While little Shiori mixed cold porridge for her increasingly pregnant mother – whose craving for oranges had mercifully transferred to an obtainable foodstuff – Kaede sat alone in her shop, taking stock. Troubled children consoled themselves with toys and sugar; like the drunk-dry liquor store, business had been too good. No supplies due, for the foreseeable.

The brats probably wouldn't get too sick on expired candy, or even if she fed them snails…maybe for free, though? 90% off, say – kids had to learn that nothing was free. It was still the mail-orders that made enough to feed her; folks needed, or thought they needed, all kinds of junk in wartime. Though there wasn't a drop of petrol unseized by UFE, no trains, cellphones or internet, Asahigoaka had never really had cellphones or internet; by oxcart, landline and letter, the few resources left in the country were still moving about.

More than goods; Kaede knew the Koshigayas would be dropping on little Shiori and her mother that evening, with a meal, and the Miyauchis the next evening. As they'd shared meals with Kaede, as often as her food budget fell short, remembering how she'd always looked out for Renge. It was how a hamlet survived, in the middle of nowhere, though self-sufficiency had been Kaede's goal since she'd been younger than Shiori. She didn't look out for little Renge because of anything she got back.

Here she was, twintails wavering like a little bird's feathers with the motion of her head. With the redhaired Inokuma twins; Mitsuki clinging to her brother Kouta as he regaled a wide-eyed Renge with the straightest of faces;

"…the truth is, since London was flooded in Heaven's Fall, everyone lives on boats. Miss Alice lives on a boat, and Karen-nee has a castle towering out of the water…"

"…and if you keep telling lies, King Emna will pull out your tongue." Kaede interrupted. Alice had already told the twins all about Matilda who told Dreadful Lies and was Burned to Death, though it had only amused them.

"Uwah! That was a lie?" Renge turned on Kouta, visibly appalled, "Lies start wars, you know!"

"Sorry…you're just too funny. I'll pay for your sweets." Kouta raised both hands with precocious nine-year old suavity. Kaede raised both eyebrows at his twin sister's flash of rage.

"…I have my own money."

"I insist. You could save your allowance for a present, for Shiori-chan's little sister or brother. Please?"

"Mm, okay. Thank you very much, Kouta-kun. Eh, Mitsuki-chan, are you okay?"

"Quite fine, thank you very much." The little lady actually tossed her head, still clinging to her brother.

"Huh. City folks are funny."

It was entirely the innocent observation of an innocent girl. Whose eyes, little ears and open mouth still drunk down a whole bright, strange world, every minute she remained a child. Kaede smiled, then scowled to see Kouta smiling too; Mitsuki never stopped scowling.

The kids chose their sweets and bought them. Thanked the sweet shop lady and left. They would leave without returning, one day, when children grew up. Little Renge might leave little Asahigaoka one day – Kaede had never imagined it, though her own mother had left the village and never returned.

For forty years, Granny Kagayama had been the sweet shop lady of Asahigaoka. Young Kaede had helped her with high shelves, sat in this shop with her through silent afternoons, and watched her die. Nothing else to do in a tiny village, nothing she'd rather have done. No words the two of them needed as Kaede played on her Gameboy, while Granny thought of her bones, her back and the rain.

What if Kaede Kagayama would never be an office lady, frustrated and aimless, alone in a teeming city? Never a lonely housewife, abandoned mother, or the worse ends of a country girl in the city, even before the heavens fell. No strong desire or purpose had ever touched her heart's softness, except for her grandmother's. To run a little shop where kids could be kids, and happy.

Kaede looked around the emptying shelves of her wooden shop, very cold in the winter. Solitary on the edge of town as a witch's gingerbread cottage. The counter under her cheek felt cold as a headstone – a strange hill to die on, aged twenty, but it was hers. Renge and the other squirts would be back, and she'd be there for them. Kids would be kids, whatever the fucking Martians did.

Renge and the Inokuma twins walked home down the road, as sunset dyed the empty fields red. Kouta and even Mitsuki tried a few more stories on Renge, but she seemed lost in thought.

-0-

Some old-fashioned Japanese schools, including Asahigaoka Branch, still called on their students to look after a few farmyard animals. It was supposed to teach care, responsibility, and the final necessity of slaughtering animals to feed human life. War made necessity bitter; hunters were scouring the woods, and the children had been warned not to look like rabbits or baby deer.

