Chapter Text
He looks tired. He always looks tired these days. Junpei finds himself hanging in the doorway anyway, just watching, somehow still feeling like a visitor despite of how long they’ve known each other.
But it’s better this way. It’s better for him not to see the longing in Junpei’s eyes, the way his hands curl into fists at the thought of revenge, finding the man who did this to them, taking that man by the shoulders and shaking him back and forth, screaming in his face until his voice gives out, how could you, how could you do this, she was my friend, she was innocent, she didn’t deserve it.
“We need bread. I’m going out.” He steps into the kitchen, steeling his resolve and placing a shaky smile on his lips. A peace offering. Please don’t hate me for this.
Carlos looks up from the paper, his tired eyes meeting Junpei’s. He can see the shadows underneath, the worry and sleepless nights. But nothing can stop him now, not even the thought of all those hospital bills he’s leaving Carlos alone with, or how they had learned to be at least glad that they had each other through this.
“Alright,” the words come out toneless and soft, so much that Junpei has to strain to hear it. Carlos turns back to the paper, but Junpei can tell that he isn’t really reading it.
So he pulls on his coat, struggling to give the moment the sense of finality that it deserves, hoping the universe could just give Carlos this one small mercy despite all he’s gone through. He doesn’t know what’s more cruel, for Carlos to not see it coming, or for him to somehow know and let Junpei go anyway.
This is a goodbye. It’s a goodbye, but it doesn’t feel like one. So he grabs his wallet and turns away. He wishes for one wild, breathless moment, that he could put this all aside and just go out and buy bread like he said he was going to.
“Junpei?”
He spins around, almost too eager for Carlos to call him back, for him to figure out Junpei’s plan and tell him how stupid he’s being, I need you, how could you do this to Maria? How could you leave us like this?
Carlos’ eyes are searching him, scared and listless as they often were these days, and he offers a brief smile despite the energy it seems to take from him. “You’re a good kid, Junpei.”
It breaks his heart. Doing this will hurt Carlos more than anything Junpei could have said to him. Doing this is something he might never be able to go back from.
But instead of saying any of that, he nods, forcing a smile and a laugh, and he says, weakly, “it’s just bread, dude.”
The first rule of bank robbery is to have fun and be yourself.
Santa shoves the bag in his hand and he doesn’t need to be told, he just runs. Flashing lights and screaming sirens fill the air around him and blur his vision as he makes it out of the bank, Santa and All-Ice following close behind him. Where’s Clover? She should have been right across the street, that’s where they left her.
“Fuck,” Santa spits, looking around wildly, “Where the hell is Clover?”
Junpei ducks into an alley, holding the bag close to his chest. His heart beats violently in his ribcage and every moment he spends outside and not in the car sends another wave of adrenaline and vulnerability shooting through his veins.
“She fucking ditched us,” Santa seethes, one step ahead of him as they race through the alleyway. They’re in between cop’s shift rotations and they bank they chose is a little farther away from the heart of the city and it’s the middle of the god damn night, but none that means anything because every moment they spend on foot and not inside the car narrows their chance of survival inch by inch.
Junpei stays quiet, gripping the bag with white knuckles and trying to ration his breath. He can hear the bank’s sirens still, from the next block over, but he shoves the sound from his mind and focuses on running instead. Running, he can do. Running is what he’s good at.
The second rule of bank robbery is to always have a backup plan.
But he slows his pace, wanting to stay by Santa. He could run faster than any of them, but he doesn’t know the way and isn’t good at making decisions under pressure. And besides, Santa has more experience than him. He’ll know how to fix this.
“What’s plan B?” He calls over his shoulder as they round the corner. A car horn blares at them, but Junpei doesn’t stop.
“Fuck if I know,” Santa pants, “We’ll jack a car. Keep an eye out.”
“Where’s All-Ice?”
“Just--” Santa slides over the roof of a car and darts across the street. “Looks like she split. Stop asking so many questions and just run. ”
So he does.
He know he’s putting too much distance between him and Santa, but running is the only thing in this dumb plan that he knows how to do, so he focuses on the feeling of the ground under his feet, leaping over fallen garbage cans and weaving through traffic, propelling himself forward until he spies a parked car in a rather quiet street.
He’s in front of the woman in seconds as she nudges the door shut, and she hardly has time to scream as he uses his momentum to push her away from the car and harshly onto the ground. Her orange hair is a splash of light against the black road as she twists to look up at him and in the next moment two things happen in quick succession:
One, his hand reaches his gun and he points right at her fiery orange head.
Two, she completes the throw and her keys skid right down the road, under the golden street lights and straight into the gutter.
His gun clicks and she freezes, turning back to look at him with wide blue eyes as the color drains from her face. She’s afraid. She’s watching him quietly and he pushes his feelings away, fighting the urge to cast a panicked look over his shoulder. Did Santa follow him? Or was he picked up? Or caught? Or maybe he took a wrong turn?
He doesn’t want to shoot her.
“Stay on the ground,” he tells her, his voice strained and quiet. “Please don’t move.”
“Hey!” Right on cue, Santa rounds the corner, glancing wildly around as he jogs up to Junpei, spitting out a string of curses as he glares at the woman and tries to catch his breath.
“Nice of you to finally show up,” Junpei says, as casually as he can manage with his heart pounding, with the gun in his hand. He tries to portray an air of confidence, like this was all meant to happen, and he isn’t about to cry. But for all the woman knows, it was.
He beckons towards the woman, doing his best to hide the way his nerves leap when Santa’s eyes lock onto his. Nodding, Santa takes his place, holding the woman in place with his own gun as Junpei draws his tools out of his bag and gets to work. He tries his best to steady his breathing, but it doesn’t work. The last time he did this, there was significantly less pressure.
