Chapter XIII: E Maka'ala Kakou

?hrs, ? ? ?, Simulated Waikiki Beach, Honolulu, Hawaii, United States

"We the warriors born to live, On what the land and sea can give, Defend our birthright to be free
Give our children liberty." Israel Kamakawiwoʻole, E Ala E.

The hot sun beating down on the SAILOR team blinded them for a second. Once their vision had corrected itself, they looked around to see where they were. They were on a street corner, but there were no cars or people in it yet. A large hotel complex sprawled before them, with a parking garage on the left separated by a road. A Sushi place was on their extreme left, and a coffee shop on their extreme right.

"Are…are we in Hawai'i?" Serena asked.

"It appears so," Amy replied. "Nice jeans." She noted Raye's appearance.

"Thanks." They were all wearing fairly casual clothing, jeans and t-shirts for the most part.

"Why are we all wearing sunglasses?" Mina wondered. A voice in their ear quickly changed that.

"Hi girls." An image flashed up on their glasses, surprising them. "This is Dr. Kobayashi."
"Yeah, I got that part," Raye snorted.

"This is our communication from the outside world to you all. Normally, you would have on eyepieces and this would be a commanding officer or something to that extent. But since this is both a simulated covert operation and your first time out, this is a review of the stuff that will be available to you in the field."

"What do these glasses do exactly?" Serena asked, looking around.

"They use a special millimetric wave system that allows you to scan the area and identify targets, friendlies, civilians, and mission objectives. Let me show you an example."

Kobayashi activated a scan on Serena's glasses.

"Whoa!" Amy, Mina, Lita and Raye all popped on the HUD, marked in green as friendly.

"So, do all of our…what are these things called?"

"It's a Heads up Display, or HUD, with liquid crystal display, providing an augmented reality experience that helps to effectively distinguish combatants and improve combat effectiveness."

"Thanks, Billy Mayes," Mina muttered.

"Didn't the US Army try something out like this with Land Warrior?" Amy asked, Kobayashi, fiddling with the glasses. She sent out another scan, which displayed more information about the buildings around them.

"Yes, but the project was abandoned in 2007," Kobayashi said. "But they integrated some of the findings of that program into their Future Force Warrior scheme, which has some of the technology you are going to use."

"That's great and all," Raye interrupted. "But can we get started?"

"Of course," Kobayashi said.

"Okay, so what's our mission?" Amy asked, irritated at Raye. She wanted to know more about the HUDs.

"Here is your objective," Kobayashi shuffled through some papers. "I'm sending it to your HUD…now."

Information started flowing the team immediately.

"So…there is a terrorist group planning to attack Japanese citizens abroad, as well as any off duty military personnel," Amy read from a dossier. "They have infiltrated this area and are planning to attack somewhere in this district. Their numbers and weaponry are unknown. Exercise extreme caution. Neutralize the targets by any means."

There was a pause before anyone spoke up.

"That's it?" Mina asked.

"Sometimes that's all you have in the field," Kobayashi stated. "I'm uploading the weapons loadout for what you would usually have in this sort of covert operation."

A large handbag appeared on Raye's right shoulder. "Whoa!" she said in surprise. She checked inside it. An MP7A1 lay in there, with some ammunition and a wallet with a Honolulu Police badge in it.

"Cool. But I guess I won't have to use it unless I have to, right?"

"Yes," Kobayashi replied.

The other girls got purses and smaller handbags; Mina and Amy got a very compact Glock 26 stuffed in their purses, Lita got a slightly larger M1911, and Serena had a Beretta 92 Compact.

"I guess waving around huge assault rifles isn't the best way to go about apprehending terrorists," Serena said. "Can we change the loadout, if we want?"

"You can…but again, in a real life situation, that might not be possible."

"I would prefer something a lot bigger," Raye said. "But I get it."

"Alright team," Kobayashi said. "I'm going to start the exercise…now."

In a second, the street was populated with cars, motorbikes, buses, and of course, people.

"Wow, that was cool," Mina said.

"First things first," Serena said. "Where the hell exactly are?"

"On it." Amy touched her glasses and they did a scan of the area.

