A/N: Character development/introduction. Last three for this act I believe.

pwashington - I've put hints and insinuations, probably no more than sentence long throwaways, that Lelei has been undermining some aspects of the Special Task Force's system, and that she's pursing certain subjects beneath their nose. I won't hide that I'm doing this at this point, but I wanted to convey it in a way where she does this entirely innocently out of pure habit and drive. She is the person, if pressed, that will keep asking why.

Rip - I actually spent a good part of that former chapter writing out a rather elaborate fight scene where the Cockatrice and the Rangers go mono e mono, but then I remembered that they wouldn't do that. Not at all. The only unfair fight was the one they lost, and they did what they knew they could do and shelled it. The same with the Zombies. When Itami and his band went through the Labyrinth he and Rory did most of the heavy lifting. Now you have, as I tried to emphasize, a team of elite infantry who, given the mediocrity of these zombies, would've had no real issue dispatching them.

Also, perhaps, I put an analogue to the fact that killing zombies was no harder than putting down the Imperials before.

They've become used to it.

Weapon - You're gonna have to wait one more chapter to see Lisa's reaction, sorry.

Section 2-17

Posted 10/25/16

Seven months since the Ginza Incident

March 11th, 2029

Japan – Ginza – The Gate

General Andrade had often considered he lived many lives. A life as a father and husband, a life as a soldier, a life as a pilot, a life as an officer, and now as a commander among others.

All those lives, he had reasoned, would've been nice if he had been in a new world. With the Gate having appeared, there was now a possible resolution to that request, but that was simply a request shot off during half-serious conversations with his wife. He enjoyed the life he had with her and his kids.

He enjoyed knowing that, in the end, it was all alright at the latter half of this one hundred years.

It was his obligation to make sure the soldiers in the 7th MEU, and the JSDF for that matter, had eventually felt the same way at old age.

Today was not the day he'd visit Arnus Hill however. Today was not the day he'd step in the land of the Empire and see, with his own eyes, what Empire truly looked Iike.

Today was the day the fighters of the VMFA-118 were finally transferred over to assist the 7th MEU and supplement the outdated Hornets.

The 118th Marine Fighter Attack Squadron was formed shortly before the onset of the 2nd Korean War for what would've become the 7th MEU, a popular public polling in Japan having designated the name of the squadron. Needless to say it became, with its looping sapphire ribbon on its tail paired with an entirely coincidental squadron number, named after a popular fictional fighter squadron.

Lieutenant Colonel Noelle, upon assuming command of the squadron, had been moderately annoyed, however he had assumed the designation of Mobius One all the same. He had earned that positon through Korean MiGs downed and hundreds of people torn up in his gun runs.

The 118th was a well-equipped, and well manned squadron under normal pretenses, even in the 2nd Korean War when they were simply on one of their first routine flights when the borders broke down. The squadron had even operated out of the USS Enterprise with their F-35s as grounded air strips in Korea became overrun.

Now, however, was what had broken the 118th's back.

Most of the crew and the pilots had already been on the other side, posted at Arnus Hill with nearly mothballed Hornets.

With a need to shore up pilots and crew to accompany the doubled aircraft amount over there, a call was out throughout the USFJ:

Any base commanders who could, spare pilots to temporarily be stationed in the Special Region.

That day, on main street Ginza under the guise of an early morning bloom, the JSDF and the rest of the Army Rangers from the 4th Battalion posted in Japan having cleared and covered the entire shindig, General Andrade stood next to one of those "spare pilots".

She was one of the new breed, Andrade had noted. Trained after Open Wind, but before the Korean War. She flew during it, that much he knew: shot down three MiGs and a Hind. Not an Ace, but respectable, given that fact she was at the helm of an electric warfare craft with only point blank missiles for usage.

The Koreans and their unending waves of terrible human fodder had been emulated on the ground, in the armor, and in the air as well:

Even with outdated aircraft the North Koreans had been able to shore up enough aircraft to match the Blue Dragons that had been Japan and South Korea plane to plane.

She stood about three inches below him, her hair was sleek like an Asian woman's, but a dark brown as if an American. Chinese heritage, according to the file. He saw it in her eyes anyway. Lean, as a fighter pilot should've been, but there was more to it to her stance: a conflict three way between professionalism, and apprehensiveness, and the swagger of a fighter pilot.

"Lose the shades, pilot." He said once, looking up at her as she stood next to the veiled form of an F-35B. The craft in particular was Noelle's own, the battle earned stars of nearly two dozen Korean MiGs shot down on his nose in red stars along with one more: the winged form of a dragon. Noelle had been the only combat aircraft to down a dragon during that day over Ginza, if only because he had been on quick on the scramble from the USS Normandy as the rest of Emerson's Rangers had been.

She spooked herself, apparently dazing from behind those aviators, the disheveled frames clattering onto the flatbed's steel surface as she realized who had addressed her.

"General Andrade!" She snapped to a salute before the general had habitually answered with one of his own.

"Lieutenant Commander Athena Lin, I assume getting that promotion would've gotten your head out of your ass. I guess not." She got that promotion only recently, and it was due, in his opinion.

She kept rigid as the general addressed her. He wasn't a scary man to look out, outright, but there had been more to the general from Compton, six foot one and a tattoo across his back which, perhaps after a little stubbornness, he kept despite being the man of USAF absolute order.

