Tokyo 24th Ward: Sacrifices
Aug. 11th, 2022 04:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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prose_alchemistTitle: Sacrifices
Author:jordannamorgan
Archive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: Mild PG.
Characters: Shuta, Ran, Koki, Mari.
Setting: Post-canon.
Summary: Being a hero comes at a price.
Disclaimer: They belong to CloverWorks. I’m just playing with them.
Notes: I’m quite sure “Tokyo 24th Ward” is the smallest fandom I’ve ever written in, but I feel it offered so many intriguing ideas without really exploring them in truly satisfying ways. Here is an attempt to do so, envisioning what I would have liked to see for the future of RGB, while also picking up on some plot threads left frustratingly loose. It was submitted for the prompts of “Knife” atfan_flashworks, and “Renewal” at smallfandomflsh.
[This story is dedicated to the memory of voice actor Billy Kametz, who portrayed Shuta in the first six episodes of the series’ English dub (among many other characters beloved to me) before his life and legacy were tragically cut short by cancer at far too young an age. To those of us who were touched by his talent, he was a true hero himself. Rest in peace, Billy—and thank you for the magic you shared with us in your performances.]
“How’s your arm?” Koki asked Shuta, when the two friends met outside the front entrance of Itadaki.
Shu frowned, glancing at his left bicep. His shirtsleeve concealed the bandage, but he definitely still felt the knife slash he’d received two days earlier, during the act of foiling a mentally disturbed hostage-taker at a convenience store. Things might have gotten ugly if the police had charged in, but Koki persuaded them to wait; and thanks to the decades-old blueprints Ran managed to dredge up with his computer skills, Shu was able to use a crawl space above the building’s ceiling to drop down on the perpetrator from above. Other than the cut he’d gotten himself before he wrestled the knife out of the man’s hands, no one was injured.
Asumi and the superhuman advantages she gifted them with might have been truly gone now, but RGB’s desire to help and protect others remained as strong as ever. After much personal deliberation and shared discussion, they had decided they would continue to use whatever abilities they had to act as heroes. Rather than visions of future events, they now depended on police-radio scanners and news reports to alert them to crises that were already happening, but they nonetheless believed they could still do something to make a difference.
Six months later, a successful string of thwarted crimes and saved lives left them feeling fairly well validated… but in Shu’s case, their actions were also reflected in a growing list of injuries. As the brawn of the team, he alone was the one who had to do the physical work, risking his body for others.
That was a price Shu was okay with. It was something he had always accepted in his ambition of being a hero, even before… but still, he couldn’t deny that he missed the enhanced abilities Asumi’s phone calls had triggered. The strength, the speed, the feeling that he could do anything. Even if the effect was only temporary, it had allowed him to accomplish so much more than he was now capable of.
He couldn’t stop the feeling that he needed to find some way to do better. To be better.
“It’s alright,” he answered Koki with a wan smile—definitely not wincing as he flexed his arm. “A couple more days, and it’ll be good as new. …So did Ran tell you any more than me about why he called us here?”
“No. He sounded even more intense than usual, but also… concerned.”
“That’s what I got out of it too. I guess we’d better go inside and see what’s happening.”
Stepping into the restaurant, they found there was only one late diner still picking over his Mari Special (which Shu could only hope was more appetizing than it looked). Upon their entry, the chef of the dish looked up from tending to the customer, her eyes darkening slightly as she saw Shu and Koki.
“Ran’s waiting for you in the back room,” Mari declared, and quickly looked away, as if to stop herself from saying anything more.
RGB’s decision to continue in the hero business had strained their friendship with her. Afraid of seeing them risk danger, she reacted to their choice with an anger that risked pushing them away from her regardless. It was a dilemma that felt nearly as sharp as any of those Asumi presented them with—and Shu still didn’t know how to solve it.
Saying nothing, the two made their way down a back hallway, entering a small cluttered space that served as a combination of storage and staff break room. Amidst stacks of boxes, Ran was sitting at a scuffed secondhand cafeteria table, an open can of his beloved Noze energy drink close at hand. A spare dishcloth covered something on the table before him.
“Hey,” he greeted them, with a crooked smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Glad you guys could make it.”
“What’s up?” Shu asked promptly, sitting down across the table from Ran.
Koki seated himself as well, glancing at what was presumably a surprise awaiting them on the table. “I take it you’ve come up with another technological aid to our hero work.”
“That’s kind of an understatement,” Ran replied—yet his face still remained strangely joyless. “For months now, I’ve been studying the DI-VA app data Kunai left to me, and the KANAE System data from Chikushi. I’ve been trying to figure out exactly how Asumi used DI-VA’s biometric technology over the phone to give us those crazy power-ups… and after dozens of failures, I’ve finally done it. I’ve managed to recreate the method she used.”
