It recently came to my attention that Tate Yuuichi is actually the formal Japanese version of the name, and that his first name is, in fact, Yuuichi. This is my mistake, and I’ll start working on correcting it, so don’t worry about it. I’m starting this chapter the proper way.
Finally, Midori’s character wasn’t very well-developed in the Anime, so I’m relying on the manga in this chapter, more than is probably generally acceptable. It’ll be okay though; promise.
And I know as stillness shatters / we have all been frightened by the sound of / footsteps on the pavement of our lives
I stand and fight / I’m not afraid to die / Elochai / bury me tonight
Please believe me / that the world deceives me / don’t stand me up just / leave me / I have fallen again / this is the end
--
Pain redefined
Shizuru inhaled deeply as she awoke; the simple breath continued into a gasp, as many first breaths do, as she opened her eyes and found herself staring at one of her captors.
The man was tall and his eyes were dark, but there was no rugged handsomeness to add to this description. Maybe he had been handsome once, but whatever was left of it was gone. Consumed by something; by what, she didn’t know.
She wasn’t particularly sure she wanted to find out, either. He advanced on her, and looked her straight in the eye, and for a moment, she was sure he was going to slap her or rape her. She wasn’t sure which, yet. His face was angry, but his eyes were not. What this meant, she also wasn’t sure of. Again, she wasn’t sure she wanted to find out, either.
“You will only be held by us until the end of the day,” he said. His voice was as rugged as his face, but more pleasant; it was the voice of a loving father, a gentle man. His face told of something colder; of, perhaps, the fate of those consigned to the role of sacrificial lambs to the recession. “After that, you will be passed off to another party, who will do with you what he chooses. You have no choice in this matter. Please do not attempt to struggle.”
There was a certain pleading in the way he said please. Like he was saying it to his dog as he killed it rather than face starvation.
She didn’t take any particular comfort from this thought. It seemed far too accurate for her tastes.
I’ll show them the light, though. Oh yes, yes I will. I haven’t felt this charged since the carnival ended. This almost feels
good
necessary.
I’m driving the van by myself because I don’t want to endanger Reito and Midori. They’re off finding the others, gathering them up. Also, I want to do this by myself. I have plenty of ammunition, and I’ve probably got a better eye than any of these bastards, trained ex-First District agents or not. I’ll show them the light.
Oh yes, I will. I crash the van through the door and grind it to a screeching halt, taking three of them off-guard, crushing a fourth who was foolishly trying to guard that ex-door. The ones taken off-guard I gun down first, my Desert Eagle chewing holes in them large enough to drive a conversion van through. A convenient metaphor, or simply observation? Hmm.
The rest are already in support positions on the upper floor of the barn. They think they’ve got good cover, but I also have a Desert Eagle, which eats wood and flesh without discrimination. Bullets spang off of the car, shatter windows, and one grazes my shoulder, but that’s as far as they get. One by one, one-shot-one-kill, they jerk and lay still, guns dropping to the floor.
And there is Shizuru, straight ahead of me, tied to a chair, the van’s headlights enveloping her in a kind of radiant aura. Perfect for her
Ascent to heaven her head is in pieces on her blouse and the floor behind her dress is torn and ripped her thighs bruised oh god what have they done oh god what have I done what am I going to
“Do?” Midori asked poking at Natsuki with one her index finger as the van ate up the highway at a fairly steady 55 miles per hour. Natsuki would have liked it to go faster, but Reito insisted to her that they would lose far more time getting pulled over than they would by slowing down 5 MPH. Midori wanted to gun it, too, but Reito insisted to her that she was far too inebriated to drive.
Natsuki blinked, coming back to reality, and shook her head, trying to dislodge the image of Shizuru
pieces
bruised
fucked
and her gruesome, though wholly fictional, state, from her head, where it stubbornly lingered. “What?”
“I said,” Midori repeated in a slow voice that could have easily been mistaken as condescension, but that Natsuki knew for a fact to possess roots in the muddy pits of alcohol. “What exactly are you planning to do?”
Natsuki shook her head. “I’m not quite sure yet, but I do know that I’ll feel a lot more comfortable doing whatever I’m doing with my gun.”
“No idea. At all.”
“I have a few, but they don’t concern you.”
Midori actually took quite a bit of offense at this: “Oh, really. And this is why exactly? Because we’re not the kind of people you’d like to have at your back, or because you just don’t want anybody on your back?”
