a/n: first fanfiction. Constructive criticism greatly appreciated. This is set in Kaname's second year of college, and based off of the anime and issue 4 of the US translation of the manga (all I have access to at the moment).
disclaimer: I don't own Full Metal Panic or any of its characters; they belong to Shouji Gatou, Retsu Tateo, ADV, et cetera.
Chapter 1.
The distance between point A and point B is only as wide as the viewer is close. Stand far enough away, and worlds collide...
"KANAME! NOOOOOO!" Tessa woke up screaming in her cabin. Sweat covered her face and blood ran from cuts in her arms where her own fingernails had gouged a trail. Breathing deeply, and trying desperately to calm down, the young captain activated her reading light and reached for her slippers. Her heart was still thudding in her chest as she crossed the room to her small lavatory, turned on the cold faucet and splashed cool water over her face. "Keep it together, Tessa. You've got to calm down. I'm sure it was just a dream." She wiped her face with a soft washcloth before giving herself what should have been a reassuring glance in the mirror. It wasn't. Colors flowed before her eyes and the world seemed to dissolve into shifting numbers and words. "CALM DOWN, CAPTAIN! THAT'S AN ORDER!" But even as the dull greys and greens of the real world seeped back into focus, she heard an echo of her dream. Help me... "Dammit." She blushed slightly at her own profanity as reality reasserted itself. "It was just a dream. I'm sure it was nothing."
She fumbled a plastic bottle of antiseptic from her medicine cabinet, thanking her foresight in stocking one against her frequent tumbles and slips. Giving up on trying to balance the bottle on the sink, she sat on the floor to dab at her scratches. Images of blood dripping on a keyboard flashed before her eyes. "No. The dream is over." A sudden, overwhelming sense of fear and sadness lanced into her brain, before disappearing. There was no mistaking that. Taking a deep breath and willing her voice to calmness, Tessa re-capped the antiseptic bottle, taped a bandage over the last of her scratches, and reached for her comm unit. "Lt. Commander Kalinin, come in please."
"Lt. Commander Kalinin reporting, Madame-captain. How may I be of assistance?"
"Please assemble whatever information we have on the current status and whereabouts of Kaname Chidori and bring it to my quarters immediately." There was a slight pause on the other end of the channel.
"Aye, Captain. Right away. Kalinin out."
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To say that the lab had been demolished would not be putting it too strongly. Joel Vermeer was the first in that morning, tray of coffees in one hand, sack of bagels in the other. A satchel of notes from last night was slung over one shoulder and the lab keys were clenched firmly in his teeth. He was still operating in a semi-conscious state of auto-pilot when something registered incorrectly in his brain. When had the door been moved to that end of the hallway??
He flipped on the main hall lights, then flipped the switch a few more times. Dead. Even so, the faint light of dawn was beginning to filter through the skylights into the hall. Broken glass and ash sparkled and smudged all around. Oh my g---! Bagels and coffee fell to the ground. There was a faint, repetitive noise from the interior of the lab.
"Yoshi? YOSHI!!" Joel yelled, stumbling into the dark interior of the physics lab. Inside, shapes loomed in anything but their familiar pattern. Desks and worktables were overturned. Twisted bits of blackened metal and warped plastic littered the ground. Part of a white board nearly obscured the door, and oddly enough, rose petals bruised beneath his feet. Realizing that there were power sources in this room which could potentially still be loose, Joel backtracked to the hallway to grab the emergency flashlight. He thumbed it on, then began picking his way cautiously, but quickly into the room. "Yoshi, are you in here?!" Thud, thud, thud. Then a murmuring. "Yoshi, holler if you can hear me!" Thud, murmur, thud.
Shoving the remains of a magnetic field generator aside, Joel stopped to stare in horror. The containment room where Yoshi Chikitaka had been working on his thesis was completely charred. The facing wall no longer existed and the control room and generators were so much tangled wire and mangled steel. Only three things remained: the project, a body on the floor, and... "Kaname?"
That Chikitaka's girlfriend was here was not all that unusual. She and Yoshi had been known to hole up in the lab for hours at a time, for all that her major (at least to Joel's knowledge) had nothing to do with physics, robotics, or dimensional research. There had been a lot of joking about what sort of muse the beautiful coed acted as. What was strange, no, horrifying, was the way she sat with her legs folded beneath her, leaning against the wall, staring at the body and rocking back and forth. Every now and then, her head would hit the wall, and she would mumble to herself. And the body...
