Chapter 12: A Mixed Bag (Ohgi and Kallen Interlude)
(A big thank you to Siatru, and to Daemon and Grig9700 on the Tanya Writers Discord for beta reading this chapter. Happy first chapter of 2022, everybody.)
The winter sun burned bright over Tokyo on the first day of December, but without warming the Shinjuku Ghetto in the slightest. The cold winds blowing from the west the night before had brought a wet slush to the Tokyo Settlement, and now the cracked asphalt of the streets of Shinjuku was covered in a rime of filthy ice. Kaname Ohgi cursed as he nearly slid on a patch of the black ice, only maintaining his balance at the cost of pulling his hands from the warm pockets of his jacket and windmilling frantically. Grumbling with irritation, Ohgi shoved his hands back into the meager warmth of his jacket, set his shoulders against the cruel breeze that had begun whipping itself back up again, and continued on his way down the nearly empty street. The near total lack of any other pedestrians did nothing to improve the former teacher's mood, not when he knew the weather didn't explain the empty streets, nor did the presence of the sole vehicle out this morning, slowly plodding its way over the ice.
Death in Shinjuku was common, easy to come by, and generally unaccompanied by any sort of celebration or commemoration of the deceased. Children and adults alike died of disease, of hunger, of accidental injuries turning infected for lack of the antibiotics readily available outside of the walls, and by bad luck every day in Shinjuku. It was impossible to truly mourn each dead family member, every dead friend, every neighborhood face that just seemingly vanished overnight, never to be seen again. As years had dragged on and the situation had gone from bad to worse for the once-citizens of Tokyo, Ohgi had seen more men and women than he'd care to remember dying from overdoses, from self-neglect, and from violence of all types. Worst of all were the ones who died by their own hands, intentional or otherwise.
A particularly haunting memory was of a family who had lived in an apartment in the same building as him during the first winter after the Conquest, before most people had the opportunity to learn about things like heating your room in the absence of central heating or a reliable electrical supply. The father of the family had found a charcoal burning heater somewhere, possibly a sports store, and had lit it in his enclosed apartment without opening a window or door. Ohgi had helped the other young men move the bodies down four flights of stairs to the curb outside the building once they began to stink, the warmth of the heater adequate to stave off the cold that might have kept putrefaction at bay.
Hauling the bodies to the curb was more or less the extent of the funerary service in Shinjuku. Wood and other useful burnable materials were in far too high a demand to be used for pyres, not when every scrap of lumber was earmarked for desperately needed repairs and patches in crumbling Shinjuku. Being part of the urban core, non-developed land was also at a premium, and virtually every inch of land not covered in pavement was needed to grow supplemental produce, and thus was guarded jealously. No room for the dead in the ground of Shinjuku. And so, deprived of the options of honorable burial or respectful burning, the people of Shinjuku had turned to dumping their dead at the roadside. After a few sheet-wrapped bundles had begun to accrue, the surviving families or their neighbors, or in the more well-managed parts of Shinjuku the locally organized Public Committee, would club together to hire one of the few trucks available in Shinjuku and haul the dead away for dumping.
Recognizing that a complete collapse of sanitation in Shinjuku would reduce the public health of their own people sooner or later, the Britannians had designated a dumping area in the southern end of the Shinjuku Ghetto, near a heavily defended checkpoint with an entrance gate large enough to permit the passage of garbage trucks. The dumping area, cleared via bulldozer of all old structures or roads, was studded with large dumpsters, which would be regularly emptied out by the garbage trucks. These dumpsters were the only way to remove non-recyclable, non-burnable garbage from the ghetto, and were the penultimate resting places for all who died in Shinjuku, before they were carted off to a landfill who knew where by the Britannian sanitation authorities.
One such truck was slowly making its way down the street ahead of Ohgi, stopping by each ice-frosted parcel, the sheets or rags serving as shrouds wet from the cold rain and snowmelt. At each stop, two men riding on the tailgate jumped down and began tossing the bodies up onto the open bed of the truck as quickly as possible, showing as much regard for the dead as they would for any other trash. Dimly, Ohgi noted that the truck bed was already nearly covered in a layer of wrapped bodies, and the back of the bed near the cab was double-stacked already. Busy day for the haulers.
Lately, the haulers had been doing a very brisk business. Between the ongoing spat of gang wars, the cold wet air that leached heat from frail bodies, and the already abandoned effort to retrieve the bodies from the collapsed portions of Shinjuku-gyoemmae Station before they began to stink, the going rate for their services had climbed rapidly. While the necessity of the haulers' services was obvious, it was galling for Ohgi to think about anybody profiting off the misery of his people, and the fact that at least some of the hauling crews were affiliated to various gangs rubbed salt in the wound. It made a kind of sense – after all, getting fuel and spare parts in the ghetto practically required gang connections – but the idea that the gangs were getting paid to clean up the unfortunates caught up in their war...
Reaching the next intersection, Ohgi thankfully turned his back on the truck and its grim burden, doing his best to shift his mind away from yet another horrible aspect of life in Shinjuku he could do nothing about. Instead, the teacher-and-rebel leader turned his mind towards a task he had, if he were being honest, been putting off for the last two days. Today's going to be the day, though, Ohgi resolved as he turned his wandering feet back towards the apartment he shared with Naoto and Tanya. Further delay's not going to help anybody, and Tanya's out of the house today.
Apparently, Kallen had taken the initiative and had invited Tanya on another trip through the Tokyo Settlement. Ostensibly, it was to get a second opinion on various food and second-hand clothing purchases the Rising Sun was planning, as well as to get the younger girl's feedback in regards to an idea Souichiro of all people had come up with.
The former police officer, from a family native to the rural province of Gunma, had proposed that Rising Sun purchase laying chickens and the materials to create a number of coops around the Shinjuku Ghetto, to provide a steady source of eggs, meat, and employment to the locals. The birds could be fed in part with plant material inedible to humans, Souichiro had claimed, and partly with cheap grains purchased in bulk, and would help provide greater self-sufficiency to the Ghetto. Ohgi personally wasn't entirely on board with the idea, since any potential yield from the coops would be months in coming, months when the cheap grain fed to the birds could be used to feed the people instead, but he was content to follow Tanya's lead on the proposal.
More importantly from Ohgi's point of view was that Tanya's outing with Kallen was clearly an excuse for Kallen to hang out and socialize with her nominal junior, with a work topic acting as justification to convince the overly-diligent Tanya to quit working and enjoy a day of walking around the Britannian Concession. Ohgi wished the redheaded girl good luck with her endeavor, and hoped she took the opportunity to feed Tanya a large meal in the process; he knew that getting Tanya to quit focusing on work long enough to eat, much less have any sort of fun, was a herculean task. Kallen's annoyingly stubborn too, so she's got a chance. Ohgi smirked slightly as he leaned into the chilly wind at the idea of the battle of wills no doubt unfolding, amusing himself with the image of Kallen dragging a recalcitrant Tanya away from a rack of canned goods and towards a restaurant. And while Tanya's out and about, I've got a chance to sit down and talk to Naoto without worrying about being overheard by a certain blonde menace. While the tone of his internal monologue was full of affectionate amusement, Ohgi was quietly thankful for the chance to sit down with his old friend and speak freely. Tanya's a good kid, but the way she takes things sometimes...
That last thought was accompanied by a guilty wince, as Ohgi remembered how the girl's Britannian blue eyes had widened in shock and undeniable pain at his poorly considered choice of words. Ohgi had somewhat forgotten, in light of her intelligence and successes, that Tanya was still a child, and still undeniably scarred by her experiences at the hands of the Britannians as a result of growing up in Shinjuku. While he doubted that she knew the exact details of her mother's death, a child as smart as Hajime Tanya would certainly have realized that her mother had been killed by Britannians, and that would have made the idea of being "Britannian" even more unpalatable. The way she'd reeled back when he'd carelessly said that he'd felt like a Britannian while executing her plan had been painful, and the way she'd begun to panic when he said she needed help even moreso. The former had been a lapse of judgment, but the later had been a genuine offer of assistance, and seeing her react so poorly to his desire to help her stung.
