MoonMan
Inactive Member
Yes? No? Had Purina had the chance to say anything? No, Kokuten didn't think so. After that uncomfortable pause, he had torn off into a full run, leaving her to her work. He didn't know what he was doing immediately, he only knew his legs were carrying him. The man had broken rank, officially so as he sprinted straight out of the lab areas. He looked like a mad man, his arms thrown forward and back, with his helmet swinging. There was a certain exhilaration to it, though, a romantic charge into battle he hadn't felt in a while.
That halted suddenly as he nearly crashed into Fidela, who was heaving a pile of papers through the halls. As she turned the corner, he narrowly side-stepped her, crashing into a wall. The assistant threw a shocked look at the rapid man. Instead of offering an apology, he slammed his helmet down onto his shoulders, locking the seals, before leaving the aghast woman by herself as he fired down the hall.
Colors mixed into a blur as he surged into the central part of the station, sifting right through a crowd of people getting off the tram from a neighboring station arm. He could feel his lungs protesting as his boots stomped harder against the sturdy floor. The Captain was going faster now, finding an energy within himself that made his body answer his unreasonable demands. Long, limber limbs stretched further, pulled hard, balanced sharper, especially as he dodged and weaved past people in the hall, some of which would stop and watching him go by.
Reports came in of a Squad Captain charging through the halls, one specifically of the Squad 35. Requests began chiming over his headset of just what was going on. His mind began processing a response, before he just went with the first option at hand. He ripped the Cirrus pin from his helmet and slapped it on his chest, before yanking his helmet off, and dropping it. The sounds of concerned security stations disappeared behind him as the headgear bounced twice over the floor, becoming a memory.
He was getting closer, going by pure memory, side stepping into one hall to cut through the recreational area. A pair of scientists playing tennis stared, agape as the security officer deflected their ball by running right through their game. A few more disgruntled, off-shift workers felt offended as they were simply thrown off-hand sorrys.
It was until he reached the elevator that he had felt the entirety of his run. Normally, Marines 'ran' the distance Kokuten had just traveled for training purposes. The cyberized Master Sergeant had just sprinted up and down stairways, through hallways, and across part of the station just to get to this point.
Kokuten jabbed the elevator's summon button rapidly...
...and then fell into blackness. Kokuten's sudden and abrupt unconsciousness was accompanied by little more than a curtain of darkness that played over his eyes and muddled his thoughts. On a few occasions, Kokuten would subside from his hazy sleep, his mind registering scuffling sounds, muffled voices, but only the darkness before he faded back into his unconscious stupor. What seemed like an eternity only truly lasted a few minutes, until Kokuten felt himself being stood upright, held tightly by unseen forces.
---
"Stand him up. Take off the bag."
A familiar voice spoke in an agitated, commanding tone. Kokuten felt more movement, heard more scuffling noises, before all of a sudden his black world turned bright white as he felt an obscuring object being pulled from over his head. Kokuten's eyes readjusted to the darkness and his returning consciousness; he was in a maintenance corridor, used to repair computer systems and usually accessible near one of the hundreds of server nodes located around the station. A single floodlight hung above him; maintenance corridors were often used by mechanics and technicians, who provided their own light.
To his left and right, two men in gray-and-blue coveralls held Kokuten by the elbows and shoulders, his wrists locked behind his back by some type of restraint. Kokuten didn't recognize the two, although their faces were obscured by simple cloth bandanas covering over their noses and mouths. In front of Kokuten were two figures which were quite recognizable, the two of them clad in the same uniform coveralls as the others, without the occluding cloths. One, a woman with long, raven hair, the other a tall, sharp looking gentleman, his simple clothing not hiding his unamused glower.
Laj Vinross Yu sighed, rubbing at his eyes as he removed the gray worker's cap on his head. The Nepleslian CEO turned his head back up to Kokuten, but did not smile as he usually did. "Been keeping well, captain?"
"I'm doing okay." Kokuten looked the man up and down with a plain face, defying his throbbing heart in front of the fact he had just been kidnapped, "Is business slow lately, or is this some kind of rich man's hobby?"
