This seemed to come out funny, though I'm not sure yet if it's strange funny or hilarious funny. Of course, the fact I wrote this after shoveling a metric shit ton of snow might be why I've been feeling a little funny all week. If this seems off, I blame it on the other four letter S word.

Zero Hour: The Albanian(Vier Und Drei); War On Insert Pronoun Here

(Zero Hour Plus 45 Days: May 6th, 2025)

As she turned her phone back into standby mode, Shino's eyes seemed to glare at something so very far away as she continued, "You see, while we were battling on the rooftop, Nanami was confronted by her boss about a certain something he had discovered about me." Forcing herself to appear calm, even as she privately raged about Kikouka's actions, she smiled sadly as she added, "That sick man attempted to make her see the consequences of her actions. He had snipers on you the entire time, but he tied their hands so that you could take the shot."

The Albanian's eye twitched, and he said, "Well, I can not say that I am too surprised about that. Kikouka Seijirou does have a bit of a reputation in the Great Game as a control freak, and all of a sudden, he needed to worry about the girl who effectively remade his future." He smirked as he played the recording over in his head. "Even so, making her listen to the report like that? A dick move at best."

That drew the amused, expected response, "And backfired horribly in the end. After what happened with Endou, blatantly attempting to cow Nanami?" The girl could only shake her head, "He must have thought so little of his pint-sized powerhouse, trying to break her into his own mold. He certainly never expected her to get a full playback of it."

(Zero Hour Plus 39 Days: April 30th, 2025)

It had been another long, hellish day at school for Shirou Endou. Masterful as she was about finding information about others, her flirtatious attitude around the boys in school made it rather difficult to completely hide her own doings. One of those now rose up to bite Asada Shino squarely in the butt.

One of her long line of ex-boyfriends (or to be more honest, one of her previous flavors of the week) had found out about her trips to Shino's house. He didn't require her devilish powers of observation, he had simply needed to follow her bike the day before, when Shino had gone missing. He saw the other girl show up, he couldn't tell who she was from twenty meters away, but she seemed familiar to him.

Putting two and two together and coming up with Twisted, he had thought up the most amusing rumor to let loose. After all, whenever Endou wasn't hanging off the shoulder of a different guy, she hung around with her two best friends. Combine that with her being with two other girls, and the teen's particularly sleazy thoughts immediately went to a reason he had not been able to keep her.

Endou noticed the others eying her oddly, heard the whispers. She had spread enough rumors herself that she knew the signs. Out came the phone, up went the search on herself, and wide flared the eyes as she saw what had been posted about her by A Nanny Mouse. When she had seen her two thugettes-in-arms, her eyes narrowed dangerously. They had heard about, been implicated by the rumor, and they had not been pleased. "You know the rules, girls. Track him, find him, make him wish we kill him."

Shino herself arrived shortly thereafter, and heard the whispers as well; it wasn't the fault of the teens that she could hear every juicy word about how she was part of a Shoujo-Ai love dodecahedron, and how nobody seemed to know who the mystery girl was. The few visible bruises above the neckline of her shirt only added strange fuel to the fire. Instead of reacting in outrage, she simply closed her eyes, trying to will herself to not hear, and knowing she needed industrial quantities of brain bleach.

Worse still was that a photo recognition program in a JSDF computer picked up on the photo of one Shirotaka Nanami, even with the hoodie she had been wearing. The adaptive programming picked up on it, pinged it, and let a spider search loose on the others involved in the blog posting. Names and dates, pictures, and correlations were wrapped together. The photo recognition program twigged to another bit of media, the slaying of three students in the video of [Laughing Coffin's] final death game by one of the supposed participants of the supposed schoolgirl lesbian tryst. The contents of Nanami's call to a member of the JSDF were logged and cross-referenced with a police report which led to the discovery of fifteen corpses and one pile of cubed human meat at a meat packing plant, in turn leading to the voice recording of Shino's interrogation. This in turn was sent to Lt. Col. Kikouka.

