Sho Fukamachi was pacing, waiting for
Masaki Murakami to return. Sho was worried. Ever since Chronos
agents had kidnapped his father and reprocessed him into a
deadly Enzyme Mark II, Sho had been terrified that something
like that would happen again. And Mr. Murakami was already well
known to the Chronos Corporation. If something had happened to
him, Sho wasn’t sure that he would ever be able to forgive
himself.
He was the Guyver I, after all, he
should
be able to protect the people that mattered to him. When Sho
heard someone knocking at the door, he at first froze, thinking
it was one of Chronos’ many Zoanoids. When Tetsuro brushed past
him, making for the door, Sho went after him. Preparing himself
to call on the Guyver at the slightest hint of trouble, Sho
followed Tetsuro to the door.
"Who’s there?" Tetsuro called, having
the feeling that a Zoanoid wouldn’t have taken the time to
knock.
"I’m here," answered a very familiar
low, deep voice. The voice itself was tinged with mild, if
good-humored, annoyance. "Will you let me in already, please?"
"Mr. Murakami!" Tetsuro exclaimed,
opening the door for the older man. "Sorry, I didn’t know who it
was."
"It’s all right, Tetsuro," Mr. Murakami
said as he stepped into the cabin’s living room. "You’re just
taking precautions."
"Murakami, I see you made it back
again," Agito said, as he stood in the doorway leading to the
cabin’s other rooms.
"I did," Mr. Murakami acknowledged
warily.
Ever since Mr. Murakami had found out
that Agito Makashima was a son of Chronos, even having worked
for them at one point, the older man had been a bit leery of
Agito. And, after seeing the kind of power that Masaki Murakami
possessed, Agito had also been more than a little cautious
around the other man. Or, that was how it seemed to Sho anyway.
The by now familiar form of Mr.
Murakami’s Zoanoid Buster Custom was visible in the holster he
had taken to wearing. Sho wasn’t sure where Mr. Murakami kept
disappearing to, but since all of them here were enemies of the
Chronos Corporation, Sho decided to trust Mr. Murakami and
respect the other man’s privacy. Agito, however, wasn’t so
trusting.
"Where have you been disappearing to
lately, Murakami?" Agito demanded calmly.
"Since when is that any business of
yours, Makashima?" Mr. Murakami shot back, with no more real
emotion in his voice than Agito.
"I
make
it my business, Murakami," Agito said.
Mr. Murakami’s eyes narrowed, not
that anyone could see it as he was still wearing his dark-green
sunglasses. "I may be working with you, Agito Makashima, but
that does not
give you the right to pry into my private affairs."
"When your ‘private affairs’ run the
risk of exposing our new base to Chronos, then I have every
right to pry into them," Agito said, still with that infuriating
calm.
"I was out on some errands,
excuse me,"
Mr. Murakami snapped, turning and roughly bushing past Agito on
his way out of the living room.
Agito grabbed Mr. Murakami’s arm before
the older man could get safely into another room. Mr. Murakami
looked like he was considering throwing Agito into the wall. It
was probably only the fact that Guyver III would have started a
fight, a fight that would have most likely demolished the entire
cabin, which enabled Mr. Murakami to keep his temper in check.
"Let go of me," Mr. Murakami demanded
flatly, glaring at the boy from behind his sunglasses.
"Not until you tell me where you went,"
Agito reiterated.
"Lay off, Agito," Sho said, coming to
stand between the two of them.
"Stay out of this, Fukamachi," Agito
snapped.
Sho looked hurt for a moment, then
remembered whom he was dealing with. Agito could be a bit harder
on him than he liked, but Sho now knew that that was just how
Agito was. Being raised by Chronos had left its mark.
"Just ease up on him," Sho said, laying
his hand on Agito’s shoulder, trying to calm Guyver III down.
Agito roughly shrugged off Sho’s hand,
ignoring Guyver I’s attempts to reason with him. "I already told
you to stay out of this, Fukamachi."
"You should listen to your friend,
Makashima," Mr. Murakami growled, yanking his arm out of Agito’s
grip.
xXxXx
Ignoring the argument that was starting,
Masaki walked down the hall till he was back at the room he had
claimed for himself. The argument, if it could even be called
that, would probably be over by the time he came back out. Sho
was a nice enough person, but Makashima was a harsh,
argumentative, demanding bastard.
The Bastard Son of Chronos, as
Masaki had come to think of him. Not that he would ever tell
Agito that he had a pet name for him.
Agito? Since when do I call the Dark
Guyver, Mr. Bastard Son of Chronos, by his first name?
Masaki wondered to himself. Then, deciding that that wasn’t
important, Masaki decided to go lay down. This day had been
tiring enough without having to deal with Makashima when he was
off on one of his ‘security’ tirades.
Yawning, Masaki dropped into bed,
kicking off his shoes and pulling his feet up onto the bed with
the rest of him. Setting his sunglasses down on the nightstand,
Masaki blinked as his eyes quickly readjusted. Grabbing the
pillow, Masaki shoved it into the space between his right arm
and his head. As he was just settling down, Masaki heard a knock
at his door. He debated whether or not to answer, but when the
knocks were repeated much more forcefully, Masaki knew that he
would have to do something.
