Chapter Text
Three pilots. Even the idea was unheard of; Re:vale was the success story that had written the books and rules in the years since and no one had thought to push the limit of something that already worked so well, it was an understood fact that there was no need for more than two. Gaku suspected his father had planned it that way on purpose, either to drum up anticipation and press before the project was even attempted or as a challenge, the next flaming hoop for his son to jump through.
That didn’t mean the thought left him cold, he’d run halfway to the hangar before Anesagi had even finished telling him the assessment would be today. The rest of the way was spent fuming over the audacity of renting a hangar like it was a nightclub, as if it mattered where or how they all met as long as there was space. Any disastrous consequences of their attempt would be brushed under the rug, money took care of a lot of things when it came to preserving the sanctity and image of an 1D0L, his father made sure of that. The public couldn’t hear of anything that would make them realize the pilots were as flawed as any of them, nobody was unbreakable. Not even a diamond.
~*~
Ryuu looked away from the view out of the windows at the sound of footsteps. Nobody wandered the halls this far from the central hub, he’d been staring at the silent vista of rain-lashed fields for almost half an hour and had heard no sign of anyone else. It was surreal, had been surreal from the moment he’d been recruited while still covered in fish residue and smelling of it too, up to the tests and the shocked whispers when he’d finished them, to standing in the tasseled uniform of a pilot that felt like it wasn’t truly his, to the figure rounding the corner bathed in a radiant glow.
Ryuu had blended in well with his own family, brown amongst the zircons and smoky quartzes, and it was only if the light fell a certain way that anyone could discern what he was truly made of. But there could be no mistaking a white diamond, the crystal clarity in the facets was evident even from several meters away and the man was lucent in fractals of pure light.
“Are you Tsunashi Ryuunosuke? Here for the pilot trial?” The man’s voice broke Ryuu out of his daze, a sharp and measuring gaze meeting his own.
“Yes…” He trailed off after uttering the one word, struggling to put his thoughts in order. He’d known whoever was part of this attempt would have to be of the same gem, but he’d never met anyone else like him before and really, could he even say they were alike? Like night and day, poise and confidence beside the awkward and wilting.
“You’re the one with the legendary score.” An excitement in the man’s gaze belied the shrewd look from before.
“They just told me it was high.” Ryuu raised his hands in a clueless shrug. “And gave me a ticket for the next flight.”
“You’ve got the highest matrix ever recorded. No wonder they thought it would work even with three of us. Yaotome Gaku.”
The highest matrix? Him? Still dumb-founded by the proclamation, Ryuu took Gaku’s hand, intending to shake it but as soon as he touched pale skin, the resonance hit him like an 1D0L’s massive fist. It was as if he was caught in a riptide, the current fast and true, tearing through him until everything was laid bare, the sadness when his parents had fought, the responsibility over his brothers’ happiness, the fear in whether he would go home to his father with empty hands, every emotion swirling and eddying around him in waves of gold. But he could see where streaks of silver had begun to mix, the taste of tears and spite on his tongue.
Gaku’s fingers slipped out of his, their breath loud in the corridor that suddenly felt too small. Had they… Ryuu couldn’t tell, didn’t know what merging looked like for the ones undergoing it. He’d only seen what everyone else had, the blinding light growing and expanding until an 1D0L emerged, fully formed and ready for battle. What happened in those few seconds was a mystery to everyone but the pilots.
A hand hovered at the edge of his field of vision, so close to touching his shoulder but never closing the final distance. Ryuu knew the thoughts passing through Gaku’s mind, they were the same as the ones in his. Would it happen if they simply bumped shoulders while walking? Glancing back towards the view, a view that felt just as tumultuous as what was spiraling inside, he saw the cracks in the window, in the ceiling. They’d almost destroyed part of the base and the assessment hadn’t even started yet.
