Manifest Destiny (To Be Rewritten)

by BlueWay

"War is the motherfucking answer." - Cpl. Josh Ray Person, Generation Kill

26. 2-7: An American War

A/N: Nothing much to say for this chapter save for this: I want to hear what you have to say about it after you're done reading it, because I know the next episode is released very soon, and it'll be the scenes I depict here.

Anyway, review responses.

To all of you referring to Faust's Story - It is. I'm bound not to say whether or not that rough draft is as is, because chances are it was just an experiment between the two of us of how we'd write a final show down, but don't take any of that too seriously. It stands for something more than just an event. It stands for an inevitability past a certain point.

It might not even be Rory as you guys are guessing. There are more than one apostle out there, remember.

In Here We Go Again, Emerson is a bit older, a bit more concrete in his identity as a soldier. He is what an Operator should be, contrasted to how he is here. An "ideal" version of Emerson, perhaps.

Rear Mirrors - I'm not sure what you're talking about with the senate thing, but I'll address Blackburn. Blackburn is a character donated to this story from Riptide for his participation in helping me build the timeline and his tie-in story to Manifest Destiny. As for the naming and his girlfriend, take it up with him, but I only realized that they were Battlefield names after the fact. As for the dream context, well, read Here We Go Again and it might get to that point.

Krulla Chief - China actually invaded North Korea to the north and made it to Pyongyang according to my history, otherwise they didn't put any forces south of the Daedong River, as is the actual Chinese plan (refer to OPLAN 5029). The Air Force did start fielding Lightnings (Noelle flew one during the conflict), as for the Navy, perhaps. I'm not too literate in Naval operations and I haven't played that game. I'm more of a Wargame Red Dragon sort of strategy player.

Whatdoiputhere - Valentine will have his redemption.

Bongos - Thanks, but I don't exactly understand.

In general - Maybe I'm borrowing from Kojima...

Just a teensy bit.

Also be aware some of the line breaks aren't working. Also go check out that RP that's happening in FF net's first GATE forum, should be interesting. I might pop in.

---

Section 2-7

Posted on 1/14/16

---

Pure, stinging bile. That was what had erupted from Masterson's stomach as he and Bannon were crumpled over in the bushes. Bannon had been trying to settle her counterpart, but nothing could stop his pain as he realized what he had done to that man.

"Why the fuck- Was that really needed?!"

Bannon had simply rubbed circle into Masterson's back as he had taken a full realization of what he had beaten a man to do.

"Cam, hun', come on, I'm supposed to be the one puking."

More and more Cam had heaved, uneasy, unsure of what had happened. Killing people was just fine, that was the inevitability of his job. It hadn't been right or wrong, he just knew he was going to do it, but torture, making suffering for so long, that hadn't been right.

"Cam. Cam. Come on, pull together here."

"Well shit, Lisa, I know that bastard deserved it, I saw that corpse pile in the basement, but, but- I don't know how you and Emerson can do that."

"It's not easy."

They had a reason. They saw the reason. A reason more real than just dead bodies. The slaves had been Emerson and Bannon's reason to not let up, to deal with it, to keep beating in his face until he spilled more than blood.

Bannon rubbed her sleeve over Masterson's mouth once, bringing him up, bringing him in, arms around and her forehead in the cranny of his neck. Their weapons never left their hands, however one had been open to hold each other's.

It had been just for a second but their palms had been red with blood and ran between their interlocked fingers. Minus the blood it had been almost like their first meeting again, in that motel in a Texas far away. This time it had been Masterson that was conflicted, breaking down.

"Hey, dumbass couple, captain wants you on the balcony in five."

The two had shook themselves apart as one of their Rangers had caught them. More specifically it had been one of Masterson's.

"Yeah, thanks Tony." he had said, conscience of himself as he had seen his bloody mark on Bannon in the embrace.

Bannon had turned away from the man entirely as Masterson wiped his hand on his pants in realization, trying to make sure he hadn't looked like a horror show in day light.

The Ranger had stayed there as he had seen his team leader be basked in the new clarity of the day, a reflection almost.

They had worn the kit and uniforms of the Rangers of old, crossed with what the 7th MEU could give: and what that had meant was that their BDUs and MCCUUs had been of a desert camouflage, their vests and kit a woodland pattern from the Cold War. It hadn't been the more refined, advanced plate carriers and rigs that they had expected to use a long time ago in training, preparing to deploy in a normal world north of the Taedong River or in the arid territory of Mexico.

During the early stages of the Iraq War the Marines, then suffering from a logistical mix-up in during the buildup before stepping off, had been issued woodland camouflage to invade the desert country.

Here with the retrograde of equipment and arms, the Marines and the Rangers had found themselves in the déjà vu of another invasion. Granted this time it had been the reverse: they were issued desert camouflage mostly with a few spatterings of woodland to "invade" a Mediterranean region.

The colors, the fabrics, had not been kind to red and blood painting them in splotches and spray, however hopefully that had been the only déjà vu carried over from the Iraq War.

Contrasted against Bannon's relatively clean form, the Ranger had seen himself how he looked after breaching so many doors and shooting at point blank.

"Movies always tell me this would be loud. But nah, it was rather quiet, I think." the man had ran his gloved hands through his beard, dust coming from it. "No one ever told me how gruesome it could get."

Italica, as life threatening as it was, had been impersonal: too large in scale to feel private. Private, man to man work was what special forces usually worked with; what all of Hitman had been promised when they signed up as Rangers either from out of civilian life or from out of the Army already. Not the monstrosity of armies clashing and the sound of thunder that resounded through worlds and history.

This little VIP hunt had been different. It was what they were trained to do and they had done it for the first time, walking through the red mists they made.

Doing it had felt so right, but no one had told them what the long fall after the battle had felt like: the relief that they were alive, that they could've been killed as Loke had demonstrated with her stabbing.

Masterson had looked at the same damage he wore be put on the Ranger before that found the two of them, both of them looking each other up and down, their boots and laces crusted slightly with the dried remains of whatever they had been stepping in after a point in that battle.

Masterson reeled himself back in as he smelt the aroma of death, realizing it came from him. "Well this shit ain't good for the skin, I'll tell you that." he tried to smile uneasily.

Tony hadn't even tried to hide his lack of enthusiasm. "Think that Navy guy got the showers set up back over there?"

"Nah. I don't think so Tone… might bring 'em here though. This house was almost as big as my ma and pa's."

"Yeah? Well I owned several houses this big once."

"All of them were in China and no one ever bought them, Lisa."

"I'm so glad you remembered…"

---

D-Day + 47

Falmart – The Imperial Capital – The Bessara Estate

---

Emerson had let the blood stay on his knuckles. A habit of one too many matches immediately after the other in the colosseum. His palms had stained the white wood of that balcony, looking at the Imperial sunrise over the capital, the dragon riders out for their morning rounds as the bodies from last night's skirmish had seemed to sink into the ground with the morning light.

Slowly those bodies had been picked up by the new prisoners of the Bessara family and their surviving guards.

That was their punishment: to take them, strip them of their armors and weapons, and brought into the house with the rest of the corpse pit in the basement.

The alternative was to be cast out into the street to die. It was only because the Rangers had patrolled the walls the populace of Akusho hadn't started pillaging the estate.

As they had understood it from the Son of Lies. Masterson would come to know how easy it was for people like him to have a title as Emerson did, and he would owe that to the Italian.

Unsurprisingly Emerson had been smoking as his two sergeants joined him, leaning on their newly claimed balcony.

"Bessara was one of the larger crime lords in this area." he started, pocketing the e-cig into one of his vest pockets. He only pulled out a real cigar in turn, lighting it as if he had been smoking all his life. "Owned a good forty percent of the slave population in most of Akusho, along as holding some contracts with a few senators for their own personal fuck slaves."

Those documents had been in a few lockboxes at Emerson's feet, Bannon nodding satisfied.

"Gonna set them free?" Bannon's voice had almost sounded clear with her hopefulness.

"All at once?"

"You can't?"

"If we do that we'll plunge this district into Civil War. I know many slaves who promised to butcher their owners when they would be set free. It's no wonder why many of them are under lifetime contracts then…" he looked at Bannon's one despairing. She wanted so badly to free them she had basically vibrated in her own skin. It took all of her self-restraint to simply stay on guard at the PX and not go out into Akusho to free them all from the markets around. "I have a solution for now, however."

"Please, do tell sir." Masterson had said, using his hand to wave off one of the prisoners to get back to work.

"I give these to Blackburn and he holds a lotter each day for four or so slaves. Seyton and Samnu will then handle the rest, I've been actually training them to handle smuggling the free men and women out to the Corridor."

"So you were planning to have them walk back?"

"No, I presume that they'll be supply shipments back and forth. They can ride those out."

"Better than nothing I guess…" Bannon had mumbled.

"Right. Also we got the location. I radioed back to RCT1 and Major Higaki and he says he'll handle it."

Masterson squinted is eyes at the phrasing. "Handle it?"

"His exact words."

"Rather ominous in my opinion."

"Yeah as long as Bessara is still alive, I think I can prevent anything from going wrong in this district."

"I presume crime isn't any different here than it is in Mexico with the cartels?"

"Yeah. When a boss goes down the assets and personnel shift to the bigger one."

"I have a feeling The Italian will be the only one standing at the end of it, and he will answer to us."

"What makes you think he will?"

"He's in that pit of bodies too. I'll keep him in there for a few days and when he says he'll listen to us, I'll let him out."

"Sounds… harsh."

"It was either that or threaten to kill his family, and you and I both know you wouldn't let any of us do that."

The stories of the Coalition of the Damned, and the Damned 33rd, had still persisted today. The Rangers had reeked of that legacy whether they knew it or not. "Shit, you sound like Walker." Masterson had said tiredly, only now realizing he hadn't put his rifle on safe. A flick of his thumb had fixed that. "I suppose he would be proud of how we fought last night. Actually felt like I was using his training."

Bannon and Masterson had been one of Walker's first cadets, however ever since then the Army had began to notice his brutal training tactics and reeled him back. It wasn't enough for him to not step in when he saw would be Rangers with "potential".

"I'm only a little jealous." Bannon's contemplation had been soft, looking down at her unused rifle and flicking the safety on and off.

Emerson tilted his head toward her. "If RCT1 botches their takedown of the crime lords, you're on deck then Bannon."

She had nodded happily, running her hands over the woodwork of the balcony. "Blackburn was bitching about how he needed a bigger place for an embassy for the Japanese and us." she had seen the building from the UAV feed. The civilian part of her had evaluated it just as much as her military part had done. Her parents had this type of walled off mansion at the foot of one of Montana's many mountains. A good to honest mansion, not a McMansion that still existed in America's slowly recuperating suburbia.

Bessera's estate had stood in defiance over the filth of Akusho around it, much like how America and Japan would when they established the embassy here, she thought. She couldn't but help to feel a little snobbish thinking of it like that. It reminded her of her own parents.

The slow fizzle of the cigar had burned up with the smoke, Emerson following it up into the sky as he had ran his other hand on the wood as well. "I don't know how the hell I'd ever live in a house this big."

Masterson had been more attentive to Emerson's feelings than most. He had known him better, almost as family at that point a year plus in. He had seen the slight furrow in his brow and the cringe on his mouth. He didn't like what had transpired before him and what he had saw in relation to Bessera. Perhaps it had only because of his ugly deeds which he had seen daily for the past month, or maybe because he had never done anything about it out of fear of blowing his cover, but still it had upset the man. Conversation always did him good.

"It takes some getting used to, Kay." Masterson had said as he remembered how he used to live as a child. His nanny would often play hour long Hide and Seek sessions with him in the grand expanse of his parent's house.

"Well I don't even think I own enough stuff to fill even one bedroom." Fact of the matter was Emerson had only owned that much for his small bedroom back in the Bronx apartment his family had lived. The cramped living conditions he had lived in had been no doubt the reason he spent more time roaming rooftops as opposed as trapped in a room no growing boy could grow up as best he could in.

Masterson had patted Emerson's back roughly. "Everything I ever owned before I joined up fit inside my backpack and my chopper's saddle bag sir."

Bannon shrugged as she had remembered her beloved pickup truck. "I think most of my stuff is still in my truck bed, assuming no one broke into that storage park."

"Well if they stole your shit, my shit is stolen too… hey Kay, you don't think we could send some of our stuff over to your place next time we're stateside?"

A smile, a smirk, some bubbly young voice as Emerson shook his head and put out his cigar for later. "I wanted to take you guys to see my family anyway. Whenever I talk to Mom she always wants to hear about you guys, seeing as you take care of me or some ridiculous shit like that."

"Aw shucks. Course we're gonna pay you guys a visit one day… maybe I can win your family over so me and Bannon can find an actual house to live in again."

"My Dad works for the VA actually so I don't think he'd have a heart to turn you down."

"That'd be…. nice." There was a lie in Bannon's thankfulness. She had the money now supposedly to live alone, dumped into her account via the cut she got from Lelei, however she couldn't buy family. She couldn't leave the surrogate she had found for that crucial part of the human condition. Not again. She rubbed her compromised eye against Doc's advice. It had gotten irritated during certain moments like these. "Your orders, captain?"

The distant roar of a dragon had spoken before Emerson could, all of them looking out toward the capital and remembering where they really were. "Sergeant Bannon, I want you to stay here with both Team One and Team Two and keep patrolling these walls. No one in or out without my permission."

"Yes sir."

"Sergeant Masterson, I want you to escort both Doc, Loke, and Ramirez back to the house, alert Blackburn he has his embassy location and stay on site with Itami. I'll join you before midnight to check up on ya, alright? No fooling around with Kurata."

"I'm more Anime than manga anyway, sir."

"Good…Dismissed." the two sergeants had turned away after they straightened their shoulders and held their faces straight, acknowledging his orders, Emerson nodding in response. He had croaked out one last thing before he continued smoking. "Nice job last night Cam." the man had paused as he winced. He didn't think the same.

---

Falmart – The Corridor – The Officer's House

---

"Why the hell did it take you so long to ask us man?" Warlord 1-2, the "Rolling Stone", had been a rather odd group of Afghanistan War II veterans that made their way into the 7th MEU's armored column weeks before D-Day. Much like the rest of the Warlords, they had all once held positions in the energy sector.

Their tank had been currently in the maintenance bay of Kilgore going through retrofits, and their tank commander and gunner had joined Lieutenant Colonel Noelle that morning for coffee in the Officer's House in the original refugee village.

Naturally Yao and Wilbur had found them there.

"Bigger fish in the pond, Jasper. He was able to half hook one a few days ago." Noelle sipped on his coffee after Delilah had all so politely filled in his mug, a little more seductive leaning forward with her form tempting the men. The Officer's House had been both her home and a favorite of the NCOs and COs of the Special Task Force. Perhaps it had been because Delilah had been so friendly (and willing to show that friendliness), but the food had been good enough and the furnishings comfortable.

"Did we hook you?" Yao had asked. She was the most exhausted out of everyone, most of that exertion out of wanting to ignore the aching knowledge in her head that her clan was still suffering as she had worked a domestic job in the Corridor. It made her feel disgusting selfish, as much as Wilbur had told her otherwise as she had joined him on the nights before his shift was over.

Noelle had put his mug down, the glass making a rather frustrated ding against the even the matted table. "Dammit, course I want to help you, also I wouldn't mind the damn glory of painting a Flame Dragon killmark on my Hornet, but I have to refer my flight plan to the Japanese flight commander and I really can't do much about it."

"Well that's because you consistently break off those flight plans." Corporal Elton's own cup of coffee had barely been sipped at as Noelle had half finished his own, the tank commander throwing a little shade the pilot's way.

"Yeah well they haven't rotated me out yet so they can kiss my ass."

Wilbur had moved his head left and right at the man subtly. "Is this all a game to you?"

