Prologue – An Even Bigger Fool's Journey II
November of 20XX.
The two of them stand there, gazing at the light of the moon.
"These people aren't ready. It's too soon."
Men are never ready to take their place in the world – it simply comes and finds them on its own, whether they want it or not.
"There's no guarantee that a king will be among them."
This city is a profound sort of hypocrisy. It's overflowing with those that have the capacity to rule. One will rise, not out of duty, but simply because there will be no other choice.
"Such a king could never claim the Sword of Power."
A king is a king. The sword has no say in the matter.
"There's going to be bloodshed, then."
The streets will run red.
"Then what will be left at the end?"
Only you can see that now.
A pale hand reaches out for the moon. A gloved hand and a deep velvet sleeve overlap with it.
"I'm coming father… Until the day I die, I won't stop."
Even after you've died. The two hands intertwine. There's no stopping. Wander the Sea of The Soul for all time.
"I'll steal you back, no matter what it takes."
At the start of the month, the speaker for the LDP publicly announces that Shirasagi Station had completely lost contact with Nakajima Station. The initial assumption was network interference, but when engineers confirm that the satellite array remains completely operational, the situation escalates quickly.
Public speculation begins to spiral out of control almost right away. People panic and rush to the stores to stock up on what they can. Maho is expecting very soon, and as things stand she can't get what she needs from the convenience store or from the supermarket. Saito had started stocking up on baby formula some time ago, but most of his mother's money has dried up, and they can't afford to spend more on provisions than they already have until Kiana has been delivered.
Between sharp inflation, and the impending widespread shortages from this supply chain disaster, it only makes sense for the lines at the stores to stretch around the block.
And just like that, the tenuous knot of Shinjuku's everyday begins to unwind.
"It's god awful, Nijima." Saito's lieutenant Watatsumi, a man of thirty-three and not a day older, calls him into his office around noon, pulling him off of his beat. "I've never seen anything like this before. Nothing. All these people worried about something happening up in fuckin' space – these things happen once in a lifetime."
"A lot of people are scared they won't be able to buy food. Most of them probably remember the food shortages from ten years ago."
"That's a good point. Are you and your wife going to be alright?"
"We'll manage. Thanks for your concern."
"Right, but for today, I need you to head out with the other men and try to direct some of this traffic."
"What are we instructed to say about the supply chain failure?"
"Just… Tell them to keep their eyes on the TV. The government will provide an update as soon as we have one. The important thing is that we keep them from swarming the stores."
"So we don't actually have any marching orders?"
"The higher ups don't know what's going on either. They haven't told me shit, and I doubt any of their direct reports know anything either. You get in touch with Commissioner Nijima?"
"Not yet. But I'll pass anything important along."
"Thanks. And be careful out there. We're all gonna have to take a bit out of this one before it's over."
It's not long after he heads out to man the street corners with the other officers that things take a turn for the violent. A group of teenagers cuts through the sea of people trying to get into one of the stores, armed with metal bats.
Saito and three of the other men move to stop them. One of the boys smacks someone in the line right in the face with his bat – two that try to retaliate get thrown to the ground. Saito runs over to the first man, who looks up at him pleadingly. He's not much older than he is – and he's just as thin around the cheeks as he is, too. Of the three officers, Saito is the only one who thinks to radio in while the other officers go into a panic trying to get them to stop, which very quickly appoints him as ranking officer of the bunch.
"This is Nijima, P508954TS. On the scene with P828437JH, P287302RJ, and P710347AX. Minors armed with blunt instruments are attempting illegal entry into the Lucky Seven Store, just east of the Shinjuku Post Office. At least three civilians have been injured."
After a few moments of silence he gets a response from an operator miles away from the scene.
"P287302RJ shouldn't be in that area, officer. Neither should you."
"Lieutenant Watatsumi approved our shift change early this morning to address the ongoing foot traffic situation in west Shinjuku. It's filed under O852723921 at roughly seven-hundred hours."
After a few moments of silence again, the operator replies. "That is duly noted. State your request for use of force."
"Requesting the use of batons and physical force."
"That's a negative. Article NS-J145 prevents the use of batons against minors. Physical barricades are recommended."
"There's someone right in front of me with blood running down the side of their face. We need more than that. J145 only applies if the minor accused hasn't inflicted bodily harm on any individual at the scene of the crime and there are three injuries confirmed at present."
