Chapter XI: Senshi awakening.

1740hrs, 8 July 2013, "Top Secret" Medical Facility, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan.

"Building the morale and confidence of security forces should be a primary strategic objective. Committing poorly trained and badly led forces results in high casualties and invites tactical defeats."

US Army and Marine Corps Counter-Insurgency Field Manual.

"I am Sailor Moon, the champion of justice. In the name of the moon, I will right wrong and triumph over evil... and that means you!"

Raye had finally come through, and she was doing much, much better after she had been dipped into the healing solution. The taking off of the bandages beforehand though...she set some sort of record for the most amount of F-bombs and variations thereof dropped in one hour at that facility (the now shattered record was 103 in one hour by one of the "previous" patients. Raye's count was 110.) Of course, in the recorded video of the incident, it all ended up getting bleeped out in post, for the benefit of the Joint Chiefs who would be watching later.

Everyone else was coming along nicely now too. The burns were healed, bones mended, and prosthetic limbs for Lita and Serena, with some fingers for Raye as well. They had been moved to better rooms now, with a TV and computer and everything.

The turning point had been when they called all the girls in for a special surgery session.

"Girls," Kobayashi said in the prepping room. "We have to do some routine surgery on you, just to make sure that we got everything, no swelling of the brain, nothing in there that could hurt you. This is going to be the last one, we promise."

"Whatever," was the reply. At this point, the doctors had done so much testing and surgery, they kind of didn't care. Go under for a couple of hours, get immersed in some fluid, come out good as new. An added benefit that Serena and Mina found out with much joy is that with multiple treatments of the fluid, their hair grew back to its original length in a month's time instead of maybe a year or so.

They had done some training as well, some handling of weapons ("How do I shot this?" Mina asked, looking down the barrel of a Glock 19 before the instructor quickly took it away), some geopolitical theory and study of other nations hard and soft power capabilities, some physical training although this was limited to some extent by the lack of limbs in Serena, who could barely walk again even with the prosthetics. She underwent labor intensive, painful and frustrating physical therapy just to learn how to walk again.

But that was all about to change.

The surgery went ahead as planned. Amy, like all the others, went under with some nice aesthesia.

So pleasant. I can see how people get addicted to the stuff, she thought as the mask was applied. Within thirty seconds, she was out.

"Okay, are the microchips ready?" Kobayashi asked Kawasaki. In addition to being a general practitioner, he was also a brain surgeon. No wonder the government had snapped him up to do their hush-hush work. He was just that good.

"Yes, they are ready. Do you think this will work?" Kawasaki was a little bit nervous, for the girls of course, but if they failed…well, this wasn't the thing that you considered failure for. The consequences were just too high.

"It has to work." Kobayashi said. He finished washing his hands. Both doctors were now in scrubs, ready to begin their work.

"Let's go practice medicine," Kobayashi calmly stated, snapping on those sterile gloves for surgery.

The procedure would take no longer than thirty minutes for each girl since the incisions would not be too invasive, but that was still two and a half hours. Every time that the doctors finished, they would have to go through a checklist to make sure they didn't fuck things up, change out gloves, scrubs, equipment, and everything else, just to start over again. It wasn't the longest procedure done in the world, but it would be very taxing. The several microchips would be placed in all the lobes of the brain (the frontal lobe, parietal lobe, occipital lobe, and temporal lobe), in order to increase processing power, learning rate, mobility, sensory attention, retention of memory, and a host of other things to make the perfect soldier.

One effect that was not particularly discussed was the microchips' ability to modify behavior.

Three hours later, after much work and healing solution later, the girls woke up. But something was different. They woke up on some beds in one of the recovery rooms, acutely aware of the difference.

Amy felt it. She was alive again! She could smell things that she could not have smelled before, taste the air around her, everything she touched was an explosion of sensations that she had never felt in her life. She was acutely aware of everything around her, from the other girls and their breathing patterns, her own heart rate…it was about eighty beats a minute. Wait, I just calculated my heart rate…without even checking my vitals. What did they do me?

Serena got up and walked around. In confusion, she looked down. Her prosthetic legs were still there, but she could move without pain, without the slow, limbering pace that she used to walk beforehand. She jumped up…and touched the ceiling. With her legs. She did a somersault and landed back down on the ground.

"Holy shit!" Lita exclaimed. "How did you do that?"

