Chapter 15: A Christmas Surprise
(A big thank you to Siatru, and to Grig9700, for beta reading this chapter.)
The liberated fatigue pants had not, to Tamaki's mild annoyance, come with a belt, and hung loose around his hips as a result. Since Naoto and Nagata had just robbed the contents of the laundry hampers, it wasn't surprising that things like belts and boots were missing, but scrounging around at the last minute to secure replacements had been kinda irritating. Fortunately, Tamaki had been able to pass it off to his little group of rookies as a training exercise improving their scrounging and improvisation skills. Fortunately, the ex-gangsters had retained every bit of their ability to requisition goods as necessary; The blackened work boots looked pretty much like combat boots, at least from a distance, and the clearly non-regulation buckle on his belt would be hidden under first the overalls, and then the uniform's jacket.
Tamaki snapped the buckle of said belt closed with a satisfying click and straightened up, taking a long look down at himself, making sure the pants hung straight and no bulge was evident on his left thigh where the Britannian-issue combat knife was strapped. Fortunately, the gray and black uniform trousers betrayed no obvious sign of the hidden knife, and any slight crease in the fabric would be hidden by his second layer. Satisfied with the first level of his disguise, Tamaki buttoned up his threadbare cotton work shirt and stepped into the pooled legs of his overalls, pulling the stinking, stained garment up over the uniform trousers and fastening the clips of the shoulder straps.
Finally, Tamaki pulled an equally worn and patched black winter coat over his shoulders to complete the appearance of a transitory Eleven worker, the outer layer heavy and warm thanks to the hidden contents of the lining. The interior lining of the coat had been carefully cut out, the uniform jacket sewn in with loose, fragile stitching as an intermediate layer along with the folded uniform cap, and the original lining sewn back into place. Unfortunately, once the active stage of the plan was done, the lining-less jackets would be more or less useless as warm layers during the extraction process, but Tamaki supposed that a few hours of cold was preferable to detection and detainment at the checkpoint back into Shinjuku.
Satisfied with his own disguise, Tamaki turned and looked over at Naoto, who was lounging against a wall and fiddling with an unlit "Quarter" handroll. The half-noble hadn't shaved in the last several days, giving him a look of general dishevelment, and his distinctive red hair had been dyed blonde and crammed away under a cap. In his own threadbare overalls and jacket, coupled with the total lack of any poise, no trace of Kozuki Naoto, the rising terror of Shinjuku, could be seen – all Tamaki saw was an exhausted worker, hungry for the meager relief provided by the low nicotine content of the ghetto smoke in his trembling fingers. Fuck, Naoto's going method with his acting!
At the sound of a muttered curse, Tamaki looked over at the two members of his unit he'd be leading into the Tokyo Settlement with Naoto. Gin, a rangy man in his mid-twenties, had just finished lacing up his boot and was fiddling with the pant's leg, carefully blousing the bottom into the top of his boot in the way that some Honorary Britannians did, following the example of the Britannians instead of the exact requirements of their manual. Inuyama already had his boots on and was muttering curses as he violently shoved a hand down his pants, trying to shift the location of the hidden knife. Inuyama was so involved in his work, half his right forearm in his uniform trousers, that he didn't even notice Tamaki approaching.
"Hey now! We're goin' intah the field, Inuyama! Save that kinda thing 'til we get back!" Tamaki laughed as he dropped his arm across his subordinate's shoulder, the other man leaping up and nearly biting his tongue as he tried to turn on his left heel, still with his arm down his pants. "The hell are yah tryin' to do anyway?"
As soon as Inuyama realized who'd accosted him, he stopped trying to simultaneously curse, turn, and stab Tamaki, and instead just chuckled with an unmistakable edge of smugness. "No need to do that now or after the mission, yah damned punk!" Inuyama looked up at Tamaki, a shit-eating grin on his face. "Hina's been takin' real good care of me – turns out your suggestion about that bottle of single-malt was right on the money!"
Tamaki let out a whoop of excitement. "Dude! Congrats, man! So that's where you two disappeared to last night! Fuck yeah!" He considered going for a high-five, but reconsidered when he realized that Inuyama was still nearly elbow deep in his own trousers, settling for a congratulatory pat on the back instead. "I hope that old bastard Jiroo didn't charge yah too much fer the bottle?"
Inuyama winced slightly, but smiled again. "It was totally worth it, man. Even if it is kinda hard to share a sleeping bag."
Tamaki smiled back at his subordinate, internally congratulating himself on his work so far. After Tanya, Ohgi, and Naoto had suddenly dropped responsibility for the recruits on his lap several weeks ago, Tamaki had decided to prioritize building loyalty in his new recruits right behind building obedience. Fortunately, between Tanya's victory over the gang – surprising only to the new recruits, as Tamaki's shoulder was still sore on cold nights from the one time he'd crossed the little goblin – and the utterly terrifying display of ruthlessness courtesy of Naoto, the whole issue of obedience had been more or less settled before it had even come up. Sure, Tamaki had been forced to prove his ability to lead by flooring Inuyama a couple of times back at the beginning, but that wasn't a big deal or anything. Plus, the man was a great drinking buddy and sparring partner, so Tamaki was fine with a little bit of lip.
So, since he didn't really need to worry much about disobedience, Tamaki had focused on building up loyalty to both himself and to the organization in his new trainees. Tamaki knew he wasn't exactly brilliant, but he wasn't stupid either, and he'd been keeping a close eye on Tanya after she'd effortlessly beaten him into the ground. He'd realized that the girl he'd once been foolish enough to call a Brit almost made it a point to not rule by fear or strength – instead, she'd made an effort to reach out to every member of the cell and get to know them, and to give them what they wanted.
Inoue had been stressed from carrying all the boring work on her shoulders, and had been feeling a bit isolated, being the only woman in the cell – Kallen didn't count – and Tanya had given her a female friend and an assistant who understood all that math crap.
Nagata loved his wife and kid deeply – that much was obvious from just a casual conversation with the man. Tamaki had known him for almost two years now, and knew he was torn between the fear of dying and not knowing his kid, and having his kid grow up in a slum. Tanya had given him a job that didn't involve any frontline combat, and had also made sure he had plenty of food to pay for a neighborhood granny to look after the kid.
Tamaki didn't like self-reflection or any of that crap, but after he'd realized what Tanya was doing, he started to wonder what she was giving to him to get his loyalty. He knew he respected the little squirt – she was a monster in hand to hand, an incredible shot, and absolutely cold as ice when it came time to kill – but he was surprised to find that he liked her too. For all her nagging, she was pretty good company, after you got over the initial reaction of "oh shit, a fucking Brit's in our base!" and all that. She had a subtle sense of humor, where jokes she told flew past his head until a second later when they slammed home, she was happy to chat with him about guns or knightmares and other crap, and she was a hard worker. She doesn't treat me like an idiot either. That was important – even Ohgi and Naoto looked at him sometimes like he was some kind of clown, but Tanya never did. She often looked irritated or disappointed, but she never looked down at him. Looking back on it, Tamaki thought it was that respect, more than anything else, that had earned her his loyalty.
