Coma Fic: Stained Glass Window (In Progress)

Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2006 10:19 pm

It's a BirdGo 'Coma Challenge' Fanfic Story! (Whew!)

… Or at least a small piece of one, anyways! This was my first challenge piece at the time I began it, - on BirdGo or anywhere - and any errors and incongruities within the Gatchaman concept are entirely my own. (Though 'tis Sam who can be blamed for its appearance at all, I must say, if you're inclined to point fingers! Well, in truth, it is rather abashedly dedicated TO the Sam in question, for reasons she knows why. Smile

) For those in the know, the working title was "Brainstorm" - it is the same story, just a bit less … lean now.

Like I see Janet has also already done, I'm going to begin posting this anyways, even if Sam's 'new' deadline for this challenge no longer applies. Otherwise, I may never find the courage to do so. I hope that's okay.

A.N. Some Stuff to Know: Rolling Eyes

Because of its relative age, (this story had been started over a year ago and then left to moulder rather unpleasantly, leading to an overripe odour I was only too happy to usher out the door) there are several items contained within that may no longer make sense, particularly to new members or lurkers of BG. (This was due to an intense - but fun! Razz

- discussion at the time this Challenge originally arose, where it became sorta "necessary" to throw in several specific elements into the soup as a kind of 'challenge-within-a-challenge' for me, and was in fact, originally intended as a series of 'in-jokes' for the members here. But as that particular dialogue was so very long ago, and also involved members who sadly no longer lurk here, the supposed humour of these elements shall no longer be apparent. (If indeed it ever was.) However, I've left them all intact, as they became woven too securely within the fabric of the tale to easily withdraw. For anyone curious as to what these 'in-joke' elements (objects, themes, phrases, and whatnot) actually were, rest assured that at the end (or maybe somewhere in the middle!) I'll point them out, if rather sheepishly. (and some of you may be able to guess at them before I list 'em!)

I have also been perhaps overly ambitious with this attempt, not just in terms of size, but with a desire to explore certain themes and issues beyond the one of requisite 'comatude'. Embarassed

But digging into maybe less-explored territory within Fanfic is always something that has interested me, and thus my little attempt to do so here.

Cautions: Um, more a novella at this point than a 'short' story. And though long plotted out completely, it is sadly very much a Work in Progress. (Quite WIPpy, I'm afraid!) This fic is primarily a learning experience for me - I am very much only an 'apprentice' or student writer, and thus I dearly welcome any criticism, suggestions, or even 'mistake pointing-outs'. Seriously. One of my major aims is, after all, to try and improve as a writer! Some of the flaws I am well aware of, but am uncertain as how to fix them - yet. (Man, oh man, has this ever been a damned hard thing to try to write! Confused

) Also, it has not yet been beta'd in any way, I confess, and is an early draft only. And I promise that the rest will soon follow! Apologies that only the first several parts are yet here. It's, um, become a little bit of a longish story. Shocked

Hope you enjoy some of it!

WARNING: Violence, Language. Yaoish.

RATING: At least R, I'd think. (And in our new BG system: PY, maybe even EY. For Sam.)

Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2006 10:20 pm

Kagaku Ninja Tai Gatchaman

Stained Glass Window

By Paxwolf

Book One:

"Fall"

"And above, in the light
Of the star-lit night,
Swift birds of passage wing their flight
Through the dewy atmosphere.

I hear the beat
Of their pinions fleet,
As from the land of snow and sleet
They seek a southern lea.

I hear the cry
Of their voices high
Falling dreamily through the sky,
But their forms I cannot see.

O, say not so!
Those sounds that flow
In murmurs of delight and woe
Come not from wings of birds.

They are the throngs
Of the poet's songs,
Murmurs of pleasures, and pains, and wrongs,
The sound of winged words. "

from "Birds of Passage"
Henry Wadworth Longfellow

1.

"Ostinato Chorale"

"Can't you just ram them or something?"

The quick words tore out of Joe's throat even as the g-forces pressed him against the cockpit's bulkhead and stole his breath clean away. The ringing notes of incoming fire sang through the air then died abruptly as the craft veered in a steep arc wing-over-wing sideways.

Ken managed to straighten out after the hard bank to starboard and shot a look at Joe. He said nothing, turning back to refocus on the battle, but his eyes, like usual, had conveyed enough for a multi-volumed saga.

He should put out a patent on that look, Joe grumped to himself, fist squeezing the life out of Ken's headrest. He'd probably make a mint on the Vid circuit. "Okay, forget I mentioned it," he muttered at the back of Ken's helmet.

Joe Asakura wasn't having a particularly good day. He was bruised and cramped, wedged into the tiny storage space behind the pilot's seat as he was, and the mission was going to hell in a hand-basket and he was trying not to contemplate how it was mostly his fault.

All right. Pretty damn much all my fault, he amended. If I'm feeling up to being honest.

The high-g evasive moves of the KNT fighter jet sure wasn't doing his headache any favours. The damage he'd already taken back at the base was making his skull resound with disharmonic clatter like some classically wrangled composition from operatic hell. And he deserved every single tortured line of it.

So he bit back another colourful curse as Ken again sent the Eagle Sharp into a series of tight rolls in an increasingly desperate attempt to evade incoming fire. Had his constitution been what it had been even a year ago, he'd have been seriously wishing the jet came equipped with easy-to-reach barf bags. As it stood, he wasn't exactly in love with being flipped upside down at every opportunity and shaken like a tenor band rattle. He had entertained some vague hope that one more advantage of his not-quite-gotten-used-to new body was a permanent immunity to nausea. Well, that hope had certainly flushed down the toilet.

"Ken!"

The name came out as scrambled as his brains right then, but he saw Ken glance back anyway with an almost apologetic shrug.

Almost. Joe could easily read the strain in his eyes and in the tightness of his mouth.

"Well, I was thinking of providing them a nice, stationary target, but figured they already had enough of an advantage." Ken angled neatly through two screaming lines of fiery artillery. "And I figured my reflexes could always use a good workout."

Joe winced. "Look, I …"

Ken shook his head, jaw tight, hands flying about his console. "Forget it. But strategy's long since flown out the window, and I … I'm just playing it now by ear." Joe scowled at the admission. Apparently he wasn't the only one owning up to the truth of things here.

"Ken ..."

He watched Ken's reflection in the glass as the Eagle's eyes narrowed, and that laser-intensity voice of his lowered. "I can't out-fly them for much longer, Joe. Too many of them this time. And there's just no fooling them on the score."

Oh, yeah, hard honesty was right up there today.

He could just make out the Sharp's tactical display over Ken's shoulder. At least thirty of Galactor's new Shadow Fighters were in hot pursuit, each bigger and faster than they, and much more heavily armed. These guys meant business, and not in the Mom-and-Pop dime store way.

"Out of the Fubar frying pan …" Joe grimaced.

Ken gave only a truncated nod, a tiny quirk at the corner of his mouth, eyes trained on his readouts.

"Hang on," was all the warning Joe got, and Ken was wrenching the Sharp into a defiantly dizzying ballet of dives, climbs, swoops, and loops.

"'Least they can't force any truth drugs down my throat if we're caught," Joe croaked, gripping the seat and interior struts with all the enhanced strength his cybernetic limbs could muster. "Since I left both it and my stomach about twenty clicks back."

"Where's your sense of adventure?" Ken muttered, a bit breathless himself. He steadied his hands on the controls, and sent them winging down into a steep, zigzagged slant.

Joe clenched his jaw, and swore he could feel his innards zagging while the jet was zigging. And vice versa.

