OP Fic: Alienation, Chapter 11
Title: Alienation
Rating: PG15 for language, violence
Pairing: LuccixKaku, KakuxOMC
Warning: Some spoilers for Water 7 and Enies Lobby.



AN: Final chapter, and it's a big one! In case anyone wonders, I totally made up Vegapunk's appearance. There was no indication of his appearance at the time this was written.

Big Ass Disclaimer: I do NOT endorse CP9's view of government, I just write using their POV. Also, I don't own the characters, though I would love to borrow Hattori in his little coat (awww)






Chapter 11



It was Saturday...Kaku had had plans for Saturday. They didn't involve a comprehensive medical by masked and gowned Navy medics in the remains of a burned-down rebel compound somewhere on the Grand Line. Kaku had been doing okay up to now with the changes in his situation; something about Lucci's presence was very grounding. But Lucci had disappeared off for a debriefing shortly after they'd come through the gate, leaving Kaku to the medics who were treating him like a plague victim. He was in an isolated infirmary ward that had apparently been built out of clapboard just for him, surrounded once more by the familiar chatter of Trade Lingo as the doctors discussed a urine sample. Through the screened window blew a sea-wind rich with the scents of saltwater and untreated sewage...Kaku felt like he was dreaming all over again.

"Enjoying yourself?" Lucci asked, showing up a couple of uncomfortable hours later.

"Having a blast," Kaku answered, words muffled by the shirt he was pulling on. He'd been finally allowed to get dressed in the clothes a gowned and masked orderly had thrust at him. They felt rough in contrast to the outfits he'd grown used to; plain undyed linen trousers and long-sleeved top to match. Hospital wear, or possibly a convict's uniform.

"This way, then."

Kaku followed Lucci to a clapboard room with nothing but a square table and single chair at its dead center. Lucci gestured curtly for him to sit down, then leaned his back against the door and crossed his arms over his chest. Kaku looked blankly at the large, long window inserted into the wall, through which he could see a gallery, the kind where they brought witnesses to view a line-up of the usual suspects.

"Okay, I give up," he finally said. "Why am I sitting in an interrogation room?"

"It's what we had on hand. They knocked it together a year ago while processing the rebels and those citizens who were accused of helping them, and they never took it down."

"And why am I here?" Kaku asked, staring at the window. There was a long table full of papers on the other side, with a carafe and a large plate of half-demolished sandwiches. It seemed that somebody had a habit of eating the top piece of bread and the meat and none of the vegetables. Kaku felt a rumble in his stomach. He'd lost track of his last meal.

"Interview. I've already given a brief summary of your time over there-" Lucci was interrupted when the door to the gallery beyond the window banged opened and a small man shot through like the place was on fire. He glued himself to the glass, staring at Kaku with naked curiosity. He was followed more sedately by a second man bearing the long-suffering expression of assistants to eccentrics everywhere; he closed the door and took up a discreet spot near the table, notebook in hand.

"Finally! It's you, right?!" the small man burst out in excitement.

"Um..." Kaku looked to Lucci for an explanation.

"Yes, sir, this is agent Kaku, the man I brought back. This is professor Vegapunk," Lucci added for Kaku's benefit. "He has total clearance."

Total clearance, old words that described what Vegapunk was allowed to know about Kaku, CP9 and their activities. Despite the 'total', there were automatic black-outs to that information. Kaku hoped he'd remember what they were. It felt like he'd been in Vancouver much longer than he'd ever been at Water 7.

Vegapunk was a wizened gnome of indeterminate age. Grayish hair sprouted out of his large ears and marched down his jowls to form a short bottle-brush beard that devoured the rest of his face in two bites. His eyes had the crazy-professor gleam to them, and he talked in short outbursts that indicated his brain worked five times faster than his mouth ever could.

"We need to talk! Now! There's so much to ask! I wish we didn't have this blasted glass here. But you're in quarantine. I recommended it, especially when I heard how many people there were over there. The higher population density the greater the germ pool and oh yeah, damn, gotta be careful. The Marines we sent before were okay, but they were only there for an hour. You were there for nearly two years, eating their food, drinking their water, and, ah-..." Vegapunk broke off and glanced at Lucci as if he'd just hit a notion that perplexed him.

"Sleeping with someone," Kaku supplied.

"Ah yes. For two years! TWO YEARS! Tell me all about it!"

"About sleeping with someone?" Kaku asked, the bug-under-a-microscope feeling prodding him into being voluntarily obtuse.

"No, you young fool, about Otherworld!"

"Is that what you call it?"

"Yes! No, I wanted to call it Realworld, but the brass just couldn't get their mind wrapped around the concept. Idiots! Oh yes, it's the real world," Vegapunk added, catching Kaku's puzzled expression. "I had a preliminary talk with your colleague while you were getting your medical, he said you'd figured out you were in a reflection of our world, and I have to say, if somebody other than me had to be the one to fall through that hole, I'm glad it was somebody halfway smart. But our two worlds aren't equivalent. The one you were in is the real one. Ours is the abnormality. Yep."

That didn't do much for Kaku's sense of reality. "But...how can you know that?"

"Devil Fruit, my boy! Devil Fruit! We have them, they don't. Right?"

"No, they don't have Devil Fruit."

"I knew it! We sure have 'em, I've studied them a lot. Maybe you've heard of my research? We have a lot of other very strange phenomenon that no amount of science can explain, and let me tell you, my predecessors and I spent our lives trying. And we're considerably smarter than a dozen of you, for all you seem brighter than some of the jarheads in the admiralty. Our world is a blip, a massive cosmological error. It's like the real universe got a stomach ache and hurled us up on a wave of reality disruptions. We're a distorted mirror of Realworld, and Devil Fruit are symptoms of this, three-dimensional projections of a part of our world where reality is weak and twisted. Oh, but it's not just Devil Fruit, it's all the Grand Line phenomenon and the weather and the totally unexplainable way our landmasses are stretched out and the proximity of the moon and a hundred of other factors that have been giving our physicists aneurysms since we first figured out what gravity was three hundred years ago. And now we know why! It's because our world is fundamentally made of baloney! That's the best I can do to explain it to a layman - you get it, right? A five year old would, but when I did my exposé, all the brass got this funny dead-fish look on their faces."

