Battle Royale '03
Part Ten
61
He walked down the hall, looking in every room, the mud on his shoes squashing against the clean white floor and leaving footprints a mother would be furious about. He looked in every room, finding them all empty, until he came upon the room in the very back, where the four were huddled. He raised his gun.
"Stop!" Shizuka shouted, standing up and putting her arms out to the sides as if to shield everyone else. "We've got valuable information about disabling these collars! I know you want it!"
"What are you doing?" Masao asked under his breath.
"Being smart!" Shizuka screamed as she drew the butcher knife from the folds of her coat and slashed blindly, feeling the unmistakeable resistance of clothing and skin against the blade. She couldn't stand someone else getting hurt. Sure, she was able to look at herself while she mutilated herself (or had herself mutilated by someone else), but if it was someone else getting hurt, she didn't want to see it. What she didn't see was, while she was blindly slashing, the fact that Masao grabbed Shojiro's wrist and twisted it until he dropped his machine gun on the ground. Junko grabbed it up but had it forced from her hand when Shojiro took out his whip and slapped it against her wrist. He got up, nursing his hurt wrist, and used the whip to bring the gun back to his hand, holding it ready once more. Junko tried a money shot and threw one of the scalpels, hoping that the blade would lodge in his skin somewhere, but it clattered onto the ground instead. Shizuka became discouraged from trying to throw her knives and instead began to formulate plans for different combat tactics...
...right as a scream rang out. "DUCK!!" And she obeyed right as one of the throwing stars whizzed over her head and stuck in the wall behind her. She got up and dodged to the right to avoid another star, then jumped left to avoid the third one. A jump in the air made the fourth miss and another duck to the ground made the last one miss. Shojiro cursed the person who thought up these weapons for being so weird, then took out the blowdarts. There were only two left. He shot these at Kiyoharu, who ducked both of them.
"Who throws darts? Honestly," he replied, standing up and rolling his eyes right as Shojiro reinstated the whip and slapped Kiyoharu in the stomach with it. This caused Kiyoharu to kneel on his knees and grab his stomach in pain.
"Bastard!!!" Shizuka screamed, drawing a steak knife and heading right for the neck. Instead of slashing that very tempting Adam's apple, her aim hit slightly below his throat, ripping open his school coat, white shirt and some of his skin. Obviously this cut began to bleed profusely. Shizuka helped Kiyoharu to his feet and made sure he was okay before she tried to fight any more. Junko flung another scalpel and this time it lodged in Shojiro's left cheek. He quickly pulled it out, which caused a fountain of blood to spurt from that cut as well.
"Can't you see you're mismatched, four to one?" Junko asked as Shojiro discarded the scalpel with his blood on the blade.
"More like three to one." Shojiro held a few quill knives in his sleeve, then he took those out and shot them at Masao, one after the other. Masao was able to dodge the first few, but the last few stuck. One stuck in his chest, one in his arm, one in his other arm and one...
...in his jugular.
"No..." Junko whispered in disbelief. "No. It's not true." She knelt next to Masao. "I'll take out the blades. We'll be okay." Of course, neither Junko nor Masao knew that Kanako Niimura died in exactly the same way. A knife to the neck, now that was pretty damn hard to survive. "Please tell me it's not true."
"Don't remove it, it'll hurt me more. Just let me die."
"I can't do that, Masao."
"I'm sorry, Junko. I can't hold on much longer. I just wanted to die right here, with you right here." His hand reached up to touch Junko's face. She was trembling wildly, almost in hysterics. Her breaths came in labored gasps. "Just remember all the good...times...we had together, okay? Go on and grow up, be successful, be happy. Do it all for the guy who slipped through the cracks." Junko touched Masao's chest, waiting for the gentle heaving of normal breath to occur. Her jaw dropped in disbelief. How could he be dead?! Was it even possible? Her mind set on one thing: revenge. She took up one of the knives that missed and aimed carefully. She was also interested in archery, so she refined her aim in that club. She imagined the knife going exactly where she wanted it to and threw it, watching as it landed on the top part of Shojiro's right thigh. 'DAMMIT! I missed!' She stood up, respectfully looking down at Masao and closing his eyes.
"Look at you! How many people did you kill throughout this game? Did you have any regrets? I've heard rumors that some nerve damage you sustained killed your ability to feel emotions. Is that true?"
"It is true," Shojiro replied. Shizuka motioned to Kiyoharu to take up a small knife and literally backstab him while Shojiro and Junko talked about emotions. "I even killed Sakura without any regrets."
"Sakura? Sakura loved you," Shizuka added.
"Shut up, bitch. Was I talking to you?" Shojiro asked, pointing his gun at Shizuka. She followed by pointing her gun at him while Kiyoharu snuck up behind him but only managed to lop off a bit of his hair because he moved his gun back to Junko. "Anyway, do you want to follow Masao?"
