Patlabor: Personal Files
An Episodic Patlabor Fanfic by David A. Tatum
Disclaimer: Insert legal junk here...
Episode 22: Prelude to War
April 30, 2000
"Gotoh! Call for you!" was an announcement often heard in the Academy halls in the most recent session. Mahoko Gotoh was often seen with a brilliant smile on her face for hours after such an announcement was made, and that smile proved to be quite contagious. So, when the usual shout went up that her uncle in the SV2 was calling for her, most passerbys couldn't help but grin at the frantically sprinting girl darting over to the phones.
"Uncle Gotoh! Hi!" she cried into the reciever breathlessly. "I was wondering if you'd manage to call today. How are things?"
"I always find time to check up on my favorite niece," came the reply. "We've been rather busy these past few weeks, however."
"I think you've only mentioned it every day since you left," Mahoko deadpanned. "So I don't know why that doesn't surprise me."
"How is Kanuka doing, by the way?" he replied, changing the subject.
"Professor Clancy? Well, she's toned down a bit since Lt. Kumagami left... and trust me, it's helped a lot. She's still as tough as nails and she still knows her stuff, but she's no longer quite so... outrageous... in her lectures." Mahoko grinned, glancing around to make sure said professor wasn't around. "Kumagami must have provoked her or something."
"It's a friendly rivalry," Gotoh noted. "That occasionally sparks less then friendly behavior. I've told you about the unit vacation, right?"
"Yes!" Mahoko laughed. "Poor Officer Ohta! I can't believe they did that to him."
"Have you been following the news, lately?" Gotoh asked when she finished laughing.
An outside observer would have had a hard time noticing it on her face, but Mahoko's smile froze the moment she heard that phrase.
"No, I'm afraid not," she replied, revealing nothing.
"Ah. Well, I suggest you talk to Kanuka about it - there's something she'll be interested in. Gomioka has been angling for a while to replace Ohta with Seiroku. Well, he finally managed it this time - Ohta screwed up big time."
"When?" Mahoko asked again, visible strain in her voice.
"I suggest you talk to her today or tomorrow," Gotoh answered. "I doubt it'll be news any more if you wait much longer than that. Ohta is upset, but I expect we'll see what Mr. Seiroku is capable of very soon. I will note that the rather busy period of activity we've had, recently, has been absent these past twenty-four hours."
Mahoko swallowed nervously. "I'll talk to her right away."
"Good," Gotoh said. "I suppose I should let you go, now, huh?"
"Yeah," Mahoko said. "I... have things I need to do."
That day, Mahoko Gotoh's smiles didn't light up the hallways of the academy as usual. Instead, a very troubled look filled her face, and a sense of uneasiness went up among the cadets.
"Uncle Sake!" came the call from the foyer. Sakaki, fiddling with a hydrolic line in one of the Type 96 labors parked in his house's courtyard, sighed. He really wished that girl would drop that embarrassing nickname.
"What?" he called back gruffly.
"Someone here to see you from Special Vehicles."
"Is it Shige? Send him on back here..."
"It's not Shige," a different voice answered him. Sakaki, his face partially hidden behind his mirror shades, raised an eyebrow. Managing a stopping point on his work, he turned around.
"Officer Ohta?" he asked, letting his surprise just barely carry through in his voice.
"Not 'officer' any more," Ohta sighed. "Gomioka has me on suspension, with pay, 'pending an investigation' into my performance as a labor pilot. That investigation has yet to be scheduled, so Gotoh didn't feel too bad about asking me to deliver a package for him."
"Indeed," Sakaki mused, taking the package Ohta was carrying. There was a letter strapped to the top, which he immediately started opening. "Did he have any other messages?"
"Just that I was supposed to wait until you were ready to reply," Ohta said.
Sakaki scanned the letter and tensed. "Did he, now? Well, I don't think I'll have a reply for him for a few days, but it looks as if he was anticipating that. I think we'll have to find a room for you, here, for a few days."
Shinobu shook her head as she spied the labor bay, seeing the same sight once again. Entering the offices, she walked over to her fellow Captain Gotoh.
"Excuse me, but you wouldn't happen to know why your entire unit is camped out, asleep, under the feet of Alphonse again?" she asked. "They've been doing that for the past two weeks, you know."
"They didn't consult me about it," Gotoh noted. "They seem to be having fun, though."
"They didn't 'consult' you? Well, do you have any guesses?"
Gotoh shrugged, looking around. Gomioka was absent, but that was usually the case. He'd grown increasingly anti-social, and his latest statement benching Ohta and suspending him from the force was done without explanation. Niether Shinobu nor Gotoh had been able to get the story out of him, but from what Ohta and the other officers in Unit 3 were saying it appeared as if there was once more a conflict between the two regarding his taking the command car. Shinobu had been feeling more and more embarrassed for having recommended him to be made captain, but it was too late for her to do anything about it. Gomioka had gone over her head, straight to Fukushima, and hadn't been showing his face around the office much at all.