Kaku had a feeling he knew which look that was. He rubbed his face to save himself some form of dignity. "I sort of see what you mean. Back in...Otherworld-" Kaku's nervous system could not cope with 'Realworld' anymore than the brass "- there were speculative books about what they called parallel dimensions- worlds, and-"

There was a loud thump. Professor Vegapunk had hurled himself against the glass like a bird who hadn't noticed the window was closed. "Tell me all about them!"

"Um, now?"

"Yes! No! Start at the beginning!" The prof flailed behind the glass. The patient-looking assistant went to a sideboard for a glass and the carafe. "And then tell me everything! Sequentially! But right now! Damn it, Rodgers, I don't want any bloody water, pour it in your ear."

"I was there for a long time, it'll take a while," said Kaku, glad he was sitting down.

"Yes, yes, I know." The professor seemed to come back down to a plane more closely connected with reality - whatever that was, Kaku wasn't too sure anymore. "Just give me the bare bones for now; we have a few minutes before I have to examine the status of the Otherworld door again. The generator can't run more than a few hours at a time, and it has to be shut down gently, so very gently to stop the fracture-waves from collapsing in on themselves, and maybe lose the singularity altogether this time. It needs my supervision. Start talking and don't stop until I leave, and when I leave I want you to start writing. Write down everything, every experience, every thought, every detail. You'll have until tonight here, then you'll be moved to another part of the compound. You'll be in quarantine, but you won't be alone; your friend there was only exposed for a very short time, but to be on the safe side, and to provide you with some company, he's volunteered to share your isolation."

Kaku looked over his shoulder at Lucci lounging back against the wall like the Boatman waiting for a passenger.

"Peachy," he said in English, trying to keep out of his tone the stirrings of a bad premonition.



Cramps in his hand and fingers woke Kaku. There was no fuzzy moment of transition where he might have wondered why it was so cold and if Yoshi had hogged all the blankets again; reality was waiting for him the instant he opened his eyes, as present and solid as the ragged wooden beam over his head.

Kaku rubbed eyelids that felt like sandpaper and then massaged his writing hand. True to his word, Vegapunk had kept him alternatively talking and scribbling at the desk all day and well into the night. Lucci had brought them some food, helped Kaku get some of the concepts through to the professor (who had to go and have a bit of a lie-down on two occasions), and lit a kerosene lamp so Kaku could continue to write, draw and illustrate. Then Lucci had led the sleepwalking castaway out of that room, through two barred doors and into the shelter of a half-destroyed building where a camp bed invited Kaku to collapse.

He must have only slept a few hours; the air was sharp and sweet with morning scents. Kaku would have appreciated the scent of coffee a hell of a lot more. Paper-wrapped field rations on a stool near the cracked wall caught his eye. They hadn't been there when he'd crashlanded into bed last night. Kaku glanced around, the same uneasiness worrying at him, but that didn't stop him from getting the food and wolfing it down. Ahhhh, the half-remembered taste of total blandness...Back in Otherworld, they'd seemed so intent on packing the maximum olfactory sensation into every bite; everything had to be sweeter, saltier, richer, crunchier, it had to be more, an experience to shanghai the senses and the pocketbook. By contrast, this food's statement was, "You'll live. Be thankful." Strange...Kaku had grown up with the one, had become acclimatized to the other, and now both positions seemed to be lacking in an indefinable way.

Kaku glanced around as he ate. He knew this place: the outerworks of the fortress the Marines had attacked so long ago. Servant's quarters, guard stations, armory, all squashed between inner and outer walls. The area had been partly destroyed by the fire spreading from the explosion in the main building as well as the subsequent attack, but here or there was an outcropping, a little observatory dome, the shape of the murderholes above a distant gate, that were familiar, like a jarring sense of deja-vu amongst the destruction he'd not witnessed. Kaku hunched his shoulders, fighting a deeply bedded sense of displacement.

The shelter he'd slept in had at one point been a small forge turning out cheap armor and sharpening foot soldiers' swords. One of the walls was rubble, but there was enough of a roof left to protect him if it rained. When Vegapunk had said 'quarantine' yesterday, Kaku had assumed he'd be returned to the infirmary. The destruction and the silence surrounding the forge were gloomy backdrops, but it was still the better option in Kaku's opinion than that clapboard plague hospice.

Prickles ran up his spine. The rations were suddenly ash in his mouth.

Kaku swallowed carefully. "Good morning, Lucci," he said without turning around.

There was no answer. Kaku put down the food unfinished and drank from the flask of water near the stool. The liquid had an odd taste, sharp with a hint of copper and moldy wood. Kaku wiped his hands against his linen shirt, glanced around to see if he'd forgotten anything - what there might be to forget at this juncture, he couldn't have said - and then turned to face the presence behind him.

Lucci was crouched on the low wall around the forge's courtyard, watching him. Kaku was put in mind of a leopard perched on a tree branch observing a weakened gazelle. Hattori was on a broken beam overhead instead of on his master's shoulder, another bad sign.

"You've put on weight. And it's not muscle."

"Hello to you too," Kaku muttered.

Lucci dropped from the wall on totally silent feet. "I suppose it was inevitable that you would decline in the circumstances."

"As a matter of fact," said Kaku, even as he knew he shouldn't argue, "the doctor who recently gave me a physical back in Vancouver said he'd never seen anyone in better shape and asked me if I was a professional athlete."

"Yes. Pitiful standards. You could see that just looking at the people walking down the street." Lucci stalked towards him.

Kaku stood his ground as Lucci circled him; he could feel the man's movement as well as hear the soft footsteps. His heart beat strong and ready, adrenaline tingled in his veins, and despite what was bound to follow, Kaku was left almost breathless as he realized how much he'd missed this sensation.

"We have a couple of weeks before they let us out," said Lucci. "We won't get you back into shape in that time, but we can make a little headway."

"Right you are," said Kaku and ducked, Soru getting him out of reach of the punch that had whistled past his ears.

"I did practice my Rokushiki back there," he said, from the wall where Lucci had been a minute ago.

"Good for you," said Lucci indulgently, and disappeared. Kaku tensed- threw himself forward on instinct, but too late. The scything kick caught him mid-air and sent him smacking down into the ground.

"If you've been practicing, then we can skip the warm-up and go straight to the preliminary exercises," said Lucci, standing on that same wall, feet apart, hands in his pockets, looking down at him.

