233This piece came to me as I was re-watching the first season (yes, I am one of those people). I started thinking about how much I enjoy Five-0 as an audience member. That led me to wonder: what are a few of the general public's views about the team?
So here are a few accounts of those who have encountered Five-0. They're structured as eyewitness accounts, but hopefully a few general opinions will filter through, depending on the narrator.
An added bonus: these are all stand-alone stories. Even though I have a bunch of chapters planned out, you won't be left hanging if it takes me a while to keep uploading.
I hope you enjoy!
Knyle B.
Disclaimer: Hawaii Five-0 is not mine! I'm only playing with it for a little while.
It was one of those things that you tell yourself could never happen. I'd always imagined that guns and robbers and terror belonged on TV or in other people's lives.
Well, there I was.
Huddled behind the stainless steel counter, I covered my head and tried not to cry. I'd never felt so shaken in my life. Not gonna lie—I actually thought, I'm too young to die.
And I was. Seventeen was nowhere near the final age I'd planned on achieving. Not that life ever went as planned. I shuddered and tucked my head farther under my arms.
A temporary job was about to kill me. Who wanted to die a waitress, even if it was a high class version? I certainly hadn't considered facing armed robbery when I filled out the application.
On the other side of the counter, a man dressed all in black paced up and down the center aisle of the kitchen. His gun gleamed just as brightly as the counters in the room: a sharp contrast with the dull black of his ski mask.
Absently, erratically, I wondered how he could stand to wear wool in eighty degree weather. I wondered if he was going to kill anyone—me, in particular. I wondered if he'd be nicer if I offered him some water. I wondered if he or the seven others with him would shoot me if I started hyperventilating.
I wondered when my heart had taken up residence in my ears.
God, I was scared. I could feel the shoulder of Casey, an assistant chef, pressing into my back. It was the only thing tethering me to sanity just then.
Casey was nice. He was a big young Hawaiian with laughing eyes and a wide smile.
Too bad the robbers had split his lip when he tried to stop them.
That line of thinking was doing nothing for me. I was going to completely lose it if I kept panicking. Of course, realizing that fact did nothing to help me calm down. I started to rock back and forth, leaning gratefully into the warm hand Casey placed on my shoulder.
There were five other employees in the kitchen with us. Only four of them were awake to panic with me.
Across from the counter where Casey and I sat, the manager sprawled limply in front of one of the refrigerators and the back door. He had been knocked unconscious when the criminals entered that way—at least, I was telling myself that he was unconscious. I stared at his prone form and did my best to glaze over inside my head.
Then he moved, to my inward rejoicing. I was startled out of my petrification by the motion, looking intently at his bloodied face in search of life. His eyes were still closed, though. Confused, I checked him over again, sure I'd seen him shift.
Then it happened again, and I realized that—while I wasn't imagining things—I had jumped to the wrong conclusion. My manager hadn't moved. He had been moved. What I'd seen wasn't a result of him waking up. It was something else entirely.
The back door was opening.
Freezing, I gawked as the entryway was slowly pushed ajar. A tall, handsome man stood behind it, dressed in cargo pants and a bullet-proof vest. He watched my boss roll over out of the way of his entrance. My eyes fixated on the terrible, beautiful glinting of the gun in his hand and the badge on his hip.
The police. We were saved.
Well, possibly.
Suddenly terrified again, I turned to stare nervously at our guard. He was facing the front of the restaurant, watching his compatriots through the windows of the swinging doors as they emptied purses and wallets. The knot in my stomach relaxed infinitesimally. He hadn't seen policeman enter behind him.
Silently, said newcomer advanced on the unsuspecting gunman. Casey and I drew in a simultaneous breath of anxiety, aware that our coworkers were doing the same. It seemed like the short walk from the back to the middle of the kitchen had stretched into miles…
Arriving at the black-clad robber, the tall man reached out and slapped the gun down from behind, wrapping one arm around the other man's neck and covering his nose and mouth with the other. I jumped in astonishment; he'd moved in a blur, he was so fast.