There was a little liquor mixed in with the coffee all around, Yao barely finding any comfort in the sugar she had put in hers. "There are some things out of our control. So why bother?"

Noelle had talked like a man who didn't care at all, but perhaps he had been a different man some time ago, before he had to do what he did in Korea.

"Because there are people at hazard here."

"Well my fuckin' job is to put people at hazard on my terms, and the Corps doesn't pay me to just sit on my ass."

"So you do understand what it feels like?"

The corner of Noelle's mouth had tugged as he put his arms on the table and crossed them, shrugging. He wasn't used to living like this, to actually walk among the enemy in his mind when he hadn't been in his plane. Every battlefield he had ever flew over, dropped ordnance on, from the Middle East to Korea, he had only visited; been a visitor. His usual air base had been miles and miles away usually from the front.

The other tankers too had felt something wrong with it. "I don't like it either. The locals are getting too uppity about worshipping the tanks. I'd rather us be moving somewhere. Hell, maybe even go off on a recon missions like the RCTs and the Rangers did when we were first here."

"Go out in an Abrams for a recon mission? What kind of nonsense is that?"

"Just sayin'."

Noelle fidgeted. "Truth be told the only reason why me and my squadron are flying is because we just need to burn fuel for more stuff to come in… Blackburn "smuggles" some supplies with the fuel shipment."

"How you know?" the tank commander asked.

"The Ell-Ay-W system came in with the last shipment, got it mounted on the AC-130 right now I think."

"Ah. Wish we got our point lasers back." Elton had remarked on the M1A5s defense systems as he lost himself of the thought of how many times that system had saved him from ATGMs during the Forever War that had been in the Middle East. "Me and Jasper here have been sitting on our ass too admittedly, ever since they brought in the tank we don't actually have any standing orders or anything. My driver and loader are back at Ginza actually, and when the MPs questioned them they weren't actually supposed to be anywhere, so they're still over there."

"You sound jealous boss." cigarettes, coffee, and cereal had been what brought the gunner awake in the morning.

"I'm just tryin' to catch up on sleep, is all." he ran his hand through matted hair, his own cape draped across the back of his chair. He had also been knighted by Myui much like Wilbur due to his position as tank commander. "Unlike Wilbur here, this tank commander doesn't have something to occupy himself. My damn mind keeps going back to Italica."

Wilbur's face had blanked for a second, remembering what all of them had been through together with the other tanks.

He had his own personal crusade going on, but he didn't forget that he was a Marine.

"You alright?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'll be fine. Ain't nothing I haven't dealt with before." he had rubbed his neck down from his hair, looking at his reflection in the coffee as Noelle looked out the window to the rather nice day forming. It was flying weather. Both his hands had cupped his mug as he pointed at Wilbur. "The time table for all of our maintenance are already pre-set, Wilbur. And I know the engies are already overworked helping out with the Seabees…"

Kincaid had tipped his head up from his cereal, eyes wide as the trade of thought his tank commander had had hit him, the man hitting him on the shoulder to no effect. "Oh come on Parker, don't give them any ideas."

"I'm just sayin' if somehow 1-3 disappeared out of thin air, no one would mind for a week until Sevson realizes he's missing a tank… and even then you might be able to get back in time."

"It took me a week to travel here on foot…" Yao said quietly, knowing before Wilbur what Corporal Elton was implying.

"And because Rolling Stone is currently in the garage, Italica's western view to the plains is more or less uncovered. I hear if you take those plains out for some time you should be able to get out of range of any Special Task Force elements and be able to go on a little adventure before someone got nosy…"

Noelle licked his lips. He really did want to help. "And perhaps I could tell you that the aircraft are under direct order to not go outside the designated AO, we have to cease, if that so happens to be the case, to chase a few missing soldiers."

"Is that so…?"

Wilbur and Yao had squeezed each other's hands tighter as the details had been coming forth, more hope coming from their eyes. If only Hitman could come that'd be the icing on the cake.

They hadn't even remembered when their hands had found each other's.

Delilah's ears had been liable to twitch if she had been listening to anything, and seeing as they had been the only customers in that corner of the House at that moment, Noelle had lifted his index finger to his lips. He had been suspicious of the bunny woman. He had been suspicious of just about every local for that matter, but Delilah had really stirred his gut feeling regarding that.

"Got no idea what you're talking about." he had said.

The Officer's House had also been where the Rose Order had spent their days translating documents for Pina. Most of it had been cleared material, but ever since Hitman had caught them smuggling some of the modern world's history back a closer eye had been kept on them.

Not everything could be caught however.

Not everything.

Crying, a shock of horror, puking and derangement. Tired and drowsy heads had snapped to the conference section of the building, a very stunned Bozes having come out. One hand had been at her mouth, other grasping a folder of papers.

Noelle had shot out of his seat, the holster over his pilot jumpsuit, his M9A3's holster being habitually unlocked. Yao had gone over to Bozes first, speaking the Lingua Franca before Delilah could, she dropping off a few items at a table of other soldiers.

Wilbur and Noelle hadn't been as literate in the Lingua Franca as Hitman or RCT3 were, and they didn't understand the fast burst of conversation between Bozes and Yao as the latter had collapsed on her knees, letting go of the folders as if it had been the damning weight that it was.

She had been disgusted, distressed, and horrified as Wilbur had walked up, a hand out.

That hand had immediately been slapped away as Bozes had stared at him straight in the eye and called him something not many people did. And she used it as if they were accursed words."American."

He raised both his hands up defensively. "What?" Only Itami, Tomita, and some of Hitman had known what Bozes saw through the virtual reality goggles in Tokyo.

She had nightmares. Horrible, gruesome nightmares. Nights when she woke up to children melting on top of her with a mushroom cloud in the background, and she could do nothing as she was engulfed by it. Images of her capital burned to glass and everything she had ever held dear.

Tomita had often shared a bed with her nowadays to comfort her almost immediately after she woke up.

The way she had clung to her bodyguard in Tokyo, the person who had been so protective of her despite the nations of their birth, she had appreciated that beyond words.

Especially beyond words during wordless nights filled with more groans and moans that had been the fear of every regulation respecting military commander.

Yao had only answered for her however, Delilah walking by and also grabbing onto Bozes as she threatened to stare a hole right into Wilbur and Noelle's face with her own pale features, made ugly by an anger Wilbur had never seen before.

Delilah had slowly puller her away from Yao, saying that she would've taken her to her room to settle down, however Bozes had never stopped looking at Wilbur or Noelle as she was dragged away into the hall.

Noelle had been quick to pick up the folder that Bozes had dropped on the ground as Wilbur and Yao traded questions and answers of what had just happened.

It had been a biography he had discovered, and it was stamped with a clearance record that even he as a Lieutenant Colonel did not have. And yet still he looked as Wilbur and Yao both stared with him, Yao phonetically sounding out the name that Bozes had translated before she read the details of the evacuation of Dubai.

"May-jor Mah-tin Walk-er."

The two tankers had looked at the folder and saw the classified stamping over it, they quickly taking back the rest of their coffee and laying it on a table. Kincaid had patted Wilbur's shoulder on his way out.

"We'd wish you luck English, but this shit is way above my paygrade."

---

Wilbur had more than subtly told Noelle to follow him as he had dropped Yao off at work, the elf nuzzling her nose into both of Wilbur's cheeks before she had went off to her current job as a master craftsman. The Corridor had accommodated more than a few furniture stores with the perpetual buildup of housing, however Yao had also been a popular grip maker for weapons.

"You're getting rather cozy with that elf there, Alton, and not in the Itami-Chuka kind of way."

"Hmph? Well, I've never had a girlfriend before so I can't really tell."

Noelle had furrowed his black eyebrows at the man, his rank had made him a part of the command staff. "I'm trying to tell you I disapprove, tanker…. anyway, what the hell did you bring me out here for?"

"Sev didn't tell you to get out at breakfast the other day. How'd it go?"

"Hazama's pressed hard on him to expand the AO, just so the JSDF could get their hands on those resources. It's a lot of back and forth about creating another Iraq here. Literally that's the entire argument both of them are using. JSDF says this isn't an Iraq, we're saying that we might accidently create one."

"Well technically the Japanese claims this land, right? They're free to do what they want."

"Sure. You can also believe that North Korea still exists, just tell that to National Geographic so they can rewrite the map again."

"I'm just saying there's a shiteload of the good stuff in Elbe and up north near the desert according to the probes. All of it untouched. Scientist told me once they'd need another world to support our society's consumption of natural resources. Well here it is and the Japanese got it under lock and key."

"And here the rest of the world is so desperate we're making everything green, which isn't a bad thing, and trying to dig up Kuwait. Seems unfair, almost."

"Which is why I heard some of the mechanics and engineers have been sidetracked to teach about natural resources to the learning classes right now, right?"

"Wouldn't want the Japanese to have their treasure too easily. That just wouldn't sit well with the rest of the world."

"I don't like the thought of drilling again, you know?"

"Yeah, I hear you…"

"You gonna do anything today?"

"Well for one, I'm gonna burn these papers. For two, I'm gonna go dig around and see where the fuck those knights are getting this info from."

"Gonna take it up with Overlord?"

"Nah, I'll do it independently… Don't know why the Rose Order would want to know who trained a good part of the Fourth Ranger Battalion."

"So, we never saw it?"

Noelle had taken a cigarette out and put it between his lips, lighting it first and taking a drag before looking at the papers before him and running through it one last time. Pilots tended to have photographic memories by training, remembering mission plans literally on the fly. All Wilbur had seen was a blur before the lighter had again sputtered out a flame and lit a corner of the folder, it being cast down onto the gravel street as it burnt to nothing more but a crisp.

"That shit was classified until the 2070s, you say a word about it and we'll have some explaining to do."

"Shit has gotten so boring for you gotta now play detective. Crazy Yank if I ever knew one."

"Yank? Shit, I look as much like a Yank as you sound like one."

"Oh how I'm offended."

"Get a move on, super sergeant. Orders."

It hadn't felt right saluting Noelle, but he had been the ranking officer. He did politely, Noelle returning it before turning away to walk back toward the airfield.

---

Wilbur had been good company to Yao, more than good company. She came here in search of a savior, and that had still been her main objective here, however she had found a friend first. A very good friend at that who had been trying his best to become her savior.

For what reasons, he couldn't lie to her: he had done bad to the world he came from and wanted to do something good to make up for it. That and he had thought it right anyway to help her.

Still, Wilbur fought hard and it still wasn't enough.

The one thought that had been always on top of her planning to kill that wounded flame dragon had been one of the first few men that had been referred to her to talk to.

One man had apparently been another dark elf like herself, Emmerson, probably another one of Rory's followers based on his name. He had been wholly unavailable, but he had been one of the people who had rendered the flame dragon as damaged as it was.

The other had been Itami. He had been a man-in-green, not a man-in-tan, and thus he had been able to be much more able to fight on her case as a man in power, a man able to fight her dragon.

He had been with Emerson too, however she knew that he could be drawn away.

She found the how by talking with the tanker she had breakfast with earlier on lunchbreak, the gunner of Warlord 1-2 having wandered in the shop which she worked to browse absentmindedly.

He had been a man of very tan skin color, his hair short, not much older than she had looked. Wilbur had often talked about his fellow Warlords with Lumaban, talking about them with his crewmen. 1-3 had been a special snowflake, not only with the unique configuration of Kingdom Come with its mine plow, but also because Wilbur himself had been making a muck in the higher echelons.

1-2 had been special because they had been the most hardened veterans out of the tank crews. They all had seen combat in the sand box: the most easy going out of all of them on the surface.

The man before her had been a man called Jasper Kincaid, and right now he had been staring up a few swords behind a glass cabinet.

"The blades are provided to us by sword makers on the other side of the Gate, however we make the grips." her introduction was not needed as Jasper spooked himself in a jump, turning around surprised.

Her apron had been lousy with saw dust and ruined with stainer.

"Oh, uhm, hey." he extended a hand and she refrained from shaking it, but only because she raised her palm up and let him see the dirtiness of it. She found a place next to him looking up at the display. "Certainly very nice. I think I'm getting a little jealous of what my tank commander is packing."

"Seems rather fanciful to be jealous of a sword when you wield these things called "guns"."

He had adjusted his glasses as he shrugged. "Nerd like me has to appreciate swords from a world like this…"

"I can perhaps give you a gift if you tell me some information…"

Kincaid had rolled his eyes. He'd seen enough anime to know what that particular sentence had meant. "Oh boy here we go."

"What do you know about Itami?"

"Itami?" he reiterated. "You mean that Japanese guy who was at Ginza?"

"What?" Yao would have no knowledge of Ginza.

"You know, the guy who led his recon team against a fire dragon."

"…Yeah."

"What do you want to know about him? I only know what Wilbur tells me…. that and his favorite three refugees."

"He has a few favorite refugees?"

"Yeah, Chuka Marceau, Madam Lelena, and Police Commander Mercury. They were a few of the first brought back."

"Why are they special to him?"

Kincaid hadn't thought hard about it. "Well he picked them up personally, so I guess that has something to do with it, but god damn he took on a fire dragon for refugees he didn't know jack shit about. Don't know what he'd do for them."

Kincaid had been too focused on the swords behind the glass to focus on what he had been saying, admiring the added designs on the blade like some fantastical anime swordsman.

"Hell, I'm sure once Chuka goes over the edge Itami would do something drastic."

Chuka had been the other side of Yao. Crudely speaking the light to her dark. The tale of two elves with a village destroyed. She had not taken the destruction of her home, her family, lightly. In fact she denied that she had lost her father entirely.

The village she could accept in some way, however her own blood was something else. Yao had known she had seen Itami before, threatening him before Wilbur had stepped in and clashed swords. It had been doubtful she could've won him directly over.

"Would Itami do something if Chuka "goes over the edge"?"

"Let me tell ya' something, Miss Ducy. I lost a brother once, in war. Not day goes by where I don't think about what I'd do to the son of a bitch that did it. But if I did, it'd go beyond what I was trained to do. Beyond what my army wanted, what they would allow."

He had nodded to himself multiple times, justifying what he thought as he saw his reflection in the mirror. The man behind the mirror had been the man he and many other Marines had to live with. He knew what he had done. Then and now.

"I never talked to you, just give me a sword, and make it worth my time." he turned around and she wasn't' there. "Fuckin' locals."

Words from a man who had done this before; in an Afghanistan that tried to be rebuilt as the Japanese had tried here.

The storeowner had come up behind him as he had angrily looked at the Japanese blade molded onto an Imperial handle. East and Western design philosophies made one in a weapon.

"Did you need something?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah, I gave some money to the dark elf you have a few days ago to complete an order, but I can't seem to find her and I wanted to pick up that blade right there."

The orc that had been the owner had crossed his arms as he looked at the blade. It had been a cavalry sword with a few runes imbedded in its handle. "Yao? Did she take your money and run?"

"Uh… nah. Said she just needed to check up on a friend who was in trouble."

"Right. Sorry about this, I'll just hand this off to you now and I'll get the money from Yao later."

---

Falmart – The Imperial Capital – The Devil's House

---

Two visitors of rather important note had come to the Devil's House as the PX continued to run smoothly, both had been met by RCT3 first.

The garden party had its fair share of children brought along by the nobles and senators, among them having been the Tyueri family and one of the youngest daughters: Sherry.

She made a fuss to Suguwara regarding how her cousin had been a bit showy offy with her pearl necklace. Children being children, jealousy had written on her face as she had basically cradled herself into Suguwara's side and begged him to do something about it.

After some nudging by Pina he had given her some sound advice and promptly made the poor girl fall for him, as Pina had told Itami and Emerson later.

Itami himself had been lazily sitting on the fountain and watching the masses of Akusho come and go from this new PX. He had neglected to wear the cloaks offered to him by Hitman, so he had been easily recognizable by Sherry as she had herself a cloak.

Immediately he had been alarmed as she rushed toward him from the crowd of people. "Sir Itami! Sir Itami!" he had stood up and embraced her as she embraced him as children do.

