright flash. He couldn't see if Mach had been caught in the shock wave or not.
Chaser flung Shinnosuke to the side, right into the few shock troops remaining, and Shinnosuke flailed. The dust hadn't settled, blowing past his visor as he tried to extricate himself from the unfinished Roidmudes' grasping claws. He finally managed to put the last one down, its poorly constructed head falling right off its shoulders with a nausea-inducing lurch, and Shinnosuke could finally turn his attention toward the rest of his team.
Chaser had transformed back into Chase, armor gone and face visible, crouched in the gap created by one freight car having smashed into another. The ground in front of him was buckled upwards, the edge of the crater formed by Mach's finishing move blocking Shinnosuke's view of whatever Chase was hunched over; he had a sinking feeling that it was Go, because Mach was nowhere to be seen.
"Chase," Shinnosuke said, his voice sounding muffled in his own ears, and then the noise of sirens resolved out of the background. Shinnosuke released his transformation, letting Drive's armor fall away, and turned toward the approaching squad cars. It was the Special Investigation Unit for the most part, he saw with relief; they would be able to help search the area for any further Roidmude activity, let him maybe locate the Roidmude's base of operations while one of the noncombatants checked Go over.
The pavement was too damaged for any of the squad cars to get particularly close, but Shinnosuke jogged out to meet them. Kano was climbing out of Tridoron when he got there, looking no worse for the wear; he'd been the one to summon the Special Investigation Unit rather than the standard police response, then. Shinnosuke gave him a thumbs-up, which Kano returned without expression.
The last figure climbing out of a squad car made Shinnosuke blink. "Deputy Commissioner," he said.
"Detective," Honganji returned. He nodded toward the crater. "The rest of your team is over there?" There was a slight hesitation before the word team; Shinnosuke was a law enforcement officer, assigned to a unit, but both Go and Chase were officially consultants and not technically part of any team. For Honganji to use the word was unorthodox, and an acknowledgement of what both of them had done with the Driver system.
"Yes, sir," Shinnosuke said. "I believe the threat has been eliminated, and I would like to search the area for the enemy's base of operations." It was possible that the word enemy was melodramatic. Shinnosuke didn't care. The Roidmudes had caused enough trouble, even if he didn't think they were inherently evil.
"Fine." Honganji nodded. "The details are up to you." He paused. "Do you know who was responsible for resurrecting them?"
"No, sir." Shinnosuke shook his head. "The Roidmude had been upgraded to the point where I didn't feel it was safe to try to capture rather than destroy."
"Someone upgraded it," Honganji said. It was unlikely for the Roidmude to have altered itself, and Shinnosuke knew it.
"I know." Shinnosuke took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I'm hoping that when we find wherever it was being worked on that we'll be able to figure out who was working on it."
"I trust your judgment," Honganji said. "Carry on."
"Yes, sir." Shinnosuke nodded in acknowledgement and gathered the rest of the team. He gave them their instructions, setting them up in pairs to run a search pattern backed by the officers who'd also arrived on the scene; no team was to go anywhere without at least one member of the Special Investigation Unit on hand, in case of unforeseen complications. "And you come with me," he said to the final group, which consisted of a pair of paramedics who might or might not be needed for whatever was wrong with Go. That his little brother hadn't come over to see what was going on was beginning to worry Shinnosuke. That Chase hadn't come over to investigate was worrying Shinnosuke.
Chase was still crouched in the same defensive position in which Shinnosuke had last seen him. As far as Shinnosuke could tell, he had barely moved, and he still couldn't see Go. Shinnosuke upped his pace to a jog, skirting the crater until he could see over the pile of rubble. He raised his hand in greeting, trying to catch Chase's attention.
"Hey, Chase!"
The response Shinnosuke got was not what he was expecting; face still utterly blank, Chase aimed the Break Gunner at him and fired. The energy ball splashed into the pavement centimeters from Shinnosuke's feet, and he stumbled to a surprised halt.