Thus it was that a salacious rumor by a jilted lover with absolutely no basis in fact led Kikouka Seijirou to [Sinon's] identity, as well as a few threats to one of his most important assets. He thought quickly, trying to figure out the best way to protect his investment. The rumor would bite him in the ass, too.

(Zero Hour Plus 40 Days: May 1st, 2025)

It did not take Endou long to figure out who had planted the rumor. A look at the blog's source identified her would-be tormentor, one of her previous indiscretions. Tomorrow the three would retaliate, after Endou looked up the proper background while Rika and Tomoe followed the little piece of filth to take pictures. It was petty, spiteful, and planned to be a seven-fold repayment in kind.

The three of them planned their little operation shortly after school was out; they still needed to do well enough to get into just the right colleges after all. Thus, when Shirou Endou spotted someone trying to hot-wire her motorcycle as school let out, she was thinking on other things as she approached to try to get him off her bike, instead of doing the smart thing, like call the police.

When the would-be bike thief heard her yelling, instead of running, he slid a little surprise into his hand; when Endou grabbed him to try to force him off (and beat the hell out of him, perhaps some small bit of Shino's activities had rubbed off on her), he made like he was trying to swing a hook at her.

It became quickly apparent to Endou that she did not have that which made Shino so dangerous. She did not have Sinon's skills, her sharp senses, and most importantly, her pragmatism; she had warned the thief, practically announced herself to him. It was only as she ducked that she noticed the balisong he bore in a reverse grip. Had she not ducked, the knife would easily have slid along her neck and cut her throat. Instead, the blade met skin, skull, and then eyes as Endou screamed in agony, dropping and holding her face with both hands.

Moving to finish the job, the assailant never saw the approaching policeman until he heard, "DROP IT!" Instead of doing the smart thing (like getting a paying job instead of boosting bikes), the man turned on the officer, who discharged his taser into the drugged-up crook. Seeing how ineffective that was as the thief continued to advance on him, the cop drew his service pistol. It took six shots to stop him, the would-be thief never noticed the bullets until his body simply would not move anymore.

That was little consolation to Endou; the officer would try to keep her calm while waiting for the ambulance to arrive, with little success. A desultory examination revealed no surprises, Endou's eyes had been horrifically ruined, and she would never see again.

For the plainclothes MP who had seen the entire thing, it complicated life considerably. Endou needed to be brought in for questioning about some incident he was not privy to, but he somehow doubted that the cop, ambulance crew, or doctors would allow him anywhere near his patient. Instead, he called his superior officer who had given him the orders, and said, "Sir, you are not going to believe this, and I know you are not going to like this..."

Kikouka, the originator of the detain order, could only sigh as he listened to the description of what had happened. He had hoped to use Shirou Endou's arrest as one more bit of leverage to get Nanami to hand Sinon over to him on a silver platter. Using just the information he had acquired from the internet spider would expose capabilities he did not want his prize pupil knowing about just yet, the head of RATH might need to use them later. He would have to move quickly in order to be able to make use of the vigilante, he needed an asset not attached to him to do a 'job' for him.

That bastard Sugou had informed him that there were a number of those accursed helmets being used by Tono's organization. He had called to warn him that a connection between Tono and himself could not be allowed to be made, otherwise the connection might spread to RATH as well. As far as Kikouka was concerned, it was blackmail plain and simple, but he would shed no tears at Tono Issei's demise.

That was when his cellphone began ringing the tune to Dragnet, the tone he had assigned to the police organizations he contacted from time to time. His Interpol contact called to give him a heads up on yet another walking disaster in play. They had made an assassin and his apparent target, a certain vigilante.

"I know you had an interest in Sinon, but keep your head down on this one. The Albanian is what is politely referenced as an 'Exceptional Asset', his presence in Japan? Means that Sinon is good as dead."

