Calamity Plus One

by Arkytal

Tokyo has been split into 2 cities with the construction of the Wall, a massive structure designed to keep the sane people in New Tokyo, and the Marauders in Old Tokyo. A severe psychological change has occurred in the youth of Tokyo, and it's about to re-pave every street in corpses. Human corpses. Sequel to The Library.

1. I

Calamity +1

I

A/N: So yeah, here we go. Anything I said to people concerning this story is now null and void. If you're reading this and haven't read The Library yet, it's advisable to do so, though not required. You'll just be a tad bit confuddled. Though most people will be after this chapter anyways.

November 11, 2015

300m from the Wall, New Tokyo side

4:45 P.M.

"Report in, from the top."

Static.

"Patrol one, got nothing on the streets lining the Wall."

"Patrol two, the rooftops are clear, besides the bodies, of course."

"Patrol three, we got two kids playing cards on the corner of a street. Ain't bothering no one."

"Patrol four, all quiet here."

"Roger that, stay on alert, we don't know when or where they could attack from."

A snort came through the communications line.

"Captain, you've got to be kidding. There's been no sign of the bastards for over three weeks! They've probably killed each other off or some shit by now. And besides, even if they did fuck everything up, they're still just kids."

Not the kind of attitude for a border patrol to be exhibiting.

"Three, if you want to keep your job I suggest you keep your mouth shut and your finger on the trigger. Those kids have killed more people in the past 3 years than there have been natural deaths in the country. Over 12,000 people are in graves because of that line. They are not kids. Not anymore. Ever since...whatever it was, they've shed that moniker. They're killers. They're butchers. More importantly, they're enemies of the state. Shoot to kill as soon as you see any of the fuckers. That's an order. However, if you kill an innocent youth due to lack of confirmation, I'll have your badge, your career, and your life. Do. You. Understand."

Stunned silence, as it was still on an open channel.

"Y...Yes, ma'am. Sorry, ma'am. I'll keep that in mind, ma'am."

"Good. Now, report in again."

"One, we've got some movement in the streets. Looks like some kind of march. All of 'em are wearing a black cloak, kind of like they're mourning or some shit...No weapons in sight though, and demographics are...well, all of them. I'm seeing a lot of guys, a lot of girls, some Blacks, some Hispanics, some Whites, and plenty of natural-born Japanese. What do you make of it, sir?"

"Two, we've also got something going on. Three individuals are coming down the street, talking and laughing...just some schoolkids, never mind."

"One, this is Sgt. Narumi. Keep your eye on them, do not engage unless engaged."

"Roger that, ma'am.

"Three here, we've got a truck rolling out of a garage at about 100m. It's looking armored...no visible weapons, might be one of those scavengers that have popped up recently...yup, some guys popped up and are starting to load scrap metal from the street into the truck. Nothing else to report."

"Four reporting in, we've got a couple armed Marauders heading for that group One just called in. Taking cover in the Wall just in case it turns messy out here."

"Roger that, but I repeat, do not engage unless engaged."

Affirmatives from all patrols, so I could finally go check on the radar crew. As soon as I got up, however, the radio began to flood with chatter.

"Woah, all of the marchers just took out firearms! I repeat, the marchers have firearms. Oh shit! They just dropped their cloaks; they're armored too! We've got body armor on the marchers!"

"Two here, several of the bodies on the rooftops just got up, there's a dozen snipers on the rooftop! Some of them are above Wall level, but none of them are targeting us; they're taking up positions on the marchers. Taking cover as well, this doesn't look good."

"Three here, that truck we just mentioned? Yeah, there's a machine gun getting mounted on it. I don't like the looks of this."

Well, peace never lasts. Especially not here. Never here.

"Yeah, they're starting to move towards the marchers. Still no shots fired, but they're getting awfully close to-"

A new tone of static cut through the comm, cutting off Patrol Three's update report.

"PROXIMITY ALERT: UNIDENTIFIED PERSONNEL IN CONTACT WITH THE WALL PROPER. PLEASE INVESTIGATE AT ONCE."

How. The. Fuck.

I jumped back into the comm channel, silencing everyone else as I spoke.

"Those marchers are going for the Wall! Everyone, get on your stations!"

What I heard back was the start of my nightmares.

"Agh! We're pinned down! There's too many! They've got grenad-AHHHH!" Patrol Two's lifesigns just flattened. No.

