#anyways i will make kenji common tags on ao3 if i have to do it all myself

[that-was-anticlimactic]

*sigh* fine, if none of you will care about kenji, i will 😌

[02blessings]

chapters: 1/1

words: 2.5 k

rating: G

additional tags: datekou gen, tortoise puns, aone and futakuchi friendship, nametsu mai roasting futakuchi kenji

“She was just here! I don’t understand-” Futakuchi turns his pockets inside out as if Speedy could be found hiding inside them- “how- what- why is she so fast?”

Or, Futakuchi likes to think he’s pretty quick on his feet. Not as quick as Aone’s tortoise, apparently.

Check it out on AO3 or below the cut!

Takanobu has heard a lot of untrue statements come out of Futakuchi’s mouth.

It was Shibayama’s idea.

No, don’t change. That shirt looks good on you, Moniwa.

I’m not scared, you’re the one who’s scared.

You’re doing great, Koganegawa.

Kamasaki is my favorite upperclassman.

Of course I remember Pantalons’ real name!

I don’t care.

But no statement has ever been as completely, unequivocally false as when Futakuchi told him, “You have nothing to worry about, Aone. Speedy and I get along great.”

In response, Takanobu had reminded Futakuchi that Speedy - and Russian tortoises in general - don’t “get along great” with anyone, as they tend to be distant with strangers. Speedy barely acknowledges Takanobu as anything more than a walking tree that supplies lettuce on most days, and they had been together since he was a child. Futakuchi had agreed that that may be true for Aone and the common masses, but he knew for a fact that he was superior to the general population, especially when it came to pet tortoises. Some might even call him a Tortoise Magnet. His words, not Takanobu’s.

So when Takanobu had to leave for the weekend to visit family in Tokyo, he asked Futakuchi to babysit Speedy. Because he trusted him and believed he was completely qualified for the job.

Well, sometimes Takanobu was untruthful as well. He had actually asked literally everyone else he knew to watch Speedy, but they had all been busy. He even contacted someone from Aobajousai, Iwaizumi Something, because he had seemed particularly responsible during their last match against each other. Iwaizumi had replied that he was going to be busy that weekend “watching another scaly reptile,” which Takanobu interpreted to mean he was either partaking in a Godzilla movie marathon or babysitting Aobajousai’s setter. Or both.

Eventually he had settled for Futakuchi, who was free because despite acting the opposite, Datekou volleyball was his social life. But Takanobu wasn’t worried at all.

Another lie. He was starting to wonder if he was in denial.

“Have fun on your weekend. Let loose, go wild, do something you wouldn’t want the team to see pictures of. But make sure you send us the pics anyways. I’ll take good care of your turtle.”

“Tortoise.”

“Semantics.”

Takanobu sighs and hefts his luggage onto his shoulder. He kneels down in the grass next to Speedy’s outdoor enclosure, draping his arm over the wire fencing to rub the top of her pale green shell the way she likes. He glances over his shoulder to see Futakuchi hovering his pointer finger over the needle of one of Takanobu’s prized cacti, muttering “don’t be a coward” to himself. Takanobu closes his eyes to allow his brain to reset, then gives Speedy a stern look. “Don’t give him too much trouble,” he whispers to her. She slowly looks up at him, and he swears he can see her smirking.

He decides to leave his phone volume on the highest setting just in case he gets a call from Futakuchi, or the fire department.

Takanobu stands next to Futakuchi, who is now letting Takanobu’s mother’s Venus fly trap eat his finger. He waits until Futakuchi turns to look at him, and Takanobu is willing to admit that he enjoys Futakuchi’s slight recoil from the intense expression on his face.

“Alright, alright. I promise I’ll be really responsible and I won’t do any of the things I’m considering doing. Get going already, you’ll miss your train.”

Takanobu stays still.

Futakuchi sighs. “Fiiiine. The emergency numbers are on the fridge, Speedy’s feeding schedule and food is on the kitchen counter, and more instructions are in your room.” And then, because he was Futakuchi, he added, “And I know how to use Google. So. Bye, now.”

Takanobu realizes that if Futakuchi hasn’t changed his behavior in the two years they’d known each other, he wasn’t going to change in the five minutes Takanobu had left before he was officially late for his train. He accepts the fact that his weekend will be cut short and backs out of his house, pointing warningly at Futakuchi until the front door closes.

“So, Speedy. Come here often?” Kenji snickers at his own joke and looks around the garden that she calls home. The edges are lined with a mix of Aone's cacti and his mother's flowering carnivorous plants, and Kenji is a big fan of the aesthetic. “You’ve got some pretty sweet digs here. This might be bigger than my bedroom. Definitely bigger than Kamasaki’s bedroom, the proletariat.”