Natsuki remained silent, and Reito cleared his throat. It took Midori about thirty seconds to understand that Natsuki was actually a little hurt. This irritated Midori, but not more than it made her feel guilty. “I’m sorry.”
Natsuki frowned. “You know why I can’t let you two help me. Midori, you’re not used to fighting without your Element and your Child, and Reito…”
“I can take care of myself,” Reito said quietly. “But I’ve never fired a gun before, so I understand. This is serious, right?”
“If it’s what I think it is, then it’s very serious. I’m not even sure I want to get in on it.”
“But you have to, because Shizuru’s gone.” Natsuki frowned again, a little angry at the presumption: This was excusable, in her mind, only because Midori was drunk. Just how drunk, Natsuki was starting to question. She was remarkably lucid for a boozie.
“I have to, end of story.”
Midori started to argue back, but Reito silenced her by speaking more clearly. “We’ll help you in any way we can, Natsuki. If that means storming the castle with all guns blazing, so be it.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Then we’ll do whatever you need us to.”
Natsuki nodded in acknowledgement as they pulled up to the parking lot. “You two wait here; I’ll be back in a minute. Reito, try and call everybody and tell them…”
He studied her face for a moment, saw the conflicting emotions there. On the one hand, he had the old, lone-wolf Natsuki, who didn’t want anybody to know anything about what was going on in her life. That Natsuki probably wanted Reito to tell everybody something like, “Could you please postpone Karaoke for about an hour? Midori got drunk and we’ve got to bring her home.”
On the other hand, he had the Natsuki who was a close friend of Mai Tokiha. The one who was gradually coming to understand what it was like to operate not just in a group, but in a group of friends. The Natsuki who actually attended lunch with Mai, Yukino, and Yuuichi on occasion, who visited Mai at work, who watched Yuuichi and Reito spar during club when she had nothing else to do. The Natsuki who attended school regularly, and occasionally, when she thought that absolutely nobody was looking, glanced at Takeda, the captain of the kendo club; whether this was to make sure that he wasn’t sneaking glances at her or for some other reason, he honestly had no idea; but it was a sign of some kind of fundamental change occurring within her.
Of course, she also still carried a gun around. Guns were illegal in Japan, so this was nothing to scoff at.
So when he observed her face now, so conflicted, fighting a battle against none other than itself, he made a decision that he didn’t know if she could make for herself. “I’ll let everybody know that we can’t find Shizuru, but that they shouldn’t worry, because you and I and Midori are out looking for her.”
Natsuki nodded her thanks, relief playing onto her face only briefly before giving way to a deadpan that genuinely frightened Reito.
Midori seemed to be sobering at this point: “In the meantime, we’ll go to the police and tell them that—”
“No!” Natsuki snapped. “The police are the last place you want to go.”
“Why?”
“Because if what I think is happening is happening, they’ll have been the first people infiltrated. If what I think is happening isn’t happening, then Shizuru is in no danger, and she’ll turn up eventually, with…” Tear-streaked eyes? A heavy heart? An unwillingness to look at me?
“With what?”
“No damages.”
Midori didn’t believe it, but her gradually returning sobriety—she hadn’t really imbibed that much alcohol, after all, and she was starting to feel her heart beat faster as she became moderately more afraid; the adrenaline dissolved the alcohol relatively quickly—told her to keep her mouth shut about it, so she did.
“Reito and I are going to scout out places in the town that we could use in case it is whatever you think it is.”
“Places like what?”
“Places with people we can trust. If there’s been an infiltration into the police department, people will have been fired, or at least paid off, right? And whenever that happens, people will be talking. Sometimes it takes a few drinks to get them to talk, but they’ll talk anyway. Small towns like this always talk.”
“You’re starting to sound a lot like Chie,” Reito said, but he was grinning, and so was Natsuki.
Not Chie. Somebody else…
Not thinking about that. Having a good time on vacation, or possibly saving Shizuru from certain doom, but not thinking about that.
“I learned it on the road,” she grinned brightly, the polar opposite of what she felt, suddenly.
Natsuki nodded to them both and got out of the car, and as she slammed the door, Reito said, “Oh yeah, you went off artifact-hunting with that professor, didn’t you?”
Midori nodded with a small, moderately somber smile, looking down at the dry-brown purple of the fabric she sat on. This was female-speak for Shut up. Reito knew this quite well, so he laid off, and for a few moments, there was silence between the two of them. It was at least moderately awkward. This really bothered Reito.