Tamaki was sick of thinking by the time he'd gotten through all that, and so he'd rounded up all of his little crew for a trip to a private slice of heaven. A year or two ago, his buddy Chisao – who had welding equipment – and two or three other guys plus Tamaki had gotten together to make their own "gym" in a mostly abandoned basement. The homemade weights were crappy – just a variety of pipes with amounts of sand inside and caps welded over their ends – but they did the job, as did the creaky wooden bench Gendo, who knew a bit of carpentry, had nailed together and glued a cushion onto. This was his secret home away from home, where he came to maintain his toned physique, where he kept himself as shredded as any honest Japanese guy could on the thin food and low protein levels available in Shinjuku. The new recruits had taken the gesture for what it was – an expression of trust, and an offer for group communion. People join up to gangs for more than just a fully belly and protection – they join up for brotherhood, for friends.
Tamaki wondered if Tanya knew how good her idea to put him in charge of the former gangsters had been. After all, he'd come within a hairsbreadth of joining up with the gangs, before Naoto and Ohgi had returned to his life and pulled him into their anti-Britannian action group. The only reason he'd been free to join up with them was he could feel his father's ghost smack him over the head whenever he thought of joining up, but those slaps had been weakening in the months leading up to Ohgi's sudden arrival. Yeah, I know a thing or two about the kinda folks who join gangs, alright.
After he brought them to the basement gym and set them free on the weights, Tamaki had taken Hojo, Hina, Inuyama, and Gin aside one by one, talking with them and getting to know his new comrades.
Hojo's hook had been pretty easy to figure out, since he'd already owned up to the whole pain-pill addiction thing, but Tamaki had taken the time to ask about more than just "what's your T-level like?", and had found himself rewarded with a pent-up river of unspoken thoughts and smothered ambitions, which he frankly had no idea how to handle. Taking a page from Tanya's book, he'd nodded seriously, maintained eye contact, and thanked Hojo for his openness once the torrent of words had slowed to a relative trickle. When Tamaki handed over the pills set aside by Naoto to help wean Hojo off his dependency, he made sure to be as respectful as possible; when the shakes and nausea set in, he made a point to be on hand to chat with Hojo, to try and take his mind off things.
Gin, apparently, was both a smoker and a big music guy – and so Tamaki had made sure that he always had a pack or two of Britannian cigarettes with real tobacco around on the weekends to reward the man for his hard work, plus tips about which barterers had caches of CDs available in the trade goods.
Inuyama was practically a belly on legs, with a particular love for meat, a luxury good in Shinjuku. Tamaki had put in a special request with Inoue for an extra two rations of meat for the man, and soon Nagata had arrived with a whole box of cheap jerky in a variety of flavors. Apparently, whatever flavors Inuyama hadn't liked he'd turned around into trade goods to get the smuggled bottle to buy his lady's affections.
Hina's requests, once Tamaki had taken her aside, had been somewhat heartbreaking in their simplicity, yet eminently practical. Tampons, sanitary pads, a safety razor, aspirin, and if possible, birth control pills had been all she'd initially asked for. Tamaki, remembering how sunken the four's cheeks had been when they'd slunk into the Rising Sun's meeting hall, didn't rib her for asking for so little; instead, he simply told her that all but the last request were freely available from the Rising Sun's stocks, thanks to Tanya and Inoue, and that the last would be available as soon as a cheap and reliable supplier could be found. Hina hadn't responded to that information at the time beyond a simple "I see", but after verifying that Tamaki had told the truth, and after drawing a ration of female hygiene and relief products from Inoue, Hina had returned, thanked him, and put in a request for a warm coat, fresh vegetables, and for the Rising Sun to deliver a take-out box for a family of four to the apartment of a single mother and her three children slightly north of their usual area of operations. Inoue had assured him that none of the requests had been hard to meet, and soon green bell peppers and unripened tomatoes joined the inventory of regular shipments into Shinjuku.
Of course, all of the peppers and cigarettes in the world paled in comparison to the experience of risking your lives side by side, and coming out laughing and smiling on the other side. As Naoto had begun his shadowy campaign of violence against the gangs, Tamaki had begged his boss for the chance to bring his trainees along for their first operation as part of the Organization. After Tamaki agreed to take full responsibility for their actions, Naoto had gladly welcomed them into his systematic destruction of the gang that had tried to shake down the Rising Sun. Hojo, once a member of the Kokuryu-kai and thus privy to the locations of all the old safehouses being used by the splinter gang, had been particularly valuable, but all four had enthusiastically thrown themselves into the slaughter of their former comrades.
Starting from quiet knifings of unwary or isolated gangsters, the four had been led by Tamaki through a gauntlet of missions handed down from the leading trio, culminating in the glorious night Tamaki had fired a shoulder-mounted missile into a warehouse turned meth lab. The incredible explosion and the chemically fueled flames still burnt in his mind when he thought about the night – the knightmare in the station Tanya had blown up aside, Tamaki didn't know if he'd ever seen anything quite as beautiful as the roaring blaze he'd caused. It had been an intense three weeks of near constant activity, training with his new detachment as they waited for the next mission, occasionally helping out Inoue and Tanya at the Rising Sun to help keep the recruits (and Tamaki, if he was being honest) anchored with the cause, with why they were fighting.
The only major sticking point in that time had been after the liberation of the gang's slave brothels a week prior. That particular job had been carried out by Naoto personally, with Souichiro and Chihiro's help, and Tamaki hadn't envied them the job; when Naoto had returned, eyes empty and bleak, followed by a line of women wrapped in bloody blankets shepherded by a grinning Chihiro, Tamaki already knew celebrating wasn't going to be in the cards. He didn't know what the women Naoto had brought back from the raid had endured, and frankly he didn't want to know either – but he was fairly sure that none of them would welcome the offer of a beer.
Tamaki had expected weeping, he'd expected uncomfortably degrees of decidedly unmanly emotion, and he'd expected to be asked to take the male contingent of his unit elsewhere to sleep for the night. He hadn't expected one of the women to suddenly scream "YOU!", pull a knife, and lunge at Gin, who had backpedaled away from his knife-wielding assailant while fumbling for the pistol belted to his waist. Tamaki had managed to move fast enough to grab Gin's arm before he actually got a shot off, while Chihiro had wrestled the knife away from the screaming woman who had persisted in her attempts to claw out Gin's eyes, nearly overwhelming the younger and fitter Chihiro.
Fortunately, Ohgi had been only steps behind Naoto's group, and between Naoto's demands that everybody stop immediately and Ohgi's calming, conciliatory words, the worst was averted. Tamaki had been sorely tempted to beat the shit out of all three of his male subordinates when he'd learned that they all knew what had been happening in those brothels, but the fact that none of them had been directly involved with that side of their gang's operations had stayed his hand. They had, however, been forced through the most rigorous three day training program Tamaki could whip up, as had Hina, since Tamaki didn't want to play favorites and she'd known damn well what was happening too and hadn't bothered to do anything about it.
That was all in the past now, though. Tamaki was confident in the abilities of his trainees, and confident in their attachment to the Organization and the camaraderie it represented, if not the nebulous goals Tanya and Naoto periodically alluded to. Which puts 'em in the same boat with me, I guess.
Tamaki thumped Inuyama one last time on the shoulders in celebration, before disentangling himself from the taller man and turning to Naoto. The leader of the cell had put away his cigarette and had been watching the back and forth between Tamaki and his men with an almost cold expression of disinterested weariness, but he perked up when Tamaki looked back his way. Wonder how well he's sleeping these days? Tamaki had helped Naoto with some of his more sticky jobs, and was perfectly content to leave all that fucked up shit to Naoto, if only so he didn't have to drink himself to sleep every night. Better yet, leave that crap up tah Chihiro, that crazy bitch.
