Chapter VII: We need you.

1123hrs, 4 June 2013, "Top Secret" Medical Facility, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan.

"I believe that there are things one chooses to do in life, and also things that are chosen for one to do in life." Lilly Satou, Katawa Shoujo.


"Um…why are we here?" Amy asked.

Amy, Lita, and Mina were all gathered in a large conference room, along with Dr. Kobayashi, Dr. Kawasaki, and Nurse Kuroi.

"I have no idea," Lita replied.

There was a loud humming noise, like a helicopter in the distance.

What could that be? Amy asked herself. In all the time that we've been here, I haven't heard any aircraft come fly overhead.

The "helicopter" (as Amy assumed) touched down nearby, and about ten minutes passed before the reason why they had gathered everyone there was revealed.

A gaggle of bodyguards entered the room, followed by one man, in his late fifties.

"Minna-san, the Prime Minister of Japan!" one of the bodyguards belted out.

Oh shit, Amy thought, while bowing like everyone else around her. Didn't see that coming.

"Ow," Lita complained. Her ribs were still a bit stiff.

The PM bowed back, and then made his way to the three "Ks" as Mina called them.

"Dr. Kobayashi," PM Hasegawa said. "A pleasure to be here."

"Prime Minister, we did not expect you today!" (They were.)

After making small talk to the three "Ks", he walked over to the girls.

"Prime Minister," they all bowed in unison.

"Ow…" Lita said again.

"Please," he replied. "I should be graced by your presence. You are so strong and so hardy to have survived all that."

They were all taken slightly aback by that.

"Prime Minister…" Mina began, but he cut her off.

"Please…we need your help."

Lita snorted at that comment. "Our help? No offense Prime Minister, but I'm missing an arm, two of my friends couldn't join me here today because they've broken every bone in their body or don't have legs anymore, and these two are still recovering," jabbing her thumb at Mina and Amy.

"Ow, dammit, need to stop doing that."

The PM didn't seem to be phased. "Well, maybe Dr. Kobayashi can explain the entire situation to you."

Kobayashi nodded. "Please, everyone, take your seats."

Amy, Mina and Lita took chairs on one side of the big conference table in the room while everyone else took seats on the other side.

"Please open the folders in front of you," Kobayashi said to the girls. There were three lying on the table in front of each person, and Amy opened all of them revealing their contents.

The first folder she opened said, "Program, Systematic Awareness Intelligence Operational Recon Service Force (SAILOR-SF) mission statement. The object of this program is to defend Japanese interests around the globe through means of direct action. This includes the selective targeting of individuals with malintent toward Japanese interests (read, assassination), the controlled removal of potential valuable material items by means of acquisition or removal (read, espionage and sabotage), the collection of information through electronic, signal and human means (read, spying), and if necessary, the deployment of special teams to contain hostile groups by coercive action, including methods that involve termination of said groups (read, raiding of hostile targets). Certain individuals will be selected from the general Japanese populace between the ages of 14-18 (and not from the JSDF) to carry out operations. The reasoning behind the age group selection is the flexibility of learning, the rate of learning, the continued growth of the body post-puberty, and the potential of said persons to become leaders in the society of future Japan."

Amy looked up from the paper. Oh shit. This wasn't what I signed up for. We have to kill people?

She looked at Mina and Lita. Both of them looked really confused, due to the amount of government-speak that was in the mission statement.

"Um," Lita said after reading the first paper. "What does it mean?"

The room was silent for a minute. Dr. Kobayashi decided to speak up, but hesitated before finding the words that he wanted to say.

"Girls…this is something that has to be done in order to preserve our nation. I know that all that you have been through has been difficult. I know that being separated from your families is difficult. I know that until now, you have no idea why you were brought here, kept in small rooms, poked with needles, fed the same thing over and over, and not allowed outside. This is why you were brought here today."

He stopped and looked at the prime minister. The PM nodded for him to continue.

"Japan is dying. You know that."