Shu’s breath caught, and beside him, he heard a similar reaction from Koki.
Ran drew back the dishcloth, revealing three tiny earpieces. The devices were respectively colored red, green, and blue: one for each of them.
“This is it. With some calibration, these things can create a personalized frequency that will stimulate our biorhythms, boosting our physical and mental abilities—the same way Asumi’s calls did.” At last Ran smiled, although there was something hard and knife-edged about the expression. “We still won’t be able to see disasters before they happen, but it would give us more power to save people from the ones we’ve been tracking the old-fashioned way.”
With wide and wondering eyes, Shu’s hand reached out. His fingers hovered over the blue earpiece; but somehow, he couldn’t quite bring himself to touch it just yet.
“This has been on your mind for a while.” He raised his eyes to meet Ran’s. “Then I’m not the only one. You couldn’t get over the feeling that we haven’t been able to do enough now, either.”
“Well, I mean.” His smile flattening, Ran seized his energy drink. He gulped down the entire contents of the can before crumpling it in his fist. “…That kind of high is a pretty hard act to follow, you know?”
“Now, though…” Shu abruptly broke into a beaming smile of his own. “This means we can have it back! We can do more, the way we did with Asumi’s help—”
“But what’s the catch?” Koki interrupted him incisively, grim-faced as he touched the frame of his glasses.
His heart skipping a beat, Shu glanced back at Ran. Suddenly he understood the air of quiet strain that tempered what should have been uncontrollable excitement from the computer genius.
Of course…
He should have known from the start that it couldn’t be so easy.
“The catch is the side effects of these bio-boosts.” Ran grimaced. “There’s no way around the fact that pushing our brains and bodies beyond normal human limits causes an insane amount of physical stress. It was happening even before, with the boosts Asumi gave us. Shu’s muscle cramps, my nosebleeds—”
“And headaches for me,” Koki nodded swiftly, as if with a new realization. “Since I’ve always been prone to stress headaches, I didn’t see the connection… but I do now.”
“But that was all just temporary stuff, right?” Shu asked anxiously. “We always recovered just fine, so—”
“In the short term,” Ran interjected. “We were fine with getting the handful of boosts we did over several months—but it’s a cumulative thing, just like any other kind of wear. More frequently, or over an even longer period of time…” He sighed and shook his head. “I’m no doctor, and I still have a lot to learn about the long-term effects of this technology. But my best guess is… regular use of these things could shorten our lives by years.”
A crushing silence followed that ominous prognosis. Shu swallowed hard, his fists clenched on the tabletop so tightly that it hurt.
“…How?” he breathed out at last. “How could Asumi have used something on us that carried such a risk? Did she not know?”
“She had the sum total of human medical knowledge and the biometric data of everyone in the city at her fingertips,” Ran muttered. “There’s no way she couldn’t know.”
At Shu’s side, Koki breathed deep, letting it out as a slow and measured exhalation.
“This must be why she only sought our help when people close to us personally were in danger,” he reasoned quietly. “She knew that if the crises weren’t averted, the losses we’d suffer would hurt us more than the side effects of the power she gave us… but she also must have known she couldn’t go on exposing us to it.” He briefly closed his eyes. “Maybe that burden of decision was the one my sister wanted to be released from most of all.”
Shu grimaced and shuddered, thinking of how much the girl he loved must have agonized over that dilemma every time she called them. Thinking of the possibility that more than anything, she could have wanted to die just to end her temptation to endanger them with pleas for help that she would have seen as selfish—even when they were purely for others’ sakes.
Unconsciously, her name crossed his lips in a heartbroken whisper.
“Oh, Asumi…”
Ran tipped his chair back against the wall, folding his arms behind his head. “Regardless, now you both know the facts—and all that’s left is the decision we have to make.” His somewhat bitter gaze shifted to his handiwork on the table. “We can flush these earpieces down the toilet, forget the whole idea, and just keep going on like we have been… or we can trade off part of our own lives for the chance to do more for other people.”
A sense of inner stillness and certainty that he’d never known before came over Shuta. He raised his eyes, his expression set with intent determination.
“I’ll take that deal,” he declared resolutely. “Losing a few years off my life in the future still doesn’t compare to what Asumi sacrificed for others—and I can’t live with asking any less of myself than she did. Besides, we’re part of the reason the Hazard Cast system is gone. After helping to end something that was supposed to keep people safe, I feel like I more than anyone owe this city a responsibility to step up and try to protect it.”
Koki regarded the hacker among the trio with a lightless smile. “You already knew what our answers would be, Ran. Otherwise you wouldn’t have made these devices in the first place.”