Out loud, Tamaki said "We're ready to rock and roll, Boss!" He didn't have to fake the confidence – this was a Tanya plan, so it was going to be solid, and he was confident in the men going into Brittown with him. They're never gonna know what hit 'em! "Say the word, and we can head to the checkpoint!"
Naoto lifted a single skeptical eyebrow, casting a look over Gin, who was shrugging into his coat, and Inuyama, who was screwing around with his goddamned knife again. "If you say so. Let's get gone."
By the time Tamaki and the rest of the small team of infiltrators got to the checkpoint into the Britannian Concession, work passes and lunchboxes in hand, it was almost six at night and the sun had vanished beyond the horizon two hours earlier. The group joined the long queue of shivering Eleven workers waiting for their chance to pick up night shift work in the Tokyo Settlement, a nearly palpable miasma of depressed resignation thick in the air as the line slowly shuffled forwards. The guards appeared equally unhappy, from what Tamaki could make out through the darkness and the milling crowd. The few inspections they bothered with were almost perfunctory, and while they of course collected the usual "administration fees", none of the Britannians on duty appeared to have the energy to aggressively shake down any of the hapless Elevens. Wonder who they pissed off to get assigned to stand out in the cold on Christmas Eve?
Despite the complete lack of enthusiasm exhibited by the guards, Tamaki knew that the checkpoint represented the first major point of failure in the operation. If those bastards think we've got some extra cash somewhere, or just wanna screw with us... Best case scenario, they'd just be turned back and not allowed to enter the Concession, aborting the mission. Worst case, the guards would realize they were trying to smuggle weapons into the Settlement, and then they'd be arrested, interrogated, and shot. Wish I'd taken the time to make sure Inuyama could walk straight with the knife... Dammit... Tamaki exhaled, and forced himself to calm down. It was too late to do anything now, and getting all agitated would mark him out as suspicious. Deliberately, Tamaki let his shoulders slump and buried his hands in his pockets, and tried to think about anything but the night's work ahead.
A tense half an hour later, Tamaki dutifully handed over his work pass for stamping, a few crumpled bills pressed against the bottom just like always. The guard, faceless as always behind the rebreather and the mirrored visor of his helmet, barely glanced at either his face or his pass, apathetically thumping the barely inked stamp down on the card stock of the pass. With a muttered "thanks", Tamaki reclaimed the pass and shuffled his way into the Britannian Concession, joining Naoto on a street corner a block away.
Stamping their booted feet to keep the cold out, the two waited in silence as first Gin, and then Inuyama made their way through the checkpoint. To Tamaki's relief, Inuyama's slightly stiff gait apparently hadn't stood out as remarkable in a crowd of cold, malnourished laborers. Plus, the guards were probably wishin' they were comin' with us to the entertainment zone instead of hangin' around the ghetto. Hah! Tamaki smiled as Inuyama trudged his way over, and considered sharing his insight with Naoto. A look over at his boss's blank expression dissuaded him. Naoto's got his game face on – probably not in the mood for joshin' around. He's gotten pretty serious lately, ever since he and Chihiro had started hackin' people apart...
As soon as Inuyama joined them on the corner, Naoto turned and started walking, heading southeast along with most of the other Eleven men allowed into the Concession, Tamaki close on his heels and the other two men tagging along behind. The loose string of workers were headed for what had once been the Ginza District; though the area had been redeveloped and filled with the same ugly Britannian architecture as the rest of the Tokyo Settlement, the old Ginza had retained its mercantile character. At this fever pitch of the holiday season, it was a safe bet that the many shops and restaurants would need extra hands to deal with the horde of last minute shoppers – not in the front of house, of course, not for the Elevens, but in the stockrooms and the kitchens where their non-Britannian features wouldn't offend any paying customer. The small knot of Shinjuku fighters blended into the shambling crowd, hunkering down into their thin jackets as best they could against the heat-leeching wind, just like every other man present. The women, by and large, had taken a different turn after passing through the checkpoint, but it was far too early in the night to be seen anywhere near that side of town.
As Tamaki trudged down the street, he reflected on how strangely nostalgic it was to return to this particular corner of the Britannian Concession. During the first months of the Cell's existence, their piddling "missions" had more often than not been carried out in this general area. In fact, the warehouse where he'd offed that fat idiot of a security guard was only about half a kilometer away from his current location. First time I'd killed... Fucker shouldn't have surprised me like that. What kinda idiot decides to risk their life for someone else's inventory, huh?
The area south of the old Chuo Ward and west of the Ginza was a mixed-use area, where the warehouses holding stock for the glitzy shopping districts and refined outlets rubbed shoulders with the homes of middle-class Britannians and the scattered estates of minor nobility, with small strip malls and convenient grocery stores dotted throughout. The center of the area was the ruined husk of the Kasumigaseki Station, completely collapsed after the Britannian aerial bombardment that had left the nearby Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters a gutted shell. During the redevelopment of the area, the remnants of the old police headquarters had been unceremoniously shoveled into the open maw where the station's roof and the nearby tunnels had caved in, thereby avoiding the cost of hauling away the rubble or filling the gaping hole with gravel.
Tamaki vaguely remembered that there had been a resistance cell operating out of the area, living in the old tunnels and emerging by night to loot whatever they could and raise hell. That's where Naoto got that sack of hand grenades, right? Now that he thought about it, Tamaki realized he hadn't heard any mention of the Kasumigaseki Resistance Cell for months. Probably means they're okay. If the Brits had caught a legit group of rebels, they'd have been trumptin' about it all day every day. Hope they're still fighting the good fight somewhere. Of course, it was entirely possible that the tunnel they had laired up in had just collapsed from the lack of maintenance and entombed the whole lot in concrete and steel. Fuck, I hope not. That's a horrible way to go.
Forty minutes and a two mile walk later, Tamaki and his merry band found themselves in the desolate no man's land around the ruined Tokyo Tower. The colossal heap of twisted girders and gutted hopes was red with rust and creaked with each errant gust, moaning like a man dying from a gut wound. To Tamaki, Tokyo-born and bred, the Tower was an almost tangible symbol of all that had happened to the city of his birth and her people. Broken, pillaged, and left in squalor, the broken Tower screamed its agony to all that would hear. The fact that the Brits haven't paved it over like they did the Imperial Palace has gotta be intentional. Just another way of rubbin' everythin' in our faces. The bastards. It was fitting that the Tower, and the boarded up station below it, would shelter her sons before they set out on their Tanya-appointed task, and afterwards as they hid from vengeful eyes.
Even by the usual standards of the desolate grave of Tokyo's pride, the place was deserted. Far away, a maglev train traversed the elevated rail, but to Tamaki the faint whistling of the wind suddenly took on a selpulcral air. He shivered, the chill unrelated to the midwinter night. The aching heart of Tokyo was empty, without even the desperate bustle of Shinjuku to provide traces of life and light. This was a dead city, a place abandoned by the living, and yet Tamaki was certain that under every pile of shattered cement and broken brick were human bones. The four men, by unspoken consensus, picked up their pace, lightly jogging through the necropolis, looking for the faded signs directing long-gone foot traffic to the nearest subway station. A few minutes of searching later, and the group stood before the rotted plywood sheets screwed into place over an entrance to Kamiyacho Station.
Tamaki gestured at Inuyama, who nodded and drew his knife and started gradually easing the first screw free of the pulpy wood. Gin followed suit, working on the screw on the opposite side of the board, and a minute later Tamaki and Naoto filed into the exposed entrance to the tunnel, damp air rushing up into their faces until Inuyama carefully pulled the board over the hole after them, propping it back into its former position.