Kaku rose to his knees, wiped his gritty palms against his trousers. This...was going to hurt.

That bastard Lucci kept his hands in his pockets for the rest of the day.



There was a well off to one side of the compound. The water was murky, the explosion and fire had polluted the source, but it was good enough to bathe in. Kaku rinsed off the sweat and patted bruises and stiffening body dry with what was left of his linen clothes. He went to bed naked, no longer feeling cold. This was a test. He should have known; he had known, on some level. He had lost some of his strength, and his life's calling allowed no weaknesses. It was a test but it was also a training program; in the same way war could be said to be a way of resolving a difference perhaps, but training nonetheless. Yeah, he should feel thankful to Lucci for this. Really.

The next day, it was apparent that Lucci had been taking it extremely easy on him. When Kaku crawled to bed that night, barely able to lift his limbs to sort them out on the thin mattress, he was too tired and stunned and sore to even think anymore.

After that, he lost count of the days.



They all started the same. He'd wake up to find field rations on the stool near his bed. They steadily increased in quantity, to match his physical output. The taste was still the same, but he was past caring now. They were all he would have to eat that day, so he polished them off religiously. Then he'd get dressed. The clothes were also new each day, since no normal outfit could take the kind of punishment he was soaking up. Calf-length black pants and t-shirts, destroyed by nightfall and dropped in the refuse pile near the half-demolished latrines, to reappear intact the next day beneath the stool in the forge as if in a never-ending nightmare cycle. Lucci must have a whole batch of them, or was getting them dropped from the walls above where guards could occasionally be seen patrolling. The clothes were the same as those worn by CP9 trainees before they'd proven themselves and were enlisted into the ranks; it'd been over ten years since Kaku had worn their like. People who thought Lucci was nothing but an overly strong brute had no idea. Behind the power in that body was a mind that could do even more damage, and which paid attention to the slightest detail.

Once Kaku was dressed, he walked out into the compound where Lucci was waiting, and it started again.



Kaku swung- missed again. He threw himself back to avoid a lazy retaliatory swipe. Then he surged forward. Tried to trap Lucci's arm but it was already crossed primly over its owner's chest, standing several feet away. Why couldn't Kaku hit the man?! He hadn't lost that much of his strength - surely not. But he'd been pretty much batting air from the beginning.

He saw Lucci flicker and vanish. Kaku teetered around in growing alarm, and then braced himself on instinct.

Lucci materialized right in front of him and punched him in the gut. Even with Tekkai, it felt like getting swiped by a battering ram.

Kaku wobbled and collapsed, lungs paralyzed by the clinical blow to his solar plexus. Flashes of images as his brain fired messages of growing panic; pictures of a thug and a bodyguard rolling around in agony after Kaku had punched them like that. Kaku had the advantage of Tekkai, but then again, Lucci had hit him hard, and if Kaku's defenses had failed, his insides would now be his outsides.

...Air...he needed...Kaku's fingers scrabbled in the dirt, mouth open wide but unable to breathe.

"You're not the first agent to go native on a long mission, you know."

I wasn't on a mission, Kaku inwardly growled as a trickle of oxygen finally made its way through. He turned his head and looked around, despite the pain wrenching his gut and burning his lungs. Lucci was crouched a few feet away, observing him.

"It was pretty obvious as soon as I saw the place where you were living that we'd have a lot of work getting you back." It must be the buzz of passing oxygen deprivation, but that didn't seem to make any sense. Kaku was back now, had come home of his own volition, which didn't feel like the smartest thing he'd ever done right this second. "It was too soft, that city. Not to mention the life you'd chosen"

Kaku swallowed great gulps of air, getting to his knees and trying to stop the shaking in his limbs.

"In a way, your infiltration was too successful. It would have been better for your fighting skills if you'd been on the run all that time. Or if you'd simply chosen something a little less...comfortable. You like comfort, don't you; you like these things we do when we wear our masks. You like the roles we play a little too well, you always have, it's a weakness of yours."

"That is not true," Kaku snarled, shooting to his feet, a shower of kicked dust preceding a blow that finally connected. Lucci's Tekkai absorbed it, but his feet left tracks in the sandy courtyard as he was pushed back an inch.

And then he disappeared again, and a purr in Kaku's ear said, "That's better, but you do remember that it is preferable not to lose your temper in a fight, right? That is definitely a weakness of yours."

...Kaku was ready to concede to that one.

The rest of the day was pretty painful.



He wondered things at night, as he fell over the threshold of sleep into unconsciousness. The half-formed questions were at the antipodes of plaguing him; they waited for him like static layers that his mind tumbled through on its way down, barely stopping, not considering an answer...What would he miss the most? What on earth would Elis, the agent who got him stunt gigs at the studio, say? He'd not said goodbye to Hao at the organic food deli. The old man would have to find someone else to sell his mango chutney to. What possible excuse could Yoshio use to explain his sudden disappearance, since 'Kaku went back to his home dimension' was not going to cut it...? He hoped Yoshio wouldn’t take as long to get over him as he took to get over Mike...Would he keep the little changes in personality he'd picked up with Kaku? And would the cat ever get over Lucci's visit...?



Kaku took the blow on his forearms with a grunt and then shot forward in a move he'd used successfully on Lucci back in the old days. Lucci's strength was unbelievable, but Kaku was just that bit more maneuverable. The blow connected, but didn't do much harm. Kaku fell back in the face of the retaliation, watching for any hint of an opening he could exploit. They were fighting without their Zoan powers. Kaku stubbornly refused to resort to his transformation until Lucci did. Which Lucci wasn't going to do since he didn't need it to beat Kaku to a pulp. It was probably for the best; Kaku's Zoan abilities had really gone downhill.



Lucci stepped back so that Kaku could pick himself up from the dirt. The small breathing space was a reward for a somewhat acceptable trade of blows, since Lucci had otherwise no qualms about kicking a man when he was down.

"Do you miss the good life yet?" Lucci asked him, watching Kaku get his balance back with some effort. On Lucci's shoulder, Hattori seemed to be laughing at him; Kaku wondered if he'd gotten concussed at some point in the past hour.

"Hell no, this is so much more fun."

"I saw you shivering in your sleep last night," said Lucci. Kaku shivered now, at the thought of something so lethal near him while he was helpless. How did Lucci always drop off his rations without waking him? "You must miss your bed-warmer."