Kikouka managed to keep a polite tone to his voice until the call ended. Then he stood up, threw his phone at the wall hard enough to break the phone and leave cracks in the stucco, and swept his desk clean while uncharacteristically screaming at the top of his lungs, "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU..."

(Zero Hour Plus 43 Days: May 4th, 2025; Ginza)

"UUUUUUUCK!" Kikouka Seijirou took a long breath to calm himself, he had everything in place, but he was loath to simply waste another potential asset.

He had just heard back from the phone company. Shirotaka Nanami had made a call to a cloned disposable cellphone, no doubt that of Asada Shino. He was now certain that if he wanted to keep Nanami's usefulness to the RATH Project, he was going to need the Asada girl disposed of. Fortunately, he only needed to bide his time with that, The Albanian had been tracking the source of his annoyance with cello case in hand. It was only a matter of time, and two Military Intelligence officers were tracking the entire affair.

A quick call to his pilot slash driver later, and Nanami was on her way to the posh restaurant he had planned for this. Tasteful surroundings might offset the very unpleasant task he had at hand, he was going to need to show the cyborg savant just what keeping Sinon's identity would cost. It was unfortunate, but Kikouka needed to show her there were consequences for hiding things he really needed to know about.

The girl followed Captain Hiraga in, a tight, nervous smile on her lips as she slowly made her way to the table that her mentor was sitting at. Taking a seat, she looked to Kikouka, and asked, "Hiraga-sama told me that you needed me here for an observation. Might I ask what this is about?" Following the elder man's actions, she looked at the menu, eyes widening slightly in shock at the prices.

Kikouka smiled sadly, tried his best to look paternal as he slid his new cellphone into the middle of the table. "You might want to listen to the file I've got loaded on that." He looked to the captain, noticed the pilot squirming a little in his seat as Nanami plugged into the phone, sliding a pair of earbuds into her ears as she hit 'play'.

Hearing the very tail end of Shino's interrogation at the hands of the thugs at the meat packing plant caused Nanami's eyes to narrow dangerously, watching as the Lt. Colonel popped a bluetool into his ear. "Shirotaka-chan, you should have told me straight out that Asada Shino is Sinon. I might have been able to save her life if I had known beforehand."

Watching Nanami's eyes widen, her mouth open as if to argue, Kikouka knew he had the young genius right where he needed her. "What... What do you mean by that, Kikouka-sama?" whispered she, before her mentor tapped a control on his watch to turn the audio over to the play-by-play of the Intel men he had watching the entire thing. Comprehension came quickly to her, as she heard them talking about how the girl had just entered an office building, how the assassin had gone up to his sniping position. The girl's voice kept low, an even tone as she hissed, "What the hell is this?"

Kikouka could only close his eyes as he said, "This is the inevitability of what happens when someone takes the wrong path, Nanami-chan. Sinon pissed off someone with a lot of money, a lot of power, and she is about to pay with her life for that." He turned on the microphone on his earpiece, and said, "I need an ongoing status report, gentlemen. I need to know when The Albanian takes the shot."

The sound of wood being placed under massive stress could be heard as Nanami glared at her boss. "Why do this? Why have me listen to this, Kikouka?" asked she, "What do you want in order for you to stop this before it's too late?" Her voice began to go monotone...

"It's already too late. The moment The Albanian was called here, it was too late." said the man sadly as he continued to listen. "If I tried to stop this now, the only thing that would happen is that he would turn on me, and everyone attached to me, next." He looked over to her, saying in as comforting a tone as he could make, "I'm letting him do this in order to save your life. You killed one of Tono's assets."

A single BANG! could be heard. "That's it, sir, The Albanian took the shot, scope kill, scope kill."