SHOK
Kokuten would be hard-pressed to see Laj's fist hurling towards him in the dim lighting, but feeling it happen proved to be much easier. Almost as soon as Kokuten had finished, the CEO reared his right hand back and delivered the blow across the side of Kokuten's face... and it wasn't a love tap. To Laj's side, Odette watched with pensive eyes beneath the brim of the company cap atop her head, her brow ruffling, if only slightly, from the sudden and surprising swing that her employer had taken. "My business is fine, captain," Laj answered Kokuten, standing back up straight and readjusting the cuff of his disguise around his wrist. "Yours, on the other hand, is sorely lacking. Mostly because you seem to have a problem minding it, and nobody elses."
"A problem..." Kokuten halted his speech to roll his jaw and let the stars flutter out of his vision, "... Indeed, I've quit smoking lately, and it's led to some pretty hasty decisions, and a gruff attitude." He rubbed one of his canines with his tongue as he straightened himself out, smiling a bit at Laj, a nice bruise starting to decorate the edge of his cheek. "You'll have to excuse me, Mr. Vinross-Yu, breaking an addiction can lead to some erratic behavior. Though, I have to say your hits feel like toddler punches through these withdrawal symptoms, that or you really punch like a toddler."
Laj scoffed with a smirk, rolling his eyes up for a split second at Kokuten's answer. "Please, captain. I'm not trying to hurt you, I'm just-"
THWOK
Another blow to the side of Kokuten's head, in roughly the same place. "Venting some of this frustration. Frustration and disappointment," Laj continued on, reaching up and flexing his fist as he spoke. The two men on either side of Kokuten held him back up and firmly, taking care to keep the man's arms secured in place as their incognito CEO spoke his piece. "I thought we had an understanding, Chiaki. You understood what I was doing, and I know you agreed with it; I know you do."
"Oh, I understood quite well..." The Captain rolled his jaw again, blinking more stars out of his eyes, which had to roll themselves to refocus. "I said I understood your reasoning, and I agreed you had good reasons, but..."
Disheveled, spikey-brown hair gently tilted to one side as Kokuten's head did, looking up at Laj with a little smile. "... I never said I'd be keeping secrets."
Laj shook his head with a disappointed sigh. "So I've been told. Now, your employer is no doubt drowning herself with all of the feelings you've so foolishly unleashed on her," the man explained, running his fingers through his hair, only to rest them along his scalp while his palm pressed flat against his forehead. "You are killing her, Kokuten," Laj said flatly in an accusing tone. "I've been doing my best to keep her alive and you are killing her. I don't even know if she's even still alive right now, locked in her room for 3 weeks; I may have moles here, but Cassefin was secretive far before I threw my hand in. Why did you tell her? What possible reason could you have to do it?"
Kokuten stared up at Laj with a thoughtful expression. The thought did cross his mind, Cassefin might've been swaying from a rope in her office, or splayed over the floor of her personal lab. There was a certain chill as that sort of realization set in, perhaps this was destined to be a sad story.
"I didn't believe in your reasons. I didn't fight and bleed with my brothers just so we could bind them up and puppet them to some greater purpose," the words rolled off his tongues fluidly, biting his cheek idly between sentences, "We killed the Reds because we believed in a world where we had the choice to exist, and not just to exist, but to exist the way we wanted."
Air sifted deeply in Kokuten's long nostrils, making his chest puff out firmly. "If Cassefin's dead, then she's dead of her own free will. When I told her, I had the inkling that this would end one of three ways. She would either give up, press on, or accept it. No matter what she chose, even if she chose to play along with you, she would've been doing it of her own volition, and not being pulled by her marionette strings."
Growling in frustration, the Vinross Yu-Cranker CEO took a few quick steps towards Kokuten, gripping his hand on the collar of his CSS suit and shaking him once or twice. "You are being selfish, that is what you are doing," Laj accused once more, staring at Kokuten behind his handsomely furrowed brow. "You were looking out for yourself. Couldn't handle keeping a woman safe from harm, a woman far more important than either of us, safe by keeping one simple secret from her. You couldn't have it on your conscience... and that's where our similarities end," Laj slowed his tone and released Kokuten's collar, taking a step back. "I'm willing to bare a burden to protect the people I care about. You? You care more about your clean conscience."
"Who's trying to clean their conscience here, Laj? You think you're right for keeping her in the dark." Kokuten tilted his head to the other side, humming an exhale out of his mouth as he kept his focus, "I think I'm right for showing her the truth. You can argue selfishness all day, but I refuse to think that playing god is the benevolent thing to do here. We're Nepleslians, we take charge of our own destinies. That's exactly what Cassefin intended when she built this station, and forged her ideas."