“So,” he said, forcing his tone to be something other than an awkward-silence-breaking-small-talk tone. “What have you decided to study at –”
“Stop,” she said in a quiet voice. She leaned against the window of the van, closing her eyes. “I’m very sorry, but please just stop. I want none of what you’re offering, Reito.”
“I’m not offering anything,” Reito said, a little annoyed.
“Then you don’t need to talk about it,” Midori said. “Please. Just don’t talk for a while.”
Reito frowned. “Are you okay, Midori?”
She shrugged. “Are you?”
He grinned at that. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I could think of a few reasons, but I don’t need to bring any of them up if you’ll give me some time to my own head.”
“And what good do you think that’s going to do you?” he growled. “Brooding does nobody any good.”
This time, instead of thinking it, Midori snapped and practically shouted it. “You just. Don’t. Get it, you snide fuck!”
This, Reito took in stride, with a grin. “I hope someday you’ll explain it to me.”
From the window, he watched her opening her bag. She pulled out…something…he couldn’t see what it was; only the glint of black metal. It looked a little like a gun, but Nori was not imaginative enough to allow himself to be swayed that easily.
It surprised him, however, when she started testing the sights of the gun she was apparently holding. Surprised him enough that his finger twitched on the trigger a little, in reflex, as she pointed it in his general direction. This was sheer reflex, however, as he was a good sniper, and he had learned long ago not to shoot anybody reflexively unless they gave him a good reason for it.
Perhaps if his finger had not been so twitchy, everything that transpired thereafter would never have occurred, but the shadow doubted it. The shadow was really, though he hesitated to admit it, just looking for an excuse to kill the man who was pointing down with a large sniper rifle at the cabin of people she called her friends. Eventually, she probably would have just killed him out of a kind of preemptive-strike instinct.
Either way, Nori Ikimasu died a second after his finger twitched as the shadow, moving with practiced silence and agility, leapt down from his spot on the treebranch above the sniper, and landed with his feet on either side of the man’s torso. In the same motion in which she bent her knees to absorb the shock, she also plunged her double-bladed knife—which she had made herself after her old one had disappeared—into Nori Ikimasu’s spinal cord, severing it in a single stroke to prevent any sort of reflexive action. (such as pulling the trigger). He died without any clue what killed him.
The hardest thing for young warriors to remember, however, is to consider their surroundings to their fullest. Young warriors—shadows included—are often at least a little brash, assuming that once they kill their target, their job is over, because they will be able to fade before any sort of alarm could be properly raised.
What this particular shadow failed to consider was the fact that Nori Ikimasu was on a hill with a very heavy weapon with a heavier scope. The weapon dropped out of his limp fingers—one of the benefits of severing the spinal cord as a mode of death was the total body relaxation it entailed, as all of the nerve stems received no final orders and all of the tendons relaxed as they ran out of energy provided by said spinal cord—and bounced down the fifteen yard slope. The shadow cursed, but supposed it made no real difference in the end.
The fact that Natsuki started shooting at her immediately was kind of annoying, though.
For another second, she thought, that’s absurd. There are no Ninja left in Japan.
Then, as her eyes focused on the ninja standing in front of her, she reconsidered yet again, opting for a third option of what the fuck is that?
She hazarded a guess, using her past experience to guide her, and prayed she wasn’t wrong and that if she was, she developed superhuman speed to avoid being killed by the nasty-looking knife at the ninja’s side.
“Akira?”
The ninja nodded and pulled off her black facemask to reveal the pleasantly masculine, yet still overtly feminine, face of Akira Onuzaki, Ninja. She blinked a moment before she became lucid enough to say, “I take it that that ninja outfit was not just something you did for show as a HiME.”
Akira grinned a little humorlessly. “You take it correctly.”
“I won’t ask.”
Akira grinned and offered her hand to Natsuki, who took it and allowed the surprisingly strong little girl to help her up. After she balanced herself, she went to where her gun had fallen, picked it up, dusted it off, safetied it, and started sifting through her bag again.
“Can I ask what you’re doing with an illegal…” she paused to take in the sheer magnitude of the semi-automatic handgun that Natsuki seemed to have obtained. “Ah…”
“An illegal howitzer. I think that’s the word you’re looking for. I got it off of one of my contacts.”
“And you did this why, exactly?”
Natsuki sighed, stopped rummaging, and steeled herself so that she wouldn’t sound as unbalanced as she felt when she explained it to Akira.
Six gunshots in extremely rapid succession. Loud ones, the kind that positively scream “Don’t fuck with me, I’ve got a freaking hand cannon right here.”