It took two and a half decades for a man who flew during Desert Storm to finally get an air to air kill, and when he did, as the NATO and UN Blitzkrieg into Iran started, he took nine Iranian F-14s, MiGs, and Mirages with him in his Raptor.

He was the first ace of Open Wind, and, in the end, responsible for bringing his combat flights the most combined Iranian aircraft kills during the entire operation.

It was that same blood thirsty, borderline overzealous drive that drove him to be posted in Japan in case of a North Korean attack. That attack happened, and, as luck would have it, one of the pilots on station that day was Lieutenant Commander Lin, a Navy pilot whose squadron was in the air along with Noelle's.

She didn't say anything as the general climbed up to her level on the flatbed, staring her down with barely a twitch of his eye, the woman standing straight.

The general knew better however. If you wanted pilots to truly take on an aspect of the boots on the ground, to want so much to fight, to kill, to wage war from their cockpits miles up, you pressed them to their breaking point before mercifully letting go.

It was rare, and needed, to find pilots who operated under such conditions.

And so he remembered a then Lieutenant Lin and how she flew as the war needed it.

"Stand at ease. Nice to see you're still around."

She had let go of a breath she didn't know she was holding, leaning down for a second only to pick up her aviators. There was a sidearm on her hip, a hair tie around her wrist that had left a series of marks up and down her skin. Andrade looked to her eyes, and they did not tell the story of a well-rested woman. "Nice to see you're still around too, sir... I saw you during Ginza."

Andrade crossed his arms as he looked out behind at the convoy of further supplies: this was a JSDF and Marine supply run oriented at the air arm of the STF. It was a giant one at that: the largest move ever since the AC-130 was trucked in in pieces.

Every day new materials and building supplies would make their way past the Gate for further use by the STF in the building up of the facilities and The Corridor, but there had been a section to those supply transfers that the staff of the STF had often been in petty conflict about: the arming of the Rangers and the Marines to current standards.

This convoy had been just as big as the original invasion force, but the pomp of it had been lost to the reality of what had gone on behind that gate and iron dome. A reality that only a choice few had known from beyond the Gate.

Patiently Andrade's two guards had been below them on this flat bed, the other pilots waiting with their birds and support crew as preparations were set.

Normally most of the material and manpower that went past the Gate had been one way, but only two days ago had a convoy, gunned up, blood stained from their cargo, had sped through all the way to the JSDF's Central Hospital.

The most important cargo had been this: Delilah herself, down a hand, a leg, a piece of her ear, and a few other bits and pieces that Blackburn had taken from her. She was alive, barely, but there was a cuff and binding on any place there had still been a limb or a bandage.

That and a Delta Team along with JSDF SOGs had been posted in Central in case she had done anything funny.

Andrade had entertained her comment before he got to what he approached his true reasoning in confronting her, waiting for the move over. "Really? Forgive me for not noticing."

"Me and Lieutenant Commander Blackburn were among the first responders that day. Fresh from a Survival Game field… when we finally made it to your CP you were dealing with Tokyo Police on how to coordinate the road blocks." There was a little pomp and pride to her admittance. Though Emerson, Masterson, and Itami were the only ones awarded their distinct "Hero of Ginza" medal by the Japanese government, there had been scores more of first responders come in with clubs, fireworks, illegal firearms, trucks and cars, and whatever else could've fought against Roman legions. A staggering amount had been civilians, but, before the main force rolled in, there had been a few other military personnel like the trio who had access to proper combat firearms and the tenacity to go into Ginza.

Andrade had nodded thoroughly as he remembered that particular debacle. The Police and the Marines had different considerations when it came to locking down a city block, but the JSDF eventually intervened and took care of the situation for him.

That day in Ginza seemed so long ago now, but it was, in reality, only half a year. He still remembered what it was like to hold a rifle on the ground, and it had been a feeling he wanted to forget.

"Thank you for heeding Emerson's call then, Lieutenant Commander Lin, but you've helped me Segway into what I wanted to talk to you about."

She tilted her head. "What, sir?"

Andrade sounded tired. He was tired. "The same reason I'm talking to you now is the same reason why the Pentagon advised me against confirming your temporary transfer to Lieutenant Colonel Noelle's unit. It's the same reason why I think you should go, and the same reason why you shouldn't."

It was the same reason why she hadn't had any sleep recently.

She curled her lip as she looked away. "He broke operational security, didn't he?"

At around three in the morning Japanese Standard Time, a single cellular phone call was bounced from the Arnus Hill tower, through the data line that had been spread straight through the Gate, and out into the airwaves to her.

That call was from Lieutenant Commander Blackburn, from his bed at Arnus Hill hospital, fresh from an operation which got Delilah's kukri out of his shoulder. Given the meds he had been on, the phone call hadn't much substance, but it was a phone call altogether.

Andrade had been briefed on its content all the same.

It was sweet, poignant, but to the point.

Andrade nodded to Lin's guess. "I talked to Andrew when he was in Seoul, you know. He was our only ground communique when the Norks came and the only man able to organize the resistance to designate targets for the ground pounders. I have great respect for him and his abilities."

She had also nodded, remembering who he once was. "I know, sir, you tasked many of those coordinates to my flight. I ran SAAD that day, remember?" Her voice was young. Younger than the 29 that she was would've let on. Maybe in another world it would've fit her, but this was a cold world that day.

"I know you did. I wasn't aware he was your main squeeze until yesterday however, and I didn't know it was serious enough for him to brake the communication lock for personal calls."

