To paste into TVR later

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For all that happened last night, Rikiya does not remember falling asleep. He jolts awake in the futon, with just a small ache in his chest. His eyes focus themselves on the still-dark ceiling, a bit more readily than yesterday. Before he can be aware of anything else, something begins to shake, deep within him at first, but soon, all around him. It becomes strong enough to rattle the shelves and signs on the dining room walls. The noise becomes deafeningly loud within seconds, and a framed picture falls off the wall behind him. As Rikiya tries to bend up to see through the window, something grabs him by the ankles and begins to drag him, into the hall, out the door, into the painfully bright front yard. It finally lets go of him, and he squints his eyes to try to see what this force was. The light shining on him is still too bright for him to see, beyond two silhouettes, and the rumbling is too loud to know if either of them are talking, until one of them crouches over him.

"You, boy. You're not supposed to be in there. You're not even supposed to be alive." It's a rough and ugly voice, suited only to a select few terrible people, and perfectly clear to his ears, despite the din around him. "Not from the way I shot you before. So this time, I'll make you watch." Tetsuo Tamashiro, clad in a demonic red suit that fits his persona to a tee, marches just out of view.

Rikiya tries to raise his voice after him. You're not supposed to be alive, either! But his voice does not work, and his mouth does not open. He wants to lash out and hit this person, but his arms fail to move. Every function Rikiya can think to use is seemingly disconnected from him.

"And speaking of things that aren't supposed to be here," Tamashiro's voice shouts from just behind him, "how about this fucking eye sore of a house?" The rumbling seems to begin anew, louder this time, until nothing can be heard over it. From just beyond his peripheral vision, a huge blotch of yellow slides into view until it dominates his sight. "Tear it down! AGAIN! Get this shit out of here!" From somewhere off to Rikiya's right, a massive bulldozer plows forth as if nothing stands in its way.

Haruka! Yuta! The kids! I gotta… Rikiya tries to get up again, but his chest once more begins to throb, until an expensive dress shoe clamps down on his neck. Aniki! Help! KIRYU! The shoe's wearer bends over and kneels down, until his face is close enough to Rikiya's that he can almost make out its features. The callously slick hairdo, the cold, traitorous eyes… You're here, too?

"Call out for your beloved aniki. He didn't save you last time, and he can't save this place either," said the man that he was sure was Yoshitaka Mine. Rikiya's vision suddenly sharpens to its full clarity, as the bulldozer smashes through the supporting walls of the orphanage. He does not hear any screams over the engine's roar - least of all his own. The old building crumbles into dust in an instant, no different from the sand, as Mine briefly turns his head to watch it all happen.

"Now that he's seen what I want him to see, we don't have any need for him alive," says Mine, with his shoe still crushing Rikiya's neck. "Give me the gun. I'll do it right this time." He receives an old Russian handgun from Tamashiro, then plants its barrel directly against Rikiya's forehead. "Want to cry, now? Do you think he'll hear you, from whatever far away place he's at?" He squeezes the trigger with tormenting slowness, the spring audibly tensing inside the mechanism and echoing through Rikiya's skull, until the hammer drops. There is no sound or flash. The world around Rikiya, especially the two villains standing over him, come to a complete halt, and all is sudden silence to his ears. Even the bulldozer has ceased its roaring. Mine, Tamashiro, and the light all begin to melt away from him, into the featureless abyss, until nothing remains around Rikiya at all. All is a sea of blackness. A hole with no bottom. The event horizon.

Null and void.


Rikiya jolts awake again, his eyes having snapped open so fast that the morning light blinds him. His throat still feels as if he's been stepped on, and his chest burns so badly that he ponders inhaling a fire extinguisher. His hand reaches over to the horrible rectangle on his heart, and to his relief, both it and his arm are still there and working. He is almost finished with his self-checks when there is a ringing sound next to his head. Damn! My phone! Rikiya grabs for it so quickly that he nearly flings it into the kitchen. It is, thankfully, still ringing by the time he recovers from his fumble. “Hello?”

