Calamity Plus One

VII

A/N: Alright, while reviewing what I have for a plot summary for this so far, I realized that this is going to be quite a bit longer than The Library was. So yeah. We're just getting started on the fun parts! The intrigue...the killing...the more killing...you know, fun stuff!

Also, a little shout-out to people who rub their cheeks and look like an otter. You know who you are. And I must say, you look goddamn ADORABLE.

A/N, part 2: Sheeeeeeeit, I just saw the thing about that shooting in Connecticut. 28 dead, including the guy himself. I laughed. A lot. Like, actually thought it was funny.

Take of that what you will.

Two knocks were all I got to before the door swung open, a grizzled old man who obviously hadn't shaved in the past week holding the door open. He looked ready to bite out a remark, but he stopped before he did so. A gun in your face usually has an effect similar to that.

The table in the middle of the room was surrounded by similar men; decorated military men, with no regard for what was actually going on. One of them, the only one whose name I knew, looked up to me.

"Captain! We're in the middle of a meeting...what is it you want?" I leveled my gun on him and said nothing.

"Wait! What is this! Where's the security?" I clicked my tongue, and that darling man who had escorted me to the private wing of the terminal heaved the two corpses into the threshold while he himself stayed out of sight. Who would have thought that he wanted to kill these old coots too? Bird of a feather flock together...birds for a slaughter...heh. Either way, the military men had faces that were quite simply, priceless. Fucking idiots.

"What...what is it you want? I'll do anything! You can't do this Hiiragi..." I looked to the man speaking, a portly old fucker who looked like he had stayed out in the sun for too long.

"Oh, can't I?" I swung the rifle around to him, and as expected, the sniveling fucker cowered behind another higher-up.

"So, what do you plan to accomplish by barging into our meeting with hostile intent, Hiiragi." He spoke as calmly as he could, but I could tell that he was trying rather hard to not piss himself in fear. That kind of thing usually happens when you're staring death incarnate in the face.

"Oh, nothing much, you know...just a hostile takeover of the military...what the fuck else did you expect?" Gasps of shock and murmurs of dissent echoed around the room. I must say, good thing that there's only one entrance, and good thing that I decided to carry a lot of bullets on me at all times. Oh my, look at the clock. It's Kill o'clock!

"Enough for games...you'll all be remembered for the decorated military men you were...say hello to the lady of the house for me, will you?" Without warning, I sprayed the whole clip into those surrounding the table, murdering all of them, making sure to leave no survivors. When I emptied the first clip, I checked the other side of the table, finding one man who had ducked down in the chaos. I reloaded, before walking up behind him. He turned around, looking up into my eyes, and whatever he saw scared the shit out of him. Literally. It was all over the place, a visible brown stain against his white uniform.

"Please...don't hurt me...I'm...I'm only an aide..." This was a blatant lie, however; despite his relative youth, his uniform was still decorated in all kinds of pins and ribbons, most of which were probably earned by sending others to their dooms'...I'd enjoy doing that.

"Don't worry, I won't hurt you." He looked up, just in time to see the 7.62mm round fly through his head, splattering his insolent brains all over the place. I looked around the room, immediately finding the object I was looking for. I picked it up, turning it on, before speaking calmly and quickly into it, sounding nothing like I did mere moments ago. After all, I have to keep up appearances for those who need to see them.

"This is Colonel Hiiragi Kagami of the JSDF. I'm the highest-ranking survivor of an attack on our command center by the enemy. I regret to inform the enlisted men and women of our military that I arrived while the attack was in progress, and I witnessed the death of more than a dozen of our leaders. I have killed an enemy spy in the name of our country, and as of right now, I will be assuming command of the operation here at Haneda. Continue operating on your previous orders.

Will Sergeant Shiraishi and Corporal Kogami please report to Meeting Room Three. That is all."

It was really that easy; kill all of the higher ranked officers, and bam, you're in charge. After all, who in their right mind would argue with a Colonel in the military who still insisted to go out into combat? No one, because you'd get shot if you did. I made sure of it myself.

The real "spies" came into the room while I was still standing there, holding the wide-band receiver, causing me to jump in alarm. I can't let my guard down like that.