Kaku wiped his mouth and spat out the grit with a touch of defiance. "If you mean Yoshio, he was my lover."

"Don't you mean your cover?"

"What's wrong, Lucci, jealous?"

Lucci's face was unreadable, but Hattori suddenly rocketed from his shoulder, heading for shelter. That was the only warning Kaku got, and it wasn't enough. The knee connected full force with his abdomen. He bent over it helplessly. A choking cough splattered blood into the dirt.

"That was particularly lame." Lucci didn't sound amused. "If you're going to try to rile me into making a mistake, do try a little harder. As for your little toy back there, at least you had the good sense not to tell him anything more than that you came from another world."

Actually, thought Kaku, staring at the blood on the ground and feeling suddenly cold, he hadn't told Yoshio anything voluntarily, not until his friend had openly questioned his cover story.

He never even saw the next blow.

When the black spots cleared from his vision, he could see Lucci turn from him with a sneer. "We'll continue this tomorrow. Your strength seems to be coming back - at a snail's pace - but your edge is about as cutting as Jyabura's wit."

Kaku's hands clenched into fists. After five minutes, he got slowly to his feet and headed towards the well to wash off. He didn't shiver at the touch of the glacial water tonight. He already felt much colder.

His body must have gotten somewhat used to the punishing effort, or else it had stopped caring; sleep didn't engulf him that time, and left him staring at the ceiling instead, utterly motionless bar the faint movement of his chest.

...Cover. Yes, Yoshio had been part of his cover from the start and had never ceased to be. Kaku had allowed himself to take the man as a lover, and he'd even thought of him as an ally at some point...The infiltrator had fooled everyone, including himself. He'd never given his 'ally' anything but the bare bones of the truth; he'd hidden the greatest part of himself and told Yoshio only what the latter could live with to keep the man's love and support. That didn't make Yoshio an ally or a lover, just a tool Kaku kept closer to his chest.

He'd thought he was happy with Yoshio. He'd thought he was happy back there, in Otherworld. A part of him did honestly miss it, an aspect of himself he hadn't known existed until his days in Vancouver...but then again, so much of his persona and his feelings had been fake, part of his infiltration, that he couldn't be sure anymore. He really had fooled himself...kept himself busy, merrily juggled the lives of Karl Crandall and a CP9 agent on a mission, staying grounded in the here and now...all to avoid looking at the bigger picture. Kaku had known on a plane of thought he did not allow himself to visit, that Otherworld did not have trans-dimensional portals; their physicists had no knowledge of even their theory, and though Kaku knew they were possible, he wasn't smart enough to invent and implement a whole new branch of physics by himself before he died of old age.

What would have happened if Lucci hadn't shown up? Kaku would have had a meltdown a few years down the road as he finally had to face the fact he was never going back. Would he have been able to move on from there? That had been the heart of his fear, the question he'd never allowed himself to ask in all the time he'd been there. Because years ago, Kaku had accepted to sell his soul and drench his hands in blood for a purpose, and if he ever lost that purpose, then he would have nothing. He would be nothing. And there was nothing more terrifying than that. Maybe someone called Karl Crandall could have eventually picked up the pieces and made a new life for himself; a better life according to most standards...but there was no escaping who he really was, and Kaku suspected that in reality, he'd have ended up leaving Yoshio anyway to join the Foreign Legion or become a hired gun, one of those hollow men who killed because life no longer meant anything to them until someone put them down like rabid dogs.

But Lucci had come for him, and Kaku had returned without hesitation and was now getting the shit beaten out of him and making no efforts to escape it. He'd left it all - the small joys, the luxuries, the friendship, the choices he might have made, the freedom to explore another man he could have been - because he did not have the right to accept them. He'd never had. He'd made that choice long before now.

An ache in his chest where no blow had landed...Yoshio. Poor guy. But then again, he wouldn't be the first of Kaku's victims and, assuming Lucci didn't kill him in the days to come, he'd probably not be the last.

That assumption - that Lucci wouldn't kill him - was far from a given.



Lucci dodged, an honest-to-goodness dodge which meant he'd not been sure his Tekkai could have handled that Rankyaku without some repercussions. Bricks, gravel and soil crunched and rippled up in a straight line behind him like a field beneath some giant's plow. They were fighting in another part of the wrecked compound, finishing the job of totally trashing it. There'd been lines of curious guards on the walls the first day, but somebody must have chased them away, for discretion and for safety.

Kaku closed on his opponent before the geyser of debris could start on its downward trajectory, Soru taking him within striking range. A quick blow to the shoulder- if he could take a notch out of Lucci's punches-

Feint!

Kaku saw it coming this time, not that that helped him much. Lucci's graceful spin-kick hit him hard enough to hammer right past Tekkai and send him rocketing fifty feet away, crashing straight through a pillar and into the remains of a barracks on the way.

...Kaku stared up at the sky; the roof of the building had fallen some time ago already. He was thinking of his old instructor's swords again, possibly on the heels of the dazed thought that if he had his own blades, he might have a chance. He remembered his instructor continuously caring for his weapons. But a sword shouldn't be polished daily like that if it wasn't used. Particles of oil and powder would accumulate in the grooves, in the microscopic edges of the blade. It should only be cleaned, edged and polished if it served regularly. A sword wasn't a sword when it was kept in a case, whether it tarnished or was kept to a uselessly pristine shine that dulled its true purpose. A sword was only a sword when it killed.

A crunch of boots in the debris, a soft 'Coooo-roooo?'

"Do you want to stop?"

It must be evening, Kaku concluded; he'd thought for a minute his vision was growing dim. Lucci always asked him that question at the end of every single day. Do you want to stop? Do you want to call it quits? Do you want to give up? Kaku was convinced this was just another form of torture.

"Stop? Why stop, this is such a kick," he gasped in English, feeling the mark left by Lucci's boot on his abs.

"If you have something to say, do so in a language we both understand."

"...got nothing to say."

"See you tomorrow then." Lucci turned on his heels and walked away. He slept somewhere else on the compound. Kaku didn't have the energy to figure out where.

...He could have just said, yeah, I want to stop...

