Chapter XXXVII: Tomorrow, when the war began.

0230hrs, 17 December 2013, Marunouchi, Tokyo, Japan

"Because we have sought to cover up past evil, though it still persists, we have been powerless to check the new evil of today. Evil unchecked grows, evil tolerated poisons the whole system." Jawaharlal Nehru

The three other SAILOR Team members drove in their Suzuki Wagon Kei-car down the deserted streets of Tokyo, looking for the HQ of the Nakanishi Group. It wasn't hard to find.

"God, that is a massive building." Lita looked up at the glimmering building, lit up with Christmas lights and spotlights on the ground. It wasn't the tallest building in Tokyo; that would be the Tokyo Sky Tree, a whopping 634 meters high (or to those countries still using imperial measurements, about 2000 feet). She then checked the Taser on her utility belt, making sure that is was ready to go. There was a second one there, just in case she found herself in a sticky situation. "We're not supposed to kill anyone, correct?"

"Anyone below the 50th floor. After that, anyone up to the top floor, the 55th, is toast," Serena replied, putting on her eyepiece HUD. "Can you hear us Luna?"

"I have you," she replied. "We're in full control of the medical facility, and we're ready to commence this operation. We only have five hours before the terrorist attacks begin, so we must hurry."

"Roger. Pull over here, Raye."

Raye pulled over the curb and looked up at the building. "Damn. This is going to be fun."

"How are Mina and Amy doing in America?" Serena was worried about the WMDs that Luna had told them about earlier.

"One of the WMDs has been secured, and they're trying to get the leadership to respond to the upcoming terrorist attacks."

Serena breathed a sigh of relief. At least that part of the plan was going well. She continued on with the briefing.

"Let's go over the plan then," Serena said, pulling out her very own tablet computer that Amy had set up for her. Tapping on a few icons on the screen, she pulled up a schematic of the skyscraper.

"We're going to enter through the garage here, on floor B1," she said, focusing on the basement. "There are two guards at the checkpoint to the garage, so Lita, you'll take them out with your Taser when we approach and neutralize them."

"Got it," Lita said. She was pretty excited to get to use the Taser again.

"Then, we are going to proceed to the elevator here." Serena pointed to a bank of elevators near the center of the garage. "I'll have Luna override the security controls on them, and we'll proceed to the security room on the fifth floor, where we'll drop Lita off. She will secure the security room, and deactivate alarms, CCTV, motion sensors and any other security countermeasures that Luna can't access from the outside."

"How many security guards in the room?" Lita asked her. It was asking a lot of one person to take down an entire floor of guards, even with all her training and weaponry. And she was going to do it without killing anyone.

"There are five guards in the room. Coupled with five more on patrol on the fifth floor."

"Great."

"Well, at least you have your shield. I trust you, you can do it."

Lita took a deep breath in and reminded herself that she could do it. "Yeah. I guess I can."

Serena nodded at her and continued on with her briefing.

"However, that security room is only for the rest of the building. The one that Raye and I will be eliminating will be on the 50th floor. That's the one that is guarded by Nakanishi's PMC. There are over thirty guards, all armed with assault rifles and body armor."

"What type of weaponry are we talking about here?" Raye asked.

"Several of the guards are carrying what appears to be Howa Type 64 battle rifles, and the rest are carrying Type 89 assault rifles."

"So they're almost like JSDF guys?"

"More like exactly the same. Most of them are ex-JGSDF or Special Assault Team members, and they know how to handle their weapons."

"Well, we're just going to have to be better than them," Raye said, putting her eyepiece HUD on. She checked the G36K on the seat next to her, equipped with a reflex sight and a Beta-C Mag 100 round drum.

"Raye, that's overkill," Lita said, looking at her weapon.

"Says the person who carries the machine gun." Lita wasn't actually packing a machine gun at this moment; she had a HK416 slung over her shoulder.

"I'm not carrying one right now!"

"You would, if you could," Raye smirked.

