Still Waters Another Turn, Chapter 11
123456
Out From The New Day's Mist I Run
123456
----
----
----
'You know what to do.'
"What do you mean?" the girl asked. She felt sort of vague, as though she were made of marshmallow and was floating in a meringue. It could be worse, she supposed. She could be something like a cracker instead, all crusty and hard. She had a feeling that having those sorts of thoughts and using those sorts of descriptions was something she would normally never do.
'You are neither a marshmallow nor a cracker,' the voice replied with perfect poise. It had a nice accent, sort of a muted British accent, she supposed. Or maybe that was Australian? She had never been able to tell the difference.
'Clear your mind of this artificial fugue, and step back into your power.'
"My power?"
'Your power,' the voice confirmed. 'When you awaken, you will find yourself being transported via van. Wait for an opening, and then seize the opportunity; you will not get a second chance.'
"Seize my chance?"
'Wake up.'
----
Chisame was startled back to wakefulness by the sound of squealing tires, and only had time to realize she was in the back of a van with her hands tied in front of her before something struck a tremendous blow to the side of the van, collapsing the right side inward in front of her and sending the van into a barrel roll down a woody embankment until it came to rest in a shallow stream, where water began coming in through the windows and pooling in what had been the left side of the van. Kugimiya was there beside her as well, looking rather bruised and dazed, but awake; Chisame had the feeling that she looked much the same. A quick look showed that one of their captors was obviously dead with his neck at an impossible angle, but the driver was starting to move around. And...there. She picked up the bag containing the mini laptop.
'I guess this is my chance,' she thought, wondering why that idea seemed familiar as she struggled to her feet and watched Kugimiya do the same. Without another word, the two teens squeezed through the space formerly occupied by the back door of the van and ran off into the nearby woods.
----
She wasn't sure when it had happened, but after a moment Konoka was aware of being awake. She forced her eyes wider open but quickly shut them again against the glare. She brought a hand up to wipe her eyes, and was confused that it moved so slowly. She sat up and looked around through slitted eyes at her surroundings, wondering what had happened. She was in a sterile white room, sparsely furnished with a bed, table, one chair, and a toilet, all of which were solidly bolted to the floor. She stood up and her head swam so severely that she would have fallen had she not slumped against the wall.
Almost at once a crackly speaker roared to life. "Don't try to move, the tranquilizers haven't worn off yet," a man's distorted voice stated so loudly that it set her ears ringing.
"Where is Secchan?"
The voice didn't respond.
She climbed back up on her bed and wrapped her arms around her legs, pulling her knees up to her chin, realizing for the first time that she was wearing a white hospital gown. Growing more worried by the second, she inspected the small room more closely, and spotted a security camera in one corner as well as a box that looked like part of an ancient speaker system poking out of the ceiling. The door seemed heavy and had no handle on the inside, and a small six inch, wire-reinforced window set fairly high up in it. There was a narrow strip at the bottom that seemed to be hinged and reminded her far too much of those American movies where a plate of terrible looking food is pushed through to the prisoner.
She could handle all of this however; what she was worried about was Secchan. The other girl had been badly hurt when Konoka saw her last, burned by hot oil and fire from an exploding robot…Konoka had screamed when she saw that, and had run straight out into the battlefield for her Secchan, healing her as best she could before the two of them had been snatched up by robots and brought down into the sewers, where some people had injected her with something that made her fall asleep. How long ago had that been? She jerked as her mind cleared more and she realized her belongings were missing.
"Where's my pactio card?! Where is it?" she demanded. "And where is Secchan? Is she ok?"
No one answered.
----
"They slipped up," Hakase said, her best 'mad scientist' grin coming out as Chachamaru entered the room. "Huhuhu," she laughed forebodingly.
"What did you find, Hakase?" the robot girl asked.
Hakase turned the monitor around to show the gynoid what she meant. "See, they forgot to remove the identifying tags from this program!" In Hakase's opinion, the basic AI program, while rather clunky, was quite good considering that the writer hadn't had Chao's information to work with. Not anything like the work of art that formed the core of Chachamaru's system, however. Still, not bad. "Hmph. Amateurs."