"Probably still back there alongside my intestines," Joe shot back, unpeeling his fingers from the stuffing inside Ken's chair as the Sharp levelled out.

"You want me to swing back and pick them up?"

"Anyone ever tell you you're a riot when you're in the middle of a life and dea-"

They both then heard the screech of overstressed metal tearing, echoing through the jet with an overture of horrific nails-on-chalkboard terror. The shuddering rumbled right through Joe's bones.

"Uh, Ken?" Joe couldn't see Ken actually doing anything about the rather unnerving sound. "Shouldn't you …"

"Nothing to worry about, Joe," Ken said calmly, gaze glued to his display. "That's just the fuselage beginning to crack."

Joe could almost hear the pop his lids made as his eyes went wide.

"Uh, that can't be good … right?"

"That's a Nobel Prize-winning grasp of the obvious you've got going today, Lieutenant-Commander." Was Ken smiling?? "Going to try for the cure to cancer next?"

Joe bristled.

Can't be that bad if he of all people is cracking insults at my expense. Right?

"Hey, I'm not the one flitting around fancily in this ridiculous paper hummingbird," he huffed, feeling the smallest bit more hopeful. "Your dance card's full already. What's …"

"With the damage we took at that mecha base," Ken interrupted, any trace of jest disappearing from his face, "She's not going to last much longer. Not with the kind of manoeuvres I'm having to pull." Joe watched uneasily as Ken's hand spasmed around his flight stick. "If we don't care to come apart at the seams in the next minute, we have to drop some altitude."

"I thought this bird was supposed to be tough?" Joe's lip curled. Inside, his tension returned manifold with an almost sickening rush.

Damnit!

"So are they. And they've maybe got a little bit of an edge." Ken smiled again, this time without a trace of humour. He slid Joe a sudden sideways look from under his lashes. "So, incidentally, G2, it's a red-letter day. Your earlier logistical analysis was right on the money … for once."

For the life of him Joe couldn't remember any tactical assessment he had made since this whole sorry excuse for a mission had begun, never mind an accurate one.

"Mine was?" he asked, mystified.

"Oh yeah," Ken said. "We're definitely Fubar."

Joe scowled.

He tried to ignore the icy clench inside his chest. He tried not to listen to the increasingly quick cadence of the bullets tearing right into their path.

He opened his mouth to shoot off some scathing remark about Ken's idea of significant banner moments, but clammed up as another hail of incoming rat-a-tatted in a drumfire of unequalled resonance.

The devil's tattoo, he thought suddenly, and bit down instantly on the thought.

"Still can't raise the 'Phoenix?" he asked, more for something to say at Ken's bombshell of the Sharp's status than because he held out any real hope that contact had been re-established.

The Eagle Sharp again banked sharply, causing both of them to brace painfully against their over-taxed flight harnesses. Nevertheless, the pistol-crack of outside ammo ripping right through a wing resounded thunderously throughout the cockpit. The Sharp seemed to waver uncertainly for a moment, before coming back to heel under her commander's firm hand.

"Still jammed," Ken answered unnecessarily, completely ignoring the damage reports flashing all over his screens. He fought with a focused fierceness to stabilize and won a brief respite. The plane seemed to gather her wings under her. "And not a peep from G-Town. Not since …"

Not since you separated from Jun, Jinpei, and Ryu and came back for me, Joe finished bitterly to himself at Ken's silence.

"Great," was all he said aloud. "Can this day get any worse?"

Even as the words left Joe's mouth, he felt the Sharp tremble suddenly under the strafing fire of the steadily gaining Galactor squad.

"Joe, do us a favour and shut up before you kill us," Ken snapped, throwing them into a merciless ninety-degree dive.

Though it had only been a tense quip on Ken's part, Joe shut up.

He didn't want to bring more attention to why they were in this predicament, and he certainly didn't want to distract Ken from his piloting in the firefight their insane flight had become. He especially didn't want to risk bringing the ire of the Fates crashing down on both their heads.

The Fates. He laughed a little to himself. Wouldn't Alan have been horrified to hear him spouting old Sicilian superstition like that!

Priests got a thing about superstitious beliefs though. Crazy ba- ..

He swallowed off his thoughts. He shouldn't tempt that fate. Shouldn't test those beliefs. But neither did he want the only bit of music he had left in his life to go mute. No matter what it took. Skill, superstition, luck, old ways, new ways, sheer too-stubborn-to-give-up idiocy, whatever he had, he'd gladly use it all without a moment's qualm if it worked.

Hell, yeah.

After several racing minutes of precision flying and near misses, the tense silence grew thicker than molasses and Ken's tight voice finally broke in on Joe's dark thoughts.

"Don't beat yourself up, Joe. It's not your fault Nome went bad."

Joe's head snapped up and his eyes narrowed. "Yeah? Didn't see the rest of you trip any fucking alarms."

"There's no way anyone could have known that your cybernetics would be picked up by Galactor's new scanners," Ken flared at him, the heat in his voice sharpening the roughened edge of it, and Joe could tell it was Gatchaman, his team leader speaking, and not Ken, his friend. "And let's not forget: the infiltration mission was a success. We retrieved the disk. It's ours."

"And for how much longer?" Joe couldn't help but snap, his earlier fury seething anew within him.

"For as long as it takes," Ken said implacably, the icy determination in his voice leaving no room for further argument. Joe heaved out an angry breath. Then Ken tossed him a tight grin. "And a bit more of a … positive outlook wouldn't entirely go amiss here, you know."

"So now a glass-half-full agenda is the order of the day, G1?" Joe growled, his voice harsh against the grating roar of the wind shear whistling through the enlarging rends in the jet's skin. "Oh, that changes everything."

Ken grunted in effort as he did something with the controls, and Joe began to wonder how he was flying at all without certain heretofore-thought necessary plane parts still attached. "Hate to break it to you, flyboy, but you can't order optimism."

"And an 'empty-glass' syndrome won't soon bring about any miracles either, Joe," Ken only said, twisting the Sharp sideways on its ear even as more artillery shot through the space they had mere seconds ago been occupying.

"I don't believe in miracles," Joe snarled at him. Ken met his eyes for an instant in the canopy's reflection, an expression in them that Joe couldn't quite decipher.

What?

The numerous alarms chirping and chiming in distress set off a punctured counterpoint to the rhythmic barrage of projectiles tearing through sky around them. Ken tore his gaze away.

What in the seven hells did that look mean?

"Damned data disk," Joe growled when he'd regained his breath from the newest aerial medley Ken had played like a mad maestro. "And stupid eggheads for letting it run away from them and into Galactor hands in the first damn place. We wouldn't even be in this mess if not for ..."

"You're right about that," Ken agreed. "Hakase is going on a witch hunt when this is all over."

"I hope I get to watch," Joe gave a nasty smile. He saw Ken raise his eyebrows but decline to comment.

Joe felt his ears pop as the Eagle Sharp abruptly plummeted again, squeezing his eyes shut involuntarily against the sight of spinning white earth looming larger below them. Ken brought them out of their whirlwind drop, levelling out a breathtaking twenty feet.

Although the cabin pressure had lessened considerably at the lower elevation, the air seemed no less frigid. Joe would have wagered the Condor Attacker itself that Ken's hands were literally frozen to his controls.

"I should still have made it back to the Chicken down there," Joe grouched scathingly, unable to put it to rest. He eyed the increasing risky moves Ken was executing with distinct unease even while steadily losing a debate with his stomach on which direction was up and which of its contents should stay down. "What else good is now being a cyborg if not to beat the clock – and a couple dozen goons or so - when the timing counts?" He hesitated, then drove on. He had to bring it up. He had to know. "There's no way in hell you should've had to double back in this hen-pecked flying eggshell to scoop me up."

