Name: More Than Duty
Author: dahar
Series: Full Metal Panic
Summary: Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get the one you're protecting. Completed one-shot, Sousuke/Kaname. Sousuke's point of view.
Category: Action/light romance
Rating: PG-13 for violence, blood, some language
Spoilers: The opening series arc (episodes 1-7) and part of episode 10; placed indeterminate time after that.
Disclaimer: Full Metal Panic and all related characters and terms belong to Shoji Gatoh and Shiki Douji, et al. No profit was obtained through the writing of this fan fiction.
Author's Notes: Written Dec. 24, 2005 - Jan. 7, 2006, revisions finished Feb. 11, 2006. My first fanfic. Many thanks to Circular Infinity for, once again, being willing to beta. Comments and reviews are welcome.
More Than Duty
She prefers it when I call before I come over, but I prefer checking in on her in person, and I'm close by. She is likely to get upset when I admit that I did not come by to tell her some vast and exciting news, nor to bring her a gift, nor to invite her somewhere, but rather simply to make sure that she was there, but I am accustomed to this. She is equally capable of being angry in person or on the phone. In person she can throw things at me, but she is also more likely to stay angry throughout the conversation on the phone. In person, she may decide she is no longer upset after all, and she can't hang up on me. Once she hung up on me seven times in three minutes.
I ring the doorbell and wait. Nothing. I ring it again. Maybe she's not home. I will go check the cafe where she likes to get milkshakes, and then start calling her friends. It's a pleasant summer afternoon; there are a number of places she might be.
I'm turning away when I catch a glimpse of pink against a bush. It's her cellphone, discarded like trash. I would have considered it possible that it fell out of her bag as she left, but it's on, and the number half-written on the screen is mine.
Her balcony is easy to get to, too easy; I've tried to convince her to move, but she absolutely refused. The glass door into her apartment is still intact, but I'm inside in five seconds. I brush glass from my jacket as I take in the room.
An open photo album and a set of fresh prints on the table, partly labeled, but her sandals gone. No sign of forced entry at the front, but possible scuffs of a struggle in the hallway. One attacker, two at most -- but there may have been others in the outside hall, or waiting downstairs. She's still alive, though, or she wouldn't have been able to start dialing my number before -- what, she dropped it? It was knocked out of her hand? She threw it away intentionally for me to find?
The last bits of glass hit the carpet almost soundlessly, and I am off on a swift search of her apartment. No further clues, no waiting ambushes. I pause again at the table where she was sorting photographs. The one she was apparently working on when she answered the door is of her, flushed and glowing as she beams at the camera, holding up the yearly class prize. I am in the background, a dark glowering shadow to her delight.
I put the photograph down again. I do not think I am very photogenic.
I vault off the balcony again. I have only one clue as to where they went, the direction from the building the cellphone lay in, but I'll have to make do.
I will find you, Chidori. I'm coming.
"I'm coming!"
I skidded around the corner and sprinted the last ten feet, not slowing as I leapt through the closing doors and into the train.
The two girls blinked at me. "Why are you in such a rush, Sagara-san?" Tokiwa asked.
"I saw Chidori waving," I said. "I thought you might be in danger and signaling for help." The only other occupant of the carriage, an elderly gentleman with a walker, snored loudly. "It appears, fortunately, that I was -- "
THWACK!
"Military nut!" she yelled as I picked myself up. Tokiwa snapped a photo. "Paranoid idiot!
"The next train doesn't arrive for seven minutes," I said, probing the bump on my forehead. No blood, so I ignored it. "If you had been kidnapped, hijacked, held hostage, struck ill -- " Her eyes were narrowing, and Tokiwa took another picture. " -- lost, wounded, or in need of other assistance, it would have required a helicopter or AS to catch up to you."
She made a strangled sound, gripping her papers so tightly they left ink smudges on her fingers.
"I am relieved to see you unharmed, Chidori," I finished, and braced for impact.
Her fingers unclenched, and her face changed. "Idiot," she said again, and her voice was still tight but she didn't hit me.
I do not understand her. Someday if I do, I will make a training program based on her psychological profile, to enable others to predict her reactions with greater reliability and accuracy.