"The best we can authorize is physical restraint. The minors that have not injured any civilians must not be restrained and must be barricaded only. Is that clear officer?"
"Then we'll need backup. We're outnumbered."
"I will put a call out."
"Thank you." He cuts the radio transmission and calls out to one of the other officers.
"Did you get us physical force?!" The officer shouts in a panic.
"Restraint. They're not gonna budge on that. Backup's coming though. Maybe."
"Well, fuck it, it's better than nothing." The officer sighs with a wry smile before heading into the store. A moment later he drags out one of the teenagers and quick cuffs him. Saito gently sets the bleeding man on the side of the pavement and moves over to help zip-tie the boy's legs.
It's three officers against what is now seven teenagers. The other two officers catch on quickly, but even with physical restraint authorized, they very much had to rely on the civilians in the store to back them up. One of the officers almost takes a nailed bat to the face, Saito ends up taking a knee to his gut, but he manages to maintain his grip on the boy that attacked him long enough for one of the other men to tie him up.
The altercation continues until at last the seventh boy is cuffed and gagged. A support vehicle finally arrives on the scene to help with the arrests.
Just then, one of the boys breaks free from his bindings – and pulls out a handgun, driving the state of the crowd into chaos. He opens fire, shooting randomly at the civilians standing against the side of the building, and at the officers that had arrived on the scene.
The four of them take cover from inside the building.
"Where the hell was he hiding that?!" Saito shouts.
"I've got no idea – he definitely didn't have it on 'em when we tied him up!"
"That doesn't do us any good now!"
The teenager shoots one of the civilians dead. A shrill scream cuts through the crowd. The look on his face is catatonic. He's just shooting them, for no rhyme or reason. Because he could do it.
There's no other choice to be made here. There's no talking him down, there's no ending this safely for everyone involved.
Saito's hand shoots for his holster – of the four of them, he's the only one that actually has a gun. And the officers that had arrived to help them were in no better shape, helplessly taking cover from the other side of their vehicle.
He wraps his fingers around the holster release, and holds down the button on the side. As he does so, his radio comes alive all on its own.
"Officer, you're attempting to access your firearm." It's a different operator from before. He shuts is eyes tight. "Please state your identification number and the conditions of this emergency."
"This is Nijima, P508954TS. I'm pinned down with P828437JH, P287302RJ, and P710347AX at Lucky Seven's Store, Shinjuku West. A minor is armed with a handgun, make and model unclear. One civilian is dead. I'm requesting the use of lethal force."
"I have record of this incident, it was reported that a group of minors appeared armed with blunt instruments, and not -"
"One of them has a gun. He opened fire. There are two other officers on the scene, also pinned down. I don't have their numbers."
"This isn't enough information to make an accurate judgment of the account. At most I can put you in touch with the operator for Shinjuku West who may authorize use of physical force. Use of lethal force against minors is strictly prohibited."
"This is a live fire situation, with confirmed fatalities, and the accused is unresponsive – use of lethal force is permitted if any two of these conditions are met, and we've got all three right in front of us!"
"But not against minors. I won't authorize it. I'll connect you to another operator, and I will save the recording of this conversation and submit it to your registered precinct for further review. Please look to resolve this situation in a safe and orderly fashion for all those involved."
Just then, a civilian car comes flying in colliding with the armed boy and sending him flying into the wall just behind him. The impact kills him instantly.
The four officers emerge from the store into the chaos. Saito can feel it – that emotion unique to this profession radiating from all around him. That putrid mix of gratitude and derision, as they step away from the crime scene to link up with the other officers. A woman is crying over the crumpled form of her dead husband, with one bullet wound to his head and another to his stomach. Saito can't look her in the eye, or the man that had saved the rest of them, who was now being taken away for what at the bare minimum would be manslaughter.
The shooting outside the Lucky Seven Store isn't reported on the news that night. Instead, news anchors interview politicians from the other end of town about the growing food crisis, and assure the public that if necessary the government will invest as much as it can into replenishing the stores and creating better opportunities for destitute families to secure supplies.
After the first day the crowds begin to dwindle as they often do in shortage situations, but smaller stores are still slammed from morning to night. Some surplus of dehydrated goods makes it into the larger stores, but it's made clear to law enforcement that this was the last of it. And as the situation begins to stabilize, information starts to trickle down to the other branches of the government, and finally to the ears of Saito's lieutenant.