4 students remaining
62
"Of course not!" Shizuka answered, firing her gun. This began a horrible crossfire taking place between Shizuka and Shojiro, who were the only two of the four that had guns. Junko still had her axe, which should only be used when there was no way in hell Shojiro could avoid it, which obviously was not right now. Shojiro's rapid machine-gun fire made it hard to tell exactly where the shots were hitting. Shizuka dove behind a couch and waited until the couch became a large ball of pulverized foam, then dove behind the next one, and the next until she was out of couches to hide behind. Meanwhile Kiyoharu and Junko were throwing knives like nobody's business. Some of them hit, but only the few and far between actually stuck. Shizuka popped up from behind the couch and fired, then was met with two shots. One she dodged but the other grazed her left leg, stinging quite a lot. This angered her and she fired more, hitting his shoulders and arms.
"WHY WON'T YOU DIE?!" she screamed in desperation as she fired until she was out. She loaded the other bullets, the only ones left, and spent those quickly as well. This was also Shojiro's last magazine and it was eventually spent, most of the shots landing in the walls. The whole room was smoking. Shojiro started to panic and looked in his day pack. That's right, he stole Sakura's katana! Right as he drew it, Kiyoharu rushed up behind him with a meat cleaver and slashed a huge gaping slit in Shojiro's back, then stood in front of him and began to piledrive him into the kitchen. Shizuka followed with her day pack in tow as Kiyoharu shoved Shojiro onto the table and began to punch him senseless. Junko came in a moment later also holding Masao's nunchaku and the two girls stood to the side, having no idea what to do. Kiyoharu was good at dodging Shojiro's hopeful katana slashes. Finally Shizuka's hand closed on something cold in her day pack and she took out...
Minami Shimada's revolver! It had been in a secret pocket of the bag this whole time! Shizuka kicked herself for not finding it earlier, then felt the cold metal of the extra bullets also in that secret pocket. But she decided not to fire now, Shojiro and Kiyoharu were squirming too much so she could end up hitting Kiyoharu.
Shojiro was bleeding profusely onto the white table and when he moved away from the puddle the girls noted that it resembled the Japanese flag. It seemed quite ironic to see a flag-like image in the blood of a fellow student, but the whole Program was a strange time for all. Shojiro tried to slash Kiyoharu's chest with the katana but he dodged and the blade grazed his side lightly, leaving a small cut.
"I don't know if I can take this any longer," Shizuka whispered. "Kiyoharu's been unable to dodge a lot of sucker punches. Shojiro is a good fighter."
"When you're one of the best yakuza kids in Kobe, what do you expect? He's not a quadriplegic, you know," Junko replied, adding in a good dose of sarcasm to lighten up the mood. Obviously it didn't work on Shizuka. Right then, Kiyoharu took a punch to his jaw and acted like it was nothing. Maybe the jaw wouldn't have to be reset? Shizuka didn't hear the sound of bones cracking. Finally she decided she couldn't take it anymore and ran up next to Kiyoharu, who spat into his hand, then looked and saw a tiny white tooth sitting in his palm, along with a large amount of blood.
"Oh, that was a baby tooth anyway. I would've had to have it pulled. Thanks for saving me a lot of pain, Shojiro." Kiyoharu spat again and his saliva was pink, then he went back to relentlessly fighting Shojiro. Shizuka began to kick Shojiro in one area of his leg, then knelt down and carved the character for "love" into the bruised leg with one of her smaller knives. She stood back up, admiring her handiwork, then balled her hand into a fist like Masao taught her to. "Remember, Shizuka," he taught her one day after school when she inquired about self-defense (against her stepfather, of course). "If you punch with your knuckles, you risk breaking your hand. Punch with this part." Masao pointed to the part below the knuckles, the part where kids would write characters so their hands spelled out words. Shizuka made sure she was punching with the part below her knuckles, then delivered a punch up into Shojiro's chin which definitely broke something, as there was a sick crunching noise.
"Don't fuck with Kiyoharu," Shizuka threatened, tossing back her hair. "'Cause you fuck with me, too."
4 students remaining
63
"Fucking with a girl," Shojiro replied. "Ha, I feel so threatened...NOT!" He lifted his un-sliced foot up and began to kick Shizuka in the crotch, to which she laughed maniacally.
"What are you kicking? I don't have balls!" she replied, grabbing his leg and forcing it back down. "I'm getting sick of fighting with this guy, let's just kill him." But not before she sustained a punch to her forehead, of course, with the force of a 130-pound 15-year-old yakuza boy behind it. "Owww..." She began to totter around on her legs unsteadily. Junko came in and began to beat Shojiro up with her nunchaku, slamming them over and over onto his rib cage, waiting for a rib to bruise or break. Shojiro wasn't looking so good. The pool of blood on the table told a tale of how badly he was losing, three to one. Now Shizuka was feeling dizzy and strange, like she'd never felt before. Shojiro took Junko's nunchaku up in his hand and began to beat her with them severely in the head, which got her feeling dizzy as well.
"Get out the way," she commanded Kiyoharu and Junko, who huddled behind her for safety. Kiyoharu held Shizuka's arm steady with his hand and kissed her cheek as she shut her eyes and squeezed the trigger. She heard the unmistakeable sound of a bullet exiting its nice warm home inside the cylinder and cracked open one eye to see Shojiro's head fall into the pool of blood, then his body slid forward and slumped onto the ground. She cracked open the other eye.