Karen had only faintly complained about the last time she'd had a burger, but Suguru and Kazuho had already set about their plan of breeding the school rabbits. A couple of healthy bunnies would naturally produce a stream of food and money – the only flaw in the plan had emerged through Natsumi letting it slip to Renge.

"NO!"

"There, there." Kazuho smiled benignly at her shaking sister, "It's one of those cycles of nature. Like the tadpole shrimps, remember?" "We fed the rabbits, now they have to feed us. We can't have eight extra mouths when there's a war on."

Suguru only stepped towards the pen. Renge's eyes were huge with horror, but she didn't run. Her little arms stayed spread out before the little rabbit family. The rest of the class watched from a distance, except for Alice, stood with her fellow teacher.

"Renge-chan, you'll still have the mummy and daddy rabbit to look after! Rabbit stew is quite normal in England…" Karen could add that it was very tasty too.

"In Korea they eat dogs and cats," Natsumi's voice was low and apparently light, "This is Japan, though."

"We might have to eat Hotaru-neesan's dog," Little Kouta piped up, "When things get bad."

Poor Hotaru shrieked and hugged an invisible corgi to her heart.

"Things aren't that bad!" Komari assured her, "So, so, we can decide which animals it's alright to eat–?"

"NO! NOT ALRIGHT! IT'S NOT RIGHT FOR ANYONE TO BE KILLED! Even if there's a war, even when it ends Hika-nee will always be gone!"

Kazuho dropped to her knees and folded Renge in her arms. She was weeping with her little sister, when she raised her head, as Suguru bowed his. Immutably reliable, he silently accepted the communal decision. The rabbits snuffled peacefully, unconscious of hovering doom as Tokyo had been.

Karen took Renge's little hand, with Kazuho, as they went away. Sanguine, she whistled the song about the farmer who got by, without his rabbit pie. As she would get by without her friend Honoka, or anything that might ever fill her place, when the last mourning tears had been shed.

Every day after school, as if unsure of her sister's promises, Renge scurried off to check on the rabbits. The rabbit hutch and chicken pens stood quite far off from the school, down a woodland path. Renge and Natsumi would never have got schoolwork done - not that Natsumi did - if the animals had been within sight of the classroom.

It was several days later that Kazuho assumed Renge had gone to the Koshigayas or the Inokumas after checking on the rabbits. In a house of empty rooms, she downed cups of a pungent homebrew Kaede had helped the liquor store concoct. It got her through as many evenings as she had to spend awake, alone in the house Renge left for her friends and their parents left to smother grief with work. Even before Hikage had left forever, there'd been nothing else to do of an evening, except reading old books whose endings she already knew.

Finally, Kazuho called the Koshigayas, then the Inokumas. Then the sweetshop, then the police box, and then she broke her leg when she fell, rushing from the yard into the twilight.

Long before the searchers found Renge, scratched and shivering in a ditch below a thicket, drowning in her tears, they found the pen. A square of wire had been cut from the back; all the school chickens and rabbits had been taken.

"Idiot." Kaede whispered, picking her way through the black forest with Renge in her arms, the rifle slung. "Picked the worst time to run away. if anything had happened to you…Think how Kazuho-sempai would feel!"

"Nee-nee is a liar," Renge whispered, "She said she wouldn't, now Liquorice and Fruit Drops and Patchy are gone! Gone like Hika-nee! Nee-nee couldn't…she couldn't…!"

Kaede dropped to her knees among thorns and mud. Gripped Renge fiercely tight against the wind that would tear her away. There was no end to tears. Kaede pressed her forehead against Renge's little head, ground her teeth, and bit back a wolf-howl of death to every Martian on Earth.

"Your sister loves you, Renge. Nobody in the village would make you cry. Someone else did this, some enemy…I'm so sorry. We couldn't do anything…we can't do anything over this war, but we will protect you - !"

"Liar."

Tokyo was a blasted prison camp; Kaede knew the squirt was right. That those wide eyes were looking on what no childhood could look upon and live; an adult helpless. Yet the soft sound, 'liar' had sounded something like love, and a stubby hand twisted harder in her shirt. Renge still clung to the woman who loved her and carried her home.

-0-

More livestock than chickens and rabbits had vanished; within days, Asahigaoka was no longer a village of unlocked doors with an honesty stand. Local Defence Force patrols were ramped up and a coldness inexorably settled itself on Kujo Karen.