I'll have to make the Brit comment up to her somehow, but I wasn't wrong about her needing help, dammit! It was weird seeing a blonde-haired blue-eyed child dying of karoshi, but the symptoms were clear to Ohgi. In a very peculiar way, he reflected, her willingness to obsessively work her way into the grave truly made her Japanese at a level where neither hair nor eye color mattered. Not that they ever did, not to anybody willing to think straight. Anyone who helps our people is Japanese to me.
A few thankfully short minutes later, and Ohgi was back in the relative warmth of the shared apartment. While by no means toasty, the intact walls and ceiling at the very least kept out the worst of the cold. Naoto was seated at the table, scribbling away at something, but looked up and waved as Ohgi entered and pulled his boots off.
"How was your walk? Did it start sleeting again?" Naoto's typically friendly smile, while undoubtedly sincere, looked a tad forced, and Ohgi noted that the bottle of cheap homemade sake his friend had cracked open shortly before he'd left was nearly empty already.
"Thankfully not – there's ice all over everything, though. Hopefully it'll thaw before it rains again." Ohgi collapsed into a chair at the table, groaning with satisfaction and relief as his weary feet rejoiced in the break. "The haulers are out in force today, though. Looks like they've finally stopped digging around in the old station."
Naoto grimaced at that, and shoved the paper and pen away. Ohgi caught the pen as it tried to roll off the edge of the table, and out of curiosity stole a quick look at the paper. Naoto's usual fine handwriting, a product of remedial etiquette lessons imparted on a noble black sheep welcomed back to the fold, was sloppy and dense on the page, but it appeared to be a letter to his mother. No wonder he was drinking, he's trying to explain why he let Kallen fight. Best of luck with that, buddy.
Naoto smiled wanly at Ohgi's sympathetic look. "She's pissed, bro. If I wasn't already a bastard, I think she'd be demanding my father disinherit me for letting her baby girl get involved."
Ohgi chuckled weakly, remembering times his high-school aged self had visited the Kozuki residence. Kallen hadn't inherited her fiery temper solely from her redheaded father – back before the Conquest, and before her mental decline had set in earnest, Miss Kozuki had never concealed the sharper side of her tongue as she chided her rogue of a son and his slacker of a best friend. While he doubted that fearsome temper had survived intact the traumas and degradations of the last half-decade, Ohgi was sure that Mama Kozuki had strong words for anybody who led her baby girl into danger.
Remembering the danger said baby girl had been led into, Ohgi's laughter trailed off, and he let the amusement fall away. Seeing his change in mood, Naoto likewise let his smile drop, and the vague, alcohol-fueled mistiness of his eyes faded slightly as the leader of their cell pulled on his business persona. "What do you want to talk about, Ohgi? I know that look – spit it out."
No time like the present. "It's been two days since we carried out Tanya's plan. How are you feeling, now that some time's passed?"
Naoto drummed his fingers on the scarred wood of the table for a second, then again, not a nervous gesture but an old tick he'd had since high-school that always returned when he was presented with a tricky question. After a moment, the hand smacked lightly against the table, the fingers' frenetic movements stilled against the surface.
"Frankly, I'm absolutely astonished that everything worked out so well." Naoto's tone was straightforward, but an undeniable hint of wonder touched his voice as he began. "I mean, we both knew Tanya's plenty smart and all that, but when she came up with that plan... I almost laughed at the audacity, Ohgi! Decapitating an entire gang through the use of synchronized bombs, and then just running in and shooting everybody who'd somehow survived, all as a means of raising funds for that front charity she set up?"
Naoto barked a laugh, sharp-edged but appreciative. "But then she actually pulled it off! I never would've believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes!" A broad smile pulled its way across Naoto's face as Ohgi fervently nodded. It really had been a time when "seeing is believing". For better or worse, Tanya had proven that her first time returning to her comrades slick with blood and a truck full of captured supplies hadn't been a fluke.
"She delivered everything she promised and more, Ohgi. Enough ammunition to put at least two of those rifles we captured to use, at least for a bit. Enough speed, horse, oxy, and hash, and enough currency to keep the cell supplied for a year, with plenty left over for Rising Sun to keep feeding our people for at least a few more months, and maybe enough to expand past soup kitchens and clothes distribution. Not to mention the absolute destruction of one of the largest gangs in Shinjuku as a fighting force!" Naoto's eyes almost seemed to glow with combined wonder and glee, sharpening with satisfaction at the mention of the Kokuryu-kai's fate. "I don't even know if the whole gang war that's erupted since then was intentional or not, but with all the gangs at each other's throats, nobody's looking for us, especially not after that Purist bastard Kewell all but publicly claimed responsibility. We got everything we wanted, and still nobody knows we even exist."
Ohgi waited a moment as Naoto paused, waiting to see if the enthusiastic burst would continue, before asking his next question. "Do you have any... reservations, regrets, about the mission, or about the plan?"
Naoto smiled again at that, the earlier broad smile narrowing into a sharper, toothier expression. "Nope. At first, I was kinda shocked – never seen something like that before, y'know – and it definitely took an extra drink or three to get to sleep that night. That said..." He paused, seemingly considering what he wanted to say, before continuing. "That said, Tanya was absolutely correct about those gangsters. Whatever else they were, they were predators and scavengers, and were helping the Britannians pluck meat from our bones. Maybe that wasn't their intention, maybe they just wanted to make their own lives less miserable, but that's what they were all doing. Fuck 'em."
Naoto seemed to realize he'd started leaning in as he'd talked, and pushed back against the table, tipping back slightly on his chair's rear legs, before slamming back forwards with a wry laugh. "The only regret I've got is letting Kallen go along, but... I don't think I'm going to win that fight. Tanya was right about that too – she's part of this, and trying to hold her back isn't going to do her or anybody else any good. I was kinda hoping that seeing all that would... I dunno, make her more interested in being a schoolgirl, but I doubt that's gonna happen. Kallen was kinda shocked too, y'know, but she's even more of a fighter than I am – and now that she's killed again, and tasted a real victory again, not just winning a street fight... She's not gonna stop, no matter how angry Mom gets."
Ohgi nodded along, in full agreement with his old friend. The teacher in him quailed at the thought, but the survivor and the rebel nodded their agreement. Making a fifteen year old, a girl he remembered as a bubbly elementary and middle school student who'd loved drawing pictures for her mother, carry a gun and kill in the name of a free Japan was evil, but what was done was done. The teacher was in agreement with the rest of him about the cruelty of children, and the addictive nature of power – and what power was greater than that of holding life or death over the heads of others? When Kallen had stabbed that man to death after he'd tried to attack her and Tanya, perhaps there was still a chance for her to walk away from the savage joy of victory, and of killing, but now Ohgi was sure that opportunity had passed. The first time's the hardest... But it gets easier.
Ohgi remembered his own first kill, a desperate business months after the collapse of the Japanese government and all social order, when the Britannians had yet to implement even the scant handful of public health and humanitarian policies they'd later adopt. It had been a fight over the last few cans of food in an emergency shelter, originally designed to shelter survivors in the event of severe earthquakes or typhoons. Ohgi had remembered seeing the 'designated shelter' sign over a locked door in a shop in Asakusa in happier days. Half-starved and lacking for any better ideas, Ohgi had limped his way there, finding the lock already broken and the door ajar. The confrontation with the man, older and weaker than even his starving body, had been brutal. The only light in that shelter had been the other man's flashlight, swinging crazily and reflecting off the dull steel of Ohgi's pipe as he'd brought it down again and again and again, driven by desperate hunger and rage that the old bastard hadn't even been willing to give him a single can of ancient rations to stave off the overwhelming hunger.
After that horrible ten minutes of violence, and after he'd glutted himself on one of the three cans of survival rations still left in the shelter, Ohgi had curled up a meter away from the corpse and cried himself to sleep. He'd taken what he could carry and left hours later, desperate to get away from the horror he'd perpetrated in that basement shelter, weeping for what he had done and for all that he had lost.
The second kill had been far easier, both in execution and justification. Sorry Naoto, but if she hasn't turned back now, she's not going to.