The bruised man flicked his tongue over his teeth again, feeling his cheeks pinch in pain, "Tell me, Laj. What's killing her more? Knowing the truth, or the fact that her achievements aren't her own, that everything she believed she brought forth wasn't really just her?"
"Except she wouldn't know about any of that if you hadn't told her, you fool! She would still be doing what she was meant to be doing!" Laj exclaimed. After he had finished, the man drew back and stood up straight, closing his eyes and drawing in a calming breath. "It doesn't matter now anyway. You've brought this on all of us, now I'm going to have to fix it," Laj spoke in a markedly more serene tone, reaching his arm out towards Odette. The Unique Captain nodded once and produced a small datapad from the pocket of her coveralls, placing it into Laj's hand. After she had finished, Laj looked back up to Odette and nodded once.
Odette, in response, reached behind her back once more and produced a dulled matte-black object; a pistol of some kind, the design unknown to Kokuten. The woman checked the weapon for a moment, looking into the chamber and examining the magazine before clicking them both back into place and looking back to Laj Vinross Yu for his approval. "You know where to go, correct?" Odette nodded once to his question, a neutral look spreading across her face. "Yes, Master Laj." Another moment later, and she was gone, exiting the hidden corridor.
Laj watched her leave, speaking to Kokuten as he followed her movements, the datapad in his hand spilling a pale white light across his upper body. "Now that Cassefin's condition is markedly unstable, I have to protect my people. If she, in her state, blabs to the wrong people, this situation will become much more troublesome for everyone. She is of no use to me in this condition... so, if she isn't already dead by her own hand, I'm afraid we will have to deal with her and do it for her. You, on the other hand, won't have to worry about that," Laj said, tossing the datapad face-up in front of Kokuten, the vaguely familiar contents of the skill barring themselves before his eyes.
"You will be far, far too busy elsewhere," Laj continued, his eyes following the pad before the both of them. Kokuten would recognize the contents after a moment; a military request order to reassignment, signed by Kokuten and dated for several days earlier. "Your shuttle is already here to remove you and bring you to your requested vessel. Some... backwater ship of some kind, patrolling the Prime borderworlds, I don't really remember. But now that you've missed your deadline for retrieval, I have no doubt that the marine escort is looking for you right now, eager to hear why you weren't in the shuttlebay to meet them and further agitated by how they aren't getting any sort of answer from Miss Montreal. And I'm very sure that they won't want to hear your excuses; not with how much I'm paying them."
Laj sighed, long and deep, a slight look of sadness playing across his face as he returned his gaze back to the captain. "I suggest you go along with it and save yourself the court-martial, captain. Odette has been ordered to make it quick. You should just forget about your time here... even if it was your own fault things turned out this way. Goodbye, Kokuten."
Looking on to his two muscle-bound subordinates, Laj nodded at them. In response, the two began pressing down on Kokuten, attempting to buckle him down to his knees. Laj, in turn, moved away from the light, disappearing from sight as he traveled back down the corridor and out into the Cirrus Station.
---
There was a stillness in Kokuten's heart as it all came tumbling down like a decree of nature. Laj had brought down his hammer, and hit hard, so hard that Kokuten had barely any words for him. Where was Odette going? Where was Laj going? Was this all really happening? For some reason the man had felt much more smug knowing he might've died from this encounter, but this was worth than death. As he went to his knees, he felt the finality sink in. Everything that he had done to protect the station was for naught. Everything that he had done to protect the people was for naught. He had done what he had always done, what he thought was right.
Was it wrong? He refused to believe it was. Yet, what argument could he have against this? It felt as everything was trying to kick him down a hill, just so they could watch him try to climb again. Fate felt cruel, and it felt much worse when it won over a person. This time, it felt too heavy to continue, to stand. Perhaps it was for the best. Perhaps Laj was right. Maybe everything Kokuten fought for was a lie he was deluding himself with, and all he had done was hurt the person he cared about the most.
Perhaps tonight, just tonight, he'd let it go, and let the people who knew whats what to control the flow of events.
Maybe... Maybe after one more time.
At that, his arms bent unnaturally at the elbows, reversing onto the men holding him. His fingers, barely reaching their chests, lengthened needles from the tips, stabbing into their flesh and injecting a pre-prepared venom into their bodies. A mixture of a slow-acting anesthesia, and a bit of velserine.
