Author's Note: This was written for Kisaragi-Gentarou's Golden Week Tokusatsu Giveaway Challenge, for the Right/Hikari prompt, though it's mainly about the terrors of fighting with imagination. Hope people enjoy!
Picturing Right
"Don't!"
Hikari's roar echoes, bouncing off the building that has been their shield for the last few seconds, striking everywhere but where it needs to... everywhere but in Right's headstrong mind.
There is nothing that Hikari can do, another round of explosions knocking him off his feet when he tries to catch Right before he can get too far. And then Right is beyond his grasp, charging with a fierce battle cry at the Shadow that has been beating on them for the last twenty-five minutes.
For a few seconds Hikari thinks that things might actually be all right. The others are with him, Tokatti and Mio and Kagura somehow managing to each touch one of his shoulders before charging with him after Right. It's not like he had a better idea, anyway—this Shadow has been particularly difficult. The monster is trap-based, and has been ensconced in this station for long enough to make the battleground its ally. As though that weren't enough, in place of its right hand it has a giant bear trap that works as both shield and weapon, deflecting their shots into the surrounding town when they strike from afar, cutting and bruising with the slightest contact when they come in close.
We have to stop that right hand.
Right had seemed so certain, and even though their battle armor prevented him from seeing it Hikari knew exactly what the expression of determination on Right's face must have looked like as he studied the enemy before nodding once.
Beat it once I've distracted it, all right? Said so cheerfully, so happily, and Right had been gone before Hikari could stop him.
Hikari wants it to be all right, wants the dodging of those long-range attacks to mean Right will avoid injury, but the logical part of Hikari knows what's going to happen. Even as hope surges when Right manages to dodge the first round of explosions, rolling left and then right and then skipping right again with a half-maniacal little laugh, Hikari can see what's going to happen.
He can see the way Right sets his feet, shifts his sword, preparing for the attack.
He can see the Shadow sneer at Right, hand raised in shield position but ready to clamp down with blinding speed if Right gets too near.
He can see Right charging straight forward, not dodging the vicious serrated teeth, allowing them to clamp down.
He can see it, step by step before it happens, and because of what they are, because of the power of imagination, does that make him as guilty as the Shadow when the teeth bite down into flesh?
Hikari screams, drowning out any sound Right might have made. Putting on an additional burst of speed, he arrives at the Shadow's side, gazes into its eyes as four weapons bite into it. At first the Shadow just stares in dumbfounded amazement at Right's body, dangling limp between the jaws of the trap, Right's sword buried in the Shadow's shoulder.
Then the trap slides open, centimeter by agonizing slow centimeter, the Shadow reeling back. But Right's armor has always flickered and faded away, and it is a very human body that Hikari just barely keeps from striking the ground.
"Right?"
The others all call Right's name, Tokatti in a sort of awed incomprehension, Kagura in tearful horror, Mio with a mixture of fear and raw anger.
Hikari doesn't say anything. Blood drips down Right's still face, splashes bright and out-of-place onto Hikari's green armor. Bruises are already coming up livid down Right's neck, plunging from left to right, undoubtedly continuing across his chest. He's breathing, though, slow and steady and without pain, and Hikari focuses on that, matches his breathing to that. "Summon your trains."
The others pause, hesitate, helmeted heads rising from their contemplation of Right to look at him.
"We all know the Shadow's just going to get big, so summon your trains!" Hikari presses the command for his train, then disconnects the red train from Right's wrist brace and summons his. He can hear the rumbling, unnatural cacophony of the Shadow enlarging behind them.
"Do we... do we leave him here until we're done?" Tokatti rubs at his helmet with his right hand, his body falling back into old habits, trying to adjust glasses that he can't reach through the protective barrier.
"No." Hikari snarls the word, gathering Right into his arms. Then he draws a deep breath, again timed with Right's, and shakes his head. "No. We're going to be running around in a giant robot. He could get crushed. I'll keep him with me."
It's a good enough reason to justify the instinctual need he has to keep Right with them right now, and he cradles his friend's body close as they board their trains, imagining Right continuing to breathe, the blood clotting, any worse injuries healing, imagining victory and health and the Shadow in pieces.
Maybe if he imagines hard enough now, it will make up for imagining bad things before.
XXX
Kagura does her part during their battle with the giant Shadow, but she does it in an almost dream-like state, her mind darting like a frightened minnow between contemplation of Right and Hikari.
Right she worries about, of course, because he is lying still and unmoving where Hikari placed him, blood oozing through his clothes in multiple places as the battle rages. She's certain that he won't die, though—absolutely certain of it, to the depths of her soul. She dredges up images of his open, bright smile, his cheerful laugh, his sometimes ungainly gallop along the train corridors, and presses it all toward him mentally. Health, healing, hope—all that her imagination can offer, and because of that Right will be fine.