“Yeah… I kinda figured.” Smiling wearily, Ran let his chair fall forward again with a thump. “And as for lil’ old me? …Ah, what the hell. Artists who die young gain a lot more value to their names, right?—But that said, knowing you’d both be this crazy too is why I already built a safeguard into the system.”
“What do you mean?” Shu queried.
“The earpieces are controlled by an app, but I designed it so no single one of us can just power up on any old whim. At least one more of us has to sign off on it with a fingerprint scan to activate a boost. If we have to run our reason by somebody who can veto it, that oughta help keep you two idiots from overusing this thing, and killing yourselves any faster. We’ve gotta be checks and balances for each other… even though, knowing us, we’re definitely gonna have some nasty fights about what reasons are good enough.” A wincing grin. “And just so you know, I’ve made it so even I can’t change this setup. If I tried to hack my own creation and boost myself without confirmation from one of you, the whole system will self-destruct—so you guys won’t have any chance to go calling the kettle black.”
“That’s… smart,” Koki acknowledged thoughtfully. “No one person should ever be trusted with power—and no one of us alone should be allowed to decide when a situation is urgent enough to warrant a boost.” His narrowed eyes behind his glasses slid toward Shu. “Otherwise this one would certainly push himself until he dropped dead.”
“Hey,” Shu muttered unappreciatively—although he knew Koki was right. As the one with the most immediately impactful physical abilities, and the one most likely to act on impulse without Koki or Ran’s more careful consideration, he realized he would have struggled the most with a temptation to overuse the boosts when there might be another option. With their quicker minds, his friends would be better able to discern those options and guide him, helping to protect him from himself.
“I’m not stopping there either,” Ran declared fiercely. “I’ll keep developing other high-tech hero gear, to give us as many alternatives to the boosts as possible. I’m even going to study biology, so I can try to find ways to reduce their side effects.” As he glanced between Shu and Koki, something in his expression faltered, his eyes softening with an elusive emotion. “After all, keeping your teammates alive is part of the whole hero thing too.”
Koki raised a stilling hand. “In that case, I think one thing we should all agree upon now is that technological brainstorming sessions are not a valid excuse for you to use a boost.”
“Yeah yeah, I get it. I already know I’ve gotta stick to my plain old ordinary brainpower for that work.” Ran smirked. “’Cept of course, when I can catch a few minutes of dev time on the backside of a boost I needed to use for official business.”
“And there’s something else we should consider.” Koki folded his hands on the table. “Even despite our last visit with Asumi being broadcast across the whole city, my father’s people managed to make sure our past actions were kept under the radar, and the things we’ve done since then have been on a small enough scale to avoid any major public recognition. However, if we start performing superhuman feats again—sooner or later, it’s going to be noticed.” He scowled. “As cliché as the motives for secret identities always sound in fiction, they are valid. For our loved ones’ safety, as well as our own personal privacy, we need a cover persona to conceal ourselves.”
“Yeah, I can definitely relate to that,” the renegade street artist remarked, as Shu nodded in agreement.
“…And given that Shu’s physical powers will make him stand out the most, I’d say he’s the one who will need to front that identity.”
Shu choked. “Wait—what?”
“It makes sense,” Ran chuckled, before turning to Shu with a more sympathetic expression. “Look, it doesn’t need to be as flashy as a superhero movie. But like I said, you’re gonna need gear to help protect you—and Ko’s right that protecting your identity should be part of that too. A fake name and something to hide your face behind shouldn’t be that big of a deal.”
The muscle of the team let out a slow breath, rubbing the back of his neck. “Well, yeah, when you put it that way… But I’ve got an argument of my own, too. If I’m going to be the proverbial face of this persona we’re creating, then Koki is the one who should be the voice.”
Ran clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle an abrupt chortle—even as Koki turned pale as a ghost.
“…I beg your pardon?”
“Reason and intuition are your strongest powers, Ko,” Shu quickly pressed. “I can’t match that. When it’s time to talk situations down instead of using muscle, we’ll need your abilities—not mine.”
The corporate heir let out a hiss. “You do realize that due to my official position, mine is already the most publicly recognizable voice among the three of us—”
“Don’t sweat it,” Ran said gleefully. “Whipping up something to disguise your voice will be a piece of okonomiyaki for lil’ old me. Then all I have to do is add a transmitter and a body cam to Shu’s gear, and you’ll be able to react in real time to any talking our ‘hero by committee’ needs to do.”
Although Koki slumped and sighed, he offered no further objection.
“So I guess that leaves me as the man behind the curtain—designing tech and gathering intel,” Ran concluded. “Eh, I don’t mind that. DoRed’s given me enough time in the spotlight as it is.”