You idiot! You nearly bit it back there. Because of me.

The memory clawed up Joe's throat with a ruthless beat of his pulse until he had to consciously force it back down with his bile. It had been so close…

Because of me.

He shuddered, quelling the persistent mocking motif through sheer willpower.

They swept lower, Ken skimming the tops the snow-crusted firs in a spray of fine powder, cleverly obscuring them from the visual sensors of their pursuers. Joe watched as Ken concentrated on the tricky parallel ground flying, until it was obvious he wasn't going to answer.

"Baka!" Joe punched the back of Ken's chair lightly, resisting the urge to put his hand right through it and throttle Ken. "I can't fucking believe I'm the one telling you this, but what the hell were you thinking? Or were you? I don't get to pull the lecture card often …okay, ever, so you listen and listen good, Gatchaman." He drew a deep breath, hands clenching on Ken's seat. "You jeopardized the mission, and the safety of the whole team, by coming back for me!"

Ken narrowed his eyes at his controls, then simply flashed him a grim smile over his shoulder. He didn't look particularly repentant. "What are friends for?"

Joe reared back a fraction, momentarily at a loss from the unexpected response. "You should have left me behind," he ground out at last. "I know it, and you know it."

Ken's shoulders stiffened. When he did speak, his voice was so low that if not for his enhanced hearing, Joe would have missed his words entirely. "I couldn't. I couldn't do that, Joe." Ken's voice caught. "Not again."

Joe frowned. What the hell was Ken talking about? He felt the rage wash over him, drowning out his sudden terror. "K'so!" He grit his teeth hard. "Ken, you …" No word could do justice as he spluttered. "You could have been killed, damn you!"

More than anything else at that moment, Joe longed to be able to reach around, slam Ken into the cockpit glass and force him to recognize what a complete and utter ass he had been. But Ken merely shrugged then, staying focused on the windshield and his readouts, and with a deft twitch, plunged them down a valley, more missiles detonating on the hillside directly behind them as they shot past, bare inches to spare.

"Well," he said obliquely. "The night is young."

Joe stared.

Then Ken rolled the Sharp right over in mid-flight, shooting through a narrow ravine even as its tail and the portside wing were raked by abrupt close fire. Ken struggled to regain control as the starboard aileron and the elevator on the rudder were completely torn away. He was forced to power straight up into a spiralling climb or risk them kissing cliff face more intimately than was comfortable.

Joe's breath was pressed right out of him as they were both slammed back with the pressure. The ten foremost Shadow Fighters arced down in hot pursuit, firing relentlessly.

"God, I really hate tailgaters," Joe grumbled as Ken managed to pull out of the ascent, and leaning forward, he slapped open the secondary emerg hatch above Ken's head, and let loose a handful of belt grenades over the roof of the jet. The screaming wind tore them out of his gloved fingers and carried them straight into the wall of Galactors behind. Joe grinned as he saw several of the blips on the Sharp's screen wink out from behind them.

Take that ticket, you bastards.

Ken whistled appreciatively even as he slammed the jet into a hard tilt starboard, narrowly evading a dive-bombing fighter. "Inspired way to compensate for our depleted weapons there, Condor."

Joe snerked even as he held on for dear life. "Well, I decided it was time to take you up on your advice and learn to think outside the box."

"What'd I tell you?" Ken shot him a look, eyes alight. "Guess it's never too late to teach old buzzards new tri- Shimatta!"

Joe glanced up in time to spot the wave of fresh fighters stream out of the thick cloud directly above them. Ken reflexively brought the Sharp's nose up and twisted them into a cascading loop upside down right over the backs of the hounding squad on their tail. The Galactor ships were temporarily thrown into disarray. It was a very neat display of piloting prowess. Particularly without an aileron.

But they were too many. And there was nowhere left for Ken to run.

Joe could only hold on helplessly as the Sharp was struck repeatedly from multiple angles. The whole world seemed to shudder under each successive blow hammering home. Ken fought the controls like a madman with his hair on fire. But they could both see that they were outgunned, outrun, and out of luck.

Out of luck, and out of time ...

The Sharp rolled over in mid-air, bucking against Ken's fight to stabilize her, and suddenly began to drop.

They were falling. And falling fast.

-

Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2006 11:06 pm

-

"Get ready to bail," Ken ordered roughly, his voice cracking, and Joe knew then that things were worse than Ken had earlier implied. Much worse.

We're in freefall.

He tried to breathe in deep gulps of air, preparing for the main escape hatch to blow and be sucked into sheer atmosphere.

How high up were they now? He was busily trying to remember what the altimeter had said at last glance – vaguely hoping oxygen wasn't going to be an issue – when a sudden oddly-displaced crack riddled with a peculiar cry that he couldn't quite place abruptly halted his thoughts – and for a split second, his heart.

For an entire second more, his brain refused to register what his eyes were telling him.

Wha … what the hell is that?

Then a second lance, nearly as big as an old-fashioned whaling harpoon, drove directly up into the Sharp's underbelly and burst in an ear-splitting clangor up through the floor at his feet, piercing the side of Joe's birdstyle.

In absolute shock he simply gazed at the quivering shaft for a precarious fraction of time, unable to comprehend for an awful racing moment of eternity what had just happened. He was certain that he could hear the harsh jangle of an out-of-tune melody, strange and out of place, ringing in his ears, inside his head.

It wasn't until the bolt of overloaded energy surged inside him in a painful flare of sparks that he convulsed, falling forward into Ken's seat back. That faint, sickeningly familiar tune he thought he'd heard – it had to have been the stressed singing of the damaged engine.

And he finally realized just what had hit him.

Hit them.

Swearing up a storm fit to rival the one now howling through the cabin, he grasped the spear-thing in both hands and yanked its duranium head out – hard. A gush of blood and crackling electricity followed and he snarled in fury and pain. If he hadn't been a cyborg, he knew he'd have been dead. He looked at the thing that had very nearly gored him.

Armour-shredding Ship Darts.

K'so!

Breathing shallowly, hand pressed against the bleeding, sparking mess over his ribs, he shot a look forward at the first Dart that had driven up from the floor and straight into Ken's knee. Its length was now flung to the side, Ken having wrenched it out while Joe was occupied with his own. Ken was still trying to fly the Sharp with fiercely controlled focus, ignoring the blood pooling around his feet. His lips were tightly compressed, and nearly as white as his wings.

"Just who do they think we are," Joe said shakily, muscles jumping from the interior electrical shorts, trying not to notice the amount of blood running down Ken's boot. "Moby Dick?"

"They're not overly bright," Ken said, a hard twist at his mouth. "They've probably confused the White Shadow with the White Whale." One look at his face belied the light tone he was attempting. Ken choked out a humourless laugh at Joe's look. "Funny. I'd always pinned Katse more as the obsessive Ahab-type. Sadra doesn't have the stones."

Joe snorted and pretended to hunch over to check his side, using the move to angle a better look down at Ken's knee. Damnation. Not a reassuring sight.

"Ken …"

"You got it under wraps, G2?" Ken snapped, jerking his head at Joe's side.

"Oh yeah," Joe growled, pressing the heel of one hand over the hole in his birdstyle, "I got it covered."

More hull-shattering hits impacted into the fuselage, and no number of jokes could disguise the guttural shriek of tortured metal.

It was really not a sound, Joe reflected darkly, that you ever wanted to hear airborne at several hundred feet up, and at speeds exceeding mach five.