"Is he...?" Junko asked in shock. Shizuka couldn't take her eyes off of the used-to-be-pristine white table, because when Shojiro slipped, his puddle streaked and now it resembled the red stripes on the American flag. He was now slumped at what would be an uncomfortable angle for a living person, but it didn't seem to matter. "Is he?"
Shizuka went over and felt for any pulse then listened for breathing. After a minute she stood up and shook her head. "He's dead." The three's faces brightened up as they realized exactly who they had killed.
Then Junko and Shizuka's eyes shut and they fell to the floor, unconscious once more from the beatings they sustained during the fight with Shojiro.
Kiyoharu was the only one still conscious.
Oh shit...
He took them each, one at a time, and moved them out of the clinic, which was now beginning to stink of blood. Then he went inside and fetched the instructions on how to deactivate the collars and first deactivated his own, hearing a beeping noise as it loosened from his neck and he took it off with the greatest of ease using a contraption that looked somewhat like the jumper cables used to jump a car battery. Next came Shizuka's collar. He placed two prongs on the front and back of the collar, then turned a small adjuster knob on the device and heard the beeping noise, then the collar loosened and he took it off. It left red marks on her neck. He ignored this and freed Junko from her collar, then sat down to rest. Technically there was nobody left. There would be no winner in this Program. Had that ever happened before? He decided to ponder these things. He knew a cleanup crew came afterwards to get the corpses and also knew there was a secluded cemetery somewhere with gravestones for all of the children who died in each and every single Program. But was that all? The winner also got a news feature in the prefecture where he or she won. Kiyoharu sighed and began to wonder how exactly they would report -this- Program, the fluke.
All 30 students dead--GAME OVER-- report from Third Year Class A Kitagawa Junior High School Program HQ Tracking System
64
On November 22, 2003, America forcefully liberated Japan. The military flew and sailed in fully armed and demanded to see the Dictator. Once they were ushered into his office, a soft-spoken half-Japanese half-American soldier acted as translator between a huffy old military general and the Dictator himself while thousands, nay, millions of other soldiers stood at the ready if the Dictator opposed anything. The general came prepared with papers already signed by the President declaring his agreement to liberate Japan and turn it into a democracy with help from the American military, then demanded the Dictator sign it. The Dictator refused and the general waved his arm. All the soldiers standing behind him raised their weapons, aiming them at the Dictator's head. Finally, he caved in and signed the paper.
"Thank you, sir," the general said in English, the translator doing his job. "Now I'm afraid we have to eliminate the only thing keeping Japan from prospering as a democracy."
"And that would be?" the Dictator asked. The soft-spoken half-and-half boy had to translate both ways before either party understood what one another wanted.
"To be honest, that one thing is you." The general motioned to a few soldiers. One placed a pair of cold metal handcuffs on the Dictator's fat wrists while the others stood beside him, guns jabbed into his waist. "Take him to the ship, boys, then steer it for Gitmo." (Author's note: Gitmo, aka Guantanamo Bay, is a prison in Cuba. It's where all the Middle Eastern terrorists go and eat Froot Loops every day because even a terrorist needs his daily value of calcium, right?)
"Gitmo, sir? Isn't that where all the Middle Eastern terorrists go?"
"Just go to Gitmo."
"Yes, sir." The soldiers ushered the Dictator out of his office, then more soldiers arrested and took away all of the Dictator's assistants. Some of the Diet members had been programmed to believe in whatever the Dictator said, as well as much of the country, so this huffy general knew he had some work ahead of him. He knew Japan would be a piece of work, but he was ready to work with them.
"Yukito," he said to the half-and-half boy.
"Yes, sir?"
"Yukito, the population of Japan has been brainwashed by a long line of dictators. We need to spread the word that this country is a democracy now. Go alert the main news centers in Tokyo, they'll have word out to the rest of the country before dinner's on their tables tonight. That won't take too long. Get back here as soon as possible."
"Yes, sir." Yukito saluted the general as he left to go alert every news center he could find in Tokyo. Like the general guessed, it didn't take very long and the nice people at each newspaper and TV station he found promised they would get the news out as soon as possible. Yukito obediently returned to the "palace" where the Dictator used to reside and saluted the general once more.
"Battalion 107 wants you on their plane. I don't know why, but they do. Go with them." The general pointed to a group of soldiers, dressed ready for flight. Yukito remembered the 107 plane, after all it was the one he flew to Japan on. He saluted the general and followed the other soldiers out to a ship painted camouflage with a number painted on the side as well as the Battalion 107 logo. Everyone loaded up into the plane, then it took off.
"If I may ask," Yukito asked a woman sitting next to him, using flawless English. "What am I doing on this plane?"
"We're looking for hostages and prisoners to free," the woman answered, a bit of a Southern twang showing. "Using this body heat-sensing radar, we can find any living person to rescue! Ain't that nice? We're going down south of the country first, then making a U-turn and coming back up north." The plane flew for awhile before the radar picked up three bodies.