Blackburn, in some quasi-delirious state, had said that "insurgents" had gotten within the main base of the Special Task Force and stabbed him.

To even admit such a thing happened publically would've had the American public in uproar, let alone the Japanese. To any civilian observer, the same steps were being tread again into an endless war…

She cringed at that, knowingly. "Sir. I saw an opportunity and I took it, respectfully."

Andrade had nodded thoughtfully, but in a way like a wolf, considering a lesser in the pack. He wasn't sure if she had been talking about their relationship or the chance to go through the Gate, but hadn't cared. "Lieutenant Commander Lin, every day I get reports that, with the casualties seen on the other side sustained by the Imperials, the JSDF and even some of the brass at the Pentagon are chomping at the bit to bloody themselves in easy kills: to test out new weapon systems meant for a Chinese war that might kick off its prelude if the situation with Vietnam explodes."

"Sir…?" She didn't understand.

Andrade pursed his lips in his coat, his cap, dead center, holding the pin of his rank. "Is that all you can say Lieutenant Commander Lin?"

It was the early morning, China, that day, was expected to transfer an entire squadron to the South Chinese border for an inevitable happening, and here she was… an able pilot whose specific set of piloting skills would've been invaluable if South East Asia went hot.

She winced as she grit her teeth, shaking something out of her. "The Special Task Force requested pilots. I answered."

"But why did you answer?" He pressed on, his voice soft.

"Is this on the record?" She worried.

Andrade tightened his jaw as he ignored her precaution. There was none needed. "You answered, not to pad for glory, not to paint your aircraft a few extra marks on your nose, but because you care about someone on the other side. I have to applaud you on that, if not tell you you're an idiot for acting on it."

She seemed offended for a second. "I can do my job well over there general."

"What? You think you can just get over there, break from your post, go to a hospital which, to my knowledge is locked down like the Green Zone was, and go visit your boyfriend?"

She kept her mouth open for just a second, considering her words, eye darting to the ground as her hands moved to her jumpsuit's pockets. "Sir, respectfully, it's not Iraq. And I think I have a right to see and comfort the man I love."

Those words had pained Andrade. They did as he winced, blew breath through his nose. "You fucking new pilots, both you and Noelle, you don't get it."

It was too early for this shit, Lin had thought as she also looked around incredulously before centering her sights. "Sir, do you have a problem?"

Andrade knew he was venting to her. He knew she knew as he brought his rough hand to his mouth and dragged down in some tired aggravation.

"There are nearly two thousand Marines, Sailors, Airmen, and Soldiers over there right now. 99% of them are over there because they're doing their job. People are still processing forms, I'm sure there's one or two people over there that are bored out of their mind on the prefabs, heck, even the cooks. From the inside of the building, during the day to day activities that keep our machine going, to them it doesn't matter where they are. All they know is that how they act is based upon the wars that came before them, and how it doesn't matter where, or when, they fight, they will be who they were assigned to be and nothing more, if they know what's good for them."

"And how about that 1%?" The Rangers, Itami; that is who Lin insinuated, who she identified with.

The Rangers which Hitman had been a part of had only been standing a few yards away on guard duty for this convoy. The way they were outfitted had spoken of future warfare entirely: the rifles, their uniforms, their plate carriers and equipment screaming of special forces.

"…There's a saying in my mother tongue, Lieutenant Commander Lin: Ahogado el nino, tapando el pozo." Andrade had looked to the distant East, past the buildings of Tokyo, toward America.

"And what does that translate to, general?"

"Only after a child drowns, do they close the well. I'm sure Hitman, and anyone who becomes involved in the people over there in certain ways will know what that really means."

"…Are you okay sir?" That's what this all was, Andrade had reasoned after so long, the Gate was only a distraction at this point from the real issues. The real issues of coming Pacific hostilities.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm just protective about my pilots. Is all." He lied. He didn't want much more than Pierce's 7th over there but he had to play ball with the Pentagon, President Fletcher, and the former President Dirrel's existing orders. "Maybe I'm just trying to make you feel bad about going over there as a SAAD pilot. I doubt the Romans have any anti-air defenses."

"You can never be too sure." She touched the covering of the F-35, its form sheathed in both darkness and the cloth. A pause had come over them. If he wanted her out, Lin realized, he wouldn't have done it this way.

Andrade curled his lip once. "I have every right to pull you out of there if you fall out of line."

She nodded thoroughly, resolutely. "I recognize the risk."

"But you also know that, in the service of your country, you're wasting your time."

"Aren't we all over there, sir? Respectfully."

Two generations stood before a machine monster: a generation born from the Cold War, and a generation born into a Forever War. In between them a dead space left bare by conflict and human suffering that defined how both acted.

"What are you expecting?"

"More of a show of force than anything. I doubt that after the initial engagements that the Empire truly tried to engage us… least what I would think so. Fly this bird around whatever capital they got, and maybe their king or some shit signs a peace treaty even faster… assuming they haven't already."

She didn't know. None of the new personnel of the Special Task Force had been briefed about the battles that came before them. None had known of the antics of RCT3 and Hitman, none had known of the Corridor, or Myui, or the Battle of Italica or the Japanese Slave or the possibility of there being American prisoners.

It was all on a need to know basis.

"It's not for you to wonder, Lieutenant Commander Lin."

"Do you talk to all of your pilots like this, General Andrade?"