“Is this Rikiya Shimabukuro?” asks a pleasantly professional-sounding woman on the other end.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he rasps, needing a glass of water again.

“It’s Nurse Hayasaka from the hospital. How are you feeling?”

Hayasaka! Rikiya has almost never felt so relieved to hear somebody's voice. “Mostly fine, aside from some aching.”

“Not doing anything too strenuous?”

“Trying not to.” But you know how dreams can get sometimes.

“Well, when you get time, can you come by the hospital? We’d like to give you a check-up, just in case. We don’t have a lot of coma patients just wake up, the way you did, and get to go home the same day, let alone… the stuff you did yesterday.”

“If I find the time, sure.”

"Looking forward to seeing you again!" He almost hears the smile over the phone, feeling a strange warmth spreading from his ear towards his feeble heart. He hangs up the phone and begins to gather his things. His shirt is still hanging from one leg of the upturned dinner table, seeming a bit more hopeful of life this morning. Rikiya dons it, letting the tails hang out instead of tucking them. Maybe I shouldn't get rid of it, but I need to figure out how to fix these holes. Maybe I'll see about that as soon as I've got some money again.


He carefully takes the last of the 45 stairs leading down from the monorail station and checks his pulse. … Yup. Still there. The pain has yet to return, today, but after so many brushes with death on Day One, there's no reason not to be careful. Rikiya scans the area for a nearby velotaxi, but does not find one. Maybe up the block.

Rikiya starts walking, but the first thing headed his way is not a velomobile, but a tall, somewhat plump American man, with a very Dwarven beard and a long pony-tail, probably the most…obviously a tourist… that Rikiya has seen in years. He stops, gives the most exaggerated bow he can, then begins to speak. “[Good morning!] ...Oh, um, good morning!” The tall dwarf awkwardly switches from English to a stilted, textbook Japanese.

“Hi!” Rikiya greets, not much of a stranger to tourists. “Did you need help finding something?”

“I’m feeling great, thank you!” replies the tall dwarf, with a triumphant pump of his fist, to a question nobody asked. “Do you know about English?”

Do you know about…? What a strange question, what about it would I--wait a second. "Uh… no, I'm not great with English," Rikiya says, trying not to slur his syllables together too much.

"Well, that's no good." The tall dwarf scratches his beard, beneath one of its elaborate Nordic braids. "[I was going to ask if you could help me find someplace, but I don't know how to do that in Japanese. Curse me and my lack of foresight!]" Snapping his fingers, the dwarf Hi-Ho's in the opposite direction and disappears around a corner. I almost feel bad for the guy, but I can barely understand what he's saying. I hope he can find somebody that can talk to him, anyway. Rikiya shrugs his shoulders, figuring that he's done all he can, and finally finds the taxi that he's looking for.


The Greater Ryukyu General Hospital seems an awful lot more inviting on the way back in. Rikiya strains a bit to get out of the velotaxi, but thanks the driver profusely for his service. He holds a hand to his brick of a heart again. "This is it," he says to it, "time to see how you're doing."

He is barely into the lobby when a familiar-looking nurse in pastel teal scrubs waves to him from next to a rather nice-looking indoor plant. Kei Hayasaka certainly looks well today; maybe she just couldn't wait for him to show up. Then again, that nonsense downtown sure took a while. "Hey, welcome in," she greets. "Here for the check-up?"

"I'm a man of my word, aren't I?" he grins.

"This way, then." Kei leads him through a couple of corridors and up an elevator. They skip past most of the little triage rooms and the gift shop, and she seats him on a bed in an exam room that nobody seems to need just yet. "Want to open up your shirt for me, real quick?" she asks, rummaging in a drawer for a stethoscope. He does so, being careful not to rip the fabric any more than it already is. The stethoscope is shockingly cold to the touch, but Rikiya grits his teeth and tries to put up with it as she runs it over his chest.