"I think you're right about that, Naoto." Ohgi returned to the topic at hand, externalizing his agreement with his leader's conclusions. "Do you resent Tanya for helping Kallen down that path?"
"Nope." Naoto's reply was surprisingly fast, nearly overlapping with the end of Ohgi's question. Clearly, Ohgi thought, he'd been expecting that line of inquiry. "Much as I'd like to give in to temptation and shoot the messenger, I'm in charge and I made the call." A moment of drumming, before "I can't let myself treat Kallen any differently than the rest of the cell, and Tanya was right to back her up. I still think she's way too young for this, but, hey, Tanya said it herself, she's not too young for the Britannians to kill her if they ever learn about just my crimes alone." That somewhat fatalistic assessment left a heavy silent moment behind, before Naoto broke the silence once again. "Plus, it's really hard to be angry with Tanya when she's working so hard and still not eating. We've gotta figure out a way to get that girl to chill out, Ohgi, before shit gets worse."
And on that happy, mutually agreed note, their little conference broke up. Naoto returned to his letter, vainly trying to dodge maternal disapproval, as Ohgi pulled his boots back on. If he remembered the schedule Tanya had drawn up correctly, Tamaki and Inoue should both be at the Rising Sun's building today. They'd certainly welcome an extra hand, and there'd be plenty of opportunities for him to talk to each of them on their own during the day. Might even make packing those food packages a bit less tedious.
Both of his cell-mates lived up to his expectations, both very busy handling the crowd of desperate Japanese looking for extra layers, for extra food, and for able hands that could help patch shattered windows or holed walls. Inoue was busy helping people find clothes that would fit various family members, while Tamaki was burning through the prepared stack of food packages, pressing box after box into the arms of gratefully bowing ghetto dwellers. Both were clearly busy, so Ohgi put off his intended conversations for the moment and hastily began packing more boxes with food, multivitamins, and chocolate bars for four for a day.
After hours of fulfilling labor, with aching arms and a sore back, the stream of the desperate and the dispossessed slowly shrank to a more manageable level. The bitter cold of the early winter winds kept all but the most determined huddled around whatever heaters they could fuel or fires they could start, giving Ohgi the opportunity to take Tamaki aside for a quick smoke break. The younger man eagerly accepted, jumping on the excuse to get away from the distribution line for a moment, and even more eager to bum a cigarette from Ohgi – a Britannian import, not one of the so-called "hafu" hand-rolled smokes common in Shinjuku, so called because they were half trash and half tobacco, or at least half the alleged tobacco smuggled into the ghetto by the various gangs. Ohgi obliged, and after giving Tamaki a moment to get his coffin nail lit and going, took the opportunity to ask how his comrade was doing.
"Shit's going great, man. Did I tell you about the gym me and a couple of my bros got set up?" Tamaki's free hand gestured enthusiastically as babbled on. "I mean, it's not really a gym, I guess, not any real equipment or nothin', but it's not too hard to find heavy shit, y'know? Chizuo found these pipes, y'see, and welded the bottom of each shut, and then we filled each with some sand and welded the other end shut – homemade weights, y'see? Perfect for benching and blasting my pecs a bit!"
"Sounds like fun. I'm glad you and your friends managed to get something like that set up." Tamaki's enthusiasm appeared to be just as purely felt as any other emotion the hothead ever felt. I'm glad there's at least one person who doesn't try to hide their emotions. It's refreshing.
Soon, Tamaki's chatter about the improvised gym wound down, and as he took a long puff, Ohgi discarded subtlety. Taking a quick look around to check for evesdroppers and finding none, Ohgi leaned in close and asked "It's been two days since our little... job. Now that the celebration's over, what do you think about what we did?"
Tamaki exhaled a long plume of smoke, quickly snatched away by the damp wind, and smiled at his superior. "It was fuckin' incredible, wasn't it? I mean, don't get me wrong now, I wish those had all been Brits – would've been a hell of a lot more satisfyin' to put bullets in Brit heads, I'll tell you that for sure."
The younger man paused for another puff, and another long exhale, the fierce joy slowly transmuting into a more pensive mien as the wind snatched away the smoke issuing from his lips. "I think my pops would be proud of us, y'know? He was a cop, died back during the Conquest. They say he was trying to help get people outta Shinjuku once the Brits started shellin' the place, but I dunno about that. Doesn't really matter, I guess. I dunno if he'd be happy about us killin' folks, even if they are gangster scum, but I bet he'd be happy we're doin' what we can to look out for the good people here in Shinjuku."
Ohgi nodded along, content to stay quiet and listen. He kept a wary eye open, making sure that none of the men and women walking past their location huddled in the alley beside the Rising Sun building towards the door and the promise of food and warmth inside looked too interested in them, but nobody seemed interested in two men stealing a quick smoke out in the cold.
"Y'know, at first I was kinda unhappy that we were gonna sneak-attack the place. I mean, if nobody knows we did it, there's not really any glory, is there? And no glory means no rep, no babes hangin' off me and all that..." Tamaki chuckled at that, grinding out his butt against the wall before pulling a baggy out his pocket and carefully peeling the paper away, dumping the leftover shreds of tobacco into the bag. "But, well... That was a stupid thought, just a drunk thought. I mean, babes are nice and all that, but...This is the real deal now, ain't it? We're not screwin' around and robbing shit anymore, this is serious. This is how we're gonna free Japan, Ohgi, or at least make the Brit bastards hurt for once. One bloodbath after another."
Ohgi handed his cigarette butt over to Tamaki, who quickly stripped the surviving tabacco out before flicking the filter away into the alley. "I dunno how many more bloodbaths we're gonna see, Ohgi, but I ain't gonna regret a single one, not until the Brits are all gone away." Tamaki tucked the bag away back in his coat, and the two men began making their way back into the warmth of the Benevolent Association's building. "I just hope I live long enough to brag to everybody about how many of the bastards I killed along the way! The honeys won't be able to keep their hands away, you'll see!"
Thankfully, Ohgi didn't have to brave the cold of the evening again to buttonhole Inoue. As soon as he and Tamaki returned to the open room that made up most of the first floor of the Rising Sun's building, Inoue immediately grabbed Tamaki and put him back to work before he had the chance to wander off again, chiding him for taking a break without telling her and Ohgi for enabling his escape from work. Soon, both men found themselves once more distributing boxes of food to the hungry residents of Shinjuku. A few minutes of ignoring Tamaki moaning about his tragic fate to suffer under such harsh discipline later, Ohgi demonstrated his leadership skill by delegating the remaining work to his subordinate's capable hands.
Inoue was seated at a small, rickety desk in the semi-separate room at the rear of the first floor. Back when the building had been home to an insurance agency, the small room had been some sort of conference room or office, separated from the main room by a glass wall and sliding door. The frame of the first remained, but all the glass was long since shattered, leaving an illusion of separation rather than a truly separate room. This small area housed what could be called the office area of the Rising Sun, including the ledgers describing both donations and "donations" made to the Benevolent Association, as well as other books tracking purchases made with that money and records tracking how much aid had been distributed to the people of Shinjuku per day, and of what variety. The books were, as Ohgi knew, best characterized as creative fiction, reasonably close to the truth but full of holes and unexplained transactions that obfuscated both the source of much of the money and expenditures like how much fuel had been purchased for the Rising Sun's rented trucks.
As Ohgi approached, Inoue looked up from the ledger she was transcribing the day's distributions into, and waved Ohgi over to a stool on the opposite side of her desk. She looked as put together as always, indigo hair neatly combed and pinned back, a faint furrow on her brow from glaring at ledgers in dim light all day, and grey eyes brimming with a fierce intelligence. While Naoto's leadership had bound the group together and Ohgi's social skills had kept the members of the cell on the same page, Naomi Inoue's negotiating ability and connections with the various factions and blackmarket operations had kept the cell armed and supplied, albeit with Naoto's money. Tired from hauling boxes and reasoning that any attempt at subtlety would immediately be seen through by the cell's logistics officer, Ohgi didn't bother beating around the bush. "Hey, Inoue, it's been two days. How are you holding up?"