Up?
Reito jerked in panic and his head rotated something near 180 degrees as he whirled around to look for the source of the gunshots. After remaining in that state—he looks like the girl from the exorcist, Midori thought—for a solid three seconds, his torso whirls around to make him not-ethereal again.
This, of course, was an exaggeration of Midori’s mind, but he did panic pretty hard. That wasn’t to say that Midori didn’t as well, but still. She actually jumped and let out a little yelp, and in the process banged her head on the roof of the car. She sat there while Reito stared out into the untelling woods behind the cabin, positively determined to spot the invading army that was most certainly coming to kill them.
Owowowowow…son of a bitch. For the second time that day, Midori violently cursed herself; her
immaturity
panicked reaction, her lack of a clear head. She wished desperately that she hadn’t drunk nearly as much as she had, and at the same time desired—in ways that couldn’t have been entirely proper—a bottle of beer. Or something harder. She found that she was actually shaking. Really, really hard, in fact. If there really was somebody that was coming to kill them—all of them, starting with Natsuki and Shizuru and working their way down the guest list—and they’d already gotten to Natsuki down there, what could she possibly do? She had no weapons; no experience fighting with anything but her Element.
For the first time, Midori became acutely aware of the fact that she could no longer fight as she had been able to last year. She was no longer a HiME; she could no longer leap yards into the air, summon Gakutenou, and slice an enemy to ribbons. She no longer had protection; no longer had the kind of power that gave her a one-up on regular people. As she realized this; that a single man with a single gun could now kill both her and Reito with very little trouble, she began to shake violently.
There was utter complete silence in the van as the echoes of the gunshots—a torrential wind pounding on a microphone connected to speakers whose volume was in constant flux—slowly died out. It was amazing how long those things lasted. The tension only fed Midori’s sudden, pounding sense of fear; fear that somebody, in any instant, could put a gun to the window of their van and gun them both down.
She had really thought that that would make her immune to the fear of death. In reality, it only made it stronger in her, more prevalent. As she felt her arms wrapping themselves around her shoulders, though, and she felt her knees draw themselves up to her chest, the tension that hung in the silence of the car started to strangle her.
Being a HiME hadn’t directly impacted Midori afterwards; rather, it had only made her more determined to enjoy her time with
not thinking about that
to enjoy her time more thoroughly. It had tipped her balance, but it hadn’t unbalanced her; adding the straw before the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. Her insecurity—guarded, hidden away under every last one of those pieces of straw—had stayed gone. But what was in her head now was like a record player that needed a whupping; that single line, repeating over and over in her head, not even a thought so much as a background: You can’t do it.
“Midori?” Reito’s voice interrupted her lack of thought.
She didn’t look up from her knees, and suddenly, his voice was…not panicked, but urgent. “Midori, what’s the matter?” He shifted into the bench she was sitting on from his position in the front seat, and he started to reach out for her with his hand—not a perverted one, but a genuinely empathetic hand.
“Don’t touch me!” she shrieked, and he drew back in shock. “Don’t you fucking touch me, Reito Kanzaki.”
“Why not?” his voice was very serious, and Midori wondered privately how he could be so easily distracted from the fact that it was entirely possible that they were both about to die.
“Because…” he was moving closer again. She backed up, but a few inches after she started, she bumped into the window. “Because I don’t want …death…”
He looked at her strangely. “I won’t hurt you, Midori.”
“Says who?” she whispered bitterly, staring straight past him and into
the face at the window with a gun pressed in her right hand staring straight at the two of us she’s
the lovely face of Natsuki Kuga.
Reito shouted in alarm, staring past her as Akira Onuzaki’s face appeared in front of him, moving towards the passenger side door. The girl gave him a look of something like disdain, but not quite.
She shook her head, saying nothing, and looked at the man: Tall, with big forearms and a big gut that suggested, to her anyway, one too many nights at a local booze-and-boobs joint. Too many lonely nights there. The pastime of the impoverished, she thought.
But the look in his eyes wasn’t cruel. Only a little desolate, a little resolved. He stared at her, and for one terrible moment, an automatic instinct in her body screamed at her, run, he’s going to take his pent-up energy out on you! It was the same instinct that told people, don’t talk to strangers: They might do bad things to you.
“What is it?” she asked, afraid but only superficially.
“Are your restraints too tight?”
She shook her head. “No.” And then cursed herself a moment later; if they weren’t, they would be now that he knew that she might be able to get out of them.