"Okay you two," Serena interrupted, somewhat exasperated by their bantering. "That's the armament that the guards are carrying on the fiftieth floor up."

"And how many after that…?"

Serena brow furrowed at that. "Unknown, maybe thirty, forty more."

Lita threw up her hands in anger. "Why do they need so much security?"

"Well, us." Serena continued to poke at the screen, bringing up the last details of the plan.

"It's not going to be enough," Raye said.

"Let's hope so." Serena focused in on a data center on the fifty-fourth floor. "Our main objective is the data stored in the center here. We need to fight our way there before the data is destroyed by the personnel there."

"How are we going to do that if we're tied up fighting at the security station?"

"We're just going to be fast then," Serena said. "We need to carve a path through the security station to here." She pointed just past the security station, to a bank of elevators that lead to the rest of the building. "Raye, you're going to have to do the heavy lifting here while I try to get to the data center as fast as I can."

Raye nodded. "Understood. How much time will it take to destroy the data in the room?"

"At this point in the morning? Let me ask Luna." She tapped her HUD and contacted Luna.

"Luna, go ahead."

"How long will it take for the security team to destroy the data in the data center?"

"A couple of seconds, if you don't hit the security station fast enough and shut down power and security commands to the top five floors. But they will only destroy the information if they get a command from the security post, so that's the only thing keeping them from destroying the data, at present."

"Shit," Raye said, continuing to peer up at the huge building.

"Why would they only destroy the data on only orders from the security station?" Serena asked, somewhat curious at that peculiar quirk.
"It seems like they had a massive security breach a month ago with a remote camera placed on a projector in the conference room on the fifty-fifth floor. This was caused by a lapse in security due to a decentralized and unorganized system of protection. Since then, they've centralized the security personnel, one of the fifth floor for everyone else, and one on the fiftieth floor for the top executives and everyone like that. And one consequence is that the head security officer has complete control over the operations in the facility, especially on the fifty-fifth floor. But if he is killed, and the security stations on both floors disabled, the data center will delay in destroying the information even if there is a massive gunfight right outside their doors."

"Thanks, Ms. Exposition," Serena groaned. "You could have just told us that they'll be slowed down."

"I'm sorry SAILOR Moon, but that's the way it goes," Luna replied, tapping out commands on the computer in front of her. They had set up a command post in, well, the conference room that got used for everything.

"Raye, you'll take the security post then," Serena said.

"Sounds good."

"I'll take the fifty-fourth floor, once we've blazed a path toward there through the guards."

Raye nodded.

"Alright then," Serena replied. "How are our guests?"

"Akamatsu and Iwasaki are doing just fine," Luna said. "Nice work on taking them down. They're being held in one of the medical rooms under guard."

"Heh, they'll finally get to experience how it feels to be trapped in one of those rooms," Raye sneered.

It had been a long day for the guards at the check-in post at the Nakanishi HQ garage. Only a couple more hours and they could finally go home and take a rest from all the boring work that they did. Plus, warming up would be a nice benefit as well, since sitting in an unheated guard shack was not very comfortable. All of a sudden, a small Kei-car pulled up from the main road and approached the garage. One of them rolled their eyes and grabbed a small tablet computer, which had all the day's deliveries, special visitors, and the like on it. It was strange though; most people who came through here didn't drive Kei-cars unless they were new hires.

"Morning," he sleepily said, as the back window on the right side of the car rolled down. "What is your purpose for visiting…"

He never got to finish, as a charge from Lita's Taser hit him in the chest, shocking him and sending him to ground. The other guard scrambled out of his chair, but by that time, Lita was already out of the car and had set her sights on him. Firing another shot from the Taser stunned him, and within five seconds, the guardhouse had been neutralized.

"Nice work," Serena commented from the backseat.

"Thanks," Lita replied, taping over the guards' mouth and eyes with duct tape. She also restrained them with flexcuffs on their hands and legs. Leaving them in the corner of the guard shack, she jumped back into the car, slamming the door shut.

"Okay, let's head to the next objective," Serena said to Raye, tapping her on the shoulder.