But he wasn't sure he could live with the consequences. To start with, he wasn't sure he would still live as a consequence; Lucci's pride in CP9 was as fierce and uncompromising as his pride in his own abilities. A small but not insignificant number of recruits over the years had suffered for not being up to Lucci's standards. Usually Lucci did nothing more than stand by and let them pay for the consequences of their own failure, though he occasionally took a more direct approach if they'd been particularly incompetent. And there were times he relented, when he judged the candidate had enough promise where a bit of whipping into shape might be enough to do the trick. Kaku wasn't entirely sure of it, but he thought his life might nonetheless depend on remaining in that category.

Sometimes the candidates quit by themselves, because CP9 agents were harsh instructors...Kaku had 'shaped up or shipped out' a couple of newbie agents himself over the years. Maybe not this roughly, Kaku told himself, wiping his mouth with a shaking hand and looking at the smear of half-dried blood. At least, he didn't think he'd been this much of a bastard.

Another minute and he'd gathered the strength and breath to stagger to his feet and limp his way to the ruined forge. He examined his body as he washed it off in the well water, looking for serious injuries rather than merely aching ones. It looked like he was going to live and fight another day. Lucci's blows were a scientific masterpiece: designed to hurt, to stress-test Tekkai to the max, yet not cripple. Oh yeah, the man was a real expert...

Kaku dropped the rag into the bucket and watched a swirl of blood dissolve in the water. Even if Lucci had been guaranteed not to kill him, he couldn't give up. He was not allowed to. He'd gone too far. Past assassinations, the friends he'd betrayed on Water 7, what he'd almost done to Yoshio, all stood like milestones indicating he'd gone further and further down his chosen path. He was not allowed to spare himself now. That was why he didn't hate Lucci for putting him through this; no, quite the contrary. If Lucci ended up killing him, he'd simply be snapping a sword that had been damaged beyond repair before it could break in battle and compromise what they fought for: peace, order, Justice. Kaku could actually understand that. Maybe that was the worst part of it all. He did understand. If the roles were reversed, he'd do the same. Every night, Lucci asked him if he wanted to stop. Every night, Kaku said no.





This is a dream, thought Kaku, perfectly lucid. He was standing in a non-space and in utter darkness, totally empty; nothing but the sound of panicked footsteps from a source he couldn't pinpoint.

As he waited, passive in his dream state, a faceless victim ran past him, fell, scrabbled in the nothingness that might have been the ground, got to his feet again and staggered on.

Dream. Kaku had had the same one a few times back in Vancouver. He knew this, but the knowledge meant nothing. Wake up, he ordered himself. But he couldn't. He watched, helpless, as the man stumbled- and stopped dead.

The killer had materialized in front of the escaped target and plunged his fingers into the man's chest. The man grunted and stared down at the hand sticking out of his ribcage as if he was surprised it didn't hurt more. He would be dead very soon.

With dreamlike slowness, Kaku's gaze went from the dying man to the killer, and the dreamworld shifted abruptly. It wasn't Lucci this time, as it had been in his previous nightmares.

The killer pulled his cap down with the hand bloodied to the wrist. "Sorry," he said, and actually sounded like he meant it, in a detached sort of way. "It's for a greater good."

"I've finished here," said a voice behind Kaku - Lucci's voice. Kaku smelled smoke.

"All done on my end," his partner replied, rubbing a spot of blood from the sleeve of his tracksuit.

This is a dream, thought Kaku.

Arms fastened around his waist. A whisper like velvet brushed his ear. "Let's extract. I think we deserve a bit of R&R after this one." The words made a promise that touched every inch of his skin.

Kaku looked down at the blood on his hand. "Sure," he said. Lucci pressed into his back, fingertips ran down his chest. Their clothes were already gone. Heat spread from where their bodies touched. There were no secrets between them, nothing held back, nothing to hold back when it was all stripped down to bare bone; it was so pure it left him breathless. Kaku glanced down, unsurprised to find that the body on the ground, chest ripped open, was his own...it didn't matter; the weak might perish but Justice prevailed.

Kaku ripped himself out of sleep with a shout, hand flying out in a gesture that started as a wild flail and ended in a cutting wash of air much like a flying Shigan. It shattered the stool and split the bricks behind it. In his peripheral vision, Kaku saw a shadow dart away.

Lungs heaving, Kaku stared at the remains of the stool and the wall. The masonry made familiar crick-crick noises, until the weight of his gaze tipped the scale and the wall cracked and crumbled. A beam shifted and settled, sending dust cascading onto Kaku's camp bed, but nothing else fell down.

Kaku finished the night wrapped in a blanket on one end of the bed, propped up by the wall, deep in...well, it was too jagged and primal to be called 'thought'. The next day, his food, drinking water and new clothes were out in the courtyard near the well. And the next day, and the next. Kaku felt at a deeply instinctual level that he'd done something positive - shown himself to be too dangerous to approach, perhaps - but his mind had become too pared down to care and he was in no way stupid enough to let himself get hopeful or distracted.



Kaku stared at the piece of glass in his hand, the relic of a broken window. The way it caught the last glimmer of fading sunlight was hypnotic, like something he'd known once, but the parallel escaped him.

He lifted it and sliced through the first lock of hair. A ginger curl floated to the debris littering the floor of the forge, followed by others. Stupid. Should have done this days ago. The sweat-plastered strands had escaped his cap and gotten into his eyes today when he whipped his head around. Nearly got him killed. He could have asked Lucci for some scissors rather than hack his way through, but his mind seemed set down iron tracks and he would be damned if he deviated enough to ask Lucci for anything, however minor.

Darkness fell, but he continued to slice and cut by touch alone until he was done.



Kaku spun at a speed beyond thought. He'd not actually had a single thought for the past hour, it was all instinct. Thinking through his moves would have seen him plastered to a nearby wall. Weave- dodge- feintspinstrike- A thud. Connected. Lucci exhaled into the blow, a grunt of pain; grabbed Kaku's arm- move-

Tekkai!

Face in the dirt once more. He picked himself up and tried again.



He fought until the man he'd been back in Vancouver should have keeled over, and then he fought until he was fairly certain he was getting near his former shape- but he couldn't be sure, he couldn't be sure. And Lucci did not stop.

Until, on the tenth day - or possibly the eleventh or twelth, or hundredth - Kaku broke.



Blood ran from Lucci's lips and forehead, but Kaku had made a mistake on the follow-through and now-

Lucci hit him full-strength. The hand with a deathgrip on Kaku's shoulder kept him from tumbling out of range, and Lucci wound his fist back and did it again. Kaku held on to Tekkai for dear life; it kept the damage from seriously injuring him. It didn't stop it from hurting. He-

He couldn't do this-

Lucci was nearly twice his strength even when Kaku was at the top of his form. He couldn't do this! If Lucci kept this up, it was going to kill him.