"Eh? What the heck are you doing out here Sherry? It's dangerous for someone as young as you to be out here!"

"I wanted to see Sir Suguwara!" she said as Itami had picked her up and put her on his shoulder.

"Well Sir Suguwara is at work right now… do your parents know you're out?"

What that work had comprised was getting the senate deliberations together and actually coming out and saying "We want peace against the enemy on Arnus Hill as opposed to mobilizing for war."

It was a rather vague discussion filled with fear and those who did not know (for the Doves weren't invited to the garden party), but to even mention the discussion of peace at all and standing down against an enemy was a careful discussion if nothing else.

Zorzal had been quick to start calling for the "American" support, trying to hunt down Emerson and get him to join. However that had been good seeing as he hadn't gone to straight to throwing senators in dungeons for even considering peace.

"Kurata to Avenger, who's the VIP on your shoulder boss?" his earpiece buzzed as he looked over to Kurata on one of the roofs.

"It's one of the senator's children. She was searching for Suguwara."

Kurata had gotten off the microphone as he screamed below. "I like your enthusiasm kid!" he gave her a thumbs up which she had returned. Itami had glowered, but he'd been generally happy otherwise.

He had liked going out in the Corridor in the same way he had been lounging around right now: reading some of his own backlog provided by Risa. Escapism for him had two folds: into the pages of manga, and in another world altogether.

As usual a child had brought him out of it.

He didn't mind, not when he had walked into the Devil's House.

Kurokawa had been attending to Loke on one of the beds. The young woman had always been prone to further injury than her fellow Rangers. She was clumsy in a way, but she wasn't about it to let it kill her as she laid down flat, Kurokawa showing her the blade with which she was stabbed.

It was a kitchen knife. "Not impressed." she had groaned as she felt her head against the pillow, none of the others in use as Doc had rolled over on his chair.

"If you want your broken arm back I'd be more than willing to provide."

As far as injuries in Hitman went, all of them had been from Italica. Bannon's eye loss had been the most debilitating, however Loke herself had broken her arm and Doc had taken a rather large piece of shrapnel to his leg. Most of it had been easily repairable with a few setting and the insertion of morphogenic proteins had sped up the process easily enough, the injuries themselves not as bad as the pain would indicate.

Harris had often boasted in this lieu that he'd been the only man in the Special Task Force who'd been shot: a bolt having made a hole in his shoulder temporarily.

Battle scars were always attractive to have in some sort of unexplainable military mojo which kept soldiers aggressive and looking for ways to gain them.

At least now in Hitman, Bannon had a competitor with her scars with Emerson. Loke had wanted to very much catch up.

"No thanks Doc, but I doubt this is going to make me broke-dick?" Broke-dick being the slang for injuries that would send service members home.

He had looked down to her stomach and then her face with a raised eyebrow, "Why, you looking to get out?"

"Nah, just worrying that it might."

"If that knife pushed about a few centimeters in and to the left you would be shitting in a bag for the rest of your life, but nah, you're fit for service. I just want the bonding agents to set and your skin to close up."

"….Can I get a second opinion Sergeant Kurokawa?"

Kurokawa had precise hands, as per her role in the RCT, and that had led her to rolling the knife's handle over her hand and knuckles into a back hand grip, stabbing the knife into the wall over Loke's head, the woman shrinking into her seats as Doc looked on apathetically. "I'd say some bed rest is good for you."

"Yikes."

"Hey Masterson!" Itami had shouted up into the second floor, he putting down Sherry.

The man had reappeared after the very notable sound of him falling out of bed, his initial grogginess coming out making more than apparent that spending a night awake had not done him good. That and he was killing people. Still the sourness was written off his face after he saw the young child in High Imperial garb.

"Yeah Itami?"

"Kay says you're good with kids. Think you can look after her until Suguwara gets back?"

"You're not Lieutenant Itami?" Doc had chided as he reached into a jar of a hard vitamin supplement disguised as a lollipop, tossing it to the girl's way, she catching happily. She had no idea what it was as she looked it over. Most of the sweets at the garden party had garnered the same reaction around, especially ice cream. None could go back to chilled ice with fruit toppings now that ice cream had been on their tongue. They'd been a top seller in the PX. "It's candy, just take the wrapper off and lick."

"O-keh." she had readily agreed as she was transferred into Masterson's arms. She couldn't have been much older than nine.

"Din't your parents ever tell you to not fall in love with strangers?"

"You should be one to talk Cam." Loke had shot out.

Naturally in the presence of a child he had stuck his tongue out at his wounded soldier, Sherry imitating as Loke threw up her arms, unable to do anything else in her presence.

"My parents told me falling in love with strangers is okay as long as you make them love you back." The way she had said it had been too happy to not make several people frown throughout the room in worry. "That is how you become senator!"

"I think Kay would like to hear that if he ever becomes a politician, anyway, want to see me do magic?"

"Mom says that all magic wielders will eventually become a threat to the state and wants to segregate them from the Empire. But okay, American."

"Uhhh. Alright. My name is Cam by the way."

"Cammy?"

"Just Cam."

The two had disappeared as the two bickered over his name, leaving Itami and the rest just simply staring at the stair way. Doc had shook his head, almost as if arguing with himself.

Kurokawa had dipped her head down to get a better lock at the older man's face. "Something on your mind Decker?"

He scrunched his face as he wiped it over with his hand, leaning back into his chair, those hands running over his bald head. "Nah, nothin'. Just reminded me of a girl that didn't come out of the cancer center when I did."

"Lost children are such a tragedy, don't you think?" Itami had prodded, beating back the impulse to smoke indoors. "Wherever I go nowadays I always see them because of what we're doing here."

Kurokawa had brushed back her bangs as she went back to her desk, opening up the medical logs she had been keeping and disdainfully looking at the age of some of the prostitutes. "You make it sound like we're to blame for them."

Doc had shook his own head as he went back to his own desk and laptop. "Mari, you used to work with the Red Cross in disaster relief. Do you blame yourself every time you lose a patient?"

"Am I supposed to feel good about it then?" there was a little bite back.

"Feel whatever you want, deal with it however you can, but never blame yourself unless you literally slit the patient's throat. If I blamed myself for every mistake I made in my time practicing medicine I wouldn't have been fit as a medical professional."

"God Doc you're such a serious old fart. You want a hug?" Loke had teased the older man. He waved her off.

"No."

"That's why we Hitmen loves you." Loke had come out of college into the service much like Itami. Something of a sorority girl without a dream; no path for her out of college. This hadn't been to say that she hadn't been smart, however she had been more emotional and headstrong than anything else.

"I don't quite understand you man." Itami had pulled up a seat and leaned back. He figured he'd give himself some time off from doing nothing. Doc turned around.

"Doc is a very hard man to understand." Loke had been issued meds, which had been perhaps why she was a little uppity and playing with her hair.

"Usually on purpose."

"But, seriously Doc, you could've been on… how do you Americans say? A "six figure" salary if you stayed civilian. You're not like Bannon or Masterson. You and Kay, even Ramirez up there, you guys had careers and jobs. Nice careers and jobs. Not all this complicated stuff."

"Itami Youji on a six figure salary? Sounds scary."

"Thanks Kurokawa, but still, why?"

"We all have our reasons for joining up, Lieutenant Itami, you have yours, we have ours."

"I suppose I wasn't exactly thinking straight when I joined the military in the hopes of doing nothing then…"

"Ah, Kay was the same way. He joined up just as the Korean War was ending… timed it so he didn't think he'd be deployed into combat."

"Only one of us have seen Korea…" Kurokawa commented. There were a select few JSDF personnel in the Special Task Force that did. They had been the JSDF's first veterans of a foreign conflict in an offensive capacity. They had drawn their first blood in Korea, and that had done something to Japanese nationalism that no one had expected.

Enough so that Japan had been the one skirting Chinese airspace and not vice versa.

"Well, thinking back on it, I feel a bit guilty. Irresponsible." There once was a time where Itami had spent countless weeks reading over manga volumes and doing nothing but analyzing them, taking them into his mind, and living within them (if not arguing with other users on 2chan about them), but that was where he had always wanted to be. Not as a serious soldier.

Doc had appeared at his side, going over to a set up printer after he sent an order for some of his data to be spit out. "Hey, you're serving your country. No one can take that away from you. Besides, job is a job. You gotta pay alimony someway, right?"

"Eh. Guess I'll have to be who I have to be."

The second visitor of note that day had glided in, Tomita having opened the door for her outside, he being posted in front of the house with all his imposing form telling the locals to not mind unless they had business.

"Afternoon, Miss Mizari." Doc had waved toward the angel as Itami had looked her up and down. He had heard Kurata and Tomita talking about her and he had believed everything they said now that the beauty was before him.

One of his squad had been an amateur photographer too, and he had squeezed off more than a few shots of this one for several of the men to squeeze themselves off over later. He didn't deny that it had been happening up and down the Special Task Force.

"Oh wow." Loke had dazed out at the visage of the seemingly holy figure, Mizari standing there, more than making her presence known, a natural glow coming off of her that painted the faces of all their in some peaceful light.

She fluttered her wings once, a slight gust moving through the room as she did it. "Hello Doctor, Kurokawa."

"Mari, can you handle her? I have to run through the STD reports before I shoot them off to Arnus…." Kurokawa had given a thumbs up to Doc as he realized what he had said. Arnus had been an odd name, all things considered. From the Japanese point of view Arnus had been spelled Alnus, and Chuka's name had been Tuka. Either had worked he had figured as he walked up stairs.

He couldn't help but feel that taking these reports of the locals had been a bit illicit in its nature, but he hadn't been one to argue with an officer above major (especially with as much grief he and Kurokawa had given him about Chuka).

Mizari's footsteps had been almost non-existent, as if she really was an angel like the old books had talked about, however Itami as a self-respecting male figure hadn't been entirely focused on her footsteps as she passed him, drawing her own hand across his chin as she disappeared into the privacy divider Kurokawa drew.

More private time for him then.

"Who's the handsome man outside Kurokawa?"

The privacy cloak hadn't covered Loke's bed, so she had naturally heard as she leaned in, all the women doing so. "Is he?" she asked.

All Kurokawa could do was smile as Loke was left to her lucid thoughts of the topic.

"What brings you here Mizari?" she pulled up a stool for her, which she had sat.

"I ran out of those pills you people signed for me." Which had meant she was using them. "I have the money to buy more from the PX, however I need a prescription, they told me. A note like the Doctor wrote for me last time."

During her time here Bannon had been especially sympathetic to not only the slaves, but the prostitutes she had seen. For what reasons Kurokawa could only assume the worst. She would most likely die if she tried to confirm those suspicions by asking either her or Masterson.

However she felt the same for them, if not on the personal level as Bannon seemed to have.

She didn't hesitate to take out her own pad and writer her signature underneath the prescription. "Here."

Mizari had taken it gingerly. "Oh thank you." she had ran her thumb over the imprint Kurokawa signature made. "What a convenient thing this pill promises. I wouldn't be able to work if I was pregnant… then again, some of my coworkers were dreaming about mating with the men here."

"No one has, right?"

"To my knowledge, yes. Still I don't understand how you women are able to work with all of them around all the time, knowing men how they are, of course."

That had been a question the US Military had to ask themselves when the gender wall had gone down and women were able to take on combat positions in the service. The validity of the concerns ranging from physical limitations to fraternization to simple health issues had been put up and down the board in debates and trials in the various branches and held up to the objective light and it was fought against for reasons both right and wrong: liberal, conservative, and progressive.

The women that could had been able to pave the way in general for a greater female involvement to take place in the US military over time: more specifically those who proved themselves able to be held to an equal standards the male service members could. However the issue of gender had melted away entirely when entire divisions had evaporated in the Middle East and America learned how to work with the subject as Russia and Israel did.

The enemy didn't care for gender of the Americans at that point. A dead American was a dead American, and the draft that came to fight those wars against those people had been without discrimination of gender.

That had been how America was able to bridge that gender divide: The Iranians, the North Koreans, the Islamic State, Afghanis, and terrorists the world over had destroyed it for them to the tune of nearly four hundred thousand American combat casualties. A quarter of that number had been female.

The proof had come in the war itself, and it was proven today with every life taken by Bannon, Loke, and the rest of the females in Hitman had fought in the Special Region. The act of killing, the propensity to wage war, was without gender.

Lists of casualties, lists of awards given out, the lists of American criminals of war, had slowly become ranges without divide between man and woman.

"You usually don't sleep with your coworkers." was Loke's answer, and that had been enough for Mizari as she pulled out her pipe.

"Hasn't stopped me."

Kurokawa had looked wearily at the pipe. Mizari had noticed as she lit and took her first blow. "You aren't going to tell me to quit smoking, are you? I heard the Doctor tell me that."

The nurse had shook her head no. "I thought you needed it."

Mizari opened her two eyes and tilted her head at Kurokawa and how knowing she sounded. "So you know what it's like for me?"

"Nope," she smiled as she tilted her head in turn. "But I couldn't do your work if my senses weren't clouded."

Mizari's eyes twitched, Loke hid under a pillow, and Kurokawa simply kept smiling. "Tch," she had clicked with her mouth annoyed. "I hate snotty women."

"I don't want to be liked to begin with."

Faces stretched, tongues were put out, but it had been all in good jest as the two women had realized what kind of faces they were giving each other.

The angel giggled. "Oh, such naughty girls we are."

"We're so much alike." Kurokawa had agreed as Loke had peeked out from under her pillow, Mizari taking one last drag and blowing it at the nurse.

"I'll be off now. I have to work."

The very utterance of those words had made Kurokawa tighten her hands reflexively, as if she had been holding onto invisible strings keeping Mizari from going.

"Mizari." she had said strongly, making the angel stop and look over her shoulder before she could part the divide. "Have you heard of the Arnus-Italica Living Community? The Corridor?" as had been the official name for the giant main street ranging from Italica to Arnus and had sported an uncountable amount of businesses, residential housings, and modern facilities that supported Italica's agricultural prowess at that point into Operation Odyssey Ultimatum.

Mizari had heard the rumors, as did most of the Imperial Capital. It had been no wonder the Empire had put travel restrictions outside the Capital and the other settlements.

The rumors of a land of hope and dreams; safety as provided by a fair and just people, for the people, regardless of species, age, or race.

"It sounds like heaven, but I don't have the papers or the ability to go. I heard that community was highly competitive to live in, and the only special skills I have… is, well…" she flipped her hair as she took a drag. "I'm a whore."

"But if you had a connection-"

The divide had been parted and Kurokawa had forgotten who had been on the other side. Itami had been who he had needed to be, and he stayed silent as Kurokawa's version of Itami had spoken in her head as the real one simply looked down on her with a gaze she had not seen from him often. A purely angry, expecting gaze.

An actual gaze of a man his age in the position he filled.

"What now Kurokawa? Did you mean to say, "If you had a connection at Arnus Hill, would you go?" What are you trying to do? These women support themselves in the life they live nowm and our orders prohibit us from taking that away from them. Even if you disagree with the orders and act out of good will for them, are you ready to be responsible for them? As you were ready to be for Chuka?"

"Dammit lieutenant I am ready for Chuka! But- for these women, if I take them to Arnus maybe we can reeducate-"

"She'll end up at the street at night regardless." and the Special Task Force would not have it.

This dialogue had been entirely internal in Kurokawa's head, but Itami had known, and he had simply held the divider open for Mizari like a gentleman as he overheard the conversation.

"Such a polite man." she had kissed the bottom of Itami's cheek as she went on, leaving only the Special Task Force to fight their own moral battles.

"As Captain Emerson says, their time will come."