They were located on Okishima Island. A map of Okishima Island was brought up on another screen, with red areas marking places where the plane could land. The three bodies were all concentrated in one area, so the pilot chose the landing area closest to the area where three red spots showed up on an otherwise dark purple screen. Well, except for a few red spots inside of a building that was a short distance from where they were landing...
They'd worry about that when they'd get there.
65
Kiyoharu heard the whooshing sound of an airplane overhead. 'Weird,' he thought to himself. 'Didn't they tell all airplanes to not fly over Okishima until this thing was over and done with?' He looked up at the sky to see a small green and brown dot getting bigger and bigger and becoming an unusual airplane he'd never seen before as it appeared to be hurling towards him. He ducked, putting one arm over each girl lying unconscious by him, and hoped the impact wouldn't be too hard. He heard a thumping sound, then a hissing sound, then the sound of footsteps clomping towards him. He looked up and saw Americans standing above him in military uniforms. Among all the unfamiliar faces he saw a Japanese face, who offered him a hand.
"Who are you guys?" he asked the Japanese soldier.
"We're Batallion 107 of the U.S. Army," the soldier answered. "I'm Sgt. Yukito Davidson. We saw you three on the radar over there in our plane. I see these two girls aren't conscious. Do you want us to take them on the plane?"
"Take them on the plane, but please wait a moment. Don't take off without me." Yukito nodded at this request as Kiyoharu took up Shizuka's revolver and headed straight for the school.
He reached the school quickly by running and noticed the rain finally seemed to be letting up. Now that he had no collar on, there was no way to kill him even if he did step into a forbidden zone. Bastards. Instead of barging in and hoping his revolver would work against armed soldiers with machine guns, he decided to sneak around outside the school. All of the windows were covered with black sheets of metal, except for one. Kiyoharu peeked inside so that no one inside could see even the tips of his wild bleached hair, then his eyes locked onto Mr. Toyama, receiving some rather disparaging news from his soldiers, who bowed to him and offered him their machine guns. He shook his head and they extracted the magazines from their guns, then went outside to surrender for the Americans.
"No winner?" Mr. Toyama asked from inside. "And we got liberated?! DAMN YOU, CRUEL FATE!!!" he screamed, pounding the table and shaking his ashtray around. Kiyoharu took aim and fired a shot that whizzed through the window and lodged itself into Mr. Toyama's arm, then ran for it as fast as he could.
'So this is what freedom feels like?' he asked as the cold wind blew around him as he ran for the camouflage-colored ship. 'This is liberation?' He returned to the ship, then asked Yukito if he could see Shizuka and Junko.
"Shizuka and Junko, huh? Which is which?" Yukito asked, pointing to two cots folded out on the plane and strapped down in case of turbulence.
"That one..." Kiyoharu pointed to Shizuka, whose red hair was sticking out in all direction. "Is Shizuka and that one..." Kiyoharu pointed to Junko, whose hair was also tousled and her face was dirty. "Is Junko."
"And you're...?"
"Kiyoharu Moritaka."
"Ah-ha. Now, I want to know something. What on earth were you three doing on this island? Is it that 'Program' thing I keep hearing about?"
"Yes, sir, it was."
"Do you mind telling me the whole story as you heard it? I want to hear about the Program from someone who won't coat it with propaganda." Kiyoharu paused, deciding from where to begin his story, then...
"Well, it all started on a school bus going from Kitagawa Junior High School in Kobe to Godknowswhere..."
66
The subcontracted cleanup crew arrived right on time and began to take up the bodies of almost every student in class 3-A. (Note: and now for sentimental value I will list everyone who died once more. Repitition helps people remember!) The bodies of Masao Suzuki, Kazuo Hanagata, Tomoko Daidouji, Takashi Hirai, Kanako Niimura, Shinji Asaba, Toru Niimura, Naomi Fujisaki, Daisuke Kirishima, Suzuko Harada, Sho Satsuki, Sayaka Ichiki, Akito Kanzaki, Tetsuko Matsutani, Shuko Inada, Kaoru Sengakuji, Miki Aizawa, Shinya Misao, Asuka Nishima, Junji Mitagawa, Nanako Shizawa, Shojiro Umeboshi, Fujiko Sasei, Toshiya Wakabayashi, Minami Shimada, Kazuhiko Yamatani and Sakura Yanagi were loaded into a really grisly, horribly-smelling cargo area on a helicopter and coptered up to Sapporo, which was the only place where the government could afford enough land for all the graves they would need to make. Many family members asked for their children to be cremated instead of buried, which the cleanup crew arranged because they owned the land now. Graves were enscribed for 27 children to add to the countless rows of graves that were already placed in the dreary cemetery. The cleanup crew was told everyone died, so where were the other 3? Well, it's not like they were getting paid enough to investigate that anyway. They probably drowned or something.
Soon the teary families would come to decorate the graves, just like the other ones in the countless rows of this depressing place. It was truly depressing to be in that cemetery for more than an hour or so, because a person would just see the toll a dictatorship took on a society and they could almost feel their hearts shrink. Even the cleanup crew couldn't stand it and would have to take breaks.
It was horrible, but now it wouldn't have to happen anymore.