"I…I don't know," she replied. "I couldn't walk beforehand and now I can do all this stuff now!"

Lita looked at her replacement left arm. She then looked at the bed she had been laying on before. Grabbing it, she effortlessly lifted it above her head, then dropped it back on the ground. Four hours ago, she could have barely moved the arm. Now it was like she had been doing it for years.

"What did they do to us?" Mina said. She had looked a medical chart and completely memorized the entire thing in ten seconds. "I don't know how I'm doing this!"

"I like it," Raye said with a smile. She was balancing a chair on her prosthetic finger. They had to make this stuff out of something strong to do this, but I wouldn't have had the balance to do this even a couple of days ago…

The door to the room opened, and the girls stopped what they were doing to look (and Raye dropped the chair, much to the embarrassment of herself).

"Hello girls." It was the three "Ks." Kobayashi, normally very stern, was looking very relieved. "Glad to hear…well, see that you are all better."

"Doctor," Amy said, excited but cautiously. "I appreciate all you have done for us, but what exactly have you done to us?"

Kobayashi explained the procedure to them.

"So, we have these microchip thingys in our brains, at the moment," Raye said. "Where can I get more of them?"

"Raye," Amy hissed in disagreement. But part of her was curious…how did these things work?
"Look, this is all well and good," Serena said. "But you're not going to like, control us?"

"No, they are an independent system not connected to an external network," Kobayashi reassured them. Normally, that would have gotten blank stares from everyone except Amy. But they all nodded in understanding. Even Kobayashi was taken aback for a second, then recovered his composure. "No one is going to be able to "hack" you mind; basically, your brain is like a computer but not connected to the internet." Again, more nodding. Again, more lies.

Hope this doesn't come back to bite us in the ass, he thought to himself. Thankfully, Dr. Kawasaki interrupted him with instructions for more training with the girls.

"We're going to do some training now," Kawasaki said. "I think the firearms instructor is downstairs; he'll meet you there."

The firearms instructor was a retired JSDF Army Master Sergeant, who took this job to get a couple of extra yen with his pension. The girls had trained with him earlier, but they failed even the most basic of all weapon safety and operation. So when they trailed downstairs, he groaned and sat up from his chair, putting down the doujinshi manga that he had gotten from his otaku cousin.

"Back for more?" he asked, voice oozing with sarcasm.

"Absolutely," Serena said, with confidence. "Master…Sergeant Akamatsu." She wasn't going to pull that maid-café shit.

Whatever, Master Sergeant Kouto Akamatsu thought to himself. You know what, I'm going to have some fun with this. He went to the armory and brought out six Glock 19s. They were a very compact weapon, or in his words, "Half the calories but all of the taste." He put them on a table, one in front of him and the other five in front of the girls.

"Okay girls," he sneered somewhat, before correcting himself. "This the Glock 19 we trained on last month. As you remember, that didn't go so well." He glared at Mina. She gave him the finger (under the table).

"Number one rule: Weapons are always loaded. Even when they aren't. Number two rule: Never point a weapon at someone or something unless you mean to do serious harm to them. Point weapons away from people when handling them and do not put any bodily appendages over the barrel unless you want to get hurt." He looked at Lita and Raye, who glared back. That was pretty insensitive of him. "Number three rule: Fingers always off triggers unless you are going to fire. And finally, rule number four: know what you're aiming at, and what's behind it as well. There are more rules, of course, but these four always, and I mean, always, must be followed, at all times and all places. So with that in mind, here is how to disassemble this weapon."

Heh, this always gets them. Akamatsu with his right hand gripped the slide of the Glock 19 and released the levers on the slide to detach them. The slide came off, with the barrel and spring coming out and making a loud, metallic noise on the table. Quickly as he had disassembled it, he put the barrel in the slide, put the spring in, round end facing toward the front of the weapon, lining it up with the notches in the slide. He put the slide back on the weapon, pulling it back until it clicked, then he charged the weapon with a satisfying "Chah-Chink!" This was done in a matter of seconds. The Glock-19 is not a complex weapon, but if you didn't know what you were doing, then it would be hard.

"See?" he said smugly. He dry fired the weapon (away from the girls and himself) downrange and holstered it. "That's how it's done. Now you try it."

This is gonna be good, he thought.

Immediately, the girls picked up the Glock 19s in front of them and copied Akamatsu perfectly. The weapon was stripped and reassembled in ten seconds. The sound of five guns being cocked and dry fired sent chills down Akamatsu's spine.