"Right." Raye drove down the ramp leading to the parking garage, and continued forward until she reached the bank of elevators. The three of them piled out of the car and walked over to the elevator, still keeping a lookout for guards. Serena tuned in onto her HUD and contacted Luna.

"Okay, Luna, we're at the elevators. Unlock the security on them so we can get to the objective."

"Understood. Standby." The locked symbol on the elevator display turned from red, to green, indicating that they could be used.

"You first, Lita." Serena gestured toward the elevators.

"My pleasure." Lita stepped into an open elevator, hit the fifth floor button, and watched as the doors closed. She checked her Taser, her shield, and her weapons. This was going to be a tough one, but she would make it.

The action started right away on the fifth floor, when Lita stepped out of the elevator and right into one of the guards. Reacting quickly, she punched him with her left hand and brought him into a stranglehold, rendering him unconscious in a couple of seconds. She restrained him using flexcuffs, destroyed his radio, took away his sidearm and tossed him into the elevator.

"Okay…one down…" she muttered to herself, checking her HUD. The security room was to her right, about twenty meters down the hall, with several guards patrolling the offices on this floor. She moved forward from the elevators and checked the hallway; no movement. Holding her ballistic shield up, she continued forward, quietly until she came to a junction, with the security room in front of her, a hallway passing in front of that, and a guard that was about to round the corner.

Lita snapped her Taser up and fired a CO2 cartridge at him, bringing him down, paralyzed by the electric shock to his muscles. The people in the security room didn't seem to notice; nothing ever interesting happened around here, and so the video cameras went unwatched, even though Lita was right outside their room. The door to the room was protected by a keypad, but Luna was kind enough to remote-access it and provide the code to the door; 3493.

Lita tapped the code in, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

Like the briefing had mentioned, there were five guards in the room, all in various states of awareness and alertness. It was a moderately sized room, with a bank of TV screens to her left, two desks for writing reports with computers on them to her right, the main desk for the watch commander in the center, and a small kitchenette for preparing Ramen, coffee and tea behind the watch commander's desk. The watch commander was also behind a sheet of bulletproof glass, which formed a half a cubicle around him. Lita calculated it would take the two on the right, who were watching the TV screens, to respond the slowest, since they were facing away from her and were not paying attention anyway. The two guards on the left would be the fastest to respond, since they were facing her, and had their weapons ready. The most challenging part was to get the watch commander out from his shell and get him to attack her. Lita figured that she could come up with…something, yeah.

The first part went fine; she aimed her Taser at the first two, firing the remaining cartridges at the guards, paralyzing them for a least a couple of seconds while she dealt with the other two. She dropped that Taser and moved to the right. One of the TV monitor guys started to swivel his chair around, seeing the black ballistic shield come in through the door and trying to bring up his weapon. She ran forward, bashing him with the shield and sending him flying. The second guard was trying to get out of his chair, but was thrown back by Lita continuing her momentum into him from the first guard, and also sent him flying.

By this time, the watch commander was trying to raise the alarm, but he had to make a split second decision between extending his arm out to hit the button, or raising his pistol to the firing position and maybe try to slow Lita down. He chose the latter, which in hindsight, was probably not the best of decisions. The shield deflected the 9mm bullets from his Beretta 92F, and she promptly bashed him into the wall, stunning him and knocking his weapon away.

Lita swung around and checked the room. Five moaning, stunned and confused guards lay on the ground. She smiled, and had to admit, that was some pretty good handiwork.

Suddenly, there was a burst of radio traffic from the remaining guards outside; they had heard the gunshots and while they were muffled since they took place inside the security room, it was enough for some concern. Ignoring the radio calls, Lita set about restraining everyone in the room, dragging them together in the center of the room, flexcuffing them, disabling their radios and weapons, and making sure that they didn't cause any more trouble.

"Alrighty then," Lita said, looking at the guards struggling in the center. "Nice work, team. Oh wait, that's just me, heh."