Accuracy is everything, but fortunately I have trained diligently in that area. Three shots take out the security cameras within .6 seconds, and I am up and running. I crash through the door and feel a bullet graze me; the gun shudders in my hands, and the guard falls before he can fire again. A radio beeps. "What's going on? What was that?"
I almost shoot it, then pick it up instead and turn it on. "A stray dog."
A pause. It beeps again. "Is everything okay down there?"
"Fine," I say, and turn it off.
This is only an observation room. Simplistic, but clearly of a military design. I had no illusions that she had been taken by your run-of-the-mill kidnappers, but this confirms it, as does the caliber of gun the guard was armed with. Military grade, although not the newest -- either they are short on resources, or they have a certain nostalgia for outdated weaponry.
There is only one other door; it is protected by a keypad requiring a security code. The guard is dead, so I must make do. I empty his otherwise worthless gun into the door hinges, and it crashes open. Subtlety is not, fortunately, my intention. I toss the gun, now no threat at all, into the corner and start running through the door.
The hallway is long, made of a steel variant, and slopes downward at an angle of approximately twelve degrees. I pick up speed and by the end am moving fast enough that I barely have time to shoot out the door before I'm inside. It is some kind of underground hangar or garage, coldly lit, lots of machinery but not a single AS in sight. There are four men, all in military-type fatigues -- they are taken off guard, and I dive behind a large steel barrel and start firing. Their own guns begin to roar, but I am well concealed.
"Who the hell is that?" one yells.
"No goddamn idea, but I'm gonna have his blistered hide," another bellows. "Shoot the oil drum, blow the bastard sky-high!"
They are amateurs. I would not have secured myself behind the barrel if I had not identified it as the type usually employed to transport pasteurized dairy products.
I hear the click of an empty cartridge coming out, and in the tiny pause while he reloads and the gunfire is less thick, I make a flying roll to one side, come up, and drop two of them before they swing around to meet my new angle of attack.
I reload my own gun and sprint across the floor, shooting one more and tackling the last. His gun goes flying and I press the muzzle of mine to his temple. "Where is the girl you kidnapped? Where is Chidori?"
"Where is Chidori?"
"She went up to the restaurant on the fourth -- ooh, a turtle!" Tokiwa began taking pictures. I gave it a quick glance -- it was a leatherback, threat level zero -- and headed towards the stairs. The aquarium was of moderate interest, but I had seen most of the flora and fauna before in their native habitats, so I was not distracted from my mission.
She was at a small two-person balcony table, a tall bright red drink in front of her. She was playing idly with the straw and looking out over the cliff-edge to the sea.
"Chidori."
She jumped, then sagged back in her chair. "Oh. It's you, Sousuke. Stop creeping up on people like that."
"I apologize for startling you. May I join you?"
Her eyes widened a little, and she looked at me strangely. Perhaps I had been rude and overstepped some social boundary. I was about to withdraw my request when she actually smiled a little and nodded. "Yes, sit down."
I sat and folded my hands on the table, fixing my gaze on her. "Why did you choose this table, Chidori? There are many others which are free."
Again strangely, she blushed a little. "I didn't think anyone would be joining me," she said quickly. "I didn't want to be selfish and take a table with more than two seats. Oh, and this one has the breeze from the sea, too. And isn't the view beautiful?" She turned her face back to the window a little.
"There is only a one-meter railing protecting you from a vertical drop of three hundred meters. If an assassination attempt were to be made, you would be in an extremely vulnerable position. Or kidnapping -- they could lower a soldier from a helicopter, seize you, and be gone."
Her face had flushed again, but her eyes were no longer strange and soft, they were bright with anger. "Don't you ever think about anything else?" she snapped. "Is everything always in terms of targets and weaknesses with you?"
"I'm a soldier. It is my responsibility -- "
"To be a single-minded lunatic!"
" -- to protect myself and those around me at all times. If something were to happen and I were insufficiently prepared, any harm done would be my fault."
"No one's going to attack me, idiot," she said, but she seemed calmer. "I'm a high schooler."