Oh no. This is why I hate working comms inside the Wall. I can't help on the frontlines when I could've saved lives.

The sound of heavy footsteps and gunfire came in through the channel.

"Ugh! This is...this is One! My partner just got shot up...The Marauders are being protected by the mob! It's getting close to the Wall..."

The sounds of machine gun fire this time, and screams, shouts, and crying this time.

"That truck is targeting us! We can't make a run for the security towers, it's a fucking meat grinder out here!"

"Snipers on the rooftops have began to engage us! We're stuck on the top of the Wall, Ishida just got fucking blown away when he tried to look around the blast shield! Whatever the hell they're using, it's fuckin' big, it pierced his helmet like it was nothing!"

Armed, organized revolt. Well, it could be-

BOOM.

The entire structure rocked from the force of the explosion, coming from below my feet. My face collided with the desk, bringing a wave of sharp pain to my head, but it was nothing compared to what I was hearing as I could practically hear the terror and pain being sown into the hearts and souls of those who are under my command.

"FUCK! They just blew a fuckin' hole in the wall! They're coming out into the streets! There's gotta be damn near three hundred of the fuckers!" Chiba's never been the most wordy person...just as well, actually.

I brought up a camera on my computer screen, displaying the outside wall on the New Tokyo side.

It was absolute chaos, and the full-color output showed red. Red was everywhere. In the center of the screen one image dominated my view.

A Russian APC with a machine gun atop and a girl with long brown hair firing it. The camera was in front of the vehicle, most likely mounted to the lip of a roof somewhere, and it was plain to see who was firing the heavy weapon into crowds of civilians as they ran in terror.

The cross tattooed to her cheek was hard to miss, as was the look and composure of the devil.

"Warrior." The words left my lips before I realized it, and before the next wave of pleas for help entered my comm. I was still in the Wall itself, on an upper floor, and I could hear footsteps coming as my squad attempts to warn me.

"Ma'am, some of the main force is splitting off into the Wall itself! Run! Is that a fucking rocket-" I'm unsure of who that was, but it was too late for them.

Now I could feel the vibration as the enemy pushed through the hole in what was believed to be an impenetrable wall...or at least, impenetrable to a few anarchist rebels who were as few as they were disorganized.

I stood up, removing my headset and grabbing my helmet from the end of the desk. Sliding it on, the familiar reduced field of view and dark, tinted sight became mine once again. I had been called paranoid to sit through my shifts in full combat armor from my stint as a patrol officer myself, after I stopped the traffic deal a few years ago. I knew, deep down, I would need it one day, and that day was today.

Bending down, I removed the P90 from beneath my desk. Again, others called me a lunatic, claiming the Wall to have no weaknesses, and that the auto-defense system was more than adequate to halt any intruders.

Well, any Wall will eventually fall, and any system will eventually fail. Good thing I came prepared.

Slotting a 50-round magazine into the top of the small weapon, I crossed to the corner of the room and stood behind the door to the sold entrance to the communications center.

Just a few months ago, this room was a hive of activity, a dozen comm officers tracking more than 75 personnel as they patrolled this portion of the wall, the Mini Wall, so called because on the outer portion, some buildings directly next to the Wall itself were taller than the Wall. This made it a hotspot for daredevil Marauders to jump off with makeshift parachutes to attempt to fly into New Tokyo and perhaps raid a few shops, kill a few people, before the authorities caught wind of it and immediately eliminated the criminal.

Now, I was the sole comm officer on this shift, and a total of 3 people worked this room at any time. One per 8-hour shift, and sometimes the night officer took 4-hour breaks.

Ever since it had begun to calm down, the Wall has lost most of its' internal defense force, reduced to a few squads for the entire 90km wall. Of course, this wasn't supposed to hap-.

"In here, this is the comms room!" So someone actually knew the layout of the massive structure. That did not bode well for us, at all. Someone was working on the inside. Possibly several someones.

Into the sterile light of the room came four figures, each unique. The man in front was of a muscular physique, carrying a revolver and wearing a yellow bandanna across his mouth, like Bandits of old.

Next came a girl who looked like Yutaka, if Yutaka had become a female version of the Punisher..., she was carrying a shotgun with a large drum magazine, and had...salmon hair in a single ponytail trailing half-way down her back. I could see A pistol in a holster on her thigh, and her armor was tinted an odd purple color.

Third to enter was the one that really made me worried. He was huge, and had long black hair. He was carrying a light machine gun, ammo belts crisscrossing his chest.