With a swipe of her left arm, she destroyed the alarm system, and with another, the TV monitors. She continued this process until all of the security equipment had been thoroughly bashed in, and was unable to function anymore.

The three guards that had heard the gunshots finally got their act together, and upon finding their fallen comrade outside, punched the keycode in and charged into the room. Lita, was caught somewhat off guard, in between destroying the last piece of equipment (a coffee maker, she didn't like the stuff), and getting her shield back from where she had laid it against a wall. One of the guards readied his Beretta and fired a couple of shots, forgetting that there was bulletproof glass there. The shots impacted against the glass and cracked it dramatically, but did not penetrate. Lita, now recovered from the surprise guests, brought up her shield and a second three-shot Taser, and snapped all three cartridges off, stunning the guards and securing the floor.

"This is SAILOR Jupiter," she said into her radio after securing the guards with the others. "Security station is disabled and floor is secure." All in under five minutes too. Not bad. Not bad at all.

"Roger, we're about to move in," SAILOR Moon said in response. "Hold your position and prevent the security guards from calling the police, over."

"Affirmative."

She had held the elevator up on the forty-ninth floor, waiting for SAILOR Jupiter to take down the security station.

"Let's do this." SAILOR Moon hit the button for the fiftieth floor; that was the furthest it could go before changing elevators, due to security reasons.

"I'm ready." Raye smiled for a second, then wiped it off of her face; memories of the flaming church flashed back quickly before she pushed them away. This was different. She was going to make up for all that she had done in the past, and bringing these bastards down was just the start. Raye readied her G36K, as did Serena with her M4 CQB Receiver. She took a breath in, turned on her HUD, and waited for the door to slide open.

Ding.

It took a second for the doors to open. Serena's HUD lit up, isolating five moving targets, patrolling the hallway in front of her, ranging from ten to fifty meters away. The hallway would lead to the security room, and beyond that, the elevators. Kind of like the Matrix…somewhat.

"Engaging!" Raye brought up her G36K and depressed the trigger, snapping to a target on the right. Serena did the same, aiming for a guard on the left. They went down. The two of them moved on, bringing their attention to the other three guards. More concentrated fire killed them in an instant; they didn't even have the time to react.

"Move!" SAILOR Moon screamed. Raye took point, keeping her weapon in the firing position and sweeping from left to right, maintaining her field of fire. Another guard appeared from a side room; a burst took care of him, sending him flopping on the ground. Serena was right behind Raye, and snapped off another burst at another guard that came out of the same room. He went down.

"Coming up at a corner!" Raye yelled out.

"Security is on the right, after the corner!" Serena replied.

"Got it!" Stopping quickly, Raye peeked around the corner and saw no one there. There were some more offices, but their main target was straight in front of them with a keypad entrance. The elevators to the top floors were on their left, down another short hallway.

"Serena!" Raye hissed. "On the left!" SAILOR Moon nodded her acknowledgement.

"Moving!" Serena made a dash for the elevators, while Raye moved forward toward the security room. As Serena moved around the corner, she saw the bank of elevators, three of them, and ran toward the center one. Suddenly, two guards popped out from behind a pair of support columns and started to fire their Howa Type 89 assault rifles at her. She tried to get out of the way, hiding behind a vending machine selling ramen noodles but a bullet clipped her in the chest. Serena fell down, clutching at the place where the bullet had hit her. Fortunately, she was wearing a bullet resistant vest, with a ceramic plate but it still hurt like hell, and it knocked the wind out of her for a second. The two guards scrambled over, trying to see if they had eliminated their target. Serena barely recovered in time, bringing her M4 CQB up to the hip position, flipped to the full auto selector, and fired. All thirty rounds in her magazine were expended in about three seconds, but the two guards were toast. Their vests were Level IIA, rated only for pistol rounds which the 5.56 round easily penetrated. They fell back, dead.

"You okay Serena?!" Raye yelled over her radio. She had seen her friend go down.

"I'm fine, get going!"

Serena made a break for the elevator, snagging a keycard from one of the downed guards and swiping it by a card reader on the elevator. She then hit the button for the fifty-fourth floor.