Indeed, a moment later, he walked around behind her chair and started fiddling with her restraints. But instead of tightening them, a second later, she felt them fall off of her wrists, and hit the floor. A moment later, the feet.
She stared at the man in awe. “What are…”
He looked straight at her. “You can see that we’re poor. Desperate. We have very little; the recession took most of what we have. We can barely afford to heat the water for rice. We steal the rice.”
Is he letting me go?
“I haven’t decided yet whether or not I’m going to let you go. A lot of it depends on when your visitor is coming; but I do know this: Just because we are poor, does not mean we are animals, and we would never, ever treat a lady such as yourself like an animal. If you are indeed going to die, we’re not going to keep you tied down like a dog waiting to be put down.”
“Then let me go,” she said quietly, feeling something tugging at her heart.
He looked away. “I don’t know if we can. I don’t know if we have time before your guest comes to see you; if you’re gone when he gets here…we…”
They’ll all die. She filled in the rest of his sentence with disturbing ease. Honor has its end somewhere in all people, and I can’t blame them. If it meant seeing Natsuki again, I would do the same thing.
Again, the niggle in her head: Obsession is a dangerous thing, Shizuru.
Again, she ignored it.
“You’ll know by tonight.” He turned to leave. “Please don’t try to escape. You’re in a basement, and the only exit is locked and guarded. The window is barely enough to get reception for a television, so don’t expect to crawl out of it.” At this, he gave her a funny look. “There are enough of us to keep you captive, and people are always watching.” Another look.
He opened the door, revealing another big, depressed-looking man who was, indeed, standing guard.
Just before it closed, he whispered, “I’m sorry. Please stay away from the window.”
It took Shizuru three solid minutes to understand that she had been wrong about her captors twice in the past day.
Honor has no end for these men, because honor is all they have left.
They hadn’t taken away her cellular phone, which was still in her pocket, and they had just told her that she could get reception.
And they had just told her that they too were being watched.
That had been the true meaning of the sadness in his eyes. It was the sadness of a samurai as he laid out his place settings for his ritual suicide.
Best not to waste their deaths, then, if that’s what they will have.
She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Natsuki.
Natsuki’s phone rang a little more than halfway back, and about three seconds after Natsuki answered, her eyes widened—what was that look so prevalent in her eyes at that moment? Reito, sitting up front with her, couldn’t tell—and she nodded twice and hung up.
“Who was it?” Reito asked as casually as he could considering that a casual look at the dashboard told him that they were starting to accelerate. A lot.
“Shizuru.”
Midori gasped, and Akira’s eyes flashed, and the two of them leaned forward.
“She’s being held in a house, she doesn’t know where, but it’s fairly dingy, in a poor part of town.”
“There aren’t that many parts of town to begin with,” Midori commented, having been startled out of her bout of insecurity into something resembling the leadership she usually put forth.
“Right,” Natsuki agreed. “She asked me to come get her, but then she said…”
“She said what?” Midori frowned.
“She said not to hurt her captors if we could help it.”
Akira frowned. “For her to be able to use a cell phone at all tells us that maybe her captors are…”
“Double-agents? For who?” Natsuki was suddenly angry. “None of this makes any sense.” She pounded the steering wheel, which once again attracted Reito’s attention towards the dashboard. He noted that they were now pushing eighty, and asked, calmly, that Natsuki slow down.
“Fuck that,” she snapped back. “That was the last thing she told me, was to hurry. That she might not have much time left.”
Reito said nothing more, only prayed that there were no cops between them and the poor part of town, wherever that was.
He had asked Scratch-ass, and had been informed that the working title for this weapon was the “Battle Cannon.” Apparently, it was like a small tank gun; it latched securely onto the torso, and fired individual shells—roughly 50mm, with explosive tips that could be swapped out for fragmenting tips. It had virtually no kick—the stabilizer was mostly to compensate for the weight. Apparently, it was the cutting edge. To him it looked more like a jump back to the days of Howitzers, but in the style of Honey, I shrunk the kids.
He activated the infra-red scope and watched as ten small red blobs appeared in his field of view. Of them, he estimated that four were on the top floor where he could be assured a kill on the first shot.
Completely set up now, he could only wait for his distraction. As he did, he searched for the person who was apparently still watching him, but there were a dozen buildings with five dozen windows between them; there was no way to do it without his scope, and he had a nagging instinct that told him that if he did that, maybe the person would just shoot him and be done with it.