"I'd suggest hanging on to something," Ken, said, the tight timbre of his voice almost terrifying in its calm control. "We're going down."

Joe felt his own heart plummet along with the aircraft. The roar of their engines had an edge of desperation to it, dissonant and warped. He looked out the port and could see the ground spinning closer than before, and hear the telltale thuds and tears as more incoming fire struck home in a sharp counterpoint to the shrill descant of the wind.

"And we're not ejecting why?"

Ken shrugged almost fatalistically. "The thing that nicked my knee also shorted out all auxiliary control. It's all I can do not to let this bird go into death roll."

"Oh. Is that all."

Ken flashed him a quick, innocuous grin. "So we improvise. I got more grenades. You?"

"Nah. Used 'em up on the Cylon Raiders trying to ram up our ass back there."

"Grab mine," Ken said, and Joe blinked a moment before Ken added, voice frightening in its tightly controlled pitch, "My hands are just a little bit busy for the immediate time being."

Joe scooted forward out of his harness and slid his arm around Ken's waist, fishing out the cluster bombs from the Eagle's belt pouch. He nearly dropped them as the Sharp hit a wild bout of turbulence as it screamed downwards. "Glass half full," he murmured, tightening his hold on both grenades and Ken's shoulder.

"Yeah. Full-glass philosophy happening here," Ken said, sweat dripping down his pale face, the muscles in his arms bulging and straining as he fought the controls. "Got 'em?"

Joe's fingers didn't seem to want to cooperate, fumbling as his body jumped in tiny jerks from the internal injury. "Just … about."

"We're ... kind of running under the wire here, Joe."

"Oh, I'm so ready to blow this bird," Joe said, wrestling back control by force of will. "Just give the word, flyboy."

Ken nodded, still working feverishly to keep their nose up and out of the point-blank range of the Shadow Fighters' gunners.

"Let's hope we both earn ... that particular title today," he forced out with obvious effort. Joe's mouth tightened. "Five seconds from my mark. I fly us over that ridge up ahead. Then I release all safeties. You blow the hatch with our cache." Ken met his eyes. "And we jump."

"Got it." Joe didn't waste any more words, and readied the bombs, closing the edge of a wing over his crackling injury.

He couldn't help but wonder how they were going to avoid becoming Ninja-sized spatter all over the racing Galactor windshields behind them once free of the Sharp's rapidly perforating shell. Unbidden, he envisioned Ken's body slamming into the hull in the blinding wind shear, the sharp crack of impact, shattering …

No! Can't think like that. Optimism. Positiveness. Full glasses.

He swallowed. Fate.

He shuddered, and tried to bury the images blaring through his mind in a searing symphony of scarlet.

"All right," Ken snapped breathlessly, "ready?"

"Ready," Joe said, though he felt anything but.

"Then, hold it … steady, and … mark!"

At the command, Joe forced all thoughts and fear from his mind, zoning down into the steady strength of Ken's voice, counting down the remaining few seconds as if all the time in the universe was on their side.

The explosive decompression ripped away all sound for a single, terrifying, blinding instant.

It wasn't until several numb moments had torn by that Joe realized he had not released the caps off the grenades, that he was blinking tears away from a dazzling flash of light, that he was still crammed into the cabin of the falling Sharp, and that he was neither gliding down to earth on air currents nor realizing life as a Condor-shaped smear on a Shadow Fighter's headlights.

Then he saw the source of both the concussive, resounding noise, and the blinding light that seemed to somehow momentarily silence the half-heard, discordant harmony of the insane scene in front of him.

A third Dart had speared directly out of the forward control panel, split forcibly into two shards by its impact, one spearing through the sparking, smoking instruments, and the other shot straight through Ken's left wrist, embedding itself into the hull beside him. It hung there, having flung Ken against the wall, pinning his arm to the plating of the Eagle Sharp itself.

Joe gaped for a precious second before kneeling forward fast.

"Ken!"

He saw Ken's eyes force themselves open, astonishing in their saturated colour, the vivid blue unshielded by his visor. In shock Joe realized all at once that the narrow Dart shard had shattered his bracelet completely at impact. It had knocked Ken right out of birdstyle.

God ...

Joe reached for him helplessly.

Ken sat hunched forward, curled around his wrist, every line of his body screaming out in blistering agony, though not a sound issued from his throat. Joe stretched out a hand to him, and Ken writhed, slipping harder against the wall into the shard.

Ken!

"W-what're you waiting for?" Ken hissed through clenched teeth. "Joe. Eject now."

"The hell I will," Joe bit back, cybernetic heart yammering loudly in his ears like a drumbeat that had fallen off the staff. "You're making the jump with me."

He reached over to yank at the Dart's tip. It didn't move. It had sunk too deeply into the Sharp's superstructure to rip out, even with Joe's augmented strength. And now, with his usual power compromised by his crossed-circuited innards, there was as much chance of budging it as a technophobe ever gaining employ with the ISO.

"Joe," Ken commanded, lifting his head with obvious, heart-breaking effort to look him in the eye, "Now …who's being the idiot? Get … out of here."

"Not without you." Joe snarled, and yanked at the implacable Dart again. Fuck!

Ken gasped as the shaft moved in his wrist, cerulean fire in his slitted eyes. "I can only … only hold us aloft … another few seconds – at very most. You've got to go. Now." He swallowed whatever else he had been about to say. "You hear me, Joe? Go. Now!"

Joe abruptly saw that Ken had never let go of the controls, straining with whatever strength he had left in him to pull back on the stick. He could see Ken's knuckles of his right hand as it gripped the throttle, bone-white under the smears of bright, bubbling blood.

Joe shook his head stubbornly, teeth set. "Get real, Gatchaman. And drop the histrionics! No NTBS cams 'round here to capture all that heroic crap you regularly toss, you know."

He hoped his voice sounded more sure than he feared as he frantically leant over Ken's back to grasp his left forearm. At Ken's sharp intake of breath, he saw that the thin shard had driven right between the radius and ulna in Ken's wrist, likely fracturing the lighter bone in the process. Short of physically ripping the arm in two right there and then, it wasn't coming loose from the hull. And in these circumstances, in this godforsaken place, what were the odds of Ken surviving that level of trauma? He'd be as dead from that as from a mid-air explosion.

K'so. Big time K'so.

He realized all at once that he didn't know what to do. What could he do?

The relentless antiphon of wailing wind and dying plane began to beat at Joe in terrible force, in terrible rhythm. And something else, half-real, half-imagined, sang through from underneath, dissonant, painful, in perfect synch with his erratic pulse.

What can I do?

The bitter taste of pure panic began to overtake Joe at that moment.

"Joe." Ken locked gazes with him, a world of stark reality and grim acknowledgment in his face. He didn't say anything beyond his name, but Joe couldn't have torn his gaze away to save his life. With a surging underscore of mute appeal in that look, Ken was imploring Joe to go. Begging him to leave.

To leave him behind.

Joe shook his head, teeth gritted. Not a chance. "Fuck that."

Leave him behind to … die. No. NO.

"Joe …"

Joe growled and wrestled with the shaft of the Dart, trying to ignore the sounds Ken couldn't quite suppress at the jarring. The death cry of the Sharp around them became an unsteady rhythm of pain, without reason, without rhyme.

"Joe!" Ken practically screamed his name now, fighting a losing battle with the forces of gravity. The throttle was slick with his blood. "Stop stalling! Get the hell … out of here, damn you! NOW !"

"Screw you!" Joe snarled back, looking about frantically for a tool, an opening, a way out, a miracle, anything.

Nothing was forthcoming.

"I don't believe in miracles," he had said, only minutes ago. A lifetime ago.