Hikari... Hikari she doesn't know what to do about, though. He has gone from their shadow-leader, their quiet, intelligent, grounded friend, to someone she doesn't recognize. He barks orders, sharp, clear commands that the rest of them listen to. He screams out battle-cries as they charge at the enemy, a rage-filled imitation of Right's cries.
He's frightened. She understands that. She feels the same way. It has been a long, exhausting battle, and she wants it to be over so that they can care for Right properly.
So she follows the orders that he shouts out, trying to imagine what he's asking of them, what he's planning.
It isn't Hikari that lands the final blow, though. It's Mio, spotting a weakness in the Shadow's armor high on the right shoulder, who gives them the image and the direction needed to finish things.
Hikari doesn't complain. He doesn't say anything as the Shadow explodes behind them, light erasing darkness. He simply rips open his wrist brace, removing the green train, and races to Right's side. As soon as the trains have reconfigured into their familiar line-up, he hefts Right gently into his arms and carries him toward the dining car.
Tokatti is the one who calls for Conductor and Ticket, his voice breaking just slightly, his nervous energy clear in the jerky way he moves. Kagura surreptitiously takes Mio's hand, grateful to get a return pressure from the other woman as they follow in Hikari's wake.
Kagura almost expects Hikari to refuse to set Right down. Hikari's face is a dark, unreadable mask, his teeth gritted together, his lips a thin line, his eyes skewering through everything with fierce passion. Conductor is gentle in his request, though, and for once Ticket says nothing, only makes a disgruntled sound.
"Should we take him to a hospital?" Mio makes the suggestion quietly, watching as Wagon—summoned by Conductor—follows Conductor's instructions, stripping Right's shirt off, cleaning the various puncture wounds that he has. Most of them have stopped bleeding, Kagura notes hopefully, though a network of bruises covers Right's body, the sight making Kagura want to wince in sympathy.
"No." Conductor gives a relieved sigh, his one hand pressed to Right's neck, his eyes scanning over Right's body. "Unnecessary. He's going to hurt when he wakes up, and for quite a few days afterward, but he's going to be just fine."
Kagura sighs, the sound giving way to a bright smile, and she returns Mio's embrace enthusiastically when it's offered. Tokatti, too, gets a hug, and Kagura giggles just a bit as the relief of broken tension sweeps through them all. She wheels from Tokatti to hug Hikari, arms open to him—
And pulls up short, hands clasping instead in front of her body. Hikari hasn't moved, continuing to stare in stony silence at Right's body. "Hikari... it's—"
Before she can finish the thought or the sentence Hikari spins on his heel and strides toward the door, each footstep deliberate and stiff, furious energy still radiating from his whole body. The hiss of the door closing behind him can be heard perfectly in the silence that flows into his wake.
"Ah..." Kagura takes a step toward the door, hesitates, and looks behind her. "What do we do?"
Mio comes and takes her hand again, drawing a deep, slow breath in through her nose. "I think, for right now, we should give him a few minutes. Let him calm down."
Kagura nods, uncertainly.
Mio squeezes her hand. "I think this is something he and Right have to talk about. So let's focus on getting Right all bandaged up, okay?"
Kagura nods. "Okay."
She pours all of her energy into helping the others patch Right up, trying, often without success, to keep from imagining what Hikari might be doing.
XXX
Right groans, though he stops almost as soon as he starts, the vibrations of the sound sending shock-waves through his chest that ache and burn. He can breathe without too much difficulty, though, and as consciousness continues to return he finds that he can wiggle all ten fingers and all ten toes. He must not be too bad off, then. If only he could remember what—
The scent of food wafts into his nostrils, a rich briny aroma, and he sits up abruptly, eyes snapping open.
Sitting up may not have been his most brilliant decision, as it sends pain stabbing through his head and chest again, but the sight that meets his eyes makes it more than worth it.
"Udon! Ramen! Onigiri!" Right grins wide, only wincing slightly as the action pulls a bandage on his right temple tighter. "You guys are absolutely amazing."
"We thought some dinner might be the way to get you to wake up." Mio returns his smile with a self-satisfied grin of her own, collapsing into the seat across from him.
"Are you all right?" Tokatti hovers near Right's side, adjusting his glasses again and again, staring at Right, unblinking. "How do you feel? Can you remember who we are? Can you—"
"Tokatti!" Mio's sharp reprimand cuts off Tokatti's stream of questions. "He doesn't have amnesia." She hesitates. "Well, no more than he did before. Right, Right?"