Well, here goes nothing.
He takes the screwdriver from his tool bag. It isn’t what he usually uses, but he dropped his spark plug the last time he did this because his hands were shaking too much, because there was too much pressure and he was still a newbie and had only jacked pontiacs before that, and now how was he supposed to do this new car without studying how to disengage the alarm system beforehand?
Shit. Right. His hands are shaking again. He can hear sirens in the background. They’re running out of time.
He hates being out in the open like this. But the good thing about late nights and the neighborhood they chose is that they have time to improvise like this. If they had tried a stunt like this in the capital, well, they would have been slammed onto the pavement the moment they realized Clover wasn’t in position. What happened to her, anyway?
“Tenmyouji,” Santa growls, “Hurry the hell up.”
Right.
He places the screwdriver on the corner of the window and braces himself, one, two--
On three, he jams his hand against the base of the screwdriver and the glass shatters. Before it has even reached the ground he has a hand inside unlocking it, and he throws the bag in the back seat.
Distracted, Junpei leans over to unlock the door for Santa and pulls two slips of metal from his pocket, one sleek and one jagged, jamming both of them and turning once, twice, three times, fighting off panic as the car stalls. If only she hadn’t thrown her keys down into the sewer. Santa opens the door, standing with one foot inside, pointing the gun at the woman from over the roof. Junpei looks at her from the side mirror, freezing for a moment as he catches the fear in her eyes as the she stares into the gun, the way her hands are held up, they way her entire body shakes.
On the fourth try, the car starts. Junpei jerks the car into drive and wastes no time in hitting the gas, hearing Santa curse again as he pulls the door shut, just as they they whip around a corner.
Too fast, too fast. They almost tip.
“Get it together,” Santa snarls, clutching the grab handle and leaning into the turn, his shoulder pressed up against the window as the tires squeal against the wet road.
“Sorry sorry sorry,” The words come out in a rush as they swerve around a car, finally putting some real distance in between them and the bank. There aren’t many cars on the road. The number on the speedometer creeps up and up and up.
“This is a shit show , do you know that?” Santa snaps, loudly. “This is a disaster. Take the next left and lose this idiot behind us before the next light.”
He glances at the rearview and realizes that they’re being followed. He takes a sharp turn into an alleyway and winces as the police car doesn’t make the cut and smashes into the corner of the alley.
“Don’t get onto the bridge,” Santa pulls on the wheel and they speed past the ramp. “It’s a death trap. Just keep going to the parking garage.”
“I don’t know the way,” Junpei blurts, panic spiking in his voice as he clips the curb and the car jostles. His hands are shaking on the warm leather of the steering wheel, his leg trembling as he presses on the gas, his breath caught in his throat as they speed through another red light and the oncoming car skids to a halt, the driver leaning heavily on the horn.
“I’ll get us there,” Santa says, calmly, staring at the road ahead.
“How?” Junpei cries. “You don’t know it either! The only one who knew how to get there was Clover.”
“I’ve lived in this city my whole life, jackass,” Santa shoots back, “Just do what I tell you to, okay?”
“O-okay.” This time he can’t hide how his voice shakes.
He hears sirens all around him, but he can’t tell where they’re from. Are they even really happening at all? What direction are they coming from? He doesn’t know where he’s going. He’s going to get them both killed.
“Just keep going straight,” Santa commands him, his voice now strangely confident compared to how frazzled he had been earlier. “They’re going to throw a spike strip into the road and you’re going to fishtail to the left, got it?”
“How do you know that?”
“Ask questions later,” Santa’s dark eyes stare into the road, the glow of the street lights catching on them in sharp, steady bursts. “June’s coming to pick us up.”
The leather of the steering wheel is warm under his sweaty grip. He tries to loosen it, but finds that he can barely move his hands at all except to tighten the fist he’s made. He used to be really strict about ten and two. His old driver’s ed instructor would be ashamed if she knew what he was doing now.
“This is insane,” Junpei hears himself say, but it doesn’t really sound like his voice or like it’s coming from him at all. The adrenaline pouring through his veins has lifted him directly out of his body.
But he doesn’t have time to think about it, because he sees the intersection and he sees the spike strip and he doesn’t think, he just pulls the wheel and holds his breath. The smoke and squealing of tires fills his ears, and he waits for the sudden pop, the jerk forward and the stop, or maybe for a roll and his skull to crash against the road, or for him to be pulled out of the car and slammed onto the hood, drop your weapons, drop your weapons!
But instead, his car clips the strip and sends it spinning into the path of another police car, which hits the strip with a thump and costs them two trackers in one move. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. How had Santa known how it was going to play out?
“Nice,” Santa says, just as Junpei floors it.
“The city needs to hire more police officers,” Junpei gasps. “How many was that? Five, six?”
“Lucky for us, they don’t,” Santa grumbles, “They might have been scattered trying to track All-Ice, too. Who knows?”
Junpei hears a siren warble over his head and he dips into another alley, wincing as the side mirrors scrap along the brick. But it seems just wide enough to get through, and he grins in satisfaction as the police car attempts to follow them but doesn’t fit and gets wedged into the mouth of the alley.
“We’re good.” Santa sighs, “We’re good. We’re golden. Pull in here. Hurry.”
Junpei is still jittery, and he moves just a bit too fast through the empty parking garage, sliding unceremoniously in between two spots and jerking the gear into park. Santa is already outside and jogging towards the car waiting for them in the time it takes for Junpei to register that the car has stopped at all.
