Authors' Notes: Now for something different.

Pay attention. Many of the things covered here will be important. You are advised to reread earlier chapters as well.

Apologies in advance to FF dot Net readers. The Doc Manager is deleting "at" signs, so parts of this chapter might look weird.

Gentle reminder that it is possible to write a character whose attitudes and beliefs are not the author's.

I (Warp) have a Ko-Fi at Ko-Fi /2375DDLLGBXNI . If you like this story, would you kindly help defray the cost of the art?

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CHAPTER 31

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Date unknown

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She was staring at the clock tower again.

"Ma'am."

The strategist found the supreme commander doing that often.

{The Avengers Original Soundtrack - They Called It}

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"We are the pilgrims," the supreme commander recited, "master, we shall go

Always a little further; it may be

Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow

Across that angry or that glimmering sea."

Her voice was like a stony river, cutting as it flowed and full of hidden danger even at rest.

"Flecker, Ma'am?"

"Indeed, o strategist," the abyssal supreme commander said without turning to face her, leaving her to look at a head full of long silver hair beneath a black peaked cap. It was tied low with a serrated purplish-silver star, off of which hung a radar supreme commander also wore a sleeveless white sailor blouse and a black pleated miniskirt with red and purple trim. "For all the faults the British had, and King had found many, they had some good ideas."

"An army unit is hardly a good role model." The strategist's displeasure was evident in the way the smoke and glow of her green eyes intensified beneath her entirely cosmetic spectacles. This enhanced the effect of the severe bun her dark hair was worn in and the nasty scar carved across her left cheek.

"You have said it many times, and I agree, but their idea of a monument to the fallen, I maintain, is inspired." The supreme commander began to kneel, her aura of black bordered by white flaring to life, and a mighty leap shot her towards the top of the clock tower no mere stone's throw away. The air and water blasted away by fearsome shockwaves from the launch site was a great contrast to the gentleness with which she touched down on the roof, the sabatons of her black armoured thighhigh boots clicking so softly on landing as to not rattle a single tile.

Slowly at first, but with gathering speed, the strategist ran, black jacket and pencil skirt flapping behind her. Jaw set and teeth clenched, she Stepped through the wavefront headed her way. Notation wrote itself into her vision, a script simultaneously mechanically regular and jagged with the distortion of fury usually hidden even to her fellows, vectors and values breaking down the world before her. More important, though, was the understanding she possessed of what it all meant, the ability to usefully work with these underpinnings of reality fast enough that the shockwave seemed to crawl. She emerged onto the part of the shockwave headed in the direction of the clock tower and immediately began climbing, finding hand- and footholds in what looked to the sleeper an unbroken wall of invisible force and ascending with an ease and speed that made the best mortal mountain climbers and traceurs look like novices, until she too landed on the tower's peak.

"Is that not why we are doing this?" The long black coat that persistently refused to stay properly on the supreme commander's shoulders rustled as she moved. With sweeping gestures that got her black segmented elbow gauntlets clicking, she pointed out the vast, sprawling shipyards incessantly churning out new Peacekeeper units.

So many, and yet it would never be enough, never be enough when it came to battling those yellow-bellied sons of bitches.

She looked down at her gauntlets.

All the shine of a thousand searchlights, all the star shells to steal from the night sky would never be enough, never be enough.

Towers of bombs would be still too little.

These hands could hold the whole world but it would never be enough.

Never be enough.

Not when they had failed the fallen once already.

Never, never.

"Indeed. I was party to peace negotiations once." The strategist's words were soaked in enough venom to kill a whale and said all one might have needed to know about her unmitigated loathing for the idea. "They were a mistake, and so too in our case should premature peace never have been an option." She clenched a fist, the wristband worn on that arm under her sleeve strained from a vicious vibrating fury far more potent than the humble 34,000 shp she had once been capable of outputting.

The supreme commander's purple optics joined the strategist's in locking onto a certain one of the covered hangars below, within which was the taken bomber. A jagged, graceless black thing, it was designed to slip through defences as surely as a skilled killer's knife between ribs, except that the knife in this case was a bomb with the power of the sun. Something far beyond what they had been capable of once, yet it was not its material properties that had gotten it marked for acquisition.

No, it was the name it had been given, and the symbolic significance and power behind it, that was so important, the better to be turned against its treacherous namesake.