"Okay, that big building complex over there on the right is a really big hotel," she stated. "3,386 rooms."

"That's really big," Serena redundantly replied. "How many Japanese nationals there?"

"Five hundred, at the moment."

Raye whistled. "That's a pretty big target."

"You're telling me." Serena noted a smaller hotel complex behind the hotel that Amy pointed out.. "What's that over there?" she asked Amy.

"Standby…oh wow."

"What is it?" Lita asked.

"It's another hotel, but it's a little bit different than the last one. It's run by the US government, and only certain people can visit there. 817 rooms, unknown amount of people there at present."

"Those are two very big targets," Mina said. "How are we going to defend them all?"

"We're going on the attack then," Serena responded. "Mina, Amy, you speak pretty good English, right?"

"Yes, I do," Mina replied, in English.

"Ah, well, um," Amy stuttered. "Kind of."

"Okay, here's the plan." Serena transmitted a map of the area to them. "There's park right by the parking garage, I want Lita go over there and watch for anything suspicious. Walk around, look at cars, trucks, anyone walking funny, that sort of stuff. Mina and Amy, go over to that, hotel over there, the one run by the government, and we'll take the other one. Okay? Raye, you're with me."

With that, they split up.

The hotel that Amy and Mina were going too was a very ugly looking hotel, with a drab shade of concrete gray (not fifty shades, they were too cheap to provide for that many varieties) covering all the buildings. There wasn't too much security, but there was a guard shack on the short curved road leading up to the hotel. Mina and Amy walked up the path to the hotel, the police officer on duty noticed them. Sometimes prostitutes would come up to the hotel, but that had stopped after a particularly nasty incident involving chopsticks, superglue and papaya. These two didn't seem like that sort of material though.

"Hey, what are you all doing here?" the officer asked, more out of curiosity than security precautions. Mina and Amy looked at each other, then approached the guardhouse.

"We're looking for something," Mina said, flashing her badge from her purse. Amy did the same.

"Oh, sorry Sergeant," the officer replied. "What can I help you with?"

"Well," Amy said. She had to pause and think about what she was going to say. "Have you seen anything suspicious today?"

"Nah, just the usual crowd. Why? Something going down?"

"It's just that," Mina began. Amy looked at her, but let her continue. "Well, we got a tip from someone that there might be a possible terrorist cell in the area and that they were going to attack here or the hotel next door."

"Damn," the officer said. "Did you tell the Military Police about it?"

"The Military Police have been alerted," Mina bluffed. "But this might be pretty big. Anything at all officer, that you can remember can be helpful."
"Okay, uh…" The program running the officer's personality searched the databank for the something that might be of use. The attack itself had already been set, but some things could be changed if the SAILORs asked the right questions. "Wait, wait a second. I let in a band today, but they weren't on the white list until just yesterday. They were a replacement band for the people who were going perform today but they got sick."

"Where do bands usually perform?" Mina asked.

"A band like this? Uh, maybe in the courtyard, by the banyan tree, but for all I know, they could be in one of the restaurants, maybe by the outdoor luau. Talk to the people at the front desk about that."

"Thanks officer." Mina and Amy walked quickly away. The officer was a bit suspicious, so he called dispatch to see if there were two detectives in the area. Dispatch confirmed, as well as the terror alert in the area due to the fact that their database had been compromised by Amy. Satisfied, the officer checked his sidearm and sat up in his chair, ready for anything.

Lita pretended to jog (well, she actually jogged but that wasn't why she was there) in the park right across from the hotel Amy and Mina were staking out. She looked around for anything at all that might be conducive to a terrorist attack. There really wasn't anything though. Children were playing in the park, people exercising, laughing, and enjoying themselves.

This is getting me nowhere, she thought to herself. Gotta find a better place to see stuff from.

The parking garage beckoned for her to come in. Fine.

Lita entered the garage and headed up three stories up, to the top of the garage. She went to the around, looking for anything suspicious in the surrounding area.

But again, nothing. She scanned with the glasses, bringing up a map.

"A church on the north side of the park," she said to herself. "…a police checkpoint…a post office on the east side…and…what's this then?" She looked a building right next to the parking garage. It looked pretty important, with sliding glass doors and a very modern exterior.

