Hello Folks!
I'm sorry I only published this now. I had finished this chapter last March 3 but the problem is...aha. Ahahahahaha.
I tried to learn Attic Greek.
Yes, Attic Greek. The language that later became Koine Greek, lingua franca of Alexander the Great's empire and the Hellenistic world. A language that the ancient Indian would recognize because damn the Greeks of those times travel a lot and settle down everywhere they like in places that would have you blinking at the distances involved. Kuwait? Greek city there. Ukraine? No problem. It's only one sea away from Greece. Pakistan? Indo-Greek Kingdom says hello.
Anyways, where was I? Oh, Attic Greek.
I was trying to learn it so I could use it for this story. But...no. Attic Greek didn't defeat me. I can read the words by now, not instant pronunciation level but at reading out new words I didn't know before from English dictionary level. I also just need a table of the declensions and internet access to an Attic Greek to English dictionary to start something.
It's just that I'm not learning fast enough, and I want to continue. So from here on, it's an hour a day at writing, then an hour a day at Attic Greek!
The best website for learning Attic Greek is textkit.com , if you folks are interested.
So without further ado, read and comment!
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Chapter 13
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
1:53 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
"With all due respect I don't think this is legal Major Suzumoto," I answered once I was able to stop myself from only staring at him. "I apologize but since I don't want to spend time in prison I won't have any part of this."
"We're at war Ichigo," Major Suzumoto replied. "And we are currently in the middle of an emergency. That's why I assure you that accepting the help of anyone is quite legal."
"Mrs. Taro from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare is somewhere around here. She's going to complain about involving me in this," Kentaro reminded us.
Before Suzumoto was able to reply a soft golden light swam through the air, followed by an ever beautiful twang. An instant later almost every able bodied person within sight suddenly had a bayonet tipped bolt action rifle and a satchel full of what I presumed to be bullets hanging on their shoulders by the straps. The only exception was a frantic Ran who was rapidly taking off the rifle and ammunition off Ms. Yamato while saying something to the school teacher.
As everyone recovered their balances with squawks and yelps of surprise, I glared at Krauncha's direction to see his glowing, crosslegged seating self pluck the string of the same musical instrument that he had from our house in Matsumoto a second time.
The soil several meters away from us to the north suddenly moved, felling trees and creating a cacophony of smashing objects and panicked screams that could probably be heard all the way to the hospital. Within moments what emerged from the soil was a sloped earthen rampart that was taller than the trees around us by one and a half times, stretching from...I don't know in the East to I don't know in the West curving down to I don't know in the South.
"What are you doing you bastard?!" Suzumoto yelled in dismay as he pulled out a pistol on Krauncha. "That must have been heard all the way from Camp Fuji!"
"They already found out before I did that!" Krauncha yelled back at him. "Instead of screaming at me, get your men and any volunteers ready to fight now! Ran and I will provide magical support beside you folks! And forget those little pistols and submachine guns! You need heavier bullets to crack those magic shields! Use the rifles!"
After a couple of seconds of glaring at the Indian, Major Suzumoto roared out the following orders to the men around him. One of them will run to their radio and call for help. Half of the men will round up all the civilians and send them to the center of this enclosure Krauncha created. The remaining half are to go to their fellows and get organized to fight a battle.
"And how did the magical aliens know that we're here?!" I screamed out at Krauncha out as this was going on, with the added pandemonium of panicking civilians in the background.
"I'm sorry. I think it was my fault."
My glare morphed into an incredulous stare as my head turned towards my wife, who was filled with so much shame she was unable to look at anything else but the ground.
Before I was able to ask her for more clarification, someone grabbed my shoulder and turned me around.
"Do you know how to work a bolt action rifle?" Akio asked me with his own rifle in hand.
Yet again I was interrupted before managing to say one word, this time by my father in law.
"What the hell are you doing! You want to make him fight in a war?!" he yelled at Akio's back, while behind him in turn Magdalena and Mom walked beside Dad as the stretcher he was on was being carried by two Self Defense Forces personnel, followed by Ms. Yamato trying to navigate the wheelchair that Moe and my daughter were using past the tree roots and through the sea of autumn leaves.
"Yes! Where's your gun?"
The look that Kentaro gave my resurrected ancestor was an answer all by itself.
"Coward," Akio scoffed after a few moments, turning away from Kentaro as if he was a stinky pile of feces and towards me.
"And you Ichigo? Will you protect your family alongside us three?"
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Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji Regional Hospital, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
1:54 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
I watched my beloved as his eyes kept moving from ancestor in law Akio, to Papa, to me, and back again to Akio.
"Ichigo, you don't need to fight. Leave all the shooting to the professionals and the war freaks and come with us to safety," Papa pleaded with my beloved while Mama hovered just behind him.
"Don't listen to this coward Ichigo," Akio retorted at Papa in a backhanded manner. "You are now the head of your family, so it is your responsibility to protect them by fighting the enemy."
Ichigo didn't respond to their words. Instead, he stopped his eyes from roving between people and to give me an intense stare.
"Kurumi? Do you have anything to say?"
Filled with gladness at seeing him take my opinion about decision making to heart, I summarized my sentiment with four words that made Akio groan in defeat.
"Ichigo, we need you."
Ichigo looked at me for a few, nerve wracking moments. Then he nodded to himself and opened his mouth to tell us his decision. That was when Krauncha spoiled the moment.
"Whatever you decide, Kurumi stays here. Congratulations girl. You will now learn how to use a light machine gun."
'Say what?'
I barely had turned around to stare at the glowing Indian when plucked his instrument one more time. An instant later I found myself somewhere else, but still in a forest, with Krauncha sitting cross legged in midair with his musical instrument on his lap.
"What on – "
I was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a big, long gun before my stomach, which dragged me down by the neck a moment later.
"This is a Vickers Berthier Light Machine Gun – "
"I don't care what this gun is called! Didn't you say that I wouldn't need to fight!" I yelled at Krauncha while taking the machine gun's strap off my neck, and then flinging the whole thing at his feet.
"We need to buy the Japanese soldiers some time!"
"Why me! Can't you do it? Or how about Konohanasakuya hime? Wasn't the goddess of volcanoes and cherry blossoms kicking magical alien ass even up to now?"
"Take a look at Mt. Fuji to get your answer."
"How can I do that when we are in a forest you idiot!"
Krauncha let out a scream of frustration while pulling at his hair with both hands. He quickly followed that up with a vicious right handed strum of his musical instrument's strings while his left hand controlled the sound with the use of a slide.
All of a sudden every tree within my sight sunk into the ground, leaving behind tree trunk sized holes from which the topmost one meter of the trees peeked...
"Now can you see Mt. Fuji?!"
I whimpered and pointed behind him, at the far off army of Lighteaters in the middle of forming up in lines and now staring at us and –
I screamed as I dropped prone onto the forest floor, dodging the bullets that the enemy soldiers sent my way.
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Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji Regional Hospital, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
1:54 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
"Where's my daughter?!" Kentaro yelled as I whirled this way and that way, looking for the running Self Defense Forces personnel all around us.
"Mr. Ichigo, get up here! Ms. Kurumi and Krauncha are that way!" Ran shouted at me from some distance away.
I quickly pinpointed her location in a moment. The young inari was at lying prone at the top of the rampart near Hisashi and Yasuhiko, waving at me as she pointed her fingers over the top of the rampart?!
'Damn that Indian rat.'
I quickly ran towards her, the rifle and ammunition filled bag Krauncha had created earlier bumping against my body at every step. Within moments I was going up the gentle slope of the rampart, absentmindedly noting the sound of several people running after me.
I had barely thrown myself prone on the slope and started to look over the top of the rampart when gunshots permeated the air. All of a sudden I was dragged back down the slope through my legs.
"You idiot! What are you doing?!" Major Suzumoto and Akio shouted at me at the same time, which made them briefly glare at each other before turning back to me.
"Looking for my wife?!" I yelled back while quickly noting the scene around me.
Ran was lying prone less than ten meters away to my right, right hand extended towards the top of the rampart, left hand holding a Yumi, and chanting something I can't properly hear. Several meters to my left were Hisashi and Yasuhiko, slowly crawling to the top of the rampart with rifles in their hands.
By my feet were the aforementioned Major Suzumoto and Akio, rifles also in hand and currently stalking up the rampart. And to my great surprise, Kentaro and Magdalena were crouching several meters behind them.
Looking further afield I saw the figures of Self Defense Forces personnel, all crawling up the earthen rampart...
"Major Suzumoto, how many men at arms do we have?!" I yelled in worry as I noticed that out of everyone defending the rampart...the group I was in was the biggest I could see.
"Fifty men, not including the medical staff! Not enough men for this, if you ask me!"
"50 men! Only 50 men for this whole place?!" Grandfather Yasuhiko screamed from where he was lying prone near the top of the rampart.
"Well sorry! That's all the men the 105th supply battalion can spare for the hospital! Everyone else was busy with moving supplies! Look, the numbers will go up once the medical staff join us after rounding up the civilians!"
Akio seemed ignorant of the significance of Major Suzumoto's words as he finally positioned himself at the top of the rampart and started aiming his rifle. I recognized the significance...but I also remembered that historically there were some rear echelon troops who were able to create miracles in battle. So I did nothing but hope for the best.
It was Hisashi and Grandfather Yasuhiko who reacted to the news with groans of dismay.
"Don't look down on us staff personnel, bastards. We'll do our best," Suzumoto growled out at the two.
"The only time I would trust staff personnel to hold a position is when they are manning machine guns, preferably two men at one machine gun! Do you see any of those here!" Grandfather Yasuhiko shouted back.
"And that is why I'm looking for my wife!" I intervened before Suzumoto got sufficiently riled up by my two ancestors. "Krauncha was with her! If he knows how to make these...'Smellie' rifles then he knows how to create machine guns with magic!"
"No need young one! I see the two of them right from over here!" Akio suddenly shouted.
Two seconds later I was looking over the top of the rampart.
I saw holes with tree tops, I saw lines of aliens, I saw a dome of light, I saw my wife crawling.
I fired the first shot from our side.
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Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji Regional Hospital, Sunto District, Matsumoto
May 11, 2013
1:58 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
I crawled as low as possible back to the rampart, maneuvering my way around the tree holes and squinting my eyes from all the soil raining around me thanks to bullet impacts –
I yelped in embarassment, indignation and pain as yet another meaty smack echoed from my very sore butt.
"Madar Chod! Help me out here Kurumi!" Krauncha yelled at me from behind. An instant later a twang swam through the air, followed by far off screams of fear and pain from the direction of the Lighteaters.
"No way! I'm going to die from the bullets!" I yelled without looking back, for fear that I would get shot in the forehead.
"Chutia! You did notice that bullets have been hitting you all this time, right?!"
"My butt will be full of bruises tomorrow! And if I bruise, then I could die from being beaten to death!"
"So make some armor on yourself!"
"I still can't read the language!"
I already tried the same thing as I did back in Matsumoto the very moment the Lighteaters started shooting at me.
I wanted something, and my perception of time slowed down again. It was followed by a Windows XP Start button showing up in front of me . I thought about pushing it and the button clicked only to show me the same damned writing as back in Matsumoto, with the only difference being that I can see the letters better now because there are now capital and small letters as opposed to the all capital letters back in Matsumoto.
"Let me see that!"
A golden dome of light suddenly surrounded me, followed an instant later by Krauncha appearing beside me and delivering a sharp karate chop to the top of my head.
"Fuck you! What was that for?!" I roared out from the humiliation of that being done to me.
"So I could see into your mind," the bastard nonchalantly replied while plucking his musical instrument and vacantly staring at the base of the rampart that was only several meters away from me at this point in time.
"What does it take to make those idiots understand eh koine dialektos had stopped being the common language of our part of the world for over one thousand years already!" Krauncha screamed in frustration several seconds later.
"Can we go up the rampart now?" I politely asked, seeing I had all but won the argument about my active participation in a war.
"You can't," Krauncha insisted. "Look, you and I are the only people stopping the Lighteaters from overwhelming our brave, outnumbered friends on the rampart above with a charge."
'What?'
I looked up the multistory building tall rampart to behold Ichigo, my ancestors in law, and Major Suzumoto firing their rifles as fast as they can while a glowing eyed Ran stood in full view of the Lighteaters behind me, arms stretched out to them while her hair and her clothes billowed at full blast in the same direction.
A quick look to my East and West made horror start crawling all over my inner self.
There were very few Self Defense Forces personnel manning the ramparts above, and that was already including the doctors and nurses from the Self Defense Forces hospital. A simple glance backwards showed me they were outnumbered by at the very least a hundred times.
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Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji Regional Hospital, Sunto District, Matsumoto
May 11, 2013
1:59 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
"Got one," I muttered to myself as the Lighteater I targeted collapsed to the ground, his green magical shield dissolving into thin air at the same time. I then performed the laborious process of reloading the rifle while using it with my off hand, something I was forced to do because of my makeshift child of a monocle and an eyepiece.
First I moved the rifle butt away from my left shoulder. Then I worked the bolt open with my left hand, followed by refilling the magazine with another 5 round clip using my right hand, then closing the bolt again with my left hand and bracing it against my left shoulder again.
All done in the span of seven heartbeats.
As I started to take aim yet another time, I heard Kentaro yell my name over the din of rifle shots drowning out anything softer in volume.
"What is it Father?!" I yelled back while deciding to crawl backwards, away from the rampart' top and until I could safely turn around.
"Where's my daughter Ichigo?! Why is she still not here yet?!" Kentaro yelled with an anxious face once I turned around, while flinching every time a rifle barked near us. Magdalena wore an equally anxious face beside him, but in contrast to her husband her only reaction to the rifle shots was a twitch of the eye.
"She's already at the base of the rampart! The only problem is all the bullets flying in her direction!"
I quickly started thinking on how to get my wife out of there.
Going down the rampart to fetch Kurumi with the protection of Ran's magical wind was not an option. Ran had already warned everyone on the rampart earlier, in the form of a voice from inside of our heads, that her wind could only protect the top of the rampart.
If I were to run down there, I would get shot and die.
The only option left is to make Kurumi come to us. The question now was how...
"Mother! Father! I'm going to ask Ran to tell Kurumi to climb up!"
If Ran was able to give a telepathic message to around a hundred people at the same time, then she could surely send a message to my wife.
"Won't she get killed if she does that!" Kentaro asked.
"Kurumi is wearing that magical ring right now! The same thing allowed her to tank several gunshots to the head back in Matsumoto! As long as she covers her head she'll be fine!"
"You sure about that Ichigo!"
"I'm sure! I'm now going to Ran, so stay please here where it's safe!"
With that said I left them, stalking towards Ran and passing by Major Suzumoto and Akio in the process, who were both silently and steadily sending bullet after bullet at the enemy soldiers in the distance.
I was halfway between my ancestor and Ran when I heard Akio yelled something that grabbed my attention.
"What is that girl doing?"
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Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji Regional Hospital, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
1:59 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
"And done!" Krauncha yelled all of a sudden, letting go of the magical ring on my finger at the same time.
I quickly looked up at the sitting bastard from my prone position and asked him what he did.
"I can't do anything about the language! It's still eh koine dialektos! But I changed its input method! It's no longer mental point and click but speech recognition! "
"I don't know how to speak the eh koine dialektos language!"
"But I do! Tell me what you want, I'll say the Common equivalent, and then you try to say it. Don't worry! Common is pretty forgiving with pronounciation!"
"Then I want a shield! Give me a shield that covers me from head to toe!"
"Round or oval – no. Let's go with the oval ones! An oval shield that covers me from head to toe, is that alright?"
"Yes!"
"Repeat after me Kurumi! (May an oval shield as tall as me appear on my back!)
After a moment or two of hesitation, I tried to say the same words as he said. A few more seconds passed before it became apparent what I said didn't work.
"Oh come on! Proper pronounciation needed?! Ok, again! This time, listen to my pronunciation! (MAY. AN. OVAL. SHIELD. AS. TALL. AS. ME. APPEAR. ON. MY. BACK!)"
"(MAY. AN. OVAL SHIELD. AS. TALL. AS. ME. APPEAR. ON. MY. BACK!)"
An instant later, an object of some weight appeared on my back and shaded my view of the smiling Indian bastard.
"Now that you have your own shield, use it! I'm making my barrier smaller now!"
As the golden glow started fading, I quickly shifted around and held the shield in my hands while getting up onto my knees. Within moments, I had to brace myself and grip the shield tight as it vibrated from the downpour of powerful blows which threatened to smash the shield into my face.
The shield, as Krauncha said, was oval and as tall as me from tip to tip. It was also, to my great surprise, seemingly only made out of vertical planks of wood glued together at the edges and a thick felt wrapping that enclosed the shield from the front to about halfway between the centrally placed shield handle and the edges of the shield.
I snapped out of it when I heard Ichigo's voice, from the inside of my head.
"That's good Kurumi. Cover yourself with that shield, then walk up here."
After going into a half kneel for a stable position while slanting the shield over my head, I looked back over at the rampart top and instantly gasped in terror at Ichigo's foolishness.
Ichigo was standing tall at the rampart's edge, right beside Ran with his right hand on her left shoulder, heedless of all the bullets that were flying around. And worse, no one around him was trying to get him into cover.
"What are you doing?! Get into cover Ichigo!" I screamed at his direction. A couple of seconds later it became apparent he can't hear me when Ichigo told me everything was going to be alright, I just had to go up to them.
Krauncha suddenly placed his hand on my shoulder, and told me that I'm now patched into Ran's telephatic communications.
"Ichigo, what are you doing standing there in full view of these aliens! Hide yourself!"
"It's alright Kurumi. Ran's performing the same bullet stopping spell that the inari cast in our house! You on the other hand should get up here now. The enemy soldiers are walking towards you."
I resisted the urge to peek around my shield upon hearing my fiance's words, seeing as the shield was still threatening to fly into my face.
"No! She can't go up there you idiot!" Krauncha yelled from inside our heads. "I need her to stay down here and help me keep them away from the rampart!"
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Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji Regional Hospital, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:00 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
"Fuck you. Why does she have to do that?" I growled out into the air, glaring down at Krauncha's floating cross seated figure beneath that golden dome of his.
"Because the Lighteaters have the numbers and willpower to overwhelm your position on the rampart with a charge. The only thing that will stop or delay them from doing that is if Kurumi and I would make a stand down here."
"No. Instead of that I propose that you make us some machine guns, you idiot," I hissed as I glared at the hundreds of Lighteater soldiers engaged in a cycle of moving, stopping, firing, and reloading, interspered with the instantly killed dropping dead and the writhing wounded healing themselves with magic, in the no man's land between the rampart and Camp Fuji.
Krauncha's answer filled me with hopelessness and anger at the world for all the bullshit I had experienced.
"I can't. I need to know all the parts of a machine gun to create one with magic."
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Many thanks to Atreidestrooper, Mjolnir66, and rm928 of Spacebattles.com! I couldn't have finished this without you folks.
An Unlikely Magical Girl and an Unlikely World War: reboot
Moderator: LadyTevar
Re: An Unlikely Magical Girl and an Unlikely World War: reboot
Hello folks! Here's another chapter!
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Chapter 14
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:00 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
"Bullshit." I called the lying rat out. "You put a machine gun in my hands earlier. What do you mean you can't make machine guns?"
"The Vickers Berthier?"
"Yes," I yelled amidst the telephatic accusations that Ichigo and Ran were sending this way.
"My bad. Let me rephrase my words. I'm not sure what's inside a machine gun, and that Vickers Berthier is just me making guesses."
"So you gave my wife a contraption that would blow up in her face rather than shoot bullets at the enemy?" Ichigo asked in a disbelieving tone.
"She won't be maimed if it explodes. But you and the others will get maimed."
"So that's it? We're all dead because you can't make a machine gun?" Ran asked in the manner of someone asking a question of everyone and their self at the same time.
"...I want to try something out."
The rat promptly ordered me to recite after him. It was instantly followed by the sudden appearance of a mound of what is called a sling in English, right beside me and twice as high as me.
He followed that up with a twang of his musical instrument, which made the slings fly up into a well spaced double row at both my left and right side that stretched into the far distance. The pouch part of the sling hung down to my knees while the two loops were hanging in midair at twice my height.
A second later, Krauncha started playing his instrument.
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Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:00 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
I watched as the hundreds of things that the rat had Kurumi create suddenly had flames at their middle part, then whirled around in mid-air at the same time to fling flaming projectiles at the oncoming Skinchangers, who at this point were only less than a hundred meters away from my wife.
To my surprise every single Skinchanger in the vanguard was hit. And to my dismay not every hit resulted in a dead Skinchanger.
The dead were those who got hit in the head, and dropped unconscious with heads on fire. The rest were injured to various degrees, which determined how successful they were at dealing with the flames burning them alive.
For a moment, it looked like they were all going to be able to extinguish the flames. They were magically making water pour out of their palms onto the fire burning them alive. However the second salvo that Krauncha launched either killed them instantly or injured them further, rendering them unable to do anything but scream while burning alive.
The third salvo injured or killed the Skinchangers behind the vanguard, who had started retreating while their comrades started to die from the second salvo. And the following salvoes made them run for their lives, incurring further injuries and possible deaths through falling into the holes where the trees had sunk into the ground.
It was that moment that I realized I was smiling, and was about to let out a whoop when Akio ruined the good mood.
"What is that idiot thinking?!" My ancestor screamed hysterically.
"What's your problem?!" Major Suzumoto shouted back in confusion, echoing the confusion of everyone on the rampart within hearing range who were born in the modern era.
"First rule of fighting in a forest! Don't burn it while you're in it!"
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Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:01 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
"Krauncha, I don't like the look of this!"
The hungry looking flames were quickly eating their way through the dried leaves of the forest floor and the topmost parts of the sunken trees. And there was nothing around us that could stop the feeding frenzy of the fire.
“Don’t worry! Don’t worry!” Krauncha pooh poohed my concern as he continued sending balls of fire at the Lighteaters with his music playing. “Everyone’s safe from the wildfire. The rampart will stop the fires from spreading towards us, and the highway to the East and the road in the South protects what the rampart doesn’t cover.”
“What about the embers?! Won’t flying embers create more fires wherever they land?!”
“Is the wind flying in our direction?!” Krauncha retorted.
I was able to sigh in relief after a brief check of the wind direction told me it was blowing towards Mt. Fuji to the West rather than blowing to us Eastwards. And with that done I asked the bastard if I can go back to my family now.
“Uhmm...will you come back if I call for you?!”
“You know, I don’t get you! Back in Matsumoto you said I don’t have to fight because I’m just a walking magic jammer! Now you’re dragging me into a fight despite knowing I don’t know how to fight! Why are you doing this?! ”
"Because I'm not a kshatriya, I'm just a fucking former low ranked gandharva! A 'has been' celestial musician! My job is playing music and running errands for my master, not fighting!"
"Then what did you do back home?! Or just now! What do you call that?!"
"Ok, I can kill people using magic! But only in small groups and only when they’re near! Thousands of Outsiders?! Dream on! What I bet would happen is a hundred or so of them will keep me busy while everyone else goes around and kills everyone behind me! So you see, I really needed you and that ring for additional options!"
"Then why were you even chosen to contact me in the first - "
I was forced to stop speaking because I started coughing from the smoke that's starting to spread through the area.
"Let's just continue this when we're on top of the rampart!" Krauncha yelled while floating backwards and still strumming his musical instrument.
I agreed and started to walk backwards in a crouch while trying not to inhale too much smoke, with the shield held in front of me just in case the Lighteaters started to send bullets my way again.
I discovered I didn’t need to do that by the time Krauncha and I had ascended the top of the rampart, to the cheers of the Self Defense Forces personnel and a personal tight hug from my beloved fiance, because the smoke and the spreading fires had blocked both sides view of the battlefield.
Ichigo quickly disengaged from the hug, slung his rifle onto his shoulder using its strap, and gently pulled me down the slope of the rampart to its bottom, where my parents were standing to my surprise. Once there he and Mama asked me if I was alright.
“I inhaled some smoke, and I’m still...terrified, I think. Other than that I’m fine. How about...what are all three of you doing here? Weren’t you three supposed to be with Ao, Mother and Father?”
“We were worried for you Kurumi,” Papa answered. “Now that you’re back with us, let’s get back to safety.”
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Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:06 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
“Mama!” Ao yelled from Moe’s lap, as Ms. Yamato and Mom carefully maneuvered the wheelchair the inari and my daughter were on to face us, a task complicated by the roots of the trees we were all hiding under and a still unconscious Dad sleeping very near them.
“Ao!” My wife happily said as she strode forward and knelt, to give our daughter a gentle hug made awkward by the fact that it was being done on the lap of a crippled girl.
Thankfully Moe didn’t mind things happening on her lap, judging by the smile she sent my way.
As all the members of my immediate family had their reunion, I looked around to see how the other hospital patients were taking recent events.
They were either huddled around in family groups and comforting each other, or were by themselves. And of those who were by themselves, some were on their cellphones talking or texting with their loved ones, some were giving me and my family wary looks, and some were praying.
"Ichigo!" Kurumi suddenly called to me. "What are you standing all the way over there for?! Come over here!"
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"Sorry, I was just thinking," I said as I rejoined my family, the inari and her teacher. "How is everyone holding up? Was anyone hurt from the shootout earlier?"
"We're physically alright," Mom replied. "Emotionally, me and Ms. Yamato here were scared for you guys. But we calmed down when Ao and Moe told us what's happening out there."
"It's true Papa," my daughter chirped when I stared her way. “Grandma was so, so very worried for you and Lola and Mama and Lolo while Ms. Yamato was worried for Ms. Ran. Ms. Moe and I were also worried about all of you So Ms. Moe and I decided to look at what you guys are doing and tell it to Grandma and Ms. Yamato.”
“Then that means you saw – ”
Everyone jerked in surprise as the noise of an intense shootout broke out once again.
I wasn't sure as to why. Maybe it might be because I was partially desensitized to the shootout since I had just participated in one, or maybe it was because I had already killed in self defense, or even because I was more concerned about my daughter.
Whatever the reason, I gathered myself after a few moments of shock and yelled over the shootout.
"Then that means you saw everything that happened?! All the magical aliens dying and Mama being shot at!? In very graphic detail?!"
Everyone not Ao, Moe, Mom or Ms. Yamato immediately understood what I was thinking off, that an almost five year old girl had just seen a lot of people dying. They quickly sent accusative looks at Moe, who quickly replied in her own defense.
“I didn’t let Ao see or read anything! I temporarily possessed her, with her consent and the permission of Mrs. Ohta, so I could use her powers to see the fighting and tell the other three!”
“Possessed?!” Kurumi said in an enraged tone, from right beside me, as she glared at Moe. A moment after this I looked at Mom, who quickly yelled that she was satisfied by Moe’s completely detailed explanation of what she was about to do.
“Mama, it’s ok! I told her it’s ok to do it, and I could kick her out anytime I wanted to,” Ao added further.
As if dragged by a magnet, my wife and I looked each other in the eyes at the same time. And we slowly shook our heads.
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Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:10 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
“I will not allow myself to be possessed by anyone!” Ao replied with a chastened look on her face.
“Good!” I smiled at her. Then I frowned at Moe, who I had also dressed down along with my daughter a while ago, with help from my beloved Ichigo.
“I won’t possess anyone unless lives are at stake!” Moe recited in surrender.
“You better do so or we will have words Moe.”
With that done I let out a very tired sigh and sat down on the forest floor. A moment later I grabbed Ichigo’s hand and gave him a light yank.
“What is it?” Ichigo asked as he sat beside me.
“I’m tired so I’m going to sleep,” I replied at the same time as I leaned into his shoulder, only to bump my head into the ‘Smelly’ rifle he had slung over his shoulder. A few seconds later the rifle was on the ground in front of us, and my head was in the crook of my fiance’s shoulder.
And then I closed my eyes to –
“Well, I guess you two really have become responsible parents.”
“Mrs. Taro, please,” I pleaded without taking my head away from its comfortable resting place or opening my eyes. “My family is tired and stressed from everything this day so I beg you. Leave us alone, even for just one day.”
“Have I said anything else other than complimenting this example of parenting from you and Ichigo?” Mrs. Taro said as the rustles of dead leaves and her voice came closer and closer to us.
“She has a point,” Ichigo commented with a whisper.
“...no,” I admitted loud enough for everyone in our little group to hear.
“Well then. May I sit here with you guys?”
“...sit wherever you want.”
Within moments I heard her sit somewhere near. It was quickly followed by a question from Mama, asking Taro what she was doing ever since we went out of the hospital.
Taro explained that she had been talking with her bosses in the Equal Employment, Children and Families Bureau and its parent organization, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare via cellphone. And after that she talked with her husband and her son.
She then told us what news she learned via cellphone.
It wasn't good.
Apparently the military bases in the Mt. Fuji area weren't the only places in Japan currently under attack. Neither is Japan the only country under attack right now.
In the case of Japan, Tokyo was being fought over by indiscriminate magical alien soldiers on one side and the combined and shocked forces of the JSDF, United States Forces Japan, Tokyo Metropolitan Police on the other side, assisted by various easily recognizable supernatural beings and magical girls of unknown allegiance who came out of nowhere. There were also reports from local TV networks of fighting in every prefectural capital and every location where a military base was located.
The news from overseas wasn’t much better. All the international cable news stations available to Japan reported fighting in all but one of the nuclear armed countries of the world, as well as every major non-nuclear armed nation, of which Japan is one of.
“Mrs. Taro, which country were you talking about when you said ‘all but one of the nuclear armed nations’?” Ichigo asked as soon as Taro had finished giving us the bad news.
“Israel,” Taro replied.
“Israel as in the Holy Land?” Mama quickly responded.
“The Holy Land of three religions? Strangely, yes. Except for Egypt, all of Israel’s direct neighbors weren’t attacked either, regardless of how weak or how strong their military was. It was quite the puzzle to the Americans, according to what my boss heard.”
“Have you heard anything about the Philippines?” Mama asked.
“The Philippines wasn’t attacked, but Vietnam and Thailand are at war while Singapore has fallen.”
“Putang ina” Mama cursed with a worried tone. “My cousins are all working in Singapore right now. Putang ina. Putang ina.”
It was at this moment that I finally decided to open my eyes and look around.
Mama was leaning back against a tree to my left, her face in her right hand and while worrying for her cousins, my relatives from my Filipino side. At the same time Papa was beside her, whispering to Mama and hugging her at the waist to comfort her.
Mother, sitting on a mat of dead leaves right beside Father’s stretcher, was still occupied with giving Father with the saddest expression I had seen on her in almost five years of living together. And she had been doing so ever since the middle of the lecture that I gave my daughter and Moe.
Everyone else, including me by this point, gave Mama sad looks full of sympathy from where we were seated.
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So, what do you think folks? Please review!
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Chapter 14
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:00 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
"Bullshit." I called the lying rat out. "You put a machine gun in my hands earlier. What do you mean you can't make machine guns?"
"The Vickers Berthier?"
"Yes," I yelled amidst the telephatic accusations that Ichigo and Ran were sending this way.
"My bad. Let me rephrase my words. I'm not sure what's inside a machine gun, and that Vickers Berthier is just me making guesses."
"So you gave my wife a contraption that would blow up in her face rather than shoot bullets at the enemy?" Ichigo asked in a disbelieving tone.
"She won't be maimed if it explodes. But you and the others will get maimed."
"So that's it? We're all dead because you can't make a machine gun?" Ran asked in the manner of someone asking a question of everyone and their self at the same time.
"...I want to try something out."
The rat promptly ordered me to recite after him. It was instantly followed by the sudden appearance of a mound of what is called a sling in English, right beside me and twice as high as me.
He followed that up with a twang of his musical instrument, which made the slings fly up into a well spaced double row at both my left and right side that stretched into the far distance. The pouch part of the sling hung down to my knees while the two loops were hanging in midair at twice my height.
A second later, Krauncha started playing his instrument.
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Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:00 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
I watched as the hundreds of things that the rat had Kurumi create suddenly had flames at their middle part, then whirled around in mid-air at the same time to fling flaming projectiles at the oncoming Skinchangers, who at this point were only less than a hundred meters away from my wife.
To my surprise every single Skinchanger in the vanguard was hit. And to my dismay not every hit resulted in a dead Skinchanger.
The dead were those who got hit in the head, and dropped unconscious with heads on fire. The rest were injured to various degrees, which determined how successful they were at dealing with the flames burning them alive.
For a moment, it looked like they were all going to be able to extinguish the flames. They were magically making water pour out of their palms onto the fire burning them alive. However the second salvo that Krauncha launched either killed them instantly or injured them further, rendering them unable to do anything but scream while burning alive.