Last to come in was a man that made me think twice about moving from my position. Target 9.

In the past few years, only a few of the rampaging youth had stood out enough to be identified and marked as specific targets.

This boy...man, really, was one of them.

Nineteen years old as of August 2015, Target 9 didn't appear to be much. Thin, wiry, short brown hair, pale electric blue eyes. Carried a couple rifles at all times, right now holding some sort of wooden carbine, a large sniper rifle affixed to his back, and matching pistols in holsters on his belt.

The reason this man was so dangerous was simply because he always lived through confrontations.

This was the guy that strafed mortar fire after commencing the Christmas Crisis. This was the guy who had killed half a dozen officers whilst completely unarmed in order to escape custody mere weeks before the Wall was finished. This was the sole sniper who had been killing any construction worker who dared near the wall, causing a 3-month project to become a 2-year project.

"Search that computer, put anything good on a drive, and make it quick." The muscular man moved to my terminal, the only one on, and began to type commands into the keyboard faster than I could blink.

I brought my gun up to my head. All of them were distracted. I could still come out on top.

I swallowed, hearing it echo in my ears.

Everyone's heads' turned to my location. The heavy-set man's faced turned to an expression of shock, but I had already pulled the trigger.

The gun barely kicked as I dove out of my hiding spot as it was riddled with three different types of bullets, and the silence in the room suddenly became a cacophony too loud for human ears to handle.

The big guy was dead before I hit the ground, rolling behind a desk and firing blindly at the other three.

Unfortunately, I felt my ribs get kicked from the side, and I fell to the floor, my gun clattering underneath a desk.

"Well, lookie here Ty, a trooper no one told us about. I thought those girls had the best intel there is." He was pointing his gun at my head.

"C'mon, get up, I'm not going to kill you. I never liked that guy anyways." The girl laughed as she was relieving the corpse of its' valuables. Quite the cheery bunch, I must say.

As I got up, he shoved me into a table, grabbing my hands behind my back with just one of his hands, his rifle now jabbing into the back of my neck, but not terribly painfully. Damn, he's good.

"Now, take the helmet off. One hand only, take it slow. We don't any more dead people in this room." He moved his thumb slightly, allowing my right hand to reach up and pull my helmet off.

He looked at me once, and started cracking up. Just straight, utter laughter. The girl kept her gun on me as he moved away, slamming his bony fist onto my desk, all the while shaking with dry laughter.

Finally, he was calm enough to wipe a tear from his eye, and returned to me, but was snickering even as he did so.

"Holy shit, no wonder the intel didn't mention this one...alright, this one lives you guys. Kimi, give her a KO pill and throw her in the corner, we've got bigger octopus to fish." The guy backed away, his rifle on my head like clockwork, even as the girl came forth with a purple pill...the same purple as her amor. Ah, hell.

First they're attacking, then they're organized, then Target 9 shows up, I don't die, and NOW I'm getting drugged by a girl who looks just so freaking similar to Yutaka...I wonder how she's doing? I haven't seen her in almost a year...she might even be...no, don't think like that. She must be fine. She has to be.

Line Break:

Even as her head fell forward as the drug took effect, I couldn't help but feel like my heart was being torn out.

Nee-san. I just drugged Nee-san. She...she was working in the Wall!

It feels like just yesterday that I was taken from Nee-san, after she had hid me for so long from the authorities, and sent to the Old city, to live with the youth that had began revolting against the government...

I found Oni-chan and her friends though, so it wasn't that bad. I made a few friends myself, and had ultimately gotten caught up in this group when the police in the New city killed a group of my friends while we were walking down the street. I was saved when Onii-chan came up behind them with a gun and...killed them. But, I guess, in that case, they were in the wrong, and she saved me.

"Did she recognize you?" My squad leader shook me free from my thoughts. He was tall and thin, and I hadn't yet caught his name. Aki...something. Akira maybe? Or was that the other sniper...

"I don't think so...I've grown a lot in the past year, and I'm wearing my hair differently, so she might not have."

He laughed again, before walking out of the room.

"Well that's good, fighting family sucks. But unlike her, you can be merciful." He was right, unfortunately.

Ty walked out with what we needed, and I picked up the rear, weighed down by the ammo belts that now hung from my shoulders' instead of Honda's chest; he had been the meat shield, and had played his part well. May warrior's fortune bring him peace.