Koki frowned. “Then I suppose all that’s left is choosing a name for this public persona of ours—”
“Prism,” Shu spoke up impulsively.
The other two young men blinked at him in surprise and bemusement.
“Listen.” He looked back and forth earnestly between his friends. “A prism refracts the light that shines through it into its separate colors, right? And this secret identity is going to reflect the three of us the same way. Because he will be all of us—working together.”
Ran grinned. “Spoken like an artist, Shu! Prism, huh? …I like it.”
“Fitting indeed.” Koki finally cracked a trace of a smile. “Very well then.”
“Okay.” Ran proceeded to carefully gather the earpieces from the table, tucking them away in a pocket of his laptop bag. “I’m gonna hang onto these for now. We’ll still have to meet up for the calibration and testing, and besides, we can’t really go using them in public until I get Prism’s full gear ready. Right now I’m pumped enough to start on the designs tonight.” He glanced at Shu as he stood up. “And speaking of, you’ll have to come by my place in the next couple of days. Since you’re set to be Prism’s frontman, I’m gonna need a lot of measurements.”
“Sure thing,” Shu agreed, his heart fluttering with an anxious excitement as he also rose.
“I’m going to have a talk with Tsuzuragawa,” Koki remarked, moving ahead of the others toward the door of the room. “I think she can be trusted with knowledge of our plan—although obviously, I’ll say nothing to her of its potential cost. She may be a great help in controlling public information about the activities of Prism when…”
His words cut off as he opened the door—only to find Mari swiftly flinching away from the other side of it. With her eavesdropping discovered, the girl froze and stared at them for a long moment, tears brimming in her eyes.
“…Mari,” Shu said softly, feeling a pang in his chest that was a painful mixture of guilty alarm and sympathetic sadness.
With no sound except a tiny catch of a sob, Mari turned away and bolted for the kitchen.
“Ah, dammit,” Ran sighed in dismay, sweeping a hand through his unruly red hair. “So do we play rock paper scissors to decide who has to have a talk with her?”
Koki shook his head. “All three of us will, together—but not tonight. For now, I think we should just leave her alone.”
“She may tell,” Shu murmured.
“She won’t. At least not yet. She knows interfering in something so important to us could damage our friendship beyond repair—and losing us in one way or another is exactly what she’s afraid of. That should keep her too conflicted to make a decision for now, especially since she must also have heard that we can’t do anything right away. …No, I’m certain she’ll wait for us, and give us a chance to talk it out when she’s calmer.”
“Then I just hope we can make her understand.”
“We’re going to have to.”
The three friends made their way out of the now-closed restaurant. Ran set off with a wave of his hand, but Koki lingered a moment, regarding Shu gravely under the filtered haze of starlight and streetlamps.
“Listen, Shu. I want to know you’re absolutely sure of this path we’ve decided to take. As the one to play the physical role of Prism… the price of what we intend to do is very likely to weigh heaviest of all on you.”
“Yeah. And I’m okay with that.” Shu looked up toward the faint scattering of stars above, dimmed by the city’s glow. “We can’t see the future now. I could die any day in the work we’ve chosen to do—and that was the risk I always took, even before. For all we know, enhanced abilities might even help me get out of a danger I couldn’t have otherwise, and live longer than I would have without them.” He smiled ruefully. “Regardless, what matters is doing the most good I can with the life I have—however long it may be. …It’s what she did, too.”
Koki drew a deep breath and looked at the stars too, as if to carefully avoid contact with Shu’s gaze.
“I never said this to you before. …Thank you for loving mysister.”
“Thanks for helping her become the person she was. The person who inspired me so much.” With a feeble grin, Shu rubbed the back of his neck. “Man, we’re getting sentimental. We both need to get home and go to bed.”
“Yes. I’ll call you and Ran tomorrow, concerning what to do about Mari.—That is, if Ran doesn’t call us first after working all night on pure artistic energy.” A rare genuine smile of warmth crossed Koki’s lips. “Good night, Shu.”
With that, he went on his way, and Shu turned to walk to his home above Aoi Bakery next door.
Had Asumi still been alive, perhaps she would have felt the same as Mari. Perhaps she would have objected to her brother and friends playing heroes at such a price—or even regretted that she had given them the means. But even so, Shuta knew he would feel no regrets himself. Committing his entire being to helping others was what he wanted to do. If it was true that his most effective way of doing that would shorten his life to some degree, it was still a bargain for the years that could be lived by the people he had a chance to save.
And he wouldn’t be alone. His best friends would carry this with him. Perhaps he shouldn’t have agreed to see them bear such a risk and burden too; but he knew he couldn’t have stopped them if he wanted to, because this cause meant just as much to them.
No matter the cost, RGB would continue to protect the 24th Ward in the best way they could: together.