“I…always thought it was an exaggeration,” Gaku murmured, still staring down at his hand as if it would disappear as soon as it touched anything. “...greater than the sum of its parts…”
“I need to find the director…. apologize...” How much would the ceiling cost? The window? Could he stay and work as a loader? How long would it take work off the cost that way? Ten years? Twenty?
A touch, he jolted in alarm but the riptide didn’t appear, only Gaku’s smile as he tugged him down the hall with a newly gloved hand. “Don’t worry about it, you’re about to make history. They’ll put a plaque there later, call it some special spot or whatever will get them their shiny medals. Come on, let’s go meet this oh-so-special third.”
~*~
The hangar was bigger than the ones he’d been shown during his tour around the facility, these were never built to house 1D0Ls but rather the remnants of their precursors. Skeleton frames hung from clamps the size of houses, their long-abandoned projects silent and echoing. It would have felt isolating, to walk past such hulking husks, but Ryuu felt warm. Gaku strode resolutely at his side, and now that the shock was fading he could feel the faint residue of where they’d touched, a shiver along his fingers that made him want to reach out again to feel smooth fingers, refreshingly cold against his warmer ones.
A lone figure stood in the center of the vast space, a rose gold blooming under the far-off light from above. Specks of pink danced across the floor as he turned at their approach.
“You’re late.” The delicate voice belied the pointed pronouncement.
“And you picked a shit spot, where’s your guardian?”
“Wherever your precious papa is. Do you need him to be able to perform?” For such an angelic countenance, the acid was equally as potent. An aftertaste rose in Ryuu’s mouth unbidden, salt and iron, and he knew Gaku would snap before the other had even opened his mouth. He had to stop them, words weren’t his forte and though he loathed to push them apart when they were meant to be growing closer together it was all he could offer in defense; Gaku’s hand was already fisted in the blush-pale kerchief tied under Tenn’s pilot collar when Ryuu reached them, the resonance so strong the very air was vibrating with it, a maelstrom and a cacophony wrapped into one. The husks around them groaned from the force of it, metal screeching as it was disturbed from its decade of rest. If this had been any normal test, the overseers would have been rushing to pull them apart, a failed merging as dangerous as a Silence let loose on a city. All it took was the barest brush of contact and Ryuu was pulled into the whirlpool.
If Ryuu didn’t already know Gaku’s taste, the fierce current that ran through every fiber of him, Ryuu knows he would’ve drowned in the attempt to merge. Tenn was a tsunami, an unyielding wall of expectations and perfection, an immovable object that Gaku’s unstoppable will had been clashing against, the fallout a deadly morass between them. Ryuu held his breath as he was sucked into the center, struggling to find the balance between Gaku’s now-familiar salt and Tenn’s newly tart lemon and sour sardonicism, all without losing whatever was left of himself. He wanted to hug them close, build a shelter for them where they wouldn’t be judged and their burdens would not feel so heavy, but all he had was himself. He could be their shelter, with space enough to hold them safe and spark off of each other without setting the world ablaze…
The ground was so far away, the hangar’s ceiling brushing their head and Ryuu’s stomach dropped out of wherever his body had gone because he had none now, they were so high up—
Ryuu . It was odd to hear them alongside his thoughts, knowing they were all around him and part of him, and yet still feel them separately; Gaku the heart in his chest and Tenn the mind in his head. They had merged, towering and regal, with the strength of three souls the power at their core and Ryuu knew they could’ve torn a hole in the wall with a mere finger, swallowed the sun and still had room for more.
“Congratulations,” the voice sparked three different emotions, but the recognition was unmistakable. Director Yaotome, their commander and, in some sense, creator. “Welcome to the world, TRIGGER.”
~*~
It was during one of their first battles that they fell apart. Not the first, that had been a resounding success, the confident aim, the bullet of pure resonance, the surefire bullseye in the center of the Silence’s gaping maw. That one had been simple, ill-suited to be pitted against them when it was a lumbering beast and they the elegant sniper. But they would not always be so lucky, and that hard truth had been paid in the pain of a thin spike, a single needle that had slipped past their paltry defense and pierced their chest.