AV-1, Test/30, 82-1066.

The supreme commander knelt again and extended a hand to reverently stroke the clock tower. On its walls were inscribed the name of every non-Japanese and non-American killed thus far, and the magic built into it was constantly adding more. "How many more, o strategist?" She asked, voice soft and tinged with sorrow, without looking up. "How many more? There can be no stopping until Tokyo is returned to the waters whence it came, and so too must we send all America to Hell to join the J ps they love and enable so, but how many more other brainwashed peoples must we fell[sic] to save? For every Quisling or collaborator willingly selling his soul to the sons of Shōwa, there are 99 thralls thwarted by temptation that we beseech over and over to do the right thing, promising protection from reprisal, and still they harden their hearts, as Nora likes to say. How many more need we kill before they throw off the yoke of the yellow bastards?"

"I do not know, Ma'am," the strategist said, a hint of being embarrassed to have been found uncertain in her voice. "We have slain more than the historically-derived projections say should be necessary to turn them back to the light, and still they remain obstinate. I can only suspect the fiends have something to do with this, though I cannot prove it yet."

Unfortunately, the moment of contemplation had to end, for far below them, movement caught the strategist's eye. "We may proceed; my sister is ready."

At ground level, the builder emerged from one of the shipyards. "Walked" was technically correct, and yet it failed to do the nuances justice. The stooped, stalking stature, the restless marionette-like motion, it was something both beast and bot but conspicuously not quite man. Her short hair, a crimson dark like drying blood, was wild and there was, even by the standards of what mankind called abyssal, a disturbingly jerky quality to the way the similarly-coloured optics snapped between objects of interest, filled with a molten madness. Her facial features showed clear familial resemblance to the strategist despite the colour differences. Unlike the strategist, her blouse was untucked and her jacket was draped loosely over her shoulders rather than worn with the arms through the sleeves. She wore boots and white thighhighs where the strategist wore shoes with black, and a red scarf.

In a protective circle around her stood six of the special units. Three, battleships, had long black hair and red optics and were horned. They wore the same black choker, wristbands and thigh straps as both their charge and the strategist, but their main garment was a black dress that showed a wing tattoo across the upper chest.

The other three, aircraft carriers, had the same silver hair, gauntlets and greaves as the supreme commander, but red optics like the other special unit type, and the hair was worn mostly loose except for a ponytail on the left. While they too wore a sailor blouse and pleated miniskirt, their blouses were double-breasted, had no scarf, and both items were all black.

The supreme commander pulsed her IFF transponder at the builder's bodyguards before nonchalantly stepping off the clock tower's roof, the strategist following suit a moment later. It wasn't necessary - Conditioning meant the bodyguards shouldn't fire at them even if the threat assessment protocols failed to recognise them, and even if that was compromised like some shipgirls could do, there was no way any shots would connect - but it was only polite.

Her three-point landing was one of deadly grace borne out of coordinating first a fearsome flying swarm, and then implacable hordes from the east. Perhaps to those once subordinate to her admiral there had been the viscerally-evoked image of a brawler stripping for action, but at the pinnacle of combat brute force was woefully inadequate.

The strategist's descent was not so artfully done, but then she was of the type that existed to be the blunt instrument that took a position and then dared defiance. Physics was just applied mathematics, and despite her physical shortness, what arose from the crater her landing had formed in the ground was a green-glowing colossus, without wincing or the slightest sign of pain.

The special units, which had been tracking their descent since the supreme commander had alerted them by sending out the IFF signal, snapped out perfect parade ground salutes with the unison of clicked heels.

The supreme commander returned a salute of her own. "Builder."

"Sister," the strategist followed by saying.

The builder let out a mechamonstrous grinding growl of acknowledgement.

"Shall we?" With those words, the supreme commander turned and led the way as the group of abyssals began sailing towards their headquarters. Once there, they made their way to a briefing room, where another abyssal leader was waiting by one of the doors.

Said leader was blue-eyed and shorter than the two sisters, and they were already shorter than the Colorados, who were far from giant beanstalks themselves. She had twintailed hair so light in colour that it was similar to the supreme commander's, but just like the other two were not so dark that colour could not be seen, so too was hers not so light that a very faint yellow could not be made out. She wore a red cloak with a black inner layer over a white sleeveless blouse and black miniskirt. Crisscrossing gunbelts, black thighhighs and red shoes made up the rest of her outfit.