The third salvo injured or killed the Skinchangers behind the vanguard, who had started retreating while their comrades started to die from the second salvo. And the following salvoes made them run for their lives, incurring further injuries and possible deaths through falling into the holes where the trees had sunk into the ground.
It was that moment that I realized I was smiling, and was about to let out a whoop when Akio ruined the good mood.
"What is that idiot thinking?!" My ancestor screamed hysterically.
"What's your problem?!" Major Suzumoto shouted back in confusion, echoing the confusion of everyone on the rampart within hearing range who were born in the modern era.
"First rule of fighting in a forest! Don't burn it while you're in it!"
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Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:01 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
"Krauncha, I don't like the look of this!"
The hungry looking flames were quickly eating their way through the dried leaves of the forest floor and the topmost parts of the sunken trees. And there was nothing around us that could stop the feeding frenzy of the fire.
“Don’t worry! Don’t worry!” Krauncha pooh poohed my concern as he continued sending balls of fire at the Lighteaters with his music playing. “Everyone’s safe from the wildfire. The rampart will stop the fires from spreading towards us, and the highway to the East and the road in the South protects what the rampart doesn’t cover.”
“What about the embers?! Won’t flying embers create more fires wherever they land?!”
“Is the wind flying in our direction?!” Krauncha retorted.
I was able to sigh in relief after a brief check of the wind direction told me it was blowing towards Mt. Fuji to the West rather than blowing to us Eastwards. And with that done I asked the bastard if I can go back to my family now.
“Uhmm...will you come back if I call for you?!”
“You know, I don’t get you! Back in Matsumoto you said I don’t have to fight because I’m just a walking magic jammer! Now you’re dragging me into a fight despite knowing I don’t know how to fight! Why are you doing this?! ”
"Because I'm not a kshatriya, I'm just a fucking former low ranked gandharva! A 'has been' celestial musician! My job is playing music and running errands for my master, not fighting!"
"Then what did you do back home?! Or just now! What do you call that?!"
"Ok, I can kill people using magic! But only in small groups and only when they’re near! Thousands of Outsiders?! Dream on! What I bet would happen is a hundred or so of them will keep me busy while everyone else goes around and kills everyone behind me! So you see, I really needed you and that ring for additional options!"
"Then why were you even chosen to contact me in the first - "
I was forced to stop speaking because I started coughing from the smoke that's starting to spread through the area.
"Let's just continue this when we're on top of the rampart!" Krauncha yelled while floating backwards and still strumming his musical instrument.
I agreed and started to walk backwards in a crouch while trying not to inhale too much smoke, with the shield held in front of me just in case the Lighteaters started to send bullets my way again.
I discovered I didn’t need to do that by the time Krauncha and I had ascended the top of the rampart, to the cheers of the Self Defense Forces personnel and a personal tight hug from my beloved fiance, because the smoke and the spreading fires had blocked both sides view of the battlefield.
Ichigo quickly disengaged from the hug, slung his rifle onto his shoulder using its strap, and gently pulled me down the slope of the rampart to its bottom, where my parents were standing to my surprise. Once there he and Mama asked me if I was alright.
“I inhaled some smoke, and I’m still...terrified, I think. Other than that I’m fine. How about...what are all three of you doing here? Weren’t you three supposed to be with Ao, Mother and Father?”
“We were worried for you Kurumi,” Papa answered. “Now that you’re back with us, let’s get back to safety.”
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Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:06 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
“Mama!” Ao yelled from Moe’s lap, as Ms. Yamato and Mom carefully maneuvered the wheelchair the inari and my daughter were on to face us, a task complicated by the roots of the trees we were all hiding under and a still unconscious Dad sleeping very near them.
“Ao!” My wife happily said as she strode forward and knelt, to give our daughter a gentle hug made awkward by the fact that it was being done on the lap of a crippled girl.
Thankfully Moe didn’t mind things happening on her lap, judging by the smile she sent my way.
As all the members of my immediate family had their reunion, I looked around to see how the other hospital patients were taking recent events.
They were either huddled around in family groups and comforting each other, or were by themselves. And of those who were by themselves, some were on their cellphones talking or texting with their loved ones, some were giving me and my family wary looks, and some were praying.
"Ichigo!" Kurumi suddenly called to me. "What are you standing all the way over there for?! Come over here!"
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"Sorry, I was just thinking," I said as I rejoined my family, the inari and her teacher. "How is everyone holding up? Was anyone hurt from the shootout earlier?"
"We're physically alright," Mom replied. "Emotionally, me and Ms. Yamato here were scared for you guys. But we calmed down when Ao and Moe told us what's happening out there."
"It's true Papa," my daughter chirped when I stared her way. “Grandma was so, so very worried for you and Lola and Mama and Lolo while Ms. Yamato was worried for Ms. Ran. Ms. Moe and I were also worried about all of you So Ms. Moe and I decided to look at what you guys are doing and tell it to Grandma and Ms. Yamato.”
“Then that means you saw – ”
Everyone jerked in surprise as the noise of an intense shootout broke out once again.
I wasn't sure as to why. Maybe it might be because I was partially desensitized to the shootout since I had just participated in one, or maybe it was because I had already killed in self defense, or even because I was more concerned about my daughter.
Whatever the reason, I gathered myself after a few moments of shock and yelled over the shootout.
"Then that means you saw everything that happened?! All the magical aliens dying and Mama being shot at!? In very graphic detail?!"
Everyone not Ao, Moe, Mom or Ms. Yamato immediately understood what I was thinking off, that an almost five year old girl had just seen a lot of people dying. They quickly sent accusative looks at Moe, who quickly replied in her own defense.
“I didn’t let Ao see or read anything! I temporarily possessed her, with her consent and the permission of Mrs. Ohta, so I could use her powers to see the fighting and tell the other three!”
“Possessed?!” Kurumi said in an enraged tone, from right beside me, as she glared at Moe. A moment after this I looked at Mom, who quickly yelled that she was satisfied by Moe’s completely detailed explanation of what she was about to do.
“Mama, it’s ok! I told her it’s ok to do it, and I could kick her out anytime I wanted to,” Ao added further.
As if dragged by a magnet, my wife and I looked each other in the eyes at the same time. And we slowly shook our heads.
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Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:10 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
“I will not allow myself to be possessed by anyone!” Ao replied with a chastened look on her face.
“Good!” I smiled at her. Then I frowned at Moe, who I had also dressed down along with my daughter a while ago, with help from my beloved Ichigo.
“I won’t possess anyone unless lives are at stake!” Moe recited in surrender.
“You better do so or we will have words Moe.”
With that done I let out a very tired sigh and sat down on the forest floor. A moment later I grabbed Ichigo’s hand and gave him a light yank.
“What is it?” Ichigo asked as he sat beside me.
“I’m tired so I’m going to sleep,” I replied at the same time as I leaned into his shoulder, only to bump my head into the ‘Smelly’ rifle he had slung over his shoulder. A few seconds later the rifle was on the ground in front of us, and my head was in the crook of my fiance’s shoulder.
And then I closed my eyes to –
“Well, I guess you two really have become responsible parents.”
“Mrs. Taro, please,” I pleaded without taking my head away from its comfortable resting place or opening my eyes. “My family is tired and stressed from everything this day so I beg you. Leave us alone, even for just one day.”
“Have I said anything else other than complimenting this example of parenting from you and Ichigo?” Mrs. Taro said as the rustles of dead leaves and her voice came closer and closer to us.
“She has a point,” Ichigo commented with a whisper.
“...no,” I admitted loud enough for everyone in our little group to hear.
“Well then. May I sit here with you guys?”
“...sit wherever you want.”
Within moments I heard her sit somewhere near. It was quickly followed by a question from Mama, asking Taro what she was doing ever since we went out of the hospital.
Taro explained that she had been talking with her bosses in the Equal Employment, Children and Families Bureau and its parent organization, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare via cellphone. And after that she talked with her husband and her son.
She then told us what news she learned via cellphone.
It wasn't good.
Apparently the military bases in the Mt. Fuji area weren't the only places in Japan currently under attack. Neither is Japan the only country under attack right now.
In the case of Japan, Tokyo was being fought over by indiscriminate magical alien soldiers on one side and the combined and shocked forces of the JSDF, United States Forces Japan, Tokyo Metropolitan Police on the other side, assisted by various easily recognizable supernatural beings and magical girls of unknown allegiance who came out of nowhere. There were also reports from local TV networks of fighting in every prefectural capital and every location where a military base was located.
The news from overseas wasn’t much better. All the international cable news stations available to Japan reported fighting in all but one of the nuclear armed countries of the world, as well as every major non-nuclear armed nation, of which Japan is one of.
“Mrs. Taro, which country were you talking about when you said ‘all but one of the nuclear armed nations’?” Ichigo asked as soon as Taro had finished giving us the bad news.
“Israel,” Taro replied.
“Israel as in the Holy Land?” Mama quickly responded.
“The Holy Land of three religions? Strangely, yes. Except for Egypt, all of Israel’s direct neighbors weren’t attacked either, regardless of how weak or how strong their military was. It was quite the puzzle to the Americans, according to what my boss heard.”
“Have you heard anything about the Philippines?” Mama asked.
“The Philippines wasn’t attacked, but Vietnam and Thailand are at war while Singapore has fallen.”
“Putang ina” Mama cursed with a worried tone. “My cousins are all working in Singapore right now. Putang ina. Putang ina.”
It was at this moment that I finally decided to open my eyes and look around.
Mama was leaning back against a tree to my left, her face in her right hand and while worrying for her cousins, my relatives from my Filipino side. At the same time Papa was beside her, whispering to Mama and hugging her at the waist to comfort her.
Mother, sitting on a mat of dead leaves right beside Father’s stretcher, was still occupied with giving Father with the saddest expression I had seen on her in almost five years of living together. And she had been doing so ever since the middle of the lecture that I gave my daughter and Moe.
Everyone else, including me by this point, gave Mama sad looks full of sympathy from where we were seated.
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So, what do you think folks? Please review!
Re: An Unlikely Magical Girl and an Unlikely World War: reboot
Hello folks! Sorry I only updated now.
The reasons for it were: I researched a few things for this story, I plotted out how I want things to happen because I don't want to write myself into a corner like I did before, and because of some problems that cropped up at home.
Without further ado, please read and review!
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Chapter 15
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:10 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
As I looked on at Mother worrying for her relatives, I started to wonder about the status of my own relatives at this moment in time.
On Dad's side, Great Grandpa Iori and Great Grandma Taeko live in Higashikushira, Kagoshima while Botan, Daiki, Shinpachi, the other second cousins, Dad's cousins and my great uncles all live in the neighboring city of Kanoya, Kagoshima. On Mom's side, Grandfather Aratetsu Kisho and Grandmother Aratetsu Chiaki are up north in Nishiwaga, Iwate.
Logically speaking, they should all be safe since there are no nearby JSDF or American bases to any of those places. Emotionally...I can’t get that attempted execution of me and my family out of my mind.
What was it that the Skinchanger said again about the Lighteater noble’s reason? Collaborating against their betters?
...not good. Not good at all from what I knew of my grandparents and great grandparents.
Grandfather Kisho, the current mayor of Nishiwaga, was a right winger that made other right wingers that knew him scratch their heads or stare at him warily because of the things Grandfather espouses. He was also a former member of the 291st regiment, 79th Infantry Division of the Kwantung Army during World War 2 and fought the Russians at a place called Mayusan, a mountain located between Onsang, North Korea and Hunchun, China.
If Grandfather does not get executed out of hand for being the mayor of the town, he will most certainly start a resistance movement on the same day Nishiwaga gets occupied by the magical aliens. And it won't be an amateur attempt that would get everyone involved killed. It would be a movement based on everything Grandfather learned during his time with the Kwantung Army, augmented by modern technology and the latest tactics from the Middle East.
Worst of all, Grandmother Chiaki would go along with Grandfather out of love for him.
Great Grandpa Iori was also just as problematic, for other reasons.
Great Grandpa Iori was in most ways a normal Japanese farmer, just like most of his neighbors. But there is one crucial difference that makes Great Grandpa very, very different from his neighbors and most Japanese farmers. And that is the Ohta ancestral farm, which comes complete with a site for a house and our very own burial mound.
According to Great Grandpa Iori, that Daikon farm had been under the ownership of the Ohta family for a very, very long time. And he swore, to his father and ancestors, that it would remain so until the end of the world.
If the magical aliens ever got it into their minds to seize the family farm and kick Great Grandpa and Great Grandma out of the place for whatever reason...
Great Grandpa would plead and protest at first. If that doesn't work and the magical aliens kicked them out of the place instead of killing them for the act of pleading and protesting, then...Great Grandpa would find Great Grandma and himself a safe place. Then he would call a family meeting.
When the entire family gathers, he would definitely ask for help in murdering the thieves one by one until the farm is given back to the Ohta. And even if everyone else doesn’t help him, which was the likeliest result of such a meeting, Great Grandpa has the experience to do it by himself.
He fought the Americans at Okinawa as a Boeitai, the Japanese Home Guard, with nothing but grenades and rocks and his own throwing arm. He can certainly make do again with...well...something.
So I hope, really really hope, that no Lighteater or Skinchanger has reason to go to Nishiwaga or Higashikushira because of how high a chance I had of losing my Grandfather and Great Grandfather.
A poke at my left side brought me back to the here and now. Upon looking, I saw it was Kurumi.
“Ichigo?” my wife whispered with a puzzled tone.
“Great Grandpa Iori and Grandfather Kisho.”
Judging from the ‘tsk’ that she let out and the shaking of her head, Kurumi understood what I was worrying about. She meets my relatives regularly during the annual weeklong Ohta family reunion at Higashikushira, and the bi-yearly visits that Grandfather and Grandmother gives to Mom. And Grandfather and Great Grandpa...are people you will remember forever from just one meeting.
"Let's just hope Earth wins this war before those two meet some magical aliens," my wife comforted me with a rub to my back.
Whatever comfort I felt from her kind words was instantly erased by a woman's scream coming from the North.
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Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:10 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
Everyone reacted to the scream in different ways. Some warily looked around them, some loudly asked what the scream was about, Ichigo started to reach for the rifle and the bag of bullets that I had placed in front of us, and I pulled him away from it with all my strength.
“Kurumi?” he asked in shock as I stood up and started to bury the items by pushing as many dead leaves and fallen twigs as I can over them.
“Tell me, if the magical aliens are also in that direction what does it mean for us?” I asked back at him. I then turned to look at Mother, Mama and Papa, who were all looking at me.
“Help me hide the gun and the bag,” I asked them.
The rifle and the bag of ammunition quickly disappeared under a pile of dead leaves and tree branches in the span of a few moments, thanks to their help and spurred on by the successive waves of panicked screaming and irritated yells in badly pronounced Japanese, calling for everyone to shut up, getting closer and closer to us. That done I turned back to Ichigo, who was still sitting with a glum expression on his face.
"Ichigo?"
"It means that the Skinchangers have flanked us from – everyone keep calm. They’re here," Ichigo suddenly said while grabbing my hand and squeezing it tightly.
By the time I looked for them, a lot of Skinchanger soldiers had already strode out of the forest’s shadows into the sunlight. They were all warily keeping their distance from all the cowering or screaming or fearfully staring civilians.
“Ichigo, if they look this way would Hayato be safe?” Mother suddenly asked Ichigo.
“I’m not worried about Dad. He’s not wearing anything that would identify him as a member of the JSDF,” Ichigo replied. “I’m worried for Moe, Ao and Kurumi.”
Those ominous words echoed in my mind over and over again as the Skinchangers walked towards our group, and the only thing that steadied me was the tight grip that my beloved had on my hand. Within moments, I let out a small sigh of relief as the soldiers at the very front of their lines peacefully passed our group by.
The moment of relief cruelly turned into so much dust in the wind when one of the Skinchanger soldiers who were about to pass by slowed down and stared at our group. After a few seconds he called out to his comrades, and in no time at all a ring of soldiers surrounded us.
I didn’t know what the others were doing, but on my part I was...paralyzed, and unable to see anything but the soldiers around us.
I wanted to shout that we had nothing to do with their war. I wanted to scream and scratch out their eyes. I wanted to take my daughter and run away with everyone. I wanted to hug my daughter and break down crying.
My indecision was the reason why I was surprised by who decided to take action for us.
“Pardon me or asking, but is there anything we can do for you gentlemen?” Mrs. Taro spoke up with a voice full of authority.
Turning my head back to our group, I saw Mrs. Taro standing up and giving the Skinchangers a polite smile.
After a brief discussion among the soldiers, one Skinchanger soldier stepped forward from among their ranks. His reply made me snap my eyes to my daughter and Moe with fear in my heart.
“Yeah. Why is the injured person giving off magic?”
“Are you sure? I don’t know anything about magic so I can’t tell whether you’re telling the truth or not.”
Most of the soldiers around us looked at the Skinchanger who called their attention to our group. He quickly said something in a defensive tone, complete with gestures that included some finger pointing at my daughter or Moe.
“My comrade,” the soldier who became the impromptu spokesman for the Skinchangers started to explain, “has...was born with a disease. Because of that he sees more magic than anyone else. So he is saying the truth.”
“Oh my,” Taro considerately replied. "If that is the case then I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt. But please, tell us which of the two girls on that wheelchair are you saying was giving off magic?"
"The one with no feet."
Moe barely had a chance to open her mouth when Taro whirled to her and interrupted what she was about to say.
“Young girl, can you think of any reason why you were supposedly giving off magic? Like say old family legends or maybe some place you went to recently?”
Moe blinked, and then gave an answer that might even be true considering she is half inari.
“Well...I recall my grandmother once said that her own grandmother was rumored to be half-kitsune.”
All the Skinchanger soldiers around us simultaneously gave Moe disgusted looks, and the spokesperson revealed the reason with his shocking reply.
“That's disgusting! I can’t believe people here really do bed everything that is big enough and can move by itself!”
I stared at the bastard because...wow. The sentiment personally felt close to that expressed by a few Japanese upon learning I’m half Filipino.
“You have received an explanation as to why there is magic coming off the young girl,” Mrs. Taro stated in a breathtakingly displeased tone. “Is there anything more we can do for you, sir?”
"Yeah. Stay here and stay away from us you sex maniacs."
After saying that the spokesperson waved his hand, said something out loud, and walked away. This started an exodus of armed, armored and disgusted soldiers away from our group...all except for one.
The Skinchanger with the magical disease was still looking...no. He's squinting at Moe and Ao, while holding his rifle in the manner of someone who thinks he is about to be pounced upon from the front by a monster.
"Is there anything else we can do for you, sir?" Mrs. Taro said once again, her tone this time an uneasy one due to the suspicion the diseased Skinchanger was broadcasting to the world.
The Skinchanger looked at her, looked at my daughter and Moe, back to Taro, then back to the wheelchair bound girls, and then did something that made me blink rapidly in surprise.
He did that hand gesture from the American movies, the one that meant 'I'm watching you' with the index and middle fingers, and directed it at the two girls. And then finally the soldier walked away into what appears to be the tail end of the formation of soldiers that just passed through the forest.
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Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:13 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
"Well, that happened," Taro said while staring at where the Skinchangers disappeared from sight. Those words unleashed a wave of sighs of relief from us, and started a lot of different actions.
Mom closed her eyes and hugged Dad’s right arm to her chest, while Kentaro released Magdalena from a hug meant to restrain her from doing anything foolish. Magdalena promptly turned around and gave him a look that didn't know whether to become a fond one or a glare.
Ms. Yamato, who was behind Moe's wheelchair and prepared to protect her student with her own body, promptly sat down on the dried leaves and dead twigs while shivering in fear. Moe quickly turned her head around and started to comfort her terrified teacher.
As for Kurumi...my wife stumbled once, stood up properly the next moment, walked all the way over to where our daughter sat on Moe's lap and gave her a light hug while whispering something to her.
And I stood up, walked over to Taro and thanked her from the bottom of my heart for protecting us.
"I'm just doing my job as a government employee, Ichigo. Just doing my job," she confidently replied. "Although I must admit that...Skinchanger?"
"Skinchanger. Their race is called Skinchanger."
"That conversation with the Skinchanger soldier had just become the most dangerous one I ever had in my career as a social worker."
"And what was the most dangerous one before this?" I asked in pure curiosity.
"It was when I was assigned to the case of a member of the Matsuba-kai. I was successful with the help of the oyabun and some fellow members of the man. And that's all I'm going to say about it."
'Oh. So she was born an aggressive person. Noted.'
"Anyways, Yamada Moe is here, but where is Yamada Ran?"
My good mood died the moment she asked about Ran, because it’s for certain she won’t take the news about what the inari is currently doing very well.
“Mr. Ichigo, where is Yamada Ran?” Mrs. Taro repeated, this time mixing in suspicion and concern in her tone of voice.
Before I was able to speak up, a familiar voice made the air and the forest tremble with its echoes.
“I, Ran of the Yamada of Gifu, will that a flood of Ball Lightning appear and destroy the enemies in front of me!”
A moment later an unending wave of explosions erupted from the direction of the earthen ramparts.
"Is she fighting alongside the Self Defense Forces?!" Taro shouted in shock and anger as fearful, panicked screaming started all around us.
"She is!” I answered while mentally thanking Ran for breaking the news to Taro herself. “Without her help all the Self Defense Forces personnel up there on the rampart would be dead by now, and alongside them me and Kurumi!"
Taro momentarily stood frozen there, filled with I don’t know what emotions under the poker face that suddenly appeared. A moment later she sighed and said something too soft for me to hear through the screaming and the explosions, and then she followed it up by giving me a brief nod and walked towards the wheelchair.
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Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:14 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
I turned my head around as Mrs. Taro kneeled at the left side of the wheelchair and asked Ms. Yamato and Moe if they were aware that Ran is currently fighting alongside the Self Defense Forces.
“I know my sister is fighting. I saw her with the help of Ao here,” Moe replied with a tone that had an equal mix of worry and pride in it.
After giving the inari a disbelieving look, Mrs. Taro looked at Ms. Yamato.
“I wasn’t given the opportunity to raise an objection to her decision,” Ms. Yamato mourned. “And even if I was given one, I...I doubt I could stop my student from going off to war.”
"Why?" Ao suddenly butted into their conversation, in the process reminding the three women that me and my daughter were also there and hearing everything whether we wanted to or not.
"Ao!" I hissed in embarrassment. "You can't butt into other people's conversations! It's rude! Apologize to them!"
My daughter quickly apologized to the three of them, but it wasn’t enough to erase the awkwardness that surrounded us. Therefore I thanked my ancestors when something else broke the ambiance around us.
Skinchanger soldiers suddenly started appearing from the direction of the rampart, where they had marched off to a few minutes ago. Many of them had no rifles, many others were dropping rifles everywhere, and some persisted in carrying their rifles. And all of them were running away from...
“They look so beautiful,” Ao stated in awe as all the so called ‘ball lightning’ that Ran created earlier silently came into view.
They were fuzzy edged, watermelon sized balls of fiery electricity in several colors ranging from orange and red to yellow and white. They also brought along with them the smell of ozone and sulfur, and chased after the Skinchangers in a riot of every describable movement bar those which involves going backwards.
“Those things aren’t going to hit us, will they?” I asked in worry as I saw several of these balls go through trees and through the forest floor, without any visible effects on the objects involved.
“They shouldn’t. Ran did say the words ‘enemies in front of me’ when she cast that spell. We certainly aren’t her enemies,” Moe answered in a confident tone.
She was proven right a few moments later as the balls avoided every human being in their way while dancing after the Skinchangers.
“How dangerous is this ‘Ball Lightning’ that the magical aliens are all running away from them?” Mrs. Taro wondered out loud.
“Mrs. Taro, ball lightning are very dangerous,” Moe started explaining in the manner of a teacher, something which brought a smile from Ms. Yamato beside her. “They go through solid objects like they weren't there. They are hot enough to melt holes in glass. And they also explode when they hit humans and animals, either killing them or leaving burns of various intensities."
Her words were punctuated by an almighty barrage of explosions from afar that made us all jerk in surprise. A moment later all o us were alarmed by the sound of Ao's whimpering.
"Oh no," I moaned. "Ao, did anything move when you got surprised?"
"I...don’t know Mama. It just hurts.”
Before I had a moment to say anything, Moe spoke up and said she would take a look at Ao.
After a few moments of whispering to herself, the inari declared that my daughter’s ribcage was still just in the same position as before, and that the pain might just be the broken bones rubbing against each other from the scare earlier.
"But really," Moe continued as I gave a sigh of relief. "She shouldn't be allowed to get surprised in the first place. May I recommend giving her ear muffs?"
"I could just make occasional peeks into the future for that," Ao replied. "Mama, can I do so from now on, so I don't get surprised?"
The two fellow women and two girls only had a few seconds of looking at me before I made my decision.
"Alright. You can peek into the future whenever we are in danger. But you have to tell me first when you will do that, ok?"
"I will. Can I do it now?"
"Go."
My smiling daughter quickly closed her eyes. Five seconds later, her smile faded away. Ten seconds after that, she opened her eyes and said something that brought my stress levels up again.
"That's not good."
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Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:16 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
I was sitting beside Mom, both of us watching Dad peacefully sleep on the stretcher Ao was using earlier this day. That was the reason why I heard the latter half of the entire conversation that my wife and daughter participated in, which included Ao’s comment of something not being good.
As I turned my head towards them, Kurumi asked the question that I was about to give my daughter.
“Ao, what’s happening?”
“Mama, do you remember the Lighteater nobles who attacked us back home?”
“Don’t tell me there’s one in this place!” Moe cut in with a worry filled voice.
Her words were instantly followed by screams and the smell of smoke coming from the direction where the Skinchanger soldiers had run away to earlier.
I turned around, and saw to my horror not one, but three Skinchanger nobles walking towards us.
These nobles wore a completely different attire from those of the ordinary Skinchanger soldiers.
Instead of a bowl shaped helmet with two holes for a rope to serve as a chin strap, they had a conical shaped helmet that had a bar running down the middle of the face up to the chin, and a thick inner lining of some black colored material attached to the helmet by several rivets along the helmet edges.
Instead of vests, armguards and shinguards made up of rectangular pieces of metal laced together, they had a knee length...raincoat like garment made out of shiny, intertwining chains that I suppose must be an armor of some sort. And underneath that was...a kevlar vest worn over a white silk shirt and thick kevlar leggings.
Instead of bolt action rifles with attached bayonets, these nobles were all toting... Browning Automatic Rifles, BAR for short and bane of the Imperial Japanese Army, and had swords, secure in their scabbards, hanging by the sides of all three of them.
And then I finally noticed the smoke rising from anywhere they stepped, leaving behind foot sized fires.that were slowly eating and growing their way through the mat of dead leaves and branches that was the forest floor.
The multiple spreading fires, in turn, made all our fellow patients and hospital visitors run away, or get awkwardly carried by the stretcher, in every direction except ours. And on that note...
“Everyone, we really should move now,” I said out loud as I stood up and put my hands on one end of Dad’s stretcher. Within moments Kentaro was at the other end without me needing to say anything, and we quickly coordinated to lift Dad up by the stretcher to waist level.
And then we stopped at that point because one of the Skinchanger nobles was beside me, looking at me.
“Can I help you?” I asked, wondering what this was about. But instead of an answer, the noble replied with a question that sent alarm bells ringing in my mind.
“Did you know that the Lighteaters were trialing an experimental armor when Matsumoto happened?”
“Huh?”
“Yeah. Light skintight uniform that gives those people the ability to camouflage themselves like us Skinchangers when naked. Magic circles that would slow down any solid projectiles that would hit the area of the circles. It’s even got a feature that was supposed to be their counterpart to uh...what’s the term...’network centric warfare’?”
For a second I was puzzled, because this noble was talking about a term that came from the Americans.
Network centric warfare was quite simply warfare that concentrates on having a very good, very short and continuous communication loop between the soldiers on the ground and the decision making generals and destroying...
...communication?
“So...how do I put this...did you know the Lighteaters had video and audio records of everything that happened in your house until your wife wore that ring, Ichigo?”
‘FUCK’
“Without further ado,” the noble said with a perverse smile on his rainbow colored face as he aimed his BAR at me. “Die.”
And then he started shooting.
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Thank you Atreidestrooper, Mjolnir66, and Strypgia of Spacebattles for help with this story! I couldn't have done this without you folks!
The reasons for it were: I researched a few things for this story, I plotted out how I want things to happen because I don't want to write myself into a corner like I did before, and because of some problems that cropped up at home.
Without further ado, please read and review!
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Chapter 15
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:10 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
As I looked on at Mother worrying for her relatives, I started to wonder about the status of my own relatives at this moment in time.
On Dad's side, Great Grandpa Iori and Great Grandma Taeko live in Higashikushira, Kagoshima while Botan, Daiki, Shinpachi, the other second cousins, Dad's cousins and my great uncles all live in the neighboring city of Kanoya, Kagoshima. On Mom's side, Grandfather Aratetsu Kisho and Grandmother Aratetsu Chiaki are up north in Nishiwaga, Iwate.
Logically speaking, they should all be safe since there are no nearby JSDF or American bases to any of those places. Emotionally...I can’t get that attempted execution of me and my family out of my mind.
What was it that the Skinchanger said again about the Lighteater noble’s reason? Collaborating against their betters?
...not good. Not good at all from what I knew of my grandparents and great grandparents.
Grandfather Kisho, the current mayor of Nishiwaga, was a right winger that made other right wingers that knew him scratch their heads or stare at him warily because of the things Grandfather espouses. He was also a former member of the 291st regiment, 79th Infantry Division of the Kwantung Army during World War 2 and fought the Russians at a place called Mayusan, a mountain located between Onsang, North Korea and Hunchun, China.
If Grandfather does not get executed out of hand for being the mayor of the town, he will most certainly start a resistance movement on the same day Nishiwaga gets occupied by the magical aliens. And it won't be an amateur attempt that would get everyone involved killed. It would be a movement based on everything Grandfather learned during his time with the Kwantung Army, augmented by modern technology and the latest tactics from the Middle East.
Worst of all, Grandmother Chiaki would go along with Grandfather out of love for him.
Great Grandpa Iori was also just as problematic, for other reasons.
Great Grandpa Iori was in most ways a normal Japanese farmer, just like most of his neighbors. But there is one crucial difference that makes Great Grandpa very, very different from his neighbors and most Japanese farmers. And that is the Ohta ancestral farm, which comes complete with a site for a house and our very own burial mound.
According to Great Grandpa Iori, that Daikon farm had been under the ownership of the Ohta family for a very, very long time. And he swore, to his father and ancestors, that it would remain so until the end of the world.
If the magical aliens ever got it into their minds to seize the family farm and kick Great Grandpa and Great Grandma out of the place for whatever reason...
Great Grandpa would plead and protest at first. If that doesn't work and the magical aliens kicked them out of the place instead of killing them for the act of pleading and protesting, then...Great Grandpa would find Great Grandma and himself a safe place. Then he would call a family meeting.
When the entire family gathers, he would definitely ask for help in murdering the thieves one by one until the farm is given back to the Ohta. And even if everyone else doesn’t help him, which was the likeliest result of such a meeting, Great Grandpa has the experience to do it by himself.
He fought the Americans at Okinawa as a Boeitai, the Japanese Home Guard, with nothing but grenades and rocks and his own throwing arm. He can certainly make do again with...well...something.
So I hope, really really hope, that no Lighteater or Skinchanger has reason to go to Nishiwaga or Higashikushira because of how high a chance I had of losing my Grandfather and Great Grandfather.
A poke at my left side brought me back to the here and now. Upon looking, I saw it was Kurumi.
“Ichigo?” my wife whispered with a puzzled tone.
“Great Grandpa Iori and Grandfather Kisho.”
Judging from the ‘tsk’ that she let out and the shaking of her head, Kurumi understood what I was worrying about. She meets my relatives regularly during the annual weeklong Ohta family reunion at Higashikushira, and the bi-yearly visits that Grandfather and Grandmother gives to Mom. And Grandfather and Great Grandpa...are people you will remember forever from just one meeting.
"Let's just hope Earth wins this war before those two meet some magical aliens," my wife comforted me with a rub to my back.
Whatever comfort I felt from her kind words was instantly erased by a woman's scream coming from the North.
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Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:10 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
Everyone reacted to the scream in different ways. Some warily looked around them, some loudly asked what the scream was about, Ichigo started to reach for the rifle and the bag of bullets that I had placed in front of us, and I pulled him away from it with all my strength.