© 2022 Jordanna Morgan
Author:
jordannamorganArchive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: Mild PG.
Characters: Shuta, Ran, Koki, Mari.
Setting: Post-canon.
Summary: Being a hero comes at a price.
Disclaimer: They belong to CloverWorks. I’m just playing with them.
Notes: I’m quite sure “Tokyo 24th Ward” is the smallest fandom I’ve ever written in, but I feel it offered so many intriguing ideas without really exploring them in truly satisfying ways. Here is an attempt to do so, envisioning what I would have liked to see for the future of RGB, while also picking up on some plot threads left frustratingly loose. It was submitted for the prompts of “Knife” at
fan_flashworks, and “Renewal” at smallfandomflsh.[This story is dedicated to the memory of voice actor Billy Kametz, who portrayed Shuta in the first six episodes of the series’ English dub (among many other characters beloved to me) before his life and legacy were tragically cut short by cancer at far too young an age. To those of us who were touched by his talent, he was a true hero himself. Rest in peace, Billy—and thank you for the magic you shared with us in your performances.]
“How’s your arm?” Koki asked Shuta, when the two friends met outside the front entrance of Itadaki.
Shu frowned, glancing at his left bicep. His shirtsleeve concealed the bandage, but he definitely still felt the knife slash he’d received two days earlier, during the act of foiling a mentally disturbed hostage-taker at a convenience store. Things might have gotten ugly if the police had charged in, but Koki persuaded them to wait; and thanks to the decades-old blueprints Ran managed to dredge up with his computer skills, Shu was able to use a crawl space above the building’s ceiling to drop down on the perpetrator from above. Other than the cut he’d gotten himself before he wrestled the knife out of the man’s hands, no one was injured.
Asumi and the superhuman advantages she gifted them with might have been truly gone now, but RGB’s desire to help and protect others remained as strong as ever. After much personal deliberation and shared discussion, they had decided they would continue to use whatever abilities they had to act as heroes. Rather than visions of future events, they now depended on police-radio scanners and news reports to alert them to crises that were already happening, but they nonetheless believed they could still do something to make a difference.
Six months later, a successful string of thwarted crimes and saved lives left them feeling fairly well validated… but in Shu’s case, their actions were also reflected in a growing list of injuries. As the brawn of the team, he alone was the one who had to do the physical work, risking his body for others.
That was a price Shu was okay with. It was something he had always accepted in his ambition of being a hero, even before… but still, he couldn’t deny that he missed the enhanced abilities Asumi’s phone calls had triggered. The strength, the speed, the feeling that he could do anything. Even if the effect was only temporary, it had allowed him to accomplish so much more than he was now capable of.
He couldn’t stop the feeling that he needed to find some way to do better. To be better.
“It’s alright,” he answered Koki with a wan smile—definitely not wincing as he flexed his arm. “A couple more days, and it’ll be good as new. …So did Ran tell you any more than me about why he called us here?”
“No. He sounded even more intense than usual, but also… concerned.”
“That’s what I got out of it too. I guess we’d better go inside and see what’s happening.”
Stepping into the restaurant, they found there was only one late diner still picking over his Mari Special (which Shu could only hope was more appetizing than it looked). Upon their entry, the chef of the dish looked up from tending to the customer, her eyes darkening slightly as she saw Shu and Koki.
“Ran’s waiting for you in the back room,” Mari declared, and quickly looked away, as if to stop herself from saying anything more.
RGB’s decision to continue in the hero business had strained their friendship with her. Afraid of seeing them risk danger, she reacted to their choice with an anger that risked pushing them away from her regardless. It was a dilemma that felt nearly as sharp as any of those Asumi presented them with—and Shu still didn’t know how to solve it.
Saying nothing, the two made their way down a back hallway, entering a small cluttered space that served as a combination of storage and staff break room. Amidst stacks of boxes, Ran was sitting at a scuffed secondhand cafeteria table, an open can of his beloved Noze energy drink close at hand. A spare dishcloth covered something on the table before him.
“Hey,” he greeted them, with a crooked smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Glad you guys could make it.”
“What’s up?” Shu asked promptly, sitting down across the table from Ran.
Koki seated himself as well, glancing at what was presumably a surprise awaiting them on the table. “I take it you’ve come up with another technological aid to our hero work.”
“That’s kind of an understatement,” Ran replied—yet his face still remained strangely joyless. “For months now, I’ve been studying the DI-VA app data Kunai left to me, and the KANAE System data from Chikushi. I’ve been trying to figure out exactly how Asumi used DI-VA’s biometric technology over the phone to give us those crazy power-ups… and after dozens of failures, I’ve finally done it. I’ve managed to recreate the method she used.”