"Only the special ones."

"I'm flattered."

"Alright, good, I just wanted to give you shit and know what kind of leash you're on, is all, Lieutenant Commander Lin." He pocketed his hands as he silently brought his heels together, Lin recognizing the maneuver and bringing her hand up in salute.

The unspoken language of fighter pilots that transcended age; inherited by battling in the blue. The language of hawks, almost.

"I hear a Masterson is over there, too, you know. I hear you knew him" Lin said quietly, hair blowing in that urban sprawl.

Andrade smirked for a second. The son of Texas's favorite lawyers was known by Lin. She was born and raised in Austin.

"He doesn't take autographs, Lieutenant Commander Lin. He ain't that sorta person."

The sirens had sounded at that moment, waking up those few in Tokyo who had still been sleeping, the echoing roar of what had been the air raid sirens of Yokota ringing out, signaling yet another day of business as usual in the Special Task Force.

"Why are you letting me go, general, if you have reasons to oppose?"

Andrade had scratched his chin once before hopping off, shaking his head. "I know what kind of man Blackburn is. He needs a friend over there or else I won't even have to send over Walke-" he caught himself before shaking his head. "Don't worry about it lieutenant commander. Just know who to keep cozy with."

D-Day + 64

Falmart – The Corridor – Furata's

"I hiked a lot as a kid, and, where I grew up as a kid, there used to be this large volcano I would climb."

"You? Climb a volcano?!"

"Yeah! I mean, it hadn't erupted for decades, but when it went, it was, if I'm not mistaken, one of the biggest eruptions in my time."

Valentine spoke, of course, of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. To who he was speaking to was the captivated harpy that the Corridor had known as Tyuwaru. She hailed from a land very similar to the Pacific North West which Valentine came from himself, and that was as much a thing to talk about.

It was one of those rare mornings when Valentine had time off duty, and, seeing within himself a moral person, he had taken care of a younger girl he had met in the prior few days. That girl being Tyuwaru. Maybe it was the inclination that he was going to be a father soon, maybe it was some paternal knee jerk motion that he held inside himself as the taker of lives on the daily, but he had done it without condition. Perhaps it was the fact he had blown out the brains of someone recently who had done this girl wrong, but he didn't think too much about how many pieces of him had been spread throughout that one room in the hospital complex.

Given that Arnus Hill wanted to keep the only other (known) special forces group at arm's reach in case of another attack like Delilah's, the Force Recon Operators had been told to be "At ease."

Today Valentine brought Tyuwaru to, on account of Delilah's restaurant being eviscerated in STALMP's and the Special Task Force MPs attempt to scour it for evidence, the restaurant inspired by the cooking of one of RCT3's members: Furata's.

Technically RCT3's cook actually owned the restaurant by the way of Bannon "suggesting" it to him.

It was good food, as Furata and his recipes yielded such dishes, but the only people who ate free had been off either a.) Hunting a Dragon, b.) Hunting for a cure for a zombie-esque disease, or c.) in the Capital currently changing the local politics by killing crime lords.

That and Valentine couldn't pay with bullet cartridges. Just cold hard Japanese Yen.

"How big?" the Harpy asked, thoroughly interested.

"Ah, half the mountain disappeared. But we were good."

The feminine chuckle of a third woman had joined the conversation.

Joining them for lunch that day had been one of the small business owners of the Corridor: a particularly peculiar feline that had been more familiar with the Marines than one would assume. Unlike Persia of the Fromar stock, she had been more "Feral" than that. If Persia had been a Kardashian then this woman with the Scout Sniper and the Harpy had been a Forman. Her cream and orange colored fur had been scattered messily, the fact that she had fur, two cat ears, and a tail the only real hint that she had been of the same species as Persia.

She was afforded something of a discount to Furata's for being the supplier of the beautiful flowers that decorated each of the tables from their vase.

"Ah, even Mother Nature, as you Americans call it, can be destructive." she said observantly, if not cutely. She still wore her apron that she wore at her shop, across her breast her nametag had read this: Lyuna.

Her hair was also that pleasant orange, tied up in a ponytail as befit a working class woman.

The business that she owned had been a flower shop, and Tyuwaru had been eying up a job at her establishment, as was why she had been invited to sit with them that day. Not that anyone had told her yet. Seeing as a flower shop hadn't been the most lucrative business she wouldn't have said no to any paid for meal.

The Harpy had winced as her half-consumed soup became cold. Before the invasion, she had been a refugee herself. Then again at this point, who wasn't?

Most of her own village had been destroyed during such a volcanic eruption, and so, as a wandering soul in Imperial territory, she naturally found herself slaved up and sold into Akusho's prostitution ring.

"Well, clearly, Mother Nature is more beautiful than destructive, as is why your line of business exists, isn't that right madam?" Valentine had nodded at Lyuna, pointing to her limply and then to the classical rose flower in the vase between them.

"You smell so nice Lyuna. How do you do it?" Tyuwaru had, when Valentine had come and picked her up from her housing today, had smelled like a man. Which was to say she had been, painfully to him, busy.

It was RCT3's Medic, Kurokawa Mari, that had left a suggestion to Arnus Hill before she had left again for the Imperial Capital. That was to simply apprehend any of the prostitutes under threat of law breaking.

For the Special Task Force, such decisions with an anchor in morality were too focused, too controversial, too complicated to carry out.

