June 22nd, 2022
Warfare, for all its complex dances and intricate scheming, for all of its blood and guts and filth and painted-on glory, had three simple rules.
One: accumulate as many advantages as possible.
Two: decimate the enemy as completely as possible.
Three: protect yourself and your allies.
No matter how grotesquely baroque the politics or how widespread the war, that was the essence of conflict, an essence that Mion had deeply absorbed over countless long summers, of blood, sweat, mud, and tears with her fellow club members. Boot camp was said to be tough, but it was pathetic, honestly. Just the same sequence of exercises, over and over and over again. Boring, repetitive, no real challenge.
Mion's club was different. Every day, every game, pushed them to their absolute limits, and more than that, forced them to find creative solutions to impossible problems on the fly and while under fire. Mion didn't bother with silly little things like asking for fifty pushups or twenty laps around a track. She asked for push-ups balancing precariously over a steam with your hands on one crossbeam and your feet on another, trying to keep a chicken's egg from rolling off your back. She asked for an hour-long trek through the broken and untamed mountains singing as loud as you could without repeating a single song, making a single error, or stopping for a single moment.
Really, boot camp? It could lick her sneakers.
But now her sneakers were busy bracing herself on the weather-beaten roof of the old forestry shack Satoko had commandeered for her home base, and binoculars were pressed tight against her eyes. The humid heat of a thunderstorm about to break made her yellow shirt cling to her skin, pulling heavily at her tied-back hair, and when Mion tore her eyes away from the road, she saw a gloomy shadow rolling across the sky as thunderheads built above the mountains. Ominous, certainly, but not as ominous as the sight of the multiple plain, nondescript white vans rolling up the road towards this mountain.
The Wild Dogs.
Yamainu.
Under most circumstances, the idea of a group of kids facing down a counterintelligence force was, well, laughable. These men were trained for espionage, assassination, and sabotage. They were experts in operating –and perforce, blocking– surveillance equipment; they were skilled in manipulating other agencies, up to and including the police, for their own benefit; and they knew how to and would use guns. As proven by the C4 that had blown open the Sonozaki sanctuary door, they also knew how to use incendiary devices, and were supplied far past what a mere disease research clinic should be able to hire.
Yeah. Against that, what hope did a motley group of seven teens and preteens, none of whom were armed with anything more fearsome than an airsoft gun or a nata, stand? The most they could hope to offer was a brief, pathetic resistance, wiggling and kicking in the arms of their captors, perhaps breaking an arm or two, before they were all taken down –and, knowing these guys, then killed execution-style in the dusty road for impeding them.
Well, of course, that was the silly little expectation that the Wild Dogs were carrying into battle. They were using more force than they needed to gather up Rika and any allies she might possess in a search net, then take care of what they had come here to do, and they expected the most arduous part of the mission to be trekking around on a mountain slope in the humid, sticky summer air. Mion knew better, though, and she grinned as she flicked the penny-like tracking device up in the air with her thumb, flipping it like the coin it so resembled, before swiping it out of the air with a snatch of her hand as her grin widened.
Rule One, accumulate as many advantages as possible.
This wasn't just any mountain: this was Satoko's trap mountain, a hellish playground that even her friends never dared disturb. That was the first major –and almost literal– stumbling block Mion was planning to throw at her foes. As they piled out of their vans and started affixing their equipment, Mion's club members were already fanning out, silent and deadly as leopards creeping through the underbrush. If you looked at this as a siege, with the Wild Dogs charging uphill towards Mion's fortified position, then the first thing she had to do, the very first thing, was break their momentum.
They were confident, but not too cocky, she saw through her binoculars as the Wild Dogs climbed. They weren't straggling up the slope in any old order, but moving in steady and focused lines that wouldn't let even the smallest child slip past them through the thick brush and tree cover.
Mion nodded to Satoko, who was sitting beside her with her own binoculars, and Satoko grinned, baring one pointed tooth as she cued up her radio with a staticky crackle.
"Alright, let's show 'em what we're made of." she cackled, and Mion gave a thin smirk, setting down the small disk of the tracking device.
"Everyone, lead your targets to your designated sector. No risks, not yet." she added, queuing up her own radio. "We've got the advantage of surprise, and you've only got one chance to use it. Make it count."