The Lt. Colonel simply leaned back, speaking into his bluetool. "All right. Keep an eye on the scene until the cops get there, do not under any circumstances engage the shooter." He received two 'Affirmative' responses, and said, "This is why I need you to come in to the Project all the way, Nanami-chan. The world is a dangerous, dangerous place, and I do not want to lose your potential too."

Then the situation turned sideways in short order.

(Office Complex)

The two men who had been watching everything go down on orders coming originally from the desk of Kikouka Seijirou had been getting photographs of everything as they spotted something new. The Albanian had made a clean kill, and even now was confirming his kill. Everything had gone as Kikouka had expected it to, until the assassin seemed to freeze on the roof as he looked down at the corpse he had made. "Sir, something's up, The Albanian is taking it very careful..."

They watched as he dropped his phone, reached for his pistol. They took photos while watching the situation, and saw the Skull Mask emerge from the shadows, saw the Albanian duck, weave, and then finally take a few rounds solidly, saw Sinon step forward and continue to fire until she had emptied her clip into her target, saw him fall over the side of the roof. "Holy. Shit. Sir, you're not going to like this."

Over their radios, they heard a tired, "What happened this time," almost as if the man had been resigned to something going haywire. The two soldiers looked at each other, shrugged, and the radio man said, "Target Sinon just walked out of the shadows and dropped a full clip into The Albanian. If the bullets didn't kill him, the fall did."

They heard laughter from a teenaged voice over their radios, then the Lt. Colonel saying, "Well. Great. See if you can get up there, find Sinon, and bring her in if possible."

The two men looked over to the building, and the man not on the radio said, "Hey man, if you don't make it back from this, I've still earned the right to date your sister." As they opened the unlocked door into the office complex, the two were assailed with the coppery tang of spilled blood, the scorched scent of fired nitrocellulose, and the first eight of the thirty bodies they would find on their way to the roof. "Jesus. It's an abattoir in here, sir. I'm counting eight bodies in the entryway alone." His partner closed in on each body, just to make sure it was dead, and found five different round sizes. "Damn. I think she offed them with their own guns. Just look how far spread apart the casings are."

The two noted the positioning of the corpses as they made their way up, apparently Sinon's shot selection had gotten sloppier as she climbed the stairs to the roof access. Multiple rounds, different guns, blood everywhere, she had left signs of a massive struggle. "I just thought of something. Why would she have taken a lower shooting spot to snipe from?" asked one of them, the other simply shrugging, the scene simply didn't make sense, as if it had been cut from some bad 80's action flick.

As they burst through the door to the roof, they saw the cloaked form of their primary mission running for the side of the roof, carrying a cello case of all things as she jumped off the side. Seeing the rope sliding down behind her, the two spotted the ring she had attached part of the rope through, saw the RGN hand grenade it was attached to, and did the only smart thing: They ran like hell back through the door. "Well shit..." asked the one with the camera after five seconds, "Think that was a dud?"

The explosion a second after the words left his mouth earned him a slap in the back of the head, "What were you thinking, saying that!" The one with the radio waited a full ten seconds before walking back through the ruined roof exit. "Sir, you're going to like this even less. Objective Sinon has left the building. I repeat, Objective Sinon has gotten clear of us, and after seeing what she did here, I suspect you just had us piss off an exceptional asset."

(Ginza)

'No, no, I think I just pissed two off.' thought Kikouka as he looked across at Shirotaka Nanami, whos grin looked positively venomous. "All right, get out of there and prepare your report." said he, deflated. 'Well hell. What else can go wrong today?'

The call ended, and Kikouka moved to take his phone back, when he noticed what port Nanami had plugged into. The audio port was open, she had been using one of the bus ports... "Oh no." Her lips softened somewhat, turning to a serene smile as she unplugged from his phone. "Shirotaka-chan... Just what did you do?"