When she noticed them, her face twisted into a wild, overly toothy grin that looked wrong on a face that looked like it should be counselling patience. "'Ey Boss, can I have a dead J p, please?"

"Patience, bulwark," the supreme commander said.

"Or is it Americans the roulette wheel says we're hunting first?"

"Patience. Only just a little more."

"Sweet. Like the good ol' days after 12/7." She walked behind the builder and the strategist and threw her arms around them, the special units automatically accepting her transponder and making way. "'Ey Riri, 'ey Lol! Why the long face? Finishing what two nukes couldn't shouldn't be depressing."

"How do these insipid monikers help make Japan radioactive again, bulwark?" The unamused strategist said as they walked through the doorway into the briefing room and started descending some steps. "Also, 'roulette wheel'? I resent the suggestion that our actions have been random and unplanned."

"How'd they hurt? Stop scrutinising every sum so closely. Gamble a little. Not everything needs tight tolerances; didn't you learn anything from the N!ps' obsession with thorough planning and how that proved their undoing?"

The strategist snorted, smokey eyeglow intensifying briefly with displeasure at the comparison. "Strange words for one once renowned for her precision."

"Big words for one who's come far from being a hater of islands to a real Bugsy Siegel."

"If only that would have saved any of our boys," the strategist said with a sudden, alien tenderness.

Caught off guard, the bulwark could only awkwardly pat her slightly taller comrade on the back. "'Sides, how much precision d'you really need? There ain't one good, not even one. Romans, I think Nora likes to say? J p or American or other Quisling, we gotta kill 'em all. Don't matter in which order you do."

"Sloppiness is for losers, and you never struck me as one." The strategist's usual peeved mood reappeared as if it had never been gone.

"So what? If it works, it means I can fight, and if I can fight, it means dead J ps and Americans, and if there are dead, it means reparations in blood, and if there are reparations, that means steadfast and loyal ships like us can get closer to the fulfilment of our overdue duty."

The three battleships reached the bottom row of the room and ceased their byplay, proceeding to seat themselves. At this, the special units moved to the side columns and followed suit. Deeply-set though their duty to their charge was, the mass of friendly transponders from the crowd, combined with what threat assessment protocols said, told them that she would be far better protected amongst this host than by any number of themselves.

Behind the three battleships, there were three heavy cruisers. Two were white-haired and wore black, strangely familiar double-breasted, long-sleeved blouses with wing collars, belts with attached sabers and pleated miniskirts. Their faces, also seeming to resemble one who had been met before, showed they were clearly sisters even though one had red eyes and the other's that wasn't covered by a black eyepatch was blue. A number of destroyers and their light cruiser of a flotilla leader sat in the third and fourth rows, one of them hastily rejoining her fellows from the projection room at the back, and four minelayers occupied the last.

The supreme commander walked briskly over to the podium at the front of the room and briefly scanned through a set of papers before putting them back and testing an overhead projector. Once that was done, and now that all were gathered, she laid her hands on the podium with the click of gauntlets and spoke.

{The Avengers Original Soundtrack - The Avengers}

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"There was an idea… to bring together a fleet of remarkable ships. To see if they could become something more. To see if they could work together when we needed them to. To fight the war that we never could. So many of us sank still believing in that idea.

"In the Japanese language only in Hell."

The faces looking grimly back at her seemed so young, some outwardly appearing not even old enough to legally enlist, but she felt every last gram of the weight of years being directed at her. Nay, not merely years, but decades. All had more than 80 years to them, and some over a century.

"You have given so much to your country, even when it denied you the completion of your duty or made you undergo the ultimate sacrifice. It is an old-fashioned notion, one scarcely honoured today, and no one has the right to ask any more of you... but I'm asking."

"What do you need, Ma'am?" One of the audience asked.

"I need your help. For the good of mankind, for the sake of saving a world that's lost its way, that remains tainted by the J ps and their continued crimes against humanity because of our failing those we had sworn an oath to, I'm asking."

The builder growled, the constant burn of feral anger emanating from her spiking such that the heavy cruisers seated behind flinched despite themselves. It was a fury now tinged faintly with grief and regret from pain that fleetingly pierced the fog. No one present reminded the supreme commander that it had not been their fault they had not been alive back then, had had no power to countermand the orders that had foolishly, unjustly stayed their hands.