Raye, at this time, had reached the door and was proceeding in a much more dynamic fashion that Lita. She simply placed a PETN charge on the door and wired it to remotely detonate.

"Got a present for ya," she smiled. Raye moved back to a safe distance and hit the detonator. The resulting explosion knocked the steel reinforced door off its hinges, into a guard, and finally bashing itself into a row of TV monitors.

Raye dashed forward, removing the pins from two flashbangs and throwing them inside the room. She stopped before she got to the door, as not to blinded by the resulting flash and deafened by the 180 decibel roar that would accompany detonation.

BANG! BANG!

The flashbangs went off, and Raye charged in. Like the intel stated, there were at least ten guards in there, including the watch commander, who was behind bulletproof glass like on the fifth floor. One guard was already down from the explosion, and several others were wounded and incapacitated from the explosion. The rest had been temporarily stunned by the flashbang. Raye did a quick sweep of remaining targets; one guard down, three immobilized and six active targets. She raised her G36K and fired, maintaining fire discipline by using three round bursts. One…two…three…four…five…five guards went down before they had the time to bring their weapons up. But again, the watch commander took cover behind the bullet proof glass. This one was no slouch; he had special operations experience and was way more prepared than the loser downstairs. Unfortunately, that didn't count for squat if you got hit square in the face with a flashbang. Which occurred when Raye tossed another over the bulletproof glass and right into his face; it detonated, completely incapacitating him. He staggered about before being cut down by the last couple rounds in Raye's G36.

"Hehe," she said, ejecting the heavy Beta-C mag and replacing it with a more conventional 30 round box magazine. "Raye, you're a fucking maniac," she said to herself.

Outside the data control center, the lone technician on duty was wondering what the hell was going on out there. It sounded like gunshots, but he couldn't be sure. If there was trouble, why hadn't the watch commander called him to start destroying the data? He waited for a few more seconds, but the loud pops and bangs were not stopping. Then someone started screaming that they were hit.

"Oh shit." The technician reached for the phone on his desk, next to the doujinshi that he was reading, and called the watch commander. Nothing. He tried again. There was still no response. The gunshots started to get closer and closer. The tech had to do something, orders or no orders. He started to delete the data from all of the servers, starting with America and moving on to Europe…

He was interrupted by the door being blown in and a lone figure rushing in through the entrance.

Serena saw the tech deleting all of the data and pointed her M4 at him.

"Stop that shit!" she screamed at him. The tech, being paid at minimum wage, was not going to die for this and immediately stopped the deleting protocol for the other servers. A huge electric surge was passed through each server, frying it completely and destroying whatever data was inside.

"What did you delete?!" she interrogated, coughing in the smoke from the destroyed servers, pointing the M4 in his face.

"I…uh…uh…"

She started to squeeze the trigger.

"It was all the data for Nakanishi's operations in America!" he replied quickly.

"Anything else?!"

"I was starting on Asia, but…"
She jabbed the weapon into his face some more, making him flinch. "That's all, I swear!"

Serena kept looking at him, not quite sure to believe him or not. After what seemed like a moment or so, she removed her weapon from the technician's face, and allowed him to breath.

"My problem is with Nakanishi, not with you. Do what I say, and you'll be fine." Serena kept a close ear on any approaching baddies, but it seemed she had eliminated most of them here and Raye had scattered the rest of them.

"I need you to send this information to this IP Address." She handed him her tablet computer.

"I don't think it works that way…" he said to her, but she glared at him.

"Okay, okay, I'll make it work…" The tech gulped and set about transferring the data to wherever this crazy girl wanted it to go. You simply didn't just transfer terabytes of data with a push of a button. Well, you could, but it did take some setup. He finally got the data transfer set up in five minutes, with Serena pacing about impatiently.

"Hurry it up already," she bitched to him.

"I'm going as fast as I can," he replied nervously. "Your connection is slowing ours down."

She tapped her foot, paced some more.

Raye came into the room.