Shu’s breath caught, and beside him, he heard a similar reaction from Koki.
Ran drew back the dishcloth, revealing three tiny earpieces. The devices were respectively colored red, green, and blue: one for each of them.
“This is it. With some calibration, these things can create a personalized frequency that will stimulate our biorhythms, boosting our physical and mental abilities—the same way Asumi’s calls did.” At last Ran smiled, although there was something hard and knife-edged about the expression. “We still won’t be able to see disasters before they happen, but it would give us more power to save people from the ones we’ve been tracking the old-fashioned way.”
With wide and wondering eyes, Shu’s hand reached out. His fingers hovered over the blue earpiece; but somehow, he couldn’t quite bring himself to touch it just yet.
“This has been on your mind for a while.” He raised his eyes to meet Ran’s. “Then I’m not the only one. You couldn’t get over the feeling that we haven’t been able to do enough now, either.”
“Well, I mean.” His smile flattening, Ran seized his energy drink. He gulped down the entire contents of the can before crumpling it in his fist. “…That kind of high is a pretty hard act to follow, you know?”
“Now, though…” Shu abruptly broke into a beaming smile of his own. “This means we can have it back! We can do more, the way we did with Asumi’s help—”
“But what’s the catch?” Koki interrupted him incisively, grim-faced as he touched the frame of his glasses.
His heart skipping a beat, Shu glanced back at Ran. Suddenly he understood the air of quiet strain that tempered what should have been uncontrollable excitement from the computer genius.
Of course…
He should have known from the start that it couldn’t be so easy.
“The catch is the side effects of these bio-boosts.” Ran grimaced. “There’s no way around the fact that pushing our brains and bodies beyond normal human limits causes an insane amount of physical stress. It was happening even before, with the boosts Asumi gave us. Shu’s muscle cramps, my nosebleeds—”
“And headaches for me,” Koki nodded swiftly, as if with a new realization. “Since I’ve always been prone to stress headaches, I didn’t see the connection… but I do now.”
“But that was all just temporary stuff, right?” Shu asked anxiously. “We always recovered just fine, so—”
“In the short term,” Ran interjected. “We were fine with getting the handful of boosts we did over several months—but it’s a cumulative thing, just like any other kind of wear. More frequently, or over an even longer period of time…” He sighed and shook his head. “I’m no doctor, and I still have a lot to learn about the long-term effects of this technology. But my best guess is… regular use of these things could shorten our lives by years.”
A crushing silence followed that ominous prognosis. Shu swallowed hard, his fists clenched on the tabletop so tightly that it hurt.
“…How?” he breathed out at last. “How could Asumi have used something on us that carried such a risk? Did she not know?”
“She had the sum total of human medical knowledge and the biometric data of everyone in the city at her fingertips,” Ran muttered. “There’s no way she couldn’t know.”
At Shu’s side, Koki breathed deep, letting it out as a slow and measured exhalation.
“This must be why she only sought our help when people close to us personally were in danger,” he reasoned quietly. “She knew that if the crises weren’t averted, the losses we’d suffer would hurt us more than the side effects of the power she gave us… but she also must have known she couldn’t go on exposing us to it.” He briefly closed his eyes. “Maybe that burden of decision was the one my sister wanted to be released from most of all.”
Shu grimaced and shuddered, thinking of how much the girl he loved must have agonized over that dilemma every time she called them. Thinking of the possibility that more than anything, she could have wanted to die just to end her temptation to endanger them with pleas for help that she would have seen as selfish—even when they were purely for others’ sakes.
Unconsciously, her name crossed his lips in a heartbroken whisper.
“Oh, Asumi…”
Ran tipped his chair back against the wall, folding his arms behind his head. “Regardless, now you both know the facts—and all that’s left is the decision we have to make.” His somewhat bitter gaze shifted to his handiwork on the table. “We can flush these earpieces down the toilet, forget the whole idea, and just keep going on like we have been… or we can trade off part of our own lives for the chance to do more for other people.”
A sense of inner stillness and certainty that he’d never known before came over Shuta. He raised his eyes, his expression set with intent determination.
“I’ll take that deal,” he declared resolutely. “Losing a few years off my life in the future still doesn’t compare to what Asumi sacrificed for others—and I can’t live with asking any less of myself than she did. Besides, we’re part of the reason the Hazard Cast system is gone. After helping to end something that was supposed to keep people safe, I feel like I more than anyone owe this city a responsibility to step up and try to protect it.”
Koki regarded the hacker among the trio with a lightless smile. “You already knew what our answers would be, Ran. Otherwise you wouldn’t have made these devices in the first place.”