The automatic rifle dropped from the thief's hands. He'd let go of it in favor of trying to dislodge the arms cutting off his air supply. The abandoned weapon hit the floor with a clatter, which my hyperactive senses seemed to create a ruckus so loud that I thought the roof was caving in. Yelping, I shrank back into Casey's arms and cowered closer to the counter, trying to make myself a smaller target.
Out in the restaurant, the other robbers heard the sound of the gun dropping. They whirled around and charged towards the kitchen as the policeman dragged his victim behind an oven, crouching and depositing the unconscious criminal on the floor. He quickly cuffed the thief's hands to a pipe as the first three burst in, guns at the ready.
Then I heard another commotion from the front of my workplace.
"Five-0! Drop your weapons!" a woman shouted. Gunfire responded.
I perked up. Five-0? I'd heard of them. They were a special police force, weren't they?
I was about to peek over the counter to see the lauded heroes for myself, but the three new men inside the kitchen spotted the intruder first. Instantly, their guns were spitting lead; just as instantly, I was squeaking and throwing myself around to hug the closest, biggest substitute teddy bear that I could find.
I will pause here to swear that I do not own a teddy bear. Or sleep with one. At age twenty-six.
I don't.
Casey tucked my head under his chin and covered as much of me as he could with his arms, a human impersonator of body armor. I reminded myself to thank him later. And promptly forgot—but a bullet ricocheting off a pan right next to your head will do that, I guess.
The shooting had intensified. The police officer was returning fire at the criminals. There was a shelf underneath the counter that went all the way through to the other side; I found myself peering timidly through the opening in curiosity. I saw the tall man as he popped up from behind his cover, firing off two rounds and dropping back out of sight.
One of the robbers cried out and fell to the ground as a result. I was too scared to be elated by the decrease in predators.
Not to mention too busy watching as my defender suddenly threw himself out from behind his counter and into the aisle, running and shooting simultaneously.
He was headed straight for me.
I yipped and ducked back into Casey's hold as the Five-0 representative launched himself into the air, rolled on one shoulder over the top of the counter, and dropped into a crouch on the other side.
Right. Next. To. Me.
I was definitely hyperventilating at that point, half-turned in Casey's embrace to gape at the crazy ninja-cop reloading beside us. Hearing me, the man looked over. He smiled, completely relaxed. My heart stuttered for an entirely inappropriate reason, considering the circumstances.
He was gorgeous.
And unquestionably out of his mind.
"Hi."
His voice was even, but nonchalant. The fresh magazine he pushed into his weapon made a soft clicking sound that seemed extremely ominous. I jumped as he reared up and fired quickly, keeping the last shooter at bay. And he was still talking.
"What's your name?"
"Macie."
Casey answered for me. I was glad he remembered how to use the English language, because it was certainly beyond me. I nodded just to show that I was still marginally functional.
The good-looking madman smiled reassuringly. "Hi Macie. I'm Steve. How about I get you out of this?"
That was a proposal I could get behind. Wide-eyed, I nodded vigorously, and his smile quirked up on one side—amusement, in a gunfight? Okay, the whole fearless-in-the-face-of-death thing was kinda hot. Did thinking that make me crazy, too?
The last gunman kept shooting, cautiously leaving the shelter of the cabinet he'd hid behind and stepping over the comrade that Mr. Five-0 had just taken down with his insane stunt. Eyes trained on the counter where the three of us knelt, the shooter walked forward slowly down the main aisle.
A faint whoosh of air pushed along the floor beneath the furniture. Casey and I stiffened, recognizing the sign of the door to the restaurant swinging open. The robber didn't notice it, too busy strafing the shelves above us with bullets and dodging the answering barrage from Steve.
"Come out, McGarrett!" he shouted roughly, unleashing a staccato burst of danger from his automatic rifle. "What are you afraid of?"
"Nothing, as far as I know," said the shorter, compact blond cop who had just stepped into the kitchen.