"What the hell?" Shinnosuke could see Go now, sprawled half on the ground and wedged between Chase and the freight car behind him. He wasn't moving, and Shinnosuke couldn't tell at a distance whether or not he was breathing. "Chase!" he called sharply. "Go!"
Go didn't so much as twitch, but Chase's eyes snapped over toward Shinnosuke, and he raised the Break Gunner again in a clear threat. If Shinnosuke got any closer, Chase would literally try to kill him.
"Get back," he said to the two paramedics, but they had anticipated his instructions. Both of them had backed off far enough to be unthreatening, near the closest thing to cover. Shinnosuke could see Honganji start forward, and waved him back. "Let me handle this," he called, and got an assenting gesture.
Shinnosuke turned back toward Chase, keeping both hands visible and his posture as relaxed as possible. Chase had glitched, somehow; that was the reasonable explanation. He edged forward, as slowly and smoothly as possible, keeping his eyes fixed on Chase's face.
"Hey, buddy," he said, just loudly enough to be heard. Chase fixed a baleful gaze on him, holding the Break Gunner in a perfectly steady grip. If he'd been human, he wouldn't have been able to hold its weight one-handed as he was for long, and Shinnosuke was forcibly reminded yet again that Chase wasn't technically human, no matter what he looked like. "Everything okay?"
Chase's gaze flitted between Shinnosuke and the officers behind him; none of them had broken off to search the area. They couldn't now, not with an active threat. Shinnosuke didn't have to look at them to know that everyone present had taken up a defensive position, and that scenario wasn't going to lower Chase's hostility level at all.
"How's Go doing?" Shinnosuke was almost past the pavement marked by Chase's warning shot, and he thought if he could get just a little closer, he could disarm Chase without resorting to either the Drive system or a more conventional weapon. Not, he thought, that a conventional weapon would do much damage to Chase, but he didn't want Go caught in the potential crossfire.
Chase's eyes narrowed and his grip on Go tightened. The Break Gunner wavered slightly, its muzzle dipping almost imperceptibly. Shinnosuke still couldn't make out any signs of life on Go at all; aside from the breeze ruffling the edges of his jacket, he was perfectly still. Shinnosuke opened his mouth for another attempt at talking Chase down, and ran into the consequences of not looking where he was going. He stumbled against a piece of displaced rock, and Chase brought his weapon back up.
Shinnosuke dodged to the side, feeling the energy bolt sizzle as it went past, knowing that Chase had missed on purpose. "Dammit, Chase!"
The freight car above Chase shifted ominously, the now-cooling metal bending under its own weight, and Shinnosuke retreated. He needed a strategy, and he needed it before the freight car collapsed and buried his brother and his friend. Chase let him go, mouth still stubbornly shut and Break Gunner still raised in warning.
"I don't know," he said in response to Honganji's question. "I don't know what's wrong with him."
"The best course of action would be to use a sniper," Kano said quietly, angling himself so that Chase wouldn't be able to see his lips move.
"It's Chase," Shinnosuke started hotly.
"Roidmudes explode when they cease functioning," Honganji said. "And then we lose the hostage."
"The hostage has a name," Shinnosuke muttered. "And he's attached to your department."
"So is the perpetrator," Kano returned swiftly.
"Can you incapacitate Chase without deactivating him entirely?" Honganji asked.
"I think I can talk him down," Shinnosuke said. "I wasn't prepared before, but I know what I'm walking into. I think I can get him to cooperate."
"If he's glitched, it might not be that simple." Rinna had ghosted up to join the conversation while Shinnosuke wasn't paying attention. "He won't respond to reason."
"The question still stands," Honganji said mildly, and Shinnosuke flinched. Rinna tapped her lips with one forefinger.
"Because he's wearing a human form, I think so," she said. "He's more vulnerable. A strong enough shock should disrupt him temporarily, long enough for us to restrain him."
"Is that shock going to go through him and into Go?" Shinnosuke asked.
"I'm not sure," Rinna said, after a moment's hesitation. "But I can't think of another way to put him down without actually ki- deactivating him." She coughed slightly, and Shinnosuke heard the word she hadn't wanted to use.
