A Young Girl's Guerilla War

by RagnartheSemiGreen

Tanya dies in an artillery barrage on the Rhine Front, contrary to both her and Being X's plans. Unwilling to let his chew toy escape so easily, Being X reincarnates Tanya back into Japan... Six years before Britannia conquers Area 11. (First posted on Space Battles)

31. Chapter 30: A Snipe Hunt (Pt 2)

Chapter 30: A Snipe Hunt, Part 2

(Thank you to Aminta Defender, Sunny, Restestsest, Mitch H., Adronio, WrandmWaffles, Rakkis157 and MetalDragon for beta-reading and editing this chapter.)

JUNE 30, 2016 ATB
ROYAL ELECTRIC REFUEL STATION, KONAN WARD, YOKOHAMA SETTLEMENT
1326

As he pulled the car up to the cordoned-off recharging station, Corporal Kururugi cut the siren off in mid-wail. For a moment, all he could do was sit in the driver's seat, eyes pressed shut and exhausted. The oppressive summer heat had seemingly conspired with the week's stress, and the young soldier's limbs felt leaden and unresponsive.

He didn't want to step out of the car and onto the scene of yet another seemingly unsolvable crime. It was demoralizing.

Not as demoralizing as filtration work, though, he reminded himself. Besides, I need to keep up with Inspector Garcia!

That exhortation fell flat, however, as Inspector Garcia had yet to make any move to get out of the car either. Dark rings had appeared under his brown eyes, and the normally immaculate counterinsurgency specialist had two days' worth of five o'clock shadow crusting his face.

This was the twenty-seventh Yokohama Sniper attack they had been called to in a week since that first urgent call that had sent them racing away from the farm. Twenty-seven attacks and twenty-nine bodies in only eight days.

It was enough to tire anybody out.

Of the twenty-nine victims to date, only twelve had been Britannians from the Homeland or the Settlements in other Areas. Of those twelve, only four had been soldiers, all of whom had been off-duty when they were shot.

One had been a child, shot while making his way from his mother's parked car to the front door of his elementary school.

And seventeen of my people, Corporal Kururugi thought with a smoldering resentment. Seventeen men and women who were just trying to live their lives, trying to prove to the Empire that we are just as loyal as the Honorary Britannians in any other Area.

With every new body, the pressure from on high to find the culprit had ratcheted up. Worse still, after a month of suppressing the story and thirty-eight bodies so far, the Yokohama Settlement's Municipal Administration and the Commandant of the Yokosuka Naval Base had finally decided that the public had the right to know that a lunatic with a sniper rifle was out in the Settlement somewhere. Predictably, reporters from every major publication in the Area and even a few from periodicals back in the Homeland had descended on Yokohama like camera-wielding sharks.

This had done nothing to reduce the crushing pressure on Inspector Garcia's shoulders, and by proxy, on Corporal Kururugi.

From his seat behind the wheel, he could see a small crowd of the bastards mobbing a beleaguered police lieutenant, his gas mask slung across his chest and his face visible as he tried to field the insatiable questions.

"Better him than us," Inspector Garcia remarked, clearly following Corporal Kururugi's gaze. "We might be able to get some actual work done while he's holding the gutter press at bay."

"I hope you're right, Nelson," Corporal Kururugi said without much hope. "How much do you want to bet that they've already frightened off anybody who might've seen something?"

"I'm not much of a gambler," Inspector Garcia demurred, "it's a bad habit to get into. Either way," he popped open his door, "we won't find any leads sitting here. Up and at them, Corporal."

"As you say, Inspector."

A squad of Honorary Britannian police stood guard around the chargers, but their sergeant waved the inspector and the corporal through. The same squad seemed to have drawn some sort of short straw, that or they were the "usual detail" for standing guard around public crime scenes; Corporal Kururugi recognized the men present from the last two attacks. He tapped his fist against his breastplate to the sergeant, before following Inspector Garcia over to the tarp-covered body.

Inspector Garcia was already kneeling by the corpse, an active recorder sitting next to him. Corporal Kururugi dutifully pulled out a pocket notebook, ready to copy down anything Inspector Garcia wanted in writing or to record his own thoughts.

By now, they had worked out something of a routine.

"Victim was a light-skinned Britannian woman in her late thirties," Inspector Garcia began, flipping the tarp back. "The victim has been identified as Joceline Tennyson by her driver's license and was the wife of Captain Steward Tennyson and mother to Joshua and Alice. The victim was five foot five inches and just over a hundred and fifty pounds. Victim has medium-length auburn hair and was wearing a yellow and white sundress.

"Victim was shot through the neck from behind while recharging her minivan's battery," Inspector Garcia continued, his voice clinical and emotionless. "I am not a medical professional, but judging by the wound and the state of her neck, I think the bullet passed straight through her spinal column before exiting through her throat."

That, Suzaku thought, was a very fair assessment, considering that the "state of her neck" is practically severed.

"After exiting the victim's body, the round continued through the window of her minivan, and…" Inspector Garcia stood back up and squinted through the holed window, "out through the window on the other side of the minivan. Trajectory looks close to flat, but it might be proceeding at a slight uphill angle."

Corporal Kururugi made a note to point this out to the crime scene techs, once they showed up.

"Considering that the round still had sufficient velocity to pass through the minivan and probably on into the recharging station itself after passing through the victim's neck, it seems reasonable to conclude that a high-powered rifle was used for this attack." The inspector scooped the recorder up from the pavement and flipped the tarp back down over the late Mrs. Tennyson. "Unless this was a copycat, the use of a high-powered rifle on a seemingly random housewife indicates that this is another Yokohama Sniper attack."

Corporal Kururugi followed Inspector Garcia past the other chargers and into the recharging station. The two clerks unlucky enough to be on duty at the time were standing awkwardly behind the counter, another Honorary policeman keeping an eye on the pair.

Inspector Garcia ignored all three in favor of the fresh bullet hole in the front window.

"The bullet penetrated the window and," he craned his head up and around, "lodged…" he tilted his head down slightly, "just above the beverage coolers. A height of probably six and a half feet, definitely not more than seven feet. As Mrs. Tennyson was five foot five according to her license, this definitely represents an upward trajectory."

A note of excitement had crept into the Inspector's voice; Corporal Kururugi felt a similar excitement welling up inside. That angle said something very interesting about the shooter's location when he had fired the shot – namely, that the shot had to have been fired from a very low elevation and from a location very close to the target.

"So," Inspector Garcia continued into the recorder, "this shot rules out the idea that the perpetrator is firing from an elevated position, at least in some cases. I will have to check back over the scene records from previous locations, but in this particular instance, the upward trajectory is unmistakable. However, this raises further questions. If the shooter is at or below ground level, how are they escaping notice?

"Corporal," Inspector Garcia said, turning to Kururugi, "please go ask the clerks for their security cameras' recordings. Also, ask if they remember seeing or hearing anything. I doubt they will, but the formalities must be observed."

Corporal Kururugi sketched a salute and ambled over to the clerks, who gazed suspiciously at him. He smiled blandly back at the two Britannians. While they might be full citizens of the Empire and his superiors, he was vested in the borrowed authority of an Inspector of the Imperial Bureau of Investigation, his own Honorary status and Eleven features be damned.

"Where do you keep your cameras' recordings?" He asked, purposefully blunt and enjoying a slight thrill at their clear distaste at his presumption. "Do the street-side cameras record to the same computer or whatever as the ones inside the store?"

"There's only one camera in the store," the older of the two replied, "it's behind the counter, looking over the cash register. There's one camera looking at the chargers, and one focused on the exit."

Corporal Kururugi waited patiently, his bland smile as immovable as granite.

A moment later, the clerk grudgingly added "...Corporal."

"So where're the recordings?" Corporal Kururugi asked, reiterating his question. "Hurry up, I don't have all day."

The younger clerk looked like he was about to say something, looked from Corporal Kururugi to the other uniformed Honorary Britannian standing by and over at the suited Inspector Garcia, and thought better of it.

"They're in the back office," the older clerk said, rising from his stool. "Here, I'll show you."

A few minutes of scanning fast-forwarded footage later, Corporal Kururugi reported back to the Inspector. "Bad news, Inspector. The cameras aren't pointed toward anything off the recharging station's grounds. There's some good footage of Mrs. Tennyson getting hit, and there's a few frames of the clerks cowering behind the counter once the bullet went through the window, but nothing else."

"That," Inspector Garcia frowned, "is unfortunate."

"It is," Corporal Kururugi agreed, "but when I asked that gentleman about other cameras," he jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the older clerk, who had returned his place behind the counter, "he said that there's a camera on the traffic light down the street. If the shooter was firing from street level, we might see something."

"Good thinking, Corporal!" The Inspector grinned, the expression boyish on his tired, unshaven face.

"As you say, Inspector," Kururugi agreed, his tone easy and bland.

For a moment, Inspector Garcia stood still and looked off into the distance, clearly mulling over his options. Then, his eyes refocused on Corporal Kururugi and the familiar smile bobbed back into place. "Well, go ahead and help hold the press off, and for God's sake don't say anything they could quote. The forensic lads should be arriving soon to make an official report of the scene and I need to call and get some sergeant assigned to prying that traffic camera footage out of Public Works' sticky hands."

With a smart salute, Corporal Kururugi turned on his heel and started heading for the door, reinvigorated by the sense of progress being made. Before he got more than a few steps away, he heard Inspector Garcia behind him.

