A Young Girl's Guerilla War

[Kelenas]

Like I wrote on SB; it's basically an unholy fusion between late Imperial Russia, Industrial Revolution era Britain, and Nazi Germany, resulting in a monstrosity that is about an order of magnitude or two worse than any of them.

 

[Roquemore]

The thing that stood out to me, as silly as it sounds, is the talk about farming. To even have sharecropping and people farming by hand at the same time they have the tech base for Knightmares, their institutional priorities must be immensely screwed up at any number of levels.

 

[GuestLurker]

The thing that stood out to me, as silly as it sounds, is the talk about farming. To even have sharecropping and people farming by hand at the same time they have the tech base for Knightmares, their institutional priorities must be immensely screwed up at any number of levels.

Click to shrink...

Their priorities are the enforcement of the status of the nobles, if changing things to make the work easier would have even the slightest risk of the peasants getting uppity due to not needing to spend as much time working the nobility has little reason to do it. Some farms and the like might go for more efficient methods, but that's probably not common.

 

[Scopas]

(Thank you to Sunny, MetalDragon, 0th Law, and Mazerka for beta-reading and editing this chapter, to Aminta Defender for beta-reading this chapter, and to KoreanWriter for beta-writing and brainstorming.)


(Note: There is a portion of this chapter that explicitly references a slogan used by Imperial Japan. This should in no way be construed as apologia for Imperial Japan, nor does it represent anything of my views on the actions and atrocities committed by that historical entity. In the universe of Code Geass, nothing of the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" happened, which is why I am using the slogan in-universe, but I fully understand why this reference could be triggering for anybody whose family suffered under the IJA or who has studied the wars fought by Japan between 1894 and 1945.)

Scene 1: A Father's Arms​

August 31, 2016 ATB
Neighborhood #12 (Honorary), Tokyo Settlement


One week before the Rising


It had taken everything he had to get to this point. Every scrap of credit he had earned over the last months' work, he had spent. Every favor he had, he called in.


In Souichiro's eyes, his ticket back to Tokyo, back to Shinjuku, had been worth it.


When he had seen the target list, read the orders, heard the plans for the first hours and days… the former policeman had known that there was no choice.


That there were things that he could not bring himself to sacrifice for the Cause.


Favors had bought him a reassignment, away from teaching new recruits the basics of firearms and onto an assault unit half-made up of his own former students. Credit had bought a blind eye turned to his age and his health, had seen him placed on that unit despite the fact that his fiftieth birthday was long behind him.


Hoarded money and moonshine had bought him quiet passage through the Britannian checkpoint at the gate leading into the Shinjuku Ghetto, along with the necessary permit to work outside of the Ghetto, valid only for a day.


A day, Souichiro knew, was all that he needed.


For all of that resolve, everything that had driven him forwards, only a single thought was in his mind as he stared up at the whitewashed concrete face of the apartment block, still full of sleeping families an hour before dawn.


He could not do it.


Could not betray the Cause. Could not betray his blood. Could not carry out his self-appointed mission.


I should not have come, he thought.


That much, at least, was obvious.


His new unit, a six-man section designated as a mortar-supported rifle team, had been one of the last to come home to Shinjuku, and had ridden one of the last trucks carrying "donated food relief" into the ghetto. In the final days, there would be no trucks packed with contraband weapons or hidden soldiers entering Shinjuku, nothing that could prompt last minute Britannian suspicions.


Accordingly, when his squad disembarked at one of the Benevolent Association's satellite kitchens, Commander Hajime herself had been there, waiting for them. She had not been standing on ceremony, surrounded by guards, but instead had been waiting in the distribution line for her dinner, clutching a battered tin tray identical to those in the hands of the neighborhood's locals.


When Souichiro and his five comrades stepped down from the truck, the commander had handed her tray over to a girl whose owlish glasses made her look years younger than Hajime. Her place in line secured, though Souichiro doubted very much that anybody would boot her from the queue, she had come to greet them. To welcome them home.


"Mister Matsumoto," Commander Hajime had said, greeting him personally. Below her hachimaki, identical in every respect to the bands worn by all of the Sun Guard, piercing blue eyes had held him in place as she inspected him.


Souichiro had known, known then, known with certainty, that she knew why he had come, why he had returned to Shinjuku. It was impossible to understand how this girl, only twelve years old if his memory had not failed him, could possess eyes so feverish in their intensity, so wise in their regard, so heavy in their exhaustion. It was impossible to think that any secret could survive such scrutiny.


"I know why you have returned," the Commander had continued, sotto voce as she stepped close, almost treading on his shoes as she looked up into his face. "I know why you fought so hard to secure your transfer; I was surprised when I saw your name on the list, I'll admit, but a moment's thought made it all clear to me."


The contempt that had flashed in those sky-blue eyes, incandescent in the heartbeat it had taken for shutters to close around that inner furnace, had scorched Souichiro's soul.


"You must have understood from your orders that your hour to make good on your long-cherished revenge had come around at last," Commander Hajime mused aloud, unblinking and quietly resolute, her voice as cold as her eyes were fevered. "Allow me to remind you, Mister Matsumoto, that I expect only the highest standards of professionalism from all soldiers of the Rising Sun. Do I make myself clear?"


If only I could tell her… What, tell her that I considered it, really considered killing my own flesh and blood, but decided to warn them instead? Decided that it was worth betraying the Cause, betraying my country, even for just a little bit, to save my son and granddaughter's lives? Would admitting to my treachery but denying that I am the detestable would-be murderer she sees me as reduce that contempt by even the slightest degree?


…What would telling her help? If she believed me, I would make her complicit in my treachery, unless she orders me shot, punished as a traitor deserves. If she doesn't believe me, then I would only have lowered myself still further in her eyes.


Besides, I deserve the contempt. I came so close to a different decision… Too close.


"...Yes Ma'am," was all that Souichiro had said, all the words he had allowed himself.


"Good," she had replied, but to Souchiro's continued surprise, she had not drawn away. Instead, something like a tremor, a momentary shake passed over her face.


When she had continued, her voice was even quieter still.


"Mister Matsumoto… Souichiro…" When he had not protested, she had continued. "Souichiro, far be it from me to step into private matters, but…" Another tremor. "Far be it from me to judge, but it is… Unsound, from a psychological point of view, for a father to… dispose of his own child. No matter what the circumstances.


"I have taken the liberty of assigning your team to a unit in the south of the city. I… Hope that you will not resent this imposition, but…" Commander Hajime had squared her shoulders, the momentary weakness vanished, impossible to see in that youthful face, prematurely lined but still implacable. "My decision is final. Your son and his family might be traitors, but the Cause is too important for the futures of too many people to lose a soldier as a psychological casualty. Understood?"


"Yes Ma'am," Souichiro had lied, and had stared dumbly as the Lady of Shinjuku, the one that barracks gossip held to be both a Britannian princess and Amaterasu Herself descended to Earth as in the oldest days, turned on her heel and marched back to the chow line, every stiff line of her body radiating discomfort.


They are traitors, Souichiro told himself again, struggling to reason himself away from the cause that had brought him to Stratford Place despite Commander Hajime's attempt at, he believed, mercy. Misplaced though it was. They betrayed Japan, they betrayed their ancestors, and they betrayed me. Worst of all, he betrayed my son, his brother, and my wife, his mother. They were in their graves thanks to Britannia, and he had the gall to take a Britannian name!


The pistol hung heavily under his workman's overalls, weighty as a guilty secret.


The wave of revulsion brought the tang of bile to Souichiro's mouth, as bitter as the hate he had harbored for years, and the pain.


Kenji, Ami, whatever they might have named my granddaughter in a better world… The trio of half-recalled faces swam before his weary eyes, barely recognizable through the residue of five long years. The anger was cold ash now, energy spent now that the dawn had come at last. My son, my little boy… The girl who I could never bring myself to love… Mari, would you have loved her as the daughter we never had? You always wanted a daughter, and now you have a granddaughter, though I have no prayers to reach you, to pass along the news…


I should not be here. I should not have come. They will call for the police. Kenji will drive me from his door.


But how could I ever feel clean again if I did not warn them? How can honor ever command a father and a grandfather to let his son and his son's family die without even trying to save them?


Beside him, the dustpan and broom leaned against the wall. Souichiro had stolen them, along with the overalls he wore over his own clothes, from an unlucky street sweeper. It had been easy to come up behind the Honorary, to loop an arm around the man's neck, and to jerk up and to the side just so. It was a trick that he had learned from Major Onoda.


Killing a traitor to save a trio of traitors.


Souichiro mustered up a half-hearted snort at the thought. The hypocrisy was not lost upon him; the man he had murdered, and it certainly was murder, presumably had a family too, just as Kenji did. Just as Souichiro once had. Children who depended upon him, maybe, a wife who would fret and worry as he was late to return home.


He could not muster up any sense of guilt, of shame, over the murder of a traitor, civilian or not.


And yet, he thought, forcing himself to take a step, and then another, I cannot muster up enough guilt or shame to stop myself from betraying the Cause that I just killed a man for.


Who am I to accuse anybody of treachery?


The lobby of the apartment building, Stratford Place, according to a sign written in Britannian that Souichiro struggled to read, was spotless. For all that every surface screamed of hard wear and maintenance deferred, the floor was swept clean and gleamed with polish. Every door handle shown, every window glistened despite the cracks, and every step of the stairs Souichiro trudged up was thoroughly scrubbed.


The people who lived here cared about the building in which they lived, the building in whose shelter they worked to build their new lives. The paint might be flaking and half the light bulbs flickering, but everything that could be cleaned, was.


Souichiro supposed that said something about the people who called this place home.


He did not want to think about it.


The stairs opened onto a hallway lined with doors, each with a neat number and plaque with a surname engraved in the bronze.


No snow-crusted mountain slope could be so difficult to climb as it was for Souichiro to shamble down the hallway, dustpan and broom trailing after him. The gun weighed him down with every step, with every passing door whose name Souichiro had to sound out in his head as he passed.


Win-Ham. Gra-Den-Hey. Whale-ey.


All Britannian names on Japanese faces.


A plaque caught his eye, with a name he remembered from the second worst day of his life.


Forester.


Keith and Emily Forester.


All Souichiro could do for a long minute was stare, cowlike, at that door. That door, with that hated name.


If I squint just a bit, though…


The letters engraved in the metal plaque swam, and for an instant, Souichiro could make himself see the familiar strokes of his surname, the Britannian symbols dissolving into Japanese characters.


This could have been home. My home. If I had allowed myself to give up, to give in. To submit.


It still isn't too late to prove myself true to Japan, a seductive voice whispered. Killing an Honorary Legionary, an armed collaborator in the rape of my homeland, can be nothing short of honorable.


Even if I remember changing that collaborator's diapers… Remember his giggling laughter as I lifted him up and down, so light in my arms… Remember standing next to him beside what was left of our house and bowing our heads…


If the price of proving myself is my son's blood, my granddaughter's blood… It is not worth it.


Nothing could be worth such a high price.


With that, Matsumoto Souichiro took a deep breath, steeled himself, and, before his resolve could fracture, knocked upon the Forester's door.


All throughout his journey towards Britannian Tokyo, hidden in the back of a truck along with the rest of his six-man unit and the disassembled mortar they were sharing the cover with, past the guards yawning at their checkpoint, along the dark and trash-strewn streets of the Honorary districts, and, most of all, when he had hesitated in the shadow of the Stratford Place Apartment Complex, Souichiro had steeled himself to meet his soon, his Kenji, for the first time in half a decade.


It was not Kenji who opened the door.


"Good morning," mumbled Ami in Britannian, yawning as she stood in the door frame, her eyes still bleary with sleep. "What can I help you with, Mister…"


Even before she had joined his son in betraying Japan, Souichiro had disliked Ami. The Osakan was crude, stupid, and in Souichiro's opinion, far below his son in potential and worth. She laughed extravagantly, mocked authority, and had ensnared his son between her legs and bound him to her with a baby.


But Kenji loved her, and whore or not, she is my granddaughter's mother.


That thought was enough to still Souichiro's hand before it could even begin to creep below his overalls towards his gun. Standing there in a loose housecoat quickly belted on over pajamas, hair still rumpled from sleep, blinking in the early morning hours, it would be ease itself to kill her, Souichiro knew, and knew that he would feel just as little about the deed as he had felt in regards to the street sweeper.


She is Kenji's wife; he would miss her.


The gasp of recognition startled Souichiro back into the moment. Looking into Ami's eyes, he saw the exact moment when she managed to look past the pilfered overalls and cap to see the man within; to see him, and to recognize him.


Eyes widening in horror and sudden, desperate fear, Ami took a step back, her mouth opening to yell, perhaps to scream.


"Wait!" Souichiro barked, the enemy's language harsh on his tongue.


"Wait," he said again, softening his tone as he slowly lifted his hands up to waist-level, open palms facing the frightened woman. "I… To talk. A warning… Please. Li-listen."


"...You should not be here," Ami said after a momentary silence, her voice almost as stilted and unnatural as Souichiro's own. "You should not have come."


What a thing for us to agree on. Common ground, at last!


"Yes," Souichiro said aloud, agreeing with her, "but… No choice."


For a moment, he just stood there, hands out and throat full of words. Words that would not come to him, so long as he spoke in the invader's language.


"Listen…" Souichiro continued, lowering his voice as he switched to Japanese. Seeing the wince on Ami's face, the way her eyes darted up and down the corridor, made him want to ball up his fists in anger, but he kept his hands open and raised. "Listen to me, Ami. Is Kenji home?"


"It's Emily," she corrected, lips tight with disapproval and anxiety. "Emily and Keith. Those are our names."


This time, his fingers did flex briefly before Souichiro could master himself enough to shove the immediate anger away.


Judging by the way Emily blanched and took a step back into the apartment, hand drifting to the door, no doubt preparing to slam it shut, she had noticed too.


Damn it!


"Emily," Souichiro said, forcing himself to keep his voice level, to not spit the alien name out like gristle, "please…" he switched back to Japanese, "please do not close the door. I am trying…"


"Trying what?" Emily spat, and now she was speaking in Japanese, face twisting as fear gave way to anger. At least in part; Souichiro could still see the fear lurking below the anger. "Trying to say hi? Trying to mend bridges now, five years too late?"


Would that I had, and would that you hadn't made such bullshit necessary by… No, keep calm. Anger is personal; this is important. Although, I suppose it too is personal…


"I am trying to save your lives," Souichiro ground out, and took a deep breath. "I am trying to help. You are in danger."


"...How do you know that?" Emily snapped, but took another step back. "Is this a threat?"


…I can't do this.


For a moment, Souichiro despaired.


I must do this. My son… My granddaughter…


Mari…


"Emily," Souichiro tried again, forcing himself to speak slowly, calmly, "is K… is Keith home? This is not a threat. This is not… Not revenge. I am… I am trying to help. You are in danger.


"Not," he raised his voice as Emily opened her mouth, clearly about to interrupt again, "not from me. Not because of me. But because your husband is a soldier for Britannia. Please…" he spread his hands, carefully, out to his sides, "I am trying to save my granddaughter's life."


It was the mention of her daughter that finally brought a crack to Emily's mask of anger.


"No…" she swallowed, "no, Keith isn't home… He was on duty last night, at the base."


Dammit.


He had no choice but to give Ami, this bitch, the warning.


He would have no chance to see his son one last time.


"Then you listen to me," Souichiro said, and heard despair in his own voice, mixed with an anger all his own. All for his own. All for him. "If you are still here in a week, you will die. K… Keith will die. My granddaughter will die. Get out of Japan, all of you. Take what you can, and go. If you are still here in a week… It will be too late."


"...What happens in a week?" Emily asked, still suspicious.


I've said enough.


"Death," Souichiro replied shortly, and then hesitated.


Honorary soldiers are not issued guns, he remembered. Except in battle, and even then, sometimes not.


This will truly be treachery, arming a traitor… But he is still my son.


"Emily," Souchiro said again, putting his life into the hands of his son's wife, "I have a pistol at my side, under my overalls. Please don't close that door!"


When she paused again, Souichiro relaxed, his shoulders slumping back down. "I have a pistol under my overalls. I am slowly going to take it out and put it down on the floor, along with a magazine. It…" he licked his lips, the untrimmed hairs of his mustache stiff and spiny against his tongue, "it might help."


When Emily did not immediately reply, but also did not slam the door shut, Souichiro took it as his cue. Moving with exaggerated slowness, he reached into his overalls and unclipped the holster from his belt, freeing the magazine pouch that hung next to it as well, and carefully putting each on the apartment threshold.


Then, he stepped back, out of armsreach of the weapon, and then took another step back, his back brushing against the far wall. When he saw Emily still hesitating, he carefully raised his hands again, this time to shoulder height.


With rabbit swiftness, Emily bent, scooped up the pistol and the ammunition, and then was back on her feet, eyes fixed on Souichiro. Her stance told him both that she had never held a firearm before, and that she had halfway expected him to attack her when she was stooping.


When she saw that he had not moved, that he was still well out of reach, hands up… Her eyes softened.


"Would…" Emily swallowed again, nervous still, though the anger had drained completely from her face. Her hand flexed convulsively around the pistol's grip. "Would you like to come in and meet Hannah? Would you like to meet your granddaughter?"


I should not, Souichiro told himself. I need to go, to get back to my post. I need to forget that these people live. I need to let go now, forever.


"I would love to," he said aloud, and then, feeling as if he was taking a knife to his own flesh, said it again, this time in the hated language of the bastards who had killed his wife and his boy. His boys.