Wheeling around, the robber couldn't bring his firearm to bear on the policeman who'd snuck up behind him in time. He didn't even manage to get a glimpse of the man, actually, because as soon as he started to turn, he caught a face full of cast-iron and a few hours' worth of unconsciousness.
The new—and also handsome, in a different way than his fellow officer—member of Five-0 lowered his weapon. The blond had picked up a frying pan on the way in and let the gunman have it. After the blow, the final shooter's head rocked back, towing the rest of his body along with him as he tumbled to the floor with a graceless thud.
And that was that. All of the shooting was done, all of the robbers were neutralized.
We were safe.
Despite the crippling wave of relief busily making me useless, I made myself keep watching. Suicidal curiosity had kept me staring through the shelf at the action while it happened, and afterwards I found myself raising an eyebrow in respect.
The new guy swung a frying pan with better form than some of the pro baseball players I'd seen, and the ninja who'd preceded him…
Beside me, Steve McGarrett levered himself to his feet. He grinned at the man in a crumpled heap at his teammate's feet. "Is that why your eggs are so bad? You only know how to use a pan like a crowbar?"
"Shut up," the blond answered, stooping to put handcuffs on the man he'd knocked out. "If you knew the right way to use a crowbar—or any tool, since all you seem to be able to do is attack people with them—you'd have fixed that damn car by now."
"It's just got a few quirks, Danny!"
"Stop assigning personality traits to inanimate objects!"
Confusion was rapidly becoming my dominant emotion. I slumped into Casey, shaking, while the two men moved to secure all of the downed criminals in the room, bickering good-naturedly.
I blinked, gawping. The arguing was clearly habitual. They were acting pretty much the opposite of what I'd expected from officers of the law after a shootout. And a frying pan clubbing.
Okay, I admit that I had never thought to expect anything after watching injury-by-cooking vessel. I'd have to anticipate it actually happening first.
When the robbers were secure, the two men halted their squabble long enough to see to the innocent victims. Steve was smiling again when he leaned over the counter—the nice, encouraging smile that he'd reassured me with before.
"All right, Macie?"
I nodded mutely; he smiled bigger.
"Good."
Casey helped me to my feet and guided me out of the kitchen at the policeman's directive. The others came with us, and we stepped gingerly through the main room of the restaurant. The patrons and other staff had already filed out.
Seeing the rest of the building was a shock. I cringed at the bullet holes decorating the walls, the tables overturned, and the two black-wearing bodies lying nearby. My head swam. I leaned into Casey.
"Looks like you've got a good friend, there," remarked a young woman by the door.
I started. She was the one who had shouted for the robbers to drop their guns.
Instinctively moving closer to Casey's side, I looked her over. She was young, athletic, native, and beautiful. Not anything like I'd imagined from the tone of command she'd used or the rugged, brutal demands of her job.
Upon closer examination, I also noticed that she was responsible for taking down at least one of the robbers. She was still kneeling on his back, holding him down as he struggled against the metal gleaming on his wrists.
Even weirder, like the other two Five-0 personnel, she didn't appear to notice the trouble. Her demeanor was that of someone at ease and in control.
When I didn't respond to her comment, her expression softened. She glanced up at Casey's face, which I couldn't see. Whatever she saw there elicited a nod from her, making me wonder what Casey had conveyed, and then she called back into the restaurant,
"Hey, cuz, you got a handle on things here?"
I turned in time to see another man walk out of the rentable dining room. Four sullen, unmasked thieves marched in front of him. They were cuffed and silent, behaving under the watchful eye of the man's pump-action shotgun. Hearing the woman's endearment, I took in the latest arrival curiously.
He was tall, dark-haired, unmistakably Hawaiian, and attractive—which had ceased to surprise me. Maybe there was sort of rule that the people on Five-0 had to be good-looking.
Not to mention capable. The men that the man ushered in were all bruised and thoroughly subdued. One was limping, another had a gunshot wound to the shoulder, and the other two were both visibly ruffled and manhandled.