"It was very profitable, our mission, and for that I'm glad." Inoue leaned back in her chair, ignoring the ominous creaking, and smiled at Ohgi. "I'm sure Tanya put you up to this, right? 'Hey, Ohgi, make sure everybody's doing okay and still likes me.' That sounds like her."
Ohgi laughed at that. Apart from him and Naoto, and perhaps of late Kallen, of the cell members Inoue had spent the most time with the youngest member of the Kozuki Organization. Between familiarizing herself with how business was done in Shinjuku, keeping the Rising Sun operating, and planning out the cell's future expenditures as Tanya had planned out her latest and greatest operation, the two had spent quite a bit of time together. Unlike any other member of the cell, the blonde had taken to Inoue's world like a duck to water, seeming to understand all the lessons the older woman had to teach almost instinctively. While Ohgi saw the girl as a promising student, with – if he were being honest with himself – the slightest dash of paternal affection, he was fairly sure that Inoue saw her as a protege who would one day surpass her master. As such, it was unsurprising that she'd recognize Tanya's hand behind his movements, although he'd been planning on speaking with the various cell members even before his post-celebration conversation with Tanya.
"Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was going to do it anyway, but when a spooky little girl tells you to check up on everybody, you'd be a fool to ignore the warning." The words were light, but Ohgi meant them nonetheless. Perhaps by dint of surviving in the ghetto as an obvious and malnourished outsider, Tanya had cultivated an extraordinary degree of empathy, although one that manifested itself in strange ways. At times her behavior was almost overly-solicitous about the health and well-being of her fellow comrades, while at others she flinched away from even the most casual touch, eyes wide like a hunted animal.
That said, even if Tanya's perceptiveness was born of paranoia and thus tainted, Ohgi couldn't blame her for it and wouldn't ignore her recommendations. Anybody who had survived five years of nigh-solitary life in Shinjuku, and anybody who could unleash the frighteningly effective violence that always seemed to bubble just beneath that porcelain skin, was well worth listening to. Especially if they were none-too-subtly warning that your fellows might be on the edge of a post-traumatic psychological break.
Inoue laughed and nodded. "I get that. Well, you can tell her that I'm fine, whenever you next see her. Those gangsters were a pack of thieving, raping murderers, and I don't regret killing a single one of them. Plus, thanks to everything we took from that pit, the Rising Sun and our own organization will be adequately funded for some time, so it was absolutely worth a few sleepless nights."
The chair's front legs landed back on the floor with a loud thump as Inoue straightened back up, ticking points off her fingers. "Yeah, I had a few nights of bad sleep. I've never seen something like that before, and seeing that much raw, shredded meat would make me a vegetarian if we had that sort of luxury. Yes, I'm concerned about the civilians who are undoubtedly getting caught in the crossfire of the gang war even now as I'm talking with you, but nobody thought the gangs would just go away peacefully." The logistics officer paused for a moment, before shaking her head with irritation. "Honestly, the only things that truly concern me are the impact on the Shinjuku market scene, and Tanya's garbage excuse for a diet."
Ohgi hummed in agreement. "I think I know where you're coming from on the later, but I'm not as sure that I fully understand the former concern. What sort of impact are you expecting our actions are gonna have on the blackmarket?"
"We're going to see the death of the middle level of the market, at least for a while." Inoue replied bluntly. "The family and individual level barterers aren't going anywhere, and the big fish that cater to the Britannians'... appetites," Her lip curled with disgust and scorn, "aren't going anywhere, they're just going to beef up their security. But the weekly meets? Those are done. They're not coming back. Even if the gangs decide a week from now to stop ripping out each other's throats, the stability and organization of the whole structure's been toppled."
Inoue tapped her cheek with the pen she'd been using before Ohgi had walked in, her expression pensive as Ohgi carefully listened. "This is going to have significant knock-on effects, Ohgi, both positive and negative for us. On the negative side for everybody but the Brits, it's gonna sharply reduce any sort of economic activity in the ghetto. The low level barter economy can't keep up, and once the gangs start smuggling goods back into Shinjuku, they're probably going to pursue more of an individual retail approach, rather than selling things to smaller groups at weekly meets, who'd turn around and sell the goods to everybody else. Nobody's got the infrastructure to fill that void right now, so everybody's gonna go short-handed. On the plus side for us, that's going to break the gangster's stranglehold over the market in Shinjuku in the long run, as people find alternative sources for staples and learn to do without everything they can't find. On the negative side specifically for us, it's gonna be a lot harder to buy weapons since somebody blew up a weapon's market and killed everybody in attendance. I could go on, but I think you've got the idea."
Ohgi nodded thoughtfully. Everything Inoue said made sense, and in retrospect seemed like the obvious results of a major bombing attack. He wondered why none of these possible effects had occurred to him when he and Naoto had signed off on Tanya's plan. Probably just tunnel vision – we got too focused on if we could do it to wonder "what next?"
"Thanks. I'll have to go over all that with Naoto. I know Tanya was talking about trying to increase the quantity of food shipped into Shinjuku, and Souichiro had that chicken idea, but if you're sure that the availability of other goods is going to take a nosedive too... We should see if we can expand our inventory range a bit." Ohgi found a dogearred scrap of notebook paper that didn't look like it had anything important written on it and started jotting down notes. "I'm assuming that medicines are going to be at the top of the list, right? That could be tricky – buying generics in bulk is probably gonna require some sort of contact, and we won't be able to bring in insulin or anything else that requires special care... Gotta find out who needs what, and how to get people what they need..."
"I've already got something started on that score." Inoue reached down into one of the desk drawers and hauled out a folder stuffed full of pages of notes. "I've been talking to the people who've been coming in to get food and clothes, and asking them if any of their family members or neighbors have any conditions they need medicine for. Thankfully," Inoue's face tightened at the word, but she pressed on. "Thankfully, very few people with chronic conditions live long in Shinjuku, so we won't be needing to worry about insulin. While I would like to find some way to get these people the medicines they've been relying on gang imports for, I think we should focus on ramping up the multivitamin supply and increase the amount of antibiotics Rising Sun has in stock, as well as building up a supply of pain killers, although we'll have to be careful about that last one. Anti-inflammatory pills would help relieve some chronic pain, which might increase the number of people who can work, which makes them a priority. And, birth control pills, for both reducing period pain and also as contraceptives."
Ohgi quickly jotted down the list of suggestions as Inoue continued. "Alright, leaving the medication question aside until we find some way to source generics without bankrupting Rising Sun... We've begun buying up some water filtration kits for people to use in their apartments, but we should try to expand that effort... We need to find a way to get more cooking fuel in, since supplies from the gangs are going to be scarcer and more expensive... Coats and blankets, and waterproofing materials..."
Tearing his mind away from the rabbit hole of all the many, many needs of the Shinjuku Ghetto, Ohgi remembered that Inoue had expressed a concern beyond the market supply question. "Oh, before we get too distracted, wasn't there something else you wanted to talk about?"
Inoue snorted, and shoved the multiple folders of notes she'd begun to pour over back into the desk. "Yes, Ohgi, there was. Namely how Tanya's apparently trying to work herself into the grave, and how she only eats when prompted to do so." Inoue shook her head with annoyance, before glaring at Ohgi, who resisted the urge to quail away from the look of righteous fury that pinned him to his stool. "You're her fucking adoptive father, Ohgi – why the hell aren't you making her eat and sleep? She already looks half-dead, and I swear the only time she eats is when I hand her a sandwich while she's working and she just starts instinctively munching on it!"
"Hey, I'm not her father!" Ohgi waved his hands frantically in a fruitless attempt to deflect responsibility. "And how do you think she's responded to me and Naoto trying to convince her to eat, eh?! When Naoto suggested she fatten herself up to look like a Britannian, she stopped considering infiltration work and started planning instead! When I told her she needed to eat to be effective, she looked terrified, like I'd said I was going to kick her out on the street!" Aware that his frustration on the issue had begun to spill out into a long suppressed rant, Ohgi forced himself to calm down and take a deep breath. He'd been incredibly uncomfortable about embracing Tanya's role as a combat-capable member of the cell to begin with, and watching her stress herself out and skip meals since she'd been "promoted" hadn't helped his internal sense of guilt in the slightest. It's not Inoue's fault, he firmly reminded himself, she's just as concerned as I am, and yelling at her is unfair and stupid.