"I would love to."


Mari… She is beautiful. You would have loved her.

---

Scene 2: Outreach Meeting​

September 2, 2016 ATB
Ashford Academy, Tokyo Settlement


Five days before the Rising


Nunnally's grip was tight around his hand. She was squeezing his hand for all she was worth, hard enough that it was beginning to hurt Lelouch's fingers.


He did not pull away.


"I love you, Nunnally." Four little words, oft repeated but still fresh on Lelouch's tongue.


Ever since they had so narrowly avoided death, first at their mother's side and again in suffering Japan, Lelouch had tried to say those words with the gravity they deserved, as if each time he uttered them would be his last chance to assure his little sister of how much she meant to him. He knew that he had fallen short; during those quiet years, of torpor and safety, the urgency had slipped, replaced by rote routine.


"I love you too, Brother," his sister replied, as ferociously intense as her thin voice allowed. The tightness constricting her throat made her words husky with nerves, but her grip still did not slacken. "I love you so, so much, Brother. Please… Please come home."


I promise nothing will happen. The temptation called. The urge to put his sister's heart at ease with but five more words. Yet, he could not say them.


I will not lie to her. He had promised as much, just the same as he had promised to include her in his secret life, in his rebellion against That Man.


Just as Lelouch had pushed the temptation to leave without informing Nunnally, without saying goodbye, away, so too did he push away the temptation to offer empty platitudes he knew that neither of them would believe. If I am to defeat That Man utterly, Lelouch resolved, I must remain a better man. One who does not fill his family's ears with convenient lies and cast them aside.


Instead, he said, "I will not take any unnecessary risks, Nunnally… And I will look forward to sharing dinner with you tonight."


"If anything happens," she replied, voice low, flat, and, to Lelouch's ear, brimming with commitment, "if even a hair on your head is harmed, Brother, I will make Rivalz pay for leading you into this trap."


"I'll have you know that I quite literally asked for this," Lelouch gently pointed out, trying to bring a playful smile to his lips, but then hesitated. "Though… I suppose if… In that case, I suppose it would be your prerogative to do as you wish, Nunnally. In this matter, and in any other."


"Then I assert my prerogative to demand that you come back alive, Brother," Nunnally replied, and Lelouch could swear the bones in his hand were grinding together in that grasp, made vicelike by determined practice of moving her manual wheelchair up and down the accessibility ramp outside the Clubhouse. "You idiot."


The grip loosened; despite his stinging fingers, Lelouch cradled his little sister's hands between his own for a moment longer.


The discreet cough from Milly, standing near the door to the apartment, reminded Lelouch that he was on the clock.


"I will be back for dinner," Lelouch said, rising to his feet. "Let Sayoko know that it will be a special night, alright?"


Outside the apartment, Milly took him aside as well. In the shadow of the heavily locked and reinforced door protecting the sanctuary, she offered him her own goodbye.


"...Come back in one piece, Lulu," the Ashford heiress sighed, pulling away from their kiss. "I'm too young to be a widow."


"Don't you mean Leland, Miss Ashland?" Lelouch replied, smirking slightly as he tilted his head to brush the tip of his nose against hers. "After all, Milly Ashland is Leland's fiancee; no such nuptials have been concluded between Milly Ashford and Lelouch Lamperouge. I know, because I would have remembered. Nunnally certainly wouldn't leave us unchaperoned in such a case either."


"...On second thought," Milly mused aloud, arms looped around his neck, over his shoulders, "I would look pretty good in black… If anybody asks, I could just say I am going through a phase, and that black frills are all the rage back in the Homeland."


"A worthwhile silver lining for my death," Lelouch noted, nodding agreeably. "I will try not to disappoint."


"You never do, Lulu," Milly sighed, and pulled him down again to meet her upraised face. "Just… Be safe, okay?"


"Rivalz will be with me," he pointed out, "I won't be going alone. It will be just like old times in that respect."


"You mean all the times you almost got stabbed in the kidneys for cheating at chess or cards?" Milly wryly asked, a mocking eyebrow lifted high as she teased him about his chess hustling, just like she always had. In a different time, Lelouch would have risen to the bait, protesting that he'd never needed to stoop to cheating. It all seemed so irrelevant now. "Wow, you sure know how to reassure a girl, Lamperouge."


Only with the benefit of knowing Milly Ashford for six years was Lelouch able to detect the tremor beneath the confidence of "Madame President" that Milly wore like armor.


It was the same tremor he felt too, whenever he allowed his thoughts to linger on all the ways this meeting could go wrong. The mere thought of it, of leaving the mystery of his mother's death unsolved, his vengeance against That Man unfulfilled… the thought of leaving Nunnally alone, of leaving Milly so soon, after whatever it was that stretched between them had only just started to bloom…


I will not be shackled by fear, Lelouch told himself once again, pushing the bowel-dissolving thoughts of empty chairs and lonely tears away. If the True Anglicans are to truly become a weapon against Britannia, certain risks must be taken. And Father Alexander must be the one to take them.


"Almost stabbed in the kidneys, thank you very much," Lelouch rejoined with a smile an equal to the last one he had shared with his sister in its gentle protectiveness, carefully disentangling himself from Milly's arms, not without regret, "Rivalz and I have quite the experience making dashing getaways, after all. Then you can join Nunnally and I for a celebration dinner once I return. I am certain Sayoko will make enough for three."


"I'm sure she will," Milly smiled, stepping back. Her smile through her smudged lipstick was wistful, not quite sad. Lelouch was certain that she was fixing his image into her mind, trying to see him in the shade of their stolen kiss in a way that she could remember. Would remember, should he not return from the meeting. "Let me check my makeup, and then… Rivalz is waiting for you outside."


"Rivalz and I can handle ourselves," Lelouch said, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards the apartment door. "Could you just… Make sure Nunnally isn't by herself? I know Sayoko will be there, but…"


"The more the better," Milly said, and nodded understandingly. "For sure, Lulu. I promise that she won't be alone."


The unspoken half of the promise, that Milly would be on hand to support Nunnally should Lelouch not return for dinner, hung heavily in the air.


"...See you later, Madame President," Lelouch finally said, and took another step back. It felt like a goodbye. "...Milly."


"See ya, Lulu…"


Outside the Clubhouse, Lelouch found Rivalz lying almost flat on his back, splayed out across his motorcycle as he stretched hugely in the warmth of the mid-afternoon sun.


"Oh?" Rivalz perked up at the sound of footsteps on the cobblestones and, levering himself up onto his elbows, turned to look at the approaching Lelouch. "Ah, at last! Took you long enough!"


Said the divine to the condemned.


"Apologies for the wait," Lelouch said, acerbic as a lemon. "I hope I have not delayed your busy schedule."


"Nope," Rivalz replied, grinning unrepentantly as he heaved himself up to his feet. "No need to worry for me. Here, catch."


The spare helmet thudded into Lelouch's hands. It was the same one he had always worn before, back when he rode in Rivalz's sidecar nearly every day. He donned it without complaint or comment; One wouldn't want to take undue risks on the drive to this dangerous meeting, after all.


"Let us be off, then," said Lelouch, speaking past the lump in his throat as he settled himself down into that same so-familiar sidecar. "No time like the present."


Rivalz gunned the engine in acknowledgment, and with a guttural roar from the motorcycle's diesel engine, they were off.


As they streaked out through the Academy's gates, Lelouch couldn't help but turn back to catch one last glimpse of Ashford, before his refuge for the last six years vanished behind the buildings rearing up over the curving road.


"Here," said Rivalz, still looking straight ahead. "Put this on."


Glancing down, Lelouch found a bundle of black cloth dangling from Rivalz's outstretched arm, and, gingerly accepting the thing, recognized it as a blindfold.


"I'm sure you know how this is going to go," Rivalz went on, speaking with the same cool voice Lelouch had heard in the garage, over the thunder of the compressor. "Inoue wants to talk to you, and only to you, but also knows that you don't want anybody outside of Shinjuku to know that you're talking to her. For both of your benefits, I'm going to drop you off at a certain place, where a few of her people are waiting. You'll be blindfolded so you don't know who they are or what route they take to get you into Shinjuku."


"You certainly aren't asking for much," Lelouch murmured, doffing his helmet temporarily to wind the blindfold around his head and replacing it once he couldn't see anything.


It's a leap of faith, he acknowledged, but so is this entire meeting. If they decide to kill me, there is very little I can do to prevent them from doing so. So, why not walk into this serpent's mouth quite literally blind?


After that, Lelouch tried to focus on nothing beyond the wind on the exposed lower half of his face, and the breath flowing steadily through him. In and out, in and out…


It was almost a shock when the wind slowed and softened as Rivalz came to a stop, his bike's motor guttering for a moment before stilling.


"Sun's up!" Rivalz called out, loud and cheerful. More quietly, as he unbuckled the helmet's strap from beneath Lelouch's chin, he added, "keep calm, buddy. I'll be waiting here when you get back."


"So, this is him?" A different voice cut in, the Britannian enunciation slurred by a non-native's tongue. "He doesn't look like much."


"Neither's Kallen, and we both know she could fold me like an omelet any day of the week," Rivalz replied, a casual shrug in his voice almost hiding the tension and respect beneath. As rough hands half-guided, half-dragged Lelouch out of the sidecar, he couldn't help but wish that Rivalz had been perhaps a bit more firm in iterating that point. "But yeah, that's him. I'd like him back in one piece, alright?"


"No promises," a different voice muttered as strong hands gripped Lelouch's left arm. "He'd better keep a polite tongue in his mouth…"


Without further ado, the presumed Japanese insurgents began leading Lelouch away from where he thought Rivalz and the motorcycle were. He walked willingly, doing his best to respond to changes in his escort's grip, cooperating as best as he could while blinded.


Especially as the small party entered into first the still air of a building, and then the humid subterranean coolness of a tunnel or basement.


The old subway tunnels, Lelouch decided, gingerly making his way down a set of stairs, trying not to lose his footing on worn concrete. Hardly a surprise that they're still in use. I'm certain that criminals of all ethnicities have made good use of them since Tokyo fell. Hopefully someone's been maintaining them well enough that I don't need to worry about cave-ins.


He was gloomily certain that he would worry about cave-ins regardless of any slapdash maintenance conducted over the last six years, and tried instead to focus on his escort's muttered conversation. From the voices, there were three of the Japanese escorting him, with one in front of him, another behind, and then the third who still had not let go of his arm.


"Fucking rats," the leader cursed, kicking something away with a wet squeak. Lelouch was gratified that he had no issue understanding the grumbling; his Japanese had gone little used in the last six years, but his fluency hadn't slipped at all. "We should tell Mishima to add more tunnel duty assignments to the pot."


"Who cares?" the trailing escort asked, the soles of his shoes slapping against the pavement. "This far out from Shinjuku, why should we be wasting our time with these tunnels? And especially with the rats. Keeping the roof up, I'll grant you, but the rats are gonna be here no matter what we do. Might as well save our energy…"


"They'll follow us home," came the gloomy reply from up ahead. "Mark my words."


"How could you even tell?" the one gripping Lelouch's arm asked reasonably. "A rat looks like a rat, yeah? Besides, if any come sniffing under Shinjuku, they'll give the kids something else besides each other to club for once."


"And then maybe the evening soup will have meat in it for a change," the trailing guard chuckled. "Boil it long enough and nobody'll know."


The reflective and somewhat hungry silence following that remark lasted until the group came to a halt, and someone guided Lelouch's hands towards the bars of a ladder.


"Climb up," the guard who had been up front grunted to Lelouch in Britannian, "but once you come out, just take a few steps forward and stop. Don't touch the blindfold. There'll be eyes on you, and we'll be right behind."


"As you say," Lelouch murmured in the same language, and then nodded his assent to emphasize his compliance.


No need to risk ending up in the soup along with the rats thanks to an overly anxious guard, he thought as he clambered up the rungs. We walked quite some distance in those tunnels… I wonder if I'm climbing up into Shinjuku, or if we're somewhere in the Honorary districts…?


No hands immediately grabbed at Lelouch as he clambered out, but he still heeded his orders and left his blindfold untouched; if there was a sniper, or even just a gunman waiting out of arm's reach, there was no need to antagonize them unnecessarily. He took the moment to lift his face up towards the unseen sun, enjoying the clean warmth of the afternoon after the clamminess of the tunnels.


Half a minute after he returned to the surface, Lelouch heard his escorts emerge up the ladder, one by one. As a familiar hand closed around his left arm, more lightly now, presumably since he hadn't tried to run, the grating sound of metal on pavement followed the ring of metal on metal.


Closing the manhole back up, Lelouch realized. Either an old maintenance port, or at some point we left the subway tunnel and entered a sewer or drain instead.


"Alright, Britannian," the apparent leader of the escort said, again speaking in the tongue of his enemy. "Just come this way…"


More stairs followed, and then the coolness of a building's interior, the heat of late summer left behind as a door closed. More walking, more stairs, and another two doors led Lelouch to the side of a table, which he bumped into, and a chair, into which he was gently pushed.


"You can take the blindfold off, Mister Gelt," a female voice speaking, bizarrely, European-accented Britannian said from somewhere on the far side of the table. "Or is it Mister Lamperouge? Or is 'Father Alexander' your preferred method of address?"


Lelouch's breath caught on the second name. Dammit, Rivalz!


"I see that Rivalz has told you all about me," Lelouch replied, grateful for the distraction provided by the blindfold's stubborn knot. Focusing on picking the damned thing apart gave him something else to focus on besides the unwelcome invocation of his "true" name. "Mister Gelt is my preference, but as I am here in my clerical capacity, Father Alexander will serve."


"Young for the priesthood, aren't you?" A different female voice replied, again in accented Britannian, although this speaker's voice carried the tones of Tokyo instead of… Brandenburg, maybe? "An early calling, I suppose."


"When the call comes, one must answer," Lelouch murmured, saying what he imagined Father Timothy might in answer to such questions, and then grunted with satisfaction as the blindfold slackened at last and fell around his neck, giving him his first clear view of his questioners.


He blinked, and wondered if the pressure of the blindfold had somehow impacted his vision.


Three people sat before him on the far side of the table, all staring keenly at him from behind poker faces. Two of them, the man and the women flanking the central speaker, were about what he had imagined when he had tried visualizing the leaders of Japanese resistance to Britannia. The man was gaunt, almost skeletal, and the ropey scar splitting his face gave him a savage, almost inhuman, mien. In the woman's hard face, eyes lively with intelligence sparkled below hair tied up in a scarf, her dispassionate gaze unapologetic in its dissection of his features.


Meeting the woman's eyes, Lelouch realized that he knew her, or at least had seen her before. During his short-lived time as Alan Spicer, he had taken orders from her while volunteering at one of the soup kitchen dinners in the Honorary district just outside the Shinjuku Ghetto itself.


That must be Inoue, then. Rivalz's contact.


Both Inoue and the scarred man sat tall and upright in their chairs, but both of their body language screamed deference to the short figure caught between them. The one whose incongruity had briefly inspired Lelouch to question his own eyes.


She can't be any older than Nunnally, was his first overriding thought, his horror tinged with fascination. She might actually be younger… Although, he thought again, noting the signs of a hard life with too little food on the figure's thin face, perhaps not that much younger. She just looks that way because of the impacted growth…


There was no question that this girl was the leader, and not Inoue or the man Lelouch mentally dubbed Scarface.


There was equally no question that the girl looked just as Britannian as Lelouch himself did.


"Well then, Father Alexander," said the girl, her lips twisting in a pinched expression that, after a moment, Lelouch interpreted as amused, "you requested this meeting; so, speak. My schedule is quite cramped."


Skipping the niceties, hmm? Not particularly Japanese, if my memories of Kururugi Genbu and his interminable meetings are anything to go by, but… Well, the circumstances make the impoliteness understandable.


"To business, then," Lelouch agreed, with a polite smile. "Though, you have me at an advantage, I'm afraid. What names would you prefer me to use for the course of our meeting? After all," he said, injecting just a touch of levity into his voice, "I can hardly think of you as just 'Man, Woman, Blondie,' now, can I?"


For a moment, as the girl slowly blinked at him, reptile eyes cool and dull, Lelouch thought that he had overstepped already.


He refused to look away, though, refused to back down or apologize as the silence stretched on.


It's just like being back at court, he had realized, staring boldly back at the lean Britannian face with a Basilisk stare. Any sign of weakness, and they will eat me alive, guaranteed safe passage or not. If I demonstrate weakness now, they will never consider me a serious partner, and if I am not a serious partner in their eyes, then there is no reason to permit a Britannian with knowledge of their faces to live.


"That would hardly be conducive, yes," the girl said at last, breaking the silence. From his peripheral vision, Lelouch saw the two other insurgents seated at the table relax just as he did.


Neither of them knew how she would react either. That is… worrisome.


"I am Commander Hajime," the trio's leader went on, and blinked at him again, her big blue eyes unnerving in their intensity just much as in the way shutters seemed to close behind them. "This is Inoue, the primary officer on the board of the Rising Sun Benevolent Association, short of Lord Cardemonde, of course. She also serves as our outreach officer, and is here in that capacity."


Commander Hajime offered no name for the man seated on her left.


Lelouch did not press for any further identification. The lack of introduction was all the information he required.


Outreach officer, is it? She was in charge of the soup dole, and the men escorting me mentioned a soup kitchen and evening meals in Shinjuku. She must be the soft face of the leadership, and probably has something to do with logistics support too, or at least the part involving keeping people fed. Scarface must be the other face of the leadership, then. The kind whose attention nobody wishes to catch.