It could only be Chikitaka-san. He was lying on his back, one foot missing, one arm and both legs twisted at sickening angles. Blood spattered all around, but strangely, no sign of charring on his exposed flesh or the anterior of his clothing. As for the back, Joel could smell the damage from where he stood.
"pinpointsingularitygenerationcriticalangleachieved..." thud. Thud. "physicaltolerance exceededcontainmentratioimplosionimmanent..." thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
"Kaname? Kaname, look at me." She didn't seem to notice his presence at all. "Kaname, what happened? I've got to call emergency services here. Please come with me." No response. "Kaname," he crouched down and grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to look at him, "WE HAVE TO CALL HELP." For one moment, her eyes seemed to see him. She paused in her rocking, stared at the lab assistant with a curious intensity.
"Help me. I killed him—OOOOOOOH!" her moan became a blood-curdling scream. Wrenching herself from his grasp, the young woman screamed again and again, each howl sounding as though it would rip her lungs from her chest. Joel toppled away from her in sudden confusion.
"I have to call help. I'll be RIGHT BACK!" Tripping and crawling, the lab assistant ran back out through the lab into the hallway. His cell phone was out of the satchel and the emergency services number dialed almost before he registered arriving in the hallway. "Hello?... we've had a major catastrophe in lab 005..." images of explosions and the tortured lab bombarded his mind, "one dead, one injured, I think..." hadn't the three of them just been sitting together smiling at lunch yesterday? "I can't tell, but I didn't see any bleeding and she's conscious... no, I don't think I could get her to tell me, she's not exactly all here... what? Okay, I'll try. Five minutes? Okay, I'll leave this line open."
Walking back into the lab, the assistant heard that Kaname had resumed her mumbling. He described her condition to the man on the phone, and then listened as instructions were relayed. Arriving back in that horrible non-room, he sat between the girl and her dead friend, and gently as he could, held her head away from the wall. The warm, brown eyes that had always been so full of life stared blindly through him. The mouth that should have been smiling or yelling murmured nonsense. "Oh, Yoshi, what the hell happened here?" and finally, Joel allowed himself to cry.
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MITHRIL's information regarding Chidori was annoyingly incomplete, but the initial data did not seem to indicate anything particularly unusual. Naturally, surveillance had been significantly relaxed as the threat was judged to have become minimal. Chidori's time at the university was generally monitored once or twice a month, more to keep tabs than anything else, but the last report was almost a month old.
"Subject performing above average academically. Outstanding performance in intramural sports. Still no major determined. Participation in social activities has declined somewhat in the past four months, suspect due to possible boyfriend: Yoshi Chikitaka. Otherwise, contacts normal. No further target behavior exhibited." There were some further comments, equally vague and unimportant. Tessa requested the operative on site to post an updated report as soon as possible.
"May I ask as to the reason for your sudden interest in Miss Chidori, Madame-captain?" Kalinin stood beside her chair in the control room.
"I just wondered how she was doing. She hasn't tried contacting us for over two years now, and I was curious. I was remembering that time she came aboard for the party." Tessa smiled brightly with a hint of nostalgia that almost hid the deep concern in her eyes. Kalinin had been observing his superior officer for too long to buy it, however. Even so, his was not to question, etc.
"I see."
They stared at the forward displays in silence for several minutes, before the captain spoke again. Her voice seemed just a hint too light-hearted.
"I wonder if any of the others have heard from her lately?" Under ordinary circumstances, Kalinin would have wondered whether the Captain's curiosity were focused on a certain sergeant and more self-serving than genuinely interested. Something in her voice suggested otherwise, however.
"I do not believe so, ma'am, but I will inquire, if you like."
"Thank you, Commander. I'm afraid they might question my motives if I were to attempt it." Ah, so she was growing. Then why was she so concerned?
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They were sitting in the garden, after a run. He'd given her a good chase and they were both pleasantly worn out.
"The real problem is one of distance, you know? I guess I should have given up on this guy a long time ago, simply because that damn distance is always there, and probably always will be, but some tiny little part of my mind won't give him up. Pretty dumb, huh?" She stretched her shoulders and lay back on the grass. "I don't think he ever even realized how much I cared about him. Stupid otaku. Did I mention he was a military freak?"
He smiled and reclined on one elbow beside her. "You may have mentioned it once or twice." Plucking a dandelion from the green, he tickled her chin, and she laughed, then tickled him back with devilish skill. When exhaustion once again imposed a truce, she stared at the sky, a remote look in her eyes. He lay back and stared with her. "Penny for them?"
"What?"
"Your thoughts. I'll give you a penny for them."
"They're not even worth that. Can you believe sometimes I still can't sleep because of him. I think about him and I get so mad. Then I get so sad, and... you know."