Part Ten
61
He walked down the hall, looking in every room, the mud on his shoes squashing against the clean white floor and leaving footprints a mother would be furious about. He looked in every room, finding them all empty, until he came upon the room in the very back, where the four were huddled. He raised his gun.
"Stop!" Shizuka shouted, standing up and putting her arms out to the sides as if to shield everyone else. "We've got valuable information about disabling these collars! I know you want it!"
"What are you doing?" Masao asked under his breath.
"Being smart!" Shizuka screamed as she drew the butcher knife from the folds of her coat and slashed blindly, feeling the unmistakeable resistance of clothing and skin against the blade. She couldn't stand someone else getting hurt. Sure, she was able to look at herself while she mutilated herself (or had herself mutilated by someone else), but if it was someone else getting hurt, she didn't want to see it. What she didn't see was, while she was blindly slashing, the fact that Masao grabbed Shojiro's wrist and twisted it until he dropped his machine gun on the ground. Junko grabbed it up but had it forced from her hand when Shojiro took out his whip and slapped it against her wrist. He got up, nursing his hurt wrist, and used the whip to bring the gun back to his hand, holding it ready once more. Junko tried a money shot and threw one of the scalpels, hoping that the blade would lodge in his skin somewhere, but it clattered onto the ground instead. Shizuka became discouraged from trying to throw her knives and instead began to formulate plans for different combat tactics...
...right as a scream rang out. "DUCK!!" And she obeyed right as one of the throwing stars whizzed over her head and stuck in the wall behind her. She got up and dodged to the right to avoid another star, then jumped left to avoid the third one. A jump in the air made the fourth miss and another duck to the ground made the last one miss. Shojiro cursed the person who thought up these weapons for being so weird, then took out the blowdarts. There were only two left. He shot these at Kiyoharu, who ducked both of them.
"Who throws darts? Honestly," he replied, standing up and rolling his eyes right as Shojiro reinstated the whip and slapped Kiyoharu in the stomach with it. This caused Kiyoharu to kneel on his knees and grab his stomach in pain.
"Bastard!!!" Shizuka screamed, drawing a steak knife and heading right for the neck. Instead of slashing that very tempting Adam's apple, her aim hit slightly below his throat, ripping open his school coat, white shirt and some of his skin. Obviously this cut began to bleed profusely. Shizuka helped Kiyoharu to his feet and made sure he was okay before she tried to fight any more. Junko flung another scalpel and this time it lodged in Shojiro's left cheek. He quickly pulled it out, which caused a fountain of blood to spurt from that cut as well.
"Can't you see you're mismatched, four to one?" Junko asked as Shojiro discarded the scalpel with his blood on the blade.
"More like three to one." Shojiro held a few quill knives in his sleeve, then he took those out and shot them at Masao, one after the other. Masao was able to dodge the first few, but the last few stuck. One stuck in his chest, one in his arm, one in his other arm and one...
...in his jugular.
"No..." Junko whispered in disbelief. "No. It's not true." She knelt next to Masao. "I'll take out the blades. We'll be okay." Of course, neither Junko nor Masao knew that Kanako Niimura died in exactly the same way. A knife to the neck, now that was pretty damn hard to survive. "Please tell me it's not true."
"Don't remove it, it'll hurt me more. Just let me die."
"I can't do that, Masao."
"I'm sorry, Junko. I can't hold on much longer. I just wanted to die right here, with you right here." His hand reached up to touch Junko's face. She was trembling wildly, almost in hysterics. Her breaths came in labored gasps. "Just remember all the good...times...we had together, okay? Go on and grow up, be successful, be happy. Do it all for the guy who slipped through the cracks." Junko touched Masao's chest, waiting for the gentle heaving of normal breath to occur. Her jaw dropped in disbelief. How could he be dead?! Was it even possible? Her mind set on one thing: revenge. She took up one of the knives that missed and aimed carefully. She was also interested in archery, so she refined her aim in that club. She imagined the knife going exactly where she wanted it to and threw it, watching as it landed on the top part of Shojiro's right thigh. 'DAMMIT! I missed!' She stood up, respectfully looking down at Masao and closing his eyes.
"Look at you! How many people did you kill throughout this game? Did you have any regrets? I've heard rumors that some nerve damage you sustained killed your ability to feel emotions. Is that true?"
"It is true," Shojiro replied. Shizuka motioned to Kiyoharu to take up a small knife and literally backstab him while Shojiro and Junko talked about emotions. "I even killed Sakura without any regrets."
"Sakura? Sakura loved you," Shizuka added.
"Shut up, bitch. Was I talking to you?" Shojiro asked, pointing his gun at Shizuka. She followed by pointing her gun at him while Kiyoharu snuck up behind him but only managed to lop off a bit of his hair because he moved his gun back to Junko. "Anyway, do you want to follow Masao?"