"Huh, does that thing still work when it's not a real heart in there?"

"Gotta listen to your breathing and your guts, too," she says, and listens as intently as she can. Her face doesn't make it look like she's happy with what she hears. "So, you're sure you haven't been doing anything too strenuous?"

"Well..." Rikiya bashfully lowers his head. "To tell you the truth, I did kind of get into a fight before we met up yesterday, and then someone tried to shoot at me, and then..."

"Oh boy." She picks up a little hand-scanner device from the bedside table and waves it over his chest. With a little beep, it starts displaying all kinds of diagnostic data. "The defibrillator's gone off...four times, in the last day. That's not normal," she understates, squinting at the scanner to make sure she's read it correctly. It isn't lying - there are timestamps, even.

"...and then I had a nightmare. About what happened ten years ago."

"Any sudden massive chest pains to speak of?"

"Yes. Every time."

"That's *definitely* not normal," Kei says, with a hand up to her head. "No, this thing's having to work unusually hard. I need to go get Dr. Hanzawa. Do you think you'll be okay for a few minutes? I'll be right back." She drops the scanner on the bed, by Rikiya's leg, and speedwalks out of the exam room before Rikiya can answer her.

Not normal? Ten years ago, Rikiya would have taken it as a compliment. Maybe I am some kind of genetic freak. How else could a guy survive being shot almost directly through the heart, and survive? Even if it did take ten years for him to recover from it? Rikiya reaches for the scanner, still displaying the diagnostic data from his metal heart. The entire past day, starting from around noon, is perfectly timelined down to the second, in the most clinical detail possible, organized by time of occurrence. 4 Alerts, 17 Cautions. Caution: Strenuous activity. Caution: Heart rate exceeded recommended level. Alert: Stoppage detected, attempted restart. Alert: Stoppage detected, attempted restart. Alert. Alert.

He has to cry a bit. Brushes with death used to be exciting. Not that Rikiya was any daredevil to begin with, but he certainly never backed down from a fight. Even the ones that ended with him with his face in the pavement. He thinks hard about it and realizes that he's never really lived a peaceful and relaxing life. He isn't sure he even knows how.

The nurse and her doctor burst into the room together. "Ah, it's you!" exclaims Dr. Hanzawa. "Er... Rikiya, was it?"

"Yeah." Rikiya realizes he's still holding the hand-scanner, and hands it to the doctor.

"Mm-hmm..." Hanzawa doesn't have to glance at it for very long. "I guess I should have figured, for a former yakuza. Iwata certainly made the right call."

"Which call was that?"

"He made the decision to implant a miniature defibrillator in your heart, alongside the pacemaker. The very latest medical technology, at the time. All this time later, it seems like it's still doing its job. Though we might need to change the battery soon." He looks more relieved than he should.

Kei draws the doctor's attention back to the screen. "Sensei, look at the timestamps."

"Oh. ...Oh, my." The look of concern finally takes him over. "Four times in a day? I'm surprised this thing hasn't killed you by now."

"Killed?!" Rikiya exclaims, louder than he intends.

"No, no, maybe that's the wrong word. Um..." Hanzawa scratches at one of his temples, searching for the right phrase. "The human heart is a remarkably fragile thing, for how important it is. I'm...primarily surprised that, for as long as it has been since the last time it's had to do any real work, the device hasn't failed to do its job, even with mere hours between discharges. I'd say you're lucky, but at the same time, this little gadget refuses to let anything happen to you. It's a tenacious little thing."

"Maybe a bit like the man wearing it," Kei adds with a sly smirk.

"So every time my chest hurts like that, it's that little robot inside my heart zapping me back to life?" asks Rikiya, tapping on the rectangle again. "Might explain why it went off when I was..."

"When you were fighting someone? When you were being shot at?" Kei finishes for him. "I mean, I suppose I can't tell you how to live your life, but you really need to avoid that kind of stuff in the future. I don't know how many more times this thing can save you."