"I have a few, but I don't know if I should mention them or not."
Shinobu raised an eyebrow, believing him to be talking about Noa and Asuma's not-quite-as-secret-as-they'd-wish relationship, but she couldn't see how the nightly parties could be involved in that.
"I know we officially avoid noticing certain things about the dynamics of Unit 2 on purpose," Shinobu began, "But surely you could mention something, unofficially, if you suspected it."
Gotoh blinked at her. "What are you talking about?"
"I assumed... ah, perhaps not. I'd like to know what it is you think shouldn't be mentioned, in this case. I promise I won't discuss it with anyone else, if you don't want me to."
The other captain sighed. "Well, I suppose I should let you in on it. I've had some suspicions about certain things for a while." He unlocked a cabinet in his desk and pulled out a file. Staring at it for a moment, he sighed. "Here, take a look. I think you'll find it... enlightening."
Shinobu glanced through it. Mostly, it was the summaries of various crime reports over the past several months. Most notable on it were her own action against the theft of a large number of military labors and the robbery of the Quartermaster's Corps. which Gomioka's unit had intervened in. Attached to the later was a document she had yet to see - the summary, provided by Shinohara Heavy Industries, of the stolen property from their government liason offices in that incident, as provided by Asuma.
Then there were some unofficial reports, as well - Takeo Kumagami had given him an off-the-record statement of her meeting with Richard Wong, which Shinobu had only been mildly aware of. Highlighted on the document was a claim by Mr. Wong that a former boss of Gotoh's was working on securing him a pardon... something which struck a cord in her, as well.
Finally, there was a series of messages from Momoko Sakurayama, the reporter. A possible exchange of sources, perhaps, as most of the messages meant nothing to Shinobu but seemed to deal with an investigation Gotoh was working on. However, one entry was highlighted. An entry which caused Shinobu to gasp aloud.
"Why haven't I heard about this, before?" she asked. "This is big news, especially for us, and it hasn't appeared at all in the press. If a reporter had it, then-"
"There's been a gag order on certain pieces of news, recently. No explanation. That's only one piece of information - another is that Bud Reynard has been, ah, removed from his school."
Shinobu's eyes narrowed. "So... what does all of this mean?"
"I'm afraid we're in for a bit of a situation... and soon. I sent Ohta off-site, and Kanuka is in position with a working labor three from my unit. I had plans to take care of Alphonse, but Noa and Asuma - whether they found out on their own, like I suspect, and took the initiative on their own or whether there's some other reason they're camping out there - are dealing with it themselves."
"You've done nothing for MY unit," Shinobu noted wryly.
"I've made some arrangements, but there's nothing I can do for your people specifically," Gotoh sighed. "I don't know them well enough. None of my people went into your unit - you're the only person who I could do anything with, and I couldn't talk with you about it until today."
"Why not until today?" Shinobu asked.
Gotoh grimmaced. "Because today, the crime spree has stopped. Which means things are going to start happening, and soon..."
There was a knock on the door, and Kanuka looked up. "Come in."
Mahoko Gotoh paused at the entrance before slowly walking into the office. "Professor Clancy," she acknowledged, nodding her head respectfully as her hands were full. "I... I've got something for you."
"Surely you haven't finished that research paper already? You simply must stop finishing assignments so quickly - you're making the rest of the cadets look bad!" Kanuka teased.
Mahoko visibly relaxed. "Nothing so mundane, I'm afraid. Uncle - er, Captain Gotoh asked me to deliver something to you the moment he gave me a certain coded message. I got that message today, and so here it is."
Kanuka raised an eyebrow as she accepted the parcel. "CAPTAIN Gotoh sent this, eh? Hmm, I wonder..." With a quick perusal of the documents, her face grew more and more grim. "Are you aware of the contents of this?"
"The gist of it, anyway," Mahoko admitted. "He let me know what it was all about when he gave it to me."
Kanuka nodded. "Okay. Pass the word - all trainees to the training labors. We're going on a survivalist field trip for a few days."
May 1, 2000
"A May Day military labor drill?" complained Sergeant Chuuichi Iguchi of JSDF Labor Team Falcon. Piloting one of the lightwieght Mitsubishi 'Simon' scouting labors, Chuuichi wasn't exactly pleased to be engaged in exercises after dark. Especially not when his labor had to go up against the much heavier grade AV-99 Helldivers (the military varient of the Ingram) of Team Raven.
"We have to keep in practice somehow," Raven team's Captain Fuwa coughed back. She was in overall command of all four teams that day, and took it to heart. "Now, gentlemen, to your labors."