A second later, Ohgi began to speak again, more calmly this time if not the slightest bit less emphatic. "We can't order Tanya around like a kid when she's killed more people than everybody else in the cell combined, especially not since she just planned and executed the biggest and most successful operation we've ever attempted. Every attempt Naoto and I have made to convince her through logic has failed. Whenever I seem to express any concern for her in the slightest, she looks like she expects me to hit her. I don't know what to do here, Inoue."
His comrade sighed, reached across the desk, and patted Ohgi on the shoulder. "It sounds frustrating, and I'm sorry. I shouldn't have acted like you were just ignoring her." Inoue leaned back in her chair again, letting the front legs lift off the floor once more. "Maybe you're overthinking it a bit? I mean, I get what you're saying about not being able to order her around like a kid, and you're right to a degree, but... maybe you should, in this case?"
Ohgi opened his mouth, before closing it again as Inoue gestured for quiet. "No, really, I think you guys were absolutely right to take her seriously and treat her as an equal – when it comes to working for the cell. Outside of that sort of work environment, though? I hate to break it to you Ohgi, but she's still a kid. Her mom only died... what, four months ago? She'll be twelve soon, right? She needs some support, even if she'd definitely disagree about that. Sit down with her and tell her, in as unambiguous a way as possible, that you're worried for her and that she needs to eat. And then, follow that up by making sure there's always food around her. Whenever I'm working with her, I just leave some food by her, a sandwich or a bowl of soup or whatever, and she'll eat it while she's working."
Ohgi had spent a fair amount of time deliberately trying to not see Tanya as a child, someone who in another world might have been in his middle school math class. He had partially done this so he'd have less trouble taking her seriously as a comrade, but mostly it had been an effort to ignore the whole child soldier angle. As a result, while he could see the practicality of accepting Inoue's advice, he found himself loath to do so.
It's a bit late to have scruples now. You're willing to overlook Tanya's age, not to mention Kallen's, when it's beneficial to your goals, but you're not willing to cope with your bullshit enough to make sure they're as healthy and safe as they can be? And you call yourself a responsible adult...
Ohgi shivered slightly at that thought. No, I don't call myself a responsible adult. I can't. I'm just as fucked up as anyone else. I'm a murderer. I... I just want to hold onto some degree of sanity, some degree of civilization... But, anything for the cause, right? That's what Tanya said to Kallen, according to Naoto, and that's what Kallen's taken to saying too... Anything for the cause...
"You're right." The words were like chalk, and forcing them out felt like it took every ounce of will Ohgi possessed. "You're right, she is a kid. And she's not eating, and someone needs to step in."
Ohgi rose to his feet, the exhaustion of physical labor nothing compared to the spiritual exhaustion this conversation had produced. "I'll let Naoto know about your suggestions for the Rising Sun's next inventory purchase, and... And I'll sit down with Tanya over a nice big meal once she gets back from doing whatever she's up to with Kallen." Picking up the note he'd taken of their conversation, Ohgi carefully tucked it into an inner pocket of his jacket, away from any possible infiltrating sleet. "Thanks, Inoue. I think that I needed to hear that as much as anything else. Have a good evening now."
Waving goodbye to Tamaki as he left, Ohgi ventured once more out into the cold. The sun had now almost disappeared behind the skyline, and the day's icy rain was quickly becoming just ice once more on the streets of Shinjuku. Carefully picking his way down the pavement, Ohgi made his way back home, trying to marshal his thoughts for the battle of wills to come.
"Look, I know you're incredibly busy, but you've got to eat." Thus far, the talk had proceeded about as badly as Ohgi had feared. He'd returned to the apartment shortly after Tanya had, and found the girl already buried in her work. Ohgi had almost given in to the temptation to put off the confrontation in favor of joining her in planning out the cell's next move, and indeed had pulled the notes from his conversation with Inoue out with the intention of adding it to the pile of scrawled notes sitting in front of Tanya. Thinking about that note had reminded him of the end of their conversation, and Ohgi had felt the iron jaws of responsibility close around his legs. He knew he wouldn't be able to outrun the stressful social situation no matter what he tried, and so decided to take the direct approach.
From across the table, big blue eyes narrowed at him as Tanya looked up from her papers. "Naoto said he'd be back soon. I thought it would be prudent to wait until he'd returned to have dinner."
Resisting the urge to take the out she'd offered, Ohgi firmed his resolve and leaned forward. "I'm not talking about dinner specifically, I'm talking about in general. You've been skipping meals, and you only eat when someone else prompts you. Don't think I haven't noticed how you've been waking up with the sun to start working early too."
The curiosity in Tanya's eyes hardened into defensiveness, and Ohgi internally kicked himself. Dammit, too aggressive. Now she's going to start justifying herself. "It's important to work hard, not only for ourselves but for everybody in Shinjuku." Tanya's tone was cool, and at one point Ohgi would have said detached as well. Months of familiarity, coupled with his own experience dealing with recalcitrant children, let Ohgi recognize the shaky tone of fear concealed by the cold tone. She's desperate to prove herself, to be the most diligent and committed... Why? Does she think we'll look down on her otherwise? It was a silly assumption, if true, but one that made a degree of sense. The poor girl didn't get much support from her mother, from what she's let slip. She probably feels the need to prove herself so we don't ignore her too. She... wants attention? No, that's not it...
"You're right." Ohgi was slightly gratified to see her eyes widen, momentary surprise at his agreement shaking her defensiveness. Attacking her certainties isn't the right way to go. I'm not trying to tear her down, I'm trying to help her.
"The people of Shinjuku, and the rest of Japan, do need our help. And you're doing lots of very important, very impressive things to help them. You're a big help." Ladle on the encouragement, let her know that her efforts have been noticed and appreciated. "And if you want to keep helping people, you need to help yourself." Don't tell her that she's been doing anything wrong, just give her help to grow in the right direction.
"I know Naoto told you about the potential benefits of looking more Britannian, but I know that idea's got some... baggage... associated with it. In that case, let me put it this way – if you eat more, your muscles will develop better and your bones will be stronger, which will reduce the likelihood of injury and will improve your level of energy. Being more energetic will keep your genius brain working as best as it can, and it'll reduce the chance of you overlooking something or making a mistake." Her abilities and intelligence are important to her, clearly. Confirm her own self-image, but indicate a path to further achievement.
"Plus, you want to hang out with Kallen in the Britannian Concession sometimes, right?" Ohgi smiled, letting his firm 'teacher face' mellow, and winked at the impassive Tanya. Increased growth potential and stability in her own image are both carrots, but she's also a social animal, and an extra incentive never hurts anything. "If you want to go and 'reconnoiter' the Tokyo Settlement, that's perfectly fine – you don't need to be on duty all the time, and the Britannians would never expect two pretty young girls having fun at Clovisland to be terrorists. But if you look like you're about to keel over, that's gonna attract some notice, right? Plus, people might assume you're Kallen's servant, and she's been mistreating you, and you don't want to draw attention to her, yeah?"
A cautious nod was the only immediate external response Ohgi got, but he thought he saw her eyes turn thoughtful. I know you, Tanya. You overthink everything, and it's incredibly frustrating. Well, two can play that game. But now that she's thinking about it, time to give her a route forward before she gets creative and proposes her own.
"Look, you're a smart girl, so I'm sure I don't need to tell you all of this." Ohgi paused for a moment to let the praise settle, before continuing. "But we all need help sometimes, and as your superior in the cell and as your friend, I'm going to help you too. You and I are going to eat together for the next two weeks – at least two meals a day, hopefully three. You can keep working while we eat, if you want, but we're going to get you back into the habit of regular meals. After that, I'll stop nagging you to eat if you keep it up, okay?"
For a moment, Ohgi was sure that Tanya was about to either hit him or attempt an escape. Her fists tightened around her pen and her jaw worked furiously, chewing away at nothing as her eyes darted around the room. Finally, with a grudging sigh, her hands loosened and her shoulders slumped. Her eyes seemed to suddenly flatten, and she looked down at the table. "As you command, sir."