Once the board was back in place, sheltering the group from any spectacularly out of place Britannian who happened to be spending Christmas Eve in the most wretched part of Tokyo outside of the Ghetto, Tamaki let himself relax a bit. Stretching and yawning, he unclipped the miniature flashlight from the inside of his arm and clicked it on, letting the light trace over the textured yellow rubber strips at the edge of the steps leading downwards to a plug of rubble and soil blocking access to the station itself, or the tunnels even further down below the surface. A horrible way to go...
"Well," Naoto broke the silence as all four stared at the collapse, the still sharp edges of the concrete shards indicating that the stairway had been passable until recently. "It's not as luxurious as I'd hoped, but I guess this is where we're going to be changing, gentlemen. Get changed, and we'll start reviewing."
Soon, all four men were industriously tearing the stitches out of their coats, freeing the smuggled contraband. Tamaki vaguely regretted tearing out the stitches that he himself had carefully made the night before, but that regret wasn't what caused his shoulders to shake in the near dark of the collapsed staircase. No, it was all he could to do to keep up his professional, on the job facade, and suppress a laugh of mingled nervous anxiety and hilarity at the memory of Naoto prostrate on all fours, begging an eleven year old to help him after he'd somehow managed to sew the sleeves of his coat together. Fuckin' rich boy's probably always had maids fer that kinda work. Tamaki knew the internal mockery wasn't true in the slightest, but that didn't matter in the face of comedy, especially when he wasn't stupid enough or petty enough to share the joke with men who hadn't known Naoto for years. 'Sides, it's all in the name of keepin' my morale up. ...Fuck, did the roof just creek? I really hope not.
Soon, Tamaki found himself checking over Inuyama and Gin, making sure their Honorary Britannian uniforms were as straight and crisp as possible, before Gin returned the favor. The sergeant's chevrons sewn onto his shoulder and chest were the only difference between his uniform and theirs, and Tamaki had carefully slicked his sometimes uncontrollable hair down before leaving Shinjuku that evening so the side cap would sit squarely on his head. Gin and Inuyama's hair was still quite a bit on the short side for Britannian soldiers, but hopefully their carefully placed caps would draw attention away from that minor detail. After getting the nod from Gin, Tamaki turned to Naoto and carefully ran his penlight over his boss, and unsurprisingly found him in perfect order, looking alarmingly comfortable and at ease in the uniform of a Britannian officer. The illusion of Britannian perfection was somewhat weakened by the loose tie and open collar of his shirt, and further undermined by the wink Naoto shot his way. Tamaki couldn't help but smile at the exaggerated look of aristocratic disdain on his friend's face, before the pseudo-professional mask cracked entirely and the boyish smile so rare in past weeks flashed across Naoto's face.
"It's finally the time, eh, Tamaki? We're finally doing it! We're finally going after some Brit bastards ourselves – just like you always wanted!" The exuberant tone and the guileless blue eyes were a sharp contrast to the violence to come, but Tamaki couldn't help the answering grin creeping across his face. It's good to see the old Naoto back – gloomy Naoto's way too boring.
"Fuck yeah, bro! We're gonna show 'em we mean business! Wanna bet we each bag a Purist sonnuvabitch before the night's over?" Tamaki knew that he should be maintaining professional discipline in front of his men, but, fuck it. They'd be squatting in this stinking wet tunnel for an hour and a half practicing basic Britannian commands and waiting for the bastards enjoying themselves in the whorehouses to get nice and drunk, at least he could get a laugh or two before he subjected himself to language lessons!
Naoto laughed and patted Tamaki on the shoulder. "You've gotta raise your game, Tamaki – we just need to get the ball rolling, and the Purists will do way more damage to their own side than we would if we just spent the whole night shanking people."
Tamaki rolled his eyes in fond exasperation, and adopted a wheedling tone "But where's the fun in that? I wanna show those Brit bastards this Japanese boy's got guts, one on one, man on man!"
Naoto raised a skeptical eyebrow, nearly invisible in the dark of the tunnel. "The way you showed Tanya? She did nearly splatter your guts across the hideout – I suppose that would've proved the point once and for all!"
This time, Tamaki didn't have to feign a whine. "Ah, c'mon! That was an honest mistake! And that girl's terrifying – I bet she'd eat a Knightmare by herself, if her mouth was just a bit wider!"
"Wait, what?!" Inuyama burst into the conversation. A step behind him, Gin looked on at the conversation with interest. "You fought Tanya, bro? And you're still alive? How the fuck did that happen?!"
With rising horror, Tamaki turned towards the two wolves in the shape of men that lurked beyond the small circle of light, dreading the ribbing he was about to receive. He'd completely forgotten that they hadn't been there back in the day to watch him get totally schooled by a scrawny kid. Worse still, judging by the shit-eating grin on Naoto's face, he was completely willing to tell the story in full if Tamaki stepped away from the challenge. Biting the bullet, Tamaki sighed and beckoned the two over as he sat down, placing the work overall between his behind and the damp concrete step, desperately trying to find some way to spin the story so he didn't come off as quite such an idiot. If you're gonna collapse, roof, now would be a good time.
"Okay, so, no shit, there I was..."
An hour and a half of careful coaching by Naoto later, and Tamaki felt more or less confident in his ability to to dutifully nod and say "yes sir" with only the faintest trace of a Japanese accent. Together with Gin and Inuyama, he had also gone over the command phrases for when it was time to run. It was of vital importance that every word uttered by the team during the actual engagement be in Britannian – any Japanese might direct suspicions back towards the Eleven population, and to Shinjuku.
As Tamaki checked the time on his cheap burner phone one last time, Naoto pulled out a flask of homebrew and carefully splashed it over the lapels of his jacket and on the front of his shirt, before wetting his palm with the liquor and rubbing it into the stubble on his cheeks and chin. Then, he took a small mouthful of the liquid and rinsed it through his teeth, wincing at the burn, before spitting it out in the direction of the cave in. Between the off-kilter hat on dyed blonde hair, the open collar, the loosened tie, and the reek of alcohol, Naoto looked every inch the part of a dissolute Britannian junior officer drinking away the shame of the recent demotion betrayed by his freshly stitched lieutenant's bar.
"Ready to go, everyone?" Naoto's voice was serious, as he looked from man to man. Tamaki mutely nodded, the anxiety and excitement starting to well back up in his gut now that the time had finally come. After a final round of nods all around, Tamaki carefully nudged the sheet of plywood aside and poked his head out of the station's mouth. After the hour and a half in the darkness of the station staircase, the outside world seemed bright under the illumination of the lights of the far away core of the Tokyo Settlement and the moon high above. Finding the broken pavement of the street just as deserted as it had been when they'd arrived, the group filed out of the station, Gin carefully propping the plywood sheet back into place. As soon as the sheet was back in place, Tamaki turned and followed Naoto, hearing Gin and Inuyama fall in behind him. The target was at least a half an hour away by foot, and they were now very much on the clock.