But, as Kurokawa herself had put it in her increasingly sour disposition: "I just want people to stop fucking prostitutes."

Valentine could concur as he saw Tyuwaru that day and found a new mission for himself that didn't involve massacring hopeless Imperials.

"Oh, it just comes with the job, unfortunately. I could never get sick of the smell of flowers, however I often like to imagine what the cooks in Delilah's café smelled like after a long day with their food." the young woman answered.

"Smells better than him, definitively." Tyuwaru had poked Valentine as he rolled his eyes, the smell of his miso soup covering up said smell.

"I'm sorry for being human. I don't got a sense of smell like you people anyway."

"Like any of the senses it can be trained." Tyuwaru had pointed her finger up, waving it about.

That Valentine understood as he looked across the restaurant at current: it was a much more formal affair than Delilah's. The servants had been more conservative in their wear, and the food was meant to fulfill hunger, not quench thirsts and bring about spirits. This was where, judging by the fact that the canine humanoids in the corner had gone out of their way to groom and dress up, the more polite and casual of the Corridor came to eat if they had the cash.

Actual cash of course, not the Imperial Denari or the still very much illegal bullet trade.

For a moment, as Valentine used his most valuable sense to gauge the restaurant, he saw a normal world. What could've been a normal life being lived by those who came to the Corridor with Lelei's and Myui's promise of protection and a modern scheme.

It also helped that the restaurant, in its brick and mortar and marble, had looked the part.

Business had been up ever since Delilah's gamble came and went and, with the majority of the people there assuming that she had been torn limb from limb as Ryolu suggested, they came to Furata's to eat at the Arnus side of the Corridor.

"Your eyesight must be like that of a hawk's, Valentine." Tyuwaru had admired, almost. She would've been one to know what such an eyesight was.

Valentine rolled his head around in some bashfulness. "Ah, maybe, maybe not… I mean, you've probably got flight over me."

"Not until I'm much older. My twenties perhaps." She palmed her cheek bashfully.

"A little jealous." Lyuna had said.

"Envious, if I can correct." Valentine responded. The two women had looked at him oddly. "Envy is when you want something that someone else has, jealousy is when they have something that is supposed to be yours… I think."

"Hm, seems like you've thought about that a lot Val." Tyuwaru had laid her head on her hands on the table.

Their meal was eaten already. It was a nice, normal lunch at the very least. The patrons that day hadn't been too loud or anything of the like; polite. Perhaps they were in mourning over Delilah.

"Ah, maybe... Maybe."

Envious, or perhaps rightly jealous, of a regular life perhaps. That's what the medusa maid had conjured from her, for her sake, hidden ability to occasionally prod into people's minds.

"That being said, you've probably flown more than me, Valentine." Tyuwaru had a hint of cold creek into her voice, looking up at the ceiling from her chair that was basically her size. Past the roof, past the sky, looking at the hum of choppers come and go from either Camp Kilgore or Arnus Hill. "What're those things called?"

Valentine would've answered first, but Lyuna beat him. "Heely Choppers, I think. Always such a bother whenever they pass over my shop, knock all the displays out and ruins my flowers."

"Helicopters, and maybe I'll take you up in one one day." He corrected. Tyuwaru had chirped before leaning excited into the sniper's right side, the man chuckling as he toyed with a fork, quite satisfied with himself.

"Thank you, Valentine."

"Of course…" he nodded to himself before looking at Lyuna, her eyebrow raised as she finally, non verbally, asked why she had invited.

The sniper crossed his arms as a waiter had refilled their cups of water, the man sipping at them before anything else.

"Look, I know jack squat about flower gardening and stuff like that; that's more my wife's specialty, that it must certainly be a better life than-" Valentine caught himself as he remembered who had been next to him. "Sorry."

She had chirped empathetically, finally separating from him. "It's alright, I know you mean well… but this is the life I've become accustomed to, and it's a perfectly okay way to live."

"Oh don't give me that crap. If you were my daughter and you were caught up in this sorta shit I swear to god-"

"But I'm not your daughter Valentine."

She had caught him red handed in her simple words, said without malice or intent. Just the truth. And yet he pressed on.

"I'm sure your daughter would appreciate such sentiment though."

"Well she ain't born yet, but… I hope." Valentine sucked himself back in as Lyuna's ears twitched.

"When will she be born?" she asked in pure earnest.

"Four months or so. I'll be back home by then, hopefully."

"Well, make sure before you leave you stop by my shop, Sir Valentine. I have a bouquet that's just right for a newborn!"

"I'll be sure to, ma'am… still, not the point Tyuwaru." Valentine pressed on. "There are better ways to be spending your time and making your money than doing such things with people you don't know." Said the killer.

"I mean, it's just the way I've lived my life…" there was a hint of sadness in her words that Valentine had felt, Lyuna wincing at as she had idly taken the flower in the middle of the table in her hand. The rose was fresh cut, but yet it grew more in Lyuna's hands; a testament to a particular skill she had.

She should've taken this girl in, she knew. She didn't want to have a former prostitute working in the shop however.

That was her bias.

"Am I bad person for not knowing any other way to live?"

Valentine moved his palm through his brushed hair almost frantically. "Well, you're not an object. I know you're not. You're a walking, talking, living, breathing, feeling person. You're not someone's personal screw toy."

"Mizari tells me that it's as good a way to live as a mercenary, and we're giving joy to the people we service." There was another voice behind her words.