"Maybe you just don't have the right pillow."
"Hmm?" she turned to look at him and he shifted closer to her, easing his arm beneath her neck. "Oh."
"Distances are all relative, you know. From a quantum mechanical standpoint, no two things can ever truly touch, or at least not without blurring the line of individuality. Still, broaden your perspective enough, and the distance between particles," he raised a finger an inch or two above her nose, "doesn't exist." She heard him chuckle as he tapped the tip of her nose.
...warningpsifieldingress...survivalprobabilitywithinfield0.003%...
"Yoshi...YOSHI!!!!"
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"A situation has arisen." Kalinin brought up a photograph on the board room screen. Only Weber, Mao and Sagara were in attendance for the briefing, but the commander's demeanor suggested that the matter at hand was neither simple, nor routine. The object of the photo appeared to be an arm slave, but...
"It's so small!" Kurz couldn't help but remark. "It's more like an armored suit than anything. Why would anybody build such a worthless little AS?" Mao elbowed him sharply in the rib cage as the commander continued.
"This AS, for lack of a better term, was apparently invented on the campus of Tokyo University by a graduate student. No specifications or blueprints can be located to elaborate as to its purpose or possible functionality, however, there are issues regarding its construction which suggest that it would be highly advantageous and possibly essential that MITHRIL retrieve this prototype."
"Is the University willing to part with it, or should we expect to have to take it by stealth?" Sousuke was as direct as ever. "Further, it seems to me that retention of the creator would be invaluable, given the lack of systems diagrams. Should we plan to persuade this individual to accompany us?"
"Wait a minute, first things first: how are we supposed to retrieve this thing if we don't really know what it is? Has anybody thought of asking this guy for his notes? I mean, if it's a student project, there's got to be a report or a paper or a thesis or something all about it right? And besides, why should MITHRIL care? University kids are always coming up with weapons technology advances. Why aren't we just waiting for the trade reports on this one?" Kurz stared at Kalinin, and Mao seriously considered another elbow, but he did have something of a point.
"What, precisely, is our mission objective here, sir, and has a risk analysis been performed?"
"Your mission is to retrieve this object and to acquire any additional information regarding its construction that you can. At present, the University is offering its full cooperation in removal efforts, provided that MITHRIL will rebuild their laboratory. As for possible dangers, there are two points of note. First of all, the device's creator died in the laboratory under suspicious circumstances over a week ago. No backup paperwork has been recovered from either the lab or his domicile. Secondly, it is assumed at present that the device was created with the assistance of a Whispered, and that it may contain previously unknown black technology."
"WHAT?" Eyes widened around the table.
"Kaname?" Melissa was the first to say what they were all thinking.
"The creator was a man by the name of Yoshi Chikitaka. His Lab Assistant, a Mr. Joel Vermeer, has been detained for questioning. Miss Chidori is believed to have been—close friends with Mr. Chikitaka, and was likely present at the time of the incident or very shortly thereafter. Whether she was an active collaborator on the project is unknown, but it is better to assume so."
"Why don't we just ask her?" Weber wasn't quite observant enough to catch the Commander's implication but Sergeant Mao's heel on his instep was clear enough. "Or not!"
Sousuke observed the exchange with some perplexity
"I am in agreement with Sergeant Weber, sir. Although Miss Chidori would seem to have little fondness for our organization, I do not think that her antipathy towards us is of such a degree as to prevent her from assisting us in this." Then again, part of his mind was quick to suggest all sorts of reasons that her antipathy (or sheer stubbornness) might be more than adequate to prevent her from supplying any information.
Kalinin took a deep breath. "Miss Chidori is currently under observation in a mental health facility. Her reported behavior does not suggest sufficient lucidity to provide answers with any value. However, a secondary objective of the mission will be to bring the young lady to a MITHRIL facility for further study. Our Whispered specialists may be able to help her, or, barring that, may succeed in retrieving any data she might have with regards to the project."
"What the hell happened to her?" Under any ordinary circumstances, speaking in unison would have occasioned some irritation from Weber or Mao if not both, however on this matter, it was clear that concern for their one-time friend overrode that.
"That is one of the things you will need to find out. As former friends, you may have better success than our investigator. Any further questions?"
"Just one, sir. Has anybody else shown interest in this thing?"
"Not yet. If we act quickly, we may be able to avoid outside competitors for the object. Good luck. You will deploy in three hours. Anything else?" Kalinin glanced in Sagara's direction, but the young sergeant seemed focused elsewhere. "Very well. Dismissed."