Oh god …

"Ken," he said, the world dropping faster all around them. "I can't …"

"G2," Ken tried, the desperation painfully clear, "I'm ordering you to get cle…"

"You know exactly what you can do with that order, Commander," Joe snapped, yanking harder at the Dart, trying not to listen to the sounds it tore from Ken.

"Face facts, Joe," Ken finally said, after drawing several deep breaths to centre himself, struggling to break through the thunder of the engine, obviously trying his damnedest for reasonable. And failing spectacularly. "I can't escape. There's no … no out for me. But there is for you. Don't be … a fool, Joe. You … can make it!" His hoarse voice cracked.

Joe shook his head stubbornly.

"Baka!" Ken said through his teeth. "Get the hell … out of here!"

"Don't you dare ask that from me," Joe hissed, suddenly furious, fingers twisting tight in Ken's collar at his throat. "I'm not bailing. Not without you."

He desperately cast about for some other viable alternative.

He could see none.

Neither could Ken. And the banshee-screaming deadweight the once mighty Sharp had transmuted into at the wristband's breaking, hollow, sepulchral in its fall, was going down. Fast.

Damn Galactor all to hell!

"Joe. Listen to me! Please!" Ken's voice changed from commanding, from reason, to desperate pleading. Every muscle and tendon stood out in sharp relief against his pale skin, quivering in the strain to hold back both craft and pain. The jet spiralled down, the ground swelling speedily into view.

Frighteningly, terrifyingly close.

"You've got … to save yourself! There's no use … you going out… this way too. There's still time! You can make it! You've … GOT to survive, Joe. You have to!" Joe opened his mouth, but Ken overrode him in a tide of sheer fire and passion. "Get out! Go! Please, Joe! GO!"

"Fuck it! I'm not leaving you!" Joe thundered, the white, swirling earth filling his vision entire, blurred and stabbing in ragged pinpricks of raw sound. "I'm not!"

"Don't do this, goddamnit!" Ken screamed, twisting his trapped arm in obviously agonizing wrenches. "Joe!"

Joe shook his head stubbornly and tugged again, uselessly, torturously, at the length of the damnable Ship Dart.

This … this can't be it … I haven't … he … God!

The ground surged closer, the shriek of the plane's engine was a cacophony of pain and fury, and Joe, fire blazing in both his side and in his heart, at last let go of the Dart, and leaned closer, twisting painfully around the cockpit to face Ken, feeling himself move as if in slow motion through deep water, to grasp Ken's face in both hands.

He could almost hear the tolling end of the song, as vivid and cathartic as the grandest of oratorios, as heartbreaking as the purest of arias. A canticle of final tribute.

Funeral March of the Ninjatai. The thought came unbidden to him and he vainly tried to thrust back the crashing surge of crumbling darkness.

"Joe, dammit!" Ken cried again, and though his eyes blazed more fiercely than ever, his struggles were weakening, and he barely had any breath left with which to speak. "Please … don't … you can't do this … you must … leave me behind."

Joe looked at him. Didn't Ken know that was impossible?

So, he thought as if from a thousand miles distant. This is how we're going to go out then?

Well, it could certainly have been worse. At least he was with Ken … at the end.

Our promise to die together, Ken. It'll be kept this time.

A strange stillness filled him, resonant and nauseatingly jarring all at once. It was as if the last bars were writing the full notes now, not just the quarter ones. But it was all coming to a finale nevertheless. He steadied a hand on Ken's hair, the other drifting down to rest against his cheek.

Ken… I…

"Joe … you need to … get the hell … out of here!" Ken was panting, desperately, no breath left to scream out, trying to throw his head back from Joe's touch, shaking it in fierce denial. And it was then that Joe saw the tears of pure frustration begin to shine in those eyes even as Ken struggled furiously to push at him. "Eject, Damnit! Go!"

But Joe's choice was long made, if he ever had one. For good or ill.

"No, Ken. I won't leave," he grated out hoarsely, breath louder and harsher in his ears than even the searing death cry of the Eagle Sharp. He didn't release his grip on Ken. "I can't. Never. Don't you fucking get it? I can't!"

But Ken was shaking his head.

"Please …" he whispered, barely audible over the scream of their aerial plunge, the whole world now inexplicably and terrifyingly visible in his face.

And Joe suddenly saw terror there, for the first time. Not terror for himself, but for Joe. It slammed into him like a punch. He stumbled over the chords in his head, could barely hear Ken's next words. "You've got to live …go … please … Joe …"

Joe shook his head violently, teeth bared. "I CAN'T!!"

The ground loomed large through the shattered window.

Shattered. Like us. At long, long last.

The flat melody of storm and jet heightened in terrible pitch, off-key, drowning the world in its deafening volume.

Oh, God ... this can't be …

And Joe knew suddenly that they were out of time. He saw it in Ken's face too, that knowledge, that awful certainty, before Ken squeezed his eyes shut in aching defeat.

Ken … I wish …

The rising crescendo of wind and falling, failing engine pounded in Joe's eardrums as he tightened his hold on Ken's face and drew him closer, no longer even feeling his body's awkward wrench around the chair. And Ken sagged at last, his forehead dropping forward to rest against Joe's visor. Joe reached out and grasped Ken's free hand, tightening his fingers over the bloodied back of it, loosening and lifting it away from its death grip on the throttle.

"It's all right, Ken," he murmured. His throat tightened unbearably. "You can let go now."

Let go ...

He could hear Ken's strained, gasping breath in his ears, his heart clenching, and then, nearly inaudibly, even against his ear, the whisper of wounded words.

"I'm … so sorry, Joe … I've failed you … again …"

What the hell was Ken talking about? But there was no time, no time, no more time to ask, no more time to say, no more time for anything.

No more time …

The world was ending. They were falling.

Ken ... forgive me …

Ken's eyes slid open as if he heard, and the depthless otherworldly blue of that soul-encompassing gaze drowned out the sight of onrushing oblivion, and it was the very last thing Joe Asakura saw before the world abruptly exploded in a violent chorus of ivory fire.

____________________________

Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 9:44 pm

Hi!

Well, it's been a bit of a while since I posted the first part, Embarassed

and so, um, well, here's another bit.

It may seem a bit ... odd to be reading about snowstorms in the middle of a summer heatwave, but perhaps reading of a cold place will prove a wee bit refreshing to those sweltering away in various parts of the (northern) world right now? (I hope?)

Anyways, without further ado, here's the second installment to this languishing story! (for so long IT'S almost in a coma now! /grin/) I hope you enjoy! Very Happy

Kagaku Ninja Tai Gatchaman
Coma Fic Challenge

Stained Glass Window

By Paxwolf

Book One:

“Fall”

2.

"Dichroic"

Joe slowly came to, every organic and cybernetic nerve enflamed. He groaned and tried to move.

God, it felt like he’d just been electrocuted. While in the spin cycle of a violent, shorted-out washing machine from the tenth level of hell.

He groaned again, and wondered out of which race he’d just completely bombed, and how bad off the G2 had to be. Lifting his head took enormous concentration, as did trying to see through unfocused eyes and cracked visor. He squinted at the sight around him and first, realized that he hadn’t just survived a car wreck but a bona fide plane crash, and second, that his initial assumption of electroshock couldn’t have been all that far off the mark.

Flames spread in a wide rictus of debris all around him. The storm had picked up; the wind was now much more forceful, the snow driving down in whirling, dagger-sharp sheets.

What the hell had just h-

Ken!