"But have you ever thought of doing something more fulfilling? More right?"

"What do you mean by right?"

Another world, another era, another set of principles that could not be taught in a snap. That's what kept Valentine away from what he needed to see this girl do for herself.

Americans held those truths to be self-evident, but this was not America, and the people of the Corridor had not been Americans.

It's what kept her current "employer" in business.

That employer had walked into the restaurant. As always she drew attention.

Mizari had been an opportunistic mind at least. She recognized the moves of men and the ability to make one's payday in one fell swoop. Without a leash, and as Kurokawa had predicted, as she had predicted, she went back to the one thing she knew how to do.

She went back with company: those with also no other recourse.

She wore the same dress she did in Akusho: that veil of white and satin that made her take on her aspect of Angel. No matter what she did, no matter who she was, she was an angel, and the Marines that had seen her in passing, those with the Christian faith had nearly dropped dead at seeing one before them.

Otherwise men had just dropped to their knees in her beauty.

The only that had changed was the messenger bag, dyed pearl, that had been at her side: brimming with cash, jingling with coin.

Business had been good.

Her fingertips had graced the shoulder of one of the patrons of the restaurant. "Hello sweetheart." A customer from days past.

The staff had approached her, as if she was partaking in the food there, but she had waved them down and instead pointed at a table at the back: Valentine's.

Lyuna had raised her eyebrow for a second, impressed as any man's, but also with a piece of history under her breath: "Huh, I thought the Empire killed all of the Asael people."

That was the name of the Angels that once inhabited the Sadera Hills, only to be done in by conquest.

Perhaps Mizari had been the last of her people.

Perhaps she was just another Delilah in the making.

Perhaps…

"I should really be going now-" Tyuwaru tried to get out of her seat, but Valentine's raised eyebrow had stopped her.

"Is she who I think she is?"

Tyuwaru had talked of Mizari fondly, if not with some apprehensiveness. She had nodded shyly as she held the edges of her seat.

She was a woman who had lived on the cut throat edge of a society that was liable to cast her out; Mizari had made sure she had a persona to exist, to live, to survive in it. As was why she had brought all the prostitutes with her to the Devil's House. As was why she talked to Kurokawa in particular.

Empathy was something that prostitutes used to enjoy the benefits of those with the charity to screw for pleasure in Akusho. People tended to be most vulnerable with their hearts open, pants down, or otherwise. Gripping someone by the balls had been her specialty, after all.

If Kurokawa was asked if the prostitutes were good people, she would've said yes without pause. Just dealt a bad hand, she reasoned.

But Emerson would've thought it different. Even before he had lived his time underneath Pina the old saying had been key to how he saw people:

"The right man, in the wrong place, at the wrong time" had been a versatile phrase. What it meant when applied to the prostitutes was something he could've applied to himself: When good people do bad things, good becomes a question of is or isn't.

Valentine had simply thought that all people were were what they did, which was why he wanted Tyuwaru out of her position so fast. She had done bad, and that bad was goaded on by this angel.

She walked up to that table with little introduction. "Tyuwaru, weren't you supposed to be near the Fifth Square with Loruru and Kally today?"

The Harpy vibrated visibly, unable to hold a gaze with Mizari as if a guilty child. "Uhm, Sir Valentine here invited me to lunch and well-" she looked into her own mind before pulling out a piece of ugly knowledge. "You said it yourself, we should never say no to a man's request."

Valentine nearly puked at the sound of her saying that and what it meant.

"What do you want, ma'am." He said as he held his gut down, a hand covering his mouth. There was irritation behind it.

"Ah, so you're Valentine, aren't you? I heard the Gladiator Kay and his Demons talk of you once or twice."

"Who the Hell is Kay?"

Mizari raised her eyebrow before disregarding. "I've come here to check up on little Tyuwaru here. I heard from my people she was around here and she's supposed to be attending to some other men…"

Valentine hadn't moved his head as he palmed his face, speaking through his bones. "I didn't know you were working today, Tyuwaru."

The Harpy could only fidget her mouth, no words coming out. Valentine had once or twice asked that she stop, at once, doing what she did. He said, "One day you're not going to have me or someone like me put their foot down for you if someone gets too frisky, ya dig?"

Habits are hard to break however, especially ones that are financially reliant.

"What job calls her at noon and keeps her busy until the morning the day after?"

"A special job, one that isn't listed by the Fromars as needed by this Special Task Force of yours." She answered slyly. What she did was illegal. But then again the law only applied to those without power, and Mizari had her own.

"Then why don't you go through the Fromars or the Task Force's system to get a job that's more… appropriate?" Valentine, for a second, thought about the fact he would be willing to put Tyuwaru up for child labor, but he had bigger battles to fight first.

Mizari had rolled her eyes. "We have to support ourselves in this new economy the Japanese are proposing, and the local government nor this Order of the Red Cross cannot find positions for us in town fast enough. Madam Lelei, who was in charge of such local job finding services, is missing at the moment as well."

Who knew that a ragtag group of dragon hunters could affect Valentine like they did now.

"Can't you wait though? You seem to have enough coin." Valentine pointed to her bag.

She had scoffed almost as she put the back behind her form more. "You can't feed the amount of people I tend to with just this, that and with how busy this place is, I can imagine the men are more than willing to pay for a service that happens to be rare… I'm sure one of your comrades would also be willing to take on this service, seeing as how valiant you all were a few nights ago." It was more than an insinuation. It was the promise, the prediction, the already-happened fact. If Wilbur had gotten his piece, so had any other macho Marine who really tried.