“Kurumi?” he asked in shock as I stood up and started to bury the items by pushing as many dead leaves and fallen twigs as I can over them.
“Tell me, if the magical aliens are also in that direction what does it mean for us?” I asked back at him. I then turned to look at Mother, Mama and Papa, who were all looking at me.
“Help me hide the gun and the bag,” I asked them.
The rifle and the bag of ammunition quickly disappeared under a pile of dead leaves and tree branches in the span of a few moments, thanks to their help and spurred on by the successive waves of panicked screaming and irritated yells in badly pronounced Japanese, calling for everyone to shut up, getting closer and closer to us. That done I turned back to Ichigo, who was still sitting with a glum expression on his face.
"Ichigo?"
"It means that the Skinchangers have flanked us from – everyone keep calm. They’re here," Ichigo suddenly said while grabbing my hand and squeezing it tightly.
By the time I looked for them, a lot of Skinchanger soldiers had already strode out of the forest’s shadows into the sunlight. They were all warily keeping their distance from all the cowering or screaming or fearfully staring civilians.
“Ichigo, if they look this way would Hayato be safe?” Mother suddenly asked Ichigo.
“I’m not worried about Dad. He’s not wearing anything that would identify him as a member of the JSDF,” Ichigo replied. “I’m worried for Moe, Ao and Kurumi.”
Those ominous words echoed in my mind over and over again as the Skinchangers walked towards our group, and the only thing that steadied me was the tight grip that my beloved had on my hand. Within moments, I let out a small sigh of relief as the soldiers at the very front of their lines peacefully passed our group by.
The moment of relief cruelly turned into so much dust in the wind when one of the Skinchanger soldiers who were about to pass by slowed down and stared at our group. After a few seconds he called out to his comrades, and in no time at all a ring of soldiers surrounded us.
I didn’t know what the others were doing, but on my part I was...paralyzed, and unable to see anything but the soldiers around us.
I wanted to shout that we had nothing to do with their war. I wanted to scream and scratch out their eyes. I wanted to take my daughter and run away with everyone. I wanted to hug my daughter and break down crying.
My indecision was the reason why I was surprised by who decided to take action for us.
“Pardon me or asking, but is there anything we can do for you gentlemen?” Mrs. Taro spoke up with a voice full of authority.
Turning my head back to our group, I saw Mrs. Taro standing up and giving the Skinchangers a polite smile.
After a brief discussion among the soldiers, one Skinchanger soldier stepped forward from among their ranks. His reply made me snap my eyes to my daughter and Moe with fear in my heart.
“Yeah. Why is the injured person giving off magic?”
“Are you sure? I don’t know anything about magic so I can’t tell whether you’re telling the truth or not.”
Most of the soldiers around us looked at the Skinchanger who called their attention to our group. He quickly said something in a defensive tone, complete with gestures that included some finger pointing at my daughter or Moe.
“My comrade,” the soldier who became the impromptu spokesman for the Skinchangers started to explain, “has...was born with a disease. Because of that he sees more magic than anyone else. So he is saying the truth.”
“Oh my,” Taro considerately replied. "If that is the case then I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt. But please, tell us which of the two girls on that wheelchair are you saying was giving off magic?"
"The one with no feet."
Moe barely had a chance to open her mouth when Taro whirled to her and interrupted what she was about to say.
“Young girl, can you think of any reason why you were supposedly giving off magic? Like say old family legends or maybe some place you went to recently?”
Moe blinked, and then gave an answer that might even be true considering she is half inari.
“Well...I recall my grandmother once said that her own grandmother was rumored to be half-kitsune.”
All the Skinchanger soldiers around us simultaneously gave Moe disgusted looks, and the spokesperson revealed the reason with his shocking reply.
“That's disgusting! I can’t believe people here really do bed everything that is big enough and can move by itself!”
I stared at the bastard because...wow. The sentiment personally felt close to that expressed by a few Japanese upon learning I’m half Filipino.
“You have received an explanation as to why there is magic coming off the young girl,” Mrs. Taro stated in a breathtakingly displeased tone. “Is there anything more we can do for you, sir?”
"Yeah. Stay here and stay away from us you sex maniacs."
After saying that the spokesperson waved his hand, said something out loud, and walked away. This started an exodus of armed, armored and disgusted soldiers away from our group...all except for one.
The Skinchanger with the magical disease was still looking...no. He's squinting at Moe and Ao, while holding his rifle in the manner of someone who thinks he is about to be pounced upon from the front by a monster.
"Is there anything else we can do for you, sir?" Mrs. Taro said once again, her tone this time an uneasy one due to the suspicion the diseased Skinchanger was broadcasting to the world.
The Skinchanger looked at her, looked at my daughter and Moe, back to Taro, then back to the wheelchair bound girls, and then did something that made me blink rapidly in surprise.
He did that hand gesture from the American movies, the one that meant 'I'm watching you' with the index and middle fingers, and directed it at the two girls. And then finally the soldier walked away into what appears to be the tail end of the formation of soldiers that just passed through the forest.
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Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:13 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
"Well, that happened," Taro said while staring at where the Skinchangers disappeared from sight. Those words unleashed a wave of sighs of relief from us, and started a lot of different actions.
Mom closed her eyes and hugged Dad’s right arm to her chest, while Kentaro released Magdalena from a hug meant to restrain her from doing anything foolish. Magdalena promptly turned around and gave him a look that didn't know whether to become a fond one or a glare.
Ms. Yamato, who was behind Moe's wheelchair and prepared to protect her student with her own body, promptly sat down on the dried leaves and dead twigs while shivering in fear. Moe quickly turned her head around and started to comfort her terrified teacher.
As for Kurumi...my wife stumbled once, stood up properly the next moment, walked all the way over to where our daughter sat on Moe's lap and gave her a light hug while whispering something to her.
And I stood up, walked over to Taro and thanked her from the bottom of my heart for protecting us.
"I'm just doing my job as a government employee, Ichigo. Just doing my job," she confidently replied. "Although I must admit that...Skinchanger?"
"Skinchanger. Their race is called Skinchanger."
"That conversation with the Skinchanger soldier had just become the most dangerous one I ever had in my career as a social worker."
"And what was the most dangerous one before this?" I asked in pure curiosity.
"It was when I was assigned to the case of a member of the Matsuba-kai. I was successful with the help of the oyabun and some fellow members of the man. And that's all I'm going to say about it."
'Oh. So she was born an aggressive person. Noted.'
"Anyways, Yamada Moe is here, but where is Yamada Ran?"
My good mood died the moment she asked about Ran, because it’s for certain she won’t take the news about what the inari is currently doing very well.
“Mr. Ichigo, where is Yamada Ran?” Mrs. Taro repeated, this time mixing in suspicion and concern in her tone of voice.
Before I was able to speak up, a familiar voice made the air and the forest tremble with its echoes.
“I, Ran of the Yamada of Gifu, will that a flood of Ball Lightning appear and destroy the enemies in front of me!”
A moment later an unending wave of explosions erupted from the direction of the earthen ramparts.
"Is she fighting alongside the Self Defense Forces?!" Taro shouted in shock and anger as fearful, panicked screaming started all around us.
"She is!” I answered while mentally thanking Ran for breaking the news to Taro herself. “Without her help all the Self Defense Forces personnel up there on the rampart would be dead by now, and alongside them me and Kurumi!"
Taro momentarily stood frozen there, filled with I don’t know what emotions under the poker face that suddenly appeared. A moment later she sighed and said something too soft for me to hear through the screaming and the explosions, and then she followed it up by giving me a brief nod and walked towards the wheelchair.
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Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:14 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
I turned my head around as Mrs. Taro kneeled at the left side of the wheelchair and asked Ms. Yamato and Moe if they were aware that Ran is currently fighting alongside the Self Defense Forces.
“I know my sister is fighting. I saw her with the help of Ao here,” Moe replied with a tone that had an equal mix of worry and pride in it.
After giving the inari a disbelieving look, Mrs. Taro looked at Ms. Yamato.
“I wasn’t given the opportunity to raise an objection to her decision,” Ms. Yamato mourned. “And even if I was given one, I...I doubt I could stop my student from going off to war.”
"Why?" Ao suddenly butted into their conversation, in the process reminding the three women that me and my daughter were also there and hearing everything whether we wanted to or not.
"Ao!" I hissed in embarrassment. "You can't butt into other people's conversations! It's rude! Apologize to them!"
My daughter quickly apologized to the three of them, but it wasn’t enough to erase the awkwardness that surrounded us. Therefore I thanked my ancestors when something else broke the ambiance around us.
Skinchanger soldiers suddenly started appearing from the direction of the rampart, where they had marched off to a few minutes ago. Many of them had no rifles, many others were dropping rifles everywhere, and some persisted in carrying their rifles. And all of them were running away from...
“They look so beautiful,” Ao stated in awe as all the so called ‘ball lightning’ that Ran created earlier silently came into view.
They were fuzzy edged, watermelon sized balls of fiery electricity in several colors ranging from orange and red to yellow and white. They also brought along with them the smell of ozone and sulfur, and chased after the Skinchangers in a riot of every describable movement bar those which involves going backwards.
“Those things aren’t going to hit us, will they?” I asked in worry as I saw several of these balls go through trees and through the forest floor, without any visible effects on the objects involved.
“They shouldn’t. Ran did say the words ‘enemies in front of me’ when she cast that spell. We certainly aren’t her enemies,” Moe answered in a confident tone.
She was proven right a few moments later as the balls avoided every human being in their way while dancing after the Skinchangers.
“How dangerous is this ‘Ball Lightning’ that the magical aliens are all running away from them?” Mrs. Taro wondered out loud.
“Mrs. Taro, ball lightning are very dangerous,” Moe started explaining in the manner of a teacher, something which brought a smile from Ms. Yamato beside her. “They go through solid objects like they weren't there. They are hot enough to melt holes in glass. And they also explode when they hit humans and animals, either killing them or leaving burns of various intensities."
Her words were punctuated by an almighty barrage of explosions from afar that made us all jerk in surprise. A moment later all o us were alarmed by the sound of Ao's whimpering.
"Oh no," I moaned. "Ao, did anything move when you got surprised?"
"I...don’t know Mama. It just hurts.”
Before I had a moment to say anything, Moe spoke up and said she would take a look at Ao.
After a few moments of whispering to herself, the inari declared that my daughter’s ribcage was still just in the same position as before, and that the pain might just be the broken bones rubbing against each other from the scare earlier.
"But really," Moe continued as I gave a sigh of relief. "She shouldn't be allowed to get surprised in the first place. May I recommend giving her ear muffs?"
"I could just make occasional peeks into the future for that," Ao replied. "Mama, can I do so from now on, so I don't get surprised?"
The two fellow women and two girls only had a few seconds of looking at me before I made my decision.
"Alright. You can peek into the future whenever we are in danger. But you have to tell me first when you will do that, ok?"
"I will. Can I do it now?"
"Go."
My smiling daughter quickly closed her eyes. Five seconds later, her smile faded away. Ten seconds after that, she opened her eyes and said something that brought my stress levels up again.
"That's not good."
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Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:16 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
I was sitting beside Mom, both of us watching Dad peacefully sleep on the stretcher Ao was using earlier this day. That was the reason why I heard the latter half of the entire conversation that my wife and daughter participated in, which included Ao’s comment of something not being good.
As I turned my head towards them, Kurumi asked the question that I was about to give my daughter.
“Ao, what’s happening?”
“Mama, do you remember the Lighteater nobles who attacked us back home?”
“Don’t tell me there’s one in this place!” Moe cut in with a worry filled voice.
Her words were instantly followed by screams and the smell of smoke coming from the direction where the Skinchanger soldiers had run away to earlier.
I turned around, and saw to my horror not one, but three Skinchanger nobles walking towards us.
These nobles wore a completely different attire from those of the ordinary Skinchanger soldiers.
Instead of a bowl shaped helmet with two holes for a rope to serve as a chin strap, they had a conical shaped helmet that had a bar running down the middle of the face up to the chin, and a thick inner lining of some black colored material attached to the helmet by several rivets along the helmet edges.
Instead of vests, armguards and shinguards made up of rectangular pieces of metal laced together, they had a knee length...raincoat like garment made out of shiny, intertwining chains that I suppose must be an armor of some sort. And underneath that was...a kevlar vest worn over a white silk shirt and thick kevlar leggings.
Instead of bolt action rifles with attached bayonets, these nobles were all toting... Browning Automatic Rifles, BAR for short and bane of the Imperial Japanese Army, and had swords, secure in their scabbards, hanging by the sides of all three of them.
And then I finally noticed the smoke rising from anywhere they stepped, leaving behind foot sized fires.that were slowly eating and growing their way through the mat of dead leaves and branches that was the forest floor.
The multiple spreading fires, in turn, made all our fellow patients and hospital visitors run away, or get awkwardly carried by the stretcher, in every direction except ours. And on that note...
“Everyone, we really should move now,” I said out loud as I stood up and put my hands on one end of Dad’s stretcher. Within moments Kentaro was at the other end without me needing to say anything, and we quickly coordinated to lift Dad up by the stretcher to waist level.
And then we stopped at that point because one of the Skinchanger nobles was beside me, looking at me.
“Can I help you?” I asked, wondering what this was about. But instead of an answer, the noble replied with a question that sent alarm bells ringing in my mind.
“Did you know that the Lighteaters were trialing an experimental armor when Matsumoto happened?”
“Huh?”
“Yeah. Light skintight uniform that gives those people the ability to camouflage themselves like us Skinchangers when naked. Magic circles that would slow down any solid projectiles that would hit the area of the circles. It’s even got a feature that was supposed to be their counterpart to uh...what’s the term...’network centric warfare’?”
For a second I was puzzled, because this noble was talking about a term that came from the Americans.
Network centric warfare was quite simply warfare that concentrates on having a very good, very short and continuous communication loop between the soldiers on the ground and the decision making generals and destroying...
...communication?
“So...how do I put this...did you know the Lighteaters had video and audio records of everything that happened in your house until your wife wore that ring, Ichigo?”
‘FUCK’
“Without further ado,” the noble said with a perverse smile on his rainbow colored face as he aimed his BAR at me. “Die.”
And then he started shooting.
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Thank you Atreidestrooper, Mjolnir66, and Strypgia of Spacebattles for help with this story! I couldn't have done this without you folks!
Re: An Unlikely Magical Girl and an Unlikely World War: reboot
Hello folks!
Sorry I only updated now. It's because of the fight scenes and the Chinese LN wave. I researched and choreographed everything in my mind for the fight scenes, even asked people in the Spacebattles War Forum to beta read the fight scenes. And the Chinese LN...the ones with Ancient China tags are really, really interesting.
Without further ado, this is the chapter! Please read and review!
=========================================================================================================
Chapter 16
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:16 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
“Ao, what’s happening?” I asked my daughter as her words made my levels of worry and fear spike up once again on this damned, damned day.
“Mama, do you remember the Lighteater nobles who attacked us back home?”
“Don’t tell me there’s one in this place!” Moe cut in with a worry filled voice. A moment later screams and the smell of smoke started coming from the direction where the Skinchanger soldiers had run to.
"I give up," I muttered as I closed my eyes, stopped standing on my knees and finally sat seiza, and planted my face into my hands with the intention of just shutting out the world for a few seconds of peace.
I wasn't given that peace. By my daughter, no less.
"Ms. Moe, could you start making that wind spell against bullets, but wait until I say activate it?"
"Ms. Ao, these are nobles. They are better trained - "
"These nobles know us," Ao interrupted Moe with a harsh whisper. "I don't know how but they recognize all of us who were in that fight in our house. And because the noble Papa killed is from one of the richest families in their Empire, that family is offering a big, big reward for killing me and Mama and Papa to anyone who wants to take it."
I looked up at my daughter and stated the word 'what'. And at the same time as Ms. Yamato and Mrs. Taro.
"How big is the reward?" Moe asked. She then turned her head around and stared at something, which prompted everyone but Ao to look at the same direction.
It only took a second for me to see it was two Skinchanger nobles positioning themselves a few meters away from us, one directly to my right and one to my forward right and both looking at me.
The nobles wore different attire from those back home at Matsumoto, and from all the other Skinchanger soldiers who were shooting at me since earlier this day. They had these knee length, long sleeved coats made of chain so fine and beautiful that the maker could make lots of money making more beautiful weird clothes like that. And metal helmets shaped like the tip of a fine tipped ink brush and had this funny looking bar of metal going down from their helm to their chin.
Oh, and they also have guns and swords.
"Uhm…converted to yen…Eleven billion, Twenty Five million, One Hundred Ninety Nine thousand and Eight hundred yen for all three of us.”
I didn’t take my eyes off the Skinchanger nobles, but I might as well have done so because I wasn’t seeing them.
I was seeing red at the thought of so much money I could use to pay for a house, for Father’s medical bills, school fees for me and my fiance and my daughter, and a store of some kind that would supplement Ichigo’s future salary as a Self Defense Forces member until he retires and...and all of that lying out of reach because we all had to be dead to get that fucking money.
It was because of all that rage that when I heard my daughter yell "now," I charged and tackled the Skinchanger to my right onto the forest floor, and started to strangle the bastard while he was stunned while screaming something.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:17 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
I was glad that Kentaro was holding the end of the stretcher adjacent to Dad’s head otherwise Dad’s head would quickly sled to the ground when I let go of the stretcher, as his feet did just now.
As for me…I sat on the forest floor, squinting at the bullets embedded into my right arm and right side of my stomach. Around the bullets my blood flew out in a continuous trickle while dead leaves whirled all around us thanks to Moe’s magical anti-bullet wind.
“Well,” I heard the bastard who shot me with an automatic rifle at full auto. “That – what in the name of Sssh?!”
It was only then I heard Kurumi howling, of all things, “Eleven billion yen” over and over again as if it was a battle cry. A turn of my head showed a scene I won’t ever forget from this moment onwards, one that I wish to never see again.
My wife was strangling a Skinchanger noble lying on his back on the forest floor, her nails gouging bloody canyons into his unprotected neck and screaming “Eleven billion yen” into his face over and over again like a crazy woman. The Skinchanger, on his part, was punching Kurumi’s head from all sides with ineffectual panic, probably because the dead leaves under his body were on fire.
And then I noticed Mrs. Taro and Ms. Yamato, stamping the flames around Kurumi and the Skinchanger while holding fire axes with –
“Papa, duck!”
I did as Ao yelled, and barely dodged the sword that would have chopped my head into two. And then an armored fist was heading for my face, so I raised my two hands to catch it –
I howled as a sheet of grey light flashed and burned my right palm, and then fell silent when my weakened hands slammed into my forehead, quickly followed by the back of my head hitting the forest floor.
The impact made me see stars and white spots. As I blinked them away and propped myself up on my undamaged left hand, I saw that Kentaro had engaged the Skinchanger some meters to my front and right, only to have his left leg snapped backwards by a well placed kick to the knee. Then the Skinchanger raised his sword to deliver a killing blow to my howling Father in law
All of a sudden Mom wordlessly charged pass me, the ‘Smellie’ rifle that Kurumi and the others hid earlier held with both hands for a bayonet thrust.
The bastard whirled and parried the bayonet heading for his neck with a downward right swing of his sword, accompanied at the same time by a flash of fire at the point of impact. Then he placed his sword hand and his hand with the invisible magical barrier side by side in front of him, and thrust them, sword first, at Mom along with a step towards her.
As Mom sidestepped and slashed at the Skinchanger's leg, I quickly started to get back onto my feet without taking my eyes off them.
“Wait Papa!" My daughter suddenly yelled from the left. "Look at your right hand!”
I blinked as I stood. I looked at Ao and then at my right hand, and hissed in dismay upon seeing my blistering and worryingly white colored right palm.
"Don't worry Papa! Use this with your left hand and help Grandma! Ms. Moe!?"
An instant later an all metal riot shield straight out of TV news plopped onto the ground right beside me.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:18 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
The twisting of my ear and a yell into said ear started to blow away the red haze in my eyesight.
"Kurumi, he's dead! He's dead! Stop that now!" Mrs. Taro's voice continued to filter in the same direction as the kicks I was getting on my left leg. And in a few moments I saw she was right.
The Skinchanger noble was dead, eyes rolled back into his head, mouth open for air that never got to his lungs, his neck bloody and misshaped by my hands. And then I coughed as the noxious scent of urine and smoke wafting through the air finally registered in my mind.
"Are you alright now, Ms. Kurumi?" Ms Yamato timidly asked me.
“I think so – the others?!”
I looked around and hissed at what I saw.
To my right, meters beyond the wheelchair Moe and Ao were on, Papa was sobbing in pain on the ground because of his visibly broken leg. Some distance away from him, Ichigo and Mother were in a stand-off with a Skinchanger noble, both sides constantly shuffling for a better position to defend or attack from…or just trying to avoid the spreading fires around the forest floor without making it obvious.
And behind me...
I stared at the scene between Mama and her opponent.
The Skinchanger had body armor, a sword and maybe an invisible shield. Mama only had an ice pick in her left hand and an all metal police baton with rubber around its handle in her right. And yet it was the Skinchanger who was losing in their fight.
He was limping, his left hand hanging useless because of the ice pick stabbed through his left wrist and another embedded in his right foot. As for Mama, the only casualty was her hair. What used to be mid-back length straight hair was now an ugly bob cut –
“Kurumi! Help me out here!” Mama suddenly yelled.
Her yell made the Skinchanger jerk, and made him shuffle for repositioning. It was then that Mama struck.
She swung the baton at the sword hand of the Lighteater at the same time as she stepped to her front and left. As the hand went down, Mama suddenly stabbed the ice pick at the Skinchanger’s chin.
The next moment the Skinchanger dropped onto the floor, the ice pick stabbed up through his chin up to the hilt. Mama followed up by kicking the body over onto its front, and then starting to hammer another ice pick that appeared in her hands up through the Skinchanger’s nape with her hands.
‘Ok. Two down, one to go.’
“Ms. Yamato, can I have that axe?” I asked while standing away from the Skinchanger’s corpse. “I’m going to help Ichigo and Mother deal with the last Skinchanger.”
After a moment of indecision, Ms. Yamato gave it to me and then went off to stand between Moe’s wheelchair and the last fight still happening, probably as a body shield in case something happens.
As for me, I strode forwards with the axe held in my hands. After a second or so of walking, I heard two sets of footsteps from behind me. But I didn’t pay them any attention, all my attention was on the bastard who hurt Papa.
Within moments I stood at Ichigo's right and Mother’s left, with enough space between us for me to touch their shoulders by stretching both arms. I was quickly followed by Mrs. Taro and Mama who were respectively on Ichigo’s other side and beside Mother at roughly the same distance.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:19 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
The Skinchanger reacted to the arrival of Kurumi, Mrs. Taro and Magdalena in this fight by making several slow and small steps backwards with that two hands side by side stance while keeping all of us in his view, leaving behind more fires that were fanned by the wind around us.
”Ichigo, what happened to your arm?!” Kurumi asked from beside me in dismay.
“He did,” I said as I pointed my chin at the Skinchanger noble, while lightly shaking my right arm for emphasis.
My right hand hurt, and I could feel the swelling around the bullets in my skin, but I thought I could still fight. The improvised monocle was on my left eye, and I was holding the riot shield with my left arm, so nothing would change other than me not swinging something with my right hand.
“Bastard,” my wife hissed.
“Don’t worry. We’ll make him pay,” I sincerely replied.
With that said I started to walk forward, peeking at the Skinchanger through the screen of holes that serve as the peephole of this riot shield. A moment later I heard everyone else start walking too.
And then Moe shouted at us to stop walking forward.
“He laid magical traps in your way! Don’t walk forward anymore!” she continued.
As I and everyone else heeded her words, the Skinchanger taunted us.
“Come on! Come at me you cheaters! I’ll take on all of you at the same time!”
‘Cheaters? Us?’
Before I was able to think of the implications, Moe scoffed and screamed back something very enlightening.
“Cheaters?! Is this about being unable to use your favorite magic spells?!”
After a few seconds of silence from the Skinchanger, the inari continued in a tone that was equal parts outraged and equal parts mocking.
“The problem is that you and your friends aren’t strong enough to push the spells through the suppression field to a safe distance from your bodies! Besides, you and your friends cheated first! You were trying to turn people with no magic into ashes and bones!”
I blinked. And then I started to remember all the feats that I saw and heard back in Matsumoto. Moments later I shivered as I recalled how my hand was burned, or the flash of fire that happened when the rifle Mom held was parried. And then Iglanced at all the mysteriously sputtering fires the Skinchanger’s footsteps left everywhere.
If Kurumi wasn’t wearing that ring I would not only have burns on my right hand, I would have lost my right hand and my head. If that ring wasn’t here the rifle Mom wielded might have exploded in her hands and stomach. And I refuse to imagine what should be happening instead of burning footprints if not for that ring’s presence.
“Because I have magic! And I have a right to use what I was born with any way I want! What right does anyone have to make me stop using magic?!”
A gunshot suddenly sounded, the Skinchanger bended over his stomach in the manner of someone who got punched there, a glittering metal object dropped among the ashes and burning dead leaves under the magical alien, and then he went back into his stance and glared at the person who shot him.
“So the armor is bulletproof,” Mom stated as she worked the bolt of the rifle. “I’m now glad I didn’t waste a bullet ear – ”
“Close your eyes!” Ao screamed. An instant later eye tearing light flashed from the Skinchanger.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:19 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
It was because I looked at Ao when she screamed that the sudden flash of light didn’t blind me.
When I looked back in front, the Skinchanger was already charging towards Mother and Mama while everyone else was still blinded, with his sword and a shining grey magical barrier held out side by side in front of him.
I quickly ran. Within a heartbeat or two I was in front of Mom and Mama, facing the rushing Skinchanger with the axe ready to swing.
When he was close enough, I swung the axe in total expectation that the axe would connect with the noble.
What happened instead was that I missed him. The Skinchanger stopped just outside the arc of the swing, let the axe pass through, and then he stabbed –
A moment later I was hunched over my right breast, breathlessly pressing my hands on it because the bastard managed to hit me there.
And then I dropped to the ground when something slammed into the back of my head.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:19 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
As my vision returned to normal I saw my wife hunched over, clutching her breast for some reason. And then she slammed face first into the forest floor because of an almighty swing of the sword from the Skinchanger to the back of her head.
I instantly moved the riot shield in front of me, glared at the bastard through the screen peephole, and charged to get him away from Kurumi.
In three steps I was about to slam into him when all of a sudden he moved left. At the same time something hit the left side of the riot shield, changing my straightforward movement into an awkward whirl that almost hit the prone figure of my wife.
A moment later I managed to stop moving and saw the Skinchanger rip open Mrs. Taro’s cheek with a thrust.
As the social worker let go of her axe and backed away with a howl of pain, I slammed the shield into the Skinchanger, who was looking at me and in the process of moving to face me. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to knock the bastard to the ground.
Thus we spent a moment there, locked in a pushing match using the riot shield while glaring at each other through its peepholes.
“I’ll kill you for hitting my wife and everything else, bastard,” I hissed at him while noticing that the riot shield was starting to get warm.
“No. You die,” He replied. An instant later he yelped at the same time as I felt him move and a sound of wood hitting metal came from the other side. The next moment I felt him lose his balance, but it was so sudden that I also ended up falling to the ground on top of him.
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Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji Regional Hospital, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:20 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
‘I swear to all my ancestors that the first word of ‘eh koine dialektos’ that I would learn is helmet’
After that mental promise to myself, and the complete disappearance of my headache, I finally sat up and opened my eyes to see a scene of dangerous comedy.
Ichigo had pinned down the Skinchanger to the forest floor with the riot shield, and was doing his best to keep on top of the magical alien. The Skinchanger was also doing his best to buck my fiance off of him with arm and hip movements that would be comedic if it weren’t for the sword waving around and the flames under the alien’s body.
And around them were Mama and Mother, standing just out of sword range…and then Mother laid down on her side, aimed the rifle under the shield in that position, and then fired four times.
And thus the last of the three Skinchanger nobles died.
=========================================================================================================
Many thanks to Atreidestrooper, locki, mjolnir66, rm928 and Sharpandpointies of Spacebattles for all the help! I can't have done this without you folks.
Sorry I only updated now. It's because of the fight scenes and the Chinese LN wave. I researched and choreographed everything in my mind for the fight scenes, even asked people in the Spacebattles War Forum to beta read the fight scenes. And the Chinese LN...the ones with Ancient China tags are really, really interesting.
Without further ado, this is the chapter! Please read and review!
=========================================================================================================
Chapter 16
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:16 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
“Ao, what’s happening?” I asked my daughter as her words made my levels of worry and fear spike up once again on this damned, damned day.
“Mama, do you remember the Lighteater nobles who attacked us back home?”
“Don’t tell me there’s one in this place!” Moe cut in with a worry filled voice. A moment later screams and the smell of smoke started coming from the direction where the Skinchanger soldiers had run to.
"I give up," I muttered as I closed my eyes, stopped standing on my knees and finally sat seiza, and planted my face into my hands with the intention of just shutting out the world for a few seconds of peace.
I wasn't given that peace. By my daughter, no less.
"Ms. Moe, could you start making that wind spell against bullets, but wait until I say activate it?"
"Ms. Ao, these are nobles. They are better trained - "
"These nobles know us," Ao interrupted Moe with a harsh whisper. "I don't know how but they recognize all of us who were in that fight in our house. And because the noble Papa killed is from one of the richest families in their Empire, that family is offering a big, big reward for killing me and Mama and Papa to anyone who wants to take it."
I looked up at my daughter and stated the word 'what'. And at the same time as Ms. Yamato and Mrs. Taro.
"How big is the reward?" Moe asked. She then turned her head around and stared at something, which prompted everyone but Ao to look at the same direction.
It only took a second for me to see it was two Skinchanger nobles positioning themselves a few meters away from us, one directly to my right and one to my forward right and both looking at me.
The nobles wore different attire from those back home at Matsumoto, and from all the other Skinchanger soldiers who were shooting at me since earlier this day. They had these knee length, long sleeved coats made of chain so fine and beautiful that the maker could make lots of money making more beautiful weird clothes like that. And metal helmets shaped like the tip of a fine tipped ink brush and had this funny looking bar of metal going down from their helm to their chin.
Oh, and they also have guns and swords.
"Uhm…converted to yen…Eleven billion, Twenty Five million, One Hundred Ninety Nine thousand and Eight hundred yen for all three of us.”
I didn’t take my eyes off the Skinchanger nobles, but I might as well have done so because I wasn’t seeing them.
I was seeing red at the thought of so much money I could use to pay for a house, for Father’s medical bills, school fees for me and my fiance and my daughter, and a store of some kind that would supplement Ichigo’s future salary as a Self Defense Forces member until he retires and...and all of that lying out of reach because we all had to be dead to get that fucking money.
It was because of all that rage that when I heard my daughter yell "now," I charged and tackled the Skinchanger to my right onto the forest floor, and started to strangle the bastard while he was stunned while screaming something.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:17 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
I was glad that Kentaro was holding the end of the stretcher adjacent to Dad’s head otherwise Dad’s head would quickly sled to the ground when I let go of the stretcher, as his feet did just now.
As for me…I sat on the forest floor, squinting at the bullets embedded into my right arm and right side of my stomach. Around the bullets my blood flew out in a continuous trickle while dead leaves whirled all around us thanks to Moe’s magical anti-bullet wind.
“Well,” I heard the bastard who shot me with an automatic rifle at full auto. “That – what in the name of Sssh?!”
It was only then I heard Kurumi howling, of all things, “Eleven billion yen” over and over again as if it was a battle cry. A turn of my head showed a scene I won’t ever forget from this moment onwards, one that I wish to never see again.
My wife was strangling a Skinchanger noble lying on his back on the forest floor, her nails gouging bloody canyons into his unprotected neck and screaming “Eleven billion yen” into his face over and over again like a crazy woman. The Skinchanger, on his part, was punching Kurumi’s head from all sides with ineffectual panic, probably because the dead leaves under his body were on fire.
And then I noticed Mrs. Taro and Ms. Yamato, stamping the flames around Kurumi and the Skinchanger while holding fire axes with –
“Papa, duck!”
I did as Ao yelled, and barely dodged the sword that would have chopped my head into two. And then an armored fist was heading for my face, so I raised my two hands to catch it –
I howled as a sheet of grey light flashed and burned my right palm, and then fell silent when my weakened hands slammed into my forehead, quickly followed by the back of my head hitting the forest floor.