Focused on keeping Kokuten's arms pinned, the two men on either side of him only served to assist in driving both of Kokuten's suddenly-disjointed arms into the opposing man. Surprised by the sudden movement and sharp pains, both of them gave short cries of surprise as they stumbled back, the affects of the cocktail of chemicals slowly overtaking their systems. One of the men tripped over himself, flopping onto the ground and finding it difficult to stand back up. The other seemed to have a larger modicum of perseverance as he held his check, slowly attempting to stagger towards Kokuten, only to fail at the last moment and fall forward onto his chest. The man was, for the moment, free to do as he pleased.
Kokuten stayed on his knees as his finger twisted and turned to shed his bindings in a most unnatural way. The bindings were manacles, wrought out of metal, held together by a simple mechanical lock. They screeched a terrible song as the Captain failed to break him. He threw a look over his shoulders to see just how tightly they clamped down on his hands. Deciding not to give it much though, the man contorted his already unnatural hand into a thin shape to slip the manacle off. With a little struggle, he pulled off the steely cuff, before tugging it off his other hand.
He spent a few moments rubbing his face, and gaining his ground. Every few seconds, he'd look at the men he had just downed, and then his mind would go back to everything Laj had said. Things were going fast, and he hadn't done something so drastic since he had killed Abeck.
Kokuten was angry, scared, vengeful, and going a mile a minute. He began calculating his options, the two thugs were currently down for a few hours, enough for a decent heart surgery. Laj had disappeared, and as much as Kokuten wanted to rip the mans heart out and put it back in, Odette had to be priority. The raven-haired woman had left on a purpose, and if Laj wanted to 'protect his people' then that meant handling an erratic Cassefin. Why would he kill Cassefin? Did he really think she's that far gone and threatening?
No time!
The first thing was to find out where the hell he was, so the Doctor turned out of the darkness and towards the exit Odette had taken into the halls. Odette would have to keep a low profile so as to not attract attention from the the CSS troopers, so she'd be carefully stalking to her objective. Kokuten, on the other hand, was still in CSS armor, he had a reason to be expedient. Not to mention the fact that there were Marines stalking the halls.
Kokuten found that the exit door to the maintenance corridor broke into a hallways not very far from his original position near the elevator. It must have been too troublesome and risky to drag the unconscious captain too much farther away. A quick glance around revealed nobody else in the hallway; both Laj Vinross Yu and Odette Swann were nowhere to be found. That was enough for him. Kokuten didn't know what Laj had expected the Doctor to do when he was left alone, but hopefully it didn't account for his escape.
With a quick lunge forward, his body lurched into the hall, all of his strength pressing him forward. Even moreso than when he had charged to Cassefin's guarded tower, he went quickly. As he cleared the way to the elevator he quickly jabbed his thumb on the call button, calling out a familiar name as he did so.
"Kess!" summoned Kokuten, his fist balling up and furious smashing against the summons button.
For a moment, Kokuten's call remained largely unanswered. His voice echoed through the hall, perhaps threateningly so with paid Nepleslian marines no doubt converging on his position as he stood there waiting for a reply. The moment of uneasiness was broken, however, as Kokuten caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, down the hallway in front of the elevator he was previously going to board. It was Kess, standing in front of the elevator, turned towards Kokuten, waving and shouting in order to get his attention. She looked somewhat alarmed. "Captain! Captain Chiaki!" Kess cried out, motioning for him to approach her.
"Kess, we have a serious security breach, I need to get up to Cassefin's quarters, now." shouted Kokuten, hushing himself quickly as he realized his volume. He quickly stepped to the SAVtech, answering her beckoning, while also warily checking the halls.
"Administrator Montreal?" Kess asked Kokuten after he had finished. Her eyes went up and down his form, obviously noting some peculiar things about his disposition. The savtech chose not to voice her concerns, however, reaffirming herself with a nod. "Something is wrong, captain. The savtechs and I watched you approach the elevator, but something happened; you disappeared. And now you're here again, and we can't access that area's volumetric displays or the surveillance systems, but they're all apparently normal and showing nothing but empty halls and labs full of workers."
Kess looked quite worried. The Savtechs only knew what was happening aboard the Cirrus Research Station through the integrated surveillance systems; without them, all Savtechs were blind to what was happening through the labs and halls. "What's happening?"
"We don't have time to verify everything. Get a security team into that corridor, and apprehend the two assholes in there. Laj Vinross Yu and his lackeys are on the station," the words came out almost too fast for Kokuten to speak, throwing his hands up his own sense of emergency more than he could put forth, "Right now, if we don't get up there, Cassefin's going to get put down like a mangy dog."