Ohgi felt his own hand twitch with sudden anger at both himself and Tanya's seemingly almost deliberate attempt to misunderstand what he was trying to say and do. Dammit, Tanya, I'm trying to help you! Can't you see that? I'm not trying to control you, I'm not trying to put you in your place! I just want you to take care of yourself!
Keeping his own jaw firmly locked, Ohgi took in one long, deep, soothing breath through his nose, and then another. "Tanya, I just don't want to see you work yourself to death. I respect you, Tanya – you're far more intelligent than I am, and you've already survived so much. You're already an incredible fighter, and you're well on your way to being an awesome leader. Please believe me when I tell you that I am not trying to humiliate you or make you submit or whatever. I'm concerned about you, and I want you to take care of yourself."
Ohgi suddenly felt like he had plunged through some hole in the floor, and was now free-falling. Being this open about his emotions, especially with a child, felt uncomfortable, especially since he'd put his foot in his mouth the last time he'd attempted sincerity. That said, Kaname Ohgi couldn't see any other option other than sincerity to convince Tanya that he said what he meant. Her fiendish mind would see through any subterfuge, and any attempt at coercion would be beyond useless.
"You'll go far, if the Britannians don't get you or you don't burn yourself out. Japan will need people like you, people with intelligence, vision, and experience, to lead us all in rebuilding ourselves when we are finally free once more. Japan needs you alive far more than she needs a martyr – and we need you, Hajime Tanya, alive too. Not just because of your raw ability, we need you for you. You've earned your position as one of us many times over – so let us help you too, just like you've helped us, okay? It's not a crime to need help. Everybody needs some help sometimes, and I want to help you when you need it."
Tanya neither moved nor visibly reacted, and Ohgi sighed once again. Another fuck-up. I screwed up somewhere along the way. Dammit.
Ohgi started to get up from his seat. He knew a lost cause when he saw one, and at least he could get dinner started for the first of their enforced shared meals. Before he could do more than shift in his seat, he faintly heard a whisper, and immediately stopped. "Sorry, Tanya, I didn't hear you."
"Thank you, Ohgi." Her voice was louder, but Tanya's tone still sounded wispy, insubstantial, quite different from her usually assured and confident presentation. Acknowledgment, even tenuous, even perhaps forced. Time to stop while I'm ahead so I don't look like I'm rubbing her nose in this "defeat".
"You're welcome, Tanya."
By the time Naoto returned with a sack full of canned sardines and three fresh oranges of mysterious providence, the latter a luxury in early winter, the pot on the hot plate was bubbling merrily, and the aromatic smell of canned beef stew had filled the apartment. Tanya was already deep into her first bowl, and Ohgi was content with a minor victory that banished the memory of the haulers and their grim cargo away – for the first time in weeks, he was sure he'd actually gotten Tanya to understand something he had said completely unambiguously. A minor victory, but hopefully the path to something far more substantial in the future.
The clock was striking thirteen as Kallen Stadtfeld neatly settled into her assigned seat during her study hall period. Every move as she folded herself down onto the cushioned chair was done just so, skirt neatly arranged over properly positioned legs, hands carefully folded demurely in her lap in perfect accordance with the etiquette lessons pounded into her head after her father had officially adopted her as his heir. The room was warm and airy, the overhead lights perfectly moderated to maintain a gentle luminescent glow ideal for contemplating one's homework; the entire artifice of the classroom was a world apart from the coldly gusting wind driving fat droplets of rain into the windows.
Kallen also felt a world apart from the introduction to physics textbook open on the desk in front of her, a diagram of a spring-scale with carefully drawn vectors ignored completely. Around her, the other young lords and ladies of the student body gossiped, chatted, and flirted with abandon, textbooks and homework alike lying ignored on their desks as well, but even that superficial similarity seemed to separate her from her peers; none of them, the youngest Kozuki was sure, had walked through an abattoir of humanity, had heard half-flayed and disemboweled men whimper for water, for their mothers, or simply moan in unfathomable pain.
The memory of those staring eyes, pupils contracted to pinpoints even in the near-darkness of the decaying train station, nearly made Kallen flinch from the memory, but grimly she pursued the images of that slaughter, refusing to let even a single detail slip away into the darkness of the tunnels. She threw the memory of pointing the pistol her friend Tanya had handed her earlier that day at supine figures at herself again and again. The first one she'd killed had been little more than hamburger, missing his right arm completely and his legs from the knees down. In all likelihood, he'd only been a bit older than herself, probably younger than Tamaki, the youngest of her brother's friends.
Kallen desperately wanted to recoil from the memory, to cram every second of the fifteen minutes or so that it had taken to end over a hundred human lives deep into her memory to never be thought of again. She'd tried to do just that with her first kill, with the sensation of driving a knife into his neck as hard as she could. Ultimately, not only had that attempt to simply run from the memory failed, Kallen had realized it was a weakness that would come back to haunt her. When she'd smelled the blood and seen the bodies on that platform, that memory and all the emotions connected to it had flooded back in, the sensory cues and the adrenaline from running and gunning her way down into the station blowing away every attempt at suppression and leaving her pale and shaking. Her Big Bro's embrace had reassured her, cradled her in a warmth she had desperately needed in that moment, but it hadn't drawn her out of that stunned state. Only Tanya's voice, as stable and as compelling as it had been on that filthy side street, had anchored her to the present and forced her to keep moving.
And moved Kallen had, joining her comrades in executing the wounded and cramming her pack with anything of value she could find. That day, in the darkness and dust of that platform, she had truly been sealed to her new comrades, and had drawn strength from the new bond she had formed with everybody there, even the two newcomers she'd only met that day. All of them had come out of that station with hands red and dripping, if only metaphorically – all of them had dipped their daggers, and been sealed together by a shared experience intimate in a way she was only beginning to grasp. The guilt had faded quickly as she drew on both her brother's and her friend's words: Their actions were unquestionably righteous, blessed by the gods of their ancestors and by the glorious cause they fought for; all whom they had killed had been scavengers and parasites, rapists and thieves, and all were willing to trade weapons for any who offered the coin, even if the hand offering that coin was sworn to the throne in Pendragon.
What had haunted Kallen after the attack had been how... easy, it had all seemed, and how good it had felt. She knew intellectually that the ease of the attack was due to the careful plans Tanya had drawn up and all the legwork and preparations her cell-mates had carried out, and that they'd had the element of surprise on their hands. Coupled with Tanya's insane levels of skill with her pistol, Tamaki and her barely keeping up with the tiny blonde, it perhaps wasn't a surprise that the stunned and disorganized survivors of the pipe bomb blasts hadn't had a chance. It had still felt too easy, though, and killing those survivors had felt almost intoxicating. The knowledge that a simple squeeze of her finger, a slight push against her palm, and a life was snuffed out... The powerful sensation as she had pointed her gun at the young triple amputee weeping on the platform... It had felt nearly godlike.
If that's what it feels like... So different from my first time... I can see why the Britannians are always so eager to murder more Japanese.
That had been what had disturbed Kallen, why she'd had difficulty sleeping of late and trouble keeping her mind on her classes or on her task of gathering intelligence. The knowledge of that high, that drug... since she had tasted that forbidden fruit, Kallen had flogged herself with the memory, the sensation, over and over again, chastising herself with the knowledge that it was wrong to feel like that, that it was one thing to kill but another entirely to enjoy it.
Cursed blood... That has to be it. My mother's Japanese, but my father's Britannian... Now that my hands are as red as our hair, I wonder if he'd still love me? It was his blood, after all, that made me like this, I'm sure...
Her outing with Tanya two days ago had helped settle Kallen's troubled mind down just a bit. Going out together for a nice day in the Britannian Concession and just doing normal things together had helped settle her frenzied mind, and had helped her remember just what normality was. Sure, they were checking the prices of water filtration devices and warm sleeping bags, of bulk bottles of aspirin and of cheap yet serviceable shoes, all for the Rising Sun's future purchases, but they'd done normal stuff too. She'd managed to haul Tanya into a department store to try on some new clothes, but Tanya had only let her buy her a pair of gray canvas pants and a black down jacket, plus some fresh socks and underwear. Decidedly not cute, but Kallen could concede their practicality for walking around in Shinjuku without drawing unwanted attention.