That might be secondary target or something, she thought. She still hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary though. Maybe this is just a waste of time.

Lita turned around to leave, but saw the answer that she had been looking for.

Shit, it was right behind me all the while.

Four identically white Ford E-Series vans were parked next to each other. That was one hell of a coincidence, or something was up. She started to approach one of the vans, but the doors opened up and five men piled out. Lita ducked behind some cars and tried to spy in on them.

"This is going to be so big," she heard one of them say. "And we're going to be stuck plinking targets this think tank here."

"Shut the fuck up, we get to kill people," another said. "What's the progress on the others?"

"Two teams are inside the hotel complex lobby, and one inside the lobby next to it. All we need to do is get in position and start firing, then they go."

"Easy as pie. I always wanted to be in a band, but oh well."

That's how they're masking their movements, Lita concluded. Bands carry around lots of equipment, so it's easy to hide large weapons in those instrument cases and such.

She touched her glasses and send out a message via text to everyone else.

"Are you getting this?" Raye said to Serena.

"Yeah. So we're looking for a very large band then, about ten people."

"Ten? We're completely out numbered. I like those odds," Raye smirked.

"That may be true, but I don't want to start a firefight in the lobby," Serena said. "If only we could get them isolated…"

She looked around. They were standing in one of the many shopping areas in the hotel complex. A crowded ABC store bustled with activity next to them.

"We have to try to get them alone. I'm going to try to access the entertainment database in the hotel, see if anything suspicious comes up."

Serena tried to hack into the database, but the hotel wasn't that stupid. It wasn't located on the internet and had to be accessed via one of the computers in the hotel, specifically, the check-in desk, security, or an employee's office computer.

"Shit. Raye, let's get to the check-in desk."

They jogged over to the check-in desk. There were hundreds of people there, walking to and from their hotel rooms, going to the bar, the pool, to the stores, checking in, checking out…and there was the band, all ten of them, standing by the drop-off point by the road. It was going to be impossible not to have collateral damage if a firefight broke out in here.

"Serena," Raye said, but Serena saw them too.

"I see them. Don't do anything stupid." Raye just glared, but Serena was right. "These might be the guys, or maybe not."

"Serena," a voice came over the "glasses" network. "Serena, it's Lita. I'm following the guys on the parking garage to the think tank. These guys are getting ready to roll, you have to find the other terrorists."

"I know, I know, we have a possible lead." Serena was looking around for something to distract them. She came up with an idea.

"Raye, I'm going to bug them for an autograph, try to get into one of their bags and see if these are the guys. Go."

Serena walked up to one of the "band" members and pulled a sheet of newspaper out of her purse.

"Ah…hi…I see your band," she said in very broken English. "It…it…very good. Sign…please."
"Oh…" The band member was suspicious immediately because this was just a cover, but maybe the girl was mistaking them for another band. No reason to attract attention. He signed the newspaper.

Raye sneaked up on the baggage that some of the band members were standing around. She pretended to trip.

"Ow!" she exclaimed, falling down on a duffle bag.

Clunck. She struggled to get up, in the process unzipping the bag a little.

An AK47 stared back at her.

"Hey, get out of there!" one of the band said.

"Sorry, sorry." Raye zipped the bag up and picked herself up.

"Get out of here missy," the band member said, shoving her aside.

Raye staggered off. Serena had finished bugging the other band member and quickly walked away, joining up with Raye near a support column out of sight of the band.

"It's them," Raye hissed to her.

"Fuck. What do we do?"

"I don't know if we can get these guys in a secluded place," Raye replied. "My opinion? Confront them here and hope they give up. If not, I mow them all down with the MP7 in here." Serena glanced over at the band. They were all packed together…

"And if this turns into a full scale firefight?"

Raye shrugged. "Hope it doesn't come down to that."

Serena looked back. The men were starting to get antsy, pacing about and checking their watches and cellphones.

"I'm going to call the police in," she said.

"Why are you…?" Raye began.

"Just in case. They can back us up…maybe." She dialed 911.