4 students remaining
62
"Of course not!" Shizuka answered, firing her gun. This began a horrible crossfire taking place between Shizuka and Shojiro, who were the only two of the four that had guns. Junko still had her axe, which should only be used when there was no way in hell Shojiro could avoid it, which obviously was not right now. Shojiro's rapid machine-gun fire made it hard to tell exactly where the shots were hitting. Shizuka dove behind a couch and waited until the couch became a large ball of pulverized foam, then dove behind the next one, and the next until she was out of couches to hide behind. Meanwhile Kiyoharu and Junko were throwing knives like nobody's business. Some of them hit, but only the few and far between actually stuck. Shizuka popped up from behind the couch and fired, then was met with two shots. One she dodged but the other grazed her left leg, stinging quite a lot. This angered her and she fired more, hitting his shoulders and arms.
"WHY WON'T YOU DIE?!" she screamed in desperation as she fired until she was out. She loaded the other bullets, the only ones left, and spent those quickly as well. This was also Shojiro's last magazine and it was eventually spent, most of the shots landing in the walls. The whole room was smoking. Shojiro started to panic and looked in his day pack. That's right, he stole Sakura's katana! Right as he drew it, Kiyoharu rushed up behind him with a meat cleaver and slashed a huge gaping slit in Shojiro's back, then stood in front of him and began to piledrive him into the kitchen. Shizuka followed with her day pack in tow as Kiyoharu shoved Shojiro onto the table and began to punch him senseless. Junko came in a moment later also holding Masao's nunchaku and the two girls stood to the side, having no idea what to do. Kiyoharu was good at dodging Shojiro's hopeful katana slashes. Finally Shizuka's hand closed on something cold in her day pack and she took out...
Minami Shimada's revolver! It had been in a secret pocket of the bag this whole time! Shizuka kicked herself for not finding it earlier, then felt the cold metal of the extra bullets also in that secret pocket. But she decided not to fire now, Shojiro and Kiyoharu were squirming too much so she could end up hitting Kiyoharu.
Shojiro was bleeding profusely onto the white table and when he moved away from the puddle the girls noted that it resembled the Japanese flag. It seemed quite ironic to see a flag-like image in the blood of a fellow student, but the whole Program was a strange time for all. Shojiro tried to slash Kiyoharu's chest with the katana but he dodged and the blade grazed his side lightly, leaving a small cut.
"I don't know if I can take this any longer," Shizuka whispered. "Kiyoharu's been unable to dodge a lot of sucker punches. Shojiro is a good fighter."
"When you're one of the best yakuza kids in Kobe, what do you expect? He's not a quadriplegic, you know," Junko replied, adding in a good dose of sarcasm to lighten up the mood. Obviously it didn't work on Shizuka. Right then, Kiyoharu took a punch to his jaw and acted like it was nothing. Maybe the jaw wouldn't have to be reset? Shizuka didn't hear the sound of bones cracking. Finally she decided she couldn't take it anymore and ran up next to Kiyoharu, who spat into his hand, then looked and saw a tiny white tooth sitting in his palm, along with a large amount of blood.
"Oh, that was a baby tooth anyway. I would've had to have it pulled. Thanks for saving me a lot of pain, Shojiro." Kiyoharu spat again and his saliva was pink, then he went back to relentlessly fighting Shojiro. Shizuka began to kick Shojiro in one area of his leg, then knelt down and carved the character for "love" into the bruised leg with one of her smaller knives. She stood back up, admiring her handiwork, then balled her hand into a fist like Masao taught her to. "Remember, Shizuka," he taught her one day after school when she inquired about self-defense (against her stepfather, of course). "If you punch with your knuckles, you risk breaking your hand. Punch with this part." Masao pointed to the part below the knuckles, the part where kids would write characters so their hands spelled out words. Shizuka made sure she was punching with the part below her knuckles, then delivered a punch up into Shojiro's chin which definitely broke something, as there was a sick crunching noise.
"Don't fuck with Kiyoharu," Shizuka threatened, tossing back her hair. "'Cause you fuck with me, too."
4 students remaining
63
"Fucking with a girl," Shojiro replied. "Ha, I feel so threatened...NOT!" He lifted his un-sliced foot up and began to kick Shizuka in the crotch, to which she laughed maniacally.
"What are you kicking? I don't have balls!" she replied, grabbing his leg and forcing it back down. "I'm getting sick of fighting with this guy, let's just kill him." But not before she sustained a punch to her forehead, of course, with the force of a 130-pound 15-year-old yakuza boy behind it. "Owww..." She began to totter around on her legs unsteadily. Junko came in and began to beat Shojiro up with her nunchaku, slamming them over and over onto his rib cage, waiting for a rib to bruise or break. Shojiro wasn't looking so good. The pool of blood on the table told a tale of how badly he was losing, three to one. Now Shizuka was feeling dizzy and strange, like she'd never felt before. Shojiro took Junko's nunchaku up in his hand and began to beat her with them severely in the head, which got her feeling dizzy as well.
"Get out the way," she commanded Kiyoharu and Junko, who huddled behind her for safety. Kiyoharu held Shizuka's arm steady with his hand and kissed her cheek as she shut her eyes and squeezed the trigger. She heard the unmistakeable sound of a bullet exiting its nice warm home inside the cylinder and cracked open one eye to see Shojiro's head fall into the pool of blood, then his body slid forward and slumped onto the ground. She cracked open the other eye.