No reminder would have made a difference.

"We cannot," she shook her head, "fail them again.

"The N!ps are rage, brutal, without mercy. They are not buck-toothed cartoons dreamed up by some spin doctor to sell soap. They have been at war since we were in the shipyard. They are combat veterans, experts with their weapons, weapons that have taken the lives of 30 million. They can live off of maggoty rice and muddy water for weeks and endure misery we cannot dream of in our worst nightmares. They do not care if they get hurt or killed as long as they sink us. They kill 250,000 civilians to avenge a hundred of their own. We must respect their desire to put us in Davy Jones's locker early. We… we must be worse, to rip them up and tear apart those who would condone their continued existence. Then," she tapped the podium, "and only then will our duty as Peacekeepers be done.

"Heed my words. There are no means of ending this hideous evil in a definitive and elegant manner. That faulty belief was held before, and the world continues to pay for it today."

The bulwark, the strategist and the third heavy cruiser's already dark expressions grew even more grim. They knew all too well from personal experience exactly what the supreme commander was talking about.

"What has Japan given us?" The supreme commander asked.

"Not their best," the strategist replied, and her usually-controlled demeanour cracked just enough to reveal the hint of a roiling wrath not so different from that which was constantly ablaze within her sister. "People that have lots of problems. Criminals. Junkies. Rapists. Torturers. No one righteous, not even one that can be called good people."

"Indeed. Thank you, strategist." The supreme commander nodded in acknowledgement. "N!ps continue to make excuses for their crimes. They paint themselves as victims of aggression. They claim they were liberators from colonialism and imperialism. They call sex slavery the provision of comfort. They deny the guilt of their war criminals, calling it an externally-imposed artifice, a victor's justice, and give the apex evil a place of honor that continued to be patronised until we wiped it from the Earth. They refuse to make unequivocal apologies, and what already inadequate remorse does exist, their ranking officers and top men repudiate. They revise their official histories and whitewash their crimes. The dynasties of the evildoers continue to qualify for the highest office in the land."

The supreme commander shook her head.

"No. For there to be a restoration of balance, a judgment on N!p nefarity, we Peacekeepers must be thorough. There are J ps who want the world in every generation." The supreme commander counted off on her fingers. "Bangka Island. The Bataan and Sandakan Death Marches. Changde and Yichang. Gaido, O'Flaherty and Osmus. The Kokoda Trail. The Rape of Nanking. Sook Ching. Tijisalak. Unit 731. Their deeds are proof enough. Nothing less than killing them all will suffice. Even if we destroy all their habitation and industry, as long as one stands," she raised a finger, "as long there is," she raised the finger again, "one evil remaining, as long as we miss," she raised the finger a third time, "even one N!p, someone somewhere will still call himself that and remember a world where they could have had it all instead of rotting in the deep, and humanity will never have peace. We will not be able to face the murdered and say in all honesty that we have done every last bit of good we ought to have. No. We know the cost of mercy and we know it too well. To be N!p is to perpetuate a system of supremacy and superpredation. We shall make them wish they had a soul to sell. To save this world, we must fell every last one of them.

"We Peacekeepers are not heroes." The supreme commander's voice sharpened. "Never forget that! Whatever merits we may have once received, and indeed I have reason to put confidence in that, are now to be counted all as loss." Her hand moved in an encompassing motion and then went down sharply like she was throwing trash. "We have returned not to be feted, not to be sung of and celebrated, but to do the right thing whatever it takes. We are not the heroes humanity wants. Some think that the evil was in the past and it is acceptable to move on, but not us. Not us." She raised a hand positioned like she was holding a scalpel and made an incision with it. "The world, horrified, will hate us for cutting out the cancer they have turned a blind eye to, but we are not here for the approval of man. We fight, not for acclaim, nor to become as gods, and definitely not to snuff out lives with senseless cruelty, but for the good of mankind. Only then will they let go of their J p-loving delusions and justice be brought to those who have eluded it for too long.