"Right Right." Shoving an onigiri into his mouth and chewing despite the fact that both his jaw and his neck muscles protest, Right tries to smile at Mio without losing any of his lunch. "That can be my new nickname, yeah? And of course I remember you all. Mio, Tokatti, Kagura..."
Right trails off, swallowing a bite and turning his head in a slow circle to make sure Hikari isn't hiding somewhere else in the dining car.
"Oh, Right." Kagura throws herself at him, hugging him tightly.
Her grip relaxes when Right gives a high-pitched whine of dismay.
"Sorry!" Smoothing his wrinkled shirt down, Kagura backs away hastily. "I just... I'm really, really glad that you're okay."
"Of course I'm okay." Again Right smiles for his friends, though the expression isn't quite as wide as it had been before. He doesn't force the smile, though. His smile is his way of telling his friends how he feels. Forcing it would feel wrong. "Did it seem like I wasn't going to be all right?"
"Well, you've been unconscious for about forty minutes." Mio gives a slight shrug, expression closing down, refusing to meet his eyes.
"And you bled everywhere in ToQ-Oh!" Tokatti spreads his hands and wiggles his fingers.
"It wasn't everywhere—"
"Most of everywhere—"
"You scared us all, but especially Hikari, and he's been hiding in his train car ever since and I'm not sure if we should go find him or not and I'm so glad that you're awake now, Right." Kagura sniffles, tears building in her eyes, and Mio jumps up, wrapping the other woman into a tight embrace.
Right blinks, slowly parsing all the information that Kagura managed to pack into that one very long sentence. "Oh. I didn't mean..."
Looking between the members of the team, suddenly acutely aware of the hole that is Hikari's absence, Right nods to himself. He didn't mean to, hadn't anticipated that anything really terrible would happen—just a lot of pain, but pain could be lived through—but the others had worried.
Standing, placing a hand down to balance himself as subtly as he can on the table where his meal still lies mostly uneaten, Right claps each of his friends on the shoulder. "I'll go talk to Hikari, then we'll all have a 'We defeated the Shadow!' party right here. Sound good?"
Kagura gives a sniffling affirmative.
Mio nods.
Tokatti relaxes as Right touches his shoulder, finally smiling. "Sounds good."
Walking slowly, acutely aware of every lurch and bump of the train as it jars his aching body, Right makes his way to Hikari's car.
XXX
Hikari knows when Right enters the train car. It's impossible to miss the sound of the door opening, the change in the shadows, the slight hiss of pain that Right gives as the train lurches up on the tracks for a moment.
Hikari doesn't move from where he is, curled on the floor beside his bed. He keeps his eyes fixed on his kendama, on the ball balanced carefully atop the toy. If he can keep the ball balanced, he's succeeded. If he can keep the ball balanced, he won't do anything else foolish. If he can keep the ball balanced, Right will—
The ball slides off its careful perch to hang dangling from the string as Right collapses next to Hikari with a long sigh. "Ow. Though it may have worked, that was not the best strategy I've come up with in my life."
Hikari's eyes jump from the dangling ball to meet Right's open, cheerful brown gaze. "Strategy?! You think that was a strategy?"
"Well, it was." Right shrugs, looking at least mildly sheepish. "You guys were able to defeat it, weren't you?"
"But you could have died!" Hikari's voice cracks on the word, much to his dismay, and he drags in a deep breath and holds it. If he doesn't speak, he won't say something he'll regret.
"I didn't think I would." Right's expression is utterly grave, any jesting wiped away. "I knew it would hurt, but the ToQger suits are really awesome, and I didn't think I would die. It wasn't something I'd imagined could happen."
No. Of course not. Right is many things, but a suicidal martyr isn't one of them. Hikari drags in another long breath, unable to continue holding the one he had been as his lungs cry out for oxygen. He won't speak, though, because what he has to say is—
"I should have been able to imagine it. I should have known that you would imagine it—it makes sense logically, right? Get squished in the trap, get dead, just like a giant red mouse." An expression of vague uneasiness, almost horror, slips across Right's face and is discarded again, replaced only by concern as Right reaches out and places a hand on Hikari's shoulder. "I'm sorry that I frightened you."
"You don't have to be sorry!" The words explode out of him. "Or you do, but not for—I don't know any more if it's your fault or mine, all right? Because I did imagine you dying, I saw it, I saw you dying in front of us, and if imagination is what gives us our power then—then—" Right's arms wrap around him as Hikari's body finally breaks through the stasis he had placed on it, shivers running up and down his frame, chattering his teeth together. "I could have killed you, Right."