The impact made me see stars and white spots. As I blinked them away and propped myself up on my undamaged left hand, I saw that Kentaro had engaged the Skinchanger some meters to my front and right, only to have his left leg snapped backwards by a well placed kick to the knee. Then the Skinchanger raised his sword to deliver a killing blow to my howling Father in law
All of a sudden Mom wordlessly charged pass me, the ‘Smellie’ rifle that Kurumi and the others hid earlier held with both hands for a bayonet thrust.
The bastard whirled and parried the bayonet heading for his neck with a downward right swing of his sword, accompanied at the same time by a flash of fire at the point of impact. Then he placed his sword hand and his hand with the invisible magical barrier side by side in front of him, and thrust them, sword first, at Mom along with a step towards her.
As Mom sidestepped and slashed at the Skinchanger's leg, I quickly started to get back onto my feet without taking my eyes off them.
“Wait Papa!" My daughter suddenly yelled from the left. "Look at your right hand!”
I blinked as I stood. I looked at Ao and then at my right hand, and hissed in dismay upon seeing my blistering and worryingly white colored right palm.
"Don't worry Papa! Use this with your left hand and help Grandma! Ms. Moe!?"
An instant later an all metal riot shield straight out of TV news plopped onto the ground right beside me.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:18 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
The twisting of my ear and a yell into said ear started to blow away the red haze in my eyesight.
"Kurumi, he's dead! He's dead! Stop that now!" Mrs. Taro's voice continued to filter in the same direction as the kicks I was getting on my left leg. And in a few moments I saw she was right.
The Skinchanger noble was dead, eyes rolled back into his head, mouth open for air that never got to his lungs, his neck bloody and misshaped by my hands. And then I coughed as the noxious scent of urine and smoke wafting through the air finally registered in my mind.
"Are you alright now, Ms. Kurumi?" Ms Yamato timidly asked me.
“I think so – the others?!”
I looked around and hissed at what I saw.
To my right, meters beyond the wheelchair Moe and Ao were on, Papa was sobbing in pain on the ground because of his visibly broken leg. Some distance away from him, Ichigo and Mother were in a stand-off with a Skinchanger noble, both sides constantly shuffling for a better position to defend or attack from…or just trying to avoid the spreading fires around the forest floor without making it obvious.
And behind me...
I stared at the scene between Mama and her opponent.
The Skinchanger had body armor, a sword and maybe an invisible shield. Mama only had an ice pick in her left hand and an all metal police baton with rubber around its handle in her right. And yet it was the Skinchanger who was losing in their fight.
He was limping, his left hand hanging useless because of the ice pick stabbed through his left wrist and another embedded in his right foot. As for Mama, the only casualty was her hair. What used to be mid-back length straight hair was now an ugly bob cut –
“Kurumi! Help me out here!” Mama suddenly yelled.
Her yell made the Skinchanger jerk, and made him shuffle for repositioning. It was then that Mama struck.
She swung the baton at the sword hand of the Lighteater at the same time as she stepped to her front and left. As the hand went down, Mama suddenly stabbed the ice pick at the Skinchanger’s chin.
The next moment the Skinchanger dropped onto the floor, the ice pick stabbed up through his chin up to the hilt. Mama followed up by kicking the body over onto its front, and then starting to hammer another ice pick that appeared in her hands up through the Skinchanger’s nape with her hands.
‘Ok. Two down, one to go.’
“Ms. Yamato, can I have that axe?” I asked while standing away from the Skinchanger’s corpse. “I’m going to help Ichigo and Mother deal with the last Skinchanger.”
After a moment of indecision, Ms. Yamato gave it to me and then went off to stand between Moe’s wheelchair and the last fight still happening, probably as a body shield in case something happens.
As for me, I strode forwards with the axe held in my hands. After a second or so of walking, I heard two sets of footsteps from behind me. But I didn’t pay them any attention, all my attention was on the bastard who hurt Papa.
Within moments I stood at Ichigo's right and Mother’s left, with enough space between us for me to touch their shoulders by stretching both arms. I was quickly followed by Mrs. Taro and Mama who were respectively on Ichigo’s other side and beside Mother at roughly the same distance.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:19 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
The Skinchanger reacted to the arrival of Kurumi, Mrs. Taro and Magdalena in this fight by making several slow and small steps backwards with that two hands side by side stance while keeping all of us in his view, leaving behind more fires that were fanned by the wind around us.
”Ichigo, what happened to your arm?!” Kurumi asked from beside me in dismay.
“He did,” I said as I pointed my chin at the Skinchanger noble, while lightly shaking my right arm for emphasis.
My right hand hurt, and I could feel the swelling around the bullets in my skin, but I thought I could still fight. The improvised monocle was on my left eye, and I was holding the riot shield with my left arm, so nothing would change other than me not swinging something with my right hand.
“Bastard,” my wife hissed.
“Don’t worry. We’ll make him pay,” I sincerely replied.
With that said I started to walk forward, peeking at the Skinchanger through the screen of holes that serve as the peephole of this riot shield. A moment later I heard everyone else start walking too.
And then Moe shouted at us to stop walking forward.
“He laid magical traps in your way! Don’t walk forward anymore!” she continued.
As I and everyone else heeded her words, the Skinchanger taunted us.
“Come on! Come at me you cheaters! I’ll take on all of you at the same time!”
‘Cheaters? Us?’
Before I was able to think of the implications, Moe scoffed and screamed back something very enlightening.
“Cheaters?! Is this about being unable to use your favorite magic spells?!”
After a few seconds of silence from the Skinchanger, the inari continued in a tone that was equal parts outraged and equal parts mocking.
“The problem is that you and your friends aren’t strong enough to push the spells through the suppression field to a safe distance from your bodies! Besides, you and your friends cheated first! You were trying to turn people with no magic into ashes and bones!”
I blinked. And then I started to remember all the feats that I saw and heard back in Matsumoto. Moments later I shivered as I recalled how my hand was burned, or the flash of fire that happened when the rifle Mom held was parried. And then Iglanced at all the mysteriously sputtering fires the Skinchanger’s footsteps left everywhere.
If Kurumi wasn’t wearing that ring I would not only have burns on my right hand, I would have lost my right hand and my head. If that ring wasn’t here the rifle Mom wielded might have exploded in her hands and stomach. And I refuse to imagine what should be happening instead of burning footprints if not for that ring’s presence.
“Because I have magic! And I have a right to use what I was born with any way I want! What right does anyone have to make me stop using magic?!”
A gunshot suddenly sounded, the Skinchanger bended over his stomach in the manner of someone who got punched there, a glittering metal object dropped among the ashes and burning dead leaves under the magical alien, and then he went back into his stance and glared at the person who shot him.
“So the armor is bulletproof,” Mom stated as she worked the bolt of the rifle. “I’m now glad I didn’t waste a bullet ear – ”
“Close your eyes!” Ao screamed. An instant later eye tearing light flashed from the Skinchanger.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:19 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
It was because I looked at Ao when she screamed that the sudden flash of light didn’t blind me.
When I looked back in front, the Skinchanger was already charging towards Mother and Mama while everyone else was still blinded, with his sword and a shining grey magical barrier held out side by side in front of him.
I quickly ran. Within a heartbeat or two I was in front of Mom and Mama, facing the rushing Skinchanger with the axe ready to swing.
When he was close enough, I swung the axe in total expectation that the axe would connect with the noble.
What happened instead was that I missed him. The Skinchanger stopped just outside the arc of the swing, let the axe pass through, and then he stabbed –
A moment later I was hunched over my right breast, breathlessly pressing my hands on it because the bastard managed to hit me there.
And then I dropped to the ground when something slammed into the back of my head.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:19 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
As my vision returned to normal I saw my wife hunched over, clutching her breast for some reason. And then she slammed face first into the forest floor because of an almighty swing of the sword from the Skinchanger to the back of her head.
I instantly moved the riot shield in front of me, glared at the bastard through the screen peephole, and charged to get him away from Kurumi.
In three steps I was about to slam into him when all of a sudden he moved left. At the same time something hit the left side of the riot shield, changing my straightforward movement into an awkward whirl that almost hit the prone figure of my wife.
A moment later I managed to stop moving and saw the Skinchanger rip open Mrs. Taro’s cheek with a thrust.
As the social worker let go of her axe and backed away with a howl of pain, I slammed the shield into the Skinchanger, who was looking at me and in the process of moving to face me. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to knock the bastard to the ground.
Thus we spent a moment there, locked in a pushing match using the riot shield while glaring at each other through its peepholes.
“I’ll kill you for hitting my wife and everything else, bastard,” I hissed at him while noticing that the riot shield was starting to get warm.
“No. You die,” He replied. An instant later he yelped at the same time as I felt him move and a sound of wood hitting metal came from the other side. The next moment I felt him lose his balance, but it was so sudden that I also ended up falling to the ground on top of him.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji Regional Hospital, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:20 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
‘I swear to all my ancestors that the first word of ‘eh koine dialektos’ that I would learn is helmet’
After that mental promise to myself, and the complete disappearance of my headache, I finally sat up and opened my eyes to see a scene of dangerous comedy.
Ichigo had pinned down the Skinchanger to the forest floor with the riot shield, and was doing his best to keep on top of the magical alien. The Skinchanger was also doing his best to buck my fiance off of him with arm and hip movements that would be comedic if it weren’t for the sword waving around and the flames under the alien’s body.
And around them were Mama and Mother, standing just out of sword range…and then Mother laid down on her side, aimed the rifle under the shield in that position, and then fired four times.
And thus the last of the three Skinchanger nobles died.
=========================================================================================================
Many thanks to Atreidestrooper, locki, mjolnir66, rm928 and Sharpandpointies of Spacebattles for all the help! I can't have done this without you folks.
Re: An Unlikely Magical Girl and an Unlikely World War: reboot
Hello folks!
Sorry I only got to update now. It was because I went on an editing spree on the earlier chapters...which unfortunately could never be seen on Stardestroyer because the editing button is not here and oh how I wish I could edit chapter here, argh!
*Ehem*
As a result of the editing spree I lost some of my feel for writing the new ones. So this chapter was a slog.
So, without further ado, please read! And please give a review or comment!
======================================================================================================================================================================================================
Chapter 17
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:38 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
"Are you sure you really can't do anything else for my knee?" Kentaro gasped out in pain as Moe gently finished tying the tourniquet around the hip above his ruined left knee. Magdalena and Kurumi sat on the other side of his body, the wife clasping his right hand for comfort while the daughter carried Ao in her arms while watching, to let the inari get down from her wheelchair to attend to the father. And nearby was Dad, still asleep on his stretcher.
"I don't even know what else to do," Moe replied as she wiped the sweat off her brow. "I’m only tying a tourniquet because I’m worried about possible internal bleeding. If you want more you should ask my sister. Ran is the one who wants to be a doctor. I only know First Aid."
"I can attest to that as her homeroom teacher," Ms. Yamato added from where she kneeled amongst the dead leaves, right beside her disabled student and ready to help Moe whenever the inari needs anything.
A sudden call of my name by Mom made me turn around, to see her frowning at me.
“Ichigo, stop eavesdropping. We need help in putting all these fires down,” she whispered. And then she quickly strode over to the nearest unextinguished patch of burning dead leaves and branches, with one of the three watering cans of infinite water that Moe made with magic before she tried to tend Kentaro’s knee in her hand, and started to sprinkle water on the flames.
I quickly started to do the same in the opposite direction from her, while taking a look around the forest clearing.
In the several minutes that passed since the Skinchanger nobles were killed, Mom and I and Mrs. Taro had been putting out as many of fires left by the dead Skinchangers as we can, after we placed Dad near Kentaro.
We started firefighting because Kentaro can’t be moved. Dad was also unable to be moved because even though Moe healed my wounds so I could carry Dad if I wanted to, we can’t leave Kentaro behind.
Also during that time, a few of our fellow patients and patient relatives from Camp Fuji Regional Hospital wandered back to the forest clearing for reasons none have bothered to explain to us.
Mom was sorely tempted to conscript the adults among the patient relatives into helping us put out the fires, but thankfully I managed to convince her it was only a waste of time. It also helped that they all stayed at the edges of the forest clearing, ready to bolt if anything else happened again.
Thus, it was only us two trying to firefight in here. With watering cans. And to my surprise we’re winning.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:38 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
As Ms. Yamato lifted Moe, currently turned into a grey colored fox to make it easier for her teacher to put her onto the wheelchair, I pondered about Papa.
I had this horrible feeling that Papa will never be able to walk properly ever again. And even though Papa's livelihood only requires a completely healthy mind instead of body...it hurts. It hurts seeing him crippled.
It has only been eight years since the last time Papa carried me on his shoulders or swung me around while playing at home.
"Kurumi?"
I got brought back to the present by Papa's voice.
"Papa," I replied, looking down at his sweaty and pain filled face.
"Come on Kurumi. What is there to look so downhearted about? We're all still alive, no?"
"Papa..."
I wasn't able to stop myself from looking at his poor left knee.
"Come on. I'm going to heal from this. Medicine has come a long way in the last thirty years. And in the worst case I'll just have to learn to use crutches."
I almost let out a sob at what Papa had said.
"You don't have to learn to use crutches," Mama suddenly said.
"I don't?"
"How?" I asked Mama with a heart full of hope.
"Simple,” Mama said while looking at me. “Your father and I will go to the Lady of Manaoag. Of course that would be after the doctors are finished with Kentaro's knee and he can walk somewhat and this war is over."
"Lady of what? Is this a pilgrimage site for Christians?" Papa asked with a skeptical expression.
"One of the most famous pilgrimage sites for Roman Catholics in the Philippines. Every year thousands of people go to Pangasinan province to visit the shrine."
“Is going there even going to work for me Magdalena?” Papa asked.
By pure accident I managed to answer before Mama said her reply.
“Papa, Moe turned herself into a fox in front of your eyes, and you met Izanami. Following that logic then Mama’s God could also exist.”
My words were punctuated by Moe turning back into a human girl with a pop, on top of her wheelchair.
“...can we try Chichibu first? It’s literally right next to Tokyo.”
“What’s in Chichibu?” Mama asked in curiosity.
“Chichibu’s Thirty Four Kannon Sanctuary pilgrimage. Thirty four shrines in just one city, as opposed to all the other pilgrimages in Japan that span whole islands or provinces.”
Mama was silent for a few moments. Then she said she will take Papa there but only if Papa promises to go to the Lady of Manaoag in the Philippines if Chichibu doesn’t work for his knee.
When Papa agreed, Mama beamed a smile at him and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
“Mama,” Ao whispered at me from my arms.
“What is it?” I whispered back, not wanting to end Mama and Papa’s moment too soon.
“Lolo just needs to wait for Ms. Ran, Mrs. Izanami and the doctors.”
I looked down and into my daughter’s eyes, who stared back at me.
“Really?” I asked her.
When Ao nodded, I took a peek at my parents.
After seeing they were still having a moment to themselves, I looked back at my daughter and put a finger on my mouth to tell her to be quiet about that.
“Lolo and Lola’s love love time is going to end now,” she said while shaking her head. And then she took a deep breath and held it in.
I had barely begun to respond to her statement when the ground suddenly started to rumble, eliciting screams from everywhere around the clearing.
“What's happening?” I yelled as Ao whimpered in pain in my arms. A moment after I said that the earthquake stopped. And then I saw my answer in the sky.
A dark cloud was once again spreading across the sky from Mt. Fuji's direction.
"There's something...I don't understand," Papa hissed in pain filled voice for some reason. A quick, worried look at him showed me the cause was his left knee moving during the earthquake earlier.
"Do you need painkillers?" Mama asked while looking at Papa with worry, interspersed with brief glares up at the dark cloud in the sky.
"No, no. It's....it’s ok now. Nothing’s moving, it’s ok now. What was I about to ask...is raining down lava from the sky actually helping?"
Everyone looked at Moe after Papa posed that question. Moe looked back at us and shrugged.
“I don’t know. I have to see the results before I make a judgement about Konohanasakuya-hime’s spell. But what I’m sure of is I don’t want to be on the other side of the flying lava.”
As soon as she finished her words, pink colored lava once again came out of the cloud in the shape of eels and swam through the air...
“Is it just me or are some of those streams of lava flying our way?” I asked out loud.
As seconds went by, I grew increasingly worried as the lava eels slowly grew larger and larger to my sight. By the time they slammed into the ground in the direction of Camp Fuji I, and probably everyone else, could tell that these things made of lava are about as long as a ten story building was tall and as thick as a passenger train.
“Definitely don’t want to be on the other side of that,” Moe stated as the bombardment went on.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:52 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
Mom, Mrs. Taro and I had successfully extinguished all the flames threatening to burn down the forest clearing around us. That was why I expected some of the very few people to enter it once again for some measure of safety, an opportunity I would use to ask them questions about what happened.
No one entered the forest clearing because they were all spooked by the lava in the skies. And the sound of their impact in the distance.
That was why I finally took it upon myself to go into the woods and ask questions at some of them. And the answers I got were...bad news, to say the least.
All the roads around us, whether they are made of concrete or asphalt, had become the growing places of all those magical bamboo I saw earlier. And worse for us those plants release poisonous gases when their stem was damaged.
That was how many patients and patient relatives died at the road to the North.
No one went East, because that was where the Skinchangers came from. And I shouldn’t mention the West was where the JGSDF personnel, Ran and my three resurrected ancestors were fighting Skinchanger soldiers.
And the worst news I received was the South.
No one dared to go past the rampart, which was also present in the south, because there was fighting in the woods beyond the rampart. They heard no gunshots, but there were never ending battle cries, screams, and wood hitting wood.
All the ones who went South walked away, but only very few bothered to go back all the way to the forest clearing. Apparently they thought hiding inside the woods would be the safest thing they could do.
By the time I wandered back to my family and sat down beside Dad and Mom, I was trying to keep a stoic face to hide the depression I felt. That was why I was surprised when all of a sudden Mom and Kurumi asked me if there was something wrong, at the same time.
I looked at Kurumi and Mom, who gave each other a quick glance before looking at me. I sighed and shook my head.
"It's something none of us can do anything about...other than pray. Maybe."
"Excuse me," Moe suddenly butted in on our conversation. "Regarding prayers, can I ask something of everyone?"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I can't believe that prayers worked," I mumbled to myself in slight disbelief, amidst the cheer of everyone around us, as...we learned the battle was over.
It was over.
Earlier this day Moe had suggested to us that we, as a group, start praying to Izanami.
As Magdalena scoffed with disbelief, Ms. Yamato gently asked her student what we were supposed to pray to the goddess. The inari quickly instructed us to pray our current situation to the goddess, in hope that she could send help to us. And then she told us how she wanted us to pray, because it will supposedly quickly gain Izanami’s attention.
Except for Magdalena, who refused to pray to what she called a misguided spirit, and my still unconscious Dad, everyone else...
We skipped any purification. We skipped any bowing or ringing of bells. We sacrilegiously just clapped our hands twice, closed our eyes, and just continuously prayed to Izanami a report of our current circumstances.
We spent only a short amount of time praying, and probably looking silly, before things quickly started happening.
Izanami’s voice suddenly shook heaven and earth, and all the things in between. And her words were...
“I, who was the Mother of all creatures. I, who became sister and wife and widow of Izanagi. I, former ruler of Yomi. I, current miko of myself, do will the gates of Yomi be fully opened. Let more of my worshippers go forth into the land of the living once more. Let all of my worshippers and their children go forth and fight my enemies. Let all my worshippers, their children and their children’s children go forth and bring. Us. Victory!”
A few seconds after Izanami's speech ended everything trembled once again, this time from the roar of foreign sounding battle cries coming from countless multitudes to the South. And the roaring continued and continued, past the time when the skies had turned orange, and way into the growing blue darkness of dusk marred only by the red glow of Konohanasakuya-hime’s clouds. The roaring also moved from only the South to every direction around the forest clearing at the same time.
And then the roaring stopped just a few moments ago, quickly followed by Izanami’s voice declaring victory by making the Skinchangers run back into their homeland.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subashiri Settlement, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
9:36 A.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
“Ichigo, Ao. Wake up you two,” I said as I gently tapped their shoulders.
As they both started to wake up, I took a glance at our current temporary shelter and thought about everything that happened last night.
Last night, once darkness had completely fallen and it became too hard to see, the Self Defense Forces personnel who manned the ramparts fetched all of us in that forest clearing, aided by the burning torches created by Ran, Krauncha, and Izanami who were also with them.
The magic of those three people, and modern medical knowledge of the Self Defense Forces medical personnel, were the reason why a few minutes after the meeting Papa was able to walk again, his left knee back to normal.
Within an hour or so after Papa’s recovery we were all walking north, past roads filled with the burned remains of magical poison spewing bamboo courtesy of one word from Izanami. Past woods filled with dead Skinchangers and a particular part of the highway to the north where many patients and relatives that I saw from Camp Fuji Regional Hospital lay dead on the ground.
The Self Defense Forces personnel escorted us to the nearest neighborhood, the settlement of Subashiri of the town of Oyama, which is the town where JGSDF Camp Fuji and all the military bases in Sunto District are located. And it was there that people started leaving the group.
Apparently they were locals of Oyama, so they gave their thanks and started walking off into the darkness of the night, aided by the light of paper lanterns that were created by the Ran, Moe, Krauncha and Izanami. Mama and Papa also separated from us, saying that their room at one of Subashiri settlement’s inns was still paid for.
Those of us who didn’t separate from the group had a choice of three different locations to go overnight in, two of them buildings that were adjacent to each other. One was the Subashiri branch of the Oyama Fire Department, which was beside the other building, the Subashiri Police Koban. And the third was the Subashiri branch of the Oyama Town Hall, a hundred or so meters down the road to the East from the first two locations.
Ichigo and I chose to reside at the Police koban, which was why it was a surprise to learn everyone else chose to go to the town hall branch for the night. Even Mother chose to have Father brought there.
Minutes after everyone else went for the town hall branch we were shown to the second floor of the two story building by the stressed but still helpful police officers downstairs, given a pair of blankets and futons, had a quick meal of noodles with hot tea, and then we slept peacefully as a family...well...Ao slept first. Ichigo and I on the other hand...when we were sure our daughter was asleep, Ichigo and I celebrated still being alive with gentle, liplocked sex in the darkness of the second floor’s toilet room. We only slipped back to our futons after finishing each other three times and cleaned ourselves up.
“Kurumi? What is it?” my fiance asked as he sat up from his futon, and blinking his drowsiness away. Beside him, Ao had moved her blankets off her and stretched her arms up.
“We all need to go downstairs. Someone wants to talk to us. Ao, do you want help sitting up, dear?” I asked my daughter as Ichigo turned to look at Ao.
“I need to go to the toilet Mama.”
Several minutes later, after flushing the toilet and folding the futon and blankets, we went down the stairs to the ground floor, with me gently carrying Ao and Ichigo guiding me at the side..
When we got to the stair landing we saw the last police officer on duty and Major Suzumoto exchanging salutes. After doing that the policewoman then rushed off outside for parts unknown, probably going back to their home. The Major then turned to us, let out a depressed sigh, and said four worrisome words.
“We need to talk.”
====================================================================================================================================================================================================
Many thanks to Atreidestrooper, Strypgia, locki, rm928 and Mjolnir66 for their help! I can't have finished this chapter without your folks!
Sorry I only got to update now. It was because I went on an editing spree on the earlier chapters...which unfortunately could never be seen on Stardestroyer because the editing button is not here and oh how I wish I could edit chapter here, argh!
*Ehem*
As a result of the editing spree I lost some of my feel for writing the new ones. So this chapter was a slog.
So, without further ado, please read! And please give a review or comment!
======================================================================================================================================================================================================
Chapter 17
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:38 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
"Are you sure you really can't do anything else for my knee?" Kentaro gasped out in pain as Moe gently finished tying the tourniquet around the hip above his ruined left knee. Magdalena and Kurumi sat on the other side of his body, the wife clasping his right hand for comfort while the daughter carried Ao in her arms while watching, to let the inari get down from her wheelchair to attend to the father. And nearby was Dad, still asleep on his stretcher.
"I don't even know what else to do," Moe replied as she wiped the sweat off her brow. "I’m only tying a tourniquet because I’m worried about possible internal bleeding. If you want more you should ask my sister. Ran is the one who wants to be a doctor. I only know First Aid."
"I can attest to that as her homeroom teacher," Ms. Yamato added from where she kneeled amongst the dead leaves, right beside her disabled student and ready to help Moe whenever the inari needs anything.
A sudden call of my name by Mom made me turn around, to see her frowning at me.
“Ichigo, stop eavesdropping. We need help in putting all these fires down,” she whispered. And then she quickly strode over to the nearest unextinguished patch of burning dead leaves and branches, with one of the three watering cans of infinite water that Moe made with magic before she tried to tend Kentaro’s knee in her hand, and started to sprinkle water on the flames.
I quickly started to do the same in the opposite direction from her, while taking a look around the forest clearing.
In the several minutes that passed since the Skinchanger nobles were killed, Mom and I and Mrs. Taro had been putting out as many of fires left by the dead Skinchangers as we can, after we placed Dad near Kentaro.
We started firefighting because Kentaro can’t be moved. Dad was also unable to be moved because even though Moe healed my wounds so I could carry Dad if I wanted to, we can’t leave Kentaro behind.
Also during that time, a few of our fellow patients and patient relatives from Camp Fuji Regional Hospital wandered back to the forest clearing for reasons none have bothered to explain to us.
Mom was sorely tempted to conscript the adults among the patient relatives into helping us put out the fires, but thankfully I managed to convince her it was only a waste of time. It also helped that they all stayed at the edges of the forest clearing, ready to bolt if anything else happened again.
Thus, it was only us two trying to firefight in here. With watering cans. And to my surprise we’re winning.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:38 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
As Ms. Yamato lifted Moe, currently turned into a grey colored fox to make it easier for her teacher to put her onto the wheelchair, I pondered about Papa.
I had this horrible feeling that Papa will never be able to walk properly ever again. And even though Papa's livelihood only requires a completely healthy mind instead of body...it hurts. It hurts seeing him crippled.
It has only been eight years since the last time Papa carried me on his shoulders or swung me around while playing at home.
"Kurumi?"
I got brought back to the present by Papa's voice.
"Papa," I replied, looking down at his sweaty and pain filled face.
"Come on Kurumi. What is there to look so downhearted about? We're all still alive, no?"
"Papa..."
I wasn't able to stop myself from looking at his poor left knee.
"Come on. I'm going to heal from this. Medicine has come a long way in the last thirty years. And in the worst case I'll just have to learn to use crutches."
I almost let out a sob at what Papa had said.
"You don't have to learn to use crutches," Mama suddenly said.
"I don't?"
"How?" I asked Mama with a heart full of hope.
"Simple,” Mama said while looking at me. “Your father and I will go to the Lady of Manaoag. Of course that would be after the doctors are finished with Kentaro's knee and he can walk somewhat and this war is over."
"Lady of what? Is this a pilgrimage site for Christians?" Papa asked with a skeptical expression.
"One of the most famous pilgrimage sites for Roman Catholics in the Philippines. Every year thousands of people go to Pangasinan province to visit the shrine."
“Is going there even going to work for me Magdalena?” Papa asked.
By pure accident I managed to answer before Mama said her reply.
“Papa, Moe turned herself into a fox in front of your eyes, and you met Izanami. Following that logic then Mama’s God could also exist.”
My words were punctuated by Moe turning back into a human girl with a pop, on top of her wheelchair.
“...can we try Chichibu first? It’s literally right next to Tokyo.”
“What’s in Chichibu?” Mama asked in curiosity.
“Chichibu’s Thirty Four Kannon Sanctuary pilgrimage. Thirty four shrines in just one city, as opposed to all the other pilgrimages in Japan that span whole islands or provinces.”
Mama was silent for a few moments. Then she said she will take Papa there but only if Papa promises to go to the Lady of Manaoag in the Philippines if Chichibu doesn’t work for his knee.
When Papa agreed, Mama beamed a smile at him and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
“Mama,” Ao whispered at me from my arms.
“What is it?” I whispered back, not wanting to end Mama and Papa’s moment too soon.
“Lolo just needs to wait for Ms. Ran, Mrs. Izanami and the doctors.”
I looked down and into my daughter’s eyes, who stared back at me.
“Really?” I asked her.
When Ao nodded, I took a peek at my parents.
After seeing they were still having a moment to themselves, I looked back at my daughter and put a finger on my mouth to tell her to be quiet about that.
“Lolo and Lola’s love love time is going to end now,” she said while shaking her head. And then she took a deep breath and held it in.
I had barely begun to respond to her statement when the ground suddenly started to rumble, eliciting screams from everywhere around the clearing.
“What's happening?” I yelled as Ao whimpered in pain in my arms. A moment after I said that the earthquake stopped. And then I saw my answer in the sky.
A dark cloud was once again spreading across the sky from Mt. Fuji's direction.
"There's something...I don't understand," Papa hissed in pain filled voice for some reason. A quick, worried look at him showed me the cause was his left knee moving during the earthquake earlier.
"Do you need painkillers?" Mama asked while looking at Papa with worry, interspersed with brief glares up at the dark cloud in the sky.
"No, no. It's....it’s ok now. Nothing’s moving, it’s ok now. What was I about to ask...is raining down lava from the sky actually helping?"
Everyone looked at Moe after Papa posed that question. Moe looked back at us and shrugged.
“I don’t know. I have to see the results before I make a judgement about Konohanasakuya-hime’s spell. But what I’m sure of is I don’t want to be on the other side of the flying lava.”
As soon as she finished her words, pink colored lava once again came out of the cloud in the shape of eels and swam through the air...
“Is it just me or are some of those streams of lava flying our way?” I asked out loud.
As seconds went by, I grew increasingly worried as the lava eels slowly grew larger and larger to my sight. By the time they slammed into the ground in the direction of Camp Fuji I, and probably everyone else, could tell that these things made of lava are about as long as a ten story building was tall and as thick as a passenger train.
“Definitely don’t want to be on the other side of that,” Moe stated as the bombardment went on.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Woods around JGSDF Camp Fuji, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 11, 2013
2:52 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
Mom, Mrs. Taro and I had successfully extinguished all the flames threatening to burn down the forest clearing around us. That was why I expected some of the very few people to enter it once again for some measure of safety, an opportunity I would use to ask them questions about what happened.
No one entered the forest clearing because they were all spooked by the lava in the skies. And the sound of their impact in the distance.
That was why I finally took it upon myself to go into the woods and ask questions at some of them. And the answers I got were...bad news, to say the least.
All the roads around us, whether they are made of concrete or asphalt, had become the growing places of all those magical bamboo I saw earlier. And worse for us those plants release poisonous gases when their stem was damaged.
That was how many patients and patient relatives died at the road to the North.
No one went East, because that was where the Skinchangers came from. And I shouldn’t mention the West was where the JGSDF personnel, Ran and my three resurrected ancestors were fighting Skinchanger soldiers.
And the worst news I received was the South.
No one dared to go past the rampart, which was also present in the south, because there was fighting in the woods beyond the rampart. They heard no gunshots, but there were never ending battle cries, screams, and wood hitting wood.
All the ones who went South walked away, but only very few bothered to go back all the way to the forest clearing. Apparently they thought hiding inside the woods would be the safest thing they could do.
By the time I wandered back to my family and sat down beside Dad and Mom, I was trying to keep a stoic face to hide the depression I felt. That was why I was surprised when all of a sudden Mom and Kurumi asked me if there was something wrong, at the same time.
I looked at Kurumi and Mom, who gave each other a quick glance before looking at me. I sighed and shook my head.
"It's something none of us can do anything about...other than pray. Maybe."
"Excuse me," Moe suddenly butted in on our conversation. "Regarding prayers, can I ask something of everyone?"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I can't believe that prayers worked," I mumbled to myself in slight disbelief, amidst the cheer of everyone around us, as...we learned the battle was over.
It was over.
Earlier this day Moe had suggested to us that we, as a group, start praying to Izanami.
As Magdalena scoffed with disbelief, Ms. Yamato gently asked her student what we were supposed to pray to the goddess. The inari quickly instructed us to pray our current situation to the goddess, in hope that she could send help to us. And then she told us how she wanted us to pray, because it will supposedly quickly gain Izanami’s attention.
Except for Magdalena, who refused to pray to what she called a misguided spirit, and my still unconscious Dad, everyone else...
We skipped any purification. We skipped any bowing or ringing of bells. We sacrilegiously just clapped our hands twice, closed our eyes, and just continuously prayed to Izanami a report of our current circumstances.
We spent only a short amount of time praying, and probably looking silly, before things quickly started happening.