"Is he...?" Junko asked in shock. Shizuka couldn't take her eyes off of the used-to-be-pristine white table, because when Shojiro slipped, his puddle streaked and now it resembled the red stripes on the American flag. He was now slumped at what would be an uncomfortable angle for a living person, but it didn't seem to matter. "Is he?"
Shizuka went over and felt for any pulse then listened for breathing. After a minute she stood up and shook her head. "He's dead." The three's faces brightened up as they realized exactly who they had killed.
Then Junko and Shizuka's eyes shut and they fell to the floor, unconscious once more from the beatings they sustained during the fight with Shojiro.
Kiyoharu was the only one still conscious.
Oh shit...
He took them each, one at a time, and moved them out of the clinic, which was now beginning to stink of blood. Then he went inside and fetched the instructions on how to deactivate the collars and first deactivated his own, hearing a beeping noise as it loosened from his neck and he took it off with the greatest of ease using a contraption that looked somewhat like the jumper cables used to jump a car battery. Next came Shizuka's collar. He placed two prongs on the front and back of the collar, then turned a small adjuster knob on the device and heard the beeping noise, then the collar loosened and he took it off. It left red marks on her neck. He ignored this and freed Junko from her collar, then sat down to rest. Technically there was nobody left. There would be no winner in this Program. Had that ever happened before? He decided to ponder these things. He knew a cleanup crew came afterwards to get the corpses and also knew there was a secluded cemetery somewhere with gravestones for all of the children who died in each and every single Program. But was that all? The winner also got a news feature in the prefecture where he or she won. Kiyoharu sighed and began to wonder how exactly they would report -this- Program, the fluke.
All 30 students dead--GAME OVER-- report from Third Year Class A Kitagawa Junior High School Program HQ Tracking System
64
On November 22, 2003, America forcefully liberated Japan. The military flew and sailed in fully armed and demanded to see the Dictator. Once they were ushered into his office, a soft-spoken half-Japanese half-American soldier acted as translator between a huffy old military general and the Dictator himself while thousands, nay, millions of other soldiers stood at the ready if the Dictator opposed anything. The general came prepared with papers already signed by the President declaring his agreement to liberate Japan and turn it into a democracy with help from the American military, then demanded the Dictator sign it. The Dictator refused and the general waved his arm. All the soldiers standing behind him raised their weapons, aiming them at the Dictator's head. Finally, he caved in and signed the paper.
"Thank you, sir," the general said in English, the translator doing his job. "Now I'm afraid we have to eliminate the only thing keeping Japan from prospering as a democracy."
"And that would be?" the Dictator asked. The soft-spoken half-and-half boy had to translate both ways before either party understood what one another wanted.
"To be honest, that one thing is you." The general motioned to a few soldiers. One placed a pair of cold metal handcuffs on the Dictator's fat wrists while the others stood beside him, guns jabbed into his waist. "Take him to the ship, boys, then steer it for Gitmo." (Author's note: Gitmo, aka Guantanamo Bay, is a prison in Cuba. It's where all the Middle Eastern terrorists go and eat Froot Loops every day because even a terrorist needs his daily value of calcium, right?)
"Gitmo, sir? Isn't that where all the Middle Eastern terorrists go?"
"Just go to Gitmo."
"Yes, sir." The soldiers ushered the Dictator out of his office, then more soldiers arrested and took away all of the Dictator's assistants. Some of the Diet members had been programmed to believe in whatever the Dictator said, as well as much of the country, so this huffy general knew he had some work ahead of him. He knew Japan would be a piece of work, but he was ready to work with them.
"Yukito," he said to the half-and-half boy.
"Yes, sir?"
"Yukito, the population of Japan has been brainwashed by a long line of dictators. We need to spread the word that this country is a democracy now. Go alert the main news centers in Tokyo, they'll have word out to the rest of the country before dinner's on their tables tonight. That won't take too long. Get back here as soon as possible."
"Yes, sir." Yukito saluted the general as he left to go alert every news center he could find in Tokyo. Like the general guessed, it didn't take very long and the nice people at each newspaper and TV station he found promised they would get the news out as soon as possible. Yukito obediently returned to the "palace" where the Dictator used to reside and saluted the general once more.
"Battalion 107 wants you on their plane. I don't know why, but they do. Go with them." The general pointed to a group of soldiers, dressed ready for flight. Yukito remembered the 107 plane, after all it was the one he flew to Japan on. He saluted the general and followed the other soldiers out to a ship painted camouflage with a number painted on the side as well as the Battalion 107 logo. Everyone loaded up into the plane, then it took off.
"If I may ask," Yukito asked a woman sitting next to him, using flawless English. "What am I doing on this plane?"
"We're looking for hostages and prisoners to free," the woman answered, a bit of a Southern twang showing. "Using this body heat-sensing radar, we can find any living person to rescue! Ain't that nice? We're going down south of the country first, then making a U-turn and coming back up north." The plane flew for awhile before the radar picked up three bodies.