In reality, Nakajima Station missed its scheduled delivery window more than a week ago. Originally the situation was being handled by the Ministry of Economy, which did not communicate the loss of contact to any other ministry impacted directly by the situation. After three entire days went by, the Minister of Economy finally notified the Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare, who also elected to keep the situation secret and employ a third party contractor to investigate the situation in greater detail.
That third party was not able to make any kind of contact with the station, which ran them into yesterday, when the Prime Minister and all the agencies that actually process the goods from Nakajima Station found out all at once the nature of the crisis at hand, and just how little all the agencies involved knew about what went wrong. Both Ministers are currently tendering their resignation, but in the meantime the rest of them need to deal with the fallout, and throw together the resources needed to send a team up to the station as soon as possible – a process which could still take close to a month.
In the end, the only reason why this all happened so quickly is because no one was paying attention when they should have. The supply had already dwindled down to almost nothing when he and his wife were enjoying rice patties and frozen food. No one realized there would be a food shortage of this scale until it was upon them. And as a result, the panic had set in swiftly, and showed no signs of subsiding.
"That's everything I know."
"I'm not going to act like I'm surprised, but it's definitely curious that this made it through to the prefectural police before it made it to my office."
"You mean they didn't tell you any of that?"
"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is playing this close to the chest it looks like. The US isn't happy their hardware stopped functioning on Japan's watch. Most likely the Chief of Police has a line to the Ministry of Health's office since they're getting screwed in this too, and he hasn't talked to me since I told him he was un-dateable that one time in front of both our bosses."
"Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and ignore that last bit if you don't mind."
"Right now what we both have to watch out for is the Acting DA making some arrests over the riots yesterday. Shinjuku wasn't the only ward that had live fire from unlicensed firearms yesterday – there were sixteen cases including yours reported between noon and eighteen-hundred hours."
"So either they cooked up sixteen city-wide shooting incidents to coincide with the first day of the food shortages in the span of about six hours, or the architect of these attacks already knew this was going to happen before the Diet announced anything to the general public. And they knew well in advance – before the Diet was even aware."
"That was my instinct too, yeah. I'm not aware of anyone that's up for re-election quite this soon, but that's never stopped the scum of this city from putting on a show like this before."
"You mean someone might be pressuring the cabinet to disband with these organized attacks?"
"Disband I wouldn't be so sure – but so far two Ministers are resigning over this, and two more will follow if whoever is behind this keeps this up."
"No matter what way you look at it, they must've been all coordinated by the same group, with the same access to firearms off the books."
"You said the boys that tried to rob the convenience store were drunk, right?"
"The one with the gun looked like he was high. But either way they weren't cognizant."
"Three of the shooters that were apprehended had the same model of handgun, but yours and about five others have no correlation with each other. Some of these are imported, some of these were manufactured in Roppongi, one of them was a standard issue with the remote ID lock and server calls to Shirasagi Station removed, so it would shoot as long as the trigger guard picked up a valid thumb print, since that's a check performed client side, rather than server side… Or at least I think that's what Futaba said. In other words, one of the shooters was an ex-officer."
"Oh good, so that means the DA is going to be knocking on my front door pretty soon, then." He was fairly confident that the percentage of officers that actually tried to have lethal force authorized during the crisis yesterday was small. It would only make sense for the district attorney to investigate any of the requests made for lethal force, if a former officer was the perpetrator of one of the shootings, including his. "Do we at least have an idea of where the guns that have a common point came from?"
"Long term we can trace where the others were manufactured, but short term the only kind of traces we've got just point us to the shooters. The Roppongi guns are pretty clean too. I've got a couple guys with warrants investigating the residences, and I'm actually heading over to the Public Security office right now to look into a lead I have on the ex-cop."
"Are you on the phone and driving again?"
"I-I'm using the car phone this time, so it doesn't count, alright?"
"...So in other words we're at the mercy of these guys if there's more attacks today."
"Wish I had better news. Is Maho at home?"
"Oh yeah, and she's doing just great, by the way. She had to skip most of her meals yesterday and of course she's at the point where her water's gonna break any moment and as soon as that happens I need to be able to get to the hospital. Honestly between the two of you I don't know who's more trouble -"
"Hey, hey, slow down for a second. Think about things clearly for a minute." He exhales sharply, just listening to the sound of his mother's voice. "Don't worry about the hospital. You have everything you need at home to deliver a baby."