It couldn't be anyone from the village; everyone agreed that wasn't to be thought on. The theory of Martian medical experiments only found credence among the children. The twins were little scamps, but much too small. Alice had wanted to kill the rabbits, but she was a good, hardworking girl. The other foreign girl definitely wasn't a hard worker, or used to going without what she wanted; she was charming enough and not exactly bad…but not what you'd call respectable.

As the village toiled on to clear and plant the fields, the older men and women spoke to Karen no more than was needful. Looked at her not at all, except when she looked away. The girls all followed Karen about like bodyguards, talking with her conspicuously as possible, but there was nothing cheerful about it – Karen bore up better than any of her friends, but she was wobbling. Suguru only followed her in silence, everywhere, as Alice had instructed him – there was nowhere Karen could run to except the military.

Renge was shown the hole in the wire, that she'd missed in the dark the night she ran away, and accepted that Kazuho hadn't dispatched the rabbits in secret. It almost made the thing worse to her; she would have eventually accepted anything the sister who loved her had done. Hikari had loved her, when she'd been home; her parents loved her when they were home. Candystore loved her with quiet, sweet safety, through everything new that came before them; Renge poured back her love and all the help she could give. It had been a circle as natural and perfect as the rain and sun from the sky, the mist from each paddy field. The air in little Renge's tiny, heaving lungs.

She stood and stared a long time at the empty hutch; the place where the circle had been broken. Where the world within Asahgaoka had become a place not safe for a child.

She spent more time alone in her room, or wandering the forests, in spite of everyone's concerns. Kazuho had been laid up to recover her broken leg, by the local vet (every doctor for miles had been conscripted). Kaede was round often, but as often assigned to patrols. Shiori, busy with her mother, had been round once; Renge had received her idea of solving the disappearing bunnies case without enthusiasm. The older girls were always rushing round to help Kazuho about the place. Renge would've been happier only tending to her sister, without so many breaks, but she supposed the other girls needed work that kept them from worry.

There had been joyful work in her childhood's Eden; knowledge and understanding of every little insect and fish. There had been no death and no madness, that not even grown-ups could control.

She knew there was nothing in the old, familiar forests to be feared; what she didn't know was what she was afraid of. She still spent evening after evening in the forest, where Inokuma Kouta sat with her.

She didn't know why, but Kouta had a steady, serious presence, like Candystore, that always calmed her heart. She loved the eternal smiles of Honoka and Karen, but they never seemed to stay. They both sat on the log wider than their bodies, in a tiny grove pressed in by young trees. Like rabbits, their faces were as still and clear of human expression as bright with unbearable feeling.

"Kouta-kun? What was Tokyo like?"

"We visited on a school trip, once. There were millions of shops, billions of people, palaces and towers as tall as mountains. The air smells much nicer here, though."

"Mm. What was it like when…?"

"…there was a huge bang." Kouta solemnly understood that it was no time for stories, "All our windows broke, and something punched me in the head. I think Mitsuki-nee went into shock. I had to drag her through everything, to the evacuation point, and Yoko-nee ended up carrying us both. She was strong…our sister."

"Like Nattsun?"

"A little bit. She was the best sister. She's probably punching out Kataphakts, just like Greatman."

"Mm! Like Greatman. Is she going to come back?"

"Yes." The face of the redhaired boy was grave as need, "She promised. Mitsuki always cries because she isn't there…she's got to come back. Your sister could come back too - !"

"It's okay. I know Hika-nee isn't coming back." Renge's eyes stood wise and tearless as the moon, close to his. "It must feel worse, not knowing."

"Sorry. It's worse for you and Kazuho-sensei."

For a while, the little boy and girl shared more than they could speak. The evening was cold, but Kouta's stomach felt very strange. Renge had always been funny, smart and restful among madness, but her hair had never been so pretty, or her ankles so smooth. Her knees shifted together as he looked; his face burnt.

"Kouta-kun, why doesn't your sister like me?"

"Um…she just misses Yoko-nee, and Mum, and our old home from before. I try to make it better for her. Whenever she got upset before, I could help, but now she's always sad, and I can't…"

"What do you do for Mitsuki-chan when she's sad?" Gingerly, Kouta reached out and stroked Renge's hair. He felt her move, towards him, "What else do you do, to show you love her?"