"911 Emergency, please state the nature of your situation."

"Yeah, I'm at this hotel here," Serena said, rattling off the name ",and I just saw these guys with big guns in the lobby, I don't know what's going on, I think you should send somebody to check it…"

She heard gunfire in the distance. The men perked up and started to unzip the instrument cases and duffle bags.

"Oh shit, Serena!" Raye pulled the MP7 out of her purse and screamed at the bad guys now.

"Freeze, police!"

One of the men snapped an AK47 up and started firing.

Lita had trailed the five man team down the stairs and to the street, where they walked to the entrance of the fancy building that looked important.

I have to do something now or else this is not going to end well.

She checked her weapon. Five against one.

No sweat Lita, just like the kill house. She looked at the street. Nobody was around…

Walking about twenty-five feet behind them, she pulled out the badge in her purse and screamed in a loud voice:

"POLICE! STOP WHERE YOU ARE!" (in Japanese).

Big mistake.

Three of the men swiveled around, Mini-Uzis in hand, and started blasting away.

"Fuck!" Lita ducked behind one of the cars in the street. She leaned to the left and snapped three shots off, hitting one of the men.

Yeah, have a nice nap, sucker.

But he got back up. He was holding his chest though.

What?! I totally nailed the guy…unless...

Lita called everyone else on the radio built into her glasses. "They have body armor!" she screamed, firing off four more shots before having to reload. Another man went down, killed by a lucky shot to the head. The other two men, having heard the gunshots tried to charge into the building but was locked out by the security team, having heard the gunfire outside.

"What was that?" Mina asked. "I didn't catch what she said."

"I don't know, but we have to hurry!" Amy said. They had asked the concierge where that particular band was playing and it turned out to be near the banyan tree. The tree itself was huge, with branches everywhere and could have encompassed two or three good sized houses by itself. It was surrounded by a long concrete bench, with several stores and a restaurant nearby.

The tree was on the basement floor, while the front desk was on the first floor.

Something like firecrackers were going off in the distance though…

"I see them!" Mina exclaimed. Five guys, with big instrument cases and duffel bags.

"Yep, that's them," Amy said. "Stop where you are!" She was a bit too soft on that, and no one heard her.

"Oh for crying out loud," Mina griped. "YO BITCHES, POLICE! STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING!"

Amy and Mina were on a staircase leading down the basement level when Mina screamed at the band.

Having been discovered, they started pulling out their guns.

"No you don't!" Mina yelled. She brought her Glock 26 to bear and pulled the trigger.

BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM! Two guys flinched, but they got back up and pulled out AK-47s.

"Shit!" Amy brought her weapon to bear and fired off three more rounds, center of mass. Again, no effect.

"Fuck, that's what Lita was on about!" Mina said. "They have armor!"

It was chaos in the hotel now. People were running around on the first floor, trying to get away. The front desk people had already alerted the police and the security team.

"Dammit, go down!" Mina fired off three more shots. Both she and Amy were advancing down the stairs, firing as they went into the group of men.

They smartened up and spread out, firing into the nearby restaurant and at Venus and Mercury. It wasn't packed in the restaurant, but there were people there…

"Fucking die already!" Mina kept firing, aiming for the head. One of the men went down. Amy got one too. "About time!"

Then, a burst of AK47 fire clipped Amy. She went down.

"I'm hit!" She said. It was a graze, but there was blood.

"Amy!" SAILOR Venus screamed. "You'll fucking pay!"

SAILOR Venus reloaded and dashed forward, with SAILOR Mercury trying to keep up.

Another man went down, hit by Venus' fire. The other two, seeing that things were going south despite their advantage, gave up.

"Don't shoot!" one of them said. He put down his AK47. So did the other one.

"Keep your hands where I can see them!" Amy yelled, blood streaming down her face.

The security team from the hotel finally showed up (although they would have had a tough time as well, they were only armed with M9 pistols) along with some police officers. Some paramedics were right behind them.

"Over here!" Mina yelled.

The security team and the police officers took over, handcuffing the suspects and searching them.