Kurokawa had held her chin down, avoiding eye contact as she had relegated herself to how Itami had coldly, rightly thought. "Roger…"

---

The two medics had stood by the window as the night came, having greeted Emerson and a beyond tired Bannon and her Team One along with Blackburn. Apparently they had made great progress with the Embassy, but it had mostly been cleanup work from the battle and relocating civilians on top of dealing with the Italian's screaming from the dungeon.

"Give him another two weeks." had been Emerson's response to that.

Those heavy words from such a young man had brought Doc out to open the window and pull out a cigarette and start smoking, his burnt match under his heel.

"I heard you got into a little staring contest with your CO from Talia, Sergeant Kurokawa." he said as he had blew from his nose, eliciting an odd look from the other medic. She disapproved.

"I heard, or well, I think you disapprove of Emerson locking a man in a basement with rotting corpses."

"Hmph. He's a bit young for having actions like that be on his soul. A little too early for evil to seep into his heart."

"So you know evil?"

"Very intimately." he took another drag, rubbing his free hand again over his bald head. "When I had cancer, I had to realize this: I would have give up everything to kill it. It was either cancer or me. I had to fight years with that sentimentality. Every pill, every iota of radiation, every single cut in my breast was something I tolerated, even if it might've killed me too. Because cancer was evil. Evil was within me. And when I had to face evil I had to face myself, destroy myself, and had to accept I would have to sacrifice everything I had to drive it out of me."

"You've been fighting evil all your life then?" she knew how young Doc had once been.

"That is why I became a soldier, a Ranger. Because I know evil when I see it." he spat out the window, knowing what he saw when he had a glance at Emerson's eyes. "When evil surrounds you Mari, what will you do? Be a soldier? Or be an idealist? A medic?"

"Itami tells me to do nothing at all… You got a stick to spare?"

"Yeah, here." A stick and a zippo had been put out, Kurokawa seizing both as she had, for the first time in her life, put the cigarette between her lips and lit the end. Her first bout of coughing afterward had been predictable, if not making Doc take another drag himself.

"Hyuck- huck, fhcuck!" Doc's patting her back had come with picking up the dropped stick from her mouth and placing it in between her fingers. "First time." she explained.

"It happens."

"Yeah, I guess… I didn't know you smoked Decker."

"I don't." he had stubbed out his cigarette on the window frame and turned away back to his desk as Kurokawa had been left with her own stick burning, her lipstick on the white and very much considering Mizari's own reasoning to smoke. She figured she could use it too. Just this once.

The banging on the door had made Doc go for his Luger with snappiness befit a Ranger, Kurokawa getting her 220 and Kurata pumping his KSG shotgun.

The cigarette once again fell to the floor and stayed there.

"Shit, again?!" Masterson had bumped down the stairs in his underwear, an 870 being one of only two guns he had shown off. The other had been in his underwear. Seyton and Samnu had delivered Sherry back home. They'd been a recognized pair of beasts on Sadera Hill now that Emerson had taken them under his wing. They had come back promptly and been hanging out in the basement with Blackburn, their cold bloodedness lending much to their behavior at night.

Loke could appreciate her sergeant looking like that, however she had been still in bed, her knees against her chest as she had went for her MP5 at the foot of her cot.

"Dammit Cam of all the places to sleep buck naked it's here?" Doc had simply cocked back the Luger as the two medics had taken positions on either side of the door, Kurokawa using her spare arm to slowly open up the door a crack before Doc had simply thrown the door open inward and stood gun up.

Kurokawa had opened her mouth first in surprise. "Mizari?"

She hadn't been alone as Doc lowered his pistol, what used to be an eyebrow on his face raised. "Something…wrong?"

Doc could put a name on most of the faces behind Mizari and her wings, but he wasn't exactly proud at the fact. All of them had been prostitutes.

"...A big guy from this house didn't call for you, did he?" Doc had anticipated the best answer his mind could come up with as Mizari had looked at him dumbfounded as to who he had been referring to, looking instead at Kurokawa.

"We have to talk now!"

Kurokawa hadn't exactly been in a position to say no as she saw the several dozen deep crowd of women.

That ruckus at night had brought a lot of attention from inside the house, Masterson quickly going to find pants, a door leading to the basement in the back of the room going up as Blackburn popped out with two other, albeit more familiar, prostitutes.

He had nothing to say as the group of scantily clad humanoids had scurried in underneath his newly installed artificial lighting, Seyton and Samnu pushing him out as the front doors were closed.

Doc had gone back to his desk and squared himself away, "I don't get paid enough for this shit."

"Yeah? I'd do this for free." Kurata had heard Doc's complaints and thought anything but.

Kurata had something going on with a cat girl from Myui's maid cohort, and it was no secret he did fancy himself some literal tail, so this hadn't been a bad surprise to him in the middle of the night as he held his KSG at ease, many of those women marveling alone at the unnatural light that the installed fixtures provided, Mizari basking in it befit of whatever angel she had been.

Canine, feline, avian, and lizard, there had been all that and more, the biggest and most exotic being a woman whose lower body had been entirely that of a slithering snake.

The stand out to Doc however had been the bunny, one half of her left ear chopped off it seemed. The information regarding the Imperial conquest on the Bunny Warriors had been disseminated by analysts back at Camp Omega, and given first hand testimony that the vaunted leader had been alive in the walls of the Imperial Royalty another complication had existed on top of the peace negotiations. That being the possibility of other nations coming forward from the Special Region with a case against the Empire.

Not many bunnies had been left in the world, and each one had been a rarity, a survivor, of Imperial expansion that Ginza had seen firsthand.

However as Kurokawa had fought with herself earlier no one got special treatment.

"Mmm. That's a really nice light, Kurokawa." Mizari had reached out as if she could touch a ray of light.

"What's going on Mizari?"

Loke had opened up her bed as sitting space for the packed crowd, an avian girl coming to sit directly beside her, she having a blanket thrown over her. Her stench had been a stench of something less than appealing done to her, Loke holding her hands over her should as the avian shook and shuddered.

"Quite frankly, we know what you, what the Father of Sin is trying to do here in Akusho, and in the Capital, however we don't care about that and we haven't said anything about it. That's the secret to survival here, after all: keeping our mouths shut. So understand what we're telling you is important to our survival."

The girl in Loke's arms had sputtered. "P-please! Help us!"

Kurokawa glanced toward her and then back to Mizari urgently, Mizari nodding. "That girl is Tyuwaru, one of our own, she told me she needed to get to you people as soon as possible."

Blackburn had shuffled his way in next to Kurokawa, his silence that of being unsure of what had been transpiring, however Tyuwaru had looked to him as the supposed man of command. Doc had been attending to some scratches and injuries from bumps and trips on the way here, Masterson reappearing with his shotgun, tossing Doc his SCAR.

"Need help with crime or something?" Loke had asked, squeezing her shoulders even more.

"No, no. I've got shivers. Every single spot on my body is just telling me to fly away from here."

Khan had been incessantly barking upstairs, the loud aggressive sound making many of the prostitutes unsure if they wanted to actually step back into the Devil's House.

"What do you-"

"Sheesh! You're too slow!" Mizari had flown out her arm, taking Blackburn by his collar and bringing him close. "I'm saying if you help us now, we'll be yours from now on!"

"Wha- what? Look Miss Misery, I'm a taken man, but please elaborate or we can't help you." Khan had continued to bark on and on and on, Peters yelling at the dog now. "And someone shut that hound up!"

"In my homeland there's a volcano, and whenever it's about to erupt the earth shakes! It's in my bones to know something big is coming!"

Nutt had come down stairs as the rest of Hitman and RCT3 had roused awake, Itami and Emerson making their way down. Emerson's presence had made some of the prostitutes kneels and draw blood again, but it had at least cleared the sightlines for the people who needed to talk to talk as he told them not to do such.

"Captain Emerson, Lieutenant Itami, me and some of the guys have lived through quite a few earthquakes in Cali, this entire place will go down to the ground if Khan's barking says anything about it." the man had darted his eyes across the room, looking at the room, thinking even further out to the capital and Akusho. Tonight, he knew, people would die.

Emerson had looked over to Itami with that revelation.

"We have to go warn Pina." Itami had echoed Emerson's own inner thoughts. "So close to the peace negotiations too. Dammit." he had said through his hand, rubbing his cheeks down in frustration.

The seriousness in Nutt's and Itami's eyes had been infectious. All the Japanese there had seen the earthquakes, the tsunamis, the disaster that had been the Fukushima Exclusion Zone expanding after more earthquakes that had destroyed the nuclear site and putting doubts in nuclear energy as the world's oil industry destroyed itself.

"I want everyone to gear up." Blackburn had shouted out into the crowd and down below to his Seabees, the Naval men immediately bracing the tunnels. "I'll put a call to Camp Omega and Camp Italica… is the major at the embassy location now with RCT1?"

"Affirmative."

"Hey Seyton, Samnu! Hold down the fort, will ya?! I've got the machetes in the box marked knives if you need 'em."

The two scaly voices had called back from the cellar. "Got it!" they were slated to become the PB force commander in Akusho.

"Itami, you're with me and Hitman. RCT3 hold position here; get people into the streets and hunker down until it hits."

Ramirez only shook his head as he gotten himself to the door, trying to ignore who he had to push through. "Same shit! Different day!"

"Oorah?"

"Oorah!"

"Sergeant Kuribayashi, Sergeant Tomita, Sergeant Kurokawa load up and then on me. We're going to the capital."

"Yes sir!"

The rest of RCT3 had been silent, standing still as they all saw the action happen: the preparation for a disaster. Blackburn hadn't been a man of inaction, and he didn't like it happening in his eyesight. "What're you ladies looking for?! Move!" they had all gotten their gear on upstairs in clatter as Blackburn told the prostitutes to wait for them, going over to the radio to Arnus and prepping his voice. "This is Wallstreet to all responding actuals. I repeat, this is Wallstreet to all responding actuals on this net."

"This is Assassin Actual to Wallstreet. Say status. Over."

"Wallstreet. Be advised I've got multiple reports of imminent seismic activity, request possible Medevac flight to be on station, over."

"…Say again Blackburn?"

"I'm saying we've got an earthquake incoming."

---

Falmart - Arnus Hill - Camp Omega - Joint Marine/JSDF Command

---

Six knocks against Colonel Pierce's room in the Arnus CP building and he had known it was Sevson. Another six knocks and he knew it had been urgent. Pierce had been a deep and messy sleeper, and perhaps he had been guilty of abusing his position as the second highest ranking officer in the Special Region to requisition a larger bed for him to roll around on.

Perhaps it had been tossing and turning from dreams of a Korea long ago; his own personal demons unrelated with the military and who he was as a person: a farm boy from Kansas with the dream of military in his eye. He'd left a lot behind in Kansas: family, a good life, a just life. A life he could not live anymore because he had not been the Adrian Pierce that left home at the peak of the Iraq War to join the ranks of another of America's lost generation as the forever wars had started in the Middle East.

It hadn't been Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Iran that changed him so dramatically. He had fought in those wars which buried America's soul and body for the rest of time. That was a burden shared by all Americans at that point. It was Korea that had changed him, that made him one of the only men able to come to this Special Region and speak on behalf of not just the American military, his Marines, but of America and her attitude itself.

He knew war. A war had known him as he made the decision to not reinforce Seoul, but to push into North Korea: undercutting the entire advance and becoming renowned in the US Military as the man who saved the province.

Only after he had been isolated in the middle of a foreign land, outnumbered by millions, outgunned and outmanned, and yet proceeded to kill them all until the Allied forces brought the frontline to them.

In that he knew what Specialist Valentine had felt: he had been awarded a Medal of Honor, even when he had made the decision for his men to die a world away from home against an inhuman enemy.

He felt wrong for taking it, but he had lived with it.

Perhaps his old experiences had been what the Pentagon was counting on in this Special Region.

He had rolled himself off his bed, boxers and t-shirt on. At a crisp forty three years young he hadn't appreciated being awoken in the middle of the night.

Though Sevson would always have his reasons.

"Colonel Pierce." he called for his commander through the door. He had croaked out some guttural noise, making known he was awake as he had thrown on his desert pattern uniform quick.

He put in his fake teeth from their moist container. A North Korean had beat his teeth in with a shovel years ago (before he returned the favor and then some), these had been the replacements. "Yeah, yeah, come in Isaiah."

The door was opened and Pierce had gotten his cap over his head as he turned on the lights to the room. Sevson had been in full combat kit and uniform. The way he had stood in the doorway had made Pierce justify getting his thigh holster and cocking back his .45. "Sir there might be a situation on our hands."

A vest and helmet with Pierce's name had been tossed his way, the man sliding it on.

"Lieutenant Commander Blackburn reported to both Hazama and me that we might have incoming seismic activity from rather reliable sources."

"Well, dip."

"Dip indeed."

Lieutenant General Hazama had appeared behind Sevson, he himself just also roused awake by Yanagida, the two Americans throwing up salute as he had stopped behind Sevson. "Heard the news, colonel?" he saluted them down.

"Yeah."

"Outside the HQ in five. Let my troops handle this, we've been through a few of these things already."

For once Pierce and Sevson didn't worry. The Japanese had been premier at dealing with earthquakes given their homeland. Pierce rumbled, "I know you guys have, just keep me posted Lieutenant General."

The two had waited for the footsteps of the JSDF personnel to fade out down the hallway before they continued. "I think Godfather would appreciate us sending a notice to him, don't want to see the Gate have any damage." Pierce had said tiredly. Most of his words nowadays had been said tiredly.

"I don't enjoy the idea of being trapped on this side if that Gate cuts off for some reason."

"Yeah, well, we got the contingencies and the supplies in place at Camp Kilgore. We'll be able to all live happily until the end of our days if that happens to be the case here."

"I want my life to end peacefully in a hospital in Hoboken surrounded by my family sir, not Rome."

"That's not what you told me in Korea."

Sevson had smiled, leading his colonel and friend out the door and towards the situation room. "True enough."

---

The situation room with all of its monitors and computers on one side the room and its operators on the other hadn't been a well-lit place: mostly of a moody blue tone which kept eyes squinted at screens and headaches constant, however the headaches had come from somewhere else that night as men and women rushed delivering reports and orders across the radios to an exploding Special Task Force.

This had been exemplified by the fact the entire situation room had been transferred over to a thousand laptops and put outside on a compilation of hastily put together tables and a few generators, many of the operators having to stand as soldiers from both the GSDF and the Marines rushed about, deploying into the Corridor and clearing them to the empty, unoccupied clearings on either side of it.

The Warlords had been taken out of their defensive positions and escorted the groups out, all of them save Warlord 1-2.

Warlord 1-1 had been the first M1A3 spec Abrams to come rolling out, A5 features having been more or less jury rigged onto it on top of the A3 base which had upset the Japanese greatly. They didn't like the fact there had been an Abrams with laser point defenses, sloped turret armor reminiscent of the old Leopard 2A5s, and the still highly expensive and maintenance heavy hydrogen fuel cells.

All this, and the Japanese could also not stand the fact an offensive laser weapon system had been on the AC-130.

"Colonel, Mobius and Rapier squadrons are asking for orders, as is Reaper." Reaper had been the call sign for the AC-130U that had not seen a shot fired from anger from itself yet. Not even in practice.

"Tell Noelle to take off and stay on station, have all other squadrons coordinate with him to hold over the Corridor and report on damage from above. Tell them to get their external tanks on too, no telling how long we're gonna have them up there."

"Yes colonel."

"Also I want a medevac chopper flight deployed shy of the capital, just in case."

"Yes sir, colonel."

"You seem rather calm, Adrian." Sevson had crossed his arms as he stood over his Colonel. They'd been long time friends at this point, a bond formed through war and willingness to follow orders during a Korea long ago. Needless to say Pierce had trusted Sevson's judgement that went above ranking and procedure.

The man held his chin in hand as he turned his long greyish haired head toward Sevson, shrugging. "This is the first time we've been in this room and it hasn't been a combat situation, Isaiah, and I doubt that this quake will cause some civil unrest in our area of jurisdiction."