"If you were just a normal high schooler, Chidori, I would not be here."
She looked down again, fingers curling around her glass, voice so quiet I could barely hear it. "Then I guess I can put up with your being an obsessive nut."
"So you will move to a table farther from the balcony?"
THWACK!
"No," she said calmly, and glanced out the window again.
I glance out the window as I run by and realize it isn't a window at all, but a porthole, and I'm not in another underground branch of the building, I'm in a ship. A cargo ship, I think, or disguised as one. A good way to smuggle a prisoner overseas quietly, provided you're in no rush.
According to my information from the man in the hangar, I am nearly to the hold where they are keeping her. I keep running, soft and fast, run held low but at the ready. Where are they taking her? Who is behind this? Is she all right? An image of the first time I rescued her flashes through my mind -- the grinning scientist with her chemicals and drugs, Gauron leering. Her on the table, held down, her screams piercing the thin metal walls.
My fingers tighten on my gun. I had come in time to prevent permanent injury, but she had suffered. Even that much again is unacceptable.
The cargo bay door looms ahead. I kick it open and dart inside. Five brawny men in oil-stained coveralls look up in surprise, then fear. Techies of some kind, unarmed, threat level three. I cover them with my gun, eyes flicking around to check for ambushes, exits, her. "Where is she? The girl you kidnapped?"
"C-c-calm down, mister," one of the techies quavers. "Kidnapped? There's no girl here."
Ignorant or lying? I am saved the decision by the muffled sounds of gunfire, beyond the cargo bay. One of the techies faints; I take off towards the sounds, and the rest flee through the door I came through.
There is a door at the other end of the bay, and a maze of passages beyond, the bowels of the ship. I plunge in towards the area the shots came from, listening desperately for any further clues. "Chidori!" I shout, but there is no answer. "Hold on, Chidori!"
"Hold on!" I dived into the pool and shot through the water to where she was surrounded by her attackers. There were eight of them, masquerading as ordinary youths visiting the pool. One of them still had his arms locked around her, immobilizing her while using her as a shield against me. It showed ruthlessness and foresight, as any attempt to drown him would likely doom her as well.
I jackknifed, still underwater, and came up next to him on the other side. Certain nerves will cause the body to relax when pressed; it's difficult to do in the water, but my strikes succeeded well enough that he loosened his hold on her, mouth falling agape. I seized her, and her shriek was cut off as we went under.
Her hair streamed darkly out behind us and tangled itself loosely around my arm as we reached the bottom. I gathered myself and pushed off as hard as I could, my left arm reaching for the surface at a sharp angle, to carry us up and away from the terrorists as fast as possible, my right arm holding her with me.
Halfway to the surface we both realized where my right hand was.
My head was reeling and a lump was forming when we broke the surface, but I managed to get her safely out of the pool, my dizziness and her struggles notwithstanding. As she coughed and caught her breath, I placed myself between her attackers and her and turned to face them. They were retreating to the other side of the pool, dragging the primary attacker with them. He appeared to be having difficulty breathing.
Idiot!" She had gotten her breath back, I noted, as the orange lifesaver connected with my head and I arced slowly out and into the water again. Nor did she appear to be injured, standing wide-legged on the pool rim, chest heaving and teeth bared. Good.
SPLOOSH!
"I cannot believe you attacked them like that," she snarled for the sixteenth time as we sat, wrapped in towels, on the near-empty bleachers. She had refused to go into the pool again, claiming "stress" and "humiliation." I understood not wanting to place herself in danger from further covert attacks and, for my part, had not left her side just in case. Since I managed to get out of the pool, anyway.
"They were posing a clear threat. I had to act."
"We were PLAYING!"
"The tall one was holding you in an overtly aggressive manner."
"He was fooling around! He was being friendly! He was actually showing interest in me! All of which YOU are clearly incapable of on a deep-seated genetic level!"
I opened my mouth, then shut it again. I knew this mood -- nothing I could say would affect matters.
"I can't even have a normal weekend anymore," she went on angrily, gesticulating for emphasis. "Everywhere I go, everything I do, bam, there you are, getting in the way, getting me involved in your stupid conspiracy theory paranoia!"