Kaku tore himself away from the grip, staggered back, but he couldn't get his stance right, he couldn't- his body was shaking. He needed- needed to-

Lucci watched, dispassionate. The sweat trickling down his neck could have belonged to somebody else. He'd taken off the jacket in the morning, and one arm of his shirt had been ripped to shreds by a glancing Ryankaku. There were bruises on his upper arm, near the tattoo. It swam in Kaku's vision.

Then the killer took one step towards him, another. Kaku hunched over the pain, helpless as a bloodied fist drew back.

The weakened plea burst out on a gasp, hands flung out in surrender. "Lucci- no- stop!"

Lucci stopped immediately. The next blow didn't land, and he even caught Kaku's arm, steadying him as Kaku staggered and fell.

"Easy," Lucci grunted. "Breathe."

Kaku's knees hit the ground with a thump, and that was all the support he needed. He whipped around and put the kind of speeds he could once pull into a single Shigan aimed at Lucci's femoral artery.

That he might have killed someone so close to him didn't cross his mind; maybe at that point he believed nothing he could do would ever kill Lucci, but this would sure keep the son of a bitch busy for a few days. What would have happened right after that blow had landed and the instant before Lucci had to deal with a serious hemorrhage was not something that Kaku had considered either. He'd reacted purely on instinct. Fight. Kill. Survive.

As it were, he wasn't going to have the opportunity of finding out exactly what Lucci would have had time to do before the blood loss got to him, because the blow had been blocked an inch from the inner seam of Lucci's pants, impact absorbed by Tekkai as well as strength and speed beyond imagining.

"I'd call that a low blow," said Lucci, after a heart-thudding two seconds.

Kaku blinked, trying to catch up with events, staring stupidly at his hand caught in the grip of steely fingers.

"About time. I was wondering if you'd ever make it back."

Kaku made a weak questioning noise. Lucci hoisted him to his feet by a handful of shirt, grabbed him by the back of the neck and forced Kaku to look him in the eye. His voice was steely with an undercurrent of urgency, the need to punch through and make every word count.

"Don't ever regret that place, or him, or anything you found there. Don't ever doubt you made the right choice. That comes down to doubting who we are and what we do. Do you understand me, Kaku? We do not have the luxury of doubt. Doubt will kill you."

"And that'd be a pity," said Kaku's mouth without bothering with cerebral input, "when you're doing such a fine job of it."

A short silence and then Lucci laughed, a sound like glory and murder. He was still laughing when he crushed their bloodied mouths together.

The first thought that crossed Kaku's mind was that he was going to live. And what's more, he finally knew - deep inside his bones - why he was going to live, and for what. He finally remembered it all. And now he was going to do what he did best, which was live to fight another day, and rip the most out of life while he could.

The thought rushed through his body like an electric current, temporarily overriding even the pain; it was hot and fiery as it wrapped around the fingers digging into Lucci's arms, and it coiled down his back and into his loins. It was the natural response to a reprieve, to a battle won; the body wanted to enjoy to the fullest the life it had fought to save, and damn the consequences.

The kiss grew fierce, demanding. Kaku's hands fastened on muscles like steel, on Lucci's skin, on the body he'd been trying to fill full of holes for the past number of days. Lucci's fingers were anchored in Kaku's hair, exerting some control on the wild thing that had burst into life between them. The savage, desperate kiss dissolved in a gasp when Lucci ground into him, throwing their bodies into the mix as well, and it was just like old times again.

He'd wondered if Lucci would want to go back to their one-time relationship once Kaku had managed to prove himself. Kaku himself hadn't been sure where he stood on that point; he'd barely left Yoshio, and falling back into Lucci's bed as if nothing had happened felt disloyal to them both...But Yoshio had been left behind, Kaku couldn't hurt him any more, while the man who'd cared for Yoshio had been killed in this compound, if he'd ever truly existed at all. And Lucci? Lucci obviously didn't give a damn. He knew he wasn't anywhere near the same plane as Yoshio. He knew he could touch something in Kaku that nobody else could. Lucci had no competition.

And then that bastard stopped! A hand on Kaku's shoulder put a couple of inches of space between them, and the fingers still locked in Kaku's hair held his head away from pursuing that mind-melting kiss. "Hold it," Lucci murmured, words brushing against Kaku's mouth. "We'll pick this up again tomorrow. I don't think you're up to it now."

"Huh? Why?" Kaku ground out, once he'd managed to make sense of the words. He was up for it - painfully so in fact, his body aching for this hard enough to temporarily blot out the other injuries. His brain's wiring had probably been jarred askew yet it seemed perfectly rational to him that if he didn't use the life burning in him to get laid in the next five seconds then he was undoubtedly going to die, possibly of spontaneous combustion.

"Tch, you wonder why? Your stamina levels are dangerously low, fighting all out for ten days without holding back." Lucci's voice was a rough caress with no condemnation. Kaku shuddered, knowing very well Lucci was right but that truth was being acknowledged in a part of his brain which was somewhere else right now, picking daisies. The desires goading Kaku on had no care for stamina levels. "No- come on, you idiot herbivore, you can barely stand."

"We don't have to do it standing. That's what beds are for."

Lucci snorted. "Go wash off and crash for twenty four hours, you'll enjoy it more. Kaku- enough." With a twist he detached Kaku's hands, which hadn't been listening to him either, from the buttons they were undoing

Kaku broke off with a hangdog expression, fingers resting obediently on the dark material covering Lucci's chest. "I- I'm sorry."

Lucci shrugged acceptance of that apology. "I like your enthusiasm, but it'd be-"

"I should have realized."

"Forget it."

"Ten days of fighting. And you're not that young anymore."

Lucci caught on immediately. He didn't dignify that with an answer, but his narrowed eyes said 'watch it'.

Kaku went right on in the same considerate tones. "I guess you're feeling pretty tired. Stamina levels, yes, I understand."

Lucci gripped Kaku's wrists, about to push him away and walk off in contempt; Kaku gripped the shirt hard and added, "You're thirty now, right? And you've suffered injuries in your life- yeah, I can see where that'd have some impact on a man's performance in the sack, but you know, that's nothing you should feel embarrassed about, I hear it can happen to anybody."