They were located on Okishima Island. A map of Okishima Island was brought up on another screen, with red areas marking places where the plane could land. The three bodies were all concentrated in one area, so the pilot chose the landing area closest to the area where three red spots showed up on an otherwise dark purple screen. Well, except for a few red spots inside of a building that was a short distance from where they were landing...
They'd worry about that when they'd get there.
65
Kiyoharu heard the whooshing sound of an airplane overhead. 'Weird,' he thought to himself. 'Didn't they tell all airplanes to not fly over Okishima until this thing was over and done with?' He looked up at the sky to see a small green and brown dot getting bigger and bigger and becoming an unusual airplane he'd never seen before as it appeared to be hurling towards him. He ducked, putting one arm over each girl lying unconscious by him, and hoped the impact wouldn't be too hard. He heard a thumping sound, then a hissing sound, then the sound of footsteps clomping towards him. He looked up and saw Americans standing above him in military uniforms. Among all the unfamiliar faces he saw a Japanese face, who offered him a hand.
"Who are you guys?" he asked the Japanese soldier.
"We're Batallion 107 of the U.S. Army," the soldier answered. "I'm Sgt. Yukito Davidson. We saw you three on the radar over there in our plane. I see these two girls aren't conscious. Do you want us to take them on the plane?"
"Take them on the plane, but please wait a moment. Don't take off without me." Yukito nodded at this request as Kiyoharu took up Shizuka's revolver and headed straight for the school.
He reached the school quickly by running and noticed the rain finally seemed to be letting up. Now that he had no collar on, there was no way to kill him even if he did step into a forbidden zone. Bastards. Instead of barging in and hoping his revolver would work against armed soldiers with machine guns, he decided to sneak around outside the school. All of the windows were covered with black sheets of metal, except for one. Kiyoharu peeked inside so that no one inside could see even the tips of his wild bleached hair, then his eyes locked onto Mr. Toyama, receiving some rather disparaging news from his soldiers, who bowed to him and offered him their machine guns. He shook his head and they extracted the magazines from their guns, then went outside to surrender for the Americans.
"No winner?" Mr. Toyama asked from inside. "And we got liberated?! DAMN YOU, CRUEL FATE!!!" he screamed, pounding the table and shaking his ashtray around. Kiyoharu took aim and fired a shot that whizzed through the window and lodged itself into Mr. Toyama's arm, then ran for it as fast as he could.
'So this is what freedom feels like?' he asked as the cold wind blew around him as he ran for the camouflage-colored ship. 'This is liberation?' He returned to the ship, then asked Yukito if he could see Shizuka and Junko.
"Shizuka and Junko, huh? Which is which?" Yukito asked, pointing to two cots folded out on the plane and strapped down in case of turbulence.
"That one..." Kiyoharu pointed to Shizuka, whose red hair was sticking out in all direction. "Is Shizuka and that one..." Kiyoharu pointed to Junko, whose hair was also tousled and her face was dirty. "Is Junko."
"And you're...?"
"Kiyoharu Moritaka."
"Ah-ha. Now, I want to know something. What on earth were you three doing on this island? Is it that 'Program' thing I keep hearing about?"
"Yes, sir, it was."
"Do you mind telling me the whole story as you heard it? I want to hear about the Program from someone who won't coat it with propaganda." Kiyoharu paused, deciding from where to begin his story, then...
"Well, it all started on a school bus going from Kitagawa Junior High School in Kobe to Godknowswhere..."
66
The subcontracted cleanup crew arrived right on time and began to take up the bodies of almost every student in class 3-A. (Note: and now for sentimental value I will list everyone who died once more. Repitition helps people remember!) The bodies of Masao Suzuki, Kazuo Hanagata, Tomoko Daidouji, Takashi Hirai, Kanako Niimura, Shinji Asaba, Toru Niimura, Naomi Fujisaki, Daisuke Kirishima, Suzuko Harada, Sho Satsuki, Sayaka Ichiki, Akito Kanzaki, Tetsuko Matsutani, Shuko Inada, Kaoru Sengakuji, Miki Aizawa, Shinya Misao, Asuka Nishima, Junji Mitagawa, Nanako Shizawa, Shojiro Umeboshi, Fujiko Sasei, Toshiya Wakabayashi, Minami Shimada, Kazuhiko Yamatani and Sakura Yanagi were loaded into a really grisly, horribly-smelling cargo area on a helicopter and coptered up to Sapporo, which was the only place where the government could afford enough land for all the graves they would need to make. Many family members asked for their children to be cremated instead of buried, which the cleanup crew arranged because they owned the land now. Graves were enscribed for 27 children to add to the countless rows of graves that were already placed in the dreary cemetery. The cleanup crew was told everyone died, so where were the other 3? Well, it's not like they were getting paid enough to investigate that anyway. They probably drowned or something.
Soon the teary families would come to decorate the graves, just like the other ones in the countless rows of this depressing place. It was truly depressing to be in that cemetery for more than an hour or so, because a person would just see the toll a dictatorship took on a society and they could almost feel their hearts shrink. Even the cleanup crew couldn't stand it and would have to take breaks.
It was horrible, but now it wouldn't have to happen anymore.