"Impressive, Colonel!" The pink-haired girl crowed, lighting up a cigarette and kicking a body to the side as she sat down in a regal leather chair, most likely paid for with the tears of small children.

"Y...Yes, that was an impressive feat, ma'am...but what are we going to do now?" I leaned against the table where there was a map of the city clearly marked out upon it.

I actually quite detest the Kogami girl, but she's well connected, due to her sleeping around with basically every guy in the military. She was the modern equivalent of Joan of Arc; a useless bitch, but could give the people what they wanted. Except I'm only one person, and the only thing I want is some connections to military contractors who can build me what I need to make sure that I will have my revenge in the most satisfying way possible.

"Well, first off, Kogami-sama, you're going to need to get me in touch with those darling gentlemen who modified the D11 for JSDF use." I made sure she knew of my contempt for the suffix, giving here the evil eye while leaning in with my gun tensed up, causing her to squeal in fear, and drop her lit cigarette into the gaping mouth of a bloodied corpse. How delightful.

"Alright, alright, don't do that! I'll get you their numbers...when do you want them?" I wanted them yesterday you fucking whore. Oh well, appearances, no matter how savage and close to the truth that they are, must be kept.

"I would prefer them to be in my list by tomorrow morning, 0600 hours. Now, you have some work to do." She jumped up out of her chair, straightened her mini-skirt hastily, despite the fact that she was wearing a shirt a few sizes too large that resulted in her hands being lost underneath the lengths of fabric, and dashed out the door, all too eager to get out of the room.

Shiraishi sighed upon the door closing, his shoulders sagging noticeably and he let out a sigh, most likely of relief.

I shrugged and bent over, beginning the task of tampering with the bodies and removing the evidence that would lead to myself.

"She's a cunt." He said it simply, without any real note of contempt behind it, which made me look up in surprise. The aide was also uncaring enough to use such a vulgar term in front of me...oh well, no one of importance should have to give a damn about manners anyways.

"Beyond her normal floozy mannerisms, or is she a psycho-bitch too?" He nodded, pulling his pant leg up, revealing a row of deep welts and discolored patches of skin.

"I was the only guy she's ever had a long-term relationship with, and her abusiveness knows no bounds. While I was doing a radio show with her, she attempted to put out her cigarettes in my eyes, she's whipped me dozens of times, and being suspended from the ceiling by your manhood while she puts a lighter to your toes is no laughing matter either." Wow, that's pretty extreme; what the fuck is this chick doing in the military? She needs her own game-show or some shit; she'll entertain the sheeple for as long as we need her to, right up until the day I put a bullet through her brain while on her Torture Show of Fun, or some shit. I'll figure out the details later.

"Why the hell did you stay with her, then?" If I were him, I would've dropped the bitch the first chance I had. With an armor-piercing round, just to make sure her thick fucking skull wouldn't save her, too.

He sighed and gave me a wry smile.

"I never said I was there by my own will. That, and after a while it turned into Stockholm Syndrome...I was in therapy for months after I escaped her estate. She's so crazy, she thinks that I never left, and I was lost in the basement or something. Can't you just kill her?"

Now this guy is talking my language: equal parts Crazy and Brutal; I speak quite fluently. Unfortunately, I need people to help carry out my plans. Well, until a certain point.

"After she's done being useful, I'll kill her for you, and you'll get to watch as I skull-fuck her corpse until she's dry, then I'll dump her broken body into the Tokyo Bay. Deal?"

He looked up from his looting of the corpses with the most feral and excited grin I've seen all day. I'll assume that's a yes. I'm going to have to watch these two...I have a weird feeling that Shiraishi isn't exactly what he seems to be either.

I'll deal with that later; right now, I need more hands to carry all of this loot!

"I need a luggage trolley sent to Meeting Room Three; we're moving the possessions of the recently deceased to the West Barracks." Conveniently, that's where I'm staying. I'll be able to mail a check for quite a lot of money to...wait, my family's dead. How about...no, they're dead, from what I can recall.

Wait, I have an idea; I'll send the high-quality stuff to those in the city, deck out the next wave of grunts flying into the meat grinder with some real crazy tech; those savages won't know what the fuck hit them, because really, nothing did.