Lucci stared at him, mouth slightly ajar for a short but memorable moment. Then he smiled. It was predatory but with an underlying grudging appreciation. "You live dangerously, do you know that?"

"It's who I am," said Kaku as they bore each other down to the hard ground in a move like an echo of a life-and-death battle.



Kaku woke up in stages, all of them painful. He tried to throw off the coverlet that was grinding down on him as if it was lined with lead. His body did nothing more than twitch and subside.

...I think I overdid it, thought Kaku, as memory started to trickle back. The insane days of fighting, only a nighttime away yet they'd already taken on the quality of past nightmares. He remembered trying to kill Lucci yesterday, and how Lucci had found that to be very promising. He remembered what Lucci had told him; it was engraved in his mind like the words on a door that had finally reopened. He remembered the kiss-

He remembered the next bit vividly too. The bit where Lucci had in essence told him to cool down and get some rest, and how Kaku had refused to take that wise advice and had instead felt him up and cast dispersions on Lucci's resilience and on his-...Kaku screwed his eyes shut and would have buried his face in the pillow had he been capable of moving. Lucci was a cold, calculating bastard with piles of restraint, but no male of the species liked that kind of disparagement. Pushing that particular button had gotten Kaku what he'd asked for, and then some. In hindsight, he was lucky to be alive.

Flashes of last night kept interfering with his attempt to panic at his immobility. Lucci grinding into him, biting- the fall of his hair as he leaned over his prey- a smirk as Kaku bit right back...pleasure stacked on lust and need until it crested way too soon, but it'd still been...pretty...damn...good...Though not good enough to justify crawling everywhere on all fours for the rest of his life.

He wasn't permanently injured as such, he could tell from a quick inward look. But he'd used Rokushiki too much, gotten hit a few too many times, made too many demands on his stamina, and his body had decided that enough was enough and had cut all the utilities until the bills were paid in full.

Kaku turned his attention from his body to its surroundings. They were in Lucci's hideout in the ruins; Kaku remembered getting there - stark naked if memory served - to finish what they'd started in the courtyard. It was better appointed than Kaku's forge; it had a proper bed, a table, and all its walls, though the glass in the single wide window was broken. Hattori dozed on the door of a weatherworn wardrobe hanging off its hinges. The bird's master was a warm dip in the mattress at Kaku's side. From the cadence of his breathing, Lucci was waking up. Good. Kaku could use some help.

The shape at Kaku's side shifted, stretched.

"Lucci." It came out as a croak. "There's something wrong. I- I can't move."

"I should bloody well hope so," Lucci grumbled, sitting up and swinging his feet off the bed. His movements were stiff as he reached up to rub at one shoulder. That he made no attempt to hide it meant as much as the roll in the sheets last night. Kaku was no longer an outsider, a potentially compromised agent; he was back in the fold. "Your resilience and single-mindedness are laudable, but they can sure be a pain to break through."

"Um, Lucci? Help?"

"Yes, yes," said Lucci testily, reaching for a robe hanging from a nearby chair. It slipped over a back covered in sleek muscles and a few bruises. "Go back to sleep, you've only had a few hours. That will help."

"Sleep? I'm paralyzed, I might have permanent damage, and you think I can just nod off?" Kaku bit back, irritated.

Lucci glanced back at him from the door and grinned cruelly. "You could if you tried, but I think you'll pass out first."

Kaku glared at the closed door, though he seemed to have trouble focusing his eyes-

- and then Lucci was shaking him awake, and the fall of light through the paneless window informed him he'd been sleeping for well over two hours.

Kaku could do more than twitch now, but walking was still nothing more than a distant hope. Lucci gave him a 'how bloody useless' look, wrapped a blanket around Kaku's shoulders and helped him to his feet, one of Kaku's arms slung over his shoulder. Kaku concentrated on hobbling and not swearing as muscles spasmed. He looked around only when they were halfway across a small garden gone to grass.

"Where we going?"

"I ordered the grunts to drop off some decent food. I also got a hot bath ready for us; the compound had some large tubs and steam rooms for the officers, and since it was off to the side, it was left mostly intact by the battle and the explosion. Maybe you'll be able to move afterwards."

"Food?" Kaku said hoarsely. "Bath?"

"Yes."

Kaku could feel a feverish energy return to his body at the promise alone. "It's what I've always said, Lucci; all those people who think you're a heartless creep just don't know you very well."

"I'm a professional," said Lucci with that feline smile of his, "so flattery will get you nowhere."

Kaku limped around a corner of what proved to be a dusty bathhouse, half his weight on Lucci's shoulder but mouth still running fine. "Ah, you may be a professional and you put up a good front, but I bet you're glad I'm back."

"Yes, I am," Lucci admitted, the straightforward answer utterly flooring Kaku. "You’re strong, reliable, and we function well in a team; CP9 gains much from that. Besides, the only other one of my acquaintances who'd be able and willing to fight me for ten days straight and still try to kill me at the end is Jyabura, and he's an idiot."

Kaku laughed, unable to stop even when it became painful until Lucci dumped him into the filled tub.



The rest of the day was spent eating, sleeping, taping up sprains and a dislocated shoulder that Kaku had put back himself three days ago and which wasn't doing as well as he hoped, and sleeping some more. Gratifyingly, Lucci was doing pretty much the same thing, though with what he probably considered to be less desperation and a bit more style and grace.

Kaku woke at five in the morning to hear Lucci talking softly from another room. They'd been so isolated these past days that it seemed almost odd for Lucci to be addressing someone else...From the odd tone of the response, the other person involved in this conversation was a den den mushi. A click, and then Lucci went out. The front door closed at the same time as Kaku's eyelids.

An hour later, Lucci disrespectfully toed Kaku's butt beneath the sheet and suggested he stop lazing around or he was going to lose whatever shape he'd managed to recapture.

"Good morning, Lucci," said Kaku, putting as much cheerful venom in it as he could. Ahh, it was just like old days.

A package of soft material landed on his head. "Get up, get dressed. We have a job to do."

"A job?"

"Yes. Don't worry, it will be easy enough for a weakened convalescent to manage."

"I'll give you weakened," Kaku muttered, sitting up and scrubbing at his hair. "What kind of job?"

"The director will give us the specifics."