Kouta threw his arms about Renge, so urgently they tumbled off the log and onto the grass. He tried but couldn't part from her tiny, burning body, as she clung to him with sorrow's strength. Then he was doing what he would never do with his sister, what had never existed in his world outside manga and movies. It felt wet and strange and warm; it emptied his little being as he hung onto her.

It was Yoko-nee should've done with Aya-nee, but she'd been too dense. What Karen-nee should've done with Honoka-san, but she'd been too late. What kids couldn't do, but both of them were doing it, again. Childhood's end wasn't in helpless terror and loss; it was doing all you could do, whether or not it was allowed.

From glimpses of rabbits every March, Renge had a very vague idea what came next – but she felt that kissing would be quite enough to deal with for at least ten years. She pushed Kouta's bewildered hands away and sat up.

"You've got to marry me now, city boy."

"…okay." Stretched out like an arrow-struck baby deer, Kouta struggled to get his cool back, "I don't want your dad to come after me with his shotgun."

"No! You mustn't go away! You must've ever go away from me. That was my first kiss, and my second, third, fourth - !"

"Colour me surprised."

Kouta rose to one knee, took the fingers Renge was counting on, and gallantly kissed them. She clung to his hand all the way back – he even smiled through the furious tongue-lashing that Kaede gave him for staying out late.

A short way across the village, at the Koshigaya residence, Karen had found Suguru's electric guitars. He'd been agreeably teaching her to shred like Brian May all afternoon, in his room, and Karen couldn't think when her heart had felt so free. The lesson got quieter as it got later, though Karen's soft giggle only grew more constant, and Suguru was quiet as always. Mrs Koshigaya had left for her patrol shift; Natsumi and Komari were already asleep

Finally, he touched Karen's hand in a way that made her dart off the bed. He didn't move; nor did she.

"I'm sorry! I don't, I don't know…everything's so strange, and wrong, and, and you can't just kiss a girl without saying anything! That only works in the movies, matey!"

Suguru got off the bed, sat down on his knees, and spoke. His speech opened with 'sorry', ended with 'love you', and passed poetically over everything in eight months that Kujo Karen had been to him. Most girls wouldn't have sat still to hear it all, quite reasonably, but Karen had a sentimental heart that loved the strange, new and lovely. She'd loved Honoka, too late – but the war that took life couldn't take love, and the words of this boy were filling her up unbearably.

"Okay then, mister rock star!" With a huge smile, she shed her Union jacket and pulled her top over her head, "Don't stop until I say stop."

They were barely sixteen and didn't have any condoms, so they didn't end up going so far. Karen still felt with every touch that she was definitely a long way from Tipperary, with a long, long way still to go…

-0-

Without Renge's demeanour changing a bit, the class at Asahigaoka Branch couldn't fail to see what was up – it was as if she'd earnestly swallowed the book on being a Yamato Nadeshiko. She walked respectfully behind Kouta and Mitsuki all the way to school. Sat down next to her squirming fiancé so she could pass him any ruler or rubber he needed, and turn the pages of his textbook. Kouta hustled her away at recess for an urgent talk that included a few more kisses. Renge settled down a bit, but still offered her betrothed a chocolate bar in place of a boxed lunch; Kouta couldn't keep a grin off his face.

Alice-sensei was too charmed to even confiscate the chocolate. Komari lolled over her desk, wondering when she would find love, while Hotaru made puppy-eyes at the hair flowing over her face.

Natsumi was trying to look anywhere but at Mitsuki, who had very visibly reached the end of her rope. While, thousands of miles away in space, Slaine Troyard wept burning tears for his lost princess and Kaizuka Inaho fixed his machine-eye upon her pendant, Mitsuki leant over her desk.

"Is it true then?" It wasn't a quiet whisper, "That country girls all have boyfriends before they're ten?"

"Nu-uh," Renge shook her head, "Nattsun and Koma-chan don't have boyfriends. I don't think Hotarun wants a boyfriend…"

"Ah, Renge-chan - !"

" - that's enough talking in class - !"

" – Mitsuki-chan!"

"Mitsuki-nee!"

"YOU DIRTY RABBIT GIRL!" Mitsuki's chair flew back, knocking Komari silly, "I'LL NEVER FORGIVE WHAT YOU'VE DONE! I HATE, HATE, HATE YOU!"

"Hmm, but we both really love Kouta-kun…?"

"N0! You seduced him with dirty, horrible country girl stuff! I bet you let those rabbits out yourself so Kouta-nii would feel sorry for you! The war took Yoko-nee away, but I'm not letting you take my brother, you cat burglar!"