The drill began fairly normally. Team Falcon in the Simons, Team Raven in the Helldivers, Team Seagull in the submersible Amazons produced by Fuji Heavy Industries, and the Kawasaki Bakers (the heavy eight-legged tank-like labors based on the failed X-10 project to compete with the Russian Doshka's) of Team Albatross all had successes in the drills. As usual, Team Raven showed itself to be the best pilots in the best labors during the one-on-one matches, but each team managed at least one victory in the team competitions.
"Time out!" Chuuichi called, two hours into the drills.
All four teams paused in their actions. "Is there a problem, Sergeant?" Fuwa asked.
"Recieving a report from Colonel Atsuo Tobe," Chuuichi explained. "He reports that Team Sparrow, on guard patrol, has lost contact with home base. He sent out Teams Condor and Heron to scout out the area, and lost contact with them as well - no explanation. He now asks that we investigate, but be on our guard."
Captain Fuwa tensed. Three units, completely out of contact without any warning? Just what was going on, anyway?
"Acknowledged. Team Falcon, set a perimeter. Team Albatross, extended diamond formation. All other labors, close formation inside Team Albatross' guard. We'll move in cautiously."
"Yes, ma'am!" came several replies at once.
As the well-trained unit it was, the sixteen JSDF military labors moved as a unit, with efficiency and skill. Or rather, it did as long as Fuwa could follow it - once they entered the patrol area where the other labors had disappeared, all of her sensors suddenly blanked out.
"Shit! I've lost all sensors. I'll have to fall back. Does anyone read me?" She paused. "Oh, hell."
With a flick of a switch, her chair lifted out so that she'd at least have some visibility as she moved. What she saw as she came up nearly made her wish she didn't - from the wreckage of labors, including the obsolescent Type-97 Samsons and at least four other Hellfires, she could see that Teams Sparrow, Heron, and Condor were all in pieces, literally, and it looked as if Sergeant Chuuichi's Simon had been shredded. And doing the demolishing, she could see, were two Doshka's, four Brochen's, and a labor she never expected to see. The telltale black wings proved to belong to the Griffin.
"Oh... hell."
In the bloodshed that followed, all sixteen military labors - including Captain Fuwa's Hellfire - were destroyed. One final act of defiance managed to take down the last of the four Brochen's they faced, but the two Doshka's and the Griffin were the real heavy firepower in the first place.
As Fuwa faded to unconsciousness in the wreckage of her broken labor, her mental math told her that between the destruction of all seven teams of military labors, almost one quarter of the entire JSDF contingent of labors was lost. To only four enemy labors destroyed.
If this really was a war, like she thought, they were in big trouble.
"Boss! We've got a package for you!" the aide-de-campe for Hanafuji Yakuza faction chief Naoya Fujioka cried. "No return address."
Naoya looked up. "Eh? Have the screeners checked it, yet?"
"Yes, we're fairly certain it's not a bomb, whatever it is. Pretty heavy, though."
Naoya sighed. "Well, bring it here. Might as well see what's going on."
The package was about the size of a shoe box, and the postmark seemed to indicate it came from the reclaimed lands which Babylon Project's phase one experiments had made available for development, but other than that there was nothing remarkable about the package. A letter was attached on the outside, which Naoya promptly opened.
"Returning some things you gave me for safekeeping. Don't use them - I'll be by to reclaim them in time."
There was no signature, and the letter itself was typed giving no indication as to who sent it. It was all quite mysterious, but nevertheless Naoya felt like he should know what this package contained without having to open it.
Shrugging, he decided there were better uses of his time then solving riddles when there was a much simpler way of getting his questions answered. With a decisive rip, he tore open the package and lifted the lid of what was, in fact, a shoe box wrapped with paper.
"Labor movement disks?" he muttered aloud, surprised. He pulled them out, and sure enough, every single labor movement disk he had sent to the care of SV2 and Captain Gotoh were in the package.
He had continued collecting labors, and now had about thirty labors, but he always sent the movement disk straight to the police captain. His collection, while constantly kept in working condition, were for show only. He remembered how to drive them - in fact, he secretly kept a single movement disk for one of the farming labors just to keep in practice - but he certainly didn't need all thirty disks! Nor had he asked for them. He looked at the letter again.
The word 'safekeeping' seemed to be a little bolder then most of the others on the page. Emphasized slightly, as it were. That was very curious, now, wasn't it?
Well, he actually liked the people of SV2. Anything he could do to help them out would be a pleasure.
"Call in our labor maintenance team. Check all the batteries," he ordered to his nearest flunky. "Make sure they're all fully charged from now on."
"Yes, boss!" the man cried, immediately running off.
Maybe he'd better up his personal training schedule a bit, as well.