Amy, Lita and Mina looked at each other. Even as young people, they weren't stupid; even Mina knew what Kobayashi was talking about. There were more and more grey-haired people on the street, more wrinkled faces and hunched backs than they could count. Classes in elementary, junior and high school got smaller and smaller, and there were fewer and fewer young children every year.

"We need a better economy. We need better resources. We need more people. We need time. But that is time we do not have."

He paused again. Amy saw thought she saw tears come to his eyes, but he quickly blinked them away.

"What we're asking you to do is bigger than all of us. By 2050, the population will be cut in half."

That was old news.

"By 2100, our nation will more than likely cease to exist. Japanese culture, language, tradition, maybe even this very island will become no more. Japan will be cast into the history books as a novelty, a cutesy experiment that was overtaken by the Chinese and the West. What we are asking you to do...in the eyes of some, it might seem immoral."

"Immoral?" Lita asked cautiously.

"I will be frank with you. We are asking you to kill people. We are asking you to destroy property. We are asking you to engage in combat. We are asking you to do things that all your life, you have been told not to do."

The PM worryingly glanced at Dr. Kobayashi. That wasn't in the script.

The three girls there were silent.

"But why us?" Mina was still confused, while Lita and Amy were trying to contain their building rage.

PM Hasegawa interjected at this point.

"The explosion was no accident."

Now it was time for Kobayashi to glance at the PM. That was most definitely not in the script they sent over a week ago, he thought.

"Not…an accident?" Lita said slowly.

"What do you mean, 'not an accident'," Amy scowled.

"Check the second folder," the PM said. Kawasaki and Kobayashi had looked at the folder beforehand, but it had just been a CCTV screencap of a maintenance crew doing their thing. A truck stood by with some workers prying off a manhole cover. It didn't mean much to them.

"It's a picture of some road workers," Amy stated. "This doesn't mean anything to me."

"Look to the right of the truck," the PM continued.

Amy looked over to the driver's side of the vehicle. She could make out a worker holding something… some sort of small objects in his hand.

"I see it, I can't make it out what they are from here," Mina said.

"There are more pictures," the PM said.

They flipped back to the same picture, but magnified. The worker was holding what appeared to be a kitchen timer.

"It…it looks like a kitchen timer," Amy noted. "And a mobile."

"Exactly. The public works company started to get complaints after this crew came out here. And if you take a look at the other screencaps…"

Everyone rustled the pictures around to look at them.

"…You can see that the same crew comes out every time."

"That doesn't tell us much," Mina said. "So they were a bit short staffed and they sent the same crew out."

"I had my intelligence team run a background check on that service crew. Turns out, most of them had criminal backgrounds. One of them, that man in the picture with the timer, was an explosives expert for the North Koreans before he defected to the South."

He let the news sink in. The girls were stunned. Why would anyone…

"This…so the guy had a bad past," Amy said, but with less conviction. "It doesn't prove much of anything."

"I'd thought you'd say that. So, I brought a video."

The PM motioned for a screen to be pulled down. A white projector screen was rolled down from the ceiling, and a grainy CCTV footage showed that day.

"That's the smoking gun, if you're interested."

Amy looked at the video, noting that the timestamps were in increments of five seconds; 17:11:40, 17:11:45, 17:11:50…

"What's he doing here?" she asked on 17:11:50. "It looks like he's answering his mobile."

"Mmm-hmm. And what does he do after that?" The PM was giving them leading questions, but he had to, in order to steer the girls onto the path he wanted them to go on.

Lita answered.

"He…"

But her voice trailed off. At 17:11:50, the man answered his mobile. At 17:11:55 and 17:12:00 he dropped one, two, three cigarette butts out the window and drove off. At 17:12:30, Mina saw herself run down the street. There was a large flash at 17:12:35, and then the camera cut out.

"There you have it." The girls were silent for a while.

"So, where is the person in the car now?" Amy asked.

"Last picture."

Amy turned to the last photograph. There was the car again, but now a smashed wreck, being towed out of the water.