"Oh, and Corporal?" Kururugi turned. "Good work, finding an alternative source of footage. Let's hope that it has our Sniper in it, yes?"

"Yes, Inspector!" Corporal Kururugi replied with an answering grin, thrilled by Nelson's approval. "The sooner we can find him, the sooner justice will be done!"

JULY 5, 2016 ATB
POLICE STATION, FUNAKOSHICHO WARD, PORT YOKOSUKA IMPERIAL NAVAL BASE
0637

To the gratified surprise of Corporal Kururugi, it took very little investigation to solve the twin mysteries of the shooter's placement and their amazing ability to escape from the crime scene without detection. With the benefit of hindsight, as he stood in front of Inspector Nelson's desk, he supposed the answer should have been obvious.

Obvious, sure, but there's no way I would've ever come up with it!

"Well done, Corporal," Inspector Garcia murmured as he flipped through frame after grainy frame of traffic camera footage. "Very well spotted."

"It didn't take much…" Corporal Kururugi began before pausing to stifle a yawn. He'd managed to catch a few hours of sleep early in the morning as he'd waited for the labyrinthine police bureaucracy to spit out the information he'd needed. "Just had to spot the pattern."

He had found the first piece of that pattern in the topmost picture of the stack on Nelson's desk. Timestamped seconds after the frame of the recharging station surveillance footage of the bullet smashing through the window, the traffic camera mounted on the stoplight at the nearby intersection had caught a white panel van in mid-turn, its rear oriented directly towards the station.

The van's plates had unfortunately been outside of the frame, the car turned at just the wrong angle, but the vehicle had stood out to Corporal Kururugi when he had first reviewed the footage while Inspector Garcia had immersed himself in the forensic report.

For the first time in his short career as a counter-insurgency agent, Corporal Kururugi Suzaku had a hunch.

Following this hunch, he had filed further requests with the Directorates of Public Works managing several different Settlement wards for any camera footage they possessed near the locations of previous Yokohama Sniper attacks. In most of those cases, the footage of the days of the attacks had no van to be seen. But after hours and hours of searching, Corporal Kururugi had found vans of the same apparent make and model lingering near the scenes of four different attacks throughout the month of June.

And in one of those scenes, Corporal Kururugi found a frame where half the van's license plate had been captured. Between that half of a plate number and the description of the van, and with the increasing pressure of the Prefect of Yokohama and the Commandant of Yokosuka Naval Base behind the investigation, records of a van recently stolen from a landscaping business in Kanagawa turned up with remarkable rapidity.

"That's really all it takes sometimes," Inspector Garcia replied, already reaching for the phone. "Honestly, finding these patterns among the chaos and following up on them, pursuing the niggling little leads down… That's what makes a good investigator, Suzaku."

The Seven Honorary paused mid-dial to shoot Corporal Kururugi a proud smile. "You did very good work this time, Corporal. Very good work indeed."

Jerkily, Corporal Kururugi nodded a reply, trying not to let the sudden spiking pride burst across his face. Thankfully, Inspector Garcia seemed satisfied by that mute response, as he turned his attention back to his call. Corporal Kururugi vaguely listened in as Nelson passed on his discovery to the Naval Base's Commandant and soon to the head of the MP force garrisoned at Yokosuka, but only a fragment of his mind was oriented towards the call.

The rest of his sleepless focus was directed inwards, on that swelling pride and satisfaction.

The long hours spent searching grainy footage, the wheedling negotiations with petty Public Works officials and archivists, that sense of recognition for a job well done made all of it worth it. Inspector Garcia was proud of him, and more than that, was listening to him! The Bureau man put enough stock in his words to immediately put out an all-points bulletin on the stolen van.

It was an almost overwhelmingly-complete vote of confidence. Suzaku found that he wasn't sure how he felt about anybody, especially an authority figure, having such faith in his words, in him, when he had so little faith at times in his own decisions.

But that just goes to show that I need to have more faith in myself, and in the Plan, Corporal Kururugi thought as he dropped into the comfy chair across the desk from Nelson. If I have confidence in Nelson's understanding of how to succeed in Britannia as an Honorary and if he has faith in my ability to deliver the results the Britannians want to see, doesn't that indicate that I'm on the right path and I can act more confidently moving forwards?

He paused and tried to turn that tangled chain of thought over in his head. I really need to get more sleep…

"And that's that," Nelson said jubilantly as the phone rattled down into its cradle. "Every patrolling officer and camera-minder knows that finding this van is the new top priority. The Prefect is activating every officer available and the Commandant is turfing all of the redcaps out of their bunks and onto standby! As soon as we lay eyes on that van, we'll be coming down on them like a pile of bricks!"

"So…" Corporal Kururugi hesitated, "what do we do now? I mean… We can't do much until they find the van, right?"

"Well, you can go find some coffee, first and foremost." Nelson softened the barb with a smile, but nevertheless waved towards the door; with every muscle in his body screaming reluctance, Corporal Kururugi forced himself to his feet. "Neither of us have time for sleep tonight, I'm afraid. So, caffeinate yourself and splash some cold water on your face, whatever you need to get some pep in your step, because as soon as someone radios in a sighting, we need to be on-site as soon as possible."

"As you say," Corporal Kururugi nodded, reverting for a moment back into the unthinking submission that his officers in the Legion had demanded, before suddenly remembering the standing order to ask for clarification when he didn't understand Nelson's reasoning. "Why do we need to be there? Surely any prisoners will be available for interrogation, right?"

"Oh, absolutely," Inspector Garcia nodded, the scar puckering his lip twisting the cynical smile up into a sneering grimace of disgust. "That's the problem. They'll be available for interrogation by any fool of a redcap officer who wants to earn a feather in his cap by 'breaking the rebels.' God forbid the DIS bastards up in Tokyo hear about the arrest either, or we'll lose access entirely."

"You think they'll steal the credit for taking down the Sniper," Corporal Kururugi asked, his mind still slow and bloated as he fumbled to make the connection. "That they'll swoop in to take the credit…?"

"That too," Nelson admitted. "Make no mistake, Corporal; now that the news has heard about this lunatic and given him a name, made him a story, whoever is responsible for writing the coda to that story will have considerable, if short-lived, influence in Area 11. But," he added, "that's only one of two broad reasons why we need to be on hand to see this whole scenario through."

"Can you think of the other? Think about what I just said," he urged, "think about how I conduct my interrogations. Can you see it?"

"If the police or the DIS interrogate the prisoners," Corporal Kururugi said, speaking his thoughts aloud, "they'll want results and want them soon. The police in particular just want this all over as soon as possible… They've been humiliated by not being able to stop the attacks. So if they get their hands on the prisoners, they'll just force a confession…"

"And…?" Nelson prompted, leading him on.

"And they'll confess to whatever they're told to confess, or they'll die under interrogation," Corporal Kururugi concluded. "Which means that if they've got any friends, or if the Yokohama Sniper just handed their van over to one of their buddies, we'll lose the lead and the Sniper could just lay low for a few weeks and then start killing again."

"Exactly!" Nelson rose halfway out of his seat, leaning on his knuckles as he thrust his face forwards over his desk, towards Kururugi. "If I, if we, aren't on hand to keep the police at bay, they'll stomp all over this case with their ham-handed techniques, just so the Prefect can announce that all's well again! If the DIS gets their hands on the prisoners, God alone knows what they'll do, but if it means sabotaging a Bureau operation, they might just let them go! Credit aside, if we want to end Number terrorism in Yokohama, we need the Sniper once and for all!"

"...I'll get the coffee," Corporal Kururugi nodded, suddenly alert as a fresh wave of energy flowed through him. The stakes were too high to give in to his exhaustion now, and sleep's siren call suddenly seemed all but muted. "I'll even use the machine in the officer's mess so I can add a few shots of espresso to each. That lock can't keep me out."

"Make mine a double," Inspector Garcia instructed with a smile as he dropped back down into his chair. "But for God's sake man, hurry back. As soon as you're here with the coffee, we're checking a car out from the motor pool. Tonight, the speed limits won't matter - as soon as the call comes in, we'll be there."

JULY 5, 2016 ATB
HIGHWAY POLICE STATION, TOTSUKA WARD, YOKOHAMA SETTLEMENT
1023

"Hey there," Corporal Kururugi said with a practiced smile, speaking in Elevenese as he slid himself down onto the unyielding planes of the steel chair, the match of the straight-backed seat on the other side of the interrogation table, "I'm Suzaku. It's good to meet you, even under such unpleasant circumstances."

The first step, Nelson had taught him, is to establish rapport. Figure out who they are and what they need, and you'll be halfway done.

"Man," Kururugi continued with a sympathetic wince, sucking at his teeth as he looked down at the mangled hand spread flat on the dented metal surface, "they really did a number on you, didn't they? Fucking Britannians… Don't worry," he added with another smile, more comforting and soft, "you're safe now. We've got you."

The woman, fettered to the chair across from him, remained silent, but that was fine. Corporal Kururugi didn't need her to say anything; after months in the care of Inspector Garcia, it was easy to read everything he needed to know at the moment on her face.

Search for tells, for signs of emotional insecurity. A clammy brow, clenching hands, facial twitches, all indicate nerves and a sense of insecurity. A clenched jaw or a red face probably means they're angry, but could be a cover for nervous anxiety too.

"I know, I know," Kururugi waved a dismissive hand, smiling conspiratorially at the subject as if he were sharing a joke, "an Eleven in Britannian uniform? I'm a traitor to our people, our gods, and the Yamato Spirit. I've heard it all before, but believe it or not, I just want what's best for our people. Just like you, right?"