But neither has a rank attached to their name, or any badges of office. Only Commander Hajime has that dignity. So, what does that mean?


"It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Commander," Lelouch bid, nodding gracefully, "and yours, Miss Inoue. I have heard many good things regarding your attempts to mitigate some of the suffering in the wake of the rampage last winter. Such mercy for those who have no reason to care for you speaks volumes about your organization."


As does the sudden cessation of those efforts. Kallen was quite upset about that, when she talked to "Alan" about the end of the public dinners. Although she said it was just a matter of funding, I am sure that feeding potential enemies was not an idea without foes. Yes, Scarface just grimaced; I am certain that he, at least, did not approve of feeding the homeless Honoraries.


"They are Japanese," Commander Hajime said flatly, "even if they have forgotten as much. Besides, when Britannia is so determined to make enemies of them, who are we to decline to assist the Administration in their efforts? Which," she continued, setting her hands flat on the table in front of her, "brings us back to you, Father Alexander, friend of Rivalz Cardemonde, without whom we would have struggled mightily. You too wish to make an enemy of Britannia? Or did you just come in hopes of soup as well?"


"Not Britannia," Lelouch admitted with an easy smile, allowing the jab to pass unchallenged, "not per say, at least. The Britannic Church, however, as well as its head and the state figures that support the heretical beliefs of the Church, are all very much our enemies."


"...The head of the Britannic Church is Charles zi Britannia, isn't it?" Commander Hajime asked, glancing at Inoue for confirmation, who nodded. "Right," Hajime went on, looking back at Lelouch, "so your enemy is Charles zi Britannia, the Emperor of Britannia?"


"Correct," Lelouch said, in perhaps the most truthful statement he had ever given.


"But not Britannia?"


"Also correct."


"...That appears to be a distinction without a difference."


"From the outside, it likely is," Lelouch agreed. "From our point of view, that is, from the point of view of the True Anglican Church, we are loyal Britannians. The only loyal Britannians. We did not leave Britannia; Britannia, you could say, left us."


Which is indeed how the True Anglicans see themselves, and how Father Alexander sees himself, Lelouch thought, almost idly, still not breaking eye contact with Hajime. For that reason, it is indeed as close to the truth as is necessary to come.


"...Alright," nodded Commander Hajime, her voice still flatly skeptical, though thankfully not outright hostile. "Far be it from me to debate a man of the cloth in such weighty theological matters. Instead, tell me why I should permit such a loyal son of Britannia to leave this room, much less to leave with any agreement between your church and ourselves. And," she raised a quelling hand, "do not think that our agreement with Lord Cardemonde leaves you untouchable. We are no longer dependent upon his name for transit through the checkpoints."


"Because our internal loyalties are, as you put it, a distinction without difference, at least from where you sit," Lelouch said, shrugging. "At the end of the day, both you Japanese and we Old Believers have excellent reasons to hate Charles zi Britannia and vested reasons to fight his agents. It will be the wheel for any of you who are taken alive, and then the public exhibition of your broken bodies until the birds are through. For me, it would be the burning stake for heresy. For the moment, we are in the same boat."


"For the moment," Hajime slowly nodded, accepting his argument, "but what about a month or two down the road. I am… not interested in setting a fire that could burn my own house down. You say that you are loyal to your idea of Britannia? Fine. What relationship does Japan have with this dream version of Britannia?"


"A restoration of the status quo before the invasion of Indochina," Lelouch said, leaning forwards slightly, now that business was finally at hand. "The True Anglican Church repudiates the wanton corruption and grasping actions of Charles zi Britannia, both in his reformation of the Britannic Church and in his unwarranted aggression."


"And what does that mean?"


"Put simply?" Lelouch feigned a grimace, "it means that given my druthers, I would immediately hand Areas 10, 12, and 13 back to the Chinese, and I would restore the independence of New Zealand and Japan. Ruling half the world is already more than enough, and trying to hold down the Western Pacific Rim on top of rebuilding from the Emblem of Blood and squashing noble and Number uprisings in the Heartland and Old Areas is an impossible task. Of all of the New Areas, only Area 9 is close to stable and only Area 11 is profitable, and that's only because of the Sakuradite.


"Collectively, all of the New Areas are a massive net loss. We only benefit by cutting them loose."


"That makes… a great deal of sense," Commander Hajime replied, rubbing a thumb over her chin, her eyes drifting away over Lelouch's shoulder as she seemed to lose herself in thought. "Colonies can be quite sticky, though… What about all of the Britannians who have gained title over Japanese land? Who now live in the atrocity called the Tokyo Settlement, or in all of the lesser settlements scattered across the Home Islands?"


"They can leave and remain Britannian or stay and deal with you on their own," Lelouch said, entirely untroubled. "Ideally, if you Japanese somehow manage to actually push Clovis and his followers out of Japan, the bulk of the Britannian migrants will return to the Heartland. They will be dispirited and angry with the Empire's current leadership, and my followers will be mixed into their ranks. Word will spread, hopefully, and then the True Anglicans will have a presence wherever the would-be settlers go next."


"Hah!" Hajime barked a laugh, and at last the shutters behind her eyes opened a crack, just enough for the glow of cynical humor to shine. "Spoken like a true priest, always eager for souls to save!"


"When we are called," Lelouch replied, answering smile with moderate smile, dripping with deliberately mocking modesty, "what are we to do but answer? And if the call perhaps needs help in arriving…" He allowed the sham piety and most of his smile to slip from his face. "But, you see, we have a good reason to hope for your victory and to desire your help."


"So you do," the blonde agreed in her incongruous European-accented Britannian. There was, Lelouch was certain, a story there. "Indeed you do. Fine, we have sufficient reason to enter a… let's call it a business relationship. Not a friendship, not an alliance, but we can talk. We can talk about what you want, and what currency you will use to tender your purchases."


"Indeed," Lelouch laughed, relaxing. His foot was in the door, and that meant that, regardless of how else this meeting proceeded, he would be returning home for dinner. "Indeed, indeed. Well, to put matters quite simply, my flock is growing rapidly but remains quite poor and low on the social strata. We have a few connections, sufficient to gain access to many of the places where technicians work and enlisted rankers guard, but not the sort of connections that can deliver significant quantities of money or of weapons. We have hands and we can reach for necks, but we lack the knives to put through barred throats."


"How illustrative," remarked Commander Hajime dryly, also relaxing slightly in her chair. "Access, you say? Access to what?"


"Take your pick," Lelouch glibly replied. "The arsenals for the Honorary brigades stationed around the Shinjuku Ghetto? I have a devout sergeant with a key. The conduits through which the fiber cables run? Telecom workers need hope too. The Tokyo power grid? I have enough electricians with access to enough infrastructure to ruin a good part of the distribution network. Plumbers, boilermakers, custodians, clerks… so many little, but ever-so-important, trades have representatives among my flock."


"What about the artillery base out on Chiba?" Commander Hajime asked, "or the aircraft hangars at the airport, where the VTOLs are based? Perhaps most importantly, what about the Knightmares?"


Ah, of course. Hardly a surprise, but is it doable…? Lelouch considered it for a beat. Despite himself, he felt his heart race and lips twitch. I always did love a challenge.


"Hmm… Access wouldn't be easy," he qualified, steepling his fingers as he let his mind run through the possibilities, "nor do I believe that outright theft of military hardware on that magnitude is possible. Sabotage, though…? Well, that's another question entirely."


"...I will want a demonstration first," Commander Hajime said, and Lelouch grinned inwardly at his victory. "You are making some very impressive claims; forgive me if I do not take your word as your bond on the matter, Father."


"Every doubting Thomas can be won over eventually," Lelouch said, but nodded. "That is a very understandable demand, and one that I would be willing to meet to advance negotiations. With that in mind, let us discuss what you could spare to help the True Anglican Church burn the heretical usurpers to the ground."

---

Scene 3: The Empress's Speech​

September 4, 2016 ATB
JLF Central Command Bunker, Matsumoto Prefecture, Area 11


Three days before the Rising.


Kaguya had spent all her life in the shadows cast by a parade of ambitious men.


Heading that parade was her father, back straight and proud, face as haughty as a hawk upon the wing, and dead these six years, nobility and high office proving poor shields in the face of Britannian missiles and bombs. He had died in Tokyo, in the opening salvo of the Conquest, had died alongside thousands of others. Though the details of what had called him to Tokyo on that black August day would remain forever unknown, Kaguya was confident that it had been a development in some scheme that required his personal attention. Always bitter that the Clan of Kururugi stood only a bare degree closer to the extinct House of Yamato than the Clan of Sumeragi, her father had forever pursued an ever greater share of power in the Republic's government.


In his daughter's memory, he still strode forwards, undefeated by death and unhumbled by sharing a final resting place with the common men and women who had died with him, all buried under mountains of trash and broken concrete in one of the great landfills outside of the Tokyo Settlement.


Next in line was Kirihara Taizo, the man who had shaped her and protected her. Her real father, Kaguya supposed, in all the ways that mattered. His heavy-handed instruction had never been sparing, but neither had she ever doubted the affection she had seen in his eyes. He had made it equally plain that she would always have the protection of his faltering house, just as she would always be a tool in his eyes, a piece within his schemes. For all that the great bear of the Kirihara Clan was failing at last, leaving only an inheritance of fire for alienated grandnephews and for Kaguya herself, ambition still burned like coals within his vast, sagging belly.


Clovis la Britannia had a place in that superb parade as well, a strutting peacock and a boy who refused to become a man. "Lady Sophie" had paid homage to the prince annually, coming to the Britannian Concession along with her fellow great traitors of Kyoto to reassure Clovis of their loyalty, and of course to offer generous gifts. During these "voluntary displays of steadfast loyalty," Kaguya had taken Clovis's measure; even as a child of seven, she had found him wanting. Indolent and callous upon his viceregal throne, the Prince of Passion had prattled on, about himself, his art, his unbridled emotions, and the great joy he found in the love his subjects felt for him.


She had only counted herself lucky that she had been too young to attract his attention, either as a prize to be won or a player in her own right. Clovis's hunger for the pleasure brought by the conquest of the former and the satisfaction yielded by the domination of the latter were secret only to those without ears to hear, and as the head of a clan of one, Kaguya had ears sharpened keen by necessity. In every laugh and every pronouncement of his passions, she heard the words beneath all of Clovis's many wasted breaths; that he would never allow himself to be upstaged, to be forced from the stage's center into obscurity in the wings.


That the only joy he would allow any under his control was the fawning over the ever-greater accolades for which he yearned.


Above him stood his father, the Emperor of Britannia, Charles. A man whom Kaguya had never met, but whose face she could envision with equal clarity as her own. Where her father had been a hawk and where Clovis was a peacock, Charles was some great eagle, a roc from an older world, a different time. A holdover from the days when titans still wheeled overhead on dread wings, and giants still flourished in the great abyss. A time when every prince had waged a war to the knife upon all of his siblings, and when every imperial scion was a kinslayer.


Alone of all of those, the founder of the last surviving branch on that great old tree, Charles strode the world, vast and terrible. A man so assured of his power and of his glory that the entire world had no choice but to bow in subjugation. A man who was as proud as a demon, with ambition enough to declare himself a god through his priestly puppet.


Kaguya had lived her life in the shadow of ambitious men, and so she had paid close attention to Colonel Kusakabe Josui during the planning meeting with the rest of the leaders of the Japanese Liberation Front. He had concealed the rage flashing in his eyes when the 3rd Division was ordered to head south with commendable speed, but she had been watching, and she had seen it. Likewise, she had seen the fury directed personally at her when she had named Tohdoh as the man in charge of executing the key stroke of her audacious plan.


That second burst had been a bright and searing thing, fueled both by personal grievances and, Kaguya knew, with thwarted ambition. She suspected that it was the second of these that had truly set Colonel Kusakabe's soul ablaze.


Fortunately, she was not the only one in attendance with eyes to see. The JLF officers had kept to their own council, perhaps unwilling to express concern over a brother officer with outsiders, but Lord Taizo had taken her aside after the meeting, intent on working out a scheme to dismantle this newfound obstacle suddenly lying in their path.


Killing him, they had agreed, was out of the question, as was simply removing Kusakabe from command. A sudden death at this juncture would inject suspicion and division into the ranks of the JLF at the worst possible time, while too many of his soldiers were personally loyal to Kusakabe to safely pluck him from their head. He had been the most active commander in recent years, and the champion of all of the hotheaded urges to attack now rather than wait another day.


The answer to the quandary of Kusakabe was easily found. Ultimately, the colonel was only worth worrying about because of the men whom he could command. If their loyalty could be diverted away from Kusakabe to the broader cause that the JLF served, the man would be neutralized as a factor without becoming a martyr or a rallying point for the dissatisfied.


And the best way to redirect personal loyalty to something as insubstantial as a cause was, of course, to make the cause personal.


Which was where Kaguya, Empress of Japan, became a factor superseding anything that Kaguya herself might achieve.


A fact that the clothes enrobing her, the costume, only reinforced.


"Your Imperial Majesty," a JLF lieutenant whose rank insignia bore the blue piping of a signals officer said, stooping into a deep bow. His brief expression of flickering uncertainty loudly telegraphed that he had no idea if this was the proper way to greet his monarch or not. "All is ready for your broadcast. As soon as you have been introduced, your voice shall reach all of Japan's soldiers!"


"Thank you," Kaguya replied, accompanying the simple words with a smile. She savored that quiet, concise expression of her thoughts; soon, she would have to drizzle formality over everything she did, all in order to reinforce the costume. "We are gratified by your professionalism."


She ignored the lieutenant's babbled thanks as he proceeded backwards out of the room without rising from his bow, blowing well past respect and into inadvertent self-parody. Or at least, that was what Kaguya thought of the man's performance, but she struggled to think badly of the man. He was an overaged lieutenant who had remained a junior officer for well over half a decade because his world had vanished out from under his feet, not from any mistake or failure. He was, apparently, buying into the world that she was offering him to replace that lost one, a world based on memories harkening at least to the time of his great-grandfather, rather than any one among the living could recall.


So what if he is acting out what he feels would be appropriate to such a world? Am I not doing the same thing?


With effort, Kaguya resisted the urge to look down again at herself. At the black hakama and the white kosode under the breastplate and gorget lacquered black and gilded with gold, at the uchikake patterned with cranes draped over her shoulders and belted about her waist with a thick obi gleaming with golden threads. She did not look, but her fingers tightened around the dark shaft of the naginata fully two heads taller than her; at least the spear's blade was of fine steel and razor keen, for all that tassels drooped from its crossguard and gilding encrusted its haft.


In the privacy of her mind, Kaguya could only think of the outfit as her costume. Every fold dripped with symbology, from the cranes spreading their wings across her back to the golden imperial chrysanthemums accenting the center of her breastplate and of her gorget, to the dragon chasing its way up the naginata's blade, all of it meant to convince all who saw it that the girl buried within was an empress in truth. Only Kaguya, Lord Taizo, and a select few servants knew that she had been forced to resort to accounts written by Britannian and European servants for details on old court costumes, and that everything had been put together on the basis of those foreign accounts and half-guessed approximations.


It is as if I am an underprepared actress, arriving on the stage for opening night without having read the script to the end and without the benefit of any dress rehearsal.


But if it is opening night, it is for an entirely new play, one perhaps based upon old themes but never performed before. Which means that the audience will be even more clueless about how all of this is supposed to work than I am. Which means that, so long as I can sell a sufficiently convincing performance, they will not recognize just how far out of my depth I am.


"It is time," Kaguya, Empress of Japan, announced, mostly for her own benefit, and turned to the small conference room's only other occupant, her herald for the day at the suggestion of Kozuki Naoto, passed along to her via a call from her Tanya. "Announce me, Major."


"As you will, Your Majesty," murmured Major Onoda Hiroo, rising to his feet at her bidding.


For a man in his fifties, he still moved with a grace Kaguya found surprising, with none of the aging stiffness that had so plagued Lord Taizo over the last few years. That easy mobility did not extend to his face; beneath the thin iron line of his cropped mustache, the major's lips remained as immobile as they had since Kaguya first made his acquaintance two days previous. But, while neither smile nor frown crossed his face in her presence, his eyes were always keen, always watchful.


An ambitious man, the nascent empress thought, following the officer out of the conference room, taking care to lower her naginata before the blade scored the doorframe, but per Mister Kozuki's reports, a competent and dutiful officer. In short, a sword without a hilt in my hands, perhaps, but in Colonel Kusakabe's eyes, nothing but an outright liability and a clear threat.


The perfect tool, Lady Sophie murmured, just as much a part of Kaguya as the girl who adored cheap cookies. Britannian lessons, refinement and quiet docility draped over bloody-handed ruthlessness, given a convenient voice. Too renowned for Kusakabe to act directly against, yet too strong for him to overlook or tolerate. If the colonel embarks upon a rash act, he will be forced to neutralize Onoda first, a move that will inevitably weaken his forces' trust in their commander.


Better still, if the Kozuki Organization reports about Onoda's enthusiasm for the return of our rule are accurate, a man as cunning and ambitious as Onoda might spot the danger Kusakabe represents and handle him for me, without any need for further investment.


Kaguya hated thinking like that. It was so Britannian in its disregard for anything but immediate victory, of how people could be useful to her, regardless of how that use impacted them. The way she could so easily turn her own people against each other to suit her own ends… Just the meat and drink of Britannian politics, and now, apparently, hers.


She suspected that she would have to think a lot more like Lady Sophie in the future, provided she survived the next few days.