Izanami’s voice suddenly shook heaven and earth, and all the things in between. And her words were...
“I, who was the Mother of all creatures. I, who became sister and wife and widow of Izanagi. I, former ruler of Yomi. I, current miko of myself, do will the gates of Yomi be fully opened. Let more of my worshippers go forth into the land of the living once more. Let all of my worshippers and their children go forth and fight my enemies. Let all my worshippers, their children and their children’s children go forth and bring. Us. Victory!”
A few seconds after Izanami's speech ended everything trembled once again, this time from the roar of foreign sounding battle cries coming from countless multitudes to the South. And the roaring continued and continued, past the time when the skies had turned orange, and way into the growing blue darkness of dusk marred only by the red glow of Konohanasakuya-hime’s clouds. The roaring also moved from only the South to every direction around the forest clearing at the same time.
And then the roaring stopped just a few moments ago, quickly followed by Izanami’s voice declaring victory by making the Skinchangers run back into their homeland.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subashiri Settlement, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
9:36 A.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
“Ichigo, Ao. Wake up you two,” I said as I gently tapped their shoulders.
As they both started to wake up, I took a glance at our current temporary shelter and thought about everything that happened last night.
Last night, once darkness had completely fallen and it became too hard to see, the Self Defense Forces personnel who manned the ramparts fetched all of us in that forest clearing, aided by the burning torches created by Ran, Krauncha, and Izanami who were also with them.
The magic of those three people, and modern medical knowledge of the Self Defense Forces medical personnel, were the reason why a few minutes after the meeting Papa was able to walk again, his left knee back to normal.
Within an hour or so after Papa’s recovery we were all walking north, past roads filled with the burned remains of magical poison spewing bamboo courtesy of one word from Izanami. Past woods filled with dead Skinchangers and a particular part of the highway to the north where many patients and relatives that I saw from Camp Fuji Regional Hospital lay dead on the ground.
The Self Defense Forces personnel escorted us to the nearest neighborhood, the settlement of Subashiri of the town of Oyama, which is the town where JGSDF Camp Fuji and all the military bases in Sunto District are located. And it was there that people started leaving the group.
Apparently they were locals of Oyama, so they gave their thanks and started walking off into the darkness of the night, aided by the light of paper lanterns that were created by the Ran, Moe, Krauncha and Izanami. Mama and Papa also separated from us, saying that their room at one of Subashiri settlement’s inns was still paid for.
Those of us who didn’t separate from the group had a choice of three different locations to go overnight in, two of them buildings that were adjacent to each other. One was the Subashiri branch of the Oyama Fire Department, which was beside the other building, the Subashiri Police Koban. And the third was the Subashiri branch of the Oyama Town Hall, a hundred or so meters down the road to the East from the first two locations.
Ichigo and I chose to reside at the Police koban, which was why it was a surprise to learn everyone else chose to go to the town hall branch for the night. Even Mother chose to have Father brought there.
Minutes after everyone else went for the town hall branch we were shown to the second floor of the two story building by the stressed but still helpful police officers downstairs, given a pair of blankets and futons, had a quick meal of noodles with hot tea, and then we slept peacefully as a family...well...Ao slept first. Ichigo and I on the other hand...when we were sure our daughter was asleep, Ichigo and I celebrated still being alive with gentle, liplocked sex in the darkness of the second floor’s toilet room. We only slipped back to our futons after finishing each other three times and cleaned ourselves up.
“Kurumi? What is it?” my fiance asked as he sat up from his futon, and blinking his drowsiness away. Beside him, Ao had moved her blankets off her and stretched her arms up.
“We all need to go downstairs. Someone wants to talk to us. Ao, do you want help sitting up, dear?” I asked my daughter as Ichigo turned to look at Ao.
“I need to go to the toilet Mama.”
Several minutes later, after flushing the toilet and folding the futon and blankets, we went down the stairs to the ground floor, with me gently carrying Ao and Ichigo guiding me at the side..
When we got to the stair landing we saw the last police officer on duty and Major Suzumoto exchanging salutes. After doing that the policewoman then rushed off outside for parts unknown, probably going back to their home. The Major then turned to us, let out a depressed sigh, and said four worrisome words.
“We need to talk.”
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Many thanks to Atreidestrooper, Strypgia, locki, rm928 and Mjolnir66 for their help! I can't have finished this chapter without your folks!
Re: An Unlikely Magical Girl and an Unlikely World War: reboot
Hello folks!
I...I just wasn't able to write my heart out since last April. And I was also distracted by Hearts of Iron: Waking the Tiger.
But thank God I was able to finish this chapter.
Well, enjoy! And please comment!
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Chapter 18
Subashiri Police Koban, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
9:36 A.M.
Ohta Ichigo
Moments after Major Suzumoto stated that we needed to talk, I quickly grabbed chairs for all four of us and then placed them around one of the four desks in the first floor of the koban. Kurumi and Suzumoto seated themselves in two of those chairs afterwards, while I placed Ao on the chair between me and Kurumi and was quickly told her to just watch and listen.
"Ichigo, Ms. Kurumi," Suzumoto said as I sat on my chair. "I'm going straight to the point. Are you two opposed to the idea of letting your daughter use her powers for the sake of Japan?"
Kurumi and I traded looks with each other for a few moments, then I gave her a nod. We then turned back to Suzumoto.
"Major, regarding that issue, may I please discuss things first with my fiance? There are new developments that we still haven't discussed with each other about," Kurumi said
Major Suzumoto nodded slowly upon hearing that. And then he spoke up some more.
"If that is the case, then I also have more developments that I dearly hope you two would consider in your decision."
"Go on," I said, wanting to hear more information.
"Almost all the Prefectural capitals of Japan had been captured as of a few minutes ago. And as of an hour ago, we could only make contact with two Self Defense Forces installations out of...more than a hundred."
My heart fell into the cold abyss of despair upon hearing that information, but I kept up a stoic look on my face for the sake of my wife and daughter beside me.
"Major Suzumoto, how could the Self Defense Forces be broken just like that?" Kurumi asked in a disbelieving tone.
"We aren't broken," Suzumoto snapped back in an instant. "The reservists hadn't been called up yet. And there are units around to form up on."
"Which units? The ones in the two installations?" I asked.
"Among many others. Zentsuji garrison in Kagawa Prefecture is untouched, but the city itself is currently under siege by Skinchangers and Lighteaters. Izumo garrison in Shimane Prefecture is also in the same predicament."
"Zentsuji...that is the 14th Brigade's Headquarters."
"Along with the 15th Infantry Regiment, 14th Reconnaisance Company and some others," Suzumoto quickly added.
"And Izumo...who is at Izumo?" I asked.
I had only memorized which area of Japan is under the responsibility of which division or brigade of the JGSDF, and that includes memorizing the location of the headquarters of each unit. I didn't bother to remember all of the garrisons, since I thought I'll learn if that was even something that must be remembered once I joined the Self Defense Forces.
"13th Reconnaisance Company. And then there's all the Self Defense Forces who were on the move when yesterday happened."
My despair started to lighten up when he mentioned that there were people on the road yesterday. That meant more members of the Self Defense Forces who were still alive and able to bring the fight to the Skinchangers and Lighteaters.
"Any idea how many?" I quickly asked.
The shrug that Suzumoto replied with dismayed me.
"The only one I know of was 13th regiment, the one your father was part of. The higher ups in the Ministry of Defense decided to move the survivors to Camp Fuji because of reasons. And as of my last cellphone call to them thirty minutes ago, they had just passed the border between Shizuoka and Nagano prefectures."
"That's...several hours of driving. Through possibly occupied territory," I slowly said, while wincing at the riskiness of what Suzumoto had just said the 13th regiment was currently doing.
"Something they had already taken account of, but won't tell me how."
"Major Suzumoto, something about what you said earlier doesn't make sense," Kurumi asked in a hesitant manner.
"Was there? Go on, ask."
"Zentsuji and Izumo aren't Prefectural capitals. And you said you can only contact those two bases and the 13th regiment. So what is this about not all the Prefectural capitals getting captured by the magical alien soldiers?"
"Ah. Tokyo...is for all intents and purposes captured. It's only the Tokyo Imperial Palace that's holding out, defended by the Imperial Guard. And then there's Nara."
"What happened to Nara?" I asked.
"Nothing," Suzumoto said in a completely befuddled manner. "Nothing happened to Nara. Osaka and Kyoto had a sudden invasion of thousands of Skinchangers and Lighteaters, and Nara was mysteriously left alone. And no one has any idea as to why."
"No one? Not even Izanami?" I asked.
Suzumoto looked at me for a few seconds, and then slowly covered his face with his right hand and started massaging the temple of his forehead.
His action prompted me to take a closer look at the man.
His uniform was wrinkled, and had stains all over the place. He smelled of dried sweat and gunpowder. And his skin was dry, rough and pale.
"Major Suzumoto, have you taken any sleep since yesterday?" I asked in concern for his wellbeing.
"I haven't slept since yesterday morning. I haven't had any coffee either," he confessed in a steady tone of voice.
"Major Suzumoto, what were you doing that rendered you unable to take a brief nap for more than twenty four hours?" Kurumi asked.
Before I was able to explain to Kurumi, Suzumoto took his hand off his face and preempted me by explaining it himself.
"I learned that I am the most senior officer still alive in the area, and that is already dismaying because there used to be a Lieutenant General, several Major Generals, Colonels and so on and so forth in Camp Fuji, Camp Taki Fuji and Camp Takigahara yesterday morning. That meant I'm now in charge of making everyone still alive move."
Suzumoto stopped for a few moments to take a deep breath. And then he continued.
"So my first order is to find out how many of us are still alive. And frankly...Camp Fuji, the Camp Fuji Regional Hospital staff and half of the 105th Supply Batallion. And your Father, if he could still serve. Out of nine different units based in there."
I only had a few moments to feel the icy tentacles of horror wrap around me when Suzumoto continued.
"Camp Kita-Fuji...six men from the 1st Artillery Unit. Out of hundreds of men from seven different units in Kita-Fuji. And from Takigahara...thanks to Izanami, all the ten units based there survived, with only around half of the members dead or wounded."
"How about the Americans in Camp Fuji?" I asked.
"Not one American left alive there. We checked."
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Subashiri Police Koban, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
9:38 A.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
"What happened Major Suzumoto?" I asked in dismay at everything he reported to us. "Why was..."
"Why did we take that many casualties?" Suzumoto said in a self mocking tone.
When I nodded, Suzumoto sighed.
"At its most basic its down to four things. Magic, surprise, chemical weapons and friendly fire."
"Friendly fire?! From who?!" Ichigo suddenly cut in.
"From the idiot at the top of Mt. Fuji."
"Konohanasakuya-hime?" I asked incredulously.
"Yes. Her fancy artillery attack was very indiscriminate and insanely destructive even by modern military standards. I personally estimate she was the one responsible for one fourth to half of all our KIA."
"KIA?" I asked, having never encountered that term before.
"KIA stands for killed in action," Ichigo quickly answered in a horror filled voice, an emotion that I was starting to feel myself.
It was one thing to die fighting for your homeland and your people. It was another thing to die because someone who was supposed to be your ally wasn't looking at where they were shooting...or maybe just plainly didn't care if their ally got in the line of fire.
"Well, I had now informed you two of all the recent developments that happened. I'm now going to leave you two to your discussion and go back to...my command post. I truly, deeply hope that you two would let Ao help us with her powers of seeing the future."
After saying that Suzumoto stood up, and then suddenly swayed in place.
"Major, you alright?" Ichigo asked as he quickly stood up and placed his hand on Suzumoto's shoulder to steady the older man.
After a few moments of silent blinking on his end, Major Suzumoto asked Ichigo to assist him in getting back to the makeshift command post.
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"I'm back," my beloved fiance said as he returned some time later, and stood in the middle of the doorway.
"How's Major Suzumoto?" I asked as Ao cuddled with me.
"Asleep on an office chair that his new subordinates scrounged up from somewhere."
"Papa, did you bring any food? I'm hungry," Ao asked.
Ichigo smiled at us, and then he stepped aside, to reveal the very welcome sight of Papa holding a plastic bag filled with a pack of sliced bread, a jar of mayonnaise, a jar of pickled cucumber, a pack of plastic spoons, and three bottles of distilled water.
"Lolo!" Ao screamed in glee. "Is that food for us?!"
"Yes it is. Now, what's the next thing you should say?" Papa teased Ao.
"Thank you for the food!" my daughter replied to her grandfather in glee.
After Ao said that, Papa quickly walked in and put the food items on top of the table with a smile on his face.
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"So Ao, how is the food?" Papa asked as my daughter, my boyfriend and I were finishing breakfast by drinking the bottles of water.
"Uhm...I'm full," Ao stated.
"Not delicious?" Papa asked with a raised eyebrow.
"...it's delicious?"
"Ao?" It was my turn to ask. "Just say what you really think. We're not going to get angry if you say it doesn't taste good."
After a moment of looking at me, and then at Papa and Ichigo, Ao finally told the truth with a big pout on her face.
"The food tasted weird. But I'm hungry so I just ate even if I don't want to."
"I bet it was the combination of pickled cucumber and mayonnaise that made the taste weird." Ichigo commented. "Why did you buy pickled cucumber in the first place Father?"
"You guys need your vegetables?"
Papa's weird reply prompted Ichigo to grab the packaging of the sliced bread and the mayonnaise and inspect them. He then looked back at Papa after a few moments and replied that according to the packaging's nutritional content we had just gotten around a quarter of our daily nutritional intake with only bread and mayonnaise.
"Ri-i-ight. To be honest, Magdalena and I don't trust everything written in a food product's label. If only we could cook and buy the ingredients..."
"We are currently at war..." I reminded Papa, to which he replied with a shrug.
"Speaking of Mother, where's Mom and Dad and Mother?" Ichigo asked.
"About that...I have good news and bad news regarding Kentaro."
"Dad's awake?" Ichigo asked as he stood up from his chair, with a hopeful tone of voice. Ao and I quickly gave him our emotional support by squeezing his right hand with our left hands, to which he replied by squeezing back.
"That is the good news. The bad news is..."
Papa trailed off and started looking everywhere but us.
"Papa?" I asked in a worried tone.
"Brain damage confirmed."
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Subashiri Police Koban, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
10:26 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
The words Kentaro said took all the strength in my legs, and left me sitting down in my chair, silent in shock and dismay.
"Papa, how bad is it?" my wife asked in my place.
"Remember the part about 'gaps in his memories'?"
When she nodded, Papa continued with one of the most disturbing news a wife could ever hear.
"He forgot his marriage ceremony and his wedding proposal with Yuki."
As Kurumi winced in sympathy for Mom, Kentaro continued talking.
"Look, it's not too bad. He remembers most of his time with Yuki and Ichigo. It's just...what he can't remember are the lynchpins, things that make the other memories make sense. And it understandably disturbs him."
"How badly?" I hoarsely let out of my mouth.
"...enough that Yuki hasn't stopped hugging him and whispering into Hayato's ears once he started to look upset. In public."
Everything was gravely quiet for several moments after that. And it seemed like it would go on forever if Ao didn't suddenly broke the silence.
"Lolo, what if we visit Grandpa? Maybe we could help comfort him?"
"Exactly how are you going to comfort the poor guy?" Kentaro frowned at Ao.
My daughter didn't let Kentaro's frown dissuade her.
"Uhm, by telling him it's ok to forget things?"
"Ao, you can't be serious," I challenged my daughter in disbelief.
"Ichigo, calm down. Maybe it's just a poor word choice," Kurumi quickly intervened. "Ao, maybe you should explain in other words? What you just said was confusing."
"...I forget things sometimes. Papa and Mama also forget things. But we don't let that stop us from...walking forwards?"
"Moving forwards," I corrected her.
"Moving forwards. So we just make up for it by making new memories that we could remember forever."
"Ao, those are home works," my wife scolded our daughter. "Or we forgot where we placed the keys. Or that we ran out of cond...err...we ran out of something. Memories of your wedding or your marriage proposal and events of that importance are a very different thing. Trust me on that."
"I just wanted to help Grandpa," Ao pouted.
"And we will, but we'll do it by following the advice of the professionals," I firmly stated in a tone that brooked no dissent.
I relaxed upon seeing Ao meekly nod in acceptance of my judgement. And then I noticed Kurumi looking at me.
It was then I remembered that we were supposed to discuss how to proceed from now onwards.
"Kurumi, what do you say to including Father here in the discussion?"
As Kentaro raised an eyebrow at my question, Kurumi pondered my question. Moments passed, then she finally made a decision.
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Subashiri Police Koban, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
10:27 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
"Papa, please look after Ao for some time. Ichigo and I need to discuss something upstairs."
Papa instantly reacted as I stood up from my chair, quickly followed by Ichigo himself.
"And what are you two going to discuss by yourselves?"
"Deciding how we should take the offer of letting Ao use her abilities for the Self Defense Forces," I replied.
Papa spent a few moments blinking, opened his mouth to say something, and then closed his mouth again with a thoughtful look on his face.
"Papa?"
"Kurumi, last night Yuki and your mother told me something ridiculous. Apparently...someone rich from the land of the magical aliens wanted you, Ichigo and Ao dead and is willing to pay the equivalent of hundreds of millions of Yen for that."
"It's true!" Ao insisted. "I saw it when I'm looking into the future. The book that I can read in my mind explained that the Lighteater that Papa killed back home was a son of one of the richest and most powerful nobles of their world."
"And because those new uniforms of theirs supposedly also transmits audiovisual records..." Papa trailed off with a very bitter look on his face.
After several seconds of silence passed, Ichigo spoke up.
"Father, you see how bad our situation is. We don't have much of a choice other than, to put it vulgarly, see how much we could get from the Self Defense Forces."
Papa gave out a weary sigh before replying.
"I see it. I get it...you've grown so much Kurumi."
The wistful melancholy in Papa's voice prompted my boyfriend and I to exchange meaningful looks before sitting back down into the chairs we had just vacated.
"Papa, what's wrong?"
"Kurumi...it's only been five years since you were still my little girl. And now, when your former classmates and best friends are only worrying about school or boyfriends or both, I'm watching you make life changing decisions with your husband to be for your own family...we really skipped a lot of things didn't we, Kurumi?"
All was silent for several seconds. I sat there, blinking and silent because I needed to think of how to answer Papa. Ichigo sat silently in his chair, most probably because he was half the reason why Papa missed a lot of Father-Child activities. Any verbal mistake on his part might irritate Papa. And Ao was silent because she most likely doesn't know what to do.
"Papa," I finally spoke after putting my thoughts and feelings in order. "I also feel sad that I can no longer go back to our house every day, or always eat Mama's food, or just spend more time with you and Mama. But...we still had happy memories, right?"
"Less than I would have liked. Kurumi...last week Hayato told me if I wanted to, he would convince you and Ichigo to move back to Yokohama, live at our house for your last year of high school."
I looked at Papa with a mix of surprise, incredulity, and outrage over what he said, because Father was one of the reasons I permanently moved in with the Ohta family.
Back when Ichigo and I announced my pregnancy four years ago, almost all our angry parents immediately took their stances.
Mother and Papa wanted me to abort the baby. But they were pointing fingers at each other, demanding that the other party be the ones to pay for the medical expenses. Mama wanted to let me to give birth to the baby, but she was torn between taking care of the baby ourselves or giving the baby up for adoption. And Father...glared at me and kept his opinion to himself.
After two days of discussion in my bedroom, something that only happened because Mother staged a sit in inside our home to force Papa to pay the medical bills, Ichigo and I decided to sit Father and Mama down in a quiet family restaurant in our neighborhood and sincerely talked with them.
We told them we wanted to take responsibility for our baby with our parent's help, and we wanted to be given the chance to learn if the two of us can be together as partners in life. We begged them to help us convince Papa and Mother to let us have the baby.
Mama quickly agreed, because Ichigo was trying to take responsibility for me and our baby. That was something she was going to demand of Ichigo, she told me late that year. And then Father blindsided us.
He said that he would convince Mom to allow the baby to be born only if his family possesses the right of parenthood and custody of my baby from the moment I gave birth.
Mama didn't argue against the idea itself, because with Ichigo as the baby's father and my future husband the baby really does belong to the Ohta family. What she protested was him forcing the state of affairs that would eventually be reached once Ichigo and I marry after his 18th birthday to happen right that moment, and his notable lack of any reference to myself with what he said.
Father's reply was that his only concern was that the baby would belong to them, and his preference was for me to have no place in his family. That panicked me into begging him to let me have a place in the life of my baby and boyfriend, while Ichigo tried to get me to stop kneeling. His reply, delivered in a mocking manner, was that if I was so adamant on having a place in their lives maybe I should cohabit with their family as Ichigo's wife to be and mother of his child.
The look on his face later on when I arrived at the doorstep of the Ohta residence at the time, accompanied by Mama, Papa, my bag of clothes, and an incredulous Mother, suggested that everything went exactly as he wanted.
'And now Father said that to Papa? After what he did then? What?'
"I know, I know," Papa said as several seconds passed and I didn't stop staring at him. "It was Hayato who forced the issue in the first place. But he eventually started to feel guilty for cutting off all the time Magdalena and I could have spent with you, Kurumi."
"...Papa, what do you want?"
"Come back. Bring your family and live with us for your last year of High School. We miss you."
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Subashiri Police Koban, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
10:29 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
"Father, what about my parents?" I quickly asked barely a second after Kentaro finished saying what he wanted. "Dad is...crippled."
"Bring them along too! Magdalena and I don't have a problem with that."
I looked at Kurumi hoping to catch her eye, and saw her sigh.
"Papa, could Ichigo and I discuss how to accept the Self Defense Force's offer first? I'm sorry but I can't deliberate on two separate things at the same time."
"Sure, sure. Go upstairs. I'll stay here and keep Ao company," Kentaro replied with a smile, while waving his hand at us.
As Kurumi and I stood from our chairs, Ao also joined Kentaro in waving at us. The two of them quickly went out of sight as we turned the corner and walked upstairs.
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"I can't believe the nerve of your father, Ichigo," Kurumi stated behind me as I closed the door after us.
"And I'm sorry for that, Kurumi," I said as I turned away from the door, to see my wife in the middle of the room. There she took off her slippers and sat down on the floor with her knees together, facing the door. And then she started to pat her thighs while looking at me.
"Really?" I asked, my eyebrows raising up my forehead.
"Really," my wife answered with a faint smile.
"Really, really?"
"Do you want a lap pillow or not?"
Within moments I was lying on the floor, with my head resting on Kurumi's thighs and looking up at her smiling face.
"You know, if there's anyone who needs a lap pillow at this moment it's you. Why are you giving me one instead of asking one from me?" I asked her in in honest curiosity.
"Because I don't want to get distracted by...what happens when my face is next to your crotch," Kurumi candidly answered, poking my right cheek with her finger at the same time.
I chuckled a few seconds after hearing her joke, which in turn made her giggle.
"Kurumi, now is not the time for anything lewd. Come on."
"Says the man who has a tendency to suddenly ask for sex at the most awkward places and times," Kurumi retorted.
"I always listen when you say no," I pointed out.
"I only say no half the time. In the other half of all those times I end up happy, sweating, and smelling of you."
I wasn't able to reply, because what she said was true. So I...
"I give up. You win. So...let's talk about Ao?"
"Ok.," my wife replied as her giggles slowly ended. "Ichigo, is demanding one million yen per month as salary too greedy for us?"
I blinked several times again, thought about it, shook my head, and quickly adjusted the pirate style improvised monocle I was forced to wear since yesterday due to movement.
"You really should have that replaced."
"Using what money? And where do I get it replaced?"
"...oh. I didn't think of that...won't you try not wearing that in the first place?"
"Kurumi, these are dangerous times we are living in now. I can't afford to have farsighted vision during these times. So this stupid thing would have to stay for the time being."
"Promise me you will replace that thing as soon as possible."
"Yes dear, I promise I'm throwing this ridiculous thing away the instant I find a replacement."
Seeing Kurumi give me a smile of satisfaction, I decided to find a replacement as soon as possible, to spare myself all the headaches this monocle was bringing me.
"Thank you love. Now, where were we?" Kurumi asked me.
"You said one million yen a month. I don't think that's a good idea because of the inflation this war will bring."
"...exactly how high do you think the prices of everything would become?" Kurumi asked me with this wary expression on her face.
I reluctantly answered her question with three words.
"World War Two."
I was tense, worrying about how my wife would react to that news when I saw that I had nothing to worry about.
Kurumi merely let off a sigh, muttered something inaudible, and then asked me if I was thinking of payment in kind.
"Definitely. This is the government we're talking with here. They should be able to pay us in kind."
"No money whatsoever?"
"Well...we can't eat coins and paper."
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Subashiri Police Koban, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
10: 32 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
"Ichigo, that's going too far. Even during World War Two money still had value here in Japan, and we certainly are going to need money whenever the war ends," I said to my fiance.
"Kurumi, we can get paid with a lifetime supply of food rations for us and our parents. We can get paid with free housing, free health care, free utilities. We might even get the government to give you and Ao a free ride to college graduation if we do things right."
"Without money you can't buy a replacement for your eyeglasses. Without money we can't buy school supplies for that free ride you were talking about. Without money we can't buy cleaning supplies for that house we could get paid with. Without money we couldn't buy clothes to keep us warm...Ichigo, are you expecting the government to pay us in those things too?"
"...maybe?" Ichigo said in an uncertain tone. "The government is doing all that for Self Defense Forces recruits in the barracks...then again Ao would most likely be classified as a civilian contractor."
For several moments all was silent in the room as my boyfriend and I stewed with our own thoughts. And then all of a sudden Ichigo said something crazy.
"Oh yeah. The condoms."
"What the fuck?! How are condoms related to what we are talking about now?" I asked, feeling a blush and hysterical disbelief spread throughout my body.
"I can't think of any way to convince the government to also include a free supply of condoms for us."
"And that's yet another thing we need money for. If we don't have condoms I might get pregnant again, no matter the withdrawals and safe days and sixty nines that we do."
The only response that Ichigo gave after what I said was a frown directed at the ceiling.
A dozen seconds passed before I realized that my boyfriend was lost in thought, so I interrupted it.
"Ichigo, are you asleep?"
"No I'm not. I'm just...this is a really bad time to bring a baby into the world, right?"
"Correct."
"Alright," Ichigo sighed out. "What is your proposal for how much they should pay us?"
"...the condoms are what convinced you to include money in Ao's compensation?"
Ichigo shrugged before replying in all honesty.
"Of course. No condoms means you will eventually get pregnant. And...I remembered the time when you were pregnant with Ao."
I wasn't able to stop a wistful smile from blossoming on my face, something my fiance reciprocated.
That time was a time of significant discoveries and pain for both me and Ichigo. And by the month I gave birth, we had both concluded we can live with each other.
"And what did you conclude when you remembered that time?"
"That we're not ready to give Ao a little brother or sister any time soon."
And that was that.
"With that settled, what do you propose now?"
"...free housing, free healthcare for us and our parents, a free ride for any school and college for you and Ao, and one hundred thousand yen per month."
"Three hundred thousand."
"Kurumi, the free things I'm are asking as compensation are already quite heavy demands. Asking for more money in addition is very unseemly of us."
"Then let's make the freebies somewhat smaller. Only Ao gets a free ride to any college she wants. I don't need a free ride, remember the plan Ichigo. You go to the JSDF, I search for a full time, Monday to Friday job."
"...Kurumi, this might literally be the last time you have a chance to go to college. Are you sure you will just look for work straight after graduation?"
I was touched by his concern, so I answered him with a smile.
"Ichigo, we still have a long life ahead of us. I'm quite sure there will be time for me to go to college in the future. Besides we have to deal with this war currently happening before we talk about school."
Ichigo looked at me for several seconds, and then looked away in the direction of the door.
"Two hundred fifty thousand yen a month. Please settle for that Kurumi, because I don't think I can face Dad after he learns we fleeced the Self Defense Forces in its time of need. As it is we are nearing that point."
"Alright. Two hundred fifty thousand," I conceded after several seconds of thought on the matter.
Ichigo was right. We were almost fleecing the Self Defense Forces Father was a member of with the two hundred fifty thousand yen per month, free housing, healthcare and Ao's free ride.
Also, Ichigo did try to meet me halfway by raising the money we want to ask as compensation, so I would concede to his will.
"Now, want to talk about what Dad said to Father?"
"...I'm still not in the mood to think about that. Let's talk about it tomorrow."
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Many thanks to Atreidestrooper, Strypgia, rm928, Sethraw and Mjolnir66 of Spacebattles. I couldn't have done it without you folks.
I...I just wasn't able to write my heart out since last April. And I was also distracted by Hearts of Iron: Waking the Tiger.
But thank God I was able to finish this chapter.
Well, enjoy! And please comment!
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Chapter 18
Subashiri Police Koban, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
9:36 A.M.
Ohta Ichigo
Moments after Major Suzumoto stated that we needed to talk, I quickly grabbed chairs for all four of us and then placed them around one of the four desks in the first floor of the koban. Kurumi and Suzumoto seated themselves in two of those chairs afterwards, while I placed Ao on the chair between me and Kurumi and was quickly told her to just watch and listen.
"Ichigo, Ms. Kurumi," Suzumoto said as I sat on my chair. "I'm going straight to the point. Are you two opposed to the idea of letting your daughter use her powers for the sake of Japan?"
Kurumi and I traded looks with each other for a few moments, then I gave her a nod. We then turned back to Suzumoto.
"Major, regarding that issue, may I please discuss things first with my fiance? There are new developments that we still haven't discussed with each other about," Kurumi said
Major Suzumoto nodded slowly upon hearing that. And then he spoke up some more.
"If that is the case, then I also have more developments that I dearly hope you two would consider in your decision."
"Go on," I said, wanting to hear more information.
"Almost all the Prefectural capitals of Japan had been captured as of a few minutes ago. And as of an hour ago, we could only make contact with two Self Defense Forces installations out of...more than a hundred."
My heart fell into the cold abyss of despair upon hearing that information, but I kept up a stoic look on my face for the sake of my wife and daughter beside me.
"Major Suzumoto, how could the Self Defense Forces be broken just like that?" Kurumi asked in a disbelieving tone.
"We aren't broken," Suzumoto snapped back in an instant. "The reservists hadn't been called up yet. And there are units around to form up on."
"Which units? The ones in the two installations?" I asked.
"Among many others. Zentsuji garrison in Kagawa Prefecture is untouched, but the city itself is currently under siege by Skinchangers and Lighteaters. Izumo garrison in Shimane Prefecture is also in the same predicament."
"Zentsuji...that is the 14th Brigade's Headquarters."
"Along with the 15th Infantry Regiment, 14th Reconnaisance Company and some others," Suzumoto quickly added.
"And Izumo...who is at Izumo?" I asked.
I had only memorized which area of Japan is under the responsibility of which division or brigade of the JGSDF, and that includes memorizing the location of the headquarters of each unit. I didn't bother to remember all of the garrisons, since I thought I'll learn if that was even something that must be remembered once I joined the Self Defense Forces.
"13th Reconnaisance Company. And then there's all the Self Defense Forces who were on the move when yesterday happened."
My despair started to lighten up when he mentioned that there were people on the road yesterday. That meant more members of the Self Defense Forces who were still alive and able to bring the fight to the Skinchangers and Lighteaters.
"Any idea how many?" I quickly asked.
The shrug that Suzumoto replied with dismayed me.
"The only one I know of was 13th regiment, the one your father was part of. The higher ups in the Ministry of Defense decided to move the survivors to Camp Fuji because of reasons. And as of my last cellphone call to them thirty minutes ago, they had just passed the border between Shizuoka and Nagano prefectures."
"That's...several hours of driving. Through possibly occupied territory," I slowly said, while wincing at the riskiness of what Suzumoto had just said the 13th regiment was currently doing.
"Something they had already taken account of, but won't tell me how."
"Major Suzumoto, something about what you said earlier doesn't make sense," Kurumi asked in a hesitant manner.
"Was there? Go on, ask."
"Zentsuji and Izumo aren't Prefectural capitals. And you said you can only contact those two bases and the 13th regiment. So what is this about not all the Prefectural capitals getting captured by the magical alien soldiers?"
"Ah. Tokyo...is for all intents and purposes captured. It's only the Tokyo Imperial Palace that's holding out, defended by the Imperial Guard. And then there's Nara."
"What happened to Nara?" I asked.
"Nothing," Suzumoto said in a completely befuddled manner. "Nothing happened to Nara. Osaka and Kyoto had a sudden invasion of thousands of Skinchangers and Lighteaters, and Nara was mysteriously left alone. And no one has any idea as to why."