It was an insurmountable agony to feel the shattering of a heart, the pieces raining down on the ground with a delicate chiming that was as beautiful as it was brutal. Ryuu felt his grip on them slip and where Gaku had already been lost from his grasp, Tenn tore away from him in tandem. In the shadow of a ruined skyscraper, Ryuu knelt amidst colorless shards, as carelessly strewn as any common glass after an unexpected accident, but infinitely more precious. The cracked remains of a leg farther off, most of a hand gleaming at his side, but the largest piece was Gaku’s torso, broken in half like a geode split asunder to reveal its inner beauty. He tried to press the two halves together, the glimmering shine sealed inside where it should be, but the lost and confused look on Gaku’s face didn’t change.
“Who…?”
“We’ll get you back, all of you,” Ryuu said, words garbled with panic. “Every piece…” Tenn stood beside him, hand outstretched. The world shook around them, the skyscraper’s support beams shifting from the Silence’s approach. It would crush them soon, either the building or the Silence, and the city would be razed as it always was when an 1D0L fell alone.
“We have to leave him.” The words were soft, a harsh truth that Tenn bore for them all, but he couldn’t do it alone. With one last look at the approaching shadow, Ryuu took his hand.
Together, they weren’t as big, as tall as they were as TRIGGER, but they were sleek and precise, not a move wasted when Ryuu sank back into the limbs, leaving Tenn to issue the orders, to decide on their course of action. It was easier to just listen, to give in to the silence, riding the storm with a mute acceptance of not being in control. Tenn was a bitter lance, an avenging angel at their helm and as Ryuu sliced through the Silence’s spikes as though they were mere talc, he could taste the fear buried deep beneath the quiet ruthlessness. They’d levered a support into place underneath the crumbling side of the skyscraper, rounded it from the far side once it was stable and led the Silence on a chase, baiting it further and further from the ruin even as the emergency frequency chattered with orders and updates on their recovery mission. When Ryuu had stirred in response to a few static-ridden words, Tenn had cut off the connection, sending them back into the efficient silence of before. The aftertaste of worry never left however, Ryuu felt it at the back of his throat until they let go of each other as the Silence oozed in the dozen hacked pieces they’d reduced it to.
There was no sense of victory, no lingering elation from the fight, only a fragile satisfaction with their paltry vengeance.
~*~
A few weeks of reconstruction awaited Gaku, constrained to a black velvet operating table, his memories of them returning as the pieces still left to reattach slowly dwindled. A few slivers had escaped, lost to the rubble after falling from such a height, but the cracks sealed and they were pronounced ready for service—in time to be benched for another month.
Z00L, dropped onto a battlefield—onto a fellow 1D0L— with no warning, had become the most requested defender in the course of a single fight. With their deceptively gargantuan build, Ryuu had believed them to be the next step, of four instead of three, always pushing the limits, until he’d seen them merge.
“They’re two separate 1D0Ls that connect to make one, two pairs!”
Mirroring his surprise, Gaku buttoned his jacket awry from the shock. “So Tsukumo hasn’t figured out a tetrad yet after all…”
“Naturally,” Tenn said from his post by the door, just barely in the room.
“As if you could tell from the beginning. You were the one that said it would be more balanced with multiples of two in the first place!”
“Once you follow the logic to its natural conclusion, it’s clear that any combination of even pilots will have to form pairs.” Rolling his eyes, Tenn stepped closer as if the better for Gaku to hear his final blow. “Otherwise, it would be another triad and a solitary gem cannot form an 1D0L.”
“They used to think we were impossible, why not them!?”
“Because we’re not just anyone.”
Frozen by the heartfelt, if rigid, proclamation, Gaku let the argument die for the first time since Ryuu had known the two. Catching Tenn’s gaze, he smiled in encouragement, hoping perhaps the comfort of the moment would continue.