"Announcing Her Current Majesty, by the grace of the Sun and the Sea," Major Onoda's surprisingly stentorian bellow rang out, effortlessly dominating the auditorium and the several hundred soldiers assembled inside as soon as he stepped across the threshold, a few steps ahead of Kaguya. "Kneel! You are in the presence of Her Reigning Majesty!"


Then, he stepped neatly to the side, leaving the aisle straight through the auditorium to the stage, and the hastily assembled impromptu throne thereupon, empty and clear for Kaguya's approach.


The throne was not the only attempt to dress up the space most commonly used as basketball courts by the garrison of the vast Matsumoto Bunker Complex; the "aisle" cleaving the neat ranks was a somewhat battered roll of navy blue fabric hastily removed from some peripheral barracks, hastily relocated to save Kaguya the "indignity" of setting a slippered foot on the erstwhile basketball courts herself.


The stage, located on the far side of the courts, was generally used by formation leaders to conduct and guide calisthenics exercises, a key part of the bunker-bound force's regular physical training, so it at least had not been erected solely for her benefit.


Kaguya had asked for none of this, but had reluctantly accepted it all as inevitable when she turned down General Katase's offer of the Command Bunker for her venue. She had specifically requested the use of the largest space available within the Complex, eager to speak to as large of an audience as possible. A few concessions to monarchical dignity were worth the opportunity to ensure her words went beyond the cliques of the upper ranks.


As soon as Kaguya's toes touched that repurposed carpet, a rippling wave of motion swept the hall. Soldiers in their ranks dropped to their knees, hands on thighs, and touched their foreheads to the auditorium's floor. On the stage, Colonel Kusakabe knelt and bowed forwards, but did not go so far as his subordinates. Instead, he lowered his head only a respectful degree, and kept his eyes open.


Those suspicious eyes tore away from the hole they were boring into Major Onoda to fix upon her, noting each small, careful step down the runner.


My message, Kaguya thought, recognizing the seething hostility in that glare, was very clearly received and understood. Good.


As Kaguya processed, the major himself fell into step a few discreet paces back, shadowing her across the courts and up the shallow stairs to the elevated rise of the stage, where he found a place to stand on her left side as she turned to face her audience, Kusakabe seething in her shadow to the right.


"Rise, soldiers of Japan!" Major Onoda bellowed out, repeating the formula Kaguya had laid out for him in advance. "Rise, and hear the words of the Daughter of Heaven, the Empress of Japan!"


As the soldiers in the audience, and Kusakabe, rose back to their feet in a thunder of noise, Kaguya cast her eyes across the crowd. They were, almost to a man, male, and all bore the insignia of the Third Division upon their shoulders. The first three ranks were all officers, majors to lieutenants, and likely represented the bulk of the leadership of the division's several battalions. Behind them, a rank and a half or so of non-coms stood, with a further four ranks of enlisted standing in the very back, together comprising the better part of the two companies Kusakabe had brought with him to the JLF Strategy Meeting as an escort.


Which means these are all his most loyal, his picked men. The ones he trusts enough to put on a show before his peers and his rivals. But how far could a man like Kusakabe ever trust his subordinates? Moreover, how successful was he in concealing his mistrust from those subordinates? Little corrodes personal loyalty quite like the knowledge that your superior doesn't trust you, after all. Kaguya paused at that, and then winced internally at the arrogant assuredness of that last thought. At least, she amended, no good leader that I have met has ever indicated any mistrust of his subordinates to their faces.


And loyal to Kusakabe though they might be… They are all Japanese soldiers. All of their attention is focused now upon me, and me only. That's all that really matters, now.


"Soldiers of the Japanese Liberation Front!" Kaguya cried out, raising her free hand up and out, palm extended towards the raptly attentive audience, "Heroes of the Japanese people, of their ancestors and their gods, we hail you!"


That did not get the appreciative roar Kaguya had half-expected. There were few smiles, especially among the rankers in the far back, but noise or effuse reactions.


There was only the hungry, expectant silence.


And so, in that instant, Kaguya cast all of her carefully laid plans aside and threw herself headlong into the moment.


"What is the purpose of something so archaic as an empress? We are sure that all of you have wondered just that much, asked yourselves that same question. Well, we.. I have wondered just the same! What is the purpose of an Empress of Japan when there is no Japan, when the Japan that my father served, that your officers swore their oaths to, was the Republic of Japan?


"But what is Japan?"


That silence still yawned like an open grave, ready to swallow her soul whole.


Kaguya gave herself over to it unstintingly, Lady Sophie and the Current Empress and even Sumeragi Kaguya all speaking with her tongue.


"Is Japan merely a collection of islands, a cartographer's label on a map? I say to you, no!


"Is Japan merely her people, those who call themselves Japanese? The remnant of a remnant who have endured hunger and disease? Those who survived cruelty and indifference, and who resisted the easy route offered by taking the enemy's Oath?" This time, Kaguya let the silence linger for a few thoughtful beats, before answering her own question again, voice low as her fingers tightened around the spear shaft in her hand. "Again I say to you, no. The people are the heart of the nation, but the nation is not merely a huddled tribe of starvelings."


There was a rustle through the ranks, an angry murmur. Many of the recruits who had come to expand the 3rd's ranks after the Conquest had come for the food above all else, including the many recent recruits from Niigata, at least a few of whom must be in the crowd.


That touched a nerve, Kaguya observed, concealing her smile. Good. You're angry, ashamed… But that still means that you have your pride.


"Japan is her people," Kaguya acknowledged, "starved and sick, the passion that burns within the Japanese heart for revenge and for a restoration of our pride is the hearthfire of our nation… But that is not all that Japan is. Japan is her gods, her traditions and her institutions! Japan is our language, our customs, our festivals and our funerals!


"And as our long history shows, the heart of Japan belongs to no one else, is not for anyone else, save the Japanese! We are not the Chinese, to absorb foreign conquerors and to make them our own. We are not the Europeans, however much they tried to corrupt us with the help of opportunistic aristocrats happy to prattle republican ideals while lining their own pockets and securing choice appointments for their own kin and clients."


Behind her and at her side, Kusakabe stirred angrily, but held his peace for now, presumably content for her to dig her own grave without his help.


"Believe me on this, for I was fathered by one such aristocrat, and raised by another."


On her other side, Onoda stood stock-still. Kaguya wondered if he recognized the barely veiled attack on Lord Taizo, and if he cared about it if he had.


"Above all else, we are not Britannians, something our Honorary Britannian former brothers and sisters would like to forget. But, as one who has taken an enemy's name and eaten the enemy's bread, I tell you this: No matter how deeply they might wish to forget it, a Japanese heart beats in the breast of every Honorary Britannian, and one day, those hearts will make their way to their throats and there they will choke them! Choke them, unless they remember who their true brothers and sisters are before we remind them ourselves…


"But now, I come back to you, oh heroes of Japan. You humble me! For six weary years, the JLF has rebuilt itself from the ashes of the old army, all in preparation for this very moment. Throughout your training, your observation and spying, your long preparation, you have never lost hope… An accomplishment that I cannot say with full-throated honesty belongs likewise to me!


"You have never lost hope… And you have not forgotten a single insult, a single torture. You have not forgotten how our best and brightest were packed aboard ships and sent east across the Pacific! You have not forgotten how all the rest of us were herded into ghettos, where cholera and hunger stalked, nor how the Britannians took our fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, and threw them into the garbage like dogs! You have not forgotten the looting of our treasure houses of knowledge and beauty, nor how the discarded scraps were burnt!


"You have not forgotten, nor have you forgiven, nor did you abandon hope.


"All for this day."


The naginata whistled as it spun, flipped upside down in Kaguya's deft hands. The blade thudded into the timbers of the stage as she drove it home, the sharpened steel sinking deep into the worn planking.


"I am the last of my house, the last of my line!" Kaguya cried out. "You ask what the purpose of an empress is? I am Japan, all of her ancient traditions and her hopes for the future! The blood of the gods waters my veins, and the knowledge of my enemy sharpens my blade! When I die, so too will Japan die!


"Unless you heroes of Japan can save me, save your mothers and sisters, wives and sweethearts, and save all of our futures. If there is a Japan again, a free nation of Japanese ruled by the Japanese, unencumbered by foreign shackles and foreign dreams, it will be your doing, and your doing alone!


"Once, a great wind overturned the invaders, but what great wind can sweep away the Knightmares of the Britannians? Only the last dying breaths of every Japanese soldier necessary to sweep the Britannians back into the sea! Only the hands of each Japanese man and woman holding Britannian heads down in the water, until the salt purifies their wretched souls and the bubbles cease! Only until each stolen Japanese child rips the Britannian name from their heart and their tongue and throws it to the stones and the ravening gulls! Only until each traitor, be they loyal in their heart to China, to Europa, to Britannia, be cast out and burnt from our ranks and from our memories!


"So, I say to all of you! Revere the Empress! Expel the barbarians! Let us all shed our blood, until the Sun rises again and our enemy's drown in their own froth!"


Recognizing his cue without ever having needed to be warned of it, Major Onoda stepped forward in the silence to stand next to her, reaching down to run his palm across the blade of her naginata.


Then, with blood running down his arm and staining his uniform jacket, the major pivoted on his heel and brought his dripping hand to his brow in a salute, crying out, "Long live Her Majesty the Empress! Long live Japan! Ten thousand years!"


And when the crowd of soldiers, Kusakabe's own picked men, echoed his cries with one voice, Kaguya knew with a curdling certainty that, whoever else they might once have been, they were now hers.


"Long live the Empress! May she rule for ten thousand years!"

---

An interminable hour later, that cheer still rang in Kaguya's head as she carefully excavated her own face from the mask of the empress, standing before the mirror of her ensuite.


"They were certainly enthusiastic," Kaguya muttered to herself, releasing her hair from its carefully-organized pins. "Just as I'd hoped they would be. By any reasonable measure, the speech was a success. Any plan Kusakabe had that hinged on his men's personal loyalty to him has almost certainly been rendered into nothing but ash on the wind now…"


But it is equally certain that I have let loose a tiger, and though I might be riding atop it, I have no control over how that great cat might move, or who it might maul.


"...How did I get into this mess?" she asked herself, hanging up the ornamental robe. Despite its old-fashioned cut, Kaguya knew that its stitching was merely a few days old, the product of a last-minute commission from a well-paid tailoress of her acquaintance.


Just as much a modern product aping antiquity as "Empress Kaguya" herself was.


The only part that was real was the steel, both in terms of the costume and in terms of my own masquerade as a monarch. If I lacked steel, I would have been just as the other house-heads believed me to be, a mere puppet for Lord Taizo's ambitions. If my costume lacked the spearhead's steel, then it all could have broken down, for if Major Onoda had not taken it upon himself to cement my speech with his own decisive gesture…


And that act, all by itself, demonstrates just how foolish the concept is, that any one person should have supreme and endless authority, that blood alone should bestow power! By all accounts, the major came from common stock, but he usurped my entire presentation with one move! But what was that move in service for? Was it in the name of his own power? In ensuring that men such as himself should have the freedom to choose their fates, to find their own fortunes?


For a moment, the major's eyes gleamed from the mirror, as shiny and cold as the moon. Like the moon, all that light was only a reflection; the Empress, not Kaguya but the old robe she wore, was his sun, the source of that light. Kaguya felt that she rarely erred when taking the measure of men, and in Major Onoda, she had found a fanatic.


He believes it all, she knew, shaking her head with amazement. I know who he is, from Tanya and Commander Kaname's reports, but… He believes it, and now, most of those men in that audience believe it too.


Nothing justifies horrors like unquestioning belief. What will these men do in my name?


More importantly… What will these men do, when it comes time for a new Japan to be reborn?


What wouldn't they do?

---

Scene 4: Accidents Happen​

September 6, 2016 ATB
IBI Field Office, Hiroshima Settlement


The day before the Rising.


"Thank you, sir, everything seems to be in order."


With the practiced smile of receptionists and secretaries the world over, William Monmouth slid the ID card back out under the reinforced glass shield cordoning his booth away from the front lobby of the IBI Hiroshima Field Office.


"Please take the elevator on the right up to the fourth floor, and then it will be the second door on the left," William continued, a fixed smile still glassy on his face as he told the nodding visitor where he needed to go. The man was already three paces away by the time he finished, clearly in no mood for the niceties.


Sighing at the rudeness of some people, William reached under his desk and pressed the button to activate the elevator's control panel. If the visitor was not welcome or unexpected, he would have found that the elevator's steel walls made an entirely serviceable cell, immovable with a dead control panel. The in-house goon-squad would have plenty of time to prepare a warm reception as he cooled his heels in the elevator.


Occasionally, William contemplated pushing that button on approved visitors, just for the hell of it.


"Get thee behind me, Satan," the young commoner clerk muttered, turning back to the pile of paperwork sitting on his desk, waiting for any moment not otherwise occupied by checking in visitors. "Probably a fast way to get fired too…"


A fate that William was eager to avoid. Not so much for the salary, which was meager, or the joy of working as a receptionist, which was nonexistent, but because of how his menial post meant he could tell the girlies at the club he liked to frequent after work that he worked for the Bureau, and be completely honest.


Ever since he'd gotten this receptionist post a month back, William's nightlife had improved dramatically.


A slight cough from the other side of the window announced that William's newest customer had arrived, and had perhaps been waiting around for a few seconds as William stared blankly down at the document uppermost on his heap.


"One moment please, sir," William smoothly replied, instantly transitioning from astonishment to the long-suffering endurance of a clerk unwilling to be hurried or, in his case, admit that he'd been daydreaming.


In service of this face-saving maneuver, William spent another few seconds staring at the form jumbled with nonsense before snatching up a pen and jotting an indistinct scribble of a note to the margin, contributing to the incomprehensibility of the document. Honor saved, he at last looked up to greet the waiting man.


Seeing the guy's put-upon expression and cheap suit, William felt a pang of guilt. The lack of any impatience or outraged entitlement underlined that this man, whoever he was, was accustomed to waiting on the pleasure of others. The crumpled packet of smokes sticking out of the breast pocket of his yellowed shirt, just the way his old dad had always socked them away, was really just the icing on the cake.


All and all, the waiting man was definitely a Commoner, just like William.


"Sorry about that," said William with a bit more warmth than usual. "Who are you here to see, sir?"


"No worries," the visitor replied, his smile knowing but sympathetic. "And no one in particular; I'm from the Fire Marshal's Office, here about the annual inspection.


"My credentials," he added, sliding both a personal ID card and a warrant card identifying him as an accredited fire inspector and arson investigator.


"Thank you," murmured William, scooping up the cards and checking that the names matched one another and that both pictures fit the man standing before him.


"Leonard Orr" was a tall, stout man, someone who had probably been strong as a youth but had since allowed himself to go to seed. Beneath broad shoulders, an equally broad paunch waggled, barely constrained by the straining belt and suspenders clearly outlined by the suit jacket's cheap fabric. A salt and pepper beard, flattened on one side like the man had somehow slept face-down on his pillow, fringed a flushed, flabby face.


A perfect match for the pictures.


"The annual inspection, you say? You'll need an escort," William said, scanning the personal ID into the visitor registry. "This is a controlled area; we can't just have people wandering around." He flashed the downtrodden man an apologetic smile, "Sorry, that's just the rule, nothing I can do. I'll get the duty guard to send someone down."


"I'm an official fire inspector," Leonard Orr pointed out, and William nodded in agreement; the scanned card was valid. "That means I'm allowed to go wherever I need to if I'm inspecting fire control mechanisms. Besides, d'you think I could honestly report on any issues if one of your co-workers is leaning over my shoulder the whole time?"


"Above my paygrade," William shrugged, sliding the ID cards back under the window, along with a visitor's badge made out to "Leonard Orr - Fire Inspector". "I don't have any say in it. But… Yeah," he conceded, "I mean, I don't like it when people are looking over my shoulder while I work either…"


Sympathy and guilt bit at his heart again, prompting William to throw up his metaphorical hands and say, "Look, I'll talk to the section chief, see what he has to say…"


"Thanks, Bill," Leonard replied, a smile creasing his ham-pink face. "You're a credit to your boss."

---

"Alright, thanks for your help," said Leonard Orr, clipboard tucked up against his armpit and cup of employee canteen coffee steaming in his hand as he shook the hand of his IBI escort. "Have a good one, Tim."


"Eh," the agent shrugged, pulling a face. "I'm not expecting much. Just a few hours left on the clock, anyway."


The young commoner took a long sip of his own coffee, clearly in no great hurry to return to his desk.


"Well, yes," Leonard agreed, a hint of impatience colouring his joviality. "Just enough time for me to finish up here and get back to the office to file my report. So, if you'll excuse me…"


"Oh, yeah." Tim, as the agent who had accompanied Leonard through his inspection of the secure areas of the IBI field office had introduced himself, grimaced slightly. "Well… Alright, poke around as you need. Be mindful not to let your hands wander now, Leo; we'll be watching."


He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, pointing at the security camera fixed down the corridor.


"I'd be disappointed if the Bureau wasn't keeping a close eye on things," Leonard lightly replied, "but don't worry, I'm not that big of an idiot, no matter what the wife says! Anyway…"


"Right, yeah. Be seeing you."


Having at last shaken off his escort, Leonard finished his coffee and resumed his inspection of the IBI field office. Proceeding floor to floor, room to room, the inspector took careful note of each fire extinguisher's maintenance tag and logged each potential tripping hazard near an exit.