"I was attempting to help you," I said.
"I don't want to be helped by you!" she yelled. "Do you hear me? I just want to be a regular girl, without a military nut for a shadow. I don't need your help!"
I looked down, and she looked away. There was a long pause.
Was it that she disliked me? It was evident that my presence was unwelcome, but I often found it difficult to determine accurately whether her rejection was direction at my actions -- ones which any professional soldier assigned as a bodyguard would also have carried out -- or at me personally. Was I inadequate as a bodyguard? Was I personally offensive? Did she resent Mithril for not protecting her more efficiently against Gauron? She seemed to like Mao and the other soldiers she'd met. Perhaps it was me after all. Perhaps I should request reassignment and suggest Weber or another soldier as my replacement. But they would all be far more visible in a high school setting -- I was the logical choice. But if I was fulfilling my duties poorly, wouldn't it still be better to have someone else?
Aware that my line of reason was starting to go in circles, I shook it off and looked at her again. She was staring down at the people splashing in the pool. I frequently have difficulty reading the subtler expressions of her moods, but she seemed unhappy.
Maybe she felt inadequate.
The thought was striking. She always seemed so confident, so sure. She was always very clear that she did not want a bodyguard, as she had just reiterated a moment before. Perhaps the entire thing was an attempt to pretend she didn't need one, to be as self-sufficient in a military mode as she was in a school environment. Perhaps she thought that it would be seen as dependence or as weakness.
It was absurd, of course. I wouldn't expect those things of her. She's a normal person. Normal people don't know how to assemble or fire a gun, how to take a fall out of a moving vehicle, how to pilot an AS or a submarine. That's okay; that's the way it should be.
I'm not a normal person.
"I would do as much for any civilian," I said, spurred to speak. "Even Captain Testarossa would be my responsibility to protect. You are not weak, you simply have not received appropriate training."
Somehow, this did not seem to mollify her. She had a fixed, unpleasant smile that struck me as oddly carnivorous, and her eyebrow was twitching. "I'm so glad to know you hold me in the exact same regard as Tessa and the entire rest of the world, Sousuke."
Whenever she says my name in that tone of voice, bruises usually follow. I wondered, half-rhetorically, if I could dig myself out of this before she hit me. Attempts to do so meet with an average ninety-four percent failure rate.
"But Tessa is your commander," she went on, voice edged, "and such a valuable member of Mithril. Surely she is of highest priority. She's much more important than I am."
"The Captain is a soldier. She is expected to make sacrifices if necessary, regardless of her importance."
She turned away, but I thought I caught the glimmer of tears before her face was shadowed by her hair. Why was she so upset about this? "Sacrifice herself for the civilian," she bit out. "How noble of her. Spare me the heroics, please. And I'm sure you'd do the same for her?"
"If necessary. She is, as you said, more valuable to Mithril than I am."
She murmured something, but I couldn't make out what. Raising her voice, she demanded aggressively, "And me? I'm not nearly as 'valuable' -- I can't fight, I can't pilot an AS, I certainly can't use the Lambda Driver. Would you for me?"
"Of course," I said.
She paused and turned slowly back toward me. She didn't look like she was planning to hit me. "Truly?"
"Of course," I repeated, somewhat confused. Her eyes were very large, and very...brown. "Is there any question?"
She hesitated, then asked, "If we were all in a situation, Tessa and you and I, who -- I mean, what would you -- who would be the priority to save?"
I'd already been in that situation once and devoutly hoped I never would be again. For once, though, although my intellect might still make the judgment I had before, my instinct and my duty both told me otherwise. "You."
She blushed and looked down. "I shouldn't have asked that," she whispered. "It isn't fair. I'm sorry, Sousuke."
There was something odd about the way she said my name that made me shift in my chair, and I felt my face heating for no discernible reason. "No problem," I said, a little awkwardly. "You have a right to know, so if we are in such a situation you know what to expect of me."
She sighed and smiled, a little back to her usual self. "You are too practical, Sousuke," she admonished. "You need to relax, have a sense of fun, and stop thinking up contingency plans all the time."