Okay…what did I miss?

"Is that all?" Mina said, somewhat bored. Maybe they have lasers, yeah, that'll be cool. Like in Fallout 3 or New Vegas. That was a fun game.

"Yeah, got any more guns we can test?" Lita asked.

Stunned, Akamatsu took the Glock 19s back and brought out six M1911s. Again, he showed how to disassemble the weapon. And again, they copied him perfectly, like if they had been doing this for years. Akamatsu took the M1911s back and came out with every pistol in the inventory there: M9s, Sig 226s, Walther P99s, Browning Hi-Powers, and CZ-75s. Same story for all of them.

"Really, this is getting quite boring," Serena said, charging a CZ-75.

"When are we going to get to the 'real' guns?" Amy asked. She had a vague knowledge of assault rifles and submachine guns that a lot of the militaries used in the world, but since the surgery, she started to recall their shape and size, but not their names.

By this point, Akamatsu was speechless. In a span of a month, these girls had gone from unable to handle a pistol properly to completely schooling him on the way a gun could be disassembled.

"I…uh…I…that's all for today girls!" he somehow stammered.

"Aw," Raye sighed. "This was so fun. Are we going to get to the better weapons tomorrow?"

"Yeah, please?" Lita begged.

"Um, sure, yeah, tomorrow, uh-huh," Akamatsu was trying to search for words but nothing was coming out. In all his time with JSDF, he had never seen anything like this.

"Okay, well, if that's all we're going to do today, then I'm going to get some dinner," Serena announced. "I'm with you!" Amy replied excitedly. All this training made her hungry. They all left, leaving Akamatsu alone and wondering what the hell he had gotten himself into.

Making sure that all of the girls had left after that incident, Akamatsu grabbed the phone on his desk (next to the doujinshi) and called Dr. Kobayashi upstairs.
"Dr. Kobayashi speaking," was the answer.

"This is Akamatsu downstairs," he said, trying not to panic. "Whatever you did with those girls, I've never seen anything like it. They want to get into the heavy stuff now, but I don't even have any of the assault rifles or submachine guns here. And they want to learn, tomorrow, all of that stuff."

"We saw the entire thing from up here on camera," Kobayashi replied. "It was certainly impressive." Not to mention seeing his ego get knocked down a couple of pegs. "You'll have the weapons by tomorrow."

"Thanks." Akamatsu hung up. Fuck.

In the cafeteria, things were just as crazy. Serena, wanting her goddamn doughnuts, barged into the kitchen and declared that she was going to make them along with the other girls. The cafeteria staff was stunned for a second before she tossed them all out.

"Lita, start on the main course. We're doing a Western Style dinner. Amy, Mina, help them. Raye and I will make all the sweet stuff."

Amy snapped some cookbooks off a shelf in the manager's office (much to his chagrin) and within a couple of minutes, she was hard at work, braising some bully beef with a variety of spices. Lita and Mina started in on making dough for the doughnuts and then made polenta. From scratch…by grinding up corn into a coarse flour and then cooking them. From the dough she also made biscuits, American style.

"Why the hell are you making these…biscuit thingies?" Mina asked.

"They looked good in the cookbook," Lita replied, shoving a tray of them into the oven. "You've never heard of biscuits?"

"The only biscuits I take are with my tea," Mina retorted. "Those are more like scones."

"Biscuits are not scones."

From the other side of the kitchen, Raye from one glance at a cookbook, had put together a chicken Caesar salad and was frying the doughnuts. Serena quickly was putting a glaze on them that she had looked up on the internet. Within an hour, they had basically created an odd assortment of French, American South, and Italian cooking. The smell of fried dough, sizzling beef, cooked eggs, sugary glaze and baked biscuits filled the air, and made the staff wonder why they couldn't cook that well.

"Itadakimasu!" They all chanted together, now seated at one of the big tables in the cafeteria. They had somehow lugged all the food out there and set it up buffet style. And in ten minutes, all the food was gone.

"Mmm, that was so good," Serena said. "I haven't had doughnuts like that since ever."

"And we made them!" Amy said. "I didn't know I could cook so well!"

"Me too," Raye chimed in.

"I never got to cook at home," Lita said. "There wasn't enough time."

"So, are you all excited for tomorrow?" Mina chirped. Everything was so exciting again!