As his pen scratched across the complicated forms pinned to his clipboard, Leonard's darting eyes searched the ceiling corners for cameras. Not that there was anything for the faceless observers on the other end to see, of course, as Leonard certainly wasn't foolish enough to fiddle with any of the desk safes or locked drawers he saw, but the placement of the cameras gave him some idea about their range, and their coverage.


Almost an hour after he parted ways with Tim, Leonard found himself on the very bottom floor of the converted office building, standing in front of a white-painted door hung with an unobtrusive sign labeling it as "Mechanical Room #2".


Eyes darted left, and eyes darted right, and Leonard's eyes found only a single camera pointed down the hallway he had come from, back towards the elevators. He reached out to test the mechanical room's handle, and found it locked.


Unsurprising.


A hand slipped behind his belt buckle, returning with a flattened metallic capsule about the length of a finger joint. A quick pull tipped the capsule's contents out onto the form-ridden clipboard; a narrow steel shim with a slight flattened end, a small twist of steel wire, and a similar length of much more malleable copper.


Humming to himself, Leonard casually inserted the shim into the lock, pushing back the sliding plate inside to expose the inner crevices. The steel wire wormed inside, probing for recesses and their yielding tumblers. When the lock was mapped to his satisfaction, Leonard quickly bent the copper into the appropriate shape, inserted the bent wire to match the groves, and rotated the still placed shim.


A click on one… three is binding… four is a false set… and-


With a satisfying click, the mechanical room's door handle moved under his hand.


Moving without worry or hurry, the fire inspector and arson investigator gathered up his tools and stepped inside, closing the door firmly behind him and leaving "Leonard" on the other side.


Packing his lockpicking kit back away into its easily hidden container, Errol Kefenick took an opportunity to peer around the mechanical room, looking for any cameras or other sensors that might betray his presence.


Definitely the risky part here, he thought, scouring pipe fittings and the narrow gantry overhead for any treacherous electronic eyes. If there were any cameras here, I'd be fucked. No way to really tell in advance either… Which made this the only interesting part too. The only hint of risk…


That risk, the feeling of taking his life in his hands… It was unprofessional, Errol knew, but it was part of what gave his life the salt he needed, the seasoning to leaven the unendurable boredom. It had been the joy of the risk, the freedom from tedium, that had first driven Errol into the Army's greasy bosom. When the Army with all of its rules and traditions had grown unendurable, that same adventurous craving had propelled him into the Directorate's Special Activities Center, and from that rarefied group of unmentionables, into the arms of the never-boring "Black Baron" Alvin Stadtfeld.


Although things have been a bit boring since he came to check up on the family homestead… Errol mused to himself, spotting the control panel for the building's gas main and crossing the room with a purpose. Kallen's a little spitfire, though. If she manages to keep her pretty head attached to her shoulders, she might grow up to be half as interesting as her old man some day… Now, where's that dongle gotten…?


Moments later, the dongle was jacked into the control panel's monitor port and the worm was happily disgorging all the options Errol could want or need onto the tiny screen. A few quick adjustments to the distribution's settings and the disabling of a few warning sensors later, as well as a quick edit to the control panel's log to delete any mention of those changes, and the dongle was back in his pocket.


Content with his work yet aware that soon, someone would come looking for him, Errol quickly moved on to the next stage of the plan and quickly located a likely location in a slight crack in the insulation around a hot water pipe.


While he had been quite the smoker as a younger man, it had been well over a decade since a cigarette last graced Errol's lips. Nevertheless, he had found that a crumpled cigarette packet could conceal any manner of sins, particularly when paired with artfully applied yellow stains on his fingers and teeth, along with an odor acquired by spending a peaceful quarter hour reading in any given bar. With all of the tell-tale signs of a chronic smoker, few bothered to even check if the packet contained cigarettes. There were, in case a particular nosy guard wanted to steal a few, but even those were just another layer of misdirection to conceal the device tucked right beside them.


It had started life as a disposable lighter, a cheap plastic butane-fired thing like thousands of others. Little had changed on the surface, but within that white shell, an entirely different beast lurked. One with an electronic sparker circuit governed by a remote receptor, as well as an ancillary timer, and one connected to an incendiary agent that burned a great deal hotter than mere butane.


Moving swiftly, Errol extracted the device, gave it a once-over to check that it was still in working order, and then quickly rubber-banded a few sheets of notebook paper over the plastic shell. The sheets when heated would flame up, the tinder for what he hoped would be a much larger blaze. The wad he wedged into the cracked insulation, out of sight or casual reach behind the heated pipe.


In seventeen hours, it will be quarter past ten, the occasional chauffeur noted, checking against his watch. By which point, all of the uppermost floors of the building will be flooded with gas. That should include the IBI server room, up on the fifth floor, as well as the off-limits hallway on the fourth. Inspector Garcia's private office is down on the first floor, but the explosion of that much natural gas will be enough to gut the building immediately. First floor or not, he'll be gone in a tragic accident.


At last. Thought I'd go insane if I had to spend another week watching the Black Baron try to remember how to be a father.

---

Right now, I should be dead.


Try as he might, drink as he might, Nelson Garcia could not shift that thought from his mind as he stared at the crater that had been his office only hours ago, still smoldering on the screen of his laptop, frozen for his perusal.


By all rights, I should be dead.


And if it hadn't been for the governor demanding an urgent report on that smuggling ring, I would be dead. Just like the rest of the Bureau's Area 11 branch, not to mention Kanae.


For all the urgency of Governor Kleinfeldt's barely polite summons, the report itself had been an utterly mundane affair. Nelson had arrived at the Settlement Administration Office at nine-thirty sharp, and after cooling his heels for a good half hour, had at last been allowed into the governor's office just after ten. The presentation had been extremely brief, its contents so straightforward that Nelson had been able to go over all the highlights in less than ten minutes.


It all could have been covered by a single email update, or even a brief phone call.


For his own sake, Nelson was grateful that it hadn't been.


Just as he was wrapping up his report, that the three commoners who had headed the smuggling ring out of the old Hatsukachi docklands and their Honorary factotums had all been dutifully rounded up in a Bureau sting along with their confederates on Quelpart Island, the governor's secretary had burst into the office.


The IBI's Hiroshima Field Office was gone, vaporized in a massive explosion. That his entire branch had been annihilated by a gas explosion that had, in addition to killing the twenty-three Bureau agents assigned to the office, killed an additional ninety-six others, ranging from the janitors sent by the dispatch agency to a Britannian child playing hooky from school and who'd had the stupendous misfortune to be on the sidewalk across the street from the IBI building when it had blown.


By the time that Nelson arrived on the scene, his initial stunned disbelief had dissipated completely, replaced by calmly professional detachment. As the settlement's fire fighters strove to save the neighboring buildings not yet fully engulfed by the flames radiating out from the burning crater where his office had once stood, Nelson had swung into motion.


His superiors were contacted and informed about the situation. The off-site backup server was checked to verify that the last bi-weekly backup had been completed without incident or data loss. It would need securing, but Nelson was rather short-handed at the moment. Messages were sent out to the next of kin of the deceased and agents who were like him, out of the office at the time, were contacted.


And all throughout the process of addressing the immediate issues of the explosion, Nelson's had kept the thought of "I should be dead" at bay, pressing it back with all the needs and requirements of duty and rank.


Once those burdens began to lighten, Nelson had smoothly moved on to the next lifeline, the next task to occupy his restless mind.


Someone has done this to me. Who could it have been?


Certainly, the accidental gas leak could have been just that, a dreadful and tragic accident, perhaps brought about by lacking maintenance or the poor installation of some gasket.


But that was not a thought Nelson could accept, certainly not before any possibility of hostile involvement had been thoroughly examined. While random strokes of misfortune could simply happen, it was not a survival skill for an Honorary Britannian of any stripe to assume as much. Random fires destroying buildings under Honorary Britannian proprietorship had far too long of a history for Nelson to ever assume misfortune in their case in particular.


The most obvious answer was of course that the incendiary device Nelson was sure a subsequent investigation would find somewhere in the ruins of what had previously been the better part of a city block had been planted by some band of Eleven insurgents. This was also the potential explanation that Nelson felt the most confident in dismissing.


While it was theoretically possible that Elevens could infiltrate the building, perhaps disguised as Honorary janitors or repairmen, those groups were also the expected route of observation, and thus kept under close surveillance while on site. Further, some nameless band of infiltrators would have had to source at the very least a tool to tamper with the gas mains without raising notice, and another tool to act as a remote incendiary.


Another possibility was that some band of organized criminals, not willing to tolerate Bureau interference in their operations, had instantly escalated to bombing the branch out of existence. This, Nelson was unwilling to immediately dismiss: The slaughter back in April of the clients and proprietors of the underground brothel on the outskirts of the Shinjuku Ghetto made it very plain that the criminal element in Area 11 were fully prepared to kill to protect their businesses or remove competition.


I should be dead… But why would a criminal organization of such significance attack a field office in Hiroshima instead of a police barracks in the Tokyo Settlement? That's where all the big fish swim – out here in Hiroshima, we've only been seeing the smallfry. Either we were on the brink of uncovering something big… Or the attack was specifically targeted at the Bureau, not at the policing apparatus in general.


So, who of significance in Area 11 carries a specific animus against the Bureau?


That list was much shorter, and consisted mostly of the Directorate of Imperial Security, the Bureau's great internal rival and, up until recently, the holders of a monopoly on the security apparatus in Area 11.


Well, not quite a monopoly; the Inquisition has an office here as well, at the Bishop's Palace. Nelson didn't bother suppressing his snort at the thought. For all the good they do.


But the DIS aren't complete fools, like the Inquisition is, and are fully capable of engineering a gas leak if it serves their goals. That said… Why would they have bothered? Field Director Felt was quite willing to parcel southern Area 11 off to the Bureau, so long as nobody said anything about the Directorate's conduct leading up to the Sniper Attacks. What good would destroying the Bureau's presence in Area 11 do him, particularly in such a public manner?


So, probably not the Directorate, at least not officially… But what about one particular agent of the Directorate…?


The half-melted ice cubes clinked in Nelson's whiskey glass as a heavy fist landed against his hotel room's door.


"Hey!" A man called out from the other side of the door. "Garcia! Nelson Garcia! You in there? Eh? I's gotta delivery for you that needs signing for!"


A delivery? Nelson blinked, cursing how slowly his mind seemed to be working, thrown suddenly out of his semi-soused introspection and into whatever this was. What could he be delivering?


How did he know that I was here?


That second question washed down the inspector's back, colder by far than the now barely-cool contents of his tumbler. Rising carefully to his feet, trying not to make any sudden motions that might cast shadows against the hotel room's windows, Nelson reached for the shotgun he'd brought up from his official car.


After all, if someone truly had blown up an entire office building in a bid to kill him, it was foolish to think that they would be content to make only the one attempt on his life.


The tumbler in Nelson's hand shattered in unison with the room's window as the tipsy night exploded into a storm of noise. Bleeding from his shredded hand, Nelson hurled himself down between the beds before the scything bullets could find his flesh, the inebriation seared from his mind by the sudden burst of adrenaline.


Almost before his knees and elbows hit the hotel's cheap carpet, the pain of the impact muted into irrelevance, Nelson was bouncing back up again to snatch the shotgun up from the bed. The shell was already chambered, the acceleration coil already charged, and so three seconds after that first burst of fire, the inspector braced the stock and began returning fire, blasting blindly away at the door with the first two shells of his semi-auto's clip each with nine rounds of buckshot, gouging though the cheap clapboard.


Five shells left, Nelson noted, absurdly cool as he hurled himself back down towards the floor as vengeful hornets whirred past his ears. So much lead in the air, doubt I'll get much of a chance to aim. They must have a submachine gun, at least.


As soon as they reload, I'll rush the window, he decided. There's nothing I can hide behind in this room. Die now or die later.


Belly to the floor, the inspector was about to climb to his feet and start lumbering for the window when the fire streaming in through the bullet-ridden wall of the hotel unit faltered, but caught himself just in time as a second torrent of fire began to pour into the room through the same holed wall, but from a slightly different angle.


Two of them, Nelson knew, his heart sinking. At least, maybe more. Not just a single hitman, but an entire team.


Whoever sent them wasn't willing to countenance a second escape from certain death.


His options were limited. Besides the front wall, where both the window and the door to the parking lot, not to mention the assassins, were, the only other way out of the hotel was through a connecting door leading to the next door unit. If a large party rented both rooms, the door could be unlocked to join the two units together; as it was, the door was certainly locked from his side, and, Nelson assumed, likely from the other side as well.


But considering how cheap this entire pile's construction is, perhaps I could break down the door quickly enough to… What, run around through the other room, stumbling in the dark, and come out the front door to take the team from the side? I would still be one man against a group…


Still better than waiting until one of the shooters gets lucky, or just charging into glorious death.


Carefully turning himself around on the floor to face the joining door, nearly biting his tongue off as the tumbler shards buried in his hand ground against each other and against his bones, Nelson rose up onto one knee, shotgun braced against his shoulder, and pulled the trigger.


With a thunderous boom and a percussive crack, the bottom third of the joining door practically sublimated under the impact of a cloud of several dozen steel pellets.


Underlying that sound and the constant whining zip of the bullets was the howl of pain that ripped its way out from Nelson's throat as the bucking shotgun tugged the impaling shards sideways, shearing at his hand.


By contrast, the white hot skewers piercing his side halfway up his ribcage and slashed across the back of his head were almost nothing, lost in the incredible pain from his hand.


Had Inspector Garcia not already been kneeling in a shooter's stance, the pain would have driven him forwards and down to his knees. As it was, it simply drove him forwards as he launched off his feet like a sprinter, hurling himself across the narrow confines of the hotel room and through the splintered hole that gaped out from between the smashed lintels of the doorframe.


This time, he had no breath to scream as he half-stumbled, half-fell onto more cheap hotel carpet, presumably in the same colorless gray, though the complete dark of the neighboring hotel room kept him from seeing it. As it was, Nelson could only sob with the agony now flaring from his side and his head in sympathetic chorus with his hand, the wet, mucous-ridden sounds hacking out as he pulled himself up, semi-automatic shotgun still in hand.


The room, he found, had been occupied. The beds were unmade, open suitcases were strewn around.


Nobody here, thought Nelson, the words sounding almost groggy in his head. He lifted a hand to his aching head, and found wetness all down his neck. Head injury. Bleeds like hell.


The bathroom, maybe?


He chanced a glance over his shoulder, towards the small antechamber with the sink, and the closed door beyond it.


Must be hiding in there, whoever they are. Not my problem.


Behind him, the hail of bullets slackened again. Nelson thought he heard some movement, but the ringing in his ears and the increasingly woozy feeling filling his extremities made it hard to tell.


Think I'm dead, he considered. They'll be trying the door, probably reaching in through what's left of the window. They'll want to establish positive ID.


And while they're focused on that…


Shotgun in hand, and without giving himself any further time to hesitate or slow, Nelson Garcia crossed the connected room and clicked back the lock.


Dios del Terror y del Poder, dame tu vara y tu espada. Salve Emperador, Salve Britannia.


The door banged open; the shotgun bucked, once, twice against his shoulder.


The man with his arms through the window of Nelson's decimated hotel room sagged, leaning heavily against the wall, arm abruptly skewered on the jagged glass teeth protruding from the bottom of the frame as his knees lost their strength.


The man standing a yard behind and to the side of the corpse at Nelson's door had already turned to face the inspector before he had the chance to take his second shot; Nelson's mangled left hand, pushed beyond endurance at last, slipped on the shotgun's receiver, sapless fingers hanging free by cut tendons, betraying him at last.


I know him, the inspector's mind garbled, almost incoherent with the blood loss and hammering adrenaline, absurdly out of place in this final moment. He was with Lord Stadtfeld! That's his damned driver!


The last thing that went through Nelson's mind as the baron's servant squeezed his own trigger was the realization that both the man he had just killed and the man about to kill him were Britannian, about as Britannian as they came. His killer had come from the Homeland, no less; a servant of one of the old lines.


A Britannian's Britannian.


Not by a Number, not by a treacherous Honorary, but in the end… Killed by a Britannian at the end.

---

Scene 5: Miracle Man, Immortal Mountain​

September 7, 2016 ATB
Sumeragi Industries Fuji Sakuradite Extraction & Refining Complex
0700


Frowning at the filth, Kyoshiro cast around for a rag or something similar he could use to wipe the blood spatters from the surfaces of his newly acquired command center. Unfortunately, the back-up control room nestled deep in the heart of the Sumeragi Industries' own Fuji Sakuradite Extraction & Refining Complex was entirely bereft of cleaning supplies. He would have to tolerate the blood, at least for the moment, until all the more important matters had been seen to.


As soon as I hear the base is secure, I'll order someone to clean up the mess, Kyoshiro promised himself, trying to ignore the heavy scents of death permeating the room. The team Commander Kozuki had sent to secure the command center in the initial flash of violence hadn't had time to haul the bodies of the Britannian "consultants" away, understandably busy with more time-sensitive matters, but Kyoshiro was having difficulty thinking clearly with the stench of loose bowels filling his nostrils.


Mess aside, young Kozuki's commandos did a good job, Kyoshiro noted as he poured over the the computer's contents, hunting for the most recent comm log, just in case anybody had managed to slip a message out. Honestly, I'm hard pressed to think of any units within the JLF who could have done better. So many unblooded recruits, so few old veterans…


At the thought of some of those old veterans, the men who had been his classmates once, his brother officers later, Kyoshiro's mind slipped his leash for a moment and wandered back to brighter days. Back when the future hadn't been something worth worrying too much about.