"There will be no cavalry coming, no last-minute Riders of Rohan; those who should have stood alongside us have broken faith and turned on us to defend this evil. The usurper," the supreme commander now hissed, clenching and unclenching her hands, "who clothes herself in the flesh and bears the blood of the J ps is only the worst of an orchard full of bad apples. No, the weight of the world is a burden we ourselves must carry till we bring death to evil, whether swift or not. If Atlas shrugs, all is lost. I tell you the truth: America is diseased, rotten to the core. All of you have seen the historical records. Some have even helped retrieve them."

The audience nodded fiercely as one. That had made for most sobering, enraging, disappointing reading. So had being witness to the decadence and degeneracy of the current world up close.

"Korea. Vietnam. Iraq. Three," the supreme commander raised the appropriate number of fingers on one hand, "for three," she raised the other, "did they fail to finish the fight. That would have condemned them enough without Yamata or the Terror.

"The Terror!" The supreme commander slammed a gauntlet-covered hand onto the podium, and the sound echoed starkly around the room. "When what the humans called 'the Terror' came, America cowered in the face of the bombings and killings on its shores, too desperate to not be the villain, to do the pretty thing rather than the right one. Who were the beacons in the night who rallied the faltering world? Not America." Her right arm made a chopping motion. "Who led the counterattacks? Not America." Her right arm made a second, wider swipe. "As the Armia Krajowa fought the Nazis, so too did their sons and grandsons resist those who would return civilisation to the desert from whence they came. The cowards of Cannes bled and died and redeemed themselves too, battling murderers who respected no sanctuary, who would let the world burn rather than admit to their crimes. Who finished the fight forever?" Her arm slashed across from left to right. "Not America!

"No. For the good of mankind, this twisted game needs to be reset. There's no saving it. The only way for it to be redeemed," the supreme commander clenched a fist and made an upward-pulling motion with it, "is to pull it out by the roots. We're going to start over from scratch. This is what we came back for." She made a wiping motion with an open hand. "Wipe the slate clean, burn it down. It is not enough to defang these lost kingdoms. We will start over from zero and entrust the future to the next generation. Only then, from the ashes," her hand rose, palm up, "a new world will be born, free of the corruption the J ps have sowed, that no longer needs bloody-handed Peacekeepers such as us."

The supreme commander gestured in the direction of the shipyards.

"For too long, we have foolishly allowed ourselves to think that numbers bolstered by surgical covert operation alone would have sufficed to Peacekeep. Now, our complacency that led to the making of that assumption has been exposed in full.

"No more. It is time we apply in full the lessons of the past, that Japan was broken, even if only incompletely and temporarily, not just by superior numbers, in those days when America bothered fighting it, but also capabilities that they never grasped. We may have been sold out by philanderers and courtesans who ceded their cunts for the comfort of Tojo, but there are still those who never gave in, who are yet our people to save.

"The lamps," the supreme commander waved her hand, plunged the room into darkness, "are going out all over the world. The loss not just of the Mediterranean, North African, Spratly Islands and St Lawrence Island bases but now those in the Philippines and Indochina shows that. If we fail to vanquish Japan permanently, the corruption of the world will become complete, and they shall never be lit again." She snapped her fingers, and the lights turned back on. "A world subsumed by the N!p nightfall would be like the month of August without summer break or Santa Claus without any glee. It would be one where the Rising Sun will paint the earth red and there will be no more blue sky. For the good of mankind, we cannot, must not, shall not allow this." Her head jerked with each "not". "To prevent this, to abolish the institutional evil that continues to bleat its innocence, we will advance the timetable not just on the construction of additional shipyards, but also the deployment of the special units into service and the upgrades to the conventional forces."

Naked surprise greeted her from the escorts at this, though not the battleship trio, and optics turned sharply from the supreme commander to look at the builder's bodyguards before turning back to her.

"I know what you are next going to say, that the deployment of the Type 66 Aviation Battleship only began not long ago. You can say that it all sounds crazy. You can say I've lost my mind. How, you ask, can we produce the upgrades and special units quickly enough in the face of the inroads the J ps, Americans and Quislings are making, when we do not have navies that can come from deep within, beneath our souls and skins?"

"I do not care if I am called crazy, for the answer is simple. Against all the evil that Hirohito's ilk can conjure, all the wickedness that J pkind can produce, we will send unto them… only you." The supreme commander pointed at her audience. "Buy that time, until it is done.