"Whoever it is, go away!"
"Not going to happen, Murakami."
Masaki growled deep in his throat.
It would
be him.
The Bastard Son of Chronos coming to
pay me a visit, how nice,
Masaki thought, considering different ways of making Makashima
go away. Finally realizing that nothing short of pounding Guyver
III into the ground, which would cause all sorts of other
problems, would get Makashima to leave him alone when the boy
was in this kind of mood, Masaki gave in.
"All right, all right, I’m coming,"
Masaki growled, dragging himself out of bed and putting his
sunglasses back on. Opening the door, Masaki was confronted with
Makashima’s annoying smirk.
"I knew you’d come to your senses sooner
or later, Murakami," Makashima said, with such infuriating
smugness that Masaki was tempted to slam the door in his face.
Crossing his arms and radiating
belligerence instead, Masaki responded. "What do you
want,
Makashima?"
"You never told me where you went
earlier."
"And I’m not going to," Masaki
growled. "So why don’t you just drop it and go away? Oh wait, I
forgot that you’re completely
incapable of respecting another person’s privacy when it
interferes with your having control of everything," Masaki spat
with bitter sarcasm.
"Rest assured, Murakami, I
will
find out what you’ve been up to lately. And if it’s anything
that would compromise our activities against Chronos, there
will
be repercussions."
The other boy actually seemed angry, it
was the first real emotion that Makashima had shown in the
entire day. At least as far as Masaki knew or could be convinced
to care. Even during his confrontation with Sho, Makashima had
still maintained his usual bored/half-amused demeanor.
Masaki glared at the Dark Guyver.
"Look Makashima, I hate Chronos just as much as you and Sho do.
Probably even more. I would
never do anything that would
help those heartless, evil bastards."
Masaki, having said his piece, waited to
see how Makashima would react. Makashima actually seemed to be
thinking about Masaki’s statement, rather than starting in on
another one of his infamous lectures about their need for
secrecy. Finally, without saying another word, Makashima nodded
to him, turned, and walked away.
Masaki was, in a word, shocked to see
Makashima walking away so soon. From what Masaki knew of
Makashima’s personality, Makashima wasn’t one to give up on
something he wanted without much more of a fight than he had put
up here. Masaki distrusted this sudden reversal on Makashima’s
part, and for a moment he thought about confronting the boy.
Then, deciding that he wasn’t in the mood to have another
argument or to listen to one of Makashima’s tirades, Masaki
decided to forget the whole thing.
Taking off his jacket, Masaki tossed it
on the floor by the bed. His sunglasses were the next thing to
go; Masaki put them back in their place on "his" nightstand.
Flopping back into the bed, Masaki hoped that he wouldn’t be
disturbed until he had had at least an hour and a half of sleep.
xXxXx
Agito trailed his hand along the
wall as he made his way back to the room he was staying in.
Maybe I should have handled
that differently, he mused.
That was one of the drawbacks of adopting a different persona
for so long: it became harder and harder to act like the person
who had taken on the persona rather than the persona itself.
Weaknesses – kindness, compassion,
generosity and any other thing that would not further their goal
of world domination - were not permitted in Chronos, and so they
had not been permitted in the Makashima household either. And
Agito had had to learn very quickly to act like the kind of
"son" Genzo Makashima had wanted him to be.
Agito remembered that once, a long time
ago, he had been a lot like Sho Fukamachi. Kind, openhearted,
compassionate. But once Genzo Makashima had murdered his parents
and taken him in, his own survival had dictated that he kill off
those parts of himself that felt those things. The parts that
had considered the feelings of others worthwhile.
Compassion, Agito recalled, had
been the first thing to go. After all, a "son of Chronos"
couldn’t be feeling pity for people that were either going to be
Zoaformed or executed. Son of
Chronos, I guess I won’t ever really be able to escape that.
Even now, Agito could still hear Genzo’s voice in his head at
times. It wasn’t a sign of psychosis, Agito was sure, just a
memory that refused to leave him alone.
"You are a son of Chronos, and
it’s time you started acting like one!"
Those words, in Genzo Makashima’s not-so-dulcet tones, would
continually play in his head whenever the part of Agito’s
personality that had been influenced by Genzo Makashima thought
that he was acting too much like a real person. It was part of
the reason that he still only referred to Sho by his last name:
to keep at least some distance between them.
Finally arriving at the room that he had
temporarily made his own, Agito pushed open the door and closed
it behind himself. Leaning his back against it, Agito let
himself succumb to a rare moment of weakness. It was hard,
always having to be the strong one when things went wrong, but
it was a role Agito had long ago become accustomed to. Perhaps,
given enough time, he would be comfortable enough with the
others to let them see this side of him.
But not now, not when there were so many
things were at stake. Not when the Chronos Corporation was
hounding them at practically every turn. Agito knew that he
still had to be the strong one, holding together their pitifully
small band of anti-Chronos rebels. Just then, Agito heard
someone knocking at his door.