Without killing him.
"He isn't touching Go's skin," Rinna added. "That might help."
"Do you have –" Shinnosuke swallowed. "Do you need to build something, or do you just have it lying around?"
The unspoken question – did you devise something specifically to incapacitate one of our allies – hung in the air, and Rinna hesitated for a moment. "I have something," she said. "Specifically keyed to Chase. It seemed prudent."
"Specifically," Shinnosuke said, and looked over at Honganji. The lack of surprise on his superior's face told Shinnosuke that Honganji had at least authorized if not ordered the countermeasure.
"Don't give me that look," Rinna said sharply. "This situation is exactly why I developed it. It's nonlethal because Chase is our ally, and friend."
"I," Shinnosuke said weakly, and clenched his jaw. He took a deep breath, and then another. "I'll try to talk him down. Get whoever here is the best shot into position, and if he gets a chance, take it."
"Don't worry."
Shinnosuke felt he should have expected Kiriko's voice behind him; he hadn't seen her, in the press of people, and he hadn't been entirely sure that she'd come along at all, but of course she had. It was her husband, and her brother, and her brother's boyfriend on the field. Kiriko wouldn't have been about to stay behind, and that she was a better shot than all three of them was an asset that was going to come in handy now.
"I'll take the shot," she said, face pale and grave. Shinnosuke knew how hard she was suppressing what had to be near-panic at the prospect of losing yet another family member, but her hands were completely steady as she gave him a textbook-perfect salute.
"Are you sure?" Shinnosuke asked.
Kiriko nodded once, and Shinnosuke wanted to take her in his arms and protect her from everything. It wouldn't be fair to her, though; she was just as capable as he was, and she was now the best chance at saving Go if he failed to talk Chase down.
"Permission to try negotiation," Shinnosuke said, turning to Honganji.
"Go," Honganji said, and Shinnosuke stepped into the no-man's-land between the law enforcement perimeter and the shelter of Chase's absurdly defensible position.
Moving slowly with as little threat as possible and keeping his body language open and relaxed did absolutely no good; Chase fired a second warning shot at Shinnosuke's feet at precisely the same distance as he had the first time he had been approached. Shinnosuke paused, talking in a soothing monotone, not really paying attention to what he was actually saying. Chase was repeating his previous actions, which only added credence to the assumption that he had glitched somehow. He could have been caught in a loop, Shinnosuke reasoned, although Chase's programming was supposed to be robust enough to handle stress.
Shinnosuke edged forward, feeling each step out carefully, keeping up the stream of words. Chase focused on him again, the Break Gunner wavering. Shinnosuke glanced at Go; he'd shifted, although Shinnosuke wasn't sure whether it had been purposeful movement or if Chase had just tugged him closer. He was only a few meters away from Chase now, the other man's eyes fixed on him as though Shinnosuke were a lifeline.
"Everything is going to be okay," Shinnosuke said, hoping that he wasn't lying, and he was near enough to hear Chase's breath catch. Where are you, Kiriko? "Put down the weapon, Chase, no one is going to hurt you." Out of the corner of his eye, he could finally see Go's chest slowly rising and falling, and the relief nearly made him trip over his own feet. His abrupt halt in a bid to not move suddenly had the same effect as his earlier stumble, and Chase started to raise the Break Gunner again.
This time, the outcome was different. Kiriko finally took the shot, a tiny dart winging its way in the gap between Shinnosuke and Chase and lodging itself in the bare skin visible above Chase's collarbone. Electricity arced between it and Chase's skin, an obscene yellow glow, and Chase froze. Shinnosuke almost thought he was going to manage to fire the Break Gunner anyway, but it slowly dropped from Chase's nerveless fingers as Chase toppled forward.
"Okay, okay, it's okay," Shinnosuke found himself muttering as he ran forward. Chase was limp, dead weight and hard to handle, but Shinnosuke managed to wrestle him away from Go. "Be okay, be okay, be okay." Go's heartbeat was erratic under Shinnosuke's fingers, and he turned to shout over his shoulder for the paramedics.