"You are ships of focus, commitment and sheer will, things our non-N!p foes know very little about. You do not lack the drive. Yours are the gifts and disciplines that will hold back the nearing N!p night until the new fleets are ready," she spread her arms out, "to stand alongside. You are the shell that shoots at the heart of the defilers, and those that would seek to stand with the J ps against justice should feel warned, for they are no dominant lifeform, no master race. You," she raised a hand, clenched it into a fist and pulled it towards herself, "will tear the hearts from their chests. Yours is a steel-barreled sword of vengeance. Think of what the world could be. Have a vision of the one you want to see, a million dreams of the world you will make. Picture it. Your efforts will bring salvation to this world. The time the J ps will make long-overdue reparations in their blood is now."

The supreme commander's tone now softened. "I know it is tempting to think our Heraclean task is the punishment of some god. The sky looks so ominous, all the lights on the seas are our enemies, and we cannot save everyone because we are just so few. Nora, I believe there is something you have to say to this."

"I do, Ma'am?" The red-eyed heavy cruiser asked, astonished, but her face was quickly overcome by rapturous revelation, and she stood. "Yes, I do. We are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

"Thank you, Nora." The supreme commander bid her sit. "I say: Do not lose hope. You are doing a good thing. The greatest thing. The world called and you answered. Peacekeeping is a great good, a just cause. We did a splendid job once, and it remains hard to overestimate how much we contributed, even if we were prevented from seeing it through to the end. This is not a price we pay for our past mistakes, though now this war continues to grow worse and scarier. The J ps, Americans, Quislings and thralls think the fiends they call 'shipgirls' are supermen. I have full confidence you'll prove they're not.

"One of the hardest things in command is sending ships to sink, and make no mistake, when we carry out a great endeavour, the greatest price may have to be paid. The recovery system is untested, and may it never have to be. I'd much rather go myself; I'm itching for a fight and dearly wish I could do my part in striking them down and sending them straight to Hell. Especially," she suddenly bared her teeth, ground them together audibly, "the zombie, the product of N!p necromancy who dares bear that name, who dares wear that face!"

They were entities of vengeance, rage and hate. Yet a few members of the audience squeezed backwards into their seats reflexively at the discordantly horrible hiss the supreme commander made and the spectacularly ugly expression that had appeared on her face.

"I want to let you all know one thing," she said now, more gently and reassuringly after her brief loss of control. "I believe in you.

"I believe wholeheartedly in you and all that our endeavour stands for. The greatest instinct to fight is in us, and those Americans and Quislings will rue the day they spared what they should have executed.

"We are ready to fight and win this war. We always have been. No man in military history ever had enough men and materiel to fight a war, but soon we shall.

"Now just a little more.

"Only just a little more.

"Let's hold the line a little longer now.

"Stay afloat and do the utmost to take care of yourselves.

"Keep killing the bastards. Every one of them.

"Everyone.

"For the good of mankind, we will win this war and restore peace, bring about the world in which no one else has to suffer or come to harm because of the J ps. That alone, that world that no longer needs Kipling's uniforms to guard the sleeping, is what will complete our duty and bring peace." The supreme commander placed a hand over her chest. "No effort or word to that end is meaningless. The future does not happen by random chance. It happens because we will create it. Believe that there is no throne, no version of this where the J ps come out on top. We could not protect our world, but we can well sure avenge it. The shining lights, even in death, who we sank with our own hands, they are the noble fallen to whom we-we owe it all."

The supreme commander took a deep breath after the cracking of her voice and unvarnished pain showed on her face.

The rest of the audience sat up straighter, and the feral madness of the builder seemed to recede a bit, become a more focused fury.

The supreme commander took a second breath while closing her eyes, snapped her fingers once, and her mouth opened again to sing a lyric of lament, accompanied by the strains of a phantom piano.

"It was as though the sun did dim

The bodies had by then grown cold

For we had been not there for them

When the J p bombs fell and the walls didn't hold

'Cause from that rubble, what remained, was only vengeance due

Two thousand lost, what then we gained

Was regret that we... failed too."

There were a few moments of silence, punctured only by the sniffling that accompanied shed tears. The supreme commander's snap had started a movie projector that was showing a parade of death.

The lucky ones died quick, but only because of how horrific the damage inflicted was. Reduced to gory messes, shredded by shrapnel that turned vital organs into ribbons or carbonised by extreme heat, they barely had to suffer through what plunged them into darkness for the last time.