Then Mitsuki snatched the heaviest textbook she could reach and swung with murderous aim at Renge's eye. It might have gone badly for the twintailed moppet if her fiancé hadn't interposed himself and been hit smack in the face.

"SOUSUNSER!"

With a wildcat shriek, Renge's rage flew out in a storm of blurring jabs. It would have gone very badly indeed for the redheaded enfant terrible if her stunned twin brother hadn't received most of the jabs on his own body. Blinded by jealous fury, Mitsuki continued aiming at Renge and bashing her brother until Natsumi managed at last to grab her arms.

The screaming wasn't over for some time – no little from Hotaru over the stricken Komari – before the rivals noticed the luckless Kouta, practically beaten to pulp. Dragged off to the first aid station by Natsumi, he was helpless to escape a long and inappropriate lecture on the wickedness of two-timing. With as many grins from Natsumi as hearty, painful shoves – facing the prospect of being tarred with the epithet 'cheater!', until he was twenty, growing up had never looked harder.

Renge and Mitsuki, knelt on the wormwood floor, received a longer lecture from Alice. With many threatening swishes of her bamboo sword, Alice explained to them how wars began, and so many beloved things destroyed by the same lovers that fought for them. Her speech might have ended the war before it had begun, if only two or three particular people had listened.

"- and yet, we have reason! We have the true courage of peace, and we have hope! If we understand each other's feelings, set aside hate and mistrust, remember that war offers nothing but blood and tears! No love, joy or hope except with peace! The world will have peace again, in the broad sunlit uplands where Terrans and Martians, townies and country folk, little blonde girls and perfect Japanese girls…will walk hand in hand! Can't we make our own little peace, here and now?"

She spoke to all the girls; they remembered her words, a long way into the future that was then so murky and trackless. After Hotaru had taken Komari home, while Alice watered another letter to Shino with her tears, Renge and Mitsuki sat at Kouta's bedside with Natsumi. There was a long silence, but nowhere to go on to except forgiveness.

-0-

The wider village was distracted even from the schoolhouse scandal by the vanishing of several more cows from a farm. Larger villages were losing far-flung fields of valuable crops; it hadn't been unknown before the war, but little Asahigaoka had been too isolated and quiet for thieves to ever target. With towns starving and cities beginning to riot across Japan, food was only more precious and theft more unforgivable. The farmers had nothing but the produce that bound their village, their place and their lives in an ancient and precious ring. The patrols went about more grimly, with drawn weapons; old firearms or bamboo spears. The children had further, sterner warnings.

Karen spent most of her time prudently hidden in Suguru's room, for further guitar lessons. Hotaru and Alice had been together with Komari a lot since her accident, doing all the cooking and caring that Komari's mum didn't have enough hours for. Natsumi was doing her best to be there for the twins, though both his sister and fiancé were giving poor Kouta the cold shoulder at present.

The peace Renge had shared with Kouta was broken in her – she returned to little Shiori with her unchanged child's grin. Walking through the rice paddies to the sweetshop, one afternoon – with water as still and the sky as clear as if no war existed in the universe – Shiori insisted again that Renge tell her about the fight.

Renge solemnly related, again, how she'd sought to protect the village's peace, but realised too late that war only brought loss. She'd taken Alice's speech very much to heart. Renge digressed quite a bit into the story of her doomed romance – Shiori wasn't so interested in that, but she drank up everything her big sister related.

"Don't trust boys." Was Kaede's offering, when the girls reached her shop. "Don't bother with those stupid goons, Renge."

"Don't you like Kouta-kun, Candystore?"

Kaede hmphed. She didn't like having her Renge stolen – but the girl wasn't her daughter, and she was always going to grow up. She'd marry some idiot, have a few cute kids. Maybe go out to work, maybe just to all the housework and farmwork that men asked of her. What was childhood freedom worth, if that, in the end, was all she could do with it? Yet, what was her own lone-wolf's freedom worth, except that she could do much with it, as Renge did so much?

As Shiori giggled and Renge 'mm!-ed' in their own corner, the surly shopkeeper gave her non-existent love life some little thought.

With the girls' chattering and her thinking, it was later than they'd thought. Kaede insisted on walking Renge and Shiori home, the way she'd often gone with Renge before the war. It was her night off from patrolling, but there was nothing else worth doing at home; the girl's ooh-ed as she slung the hunting rifle on her back. Almost a year at war without a shot in anger; Chekhov would've been unimpressed.