"Out of curiosity, Captain Chiba… Did you ever climb Lord Fuji, back before… all of this?"


From the corner of his eye, Colonel Tohdoh Kyoshiro saw his aide-de-camp blink, pulled from her contemplation of the back-up control center's communications system by his question.


Why am I distracting her? Kyoshiro berated himself, shaking his head at the wandering course his thoughts had taken. The time for navel contemplation has come and gone. I need to be focused on the task at hand.


"Don't worry about it," he added, waving the question away. "It was just idle curiosity."


And some superstitious bunkum.


"No, I…" Chiba Nagisa hesitated, her mouth slightly open and a minute frown crinkling her forehead. It was, Kyoshiro couldn't help but notice, a decidedly different frown from her more common, and more pronounced, irritated expression. "I didn't get the chance, Colonel. I had the opportunity, you know; I was in college, and a whole group of my friends went one weekend, and they invited me… But I turned them down. I… had other things to do, back then.


"I've always sort of regretted it…"


Noticing how sober her voice had become, Chiba pulled herself back together, an expression of forced joviality smeared unnaturally across her features.


"Well, I'm here now!" she got out, in a tone the match for her expression in artificiality. "Six years too late, but right on time to send a few Brits to hell, eh?"


"Too true," Kyoshiro conceded, and turned, meaning to leave the conversation there. But instead, words not his own forced their way from his lips.


"A wise man will climb Fuji once, but only a fool climbs it twice," he said, quoting the old cliche. "I climbed Fuji once, you know, Captain… I was a young student back then, just like your friends, still deep in my studies at the Army Academy… I went to Fuji with them, my friends, and we sang together as we jogged our way up the Yoshida route…"


Noticing how rapt Chiba's focus had become, how intently she was waiting for his next words, Kyoshiro fell silent, abruptly embarrassed.


No doubt she's expecting some sort of sage wisdom dispensed by Tohdoh of the Miracles, he thought, somewhat bitter. They always do. Sorry, none of that here. Just an old fool who should've died six years ago wondering what it means that he's come back to Fuji again…


"...Yes?" Chiba prompted, clearly not realizing that his silence hadn't been for dramatic effect, but out of a sudden reluctance to discuss the topic. A second later, she quickly added, "Sir? I mean… What then, sir?"


"...We had a good time," he grunted, memories of that "good time" and the afterparty he and his friends had thrown after they returned to the hostel at the foot of the mountain suddenly swam to the forefront of his mind. Glancing furtively around, Kyoshiro lashed out to grab the first topic he could seize. "We… Of course, we didn't see the mines then, not as they were."


That reminder, uncomfortable and jolting, was enough to remind Kyoshiro of where he was, and what he was supposed to be doing. It seemed enough for Chiba as well, as his aide took a hasty step away, formalities of rank slipping back between them.


Ah yes, the mines…


"What's the latest from Commander Kozuki?" Colonel Tohdoh asked, leaning over one of the secondary command center's consoles, currently demonstrating a map of the refinery's ground floor. "Has he reported back in on the progress of his special teams yet?"


"Yes, Colonel," Captain Chiba crisply replied. "All teams have reported back with successful emplacements. All charges are set in the refinery itself, as well as in the mines. Her Imperial Majesty's diagrams of the gantry system were entirely accurate, along with her description of the stabilization centrifuges."


Kyoshiro made himself nod, focusing entirely on conveying the necessary solemnity the moment called for.


After all, in the eyes of Captain Chiba and all of the other men and women preparing to die to defend the mining complex, barring a very select group, Commander Kozuki had just cocked back the hammer of the pistol placed to the temple of all Japan by Her Imperial Majesty, Kaguya.


Such moments called for an element of recognition.


"Very well," the Miracleworker acknowledged, gravely nodding his head. "It is done, then."


Perhaps I should have told her, Kyoshiro thought, hating himself just a little for lying to someone who had shown him nothing but earnest loyalty and devotion over their four years of shared service. But, Her Imperial Majesty was most clear in her orders… And I cannot fault her reasoning. And, soldiers gossip. Best to keep temptation away when possible.


"What about the rest?" he asked, brusquely moving on to a different topic. "Updates, Captain; I want them."


"Yessir!" Chiba smartly replied, and began reeling off a list of guard rotations instigated, fortifications installed, communication systems sabotaged, and exits plugged.


"...And we've got all the Honoraries that weren't with us and managed to survive the shooting all down in the Number Three Ore Locker," she beamed, with the overzealous tone of devoted subordinates who had addressed a problem their superior had overlooked without requiring any consultation. "All the ones who caught a bullet when Commander Kozuki entered the facility have been put with all the Brits out by the loading docks."


The infiltration, now a full half hour in the past, had been a rather neat piece of work, in Kyoshiro's considered view. The Fuji Mining Complex had enjoyed the protection of a complement of Britannian regulars who, along with a handful of Britannian "consultants," kept an eye on the Honorary managers, laborers, and specialists employed by Sumeragi Industries.


But, over the years of quiet productivity, security had slipped and complacency had set in. It had been easy for Lady Sophie Sumeragi, with the assistance of a select few others, to doctor the composition of the morning shift of September Seventh. Several new faces under old names appeared in the system as long-time employees with fully vetted backgrounds. Several old faces who had long cherished certain views were rotated off the night and swing shifts.


When Commander Kozuki, his Britannian red hair dyed black, had stormed out from the Complex's mess hall at the head of fifty of his picked men, each armed with pistols smuggled in via lunch pails and toolboxes, the Britannians on guard at the main gate and those keeping watch over the server room were taken entirely off their guard. By the time that the surviving Britannian officers, not to mention their civilian consultant charges, had instilled a vestige of order into their disordered soldiers, Colonel Tohdoh was already through the gates of the Fuji Complex.


And for once, Kyoshiro thought, allowing himself a private smile, it was we who had Knightmares coming to our aid, along with a full column of reinforcements. Amazing how much easier that sort of heavy support makes it to root out the last diehard pockets of resistance…


A lesson I should keep close to my own heart.


But, there he had been, at the controls of his Burai Kai and at the head of another thirty-one Knightmare Frames, the flower of his carefully hoarded Knightmare Corps. Behind them, a river sprung from many hidden tributaries had flowed as hidden trucks gunned their engines and surged for the compound, eagerly bringing their cargos of men, munitions, and supplies into the mountainside mining and processing facility even as the last few Britannians were hunted like rats.


Leaving Kyoshiro in command of the mountain, and also in command of thirty-two Knightmares, a hundred and thirty two commandos picked from Commander Kozuki's Rising Sun formation, the commander himself, and thirty-odd Sumeragi Industries employees who had chosen to follow their lady into a life redeemed of their Honorary names and identities.


And now, thought Kyoshiro, waving Chiba away, confident that she would know what she needed to do while he contemplated the battles stretching off as far ahead as he could see, all I need to do is to hold on as tightly as I possibly can.


Ienaga and his battalion held on to the death; hopefully, I will not be forced to order my own troops to hold to that same bitter end.

DAY 0 OF THE SHINJUKU RISING​

+6 Japanese
+23 Honorary Britannians
+54 Britannians
Daily Total: 83
Cumulative Total: 83

 

[Xilokiir]

Poor police-kun, little did he know that innocence proves nothing, loyalty is no defense, and competence is a capital crime.

Miss Empress continues to be possessed by the spirit of great leaders past, and has accidentally 'no chill'ed the soldiers, I'm sure this will have no unfortunate consequences, Teehee pero~.

The pace has finally allowed us to reach hour 0 of the actual uprising, and I still have half my teeth unground from the suspense. I would be more upset about the dental bills if what was written were less good, but this is excellent. I'm still going to bitch about it, but I bitch about everything.

 

[Ranmabomb]

Loved the chapter. This is one of my favourite fanfics.

I particularly love priest Lelouch and the empress.

 

[Scopas]

MinttSky has completed another wonderful commission for me, featuring Her Imperial Majesty Kaguya speaking to the JLF's 3rd Division

 

[Scopas]

(Thank you to Sunny and MetalDragon for editing this chapter, and to KoreanWriter and all the others over the last few months for help beta-writing and brainstorming.)


September 7, 2016 ATB
Port District 3, (Occupied) Tokyo Settlement, Empire of Japan (contested)
0724


Six years ago, Britannian bombs had fallen like rain on Tokyo.


Shinichiro Tamaki was ecstatic to return a little bit of the favor back to the Brits, courtesy of his 81-millimeter mortar. That he was one month late for the anniversary did little to dampen his enthusiasm.


Sprawled out on his belly on the roof of an anonymous, low-slung, gray office building, the faux-redhead peered through his binoculars at the whitewashed frontage of the District 3 Police Station and carefully noted the bearing, distance and the direction the wind was blowing. Pocketing the compass, Tamaki took one last glance at the station's gated entrance and then turned away, confident in his measurements. He'd gotten quite good at working out basic firing plans in his head back at the School, good enough to become an instructor along with the rest of his boys.


Quite the long walk for a guy who got his ass handed to him by an unarmed kid back in the day, Tamaki thought to himself, grimacing at the memory. But, everybody's gotta start somewhere. Me and the boys did good helping Naoto hold down Shinjuku, and now that Tanya's cut us free at last to deliver some whoop-ass to the Brits, we'll do good here too!


Grinning at the thought of vengeance long deferred, Tamaki shimmied back down the folding ladder to rejoin his squad. There they were, the once-gangsters once led by a braggart, now each of them a soldier of Japan in service to the girl who had raised them up from the trash they had once been.


"Alright, Inuyama," Tamaki said, clapping the man in question. "Seven hundred meters out, eighty-six degrees east, and the wind's southwest. You know what to do."


The soldier grinned, yellow teeth bared in humorless defiance as he spun the various dials on the mortar's base. Of course he knew what to do; they all did, every single soldier of every single squad fanning out across the Tokyo Settlement and all the people backing them from Shinjuku and hidden camps spread out across half a dozen prefectures. Weeks of planning must have gone into this operation; months of training certainly had.


The mortar at Inuyama's feet thumped its support, like a happy drunkard hammering on a table. Even through Tamaki's hands, pressing firmly over his ears, the blasts – one after another after another as Inuyama and the rest blazed through the six-pack of shells – were nearly deafening, but Tamaki couldn't care less about the noise and heat. He could barely care about the pounding headache the percussive blast always gave him; Tamaki could only look forward to the moment, only seconds away now, when he and the rest of Squad 16 would join Squads 17 and 18 and attack the ruptured police station, guns blazing as they cut the stunned and bleeding Brit pigs, standing or running, down.


This was it! At last, at last! The Day of Liberation had come, and with it the first hour of vengeance. Revenge for family, friends, and acquaintances, dead and crippled and lost in a churning and chaotic sea. Revenge for hopes and dreams quashed, homes and livelihoods turned into rubble. Revenge for petty slights and breathtaking cruelties.


Revenge for Japan.


"Alright, boys!" cried Tamaki, yelling over the ringing in his ears, savoring the fact that he was speaking in Japanese while standing outside Shinjuku's looming walls, "Let's not keep them waiting! C'mon! Follow me!"


"For the Commander! For the Empress! Expel the barbarians! For Japan! Banzai!"

---

September 7, 2016 ATB
Shinjuku Ghetto Check Point, Tokyo Settlement, Area 11
0730


When the 26th Infantry Regiment arrived in Area 11, the unit's officers and rankers alike had been delighted. Everything they had heard about the still-recently proclaimed Area spoke of opportunity and excitement, free from the constant political worries that invariably accompanied deployments back in the Heartland or Homeland. The Area even had just enough dead-enders clinging on to keep things from getting too boring, an extra entertainment whenever the whores grew dull and the regular Numbers too enured to being pushed around.


Two years on, Private Charles Klark was well past having second thoughts and starting to venture into third regrets.


"Every Britannian a lord!" they said! "All the Eleven girls you could plow, ready for the taking!" they promised! Stupid! How in the Emperor's name could I be taken in so easily?


Moodily, the young soldier prodded a discarded beer can with the toe of his boot; when it failed to explode, he kicked the rubbish away from his sentry box and back across the threshold into Shinjuku Ghetto where it could be with all the rest of the trash.


Those bastard recruiters… Klark growled, his black mood entirely unleavened. They always promise assignments where the beer flows in rivers and girls spread their legs like butter on toast… And it's always a lie. Dammit, dammit, dammit!


Frustratingly, even that wasn't quite true.


It used to be like that… the Britannian private thought sourly, casting his mind back to fond recollections from the first months of his tour of duty in Area 11. Back then, it was all brothels, cathouses, and bars past this checkpoint, up and down the streets! You could buy anything… well, any girl you wanted or anything you wanted to snort or shoot up, at least. No letting the Elevens buy weapons, after all. But anything else…


Oh, those had been the days. The Elevens were hungry enough and desperate enough that even a private's pay went a considerable distance, and since Charlie Klark had been stuck on sentry duty in and around the Tokyo Settlement more nights than not, the leverage of "overlooking" a sufficiently grateful Number trying to get in or out of the ghetto without a work pass had gone still further towards ensuring that the party never really ended.


All of that had come to a screeching halt right around the same time everything else had gone sour.


Fucking Purists, burning all the best Honorary dives and cathouses down… Bastards…


Not that the precipitous decline in the Tokyo nightlife was entirely the Purists' fault, much as it galled Klark to admit as much; the yellow-bellied Honoraries were at least as much to blame. It was, in his opinion, almost incomprehensible how quickly the Honoraries of the Tokyo Settlement had all but vanished from the streets.


A little rough-housing and suddenly all of the Honorary grog-shops were closed up! The ones who hadn't been looted bare, at least.


Still, at least for the first few months of the year, all the pleasures of Shinjuku were still spread wide open for his approval, even if prices had gone up just a bit. Sure, it hadn't been quite as fun after last Christmas – the vibe had been ruined, for one, and suddenly there seemed to be a lot more Numbers watching his every move every time he went into Shinjuku to blow off some steam – but the ghetto had still proven a reliable source of girls and giggles for an enterprising Britannian soldier with money to spend, and his gate income still provided said money.


Then, all at once, shit went sour again but in a way that hit far closer to home for Charlie Klark. The Kennel, his favorite establishment, run by a gang of Elevens who made a living providing for the appetites of their betters, had turned into a charnel house one sweltering April night.


I could have been there, Charlie thought, not for the first time, and shivered. One of those bodies could have been mine…


He'd volunteered to help out with the retributive killings the next day, of course, showing up bright and early nursing a bitter hangover courtesy of the inferior watering hole that had saved his life, showing up despite his leave pass extending to noon.


The experience had helped settle him down, but only a little. It rankled that only a fraction of the lawful punishment those who had lifted their hands against their betters had earned had been executed before other, more pressing matters down in Yokohama and along the Area's western coast had distracted the powers that be. Even worse, higher command had come down hard on all of the little allowances that had made the life of one Charlie Klark, perpetual sentry, more livable.


The perpetrators of the slaughter at the Kennel were entirely unknown, somehow escaping scot free from justice. Apparently devoid of any other answer, word had come down from on high that soldiers could enter the Shinjuku ghetto only in platoon-sized or stronger elements, and only on official orders. Given the circumstances, Charlie found it hard to blame them, but the directive had still badly damaged both his recreational funds and social life.


Why the hell am I even still here? Private Klark wondered, glaring at the empty patch of road where truck traffic usually queued. Why is this fucking gate even open? Traffic's been shrinking over the last month; over the last week, it's been dead quiet! Why not just brick this damned gate shut and have done with it, eh? Not like there's any point to having access to a ghetto full of Numbers if I can't use them…


Sparing a moment from his pity party, Klark glanced over at the pedestrian gateway to see how Corporal Wiggins – a real piece of work, in Charlie's opinion – and the rest of the fireteam were getting on. If they were busy, he'd better find something to do so nobody would call him over to help…


The pedestrian queue's empty too… Somewhere far in the back of Charlie's head, warning bells began to clamor. It's not even eight yet, isn't it? Where are all the Elevens with work passes?


"Klark!"


Charlie winced, hearing the familiar tones of Area Three on Corporal Wiggins' voice. He'd been caught looking around, and now the non-com was going to give him something to do.


"I'm falling asleep on my feet out here, Klark!" bellowed the noncom from across the road. "You're up for a coffee run! Make sure mine's double strength. Extra cream, you hear?"


"You got it, Corp!" Klark replied, tossing off a hasty salute. It wasn't strictly appropriate to leave the sentry box while on duty for something like this, but he didn't have any intention of questioning the brawny corporal's orders; he'd joined in with enough blanket parties before to have no intention of ever being on the receiving end of one.


Besides, the nearest convenience store was only a block or two away from the Kawadacho Gate into Shinjuku. He'd only be away from his post for fifteen minutes, tops.


And some coffee really would hit the spot, wouldn't it…?


Turning to trot away, Charlie heard something zip right past his ear. A wasp, maybe, or perhaps a mosquito.


It's pretty late in the year for mosquitos, isn't it?


He was on the ground before his ears had a chance to register the flat crack! of a distant rifle. His rifle, hanging over his shoulder, tangled around his left arm as he tried to unlimber it as he crawled. Charlie cursed as the butt thumped against his knee in a numbing burst of sparks.


Through the buzzing in his head, Charlie heard what sounded like distant shouting. He dimly recognized the voice as Wiggins'. Chancing a glance back, he saw that someone in Britannian gray was down, their blood shockingly bright against the asphalt. Wiggins was kneeling, his coilgun raised to return fire though Charlie couldn't see what he was aiming at.