Junpei pulls his bag from the backseat and yanks his makeshift key from the ignition, pushing the door open with shaking hands and stumbling across the parking garage. He covers the distance as fast as his wobbling legs will allow, ignoring the fact that at any moment the garage could be full of sirens and colorful lights and it could all be over, and there would be nowhere to run, all because he was too slow to walk a few feet. He can sprint five blocks but can hardly make it across a parking lot.
His screwdriver, shit. Did he leave it in the car? Did he drop it again? That was his only other back up. He’ll have to put a handful of screwdrivers in his bag just to prepare for next time. But he pushes the thought from his mind and scrambles over to the black car, pulling the door open with trembling hands and tossing himself into the backseat, his mind too blank and exhausted for him to think of anything as at other than to be grateful that he’s not driving anymore.
June adjusts the rearview mirror. “How was the ride?”
“Horrible,” Santa answers, slumping into the seat. “If you knew it was going to go so wrong, why didn’t you say something?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she smiles, “you have to think you’re in danger for it to work.”
“Well, shit,” Santa says, “I knew how it worked and the danger still felt real. Tenmyouji looks like he’s going to pass out.”
They drive away slowly, casually, exiting the parking garage and pulling onto the street, catching the end of a yellow light and stopping at a red one a block later. Junpei’s eyes glaze over and he’s suddenly more tired now than he’s ever been before in his entire life.
Akane laughs, her eyes searching his in the rearview mirror for just a moment before the light flicks to green and she pulls forward. “And how did he do? First time driving, right?”
Junpei opens his mouth, but no words come out. Akane laughs. Her voice sounds like music, and despite the circumstances, he finds himself relaxing.
“Yeah, and I never want to see him do it again,” Santa shudders. “Oh, and we left a witness on Maple.”
Akane and Santa share a glance for only a heartbeat before she looks away, swiping on her turn signal. “I’ll look into it later. Also, we’re all staying at the base for a little bit.”
Santa lets out an aggravated sigh, “What is it this time?”
Akane doesn’t take her eyes off the road. “We’ve got company. It’s what held Clover up. You’ll meet him once we get inside. But since this job went so off the rails, we’re going to limit movements for a few days. That means no one leaves the hideout until it’s all clear.”
Akane's voice sounds strangely serious and Santa picks up on it. He frowns. “Is he that close?”
“Closer than I would like,” Akane answers, coolly, “I guess it’s true what they say, that seven’s a lucky number.”
Santa shakes his head, but the frown doesn’t lift. “So, what happened to Clover?”
“I think she picked up a bug.”
“Like a stomach bug?” Junpei blurts, confused.
Akane laughs, loud and sharp and clear, and he can see Santa roll his eyes in the reflection of the class. “No, silly,” she says, “like a lice infection. We’re all gonna detox this weekend. Make our new friend isn’t trying to rat us out.”
Santa stretches. “You think he’s one of Seven’s crew?”
Akane pulls to the side to allow a police car to speed past, sirens blaring. “If he is, that means that he’s gotten much closer than we had thought.”
“Why let him in at all then?” Santa asks, watching her closely. “Why take the chance? If Clover brought us an undercover cop, then we’re going to have to go back underground. Why are we even returning to the base at all? And then stay there for the next few days? We’ll be sitting ducks.”
“I like Clover’s new friend,” Akane says, simply. “He’s an animal lover. He kept trying to get us to call him a cat themed named. We paired him with Phi, so he’s now Sigma.”
“He has a partner already?” Santa frowns, incredulous. “How long did you have to know this guy before picking us up?”
“Only a few minutes,” Akane answers, shyly, “But don’t worry. Everything is going great.”
Santa crooks an eyebrow and doesn’t comment. Junpei doesn’t want to be a nuisance, so he holds all his questions inside his throat until they almost start to burn.
He’s been with the Crash Keys for a few months, and in the business of car stealing for longer, but one glance from Akane was enough to make him feel like it was his first day all over again, and even with all his experience, he still knew nothing.
Still, there’s so much he doesn’t know about the way Akane functions. Everyone else seems to be okay with her leadership. They follow her directions, they don’t question things they have every right to, and everyone operates like they know something he doesn’t, like some inside joke he isn’t privy to. He had chalked it up to how long they had been working together, but after tonight, he can’t quite justify it to himself the same way.
How had Santa known so much about there the police would be, how had he anticipated Junpei’s own moves almost before Junpei himself realized he was planning to make them? It just doesn’t make sense. But he had known that she was smart. This is Akane Kurashiki after all, and you don’t get a reputation like hers by being a fool.
But this just doesn’t make sense. They seem to have entire conversations without speaking a word. Or Akane will tell them to do something specific at a certain time, and they just do. Everyone trusts her and it always turns out alright in the end, because people follow her specific instructions. It’s freaky.
Junpei doesn’t remember her being like this. She’s changed a lot since middle school, of course, everyone does. But this seems a little drastic. And if she was part of a crime ring back then, he thinks he would have suspected something. How did such a kind, sweet girl end up in a life like this? And why did she let Junpei be part of it?
“I know,” Akane says, suddenly, her voice loud in the silent car as she hits the break and shifts the gear. She sighs, frustrated and seemingly unaware that she had spoken aloud. She sweeps a lock of hair out of her face and glares at Santa, who glares back.
“Do it, then,” Santa mutters, grabbing his bag and sliding out of the car, closing the door harshly behind him.
The engine is still growling at them, filling the car with it’s noise, and Junpei gets the keen impression that he isn’t supposed to leave yet. So he waits, nervous under the intensity of Akane's eyes on him. Her face is impassive, but he can’t shake the feeling that this has something to do with his performance today.
“Relax, Jumpy,” she says, though her face is still blank, “You’ve got nothing to worry about. I just have a few questions, is all.”