Emerging from the shade of standing trees that hid the road, into the dark blue night, the girls trotted down. No spoken word broke the silence layered with the ages over inky fields – until a light flashed, at the moment Shiori's wandering eyes turned off the path.

"It could be Martians!" She informed Renge, in a delighted whisper, "Let's go tell them not to make any more war!"

Little Shiori rushed away, between two fields, beyond Renge's snatching hand. She would've run after her, but Kaede pulled her back. They saw Shiori look back as she ran, waving and calling out, then there was a bang no louder in their ears than the fall of Tokyo. Shiori tumbled down the bank into the rice paddy's black water.

Like a wildcat from a trap, Renge screamed out. As she struggled to run to Shiori, Kaede could only throw them both down into the field, below the level of the road. She pinned and covered Renge's little form with her own body, up to waist and knees in mud. Clamped a hand over the girl's mouth and stared into her eyes.

"Renge!" She whispered, "Do exactly what I tell you. Stay right here, close to the ground, put your hands over your ears. However wet and cold it gets, whatever you hear, do not make a sound and do not move. I'm going to save Shiori. I'm going to protect you. Thanks for…everything."

Renge's eye shone through the dark; Kaede took one more look at their brightness. Then she unshipped her rifle and held it above the water, as she started to crawl.

The rice shoots in her path were ruined – worth more than her ruined jeans to the village – worth more than her, unless she looked out for the kids. She understood that the world had gone irreparably insane, that nothing which was happening in it should ever have been, but it seemed there was a reason she was alive, and it was still this.

Shiori had only tripped at the noise of the shot. Too scared to move or speak, she was only marked by a few scrapes and soaking underwear.

With her cellphone useless, Kaede needed a way to signal the nearest patrol and remain hidden – single shots into the bushes at rabbits or imaginary spies were commonplace. Raising her eyes and rifle barrel over the bank, she saw a light - felt another shot go past before the crack.

"CANDYSTORE! SHIORI-CHAN!" Renge's cry rose up at her back like a trumpet, "FIGHT THOSE MARTIANS! PAY THEM BACK FOR HIKARI-NEE! DO YOUR BEST, DO YOUR BEST, DO YOUR BEST!"

As she cried out, Kaede rifle kicked at her shoulder and leapt from its rest on the road. Her fingers shook like Renge's first bicycle lesson on the bolt. She sent out four more little life-stealing pieces of lead; each seemed to kick harder than the last. She didn't hear another return shot because she was deaf. Cordite smothered the deep mud smell of her home village; she could have been lost in any wasteland of war-ravaged Earth.

Finally, a hideous moan came from the darkness and never stopped. Then shouts of familiar voices, more shots – Kaede threw up at the side of the field, then rolled over, filthy and alive.

-0-

The morning found four rustlers, one shot through the leg more by luck than skill, apprehended without further casualties. Shiori cheerfully saluted the townsfolk with the heroes of the hour, until her mother pushed through the crowd, despite her burden, and took her daughter away to change her clothes. Renge was just as muddy, but her hand that wasn't saluting wasn't letting go of Kaede's.

The constable from the nearest town was summoned, while most of the village surrounded the criminals in a wall of immutable revulsion. The same contempt for unnatural monsters that took from the Earth without sharing its goodness was hard in each eye. Glad as she was that everything was nicely sorted out, Karen was rather alarmed to see Suguru with a spear. Until her boyfriend sent one glance from which only she could've read the love and comfort.

"Why did you take Liquorice, and Fruit Drops, and Patchy and all their babies, and the chickens?" Renge demanded, "Don't you know killing is wrong!"

All but one of the rustlers were about seventeen; all of them had deserted from the UFE forces but kept their weapons and training. They would've shot Kaede to pieces and escaped, except they'd heard Renge call out and were not prepared to risk hitting a child. Their panicked gunshot that scared Shiori had been fired in the air. Their humanity had been swiftly repaid; it was clear that only the children on the scene had kept the farmers from punishing treason with their spears.