"Then why'd you order all the Marines to load up for a combat mission?"

"Remember when we hoarded the Nork prisoners out of Sariwon?"

"The ones we had to bluff?" By that time in the Korean War it had been about five days after Pierce and Sevson had been reinforced and the allied forces had pushed the frontline to their forward position (which had meant out of South Korea). There had been barely enough ammo to go around, so much so that one of the teams tasked with taking prisoners to the back line had to do it with no ammo in their M4s.

The prisoners had been civilians and the local militia men still loyal to the dead Kim Jung Un, soldiers who had still wanted to fight.

One Marine had lost his gun to one of those men, but thankfully he couldn't use it for any harm due to the lack of ammo. Though when none of the other Marines could shoot said man the local militia had turned on not only them but on the surrendering civilian in a beat down that the Marines could not possibly stop before it had been too late.

Pierce had been worried about a repeat happening in some form.

It wasn't for their own safety, but for the civilians.

"This is Mobius One, taxiing for take-off. Rapier I want your flight to escort the medevac birds and push toward the Capital and stay on station until notified." A little bit of Noelle's Slavic accent had pushed through.

"Affirmative."

"Mobius two through five, I need you on my ass for the night, we're skimming Corridor airspace and I need everyone Christmas Tree. Six and seven, hold over the airfield and escort Reaper. Gentlemen we are Playtime for the rest of the night." his chatter had blended in with the rest, coming from one of the radios, Christmas Tree designating that he wanted his aircraft to have their external lights on from here on out and Playtime being the brevity for how long they were to be flying.

Just a glance over to the right and the command staff had seen the Hornets and Harriers take off, the rumble of their engines almost like the forebearers of an earthquake themselves. Sevson squinted his eyes at their wingtips.

"They're deploying loaded. Sidewinders."

"Lelei told me that dragons are recorded to go haywire during things like this according to the old records. Just in case."

"Roger. Where is she anyway?"

"She was helping evacuate Myui and her refugees. Rory is on our side as well with Chuka."

"I've got all my men ready." Hazama had said from his table, helicopters buzzing above. "Wish we had this kind of preparation for the typhoons back in '23!" 2023 had been a rather bad year for Japan in terms of natural disasters. Earthquakes, the worst recorded typhoons in history, and immediately following the next year the Korean War, it had helped set the stage for a new JSDF generation.

Here it had made vehicles run through the streets with loudspeakers warning for "earth shakes" to many of the residents concern and humor.

"Me and you both, lieutenant general!" Sevson had yelled back, Pierce giving a thumbs up as he joined the commander.

Blackburn had been looking around as if lost, but in reality he had just been overwhelmed. "Personally I'm a tad skeptical of Blackburn's sources."

Hazama crossed his arms as he scratched his moustache, several of his lieutenants echoing the same doubts. "Oh, trust me, the animals always know."

Major Higaki had still carried doubts, adjusting his glasses. "I mean, yeah, some of the beasts are acting up, but it might not be anything bad, we don't know where the epicenter is going to be if there is one."

The major had jinxed it as Pierce opened his mouth, feeling it in his bones as he instinctively grabbed onto both the lieutenant general and his own major, several of the more sensitive to the earth losing their breath and immediately going to the ground in a kneel or prone as the vibrations beneath their feet did not cease and evolved.

People were slow to realize what had been happening even if they prepared for it, the command staff gripping their tables as the civilian screaming started in the distance. Soldiers falling to the ground and planting their rifles in the dirt as posts.

"Everyone hold on!"

---

Five minutes earlier

Outside the Corridor

---

A piece of the San Andreas Fault had cracked in 2020. Some of the Marines from Pendleton had remembered it very vividly as, for a month, the entire western seaboard was evacuated in the fears that the "big one" was coming.

The destruction of LA and California had been Wilbur's on the job training as a young man on vacation in the Golden State. That was how he had been able to get a job as a surveyor with BP at so young, and it was also how he had a place to go after he had exiled himself from BP after saving his childhood home.

It was also why he had understood the significance of one of Rory's bird like MPs having shocked herself beyond reasoning and collaborated with RCT3's and Hitman's report on incoming seismic tremors.

He also hadn't been the only one who recognized what earthquakes did within his assigned section. He had caused them before.

As the Warlords had been more and more visited in Italica as monuments, subjects of pilgrimages to some of the citizens of the Corridor, security issues had been raised and each of the Warlords had an infantry squad assigned to them. Wilbur had found himself in command of not only a tank, but also of a Marine fireteam.

In that fireteam had been Lumaban. An immigrant from the Philippines who fully understood the nature of a cracked earth from the tsunamis and the earthquakes she had endured as a child in South East Asia. Not only that, she had been in Iraq, in Iran and Afghanistan, as the weaponized "rods from god" that had been the US military program in space, had roared and tore the earth wide open.

"Wilbur!" she yelled to the get man's attention as he had worn his cape even now, but with purpose: to have the people recognize them and to calm them down as words and rumors from the Marines and the JSDF spoke of the Earth shaking horribly.

When the word had gotten out that an earthquake was predicted to come, the Corridor was evacuated, and all the people in Italica and Arnus respectively had been shoved to the cleared, undeveloped fields flanking the land.

"What?!" the Englishman had yelled back as he kept twisting and twirling, his shouts in his less than well practiced lingua franca not at all helping the situation.

Lumaban had brushed her black hair back behind her ears, damning it as she and her fireteam had struggled to keep the massive crowd off of Kingdom Come as it was driven out to escort these people and provide security.

She had tossed him her breaching shotgun, the man shaking his head once as he knew what to do with it, getting a bird scaring blank from his own kit and loading it in before taking it within both hands and aiming up.

The sound of thunder had cracked out as entire crowds recoiled from Wilbur's boom, his section's reaction of silence reverberating throughout the crowds ushered out of Italica.

"This is Assassin 4-3 to all Marine fireteams! Use blanks! Don't need collateral coming down later!" she had barked into her radio knowingly as one by one, and throughout the Corridor, great booms had been going out into the dark of night as Arnus Base and Camp Kilgore shined brilliantly with lighting unseen in this world yet.

"Perla!" Wilbur yelled in the silence, the woman turning around and catching her breaching device again, only to shake her head tiredly at the crowds.

"What the hell Wilbur, I thought these people would listen to you." she had spited as she had finally lowered her M16 from those once roaring crowds who had wanted to clamber on top of 1-3.

"Yeah? Coming from the woman who's trying to make a church choir group on her off time." Wilbur had spited her sarcastically as he kept his vision dashing around, looking for a particular dark elf with great concern.

Colonel Pierce had made it very clear that teaching anything of cultural note to the natives of the Special Region had been off limits, at least as far as American values was concerned, the fear being they would class with Japan's conservative views as the island nation tried its best to keep integrating this world from Arnus out, one word, one piece of yen, one lesson at a time.

That was one of the sins of one of the greatest empires on Earth: of the British Empire, and how it tried to force Christianity on its people. But yet, here, Lumaban had not forgotten her faith, and would not discard its values when teaching these people as the Marines did at the classrooms of Italica and Arnus.

Not when she saw the poor, the poverished, the weak and weary.

She had caught herself, though, almost speaking of her God, her saviors, to these people openly during a class she had helped managed. She knew better.

Still, the comfort she had found in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost had many ways to touch people in need, and as she had hummed one idle day, she remembered song and hymn was one of those.

Her sessions in front of Warlord 1-3 had been of teaching the tune, the hum and ahs, of Christian tunes. Not the words, but just the melody. One day, she had hoped, that the words would come to them naturally.

Her CO had no problem with this as it calmed the ears of those busy residents of Italica and the Corridor.

And so they knew the tune of the hymn Lumaban used to calm herself in this busy night, preparing for calamity further as Wilbur had finally cried out the name of who he was looking for: "Yao! Yao!"

---

Now Playing:

Amazing Grace

As whistled by Sergeant Perla Lumaban, 7th Marine Expeditionary Division

---

Wilbur had jumped off the tank, his pistol out as he parted that sea of citizens and dared them to see what he would do for one person. His pistol had been out, and the crowds, for the first time, had a gun pointed at them by a member of the Special Task Force. From either Lumaban or Wilbur, from either the Marines or the GSDF who had been hoarding them out like some horror show comprised of "on short notice" and "incoming calamity".

It was a new feeling, a feeling of some sort of betrayal that glazed past their mind for only a second as Wilbur disappeared into it, following a voice he literally could hear above them all.

When he had come back he had been gripping a dark elf.

Lumaban had given him a weary glare, a questioning look as he pressed back and put himself on top of 1-3. He had answered unsaid words. "She's my responsibility." and that had been only proven with how tight the two had held each other.

The shaking, the grinding of the earth, the incoming rumble and quake that Wilbur had known very well.

"Hey Perla!"

"What?!" the two locked eyes as they felt it start, the initiation of a natural disaster. Perla had felt the very dirt shift in two directions as she said her prayers.

"Remember the Big One?!"Wilbur asked, almost cheekily, daring the world as he looped his arm around both Yao and a handle on his tank.

She nodded as she dropped to the ground, bracing against Kingdom Come and her rifle. "Here it comes boys! Everyone down!"

---

Two minutes earlier

Falmart – The Imperial Capital – Akusho – Three minutes from Sadera Hill at full gallop

---

"So, tell me private, how the hell do you west coasters know when it's coming?!"

"Sergeant, I ain't in the business for predicting earthquakes, just knowing how to survive them!"

Masterson had yelled over his shoulder to Nutt, over the rushing madness of us all as we galloped down the cobblestone, the three RCT members having taken to riding shotgun with the three Hitmen leads. In truth he hadn't minded Shino taking his rear position as much as Bannon did with her unnoticed glaring.

There was no time for such petty squabbles in a world about to be, dramatically speaking, broke in half.

Foulke, Emerson's horse, hadn't complained with leading the pack of ten horses, two people to a horse, it had just been like old times out during the conquests. His new master had also been a little less overbearing, the black steed having a personality of its own that Emerson suspected had been formed by dealing with the man who had once rode him.

However he had been antsy, indeed most of the other horses had been, trying to tear themselves free of their reins. When Hitman, Itami and his soldiers came to saddle up, they were difficult to say the least.

Riding hard however had seemed to put all that instinctual anxiousness away it seemed.

Like the riders of old, like Paul Revere himself as Masterson had more than obviously howled into the night, yelling of another Empire and how they had been coming by sea.

"Shut the fuck up Cam! Less talking, more riding!"

"Trust me sir, I don't want to be stuck here when the buildings start coming down!"

If San Francisco had collapsed partly to great damage, the Imperial Capital wouldn't weather it even half as well. It was doubtful even the Special Task Force could do the damage that nature could. Still it was something they would have to deal with, judging on how panicked the humanoids and the beasts had been acting as they passed them on the streets. Death was a constant, and it seemed to follow in their wake. They worried about the people, the slaves, the survival of the Empire, but they could not do anything. In a battle of man versus nature, nature always won in the end.

How close death followed had been to the second as a great gust of wind had cut overhead. as the horses had stopped themselves almost immediately, some of Hitmen being thrown off in a great clatter of stone, batterings and brusings coming as their forms against the ground felt the all too intimate vibrations of an earth about to be torn apart.

"Everyone against the ground! Now! Stay center of the street!" Emerson had yelled as he scrambled off of his side, Foulke laying in the center on his own side as Emerson flopped over him, Itami following along with the rest. Those who could at least had followed suit. Being thrown from their horses in full kit had not been kind to some. Not when they hit the ground shoulders, arms, bent legs first as their own groans of pain had been hidden by the coming rumbling of an upset earth. Itami had barely the time to slide on his helmet before the first pieces of building started hitting the ground in wooden explosions.

Wooden shrapnel had erupted all around as the stone beneath them had shifted and threatened to give way to hell seemingly,

The vibrations wouldn't stop like a maddening headache that rattled every bone in their body.

The cacophony of a thousand bricks, building materials, stone and the worth of the Empire's architecture all colliding and collapsing on top of each other.

"Son of a fucking bitch! My leg's snapped!"

Ten seconds to half a minute. That was the usual average for how long an earthquake lasted. However an earthquake had been like a battle, a firefight, and all of them knew their minds had played tricks on them as it kept on going and going and going threatening to drive them mad.

Down the street a building had collapsed into the street, the shaking having thrown it one way in a wave of dust and debris that blew its way down toward Hitman and RCT3.

All they could do was bury their faces in their arms or put on their goggles and weather the incoming storm. When the earthquake would end the destruction of the Imperial Capital would follow like dominos falling.

Nutt had been more than knowing when an earthquake stopped to yell out. "Alright! Alright! We're clear unless we get aftershocks!" he had been more than eager to move seeing as his arm had been dislocated after being thrown, he hiding under his fallen horse as it happened.

"Sitrep!?" Emerson had yelled as he stood up, the dust having kicked up enough that it blinded him more or less. Itami had grabbed onto his leg to pull himself up, running over to his RCT3 detachment to help them up.

"Team One we good?!" Bannon had coughed through her radio. "Team Two?!"

"1-4, I'm inop!" the pained yelling of Black, he having been the man with a broken leg.

"2-6, is no good. Well, give me a second. Hold still you big baby." Doc had reported on Nutt, the man's screaming having followed what had been undoubtedly the crack of an arm being set back into.

"Agh. 1-9, we're all battered but I think we're good." another one of the Rangers, but no other calls had been had reporting injuries as a flare was struck and that red light had highlighted a reconvening point in the middle of the street.

The horses had wobbled back up, all of them alive miraculously as the twenty four men all huddled school circle for head count, even those with broken bones.

Emerson's darting vision had been nothing short of frantic, the destruction around him slowly revealing itself as the dust cloud came down and the fires went up. "Alright, focus Emerson, focus." he knocked his head once with his own palm. "Nutt, Black, we're going to have to move. You think you can handle that?"

Black had been the only one unable to walk, but he had been thrown across Harris's back, he giving a weak thumbs up as he readied his DMR.

"God I hope Pina is alright." Itami had been lousy with dust, he having been in a rather officer's uniform than anything else, the man patting Tomita's chest and having some dust float off of it.

"It never gets any easier, does it?" he said, wiping his head clean. The Japanese had all survived earthquakes before, but never like this.

"Kouji's up there too I think…. alright, we're oscar mike move it!"

Bannon had been quick to rally her squad back on her horses, but she had not forgotten the screams that started to roar throughout the district. It was impossible for her to not think about those slaves in their cages and how they would handle this, but she had the luxury of dealing with her own soldiers right now to ignore it.

---

Falmart – The Imperial Capital – Sadera Hill

---

Bannon and Ortiz had been up here with Emerson before, but none had seen it like it was now. The footpaths and the streets had all been ajar and cracked, but no buildings had collapsed. A testament to the Imperial engineers who designed the mansions.

The Imperial guards who had been panicked hadn't argued when Kay Ro Bronxon had appeared with a posse of twenty plus individuals. They had still worn their cloaks.

Amazingly Pina with a cadre of guards had come out to meet them, several of her Rose Order armed and ready, but not for them of course. Kouji had been in tow with a suit and tie.

"Sorry we couldn't get to you in time Pina! Kouji!" Emerson had yelled as Foulke ground to a halt, the horse exhausted. Emerson had not been so busy to not remember to thumb a sugar cube into his mouth. "You there, fetch water for my horses." he pointed and ordered off a few of the guards, they complying with little argument.

All Kouji could do was nod as Pina had been shaken up both literally and mentally about what had caused her mansion to have broken windows and have its tile shaken off.

"Captain Emerson, Lieutenant Itami. How was Akusho?"

Itami had whipped his beret out from under his helmet, getting rid of the dust. "Falling apart as we speak. Most of my squad is back at the Devil's House and the PX with Blackburn and the major, helping out the civilians that warned us. We were able to send out a warning to Arnus in time too."