Upon the woman's inquiry, though, her "cuz" nodded, equally unperturbed. "Yeah. Steve and Danny are clearing out of the kitchen. We've got it."
As he spoke, the two other men walked in, dragging or leading their three conquests. The blond one, Danny, was had just finished muttering something as he backed through the doors. Steve, guiding the two robbers walking upright, smirked back.
"Well, then you should have made sure he could walk when you were done with him."
He ignored his companion's answering glare in favor of taking stock of the rest of his team, nodding in approval at the third man's bevy of prisoners.
"You take all four of them by yourself, Chin?"
I didn't hear the man—Chin's—reply. The rest of their conversation was cut off by the door of the restaurant closing. The woman had led Casey and me outside to the waiting emergency responders and police officers. The rest of the people from inside were already there, receiving treatment, giving statements, or just milling about.
I stared, feeling like I was seeing and hearing it all through a thick cloud. My whole body was shaking, and even huddling closer to Casey couldn't wipe away my chills.
Leading us over to the back of an open ambulance, the young Five-0 officer motioned for a medic to come our way. In the meantime, she focused on me, still smiling. "You don't look like you feel so well, miss, so I'm going to have my friend here make sure you're not in shock, okay? My name's Kono."
I still couldn't speak, so Casey took over, handing me off to the EMT when she came over. He remained standing close by while I was poked and prodded and questioned. While a different medical officer looked at his lip, he checked his watch; I heard him give a low whistle.
"That whole thing took you guys less than five minutes."
Still nearby, Kono shrugged, a bit embarrassed. "We would have gotten here sooner, but we were wrapping up a different situation from this morning."
He answered, but I didn't catch what he said. I'd completely zoned out, the day's events finally sinking in. One thing in particular was resonating in me: I would have probably died if not for Five-0's handiwork.
Died.
I was stunned by the enormity of that word. What if I had been killed?
Passed on. Kicked the bucket. Bought a one way ticket.
That did not sound inviting.
Ergo, I shivered. I appreciated. I smiled.
Five-0.
Those people had saved my life. I let that fact permeate my dizzy head for a little while longer, watching soundlessly as Steve, Danny, and Chin herded the robbers who weren't in need of medical attention into squad cars and motioned for other officers and personnel to see to the rest. Kono went over, and the four of them met briefly by the edge of the area cordoned off in front of the restaurant, discussing.
The sight of Danny lifting the police tape jolted me out of my daze.
They were leaving. They had saved my life.
I had said nothing.
Jumping up from the bumper of the ambulance, where I had been sitting wrapped numbly in a shock blanket—scary that I would need a thick blanket in summertime Hawaii—I darted through the crowd and into the open beyond it. My courage failed me a good distance short of Five-0, though. I faltered to a halt.
They turned at my approach, watching me expectantly. Tired and frazzled and a little too deeply in shock, I uttered the only sensible words that had come into my head since eight armed men had invaded life and stolen my security.
"T-Thank you."
They smiled, the expression varied across their faces and yet absolutely the same. Danny ran a hand through his hair, Steve shrugged, Chin nodded.
Kono winked. "Anytime."
Then she turned and ducked under the tape. Her team followed, and that was the last I ever saw of them in person. Casey brought me home when the EMT's said it was all right, which was nice—I now have a boyfriend, in case anyone was wondering.
After he'd gone, though, I wound up sitting on my bed until three in the morning, processing. And shaking. Alternately giggling. For comfort, I might have hugged a theoretical teddy bear so tight that the buttons on his face left imprints on my skin, but something still felt like it was missing. I couldn't sleep.
The next day, I acted on a total whim. After a quick trip to the craft store, I exchanged a certain plush creature's bow tie for a little felt badge with two special numbers on the face. That night, hugging my new security device, I had no trouble falling asleep at all.
Why would I? I had 5-0 with me.
I've slept like a baby ever since.
So there you have it. I will be adding more chapters as I have time, but hopefully each can stand alone as a story.
Please let me know what you think!