Momoko Sakurayama hesitated. She and Captain Kiichi Gotoh had been secretly exchanging information for months, now, and she'd seen much of what he had about what was coming. Whenever she even tried to write about it, or to comment on it during her TV gig, her superiors would nix the story, saying that there wasn't enough proof (which was bullshit, in her opinion - she and many of the other reporters had published stories on much less data than she'd had) or that 'it was a message the editors didn't want our papertelevision station to report.' Or, in other words, someone up top was being pressured to keep the story quiet. By who was a real question she wished she had an answer for, but she supposed it didn't matter anymore. Given what she'd just heard from her contacts in the military, she wouldn't be able to do anything about it before the story got too big for her editors to continue to ignore it.
Thirty military labors, destroyed in minutes. And not just the older models like the Samsons, but also a large number of Hellfires and Bakers - the backbone of the military's labor force - and the brand new Simons and Amazons as well. The Simons, the military's response to the high-speed threat posed by the Griffon, were wiped out in a matter of moments - they were no match for the vehicle they were built to counter. Nothing else was quick enough to fight it. The Griffon's appearance, itself, was astounding - one hadn't been seen since Noa Izumi's encounter in October of 1999. It was last seen self-destructing after a rather remarkable battle... which no-one had on tape, but that was probably for the best. Gotoh had explained his reasoning to her, and while she felt a LITTLE used, he had given her a good story as compensation.
That was the channel through which they'd continued discussions. Ever since she was 'discovered' and 'thrown off the base,' though, updates were harder and harder to get to each other. Gotoh had given her one new tool to use in gathering information, however - the signal of an old wiretap a certain Yakuza from the Daina group had used on the SV2 which had never been removed. With it, she could hear any phone conversation going to and from the headquarters, and thanks to that she had learned of his suspicions already. The phone call to his niece was an obvious code - he already knew things were coming to a head. He probably didn't know quite how close things were, however.
Just as she was about to call him, the crackling of a bit of static warned her that someone was calling out from the SV2. Quickly, she switched the audio of her wiretap's reciever from speaker to headphone, and decided to listen in secretly.
"Hello?" a deep male voice she'd never heard before answered, obviously on the other end.
"It's me," another voice, one she recognized as belonging to one of the new rookies, answered. Suddenly, there was something in the background from that end, and some sounds of shifting seemed to indicate the owner of the voice was turning his head. "Oh, captain," the distant voice in SV2 headquarters answered. "Yeah, I'll get right on that after this call to my grandparents. Yes, sir, I'll make it short. Thank you, sir!"
"Is he gone?" the deep male voice answered.
"Yeah, now he is. Look, I can't talk long. I've managed to do a significant amount of sabatoge, and I've placed small explosives in various locations. I even managed to find a scapegoat, although they'll discover that he's innocent soon. The only labor I haven't been able to touch is Alphonse - er, Unit two labor one. For some reason, some of Unit Two came up with the idea that the Ingram's feet would be a great place to hold some kind of nightly party. All other heavy equipment outside of that labor and my own Zero, which I'll have out of here tomorrow night, will be ruined by the explosions. You can move in on the morning of the third."
"Good. We'll have someone standing by to guard your escape."
"I've gotta go, now - the Captain's waiting for me, and I don't want to be discovered. This'll be our last communication - I'm taking the phones off-line in ten minutes."
"Good luck. We've already had one major success - the pride of the military was already taken out, and the rest is in confusion. The Kanazawa unit has already been wiped out without getting word out. The third will be the last day any of us will have to work in secret, so don't worry too hard about your cover."
Two clicks indicated the phones were hung up, but Momoko could only sit there in shock.
'Kanazawa's been taken out? The military is being stopped? Why the hell are they worried about SV2, anyway, if they can do THAT?' She paused. 'And how am I going to get word to Captain Gotoh, now?'
Author's note:
The (new) labor names for the military labors mentioned above are a bit of an in joke for me, but since they ARE an in-joke, I figure I should explain them. 'Ingram' is the name of a major wholesale book distributor (one you may not have heard of if you aren't in the industry, however). So, all the new names ("Simons" for Simon and Schuster, "Amazons" for and "Bakers" for Baker and Taylor (the British-based equivalent of Ingram, I believe)) are also major book distributors. The manufacturers all are, or have in the past, built airplanes for the JSDF according to Janes All the Worlds Aircraft 1997-98 (I have more recent copies, but this was the most convenient one to reach).
Season Finale... No New Episodes Until next 'Season.' I'm not entirely sure what I'll do to show this as a season break - I make make major revisions to older episodes (and maybe, finally, REPLACING the Lost Episode with a new Episode 07) or I may finally write up one or two of the dozen or so OAVs I've planned. Regardless, something's going to happen between now and season 2. (Sorry, ladies and gentlemen - that does mean more delays. Urgh.
Next Episode: In the Season 2 Premeire for Patlabor: Personal Files, the SV2 has to deal with the results of a traitor in their midst.