"Wish I had that warning…"

Several of the guards had been cowering but Shino had been more than willing to show her might. "Calm down! It will pass soon!"

Hamilton had been clinging onto Pina as if her life depended on it. To be fair Pina could do nothing but tremble as she had survived the earth shake, spooked as Emerson approached. Perhaps Emerson hadn't been Rory's apostle, but Hardy's with how he seemed to follow the earthquake. Fortunately Itami had spoken to her first as the two officers brought her off her knees.

"Are you alright, Princess Pina?" Itami had asked concerned.

She shook her fear out of her as best she could. "Ah, yeah, I think."

"Hamilton." Emerson had addressed the young woman clinging to her, the woman freezing even tighter.

Itami had reassured them. "Something like this usually isn't a big deal. In Japan it's pretty common."

Pina had been more than aware that common translated into could happen again, her eyes going wide and deep as she grinded her teeth. "Will another come?!" she yelled.

Itami had nodded as Emerson got them onto their feet. "More than likely."

It was with that declaration Pina had shook Emerson off and stood on her own, ambition and the need to do something in her eye, clenching her fists.

"I must inform father at once. We must leave for the Imperial Palace."

The way she had said We had made Itami raise his eyebrow. "We?" he had no intention of complicating the situation anymore, but as Kay had once said about him and he: "Right men, in the wrong place, and the wrong time… or something like that."

"You won't be coming along?" she had seemed disappointed.

Kouji had already been antsy with an American having paid audience to the emperor first, however he figured that now was any time to do so to keep up with them. He had nodded at Itami. They were going to.

He straightened his tie. "If there was any place for the emperor to meet the Japanese, it would be here, helping his people. I doubt another opportunity would rise again. Emerson if you could go back to Akusho an-"

"No. We're going too."

Emerson had been quick to react, Kouji glaring. "You never makes things easy, do you?"

"The only easy day was yesterday. That and I'm the only one here from the Special Task Force to have talked to the emperor before. He would recognize me, and I would speak for you."

"All of your Rangers?"

"No. Masterson, Loke, Doc, Ramirez, you're with me. Bannon call for medevac on the steps of the capital with the rest and hold position."

"Affirmative captain."

"Yes sir."

Pina had looked at Kouji and he couldn't say no. Diplomatic relations were about to be opened up in the middle of a natural disaster.

---

"Woah…" Itami's breath had been lost from him as he looked up at the artisan patterns of marble and stone over his head. "It's like a Demon Lord's Castle from an anime."

I only shook my head at him, the cloaks of my Rangers and my own still fluttering in our wake.

"Reminds of a mosque, really." Loke's observation had been said through the very hijab that she had once worn as it was supposed to, it covering her neck as a scarf in that cold palace of an Imperial might.

The sentries had all been missing and I had been personally disappointed. I trained many of them to stand their ground in combat. Then again this wasn't exactly combat as they understood from me.

It was an oddity I had to train many Imperial guards posted in the very capital building itself, but apparently many of the elite order had been reassigned throughout the rebuilding Imperial Army, still recuperating from nearly half a million lost.

The Roman army had been around 450,000 strong at its peak. The Imperial Army had just barely been above that and they suffered because of their losses.

Hamilton had not know where they were as we all followed Pina, torches and flashlights in hand. "Where are we, princess?"

The doors we had been approaching had been grand and tall, befit those who had slept behind it during the Empire's time.

Even she as a Rose Order knight had not been in this sanctum before.

"Father's bedroom."

Everyone but me had shocked themselves at that fact, chills running through their bones. "Kneel and do not hold eye contact. Remain silent and do not speak unless me or Pina introduce you."

My Rangers and RCT3 had taken off their helmets in some show of respect.

Emperor Molt had been many things, but one of those things was that he believed that he had been a god in a way. He talked like it, acted like it, and although he had some common sensibilities that had been unrecognized by the senators themselves, some sort of down to earth persona he held, he had still been emperor of an empire that we were engaged in.

I drew my Winchester as I follow on Pina's side, kneeling immediately and digging my stock into the red rug of his bedroom.

"Sire." I ground through my throat.

"Father." Pina had gone the most forward out of all of us, going to his giant bed that hugged the walls of his chambers, his privacy curtain partly already broken.

The room had been shaken apart, but no serious damage had been given.

"Oh." an old voice, a voic man who was king. "I was certain that the first of my children to come to me would be Diabo or Zorzal… though I see Sir Bronxon has trained you well to be punctual."

She had accepted her father's words as he laid in bed, disturbed by the rumbling, but otherwise calm. "Father. Please ready yourself at once. I will accompany to you chambers."

"Do these people wish my audience now, of all times?"

"At my beckoning, yes father. It is important."

"… Very well."

"Hitman! Atteeeeennn-tion!" My voice had snapped as I moved out of the room and joined my Rangers, Hamilton and Pina beating back the urge to not bow to my voice. The guards had no such luck as they snapped their heels together, however only to imitate the soldiers who actually knew what they were supposed to do.

Ramirez had been offered a highly honorable position in the US Army after Iran: a transfer to the Third Infantry Regiment, the Old Guard. The army regiment that had the sacred duty of protecting and honoring the memorials of fallen soldiers as well as protecting the US Capital and their Commander in Chief.

Ramirez had flunked out of training for that unit, however he had known how to stand at attention for honor, as if he had been standing before the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

The Hitmen that were there had followed his stance as they flanked either side of the rug like a checker formation and stood at attention with a snap, their rifles laying on their shoulders, muzzle up and feet spread.

Naturally Shino, Tomita, and Kurokawa had tried to imitate as they all stood there and waited for an emperor, the faces of the Americans losing all emotion and like statues.

That had been something they were unable to copy.

---

Pieces of Masonry had been chipped off as we followed Pina and her father, the earth still slightly vibrating as maids and workers rushed to clean up.

The emperor had hardly the time to get himself fully readied for such a proceeding, but no one could blame him, even with his wavy long hair matching the fluttering of our cloaks.

As gaurds and guards convened around us Pina had shouted out orders like she had been a true leader. "Dispatch messengers to the ministers and the generals of our garrison here at the capital! Order them to assemble! Have officers take command of the guard and fortify Sadera Hill!"

She had waved her hands as she gave her orders, putting her heart and soul into it to my delight. "Trying to trap us here, Pina?" I said under my breath.

"I read in your world the army is deployed in times of great crisis in domestic affairs."

My mind soured as I remember the riots back in 2019, but I knew she had been doing her research right. "True enough."

She had put a hand to my chest as we all entered the throne room, just short of going on the steps before the emperor. This was as far as she'd let us go as foreigners.

The emperor had noticed too how Pina had grown in her ability, the bark, the bite, her ability to command soldiers over twice her age. He had settled down into his throne, his crown on.

"You've certainly changed Pina." he said, Pina nodding as the emperor looked to us, the guests of an inopportune time. "Now while everyone is being gathered, would you and Sir Bronxon introduce us to these unfamiliar people here. I believe Zorzal told me about them, but I'd like to be personally introduced."

She pointed her hand at each of us as she introduced us by who we really were. Even me.

"You are already acquainted with Captain Kristian Emerson, those in the cloak and the tan garbs behind him are his own knightly order: the Rangers." we saluted him. The emeperor had seemed to mentally stumble as he saw Pina give me another name.

"That is Sir Suguwara, envoy from the Nation of Japan. Behind him are several Japanese soldiers led by Sir Lieutenant Itami." they saluted as well.

"Japan… America…" the emperor had rumbled as he ran his hand through his beard. "I've been waiting a long time for this Pina. Long enough that I've tolerated you acting as an intermediary behind my back and for Sir Suguwara here ghosting me during my daily routines."

The two people in question had frozen as they had been made from the start. At least I hadn't tried to hide who I was. I would do away with the last of that disguise now.

I didn't know exactly what was going through my head but I knew something was going to come off of it as I drew my knife.

"I'm sorry you had to learn this way but…" My other hand had held the tips of my ears as I tugged on it once and revealed the stitching to strain.

Of course it had hurt, but there had been worse things to happen to me before the emperor as the squeamish looked away and I mutilated myself.

The Imperials who didn't know better would've thought I was bluffing, however I didn't even wince as the knife cut through the synthetics, the black lines that had been the stitching somewhat bloody as I had taken both the fake tips of my ears and tossed it at a guard.

"I will hold no lies from you, Emperor Molt. I thank you for your hospitality to me, however I come allied with Japan."

"Allies with the enemy on Arnus Hill?"

I nodded solemnly.

"I'm an American, but I am also a human, and we are allied with the force that occupies Arnus Hill. We come in peace, Emperor Molt Sol Augustus, but we are prepared for war."

The emperor had sat back in his seat at this revelation, but he did not seem surprised. He had either not cared or I had a lot to learn from him. "It is because of you… Emerson, I do not hold contempt right now. You trained my daughter, my officers and her order, with such diligence I will not mistake your intentions of meaning good."

I nodded down. "You have my gratitude, emperor."

"I look forward to these peace talks if that is the case, however, I imagine this is not what you brings you before me today."

Pina had shook her head. "No. They have knowledge of the natural disaster that has stricken our Empire. The sum of this knowledge being that it may come again."

"Again?!..." he seemed shocked as he adjusted his crown, however the crack in his voice disappeared. "Very well, I welcome any help you can give, honored Envoy Suguwara."

The man had risen from his kneel. "Thank you. And thank you for receiving us, your majesty."

The emperor had used his hand to lower Kouji's humble words. "One should not be so gracious during such troubled times, especially after a natural disaster. It is not, in my mind, the right order of priorities. You have my thanks regardless however. Regardless of this war we seem to be engaged in apparently."

"A war that might've been over already emperor!" Hamilton had yelled from behind a pillar, her outbursts making the eyes of the room fall on her before Pina had barked at her to be cast out temporarily.

She had believed those words, I know. She had wanted the Imperial Legions to march on us at Arnus so reverently, so blood lustily it betrayed her youth.

The emperor had made no note of the intrusion. "If the time and place was different, I would've held great banquets in your name to receive you, as I did… Emerson, is it?"

I nodded at my name.

"I eagerly await further negotiations between our nations, emperor." Suguwara had followed up in a bow.

Molt raised a finger as if pointing something out. "Though, as I was told from Pina's scouting reports, Japan has a monarch much like myself, is that correct?"

Our eyed had, for a second, turned on Pina. Loose lips had sunk ships.

Suguwara had nodded again, confirming the emperor's information.

"A sovereign that has been deprived of their power by the people. I did not believe such a nation a threat to us. However I understand beyond the Gate, things are… different. Especially if there are men like Emerson there: representatives of nations like Japan and America. It makes me wonder if you have always been allies with such great power, co-existing."

"Excuse me, your highness?" I softly said in the room that had seen a dozen emperors in the hundreds of years this Empire had existed.

"America and Japan must be equal powers. I myself wonder how my Empire will stand up to you. We've never encountered such a force able to equal us, therefore I wonder how you have dealt with that question."

It was something that gave us pause as we knew the answer of our own World War, nearly a century ago now.

If Pina had known, perhaps this question was rhetorical, already passed down to the emperor.

We never had a chance to respond as marching to our back had spurred us to readiness for engagement.

The sounds of moans and groans and pain. I was long used to hearing such things in this capital, but not in these halls, even with Tyuule. She was usually quiet when Zorzal had his way with her. It was a necessary evil I had to tolerate in my time here, but never I thought it would be acceptable for Zorzal to stridei n here with his knights, each of them pulling those sex slaves by chains: he had pulled many by one, ignoring us. However I saw his glance at me, at the fact I had been missing the tips of my ears.

They were all dragged past us, and we all saw them heave in pain as their skin was dragged across the unkind ground.

Masterson had his balaclava on, however he had still had a radio equipped, switching to our private frequency as covertly as he could. The mics we Rangers had been given had been throat mics, a band that had picked up even the quietest whisper and did away the bulbous microphone that most infantry units had used. It was because of that only we Americans had heard his whisper across our headsets.

"Eyes on one slave, black hair. Good god I think she's Asian."

No attention was drawn when we turned our heads toward the dazed body being dragged across the floor that was barely living: a woman. A foreign woman with long black hair and a slim form, hurt and bruised all over below bodily fluids that had been more than just blood.

She among others had been in the same state.

Zorzal had been busy that night.

RCT3 hadn't picked noticed at first, but Itami had has Zorzal walked past him. He had also seen us all quietly flick the safeties on our rifles up.

Doc had turned his head away and looked back into the hallway, Zorzal's knights had been plentiful. "CASEVAC is on station, just in case." he also had rumbled.

"Brother! A meeting is in progress with honored dignitaries! If you don't wait you'll-!"

"What are you being so laid back about?!" Zorzal had yelled as he had stepped in front of Kouji, his knights standing behind us. We had been more than aware as Tomita shifted his own safety to off. He pointed at the black haired slave: "Noriko has told me that the ground may yet move again!"

He said her name to Pina. As if she knew. As if-!

Itami had pressed my shoulder once as we all heard that name. A Japanese name.

Zorzal, chain still in hand holding the sex slaves, had dragged them further up and shoved her sister out of the way. "I'm getting father out of here!"

"Brother! Calm down. Where would you even take him?! And at any rate, we know that the earth may shake again."

"So you heard from Noriko too?" Zorzal had asked his sister, Pina's face panicking.

"No- Noriko? Who's that?" she was guilty as sin of knowing.

I asked her very clearly, one of my very first orders to her: "Was there any captured people from beyond the Gate?"

She checked. I know she did. And she told me no.

She told me no!

"That one, right there." Zorzal had pointed her out as her backed burned from being dragged on the rug. "Right there."

Itami had locked eyes with her and she had seen him with faded vision, pained grasping of a world she did not understand. Her mouth moved, mouthing words again and again until at last her throat and breath had cooperated and uttered words so horrible it brought me out, showed me everything, and snapped me back into my mind in a horrible whiplash that made my breath cold and my gut wrench.

"Tasu-…. tasukete."

Words can kill.

That's what Major Walker told me during training, as I laid belly first on the ground, sentries looking for me as part of my Ranger Training in the Florida nature. Moss having become my skin, breathing in dew as people walked right by me.

One word, in any language, across all the world, still made a sound, no matter how hushed. Word and tongue could expose one's self, and at the end of the day, a soldier spoke not with language, but with action.

Actions spoke louder than words.

Acta non verba.

Though perhaps, that's not what I thought as I heard that black haired woman look at us, knowing eyes: her mouth moving in the lingua franca that we had been trying to spread. Japanese was on her lips, and I remembered the quote of someone I learned from Syracuse, so long ago, explaining to me a part of why America had been whole.

---

manifest destiny

"One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other."

Emil Cioran, Romanian philosopher, 1987

---

The homeland, spoken and revealed by that one desperate word had been Japan.

She was Japanese, and she had said with perhaps her dying breath: "Help me."

I heard it. Masterson heard. Itami heard it. RCT3 and Hitman had heard it, seeing as it had been the loudest thing we had ever heard in our lives.

We all knew Japanese. Even my Rangers, Loke, Doc, Ramirez, Nutt, Harris, Bannon; all of them. That was a peculiarity of us that helped us work with the Japanese better than most, and the understanding of languages across time was usually a positive point in relationships. The JSDF Special Task Force had also been more than willing to learn more English, on top of their already considerable knowledge of the lingua franca of the world, however Masterson posed this to me this during his initial studying:

"I am learning Japanese: a language spoken solely on a secluded volcanic archipelago inhabited by racist xenophobes, all so I can either read terrible manga that hasn't been translated or yell at the GSDF boots and POGs during training exercises."

No Cam, you learned Japanese so you knew exactly when shit hit the fan across two languages. Which was now, and he certainly did understand as he moved.

Itami had formed a fist as Doc had leaned down immediately to the chains, Masterson too late to reach out to Itami as he brought his fist back, Loke verbally yelling at the guards to back off as we touched the slaves, her gun up.