The program the girl was deconstructing had come from one of the more advanced robots. There had been several types involved in the attack, model numbers printed discreetly in roman numerals here and there. On a hunch, she had set her team scanning through the programming for identifying tags; most of the robots were clean, but one short production run used an older version of the program that hadn't been cleaned…someone had probably gotten drunk the night before and missed the problem. Once she had figured out what to look for, the rest was easy.
"See, right here." She pointed to a line of documentation near the top of the editor. "Kurogane Electronics. I just looked it up, and it's a child company of another child company of the Yukihiro Group...they build computers and do a lot of engineering. I don't know why they would attack the school or kidnap students, but at least now we know where to start."
Chachamaru nodded and accessed her records for information on the group. "They expanded roughly six months ago, turning a previously unused warehouse into a factory that went into use three months ago next Tuesday. Purpose of factory: unknown. Materials gathered for production: two thousand—"
"That's enough, Chachamaru. Can you give me a printout?"
"Yes, Hakase."
----
The ceiling was the off-white, almost beige color of aging linen, covered in small bumps of plaster or something similar. Her gaze slowly shifted to the ancient cobwebs that had gathered in the corners, and then the streamers of dust that hung from them. She just looked blankly at it all until suddenly realizing she was awake.
Kazumi found herself in a hotel room that made an attempt to be 'charming', but came across as 'cheap'. She tried to recall how she had gotten here, but all she could remember was stepping out into the hallway in the dorm and hitting the floor. She didn't even know why she had fallen.
She sat up and put a hand to her head as it swam, squeezing her eyes shut until the dizziness passed. Using the bed post, she pulled herself to her feet and crossed the small room to look out through the barred window. It looked like a very run down section of some big industrial town, but she couldn't tell any more than that.
Suddenly apprehensive, she crossed to the door and tried the handle. It was locked from the outside. She stepped back warily and looked around again, more carefully this time. "Security cameras?" she asked herself aloud as she spotted the one in the corner of the ceiling. A quick search resulted in three more tiny cameras cleverly placed here and there. So cleverly placed in fact, that most people other than Kazumi would be completely unaware of them.
Other than the locked door, there were two doors in another wall. Trying them, she found that one opened on a small bathroom with a shower and the other opened on an empty closet. Checking carefully over the room again, she found that anything that might be of use had either been removed, or had never been there in the first place. There weren't even any curtains on the window or any hangers in the closet. No shower curtain or rod either. She frowned at that as she noticed another camera hidden above the mirror in the bathroom.
What was this place, some kind of hidden Yakuza prison? She backed up to the wall warily as she recalled the recurring dream she had been having lately; in her dreams, she had been captured and tortured by the Yakuza for taking pictures of something or other...it was different every time. And then, for the first time, she realized her bag and camera were gone. She stalked to the center of the room and looked up at the big security camera in the corner.
"Where is my stuff?" No answer. "Come on, I don't have all day!" she yelled as she tried to check her watch, only to find that it was gone as well. "So you stole my watch too?"
The door behind her opened and she got ready to run.
"Don't try it," a startlingly deep voice said. She looked up at the speaker. And up, and up, and up. The man was massive, seven feet tall at least, maybe more, and built like an olympic weightlifter. He looked at her threateningly, and she unwillingly took a few steps back, then, once started, continued all the way back to the far wall next to the window as two more men entered. One of them looked like a fairly normal person next to the giant, but the other…she could tell he was vile even at a glance. She almost cringed as his eyes roamed over her, but forced herself to glare back. It came across as a wavery, eye-watery stare that brought an amused smirk from the man, and she hated herself for it.
"W-what's going on here?" she asked, hating herself even more for stuttering and the weakness she had already shown in front of these men.
"Well, you've been kidnapped obviously," the normal looking man said.
"What are you going to do to me?" Kazumi asked, realizing that that was a question she should not have asked in front of the vile man even as she spoke.
The vile man grinned. "Whatever we want," he said, looking her over again and pausing on her chest. She put her arms in front of herself defensively and averted her gaze as the man laughed. He truly was vile, from his greasy hair to his dirty hands and cheap clothing, every inch a monster.