"We're going to Enies Lobby?"

"No. He's here. They all are."

Kaku blinked at him in the morning sunlight.

Lucci tilted his head towards the nearby walls. "Didn't you notice the inner compound had been rebuilt? This is the gateway to a brand new world; Vegapunk is here, a lot of scientific minds with him, some very expensive and potentially dangerous equipment...In the past year, more and more Marines and government staff have congregated here. There's an even larger sprawl of new buildings on the far side, where there aren't all these debris to clear away. The Tower of Justice was slow in being rebuilt, and anyway too many people knew our home address by then and that's hardly acceptable for a secret organization. When our Director learned that you hadn't died but were on the other side and giving him one hell of a stake in this new venture, he just moved us here. We've been operating out of this place for the past six months."

"Oh." So much time had elapsed. So much was different. "Hey, you mentioned back in Vancouver that the political situation had changed, what-"

"Later. We'll have several days of traveling to get to where we’re going. I'll fill you in." Lucci was already at the door. He was wearing a jacket, a hat, Hattori on his shoulder...Suddenly it was like no time had elapsed at all. "I'm going to go and convince the guards at the exit to the quarantine area that we're not plague carriers. They won't insist on keeping us here forty days; not with a bit of persuasion. Get dressed and meet me at the exit in fifteen minutes."

"Roger."

In the silence that fell once he was gone, Kaku got up, pleased to note that he could move around normally, if stiffly. He used the small bathroom next door. The water wasn't running, Lucci had filled a copper basin to bathe in and to flush the toilet when needed. Kaku examined himself in the cracked and dusty mirror set against the tiles. Rokushiki users had enormous recuperative abilities; he didn't look like a total road accident victim today. Though he sure had done a number on his hair...Had he really hacked at it with a piece of broken glass? He could have sworn that was another nightmare, but from the looks of it, he'd either used that or a lawnmower.

Kaku tilted his head, examined a bruise that ran down his temple to his jaw, swelling the skin over one eye...and something he'd subconsciously noted on his way into the room prodded him suddenly. He twisted around and searched the dim corners of the bathroom; yes, his cap had been dumped there, the one he'd taken back with him from Vancouver. He'd sneaked it out of the infirmary when the rest of his Otherworld clothes had been confiscated. He'd worn it all this time; Lucci, who knew there were some lines that should not be crossed, hadn't taken it from him.

It'd been dropped in a pile of shredded clothes, a bedspread and other sundries that Lucci must have recuperated yesterday from the forge. The ground's keepers were probably going to burn them all. Kaku picked up the cap and went back to the mirror, rubbing at a spot of blood on the band. He fitted it on, tilting it so that it shaded the bruise. Then he took it off and looked at the logo. He remembered shopping for this with Yoshio when someone had stolen his old black cap at the gym. Yoshio had half-heartedly tried to persuade him to buy a Canucks cap, this being Vancouver, but Kaku had picked the Mighty Ducks one because he thought it was funny. Maybe he should have gone local color, but at the time, in a city that rich with variety, a tiny, unnoticeable individualistic streak would go unnoticed, surely. The synthetic colors were bright in the gloom of the bathroom lit only by a couple of holes in the ceiling. Kaku brushed his finger over the fierce duck...

They'd need him over there again...The powers that be were planning to establish connections with Otherworld once they'd studied the info he'd given them. CP9 might try to block him from going, but if someone of Vegapunk's stature insisted, they'd have to cave, and who else could lead a delegation to the right people and translate for them? It was a given he'd be going back.

Yes. But he'd be going back as a CP9 agent. He had to know who he was. Doubt will kill you...Kaku wasn't a cruel man, and he did not believe he was a bad one, but there was something hard and sharp inside him, something intransigent and dangerous and pure like a steel blade. He'd dedicated it entirely to Justice, since it was better than having it cut randomly, and perhaps that one single choice might seem limiting to people who'd been spoilt with choices all their lives, but for Kaku, it was the only way, and he truly would not have it otherwise.

The cap landed back in the refuse. Kaku tore off the tee and light pants that Lucci had given him yesterday, and dropped them in the pile as well, and headed back, naked, to the bedroom, the only thing going through his mind the distant hope that this time Lucci had remembered underwear...He unrolled the bundle of clothes and smiled with pleasure. It was a tracksuit. Well, well, that was a surprise, considering all the griping Lucci had done in the past about Kaku's abominable lack of style...Kaku had never cottoned on to suits and ties. The clothes felt like a memory as he pulled them on, an old, comfortable sense of belonging. And a cap had tumbled from the bundle. Black, of course. Oh yes, beneath his I'll-spend-ten-days-nearly-killing-you tough guy exterior, Lucci was an old softie at heart, and Kaku would be certain to remind him of this once he'd fully recuperated his ability to dodge.

The large gates out of the wrecked part of the compound were open. Lucci leaned against the thick stone lintel, and looked up as Kaku ambled into the shadow cast by the fortress walls. His eyes rested on what he saw with an air of approval, though true to form, all he said was, "About time. You made me wait. Am I going to have to beat punctuality back into you as well?"

Kaku joined him at the door, hands in his pockets. "Hopefully not. What's the rush, anyway? There are no trains leaving from this island, so we'll have to wait for the evening tide to sail."

"Yes, but the others want to see you. They've been giddy as schoolgirls for days now, hanging around on communication channels better reserved for official business, only to badger me into letting you out, or letting them in, or at least let you come to the den den mushi." Lucci looked disdainful for the record, but Kaku didn't try to hide his pleased grin. "More importantly, the director wants to see us over breakfast to welcome you back into the fold, gloat over the new leverage you've given him with Mariejoie, and then give us our official orders. We're to start the mission 'right away' after that. He didn't bother checking the timetables before tossing that out."

"I see the government's still the same. Hurry up and wait is always the order of the day."

"Some things never change...but we'll leave taxes to the taxman," said Lucci with a sensual smile as he turned towards the door. "Let's get moving."

Kaku fell in at his side. No time to waste. They had a job to do.



END



Whew, that's one year of my life under wraps. One year of my life and a lot of hours goofing off at work. Comments, crits, thoughts, rambles, quick thumbs-up in passing (presumably if you got this far, it won't be a quick thumbs-down, but hey, you never know) all are welcome; what pulled you in, what turned you off...It all helps me better my writing.