But Tenn’s stare sharpened. “Did they see you?”
“Huh?” It had only been a few hours ago, meetings and necessary check-ups keeping him apart from them until now, but the excitement of the news had turned the recollection fuzzy. “I know I saw them separate, I was passing by their docking port and wanted a closer look. I didn’t see any of them turn, but I was hoping to find you two right then so I didn’t linger.”
“So they could’ve noticed you leave.” Frown growing as Ryuu had recounted, Tenn continued, “You’re easy to recognize, Ryuu. Be careful, steer clear of them.”
“What? Why? I’ll tell them it was just you two that I shared it with, their secret’s safe with me.”
“And put a target on our backs too?”
“Oi!” Gaku, uniform buttoned properly and as regal as ever, interrupted. “You praise us one second and now this?”
“You couldn’t walk last week,” Tenn spat, a true anger coloring his face. “We’re vulnerable. Think about it. They’re riding on a lie of being an improvement over us, of making us obsolete . They’ll think Ryuu’s a threat, because we have the most to gain from exposing them.”
“You’re saying I’m the weakest link?”
Ryuu knew he was imagining the salt on his tongue, he’d been offered a pudding by one of the latest recruits only an hour ago, but Gaku’s expression spoke volumes. As if reading the same pages, Tenn shook his head swiftly.
“I’m saying we need to watch our backs. Each other’s backs.”
The only problem in watching each other’s backs, is no one is watching what’s in front.
~*~
His arms turned leaden first, their arms. The world foggy and dizzyingly in motion, TRIGGER’s shot going wide by such a large margin they were lucky the park it imploded in had already been under construction.
Ryuu! Ry— their voices blurred and glitched, fading in and out as if the radio of his consciousness were surfing the channels with abandon. A queasiness settled in his stomach, leeching numbness up his torso and down into his legs. TRIGGER buckled, falling to their knees and truly falling apart as they hurtled towards a shelter, the bunker already cracked from the battle and with no chance of further surviving a collision with an 1D0L.
Ryuu, after becoming so used to holding them together, didn’t remember the moment he let go.
~*~
“He’s still in one piece,” Gaku muttered, running his hands over Ryuu for the third time but finding nothing amiss. Simply as unresponsive as any piece of rock, still and lifeless, a statue carved from diamond. The residents who had taken shelter in the bunker were thankfully still kept underground by protocol, but they couldn’t stay out of the fight for long, not with Z00L still waging a warpath in the distance. They’d been the long-range to their short, relegated to cover fire as Z00L barged in with blades drawn, and now they were nothing. What would be said if the fight was finished and they’d been felled from the backlines? They’d never be called into battle again, a wild card in the worst cases.
“Ryuu,” he tried again, cradling Ryuu’s face and searching for any hint of motion. Even when he’d lain in pieces, in danger of being buried and crushed into so much dust, he’d never been worried enough to feel his core flicker; the most hopeless battle was nothing compared to this uncertainty.
“Gaku…” Tenn trailed off, turning back from the far-off spectacle to their fallen support.
“You’re not even going to suggest it?”
“You think it would work?” Any other day, the words would have been dripping with scorn, but today, Gaku was surprised to hear the request for what it was. Their foundation was gone, it didn’t matter that the numbers should be on their side; the first time had been a bomb defused at the last second and now they were planning to set it ticking again.
“For Ryuu, we can make it work.” Standing and turning in one movement, Gaku walked away, every facet of him fighting to not look back in case it made him falter. It clawed at him, the choice to keep going while Ryuu lay so cold—
“This is far enough.” It was an uncommon day that he was so glad for Tenn’s terse efficiency, but it was what was needed now.
Their hands were like magnets, repelling each other, the knowledge that they were bringing together something so unstable an instinctual failsafe against any attempt to accomplish the impossible. But they’d done it before, they would do it again.