The rumbling of the car in neutral makes him nervous, like she hasn’t yet decided what gear to put it in. He tries his best to meet her eyes, but he has to look away. What is he even worried about? This is Akane. She wouldn’t do that to him.
“Santa told me you left someone behind,” Akane says, carefully. “A witness. She saw the whole thing. Why didn’t you stop her?”
“W-why didn’t Santa?” Junpei asks back, defensive and a little bit paranoid under her unwavering gaze.
“Santa was being considerate,” Akane says, “He knew that shooting her would only spook you more. But do you see how this creates more problems for us? She clearly saw both of you.”
He wonders how she can be so sure of what Santa was thinking. But she stares at him, waiting for an answer, and he isn’t brave enough to talk back so he nods in sharp, choppy movements.
She looks away. “I guess I just thought you were different,” she admits, “I didn’t think you would be so nervous.”
That much is true, though he is a bit ashamed of it. This is the first time he’s outwardly panicked like that. It was his first time behind the wheel with such high stakes, but still. It’s a far cry from the cool, distant person he’s tried to become. (What would Carlos think of him now?)
He pushes the thought away, pushes away the rush of complicated emotions that follow. Does that mean he’s really still just a scared kid, even after doing this for so long?
“Sorry,” the words spill out. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. It just took me by surprise.”
Akane must find something endearing about it, because she shakes her head and lets out a breath. “Just as long as you’re still with me on this.”
He meets her eyes. “Of course,” he says, hearing a surprisingly vulnerable honesty in his voice, “that hasn’t changed. Today just caught me off guard. I’ll be ready for it next time.”
She bites her bottom lip, her eyes wandering for a bit as she thinks it over. He thinks about how its just going to be more chaotic and high stakes the next time he has to get behind the wheel. Can he ask Akane to count on him then? Can he promise her that he’ll be ready? (He has to. It’s what he came here to do.) He doesn’t feel nervous, looking at her, but he can’t seem to look away.
In the end, she can’t seem to find an solution to their problems, so she just shakes her head again, chasing the worry from her mind and letting out a ragged sigh. She cuts the engine in short, jagged motion, not moving to reach for the door even after the silence fills the air.
“If you’re going to keep doing this with us,” she says, calmly, “you can’t be making more problems. You have to start solving them.”
He blinks at her as the silence stretches on, feeling guilty now that the adrenaline has finally waned, residual anxieties still turning in his stomach. He wishes he could say something here that he really means, something like: Sorry, I wish I had shot that innocent woman when I had the chance. I wish I could just shoot her and not think about any of the other innocent people I could be killing with just one twitch of the finger, or how I would feel if that were me or someone I care about, or how I did feel when it was someone I cared about.
Or he could open his mouth and say: Sorry, I didn’t meant to be disloyal and I absolutely would pull the trigger for you, Akane Kurashiki, for you and anyone else in the Crash Keys, if it meant getting us out safe or achieving our goal.
But both of those would be lies and they know it. So he just sits and lets the silence fills the car and thinks about how people used to kill themselves with cars and carbon monoxide in the days before emission controls.
“Don’t worry, Junpei,” She soothes, though it still sounds strained. “Maybe I was expecting too much of you. It’s a learning experience and a minor setback. We’ll just have to wait a little longer than I would like for this to die down.”
She sounds like all the teachers he disappointed in grade school, with his penchant for getting into fights and his inability to sit still.
Finally, she reaches over and exits the car. After a moment, he does, too, grabbing his bag and his tools and trotting up beside her as they cross the garage and make their way to the elevator where Santa is waiting.
“I know you’ve got a good heart,” Akane says to him as she staring ahead, “but that’s not going to help you here. You should know that by now.”
He stays silent, trying his best to keep pace as they near the elevator. Santa nods to them, jabbing the button, and they wait silently until the silver doors slide open, letting him into a closed box with no exit.
“So, Clover left us to go pick up boys?”
“As if,” Clover protests, crossing her arms. “He just got in and wouldn’t leave. Made me drive around looking for his cat.”
“It was an emergency,” the newly dubbed “Sigma” clarifies, faltering a bit when all the eyes turn to him. He shrugs, which proves to be difficult with his hands tied behind his back. “Luna was trapped under the paw-ssenger’s seat and Gaulem was still m-hissing.”
“You named your cat Gaulem?” All-Ice raises an eyebrow. “Like from Lord of the rings?”
“That’s Gollum,” Phi interjects from across the table without looking up from her screen. “It’s completely different.”
Santa rubs his temple. “And why didn’t you just kick him out? You had a gun, Clover.”
Sigma and Clover share matching shocked expressions. “There was a cat .” She repeats, as is that made it any clearer.
“So?” Santa gestures, “You didn’t have to leave and go looking for the other one. You left us there and took the getaway car. I thought poor Tenmyouji was going to have a stroke.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” Clover says, not sounding sorry at all. “But I wasn’t going to just shoot him when there was a cat in the car. What if I missed? I’m not a barbarian.”
“You were at point blank range!” Santa throws his hands up, exasperated.
“The noise would have drawn attention to her before the sting was completed,” All-Ice points out. “It would have brought the cops to you at the worst possible moment, which would have screwed us over even more.”
“See, Clover?” Santa says, “Why can’t you defend yourself like that? I wouldn’t be mad if there was even an ounce of sense to what you did today.”
Clover shrugs. “All-Ice and I are a team,” she says, “And besides, she didn’t have any problem finding me. I picked her up a few blocks over and brought her here.”
“And you brought this dipshit along? What’s your reasoning for that?”
“Hey,” Sigma protests, weakly, before being ignored completely.
“Dude’s got a photographic memory,” All-Ice says, “Also, he was really into it.”