"The security room has been cleared out and equipment destroyed," she said to Serena.

"Good. Tech guy, how much longer?!"

The data stream ended. "I'm finished," he said.

"Thank goodness. Alright then." Serena approached him threatingly; the tech flinched again. "Stay." It was like she was talking to a dog. She turned around and left with Raye, leaving the tech confused but grateful that his life had been spared.

"Lita, how are you doing?" Serena asked over the radio, still keeping a lookout for enemy guards.

"Doing just fine," Lita replied. The other civilian guards hadn't checked in, and Lita made sure that anyone coming up to the fifth floor was immediately detained and locked up. So far, she had snagged at least five random people. Despite the massive gunfight going on upstairs, no one seemed to notice it due to its distance from the rest of the guards in the building. With the control center down, they ignored it and passed it off as another one of the shenanigans those trigger-happy PMC guys up top were up to.

"How is everything up there?"

"We got all the data and we are exfiling from this facility."

Luna got the data stream almost immediately. Buried beneath all the status reports, the log files, the powerpoints, the memos, was the correspondence between Beryl and her minions detailing the information about the attacks. It took her a couple of minutes to find the emails, texts and calls, but they were there, in the open without any encryption whatsoever. Beryl must have been super cocky about that kind of stuff.

"I've got all the data containing their plans for Asia, parts of Europe, but that's it," she said in a disappointed voice. "Operation Take Hold", was the phrase that came up the most. Some fragmented conversations about America and the Middle East came up, but there was nothing concrete; especially in regards to the WMD. "What happened to the rest of it?"

"The tech started to destroy the data, and I guess he succeeded a little bit," Serena said sheepishly.

Luna sighed, but she knew that trying to get all of that information would have been a long shot in the first place, even with the full team and in good conditions. However, since Mina and Amy were in the US, they had to make do what they had.

Luna hoped that what little information they had regarding the massive terrorist attacks would be of use; otherwise, many more people were going to die in vain. She started to send out emails, SMSes, making phone calls, to anyone and everyone who would listen to them concerning "Operation Take Hold."

As she was doing so, she spotted an email concerning the CEO of the Nakanishi Group, a Mr. Ichigo Yamada.

"I would like to meet with you tomorrow in the morning, Beryl."

That didn't strike her as weird until she saw the date. It was sent only hours before, from the Nakanishi HQ.

"SAILOR Moon, new mission objective," she said over the radio. "Artemis, get Ichigo Yamada's address up!"

"Got it!"

It was somewhere on the outskirts of Tokyo…kind of. It was a large mansion, even by American standards. Supposedly, eminent domain had been used to build the place, an obvious misuse of government power.

"What's the new objective?" Serena asked, exiting the elevator in the basement and walking toward their Kei car. No guards in sight.

"Ichigo Yamada, he's in his mansion in Miyawaki."

"That's pretty far away," Lita said. "I don't know if we can make it in this tiny Kei car."

"You're going to have to. These terrorist attacks are going to start soon and I don't know if I can get all the law enforcement agencies to cooperate and to accept the data as factual. For all they know, I'm just a crank caller."

That was a real possibility, considering that the SAILOR unit did not officially exist. That was a risk that they were just going to have to take though.

"How many hours to the terrorist attacks?"

Luna looked at the time on her watch. Four hours. At least the SAILOR team had been quick about it.

"Four hours remain. Better hurry."

"Understood, send us the directions." Serena motioned to Raye to get into the driver's seat. Raye replied with a roll of the eyes, but she complied, jumping into the seat and starting the Kei car up.

Artemis sent the directions from his computer to their HUDs.

"Got it," Serena said. She looked over at Lita, who seemed to be wiped out, as she was leaning against the car, holding her prosthetic arm.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm just a bit tired."

Serena believed her. "Alright then. Hope on in. We're off to see the wizard."

Lita pulled herself together and got into the back seat, with Serena close behind. Seeing that all were in the car, Raye put it into drive and pulled out of the garage, calming leaving as if nothing had happened.