After their brief clothes shopping trip, Kallen had bribed Tanya out of her sulk with a quick trip to a crepes store she'd discovered a few weeks earlier on her way back home from Ashford. After promising to pay for everything, Kallen had pressed her advantage as the sponsor of the trip and had bullied Tanya into ordering a particularly large crepe, full of fruit and whipped cream, with hazelnut spread on the interior of the pastry and chocolate syrup drizzled over the cream. It had taken some doing to get the damned waif to accept the crepe, but once she'd started to dig in it had been remarkable how fast Tanya had destroyed the crepe. The look of pure blissful satisfaction as she'd reclined in her chair like a sated lion had made the expenditure and the effort entirely worthwhile, in Kallen's book.
Smiling faintly from the memory of a sleepy Tanya, face smeared with whipped cream, Kallen pulled herself back into the present. Her information gathering efforts had already yielded fruit when she'd dug up Kewell Soresi's name and connections with the Purist Faction. That tidbit had been seamlessly incorporated into Tanya's plan to sow chaos and disorder between the gangs and the Britannians, and between the competing factions in the Area Eleven Administration, and the squabbles that Lord Kewell's press conference had kicked off continued, with statements from both sides of the dispute mysteriously "leaking" to the press, who published the potshots with barely concealed glee. The Shinjuku Bombing had become a minor scandal to one side and a symbol of victory to the other, and as the Britannians sniped at each other nobody seemed to notice or care about anything actually happening in the Ghetto.
Just as planned.
Now that Kallen had a definite victory under her belt, a sign that her efforts to gather intelligence from the careless lips of the Ashford student body were worthwhile, it was time to expand her operation. Up until now, she'd simply wandered the halls of Ashford, flitting like a proper social butterfly from engagement to engagement. This was all well and good, as it made her a known and welcome quantity at any number of social engagements with any number of social groups among the students, but it also made it difficult to dig or to show interest without tipping her hand. As a social butterfly she was innocuous, but it also only gave her a cursory amount of information about any one topic before the flow of conversation moved on. Such surface level intelligence was useful for garnishes like pinning the responsibility for the bombing on Kewell, Kallen thought, but very little beyond that.
The question, then, wasn't whether or not Kallen should plunge herself deeper into the social scene of Ashford Academy, but how she should do so.
Milly Ashford, granddaughter of the principal and pain in Kallen's ass, had casually mentioned months ago how she had free access to the school administration's records, a freedom that she freely abused to discover the personal details of students that caught her eye. Unfortunately, attempts to get said details out of the infuriating girl had proven fruitless; Kallen didn't know what game they were playing, nor the rules, but she was certain that Milly held the high score and was simply toying with her. It was an infuriating situation for a number of reasons, but Kallen couldn't figure out any way to lever the former heiress's secrets out. She had considered simply abandoning the social game, cease trying to win Milly's friendship, and simply breaking into the school office and going through the records herself, but Kallen had regretfully abandoned that idea almost immediately. Who knew what kind of surveillance was operating in Ashford, or what kind of security forces would respond to a potential burglar? If she was caught in the act, her life as Kallen Stadtfeld would be over, and her background would be carefully examined – Naoto would surely be brought in, and it was all downhill from there after that.
Another potential strategy would be cozying up with the other notable gossips around the school. Like any high school, and doubly so for a place crammed with the cream of the local good and great, there was no shortage of gossip-mongers, and some were so well informed and sought after to be practical queens of the school – or at the very least duchesses, as none contested Milly's dominance over the student body. Kallen had considered attempting to ingratiate herself with one of these social power-brokers, but had quickly discarded that idea as well. Such a strategy had all the same drawbacks as dealing with Milly. Furthermore, the only way to buy her way into such social circles was if Kallen had particularly choice morsels of gossip to offer. Since all of the morsels she had that might be considered interesting were in some way tied to her rebel cell's interests, Kallen thought it would be a very bad idea to let anybody know exactly what information she had been collecting. Besides, people as socially savvy as those gossips certainly would realize what sort of information Kallen was looking for, which was another way her secret life could end up exposed. And so, just like her fantasy of burglarizing the school office, Kallen dismissed that idea as well.
After dismissing her first two ideas, Kallen was left with her third idea, the safest by far of the three. So far, she hadn't committed to any particular extracurricular activities, despite Milly's chiding to "get engaged and meet some cute boys – or girls!" Reluctant as Kallen was to go along with any suggestions from that particular blonde, joining an extracurricular organization would give her an excuse to snoop and probe, if she could hide behind the purposes of her chosen club. In that light, either the yearbook club or the student newspaper would serve her purposes – the yearbook club was constantly watching the student body, constantly snapping pictures, while the student newspaper under Milly's reign had a practically free hand to interrogate any student they desired, so long as they wrote sufficiently entertaining stories. Of the two options, the student newspaper was definitely the preferable choice; in between investigating whatever inane stories she was tasked with, Kallen would have plenty of options to follow up on any tasty morsels some fool let slip, all in the name of "journalistic rigor".
Soon, the bell indicating the end of Kallen's study hall period rang, heralding the start of her brief window of lunchtime freedom. Sandwich in hand, Kallen made a beeline to the office of the faculty advisor in charge of the newspaper, and caught the man before he'd left his office for his own lunch. It was the work of three minutes to sign up for the newspaper club, complete with a handshake from the amused teacher as he ushered her back out of his office so he could lock up. To Kallen's mingled surprise and annoyance, Milly Ashford was waiting for her outside the teacher's office, her smirking smile as broad as ever as she casually leaned against the far wall.
"How'd you find me here?" Kallen couldn't help herself, the surprise loosening her tongue just long enough for her annoyance to take control. Immediately, she snapped her mouth shut, blushing at the momentary lapse as that infuriating bitch Milly chuckled, a demure hand to her mouth somehow making her laughing face even more intensely irritating than her typical smirk.
"Oh, a little bird told me a certain redhead was sneaking into a teacher's office for a lunchtime rendezvous." To Kallen's disbelief, one of Milly's eyes closed in a lascivious wink, and that awful smile seemed to grow somehow more eminently punchable. Kallen quickly looked around for the teacher, hoping he'd been close enough to hear that comment and take the other girl to task for her insinuation, but the educator had clearly known what was good for him and was power-walking away down the hall.
The useless bastard!
"Congrats on finally signing up for some extracurriculars! It's good for us girls to get used to taking on a hefty, meaty schedule – don't you agree?" Cursing her blushing cheeks, Kallen resigned herself to enduring another conversation with Milly, and fervently hoped for an opportunity to escape. Milly, for her part, looked like she was enjoying every drop of Kallen's embarrassment, an inquisitive eyebrow raised over a nakedly amorous grin. "I know you've been toying around with the possibility for a while, Kallen, but as your friend, I'm happy to see you stretch yourself out a bit!"
Kallen felt helplessly at sea, totally out of control of the conversation. The embarrassment at Milly's crass sayings fed her desire to once again taste that power of being the one dishing out the pain, which slammed up against the need for self-control. Why is she messing with me like this, dammit?! Doesn't she know how furious it makes me?!
The internal whining was surprisingly helpful. As Kallen attempted to answer her own question and ignore the increasingly explicit teasing, she realized that this whole encounter was by no means accidental. Milly had somehow known where Kallen was going quickly enough to position herself outside the office, and hadn't shown any signs of being out of breath. Either she followed me here, or somehow she's keeping close enough tabs on my movements to know where I am at all times. She's trying to keep me distracted and off-balance so I don't think about that! The embarrassment remained, at least on the surface level, but the heated rage brewing in Kallen's belly disappeared as the ice water realization swept through her. I don't even know why she wanted me off-balance, or why she bothered to show herself at all. Is this some kind of weird dominance play?