“I’ve always wanted to die in a heist,” Sigma explains.
Phi snorts. Santa silences Phi with a glare. “This isn’t funny,” he says, “none of this is funny. This guy has no training whatsoever. We don’t even know if he’s trustworthy. It’s bad enough that we have one rookie on the team, let alone two.”
Junpei swallows uncomfortably as all eyes turn to him. For a moment, no one says anything, and the only sound is a soft rhythmic thumping as June continues to count the money at the head of the table, piling the money into identical stacks and ignoring their conversation completely.
Phi looks up from her tablet. “Did you get your cats back, at least?”
Sigma’s face lights up. “Yeah,” he says, “Luna’s in my hood right now and Gaulem’s on my lap. They’re both super pissed at me for the car ride. They hate that.”
“How did the cat even get in the car?”
“Oh, uh,” Clover finally manages to look ashamed. “That one’s on me. I opened the door. Luna’s just too cute. She came right up to me.”
“No, but why were they even outside?”
Santa lets out a breath, rubbing the bridge of his nose to ward off an oncoming headache. “You people,” he says, his voice tight, “are going to kill me one of these days. What is this, a circus?”
Akane puts a hand on his shoulder, speaking up for the first time since they entered. “Everything turned out alright,” she soothes, “Clover, you’re off driving until we can trust you again.”
Clover nods, but seems thankful that she got off so lightly, so she keeps her mouth shut. Everyone turns to Akane, the humor in the air slowly drying up as she commands their attention.
“Who’s going to replace her?” Akane brings a hand to her cheek and tilts her head in thought. “Any volunteers?”
Everyone looking at her looks away. They’ve all got their roles, and they’ve been working with Clover as the driver for so long that no wants to abandon their position to replace her. It’s a stressful, high stakes job that she’s got, and it’s a lot of pressure for one person.
“Tenmyouji’s been looking for more responsibility, isn’t that right?” Akane smiles at him from across the table and he feels his stomach twist, his blood going cold. This is because he let that woman get away, he just knows it.
Santa scoffs. “Him? He barely held it together today. And he wouldn’t have gotten anywhere if I wasn’t there with him.”
The rest of the group refuses to look at him, much less vouch for him. Maybe they don’t want Akane attention to be directed at them, or maybe it’s because he’s still so new that no one really cares what he does, or if he’s even there at all.
“But we trust him, right?” Akane meets his eyes from across the table. “Tenmyouji’s a good sport. And Clover can teach him her tricks before our next job. And we’ll have plenty of time, since we have to lay low for a while, thanks to her.” She claps her hands together. “I think it’s a fair trade. Any questions?”
Santa looks at her. It seems like he’s the only one willing to talk back to her or contradict her at all, but even he has his limits. Junpei’s heard rumors that Santa was the first person she recruited, and he’s been with her the longest. Either way, Santa’s his only hope for getting out of this.
“It’s not that I don’t trust Tenmyouji,” Santa says, slowly, “It’s just that we both know the problem you have with reaching him.”
“No worries,” Akane chirps, “He and I are going to work on that. We’re going to spend some bonding time together. I think it’ll be fun, don’t you?”
She’s looking at him now, so he nods, stiffly.
“Is this a sex thing,” Sigma blurts.
“Alright then,” Akane says, clapping her hands together and ignoring the outburst. “You should all go get some rest. We had a busy day today. Sigma and I are going to stay here and have a little cat-- oh, I mean chat.” She laughs, “See? He’s already rubbing off on me.”
No one says anything, Clover and Phi quickly moving to take Gaulem and Luna from Sigma. The cats meow at the sudden movement, but quickly acquiesce to their new handlers as everyone filters out of the room. Junpei casts one last look behind him before the door swings shut, and it’s just enough time to watch as the nonchalant grin Sigma had carefully maintained finally fades from his face. He watches Akane carefully, like a caged animal, as she pulls up a chair and leans forward.
The door swings shut with the quietest of clicks. Junpei turns away.
He had first met Akane Kurashiki in sixth grade. Some eighth graders had been picking on the school rabbits, which had upset her, and so he had confronted them and they beat him up for it. He gave her a doll. That’s all he remembers. That’s all he knew about her, until a few months ago.
He wasn’t very good at stealing cars. But he was better at doing that then he was at going to college, so for a while, that was his primary source of income. When he’s not nervous, he can break into a car as casually and smoothly as if it really was his own. And it was the only way to get close to people who would know how to get to the head of Cradle Pharmaceuticals.
The steps are relatively easy and there are different ways to do it. Given enough time and options, he usually starts with a thin strip of metal, flexible but just enough. He works it in between the bottom of the window pane and the door, sliding it side to side until he finds the groove. Pop, and the door is unlocked. Then it’s just a matter of starting the car. Hot wiring usually takes time he doesn’t have, and he knows just how to drill the ignition without damaging it. Then you stick the screwdriver in and turn, and you’re on your way.
Of course, cars have gotten a little more complicated these days. But if he studies, he can usually anticipate how to bypass the alarm and break the steering lock. That’s what his usual jobs were. Planned robberies, something like this, as high stakes and pressurized as it is, he has no way of preparing for. He didn’t ever plan to enter this side of crime.
It started because his dealer had a score to settle with "June". She has quite the reputation, and she’s managed to piss off more than a few people. Junpei had heard them talking about her, without knowing who it was at the time. She had eyes everywhere, they would say, she was always one step ahead. She had ways of knowing what was going to happen. The nicest thing they ever called her was a clairvoyant, or a witch. The not so nice things, well...