Almost involuntarily, the woman opened her mouth and seemed on the cusp of speaking, but then she shot a frightened look at the broad expanse of opaque glass that made up one of the walls of the room.

"Don't worry," Corporal Kururugi soothed, plastering a smile he certainly didn't feel on his face. While his smile was only skin-deep, he would privately admit to feeling a spark of anticipation; she was about to speak! Already, a crack had appeared in her facade! "There's only another Honorary behind that glass. He's making sure the local cops don't try to sneak back in."

Don't lie if you can avoid it; cultivate a sense of trust with the subject, to encourage a spirit of reciprocity.

He carefully let the smile lapse into a perturbed frown, shaking his head as he gazed down at the woman's left hand again, letting his eyes linger on the twisted fingers and the mangled joints. "That must really hurt. We'd better get you to a doctor soon; I can't promise anything, but if they can at least get everything pointed the right way again, you should make a full recovery… Oh," Kururugi added offhandedly, "and give you something for the pain too."

Left unsaid was the implication that not seeing a doctor soon could lead to lasting damage and greater pain, along with the corollary that only cooperation could purchase access to medical assistance. Nelson had taken great pains to point out that pain perceived was pain received. This woman already knew what could happen if she didn't cooperate, it was up to him to show her that she had choices.

"I…" For the first time since Corporal Kururugi entered the overly bright room, the Eleven spoke. "I… I'm not going to say anything… There's no point."

Her voice was raw and brutalized, presumably as a result of the screams the prefectural Britannian highway police had ripped from her throat when they'd broken her hand and twisted her fingers out of their sockets. Coupled with the obvious bend in her leg, a product of the highway crash that had ended her frantic escape, the Eleven was in bad condition. Honestly, the fetters to the chair were redundant; it's not like the suspect could have walked out under her own power.

Corporal Kururugi found it difficult to care, although he did his best to pretend otherwise. Indeed, the only outrage he felt over the clear torture the prisoner had sustained before Inspector Garcia had arrived to put an end to it was the clear illegality of the Highway Police's actions.

Still, it's hard to blame them… he mused behind his sympathetic smile, carefully modeled after Nelson's own. She didn't pull the trigger, but she was the driver for the bastard who put one of their buddies in the hospital this morning, and another in the morgue.

It had been a very busy morning. Shortly after the all points bulletin had gone out on the van, a spectacularly unlucky patrol unit had noticed the stolen vehicle trundling along down a frontage road. The two-man patrol had tried to pull the van over, but as soon as they'd turned on their flashing red and blues, a hail of gunfire had smashed through their windshield, killing the driver and sending the police car off into an uncontrolled crash trajectory with a telephone pole.

All units in the district, including the borrowed car with Corporal Kururugi behind the wheel and two VTOLs launched from Yokosuka, had converged on the Britannian suburb on the southern edge of the Yokohama Settlement. Amazingly, the van had been quickly cornered and, after a brief pursuit, ran into an unyielding brick wall by the panicking driver, who now sat across the table from Corporal Kururugi.

But, he knew, she isn't the Sniper. Or, at least, she's not the triggerman in the group of people we called the Yokohama Sniper.

The search of the van had turned up three sleeping bags and an abundance of detritus, more than enough to suggest that multiple people - multiple women, judging by the abandoned clothes - had been living in that van over the last few weeks.

Of whom only one, the driver, had been caught.

And by the time Inspector Garcia and I finally caught up, the cops had already dragged her back and begun their own little amateur interrogation. And that's not even getting into what else we found in the van…

"What makes you say that," asked Corporal Kururugi with a quizzical frown. "You're not the one we want, are you?"

"When's that ever mattered?" came the instinctual bitter response, exhausted emotion dripping from every word. "When the hell has that ever mattered, Brit? We both know what happens to anybody your side doesn't like, and anyone next to them too. No matter what I say, it's all gonna end the same way."

Long trenches full of bodies, disappearing under shovelload after shovelload of soil… What would happen once word of those long scars in the earth leaked out? The whole street reeked of an unholy mixture of burning garbage and overcooked pork… "I swear... Suzaku, I swear! I'm going to obliterate Britannia!"

"That's not always the case," Corporal Kururugi replied with easy reassurance, cramming the memories of Toyama and Christmas back into the vast mental storehouse that was always under lock and key. "There's plenty of leeway, depending on the circumstances of the matter. Not to put too fine of a point on it, but… there's lots of people who want all of this 'Sniper' business to end sooner rather than later. They're willing to make significant concessions to make that happen."

The anxious, self-centered character, Nelson had advised him after the interrogation of a previous subject equally concerned with their own self-preservation, is fearful, although they constantly try to conceal their fears, often by presentations of bravado. Don't push back on these displays, but instead try to reward their "courage" by soothing their fears. If pressed for time, offer them a way out with an obvious catch.

"Uh huh…" The subject didn't seem convinced, but Kururugi felt like she really wanted to be convinced. In his estimation, she didn't want to die, but didn't see a way out of her situation. "That's why your thugs fucked up my hand, right?"

"They're not my thugs!" Kururugi let a bit of "Suzaku" slip into his voice, along with a taste of his very real disgust at the unsanctioned violence. "I am truly sorry for the way they treated you, Miss…?"

"Kanae," the subject muttered, prompted by his pointed silence. Her reply was reflexive; the fatigue and fear inspired by her situation were undermining her focus and will to resist. For the first time, she had answered one of his questions. He felt a slight thrill at the petty but important triumph; Nelson had taught him that the first answer was always the most difficult, and that the next answer would always come easier.

"I am truly sorry for your treatment, Miss Kanae," Kururugi repeated, "and believe me, I want to get you to the hospital as soon as possible to get that hand looked at, and your leg. It's amazing that you're still able to hold yourself together after so much pain! But…" he shrugged apologetically, "I don't have that much say, you see? I need something to convince the police to release you to my custody."

It's working.

Kururugi could see it in Kanae's eyes, the way her walls were crumbling. Her hand must be a mass of pain, and her leg little better; beyond that, she was sitting in an interrogation room in a police station basement, the worst nightmare for any Number terrorist. And, Kururugi was increasingly certain, Kanae had never been strong, but preferred instead to follow the strong.

And here in this little room, even though he wore the uniform of her enemies, he was strong.

And that means I can protect you, Kururugi thought, keeping his face earnest and open, shamelessly using his youthful and seemingly guileless features to his advantage, I can get rid of your pain, get your hand splinted and leg treated, and best of all, I can keep the cops and the executioner's wheel away from you…

"I need something," he reiterated, catching Kanae's eyes and holding them with his own, "something that I can send them off on, something to distract them. They're angry, you see? Someone shot their buddies this morning. But it wasn't you, right? They don't need to have any interest in you… especially not if they know who they should be interested in instead."

A dry tongue flicked nervously across split lips. Kanae was wavering.

"I…" She swallowed convulsively. "I didn't shoot anyone… Not here. Not Britannians."

"I know that," Kururugi replied with a supportive nod and a smile. "You were the driver, weren't you? We found the hole in the back of the van, by the way. That was a really clever idea, concealing a firing hole just above the license plate! And that sliding panel was some good work too. But there's no way you could have shot a gun out that hole while you were driving… And we didn't find the gun either."

Kururugi paused for a moment, letting Kanae simmer, before asking, "Where is the rifle, Kanae? Where are the other two girls who were riding around with you?"

Kanae wavered.

Kanae fell.

"I…" she licked her lips again, "I don't know… One of them's been gone for weeks… She was smart enough to see how things were going… I… I think that's what made… Made her go nuts. And… Once we knew the van was made… She said we should split up, and meet back at…"

The words caught in the injured woman's throat.

"Do you need some water?" Kururugi asked, all solicitous concern. "I'll get you some, and I'll get the key to unlock your wrists so you can drink… But first, tell me about her."

And so, haltingly at first but with increasing fluidity and detail as she fully collapsed, Kanae told Corporal Kururugi about the Yokohama Sniper.

JULY 5, 2016 ATB
TOTSUKA WARD, YOKOHAMA SETTLEMENT
1147

An hour and a half later, Kururugi Suzaku left the Totsuka Ward Highway Police Station, ready to join the urgent efforts to hunt down Tanaka Chihiro and her remaining accomplice and bring them to justice, assuming said accomplice hadn't skipped town already.

Behind him, a squad of Honorary Britannian police trailed out from the station with all the fearsome certainty of a gaggle of ducklings. They seemed almost terrified of the freshly issued pistols hanging at their hips, jerking their hands away from the weapons whenever their hands accidentally brushed up against the stiff leather holsters.

This is probably the first time most of them have even touched a pistol since their training ended, Suzaku thought glumly, letting a hand drift down to his own sidearm. Not exactly the team I'd want backing me up on the hunt for a dangerous terrorist, but needs must and all that.

For his part, Corporal Kururugi had redonned the familiar charcoal body armor and helmet of His Majesty's Armed Services, freed from his footlocker for the first time since he'd come to Yokohama. The perennially useless gas mask hung loosely around his neck; now freed from the 32nd Honorary Britannian Legion's command structure, he would have left the cursed thing behind entirely, were it not for the thermal imaging capacities of the built-in goggles.

And if I were still just Corporal Kururugi of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Company, I'd never have drawn my last piece of equipment from the stores… But the Bureau of Investigation and its auxiliaries are beholden to different rules.