The world swam before Charlie Klark's eyes. Suddenly dizzy, he glanced down at himself, wondering if he'd been shot. He didn't see anything but the movement had been enough to send the whole world swirling around him.


I'm still out in the road… he thought, and was alarmed at how muted and far away his own internal monologue sounded. Need to get into cover… Sniper…


There'd been something with an Eleven sniper recently, hadn't there?


Yeah… Bitch down in Yokohama… She must've had some friends…


Across the road, Wiggins toppled over, hands scrabbling at a ruined throat.


Bitch… Klark thought, dully satisfied. Not gonna yell at me… Heh… Oh God…


Why was he so tired? What was he doing, lying down on the sidewalk like this? Moving fingers like lead, he found his rifle, strap still tangled around his arm. Dully, questing fingers found the release and unsnapped it.


There. Got my gun back.


Woozily, Charlie looked up, rifle in hand, and peered off into the distance, into Shinjuku, looking for whatever Wiggins had been shooting at.


He saw a crowd coming his way, many of them armed and all with hard, angry faces.


Elevens, he thought disgustedly, and spat. The sputum came out pink and foamy. Bastard Number scum…


Almost carelessly, Charlie lifted his coilgun in the approaching mob's direction and pulled the trigger. His aim was bad, but he thought he saw at least one of the fuckers go down with roses blooming on his chest.


Just ninety-nine more to go… Gotta balance the scales… Or is it nine hundred ninety-nine now?


Before his puzzled mind could quite answer that question, before his increasingly numb hands could fit a fresh clip into his suddenly heavy rifle, the crowd was upon Private Charles Klark, and suddenly very little mattered.


Except for the horrifying, all-consuming pain that not even the peculiar lassitude burdening his limbs could conceal.


The last thing the Britannian private saw before dirty-nailed thumbs found his eyes was the flat-eyed stare of an Eleven slut he remembered tupping a time or three. No simpering smile for him this time, nor "gifted" service, only a hateful sneer of purest satisfaction.


For Charlie Klark, that pain would last forever; for the mob of angry citizens of Shinjuku, out to take a bit of private revenge before following the directive to evacuate underground, the last survivor of the Kawadacho Gate's small garrison only lasted a disappointingly brief ten minutes.

---

September 7, 2016 ATB
Shinjuku, Empire of Japan (contested)
0800


Forty stories up, Kaoru was keenly aware of how the burnt-out remains of the Kabukicho Tower groaned with each chilly breeze. Now, almost at the top of that rotting steel and cement tree, he very much regretted his rash decision to volunteer for the "special morale-boosting assignment."


Not that he had the slightest intention of revealing that change of heart to any of the other seven lucky kids chosen from Missus Tsuchiya's school. Especially not after how much he'd whined and begged until she'd at last given in to his wheedling and allowed him to go along with the other kids. At eleven, he was the youngest of the crew by two years except for Kotori, who was a month younger than him, and it had taken a lot of pleading and cajoling to work his way onto the crew; if he backed out now, he'd never hear the end of it. Especially since Kotori, who had taken advantage of his urgent pleading to come along too, looked supremely unconcerned.


Still, though… Kaoru gulped and tugged ever so slightly on his tether, making sure the rope was still firmly tied off to the guide-line Manami, the oldest of the group at fifteen and thus the leader, had strung out behind her from anchor to anchor. If I'd known that the special assignment Teach was talking about meant climbing to the highest point in the Ghetto, up to the top of a skyscraper that could topple over at any minute… That there were heights involved…!


He tugged the rope again. Still firm, still holding.


That reassurance was almost enough to make him forget how all the windows this far up were long-gone, as were the topmost eight floors of the building, and how a forty-story fall waited less than half a meter away from where he was standing right here and now.


"Kaoru, c'mon! Hurry up!" one of the others called back, waving him forwards. "Get your ass over here! We need the flag!"


Grimacing, Kaoru tried to ignore the yawning precipice beside him and how Manami was swatting their foul-mouthed classmate over the head for cursing. He had more luck with the latter than the former as he hurried forwards, sure to keep one hand on the guide-rope at all times. With his other hand, he kept the package, neatly wrapped in brown butcher-paper, pinned tightly against his chest, terrified that if he didn't, his great responsibility would slip between his fingers and fall those forty stories down to the recently repaved streets of Shinjuku far below.


And what a responsibility it was, that package entrusted to his care! The other kids, who were all, except for Kotori, older and bigger than him had carried larger and more structurally important burdens up the forty flights of stairs, from the improvised flagpole to the steel cables and hooks that would hold the thing in place, but none of it would mean anything without the package cradled in his arm!


And Kotori lucked out, Kaoru grumbled to himself, being the smallest one of all. She just has to carry that weird Brit's camera! Funny how her size didn't matter when it came to joining the crew, but all of a sudden when it came time to carry all this crap up…


The honor of his burden aside, Kaoru was looking forward to putting the package down and, hopefully, scampering quickly back downstairs and out of the ominously creaking tower. Heights aside, the burden was heavier than he'd really been expecting. Cloth was light, after all, but enough cloth tightly folded could apparently turn into almost a brick, especially after such a long climb up. Since the flag was fully three times his height in width and almost double that in length, that was quite a lot of cloth indeed.


"Here," grunted Kaoru, eyes focused entirely on Manami and her extended hands, and definitely not thinking about how he was now at the very ravaged edge, out by the corner with nothing but air to his left or his right. Incredibly, Manami was even further out in the corner of what might have been some boss's posh office, almost standing on the three spans of rebar bound together with wire and anchored with cable, the flagpole they'd improvised. "Take it."


"Surly~" Manami teased with an easy smile that made Kaoru's nerves jangle. Didn't she understand that she was standing on the edge of a massive cliff?! "Getting a little anxious about how high up we are, Kaoru?"


"No!" As soon as he blurted out the denial, Kaoru knew he'd overplayed his hand.


They know!


The teasing smirk on Manami's face stretched almost into a grin before she seemed to remember that she was the leader and supposed to set a good example, per Missus Tsuchiya's instructions.


"Don't worry," Manami reassured instead of teasing Kaoru further, shooting a quelling glance over his shoulder, no doubt stifling his fellows who were giggling behind his back. "The guide line is perfectly safe. I could rest my entire weight against it and, so long as I stayed in my harness, I wouldn't fall."


He almost yelled at her to not do that, to not take the risk. Thinking he saw the grin in her eyes again, Kaoru decided to keep silent and ignore how he could feel his neck heating with embarrassment.


The byplay was not lost on Manami.


"Relax," she sighed, turning around to kneel by the flagpole. Carefully, the leader of their little group unfurled the flag, wrapping more salvaged electrical wire through its eyelets to hold it firmly against the rebar pole. "We'll be heading down soon, and then we'll be heading even further down. You won't be seeing another view like this for… Well, for a while. Enjoy the view while it lasts, because we'll be seeing a lot of basements for a while."


Privately, Kaoru couldn't wait to see nothing but safe, sheltering, and unmoving walls. He hoped he'd never see anything but firm pavement under his feet ever again.


He did not share these thoughts with Manami, nor with Kotori or any of the others as he carefully picked his way as far back from the edge as he could.


Instead, Kaoru focused on the flag as it slipped free from Manami's fingers and billowed in the wind, tugging against its anchors.


It was a work of art, in his opinion, and it was different than any flag he'd ever seen. There were still plenty of old Republican flags left over from the old government and Kaoru had seen the familiar meatball on a field of snow hanging in many different apartments throughout Shinjuku. This one was different, larger than all of those and the white and red had switched places. A large white chrysanthemum blossomed in a scarlet sea, its petals and stem piped with gold thread "liberated" from the Viceregal Palace itself, or at least that was what Kaoru had heard. In the four corners, stitched in broad white lines, the four kanji of the Rising Sun's new battlecry flanked the Imperial flower.


"Revere the Empress; expel the barbarians."


Old Miss Tsuchiya had practically come alive when she'd handed the flag over to Kaoru and the rest, going on and on about "historical context" and "symbols for our future," but most of that had gone over Kaoru's head. As far as he could tell, the most important thing about the flag he'd cradled against his chest was that it would be the first Japanese flag, old Republican or whatever this new one was, that Kaoru had ever seen fly out under the open sky under the light of day.


It was enough to really make him believe that the sun was rising at last, at so very long last.


They might be going back underground to hide from the Brits, but their flag would still fly high above them.


"Missus Tsuchiya said it's a modi-fi-cation of some old imperial flag," said Kotori, carefully enunciating each word to avoid her usual lisp. The youngest and smallest of the crew had moved over to stand beside Kaoru, her borrowed camera in hand. She looked like she was staring at the flag too, but when she lifted her camera again and Kaoru followed the line of its lens, he realized his classmate was aiming past the flag billowing in the morning wind to capture the hulking elevated platform atop which the Britannian Concession squatted. In the middle of which loomed the Viceregal Palace, a tower atop another tower.


Kaoru wondered if the governor, Prince Clovis, ever looked down from his massive palace to see Shinjuku glaring back at him. He wondered if the blond Brit bastard would be able to see their flag from his balcony.


He hoped the prince could see; he hoped it made him wet his fancy underwear to see a new flag for a new people rising up from beneath his feet.


"They'll know we're here now," said Kotori, her voice thoughtful. "No going back now. One way or the other."


"No going back," Kaoru agreed, not that he could really remember any "back" he could have gone to. As long as he could remember, life had sucked and times had been hard. Even with the Rising Sun's help, his mom had still died last March from the wet coughs. "But that means things can only get better from now, right?"


Kotori turned, met his eye, and smiled. Kaoru thought it was a sad smile for such a happy moment.


"I really hope you're right, Kaoru. I really, really do."

---

September 7, 2016 ATB
Shinjuku, Empire of Japan (contested)
0820


"No pushing, no shoving!" Shimura Terauchi bellowed so his voice could carry over the tumult. "No pushing and no shoving! Keep your hands to yourselves and keep moving! There's room for everyone, so keep your damned hands to yourselves and keep moving!"


Fortunately, the crowd shuffling down the stairs into the pump station-turned-gateway to the sprawling subterranean network underneath Shinjuku was mostly calm, and mostly moving with a purpose down into the tunnels. Parents ushered children, both with backs bent under the weight of any movable supplies, and youngsters with Sun Guard hachimaki leant supportive elbows for elderly neighbors to lean on as they picked their way down the stairs.


Every one of them had drilled for this moment. Everyone had known that this day would come soon, even if most of the people of Shinjuku had been surprised to hear Commander Hajime's morning declaration crackling out across the radio waves.


And, Terauchi thought, privately smug, they have the benefit of a voice of authority to reassure them that not everything has been entrusted to a twelve year old girl.


And isn't that still an absurd thought to have… even more absurd that it doesn't sound all that unreasonable anymore now.


Unlike that old sailor and crook Nishizumi Tsutsumi, his former fellow councilor in the dissolved Chamber of Notables and a perennial pain in the ass, Terauchi's dislike for Shinjuku's new despot wasn't particularly personal. Sure, he didn't enjoy being beholden to a child for protection and supplies, and he certainly didn't enjoy taking orders from a hafu no matter their age, but then, who did?


Frankly, Tearuchi didn't even particularly resent the forceful dissolution of the Notables; that was only politics and it had barely diminished his personal powerbase. The chamber was created to consolidate Rising Sun's power, and it was dissolved for the same reason, all perfectly logical to Tearuchi. After all, his appointment to that body had only been a recognition of the authority he already enjoyed, the product of two decades spent as a key player at the Bureau of Waterworks of the old Tokyo municipal government, and that authority and institutional knowledge guaranteed his place at the table.


It isn't personal, Terauchi told himself again. It just isn't right that a girl with foreign blood should set herself up as a dictator over us! And an empress…? Another girl, and this one a former collaborator to boot?


It wasn't personal, his dislike, but it was strong.


But his hatred of the Britannians who had taken his left arm in their damned invasion and whose starvation and cholera had taken most of his family was much stronger.


And if that blonde bitch really can make those Brit bastards drown in their own blood… his mouth quirked up at the dream, of pallid faces and gray uniforms heaped on every street corner, of guidons crammed down the throats of captured officers. Make them pay the blood price for even a fraction of what they took from us… Or better yet, hold out until the real soldiers from the JLF get here… Perhaps the sun is rising indeed. And once the new day comes…


Terauchi cut off that line of thinking and resumed his business exhorting the stragglers to hurry up and get underground. There was plenty of trouble in the here and now to worry about, enough that he didn't have the luxury to consider his plans for a future that he might not live to see.


Survival for now, but for tomorrow… There will be opportunities, oh yes. And there will be no need for any drop of Britannian blood to remain on the Home Islands to see them.

---

September 7, 2016 ATB
Near a road leading north from the Tokyo Settlement, Area 11
0830


It would have come as a significant surprise to Albert Hanlon's coworkers at B & N Transport Solutions that, while his pleasant affability was no act, his complete disinterest in anything resembling politics, religion, or any of the other topics which fell under the umbrella of "what was really going on" most assuredly was.


If there was a substance more poisonous to the beleaguered commoner class of the Holy Britannian Empire than the vile rotgut that was its most common solace, it was curiosity. Short of outright defiance in the face of noble, or worse, imperial authority, no road led more swiftly to death for a commoner than an unfortunate tendency to ask too many questions, or ones of the wrong type.


From an early age, Albert had warred with the soul-deep need to know that clung to his shoulders like a gnawing demon. Growing into a man in the Britannia of Emperor Charles and serving a four year tour of duty in His Imperial Majesty's Armed Services as a combat engineer, the penalties for overt curiosity in an empire wearied of backtalk were abundant and obvious.


Nothing, not even witnessing the consequences of surplus curiosity and inquisitiveness paired with a lack of due caution had been enough to quench his boundless thirst for secrets. Just like every other engineer in his detachment back during his time in uniform, Albert had stood assistant to the regimental executioner from time to time, ready to hand the man any tool he required to extract a wagging tongue or one or both of the wandering eyes formerly in the possession of some fool or another. From that experience, bloody and wet and sizzling and heated by turns, Albert had derived the lesson that one's superiors misliked it when their lessers asked questions they ought not, and so he had been very careful not to ask those questions where such superiors ran the risk of hearing them.


And yet, with each skeleton he unearthed, his addiction to context only intensified. Albert still needed to know, despite the emptied chairs and the comrades called away to private meetings who never returned and especially the ones who did return, albeit in the hands of the military police and below the gloves of the executioner. He needed to know whether the reforms of Archbishop Warren had any grounding beyond the demands of an emperor's insatiable libido. He needed to know whether the scheming of the remaining and reformed noble factions would bring about more war, or whether the ever-busy hand of DIS would keep the weeds of aristocratic cliques at bay. He wanted to know what had happened to turn the tide and finally end a civil war that had lasted for decades.


Most of all, Albert needed to know what really happened the day Marianne, sometimes called the Flash and later known as the Commoner Empress, had breathed her last, shuddering in a pool of her own blood. What had happened to the darling of the people, the evidence that sufficient talent could lift even one of their own up to the heavens? Moreover, what had happened to her children, to Prince Lelouch and Princess Nunnally? Could they truly have been slaughtered by the Elevens in a pitiful act of defiance, their royal bodies thrown into some common ditch or even defiled in a barbaric ritual as some last act of desecration?


His suspicions regarding that last question, Albert buried deepest of all. Not once did he admit to even the slightest of doubts about the tragic fate of the Flash's Lost Children. Not to chaplain, nor to drinking buddy, nor even to the wife he had taken a year after Area 11 was declared. Every time he bit his lip, the imp's talons dug deeper into his back, the devil's whispers in ear grew a little harder to ignore. He'd had no choice but to bear the burden of his curiosity in silence. At least, he'd had no recourse until recently…


When word had gotten around that there were opportunities for honest Britannian families willing to claim the new clay on the rim of the Pacific and to make it truly part of the Empire, Albert had jumped at the chance. He had told Teresa, his wife, that there would be plenty of work for a man with his skills, both the skills the Imperial Army had taught him in Combat Engineer School and the ones he'd picked up in his post-military career as a teamster.


His military service in particular had been a plus when it had come to securing a place in the New Areas. The administrations of newly conquered Areas gave preference to veterans when it came to recruiting settlers, especially those healthy enough to be called back to the Colors should the Empire have need of them once more. A comparatively small amount of paperwork had seen Albert, Teresa, and their two small children on a boat out of Holy Angels, bound for the Tokyo Settlement.


It had been in Area 11 that Albert first found his quiet, slow, careful way to a local message board of fellow "Lelouch Truthers". Unsurprisingly, their numbers were much larger in Area 11 than in the rest of Britannia combined; it was hard not to wonder about the children of Marianne when the Princess Nunnally Memorial Hospital saw to the medical needs of the bulk of the settlement's Britannian population. It was harder still not to ask questions about the official narrative when the evidence of Eleven terrorism was practically ubiquitous.


The Elevens, in Albert's opinion, were absolutely proud enough and stubborn enough to cut the noses off their faces out of petulant defiance. He had no trouble believing that they had murdered the prince and princess entrusted to their care. That being said, after seeing so many grandiose yet altogether ineffectual attacks reported on over the years, Albert had a much harder time believing the savage Elevens would simply throw the bodies into a hole somewhere and bury the evidence.