"What?!"
"If it comes down to it, the only thing you'll need help with is cutting the umbilical cord. Delivering a baby is not actually that difficult. If you need my help I can walk you through it. So don't get all hung up on getting her to the hospital, alright? Now may not be the best time."
He realizes what she's saying after a few seconds. He was being a fool – if there were organized hits on public facilities, of course the hospitals wouldn't be safe. In fact, if things escalated even worse from there, that may very well be what goes next.
"Right. Okay."
"Good, you're sounding better. Alright, I've gotta go before I get pulled over. Stay safe, try not to get into anymore shootouts."
"You too."
He looks over at Maho, who's sleeping in bed with a pained expression on her face. The contractions must be getting worse – and worse yet she was still trying to make him eat his own share of what food they had. He'd already tried going behind her back and getting a hold of anyone he knew from the Okumura family – but it was of no use. She was as black as a sheep could be, and the only one left willing to help her, her own mother, was still despondent, and if her brother was even aware of what she was going through, he was perpetually unreachable, forever sitting on his perch atop the world.
Maho was effectively bedridden, her family had all but abandoned her, and by the time he gets off duty he wouldn't even be able to find anything in the stores anyway – he would have no choice. On his patrol, he'd have to see if he could buy anything from the supermarket. It's a stark violation of his beat, but there aren't any better options. He'd just come home that much later, and he'd have to figure out a good timeframe to drop off his firearm at the precinct.
And hopefully she won't be dead by the time you get home at four in the morning.
Think about what you're doing.
He shakes his head.
This is the only way. The only way that will work.
He heads out.
The second day very fortunately proceeds without incident. When he sneaks off to buy food from the supermarket he manages to secure some fresh vegetables. He gets a call on his radio after that, but he essentially ignores the complaint from the operator that picks him up going into the store in the middle of the day. That evening he gets a call from his mother, letting him know that one of her close friends was going to be sending food right to their apartment tomorrow afternoon. Maho manages to sit herself up to eat that night.
The third day Maho tries her best to stay awake and listen for the doorbell – if they just left food out in the hallway it would definitely be stolen before too long. Saito is notified that he'll be receiving a small pay deduction on his next paycheck for what he did the previous night. He keeps this from Maho as he tends to his beat in his standard capacity. The streets are restless. He has to break up a few minor altercations that had already escalated to the point where physical restraint could be authorized – some of the smaller stores still have lines for people trying to get in, but at least for the moment things have stabilized. The delivery they get has enough food to last them the next two to three days, but Saito would still have to go look for provisions when he could.
The fourth day, word comes in from Hokkaido that production at five of its greenhouses has ceased, citing widespread temperature irregularities that resulted in the breakdown of equipment essential for the greenhouses to operate in the winter. As a result a large shipment of produce was about to come in, but that would be it until at least late January. Of that shipment it was very likely that the portion that was cultivated too early would not pass the Food & Drug Agency's requirements, but likely the Minister of Health will try to cut a deal with the Minister of Agriculture in a vain attempt at saving his job. Farms and greenhouses in other parts of the country get shipments in with most of the stores. Some of these shipments are robbed by groups of roaming homeless men mid-transit.
The fifth day, the government finally declares a state of emergency and enacts steps to address the growing tensions. Prefectures that preside over 20% or more of the nation's produce output are required to create farming cooperatives that will reorganize production and shipping in order to address the crisis in population centers first.
On the sixth day, Maho is convinced she's going to give birth, but eventually the contractions subside. Saito has been given paid leave on this day due to a changing in officer shifts that would go into effect overnight. He was going to be given a much earlier shift for his beat, which would make it a lot easier for him to go hunting for nonperishables after work. The smaller stores were low on stock, but the allocation of resources through the population was starting to stabilize.
Then on the seventh day, the very earth they were all holding onto for dear life jumps into the fray. At roughly noon, a magnitude 8 earthquake racks the Honshu coastline, just east of Tokyo. Evaluated at a 6- by the JMA as far out as the adjacent prefectures, the seismic activity causes flooding throughout coastal areas including Odaiba, and causes significant damage to the power grid, causing loss of power for customers in Shibuya, Shinjuku, and Ueno.