The Savtechs eyes grew wide as saucers, but quickly fell back into a determined scowl. The elevator door opened, Kess standing in front of the door to bar Kokuten's path; the elevator was not there, only an empty shaft with several cables and mechanisms whirring in the space. "Alright. I'm notifying security farther up the elevator's route. The elevator isn't responding to my return call- nevermind, now it is."
Kess wasn't kidding. The cables in the empty elevator shaft pulled taut for but a split second before the woven steel began pulling upwards at a markedly faster pace. This, accompanied by a strained screeching of metal emitting from the elevator shaft, gave Kokuten the impression that Kess was summoning the elevator at a much faster pace than normal. "Cameras in the elevator have shown no entries in the last hour... if Laj Vinross Yu is behind this, he's done a good job at making sure we Savtechs can't see what's happening."
The elevator screeched into view, actually sailing a floor or so down before coming to a halt and jerking itself back up into a position which Kokuten could enter. The elevator was barren, but the maintenance door at the roof of the elevator had been opened. "I can take you straight to Cassefin's floor, but I can't be there volumetrically," Kess said, a glimmer of worry shooting across her expression. "I can't be there to help you, so you'll have to do it yourself. I'm sending help, however."
"I want this station locked down in the meantime," answered Kokuten, getting into the elevator as fast he could, almost jumping in as it went down, "no one needs to be getting on or off. Everyone is a security risk at this point. If you can, hunt down the bastard wearing Laj's face."
"I'll do what I can, captain," Kess said, nodding firmly, eyes fixated pensively on Kokuten. Savtechs didn't have the ability to tear up; it wasn't a function they were given. However, Kokuten could tell that Kess was worried enough to try all the same. "Just make sure Miss Montreal is okay."
"I promise."
The elevator door slammed shut and immediately began ascending at an unsettling pace, Kokuten found it hard to simply stand straight at the break-neck pace Kess was pushing the machinery to. The ascent took next to no time at all, the mechanisms creaking and hissing at the stress as the doors swung open once more, exposing Kokuten to the familiar red-carpted hallways leading to Cassefin's personal area. The two doors on the right and left of the hall were shut, the large white bulkheads closed, while Cassefin's personal living quarters lay just beyond the two carved wooden doors at the end of the hall. Nothing seemed too out of place, but with how things were turning out, Kokuten would be hard-pressed to believe all was well.
With a breathing he tried to pace with his heart, Kokuten slipped out of the elevator, his eyes quickly scanning the area. Something was off. Why weren't the doors open? Odette had a mile-long headstart, would she have closed them to prevent people from becoming aware of her presence? The man ran these thoughts over his personal review several times as he quietly jogged to the door, trying not to make too much noise.
His hand carefully grasped the door handle, and turned it.
There was no give; the doors were locked. Kokuten's proximity to the door allowed him to hear the breaking of glass from beyond the door, as well as muffled voices after his failed attempt at working the brass handles of the ornately-carved double doors.
Shnk! The razor sharp surgical blades formed out of his wrists. Normally, he'd never use those bladed instruments for a crude task, but desperate times called for a lack of restriction. He shoved both blades into the door handles, and turned them like murderous skeletons keys to open the double doors.
Kokuten's attempts at forcing the lock were met with failure yet again; surprisingly, the lock holes on the doors actually led to nothing; the door was merely made to appear as ornate as a real one would. The actual mechanisms and locks were most likely more refined in nature. The sharps sounds of metal upon metal, however, did raise something from the door.
"... who's there?! Go away!!"
It was the unmistakable voice of Cirrus's Head Administrator, Cassefin Montreal. However, Kokuten could note some clearly-defined properties in her voice that would cause him some alarm. Her voice was strained and weak, almost choking on every word as though she were in great pain or on the verge of tears.
"Cassefin, open these doors, right now."
"Chiaki?" Cassefin's voice returned his order, almost in disbelief. There was a long pause, no further sound coming from the room. "... leave! It's... not safe! Just go away!"
What?
"The hell with this," growled Kokuten, his frustration mounting to inconsolable heights. The cyborg's cybernetic arm began to click and whir as it built tension in its servos. He brought his arm back, and positioned himself. His body turned slightly, edging the arm into position, but the cybernetic limb fired forward like bullet into the center of the double-doors, forcing them open with one thunderous strike.