His old dealer had a grudge and so he enlisted Junpei to plant a tracker and a recording device in her car. It wasn’t the first time he had done something a job like that, and to be honest, he didn’t care much for the specifics of who his victim was. He wasn’t in the job for the morals. He just did what he was told. Maybe if he had done less studying about the car and more studying about it’s owner, he would have been prepared to have a gun shoved in between his eyes, the hand on it just moments from pulling the trigger.
But she had hesitated. If it had been anyone else, someone who’s mind wasn’t as sharp, they might not have reacted in time. But Akane Kurashiki, with all of her foresight and knowledge, still seemed surprised to find him in the driver’s seat of her car. He might have been luckier than he remembered being. If Santa was with her, it could have gone down differently. She might not have hesitated, then.
She had remembered his name. She had remembered everything about him. He was almost shocked to see how she lived now. The Crash Keys were powerful and elusive, so good at what they did that even the more experienced of his bosses were hardly sure that they existed. If their mysterious leader could elude the black market so well, then she was definitely out of reach of the cops. It brought a sort of comfort and awe along with it's fear, and it was an entirely new risk of it's own. The only other group on par with them was Free the Soul, but there's even less known about them, even with the Crash Key's combined knowledge.
At the end of the day, despite what he had heard, it was Akane. He knew her. She knew him.
There hadn’t been any protest at his inclusion. The Crash Keys believed in Akane. They did what she thought was best. All he needed was a new name, and he was all set.
It isn’t his real last name, of course. When he and Akane were little they would talk about marrying each other. But they couldn’t agree on who would take the other’s last name, or if they would hyphenate it. So eventually, they just opened the phone book and choose a name at random. And it was agreed, that when they married, that was the name they would take. A new start. A little fairytale life.
Junpei had almost forgotten about it. There seemed to be a lot about them that he didn’t remember.
It was painfully obvious how little he actually knew about their business. He wasn’t a stranger to crime, but the scale they operated on was much larger than he had even imagined. He still wasn’t sure if he was cut out for it. But there was no backing out. He wouldn’t get a second chance. She wouldn’t hesitate again.
Most of the group trusted Akane and didn’t care, but it took Santa a while to warm up to him. Actually, before today, he hadn’t put up with Junpei at all. But maybe now that he’s proved his worth, he’s earned some of Santa’s trust as well. Well, it doesn’t matter what he thinks of Santa. Akane trusts him, and that’s all that matters. That’s all that ever matters. It’s the only real rule of this place, to listen to Akane.
He’s done a few small jobs for them in the months after he had joined. Most of it involved getting cars for them beforehand and parking them in the proper garage. A lot of behind the scenes work. He would research which cars to use, uninstall some of the safety mechanics, hop up the engine. Cutting the limited-slip differentials makes it harder to drift, sure, but the improvements in traction and stability might make all the difference in the world.
You could weld it to improve the drift, but don’t come crying to me when you snap the axle, he remembers saying. The real wheel drive makes it worth it. What an idiot he had been, thinking he was on their level at all.
Santa quizzed him on what to do right up until Clover parked the car. Most of the instructions boiled down to, “just stand there and look threatening, wave the gun around but don’t wave it around too much, and just let All-Ice and I do the talking. Make sure none of these good samaritans feel inspired to be a hero. You’re not going to pull the trigger, but they don’t need to know that.”
The robbery was actually the smoothest part of this night. It’s when they got outside to see Clover not where she’s supposed to be did things go wrong.
He doesn’t know when All-Ice split from them, but he would have liked a warning. If he had followed her instead of Santa, he would have been in the car with Clover and Sigma en route back to base instead of scrambling through the dark streets without a plan. But he supposes that if he did do that, there’s no telling what might have happened to Santa. At least this time, everyone got out alright.
But he’s going to have to do it again. He’s going to have to be the one at the wheel, thinking fast and making crazy maneuvers. He’s going to be there, and they’re all going to be relying on him to get them to Point B alive and without the cops on their backs.
Why did it have to be him? Punishment aside, Akane should know that he isn’t suited to be behind the wheel. Maybe she trusts him, but the rest of the group has only known him for four months. They have no reason to trust him. And once they see that he has no idea what he’s doing, they’ll have even less of a reason to trust him.
This is insane. Why not All-Ice? She was a constant on their jobs. She could crack a safe in under a minute. She used math to do it, she had explained it to him once when they were waiting at a drop site, but Junpei hadn’t been able to keep up. And besides, All-Ice (this is where he thinks she got her code name from) is always cool under pressure. It’s impossible to tell what she’s thinking under her stoic demeanor, but she never panics, or takes her eye off the goal. Surely someone with such steadfast concentration and quick, logical thinking would be better suited as a driver.
Actually, scratch that. The one time All-Ice’s expression changes is when she’s looking at Clover. And even then, it’s just the faintest of smiles.
He’s only had to stay in the base for more than a day once before, and that was because one of their contacts got taken in by the police. Luckily, nothing came from it and the danger passed, but it hadn’t stopped Santa and Akane from being extra cautious with what they told people and who they bought from in the following weeks.
The less he knows about the Crash Keys, the better.
Staying in base mostly meant finding ways to entertain yourself. Akane didn’t enforce many rules, and she didn’t even seem to care if you went off on your own. She always seemed to know where everyone was, and what they were doing. She’s probably bugged the place. There’s probably a camera watching him right now.
But laying low was fine. They’ve never made a mistake this huge before, and Junpei can feel his head start to hurt from stress when he thinks back to all the evidence he might have left behind that could be traced back to him. He should have been more careful. That stupid screwdriver. Luckily, most of the blame falls on Clover, which means that as long as he doesn’t do anything worse, he should be able to fly under the radar for this one. Probably.
Oh God, he’s going to be the driver for their next operation. That’s going to be him, having to call the shots and memorize the route and bear all the blame when it inevitably goes wrong.