The constable mentioned to Kaede, on his arrival, that deserters were generally scooped up and put to work by Yakuza. They'd be gutted in prison if they named names, but in future, the gangs probably wouldn't risk stealing from Asahigaoka village. He expected Ex-PFC Itami, with Ex-Privates Suoh, Mochizuchi and Bartfort, would all get several decades in prison rather than a firing squad. Thousands of refuseniks and runaways had been shot by the UFE worldwide, in the war's opening months, but the situation had improved –

"You dumb hicks." Itami, the leading deserter, red-eyed from his wound, "Less of us are dying because the brass finally realised we've lost the war! No Landing Castle has fallen since Novosibirisk, they can wipe out any city they want, and attacking the Versians is certain death! Everybody gets that except the Chinks! I'm a soldier, I'm a complete human being! Not the dumb, brainwashed cannon fodder they send to the continent, that never comes back-!"

Then Mitsuki Inokuma burst from the crowd. Stamped her little foot down on a leg with a hunting rifle's soft-nose in it. Itami's screams made her go pale, but her rage was even stronger.

"MY SISTER IS A BRAVE SOLDIER! YOKO-NEE WILL COME BACK! SO THERE!"

Kaede hid Renge's eyes; she clung to her protector, until both she and Mitsuki were dragged off. Kaede knew Renge would have to grow up, into a fearful world, but not today. She knew, even if madness and death had never come, their bond of experience and care would never have loosed.

After the chaos had subsided, the constable got round to telling Kaede he didn't need to see her gun license –

"…not under the circumstances. Trouble is, if I ask you out for a drink now, it'd sound like an abuse of position."

"True. I could ask you out for a drink?"

Officer Shuu Matsutani wasn't quite old enough to be her father; he was a tough, honest guy who probably got lonely in the next village's police box as Kaede in her sweetshop – castaways on separate islands, who might never have met. She wasn't spoilt for choice, but he was really rather hot – she was even more aware she wasn't dead, and very ready to find out some more about adulthood. If he cheated on her, well, she had a gun and knowledge of the local country.

-0-

At a hidden camp in the highlands of north China, the progress of the war was such that fraternization regs had been abandoned months ago. Half-out of their pilot coveralls and black underwear, Sergeant Yoko Inokuma and First Lieutenant Rize Tedeza lay together in the darkness of their tent.

Yoko blew some more cigarette smoke up to join the cloud above them. She rubbed Rize's silky pigtail between her fingers.

"I hope Aya found somebody. I should've done this with her…"

"You can call me Aya-chan. If you don't mind getting your throat cut."

Yoko was surprised she could laugh, after the sights she'd seen. Dead kids – Honoka had only been the first. Dead families, dead cities, plains of wreckage that had been Areion Kataphrakts and her comrades. Her lover was one of a dozen-odd soldiers in the world who'd sniped a Martian Argyre, that had wiped out two armies. For once, the Martians hadn't flattened a city with meteors in response; Count Keteratesse of the Beijing Land Castle favoured enslavement

Yoko hadn't done much more than survive – the first time an energy beam had bisected the Kataphrakt at her side, she'd realised she had somebody to get home for.

It was nearly Christmas. Time for love…but they should have been so much more.

"Maybe she's straight," Rize groused on, "I'm certain she never took out an Argyre."

"She's not straight, she's…special. I was such a dumbass not to see…she's the girl I need to protect."

"Ugh. Can't compete with that. Is she more feminine than me?"

"Never. I know what a girly-girl Lieutenant Tedeza really is."

Yoko felt Rize's tremulous little heartbeat through her breast, and stroked down her slim, battle-scarred side. Their cigarettes kissed in the darkness.

"When this stupid, stupid war is done, I'm going to wear nothing but dresses…if it's ever done."

"It will be. You've got your Sharo-chan to get home to."

"Yeah. I don't know if she liked me that way, but I've got to ask. Chino too, and her friends…we've got to end this war before they hit sixteen, whatever it takes."

Novosibirisk, the fall of Castle Saazbaum, had halted the annihilating wave of Versian Earthfall. Castles in Tokyo, Arkhangelsk and Stockholm had gone down before the invaders closed ranks. For ten months, every attack on a Landing Castle had yielded nothing but massive losses. UFE commanders spoke of maintaining pressure on the invaders. The thousand-to-one shots that might take out enough irreplaceable war machines to bring them to the table…numbers and courage, after all, were the only weapons Terran humanity had left.

UFE China, its strongest branch, pre-war, was not prepared to acknowledge that the Russians and Japanese had done more for humanity's survival than they. Orders were heading out already to all camps and bases, to assemble another ground-airborne attack on Castle Keteratesse.