He did spot one interesting thing with just his eyes, though. There was another man on the roof of the clothing store across from him, which was situated on Goza’s main drag; the man himself was sitting on a ledge, with another big sniper rifle in his hands. He wasn’t aiming at Minoru, but rather, the basement of the house.
Minoru’s eyes widened and he grabbed his radio, thumbed the button.
“There’s another sniper. Tell me that’s ours, please.”
“Is he sitting on the ledge of the Clever Needle fabric store?” Scratch-ass replied almost instantly.
Minoru sighed in relief. “He’s one of yours?”
“No. But we’ll take care of it, don’t you worry. Just get ready to start shooting when we tell you to. Also, move ten yards to your left; you’re in view of the main drag right now.” Unsaid was and I can see you.
Minoru frowned. Creepy bastard.
But he picked up and moved anyway.
Not that Aoi didn’t look good in it, Chie amended. It was only that for a girl as shy and modest as Aoi, it was certainly
an improvement
a change. “Are you planning on wearing that outside, Aoi?”
Aoi grinned a little and did something Chie had never heard of her doing before: She winked. Letcherously. At Chie. The girl stood there dumbstruck for a solid half-minute as Aoi laughed, and said, “No, not really. I just wanted to see what you’d think of it.”
“I think that you’re a dirty son of a bitch is what I think,” Chie laughed along with Aoi. “And I think your mind’s pretty well lodged in the gutter right now.”
Aoi shrugged. “Maybe it is.”
“Aoi? Acting scandalous?” She looked quickly over her shoulder as though something had caught her eye. “What…is that satan? Eating ice cream?”
“Oh—” Chie never did find out what was oh.
A man emerged from the changing booth next to them and gave Aoi a look that was a little bit too appraising before he left.
“Hey pal,” Chie snapped at him, “The goods aren’t for sale, so stop fucking window-shopping and wait till you get home to play pocket-pool.”
Aoi looked only partially shocked. Chie had a tongue to her, it just rarely came out as it had there. The man gave them a moderately satisfied grin, as though they had gotten what was coming to them, and started to walk out. Chie frowned. This is the girls’ changing room. What the hell was he…
What happened next was forever ingrained into Chie’s head in slow-motion, as traumatic events often are: In horrifying detail.
A girl walks past the two of them, eying Aoi in particular. The girl is tall and pretty, with boobs to rival Mai’s. She’s carrying an outfit smaller than Aoi’s, and Chie wonders in some far-off corner of her head how she plans on fitting into that while staying out of a jail cell for indecent exposure.
She opens the door, and Chie hears a small beeping sound. She tenses up, and gives Aoi a look. Aoi, not understanding, doesn’t return it. The girl says, “Somebody left their bag in here,” and Chie looks into the room, where she sees a large, black backpack. The backpack is beeping steadily. Like a countdown. Later, she will feel guilt, thinking that this girl has saved their lives, but knows in another part of her brain she trusts her own instincts more than that.
She’s studied American history quite intently, so she knows exactly what this is. She screams, run! GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE! IT’S A BOMB! As loud as she can, but only Aoi, forever trusting Chie with a strength that will later drive Chie to tears, listens to her.
The two of them tear out of the store, just as the door shuts behind the creepy man. As soon as they hit the street, they dive off to their left, and Chie screams, “Everybody get down!”
Nobody does. The townies, all creatures of routine and habit, simply go about their business.
The pavement is really hot, Chie thinks as she tackles Aoi and covers her with her body.
It’s a lot hotter for the people who didn’t move. The store windows explode outwards in a ball of flame that seems to Chie for a moment to be Hiroshima round two. In spite of the deafening roar of the explosion, she swears she can still hear the screams of the people inside; she can certainly hear the people outside screaming as the ones in front of the store are incinerated almost on the spot. Chie herself feels her back being singed, but it’s only her coat. She saved Aoi only from a burn mark, but feels shamefully proud, nonetheless.
As the flame vanishes, she stands up and scans the street for the man. He’s gone. Of course.
After it was over, as with many traumatic events, things were slightly more blurred in her mind.
Something inside of him, though, was shaking. It was that pesky compass, he estimated.
“Minoru,” came Scratch-ass’s voice over the radio. “This is your distraction. Don’t waste it, please.”
You’re just doing your job you’re just doing your job you’re just doing your job. He repeated this over and over in his head, hoping to believe it in the next few minutes. Then he exhaled deeply, calmed his shaking hands, and centered the first man’s head in his crosshairs.
Back to Resolution Index - Back to Mai HiME Shoujo-Ai Fanfiction