About a minute afterwards, give or take a few seconds, faint cries and ringing thuds began to echo across the forest, and Mion and Satoko both grinned. Satoko pressed her binoculars tight to her eyes with one hand, swiveling back and forth on the roof and pouring out a rapid-fire series of orders to Keiichi, Rena, Hanyuu, and Rika.
Mion watched through her own binoculars as the Wild Dogs began to falter, shouting through their own coms as they tried to establish just what the heck was going on. She chuckled quietly to herself: the more superior you felt, the more dismaying a sudden upset was. Their slow uphill progress had been completely broken, their momentum shattered: the men were reeling every which way, not sure of where their comrades were, not sure whether or not they should advance, not sure what was going on. They weren't creeping up the mountain at a steady, measured pace anymore: they were milling in uncertain clumps where they had stopped, some leaning back, some even edging downwards, towards the mountain's base.
But now it was time for Rule Three, and Mion kept a sharp eye on those forces as they began to knit themselves back together, courtesy of a man who she guessed to be the commander, standing tall and proud with his black hair tied back in a thin tail.
"Alright, everyone, back to base –and someone grab me one'a their radios on your way." Mion said, and nodded to Satoko. "Satoko-chan, you're up. Everyone else fall back behind the second line."
Satoko's first series of traps, the breakwaters, were meant to slow the Wild Dog's advance and sow the first seeds of doubt into their mind. But a few days or hours' worth of explanations was not even near enough to indoctrinate the rest of the club into Satoko's complex art, and the main problem with traps was that they were stationary, and useless after they were sprung.
Because these Wild Dog guys were professionals, Mion estimated that even in the face of Satoko's masterful traps, they would regroup and throw themselves up the mountain again, once they ascertained that it was indeed traps that they were dealing with. Takano-san knew Satoko, and once a threat had been identified, its intimidation factor shrunk, especially when that threat was revealed to be a little girl.
So, now, in this moment when the Wild Dogs were milling about, Mion needed to call her forces back to protect them from the humiliated and vengeful men that would soon be surging back up the line with extra vigor. Keiichi and the others could take a short rest at the shack, regaining their second wind, and Satoko could sally out, cracking her fingers and about to play the most masterful of compositions on her trap-filled mountain. Mion and the others could avoid the traps she had laid out, trigger what she told them to trigger, follow Satoko's directions –but there their use ended.
Satoko was the God-Sent Master of Traps, and it was time for her to show why that title had been bestowed upon her.
Mion nodded slowly to herself as Keiichi, Rena, Rika, and Hanyuu gathered around her shack, panting and throwing themselves down on the grass. Satoko was already gone, and Mion swept her binoculars in slow, steady sections as she inspected their enemy's progress. What the Wild Dogs had seen up until now was essentially party favors, when it came to Satoko: now that they had regathered and regrouped –still a little uncertain but now determined, since they had found and identified a target– they would run straight up a brick wall.
By allowing them that glimmer of hope and confidence, Satoko –and through her, Mion– would send their moral and their confidence plummeting down even further when it was crushed. After all, they were only dealing with a very little girl's traps. Those traps had been damaging, true, but that was because of their initial arrangement, and every trick was less useful the second time around. Now that they knew what they were facing, they could plow forward with confidence, using their superior tactics and experience to win the day.
Nope.
Mion would lay money on Satoko beating out a thousand special-ops forces from any country you cared to name with her most serious of traps, and Mion would've won big every time. Satoko didn't just set up physical traps: she toyed with your mind like a cat with a mouse, making you second-guess every step you took, until you didn't dare move backward or forward. The army that challenged her on this mountain was an army that would effectively cease to exist, for when it came to luring and to capturing, to disarming and disabling, Satoko was a devil in little girl's clothing, wise and deadly beyond her years.
The Wild Dogs had had one setback, losing some of their forces to injuries and concussions and broken bones, but they had freed those that had been tied up in blanket-traps or rope snares and reorganized themselves, moving forward. They were determined, but in the back of their minds, a hint of unease remained. Well, to call it unease, even, that was a bit much. Perhaps at this point it was just surprise. After all, they had been outmaneuvered at every turn so far, and they were just dealing with a ten-year-old girl and her fellow schoolchildren. That was impressive. It was unexpected. What else –not, of course, that they wouldn't be able to deal with whatever came up, they were professionals– but what else did these brats have to throw at them?