There was a ring on Valentine's finger that made him decline, his fist curling on the table.

"What do you want ma'am?"

"Tyuwaru."

Valentine had sucked in some air sharply as he had scratched as his sideburns, taking a glance at the speechless Tyuwaru, instead looking down at her half eaten meal motionlessly.

How old was she again? Valentine had thought. 13? 14?

"I'm sorry, Miss Mizari, however she's having lunch with me and Miss Lyuna here."

"Really? I thought she was supposed to be helping us today."

"She has better things to be doing."

"It's a job: what she does."

"It's not a job, it's exploitation."

"How rude."

Valentine had silently snickered. "Too bad. You're just lucky we're too busy with other shit to do anything about it."

She took a drag from her pipe, always there, always letting the wispy clouds off into the air in a building where smoking was not allowed. It smelt of sin. The pause that had been offered was only filled in with the façade of people trying to keep cool.

Valentine had killed for less.

Mizari had expected Tyuwaru to already have come with her.

The poor flower shop owner Lyuna had only fidgeted in her seat, her tail dead, her fur raised.

"So you know what we do?" The angel asked. It was an insulting question to Valentine almost: to have him say what Tyuwaru did.

"I prefer not to say what when I'm having lunch." Steak was steak, and the type of bovine they had here in Italica provided a particularly interesting taste. "And besides, it's wrong and illegal in this Corridor."

Suppose the same could've been said for the women.

"I'm coming Mizari." Tyuwaru had said as if expected of her, she said it hurriedly, with urgency that betrayed her age.

"You don't have to go Tyuwaru."

"It's for the best…" Valentine had instead opened up his worn palm at her, stopping her as she almost got out of her chair.

There was a certain tenseness in Valentine's voice that made the volume project throughout that quaint room, and the restaurant had looked to them silently. Conflict within the Corridor. The Killer of Italica versus the Lover of the Corridor. Angels and Demons appropriately.

With the arrival of the prostitutes came the legends of Kay Ro Bronxon and those that trained with him. It was only assumed that, as per Emerson's posturing to the Imperials, he had trained or were kin with the special forces of the Special Task Force.

If Emerson was Demon Lord, Valentine was one of his own.

Mizari had treated him as such.

"You are so fond of Tyuwaru, she tells me… I suppose you like kids yourself, don't you?"

"Nah." His answer was hard and fast, his head shaking as he scooched his chair back for his sitting form to face Mizari. "You come to me while I'm having a meal I paid for and call me a kid fucker-"

A picture snapped in the background. A JSDF patron with his digital camera had taken a snapshot, slightly annoying the sniper. The locals however wouldn't know any better.

Mizari had barely moved her arm in accusation, her hand ever gripping her pipe. "Why just her though? If you feel for what she has been doing is wrong, than why not bring the issue broader? To all of us?"

"One step at a time." It was his only excuse, his only lie. After step one he'd rather stop. After all, as long as he only saved one person in his time here, it would've been okay he reasoned. It would've been how he could've lived himself.

Because, in the end, there's a conflict in every human heart, between the rational and the irrational…

Forget about everyone else, remember her, forget this damned Special Region after going home. Settle down and never pick up a gun again if he could.

Mizari had read Valentine's stiffness, the aggressiveness in his voice, the way he ran his hand through his light brown facial hair to give his hands something else to do other than strangle the angel.

It was no use talking to him.

"You know it's a team effort, Tyuwaru. It always has been." She turned to the harpy.

From the day Tyuwaru arrived in the Capital, to the day she left, the prostitutes always kept together.

"Maybe she's better off, ma'am." Valentine answered for her.

She shot back. "Well, she's on the clock right now."

"If her time is worth that much to you, here." It was a jumble of five dollar bills, and a wad of Yen had been balled into Valentine's fist and put before Mizari on the table. Those who had been in earshot and witness to what had been happening in their corner of the restaurant (thanks to Mizari, a great deal of the customers) had the life sucked out of them as Valentine's hand went below the table to his thigh holster.

His Glock was drawn above the table, and one woman spectator had shrieked. Instead of the worst happening however his hand had racked the pistol back twice, two cartridges plopping onto the table as the gun was put back immediately.

"I've got her now, and I bet those pretty little wings of yours that neither I nor you will be laying a finger on her."

Mizari had coolly took another drag from her pipe before taking the collection of currency and putting in her own pocketbook, her eyes half lidded, looking down on him. "Your loss." She turned away after, her money made, the trail of white being left by her as she made her leave. She had thrown a gaze over her shoulder however, just before getting out of earshot. "I'll see you tonight Tyuwaru."

Lyuna had put her nose up at her as she flared one nostril, a twitch over one eye. "The best thing those prostitutes have done for me is at least get their gentlemen suitors to buy more flowers. Despicable."

Valentine had looked at her backside, not in lust, but in a certain kind of rage that only a man like him could display toward an evil. "Mizari? More like Misery."

He forgot when he stopped chewing his tobacco and instead began grinding it against his molars, but Tyuwaru had noticed, grateful, if not worried.

"It's not worth your time, Valentine. Thank you." Her small, odd feeling hand had touched his forearm, and, just for a moment, the sniper had agreed as the angel left his sight.