“What are you waiting for? You were the one who said it would work, stop holding back!” Tenn’s accusative glare was catalyst enough. Gaku surged forward, hands grabbing onto his shoulders and through a tear in the fabric, they finally touched.
They were chaos, the destruction at the beginning of the universe, in a form that shifted and rearranged with every second as if it could never be in agreement on what they could be, should be, were. Small, they’d never been this small, not when they knew how to tower over buildings, to now be dwarfed by one was galling. Every step felt like a fight, every move a quarrel, and yet with an energy that was boundless, a fusion that was never-ending because it was always halfway to being undone. Every step was a league, every move holding the power of a sun.
Z00L slogged by as if the false 1D0Ls were swimming through mud, the Silence much the same. Pouring every ounce of friction, every fraught word, every moment they’d been the prickliest of friends, into a single finger, the energy of it eclipsed the Silence in a single searing second. Later, the news broadcasts would wonder at the clean removal of every shred, every disgustingly living cell, of the Silence, never before had their cities been left untainted, if still ravaged, by its biological putrefaction.
In the moment, they’d had a single synchronous thought. And the devastation it had rained was enough to never do it again.
~*~
“Jealous?” Gaku’s question pulled Ryuu from his stupefied staring; RULER was an incomparable merging, so fluid and seamless there was no distortion discernible. If they had been small enough to walk down a hall, no one would have guessed they were two separate gems. But it wasn’t every day two got to be one again, as in the beginning, so in the end.
“Of having a twin?” Shaking his head, Ryuu turned towards Gaku, letting the new 1D0L pass out of his sight. “I’ve always liked being an older brother.”
Eyes still on Tenn, on what Tenn had become, Gaku turned pensive. “Never had a sibling, seems fun.”
“It is! And irritating, sometimes the arguments outweigh the agreements but you care for each other no matter what.” Tentatively, as if he might break the focus with which Gaku followed the path of the 1D0L, he continued, “Tenn’s like a little brother to me too.”
“He is, the little brat,” Gaku said softly, as if to himself. His gaze snapped to meet Ryuu’s, catching Ryuu staring. “But I’m not.”
There were times that he forgot Gaku had been trained in the pilot reserves since he was small, learning the confidence and poise it took to take to the skies alone. It was easy to forget between the goofing around to the tune of Tenn’s long-suffering sighs and the unabashedly sincere things that he said as if they were commonplace, that they were simply members of a unit. There were times that he forgot the rules, the ranks and the restrictions, and let himself be close, let his feelings leak out of his heart and into his hands and his head. But Gaku’s intense gaze reminded him, throwing him back to his first days of floundering when he didn’t even know how to bow to whom. Backing up in the small confines of the corridor, Ryuu stammered at the look on Gaku’s face, “You’re not?”
“I’m not like a little brother to you, am I?”
“No, s—” Ryuu cut off as his back hit the wall and Gaku stepped close, past regulations, and hooked a finger into the loop of tassel that hung down Ryuu’s chest. Fiddling with it, rolling the smooth cord against his gloved thumb, before pulling on it firmly. Ryuu’s breath hitched, searching Gaku’s face for what it meant, what he meant, what Ryuu meant to him.
“Come with me.” Relinquishing the tassel as he turned toward the hangar, Ryuu nevertheless kept the distance, his heart firmly entangled. RULER had gone, sent off to battle and the personnel had filed away with the knowledge that their duties were done. The slice of sky through the open doors was invitingly blue, the only disturbance the silver threads of exhaust unraveling slowly.
They stopped in the center.
“Just in case,” Gaku said, looking up at the sky, and Ryuu couldn’t bear it any longer.
The kiss lasted a second, it lasted an eternity, they were one, they were both, a silver and gold vortex, mixing together until Ryuu didn’t know where he ended and Gaku began. Every merging had some bleeding between the pilots, it was why it even worked, but this went beyond that. Not a tool for fighting, or a shield to use for protection, not a project or a pair or pilots, but something more unique, a singularity, a dance, a phenomenon.