Satoko was pleased to give them a personal demonstration.
Mion grinned as chaos exploded across the mountain. Satoko didn't even give the Wild Dogs a chance to radio for help –or, for that matter, radio to explain. Comm after comm was going dead, and she saw, through the glassy and curved view of her binoculars, unease spreading like a fog amongst the still-standing men. Their forces had been halved at this point, or thereabouts, and yet still they doggedly marched on, even as Satoko came skipping back to the shack.
Shouts were crackling almost constantly in the radio that Rena had handed to her from one of the Wild Dogs –demands for reports from the guy that sounded like the commander, screams from Satoko's victims, and most ominous at all, a growing silence, a growing lack of replies. The seeds of doubt that had been planted with Satoko's first breakwater were growing well as the Wild Dogs became scattered, disorganized, and increasingly concerned. This wasn't normal. This wasn't something that kids should possibly be able to accomplish.
"Kei-chan, Hanyuu," Mion said, picking up the stolen radio at her feet and handing it to Keiichi with a grin and a flourish. "Rattle their cages for us, will ya?"
"Gladly." Keiichi took the radio and cleared his throat a few times, rubbing the base of his neck as Hanyuu gathered around him.
Rule Two: decimate the enemy as much as possible. Mion and her forces had cleaved through the Wild Dogs an appreciable amount, but even Satoko's traps couldn't hold forever. This wasn't the main battleground, the main stage, but if Mion was given the job to distract and dismay the enemy as much as she could while Shion raided the clinic and Akasaka-san burst through the blockage outside the village to get help, well, she would do the best damn job she could.
Psychological warfare was a delicate task to accomplish. Too soon, and it was as campy and ridiculous as a child's paper mask. Too late, and its effectiveness shrank. But ah, if you managed to get it right on time, right when the seeds of doubt had bloomed into a thick tangle of uncertainty, right when all the factors you had woven together formed a cohesive whole, then you could lay the enemy flat.
The Wild Dogs were out in the forest, and while it wasn't night, nature still had a way of subtly stimulating the imagination, especially in as wild and mountainous and remote place as Hinamizawa. Because people associated civilization with progress and maturity, they conversely associated rural wilderness with the past and with mystery. And the Wild Dogs were afraid, oh yes. They might not admit it aloud, but they were sorely shaken. Children were outpacing them, children that had been taught their schoolwork in a single-classroom converted forestry shack, children that did not have even a fraction of the experience and tactical knowledge of them, these hardened adults.
It was impossible. Surely, it was impossible.
But if it was impossible, then what was happening right now?
And…and there were such rumors, in Hinamizawa, of Hinamizawa.
Onigafuchi, the Abyss of Demons. Oyashiro-sama's curse.
The fact that these men had probably had no little part in executing the legendary curse, according to Rika, meant little right here, right now. In fact, it might scare them all the more. After all, they had merely played the part of a legend older than any of them, and now their comrades were dropping like flies for no sensible and logical reason. Untutored brats like Mion and her club members surely couldn't be taking out hardened black ops on their own, so…what was working against them?
There was a very simple answer.
No normal children could be doing this. No humans could be doing this.
The force the Wild Dogs were fighting against was not human.
Hanyuu and Keiichi picked up where Satoko had left off, stringing their foes tight and playing them like a fiddle as Hanyuu deepened her voice, drawing a sudden cloak of authority heavy and ominous about herself as she harangued these soldiers for daring to trample upon her sacred land, and Keiichi choked and screamed like the end of days had come upon him, subtly weaving the legends of Hinamizawa in amongst his cries as he pleaded with unseen demons, gurgling as they ostensibly ripped his intestines free.
Mion snickered behind her muffling hand as she watched several of these soldiers –several of these grown and hardened men– break and downright sprint for the base of the mountain, shouting in their panic.
Keiichi clicked off the radio, and they all grinned at each other.
"Heh." Mion straightened, standing tall and proud on the roof of the shack as she looked down the mountain and felt the summer wind, heavy with the scent of rain, blow through her hair. "Underestimate the Hinamizawa Club, will ya? You guys haven't even begun to realize how outmatched you are."
8.18 AM, USA Central Time
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