Rikiya wants to tell her it's no big deal, that he's been through worse. Not a single thing he can think to say, would reassure her at all. "Alright," he finally tells her. "I'll do my best to keep it in check."


His trip back out of the hospital lobby is slower, more measured and careful than usual. Maybe too careful, he suspects, but why push it? Just in case, he does look both ways before exiting the main doors, in case a certain somebody is lying in wait for him. With the way clear, he leaves, to find the velotaxi from before still waiting for him. The driver waves to him and gestures to get in.

"Wanna go back downtown?" he asks with a grin.

"Yeah, sure," he says, feeling more tired than he'd like to be. He climbs into the back and swipes his transit card in the machine, then once he is properly strapped in, the driver begins pedaling.

"Y'know, I never thought I'd get used to driving something this big without an engine, but you'd be surprised how easy these things are to move," the driver begins, as he brings the vehicle on to the side road. Going by his voice, he's a local; it's hard to mistake the way an Okinawan talks.

Rikiya sighs, remembering what the nurse just told him. "I'd almost want one for myself, but my heart probably can't take it now."

"Shame to hear. Way better than the old compact van I used to drive, y'know." The driver's speech has a certain quality to it that Rikiya recognizes, a bit. "Plus, y'know, does help ya lose some weight!"

"I'm sorry if this is kinda personal to ask, but did you used to be in one of the yakuza families around here?"

The driver has to laugh for a second as he slows the velotaxi to stop at a red light. It's a mirthful, but conditioned laugh, like he's had to laugh on purpose for one reason or another. "Y'know, it's been a few years since somebody asked me that, I got to thinking nobody ever would again, since I quit bleachin' my hair and wearin' those flashy clothes."

Rikiya looked down at his ragged shirt, that seemed uncomfortably bright now, even compared to the bright orange vest that the driver wore. He would need to consider getting something less obvious, now, if he intended to not be in any more fights.

"Nah, to answer your question, yeah, used to be, but that was years ago. Family ain't around, now, so I went legit." He scratched at the back of his head, where his hair showed only the tiniest hint of having ever been anything but dark brown. "Didn't used to get a lot of customers, but I've known this place like the back of my hand for years, and I did always love showing tourists around."

Rikiya thinks about the Tall Dwarf again, and briefly wonders if he should have given him a referral to this driver in particular. "I was, too, is why I'm asking. Found out I'm not in nearly good enough shape to keep that life up anymore. Was almost going to ask for some pointers, but if it's going to involve a lot of pedaling, it might not be for me."

"Hah, nah, nah, don't worry about it. If you're looking for some odd jobs, I hear they just opened a Hello Work office, it'd be up the boulevard a bit. I, uh, can't take you there directly, these things aren't allowed on the faster roads."

"I appreciate it, either way," says Rikiya.

The taxi pulls up to a stop, next to the staircase leading to the monorail station. The driver turns as far as he can in his recumbent seat and looks at Rikiya out the side of his eye. "Thanks for riding with us, and if you're ever in need of a ride in a pinch, we've got an on-demand service, too. We got that fancy app for those newer phones, but just in case, I'll give you my card." He reaches into his vest and fishes out a little plastic badge with a name on it, which Rikiya accepts without looking at it. As soon as Rikiya's out of the vehicle, something beeps between the handle bars. "Oh, speakin' of which, got a request coming in. Gimme a call whenever, aniki!" With this, the velotaxi takes off again, coming up to speed somewhat faster without the extra weight of a passenger.

Aniki...? Rikiya doesn't recall hardly anybody calling him aniki. Except... he looks down at the plastic business card in his hand. On one side of it is the company logo, Ryukyu In Motion, Inc. He flips it over. Mikio Aragaki. He kicks at the sidewalk a bit. Did he recognize me? How'd I not notice it was him? Where'd the time go...? He slips the card into one of his pants pockets. Well...I guess it'll have to be some work, first of all, he thinks, and sets off towards the main boulevard.