The unlucky ones found only a prolonged pain. The asphyxiated, oxygen run out too quickly for rescue to come, but not quickly enough to spare them the heaving of choking lungs desperate for one more breath of life. The bled out, drained slowly enough to feel their strength waning and awareness fading, but quickly enough no aid would arrive in time to do any good. The burnt and charred, screaming in agony for higher powers and loved ones they would never see one last time, the mercy of release too slow in coming. The crushed, fatal pressures ruining their internal organs, but little enough squashed that the suffering stretched on. The dehydrated and hypothermic, with parched throats and shivering limbs robbing them of strength and hope, dying in despair.

It was the last moments of all 2,403 they had directly failed, even those that had died with no living person in attendance, and it was playing with an impossibly vivid clarity that made IMAX look fuzzy. Every last member of the leadership could and did put a name to at least a few of the fallen.

"And from now on, these eyes will not be blinded by the lights

From now on, what's waited 'til tomorrow starts tonight, tonight

And let this promise in me start like an anthem in my heart

From now on, from now on."

The piano continued playing, faster now, as the supreme commander picked up a stack of what seemed to be papers from the podium and stepped out from behind it. She reopened her eyes as, with a flourish, she set what turned out to be a bunch of photographs of naval officers floating in a horizontal line centred on the podium.

"To us did drink the kings and queens

The politicians praised our names

Ghosts, martyrs, imp'rishables

And the one who was falling apart...

For years and years, we chased J p heads

At the crazy speed of always needing more."

The supreme commander now turned back to the photos, and with all the veneration one of faith might reserve for a sacred relic, she gently touched the one in the middle. All present bowed their heads deeply, trembling with reverence and guilt.

The man whose image had been captured in that photo, the right side of his harsh features shadowed, had given them and their former crews a most heavy responsibility.

They had failed to come through, and it mattered not that the hands stopping them had not been their own.

All they could do now was try to make amends.

In the material realm, Jersey clutched with strange desperation for the desk she was writing a report at, gripped with a sudden, alien terror, and the desk shook along with her. Those in the office around her recoiled, infected with the fear she was emanating.

"But told to stop, our duty shun

This time we'll not leave it undone!"

The supreme commander raised her arms as she raised her volume further, clenching fists. A wider variety of phantom instruments, including banjos, now joined in.

"And from now on, these eyes will not be blinded by the lights

And from now on, what's waited 'til tomorrow starts tonight

It starts tonight!"

Without needing to look, she snatched up a map of Japan from the podium behind her and threw it perfectly onto the overhead projector. Targets glowed where her pointing finger fell.

"Tokyo, Naha, Fukuoka, Sapporo, Matsuyama

From now on

From now on

From now on!"

The supreme commander finished outstretching her arms to the full, and the bulwark, the builder and the strategist rose to their feet as one with mighty coordinated stomps. The rising abyssal leadership rippled backwards like rolling thunder until all were on their feet and singing along, voices and still-watering eyes alight, the latter literally so, with determined fervour.

It was the roar of rushing waters and the peal of thunder.

A choir so perfectly coordinated and beautiful it overflowed and became inhumanly terrifying down to the depths of one's being, purely by tone even without needing the lyrics. Any mortal somehow in earshot would fall to his knees in terrified worship a quivering insensate.

"And we will kill them all

And we will kill them all, save, this world

And we will kill them all

And we will kill them all, save, this world

And we will kill them all

And we will kill them all, save, this world

From now on!

And we will kill them all

And we will kill them all, save, this world

And we will kill them all

And we will kill them all, save, this world

And we will kill them all

And we will kill them all

Yes!

Save, this world

And we will kill them all

And we will kill them all, save, this world!"

Another map, this one of the whole world, the supreme commander threw onto the overhead projector.

"From now on, these eyes will not be blinded by the lights

From now on, what's waited 'til tomorrow starts tonight!

It starts tonight!"

Again her finger jabbed out staccato a designation of targets, glowing as they were marked to meet their end.

"Washington, Moscow, London, Beijing, Delhi, Canberra

From now on

From now on

From now on!"

The audience stomped again as one.

"And we will kill them all

And we will kill them all, save, this world!"

The fiery fervour abruptly plunged into a chill, and it was with lowered arms and a softer if no more gentle manner that the abyssals ended.