If these defiant Elevens truly slaughtered the royal children in a savage act of barbarity, where is the evidence? Where was the theater? Where was the macabre ceremony celebrating their triumph? Albert had reasoned to himself during many moments of introspection. I would have sooner expected defiant savages to nail the severed limbs of their young victims to the gates of the Kururugi shrine and dare us to pull them down than to bury them in a hole no one in the Empire has yet managed to find in six years of searching. Especially since, if they were murdered prior to the Conquest of Area 11, someone involved would probably have run to the hills and survived to create propaganda about the murder of a prince and princess.


So, why haven't they?


Unfortunately, Albert's illusion of relief in finding a community of like minds in the anonymous corners of the message boards quickly evaporated. There was nothing of real worth there, no insights or information, just the wild imaginings of fevered minds. Worst, the only ones who had anything even potentially interesting to contribute were also far too naive, or too arrogant to realize the dangers that came with digging so deeply. Either way, Albert carefully shunned those accounts, knowing full well that they wouldn't last long. Sure enough, those verbose and temeritous accounts would always fall suspiciously silent after a few weeks, only to briefly revive with notably different word choices and grammar.


After a few months, the familiar old demon of needing to know spurred him on again with renewed vigor, and so Albert began once more to search for the truth.


When a pamphlet slipped out from the pages of a pew hymnal after Sunday service and fell into Albert's lap, it had felt like a message from a god Albert had only occasionally ever believed in. There, in large letters across the front of the pamphlet, printed in cheap ink, were the words 'THE TRUE PRINCE RETURNS TO US!'


Albert had slid the pamphlet into his pocket without alerting Teresa, had continued pleasantly about his day, and that very night had slipped away to a certain street corner. A shadowy meeting with a drab little man had been followed by a much brighter meeting with a pleasant young lady who had been all too willing to answer some of the many, many questions Albert had been keeping pent up inside, and…


And there it goes! Albert crowed to himself as the engine of the hotwired truck turned over at last. Finally!


"We're ready to roll," he helpfully informed the woman perched uncomfortably in the bucket seat next to him. "Didn't I say it'd be nothing?"


"Yes," she curtly replied, voice taut with the realization that her part in their holy conspiracy had just translated from mere talk into action.


At least, that was what Albert assumed had left her so agitated. It certainly wasn't because the woman, whose name Albert didn't know and whom he had only met earlier this morning when one of the brothers spearheading this mission introduced them to one another and told Albert to get her over to the route leading out to Chiba before embarking upon his own appointed task, had been subject to Albert's sterling and nonstop conversation for the better part of an hour and a half by now.


"Yes'm!" Albert happily replied, talking loudly over the engine's roar, "I told you I could get us in and get the truck – and not just any truck, but the one we were told about, no less! – moving just as easily as Old Chuck takes another wife! Yes'm, I told you that!"


Ignoring a murderous look from his captive audience, Albert put the garbage truck with the discreet Chi-Rho chalked on the left rear tire into gear and carefully navigated a path out of the Tokyo Settlement Municipal Sanitation maintenance lot, the pair of bolt-cutters he'd used to gain entry via the fence knocking against his knee. It had been quite some time since Albert had driven such a large vehicle and longer still since he'd driven one burdened with a load as heavy as the heap of scrap metal crammed into the back of the garbage truck, but it was like riding a bicycle and familiarity returned shortly. Even the hotwiring had been an old army trick, as sometimes one had to strategically transfer equipment to alternative locations, such as a truck, without the previous owners needing to know.


Presently, he was rolling down one of the primary arterial roads, heading for the prefectural highway headed north to Ibaraki and on to the Sendai Settlement.


"You just passed the exit for Chiba," his irritable passenger pointed out, breaking twenty minutes of sullen silence.


"Oh, piss on the exit!" Albert declared. "I know a better way!"


He lifted a hand from the wheel and placed it over his heart, a man on the cusp of swearing a solemn oath, "Why, I wager I could out-route and out-fox any damned taximan in Tokyo! I tell you what, I was born with roads in my veins and an interchange for a vena cava. Why, this one time, back in New Wight, I–"


"Let me out at the next exit," his sister in the True Church commanded. "I'll find my own way."


It didn't rub him right, taking an order from a woman. It wasn't how he'd been brought up and it wasn't how things usually were done when it came to matters outside of the classical feminine sphere. Blood of the Martyred! They were engaged in war here, not bloody flower arranging or maths proofs!


But, something in the nameless woman's voice indicated that her patience was hanging by her very last thread; years of marriage had taught him to heed that voice, and so, reluctantly, he pulled over at the next eastbound exit.


"You be careful now, you hear!" Albert admonished his sister as she wrenched herself free of the belt and all but hurled herself free of the cab. He rolled down the window of her slammed door so she could still hear him. "Go with God, sister! And don't forget to… and she's gone."


Alone now, Albert wondered as he continued north if Teresa had noticed the red paint he'd splashed across their front door that morning before leaving to steal the truck. If she had, he hoped she didn't try to remove it or worse, leave the house to go buy paint remover.


Albert didn't quite know why Father Alexander had warned all his people to daub a red sun on their doors, and on the doors of other random houses and apartments to confuse the authorities. But, beyond the theological symbolism, he had a few suspicions founded both on the orders Brother Roger had passed along to "sow thorns in the roads" and some specific details regarding the truck he was now at the wheel of, and on the sounds of gunfire he'd heard fifteen minutes earlier, when he'd been trying to jimmy the lock on the cab door open.


The fact that his unnamed sister in the True Church had a sidearm poorly concealed under her coat and pockets full of mysterious bulges had also been something of a clue about the day's planned events.


Now, idling to a slow and careful stop alongside the southernmost pylon of the bridge across the Naka River, over whose broad back much of the northbound traffic leaving the Tokyo Settlement for Ibaraki, Sendai, and parts north traveled, Albert did his part to further the works of the True Prince and his sole and holy Church on Earth by kicking the dump truck's manual brake and going to work.


As a combat engineer in His Imperial Majesty's Armed Forces, Albert had picked up a trick or three. He'd already used one of his old army skills in hotwiring the truck earlier in the morning; now, he used a second.


Ordinance had never been a particular passion of Albert's. He was not a sapper at heart, as so many of his fellows were, and he lacked the sheer love those men and women had possessed for all things explosive, which was why many of his old comrades had predeceased him. But lack of fatal obsession didn't change the fact that, when it came to the refined art of removing obstacles, often in an explosive fashion, he remained a trained professional.


And professionals… Albert thought, looking over the mass of miscellaneous scrap metal at whose heart sat a chemical surprise another previously unknown brother or two had left waiting for him. A surprise sufficiently mighty enough to tear a garbage truck's thick steel sides open like so much orange peel. It had taken every bit of his carefully cultivated lack of outward reaction not to shake his head in disgust when he'd opened up the back of the garbage truck back in the yard and had his first glimpse… Have standards. Probably for the best that Sister Tightass didn't try to peer in over my shoulder; she was sour enough even without knowing she was sitting on top of a bomb!


It hadn't been a particularly horrible job, that bomb, all things considered. Albert wasn't so snobby that he couldn't admit as much, at least in the privacy of his own head. It was just that it was so clearly the work of a talented amateur or some well-practiced hobbyist instead of anybody with actual demolitions training. At most, the whole thing had been cobbled together by a civilian whose job provided some vague familiarity with the ins and outs of do-it-yourself chemistry, not someone schooled by His Imperial Majesty's finest lads to bring down the work of years in a brace of seconds.


But again, needs must when the Devil drives… Albert eyed the bridge, and where he'd parked the truck. …It'll do. Damn well better. Not terribly efficient, but it'll work.


Just have to get the blasting caps set up… he thought, gloved hands retrieving the five homemade caps he'd previously fashioned in his home garage from their beds in a heavily padded cigar box he'd kept close to his heart, and then get the timer rigged up…


The timer's design was Albert he had picked up from an old buddy, and God alone know where that miserable old cuss had happened across it. All it required in its base design was a cheap watch, a battery, and a few copper wires. For this holy job, however? Albert had improvised, just a bit. He had, he'd reasoned, needed a bit of an extra kick to guarantee that all five blasting charges went off at once.


He hadn't mucked with the principles, though, though, so in no time at all each blasting cap found a home in the bags of gritty, metallic dust nestled within the onboard compactor's heavy maw, then each cap was mated to one of the nest of copper wires wound about the head of the screw driven through the face of the watch. A last lone wire stretched from the terminal of the salvaged boat battery to the watch itself, whose remaining hand was already ticking its way around the mangled circuit towards its date with destiny.


Twenty minutes ought to be plenty, thought Albert, wiping the remnants of the chalked symbol away before stripping his gloves off and briskly walking away from the still running garbage truck, whose doors he had closed to shield his gorgon-head of a detonator from the view of any casual passerby, and a truck full of dusted metal and fertilizer should be plenty to crack that bridge in half.


Just as Brother Rodger commanded.


Just like how Albert didn't approve of taking orders from pushy women, sister in the communion of the True Church or not, he didn't approve of doing dirty work on behalf of the Eleven savages. Not that anybody had said that was why Father Alexander had ordered Brother Rodger to set loose his collection of veterans and volunteers, but Albert wasn't a stupid man; he could put two and two together. On the other hand, the tantrum the savages were pitching back in Tokyo was fantastic cover for such otherwise impossibly audacious acts as, say, blowing up key pieces of mission-critical infrastructure. Anything the True Church did now would surely be pinned on the rampaging Elevens, giving the Bureau and Inquisition no reason to go looking for them.


Win, win, win, all the way around!


Smiling to himself, Albert tossed his gloves and cigar box away into the Naka River and strolled along at the unhurried pace of a man on his day off, waving politely at a few old men sitting with their fishing poles down by the river. He continued to casually saunter until he judged that he was out of their sight, at which point the teamster and father of two began to stride with a great deal more urgency, humming the tune of 'Sleepers, Awake!' between breaths as he sought to maximize the distance between himself and the truck bomb he'd just abandoned.


After ten minutes and the better part of a mile, Albert slowed down and switched over to the decidedly more secular 'Bonnie King Charlie.' It had been a good, enlivening day already, and he expected the rest of the day would be nothing short of exciting.


Enamored with his good works and praying that whatever nonsense was sure to overtake the Tokyo Settlement wouldn't find its way to his doorstep and the family that was, at least legally, his, Albert trundled off down the road in search of some nice public house he could disappear into, vanishing into the morning crowd of punters and layabouts as one unremarkable face among many. The True Prince was coming and Albert had no intention of becoming a martyr before his suspicions about Marianne's children were resolved, one way or another.

---

September 7, 2016 ATB
Shinjuku, Empire of Japan (contested)
0830


Long, long ago, in a different world, in a different life, in the skies over a place called Norden by some, called our own sovereign soil by the empire I had served…


I had fallen.


Plummeted, really.


Computation jewel shattered, every scrap of magic expended, boneless with exhaustion, I had tumbled from the sky with the supreme grace of a duck shot on the wing.


In that brief moment of freefall, I had been convinced that, by dint of death or near fatal heroism, I had left war and all of its dangers forever behind me in the clouds above. Utterly unencumbered by stress or fear for my future, I fell with a smile upon my face and a song of purest freedom in my heart.


In a strange way, I felt I had reached the absolute bound of freedom in the tumbling moments of that fall. Bereft of jewel and of magic, I had been equally bereft of any obligation to choose or to act, for I was incapable of changing my present situation. The burden of agency had been lifted. All but guaranteed to die when I hit the ground, I was free; I did not know whose responsibility dealing with the aftermath of that skirmish would become, but it was highly unlikely that it would fall upon my cold shoulders.


Standing at the central podium in the school gymnasium previously fancied as the Chamber of Notables, I felt the familiar weightlessness of freefall again.


That's the exhaustion, I told myself firmly, gazing out across the assembled crowd with all of the stoic dignity I could muster. Sleep deferred is sleep lost, and magic can only go so far.


And how far it had carried me already! I could never have done all that I had for Shinjuku and the Kozuki Organization without the help of my previous life's inheritance. The scraps of magic had been my only slim edge for long years, after all.


And now it has become my crutch, one that yields ever diminishing returns. Fresh casting no longer brings euphoria and energy, only a surcease from the drag and a step back from complete collapse.


Too late for second thoughts now.


Just as they had at the show trial of Lieutenant Ichiya almost two months ago, Inoue and Koichi stood at my shoulders, Sun Guard hachimaki brazen across their brows. A three-headed monster all our own, we were a lesser sculpt of the triumvirate Ohgi, Naoto and I had brokered so many months ago. Lesser troika or not, Shinjuku rested now within our sweat-soaked palms.


The remainder of the Leadership Commission assisted, of course, as did the many officers both Inoue and Koichi had promoted from within the ranks of their respective organizations. However, with the dissolution of the Council of Notables and the more final dismantling of other rival powers, all responsibility for the city had come to rest upon our three shoulders, upon mine most of all.


I'd thought the idea of me holding absolute authority over Shinjuku was a bad idea once, but… Peering out across the eager sea of faces, of healthy faces, faces no longer lined with starvation, of bright-eyed faces, I could only reflect that perhaps my fears had been misplaced.


The results, after all, spoke for themselves.


Oh yes, I chided myself, the results do indeed speak for themselves. Remember that thought in four hours, when the first blows of Britannian retaliation fall on these oh-so-eager faces.


My eyes sought out Junji, across the room. The skinny communications lieutenant looked up from his recording equipment and gave me a thumbs up, assuring me that he stood ready to broadcast my words across the lines criss-crossing Shinjuku and, via the relay system spanning three prefectures, most of central Honshu as well. Doubtless, recordings would also be distributed under some vague idea of boosting morale. Perhaps it would soften the hammerblow of incoming artillery, but I very much doubted it.


Behind him, Tanaka Chika stood, owl-eyed and solemn behind her glasses.


As if I needed some damned memento mori to remind me of just how mortal I am and how fallible! As if I were ever free of that knowledge!


I took a deep breath and forced my hands to uncurl, my fingers to straighten, and let the impulse to simply lash out disperse.


Everything was ready to go.


I could rest soon.


"Brothers and sisters!" My voice rang out across the gymnasium and all within fell silent. "Men and women and children all across occupied Japan, I come to you this morning with good news!


"Here in Shinjuku, in the very lap of our subjugation under the foreign tyrants… the Sun has finally risen."


It was interesting how the subtleties of pitch could so easily modulate a receptive crowd's reactions. A slight inflection and they all knew they should rise to applaud.


I had included no such inflection; my voice, low and intense, held them spellbound, pressing them down firmly into their chairs and keeping the gym as quiet as a tomb. Applause would come later.


"After a long Night of Sorrow… the Sun has finally risen. And yet… a dark fog of terror and pain lingers over us all, blanketing Tokyo and all of our beautiful islands. And unless the beams of our brilliant sunrise burn that fog away, it shall remain blanketed over us always, occluding the light of our new day.


"How fortunate we are that those purifying rays of sunshine are descending already, cleansing our holy land of the flesh and false security of our enemies even as I speak to you.


"This is not a homecoming, my brothers and sisters, my comrades! Our home is gone! Our past is crushed!


"This," I bared my teeth, hand gripping the sides of the podium, leaning forwards towards my audience, "is a reconquest! Nothing short of a complete and total victory will appease our righteous demands! Brothers and sisters across Japan, hear my voice and know that today, known now and forever as the Day of Liberation, the Kozuki Organization declares war in the name of Kaguya, Empress of Japan, and in the name of the millions of restless dead!"


My voice began to rise along with my hands, reaching for a crescendo. "In cooperation with the Japanese Liberation Front, with the Six Houses of Kyoto, and with all Japanese of true spirit, we declare war to the hilt against Britannia and all her might!"


That last line carried that inflection, the one that told the crowd that this was the time to applaud. Rapturous, they obeyed, rising to their feet like a crashing wave surging past a breached dam. Each person in attendance seemed to compete against those to their right and left to clap and cheer the loudest.


I could only hope that applause carried out beyond the walls of Shinjuku.


If everything's proceeding according to plan, Fuji will already be in Naoto's hands, I reminded myself. That's where the real crux of our plan is. This? This is just…


I grit my teeth as I surveyed the crowd of cheering masses, all so uproariously happy to finally fight for Japan reborn. …A show. A distraction. A stage performance designed to hold the Britannians' attention for as long as possible.


The sense of tumbling, plunging freedom was on me again, the pressure of a future beyond a week sleeting away. After so long spent in careful deliberation, careful planning… I took a deep breath, and tasted a liberty that could not last, and so was all the much sweeter for it.


"I will not waste any more of your time, my comrades!" I spoke over the sound of the applause and the rising chants, meeting eye after eye in the assembly, striving for that personal touch, seeking the individual in the crowd. "Today will be a very busy day for us, as will tomorrow and every other day until no Britannian breathes Japanese air. You all know what is expected of you and what your duties shall be! Follow your leaders and take heart that, come what may, we are all Japanese and shall live and die as such!


"I am honored to have you all by my side."


I only hope you do not curse me when you meet the fate you all so ardently wished for.

 

[reginaldReginaldusson]

good update after i nearly feared that the Story was dead

 

[Scopas]

good update after i nearly feared that the Story was dead

Click to shrink...

Not quite. Glad you enjoyed the new chapter!

 

[Xilokiir]

Goodness, the slow grind forward is killing me. I had to get a filling at my dentist recently, I really need to stop grinding my teeth. Excellently written as always, I found it interesting how you managed to make the gate guard likeable for a brief period before then quickly making him very unlikeable.

 

[Psyraptor]

TFTC

 

[kalistira]

Good chapter as always! Love your way of showing things with side characters, keep up the great work!