He hears voices through the wall, cutting him off from his worried thoughts, but he can’t tell what they’re saying, even as they pass the door. After a moment, Akane knocks and enters, and waves when she catches him staring.
“Good, you’re still up,” she says, coming to sit next to him on the old mattress. “We have a lot to talk about. What a crazy day, huh?”
He stares at her. He gets the feeling that this friendliness is a facade, that she’s hiding something much more dark and sinister underneath. But looking at her now, he can’t say for sure. He wants to believe in her. He wants to, and yet the doubts in the back of his mind lingers.
She smiles when he doesn’t answer. “Speak freely, Jumpy,” she says, using his childhood nickname. “You know I’d never hurt you, right?”
“I mean,” the words tumble from his mouth all jagged and broken, “You did- today, just now-- You made me a driver? I can’t do it, Akane.”
She nods thoughtfully, so he continues, leaning away from her before he even realizes that he’s doing it.
“We both know I can’t do it. If this is about the woman today then, I’m sorry, I just, I couldn’t--”
“Jumpy,” Akane says, “Relax. Everything will be fine.”
“I mean, I don’t--”
“Who else would you have me replace Clover with?” Akane asks, acting as if he hadn’t spoken. “Sigma? He’s too new. Phi still can’t run reliably. All-Ice is needed inside the bank. Would you rather take Santa’s place leading the operation?”
He stares at her.
“No,” she says, smiling, “this is the best placement for you. You know cars, and I know you.”
He narrows his eyes. “You do remember that that’s not why I’m here, right?”
She nods, reflexively, “I know,” she soothes, “and as soon as I find something new, you’ll be the first person I tell. But I still need you to do this for me.”
“Why do we even need to rob places anyway?” he asks, “what’s the money for?”
“Bribes,” Akane answers, easily, “People don’t just give out information for free. We need materials to bypass Cradle’s security.”
He tears his gaze away. He knows Akane likes to keep her secrets, and every bit of information she gives him comes along with the unspoken understanding of trust between them.
“It’s a complicated thing,” she assures him, “there’s a lot that goes into it. Our informant tells us that one of the executives is a gambling man. Isn’t that interesting?”
She’s trying to assuage him. He makes a noise of agreement. He knows how that will go. With enough bets and enough money piled on, eventually they’ll start dealing with information, and if enough of a rapport is built, they might even get something good out of it. Akane has done it so many times before. She just knows people, knows how they work and what they’ll do.
“I’m sure he’ll tell us what we want to hear,” she says, “Whether he realizes it or not.”
“And then?”
“And then we’re one step closer to destroying Cradle Pharmaceutical. That’s what we all want, right?” She smiles at him.
He stares at her, somehow unnerved despite the reminder of their common enemy. Innocent bystanders like that woman today might end up dead for them to get what they needed. Is it worth it? Should an innocent, unconnected person die so that the guilty could be sentenced? Can he sacrifice someone he doesn’t know to achieve that result?
“But,” he shakes his head and finds his nervousness returning, “driving like this-- it’s different. You can’t plan for it. We only got away today because of dumb luck. Because Santa had enough experience to anticipate where the police were waiting. Because he happened to know how to get to the garage. I couldn’t do something like that on the fly.”
Akane watches him calmly throughout his rambling, moving only to make herself more comfortable on the bed, tucking one foot underneath her and leaning back.
“Junpei,” she says, when he’s done, “You know how Santa knew where to go today? It’s because I told him.”
He frowns. “You don’t let any of us wear wires,” he points out, “and he seemed just as surprised as I was when the plans changed.”
Akane shrugs, “I knew that the plans were going to change. I let them change. If I didn’t want Clover to leave and bring Sigma back to us, I wouldn’t have let her. I would have stopped her before she even set foot in the car.”
“But you didn’t,” Junpei says, “You didn’t, and you knew it was going to go wrong."
Akane nods.
“And you thought that was okay, to gamble like that. That woman today, we stole her car, she could have died--”
“But she didn’t,” Akane says, “I knew she wouldn’t.”
“Well,” Now he’s just confused. “If you knew, then why am I getting in trouble for it?”
“You’re not in trouble,” Akane assures him. “You’re the driver. This is the quickest way to get you in front of the wheel. You were always meant to replace Clover. She can be too rash and unpredictable. But you’re the key to all this. You wouldn’t have opened the door for that cat today.”
She’s right. He can imagine it, looking down to see a pair of pale yellow eyes peering up at him. He would have looked away, conscious that black cats were bad luck, and if Sigma had asked him about his other missing cat, he would have said he didn’t know.
She nods again, satisfied. “See? It was always under control.”
“But how?” he asks, “Even if you had somehow known that Clover would leave, it doesn’t mean that you knew that I would choose that woman’s car to steal, or that I would even turn down that street at all.”
“You’re right,” Akane says, “I didn’t know. And we have to fix that.”
“I’m not here to be a driver,” he protests.
“You’re here to do what I tell you,” Akane responds, “that’s what you agreed to when you joined the Crash Keys. I’m helping you reach Cradle, and you help me out in return. That seems fair, I think.”
She talks so calmly. It’s like she knows what he’s going to say before he even says it. Like she knows it before the thought has even entered his mind. How can she know these things? The room is dark, illuminated only by a lamp in the corner, and he can see the way the shadows play on her pale face, how they catch on her dark eyes, the bridge of her nose. She’s staring at him so intensely, and he feels a keen sense of danger in the room. Not of her physically, no, but just how much she knows
“I’ve heard,” he stutters, “I’ve heard people say you were clairvoyant.”
She nods, patiently, “I know,” she says, “I’ve heard it too. But that’s not it. Tell me, have you heard of the Morphic Resonance Theory?”