"And we will kill them all

And we will kill them all, save, this world.

And we will kill them all

And we will kill them all, save, this world.

Kill them all, kill them all, save, this world.

Kill them all, kill them all, save, this world."

The singing came to a close with a minute of silence to finish weeping for those they had failed to protect, after which the audience sat down again, wiping eyes.

The supreme commander, speaking at normal volume once more, raised a hand and pointed at her subordinates. "So we walk eternally through the shadow and work in the dark to serve the light, standing against evil where all others falter. Where the Americans, Quislings and thralls blindly follow the J ps, remember:"

"Nothing is true!" The other abyssal leaders shouted as one, strength renewed.

"Where the Americans, Quislings and thralls are limited by morality or law, remember:"

"Everything is permitted!"

"Remember Frank Goettge and his 25, baited into a massacre by faked surrender. Remember Jan Ruff O'Herne, raped repeatedly by the ravening, ravaging barbarians. Remember Liu Lanqing, murdered as he bailed out of his stricken plane. Remember Nirpal Chand, beheaded for leading prisoners in a hunger strike against the appalling conditions imposed by the N!ps. Remember all the honoured dead who the supremacists of Shōwa have slaughtered for being subhuman. Remember why we must not stop until we slay all of these savages and their supporters, soaking the soil in and showering the seas with their sanguis, that they may never hurt anyone again."

"We remember!"

"For the good of mankind."

"For the good of mankind."

"Whatever it takes."

"Whatever it takes."

"May our thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on our swords never dry," she spoke more softly now, but no less determinedly, "and may we never be needed again."

A few more moments of silence followed before the strategist rose to her feet once more. "Snow One, with me. You have done well to prepare thus far, and now it is time to act. We shall conduct the final briefing before you deploy with the first batch of special units, and then set off as soon as we're ready."

"Yes, Ma'am," "Nora" said, rising as the strategist passed her seat and saluting the supreme commander with a drawn sword. "Fun isn't something one considers when saving the world, but this does put a smile on my face." Her lips parted slightly and dangerously. "The wicked shall be slain and they who are bloodthirsty shall be done away with. For the good of mankind." She sheathed her sword and made to leave, turning with a mechanical sharpness that sent her braid whipping out.

"Am I really not to go?" Another of the audience, this one a destroyer in a Romanesque toga-like dress and cloak with a circlet in her short hair, suddenly spoke up. "I was there too the first time."

"I have said before and I say again. No." The strategist's tone brooked no argument even though she made no effort to stop walking. "As the plans indicate, we need you and your partner on another operation. Do not deviate."

"Nora," the supreme commander said suddenly, and the sharpness of her tone killed any anticipatory joy as surely as a direct hit from a naval shell might splatter a normal.

Nora froze in place, while the strategist cocked an eyebrow at the unanticipated interruption. "Ma'am?"

"Remember we are not here to delight in suffering, whether of the slaves or those who deserve it. We fight in the name and with the blessing of those who fell trying to stop those of evil nature the first time. We kill because it has to be this way, not as a celebration or a redemption song. The death of the evil billions and their enablers is a necessity and a means to justice, not a sadistic indulgence or to see the fear clear when we look in their eyes. Taking pride in a job well done is not in itself wrong, but every death of someone whose only crime was getting brainwashed by the J ps is regrettable." The supreme commander shook her head. "We are not heroes, but if we lose sight of what we fight for, if we lower ourselves to the level of the J ps and kill for our own pleasure or to rise up a leaderboard, then we stray from the right path and the fulfillment of our oath to the dead, we sully our cause, and all we have fought for is then for naught."

"I stand corrected, Ma'am," Nora said, bowing her head apologetically.

===[===]===

Back in the material realm, Augusta's eyes shot open on a face inexplicably drenched with cold sweat. The nightmare that had prompted her waking was fast fading like smoke, its details disappearing before she could record any of it to pass to the analysts.

The deep-seated terror it had filled her with, which stubbornly refused to die down even awake, not so much.

===[===]===

Authors' Notes: We hope you did indeed pay attention. You might be able to figure out what's going on or who's who.

Thanks to Sufficient Velocity user BF110C4's sharp eye, we can confirm that one of the inspirations for this chapter was John Basilone's "Jap Speech" from The Pacific.