“Yeah… I kinda figured.” Smiling wearily, Ran let his chair fall forward again with a thump. “And as for lil’ old me? …Ah, what the hell. Artists who die young gain a lot more value to their names, right?—But that said, knowing you’d both be this crazy too is why I already built a safeguard into the system.”
“What do you mean?” Shu queried.
“The earpieces are controlled by an app, but I designed it so no single one of us can just power up on any old whim. At least one more of us has to sign off on it with a fingerprint scan to activate a boost. If we have to run our reason by somebody who can veto it, that oughta help keep you two idiots from overusing this thing, and killing yourselves any faster. We’ve gotta be checks and balances for each other… even though, knowing us, we’re definitely gonna have some nasty fights about what reasons are good enough.” A wincing grin. “And just so you know, I’ve made it so even I can’t change this setup. If I tried to hack my own creation and boost myself without confirmation from one of you, the whole system will self-destruct—so you guys won’t have any chance to go calling the kettle black.”
“That’s… smart,” Koki acknowledged thoughtfully. “No one person should ever be trusted with power—and no one of us alone should be allowed to decide when a situation is urgent enough to warrant a boost.” His narrowed eyes behind his glasses slid toward Shu. “Otherwise this one would certainly push himself until he dropped dead.”
“Hey,” Shu muttered unappreciatively—although he knew Koki was right. As the one with the most immediately impactful physical abilities, and the one most likely to act on impulse without Koki or Ran’s more careful consideration, he realized he would have struggled the most with a temptation to overuse the boosts when there might be another option. With their quicker minds, his friends would be better able to discern those options and guide him, helping to protect him from himself.
“I’m not stopping there either,” Ran declared fiercely. “I’ll keep developing other high-tech hero gear, to give us as many alternatives to the boosts as possible. I’m even going to study biology, so I can try to find ways to reduce their side effects.” As he glanced between Shu and Koki, something in his expression faltered, his eyes softening with an elusive emotion. “After all, keeping your teammates alive is part of the whole hero thing too.”
Koki raised a stilling hand. “In that case, I think one thing we should all agree upon now is that technological brainstorming sessions are not a valid excuse for you to use a boost.”
“Yeah yeah, I get it. I already know I’ve gotta stick to my plain old ordinary brainpower for that work.” Ran smirked. “’Cept of course, when I can catch a few minutes of dev time on the backside of a boost I needed to use for official business.”
“And there’s something else we should consider.” Koki folded his hands on the table. “Even despite our last visit with Asumi being broadcast across the whole city, my father’s people managed to make sure our past actions were kept under the radar, and the things we’ve done since then have been on a small enough scale to avoid any major public recognition. However, if we start performing superhuman feats again—sooner or later, it’s going to be noticed.” He scowled. “As cliché as the motives for secret identities always sound in fiction, they are valid. For our loved ones’ safety, as well as our own personal privacy, we need a cover persona to conceal ourselves.”
“Yeah, I can definitely relate to that,” the renegade street artist remarked, as Shu nodded in agreement.
“…And given that Shu’s physical powers will make him stand out the most, I’d say he’s the one who will need to front that identity.”
Shu choked. “Wait—what?”
“It makes sense,” Ran chuckled, before turning to Shu with a more sympathetic expression. “Look, it doesn’t need to be as flashy as a superhero movie. But like I said, you’re gonna need gear to help protect you—and Ko’s right that protecting your identity should be part of that too. A fake name and something to hide your face behind shouldn’t be that big of a deal.”
The muscle of the team let out a slow breath, rubbing the back of his neck. “Well, yeah, when you put it that way… But I’ve got an argument of my own, too. If I’m going to be the proverbial face of this persona we’re creating, then Koki is the one who should be the voice.”
Ran clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle an abrupt chortle—even as Koki turned pale as a ghost.
“…I beg your pardon?”
“Reason and intuition are your strongest powers, Ko,” Shu quickly pressed. “I can’t match that. When it’s time to talk situations down instead of using muscle, we’ll need your abilities—not mine.”
The corporate heir let out a hiss. “You do realize that due to my official position, mine is already the most publicly recognizable voice among the three of us—”
“Don’t sweat it,” Ran said gleefully. “Whipping up something to disguise your voice will be a piece of okonomiyaki for lil’ old me. Then all I have to do is add a transmitter and a body cam to Shu’s gear, and you’ll be able to react in real time to any talking our ‘hero by committee’ needs to do.”
Although Koki slumped and sighed, he offered no further objection.
“So I guess that leaves me as the man behind the curtain—designing tech and gathering intel,” Ran concluded. “Eh, I don’t mind that. DoRed’s given me enough time in the spotlight as it is.”
Koki frowned. “Then I suppose all that’s left is choosing a name for this public persona of ours—”
“Prism,” Shu spoke up impulsively.