Because, quite simply, lasers.We have lasers, right? Prototype energy rifles firing hypersonic projectiles that emit various shades of color as their core elements rapidly progress through their half-life upon contact with oxygen? Good enough. I want a rainbow one. You can't fit multiple elements into one? Bullshit. Get it done or you get a skull tunnel. The clock is ticking.

divYou know how to make a fair fight? Neither do I, but I do know how to piss off web developers./span

"Here's what I think." I was trying way too hard to not break down, beat her up, cry, hug her, or some combination of the above. I always had an inkling of what she had been up to that day, but after she got shot, that partially dissuaded my suspicions, but they had still lingered on. I had been correct, unfortunately.

Fucking Hiyori! What? I don't even understand...it's just not in her nature to do something like that...she's so cute and innocent and...wait.

She is those things. We're talking about the past here. People do stupid things...maybe her low moment was just killing a bunch of people while being egged on by a psychopath...a very clever and sly psychopath. Yeah, that's it.

But.

Am I just making excuses in my head? Am I just trying to place the blame on her so that Hiyorin can stay pure and unsullied in my eyes?

I have to make sure. If she's the girl I know...intimately, then she'll be able to answer me truthfully. But there'll always be that inkling...feeling, of differing opinion.

If she still had any remaining feeling of guilt, how best to rid them from her, or at least confirm that she won't do anything like that again?

"So you were there, and did those things." I began in a forceful tone, turning around and looking her right in the face. She cowered, and her face was just so red from crying. I almost broke down right then and there, but I told myself to be strong, that I had to do this, just to make sure.

"...Y...Y...Uh-huh..." She looked down in shame, her hands on either side of the bowl of now-cold ramen.

"How do you feel about doing that? Did it feel good:? Was it an enjoyable experience, bar the physical injury you had?" This got the kind of reaction I was expecting, and had hoped for.

She flung her head up and began screaming at me, but her sobbing had reduced her loud voice to a scratchy tone. She actually went on for quite a while, until I stopped her by advancing on her and hugging her, but even then, she kept going.

"No! Once we started...killing...I saw their faces! Innocent people, their lives being taken out from under them! It was horrible! I couldn't believe what I was doing! It was like killing myself, over and over and over again! So many people were ended by my hand, and I've done nothing to revenge them! I'm wasting away here, doing jack fucl-all to compensate for the horrible lie I've been living the whole time! If you were to strike me down today, I wouldn't mind! I really wouldn't! I deserve it! I was weak, too weak to refuse Tsukasa! I thought it was a good idea, we'd die as heroes and that would be it! What's worse, the only reason she was even able to wreak so much havoc was because I supplied her! My dad is a fuckin' Yakuza, I'm Yakuza, I got all kinds of shit for her and Konata! We had rifles, grenades, bombs, you name it! It was all paid for by my dad, at my behest! It eats away at me every day, that I can live and be merry and sleep comfortably at night and have you as my lover and not be affected by the fact that I killed people. They're dead. I eat every meal with a heavy heart, that if I hadn't existed, or at least if I wasn't who I am today, that so many others could be enjoying these same simple pleasures that I denied them! What more do you want?"

I dropped my fierce stance, my shell of stoicness being shattered by her words, and knelt down next to her chair and hugged her. But she didn't stop; not yet. She wasn't done. And I was okay with that. At least she hugged me back; I was afraid she wasn't going to. Through the fabric of my shirt she continued to speak; I could feel my collar stain with tears.

" You're making a mistake Patty. I'm not worth the dirt on the side of the road. I should've died on that day, and you'd be so much better off. You'd probably have found a nice guy who wouldn't burden you with the social stigma of being a lesbian, wouldn't burden you with having a low-paying, high-effort job like me, would have attainable goals, and most of all, wouldn't drag you down and potentially ruin you by association. I'm not worthy of having anyone, much less such a perfect girl like you..."

Uhoh, I didn't mean to make her that upset...well, it was coming with the territory of admitting your deepest, innermost secret, especially something of that...magnitude.

My own feelings were in turmoil though, but not with her, personally. I was head-over-heels in love with her, no doubt about that, but the fact that she was a killer on the loose sure did put a damper on things.