“It’s like telepathy, right?” He frowns, “but it’s pseudo-science. It isn’t credible.”
“Let’s not worry about that yet,” she says, “we’ll start at the basics. Tell me what you know.”
“Nothing.”
She lets out a soft laugh. “The theory goes that all of humanity shares a collective memory through the fourth dimension in Minkowski spacetime, the Morphogenetic Field. People who are in tune to this medium are called espers, and they use the field to send information to other espers, as well as other potential versions of themselves in different timelines. Are you with me?”
He nods.
“Okay.” She brings herself closer to him, settling into a more comfortable position. “There’s a lot we don’t know about it. For most of the espers in the Crash Keys, you’ll probably be able to share memories with them, and vis versa. In time, the field will lend itself to you in other ways.”
“Like a hivemind?”
She ignores him. “As you develop the skill, I will look into other timelines and send you the information you need. For example, telling you which hallway to turn down. With enough practice, it all should happen before you have a chance to even recognize it.”
“Today was a test run,” Akane says, “and lucky for us, you passed. You’re a good driver. You’ll do what I tell you to. Maybe it’s because you trust me, or maybe it’s because you don’t know how to make decisions for yourself.”
“There has to be an element of danger, right?” He thinks back to the one time he had read about Sheldrake’s theory, back when he had been trying to investigate what happened to Maria on his own.
She runs a tongue over her teeth. “Bank robberies are a very high stake operation, right? A lot of variables, a lot of danger. You really feel like you could get caught at any moment.”
He nods. “But don’t both parties need to be in danger?”
“That would be the best way to make sure we’re working at our full potential,” she admits, “When the time comes, I would love to go to Cradle with you. But it’s hard for me to control the fates of six different people as well as my own.”
“Why have so many people involved, then? It just seems like more variables.”
“We have only the people we need,” she says, “even Sigma was always meant to be a part of this.”
He can’t think of anything to say to this. He can’t believe that she could think so far ahead, planned everything down to the second.
“It’s only helped us, so far,” Akane continues, “We have a very thin paper trail connecting us to these bank robberies. It helps me figure out guard rotations and camera locations, how to avoid the things that go wrong in every timeline but this one.”
“But for things to go right in this one,” he says, “there has to be a timeline where things go wrong, right? Where we don’t all make it out.”
Akane shrugs. “Things like that happen every day. Most people don’t even know to think about it. That woman today, there’s a timeline where Santa shoots her and it sends you into so much of a panic that you can’t start the engine and the cops find you. But that woman doesn’t know any better. She doesn’t know to be lucky that this is the timeline she’s in.”
“But still,” he hears himself say, “That means that the other version of her died just so we could get it right. You would do that to her?”
“Would I let that woman die you that you and Santa could survive?” Akane asks him, her eyes trained on him, and he can’t bring himself to look away. “Maybe another version of me wouldn’t be comfortable making that sacrifice. But I’m not her.”
He swallows, “What if it were me, then? What if the time comes where you have to let me die so that another version of me could live?”
She cocks her head, “What if I’m talking to the version that lived right now, then? Wouldn’t you be glad that you got to go on living?”
“Not at the cost of me,” he says, “or other people.”
Akane sighs. “Junpei,” she says, “people die every day, you wouldn’t even know it even if it did happen. But I don’t have a hand in all of them. I’m not trying to play God. I only do what I do to protect the people close to me. And that includes you.”
He looks at her. She says it like he should feel lucky that he’s included in that. He doesn’t know what to say. For a long moment, the only sound in the room is the humming of the bulb inside the lamp.
He can’t say that he wasn’t intrigued by her. This ghost from his past that had suddenly reappeared in his life, offering him a path into a world with her in it. And he took it. Of course he did, he’d have been a fool not to. He had been making progress on his own, but it was stubborn progress. Investigating took a lot of intuition, to know who to trust and who was about to betray you. In a way, it was always easier to betray first. It was safer that way. There was nothing that could surprise him.
And for the most part, he had been right to do so. The information given to him was purposefully misleading, but with the Crash Keys it was already vetted. They had more access to resources, and much more influence than one person. Akane’s group was farther ahead on the Cradle Investigation that he had ever hoped to be. She was cunning and powerful, and she knew things that no one had the right to know.
“I know it seems like a lot,” Akane says, “But you have this potential inside of you. I know because other versions of me have showed me that you can do it. And also because I trust you.”
He thinks about it. To be so close to the end now, so close to reaching Gentarou Hongou himself-- he can’t give up now. He abandoned Carlos in order to get to where he is now, and he can’t give up when that his goal is finally in sight.
What he wants doesn’t matter. It’s what he needs to do. But still, the lingering doubt in his mind persists, a logical voice reminding him that even if he is on board for this, his driving skills might not be enough. He doesn’t think that fast.
But maybe if he can get Akane inside his head, he won’t need to. No one could get this far by themselves. But Akane reaches beyond the cosmos, so of course he has to follow her. It’s the only chance he’s got. He’s known that from the moment she spared his life and invited him in. He just has to figure out how to flip the switch and turn on the morphogenetic field.
His survival comes down to it. It’s been a year and a half since he left Carlos, and now it’s almost over. If he can make this work, then all of it will have been worth it. He’ll get to go home, even if Carlos doesn’t accept his apology or want to see him again. Cradle will pay for what they’ve done, and that will make a difference. It has to.
But the answers don’t come to him in one night. They don’t come to him at all, and he stares out into the darkness until his eyes hurt, thinking about car exhaust and hospital bills. Even when the morning light reaches him, it doesn’t bring him any revelations. In fact, he can hardly feel it at all.