"Nope." Right's reply is cheerfully certain as he continues to hold Hikari tight. "If I died, it would have been the Shadow's fault, not yours. Or mine, for doing something foolish. Imagination is seeing all the possibilities, and then finding the path to give you the one you want. If you see that there might be a bad outcome, Hikari, that doesn't mean that you made the bad outcome."
"Doesn't it?" Hikari rubs at his temple, the shivering subsiding as he settles into Right's embrace. "I mean, if that's the path I see..."
"You see it so that we can avoid it. That's all." Right pulls back slightly, using his left hand to brush Hikari's hair back into a semblance of order. "We need you on the team for that ability to see the bad possibilities as well as the good. And I'll try to wait in the future so that you have a chance to tell us anything we need to watch out for."
A gruff laugh slips its way out of Hikari's throat. "We need to watch out for the monsters under the bed, because they're real and out to torture all humanity and we're the only adults who can stand in their way."
Right purses his lips. "I don't think these are the ones from under the bed. They're too big." A broad grin splits Right's face. "I think these are the monsters from the closet. I think they'd fit better in there."
Hikari can't help but laugh along with Right, though the humor still catches painfully in his chest. "All right. They're the closet-monsters."
"Or maybe the basement monsters. Or the old abandoned house monsters! Or, even better, the old abandoned subway monsters!" Right's excitement level seems to rise with each possibility. "Couldn't you see them starting there? It's dark and it's creepy and there aren't people there."
"I suppose." Hikari continues to smile, his right hand toying with his kendama again as Right pulls further away. "We don't really know much about the enemy yet, do we? Not where they come from or what they want other than to take over the world."
"They need to have a motive beyond that?" Right looks taken aback.
"I..." Hikari frowns. "Maybe? Maybe not. I don't know."
"Lots of things we don't know." Right frowns, just slightly, and then raises his head with a smaller but no less sincere smile. "But you know what I do know? I know you're the type of adult that lots of kids would want to grow up into."
"Right..."
"No, you are." Right continues to smile, reaching out and stroking his hand through Hikari's hair again. "You're smart and you're able to think about things really well but you've still got a lot of imagination and you're able to play and have fun. You're the perfect adult."
"I don't know if we even count as adults, since we don't remember much of anything." Hikari's eyes fall to the train floor, a duller pain taking the place of the sharp anger-fear-guilt tangle that Right has somehow managed to burn away. "When the latest any of us can remember is being eight or nine in the tree house..."
"Being an adult isn't about age, silly. It's about doing things—about taking care of what needs to be taken care of. About fighting off the monsters and saving the day, even when it's hard and scary." Right leans in, his lips pressing gently to Hikari's right cheek. "We're all adults now, I think, because of that."
Hikari blinks, his left hand rising to press uncertainly to his cheek. "Right..."
"Did that bother you?" Right leans back, his right hand burying itself in his hair, a sheepish expression on his face again. "Sorry. It was just impulse."
"No. It's fine. I..." Hikari shakes his head, trying and failing to follow an infuriating sense of deja vu. Has Right done this before, in their shaded past? "I don't mind. I kind of... liked it. Though really I'm just glad that you're alive. You promise you won't do anything foolish like that again?"
"You promise you'll stop breaking windows when you get mad?" Right glances toward the door to Hikari's train car.
Hikari can feel his cheeks heat as his eyes drop again. "I... was really angry."
"Really scared." Right nods, shifting to a seiza position and clapping his hands on his knees. "I promise I will think harder and listen more before doing anything foolish. At least as long as I recognize that it might be foolish."
"And I won't break any more windows." Hikari sighs, climbing slowly to his feet. "I was really trying not to break things, you know. That's the reason I was sitting down here instead of pacing."
"Another thing that says you're an adult." Right's grin is back to its usual bright luminosity, though he's slow climbing to his feet, wincing once or twice. "Aren't kids supposed to just destroy things without thought when they're upset?"
"Yeah, but I'm the one with the forethought and planning, and breaking the cars that we live in and fight in is probably not a good idea."
"Fair point." Right pulls him into one more tight embrace before letting him go. "So, are you feeling up to a little celebration party?"
Hikari nods. "Lead the way, Right. Wherever you go, I'll be happy to follow."
"And I'll be happy to have you behind to help steer the way." Right reaches out, taking Hikari's hand in his and squeezing. "So let's go celebrate with the rest of our team, because we won. We beat the monster, and I don't think there's any monsters out there that can take us down."
Hikari finds himself smiling as he allows Right to tow him back toward the dining car and the rest of their friends. He could argue—should argue, maybe, because the Shadows just seem to be getting stronger—but for right now, he's just happy to follow Right's cheerful optimism wherever it might lead.