"You son of a bitch! I'll FUCKING KILL YOU!"

That's how it often falls apart: in slow motion, and even as Masterson had grabbed onto Itami's shoulders, Zorzal had taken to the hit to his cheek in a sickening crack, the Japanese ambassador grabbed by Tomita and put under his protection as the guards drew their swords.

His body fell as his jaw went askew, Itami throwing his strength into the throw, the follow through, the rage and the action incoherent with everything they fought for. He wanted to kill this man, and he tried.

Masterson had put his knee on the back of Itami's neck as he had drawn his M4 up toward Zorzal, not knowing what that weapon was he had rebounded quickly. "You- You bastard! How dare you hit a prince?!"

"What insolence to raise a hand against the prince!"

"You won't leave this place alive Father of Sin! We'll kill you all!"

Masterson had been quick to react, the cracking of gunfire from his rifle putting holes in the floor right in front of Zorzal as the casings flew and the prince flew back, a ricochet coming to take a piece off the emperor's throne, despite no reaction coming from him; he hadn't noticed it. This had given pause to his cohort for only a second as Shino had stepped forward with Ramirez and Doc, trying to bar them off, guns up and ready as I had drawn the Winchester from under my robes, from my kit, and cocked it with one hand.

Loke looked down and wiped away what liquid on her face, of tears, semen, and blood in one go and looked at her straight in the eyes. She was barely coherent, barely conscious, barely alive.

"There… are more…"

"Miss?! Are you alright?! We're from Japan. America. Maam?!" Loke had said desperately into her face.

"Are you here to….?" her words drifted above the cacophony of yelling from all parties, my men and RCT3 yelling for everyone to get back, the Imperials yelling at us to die. Even Pina at her Emperor's side had been shouting, yelling, but her words were confused, jumbled, not knowing what to do as something of hers, a plan, collapsed before her eyes as these chained women did before our feet.

"Yes! Yes! We're gonna get you home ma'am. Stay with us!" Loke had said as she drew both her pistol and her lifesaver kit.

"There is…more. There is…There are…-" her words went on as she drifted further away, the leather binds on her neck and appendages sliced off as she saw relief in the form of Loke.

"There is what ma'am? Don't exert yourself."

"There is an American."

---

Heads turned, mouths opened, eyes stared at the Imperials.

Emerson's cold green eyes had looked at Pina, his knuckles turning white. "You LIED to me!" he had let the rifle on his sling drop as he opened up the flap on his leather Winchester holster unconsciously, bringing it up, cocking it as it came one handed.

"I- I didn't know!"

"You were lying! Lying right to my fucking face!"

"It's a misunderstanding!"

Pina had once wondered what this peace was worth to the Americans and the Japanese. She measured it in money, in material lost, in politics and in history to be gained.

However she had gotten the answer to that question. This peace was worth the life of a single person.

---

"Captain!" Itami had shouted to the ranking officer in question, he thumbing down his P220's hammer as he regarded the fighting force to his back, front toward the emperor. Emerson too, had his front toward the royals, and his eyes didn't only speak toward hatred, righteous fury, but they also spoke of the ugliest of human emotions to perform, and to react to: betrayal.

Betrayal between Emerson and Pina. He had simply given Itami silence, and to do as he wanted.

He pointed the pistol down at Zorzal to keep him still, he not knowing the power of the gun until the men and women behind him demonstrated. "You are free to engage! Light them up!"

"Itami?!" Pina had yelled out. "What are you doing?!"

A question unanswered as the soldiers heard the order as Emerson approached her, her knees weak and heavy as she tried to step back, but only to trip as she saw the Father of Sin approach her: the Devil by any other name. Her own devil. His hands reached for her collar, her neck, but stopped just short. She was no good to him dead.

Bypassing Zorzal, bypassing the emperor and the servants, the world boiled down to only two people: Emerson and Princess Pina Co Lada, and in Emerson's wake, hell had followed. How easy, she realized, and how willing, that all these talks for peace, all these preparations for a bloodless future, would be thrown away at this slavery.

But she knew, deep down, that this would've happened. She knew she made a deal with the devil, and tried to hide away the sins of her empire, to save her soul.

Anger had made people raw, turned them back to their primal selves where the world had been a simpler place: of kill or be killed, and that primal state had made Masterson drop his M4 and, by habit, dived into his belt holster and pulled out, hip firing, and fanning, the first shots to kill on capital hill. Six shots, fast as lightening, across six men as the Peacemaker had bucked out and screamed before dropping to the floor, the one on the hind of his belt being pulled by his left hand and brought up to the level of his eye, being thumbed down and shot to another six, center mass.

Shino had almost lunged out in her instincts, however she had pulled back as Masterson fired his twelve shots from the guns that won the West, Doc, Ramirez, and RCT3 finding their peace as they flicked the safeties on their rifles off, and opened fire in a cacophony of chaos and insanity.

At least twenty of Zorzal's own knights had followed him in.

None were to leave.

If any of the senators who left the garden party with any doubts about the capabilities of the JSDF and the Rangers, either out of simply not being impressed, or not wanting to believe, here, at the feet of their mortal god, had been thrown down the bodies that proved everything of what these men and women were capable of.

Not the way, or the how, or the why, but just simply how easy it was to them to do the act of killing. No care for who it was, they just simply did with a the pull of an index finger, and a rifle as the knights charged, shields up and in tightened formation expertly.

But it was no matter. Not against firearms, rifle rounds, at the distance they were at as sights hardly needed to be aimed down from. The soldiers held their guns lightly, but firmly, knowing what they were going to do on royal ground as Emerson had taken Pina by the collar, Itami dealing with Zorzal by his own.

The torches held no candle the muzzle flashes of automatic fire, men crippling, being shredded to pieces, as hot lead tore through flesh like the flesh of fruit through the molars of pigs, their bodies twisting and reacting as the felt fire for the first, and last, time of their lives. Muscles, hands, limbs, hearts blown away in fleshy and blood spattering impacts as they, despite it all, continued to run toward them in their war cries.

The Emperor and Zorzal had been so engrossed in the devastating sight they had paid no mind to Pina and Emerson engaging in a silent stare off, gravity seemingly feeling ten times a strong, threatening to bring her body to the earth as in the span of ten seconds, mags were unloaded furiously into the bodies of men who had no chance and, in the end, in the minds of those who fired, deserved it.

It was never being shot that killed you. It was the bleed out, the organ chewing, the splattering of spinal cords and grey matter, that did and so as the first mags were being reloaded, the man who had gotten the farthest: a massive blonde with an artery in his leg shot and bone showing, had stumbled to in front of the firing line as Shino had simply pig stuck him with her bayonet mid reload, right in between the eyes and pulling up, his skull split in two as she used her boot to kick the body down.

Men were heaving, choking on themselves as the squad habitually fanned out.

A man in the back of the battle formation had tried to run, but Shino opened fire in a burst, unnoticed as mercy shots were put into the back of heads of other gasping knights.

The gaze on her face had been as dead as some of the guards, and yet, her eyes had been so alive.

Double tap, was the term, for what every soldier on guard was doing to each and every body, making a point: die.

Just simply die, for, in their minds, it was what these people deserved.

In another world, in another time, they would've said something to Shino, about how she didn't need to shoot that man, but as skull and brains started overlapping with the red of the carpets, flesh and blood seeping into the very roots of the chambers, they said nothing.

For they were complicit in the same sin.

Even Loke, as she sighted down her ACOG and had the splatter touch her face, she doing it in the name of retribution. Gone was her gentleness when presented with something so heinous.

Ramirez had walked this road once before, and so he had done again, as he had done to so many North Koreans who walked into Seoul and how they screamed for a god that was not so. To him, this was mercy.

Masterson simply was murderous, mad, the righteous rage of a man who had so much anger within him, let out as Americans do. "Kill them all!" he screamed as he picked up his blood stained Peacemaker.

Doc had drew his Luger as his SCAR clicked empty, one handed, Zorzal's knights pushing through as the Imperial Guards ducked behind cover.

Where was that civil restraint? Of knowing better? Of having lived the same mistake time and time again but not learn from it?

The muzzle flashes in the relative dark had only painted the silhouettes of the Marines, the Rangers, and the JSDF for split seconds at a time: in that blaze, they had looked the same as darkness and fire fought to illuminate them.

Itami had given the order. That was the rationale the Americans used as they dropped their mags to the floor and reloaded as RCT3 started a repeat of Italica: of men clambering of the bodies of fallen comrades. A diplomatic option, peace: it all seemed so far away now, and yet, it was all worth it when confronted with this. It was personal again.

But for RCT3, it was something less refined: the emotion, the impulse that America once used to justify Afghanistan.

"Surround them!"

"Don't get careless! Get in turtle formation!"

"Oh gods! It hurts!"

The trap door opened up beneath them, and America was freed: an island nation replacing them they all realized as Shino led RCT3's standing, her full auto breaking stone and flesh. It was so impacting that the Rangers had slowly realized that all the ammo in the world could not provide for Shino and RCT3 as they just kept on firing, unaware of the madness they had immersed themselves in. The Rangers had realized that just tasted that old flavor again, and recoiled almost immediately.

Loke gagged in her mouth as Doc stood wide eyed, pistol out, locked back and empty as it fell to the floor, his pose frozen as Shino led the JSDF fire. He hadn't even realized it fell from his hands; for all his talk of knowing evil, it hadn't stopped the pause in his mind as he realized where it was: and it had been right in front of him.

And the fire didn't stop. It was too late now as Zorzal's knights all fell in a glorious charge of defiance, of the might of their empire faltering behind them when confronted with the JSDF.

She laughed, the hiccups in her throat coming from her psyche as blood spurted to her feet, to her form, and gave her what she wanted.

Seven six two full metal jacket. That was what Tomita and Shino had been firing from the standard issue battle rifles as the Americans stepped back, and let them do what they wanted, and into the darkness to disappear from this stage of history. Bloody history, bullets passing through skulls and hearts and going to the floor in stringy, fleshy, almost gelatinous chunks highlighted by bone and teeth.

Doc's hand tugging at Masterson's kit had made him step back as he emptied his Peacemakers, the fire from his eyes extinguished as the yells of combat stopped coming, bodies and bodies on the floor of this throne room, and replaced with the groans of people who wanted to die.

There are fates worse than death, Shino had known, as she had seen the Imperial Gaurds run away, back through the doors, and left Zorzal's knights to die as she walked over toward this one man: dragging his arm by the tendon, crawling on his back away from the monster as she smiled.

She affixed bayonets, and the Americans turned away as Tomita pushed forward and secured the area.

Shino's father had once told stories of the Second World War: where Marines would dig out the gold fillings of Imperial Japanese teeth in their island hopping if they were ever found. Regardless if they were dead and alive. And more often than not, they were alive, in agonizing pain, as the GIs took their knives and stuck it into their gums and dug their teeth out as they squirmed.

"No- NO! Wha- What are you do- mmpgh!" Zorzal's lieutenant had cried out before Shino had put her boot on the man's bleeding chest as she kicked his severed arm away, without second thought putting the bayonet into the man's mouth, finding room between his bottom two teeth, and twisting.

---

Emerson had been frozen, eyes staring, boring into Pina in fury, as Itami stared down her brother. This had left Masterson, recomposed, and loading new rounds into his peacemakers, to fully confront the screaming and squirming of the man that Shino had been dislodging teeth from, bloodily.

It was that screaming that made him turn around and face Shino, as Loke, Doc, and Ramirez, went to Emerson, expectantly, blocking all that horror out for their own sanity.

Masterson closed the loading gate with one of his blood stained Peacemakers and pulled the hammer down in sync with his voice.

"Sergeant Kuribayashi!" he yelled as a piece of Shino's victim's gums went with a few teeth as she twisted her blade in his mouth like a blender, her privacy granted to herself, courtesy to her horror.

She didn't hear Masterson's words as he had unconsciously raised the gun to her back.

"Kuribayashi! Shoot the man, or leave him! Now!" he screamed.

And she did not listen still as she was enveloped in her own pleasures, her own mad laughing and panting that had made her hot and bothered, much like Rory. This wasn't a display of her combat ability, of her close quarters combat prowess. No, it had been simply her urge being satisfied. An ugly, evil urge that infected her more than glory.

Masterson had sucked in air as he brought the notched sights down, in between her legs, and fired once.

Even as the bullet went through the man's neck and into his spine, Shino did not stop. She simply did not stop her idea of doing her job. Of what she wanted to do as a Special Operator.

Masterson didn't know why, but he had thumbed the hammer down again, one last time, and, for the shortest second, levied it to Shino's back before turning away as the sound of flesh and blood being churned made him holster, walk over to her, and yank her by her combat harness out.

---

So Tomita had mowed them down alone as they came, all of them. Every guard that wanted to investigate the ruckus, every one of Zorzal's stragglers. Every one, without regard, with the ultimate excuse:

You deserved it.

When people collapse it's not a pretty sight, but they often collapse in ways so unlike themselves.

No one had told Hitman to stop firing. The standing battle necessitated that the room be cleared of all hostiles, and there were still knights pushing forward toward them. All the rage, all the fight, all the horrors they wanted to fight so desperately, they could not do it until Emerson had cried out the scream of a dying Empire into the halls and turned around, his rifle brought up.

Hitman would always follow Emerson. That was how they knew, how they followed, their officer, the man they had once jokingly called Jesus Khrist. Emerson had been no savior though. Not in the dramatics of war, the horror of events they were there for that would define history.

More defenders, the regular Imperial guard. As if in a trance the Rangers had snapped out of their self-realization and simply reloaded their weapons as they pushed in front of the two RCT3 members, Emerson loading his underslung grenade launcher.

RCT3 had simply turned around and held the Royals at gun point.

They didn't fire though. This war would not end like this. It couldn't have ended this early. The Japanese and Americans needed to end someway else.

No yell, no proper spotting of the running contacts, they just simply did as the mass of men came running down the halls.

Emerson's left index finger looped around the grenade launcher's trigger once, the men in front of that moving, rushing shield wall blown away in chunks and pieces of wood and flesh as the men behind them stumbled through the smoke.

Any self-respecting operator knew how to wield semi-auto just fine, and that was all that was needed as the rapturous sound of gunfire erupted once again.

Massacres never taken that long at all, not when the weapons had shot fire at several thousand feet per second, bullets flying through the air like stars in a blistering sky, making black holes in the faces of those who stood and rushed at the Rangers, coming down that hallway.

Bursts of two per man, per target, per scrambled heart and shield of an Imperial that ran but faltered as their insides were eviscerated by the loud gunshots that came from that defiant lane of Rangers.

"Emerson! Emerson stop!" Pina had yelled, however Shino had poked her gun forward, the barrel saying all that she didn't.

She had to wonder as she recoiled back at how many Imperials Hitman had really killed. Directly or not, she had to wonder, to guess, how much this Empire suffered and would suffer because of Hitman; because of Emerson.

Nearly eighty percent of the Imperial Army had been gutted between Arnus, Italica, and Ginza.

Emerson had been there for every battle, a bad omen, the devil in disguise.

Emerson had snapped his aim back and forth between standing targets, his fingers running white as he gripped his rifle so tightly, almost as if he had been drilling through people with his gaze alone. Loke had noticed this, Itami had noticed, this. Emerson himself did not as his trigger finger twitched and twitched and twitched again as fire was put down, his magazine dropping when empty only for a new one to be slammed in, the man nearly yanking the charging handle off the gun in his anger as the killing continued.

How people were when they were angry, tired, hungry, deprived of what was rightfully theirs had been very telling of who they actually were and who they had become in their life.

The calmness that Emerson had was not there as he acted on that anger. His teacher told him to act on that anger, all stemming from a beating at a college long ago where he did not do anything.

Condensed, displayed, used, Emerson's contempt had boiled inside him ever since he had become a man wronged that one, singular time, and he had drawn from it now.