It's a nightmare for everyone involved. Saito is called on his radio directly by an operator with his instructions for the day – maintaining the peace at the distribution centers, which in this case meant the platforms the farming cooperatives had set up to sell through surplus that could not be allocated to stores per their contracts during the current crisis. It becomes apparent very quickly that the damage caused by the earthquake to the power grid alone would take some time to repair, at least two days.
In that time the population would need to manage their intake very, very carefully – and naturally that was not something that was going to happen. People who were in line the first day are likely almost out of what they managed to buy up by now. Some people just keep buying and buying, either assuming that the situation will eventually fix itself, or out of sheer paranoia that it won't.
The longer the general public is required to manage its own resources, the worse the situation will get. And after only a single week, things were at a fever pitch, and the manufactured riots and shootings compelled the masses to believe it was all worse than it actually was.
On his way to the distribution center near Shinjuku Station, he makes three arrests at three separate locations – people trying to break into the stores that were closed due to having lost power. What little they had, the longer the blackouts continued, would not meet the Food & Drug Agency's requirements for sale, and if they tried to sell any of their intake under those circumstances, while long term they could appeal the terms of their suspension, those stores would be closed for an extensive period, enough to put them out of business anyway. There was nothing anyone could do, besides pray that no one would break down their doors or start throwing things through their windows.
The state of the center itself is not much better. Saito and three other officers have to restrain the homeless trying to beat down on the closed shutters. Inside the distribution workers are in fear of their lives – but with some persuasion they manage to open for the day with support from the police. As soon as they do so, a mob of homeless people pitch themselves across the street from the center and start protesting.
Surprisingly enough, Saito's lieutenant appears on site around fifteen-hundred hours, seemingly to check in on the state of things.
"Everything going alright here?"
"Yes, sir. We had some trouble earlier, but there's really just that commotion across the way now."
"Not surprising. There's another crowd just like this one on the east side."
"Did we hear anything about the power grid?"
He shakes his head grimly. "Usually we'd get upwards of a week before the complaints about the lights get out of hand, but this couldn't have happened at a worse time. People feel like everything's crashing down around 'em as it is."
One of the homeless men takes a position on top of a cardboard box, and begins to orate, holding a blue tarp tied to a pole in his hands, much like a flag that flaps in the wind. On the tarp is a crude drawing of what looks to be a man in a mask.
"Look there, one and all, to the pigs in men's clothing! While we suffer and die by the hundreds each and every day, they look on and do nothing! Their masters forbid them from exacting even the smallest justice, and they would sit by and watch us all go, one by one! Wandering our streets aimlessly, before corralling back into the pen, each and every day – there's no justice so debauched anywhere but in our beloved city, and we'll not stand for it a moment longer! These pigs don't deserve to eat from these hallowed stores, they deserve nothing more than the shit they roll about so eagerly!" The crowd echoes the man's energy. The situation is only moments from turning for the worse. "Enjoy your shit, pigs! We've no use for it here!"
The mob on that cue begins to throw all manner of garbage at the police cruisers, and at the officers themselves. Feces, half eaten food – all of it was fair game for these men with almost nothing left to lose. The distribution workers try to shield the produce from the sudden assault. This certainly counts as defecating in public, and on that note the other officers on the scene move to restrain the group.
Only then, once the officers make their approach, the mob takes a turn for the violent. Whacking one of the officers over the head with his tarp flagpole the man at the head of the congregation orates further.
"This day – this day we take what's rightfully ours! Bring an end to this ceaseless nightmare, my friends! Once and for all this city is ours – this is the day we claim our destiny!"
The mob howls like a pack of dogs as they push back on the line of officers, as the leader puts on a set of headphones and waves his tarp flag along to a beat only he can hear. The line of officers, with not a single piece of riot gear to its name, is broken swiftly – and from there, an all-out brawl ensues.
"Physical force is authorized. Like I said, Njijima -" His lieutenant readies his baton after switching off his radio. "One way or another we're all gonna have to take a bite." He disappears into the crowd, leaving Saito alone on the platform with the distro center staff, huddling behind the stands in fear for their lives.
"Get this closed up." Saito tries to get through to the staff members, but to no avail. With that he has no choice but to descend into the chaos himself, his own baton at the ready -
The scattered feces have been spread around during the struggle, making it difficult for the officers to move around in their uniforms, giving the homeless mob an inherent advantage – and it shows right away. Almost right away someone tries to club him over the head, but he manages to move out of the way fast enough, smacking the side of the man's head with his baton and knocking him straight out cold, nearly losing his footing in the process. He almost sighs with relief – he hadn't been sure if he had the upper arm strength for the task, but he remembers that these men are in just as bad if not worse shape than he is.