Galvanized, Joe scrambled up, ignoring his new assortment of burns and bruises, looking around frantically, his heart in his mouth as the memories of their flight and doomed descent swarmed into his mind. But Ken was nowhere in immediate view.

How could that be? Hadn’t he just had him in his arms?

The wreckage of the Sharp lay scattered over the snow-covered terrain. Joe swallowed at the sight, and then began to stagger through it, forcing the heady panic down with an effort of will. Despair and terror warred within him as he glanced through the enormity of the debris; he knew only too well the likelihood of his survival had he not been a re-made man. He almost snorted at the thought.

But Ken … Ken was only human. And further, Joe suddenly remembered, he had been without the protection of his birdstyle.

He spotted the remains of the cockpit lying several feet away, torn open as if by a gigantic can opener. His heart clenched in a painful spasm. He took a breath and dragged his numb legs over to it. Steeling himself, he hauled himself up to the torn lip of metal and looked within.

It was empty.

Swept both by shock and relief, Joe dropped back weakly, then squinted against the driving snow at the rest of the wreckage.

“Ken!” he croaked, and coughed up more blood. “Ken!” he tried again, louder, scanning wildly, but no familiar form was in sight.

Where the hell was he? He couldn’t have been flung that far! He had to find him. He needed to find him.

He steadfastly refused to picture just what he might find when he did.

“Ken, goddamnnit, where are you? KEN!”

Joe stumbled through the mess, barely holding onto both his balance and his emotional control, shouting for Ken. In some remote subsection of his brain, he recognized that he wasn’t thinking very clearly. And another part, the part that remembered his KNT training, was already emotionlessly analyzing and dissecting the data, partitioning off the deeper part of him that was deathly afraid of just what he might end up finding. He ruthlessly shoved that part down, refusing to dwell on the grim extrapolation that ensued.

The part that knew the crash had been … bad.

What if … He shook his head in anger and denial then tripped blindly over more flaming debris, falling to his knees in the snow. Every part of him seemed to burn, inside and out. Ken!

He twisted in a sudden painful turn as the roar of engines from somewhere in the snowstorm overhead tore into his bleeding eardrums. Galactor was coming. He couldn’t stay there.

Where are you?

But there was no way in hell he could leave.

“Ken!”

Nothing. He’d looked over every piece of plane, every rock and clump. Ken wasn’t anywhere on the ridge.

Biting down on a surge of sickness, Joe shoved himself to his feet again, and wound through the smouldering wreckage yet again, hands and mind and heart numb.

“Ken …”

The engines rumbled closer and he realized if it hadn’t been for both the storm and the sheltering rise of ridge that they had been smashed against, Galactor would have long been upon them.

He suddenly found that he couldn’t give a damn.

Ken was gone.

He halted, swaying. A thousand possibilities flashed through his mind, each one a nightmare in itself. No matter how much he wanted to hope, with the evidence before him, he didn’t know how. There was no possible way that the Eagle could have survived a crash of such magnitude, of such devastation. None.

Ken … Ken was gone.

He lifted his head, blind to the pain, blind to the snow, blind to everything, and howled into the wind. The cry of anguish that tore out of his throat, sounding more animal than human, wrenched at his own soul, at his mind, at his very flesh. Oh, how very tempting it would be to just collapse into an unseeing, unfeeling heap, and let himself freeze there. His throat raw, he screamed again, not caring. All he wanted in that moment of utter horror, of wrenching realization, was complete escape.

Gel Sadra could sift through his frozen bones and components for all he cared. And Nambu, the United Nations, and Earth itself could all go to hell.

Ken was gone.

Then he shook his head, all at once furious with himself, at Galactor, at the world that had let this happen, the old familiar rage surging up inside, searing the edges of his frozen grief with its savage heat.

Collapse and weep? Like some weak little girly-girl who’d lost her way or her teddy bear? Fuck that. He was Kondoru No Joe. He’d sooner take on all of Galactor single-handedly than admit to a momentary surge of weakness. Man, he could already hear the cutting remark that Ken would make if he kne-

He inhaled sharply, feeling the burn of the cold in his lungs, in his heart, and shut his eyes tight.

Damn it. NO. He wasn’t gonna give up on Ken that easily. Not if a thousand hells had frozen over.

Not if a million had.

Never.

He raised his head, surprised to find himself pitched over in the snow. He gathered his numb limbs and huddled for a moment, willing himself to stay conscious. But far from becoming insensate, his hearing seemed to sharpen, picking up the increasing drone of approaching Shadow fighters.

Fine. FINE. He would fight to his last. He knew the chances of his surviving the night. But he sure as hell would take as many Galactors with him as he could before it was over. That would grant some grim satisfaction at least. He would take what vengeance he could. He would deal death in Ken's name. And even if by some miracle Joe survived … there would be no more life for him worth living. He knew that as surely as he knew what he must do. And if he didn’t … what did it really matter? Any of it? Ken was gone.

He straightened his back, ignoring the protests of his battered body, and searched for a shuriken, lips thinning. He would make his stand here. With the wreckage of Ken’s Eagle Sharp at his back. He bared his teeth in a grim parody of a smile and settled into a battle stance. He would wait.

He would avenge the death of Gatchaman, and take out the entire Galactor squadron if Fate allowed it to him. There was nothing else for it.

Ken was gone.

His throat tightened, and he stiffened his back. And then, on the farthest edge of hearing, he thought he heard something else, something beyond the roar of approaching engines, a keening, inhuman cry, completely in-tune and yet somehow disparate from the mournful howl of icy wind.

He jerked his head up and strained to hear more clearly.

What was that?

He suddenly realized that the skin at the back of his neck was prickling, and he could feel the hairs on the top of his arms rise from his skin.

It hadn’t sounded like an animal, but …

He listened intently, but heard nothing more than the rising throaty whine of the wind. It had probably been his imagination. He shook his head, releasing a breath, and then froze.

What if it had been Ken? Calling for him?

He clenched his jaw and forced himself to look at the still-flaming wreckage of the Sharp lying strewn all over the lee of the ridge, most of it in alarmingly small bits.

Impossible.

He staggered again, fighting to keep his vision clear where it blurred. Fighting to not think, to not feel …

Ken was gone.

He couldn’t have been calling to Joe. He couldn’t have been.

And then, all at once, he could hear the cry again, rising like a repeating refrain out of the verses of the wind.

It wasn’t Ken. It wasn’t remotely even human.

Still it tugged at him, drawing him, commanding him as if he had no will of his own …

Unseeing, he ghosted to his feet, all pain shoved into the far recesses of his mind, and staggered forward, following the haunting, half-imagined wail.

Sliding down the ridge’s treacherous slope, Joe tried to shake the increasingly vivid sense of dreaming, of being led … where?

What was he doing? He couldn’t leave the crash-site! He couldn’t leave Ken!

But it was if his feet had a will of their own, and he had no choice but to heed the faint, eerie, - maybe unreal, his mind whispered to him - siren’s call through the storm, and come down off the mountainside.

So he followed.

His boots sliding down the steep slope, he slipped down the ridge, over the frost-encrusted boulders, now one-third the way down, now halfway, now through the copse of scrub brush near the bottom … down, down, down …

The wind howled, driving ice into his face, the snow stinging his exposed cheeks below his visor with tiny, hard, frozen particles. If this were still only Fall up here, he’d sure hate to see Winter.

He reached the bottom, and stood, swaying, feeling lost in a way he had never before felt in his life. Then, as if controlled by some outside force, he saw his feet begin to move, as if beyond his will, and seemed to watch himself stumble through the snow, as if from a great distance.

I ... what is ...