Indeed, while the leadership of the Armed Services in Area 11 had seen fit to prohibit their Honorary soldiers from using any weapon more deadly than a pistol, and even that in only the most dire of circumstances, the Bureau leadership in Area 11 consisted solely of Inspector Nelson Dutra Garcia at this point, which meant that Nelson had a practical monopoly on the Bureau's fearsome reputation. A reputation he had already drawn on three times this morning.

First by seizing custody of Morita Kanae and ordering, as soon as Corporal Kururugi completed his interrogation, her immediate transfer to the Richard Hector Memorial Hospital in the Yokohama Settlement for medical treatment. Inspector Garcia had gone to the hospital with the prisoner to both keep her under his supervision and to continue the interrogation where Corporal Kururugi had left off, but before he had left, he had commanded the Highway Police to give Corporal Kururugi command over a draft of Honorary Britannian officers to assist him with his mission, and that this draft and Corporal Kururugi be armed from the station's stocks.

The second and third uses of the Bureau's authority, respectively.

"I've given you the tools you'll need, Suzaku," Nelson had said once the police lieutenant in charge of the station had left the observation gallery behind the interrogation room's one-way window. "Now, it will be up to you to use them to deliver results. You've done magnificently so far; keep it up. Make the Bureau proud. Make me proud."

That was a mission Corporal Kururugi Suzaku was determined to complete. It was the chance he had dreamt about for months. Ever since Christmas.

And if I can capture Tanaka Chihiro in my capacity as a deputized Bureau agent after extracting the information leading to her in that same role, then the entire operation will suddenly become a Bureau operation. A successful, clean-cut operation in Area 11 will give Nelson an opportunity to request further support and a longer-term assignment here…

Corporal Kururugi very carefully didn't notice Suzaku's enthusiasm at the prospect of Inspector Garcia's deployment to Area 11 extending.

A Bureau field office here in the Area will make everything better, Suzaku explained, the thought curiously tense. The Bureau will keep a closer eye and a tighter hold on the Purists, putting an end to any further "Incidents" like back in Tokyo, which will benefit all Honoraries. The Numbers will benefit too, if the counter-insurgency tactics that Inspector Garcia's predecessors used in the Old Areas replace the wasteful and indiscriminate slaughter of the filtration operations or the retaliatory quotas!

"Alright," Corporal Kururugi turned back to his little knot of Honorary Britannians, who clustered warily in front of him. "Listen up, boys and girls. We've got a job to do."

The ten men, all older than him by at least five years, let the remark pass without challenge. He was a stranger to them, but his military gray uniform and the familiarity the man from the Bureau had shown him, clapping him on the shoulder and shaking his hand before hopping aboard the ambulance taking the prisoner to the hospital, made the pecking order abundantly clear.

"The Yokohama Sniper is out there, somewhere in the Totsuka Ward. We're going to find her."

That little revelation sent a shiver of unease through the cluster of police officers, but none of them spoke up. None of them wanted to mark themselves out as weak, as lazy, as fearful cowards.

And in doing so, they only prove how frightened they really are. But if they fear the system, they'll be happy to make sure everybody else is just as afraid as they are.

"She's just one woman, far from home and all alone," Corporal Kururugi went on, his tone deliberately casual as he addressed the men in a way his old fireteam would have been shocked to hear, "although admittedly a dangerous one. But," he patted the butt of the rifle slung over his shoulder, "we're dangerous too, aren't we?"

I need to relate myself to them; if I'm a stranger, they won't trust me and will be slower to take my orders. Use inclusive language.

"I won't lie to you," Corporal Kururugi continued, pointedly making eye contact with policeman after policeman, holding their gaze for a moment before moving on. "This isn't going to be easy. Someone could get hurt. I can't promise everything will be all nice and safe. If I could, well…" he shrugged and leaned back against the nearest police car, "do you think they would have sent us out?"

That brought a light wave of feeble smiles, and Corporal Kururugi smiled back, sharing the common experience of Honorary soldiers given an unpleasant and dangerous task.

"This is how the Britannians think this is going to go," Kururugi continued, theatrically lowering his voice and prompting his audience to lean in almost conspiratorially. "They think we're bait. The Sniper is a rabid bitch, and as soon as she sees our uniforms, she's going to start shooting. We'll cower and hide, but most importantly we'll hold her in place while our betters swoop in to make the arrest and claim all the credit."

Grimaces and nods, but no trace of surprise or dismay appeared on the faces of his fellow Honoraries. These men knew the score; they, Kururugi was bitterly certain, had never bought into the Britannian propaganda the way a younger Suzaku had. Just like his former comrades in the 32nd Legion, their low expectations prevented any disappointment.

On the other hand, expecting nothing makes any sign of something better welcome.

"That's not how this is going to go." The change of tone was textbook Nelson; Corporal Kururugi even heard a faint touch of the melodic accent of Area Seven7 in his voice as it strengthened with conviction and certainty. "Not this time. This time, we will take the credit along with the danger, for both ourselves and for the Bureau of Investigation, who Inspector Garcia has pledged will reward us if we bring the Sniper down."

There were no cheers, no smiles, no signs of enthusiasm, but Corporal Kururugi hadn't expected any. These were disillusioned men, working for a paycheck and the vague hope that things wouldn't get any worse. But none of them stepped back, none of them looked outwardly skeptical or incredulous.

It will have to do.

"Load up, men," Corporal Kururugi directed, straightening up from the police car and stepping aside. "The Sniper's gone to ground, and she's had two hours to dig herself in. Time to pull her back out and show the world what happens to those who would raise a hand against His Majesty's citizens, Honorary or not!"

Minutes later, the two overloaded squad cars were rolling out through the web of secondary roads surrounding the Totsuka Station, making their way towards the High Street central artery.

The miniature convoy was slow going without the flashing lights and sirens; it was almost lunchtime, and traffic thickened with every minute. With five men packed in one car built for four and six in the other, and with the heat of a summer's noon beating down, it was a claustrophobic, stuffy trip across town. Behind the wheel of the lead car, Corporal Kururugi tried to ignore the sweat rolling down his spine, infuriatingly difficult to scratch under his body armor.

A constant stream of updates drizzled from the dashboard radio. Corporal Kururugi kept half an ear open for anything pertinent; mixed into the usual police chatter were the occasional updates from the units still patrolling the ward hunting the Sniper. The VTOLs had gone home, but the local police force was still out and about, making their presence known.

And no doubt drawing all kinds of cushy overtime, Corporal Kururugi thought sourly. Still, if I can complete this mission… I'll get payment in a far more valuable coin.

Smiling at the thought in a conscious attempt to cheer himself up, Corporal Kururugi idled up to the next traffic light. As he waited, he scanned the surrounding crowd of mostly Commoner Britannians, noting the industrious way they scurried from place to place, many with beverages or wrapped sandwiches in hand. It almost seemed dreamlike, how ordinary it all was. So divorced from the chaos of the morning, or from the shameful horror of Toyama…

"All units! All units!" Suddenly, the radio dispatcher's urgent tone had Corporal Kururugi's full attention, everything else fading into irrelevance. "Gunfire reported on Charleston Square. Civilian casualties reported. All units, standby for situation updates and dispatch."

Before the dispatcher was done with her update, Corporal Kururugi was already flicking on the lights and sirens. Trusting the squad car behind him to follow suit, he floored the accelerator and squealed out into the intersection.

Charleston Square is just a few blocks ahead, straight down High Street, Corporal Kururugi thought, remembering the map of the Yokohama Settlement he'd committed to memory a few weeks earlier in the course of his chauffeur duties. A big open field, surrounded by trees and a few paths. Lots of community events happen there. The place is surrounded by plenty of tall buildings… hotels and the like, along with the Angels Triumphant Britannic Church. A perfect killing ground for a sniper. Why the hell didn't I think to go there immediately?

"Uhh, Corporal?" Kururugi spared a look over at the man sitting in the passenger seat, who swallowed nervously but pressed on. "Didn't the dispatcher tell us to standby and wait for orders?"

"She told the police to standby," Corporal Kururugi corrected. "We're not 'all units'. We're Bureau, and we don't answer to them."

Not unless we screw up, that is, he silently added as he turned his eyes forwards once more. Best not to fail, then.

From his driver's seat, Corporal Kururugi watched as the normal run of daily life disintegrated before his eyes. As he raced closer and closer to Charleston Square, the sidewalk-bound crowds of pedestrians scrambled for cover, or otherwise stampeded back the way he'd come. Most drivers had the sense of mind to likewise turn back the way they had come, but some lost their heads completely and lept from their cars for cover, leaving abandoned cars cluttering the road.

Unfortunately, a delivery truck driver appeared to have split the difference by trying to turn in the middle of the intersection at the southeast corner of Charleston Square, where High Street met Elizabeth Avenue, before giving it up as a bad job and running away, leaving his truck in the middle of the intersection.

"Son of a bitch!" The curse came involuntarily to Corporal Kururugi's lips, and he winced at the knowledge that Inspector Garcia would disapprove of such a display in front of the men. "Alright," he continued, slamming the car into park, "end of the ride. Everyone out!"

The fire team crammed into his car didn't need to be told twice. The five other men packed into the cruiser boiled out immediately; nobody wanted to be a stationary target in the parked cruiser, even with the truck separating them from the open air of the Square.