"You might want to take a listen to the file I just loaded on this," said she while tapping her modified AMUSphere. "You should have told me you were a snake. I might have been able to save your career if I had known beforehand." The teenager's glare softened, and she spoke slowly, seriously, mirroring what Kikouka had said earlier, "This is the inevitability of what happens when someone takes the wrong path, Sei-chan. You pissed off someone with a lot of information, a lot of power, and you are about to pay with your career for that." She paused for a moment, a finger touching her lips as she seemed to think, before she added, "If you're talking about Ghoul, though, I didn't gank that gutter trash, though I most certainly wish that I had."

Kikouka's eyes widened, narrowed, and calmed as he figured out what Nanami had in mind. 'Great, I'm about to be blackmailed by a fifteen year old girl,' he thought. Putting on his game face, "I assume you want to make some kind of a bargain then, in exchange for that recording not going to those who do not need to hear it." He could only hope Nanami was in the bargaining mood...

The cyborg said, happily and in a conversational tone, "Well, for starters, I'll have the strawberry torte, as well as notice that if you ever pull any kind of shit on me or my friends ever again, they'll need a wet-vac to retrieve your corpse." Kikouka had no doubt the girl could make good on that threat, having seen the before and after pictures she caused to too many terrorists.

"Next, I need you to retroactively OK the use of the Medicube for Shirou Endou. If it hadn't been for the information she provided, right now I would be leaving Ginza in a police car, and you in a hearse." Nanami smiled sweetly as her boss nodded his assent; it was not like he could refuse her, though he did note to find out more about the blinded young woman.

Holding up three fingers, the teenager continued her demands. "I wish you had simply asked about Shino, she needs assistance. Now that you've screwed everything up, though, I strongly doubt she'll trust anything you do to try to 'help' her. Instead, when this entire mess is over, I'll need you to contact Mental Health, and let them decide who would be best to help keep her from turning into more of a killer than she's already become."

The officer in a fine suit nodded, and said, "That's perfectly reasonable." He also knew exactly who to talk to; several psychologists would work perfectly for what he had in mind. Shino would end up a more controlled soldier after they were done with her. "Wait, you mentioned a mess."

The fourth finger came up. "Yes. You know the HAW design I worked up, and showed you? It's ready for use, I'll need you to sign off on both it and the Warsaw Pact arms that the students swiped from those Red Army assholes. The reason for that is..."

The thumb popped up, and Shirotaka Nanami's grin turned feral. "Asada Shino is not going to stop until Tono Issei is dead. He's the man who let Laughing Coffin run free, who profited most from the videos made of their death games, and who forced her onto the path she now follows." Her eyes narrowed, and her voice ran bitter, "In the end, he's responsible for my getting maimed. I know I wouldn't have invented the harness if that hadn't happened, but I suspect I wouldn't have gotten that taste for something bad if he'd reined his bastard grandchild in. His syndicate also supplied the meth that the jackass that blinded Endou was high on."

She seemed to gauge Kikouka as she finished her demands. "In short, the three of us want to rip his works apart down to the flagstones, to gut his organization so that it never rises again, to put an end to that man before he can ruin any more lives."

In that moment, Kikouka heard the Halleluiah Chorus going off in his head, this had been unexpected, but very very welcome. He smiled, and said, "I will need to see what I can do regarding those, Shirotaka-shi. The kind of repercussions from what would essentially be an army-supported hit job would be enormous." He paused to think for a second, "There would need to be a rather massive justification to say yes to that..." Not that he wouldn't manufacture one to get the job done, now he just needed to be careful not to get Nanami caught in the gunfire of a battle, the backlash that might cause.

The girl's face went serene as she pulled out a tablet with the explosives purchases Endou had found, sliding it over to her bastard of a boss. "What would you do if I told you Tono's majordomo hooked The Heartbreaker up with a weapons dealer? Would that justify the use of lethal force?"

Kikouka's jaw dropped and his eyes widened. Nanami had just gift-wrapped the solution to his Tono problem. "Nanami-shi, I think you have just successfully green-lit your War on Terror."