But their leader – he's the weakest looking of them all. Even through the baggy blue jacket he was wearing, it's apparent that his figure has shriveled away into almost nothing. Yet he fights like a monster, faster and far more agile than any officer that dares come his way.
One of the men that goes after the head of the mob hits the ground hard – Saito moves to his aid, but the head homeless man lobs his flagpole towards him like a spear before rushing in and tackling him to the ground, taking advantage of the tarp to blind him.
"Don't get back up." The man brings his face close and whispers to him, a manic look in his eyes. He smells awful, his ragged breath reeking of rotten vegetables and cheese. His unshaved beard has bits of beansprouts stuck in it. His beanie was all shredded and much of his messy blue hair underneath sticks out badly. He can hear the faint sound of Lotus Juice blaring from the headphones.
Saito is left staring up at the sky in a daze as the man scrambles away to retrieve his flag. If he can help it, he'd like to not have to experience something like that ever again.
Other officers rush past him, some homeless men trample over him. He squints his eyes tightly as someone's dirty shoe stomps his face. Then the hellscape around him seems to shift a few feet to the right. He can heard the riot very close by, but right around him a very sudden peacefulness settles in.
A few moments later someone slaps at his cheeks. He opens his eyes – his mother is standing over him, fully in uniform, covered from the neck down in what looked like a blade resistant padding. Whenever the police commissioner showed up looking like she was about to take on an army, you knew things were bad. Especially when that police commissioner was Makoto Nijima.
"You doing alright down there?" She extends a gloved hand to help him up. Behind her is a much larger detachment of officers than what they had at the start, similarly better equipped to take on a mob.
"Is that Yusuke Kitagawa?"
"Yep."
"They really need an army like this to bring him in?"
"A few of my guys were watching from the rooftops. There's four dead in that crowd already. None of them cops. So we brought everyone we could." She looks over to the mass of people as the reinforcements join the fray. "They wouldn't let me bring in the riot gear, but they're letting us use bats." She pats her son on the back. "Don't get knocked out," she chides him as she walks off.
She heads into the crowd at a brisk pace, armed with nothing but her bare hands – the first man that approaches her is on the ground and unconscious in the blink of an eye, barely even slowing down her advance. It's clear in moment that she's headed straight towards Kitagawa.
He waves his flag through the police officers like he's a Sengoku general, trapping many with the tarp and laying into them as he had with Saito. But the moment she closes in, He stakes the bottom of the pole into the uneven dirt just beneath him.
Then, unzipping his jacket he exposes the sheath a long blade within, strapped to his chest. The sheath is ornate, highly decorated and engraved with what looked like a royal clan's insignia. With a firm grip on the hilt sticking out the top, he draws the blade, once again exhibiting strength and speed that would be impossible for a man in his shape.
A street samurai. How quaint.
The blade arcs like a small glimmer of light cutting through the air – and just as swiftly the man takes but a single step forward – and the blade is at his mother's throat. In that motion the man's bulky jacket falls to the wayside, revealing his shirtless form beneath, his stomach a great hollow, his ribcage bleeding through his tight skin for all to see, the sheath acting as meager protection.
Following the curve of the blade she slips just past it, closing the gap between them, ramming her closed fist into the pit of his stomach, grinding it against the soft core just beneath his skin. He gags hard, but before she can get her arms underneath his, he reverses his grip on the blade and slashes outward. The blade slips right between her padded armor and cuts right to the skin.
Gritting her teeth, Makoto doubles back before shooting forward again – this time she finds an opening by ducking to the right as he swings horizontally, landing a blow to his side. Having successfully thrown him off balance she moves in, poised to grab hold of his sword arm.
Another homeless man throws himself in her path, and she ends up having to throw him to the ground instead, while her target moves to circle around her. With their positions switched, Saito is left with an opening to move in on, the street samurai's back fully turned to him.
What happens next as he moves forward is somewhat of a blur. Seemingly losing his balance Yusuke backs right into him, and he tries to throw his arm around the man's neck – and then in the span of a few seconds that defy explanation, he finds his sense of direction completely spinning out of control as he crashes into the hard ground beneath him with a hemorrhaging cut from his eyebrows right across the bridge of his nose.