"Here are the rules," the normal man began. "First, stay quiet, don't try to call out to any of those passing by below or anyone you hear in the hallway. For every person you attempt to speak with, we will break a finger." He said the words in the same bored tone as a student reading aloud in class. "Second, don't try to escape. If you do, we will break one of your legs." The vile man was looking at her legs now, and she wished that she had put on a pair of pants instead of a skirt. "Third, do what we ask. If you refuse to answer questions, be prepared for repercussions. If you disobey our commands, be prepared for repercussions. If you cause too much trouble, we will kill you. You are expendable."
The normal-looking man's speech sent her mind reeling, and somehow she was more afraid of him than the other two. To say things like that without any change of expression from the bored look he had worn since he entered…she shivered and the vile man grinned again. The big man remained silent and impassive as he had since he entered the room. She looked from one to the next, and for the first time felt true despair growing in her heart.
----
Mahora Headmaster Konoe Konoemon swept his gaze over the teachers arrayed before him, piercing each one with his gaze, one by one, while they squirmed.
"Headmaster—"
"Silence." Konoe didn't even have to raise his voice. "You were all hired here on the condition that you help protect the students and civilians living and working in this town," he began.
"We tried—"
"Silence!" Konoe said, smacking a fist on his desk. "You seem to have forgotten that we must act as defenders for those who cannot defend themselves! Because of your incompetence, four people have died, and many more are missing, possibly kidnapped! Who was in charge of watching the East Entrance?"
One of the teachers reluctantly raised a hand.
"I see you are in particularly good condition, considering what you must have been through yesterday," Konoe said, his voice deadly calm.
"Headmaster—"
"You are now demoted to apprentice. Turn in your staff. You will begin retraining in the academy in France immediately. Well? What are you waiting for?"
The stunned teacher left the room, and Konoe turned his attention back to the others.
"Tell me, Takamichi, why do you think you failed to properly defend the school?"
Takamichi straightened, looking uncomfortable. "Headmaster, our defensive wards were successful in alerting everyone, but as a whole our reactions were wild and uncoordinated, resulting in many people being captured before most of us even arrived. We were therefore unable to use wide-scale magic for fear of killing them, and were reduced to hand to hand combat against the attackers."
"I understand you yourself didn't arrive at the site of battle for at least ten minutes once the alarms sounded," Konoe said. "You are hereby assigned to late night patrols for the next month and demoted until such time as you prove your competence. Dismissed. Touko!"
"Yes sir!"
"You did well, considering how quickly you were on the scene. However, as Head of Defense, you should have taken charge rather than wade into battle. You will review your behavior and deliver a report on the mistakes made in the defense, what could and should have been done, and how we might avoid something similar in the future. Dismissed."
Konoe waited until she had left, then turned back to the crowd of teachers and mages standing before him. "Max Linell!"
Max stepped forward.
"While I appreciate your attempts to rescue the injured or captured defenders, your power would have been of much greater use in other ways. Also, had you not taken so long to respond to the wards, it is conceivable that your power, due to its unusual nature, could have gone far in halting the invasion at the east gate. You will undergo a course on group battle and defense tactics and will accompany Takamichi on his late night patrols. Dismissed!"
He dressed the worst transgressors down one by one, liberally spreading around demotions and punishments and retraining orders, until he was left with a group of about twenty people.
"The rest of you are for the most part new here, or untrained or unused to this sort of situation. You responded quickly. Unfortunately, most of your efforts were in vain due to the lack of coordination between defenders. You will all undergo a course on group interaction during a defense situation at an undetermined point in the near future. I will alert you when it is ready. Dismissed."
When the office was finally cleared out, Konoemon let out a sigh of relief. He hated doing things like this, but it had to be done. The mage teachers had grown soft and unfocused; it was a trend he had first noticed during the incidents at the school festival months ago, and it had only been cemented during the summer and this most recent incident. He looked at the notes he had taken on who would get what punishment, and frowned. They might hate him for it, but he would mold them back into a group skilled in all sorts of situations; he couldn't afford not to.
Now that Mahora had been successfully attacked not once but twice, there was no other choice.