---

The shakings of the Earth hadn't been enough to make Rory go to her knees, but something had. It hadn't been anything close. Her radio hadn't been reporting any combat activity in the Corridor, but she knew, somewhere, a fight was being fought, people were being killed, and their blood would soak into the roots of the world and history. The blood of martyrs, watering the tree of an imperial dream.

For the first time in nearly a century, she heard the voice of her god.

And he had been screaming.

---

My shoulder had gone numb as the recoil punched a hole through my shoulder. I didn't concentrate on the targets I snapped back and forth between as I put rounds downrange in that hallway, I tried to make it impersonal; tried to make it so I wasn't really there. So I focused on the gun.

The M16A2. Bursts of three, adopted by the Marine Corps in the early 1980s. Forty years on and it had a thousand year advantage against these Imperials. These soldiers who stood for things I could not tolerate, could not fathom.

This rifle had been mine, there were many like it, but this one had been mine. My rifle, without me, is useless. The power it wielded, the terrible power of five point five six ammunition fired out of the muzzle at a velocity of over three thousand feet per second, meant nothing without me, or someone like me, behind it.

Someone to shoot straighter, someone to shoot true, someone to shoot knowingly.

I know that what counts in war is not the rounds I fire, the noise of my burst, nor the smoke I make. I know that it is the hits that count. We will hit... We will hit every Roman, every Imperial who ran against us intent on striking me down in the name of Zorzal, in the name of the Empire, in that name of the savagery of different civilization we tried to deal with. That we would deal with in time, but differently, perhaps with this rifle.

The rifle with a barrel twist of one to nine with a lethal range of nearly a kilometer. Not the several yards in front of me as I was doing now.

I swore before God I had been a defender of my country. I had instead become a master of my enemy, and as I stood there as the last man fell onto his knees, threw his sword just short of our feet, I made the conscious decision to kill for the idea of my country.

I held the rifle across my chest with my left hand as my right arm went for my M45, drawing it with one hand, bringing its sights level with the dying man's kneeling head, surrounded by the bodies of the fallen knights, and I squeezed the trigger.

It was just as Kouji had wanted, I thought as the man flayed his arms out and took the bullet ot his head, falling on his back and molding into that disgusting moshpit of corpses and armor.

There was no more enemy. Only peace.

"Stay down!" Loke had yelled as she remained, most of the squad turning back around to bear their front toward the emperor. I looked and I saw one man who survived, blood frothing from his mouth, his sword used to help him stand shakily.

"Stay down?!" he screamed back, his helmet clearly having a bullet shot through it. "To do what? Die?!"

"Stay down!" Loke had yelled again, the man had been defiant and waddled closer, his sword making the clang of metal against the ground as he walked, his fingers running red as he gripped the blade inadvertently, tighter and tighter.

"Go ahead! Kill me!" he pumped his chest with his fist, banging against his metal armor before throwing his hand to the floor, at all the death. "I want to be killed for my Empire, for Emperor Molt! Not just to simply die at the feet of you monsters!"

And I knew the emperor had seen it all, the royals, to see am an die before them because it is what he had known right.

"Kill me! Kill me!"

Loke had appeased in another bang, her eyes dried behind her balaclava. Unable to be closed as she saw the knight drop to the floor, face down, darkness burrowing out of him as he died.

---

"She says there is an American here. More people from beyond the Gate. Where. Are. They."

To hear Itami talked so coldly, it was a rarity, a bloody rarity. He had asked after the Rangers reeled themselves back, shutting the doors to the throne room.

"I have nothing to say to you! You barbarians! But perhaps I would tell you if you get on your knees an-"

"Brother! Please stop-" Pina pleaded, the emperor either studying everything with his silent gaze, or stunned in petrification.

"Silence! You brought these Americans here! These people! You're nothing but the daughter of a whore! Know your place!" and yet he had still been on the ground, staring down the barrel of a gun.

"I was doing this for the-!" she tried to yell, to be angry, but she faltered in a sob. "I was doing this for the Empire! Why!" she tried to scream at it all, her eyes wide and empty and not understanding.

Why did Emerson gun down so many of the Imperial knights he had bumped shoulders with for the last month?

Why did Itami hit brother? Holding him at gun point?

Suguwara had gotten off the ground after the fire stopped, standing straight, flattening out his dress shirt as he stood there and addressed them, Doc and Kurokawa attending to Noriko. Suguwara motioned to her. "Why indeed. Why did you not tell us-" he stopped himself. He had known why. "Were you aware of this Pina?"

She could say nothing.

How humane she had known they treated the prisoners from Italica, fallen enemies, people from all the wars they had fought. She did not understand why she was seeing what she was seeing now, if only because she did not want to tell herself why.

It would damn her.

"It's a misunderstanding!" she tried to shout. "Everyone put your weapons down!"

Zorzal had cackled. "It is already too late, Sister." he waved his fist up toward Itami over him, the man not impressed. "America. Japan. I do not know where they are, but I will destroy their countries and cast away ALL they hold dear. I will show them the power of an Empire as the bunny people had! It is too late to beg for mercy. And it's all your fault!" he had pointed at Itami, and Emerson.

Emerson had appeared like a ghost, a reaper, his footsteps silent as he cast his rifle asides and almost shifting Itami away, taking Zorzal by his collar and hauling the much larger man up. "There are FATES worse than death, Caesar. Answer my comrade's questions or I will show you what I mean." he was forehead to forehead, touching Zorzal before he had fallen back on the floor, his rifle hit by its stock and flying up into his arms.

"You degenerate Darkie. I would never- auUGGGH!"

A gunshot to his thigh, Emerson had pointed the rifle down as the casing flew out.

Itami had barred his hand across Emerson as Zorzal writhed in pain, the bullet buried within his flesh. "I'll handle it. Tomita, Kuribayashi, Doc: escort the woman and Suguwara out of here." They had all answered in an affirmative as Doc threw a blanket around Noriko's form, the other sex slaves scurrying away, freed from their bonds.

They didn't want to move, not as they were standing at the base of history, Doc applying bandages and wiping her clean with a sanitizing agent, Kurokawa getting her form on a deployable stretcher from the Ranger medic's bag.

The lieutenant had lit his cigarette, took in a breath that would've made the Devil hack, and blew out in the face of Zorzal, obscuring his vision enough so that he never saw what was coming.

Itami's free hand had wrapped around Zorzal's neck as his head was brought forward: that burning cigarette being drilled right next to his eye.

Zorzal, for the first time in his life, knew pain as a blood curdling noise came from his throat as he squirmed underneath Itami, his back pushed on the ground as slowly the cigarette and all of its burn slowly slid its way to his right eye.

And he screamed, and he screamed, and he screamed for any God that would listen as Itami came ever so close to the white of his eyes, only to drag the burning stick down below the eye, and slowly burn his mark into his cheek before being tossed away and his face beaten in by Itami's fist again.

Teeth broke, as did his nose, as blood immediately came forward and splashed itself on Itami.

Zorzal raised a hand up to resist, but that hand was taken by Itami by two, and as he made Zorzal replicate a Vulcan salute, he tore the two pairs of fingers in two directions, breaking them and tearing them, almost off of his hand as he was forced to use that mangled appendage to break his fall.

Before he had stopped moving Itmai's dress shoe had found his face, teeth breaking, nose cracking, blood flowing.

The maids had cried, the survivors groaned as they were finally killed by mercy shots, and the royals had watched in horror.

And over everything Shino had laughed in the background. "Finally!"

"Talk!" had put his heel on the gunshot wound to his thigh, Zorzal's screams resounding into the night, making the torches ebb and flow. "Talk!"

"Nu- No! I can kill both of you with my bare hands!"

Itami had pointed his gun down toward him. "Try me."

Zorzal shifted toward the two, and Itami would've fired. He was going to, save not for the appearance of one of the slaves, broken from their chains.

Tyuule.

Her arms had been out, spread eagle, protecting the broken form of the Imperial prince, her eyes had been resolute. No one would touch him unless they went through her. The right woman, in the right place, at the right time.

"Of all the fucking people, you?!" Emerson had yelled in his own language. Not many had understood, but Tyuule did only because Emerson pointed one finger out.

She had nothing to say, but her point was clear.

"We sold them as slaves! That's all I know! Men, women! We sold them all! They were nothing special!"

And that was all Zorzal could say as Itami lowered his pistol, Kouji and Emerson going forward before an emperor. The prince had fallen to the floor, dead, passed out, one of the states which kept him out of the picture, Tyuule going to the floor in worry as she cried his name and called for help.

For once Kouji and Emerson stood there in concert. "Unfortunately that banquet you mentioned earlier will have to be postponed until further notice; at least until we get our citizens back." he had turned around, but paused. "I'm not familiar with your gods, but please do pray they are still alive."

"Pinya." Emerson's voice had sounded so low the woman in question froze as if she heard the devil himself talk to her. To her, that was very much the case. "I expect any information you may find on them be sent to us immediately."

The backup guard had put their shields on the ground and locked together like a turtle. Their spears over their heads and pointed toward them as Hitman and RCT3 formed a chevron in front of the civilians.

"Enough!" Molt's voice, the sound of him shooting from his chair straight, the absurdity of seeing war at his very feet. "I do not wish to see any more blood spilled here today." he looked down at Kouji and Emerson. "Sir Suguwara, Sir Bro- Sir Emerson, the soldiers of your country are strong, I will admit that much, but I see now their weakness."

"What weakness, Emperor Molt?"

"Your countries love their people too much and that'll come back to haunt you. Strong justice can be easily predicted. Strong faith will lead to great losses."

---

manifest destiny

American Casualties in the Afghanistan War as of 2015: 20,904

American Casualties in the Iraq War by war's end: 36,710

Coalition Casualties in Afghanistan as of 2015: 3,407

American Casualties across all wars in Manifest Destiny by 2029: 3.1 Million

"The total number of deaths in the three countries named above (Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan) could also be in excess of 2 million, whereas a figure below 1 million is extremely unlikely."

From their joint report— Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 Years of the 'War on Terror—Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Global Survival, and the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War regarding the human cost of the War on Terror

---

Under his breath, on the tongues of every American, they had all wanted to respond so knowingly, so sadly, relegated to their fates. They all knew what they wanted to say and it hurt:

"We know."

"If your enemy is strong, unbeatable, you simply should not fight them. Your country should take care to know that."

Kouji had forgotten there were Americans in the room as he stepped back toward the emperor. "My country…" he straightened his tie. "My country has taken that weakness, that moralistic integrity, as our national policy. Our army, the Japanese Self Defense Force, protects that policy. Would you like to test us?"

"You wouldn't be able to stop us." the emperor responded. "Why don't you just negotiate for peace?"

Kouji had looked down at the blood soaked carpet, his heels digging into the floor, and shook his head. It felt so right to know past all the bullshit he had thrown up against Emerson would be thrown down here. "It doesn't matter I guess. Peace… peace is just another name for the time before another war. Our country far exceeds the might of this Empire and much of even our own world. It is a country built on a history of bloodshed so what use is it to have peace negotiations no- peace, at all?"

"Because you would not win this war." Emerson shouldn't have said anything at all, but he did. He said it English, and only the Americans had heard what he said in his hushed relegation.

With that, silence, the rumble of the earth ever more.

Itami raised his hand and pistol outward. "We're leaving."

Not on the emperor's terms, but their own as the guards all stood by and saw the enemy inches from them, unable to do anything.

Pina reached out one last time to her teacher of a month who had taught her so much. "Kay!"

"You've disgraced me." his words had hit her like a bullet, falling to her knees as tears swelled in her eyes. The pen, Doc's pen, had still been in her ear, and it fell to the ground only to make a metal smack against an unknown item on the floor.

Before she had closed her eyes to cry however she had seen the blurry image of a black object who had seen war longer than anyone in that room had.

She knew what it was, she had held it, used it before, and damned it for it being presented to her by destiny, Sergeant Bannon's words when she had identified it long ago echoing in her mind.

"German model P-08. Nine millimeter Parabellum. A Luger."

---

Before we had stormed out the front door, Imperial knights and guards told to stand down still surrounding them, the Rose Order had been there.

"Is Princess Pina alright?" Hamilton had screamed aloud, her and the rest of the knights blocking the door way, shields up, swords out. "Is she?!"

"Go check on her. She's fine."

The blood on our forms, in our footsteps, it had told a different fact. They wouldn't believe us. They didn't believe us as Loke and Masterson pushed forward, Doc, Ramirez and RCT3 covering our backs. I had held my arms out for them to get behind me.

I had trained them hard. Trained them vigorously. Trained them as my trainer taught me. I knew what had made them tick, made them go in order, and bring them to their knees. I had beat it into them and what I was capable of.

Hamilton walk forwarded towards me, just like how she greeted me the first time here, challenging me.

Pina hadn't been holding me back this time.

"Fall in line!" my voice had betrayed itself, and it had gone low, growling almost. My Rangers had tipped their heads up by habit as they heard those words, but beat it back. The Rose Order's dozen deep line had stumbled as their faces froze and their stances fell for a second. Hamilton herself had stumbled horribly, going to a stop as she lost her breath, her brain comprehending those words. Her fury wanted her to stand straight. Her habits, her training, had told her to get on her knees. Like glass breaking one side had prevailed. I stepped forward as I said it, the group coming with me as our shadow cast itself over her and overwhelmed. "Fall!"

To bring someone on their knees by voice and authority alone, that had been a part of who I had trained to be, and everyone had recognized it.

They fell in line, they fell apart, and they let us go as we left them behind.

---

"This is Hitman Actual to Overlord. Do you copy Overlord? Over."

"This is Overlord-Actual. Go ahead Hitman Actual."

Bannon had cranked a flare as she had thrown it forward, landing before the steps of the Imperial Senate, unquestioning of what had happened in the capital as she had seen the Japanese slave. "RCT3 and Hitman elements have confirmed the existence of slaves. American and Japanese citizens included. How copy over?"

"…."

"I repeat. Hitman has confirmed existence of Japanese and American slaves. How copy Overlord? Over."

"Overlord copies all."

A few clicks of the radio later, behind Overlord's transceiver, and Emerson knew it was a wide band declaration about to be announced. A contingency for this worst possible scenario. A scenario where America had to be who it had been, so long ago.

And yet the Japanese did not know. Only the Americans. They were the first to know. Not Hazama.

Shino and Tomita had cringed at the cackle of their radios. It had been an American message.

"This is Overlord Actual to all US Military units. We have confirmed Imperial status on slaves and have confirmed American slaves are present in the AO. As of Zero-two-zero-zero hour, all forces are standing by on DEFCON 2. I repeat. To all US Military units within the Special Region, DEFCON 2. We are on war footing. Report to your company commanders at once and prepare for mobilization. All orders must come from American officers and command authority from here on in. Disregard JSDF command unless outright stated by your commanding officers. Authenticate Ulysses. May God have mercy."

Kouji looked at Emerson in shock as the Americans turned away all of the sudden, and left the Japanese behind as they threw their hoods over their heads: a Black Hawk chopper formation touching down in front of the capital with the backdrop of a burning Empire. Nutt had been ferried over as the bloodied Hitmen separated from the Japanese.

The Japanese slave had been taken from them. They were going to get back home faster than anyone.

"What are you doing?! This is a Japanese operation!" he yelled. All RCT3 could do was watch as Hitman had become worthy of the title the entire world had held in scorn at one time or another. An ugly word with a weighted connotation that seemed to drag the people it described to hell: American.

Emerson turned around coldly. "Not anymore."

"What?! Someone get to Lieutenant General Hazama now! He needs to know of this information fir-" the choppers had drowned out his yelling as Hitman had mounted with the Japanese citizen.

Some could argue it never had been a Japanese operation.

Not in control, command, or planning. No. It had never been a Japanese operation because of its character, in its soul.

And thus, the Japanese had fought an American war.