Unlike the graveside of the rotting Tokyo Tower, the entertainment zone positively thrummed with activity. The streets heaved with drunken soldiers, government functionaries, and other representatives of the Britannian occupation, all drunkenly yelling, bellowing, and pushing in a scrum of consumption fueled by lust. Mixed into the crowd of eager customers were the inevitable followers, drawn by money so eager to be spent it was practically burning its way out of pockets and purses: Sausage salesmen did a brisk business behind sizzling carts on every corner, bouncers loomed in doorways of bars and brothels, and plenty of women and a handful of men of varying degrees of attractiveness in their skimpy outfits flitted and fluttered between knots of drunks, offering their wares and attempting to draw eager takers back to whichever house they were working out of.
As the group entered the entertainment zone, Naoto's gait morphed from the firm and direct strides he'd taken on the walk to this little slice of soldier's heaven, instead rolling his steps and swaying side to side. The change was gradual, so it didn't jar any observant watcher, but by the time they'd made their way past the first block of late-night takeout joints and convenience stores, Naoto looked just as drunk as almost every other man on the street to Tamaki's eyes. Stopping at a sausage cart, Naoto ordered in slurred and near incomprehensible Britannian before shoving a wad of cash into the hapless Honorary Britannian salesman's hand in exchange for four sausages in buns. As Tamaki waited for his turn with the condiment tray, Naoto squeezed the mustard bottle hard enough for the top to pop off entirely, dumping most of the contents onto his sausage and spraying mustard over the front of his uniform coat. Another bout of loud, slurred Britannian later, this one an angry tirade full of words Tamaki could recognize as profanity, Naoto had a second free sausage in hand and was staggering away from the cart, still streaked with yellow mustard. Playing the role of the nurse-maiding orderly, Tamaki attempted to daub at the condiment stain whenever Naoto staggered his way and fought down the urge to grin at the sullen stream of Britannian curses coming from his friend. Bastard missed his calling as an actor! Well, at least he got us some dinner.
As the small group of disguised resistance fighters moved deeper into the entertainment zone, the quality of the facades facing onto the streets improved. Bar windows were lined in fine, dark wood, undoubtedly concealing steel shutters and armored doors, the brothels became gilded enough to earn the description of bordellos, and most importantly, the number of men and women in the crowd wearing expensive finery increased the further Naoto led them into the zone. Hell, even the prostitutes are wearin' nicer panties! That's straight-up lingerie now – and that's just what the ones workin' outside are wearin'!
The group turned a corner, and Tamaki saw an illuminated sign featuring a single stocking-clad leg, the smooth white garment held up by a very elaborate, extremely lacy garter. That must be the target! The building the sign was attached to was about a hundred yards down the block, and though the crowd was just as thick as ever, Tamaki could see a constant stream of well-dressed young men entering and exiting through the wide-open wooden doors; even better, no obvious bouncers were in sight, reducing the chance of anybody getting in the way of the imminent fight.
Naoto had clearly seen the sign too; lowering his shoulders and picking up speed, the young half-breed bulled his way into the crowd, spitting a constant stream of slurred curses as he shoulder-checked one bystander after another out of the way, Tamaki and his two men picking up speed to follow Naoto through the gap in the crowd he'd cleaved. Ahead, a pair of visibly inebriated young men staggered down the trio of short stairs leading to the Lacy Garter's front door, laughing and swaying as they supported each other with friendly arms cast around shoulders. Judging by the short, tight, heavily brocaded jackets with long tails they sported, plus the tight trousers and knee-high boots, they were unquestionably nobles – and since they'd just emerged from a bordello owned by a Purist family, Tamaki had no doubt that these two fit the target profile exactly.
Fuckin' finally! The blood began to pound in Tamaki's ears, and he had to remind himself to stay cool and collected. It wasn't his role to get the party started, and the night's events were going to be an exercise in control, the attack a precise strike followed by a near immediate disengagement. But.. I thought it'd never come... But today's the day to get some fuckin' revenge! Dad? I'm sendin' some company your way t'night!
Ahead, the two probable-Purists had reached the sidewalk. Tamaki could see they were talking, but over the noise of the street and the hammering pulse in his head, he couldn't make anything out. Fuckin' Brits are probably just braggin' about how good they think they were in bed... Hope yah enjoyed it while it lasted, you murderin' pieces of shit! The world tunneled around Tamaki as he picked up speed, trying to maintain Naoto's acceleration, cries of irritation and outrage dopplering out behind the group as Gin and Inuyama forced their way through the crowd behind him. The mood's already startin' to turn ugly... Perfect.
Naoto heaved his way down the street, and just as the Purists turned towards the oncoming apparent drunk, Naoto dropped his center of gravity and slammed into the nearest Purist, shoulder ramming into the center of the man's chest. The other noble cried out in pain as his right arm, still slung around his friend's shoulder, was painfully forced back in its socket as his inebriated friend staggered backwards, frantically trying to regain his balance.
Tamaki came to a stop a few feet away from the two Purists, and gestured for Inuyama and Gin to fan out to the left, into the crowded street and around the flank of the targets. As the two slipped off to the side, Naoto turned on his heel towards the staggering Purist and began yelling, stepping closer and getting into the slightly shorter man's space. The other Purist tried to stabilize the first, grabbing onto his shoulder as he leaned back, away from the spittle flying from Naoto's mouth and the overpowering stench of hard liquor wafting off Naoto's uniform.
Tamaki didn't have a great understanding of Britannian, but between all the planning sessions and the rehersals, he'd picked up enough vocabulary to understand when Naoto told the Purists to "Get the fuck outta the way! You Purist cucks already got your shrimp dicks milked, so make room for me and my boys!", gesturing towards Tamaki, who was doing his best to look as sober and stoic as possible and desperately hoping that Gin and Inuyama were doing the same.
While the Purists had at first looked stunned to suddenly be confronted by an irate drunkard they almost certainly outranked, the initial confusion had rapidly turned to barely suppressed anger. Fists clenched, they had admirably kept their anger under control, presumably because Naoto was clearly spoiling for a fight, and had tried to calm the situation down. Tamaki hadn't been able to understand the exact words, but he doubted the attempt at deescalation would have worked regardless – the contempt in their tone was obvious. But, as Naoto continued the barrage of insults, the two seemed like they were actually going to force Naoto to throw the first punch, which would have ruined the broader plan of riling up the crowd against the Purists.
Just as Tanya predicted, however, the implication that the intoxicated fool yelling at them was about to lead a unit of Honorary Britannians into a brothel specializing in Britannian prostitutes in particular was the one thing that the Purists couldn't stop themselves from reacting, and the man Naoto had shoved took the bait and started yelling back just as angrily and stepping almost chest-to-chest with Naoto.
"Oh, shut the fuck up, you noble twat! They're Honorary Britannians, so they're just as good as any other fucking Britannian here – better than some, since they can actually please a woman! Those girls won't have to fake their moans with my boys, y'hear?" Tamaki was impressed – between Naoto's assertion and the shit-faced grin he wore, the Purists looked nearly apoplectic, cheeks red and incoherent half-syllables choked out into the cold night air.
Taking a quick look around, Tamaki saw that the little confrontation, noisy even by the standards of the entertainment zone crowd, had not gone unnoticed. A ring of men and women, of whom maybe thirty percent looked wealthy enough to be nobles of some kind and thus Purists, had begun to form. The ring surrounded a small clearing in the crowd maybe ten feet wide, with the two Purists and Naoto near the center and Tamaki right near the edge. From the corner of his eye, Tamaki saw Gin standing in the ring, almost directly behind the Purists, while Inuyama was one row back and to their right. With Naoto in front of them and Tamaki to their left, the pair were surrounded, though they hadn't realized that quite yet.