Kallen found that she really was beginning to hate Milly Ashford personally, not just as a symbol of the youth of the Britannian ruling class. The way Milly ground her overwhelming social dominance in Kallen's face, the way she not only effortlessly ran rings around her but also made sure Kallen knew she was toying with her, the constant sexual harassment, the way she kept dropping hints that she knew more about Kallen than Kallen wanted her to know... Every interaction she had with the fallen noble made Kallen hate her slightly more. In a small, petty way, she felt like Milly represented every bit of Britannia's self-proclaimed supremacy, and couldn't help but feel like one of the tanks of the long-dead Japanese Army, helplessly trying to keep up with the Knightmare that danced around her, always just barely ahead of her tracking cannon.
She's got to go. The thought bubbled up from somewhere deep in Kallen's mind, deliciously seductive and poisonous. The idea of shutting up that constantly mocking face once and for all with a knife up through the soft meat behind the chin, up through the soft palate at the back of the mouth... She knows too much about you, probably. She's going to hand you over to the authorities, and once you break, they'll haul Naoto, Mom, Dad, Ohgi, and Tanya in too... Being honest, Kallen had no idea what Milly knew, but she definitely knew that giving in to the urge to murder would certainly end up with her behind bars or, if she was lucky, dead herself. Not now... Not now... She'd take the bullying and taunting a while longer, Kallen decided. Anything for the cause... "It's part of your sacrifice for Japan too, isn't it?"
Kallen stuttered out some excuse, turned on her heel, and fled, running away from temptation and from the mocking laughter that echoed after her. She so desperately wanted to do to Milly what she had to the last person who had held her down and tried to force themselves on her, but she couldn't, not here and not now. She knew she was making a mistake, running away like this – running from bullies always made them more hungry to hunt you down, like the predators they were. Despite Naoto's best efforts, Kallen had learned that lesson in the dark years between the Conquest and when their father had reclaimed them. That must be what Milly knows... Just like all those other Brit bastards, the half-breed is a fun target... "Almost better than an Eleven, since Elevens are just animals, but half-breeds are close enough to human to be fun..."
After school, Kallen had her first meeting with the student paper's staff. It was a fairly informal group, and after her introduction she practically vanished into the woodwork as the other members fought over potential stories and assignments. The editor, the head of the club, handled out assignments with the same air as a queen on her throne bestowing favors to favorites, and hurling the scraps to the rest.
Eventually, as the feeding frenzy died down, Kallen found herself tasked with investigating a potential haunting, of all things. Apparently, a ghost had been seen darting in and out of the Student Council's clubhouse at night, and that qualified as a news story worth investigating. Who had reported this apparition was a mystery, as was the reason why they were out and about on the campus and outside the dorms some students live in, but nobody else had been interested in pursuing this story. Some had said they didn't want to waste their time on silly fantasies, others said it was too creepy for them. Kallen personally believed that nobody wanted to have to come back to school in the middle of the night, and so she as the new girl had been stuck with the unenviable ghost hunt.
Kallen saw the assignment in a different light, of course. Not only would it give her a night guaranteed to be free of her step-mother, but Milly was part of the Student Council – the president, as a matter of fact. Anything that Milly was involved in almost certainly had access to private information regarding the student body, and the fact that the Student Council apparently had an entire building all to themselves virtually guaranteed that there'd be something worth her time in that building. The whole ghost story gave her an excuse to linger around the place late at night, when nobody else would be around, not to mention a reason to poke her nose anywhere she wanted because she "saw something over there!"
Since the Student Council clubhouse was locked at night to prevent any skullduggery not explicitly authorized by Milly Ashford herself, the first step in Kallen's assignment was hunting down a Student Council member to give her the key. Fortunately, the secretary of the Student Council was an avid member of the swim club, and thus easily found.
Shirley Fenette proved to be a gregarious, easy-going girl who was happy to meet the newest member of the student paper's staff. She had also proven to be a remarkably easily spooked person who went white as a sheet at the first mention of a ghost haunting the clubhouse, and who had practically torn her locker open in her haste to throw her key to the building at Kallen. After a polite thank you and a personal promise to get to the bottom of the alleged haunting, which she was sure was nothing but silliness, Kallen found herself in the possession of both a key to the Student Council clubhouse and a surprisingly stern admonition to stay on the first floor and not try to access the second floor. Apparently, it was "totes off-limits! Don't even think about going up there, kay?" A second personal promise later, and Kallen had both the means to access the Student Council clubhouse and an excellent idea of the first place she should check for her "ghost".
By ten o'clock that night, Kallen was inside the opulent interior of the Student Council's pocket kingdom. Even by the standards of a noble girl, accustomed to the rococo of Stadtfeld Manor, the first floor of the Council building was richly appointed. Kallen even felt vaguely guilty about dripping rain on the deep plush carpet, ludicrous though the feeling was. Why the hell does the Student Council need a goddamned mini-mansion!? Her recent excursion with Tanya had given Kallen a keen understanding of how much money it took to keep people alive at a subsistence level, which made the ridiculous finery even more aggravating. The fucking carpet alone could probably feed a hundred Japanese for days!
Forcing the thoughts of starving Japanese families out of her mind with almost practiced ease, Kallen began dutifully snapping pictures of the admittedly gorgeous interior on her student paper-issued camera, doing her best to capture anything that looked remotely spooky under the automatically activated lights. Unfortunately, the true horror of the place couldn't exactly be captured on film, so Kallen simply contented herself with taking pictures of the more unusual decorations, including a remarkably badly taxidermied peacock that had apparently been mounted by Ruben Ashford himself, explaining its presence in the formal receiving room. What she didn't find were any computers or suspicious file cabinets crammed to the brim with blackmail material, much to Kallen's dismay.
As she meandered about the first floor snapping the occasional picture, Kallen noted any visible security cameras as well as any way up to the second floor. She discovered a total of four ways up the broad, formal staircase up to the second-floor foyer, a pair of elevators at either end of the building, and a locked door at the rear of the building with a small unobtrusive stairway icon. Kallen also noticed that there were plenty of visible security cameras in virtually every room in the clubhouse, but oddly enough none were around either of the elevators or the mysterious back staircase. So whoever set up the security system here decided to actually conceal the cameras in those areas, meaning they're the only important part of this whole heap...
Kallen mulled her options over as she continued to snap pictures of any shadow that crossed her rangefinder, before deciding that her new role as a rookie journalist would be plenty to explain away a bit of ill-mannered nosiness. Keeping up her meandering path, she slowly made her way back to the mysterious locked door with the stairway icon, finally coming to a halt and snapping a final picture of the pale wood door. Audacity, always audacity – and journalistic privilege! Kallen pulled a hairpin and a nail clipper from the pocket of her uniform blazer, and started fiddling with the door lock, completely aware that the unseen cameras and whoever was behind them were watching her. I'll just tell them I saw the ghost phase through the door – what're they going to do, expel me?
The dimly remembered lessons from her Big Bro proved more than enough to beat the flimsy single-tumbler door lock, and soon a distinctive click echoed through the empty hall. With a sigh of relief, Kallen returned her tools to her pocket and tried the door. The handle turned easily, but the door remained stubbornly closed. Examining it more carefully, Kallen realized that the lock built into the door's handle was nothing compared to the solid three-inch bar of waist-height steel she could barely make out in the narrow gap between the door and the frame. There was no obvious opening mechanism on this side of the door, and Kallen suspected that it was a maglock, which would require the precise movements of a magnet over a specific patch of the door to unlock – her father had a similar mechanism installed on the door to his study, although certainly not such a substantial model. The door itself was on close examination only paneled with wood – the echo and weight of the thing indicated that something substantially stronger was under the tasteful facade. Whatever's up on the second floor, someone's really serious about keeping it under wraps... Presumably the Ashfords... Fuck, another secret I need to get out of Milly, somehow...
Stowing her camera, Kallen decided to call the night a bust and headed back out into the rain, uninterested in meeting whoever might be keeping an eye on the cameras. If someone was protecting something that seriously, she doubted they'd be interested in her claims of journalistic freedom. But that means that whatever's behind there is definitely worth further investigation... If they're willing to let all this wealth be guarded by a single lock... whatever's up on the second floor would definitely interest Tanya.