"Yeah! I can't wait to humiliate that instructor again," Amy smirked. "Did you see his face?"
"Heh, we showed him," Raye said. "Motherfucker didn't even know what hit him."

They chatted for hours afterward until the cafeteria staff had the courage to come back and kick them out, admonishing them for leaving such a mess in the kitchen.

"See you all tomorrow," Serena waved to everyone as they went back to their rooms, generally excited about life.

"Well, that was interesting." Beryl stepped back from the TV monitor that see had been watching the girls chat idly on. Beryl and Nurse Kuroi were in a security room located on the other side of the complex, out of the way of the girls.

"Is there anything else that you want?" Nurse Kuroi said, barely keeping the annoyance in her voice back. She didn't like her, and Beryl returned the sentiment.

"No…" Beryl replied. "Just…checking in to see how our investment is playing out."

"Investment?" Kuroi scoffed. "You know how the healing solution works, so why come here?"

Beryl just smiled. "That's above your pay grade. Maybe you should mind your own business."

Fuck off, loser, Kuroi thought. Just because I didn't get to go to Todai and end up working for some big company as the CEO's fucktoy, doesn't make me any less of a person. Kuroi shrugged off the comment and continued to stare at the TV screens, now showing the girls in their rooms. Serena was watching TV, Mina was singing loudly to some J-Pop that she got from "the internet" (read, The Pirate Bay), Lita was cleaning her room obsessively, Amy was reading "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mill and Raye was…looking at "special" videos that had "talented" people in them on the internets.

"Well, that'll be all," Beryl said, with that smug smile of hers. "I just had to file a status report for Mr. Yamada." She bowed, again showing off that cleavage.

"Whatever." Kuroi slightly bowed back. She started to stand up but Beryl grabbed her hair.

"I don't think that was very nice," she whispered into Kuroi's ear. "You should bow lower."

Kuroi struggled, but complied.

"That's much better. Have a nice day." Beryl left the room, leaving Kuroi fuming and with a head of messed up hair.

Amy had put down "On Liberty," and was staring outside. There was a window with a sliding glass door to a balcony, but it was surrounded by bars preventing her from escaping. She had gotten caught up in the day's events, but sometimes at night, she did think of escaping and returning to her mom.

"Gotta stay strong," she said to herself. "Mom raised me by herself. I can do it."

She wondered what the news had said about her and her family after the explosion. In the last month or so, she hadn't had the time to look up the news. Getting onto the computer at her desk, she looked up the Mainichi Shinbun's news article covering the explosions. The article there stated that they had died.

"Well, that makes sense," she said to herself. "If they wanted to keep this secret, then we would have had to have died."

Again, something told her that this was all too convenient, and her gut instinct told her that the whole story wasn't being told to her. Then again, nothing made much sense anymore. She would tell these facts to Dr. Kobayashi and the rest of the team tomorrow. Maybe sleep would make everything better.

Amy turned off the lights in the room and let her mind drift off to sleep.

"Oh god, that felt so good," Raye said out loud. She finished washing off in the shower after her computer session. Raye was certainly excited to have new appendages on her hands, that's for sure. It had been difficult eating, opening doors and writing stuff, but now everything would be better.

She was generally excited for tomorrow. I can learn how to kill stuff to death, even better!

With no hint of irony, she prayed before going to bed.

With her room finally cleaner than clean, Lita was satisfied with her work. She winced in pain sometimes, her stupid prosthetic arm reminding her that she had lost something…well, at least it wasn't like she was trying to bring back her dead mother or something like that. Not that I wouldn't try, Lita bitterly thought to herself.

She wondered what the future would bring though for her and the rest of them. Noting the time, she opened up a drawer with some pills that Dr. Kobayashi prescribed for her condition, and took them.

Mina was screaming at the top of lungs "Baby! Baby! Baby!" by AKB48. She wished that she could be an idol as well, but oh well. Maybe in the next life she would lead. Tired out by all that singing, she turned off her computer and plopped into bed.

Serena was on her balcony staring at the moon. From the time she was little, she had always stared at it, like she belonged there. She even thought that she was a princess there and that Mamoru/Darien was her prince. Hah! What a joke he turned out to be when he moved to America. She had asked him for a stronger commitment to their love life, but he pulled away. Soon after, his family moved away, to that far off land of California, United States of America. She still missed him, every day.

Get your mind of him, Serena. She sighed. Time to start anew.