"No one? Not even Izanami?" I asked.
Suzumoto looked at me for a few seconds, and then slowly covered his face with his right hand and started massaging the temple of his forehead.
His action prompted me to take a closer look at the man.
His uniform was wrinkled, and had stains all over the place. He smelled of dried sweat and gunpowder. And his skin was dry, rough and pale.
"Major Suzumoto, have you taken any sleep since yesterday?" I asked in concern for his wellbeing.
"I haven't slept since yesterday morning. I haven't had any coffee either," he confessed in a steady tone of voice.
"Major Suzumoto, what were you doing that rendered you unable to take a brief nap for more than twenty four hours?" Kurumi asked.
Before I was able to explain to Kurumi, Suzumoto took his hand off his face and preempted me by explaining it himself.
"I learned that I am the most senior officer still alive in the area, and that is already dismaying because there used to be a Lieutenant General, several Major Generals, Colonels and so on and so forth in Camp Fuji, Camp Taki Fuji and Camp Takigahara yesterday morning. That meant I'm now in charge of making everyone still alive move."
Suzumoto stopped for a few moments to take a deep breath. And then he continued.
"So my first order is to find out how many of us are still alive. And frankly...Camp Fuji, the Camp Fuji Regional Hospital staff and half of the 105th Supply Batallion. And your Father, if he could still serve. Out of nine different units based in there."
I only had a few moments to feel the icy tentacles of horror wrap around me when Suzumoto continued.
"Camp Kita-Fuji...six men from the 1st Artillery Unit. Out of hundreds of men from seven different units in Kita-Fuji. And from Takigahara...thanks to Izanami, all the ten units based there survived, with only around half of the members dead or wounded."
"How about the Americans in Camp Fuji?" I asked.
"Not one American left alive there. We checked."
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Subashiri Police Koban, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
9:38 A.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
"What happened Major Suzumoto?" I asked in dismay at everything he reported to us. "Why was..."
"Why did we take that many casualties?" Suzumoto said in a self mocking tone.
When I nodded, Suzumoto sighed.
"At its most basic its down to four things. Magic, surprise, chemical weapons and friendly fire."
"Friendly fire?! From who?!" Ichigo suddenly cut in.
"From the idiot at the top of Mt. Fuji."
"Konohanasakuya-hime?" I asked incredulously.
"Yes. Her fancy artillery attack was very indiscriminate and insanely destructive even by modern military standards. I personally estimate she was the one responsible for one fourth to half of all our KIA."
"KIA?" I asked, having never encountered that term before.
"KIA stands for killed in action," Ichigo quickly answered in a horror filled voice, an emotion that I was starting to feel myself.
It was one thing to die fighting for your homeland and your people. It was another thing to die because someone who was supposed to be your ally wasn't looking at where they were shooting...or maybe just plainly didn't care if their ally got in the line of fire.
"Well, I had now informed you two of all the recent developments that happened. I'm now going to leave you two to your discussion and go back to...my command post. I truly, deeply hope that you two would let Ao help us with her powers of seeing the future."
After saying that Suzumoto stood up, and then suddenly swayed in place.
"Major, you alright?" Ichigo asked as he quickly stood up and placed his hand on Suzumoto's shoulder to steady the older man.
After a few moments of silent blinking on his end, Major Suzumoto asked Ichigo to assist him in getting back to the makeshift command post.
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"I'm back," my beloved fiance said as he returned some time later, and stood in the middle of the doorway.
"How's Major Suzumoto?" I asked as Ao cuddled with me.
"Asleep on an office chair that his new subordinates scrounged up from somewhere."
"Papa, did you bring any food? I'm hungry," Ao asked.
Ichigo smiled at us, and then he stepped aside, to reveal the very welcome sight of Papa holding a plastic bag filled with a pack of sliced bread, a jar of mayonnaise, a jar of pickled cucumber, a pack of plastic spoons, and three bottles of distilled water.
"Lolo!" Ao screamed in glee. "Is that food for us?!"
"Yes it is. Now, what's the next thing you should say?" Papa teased Ao.
"Thank you for the food!" my daughter replied to her grandfather in glee.
After Ao said that, Papa quickly walked in and put the food items on top of the table with a smile on his face.
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"So Ao, how is the food?" Papa asked as my daughter, my boyfriend and I were finishing breakfast by drinking the bottles of water.
"Uhm...I'm full," Ao stated.
"Not delicious?" Papa asked with a raised eyebrow.
"...it's delicious?"
"Ao?" It was my turn to ask. "Just say what you really think. We're not going to get angry if you say it doesn't taste good."
After a moment of looking at me, and then at Papa and Ichigo, Ao finally told the truth with a big pout on her face.
"The food tasted weird. But I'm hungry so I just ate even if I don't want to."
"I bet it was the combination of pickled cucumber and mayonnaise that made the taste weird." Ichigo commented. "Why did you buy pickled cucumber in the first place Father?"
"You guys need your vegetables?"
Papa's weird reply prompted Ichigo to grab the packaging of the sliced bread and the mayonnaise and inspect them. He then looked back at Papa after a few moments and replied that according to the packaging's nutritional content we had just gotten around a quarter of our daily nutritional intake with only bread and mayonnaise.
"Ri-i-ight. To be honest, Magdalena and I don't trust everything written in a food product's label. If only we could cook and buy the ingredients..."
"We are currently at war..." I reminded Papa, to which he replied with a shrug.
"Speaking of Mother, where's Mom and Dad and Mother?" Ichigo asked.
"About that...I have good news and bad news regarding Kentaro."
"Dad's awake?" Ichigo asked as he stood up from his chair, with a hopeful tone of voice. Ao and I quickly gave him our emotional support by squeezing his right hand with our left hands, to which he replied by squeezing back.
"That is the good news. The bad news is..."
Papa trailed off and started looking everywhere but us.
"Papa?" I asked in a worried tone.
"Brain damage confirmed."
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Subashiri Police Koban, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
10:26 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
The words Kentaro said took all the strength in my legs, and left me sitting down in my chair, silent in shock and dismay.
"Papa, how bad is it?" my wife asked in my place.
"Remember the part about 'gaps in his memories'?"
When she nodded, Papa continued with one of the most disturbing news a wife could ever hear.
"He forgot his marriage ceremony and his wedding proposal with Yuki."
As Kurumi winced in sympathy for Mom, Kentaro continued talking.
"Look, it's not too bad. He remembers most of his time with Yuki and Ichigo. It's just...what he can't remember are the lynchpins, things that make the other memories make sense. And it understandably disturbs him."
"How badly?" I hoarsely let out of my mouth.
"...enough that Yuki hasn't stopped hugging him and whispering into Hayato's ears once he started to look upset. In public."
Everything was gravely quiet for several moments after that. And it seemed like it would go on forever if Ao didn't suddenly broke the silence.
"Lolo, what if we visit Grandpa? Maybe we could help comfort him?"
"Exactly how are you going to comfort the poor guy?" Kentaro frowned at Ao.
My daughter didn't let Kentaro's frown dissuade her.
"Uhm, by telling him it's ok to forget things?"
"Ao, you can't be serious," I challenged my daughter in disbelief.
"Ichigo, calm down. Maybe it's just a poor word choice," Kurumi quickly intervened. "Ao, maybe you should explain in other words? What you just said was confusing."
"...I forget things sometimes. Papa and Mama also forget things. But we don't let that stop us from...walking forwards?"
"Moving forwards," I corrected her.
"Moving forwards. So we just make up for it by making new memories that we could remember forever."
"Ao, those are home works," my wife scolded our daughter. "Or we forgot where we placed the keys. Or that we ran out of cond...err...we ran out of something. Memories of your wedding or your marriage proposal and events of that importance are a very different thing. Trust me on that."
"I just wanted to help Grandpa," Ao pouted.
"And we will, but we'll do it by following the advice of the professionals," I firmly stated in a tone that brooked no dissent.
I relaxed upon seeing Ao meekly nod in acceptance of my judgement. And then I noticed Kurumi looking at me.
It was then I remembered that we were supposed to discuss how to proceed from now onwards.
"Kurumi, what do you say to including Father here in the discussion?"
As Kentaro raised an eyebrow at my question, Kurumi pondered my question. Moments passed, then she finally made a decision.
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Subashiri Police Koban, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
10:27 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
"Papa, please look after Ao for some time. Ichigo and I need to discuss something upstairs."
Papa instantly reacted as I stood up from my chair, quickly followed by Ichigo himself.
"And what are you two going to discuss by yourselves?"
"Deciding how we should take the offer of letting Ao use her abilities for the Self Defense Forces," I replied.
Papa spent a few moments blinking, opened his mouth to say something, and then closed his mouth again with a thoughtful look on his face.
"Papa?"
"Kurumi, last night Yuki and your mother told me something ridiculous. Apparently...someone rich from the land of the magical aliens wanted you, Ichigo and Ao dead and is willing to pay the equivalent of hundreds of millions of Yen for that."
"It's true!" Ao insisted. "I saw it when I'm looking into the future. The book that I can read in my mind explained that the Lighteater that Papa killed back home was a son of one of the richest and most powerful nobles of their world."
"And because those new uniforms of theirs supposedly also transmits audiovisual records..." Papa trailed off with a very bitter look on his face.
After several seconds of silence passed, Ichigo spoke up.
"Father, you see how bad our situation is. We don't have much of a choice other than, to put it vulgarly, see how much we could get from the Self Defense Forces."
Papa gave out a weary sigh before replying.
"I see it. I get it...you've grown so much Kurumi."
The wistful melancholy in Papa's voice prompted my boyfriend and I to exchange meaningful looks before sitting back down into the chairs we had just vacated.
"Papa, what's wrong?"
"Kurumi...it's only been five years since you were still my little girl. And now, when your former classmates and best friends are only worrying about school or boyfriends or both, I'm watching you make life changing decisions with your husband to be for your own family...we really skipped a lot of things didn't we, Kurumi?"
All was silent for several seconds. I sat there, blinking and silent because I needed to think of how to answer Papa. Ichigo sat silently in his chair, most probably because he was half the reason why Papa missed a lot of Father-Child activities. Any verbal mistake on his part might irritate Papa. And Ao was silent because she most likely doesn't know what to do.
"Papa," I finally spoke after putting my thoughts and feelings in order. "I also feel sad that I can no longer go back to our house every day, or always eat Mama's food, or just spend more time with you and Mama. But...we still had happy memories, right?"
"Less than I would have liked. Kurumi...last week Hayato told me if I wanted to, he would convince you and Ichigo to move back to Yokohama, live at our house for your last year of high school."
I looked at Papa with a mix of surprise, incredulity, and outrage over what he said, because Father was one of the reasons I permanently moved in with the Ohta family.
Back when Ichigo and I announced my pregnancy four years ago, almost all our angry parents immediately took their stances.
Mother and Papa wanted me to abort the baby. But they were pointing fingers at each other, demanding that the other party be the ones to pay for the medical expenses. Mama wanted to let me to give birth to the baby, but she was torn between taking care of the baby ourselves or giving the baby up for adoption. And Father...glared at me and kept his opinion to himself.
After two days of discussion in my bedroom, something that only happened because Mother staged a sit in inside our home to force Papa to pay the medical bills, Ichigo and I decided to sit Father and Mama down in a quiet family restaurant in our neighborhood and sincerely talked with them.
We told them we wanted to take responsibility for our baby with our parent's help, and we wanted to be given the chance to learn if the two of us can be together as partners in life. We begged them to help us convince Papa and Mother to let us have the baby.
Mama quickly agreed, because Ichigo was trying to take responsibility for me and our baby. That was something she was going to demand of Ichigo, she told me late that year. And then Father blindsided us.
He said that he would convince Mom to allow the baby to be born only if his family possesses the right of parenthood and custody of my baby from the moment I gave birth.
Mama didn't argue against the idea itself, because with Ichigo as the baby's father and my future husband the baby really does belong to the Ohta family. What she protested was him forcing the state of affairs that would eventually be reached once Ichigo and I marry after his 18th birthday to happen right that moment, and his notable lack of any reference to myself with what he said.
Father's reply was that his only concern was that the baby would belong to them, and his preference was for me to have no place in his family. That panicked me into begging him to let me have a place in the life of my baby and boyfriend, while Ichigo tried to get me to stop kneeling. His reply, delivered in a mocking manner, was that if I was so adamant on having a place in their lives maybe I should cohabit with their family as Ichigo's wife to be and mother of his child.
The look on his face later on when I arrived at the doorstep of the Ohta residence at the time, accompanied by Mama, Papa, my bag of clothes, and an incredulous Mother, suggested that everything went exactly as he wanted.
'And now Father said that to Papa? After what he did then? What?'
"I know, I know," Papa said as several seconds passed and I didn't stop staring at him. "It was Hayato who forced the issue in the first place. But he eventually started to feel guilty for cutting off all the time Magdalena and I could have spent with you, Kurumi."
"...Papa, what do you want?"
"Come back. Bring your family and live with us for your last year of High School. We miss you."
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Subashiri Police Koban, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
10:29 P.M.
Ohta Ichigo
"Father, what about my parents?" I quickly asked barely a second after Kentaro finished saying what he wanted. "Dad is...crippled."
"Bring them along too! Magdalena and I don't have a problem with that."
I looked at Kurumi hoping to catch her eye, and saw her sigh.
"Papa, could Ichigo and I discuss how to accept the Self Defense Force's offer first? I'm sorry but I can't deliberate on two separate things at the same time."
"Sure, sure. Go upstairs. I'll stay here and keep Ao company," Kentaro replied with a smile, while waving his hand at us.
As Kurumi and I stood from our chairs, Ao also joined Kentaro in waving at us. The two of them quickly went out of sight as we turned the corner and walked upstairs.
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"I can't believe the nerve of your father, Ichigo," Kurumi stated behind me as I closed the door after us.
"And I'm sorry for that, Kurumi," I said as I turned away from the door, to see my wife in the middle of the room. There she took off her slippers and sat down on the floor with her knees together, facing the door. And then she started to pat her thighs while looking at me.
"Really?" I asked, my eyebrows raising up my forehead.
"Really," my wife answered with a faint smile.
"Really, really?"
"Do you want a lap pillow or not?"
Within moments I was lying on the floor, with my head resting on Kurumi's thighs and looking up at her smiling face.
"You know, if there's anyone who needs a lap pillow at this moment it's you. Why are you giving me one instead of asking one from me?" I asked her in in honest curiosity.
"Because I don't want to get distracted by...what happens when my face is next to your crotch," Kurumi candidly answered, poking my right cheek with her finger at the same time.
I chuckled a few seconds after hearing her joke, which in turn made her giggle.
"Kurumi, now is not the time for anything lewd. Come on."
"Says the man who has a tendency to suddenly ask for sex at the most awkward places and times," Kurumi retorted.
"I always listen when you say no," I pointed out.
"I only say no half the time. In the other half of all those times I end up happy, sweating, and smelling of you."
I wasn't able to reply, because what she said was true. So I...
"I give up. You win. So...let's talk about Ao?"
"Ok.," my wife replied as her giggles slowly ended. "Ichigo, is demanding one million yen per month as salary too greedy for us?"
I blinked several times again, thought about it, shook my head, and quickly adjusted the pirate style improvised monocle I was forced to wear since yesterday due to movement.
"You really should have that replaced."
"Using what money? And where do I get it replaced?"
"...oh. I didn't think of that...won't you try not wearing that in the first place?"
"Kurumi, these are dangerous times we are living in now. I can't afford to have farsighted vision during these times. So this stupid thing would have to stay for the time being."
"Promise me you will replace that thing as soon as possible."
"Yes dear, I promise I'm throwing this ridiculous thing away the instant I find a replacement."
Seeing Kurumi give me a smile of satisfaction, I decided to find a replacement as soon as possible, to spare myself all the headaches this monocle was bringing me.
"Thank you love. Now, where were we?" Kurumi asked me.
"You said one million yen a month. I don't think that's a good idea because of the inflation this war will bring."
"...exactly how high do you think the prices of everything would become?" Kurumi asked me with this wary expression on her face.
I reluctantly answered her question with three words.
"World War Two."
I was tense, worrying about how my wife would react to that news when I saw that I had nothing to worry about.
Kurumi merely let off a sigh, muttered something inaudible, and then asked me if I was thinking of payment in kind.
"Definitely. This is the government we're talking with here. They should be able to pay us in kind."
"No money whatsoever?"
"Well...we can't eat coins and paper."
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Subashiri Police Koban, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
10: 32 P.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
"Ichigo, that's going too far. Even during World War Two money still had value here in Japan, and we certainly are going to need money whenever the war ends," I said to my fiance.
"Kurumi, we can get paid with a lifetime supply of food rations for us and our parents. We can get paid with free housing, free health care, free utilities. We might even get the government to give you and Ao a free ride to college graduation if we do things right."
"Without money you can't buy a replacement for your eyeglasses. Without money we can't buy school supplies for that free ride you were talking about. Without money we can't buy cleaning supplies for that house we could get paid with. Without money we couldn't buy clothes to keep us warm...Ichigo, are you expecting the government to pay us in those things too?"
"...maybe?" Ichigo said in an uncertain tone. "The government is doing all that for Self Defense Forces recruits in the barracks...then again Ao would most likely be classified as a civilian contractor."
For several moments all was silent in the room as my boyfriend and I stewed with our own thoughts. And then all of a sudden Ichigo said something crazy.
"Oh yeah. The condoms."
"What the fuck?! How are condoms related to what we are talking about now?" I asked, feeling a blush and hysterical disbelief spread throughout my body.
"I can't think of any way to convince the government to also include a free supply of condoms for us."
"And that's yet another thing we need money for. If we don't have condoms I might get pregnant again, no matter the withdrawals and safe days and sixty nines that we do."
The only response that Ichigo gave after what I said was a frown directed at the ceiling.
A dozen seconds passed before I realized that my boyfriend was lost in thought, so I interrupted it.
"Ichigo, are you asleep?"
"No I'm not. I'm just...this is a really bad time to bring a baby into the world, right?"
"Correct."
"Alright," Ichigo sighed out. "What is your proposal for how much they should pay us?"
"...the condoms are what convinced you to include money in Ao's compensation?"
Ichigo shrugged before replying in all honesty.
"Of course. No condoms means you will eventually get pregnant. And...I remembered the time when you were pregnant with Ao."
I wasn't able to stop a wistful smile from blossoming on my face, something my fiance reciprocated.
That time was a time of significant discoveries and pain for both me and Ichigo. And by the month I gave birth, we had both concluded we can live with each other.
"And what did you conclude when you remembered that time?"
"That we're not ready to give Ao a little brother or sister any time soon."
And that was that.
"With that settled, what do you propose now?"
"...free housing, free healthcare for us and our parents, a free ride for any school and college for you and Ao, and one hundred thousand yen per month."
"Three hundred thousand."
"Kurumi, the free things I'm are asking as compensation are already quite heavy demands. Asking for more money in addition is very unseemly of us."
"Then let's make the freebies somewhat smaller. Only Ao gets a free ride to any college she wants. I don't need a free ride, remember the plan Ichigo. You go to the JSDF, I search for a full time, Monday to Friday job."
"...Kurumi, this might literally be the last time you have a chance to go to college. Are you sure you will just look for work straight after graduation?"
I was touched by his concern, so I answered him with a smile.
"Ichigo, we still have a long life ahead of us. I'm quite sure there will be time for me to go to college in the future. Besides we have to deal with this war currently happening before we talk about school."
Ichigo looked at me for several seconds, and then looked away in the direction of the door.
"Two hundred fifty thousand yen a month. Please settle for that Kurumi, because I don't think I can face Dad after he learns we fleeced the Self Defense Forces in its time of need. As it is we are nearing that point."
"Alright. Two hundred fifty thousand," I conceded after several seconds of thought on the matter.
Ichigo was right. We were almost fleecing the Self Defense Forces Father was a member of with the two hundred fifty thousand yen per month, free housing, healthcare and Ao's free ride.
Also, Ichigo did try to meet me halfway by raising the money we want to ask as compensation, so I would concede to his will.
"Now, want to talk about what Dad said to Father?"
"...I'm still not in the mood to think about that. Let's talk about it tomorrow."
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Many thanks to Atreidestrooper, Strypgia, rm928, Sethraw and Mjolnir66 of Spacebattles. I couldn't have done it without you folks.
Re: An Unlikely Magical Girl and an Unlikely World War: reboot
Hello folks!
Sorry it took me so long to update. It's because of all the things I researched for this chapter, combined with being sidetracked by Europa Universalis 4.
Very addicting, Europa Universalis 4 is.
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Chapter 19
Parking lot of Ogiya Inn, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
11:06 A.M.
Ohta Ichigo
“Thank heaven,” Major Suzumoto mumbled tiredly to himself as I told him about the decision that I and my wife had made.
“Major, there’s something else.”
Kurumi trailed off beside me as the weary faces of everyone in the tent, Major Suzumoto among them, turned in her direction.
“What is it?” Major Suzumoto asked.
“Because of the dangers to our daughter’s life in cooperating with the Self Defense Forces, we strongly feel there should be some compensation given to our family. Who should we talk with regarding such matters?”
“Most probably the same person the Self Defense Forces are supposed to be taking orders from at this moment,” Major Suzumoto instantly replied. “The problem is no one knows who that is right this moment.”
Several seconds went by before I realized I...had no knowledge on the topic beyond knowing it was about the line of succession of the Japanese Government.
“Major, how exactly does the Japanese Government’s line of succession work?” I slowly asked, wary of not getting an answer from the weary man. That was why it was a surprise when he started explaining in a strangely joyful manner.
“It goes like this. Prime Minister Abe will choose certain members of the Cabinet to act as Temporary Prime Minister should Abe get incapacitated to perform his job. Abe is also the one who determines the order of who is in line first. Understand?”
I nodded to indicate I understand. And I heard Kurumi beside me reply that she understood.
“Now as far as I know the ones Abe chose to be in the line of succession are the following, in order from first to last. Finance Minister Taro Aso, Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide, Justice Minister Tanigaki Sadakazu, Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy Amari Akira and Environment Minister.”
“And you had absolutely no information on what happened to all of them?” I asked.
Major Suzumoto slowly shook his head.
“That’s not my job. Military Intelligence Command is all about unifying all the necessary information for the Ground Self Defense Forces to operate according to a chosen strategy, and collecting and translating foreign military literature. You should instead ask the Security Bureau of the National Police Agency if you want their locations.”
Kurumi and I immediately looked at each other as soon as Suzumoto finished saying that. And after a couple of seconds of silence, Kurumi broke eye contact with me and looked at Suzumoto.
“Major, may I request something of you for the time that you make contact the person in charge of leading Japan?”
“Is it about the compensation you said earlier?”
“Yes. If ever you get in touch with the person who is now in charge of leading Japan, I request that they be informed about our request for compensation.”
“I will. However the likelihood of them listening is proportional to how much your daughter does for the Self Defense Forces. I’m sorry to ask but how soon can she start...fortune telling for us?”
“As soon as you get back to the police station,” Kurumi instantly replied. “Please remember that my daughter has a lot of broken ribs, and the medical advice given was that she should not move as much as possible until the bones heal.”
“Oh. Bother,” Suzumoto murmured as he and every other Self Defense Force officer and NCO in the tent looked at one of their colleagues.
This colleague was the oldest Self Defense Forces member in the tent, in both the unkindness that time had given to his looks and his demeanor. He was also a member of the medical corps, judging by the white armband with the red cross symbol on his right arm.
And then I stared as I saw the rank on his shoulder.
It was the three golden cherry blossoms and two bars of a Colonel, two ranks above a Major.
After a second or so of thought I decided I’ll ask Suzumoto later, figuring that this wasn’t the right time and that there must be a long story behind this.
“What the kid said was advice given by my men," the Colonel said. "I’m also strongly recommending the same thing for the girl."
Suzumoto nodded to himself after hearing that, and then he spoke.
“If that’s your verdict then I will follow it, sir. Now...say, do we have a spare radio? Communicating via courier or walking to the police station for every single prediction is going to put a serious cramp in our operations.”
“Sir,” one of the NCO’s in the tent answered. “We can’t spare any radio, we need them all. And even if we were to give them one, I highly doubt they know how to operate it properly. I propose that we do something else, sir.”
“Go on Sergeant.”
“I propose that we move our headquarters, and everything else, into the town. Sir.”
Suzumoto opened his mouth to reply, and then he closed it as he saw me and Kurumi. Then he opened his mouth again.
"Sergeant Mori, there are logical reasons why I had us establish our headquarters and barracks in this place. But before I discuss that,” Suzumoto suddenly turned towards me and my wife.
“Ichigo, I'll send someone to the police station later this day. You two can go now."
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Parking lot of Ogiya Inn, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
11:07 A.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
Recognizing the dismissal for what it was, Ichigo and I quickly said our farewells to Major Suzumoto and walked out of the tent’s entrance into the heat of the noontime sun, and onto the parking lot full of tents and parked vehicles Ichigo introduced as the Type 96 APC and Type 87 RCV.
Once we had taken several steps away I looked back at the olive green colored tent, and saw the flaps serving as the doors of the tent getting closed by one of the Self Defense Forces officers inside the tent.
“Ichigo, what was that?” I asked as I stopped walking so we could talk properly. And in the same time Ichigo had taken two steps forward before I had finished saying my words.
“Probably a disagreement about strategy," My fiance replied as he turned around and faced me. "Something we don’t have to concern ourselves with.”
“But if Ao is going to be a consultant for the Self Defense Forces...”
“There is no way anyone in the Self Defense Forces will involve a four year old girl in that kind of stuff,” my fiance confidently said. And then he looked to my right and tried to change the topic with a question.
“Kurumi, want to go and see what they are doing over there?"
"It’s only Izanami, Krauncha and a lot of Self Defense Forces personnel gathered around a table with assembled and disassembled rifles on it. There’s nothing interesting in that for me.We still have to visit our parents, remember?”
During the few seconds of silence before Ichigo replied, he stared downward. Not exactly at my lower body, but blankly looking at the ground that I just happened to be blocking the line of sight to with my hips.
“...just...give me some extra time. Please?”
‘Oh’
I looked around to see if anyone was looking in our direction. Seeing no one was doing so, I quickly stepped forward and gave my boyfriend a hug which he quickly returned.
“Ichigo, I can’t assure you that Father will become better with time,” I softly spoke into his ear. “But what I can assure you is that I’ll do my best to always be there by your side.”
After a few more seconds passed Ichigo whispered his thanks to me, and gave me a kiss to the cheek. And then we jerked in suprise as moans of despair and dismay rang through the air.
A quick search revealed that the source was the huge group of people gathered around the table with rifles. Said group was getting smaller as Self Defense Forces personnel walked away with dismayed faces towards the various tents and vehicles inside the parking lot.
“Ok. Now I really want to know what’s going on,” Ichigo commented as we let go of each other upon seeing many of the walkers giving us looks.
“Then lead on, dear,” I said to him.
Within half a minute we have arrived at the table, which by that time only had Izanami and Krauncha and three sad faced Self Defense Forces personnel around it.
“Good morning Izanami. Krauncha,” I greeted the two with a nod. Beside me, I heard Ichigo greet the Self Defense Forces personnel.
Everyone greeted me and Ichigo back in reply, and then silence fell again as they stared at the objects on the table.
“What’s happening here?” Ichigo asked while looking at the table with a puzzled look on his face.
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Parking lot of Ogiya Inn, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
11:08 A.M.
Ohta Ichigo
I saw a fully assembled Type 89 rifle laid on the table, with a disassembled Type 89 to its left and right.
The disassembled set to the right of the Type 89 was exactly how I remembered a Type 89’s various parts should look like. A black polymer butt stock and lower receiver assembly. Black colored upper receiver made of stamped steel. A barrel, colored black by a special forging process and the various parts of the action, all of them shining in the sunlight.
The disassembled set on the left of the assembled Type 89...
“We were trying to help these two create Type 89 rifles via magical means to replace all the rifles lost yesterday,” one of the three Self Defense Forces personnel around the table replied to my question earlier.
“Lost yesterday...the flying magma?”
The only reason I could think of for why an assault rifle would be considered lost considering yesterday’s events was if it had been stolen or it had been destroyed.
I don’t think the Skinchangers wanted the rifles. They had their bolt action rifles, and they were winning with those against most of the world’s military powers. So the most probable conclusion was that they were destroyed, and the flying magma was the most likely culprit for the destruction.
“Yes. If they weren’t buried under still hot and solidified magma, then the damaged rifles would have solidified magma inside the receivers, which would have badly damaged all the internal parts. As an armorer of the Evaluation Support Unit, I declare all those poor guns too damaged to use again.”
“And that is the result?” I asked while looking at the disassembled set beside the Type 89.
The upper receiver and all the parts that belong to it were colored in various shades of grey, as opposed to the all black of the ordinary Type 89. The lower receiver, on the other hand, was made of a bronze colored metal that seemed to be twice as thick as the ordinary Type 89 lower receiver. And the handguards and the butt stock were made of wood.
“I’m just as surprised as you are kid,” the armorer stated. “Mr. Krauncha, could you please explain what you did here?”
“Sure. For the lower receiver I used gunmetal bronze because I’m not confident using the steels I know of for any structural frame that thin. I also used wood in place of steel and plastic for the stock and the handguard because of the same reason. As for the upper receiver, the action and all the screws, I used the various steels and irons involved in creating the metal parts of a ‘Smellie’ rifle for the analogues of said parts in the Type 89.”
“And those are?” the armorer asked in a skeptical manner. He was promptly surprised by the torrent of information that came out of Krauncha’s mouth.
“BSS51 Wrought Iron, both grades A and B. Three different kinds of black cast steel. Black mild steel, mild steel, black rolled cast steel, steel with 1 percent carbon and point 2 percent manganese and silicon and very little others , bright cold drawn mild steel, crucible steel, bright cold rolled cast and bright cold rolled mild. Any problems?”
Due to a lack of knowledge on the subject, all I could tell from what Krauncha said was that he replaced the stamped steel and polymer with wood and whatever steel the internal parts of a Type 89 was made of with various other kinds of steel I had never known about before.
“...why did you change the metallurgy of the Type 89 for your copy?” The armorer asked as he looked at Krauncha’s disassembled copy of the Type 89 with an uneasy, worried look on his face that was mirrored by his two companions.
“Because I’m a musician by trade – wait! I’m not finished explaining,” Krauncha said as the armorer was about to react to his words.
Once the armorer calmed down Krauncha continued talking.
“As a divine musician of the Sanatana Dharma, I’m expected to be competent in woodworking, leatherworking, weaving, animal processing and gold working because knowledge of those skills are needed to create classical Indian musical instruments by hand and magic. Metalworking outside of gold is mostly outside of my expertise, and I’m ignorant on how plastics are made, so I can’t completely copy the Type 89.”
“And yet you mentioned several different types of steel.”
“I did say the word 'mostly,' you know?"
The unimpressed look the armorer and his two fellow Self Defense Forces personnel gave Krauncha made the Indian man sigh and explain further.
"I gained my knowledge of those steels from my part time job as a workman at Rifle Factory Ishapore, from 1909 to 1919. During those ten years I was able to watch every stage of the fabrication of a Short Magazine Lee Enfield Mark Three rifle.”
‘Oh. So that’s where ‘Smellie’ came from. SMLE the acronym.’
After several moments passed, during which the armorer and his companions just stared at Krauncha, the armorer finally asked Krauncha a question that visibly took the Indian man aback.
"Well...are you a qualified gunsmith, Mr. Krauncha?"
“Which definition of gunsmith? The original one or the watered down one used nowadays?”
"The original one?" the armorer answered after a few moments of thought.
"Tvastar, the god of craftsmen in India, told me he would officially certify me as a gunsmith when I pass his test. That test is to craft a gun from raw materials without using magic,” Krauncha proudly stated.
"So you're still an apprentice gunsmith?"
"Almost graduated apprentice gunsmith."
After a moment of nodding in reply to Krauncha's words, the armorer and his companions went into a huddle and discussed something quietly. The huddle ended after a couple of minutes, and then the armorer started assembling Krauncha’s Type 89.
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The armorer had finished assembling the copy Krauncha made. And it looked...functional.
The armorer pulled back the bolt and then gently let it go back to its normal place, and then tested out the balance of the weapon.
"What do you think?" Krauncha asked with a smile on his face.
"It's heavier than a normal Type 89," the armorer grumbled. "Thankfully you didn't wreck the balance with your improvisation."