"Hey." Someone tapped Amy on the shoulder. She was holding a bandage on her head now, from one of the EMTs. "Who exactly are you?" It was the police officer from the guard shack.

"Well, we're detectives…" Mina began, but the officer cut her off.

"I don't think so. Who are you really?"

Amy and Mina looked at each other sheepishly, and shrugged.

"It's above your pay grade," Amy replied. "We're the good guys, that's all we can say."

"Okay then…" was the reply from the officer.

"And we were never here, officer," Mina added. With that, they hurried off to help the other teams.

"Goddamit!" SAILOR Moon cried out. Both Serena and Raye were still hiding behind a support column as chaos reigned around them.

In the first two seconds of the firefight, SAILOR Mars had fired the entire twenty round clip of the MP7 into the group of terrorists. Six went down in the hail of bullets, but the other four had scrambled away, firing indiscriminately into the crowd of people in the lobby.

SAILOR Moon fired her Beretta but only managed to annoy the terrorists.

"Come on Raye, what's the hold up?!"

"I'm trying, I'm trying!" Raye shoved a new magazine into the gun and charged it. "Ready!"

"Go!"

They rushed out from the column and made a run for another support column closer to the front desk.

"Gotcha!" Raye shouted. She sighed down the gun and snapped off one…two…three bursts. Three down bad guys down, one to go.

"Where's the other one?!" Serena yelled.

There was some gunfire further into the hotel.

"Shit, move!"

SAILOR Moon and Mars hustled to where the gunfire was coming from. A gaggle of Japanese tourists ran screaming away from a bunch of shops. They stacked up on a corner, and SAILOR Mars took a peek.

"Oh Christ," she said (ironically). Several civvies lay dead on the ground while a whole bunch more were injured. The shooter was reloading his AK47 and…what was that…?

"He's got a grenade!" Mars rounded the corner and fired. The last shooter went down, hard.

"Check him," Serena said. They approached, carefully.

Suddenly, he popped back up and fired a burst straight at Serena's legs.

"OW!" She fell down. Mars put him down for good with a burst.

"You okay?" Raye asked.

"I'm fine," Serena said. "Thank god for prosthetics."

"Hey, I could use some help here!" Lita was still in trouble.

"Come on," Raye said, helping Serena back up. "Let's finish this."

SAILOR Jupiter had barely made any progress. Four Mini-Uzis pounded her position and what little fire she could return didn't really do much.

"Guys, could use some help! Could use it now!"

"Hold on, we're crossing the street now, we see you!" Amy and Mina were running at full tilt, dodging cars and fleeing citizens.

"Amy, get the guy on the left! I got right!" Mina said.

"Got it!" Amy highlighted the position of the terrorists to everyone.

"Well, thank you Mercury," Lita muttered to herself. She could see where the terrorists were now, and she fired blindly in the general direction of them. At least she was doing something.

Amy fired off a couple of shots, but again, they didn't really do much. There was a chatter of bullets now as the four remaining men fired at everything that moved. The security guards in the building couldn't do much, Lita was pinned down and Amy and Mina were doing scratch damage.

"Coming up on your six!" SAILOR Mars yelled on the radio. "Engaging!"

A few well-placed shots from Mars downed one of them.

"Come on!" SAILOR Moon yelled. "Get them!"

Five guns trained down range. Five guns fired, hitting the exposed parts that the armor didn't cover and killing all but one of the terrorists.

"Cover!" Serena yelled. She motioned to Amy to follow her. The terrorist was on the ground, writhing in pain. He tried to reach for the Uzi but Amy kicked it away.

"Not so fast," she said. "Who are you?"

"Does it matter?" the terrorist replied, in Japanese.

"So you do speak Japanese," SAILOR Moon said. "Why are you attacking Japanese citizens and US Military people?"
"Heh, you don't know much, do you?" He spat some blood. "You think you work for the Japanese government, but you're actually working for them…"

He died.

"Working for whom?" Amy wondered out loud. "That was cryptic."
"I guess," Serena said.

"Hey!" All the girls turned around to face a heavy armed SWAT team pointing assault rifles at them. "Hands up!"

Serena sighed. "Didn't see this one coming."

Suddenly, everything went black again.