He refers to the instruction sheet Aone left him, and decides that he has enough time to watch some TV before he has to feed Speedy. He eyes her as she meanders across her enclosure, pushing aside blades of grass taller than her. He suspects that she might be watching him as well, but he brushes it off as inevitable - not even beasts could resist all of this - and heads back into Aone’s house.

Slinging himself over the back of Aone’s leather couch, he turns the TV on and begins scrolling through the channels. “What’s with this Pokemon nerd shit? I’mma still watch it though, I’mma still watch. But only to make fun of it!” He yells the last part just in case Speedy is judging him.

Kenji sinks deeper into the couch. “You know, Speedy, you kinda remind me of that little blue turtle Pokemon. What’s it called again?” Kenji knows what it’s called. It’s Squirtle, it’s his favorite, and he has three plushie versions on his bed in assorted sizes. He’s just not sure if Speedy can be trusted with the knowledge that he still loves Pokemon.

“Hey Speedy, if I was a Pokemon, which one do you think I’d be?” Kenji yawns and props his feet up on the glass top of Aone’s coffee table. “Don’t say Magikarp.”

His head slides to the side to rest on a brightly patterned throw pillow. He watches as Ash orders Pikachu to use Thunderbolt on Team Rocket - how violent of Ash, he always knew he respected him - and whispers “it’s super effective” as they blast off. The last thought he remembers having was whether he should rewind the show to sing along with Team Rocket’s song or just wait for the next episode before he falls asleep.

“Shit.” Kenji sits up from where he had slid off the couch and onto the floor in a room that was significantly darker than he remembered. “Oh no, the turt- tortoise is going to kill me.”

He rushes to the kitchen to grab some lettuce for Speedy, checking the clock. He was thirty minutes behind her feeding schedule, and he was unsure if that was a noticeable difference for a tortoise or if that counted as, like, a second in tortoise years.

The back door slams behind him as he stumbles into Aone’s garden, piles of lettuce clutched in his hands. “Speedy, please don’t tell Aone, I’ll give you a carrot if you don’t talk- wait. What.”

Speedy was nowhere to be found.

“Nope. Noooooope. Nopity nope.” Kenji retraces his steps back into the house, waits for the world to fix itself, then goes back into the garden. Speedy is still missing. The lettuce falls from his hands.

He paces back and forth across the garden and does some quick calculations in his head. Assume that tortoises are slow, carry the 1, multiply by 2...Kenji concludes that there’s no way the tortoise got out of the garden. He begins searching under the bushes and behind the flowerbeds, even climbing the tree just to be safe. There’s no sign of Speedy.

“She was just here! I don’t understand-” Kenji turns his pockets inside out as if Speedy could be found hiding inside them- “how- what- why is she so fast?”

Kenji is beginning to panic, so it’s understandable that he makes the worst possible decision and calls the one person who actively enjoys watching him suffer.

“Futakuchi Kenji. What did you do now?” Nametsu Mai greets him. Kenji is stung that he didn’t even get a hello this time.

“Nametsu Mai. What makes you think I did anything- okay fine, I lost Aone’s turt- tortoise.”

There’s nothing but silence on the other end of the line, and then Nametsu is laughing at him. Kenji is disturbingly used to the sound.

“Did- did she go too fast for you? You must be a little...shell-shocked,” she grits out.

“Come on, this is serious-”

“No, wait wait, I have one more - Aone is turtley going to lose it when he finds out.”

“I’ll have you know, Speedy is a tortoise and she’s beautiful. Are you going to help me or not?”

Nametsu’s laughter cuts off abruptly. “Can’t. Aone actually asked if I could watch his tortoise this weekend, but I let him know the managers are having their monthly get-together where we swap stories. Mainly about you.” Her voice moves away from the phone as she talks to someone in the room with her. “What? Yeah, it’s Futakuchi. Tell Hana she was right, we owe her money now. He didn’t even last the night.” She moves back to the phone. “I have to go, Futakuchi, but I won’t tell Aone yet. Call some of the team. Actually, call all of the team and tell them exactly what you told me. See you Monday.” Kenji hears her yell “Yachi! You and me, Rainbow Road, right now!” before the call ends.

He takes a deep breath and scrolls through his contact list.

“Thank you all for joining me on such short notice,” Kenji says to the assembled group. He crosses his arms across his chest, only flexing a little bit. “I’ve called you here today to complete a very important mission.”

The long-suffering faces of Moniwa, Obara, and Pantalons look up at him from where he ordered them to sit on Aone’s living room floor. He likes to feel tall sometimes. Kenji had called Kamasaki and Sasaya as well, but Nametsu had probably gotten to them first because when Kamasaki picked up Kenji had been unable to say anything over the full minute of laughter he heard from both of them before they hung up and blocked his number. Kenji had decided against calling any of the first years, in order to maintain what little respect for him they still had.