Taking the same route we had to gain access to the comm room, it was clear some intense fighting was going on down below, and outside. The superstructure was cracked in some places, which was no small feat for a 5 meter thick wall on both sides. I had to help prepare a lot of the younger members for this blitz-like attack, and I was surprised at the hardware we had amassed from various sources.

A 13-year old named Gin was set to stay in the back with a surface-to-air missile launcher, capable of taking down slow moving aerial vehicles, like VTOLs and helicopters. The launcher itself was of American make, as was much of our supplies. Akira had mentioned at one point that the Americans were secretly funding them. something about falling out with the government or something.

Some of the weapons were NATO weaponry, most likely stolen from the government, but this was much rarer, as Japan had been ejected from the UN once the Wall was constructed.

We crept closer to the door, and cautiously stepped outside into the battlefield, slightly awed at the progress we had been making.

During the briefing in an abandoned subway tunnel turned command center, our leaders had outlined the course of attack to be "as much of a push into the city as possible, until our losses become too great."

We were almost a hundred meters into New Tokyo, toppling buildings and firing on anyone who wasn't one of us, and the Marauder war machine didn't look to be stopping anytime soon.

"Come on, to the rooftops!" Akira was running to a building that had mysteriously been left standing, surrounded by piles of debris that may have been buildings recently.

I followed as best as I could, just trying to take in the sights and sounds of a true Marauder attack. As night slowly fell, the flashes of tracer rounds became apparent, and the rumbles of heavy gunfire and explosions punctuated the air every few seconds. The air was thick with the screams of trapped animals...which were all that civilians were, really. The ground was pitted with pockmarks from bullets and shrapnel, and the slight wind caught my hair as I ran into the building.

It was dark inside, the only light coming from Ty's flashlight on his pistol. We rushed up a few flights of stairs, coming out on the roof, where Akira was already setting up the rifle on his back, and where we had a clean view of the terror we had wrought.

The whole width of this district was being swept up in the chaos, the main force accented by the heavily armored truck in the forefront, being constantly resupplied by those behind it. Our forces were fanning out in all directions, gunning down civilians as they saw them, and looting what they could from the buildings left in the wake of destruction.

The -whoop-whoop- of a helicopter was heard overhead, as something attempted to cross the airspace above what must have been making the news everywhere. Or, knowing the oppressive government, maybe it wasn't.

Either way, a -WHUFF- came from the ground as a missile flew straight up, past the helicopter, whose pilot had attempted to steer away from the object, but failed as the explosive device came down and detonated against the vehicle, causing it to plummet and crash into a building the warpath had not yet been brought into contact with.

The blare of emergency sirens all over the city were still covered by the sounds of gunshots and explosions, and now, the loud shockwave as Akira fired his own rifle into the crowd ahead of the path of death being sown into the city.

Even though it took awhile to get used to this, I have got to say: it's glorious. I'm not quite sure what we're fighting for, but if this is any indication, freedom fighters for a just cause, then it's worth it...I just need to make sure Nee-san doesn't get hurt.

Line Break:

The soundproofing in the cab did little to help when the top was open the whole time, a certain girl's feet stepping on the turn pedals constantly as she laid down a deadly stream of bullets into anything that was ahead of the wheeled monster. The sounds of bullets pinging off the chassis occurred dozens of times a second, and the windshield was nothing but a tiny window reinforced with several layers of blast-resistant glass.

Fuck, it wasn't supposed to be like this...but I bet it could get worse, too. I looked to the other occupant in the cab, who was holding a flashlight while writing on a pad of paper as she calculated complex math problems, which she reported the answers into a radio mounted on the dashboard.

"Unit Seven, change your firing trajectory 6 degrees west and 3.5 degrees north to compensate for wind speed and enemy movement. Unit Eight, keep your firing pattern."

She sighed, her matted, dirty, pink hair shuddering under the beret she wore to mark her rank in the group: Head Tactician.

She looked sideways at me, the darkness denying me from reading her face.

"You know, this isn't what I meant by leading the right path, but I'll deal with it...for now."

A/N: What do you think? If you think this was a bit rushed, this is like the 4th revision of it. The first version was WAY too dull, the 2nd and 3rd were okay but lacked the sense of "oh shi-" that I want to keep going, and this one was actually good. Only 2 named OC's who aren't cannon fodder, which is pretty okay considering my track record.

Next chapter: You'll have to wait and see, but I assure you it is awesome.