The other two young men blinked at him in surprise and bemusement.
“Listen.” He looked back and forth earnestly between his friends. “A prism refracts the light that shines through it into its separate colors, right? And this secret identity is going to reflect the three of us the same way. Because he will be all of us—working together.”
Ran grinned. “Spoken like an artist, Shu! Prism, huh? …I like it.”
“Fitting indeed.” Koki finally cracked a trace of a smile. “Very well then.”
“Okay.” Ran proceeded to carefully gather the earpieces from the table, tucking them away in a pocket of his laptop bag. “I’m gonna hang onto these for now. We’ll still have to meet up for the calibration and testing, and besides, we can’t really go using them in public until I get Prism’s full gear ready. Right now I’m pumped enough to start on the designs tonight.” He glanced at Shu as he stood up. “And speaking of, you’ll have to come by my place in the next couple of days. Since you’re set to be Prism’s frontman, I’m gonna need a lot of measurements.”
“Sure thing,” Shu agreed, his heart fluttering with an anxious excitement as he also rose.
“I’m going to have a talk with Tsuzuragawa,” Koki remarked, moving ahead of the others toward the door of the room. “I think she can be trusted with knowledge of our plan—although obviously, I’ll say nothing to her of its potential cost. She may be a great help in controlling public information about the activities of Prism when…”
His words cut off as he opened the door—only to find Mari swiftly flinching away from the other side of it. With her eavesdropping discovered, the girl froze and stared at them for a long moment, tears brimming in her eyes.
“…Mari,” Shu said softly, feeling a pang in his chest that was a painful mixture of guilty alarm and sympathetic sadness.
With no sound except a tiny catch of a sob, Mari turned away and bolted for the kitchen.
“Ah, dammit,” Ran sighed in dismay, sweeping a hand through his unruly red hair. “So do we play rock paper scissors to decide who has to have a talk with her?”
Koki shook his head. “All three of us will, together—but not tonight. For now, I think we should just leave her alone.”
“She may tell,” Shu murmured.
“She won’t. At least not yet. She knows interfering in something so important to us could damage our friendship beyond repair—and losing us in one way or another is exactly what she’s afraid of. That should keep her too conflicted to make a decision for now, especially since she must also have heard that we can’t do anything right away. …No, I’m certain she’ll wait for us, and give us a chance to talk it out when she’s calmer.”
“Then I just hope we can make her understand.”
“We’re going to have to.”
The three friends made their way out of the now-closed restaurant. Ran set off with a wave of his hand, but Koki lingered a moment, regarding Shu gravely under the filtered haze of starlight and streetlamps.
“Listen, Shu. I want to know you’re absolutely sure of this path we’ve decided to take. As the one to play the physical role of Prism… the price of what we intend to do is very likely to weigh heaviest of all on you.”
“Yeah. And I’m okay with that.” Shu looked up toward the faint scattering of stars above, dimmed by the city’s glow. “We can’t see the future now. I could die any day in the work we’ve chosen to do—and that was the risk I always took, even before. For all we know, enhanced abilities might even help me get out of a danger I couldn’t have otherwise, and live longer than I would have without them.” He smiled ruefully. “Regardless, what matters is doing the most good I can with the life I have—however long it may be. …It’s what she did, too.”
Koki drew a deep breath and looked at the stars too, as if to carefully avoid contact with Shu’s gaze.
“I never said this to you before. …Thank you for loving mysister.”
“Thanks for helping her become the person she was. The person who inspired me so much.” With a feeble grin, Shu rubbed the back of his neck. “Man, we’re getting sentimental. We both need to get home and go to bed.”
“Yes. I’ll call you and Ran tomorrow, concerning what to do about Mari.—That is, if Ran doesn’t call us first after working all night on pure artistic energy.” A rare genuine smile of warmth crossed Koki’s lips. “Good night, Shu.”
With that, he went on his way, and Shu turned to walk to his home above Aoi Bakery next door.
Had Asumi still been alive, perhaps she would have felt the same as Mari. Perhaps she would have objected to her brother and friends playing heroes at such a price—or even regretted that she had given them the means. But even so, Shuta knew he would feel no regrets himself. Committing his entire being to helping others was what he wanted to do. If it was true that his most effective way of doing that would shorten his life to some degree, it was still a bargain for the years that could be lived by the people he had a chance to save.
And he wouldn’t be alone. His best friends would carry this with him. Perhaps he shouldn’t have agreed to see them bear such a risk and burden too; but he knew he couldn’t have stopped them if he wanted to, because this cause meant just as much to them.
No matter the cost, RGB would continue to protect the 24th Ward in the best way they could: together.
© 2022 Jordanna Morgan