“Don’t you think we’re wasting time talking when we could be looking for Speedy?” Pantalons asks wearily.

“Yes. Don’t interrupt. As I was saying, we’ve gathered here for a very important mission - Operation Ghost in the Shell.” Kenji pauses to let his joke sink in. He spent ten minutes working on it. He unfurls the poster he spent another ten minutes working on. “I’ve outlined a plan for us to cover the most ground in Miyagi before Aone gets back. It involves Moniwa getting a pilot’s license, a horse, and several pairs of rollerblades.”

“I don’t think Speedy made it any farther than a mile, max,” Moniwa says hastily, paling at the prospect of taking a test for a pilot’s license. He hadn’t even studied.

Futakuchi thinks for a second. “Don’t interrupt, but that sounds like a good starting range. We should split up and search the entire block.”

“I’ll take Obara, then. Onagawa, you go with Futakuchi,” Moniwa says, rising from the ground. Kenji revels in the fact that he’s still taller even when Moniwa is standing.

“Huh? Who’s Onagawa? Pantalons, you come with me. Moniwa, stop giving orders. I'm captain now,” Kenji leads the way out the front door, pointing imperiously down Aone’s street while Moniwa grabs Obara’s arm and speedwalks in the opposite direction, attempting to hide his laughter at the horrified expression on Pantalons’ face.

“Futakuchi. Give up, please. It’s time to call Aone,” Pantalons calls up to him. Moniwa and Obara stand next to him, Moniwa’s hands fluttering in panic. Pantalons had called them for help after Kenji started to make rash decisions when Speedy hadn’t been found immediately.

“No, he’s with his family! I’ve got this under control!” Kenji pulls himself up using another branch. He’s almost to the top of this tree, and then he’ll be able to see all of Miyagi. Kenji - 1, Speedy - 0, he thinks gleefully. She can’t hide from him now.

Kenji is preparing his victory speech to be delivered on speakerphone to Nametsu and the rest of the managers, when the branch he’s standing on snaps. Obara’s terrified screech almost makes him laugh hard enough to lose his grasp on the branch above him, but as he carefully looks down, he realizes he’s still alive but now stuck in a tree.

He pulls himself up to sit on the branch that saved his life, grabbing his phone and dialing Aone’s number. He picks up on the first ring.

“I just unpacked.”

“Hellooooo to you too, big guy. How’s the weather in Tokyo?”

“You lost Speedy.”

“I lost Speedy.”

Aone sighs. “I’m on my way.”

Kenji hangs up, then starts dialing the fire department.

Kenji - 0, Speedy - 1.

Aone enters the house quietly and makes his way to the backyard without pausing to say hi to Kenji, which was honestly really rude of him, it’s not like Kenji lost Speedy on purpose-

“You didn’t lose Speedy.”

Kenji stops in the doorway to the garden, Moniwa and the other second years peering over his shoulder. “What.”

Aone kneels down next to the enclosure and pushes aside a mound of dirt and- oh. Speedy’s head pops out and she turns surprisingly quickly to look directly at Kenji. He swears she’s smirking at him.

“I’m going home,” Moniwa says, turning immediately towards the front door and walking out of Aone’s house.

Obara and Pantalons sigh in unison, patting Kenji on the back and saying goodbye to Aone before following Moniwa out. The garden is silent for a moment as Kenji focuses intensely on the foliage. The first stars have started to appear, stark against the blue-black of the sky, but the edges of the horizon are still a soft pink. He thinks it makes the garden look even more disgustingly quaint than usual.

“It’s on her instruction sheet.”

“Huh?”

Aone offers some lettuce to Speedy. “Russian tortoises like to burrow.”

“Oh.” Kenji scuffs his shoe on the ground, avoiding eye contact with Aone and Speedy, that judgmental rock-lizard. “I’m...sorry you had to leave your family.” There. He said it. He hopes Aone isn’t recording this to send to Nametsu.

“It’s okay. I don’t like my cousins,” Aone replies, stroking Speedy’s shell as she munches on her lettuce.

Kenji brightens immediately. “So I did you a favor then!”

Aone doesn’t respond, which Kenji typically interprets as a yes or a no, depending on whichever answer would best suit him. This time it’s a yes for sure.

“Well, in that case, you’re welcome.” He settles on the ground next to Aone and reaches over to pet Speedy. She appears to appraise him, her eyes narrowing before allowing it to happen. Kenji beams at Aone and nudges his shoulder while gesturing wildly at the tortoise. Aone acknowledges them both with a small smile.

“Told you we get along great.”