Surrounded by tall, snow-dusted evergreens that seemed to whisper in silence to each other as he passed, Joe felt drawn into a sheltered grotto, deep within a circle of trees, as quiet and calm within as the blizzard without now warred in tempestuous fury.

I don’t think I’m in Kansas anymore, Toto …

He shook his head at the absurd but somehow appropriate thought, feeling more on edge than he remembered feeling in some time, and fingered the feather shuriken in his right hand.

There.

He turned his head sharply.

Was that a flicker of movement he had caught among the dark sway of branches?

He couldn’t be sure he hadn’t imagined it. He strained to listen, but the strange, half-heard howl of before had ceased.

Had he been hearing things?

There’s nothing there. There’s nothing.

He suddenly felt the weird detachment he’d experienced moments earlier evaporate, and he was slammed back into his own skull with a sickeningly dizzy surge of pain and cybernetic systemic overload. He stopped, and drew a deep breath.

I’ve had a bad electrical shock, and I’m hurt and energy depleted, he rationalized, taking a deep breath. He refused to think of the other kind of shock he had endured. My mind is just playing tricks on me.

But even with eyes straining in the dim light, the trees seemed to draw even closer, the sense of awareness, of … of sentience? from them stronger than ever. But he possessed no sense of foreboding. No feeling of entrapping malice. Just one of tranquillity, a vision of silent sentinels guarding … what?

He breathed out slowly, the vapour from his breath misting and floating strangely in the cold air.

He whirled again in a blur of suddenness, certain he had caught a glimpse of motion on the other side of the circle of trees from the corner of his eye.

Again, he saw nothing when squarely facing the protective line of trunks. He stepped further into the small glade, alert and tense, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, sensing about a billion different things, wishing he had his cable gun. Or better yet, Ken at his back. But no … that couldn't be, he reminded himself harshly. Ken was …

Ken is gone.

His throat tightened as he forced himself to think the words consciously. He felt his stomach churn, and a pain almost physical burned within.

I don't want ... I can't ...

Something else caught his eye then, a faint outline, lighter than the shadows of the overhanging branches under which it lay, began to resolve itself to his cybernetic vision.

His breath caught in his throat.

For an instant he stood there, unable to move, frozen, staring.

And then, a curse half out of his lips, he flung himself forward, and fumbling, lifted the dark head out of its cradle of snow, frantically checking for signs of life.

Joe Asakura would never be able afterwards to put his feelings of that moment into words, but right then, as he felt a pulse, thready and weak but definitely there, in the throat beneath his fingertips, he could have gladly given up the power of articulate speech forever in exchange for the fiery relief that threatened to overwhelm him then and there.

Ken lay there in his arms, broken, bleeding, and unconscious. But blessedly alive.

Alive. God, Ken … you're alive.

Joe trembled for several indeterminate moments, unable to stop, hugging Ken’s body against his chest, unable to move right then if his life had depended on it.

Oh, god, Ken …

He told himself that the shaking was merely a side-effect of the malfunction his cybernetic systems were experiencing, and the moisture leaking from his eyes was simply the unfortunate result of his short-circuited overload.

Shit.

“Ken, you bastard,” he growled softly, the hoarseness painful in his throat. “Baka …”

He hadn’t really ever believed in miracles. Fairy stories, he’d sneered.

But it was undeniable. Ken was there. And he could feel the living warmth and breath of his body against him.

Oh, all you saints of heaven … He caught himself, pushing back the old, half-forgotten poem or prayer or who knew what, choking out a strained laugh. My debt is piling so high I’m gonna spend eternity neck deep in payback …

Ken was there.

After a small millennia, the hushed whisper of wind and the muted creaking of the surrounding tree trunks seemed to at last work through to his consciousness, and he shook his head abruptly, pulling himself together.

“Get a hold of yourself, Asakura,” he muttered, and brushed disparagingly at his cheeks. “You sure as hell don’t want frozen-face on top of everything else tonight! And sitting here uselessly in the snow isn’t helping anyone, is it?”

His own voice echoed with a hollow peculiarity back at him and he nearly jumped out of his skin.

The silent grove watched them.

Watched? Oh, hell yeah.

He straightened, peering about, neck prickling, keeping one hand on Ken’s shoulder. “If someone’s out there, you had fucking better announce yourself. It’s not exactly been Christmas Day for me here.”

He held still, listening. Except for the breath of wind and the more than eerie creaking of the evergreens, there was no answer. He saw nothing.

Nothing looked out of the ordinary. But he could not shake the sense that something was there. Something ... indefinite.

He looked back down at Ken, shoved the unease to the back of his mind, shoved down the part of him that sang with some nameless emotion along every nerve – Ken was there …. He’s alive! - and concentrated on remembering his training.

How the devil did you end up way down here, anyways?

He laid Ken’s head carefully back down and began what he should have done right away had he been thinking straight: a systematic check of Ken’s vitals and injuries. He prayed he hadn’t done damage to the spinal column when he’d moved Ken’s head. But thankfully, his neck and back still felt in one piece.

Thank God …

“I know you probably’d rather it were Jun who was feeling you up, buddy,” he muttered aloud, suppressing the twinge the thought forced up. “But you’ll just have to grin and bear it. I’m all you got.” He grinned himself, suddenly savage with euphoria all over again. Ken was alive. He was alive! “Condor Joe, your handy-dandy field surgeon of the day!”

He realized he was babbling, and wondered if it was from the relief in which he was still reeling … finding Ken more or less whole and breathing really was a miracle he had not even dared hope for. Ken wasn’t gone.

He’s alive …God …

The thought, that undeniable knowledge, was still singing in a soft piano medley beneath his conscious thoughts, every now and again surging out in a forte of thrilling notes.

“You’ve gone and got yourself messed up and good, Ken,” he said roughly, checking out each leg for breaks. “Getting to be a damned habit here. No sense of self-preservation at all, anymore.”

He continued to talk softly aloud to focus himself on his task. Or maybe it was to distract himself from the distinct impression that he and Ken weren’t alone in the grove. He suppressed the desire to look up suddenly every few seconds to see if he could catch someone or some … thing spying on them.

I’m just tired is all. There’s no one there.

He grimaced. Just keep telling yourself that, Asakura.

He knew there was no one else there. He knew that. But that didn’t lessen the very real feeling that they weren’t alone.

Maybe it’s ghosts, aniki! He could hear Jinpei saying excitedly.

“Supernatural hogwash, squirt,” he muttered, wishing with all his might that Jinpei and Jun and Ryu were there with them, arguing with him in person.

He finished with the front and gently turned Ken over, shifting the piece of plane beside him with utmost care, and saw the blood spreading darkly from both wrist and knee wounds, staining the snow crimson even in the dim light of the watching grove.

“K’so.”

He cursed himself his laggarding as he bound the knee up carefully, stemming the slow flow of blood. At least the below zero temperatures were good for something. Ken might have bled out otherwise.

At last he dared look at his main worry.

Ken’s left arm remained pinned to the scrap of plane wreckage, a length of Shard still piercing directly through his wrist. It was a horrific sight. How Ken had otherwise remained in one piece throughout the crash was a mystery, but the Shard and the hull plate it was thrust into had probably saved him from completely bleeding to death, and perhaps in the end had shielded him from the worst of the impact.

Joe considered the problem as he removed his wings and carefully folded them around Ken’s thinly t-shirted torso in a probably vain effort at keeping him warm. An impressive score of burns, contusions, and nasty lacerations adorned Ken’s body and face. But other than a few spectacularly bloody cuts on his scalp, Joe could detect no obvious head injury serious enough to account for Ken’s lack of response.