The more belligerent of the two Purists once again took the bait, although it was hard to hear what he was saying over the rising murmur of the crowd as more and more people converged on the ring. The crowd, however, did understand whatever the drunken lord had spewed out in response, and the murmurs from the non-Purist soldiers was turning increasingly ugly, while the Purists were cheering on their comrade. Which means the idiot probably said somethin' about how the regulars can't do shit, or how they spend all their time with whores instead of doing anythin' useful. Fuck, it's just like Tanya said it'd be!
Before the Purist could finish whatever verbal riposte he'd attempted, Naoto started shouting. Tamaki knew the gist of the comeback. "Bullshit! You Purist bastards just run around doing whatever you want, stirring up shit, and then you swan off to your fancy clubs and stuff your piggy faces! And who the fuck cleans up your mess? We do! We do all the hard work, we do the dangerous stuff, and you bastards take all the credit!"
This time, the non-noble Britannians cheered, their drunken enthusiasm nearly drowning out the heckling from the equally drunken Purists. Across the ring, Tamaki saw Inuyama move, and suddenly the Purist in front of him in the Ring itself fell forward and to the side, running into a regular soldier and trying to grab onto him for balance. The drunken soldier turned with a snarl, but before Tamaki could see what happened next, the Purist pushing up against Naoto lost his temper and tried to shove him.
The taller, stronger, and secretly sober Naoto swayed back with the shove, before reciprocating, shoving the drunken and enraged Purist from the shoulders instead of the chest, sending the man sprawling. Tamaki distinctly heard the sound of the man's head bouncing off the curb, but by that point the chaos had already begun. The guy's friend swung at Naoto, who ducked the wild haymaker and shoved the man back as well. Unlike his friend, the second Purist stayed on his feet, staggering backwards into the ring of bodies behind him, Naoto close on his heels. As the second Purist fell back onto the arms of one of his comrades in arms, Gin stepped backwards, getting around behind the pair just as Naoto threw a straight right, missing his target but catching the other Purist in the nose.
Across the ring, the Purist Inuyama had shoved took a punch from the soldier he'd fallen on, who had apparently interpreted the fall as an attempt to shove him and had sunk his fist into the other Britannian's gut in retaliation. That Purist had friends too, though, and the soldier was ineffectually trying to push his way back into the crowd, away from the two Purists trying to grab him. One of the Purists suddenly twisted in pain as Inuyama slammed a punch into his kidney, giving one of the soldier's friends the opportunity to jump in and grab for the Purist's face as he turned.
At that point, the ring and the crowd both dissolved into a melee of overlapping brawls. Most of the fighting was between middle- to lower-class Britannians mostly in casual garb – though a few were still in uniform – and more richly dressed middle- to upper-class Britannians, but Tamaki could already see several scrums of men who all looked more or less the same to his Shinjuku eyes. Looks like lotsa scores are gonna be settled tonight. Tamaki caught Inuyama's eye and jerked his head towards Naoto, and Inuyama nodded and began cutting his way through the heaving, brawling mass.
Tamaki, for his part, rushed forwards towards the first Purist, who after a few seconds of apparent unconsciousness appeared to be coming back around, trying to push off the ground. Tamaki bent down and scooped the still-woozy man up into a firefighter carry, and started pushing his way towards the clear space between the wall of the Lacy Garter and the short staircase leading up to the door. "Make way! Wounded man coming through! Make way!" A small path through the fighters appeared and Tamaki hustled his way through to the open area.
"W-what happened...? My head hurts..." The man on his back moaned into Tamaki's ear, but Tamaki ignored him, and instead of responding carefully lowered him to the ground. As he bent down, he carefully put the man in the recovery position, kneeling beside him and rolling him onto his side, tuning out the slurred complaints. He's got a concussion at least, for sure.
Then, as he bent over the downed man, making a production of propping up his back, Tamaki lifted the Purist's jacket away from his back with one hand as he quickly rammed his hand down into his own pants and pulled out his knife, nearly cutting himself with the wickedly sharpened blade as the pressure from the belt turned the hilt in his hand. Before anyone could see what he was up to, Tamaki quickly stabbed the man twice in the back, aiming for the upper center of his back. The blade rasped against bone, and then as Tamaki pressed down firmly with as much weight as he could muster without tottering forwards in the second stab, he felt something give with a wet snap. Twisting the knife free of his "patient", Tamaki quickly wiped the blade on the interior of the man's jacket before pulling the tailored garment back down over the wound. Tamaki was sure that the gurgling would have made the man's already slurred speech nearly incomprehensible to someone who could actually speak Britannian, but he was content with the indication that he'd gotten at least one lung with his knife.
Tamaki manipulated the dying man's arms and legs so he would remain on his side, hopefully concealing the blood likely pooling under him until he and his comrades were well away, and got back up on his feet, tucking the knife against the inside of his forearm. As he turned, a momentary gap opened up in the crowd. Through the gap, Tamaki saw Naoto shove an apparent Purist backward into Inuyama and Gin's arms. Inuyama grabbed the man's left arm, Gin his right, and as Inuyama grabbed the man's shoulder length hair and pulled his head back, Gin's gloved hand flew across his throat, a wide red grin following in his wake. Below their feet, Tamaki thought he could make out another figure in bloodied brocade lying beneath their feet, before the crowd heaved again, closing the gap.
A moment later, screams of horror began to resound through the crowd as somebody suddenly noticed one of the bloody bodies, and the earlier violence abruptly escalated as many more knives suddenly appeared from hidden sheathes, along with hurriedly broken bottles. Over the press of the crowd, Tamaki could see Naoto's dyed blond hair, now minus the peaked officer's cap, moving with impressive speed through the crowd, followed by at least one head with a folding garrison cap. It's bugout time, for sure!
Tamaki started running, heading in the same southern direction Naoto had started to move. Since he was already near the edge of the mob, it was easy to break free and move. Naoto's longer legs had given him some advantage, and he broke free of the crowd a second later, Inuyama and Gin right behind him. Gin had already peeled off his bloody glove, though the right arm of his jacket was dripping and dark, and Naoto was furiously wiping away the splattered arterial blood from his face, not missing a pace as he continued to run. Tamaki fell into step, quickly shoving his knife through his belt, taking care not to stab himself in the thigh as he did so.
Behind them, the screams of terror had already turned to howls of rage intermingled with pained cries. To Tamaki's amusement, though some people (including the sausage salesman) were following their lead and hurriedly getting as far from the area as possible, the yells and screams seemed to be attracting every wannabe belligerent in the area. Men and women, drawn by voyeurism, their own desire to end a night of fun by breaking someone's teeth, or summoned by cries for reinforcements, streamed past and in true Britannian fashion hurled themselves into the fight, seemingly without caring what the fight was about or how it had started.
Tamaki wrenched his eyes away from a gang of seven or eight Britannians in the uniform of the Royal Marines, who were making a beeline back the way he had come with sleeves rolled up and an unmistakable expression of anticipatory relish. Forget about the damned Brits, you've got running to do! In a few minutes, he and his comrades would split up and make their separate ways back to the husk of Kamiyacho Station. Once they all got back, they'd have four hours or so to change back into their worker outfits, get cleaned up, and wait before heading back into Shinjuku. Tamaki would have liked to linger around the fight a bit longer – after all, it wasn't every day you got the pleasure of watching Brits beat the shit out of each other – but they'd done what they came for, and if he got caught after the job was done because he was rubbernecking, Tanya would never let him hear the end of it, if she didn't kill him herself.