In what little he can make sense of he sees his mother grab hold of one of the street samurai's arms from behind him, and with a powerful stomp to the back of his knee he falls to the ground – his grip on the blade still strong. He swings the blade outward just in front of him, the tip still fresh with Saito's blood. But his mother restrains his sword arm at last, and try as he might, he can't break free as four other officers rush to the police commissioner's side to help her restrain him.
The mere sight of that causes relief to wash right over him. Without their fearless leader the congregation would soon either give in or run off. The fight was essentially over.
At some point later as the EMTs arrive and tend to the wounded, he finds himself sitting on the side of the road blankly staring into space, the bandages on his face already starting to annoy him. With some luck that cut hadn't been all that deep and would heal nicely in a few days.
Before too long, his mother comes over and squats down on the sidewalk right next to him.
"You did good today."
"I made a damn fool of myself, is what I did."
"Hmm… Nah." She takes his hand and squeezes it tightly. "I'm gonna be honest, though, I almost had a heart attack when you tried to sneak up on him like that."
"That was a pretty obvious move, huh?" Something dawns on him in that moment. "...Before that, when I went up to him and he pushed me down – he said something to me. Like he was telling me to stay out of the fight. Did he... know who I was?"
"I wouldn't be surprised if he did."
"How's that?"
"Because I told him, that if he ever hurt you, law not withstanding, I'd kill him sixteen times."
"That's fair enough." He gazes at the setting sun, taking in the peaceful moment. "How'd he end up like that in the first place?"
She sighs. "It's a long story, but he's not getting away from us this time. His role in the mess today was pretty big – and he gave you that." She taps at the bandages on his face. "You were authorized to do exactly what you were doing when he cut you like that. So that charge is gonna stick. He'll be off the streets till Christmas."
"Is that all?"
"Aside from that he didn't break any laws. It's not illegal to wave a flag around in public, or give a rousing hateful speech about the police. Plus the officers took his bait."
"You mean with the trash hurling?"
"Yep. The first responders didn't have the authority to use physical force on the mob before they broke the line, but they went ahead and used it anyway. Most of his followers are just going to get charged with throwing shit around."
"And he thought of all of that, huh?"
"Yusuke's not an idiot." She says, looking off into the distance at the sunset. "He's crazy, but he's not an idiot. It's why they like him so much."
"Could he be involved in the other incidents, then?"
"Doubtful, but chances are he didn't put this exhibition together on a whim. I'll see what I can get out of him."
"I'd never seen any of the homeless in this city act like that before."
"That's because they owe him everything. Up till now, he's been their hero."
"So that really was the fabled Minato gang, then?"
"Hiding in plain sight."
"They're bound to make him into a martyr if this goes on much longer."
"They just might." This time she's the one that pulls him in, his head resting on her shoulder. "But you don't need to worry about any of that. Let your mom tend to her old friends' messes, alright?"
The events of the all-out brawl at Shinjuku Station feature strongly in the evening news, very much unlike the shootings. The situation ended with a total of six dead – five civilians that were legally in the wrong, one police officer. The conditions of the struggle, as well as the swift resolution of the violence by Police Commissioner Nijima and apprehension of the riot's architect, were such that the man who gave his life in the line of duty was commended as a hero, and the story ended on a high note for the Tokyo MPD.
What little the homeless eek out on a daily basis after all is driven by the supply and demand, the same as it is for everyone else. There was no one manning the soup kitchens, nor was there any soup for them to give out. The scene at the distribution center that day was just another layer – another aspect of this endless madness. There was nothing anyone could do but wait and hope for this to pass.
And sure enough -
The following morning, the Minister of Health puts out a formal warning to all prefectures. Over the last forty-eight hours, a sharp rise in cases of an airborne flu strain was reported across the country. This strain, which is noted to be highly contagious, is said to have been cultivated from samples of the dehydrated foodstuffs commonly sold in stores, released after being reheated. While the spread is partially asymptomatic, the elderly and the pregnant were said to be at the greatest risk.
And so it was. In what may very well have been its final shipment, Nakajima Station had sent tainted supplies, which had already infected scores of people across the country.
That morning, opposite the sun in the sky, he could see the moon, full as it has been these many nights, as impossible as it was. Perhaps he was the only one – the only one in the entire city who had noticed.