It made sense, pay a guy to call a number in a certain area, drop some cigarette butts in the road while he's doing it, drive off, then get rid of the evidence. But why so close? Why not just have the guy call from a distance? Where was the phone? Why this road? Why this area? Why not in one of the more high-traffic areas? Why…?

"Amy, I understand your concern." The PM held up to the barrage of questions that the girls had. Even Mina started poking holes in the PM's story.

"Look, Prime Minister," Mina said. "This is all well and good, but this is really…too obvious."

"Perhaps that's the point," the Prime retorted. It was all starting to come into place.

"But why not tell the public?" Lita asked.

"Lita, the last thing Japan needs to be concerned about is terrorism with everything else going on. Do you want this nation to become like the US, jumping at every shadow, shooting everything that moves?"

They couldn't argue with that. 9-11, the PATRIOT Act, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, the drug war in Mexico…the U.S certainly had its hands full.

"This is work of an organization with connections that wants to send a message. They are saying that they can attack anywhere they want, and you were just the beginning. They want to scare Japan. But we won't let them."

That kind of made sense. At first glance the entire situation was really stupid. It seemed to be one contrived coincidence on contrived coincidence.

But when you put it all together, yes, it was a coincidence, but it was specifically designed to send a message, maybe not to the population of Japan, but to the heads of state.

On the outside, it was just an accident. Dig deeper…

Amy still wasn't convinced. "I'm not so sure of your evidence." She stood up, along with Mina and Lita. "I think I'm going to leave if you don't have anything more." There was nowhere they could go, but the threat is what Amy was going for.

"This is all we have," the PM said. "I beg of you…please." He got out of his chair, and got on his knees and bowed. So did everyone else in the room. This was the ultimate sign of deference, respect and begging that one could give in Japan. And coming from the Prime Minister of Japan, that…well, that really meant things were going south.

Mina, Amy and Lita all stood there, dumbfounded.

"I…" Amy just couldn't believe it. Maybe the PM was right. Something didn't click, but if they followed the rabbit hole, maybe they would get the answers they were looking for. And if he was willing to put it all on the line for them, maybe they should do the same.

"I can't speak for my friends," she said. "But I believe you. I will work for this program that you have."

"Thank you." The PM braced himself for what was going to come. He stood back up with everyone else.

"But."

If she was doing this, then she was going to milk them for all they were worth.

"I was told earlier I would get the equivalent of a Todai degree. I want your reassurance that this will happen."

"Of course."

"Next, my mother pays reduced taxes for the rest of her life, and her pensions guaranteed."

"Done."

"I get a pension, starting immediately and paid out every quarter with adjustments for inflation. I want health insurance, paid for by the government. I want to be exempted from all taxes, barring sales tax. I want access to all government facilities, access to all government databases, free flights on all Japanese airlines, free public transport card, free utilities, a guaranteed admissions to Keio University after I get out of this program, an apartment guaranteed in the city of Hino, a country villa in Shirakawa, and a library card that is good at all libraries including universities that never expires."

The PM's aides were scribbling as fast as they could.

Lita and Mina stared at Amy. They didn't know half the stuff she was talking about.

"Uh…I'll have what she's having," Lita awkwardly said.

"Me too," chimed Mina. "But I want a driver's license. And if I get a parking ticket, I don't want to pay it either. "

Amy rolled her eyes at that one.

"Done, done, and done. I assume that you two are joining this program then?"

"Yeah, sure," Lita said. "Since we can't go back, might as well have something to tell when I get older."

"I'm kind of excited," Mina said. "I've never shot a gun before."

"Very well then." The PM was relieved that this was working out.

"What about Serena and Raye?" Amy thought of those two, still lying their beds, unable to do anything.

"We'll get to that when they're ready," Kawasaki said.

The PM bowed again and promised that everything possible would be done for them. He shook their hands, thanking them profusely.

It was probably the biggest lie he had ever told in his entire life; and that was saying something coming from a career politician.