Woulda been nice to see, though. But, hey, at least two of those Purist fucks were definitely dead, probably three – that's a hell of a nice Christmas gift, right? Tamaki grinned as he ran into traffic, dodging around a car screeching to a halt. This was what he'd signed up for, at long last! After the attitude adjustment from Tanya, the volunteer work didn't seem useless, but it was kinda boring. Bringing a little taste of hell to the Brits, though, especially the night before one of their big stupid holidays? Merry Christmas, Dad, wherever the hell yah are. Hope I made yeh proud, for once.
Private First Class Suzaku Kururugi, lately of His Imperial Majesty's 32nd Honorary Britannian Legion, 1st Brigade, 3rd Regiment, 1st Battalion, 2nd Company, stared at the charred thing chained to the stop sign, and felt the world sway under his feet. The limbs had been mostly burnt away, but the thighs and upper arms remained; in fact, it was thanks to these remaining appendages that the corpse still hung from the chains padlocked to the stop sign, the cherry red paint blistered and peeled yet still visible between the spread stumps. Suzaku didn't know the man chained to the stop sign personally: He'd never met the fellow, didn't know his name or whether or not he had a family that would miss him. He did, however, know exactly what that man sounded like when he had screamed from the depths of horror and pain, pleading for mercy, for help, for someone to do something.
Nobody had, Suzaku included. Nobody had intervened in the slow torture and lynching of the man, nor of the other two Honorary Britannians who dangled from traffic signs outside the 2nd Chuo Ward Outpost, only half a mile from the checkpoint into the Shinjuku Ghetto. And now, at one o'clock in the afternoon on Christmas Day, the curfew on the barracks had finally been lifted for Suzaku and his fire team, so they could clean up the rubbish from the previous night's "incident", including the three bodies.
It had all come as a complete surprise to Suzaku and the other members of the 3rd Regiment billeted at the Outpost. When he had gone to sleep at around ten the previous night, everything had been calm and tranquil; most of his fellow Honorary Britannians had been enthusiastic about the day off they'd been promised the following day, although Suzaku had volunteered to remain on duty as part of the skeleton duty force. He didn't have any friends or family to spend the day with, and the extra pay seemed like the better option. Suzaku had slept as restlessly as always, the unquiet ghosts of his past tormenting him as they did most nights. When he'd woken up to the sounds of gunshots, angry yelling, and hundreds of pairs of feet converging on his location, Suzaku had at first thought he was still dreaming.
The scuttlebutt was that the instigating event that had led to everything else was a fight that had turned nasty in one of the entertainment zones scattered around Tokyo. At least a hundred men from various units had been arrested for a variety of crimes when the military police, supported by the Knight Police, had finally arrived on the scene to break up the growing brawl. Almost as soon as the police had arrived and begun to beat the crowd of unruly soldiers back into line, the Purists on hand – none of whom, Suzaku was sure, had been arrested – had immediately started yelling about their "fallen brothers".
One of the dead Purists had been killed by a bottle-wielding marine who had slammed a mostly-full bottle of bourbon into the man's temple with enough force to cause internal bleeding; the guilty party had been quickly found and was sitting in the cells under the Viceroy's Palace. The other three Purists, on the other hand, had been knifed to death, and the Purists had immediately pinned the blame on Honorary Britannian soldiers. Allegedly, some Honorary Britannian soldiers had been seen fleeing the scene, but Suzaku highly doubted that story. As far as he knew, all Honorary Britannian units had a strict curfew, and as tenuous as the Honorary Britannian status was, Suzaku doubted that any of his comrades would have chosen to flaunt the rules by going out for a night on the town.
Regardless, whether or not the Purists had been killed by Honorary Britannian soldiers, the reprisals had come almost immediately. Before the sun had even risen, disorganized mobs of Purists and other Britannians had swept through the Chiyo, Chuo, and Ginza Districts, grabbing every Honorary Britannian soldier unlucky or stupid enough to be outside their barracks, including men unfortunate enough to be assigned to guard duty outside the fortified walls of the various outposts or assigned to policing the Honorary Britannian neighborhoods. Nobody in Suzaku's unit had any clue how many had died last night, and the news was second or third hand at best, but Suzaku was inclined to believe the worst, considering what had happened next.
Once the mob had butchered their first batch of scapegoats, the Purists had turned on the barracks housing the various Honorary Britannian units distributed across the city. Here, at least, at the 2nd Chuo Outpost, the Britannian officers commanding Suzaku's unit had confronted the mob through barred gates, telling them that the unit was under lockdown and nobody was allowed onto or off the installation. The crowd had heeded the Britannian voice of authority, and hadn't entered the base's grounds, to Suzaku's fervent relief; the unlucky gate guards, stuck on the other side of the hastily shut gates, weren't so lucky. Unarmed as all Honorary Britannians were required to be, in uniform or not, the three men on duty too slow to escape back inside had been hauled out of the guard shack and into the street.
Suzaku had woken at five thirty when the mob had first arrived, and like the other four men of his fire team he'd watched at the window with growing apprehension as the gates slammed shut and as Major Humphrey, who commanded the outpost's two companies, yelled back at the mob through the steel slats. For a moment, when it seemed like reason and order had won, when it seemed like the system had ruled the day once more, and that peace would prevail over violence, Suzaku had relaxed. It's good to see that some Britannians really do believe in their duty – the system truly can be reformed from within with the help of good men like the Major!
That moment of contentment, of a renewed sense of surety and confidence in his life's choices, had been brief. The mob, denied the opportunity to destroy the entire garrison in an orgy of slaughter, had instead opted to vent their bloodlust on the three unfortunates they had seized. They had started with clubs and knives; they had soon moved on to blowtorches looted from a machine shop nearby. The major hadn't even stayed by the gate to watch. As soon as the mob had turned inwards on its captives and ceased attempting to breach the walls, he had turned his back and returned to his quarters.
Suzaku had to be physically restrained by his squadmates. As soon as the first screams had risen above the ugly din outside the gate, he had gone for the door. He had to do something – anything! – to help the poor men, his comrades, suffering outside. Before he had managed to even get out of his shared barracks room, much less out of the barracks, the corporal in charge of his fire team had grabbed him, and together with his squaddies had wrestled Suzaku down onto his bed and pinned his arms and legs. Suzaku had screamed at them to let go, pleaded for them to let him help, let him try to save the men suffering outside whose screams he could not shut out no matter how much he tried, but all was for naught. The corporal screamed back that the men were already dead, that there was nothing he could do for them, and that trying anything would just get them all killed.
And so, Suzaku had thrashed against his comrades and wept, unable to help, unable to escape the agonized screams coming through the closed window. The screaming had ended by seven o'clock, but Suzaku had seen the dancing light of flames reflected against the white ceiling of his barracks room, and remembered the scent of other burning Japanese. I joined up so I'd never have to smell that again! After the Conquest, after we surrendered, there was supposed to be peace, dammit! The Britannians won! We Honorary Britannians followed every rule they gave us! So... Why?! Why?! His comrades had finally let go of him, now that there was nothing Suzaku could possibly do, but he still lay on his bed, staring upwards at the reflected flames, asking himself why it was so hard for people to live together in peace.