Did I hate her? No. Was I disappointed in her? That's not really the word I'd use. My feelings come out somewhere between turned on by it, and mildly reproachful that we hadn't been one hundred per-cent truthful with each other thus far, but that had hopefully been rectified. I didn't keep any secrets, no, but then again, I can also see why, from her perspective, why she would be loath to tell me.

No, she had her reasons, and while they were sound enough for the time they were upheld with, the fact that they came crashing down in the wake of this whole battle in the city and those killers on the loose meant that she really didn't have any want of getting back to that type of thing. She was, no doubt about it, a reformed, deeply-disturbed, depressed, former, genocide-committing girl.

I love her just the same. Does that make me a bad person? If it does, I don't want to be a good person.

Aw, she fell asleep on me...good thing she's not too heavy.

I got up, keeping her upright in the chair, before pulling her out of the chair, careful not to hit the table with any of her limbs. Carrying her in my arms, I deposited her onto the couch on the opposite side of the room, making sure she was comfortable among the couch cushions. As I covered her with a blanket, I saw a flash out of the window.

In the sky, something blinding-white had erupted, sort of like a flare. It was hard to tell how far away it was, but I'd guess it was on the other side, near where that gang of rogues had busted through the Wall. As I shielded my eyes, I saw a large shape block my view of the white object. This shape was slow-moving, and the whirring sound that cut above the sound of the night told me it was a helicopter, or something similar. It stopped moving after a minute or so, and troops began to drop ropes out of the belly, and rappel down them. They were less than a hundred meters from myself, so I could see their armor clearly.

Black with red highlights, they weren't the normal green camo of the defense forces in the city. Special forces maybe?

If they're involved, that makes me worry greatly. Maybe this uncoordinated attack from this gang was a lot more than they were letting on to be.

I picked up my cell-phone from the desk next to the couch, where Hiyori continued to snooze peacefully, and called a friend.

"Can you see what's going on outside?"

The older voice responded back excitedly.

"Oh, of course! It's all over the news! There's been a hostile takeover in the military, and the new bigwig is pouring a lot of money into making sure this uprising is squashed. Hell, the bigwig might sound familiar to you." Well, that's never a good sign, but he was generally very dependable, being a writer himself.

"Dare I even ask?"

The old man giggled in a girlish way, reminding me that I had probably interrupted him while he was getting off to little girls. Ugh. People sometimes.

"Hiiragi Kagami, of course. Seems like crazy runs in the family, huh?"

No.

Fucking.

Way.

Wait, she can actually walk?...You know what, I don't really want to know.

It's official, the whole world's gone mad. And I'm the only sane one left.

"So, you talked to Konata recently?"

The sharp intake of breath reminded me that this was a very bad topic, but I had forgotten...I was probably in for a hang-up, followed up by a tearful call several hours later.

What I got instead, was surprisingly.

"...Yes...actually...we talked about an hour ago...she's...fine. She was...with friends. I was able to talk to Yutaka as well, before they had to go...they hung up with gunfire in the background...I'm scared for her...I really am..."

He was living in fear, just like so many of the parents in the city were. Months could space out conversations with your child, and a lot of the time, they wouldn't survive that long.

The only reason myself and Hiyori were able to stay in the city was because we had actually been out of town in Kyoto when they heaved everyone out, so when we came back, we had nothing but the clothes on our backs and the contents of our bags. Hiyori was able to recover most of our stuff through some friends, which I now realize were probably Yakuza.

Wow, I've missed a lot by not being more perceptive...fuck, I'm gonna sleep on it. Nothing good is going to come of this, besides being closer to Hiyorin...and look at me, shrugging that off like it's no big thing!

We need to reconnect...yeah, that'll do both of use some good. I'm still feeling it from my twisted perception of her blowout.

/ TEMPORAL ERROR: CANNOT PLACE EVENT WITHIN CURRENT TIMELINE. SEPERATE TIMELINE GENERATED. CALCULATING APPROXIMATE ENTRANCE AND EXIT TIME OF EVENTS IN TIMELINE2 COINCIDING TO TIMELINE1.

A/N: Well, that was a long time in the making, but I feel like I've gotten a good handle on what's about to happen, so, if you're feeling pretty optimistic, expect a new chapter in the next few days. I wouldn't hold my breath, however; I've been busy lately, and the next week garners little to no time to actually sit down and write. Not that I won't try, though.

Ciao~