As the second cruiser emptied, Corporal Kururugi cautiously peered out from around the boxy frame, ears straining for the distinctive cracking hiss of rifle fire. It was a fool's errand: any such warnings would be drowned out by the cacophony all around him. Down the street, cars screeched and swerved. Civilians sheltering behind any scrap of cover available yelled at one another, voices angry and hysterical. Others whimpered into their cellphones, making calls home or to the police to tell them what they already knew.

Somewhere out on the broad expanse of green, someone screamed in agonized pain.

Turning back to his borrowed squad, Corporal Kururugi found ten pairs of eyes fixed on him, waiting for instructions. Waiting for him to tell them what to do. Looking past the Honorary policeman, he saw still more eyes fixed on him, as civilians took the cue and looked to him as a leader.

The rush of emotion at the awareness, at how all of these people, his nominal social superiors were begging for his protection, beseeching him to tell them how to escape, how to survive, was intense.

"All civilians," he called out, doing his best to project authority by speaking loudly without shouting, deeply conscious of just how good it felt to give orders, "stay under cover, and stay off your phones. The police are aware of the situation, and help is already on its way. Please keep calm, and keep your heads down."

Amazingly, none of his Britannian audience questioned why an apparent Eleven, even with a rifle and uniform, was giving them orders. More than the panicked flight, that spoke volumes about their fear.

"Now," Corporal Kururugi continued, his eyes jumping from civilian to civilian in the shelter of the truck, still trying his best to channel Nelson's unflappable charm and aura of natural command, "did any of you see anything? Did you see anybody go down, or see the shooter?"

Mute gazes and silent headshakes met him. One man wrapped his arms around himself, trying to resist the wracking shakes.

All useless…

Corporal Kururugi stuck his head back out around the truck. One side of the square, proceeding north along High Street, was lined with a multitude of two- and three-story buildings. Shops on the ground floor and presumably apartments on the subsequent stories. To his west, along Elizabeth Avenue, stood a tall hotel, somewhere between ten and twenty stories. He couldn't see past it, nor through the trees that lined the Square to the other side, but he could see a tall steeple reaching skyward over the foliage. Presumably, the church itself stood at the north end of Charleston Square.

Nothing but vantage points for a lunatic bitch and her rifle… And, Suzaku added, no shortage of targets either.

There had been some kind of open-air market happening in the Square, Corporal Kururugi saw. That, or perhaps the food trucks were always set up out in the grass at this time of day to feed the crowds of workers who needed a cheap meal on the go. Either way, while some of the market's patrons and sellers had managed to scramble to the shops or the streets leading away from Charleston Square, many were stuck behind the pitiful shelter afforded by garbage cans, trees, and benches.

At least one was down, and judging by the blood oozing from his holed head, already dead.

"Alright," he began, turning back to his men, "we're going to be as careful about this as possible, but we're going to do our duty. Our first job is to evacuate the civilians as best as we can. Split up into pairs; one of you will talk to the civvie, try to keep them calm, the other keeps their eyes up. If someone can't move under their own power, carry them over here to this truck, you hear?"

Among the chorus of "yessirs," one of the policemen asked, in Elevenese, "What about you, Corporal? What are you going to be doing?"

…Save it for later, Suzaku decided. It's a stressful time. Whatever it takes to get them moving.

"I'll be keeping a lookout for the Sniper," Corporal Kururugi replied, pointedly in Britannian, shrugging his rifle off his shoulder and into his hands. "As soon as I see something, anything… I'll let you know. If you hear the shout, drop whatever you're doing and follow me. Clear?"

It apparently was clear, and seconds later the squad started moving out. The five pairs of policemen, Honorary Citizens all, warily fanned out across the intersection, keeping one eye on their surroundings and one eye on their leader. Corporal Kururugi sidled out behind the last pair, eyes scanning the crowded sidewalks and Square.

It was a bright day, sunny without a cloud in the sky. The heat, already sultry, became oppressive as Corporal Kururugi focused on the now, putting everything else away. Nelson, Toyama, his men, the ever-watching ghost of Kururugi Genbuu, none of it mattered. None of it was real.

Only he was real. Only he mattered. He and the Sniper.

He and Chihiro.

Dazzling sunlight glinted off the windows of the hotel to this left. Minor mineral imperfections in the marble facade glittered in flecks of gold, each of which could be a glint off the lens of a scope. The branches, heavy with vibrant green foliage, swayed in the desultory breeze, and above them the distant steeple-top cross of the Britannic Church reared proud against the azure sky.

Corporal Kururugi swallowed heavily, his tongue swelling in his throat as he padded forwards. The rifle's unfamiliar weight was heavy in his hands, the metal and plastic unaccountably bulky, as if the weapon was trying to escape from his hands to join the civilians in pressing their faces into the sod and cement.

Eyes open, eyes open, eyes open…

From the trees, a crow cawed. A woman moaned. One of his pairs was darting back from the tree line, a civilian's arm over each man. The girl's yellow blouse was vibrant against the sanguine blotch in her abdomen. A gut shot.

Eyes open…

Kururugi was suddenly on the ground, his chin, unprotected by the facemask, scratching painfully against the rough grains of the cement sidewalk. Belatedly, he realized that he'd heard the crack-hissss of a round slashing through the air and had hurled himself to the ground by pure force of instinct. The injured woman screamed; her two escorts had likewise plunged away from the deadly wasp-sting of rifle fire and had dropped their cargo in the process.

Her wound torn open by the fall, the blotch began to spread across her blouse anew.

Corporal Kururugi climbed to his feet, his jaw sore and wet. He felt something trickle down his chin, running down his neck. Sweat or blood, he couldn't tell. His gloves were full of sweat. Belatedly, he realized that his rifle's safety was still engaged, and flicked it away.

Where had that shot come from? He cursed the senselessness of it, and his own failure to get a direction from the shot.

He was certain the Sniper would give him another hint soon.

His whole body felt tense, heavy with electric energy that Corporal Kururugi had to struggle to control. Muscles were locked tight as his fingers clasped down on fore- and hand-grips. The heat was unbearable, now that the breeze had gone. A policeman was leading a trio of Britannians in suits back towards the truck, his almond eyes almost bulging from his face with nerves. His partner brought up the rear, his pistol in his hands and pointed skyward as he walked backwards, his sidearm held aloft like some protective charm and about as useful as an ofuda in warding off a sniper's shot.

From up ahead, to Corporal Kururugi's northwest, out on the green of the Square, a man screamed in sudden agony. An aproned man, still absurdly wearing the paper dixie hat of a food server, stood up from his worthless shelter behind a park bench, blood streaming from his mouth and from the hole in his neck. One of his policemen, only feet away from the unfortunate man, reeled away from the dying man, his hands darting to his holstered pistol. His partner, who had been trying to coax another man up from behind a mobile grill, dove for cover next to the civilian, his face a pale streak in Kururugi's adrenaline-blurred vision.

It was a perversion, how relieved Corporal Kururugi was that a man was dying, his last breaths drowned in his own lifeblood. And yet, to see it happen, to finally bring the anticipation to an end… To finally feel that tension snap, to know that the time of waiting was over, and the moments of action had begun?

Freedom.

"To the north!" Corporal Kururugi bellowed, already running. "The bitch is to the north! Follow me, men!"

The blood was pounding in his ears as he ran, the adrenaline that had jangled every nerve and constricted his vision to a hyper-sensitive pinpoint finally given reign to send him flying like an arrow across the pavement and grass. He couldn't hear his men behind him, but Corporal Kururugi couldn't hear anything over the heaving in his ears, nothing except for the crack-hisss of another bullet flying overhead, and the distant, irrelevant scream of a man down. Irrelevant, because it was not him, and he was running, charging.

Above him and before him towered the church, a massive building of dusty red and creamy white, with a steeple as supremely proud as the man who ruled the Holy Empire. Tall windows in iridescent blues, greens, and imperial purple suggested at the divine mysteries of royalty, of power. High above in the steeple, through a yellow-tinged window, Corporal Kururugi could dimly see a suggestion of a massive bell… And could see a shadow darting from window to window.

"The church!" He yelled again, his wind coming deep and strong as he ran. The rifle, previously so heavy in his hands, had all the mass of his childhood training sword, practically a stick. "The bitch is in the church!"

Grass turned to pavement once again as Corporal Kururugi hurdled over the ornamental hedge separating the Square from the perimeter sidewalk. He was so close to the church now, so close! Only a handful of parked cars, a stretch of asphalt turned sticky and soft under the summer heat, and the flight of stairs rising up to the edifice separated him from the door leading into the vestibule, painted red and banded with black iron in the old style.

He felt, rather than heard, the shot.

Standing in the shadow of the steeple, the Yokohama Sniper had snapped off a shot at the last possible second, just before he lunged under her line of sight. He had no idea how she could have overlooked him during his charge down the length of the Square. Maybe she hadn't. Maybe she shot at him, but he simply hadn't noticed, his whole world reduced down to the tunnel stretched ahead of him.

He didn't know. An overwhelming explosion of pain as his vision disintegrated into a momentary flash of searing white light was all he knew. Immediately matched with the fiery coal under his helmet burning a hole straight down through his scalp.

Stumbling steps carried him forward into the side of a parked car. The velocity of his running leap exhausted, he reeled back from the unexpected obstacle. The urge to slump down behind the pitiful shelter of the sedan, to collapse onto the hard, hot asphalt, and to claw at his aching head, was almost overwhelming.