Vietnam – Hanoi - The Old Quarter

Nguyen Huu Vo (to the American who owned the store he worked at, just Vo), was hardly a young man who knew what it was like to be a warrior and waking up either a.) hating his life or b.) having existential and moral crises on the daily.

No, his only real issue with waking up was simply waking up from his modest bed in his apartment skirting the Old Quarter in Hanoi.

Perhaps there had been more reason and rhyme to that than usual as the party van with its usual morning party announcements had bumped through the street, competing with Hanoi's plentiful mopeds and motorcycles.

It screamed into the air, reminding every male of age that, if needed, they would have to take arms for their country again against another foreign power. Subjects of nature that, at face value, Vo could've gotten behind as a Vietnamese who was rather well off in life: a manager at a smartphone outlet that Apple had been eyeing to be certified in the selling of their products.

His own smartphone had been ringing as it blared its own alarm, and like any other twenty two year old he had groaned before saying the magic words.

"Siri. Off please."

"Of course." The digital assistant had responded to him as the ringing of his iPhone shut off. "Do you want to see today's headlines Jackson?"

"No thank you, Siri. Silent mode until Noon." He said simply in his groan, finally sitting upright in his white sheets. His digital assistant had referred to him as such for practice of course. His Boss had made a deal with the Apple scouter that, if decided that his outlet would've been an official Apple outfitter, he would've needed to send employees to Cupertino in order to train new technicians for that store. Vo would've been on deck to lead them in that education, and because of that, an American name was in order.

That day wasn't today however, he had known, back against his metal headboard and black hair reaching out like an afro, or a hedgehog. He wasn't exactly the most fit man in Hanoi, a few stomach rolls and unkempt grooming painting his form as any other disgruntled Vietnamese young professional, but it was a form that got him by from day to day and kept him happy.

His own self happiness had been a lesson learned from an unsuccessful relationship that he had been dropped from recently, but all was well for him that morning as he left his phone on his meager bedside desk and looked at his modest apartment.

There was a set of dishes yet to be washed; gifts from his parents when he moved out, a picture of them propped above the kitchen on one of the cabinets. Connected to the kitchen had been the rather Spartan living room: big enough for a couch and a TV and maybe something or another in the middle, but there had been no TV: only a laptop laying on the coffee table in the middle as light poured in from the two windows he had been afforded.

His ex-girlfriend's linens had still been on the couch, but he doubted she would've been back for them.

With it only serving one at the moment, it felt new again, if not roomier as he patted along to the bathroom with only his draw string pants.

The young man that was reflected in the mirror, as his mother told him, was a spitting image of his father. Which was to say he was handsome. He had argued it didn't require much maintenance as he dipped his face in the water of his sink, it pooling from his faucet cleanly. A towel was enough for his touch up in the morning, glasses put on as he smelled the cool air stream into his nose.

Beyond that however, his mirror had spoken to him in words:

It was something of a DIY tinkerer project, a plain mirror transformed into a reflective screen that displayed the days agenda and the weather, along with other tidbits of information a man in the morning would've appreciated.

It was a little piece of the so called future that was apparently abundant in America and the West, and, all things considered, 2029 had been the future, however that future was slow to reach the rest of the world.

Let alone Old Quarter Hanoi.

This mirror was his stop gap.

Still Vietnam had been afforded a boom in its economy after the Chinese housing bubble popped and South Korea destroyed: many businesses abroad putting more credence into the Vietnamese economic situation. Many businesses that once relied on Chinese and Korean labor instead moving shop to Vietnam after the North Koreans invaded or the global economy nearly bottomed after the failure of China.

What was once an already bubbling, progressing South East Asian regional power had become a new, if not temporary, place where the modern economy could rely on. The sweatshops and factories of questionable work conditions had been quickly stamped out as the focus on worker's rights intensified with this new responsibility and economic payload, new technologies expediting many manufacturing processes.

It was a good time to be Vietnamese, and in general today was a good day, according to the mirror, Vo having nodded at himself content as he realized the agenda for the month and week on was hectic, if not anything else. He was good at planning, if not forced into it.

He was, jokingly among his friends, called as a young child "the Man with the Plan".

He took it to heart as he wandered to the window of his bathroom, the pork and noodle shop down the street getting its stones hot and ready for whatever the day would've brought in. It was that scent which usually invigorated him to wake up.

It was also liable for him to daze out as his elbows came to rest upon the old wood, slipping, ever gradually, until a brain bucket of old had tumbled off the ledge and down to his bathroom floor.

There was a little jump, a little shock behind it, but it was something he'd done tons of times before on accident.

He had gingerly picked up the faded green helmet, broken leather straps across its front. It was a helmet that had been in his family for around half a century at that point, but, if helmets could talk, this one probably could've spoken of a hundred years worth of war.

It was his grandfather's helmet from his time in the NVA, fighting against the French, the Chinese, the Cambodians, and, of course, the Americans.

And, mercifully, it had a long bout of peace. As was why Vo's grandfather had handed it down to his grandson for having a life, not of a soldier, but of a civilian.

Whimsically, Vo had didn't mind this arrangement. His father and grandfather, his mother and grandmother, had bled for his life now. This helmet was a reminder.

A reminder he had placed on his bathroom window sill he had seen every single morning.

"Not today." he said to it. The wish of the world; the hope of peace in South East Asia. A dare against an inevitable conflict. "Not today…"