By nine, a Knight Police Glasgow and a detachment of military police had come by and cleared off any remaining members of the mob with an admonition to "Return home to your families! It's Christmas Day, for God's sake – go home and enjoy your day!" The handful of Purists still present among the crowd of rubbernecking civilians had been told to return to their duty stations or their homes. Once the crowd had dispersed, the police had mostly left, leaving a token pair of military police behind to "maintain order" at the request of Major Humphrey. Not once during their stop had the police shown any signs of interest in the three dangling bodies, nor even remarked on the piles of charred garbage piled up around the base of each sign.
Hours later, the Honorary Britannians were still locked down, still huddling fearfully in their barracks. From his window, Suzaku had seen several groups of Britannian civilians taking pictures with the grotesque remains of three completely innocent Honorary Britannians sworn to the service of Emperor Charles and the Holy Britannian Empire. At least one group of children had even started trying to pull pieces off the dangling thighs of the man bound to the stop sign, but apparently that was where the police had decided to draw the line, and the children were sent away after one was smacked across the ear.
As the lunch hour had begun, Suzaku approached his platoon's lieutenant and requested permission to go out and take the bodies down. The lieutenant, a Britannian, had lost his usual sneer, and instead looked pale. His hands shook slightly, and at the mention of the bodies, he had looked physically ill. He had nodded vaguely, said something about running the request up to the Outpost's commander, and had left the cafeteria. Suzaku had joined his squad at their table, where they all sat in silence. Their lunches sat on their trays practically untouched; nobody felt much like eating. Nobody had opted for the meat option that day either.
Usually, Suzaku felt fairly isolated among his fellow Honorary Britannians; most of them had come from poor backgrounds, and had seen the Honorary Britannian option as a way to a better life, and his background as a member of an upper-class family before the Conquest marked him out as different. On top of that, most of his comrades were solely concerned with improving their own and their family's prospects, and cared little for the majority of their people, who were still considered mere Elevens by the Britannians. They hadn't taken his talk of reforming the system from the inside for the betterment of universal justice and their people when he'd first joined up well. Most days, any interaction Suzaku had with his comrades was professional at best, and always curt.
Today, Suzaku felt just as miserable as everybody else there. The corporal had even looked apologetic, once he'd waved the other members of the fire team off him. When he rejoined his squad at the table, instead of trying to find a spot somewhere to wedge himself into, two of the guys had moved out of his way, clearing a place for him. Suzaku couldn't find it in himself to wonder or care about the sudden level of newfound acceptance; all he could think about were three men screaming on pyres, a nearby airstrike shaking the plateau as he sat on a crate of MREs, the charred wood crumbling under the impact, "I swear... Suzaku, I swear! I'm going to obliterate Britannia!" was how little it all seemed to mean.
An hour later, Suzaku's fire team had finally been given permission to "tidy up" the street, and now here he was, staring into the blackened sockets of a man he had failed to save. Just another time I've been too late, done too little... What do I do? I just want to save my people... I want them to live in peace... We can't fight this... We'll all die... But... The visage, barely recognizable as human, was as inscrutable as any Buddha carved from stone. Suzaku knew he wouldn't find any answers printed across its flaking skin, no more than he would find answers in the dreams where his father came to visit him, but he just couldn't look away.
Behind him, Suzaku heard the sounds of brooms and shovels at work, as the other members of his fire team dumped the garbage from the burnpile around one of the other signs into a wheelbarrow. Suzaku had dimly noticed multiple empty cooking oil containers as he'd crossed the road from the barracks – likely, the mob had piled up anything even slightly combustible around each of the chained men, before raiding a local mini-mart and dumping every bit of oil they'd had in stock on the garbage and the men. The whole street reeked of an unholy mixture of burning garbage and overcooked pork. One of his squadmates suddenly lost an internal battle and started retching, dry heaving for lack of any lunch or breakfast to expel.
Suzaku felt cold and numb, as if the unmistakable twisted expression of excruciating agony had been a spiritual analgesic. His thoughts ran in circles, incredulity warring with indignation with resignation. Is this Britannian justice? Britannian honor? The system worked just fine when it came to breaking up that brawl last night, and when the police decided to scatter the mob, they were able to do that without a sweat. The system worked well enough for the Major to give an order and have it obeyed. So... why didn't the system work for these men? Where's the justice for them?
From the moment Suzaku had realized that an independent Japan was a lost cause, he had resigned himself to living under Britannia's rule. From that moment on, he had done everything he could to execute what he saw as his duty – to do whatever he could to make the occupation as light and easy for the Japanese as possible, no matter how lonely and heavy the burden. He had... He had done what he had to, so Japan would surrender quickly, before the cities were ground into rubble. He had done everything in his power as a civilian to try and make things better for his countrymen, what little that had turned out to be.
Finally, Suzaku had decided to enlist in the Honorary Britannian Legions as an example to his countrymen. He had hoped that the only son of the last Prime Minister of Japan enlisting in the Britannian Army would reconcile his proud people to the new order. Besides, the Army was the one place where an Honorary Britannian could plausibly gain respect and power. If he could accrue power and influence, he could start to change the system from the ground up.
At least, that had been the plan.
Is it even possible to reform the system in any meaningful way? It was far from the first time he had asked himself this question. If the law states that criminals have the right to a trial and to a sentence in line with the penal code, but this sort of thing happens anyway... Suzaku felt helpless, adrift in a dark sea. He had made his choices with the best of intentions, and at the time they had seemed like good decisions with solid reasoning backing them up. He had done everything the Britannians had told his people they needed to do to succeed in Area 11. I gave them everything I had to give, all for the prospect of being a loyal Britannian citizen and an example to my people... But if we give everything we can give, and this still happens... What's the point?
Suzaku forced himself to look away from the face of horror, sighed, and started going to work on the padlock securing the body to the stop sign with a pair of bolt cutters he'd grabbed from the motor pool on the way out. It was true, he had made his choice, but he had made those choices as part of an exchange. He would serve Britannia loyally and faithfully, and in exchange Britannia would be loyal and faithful in its promise that anybody sufficiently loyal and strong could be a Britannian. It was too late to go back, too late to change his past, but that didn't mean the future was already set in stone too. Suzaku had boundless faith in the system; anarchy and chaos fed upon itself, and left everybody poorer by the end. If the leaders who controlled the system were allowing and fostering anarchy and chaos, though... Than it's no longer the system; it's just another form of chaos, dressed up in order's clothes.
The thought was like a hammerblow, but Suzaku kept dutifully working as he mulled through the implications of it. Britannia was far too strong to fight; Japan would be under Britannia. Britannia as it was now was fundamentally unjust; the system needed to be co-opted and reformed. The system as it was now could not be reformed; we need a new system, with new leaders beholden to the rule of law.
Suzaku kept that conclusion to himself. That night, as he listened surreptitiously to one of his squadmate's contraband crank-powered radios, which he normally would have complained about as a breech of the rules, he didn't say a word, not about the radio, and not about the speech Prince Clovis gave on the previous night's "tragic incident". An investigation would be opened into the deaths of the three Purists, apparently, and Prince Clovis was certain that "disloyal rapscallions hiding in the uniforms of our dear little friends and brothers the Honorary Britannians" were responsible. Nowhere in his speech did the Prince mention the tragedy of Christmas morning, nor did the regular news announcer mention the mob lynchings outside of warnings about unsafe roads near Honorary Britannian neighborhoods and installations.
Later that night, lying awake, Suzaku reconsidered his conclusion, ran through the day's events, and found that his resolve had returned once more. He no longer felt numb; in fact, he practically burnt with a new purpose. The only way I can reform the system... Is if I install a new leader to change it from the top down.