If I stop and sit down here, Suzaku thought, ludicrously calm in the near-blind chaos as Corporal Kururugi desperately blinked the starbursts out of his vision, she will kill me. She can still shoot me from here, and the car isn't tall enough to block her vision.

I can't die yet; I can't let myself die yet! Not with a chance to start the Plan in earnest just within my grasp!

With renewed energy, Corporal Kururugi half slid, half skidded around the car's trunk. One hand braced against the shining silver surface whose reflected light made his blurry eyes weep, the other holding fast to his rifle. Another crack-hisss slashed down from above, and off to his left where one of the cobblestone paths through the park led out onto the street, he heard a gurgling scream.

He didn't give himself time to think about who that could have been, or how close it was to his own fate. He needed to push on, to bury the fear, the pain, and keep moving. Don't think, just move. Move. Move, move, move!

The sun-softened asphalt sucked at his boots as he sprinted madly across the road, rifle clasped to his chest as he dashed for the shelter of the monolith rising before him. The stairs, broad and gentle, suddenly loomed up like the very stones of some vast mountain, rising to the heavens or at least to the promise of sanctuary and salvation behind a red-painted door. Pushing through the sudden vertigo, he flew up the steps in an almost uncontrollable wave of energy and threw his body, all of its armored weight and frantic, desperate energy, against the door.

The door flew open, bouncing of the wall behind it with a protesting groan echoed by Corporal Kururugi as he flung himself around the corner and into the vestibule of Angels Triumphant. It was like stepping into another world. The noon heat and bright, eye-searing light of the world outside vanished as he stepped into the twilight of the manmade vault. Sunlight poured in through the open doors behind him, along with the huffing, panting remnants of his squad.

Seven of the Honorary Britannian police, he saw, had survived the run. Of the other three, there was no sign. Perhaps they were still alive and well, and had just been too cowardly or smart to charge straight at a sniper's nest. Maybe they were wounded, bleeding out on the sidewalk or the Square behind him. They were most probably dead.

At least these seven are okay, Suzaku considered, running his eyes over the group as they slumped against walls and fought to reclaim their breath. To his pride, two of the men already had their pistols drawn and pointed at the door labeled 'to the belfry.' No signs of any injury. Good… That's good…

At the thought of injuries, Corporal Kururugi suddenly remembered that he'd been shot only a minute before. Shot in the head, no less, for all that he was still ambulatory and, apparently, alive.

Swaying slightly under a sudden spike of nauseous vertigo, he fumbled with the strap's buckle, pulling the helmet from his head. For a moment, Corporal Kururugi couldn't bring himself to glance down at the protective equipment; the sudden, irrational fear that if he did, he would find a hole clean through the ballistic fibers stained red with his lifeblood, or worse still gaze upon wet pieces of his head enmeshed in the torn fibers. In an effort of will, he forced himself to look down at the helmet.

To his great relief, it was instantly obvious that the hit had been glancing at best, presumably the result of Chihiro firing too rapidly to place the shot with the same level of precision she'd demonstrated during the Yokohama Sniper Attacks. The ballistic fibers were torn in a line from the crown of the helmet halfway down to the base, before the tangential trajectory had taken the round down past his back and into the ground behind him.

If I hadn't been wearing this helmet…

Pushing the thought and the shiver such a brush with death evoked aside, Corporal Kururugi slapped the helmet back into place, wincing as the weight settled back onto his sensitive scalp and bruised skull. While the helmet had saved his life, it hadn't managed to negate all of the bullet's kinetic energy.

Could've been much worse… My sight's even coming back. Only some floaters now. And the nausea… I think… I think I've got a concussion…

"Alrigh-," he started, only to be cut off by a rasping cough. Abraded from shouted exhortations and orders to his men, his throat registered its cracked dryness. One of the policemen passed him a canteen, which he took gratefully and drank from before passing it back with a nod of thanks.

"Alright," he began again, trying to focus through a sudden wave of wooziness "we've got her cornered up in that steeple. Only one way down, but that also means there's only one way up. We can't leave her just sitting up there taking potshots at the public."

Nobody spoke up. Most looked resigned. The one officer without a partner, who Corporal Kururugi thought he recognized as one of the pair who he had seen carrying the injured girl, looked angry.

They're just as silently obedient as the men back in the Legion were, Suzaku noted. It wasn't a happy thought. Silently obedient doesn't mean much if they drag their feet or only follow my orders if I'm standing behind them with my finger on the trigger. Sullen obedience isn't good, not good enough. Not for an elite group. That was my mistake last time.

Nelson would want me to lead them, not just drive them.

"Did anyone see what happened to the other three?" Kururugi asked, trying to control the ache in his head as he attempted, at this late juncture, to show concern for the strangers put into his care. "I was a bit too focused on the run to look around."

A few men smiled at the lame comment, and one or two even snorted slightly. It wasn't funny, but everybody present was tense enough to laugh at anything.

Nobody relaxed. The door to the belfry seemed to loom in the corner of the collective eye.

"I saw Yasu… I mean, James, go down," one of the officers finally offered, the man who had lent Corporal Kururugi his canteen. "Took one to the shoulder, I think. He… I think he got behind a tree…?"

The officer's voice trailed off into a question Corporal Kururugi didn't know how to answer.

I wish Lelouch was here… Or Nelson. Lelouch would say something asinine but profound, and Nelson would just figure out what they needed to hear to keep them moving…

"I'm sure he'll be fine," Corporal Kururugi replied gruffly, knowing as he said it that it was probably a lie. Even if James hadn't bled out, he doubted that the Highway Police had much use for an Honorary officer with a useless arm. "What's your name, officer?"

"Eugene, sir." The name was stiff and unnatural in the officer's mouth, the reply stilted. "Eugene Araki."

Nelson would say something about a mutual bond or whatever…

"Good to meet you, Eugene…" Corporal Kururugi said, the words dropping from his mouth like leaden weights. Exhaustion crested over him, the tiredness of sleepless nights held at bay by first coffee and more recently adrenaline suddenly, inexorably returning as his surge began to recede.

It's time to move, before I fall asleep standing up… Wait, you're not supposed to sleep with a concussion, right…? I think Instructor Tohdoh told me that once… I'm so tired…

Pushing himself back up off the wall took Herculean effort. His helmet straps hung freely; he'd forgotten to rebuckle them after he put the scored thing back on. Suddenly, he realized that his rifle was still active, the safety very much unengaged.

So tired…

"Well boys," said Corporal Kururugi, then laughed at the silliness of the statement when everybody else was at least in their twenties and wondered why the men looked alarmed. "She's not coming down, so we're gonna have to go on up." He paused. "I'll go first. I've got the big gun."

He gestured with it, swinging it up at the roof of the vestibule. Every eye present followed it.

Def… Definitely a concussion. Woopie.

"She's had some time to dig in up there, so who the fuck knows what she's done with the stairs? Our source said that the Sniper's got a thing for grenades and knives, as well as rifles…" Corporal Kururugi's mouth was dry again, and he wished he had something stronger than lukewarm water to quench his thirst.

"I'll go first," he repeated, "so… If you see something, let me know."

And on that muddled note, Suzaku decided that the moment of action could no longer be put off. Crossing the vestibule to the neat little door with its neat little sign, printed in faux cursive felt dream-like. With each sleepwalking step across the plush carpeting, the door grew larger and larger. His neck, unaccountably stiff, wouldn't let him swivel his head away, wouldn't let him break his focus on the door.

Lulu could play chess in his sleep… He hated it when I called him that…

He barked another laugh.

He's probably been dead for years now… Two Britannians, one a blind paraplegic, alone in the wake of the Conquest? Well… Don't worry, Lelouch… I was supposed to die today, I think, but Chihiro fucked up her first chance. She'll get another…

The doorknob turned easily in his hand; despite the visible keyhole, it was unlocked. Corporal Kururugi hesitated, and pulled his combat knife out of his belt.

The first and only weapon most Honorary soldiers get… Well, unless you count the truncheon, I guess. And if I was chasing Lelouch through the woods near Kururugi Shrine, he'd set up a tripwire to snare me up.

Carefully, he cracked the door open just wide enough to smoothly slide the blade, sharpened to a razor-edge every morning, up and down the height of the door. At chest-height, he encountered just a trace of resistance that parted under his descending blade.

Gotcha.

Stepping back, Corporal Kururugi let the door quietly glide open on its well-maintained hinges. The same deep plush carpet that blanketed the vestibule's floor extended into the tiny room housing the staircase and up the stairs at least to the first switchback. Looking up, Corporal Kururugi noted that the stairs met a longer balcony-like structure a floor up; presumably there was an exit onto the sanctuary's upper gallery there, and then the stairs up into the steeple proper would begin.

More importantly, a grenade, Britannian Army-issue, was securely taped to the wall to his right, just beside the staircase door. A string dangled from its ring-pull pin, the other end hanging limp and impotent. If Corporal Kururugi had opened the door with any more force, he would have ripped the pin from the device and blown himself up.

"A classic…" Suzaku said happily to himself, remembering a pepper bomb Lelouch had set up just outside of his room one happy spring morning. "Didn't get the scent out of my hair for two whole showers!"

By the time he was halfway up the first flight of stairs, the first man, Private Eugene – Officer Eugene, he corrected himself – had entered the stairwell after him. To Corporal Kururugi's disapproval, it wasn't until the third man had entered the room that someone else noticed the live grenade still taped to the wall beside them.