"If the balance changes then use the bipod. Isn't that what that thing is for?" Krauncha retorted.
Before the armorer managed to reply Izanami spoke up, reminding everyone that she was standing there all this time.
"Pardon me. May I ask how sorely needed is making the composition of the magical copy of your weapon be exactly the same as your weapon itself? Because if an exact copy is what was required, I have an idea I could try.”
The armorer said it was sorely needed with a big, wide smile while Krauncha looked a bit disgruntled. That was quickly followed by Izanami saying she needed to touch the weapon, and then stepping forward to place both her hands on the rifle.
Izanami then quickly closed her eyes, and then she and the rifle started to have this soft, whitish aura around them.
“I am Izanami, mother of islands and gods. I will this weapon to twist and shed into the weapon made out of my children."
The soft whitish glow around the Type 89 intensified into an eyesearing white after she finished saying those words. Several seconds later the magical glow around Izanami and the rifle quickly faded away, followed by Izanami stepping away from the rifle with a smile.
"It became lighter," the armorer commented as he again tested the balance of the Type 89 in his hands while inspecting it. "Did you turn the bronze into steel?"
"Not just that. I made all the metal in Mr. Krauncha's gun become exactly the same as the gun he copied it from."
"And you did it in the most harmful way possible, you idiot," Krauncha suddenly commented sarcastically from the side, surprising the goddess and making everyone else glare at his rudeness. "Really? Making metal twist and shed into another kind of metal instead of dispelling and then materializing? Don’t you know that is one of the ways to create radiation, idiot creator goddess?”
A few seconds of silence passed after those words, during which Kurumi and I tightly held each other’s hands while the armorer's companions backed away from the pale looking armorer, all because of the fear of anything nuclear instilled into us by the Japanese educational system.
“Mr. Krauncha,” Izanami timidly replied. “By radiation...do you mean this strange light?”
Izanami cupped her hands in front of her...cupping nothing but air. But the casual question that Krauncha let out of his mouth next proved my thoughts wrong.
"You absorbed all the radiation into your own body?”
“Yes.“
“...and how will you dispose of it? Mind you, radiation is all kinds of slippery.”
“Uhm...I can ask my daughter to take it. She is the goddess of the biggest source of this strange light in the world.”
“Izanami, are you talking about Amaterasu?” My wife asked from beside me. The question made me remember that the biggest source of radiation on Earth is the Sun. And Amaterasu was the goddess of the sun...one of the deities of the sun in the world.
Upon seeing Izanami’s nod, Krauncha exclaimed that all was well and no harm was done. He then turned towards the still pale-faced armorer and asked when the armorer wants the two of them to start producing rifles.
“I...on second thought your modified Type 89 rifle’s balance is within tolerable limits. You are also right when you said we could just use the bipod, right guys?” The armorer asked his two companions.
“We just need to have it tested out at a shooting range,” one of the companions, now revealed to me as another armorer, said.
“And once we are satisfied with it, then you can proceed to magically create hundreds of modified Type 89’s for us – wait. All the magical copies will be exactly the same as this one, right?” the other one of the companions, which I presume is yet another armorer, asked.
“Down to the atomic level,” Krauncha boasted.
The third armorer exchanged looks with the other two armorers. Then they shrugged and then turned back to Krauncha and Izanami with smiles on their faces.
“Mrs. Izanami, we sincerely thank you for your cooperation with the Evaluation Support Unit.” the third armorer said. “We hope that in the future we could have more opportunities for cooperation with each other.”
Having said that, the armorer turned to Krauncha, and then asked him to follow them.
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Road to Oyama Town Hall Subashiri Branch, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
11:21 A.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
I sighed as I walked down the mostly deserted road towards the town hall, Izanami beside me and my boyfriend on her other side.
“It’s not about Yomi, Izanami. It’s about the radiation,” I explained to the depressed goddess. “We Japanese...have a peculiar relationship with anything related to nuclear energy.”
“Look,” Ichigo suddenly added in from the other side of Izanami. “I know you’re sad about being left out of the whole magical rifle factory scheme after that deal with the radiation. But it already happened. Move on and remember not to do anything that will make radiation next time.”
“Why did you do what you did and not...what did Krauncha said Ichigo? Dispel and materialize?”
“Dispel and materialize,” my fiance confirmed.
Izanami took a deep breath and then explained.
“It's partly because I wasn’t thinking. And partly because of my nature as a member of a pantheon.”
“And what does being a member of a pantheon have to do with what happened?” I asked.
“We are constrained in several ways by the stories and the beliefs that are told about us. As an example, me. Disregard what was believed of me before my husband's worshippers came to Japan and concentrate on what was told of me in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. What was I in the two works that made permanent what I was in the minds of the Japanese?"
Several seconds passed of embarrassed silence passed before Ichigo and I explained the Japanese Educational system's treatment of the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki.
We high school students only encounter Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki in one of two ways in modern times, in large part because of how tied up the two books were with the military government of World War Two that the two literary works were considered...not important to learn by everyone after the war.
One of the ways was through our Japanese History classes, wherein we don't read the contents of the books, but only had to memorize what year and era and who wrote those books. The other was through the Kobun or Ancient Japanese Texts course and the Kanbun or Chinese Style courses offered in High School, wherein...
We didn't have the heart to tell her how much the two of us and most people our age dislike those two courses.
"Then how do you two...how does every Japanese even know who I was if they didn't know anything about the insides of those two works?" Izanami almost wailed at us.
Several moments passed before I got the courage to confess that we learned about her through Pop culture.
“By Pop culture...are you referring to TV shows?” Izanami asked.
“Not only that, but manga and console games,” Ichigo added.
“Don’t forget Light novels and Novels,” I reminded.
“...tell me what you know?”
“You’re Izanagi’s wife and...uh...sister,” Ichigo finished awkwardly.
Ichigo's answer surprised me, since I didn't know that. It also embarrassed me on Izanami's behalf, because my fiance just accused her of committing incest.
“I am Izanagi's wife. The sister part came about from people trying to explain then justify where the first human got his wife from. The reasoning was that if the gods who created the first man are practitioners of incest or committed incest first, then the first human has an excuse to have sex with his sister and have children with her. And those children would also have an excuse justifying them having sex with each other to make more children, and so on and so forth until there are enough humans that incest wasn't a necessity to increase the numbers of humans," Izanami explained.
Several seconds passed in which both Ichigo and I digested the interesting and disturbing information she had just given us, before Izanami asked if we knew anything more about her.
"You're the mother of a lot of gods and islands," I said.
"All thirty six of them," Izanami replied with a sad smile.
As my boyfriend coughed at the number of children Izanami said she had with Izanagi, I...whimpered.
I still remember when I gave birth to my daughter. It was the most painful thing I had ever experienced in my entire life. And here beside me was a woman who went through that thirty six times.
"You're also the first known being to die in Japanese mythology," Ichigo added, reminding me again of how I almost died while giving birth to Ao.
“What happened after I died?”
“You went to Yomi,” I replied, remembering that part about Izanami through pop culture osmosis.
“As what? Am I the ruler of Yomi or am I an inhabitant of Yomi?” Izanami asked.
“...ruler?” I replied in uncertainty.
The way she asked that question implied something happened in the background of the myth that I don’t remember.
“No I wasn’t. I was merely the latest and most unusual arrival to the underworld of my husband’s people at the time. Yomi was...the practice of deifying dead humans into gods came from my husband’s people. Yomi was full of humans worshipped into gods, who insisted – “
Izanami suddenly stopped talking, and walking, while letting out a long sigh. This prompted me and Ichigo to also stop walking after a few more steps and look back at the goddess, who was massaging the temples of her head with both hands while her eyes were closed.
“Pardon me Kurumi, Ichigo. It appears I am still sore about the results of political arguments from thousands of years ago.”
“Is how you became the ruler of Yomi also political in nature?” Ichigo asked.
Izanami looked up and nodded. Then she started walking again, and we walked by her side.
“So now we have established that I gave birth to gods and islands, and have become the ruler of the land of the dead. Now I ask you, what kind of powers should I naturally possess based on myth? What kind of power should I instinctually be using according to myth?”
I instantly saw what Izanami was trying to tell us. And I saw Ichigo realize it at the same time as me. However...expounding, putting it into words was hard.
“I gave birth to the islands of Japan, so I’m the mother of all the Japanese islands. And since children listen to their mothers, if I ask them to do something, they will try to do it. But that’s for when I’m feeling too lazy to use my own magic on the soil and uplifted crust that I gave birth to. What happened earlier is just me using my magic on the soil and uplifted crust I gave birth to, in the manner which was most familiar and natural to me.”
Her words managed to demolish the block that was blocking us from expounding on what we realized by giving us a pattern to use.
“You gave birth to several gods, so you yourself are a goddess of either life or magic,” my fiance said, in the same manner as when he is happily answering a question given by our teacher.
“And since you’re the goddess of Yomi, you’re also a goddess of death,” I added in the same manner and sentiment.
We then noticed Izanami smiling awkwardly at Ichigo.
“Izanami?” Ichigo asked.
“Ichigo...the only reason why gods also use the term magic for many things they do is because the line between magic and religion is very, very blurry. But to call a deity a god of magic? It’s...somewhere between rude and unforgivable insult.”
Ichigo didn’t ask why calling a god a god of magic was insulting. He instantly apologized, and me along with him to convince kind hearted Izanami to forgive him.
Izanami herself quickly said she forgives him, and explained that she understands most people in the world don’t understand the difference. She even told us that eight years ago the Kannushi of the shrine she was working as a part time miko at, the very shrine on Nu island that is dedicated to herself and her husband, called her a goddess of magic with no knowledge about how it was to be used in relation to gods.
Unfortunately that was while her son Hiruko, more commonly known as Ebisu nowadays, and his wife Waka-ush were on a family visit to see Izanami. Ebisu instantly tried to punch the surprised old Kannushi in the face while Izanami and Waka-ush held him back.
“It was so, so embarassing. Hiruko only calmed down after Waka-ush kissed him and never let go off for half an hour, leaving me to explain the issue to Mr. Hiro and his family.”
“I commiserate with you,” Ichigo –
I gave my boyfriend a wide eyed glare for those words. Ichigo repeatedly blinked back at me with befuddlement on his face. And then he silently mouthed the word ‘parents’ at me, and then pointed at me and then himself while repeating that word.
I huffed and looked back down the road, to see the Oyama Town Hall, Subashiri Branch in sight.
“Well...moving on,” Izanami meekly said in an effort to make the awkward atmosphere go away. “From the Kojiki's point of view I’m more of a goddess of creation rather than life, since my children aren't just alive. They are also islands and gods and goddesses of natural phenomena, physical geographical features, and buildings at the same time...do you two still understand my explanation?"
"Easily enough," I replied.
"Just go on," Ichigo encouraged Izanami.
"As a goddess of creation, I...creation isn’t about making silly little things like guns or houses. Or money or cellphones.”
”Then what is it about?” I asked while having this feeling that her reply would be something to remember for the rest of my life.
“Islands, mountains, plains, and seas. Fire, trees, wind...Kami-umi and Kuni-umi wasn’t over. They had never been over. I could continue all that right this moment...it’s just...I don’t know how many humans would survive if I go at it full blast.”
‘Oh. Something to remember indeed.’
"How about Yomi? Did Kurumi guess it right or wrong?"
"She was right. I’m also the goddess of death because of Yomi. Death as a concept means decay, or entropy.”
Upon seeing us nod in understanding, Izanami continued.
“So in summation, I am most instinctually inclined to use magic that makes the target decay in any manner, magic that affects the soil and the crust of this planet, and magic that gives life and personalities to concepts.”
Several seconds passed after Izanami’s summation, before Ichigo commented that she could have just explained the magic that she was most inclined to use and then explain why she was most inclined to use them.
Izanami’s answer was to look away from him with an embarrassed face and explain that she was only trying to do it in the same way as the TV show Adventures with Dora.
I snorted. And then I started giggling as I remembered childhood memories of morning spent watching the Japanese language version of Dora the Explorer while Mama was doing chores around the house.
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Many thanks to Eternal_Freedom, Elheru Aran, Zixinus, Crazedwraith, Imperial Overlord, madd0ct0r and SpottedKitty of Stardestroyer.net
Atreidestrooper, Strypgia, Mjolnir66, Anasurimbor Phallus, Felidae, DEEPSIX, Sea SkimmerA2E6, Funkmachine7, Schlub-NoogieRat, Rubberanvil, Erinyes, bullethead, Winged_One, bluepencil, Mithril-blade, Scherazade of Spacebattles.com
muffet.2008, Lee Enfield, Bruce in Oz of milsurps.com
Lithgow Small Arms Factory Museum, and the helpful staff there.
I couldn't have done this without any of your help.
Oh. And if you, dear reader, had finished reading then please give some comment about this story and the direction its heading. Pretty please?
Sorry it took me so long to update. It's because of all the things I researched for this chapter, combined with being sidetracked by Europa Universalis 4.
Very addicting, Europa Universalis 4 is.
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Chapter 19
Parking lot of Ogiya Inn, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
11:06 A.M.
Ohta Ichigo
“Thank heaven,” Major Suzumoto mumbled tiredly to himself as I told him about the decision that I and my wife had made.
“Major, there’s something else.”
Kurumi trailed off beside me as the weary faces of everyone in the tent, Major Suzumoto among them, turned in her direction.
“What is it?” Major Suzumoto asked.
“Because of the dangers to our daughter’s life in cooperating with the Self Defense Forces, we strongly feel there should be some compensation given to our family. Who should we talk with regarding such matters?”
“Most probably the same person the Self Defense Forces are supposed to be taking orders from at this moment,” Major Suzumoto instantly replied. “The problem is no one knows who that is right this moment.”
Several seconds went by before I realized I...had no knowledge on the topic beyond knowing it was about the line of succession of the Japanese Government.
“Major, how exactly does the Japanese Government’s line of succession work?” I slowly asked, wary of not getting an answer from the weary man. That was why it was a surprise when he started explaining in a strangely joyful manner.
“It goes like this. Prime Minister Abe will choose certain members of the Cabinet to act as Temporary Prime Minister should Abe get incapacitated to perform his job. Abe is also the one who determines the order of who is in line first. Understand?”
I nodded to indicate I understand. And I heard Kurumi beside me reply that she understood.
“Now as far as I know the ones Abe chose to be in the line of succession are the following, in order from first to last. Finance Minister Taro Aso, Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide, Justice Minister Tanigaki Sadakazu, Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy Amari Akira and Environment Minister.”
“And you had absolutely no information on what happened to all of them?” I asked.
Major Suzumoto slowly shook his head.
“That’s not my job. Military Intelligence Command is all about unifying all the necessary information for the Ground Self Defense Forces to operate according to a chosen strategy, and collecting and translating foreign military literature. You should instead ask the Security Bureau of the National Police Agency if you want their locations.”
Kurumi and I immediately looked at each other as soon as Suzumoto finished saying that. And after a couple of seconds of silence, Kurumi broke eye contact with me and looked at Suzumoto.
“Major, may I request something of you for the time that you make contact the person in charge of leading Japan?”
“Is it about the compensation you said earlier?”
“Yes. If ever you get in touch with the person who is now in charge of leading Japan, I request that they be informed about our request for compensation.”
“I will. However the likelihood of them listening is proportional to how much your daughter does for the Self Defense Forces. I’m sorry to ask but how soon can she start...fortune telling for us?”
“As soon as you get back to the police station,” Kurumi instantly replied. “Please remember that my daughter has a lot of broken ribs, and the medical advice given was that she should not move as much as possible until the bones heal.”
“Oh. Bother,” Suzumoto murmured as he and every other Self Defense Force officer and NCO in the tent looked at one of their colleagues.
This colleague was the oldest Self Defense Forces member in the tent, in both the unkindness that time had given to his looks and his demeanor. He was also a member of the medical corps, judging by the white armband with the red cross symbol on his right arm.
And then I stared as I saw the rank on his shoulder.
It was the three golden cherry blossoms and two bars of a Colonel, two ranks above a Major.
After a second or so of thought I decided I’ll ask Suzumoto later, figuring that this wasn’t the right time and that there must be a long story behind this.
“What the kid said was advice given by my men," the Colonel said. "I’m also strongly recommending the same thing for the girl."
Suzumoto nodded to himself after hearing that, and then he spoke.
“If that’s your verdict then I will follow it, sir. Now...say, do we have a spare radio? Communicating via courier or walking to the police station for every single prediction is going to put a serious cramp in our operations.”
“Sir,” one of the NCO’s in the tent answered. “We can’t spare any radio, we need them all. And even if we were to give them one, I highly doubt they know how to operate it properly. I propose that we do something else, sir.”
“Go on Sergeant.”
“I propose that we move our headquarters, and everything else, into the town. Sir.”
Suzumoto opened his mouth to reply, and then he closed it as he saw me and Kurumi. Then he opened his mouth again.
"Sergeant Mori, there are logical reasons why I had us establish our headquarters and barracks in this place. But before I discuss that,” Suzumoto suddenly turned towards me and my wife.
“Ichigo, I'll send someone to the police station later this day. You two can go now."
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Parking lot of Ogiya Inn, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
11:07 A.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
Recognizing the dismissal for what it was, Ichigo and I quickly said our farewells to Major Suzumoto and walked out of the tent’s entrance into the heat of the noontime sun, and onto the parking lot full of tents and parked vehicles Ichigo introduced as the Type 96 APC and Type 87 RCV.
Once we had taken several steps away I looked back at the olive green colored tent, and saw the flaps serving as the doors of the tent getting closed by one of the Self Defense Forces officers inside the tent.
“Ichigo, what was that?” I asked as I stopped walking so we could talk properly. And in the same time Ichigo had taken two steps forward before I had finished saying my words.
“Probably a disagreement about strategy," My fiance replied as he turned around and faced me. "Something we don’t have to concern ourselves with.”
“But if Ao is going to be a consultant for the Self Defense Forces...”
“There is no way anyone in the Self Defense Forces will involve a four year old girl in that kind of stuff,” my fiance confidently said. And then he looked to my right and tried to change the topic with a question.
“Kurumi, want to go and see what they are doing over there?"
"It’s only Izanami, Krauncha and a lot of Self Defense Forces personnel gathered around a table with assembled and disassembled rifles on it. There’s nothing interesting in that for me.We still have to visit our parents, remember?”
During the few seconds of silence before Ichigo replied, he stared downward. Not exactly at my lower body, but blankly looking at the ground that I just happened to be blocking the line of sight to with my hips.
“...just...give me some extra time. Please?”
‘Oh’
I looked around to see if anyone was looking in our direction. Seeing no one was doing so, I quickly stepped forward and gave my boyfriend a hug which he quickly returned.
“Ichigo, I can’t assure you that Father will become better with time,” I softly spoke into his ear. “But what I can assure you is that I’ll do my best to always be there by your side.”
After a few more seconds passed Ichigo whispered his thanks to me, and gave me a kiss to the cheek. And then we jerked in suprise as moans of despair and dismay rang through the air.
A quick search revealed that the source was the huge group of people gathered around the table with rifles. Said group was getting smaller as Self Defense Forces personnel walked away with dismayed faces towards the various tents and vehicles inside the parking lot.
“Ok. Now I really want to know what’s going on,” Ichigo commented as we let go of each other upon seeing many of the walkers giving us looks.
“Then lead on, dear,” I said to him.
Within half a minute we have arrived at the table, which by that time only had Izanami and Krauncha and three sad faced Self Defense Forces personnel around it.
“Good morning Izanami. Krauncha,” I greeted the two with a nod. Beside me, I heard Ichigo greet the Self Defense Forces personnel.
Everyone greeted me and Ichigo back in reply, and then silence fell again as they stared at the objects on the table.
“What’s happening here?” Ichigo asked while looking at the table with a puzzled look on his face.
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Parking lot of Ogiya Inn, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
11:08 A.M.
Ohta Ichigo
I saw a fully assembled Type 89 rifle laid on the table, with a disassembled Type 89 to its left and right.
The disassembled set to the right of the Type 89 was exactly how I remembered a Type 89’s various parts should look like. A black polymer butt stock and lower receiver assembly. Black colored upper receiver made of stamped steel. A barrel, colored black by a special forging process and the various parts of the action, all of them shining in the sunlight.
The disassembled set on the left of the assembled Type 89...
“We were trying to help these two create Type 89 rifles via magical means to replace all the rifles lost yesterday,” one of the three Self Defense Forces personnel around the table replied to my question earlier.
“Lost yesterday...the flying magma?”
The only reason I could think of for why an assault rifle would be considered lost considering yesterday’s events was if it had been stolen or it had been destroyed.
I don’t think the Skinchangers wanted the rifles. They had their bolt action rifles, and they were winning with those against most of the world’s military powers. So the most probable conclusion was that they were destroyed, and the flying magma was the most likely culprit for the destruction.
“Yes. If they weren’t buried under still hot and solidified magma, then the damaged rifles would have solidified magma inside the receivers, which would have badly damaged all the internal parts. As an armorer of the Evaluation Support Unit, I declare all those poor guns too damaged to use again.”
“And that is the result?” I asked while looking at the disassembled set beside the Type 89.
The upper receiver and all the parts that belong to it were colored in various shades of grey, as opposed to the all black of the ordinary Type 89. The lower receiver, on the other hand, was made of a bronze colored metal that seemed to be twice as thick as the ordinary Type 89 lower receiver. And the handguards and the butt stock were made of wood.
“I’m just as surprised as you are kid,” the armorer stated. “Mr. Krauncha, could you please explain what you did here?”
“Sure. For the lower receiver I used gunmetal bronze because I’m not confident using the steels I know of for any structural frame that thin. I also used wood in place of steel and plastic for the stock and the handguard because of the same reason. As for the upper receiver, the action and all the screws, I used the various steels and irons involved in creating the metal parts of a ‘Smellie’ rifle for the analogues of said parts in the Type 89.”
“And those are?” the armorer asked in a skeptical manner. He was promptly surprised by the torrent of information that came out of Krauncha’s mouth.
“BSS51 Wrought Iron, both grades A and B. Three different kinds of black cast steel. Black mild steel, mild steel, black rolled cast steel, steel with 1 percent carbon and point 2 percent manganese and silicon and very little others , bright cold drawn mild steel, crucible steel, bright cold rolled cast and bright cold rolled mild. Any problems?”
Due to a lack of knowledge on the subject, all I could tell from what Krauncha said was that he replaced the stamped steel and polymer with wood and whatever steel the internal parts of a Type 89 was made of with various other kinds of steel I had never known about before.
“...why did you change the metallurgy of the Type 89 for your copy?” The armorer asked as he looked at Krauncha’s disassembled copy of the Type 89 with an uneasy, worried look on his face that was mirrored by his two companions.
“Because I’m a musician by trade – wait! I’m not finished explaining,” Krauncha said as the armorer was about to react to his words.
Once the armorer calmed down Krauncha continued talking.
“As a divine musician of the Sanatana Dharma, I’m expected to be competent in woodworking, leatherworking, weaving, animal processing and gold working because knowledge of those skills are needed to create classical Indian musical instruments by hand and magic. Metalworking outside of gold is mostly outside of my expertise, and I’m ignorant on how plastics are made, so I can’t completely copy the Type 89.”
“And yet you mentioned several different types of steel.”
“I did say the word 'mostly,' you know?"
The unimpressed look the armorer and his two fellow Self Defense Forces personnel gave Krauncha made the Indian man sigh and explain further.
"I gained my knowledge of those steels from my part time job as a workman at Rifle Factory Ishapore, from 1909 to 1919. During those ten years I was able to watch every stage of the fabrication of a Short Magazine Lee Enfield Mark Three rifle.”
‘Oh. So that’s where ‘Smellie’ came from. SMLE the acronym.’
After several moments passed, during which the armorer and his companions just stared at Krauncha, the armorer finally asked Krauncha a question that visibly took the Indian man aback.
"Well...are you a qualified gunsmith, Mr. Krauncha?"
“Which definition of gunsmith? The original one or the watered down one used nowadays?”
"The original one?" the armorer answered after a few moments of thought.
"Tvastar, the god of craftsmen in India, told me he would officially certify me as a gunsmith when I pass his test. That test is to craft a gun from raw materials without using magic,” Krauncha proudly stated.
"So you're still an apprentice gunsmith?"
"Almost graduated apprentice gunsmith."
After a moment of nodding in reply to Krauncha's words, the armorer and his companions went into a huddle and discussed something quietly. The huddle ended after a couple of minutes, and then the armorer started assembling Krauncha’s Type 89.
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The armorer had finished assembling the copy Krauncha made. And it looked...functional.
The armorer pulled back the bolt and then gently let it go back to its normal place, and then tested out the balance of the weapon.
"What do you think?" Krauncha asked with a smile on his face.
"It's heavier than a normal Type 89," the armorer grumbled. "Thankfully you didn't wreck the balance with your improvisation."
"If the balance changes then use the bipod. Isn't that what that thing is for?" Krauncha retorted.
Before the armorer managed to reply Izanami spoke up, reminding everyone that she was standing there all this time.
"Pardon me. May I ask how sorely needed is making the composition of the magical copy of your weapon be exactly the same as your weapon itself? Because if an exact copy is what was required, I have an idea I could try.”
The armorer said it was sorely needed with a big, wide smile while Krauncha looked a bit disgruntled. That was quickly followed by Izanami saying she needed to touch the weapon, and then stepping forward to place both her hands on the rifle.
Izanami then quickly closed her eyes, and then she and the rifle started to have this soft, whitish aura around them.
“I am Izanami, mother of islands and gods. I will this weapon to twist and shed into the weapon made out of my children."
The soft whitish glow around the Type 89 intensified into an eyesearing white after she finished saying those words. Several seconds later the magical glow around Izanami and the rifle quickly faded away, followed by Izanami stepping away from the rifle with a smile.
"It became lighter," the armorer commented as he again tested the balance of the Type 89 in his hands while inspecting it. "Did you turn the bronze into steel?"
"Not just that. I made all the metal in Mr. Krauncha's gun become exactly the same as the gun he copied it from."
"And you did it in the most harmful way possible, you idiot," Krauncha suddenly commented sarcastically from the side, surprising the goddess and making everyone else glare at his rudeness. "Really? Making metal twist and shed into another kind of metal instead of dispelling and then materializing? Don’t you know that is one of the ways to create radiation, idiot creator goddess?”
A few seconds of silence passed after those words, during which Kurumi and I tightly held each other’s hands while the armorer's companions backed away from the pale looking armorer, all because of the fear of anything nuclear instilled into us by the Japanese educational system.
“Mr. Krauncha,” Izanami timidly replied. “By radiation...do you mean this strange light?”
Izanami cupped her hands in front of her...cupping nothing but air. But the casual question that Krauncha let out of his mouth next proved my thoughts wrong.
"You absorbed all the radiation into your own body?”
“Yes.“
“...and how will you dispose of it? Mind you, radiation is all kinds of slippery.”
“Uhm...I can ask my daughter to take it. She is the goddess of the biggest source of this strange light in the world.”
“Izanami, are you talking about Amaterasu?” My wife asked from beside me. The question made me remember that the biggest source of radiation on Earth is the Sun. And Amaterasu was the goddess of the sun...one of the deities of the sun in the world.
Upon seeing Izanami’s nod, Krauncha exclaimed that all was well and no harm was done. He then turned towards the still pale-faced armorer and asked when the armorer wants the two of them to start producing rifles.
“I...on second thought your modified Type 89 rifle’s balance is within tolerable limits. You are also right when you said we could just use the bipod, right guys?” The armorer asked his two companions.
“We just need to have it tested out at a shooting range,” one of the companions, now revealed to me as another armorer, said.
“And once we are satisfied with it, then you can proceed to magically create hundreds of modified Type 89’s for us – wait. All the magical copies will be exactly the same as this one, right?” the other one of the companions, which I presume is yet another armorer, asked.
“Down to the atomic level,” Krauncha boasted.
The third armorer exchanged looks with the other two armorers. Then they shrugged and then turned back to Krauncha and Izanami with smiles on their faces.
“Mrs. Izanami, we sincerely thank you for your cooperation with the Evaluation Support Unit.” the third armorer said. “We hope that in the future we could have more opportunities for cooperation with each other.”
Having said that, the armorer turned to Krauncha, and then asked him to follow them.
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Road to Oyama Town Hall Subashiri Branch, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
11:21 A.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
I sighed as I walked down the mostly deserted road towards the town hall, Izanami beside me and my boyfriend on her other side.
“It’s not about Yomi, Izanami. It’s about the radiation,” I explained to the depressed goddess. “We Japanese...have a peculiar relationship with anything related to nuclear energy.”
“Look,” Ichigo suddenly added in from the other side of Izanami. “I know you’re sad about being left out of the whole magical rifle factory scheme after that deal with the radiation. But it already happened. Move on and remember not to do anything that will make radiation next time.”
“Why did you do what you did and not...what did Krauncha said Ichigo? Dispel and materialize?”
“Dispel and materialize,” my fiance confirmed.
Izanami took a deep breath and then explained.
“It's partly because I wasn’t thinking. And partly because of my nature as a member of a pantheon.”
“And what does being a member of a pantheon have to do with what happened?” I asked.
“We are constrained in several ways by the stories and the beliefs that are told about us. As an example, me. Disregard what was believed of me before my husband's worshippers came to Japan and concentrate on what was told of me in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. What was I in the two works that made permanent what I was in the minds of the Japanese?"
Several seconds passed of embarrassed silence passed before Ichigo and I explained the Japanese Educational system's treatment of the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki.
We high school students only encounter Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki in one of two ways in modern times, in large part because of how tied up the two books were with the military government of World War Two that the two literary works were considered...not important to learn by everyone after the war.
One of the ways was through our Japanese History classes, wherein we don't read the contents of the books, but only had to memorize what year and era and who wrote those books. The other was through the Kobun or Ancient Japanese Texts course and the Kanbun or Chinese Style courses offered in High School, wherein...
We didn't have the heart to tell her how much the two of us and most people our age dislike those two courses.
"Then how do you two...how does every Japanese even know who I was if they didn't know anything about the insides of those two works?" Izanami almost wailed at us.
Several moments passed before I got the courage to confess that we learned about her through Pop culture.
“By Pop culture...are you referring to TV shows?” Izanami asked.
“Not only that, but manga and console games,” Ichigo added.
“Don’t forget Light novels and Novels,” I reminded.
“...tell me what you know?”
“You’re Izanagi’s wife and...uh...sister,” Ichigo finished awkwardly.
Ichigo's answer surprised me, since I didn't know that. It also embarrassed me on Izanami's behalf, because my fiance just accused her of committing incest.
“I am Izanagi's wife. The sister part came about from people trying to explain then justify where the first human got his wife from. The reasoning was that if the gods who created the first man are practitioners of incest or committed incest first, then the first human has an excuse to have sex with his sister and have children with her. And those children would also have an excuse justifying them having sex with each other to make more children, and so on and so forth until there are enough humans that incest wasn't a necessity to increase the numbers of humans," Izanami explained.
Several seconds passed in which both Ichigo and I digested the interesting and disturbing information she had just given us, before Izanami asked if we knew anything more about her.
"You're the mother of a lot of gods and islands," I said.
"All thirty six of them," Izanami replied with a sad smile.
As my boyfriend coughed at the number of children Izanami said she had with Izanagi, I...whimpered.
I still remember when I gave birth to my daughter. It was the most painful thing I had ever experienced in my entire life. And here beside me was a woman who went through that thirty six times.
"You're also the first known being to die in Japanese mythology," Ichigo added, reminding me again of how I almost died while giving birth to Ao.
“What happened after I died?”
“You went to Yomi,” I replied, remembering that part about Izanami through pop culture osmosis.
“As what? Am I the ruler of Yomi or am I an inhabitant of Yomi?” Izanami asked.
“...ruler?” I replied in uncertainty.
The way she asked that question implied something happened in the background of the myth that I don’t remember.
“No I wasn’t. I was merely the latest and most unusual arrival to the underworld of my husband’s people at the time. Yomi was...the practice of deifying dead humans into gods came from my husband’s people. Yomi was full of humans worshipped into gods, who insisted – “
Izanami suddenly stopped talking, and walking, while letting out a long sigh. This prompted me and Ichigo to also stop walking after a few more steps and look back at the goddess, who was massaging the temples of her head with both hands while her eyes were closed.
“Pardon me Kurumi, Ichigo. It appears I am still sore about the results of political arguments from thousands of years ago.”
“Is how you became the ruler of Yomi also political in nature?” Ichigo asked.