"But I must be prepared at all -- "
"Sousuke!" she said warningly, and threw a plastic fork at me. It bounced off my forehead, and she laughed. I was confused, but she seemed amused, not angry. Maybe it was all right after all.
If she is not all right after all this is over, I will be to blame. I am too slow. I should have prevented her being kidnapped to begin with. I should have gotten here faster. I should have found her by now. But the hallways seem deserted. I can hear nothing the ring of my own boots, so I slow to a silent walk, peering around each corner in the futile hope of seeing her hiding there.
An open door. A chair with straps for wrists and ankles. A man on the floor, alive but...giggling. He is drooling helplessly, lips drawn back in a maniacal grin. He gives no sign that he sees me. Next to him lie the mangled shards of a hypodermic syringe in a sticky puddle of a vile yellowish serum. I look at the maddened man chortling on the floor, at the empty chair. The restraining strap for the left hand is stretched oddly but still fastened, while the rest are unbuckled -- she must have forced her hand free. Not without difficulty; there is the faintest film of blood on the edge of the leather. My own hands are cold.
She is not a soldier. But she is strong. It's not a strength that derives from skills or abilities, that relies on an organization or a mission, not even one that comes from beliefs or virtues. She just is, like a core of light that glows into everything that it touches. She is self-sufficient in a way I, for all my training and aptitude, all my carefully honed strength, am not.
I bolt the door closed behind me, trapping the hapless guard in her would-be cell, and head swiftly down the corridor, trailing the gunshot holes in the walls until they peter out, with no further sign of her passage. I will find her. I will find her.
I can find nothing. It is a large ship; three people could circle here for hours without ever finding each other. One of us has the advantage, of course -- he knows the ship. I do not. She neither knows the ship nor has a weapon, unless she somehow procured one during her escape.
A muffled scream from close by. I spin and start to run.
Around a corner I skid to a halt, gun trained on the man at the other end of the corridor, but I can't fire. He holds her in front of him, pinned with a beefy arm, his own gun at her temple. I doubt he would kill her -- she is only valuable alive -- but I cannot even entertain the possibility of risking that. I freeze. He grins. It makes me feel sick.
Her arms are bruised, and her wrists and ankles have angry red marks on them. There are abrasions on her left wrist, superficial but enough to leave a dried bloodstain on her skin. Her eyes are on me, and after I meet them I cannot see anything else about her. I am here, Chidori. I am sorry I was not here before.
"Drop the gun!" the man barks. Slowly I put it down, gaze never leaving them. "Hands up!" I obey. He smirks.
"Why do you want her?" My voice is level, non-threatening. "She means no harm to you."
He laughs. "She means a lot of money, boy."
"You are bounty hunters."
"Shut up," he snarls, humor suddenly gone. "You're a mercenary yourself. You goddamn hypocrite." Without warning, his gun flicks outward and fires, dark muzzle aimed at my chest.
I am already diving into a roll, snatching up my gun as I go. I come up and fire back, once. My bullet is faster than his ability to turn the gun towards her again and pull the trigger. His arm falls away from her, and he topples to the ground. There is blood on the wall behind them, and blood on her rumpled blouse. She is unmoving for a second, eyes huge, before her knees unlock and she slumps down, legs splayed, on the floor beside her captor's corpse. That's okay; that's good. She is a normal person.
I'm not a normal person.
That's okay, too.
I approach and kneel down beside her. "You are bruised."
"I tried to escape. They were angry." She takes a breath and gives me a shaky smile. "I'm -- glad you came."
"I'm glad you escaped the second time," I say, remembering the man drooling on the floor. "Do you know what that serum was?"
She shudders. "They said it would make me docile. I don't know what else it does."
I do not want to think about coming into the room to find her giggling and vacant instead of the guard. "But you're all right."
"Yes. I'm all right."
"Good." I stand and offer her my hand. "I'll call Mithril and have them investigate the rest of the ship. I'll take you home."
She takes my hand, letting me help her up. She is still trembling with stress and fear, and she must be in pain. But she stands straight, steady on her feet, and smiles at me. "Hai, Sousuke," Kaname says.
Fin