"Yes, be careful," Corporal Kururugi muttered at the shocked curse. "And keep your voice down. No need to give the Sniper precise updates on our progress…"

Chastened, the men began slowly ascending the stairs behind him, and Corporal Kururugi resumed his trudging progress; trudging, because he was, as best as he was able, eyeballing every inch of banister, runner, carpet, and creaking pine-wood step, scanning for more improvised bombs or spring-loaded knives connected to tripwires or whatever other nonsense Chihiro had managed to cook up during her hours of preparation for her final stand. It was infuriating how his addled mind simply refused to focus, eyes turning and swiveling seemingly at their own pleasure. Every motion, intentional or not, gave him a fresh twinge of vertigo.

The next hurdle, such as it was, came not at the balcony door, but at the base of the wrought iron staircase spiraling upwards at least sixty feet, towards a trapdoor in the floor high above. A second tripwire stretched across the skeletal base, and worryingly Corporal Kururugi couldn't see what exactly it was supposed to activate. One end was firmly bound to the side of the stairs at mid-boot height, perfectly placed for an unwary soldier to activate, but the other wound around the other side of the stairs before simply going… up. Up, somewhere, to some higher turn in the stairs.

Or up all the way up, Suzaku added. The exact purpose of the trap was a mystery, either way. Even more mysterious was where Chihiro had gotten so much material to go to ground with; Kanae had referenced some sort of rebel organization, but in Corporal Kururugi's experience most Eleven insurgents had very limited resources. If an operative working independently like the Yokohama Sniper enjoyed such a wealth of explosives, that spoke volumes about the dangers of this mystery organization.

There were charges leveled against a pair of corrupt lords several months ago, Corporal Kururugi dimly remembered, trying to remember the almost forgotten news item. And something about the theft of explosives from a warehouse… Last summer?

A chill washed over him, the sweltering heat of the steeple momentarily forgotten. My outpost… It was only three kilometers away from the Shinjuku Ghetto… How long has this pack of terrorists been lurking, right under my nose? A year? Two years…?

Why am I standing around and staring at a flight of stairs? Worry about this later.

"Mind your step," Corporal Kururugi grunted as he carefully stepped over the thin wire. "There's something here."

Indeed, it wasn't until Corporal Kururugi was ten feet and two twists of the spiral staircase up in the air that someone, some idiot of an Honorary, some uniformed fool, fucked up and stepped on the line. Suddenly, the wire, heretofore invisible where it stretched up through the central axis of the spiral, thrummed into visibility as high above a bell tolled loudly.

Not a trap, he thought frantically, already running as his adrenaline surged at the memory of hissing rounds streaking from above, but an alarm! She knows where we are now!

Resisting the urge to crane his head up towards the trap door high above, Corporal Kururugi focused on nothing but running up the steps. He couldn't afford to look away from the stairs, to look up as the memory became reality with a thunderously echoing crackthat put her shots under the open sky to shame. The stairs provided minimal cover, and he was in the lead. If he lost focus now, if he let his feet get caught under the iron stairs' treads, he would be horribly vulnerable to Chihiro's fire and a simultaneous obstacle to his men's advance on the madwoman's elevated position.

They might not even stop running. They might just trample over me and smash me between the stairs and down to the floorboards below.

Below him, a few of his officers were returning fire. He caught sight of Eugene through a gap between the stairs, two turns below with his face and sidearm craned almost straight up, firing away at something Corporal Kururugi wouldn't let himself be distracted by. The crack of rifle fire continued to lash down from above, and he fancied that he could almost hear the sound of the piston motor working as it propelled round after round into the accelerator coils.

How many stairs are left? How high up am I? Suzaku asked both questions before pushing the wonderings aside. No past. No future. Only the present.

Up and up, the rifle swinging side to side in his arms, a stitch growing under his ribs, under his body armor. He had lost his helmet at some point, he blearily realized, the air flowing through his sweat-damp hair pleasantly cool.

Up and up and up, until suddenly there wasn't an up anymore, only the tight confines of the clock room, a nest of gears and shafts against one wall and a vast glass clockface studded with yet more gearwork on another. And, in the center of the room, rising from the floor next to the trap door, was another, shorter staircase, practically just a canted ladder, rising to a second trap door. Presumably, the belfry was above their heads, through that second door.

Chihiro was nowhere to be seen in the clock room, although Corporal Kururugi vaguely noted a bullet hole in the ceiling just over his head, where one of his men had made a lucky shot up through the first trap door, presumably narrowly missing the Sniper.

Corporal Kururugi kept his rifle warily trained on the opening in the ceiling as he side-stepped clear of the entrance to the room, allowing the men on his heels to stumble up the last few steps after him. Five men made it, the last Eugene, who turned a sweat-soaked face towards him as the officer slapped a fresh magazine into his pistol.

"Report, Eugene," Kururugi said around his thick tongue, his saliva syrupy thick in his parched throat. "Where's the rest?"

"Dead, sir," came the expected reply. "Eddie overbalanced and fell over the railing… He might still be alive. Andrew isn't. She got him right in the fu- sorry, right in the face, Sir."

"Oh."

There didn't seem to be anything else he could say in that moment. He'd never heard either man's Britannian name before that moment, and wouldn't have been able to pick them out of the squad's initial lineup if his life was on the line.

He'd only paid attention to the uniforms, not to the men wearing them.

Mistake, mistake, mistake, muttered a voice that sounded old and fat, yet pathetically proud. No end to your mistakes, no pause in your endless betrayals. First your country, then your family, then your own command. Mistake, mistake, mistake.

"Shut up, Father."

Eugene blinked, and Corporal Kururugi realized he'd said that out loud.

"Up!" He snapped, and before he could think twice about it, Corporal Kururugi was in motion once more, pushing his flagging body for everything it could give him.

And there she was, appearing at the head of that last flight of stairs as if in answer to his call, a twisted thing that barely seemed human, much less female, down on one knee. For all that Tanaka Chihiro's face was locked in a grimace of demonic, tooth-baring hatred, her rifle was stone-steady as it pointed down at him like the accusing finger of a judgmental god.

Or the sternly unwavering disapproval of a father whose demands he could never quite appease.

His finger twitched, hours of training under first Kyoshiro Tohdoh and then under the merciless hand of Britannian drill sergeants taking over where his mind faltered. The butt of the rifle, pressed tightly against his shoulder, kicked back and tried to rear, but Corporal Kururugi's grip was iron tight and unyielding.

It was kill or be killed, and he would be damned if he died here, his work unfulfilled and the vast debt he had amassed unpaid.

But, some seductive corner of his mind murmured, what better absolution could there be for a murderer like you than dying in the pursuit of another murderer? Dying a hero has its upsides, you know…

Nelson can use your sacrifice almost as well as he could use you. Perhaps even better – after all, you wouldn't be around to fail him like you failed everyone else.

Dimly, Suzaku felt something hot pass through his hair, leaving a curiously-numb line tracing behind it that he knew intellectually would soon scream with burning pain, and he knew that for the third time that day, Tanaka Chihiro had failed to kill him.

Damn her.

He didn't fail. When it came to killing, Kururugi Suzaku had never failed.

In that way, he was not his father's son.

The first rosette bloomed on Chihiro's bracing arm, the limb inconsiderately placed between her breast and the bullet's trajectory. The second and third shots lanced over the Sniper's stolen rifle and slashed into her chest, just under the shoulder, just under the neck.

Another shot lashed past him, and Kururugi Suzaku could have wept with the misery of the moment. Killing himself for his crimes would be far too easy, his life worth far less than the debt he owed. But surely, nobody would begrudge him a death in combat at the hands of an enemy…

Kill me! Kill me, you murderous bitch!

And yet, violence had always come so easily to the only son of Kururugi Genbuu. Even as a boy, he had sparred with a proficiency that old Tohdoh had praised, naming him the most promising student he had ever taught. That training-ground violence, so intense and exhausting and artificially constrained, had been a pale shadow of this moment.

All of it, all of the beatings of criminals and dissident soldiers with fist and truncheon, even the ghostly memory of a sword stabbing into muscle gone soft and fatty with age, all had been just a pale shadow of this moment. For the first time, Kururugi Suzaku found himself in a fight to the death with another killer, and found himself utterly at home in the confrontation.

Always the traitor, even to myself…

Abruptly angry at himself for finding even a moment of comfort, he fired another burst with a quick-pull clench of his finger, squeezing not jerking.

The rage in Chihiro's eyes slipped into the shocked agony and awareness of her death as his bullets pulped her face, reeling back as cheeks and jaw vanishing in an explosion of splintered teeth and pulped meat. Charging into the cloud of aspirated blood, carried by an unstoppable momentum, Suzaku caught a last moment of awareness from Chihiro in an instant of fragmentary eye contact as he slammed into her at full speed.

For the second time that day, Corporal Kururugi's vision disappeared in a starburst of white light as his head slammed forehead-first into Chihiro's. He was yelling, but he didn't know what he was saying, what he was doing, just that there was an enemy before him and she needed to die for her failure to kill him. Was dying. Had died. Died in his arms, died in his hands, died under his croaking screams and incoherent demands, shouted down into her wide brown eyes, pretty eyes, dead eyes absurdly untouched in the intact upper half of her face.

Hands were on his shoulders, lifting him up, pulling him back, and almost sending him toppling to the ground as wave after wave of deferred agony assailed him. His whole head was a a burning star with three hateful poles, the two head wound joined by his forehead aching from the impact, but some part of him recognized that the hands were those of his men, his comrades if he dared, and that he was safe.