Izanami looked up and nodded. Then she started walking again, and we walked by her side.
“So now we have established that I gave birth to gods and islands, and have become the ruler of the land of the dead. Now I ask you, what kind of powers should I naturally possess based on myth? What kind of power should I instinctually be using according to myth?”
I instantly saw what Izanami was trying to tell us. And I saw Ichigo realize it at the same time as me. However...expounding, putting it into words was hard.
“I gave birth to the islands of Japan, so I’m the mother of all the Japanese islands. And since children listen to their mothers, if I ask them to do something, they will try to do it. But that’s for when I’m feeling too lazy to use my own magic on the soil and uplifted crust that I gave birth to. What happened earlier is just me using my magic on the soil and uplifted crust I gave birth to, in the manner which was most familiar and natural to me.”
Her words managed to demolish the block that was blocking us from expounding on what we realized by giving us a pattern to use.
“You gave birth to several gods, so you yourself are a goddess of either life or magic,” my fiance said, in the same manner as when he is happily answering a question given by our teacher.
“And since you’re the goddess of Yomi, you’re also a goddess of death,” I added in the same manner and sentiment.
We then noticed Izanami smiling awkwardly at Ichigo.
“Izanami?” Ichigo asked.
“Ichigo...the only reason why gods also use the term magic for many things they do is because the line between magic and religion is very, very blurry. But to call a deity a god of magic? It’s...somewhere between rude and unforgivable insult.”
Ichigo didn’t ask why calling a god a god of magic was insulting. He instantly apologized, and me along with him to convince kind hearted Izanami to forgive him.
Izanami herself quickly said she forgives him, and explained that she understands most people in the world don’t understand the difference. She even told us that eight years ago the Kannushi of the shrine she was working as a part time miko at, the very shrine on Nu island that is dedicated to herself and her husband, called her a goddess of magic with no knowledge about how it was to be used in relation to gods.
Unfortunately that was while her son Hiruko, more commonly known as Ebisu nowadays, and his wife Waka-ush were on a family visit to see Izanami. Ebisu instantly tried to punch the surprised old Kannushi in the face while Izanami and Waka-ush held him back.
“It was so, so embarassing. Hiruko only calmed down after Waka-ush kissed him and never let go off for half an hour, leaving me to explain the issue to Mr. Hiro and his family.”
“I commiserate with you,” Ichigo –
I gave my boyfriend a wide eyed glare for those words. Ichigo repeatedly blinked back at me with befuddlement on his face. And then he silently mouthed the word ‘parents’ at me, and then pointed at me and then himself while repeating that word.
I huffed and looked back down the road, to see the Oyama Town Hall, Subashiri Branch in sight.
“Well...moving on,” Izanami meekly said in an effort to make the awkward atmosphere go away. “From the Kojiki's point of view I’m more of a goddess of creation rather than life, since my children aren't just alive. They are also islands and gods and goddesses of natural phenomena, physical geographical features, and buildings at the same time...do you two still understand my explanation?"
"Easily enough," I replied.
"Just go on," Ichigo encouraged Izanami.
"As a goddess of creation, I...creation isn’t about making silly little things like guns or houses. Or money or cellphones.”
”Then what is it about?” I asked while having this feeling that her reply would be something to remember for the rest of my life.
“Islands, mountains, plains, and seas. Fire, trees, wind...Kami-umi and Kuni-umi wasn’t over. They had never been over. I could continue all that right this moment...it’s just...I don’t know how many humans would survive if I go at it full blast.”
‘Oh. Something to remember indeed.’
"How about Yomi? Did Kurumi guess it right or wrong?"
"She was right. I’m also the goddess of death because of Yomi. Death as a concept means decay, or entropy.”
Upon seeing us nod in understanding, Izanami continued.
“So in summation, I am most instinctually inclined to use magic that makes the target decay in any manner, magic that affects the soil and the crust of this planet, and magic that gives life and personalities to concepts.”
Several seconds passed after Izanami’s summation, before Ichigo commented that she could have just explained the magic that she was most inclined to use and then explain why she was most inclined to use them.
Izanami’s answer was to look away from him with an embarrassed face and explain that she was only trying to do it in the same way as the TV show Adventures with Dora.
I snorted. And then I started giggling as I remembered childhood memories of morning spent watching the Japanese language version of Dora the Explorer while Mama was doing chores around the house.
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Many thanks to Eternal_Freedom, Elheru Aran, Zixinus, Crazedwraith, Imperial Overlord, madd0ct0r and SpottedKitty of Stardestroyer.net
Atreidestrooper, Strypgia, Mjolnir66, Anasurimbor Phallus, Felidae, DEEPSIX, Sea SkimmerA2E6, Funkmachine7, Schlub-NoogieRat, Rubberanvil, Erinyes, bullethead, Winged_One, bluepencil, Mithril-blade, Scherazade of Spacebattles.com
muffet.2008, Lee Enfield, Bruce in Oz of milsurps.com
Lithgow Small Arms Factory Museum, and the helpful staff there.
I couldn't have done this without any of your help.
Oh. And if you, dear reader, had finished reading then please give some comment about this story and the direction its heading. Pretty please?
Re: An Unlikely Magical Girl and an Unlikely World War: reboot
Hello folks!
Sorry it took some time to update. It's because of research...and Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
Without further ado, here's the story. Please read and then leave a comment.
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Chapter 20
Oyama Town Hall Subashiri Branch, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
11:25 A.M.
Ohta Ichigo
“Pardon me Kurumi, Ichigo. I will now take my leave,” Izanami said at the very moment that the three of us reached the entrance to the parking lot that also served as the front porch of the single story, expansive structure that is the Subashiri Branch Oyama town hall.
We both looked at Izanami, who was gave us a smile in return.
“Where are you going?” Kurumi asked.
“I’ll visit Konohanasakuya at the top of Mt. Fuji. She is currently trying to heal her wounds from yesterday.”
“What wounds? When yesterday?” I asked while trying to recall anything about enemy soldiers attacking Mt. Fuji.
“The wounds she suffered from being attacked by High magic Skinchangers on top of Mt. Fuji. It happened right after Kurumi wore...oh I forgot to thank you Kurumi.”
The sheepish looking goddess turned towards Kurumi and bowed her head to her.
"Kurumi, thank you for wearing that ring at that very moment. If you had been any later in doing so, my granddaughter would have died."
"No, it's alright. That's what friends do for each other," my wife beamed at Izanami. And then she followed it up by asking Izanami about Konohanasakuya-hime.
"She's my granddaughter, through my son Oyamatsumi. I'm also sorry for not thanking you earlier."
"No problem, no problem. How are you going to go to her? Walk?"
Izanami smiled and shook her head.
"I said this earlier. If I ask my children to do something for me, they will try to do it."
Izanami then knelt down and patted the asphalt street..
"Yamato, please be a dear and take me to Konohanasakuya."
A moment later the asphalt under the goddess’ feet cracked. Then the asphalt started to split apart, to end up getting pushed out of the way by a small mound of earth that lifted Izanami a few centimeters up into the air.
“Izanami, please don't tell me that is what you're going to use to get to the top of Mt. Fuji," I told the goddess in a tone filled with exasperation at the thoughtlessness of the person I'm talking to.
As Izanami asked me what was the problem Kurumi pinched my back, expressing her displeasure with me in a manner that Izanami won't see.
"You do realize if that mound of your goes across town towards the volcano in that street wrecking manner, you're going to cost this town thousands if not millions of yen in repair costs, right?" I pointed out to Izanami.
Izanami blinked, and then she looked down at the mound at her feet.
"Yamato?"
Several moments passed, with Izanami looking down at...Yamato and seemingly having some kind of mental conversation with him while Kurumi and I watched on. And then Izanami nodded and looked back at us.
"Yamato says he will fix the broken street himself. And he swears that everything he damages will be as good as new once he fixes it."
"I don't want to sound distrusting, but can Yamato show me?"
I winced as the mound under Izanami moved, smashing apart the asphalt road and leaving behind a trench in the street. And then the broken asphalt...melted into a smoking, stinky and black colored slurry that quickly leveled itself into a flat surface.
Around five seconds later the slurry had hardened back into an undamaged asphalt road.
"Uhm...Yamato asks if that is good enough. It does look good enough, right Ichigo?" Izanami asked.
"It does look fine," I conceded.
With my concession given, Izanami gave her farewell once more. Then she and the mound under her started moving away, at the same time leaving behind the stink of asphalt in the air.
“Well, that was...interesting,” Kurumi commented once Izanami was out of sight, while staring at the magically repaired road.
“When has anything involving these magical beings not been interesting?" I replied in a deadpan that made my wife chuckle in amusement.
"Now that's over with, shall we go see our parents?"
I blinked at Kurumi's sudden topic change...and realized that I was no longer feeling any kind of trepidation. And that made me suspicious about the antic Izanami just pulled.
"Was that whole thing with Izanami done on purpose to stop me from thinking nervous about Dad?" I asked my wife.
The confused look and the 'what' that she replied with laid my suspicions about the antics earlier to rest. And with that I took a deep breath, took hold of Kurumi's right hand in my left, and then led the way towards the Town hall's entrance.
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Oyama Town Hall Subashiri Branch, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
11:26 A.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
As equal parts disbelief and amusement filled me at Ichigo's idea that Izanami was actually planning that whole silly thing earlier to ease my fiance's nervousness, we walked through the white wood and glass doors of the town hall and entered.
I was immediately thankful that Ichigo and I had decided to go to the police koban instead of the town hall branch.
There were futons, pillows and blankets everywhere in the hallway, where the patients and patient relatives from JGSDF Camp Fuji Regional Hospital and piles of...donated clothes, I presume, were laying or sitting on. There were people who I presume are town hall staff gingerly stepping around all the patients, relatives and sleeping objects while distributing water bottles and packaged bread from the plastic baskets that they held.
It was...not too noisy, to be fair to the town hall. Instead of a din of voices there was a constant background level of murmurs and whispers. Also, all the futons and the pillows and blankets looked so fluffy and comfortable...as if they are brand new. And the patients and their relatives actually looked happy instead of despairing.
But still, the space issue and the fact that they are literally sleeping in the hallways...never mind.
"I don't see Mama or Mother and Father," I said.
"Let's split up and look for them. I'll go left, you go right," Ichigo replied.
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After a minute or so of me searching through packed hallways and asking people left and right, a disheartened looking Ichigo came to get me, telling me he found them first.
Another minute or so later, I found Father and Mother and Mama, in the furthermost hallway from the main entrance filled by only the three of them and the occasional passing town hall personnel.
Father, now dressed in an unbranded white shirt and blue jeans, sat on the floor of the hallway with closed eyes while Mother was hugging...no. It was more like she draped herself over Father’s right side, as if she was trying to become his blanket from the world.
Nearby stood Mama, leaning her back against the wall of the hallway and looking at me with a sad smile.
"Good morning Mama," I whispered as I went forward to hug her.
"Good morning to you too, anak," Mama whispered back. "What took you so long to get here? Kentaro went to give all three of you breakfast more than an hour ago."
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I don’t know how long it took me, but I explained everything that happened this morning to Mama. From Major Suzumoto visiting us to when Izanami left us at the gates of the town hall earlier.
By the end of my storytelling she looked...resigned.
“Well, that’s life,” Mama softly sighed. “Sometimes you’re on top of the world, other times you’re at the very bottom.”
“At the very least we can get a lot of payment from the JSDF,” I whispered, reminding Mama of what we stand to reap for Ao’s cooperation with the JSDF.
“True. You did well in getting what you can get in this situation anak,” Mama softly praised me.
I smiled, momentarily feeling like a child who received the heartfelt praise of their parent for a 90 plus score on their test. And then I was back to the present again as I looked to my right.
Ichigo was at Father’s left side, holding his left arm with both hands and just softly whispering to Father with a very concerned look on his face while Father nodded from time to time, presumably at what my boyfriend was whispering.
“Mama,” I whispered as I looked back at her. “Papa said that Father can't remember his marriage ceremony and wedding proposal with Mother.”
“Yeah. It was bad news, but not...too shocking, thanks to the doctor’s forewarning yesterday.”
“How...whose idea was it to ask Father questions about his memories?”
Mama surprised me when she whispered that it was Mother's idea to start asking Father questions regarding his memories.
"Yes, I know," Mama continued whispering as I stared at her. "I told her it wasn't something that she has to know right now. But...to quote Yuki, 'I want to get the pain over as fast as possible.'"
"...that is so...”
“Just like Yuki? I know. That’s why I’m best frenemies with her,” Mama whispered with a smile.
Several seconds of silence on the part of me and Mama passed, only faintly broken by Ichigo’s whispering to his father. And then I broke the silence and asked Mama what else did Father forget.
“Oh boy. Uh...Hayato forgot how his parents died. But from the story that Yuki told me, I think that is a blessing in very thin disguise.”
"It's more a blessing for the far off future," I whispered cryptically.
Whenever Father doesn't have Mother or anyone else to hug tightly while sleeping, he suffers from recurring nightmares about his parents up to the present day. And the nightmares, Great Grandmother Taeko explained to me and Ichigo during the annual Ohta family reunion last December, was caused by the manner of their deaths.
Father and his family used to live in Kagoshima city. One day when Father was ten years old he, Grandmother and Grandfather were walking towards a store when they walked by a flatbed truck carrying a full load of 50kg cement bags that were loaded and secured improperly. It was so very unlucky that at the moment they walked by the ropes snapped, causing all three of them to get buried by a landslide of 50kg objects.
When they were dug out from under the bags, Grandfather and Grandmother were found dead from crushed heads and snapped spinal cords while Father survived with a snapped leg because his parents bodies protected him from the worst of it.
The company who owned the truck and the cargo, Aso Cement, voluntarily paid for everything. Including Father's weekly visits to a psychologist, who was the one that prescribed Father's hugging someone in his sleep.
"Interesting word choice there. Want to tell me about it?"
I shook my head no, to which she replied with a shrug.
"Then never mind about it," Mama whispered. "Anyways, back to Hayato. He also has difficulty getting names right."
"What," I asked, in a normal tone of voice. A moment later I realized I said that loud enough to take the attention of Ichigo and his parents.
A look to the right showed that I was right. Ichigo, Father and Mother were looking up at me in curiosity.
“Mama said you...have difficulty remembering names, Father?” I asked in an uncertain tone of voice.
Father replied in a very morose manner.
"I can only remember the first syllable and how many syllables the name had. The rest is...let me show you."
Father coughed to clear his throat, and then continued.
"Your name is Kumiko."
"It's Kurumi," Ichigo spoke up while rubbing Father's back.
"Kugako."
"Kurumi."
"Kutchinta."
The sadness and pity that was filling me up as Father proved unable to say my name was blindsided by the giggle that came from Mama.
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Oyama Town Hall Subashiri Branch, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
11:35 A.M.
Ohta Ichigo
"What are you laughing at Magpantika?" Dad said as we all stared at the laughing woman. Dad's question made Magdalena's giggling turn into all out laughing, of the kind that takes away your strength to stand.
"Magdalena," Mom growled out at Magdalena as it became apparent the laughter isn't going away any time soon, judging by the laughin being done even as Magdalena leaned her back to the wall for support.
"Sorry, sorry Yuki - bwahahaha! His words! His fucking - bwahahaha. Rice Cake? Wear a panty? With a straight face too! Oh my God I'm so sorry but it's funny for a Filipino sorry - hahahaha. Hayato stop saying Filipino words please lang tumigil ka na."
I wanted to scold Magdalena, Mom looked like she wanted to scold the woman, even Kurumi wanted to scold her mother. But it was very obvious that the laughter wasn't being done in malice, but it was because of something she genuinely thinks was funny.
"Magkatanan if you're going to continue laughing then I'm going to start charging money for all your laughs," Dad grumbled at Magdalena, which only made Magdalena have another bout of breathless laughter, this time sliding down the wall with her back to sit onto the floor.
“What did Dad accidentally say this time?” I asked my mother in law.
“Partners in – bwahahaha! Elopement! Bwahahaha! Seriously Hayato, stop. Stop. I’ll – bwahahaha! Die of laughter here!”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I don’t know how long it took, but Magdalena finally managed to stop laughing. But that time wasn’t unproductive for us, it was actually...cathartic.
In the midst of all the laughter, I discovered that all my sadness, pity and despair at Dad’s condition was...gone. Instead I was spending effort trying not to laugh at Magdalena’s sorry look from her bout of all out laughter, and so was Dad and Mom.
Kurumi, for her part, spent that time trying to help her mother stop laughing because at some point Magdalena was crying from the laughter.
“So, are you ok now Magdalena?” Mom asked as my wife helped Magdalena fix her face up from all the laughing she just did.
“I think so,” Magdalena replied with a slight breathlessness. “Hayato, you have to do something about your problem with names before you kill someone with laughter.”
“Do you have any suggestion?” Dad asked with slight peevishness.
“I do,” Magdalena instantly replied. “Don’t bother with forcing yourself to say the person’s whole name, not without any medical advice. Say their relation to you and then add the first syllable of their name. Here, I’ll show you an example. Pretend that I’m the one afflicted with your problem right this moment.”
Magdalena coughed, and then pointed at me.
“Son in law Ich.”
Then Magdalena pointed at Mom.
“Best frenemy Yu. Are you getting the idea, in law Ha?”
Our immediate surrounding was silent for several seconds, as everyone tried to digest Magdalena’s suggestion.
And then all of a sudden Mom did something that I had never seen her do where Kurumi or her parents could see her, and something that has become rare ever since Kurumi came into our lives.
She started giggling. And then she stopped and flirted with Dad, something that I haven't seen since the announcement of Kurumi’s pregnancy.
“Hayato, how would you call me in the way that Magdalena suggested?”
Mom noticed me staring at her with a slowly growing smile the moment that she finished saying that. Her only reply was a brief smile sent my way before her attention was taken away by Dad’s reply.
“My dear Yu. Dear wife Yu. My beloved Yu. My sweet, sweet Yu. Do you want more, love?”
As Mom started giggling again, I felt compelled to look to my left. There I saw Kurumi and Magdalena, looking on at my parents in amazement.
I gave Kurumi a raised eyebrow when I saw she noticed me looking at her, to which she responded by kneeling at my left side and whispering to my ear, possibly so Mom and Dad wouldn’t hear her.
“Ichigo, is there anything else Mother and Father were holding back and hiding whenever I’m around?”
It took a few moments of staring at her before I answered straight from the heart.
“Mom has apologized to you,” I whispered. “She has also accepted you as part of our family. You’ll see more of her and Dad in time. I promise.”
Kurumi’s answer was a smile and a hug.
That in turn brought a smile to my face, for that was a sign that my family, at long last, has finally healed from the emotional wounds of teenage parenthood.
==============================================================================================================================
Many thanks to Atreidestrooper of Spacebattles. I couldn't have done this without your help.
Please comment after reading, readers!
Sorry it took some time to update. It's because of research...and Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
Without further ado, here's the story. Please read and then leave a comment.
==============================================================================================================================
Chapter 20
Oyama Town Hall Subashiri Branch, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
11:25 A.M.
Ohta Ichigo
“Pardon me Kurumi, Ichigo. I will now take my leave,” Izanami said at the very moment that the three of us reached the entrance to the parking lot that also served as the front porch of the single story, expansive structure that is the Subashiri Branch Oyama town hall.
We both looked at Izanami, who was gave us a smile in return.
“Where are you going?” Kurumi asked.
“I’ll visit Konohanasakuya at the top of Mt. Fuji. She is currently trying to heal her wounds from yesterday.”
“What wounds? When yesterday?” I asked while trying to recall anything about enemy soldiers attacking Mt. Fuji.
“The wounds she suffered from being attacked by High magic Skinchangers on top of Mt. Fuji. It happened right after Kurumi wore...oh I forgot to thank you Kurumi.”
The sheepish looking goddess turned towards Kurumi and bowed her head to her.
"Kurumi, thank you for wearing that ring at that very moment. If you had been any later in doing so, my granddaughter would have died."
"No, it's alright. That's what friends do for each other," my wife beamed at Izanami. And then she followed it up by asking Izanami about Konohanasakuya-hime.
"She's my granddaughter, through my son Oyamatsumi. I'm also sorry for not thanking you earlier."
"No problem, no problem. How are you going to go to her? Walk?"
Izanami smiled and shook her head.
"I said this earlier. If I ask my children to do something for me, they will try to do it."
Izanami then knelt down and patted the asphalt street..
"Yamato, please be a dear and take me to Konohanasakuya."
A moment later the asphalt under the goddess’ feet cracked. Then the asphalt started to split apart, to end up getting pushed out of the way by a small mound of earth that lifted Izanami a few centimeters up into the air.
“Izanami, please don't tell me that is what you're going to use to get to the top of Mt. Fuji," I told the goddess in a tone filled with exasperation at the thoughtlessness of the person I'm talking to.
As Izanami asked me what was the problem Kurumi pinched my back, expressing her displeasure with me in a manner that Izanami won't see.
"You do realize if that mound of your goes across town towards the volcano in that street wrecking manner, you're going to cost this town thousands if not millions of yen in repair costs, right?" I pointed out to Izanami.
Izanami blinked, and then she looked down at the mound at her feet.
"Yamato?"
Several moments passed, with Izanami looking down at...Yamato and seemingly having some kind of mental conversation with him while Kurumi and I watched on. And then Izanami nodded and looked back at us.
"Yamato says he will fix the broken street himself. And he swears that everything he damages will be as good as new once he fixes it."
"I don't want to sound distrusting, but can Yamato show me?"
I winced as the mound under Izanami moved, smashing apart the asphalt road and leaving behind a trench in the street. And then the broken asphalt...melted into a smoking, stinky and black colored slurry that quickly leveled itself into a flat surface.
Around five seconds later the slurry had hardened back into an undamaged asphalt road.
"Uhm...Yamato asks if that is good enough. It does look good enough, right Ichigo?" Izanami asked.
"It does look fine," I conceded.
With my concession given, Izanami gave her farewell once more. Then she and the mound under her started moving away, at the same time leaving behind the stink of asphalt in the air.
“Well, that was...interesting,” Kurumi commented once Izanami was out of sight, while staring at the magically repaired road.
“When has anything involving these magical beings not been interesting?" I replied in a deadpan that made my wife chuckle in amusement.
"Now that's over with, shall we go see our parents?"
I blinked at Kurumi's sudden topic change...and realized that I was no longer feeling any kind of trepidation. And that made me suspicious about the antic Izanami just pulled.
"Was that whole thing with Izanami done on purpose to stop me from thinking nervous about Dad?" I asked my wife.
The confused look and the 'what' that she replied with laid my suspicions about the antics earlier to rest. And with that I took a deep breath, took hold of Kurumi's right hand in my left, and then led the way towards the Town hall's entrance.
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Oyama Town Hall Subashiri Branch, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
11:26 A.M.
Ikeda Kurumi
As equal parts disbelief and amusement filled me at Ichigo's idea that Izanami was actually planning that whole silly thing earlier to ease my fiance's nervousness, we walked through the white wood and glass doors of the town hall and entered.
I was immediately thankful that Ichigo and I had decided to go to the police koban instead of the town hall branch.
There were futons, pillows and blankets everywhere in the hallway, where the patients and patient relatives from JGSDF Camp Fuji Regional Hospital and piles of...donated clothes, I presume, were laying or sitting on. There were people who I presume are town hall staff gingerly stepping around all the patients, relatives and sleeping objects while distributing water bottles and packaged bread from the plastic baskets that they held.
It was...not too noisy, to be fair to the town hall. Instead of a din of voices there was a constant background level of murmurs and whispers. Also, all the futons and the pillows and blankets looked so fluffy and comfortable...as if they are brand new. And the patients and their relatives actually looked happy instead of despairing.
But still, the space issue and the fact that they are literally sleeping in the hallways...never mind.
"I don't see Mama or Mother and Father," I said.
"Let's split up and look for them. I'll go left, you go right," Ichigo replied.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After a minute or so of me searching through packed hallways and asking people left and right, a disheartened looking Ichigo came to get me, telling me he found them first.
Another minute or so later, I found Father and Mother and Mama, in the furthermost hallway from the main entrance filled by only the three of them and the occasional passing town hall personnel.
Father, now dressed in an unbranded white shirt and blue jeans, sat on the floor of the hallway with closed eyes while Mother was hugging...no. It was more like she draped herself over Father’s right side, as if she was trying to become his blanket from the world.
Nearby stood Mama, leaning her back against the wall of the hallway and looking at me with a sad smile.
"Good morning Mama," I whispered as I went forward to hug her.
"Good morning to you too, anak," Mama whispered back. "What took you so long to get here? Kentaro went to give all three of you breakfast more than an hour ago."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I don’t know how long it took me, but I explained everything that happened this morning to Mama. From Major Suzumoto visiting us to when Izanami left us at the gates of the town hall earlier.
By the end of my storytelling she looked...resigned.
“Well, that’s life,” Mama softly sighed. “Sometimes you’re on top of the world, other times you’re at the very bottom.”
“At the very least we can get a lot of payment from the JSDF,” I whispered, reminding Mama of what we stand to reap for Ao’s cooperation with the JSDF.
“True. You did well in getting what you can get in this situation anak,” Mama softly praised me.
I smiled, momentarily feeling like a child who received the heartfelt praise of their parent for a 90 plus score on their test. And then I was back to the present again as I looked to my right.
Ichigo was at Father’s left side, holding his left arm with both hands and just softly whispering to Father with a very concerned look on his face while Father nodded from time to time, presumably at what my boyfriend was whispering.
“Mama,” I whispered as I looked back at her. “Papa said that Father can't remember his marriage ceremony and wedding proposal with Mother.”
“Yeah. It was bad news, but not...too shocking, thanks to the doctor’s forewarning yesterday.”
“How...whose idea was it to ask Father questions about his memories?”
Mama surprised me when she whispered that it was Mother's idea to start asking Father questions regarding his memories.
"Yes, I know," Mama continued whispering as I stared at her. "I told her it wasn't something that she has to know right now. But...to quote Yuki, 'I want to get the pain over as fast as possible.'"
"...that is so...”
“Just like Yuki? I know. That’s why I’m best frenemies with her,” Mama whispered with a smile.
Several seconds of silence on the part of me and Mama passed, only faintly broken by Ichigo’s whispering to his father. And then I broke the silence and asked Mama what else did Father forget.
“Oh boy. Uh...Hayato forgot how his parents died. But from the story that Yuki told me, I think that is a blessing in very thin disguise.”
"It's more a blessing for the far off future," I whispered cryptically.
Whenever Father doesn't have Mother or anyone else to hug tightly while sleeping, he suffers from recurring nightmares about his parents up to the present day. And the nightmares, Great Grandmother Taeko explained to me and Ichigo during the annual Ohta family reunion last December, was caused by the manner of their deaths.
Father and his family used to live in Kagoshima city. One day when Father was ten years old he, Grandmother and Grandfather were walking towards a store when they walked by a flatbed truck carrying a full load of 50kg cement bags that were loaded and secured improperly. It was so very unlucky that at the moment they walked by the ropes snapped, causing all three of them to get buried by a landslide of 50kg objects.
When they were dug out from under the bags, Grandfather and Grandmother were found dead from crushed heads and snapped spinal cords while Father survived with a snapped leg because his parents bodies protected him from the worst of it.
The company who owned the truck and the cargo, Aso Cement, voluntarily paid for everything. Including Father's weekly visits to a psychologist, who was the one that prescribed Father's hugging someone in his sleep.
"Interesting word choice there. Want to tell me about it?"
I shook my head no, to which she replied with a shrug.
"Then never mind about it," Mama whispered. "Anyways, back to Hayato. He also has difficulty getting names right."
"What," I asked, in a normal tone of voice. A moment later I realized I said that loud enough to take the attention of Ichigo and his parents.
A look to the right showed that I was right. Ichigo, Father and Mother were looking up at me in curiosity.
“Mama said you...have difficulty remembering names, Father?” I asked in an uncertain tone of voice.
Father replied in a very morose manner.
"I can only remember the first syllable and how many syllables the name had. The rest is...let me show you."
Father coughed to clear his throat, and then continued.
"Your name is Kumiko."
"It's Kurumi," Ichigo spoke up while rubbing Father's back.
"Kugako."
"Kurumi."
"Kutchinta."
The sadness and pity that was filling me up as Father proved unable to say my name was blindsided by the giggle that came from Mama.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oyama Town Hall Subashiri Branch, Subashiri, Oyama, Sunto District, Shizuoka
May 12, 2013
11:35 A.M.
Ohta Ichigo
"What are you laughing at Magpantika?" Dad said as we all stared at the laughing woman. Dad's question made Magdalena's giggling turn into all out laughing, of the kind that takes away your strength to stand.
"Magdalena," Mom growled out at Magdalena as it became apparent the laughter isn't going away any time soon, judging by the laughin being done even as Magdalena leaned her back to the wall for support.
"Sorry, sorry Yuki - bwahahaha! His words! His fucking - bwahahaha. Rice Cake? Wear a panty? With a straight face too! Oh my God I'm so sorry but it's funny for a Filipino sorry - hahahaha. Hayato stop saying Filipino words please lang tumigil ka na."
I wanted to scold Magdalena, Mom looked like she wanted to scold the woman, even Kurumi wanted to scold her mother. But it was very obvious that the laughter wasn't being done in malice, but it was because of something she genuinely thinks was funny.
"Magkatanan if you're going to continue laughing then I'm going to start charging money for all your laughs," Dad grumbled at Magdalena, which only made Magdalena have another bout of breathless laughter, this time sliding down the wall with her back to sit onto the floor.
“What did Dad accidentally say this time?” I asked my mother in law.
“Partners in – bwahahaha! Elopement! Bwahahaha! Seriously Hayato, stop. Stop. I’ll – bwahahaha! Die of laughter here!”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I don’t know how long it took, but Magdalena finally managed to stop laughing. But that time wasn’t unproductive for us, it was actually...cathartic.
In the midst of all the laughter, I discovered that all my sadness, pity and despair at Dad’s condition was...gone. Instead I was spending effort trying not to laugh at Magdalena’s sorry look from her bout of all out laughter, and so was Dad and Mom.
Kurumi, for her part, spent that time trying to help her mother stop laughing because at some point Magdalena was crying from the laughter.
“So, are you ok now Magdalena?” Mom asked as my wife helped Magdalena fix her face up from all the laughing she just did.
“I think so,” Magdalena replied with a slight breathlessness. “Hayato, you have to do something about your problem with names before you kill someone with laughter.”
“Do you have any suggestion?” Dad asked with slight peevishness.
“I do,” Magdalena instantly replied. “Don’t bother with forcing yourself to say the person’s whole name, not without any medical advice. Say their relation to you and then add the first syllable of their name. Here, I’ll show you an example. Pretend that I’m the one afflicted with your problem right this moment.”
Magdalena coughed, and then pointed at me.
“Son in law Ich.”
Then Magdalena pointed at Mom.
“Best frenemy Yu. Are you getting the idea, in law Ha?”
Our immediate surrounding was silent for several seconds, as everyone tried to digest Magdalena’s suggestion.
And then all of a sudden Mom did something that I had never seen her do where Kurumi or her parents could see her, and something that has become rare ever since Kurumi came into our lives.
She started giggling. And then she stopped and flirted with Dad, something that I haven't seen since the announcement of Kurumi’s pregnancy.
“Hayato, how would you call me in the way that Magdalena suggested?”
Mom noticed me staring at her with a slowly growing smile the moment that she finished saying that. Her only reply was a brief smile sent my way before her attention was taken away by Dad’s reply.
“My dear Yu. Dear wife Yu. My beloved Yu. My sweet, sweet Yu. Do you want more, love?”
As Mom started giggling again, I felt compelled to look to my left. There I saw Kurumi and Magdalena, looking on at my parents in amazement.
I gave Kurumi a raised eyebrow when I saw she noticed me looking at her, to which she responded by kneeling at my left side and whispering to my ear, possibly so Mom and Dad wouldn’t hear her.
“Ichigo, is there anything else Mother and Father were holding back and hiding whenever I’m around?”
It took a few moments of staring at her before I answered straight from the heart.
“Mom has apologized to you,” I whispered. “She has also accepted you as part of our family. You’ll see more of her and Dad in time. I promise.”
Kurumi’s answer was a smile and a hug.
That in turn brought a smile to my face, for that was a sign that my family, at long last, has finally healed from the emotional wounds of teenage parenthood.
==============================================================================================================================
Many thanks to Atreidestrooper of Spacebattles. I couldn't have done this without your help.
Please comment after reading, readers!