Why then was Ken still out like a light?

His skin and snow-wet hair also bore signs of enduring severe electrical shock, shock of a dangerously high voltage, much as did Joe’s own. But surely he’d have recovered from such a jolt by now? Ken had been zapped before, and generally bounced back like it was a dip in the pool.

“Ken,” Joe called out, softly at first, and then shook Ken’s shoulder a little harder. “Hey, Ken. Wake-up call. Ken!”

Ken did not awaken.

“Shirking already, G1?” Joe tried. “You’re letting Hakase down bad. You’re worse than Ryu with the naptime here. And what’ll Junie think, lazybones? Up and at ‘em, Eagle-boy! Call to duty and all that crap.”

Ken did not stir, or even blink. His breathing did not alter. Panic started to twist in Joe’s gut.

“Ken! Stop screwing around! Wake up!”

Nothing.

No, no, no …

“This isn’t some game, Gatchaman! Get with the program already!”

Ken lay there, unmoving, and if Joe weren’t feeling the slow pulse beat against his reapplied fingertips, he would’ve sworn that he was dead.

Ken, damnit!

“K’so,” he growled for the umpteenth time, forcing down the panic. He’d need to find a new piece of profanity soon to keep from dying of monotony if the situation kept looking this grim.

What do I do now?

He lifted his head and listened to the sussurant sound of the whispering trees and the deep-sea roar of the storm beyond.

And then, over them he could faintly pick up the whine of turbo engines swooping unseen overhead and behind the ridge.

Galactor.

He’d almost forgotten about them. And it wouldn’t be long before they’d locate the Sharp’s crash site up on the ridge’s summit, and track them down to the hidden grotto faster than sharks to blood in water.

They had to move. They had to move now.

He checked Ken’s pulse and respiration again. Neither was strong or regular. The motion could very well kill him. But then again, so would staying there. Galactor would quite happily take him off his hands. And their simply killing him would be an unlikely kindness.

Well, there were plenty of other options leading to a slow death. The deadly cold could finish him off. Or shock. Or exposure. Loss of blood. Hypothermia. Dehydration. The list went on quite determinedly.

Well, this is damn depressing, he thought.

“Damn it, Ken,” he grunted, as he hurriedly patched the deep wound over his own ribs, “I didn’t come back to you after two fucking years, through bullets and fire, only to lose out to Galactor and a snowstorm now. I could use a hand here. You gonna just lie there like a sissy or what?” He thought furiously. What would get a rise out of Ken? “What would Red Impulse say if he could see you now? Think he’d be all that impressed with a wimp who didn’t know better than to get up out of the snow?” Ken did not move or answer. Joe gritted his teeth. “You’d damn better well hang in there, flyboy. I don’t want to have to do all the explaining over this lame-ass mission to Nambu by myself.” Ken’s eyes remained closed. “Goddamnnit, Ken!” Joe shouted, leaning down over him.

Not even flutter of those eyelashes.

He hesitated, then bared his teeth, and slapped Ken across the face. Hard.

Nothing. Joe steeled himself and struck again, harder. Ken’s head rocked with the blow, even with Joe keeping his strength in careful check.

“Wake the hell up already!”

Or so help me, I’ll follow you to Heaven or Hell itself and drag you back! With your shield or on it, Ken. That’s a promise.

Ken gave no sign of hearing or understanding, or of feeling the slaps, although a few of the cuts reopened. Joe clenched his jaw. He sat back on his heels and rubbed his hand over his eyes.

Well. That was successful. So much for breaking the Vulcan healing trance in the 'traditional' way. He smiled without humour. Now what?

He sat at a loss for a long moment, listening to the whispering wind, feeling the few flakes drift down and settle on his cheeks.

He sighed. First things first. He drew a breath and squared his shoulders. At least Ken’s unconscious state would let him be spared some extra pain.

Joe stood up.

Placing his boot squarely on the stress point of Sharp hull, he grasped the piece of wreckage in both hands, braced all of his strength, and wrenched. It broke apart in three pieces, loosening the Shard’s duranium head from its anchored grasp. Joe breathed a sigh of relief as he felt the hull come apart in his hands, and then again in disappointment when he saw Ken had not stirred as his wrist was jarred in what surely would have been an agonizing move had he been awake.

But he couldn’t very well drag Ken around with a great huge chunk of his Eagle Sharp hanging off his arm either.

He studied the injury and expertly assessed that the metal shaft of the Ship Dart’s remains could in no way be removed safely; it would have to stay in place for the time being. He couldn’t afford to risk pulling it directly free without any proper medical supplies on hand. He would just have to hope no toxic poisoning would result from the continual contact with the weapon’s metal shell.

And that was only if the head hadn’t been tainted with Galactor poison to begin with.

He grimaced, shoving the horrific thought away forcibly, and set to work carefully binding the Shard tightly against Ken’s arm itself, packing shreds of cotton tee around the wound and shaft both. Then he bound the arm to Ken’s side with torn strips from his own wings. He finished the task and straightened with a pained oath.

It occurred to him that it was awfully quiet all of a sudden. He looked up at the sky.

Shimatta.

Galactor must have landed up on the ridge.

He turned to Ken’s pale form, trying not to see how unnaturally still he was as he lay there in the snow.

“You’re not making things easy on me, are you, Washio? Out cold and it’s still business as usual." He shook his head. "Only you could make a bad situation even more complicated. What is it, some sort of gift?”

He eyed him, and then crouched and pulled on Ken’s good arm carefully, hauling him up to a sitting position. Ken’s head fell forward, chin smacking against his chest. “Well don’t blame me,” he huffed, “you’re the one not waking up. And we’ve got to get the hell out of Dodge.”

He hoisted Ken gracelessly onto his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, for once very grateful for his cyborg durability and power.

“Looks like I’m in charge for a change, Commander, and I aim to make the most of it. Whatever I say is what goes. Capisce?” That surely would have earned a response out of a healthy Ken, but though he watched him carefully, Ken continued to just hang there limply. “K’so. I’ve got to come up with new material,” he muttered, standing with some effort. “You’re a brutal audience.”

Joe settled Ken a bit more securely on his shoulder, anchoring an arm over his hips. He kicked snow over both the bits of wreckage and the bloodstains visible in the half-light. He started forward, and then paused. He glanced back at the little grotto of trees that somehow - God alone knew how - Ken had mysteriously ended up within.

The pines and firs seemed to still emanate a sense of … of awareness, of watching them. Of somehow knowing them. Both of them.

It was as creepy as hell.

The snowflakes drifted down, silently. The strange creaking of the tree trunks echoed throughout the grove with the whispers in the wind. Nothing else moved.

Joe hesitated, scanning the circle of trees. He could have sworn he felt a profound, vivid, invisible presence, of unseen eyes following his every move.

“Is anyone there?"

Only the hushed wind and the creaking sway of wood answered him. He grunted and suddenly suppressed a ridiculous urge to nod his head at the trees, fighting an odd reluctance to leave the grove. Which was damned weird, considering how freaky the place was.

What … is this place?

Then the sound of faraway - but still much too close for comfort - quite human shouting jolted him upright, and set his heart to hammering.

“Thank your guardian angels for me, Ken,” he muttered, and hoisted him up more securely over his shoulder. “Me, I just got luck on my side.”

With a last glance back, he turned to plunge through the murmuring branches, angling away from the ridge.

And with absolutely no plan in mind other than getting himself and Ken as far from Galactor’s grasp as possible, Joe headed straight into the inhospitable night, the frosty winter wilderness both helping and hindering him, carrying his silent burden as if it were more precious than the purest of gold.

--