Corporal Kururugi Suzaku sagged, almost collapsing to his knees as the last of his adrenaline spike ebbed into nothing before his men, Eugene at his right, hauled him back to his feet.

"Someone…" His voice was a ghost, thin and reedy and whistling. "Someone get my phone… It's in my left pocket…" A searching hand thrust in, withdrawing a moment later with the cell phone in hand. Corporal Kururugi grunted out the passcode, and then added, "call Inspector Garcia. His contact is listed as 'Nelson'. Call him, and tell him…"

He looked down at his feet, at the suddenly all-too-human corpse of Tanaka Chihiro. Her eyes, a warm chocolatey brown already glazing over in death, smiled back up into his from the remaining half of her face. Dimly, he noticed that she'd had more grenades, a whole belt of them, with the pins tied together with a daisy chain of wires, the braided cord of which hung to the side, ready to be pulled.

If I had been just a bit slower… If she had been just a bit further back inside the belfry…

"Call him and tell him the Yokohama Sniper is dead." Corporal Kururugi… No, Suzaku commanded, pushing the sense of overwhelming longing and keening despair down with the dead woman as he turned to grin Nelson's smile at Eugene. "We did it… We got her. Sti…" he swallowed. "Stick with me… I'll need you. We'll need you."

Not the end, not a beginning… Just another step of the Plan.

JULY 20, 2016 ATB
NAKA WARD, HIROSHIMA SETTLEMENT
1000

Inspector Garcia had moved mountains in weeks, and the Area Administration still didn't know what hit it. In June, Area 11 had been an exclusive fiefdom of the secretive and moribund DIS, the great traditional rival to the Bureau of Investigation through the long years of the Emblem of Blood.

No more.

One of the first lessons on the art of the interrogation Inspector Garcia had taught Corporal Kururugi was the importance of information and the appearance of information.

"A suspect who thinks you know everything already will be much less cautious than a suspect who knows you're just groping around in the dark," the Bureau man had instructed. "If you don't know anything, come in with a thick file of blank paper, just as a prop. But, if you know one thing, make sure to capitalize on it. As soon as the suspect gets confident about your ignorance, spring it on them. Once their illusion of invincibility falls apart, they'll panic."

Corporal Kururugi had, from his convalescent bed, watched Inspector Garcia pull the same trick on the entirety of the Area Administration, most especially on its leader, the Viceregal-Governor Clovis la Britannia, Third Prince of the Empire. Unlike the other officials who had consented to media interviews during the height of the Yokohama Sniper attacks, Nelson had known exactly how to handle the aftermath.

He had, after all, always been convinced that between his counterinsurgent experience and Suzaku's own abilities, bringing an end to the Sniper's reign of terror was only a matter of time. He had told Suzaku as much on his hospital bed on the first day he was allowed visitors.

When the news of the Sniper's death had broken, it was Inspector Garcia informing the media of that development in the name of the Imperial Bureau of Investigation scarcely minutes after he had informed the Administration itself, thereby guaranteeing that the Bureau's narrative would get a running start. When other officials had been asked for comment, they had barely been able to splutter general assurances and tritely arrogant soundbites. When the press had called on Nelson, he'd freely offered plenty of juicy details about both the "incredible actions of our dutiful Honorary brothers" and the "badly mishandled investigation conducted by the Directorate."

When the announcement had come that Inspector Nelson Dutra Garcia, Agent of the Imperial Bureau of Investigation, would be promoted to Special Agent Garcia and put in charge of the embryonic Area 11 Field Office, everybody seemed to just accept it as the natural conclusion.

Of course the Bureau should open its first office in the New Areas in Area 11 – the Sakuradite reserves made it the newest and grandest gem in Britannia's imperial diadem! Of course they should be put in charge of anti-insurgency operations – wasn't that what the Bureau had mostly handled, over the long years of the Emblem of Blood, and hadn't they proven their competency time and time again in the Old Areas?

Information and the appearance of information…

Special Agent Garcia had even displayed magnanimity in victory, or so the public might believe. Instead of insisting that the new field office be headquartered out of the Area capitol in Tokyo, right on the doorstep of the DIS branch installed in the Viceregal Palace, he had accepted a location in the Hiroshima Settlement, at the extreme southern end of the central island of Honshu.

The general public might take this as a sign that the new darling of the Area was trying to reduce the DIS's embarrassment by giving the senior intelligence service some room to breathe. Corporal Kururugi knew better.

And, true to his promises, vocalized and implied, Special Agent Garcia had not forgotten about him. The paperwork permanently transferring him to a newly established militia unit under the authority of the IBI went through with incredible speed. Never mind that the Bureau hadn't had such units since the worst of the Emblem of Blood, when insurgencies had raged across the Old Areas as the Britannians fought amongst themselves. No less a seal than that of the Office of the Prime Minister adorned the charter of the new unit.

Command was still sadly unthinkable. A unit made up purely of Honorary soldiers and police would have represented a massive political vulnerability for the fledgling Bureau field office.

"Besides," Special Agent Garcia explained during a subsequent hospital visit, "you almost never want to be the nominal commander, Suzaku. Yes, you get the recognition, but you also lose a great deal of your freedom to operate on your own initiative. The real trick is to have someone who can misdirect attention be the public face, while the real operators handle the serious issues from a position safely out of sight among the ranks."

"But you're in charge of the field office now," Suzaku had retorted. "Where does that leave you?"

"When you're as handsome and capable as I am," Garcia smiled charmingly, an expression Suzaku now recognized as his 'reporter smile', "a cipher would simply be gilding the lily! But, alas, despite your new scar, you're not pretty enough to manage that. So, congratulations, Sergeant Kururugi, on embarking on your fresh new career of puppeteering gullible officers!"

"'I've already got some experience with that," Suzaku confessed, remembering how easy it had been to play on Lieutenant Rockwell's ethical misgivings. "Have you seen the kind of officers who get sent to Honorary Legions?"

Nelson had laughed at that, and promised more of the same, but with "lieutenants who have a greater understanding of their place in the pecking order."

Which was how Sergeant Kururugi Suzaku had found himself meeting Captain Edwin Dreyer, the newly appointed commander of the Imperial Bureau of Investigation's Counter-Insurgent Branch Area 11, IBI-COIN-11.

And, also known as the Yokohama Scouts, thanks to Nelson's "accidental" use of that name in an interview.

"Ah, Kururugi," Captain Dreyer greeted him as he knocked and entered the office, "what's the word from the Special Agent?"

"Approval came in from Pendragon, Sir," Sergeant Kururugi replied, handing the printout over, along with the envelope it had arrived in. "We're to fly out on the 20th from Tokyo. Once we hit Newcastle, there will be buses waiting to take us to the school in Guayaquil. Expected start of training is listed as the 22nd, so it looks like we'll have a day to recover from the flight."

"Capital!" The Britannian replied with a hardiness that Kururugi could hardly tell was forced. The watchfulness in the man's eyes gave him away. Dreyer knew his place indeed. "And just on time too! You've finished with your recruiting, haven't you, Sergeant? All twenty-five of your lads, ready to be all they can be?"

"As you say, Sir," Kururugi replied, following his steps in the charade. "We're all very eager to learn as much as we can, and to demonstrate our proficiency here in Area 11, Sir."

After all, Suzaku thought, Nelson is an alumnus of the Guayaquil Counterinsurgent School. He's setting me to walk in his shoes and to give me the tools I'll need to walk where only an Eleven, where only a Japanese man, can go.

"Well… good." Captain Dreyer's waxed mustache, twenty years out of style despite his middling age, twitched uncertainly. "Pass the word onto the men, would you, Sergeant?"

"Yes, Sir." Kururugi nodded dutifully, as if he hadn't already told Corporal Araki, Eugene, the news an hour earlier when he'd first gone through the Captain's mail. "I'll do that."

"Good, good… Dismissed."

With a parting salute, Suzaku left the rubberstamp behind and descended down through the Bureau's new field office, a typically overblown example of Britannian architectural sensibilities. There was so much to do to prepare, to account for, to learn… And he wouldn't waste this second chance as a leader. He'd sworn as much, first to himself, and then to Nelson.

He had a people to save and an Area to secure. If the rebels in Shinjuku that Kanae had told Special Agent Garcia about were all like Chihiro, as murderous and dead-set on a war to the knife as the Yokohama Sniper had been…

Then by the time the Britannians are finished exacting their retaliation, all of Area 11 will be just as desolate as the Yokohama Ghetto is now.

He stopped for a moment, halfway down the hallway to the stairs, and shivered at the thought. Once the Britannians' initial wave of relief at the end of the Sniper had subsided, their rage at ever being threatened had boiled up with a bloody froth the likes of which Suzaku had only ever seen before on a much smaller scale, back on Christmas…

At least this time they spared the Honorary districts, he told himself. It meant something, that Honorary soldiers bagged the Sniper. I meant something.

And bad enough that the terrorist forced the Britannians to practically depopulate an entire ghetto! If there's a whole nest of them sitting on the very steps of the Viceroy's palace, on the steps of a prince's palace, this needs to be handled very carefully indeed. Otherwise, there won't be a Japan left for me to save.

The last time the Japanese were accused of killing a prince, we lost our freedom. If another prince dies here…

Sergeant Kururugi shivered at the thought and resumed his walk towards the barracks at double speed. He couldn't let that happen. He'd come too far to let it all fall apart now.