Battle Royale Fan Fiction ❯ If... ❯ Glory ( Chapter 12 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Chapter 11: Glory

I am the enemy
I am the antidote
Watch me closely
I will stand up - now

We will rise
Rise above”
We Will Rise"-Arch Enemy

Green

"You don't hate people, you just feel sorry for them." Even without the constant influence of his mother's pet phrase, Yoshio knew he'd still feel a little bad about Hiroshi's death. The bruises, the insults, it just didn't pay to get angry about it. Anger destroys you from the inside, causing you to hurt people and get locked away, just like it did to dad.

"Wait." Hiroki said out of the blue when something leaning against an open garage door caught his eye. He regretfully let go of Kayoto's hand, checked his tracker, and ran off to get it.

It was almost as if their team was in an alternate universe. Sure they were not immune to the death calls and worry of dead friends, but avoiding the other teams did have its advantages.

"Yoshio?" Kayoto turned to her larger teammate, her arms wrapped around herself as the thought in her head weighed heavily on her body. "Are you Christian?"

"Uh, no." Okay, that was unexpected.

"Yuko was one and I was hoping if you knew anything about it." The memories of Yuko began to come back to her in all their bitter sweetness. "She liked to talk about these creatures, angels, yeah that's what they're called and how her god would send them to protect people." A slight laugh escaped her lips. "She even had this tacky little collection of them in her room with their big, creepy eyes and stuff."

"Can't be any worse my mom's "Clown Corner"."

”Probably.” Kayoto paused as her mood turned somber. "Do you think she's become one?"

Yoshio gave her a confused look. "Oh." He briefly cursed his slow-wittedness. "Maybe that's what happens to Christians when they die. The good ones, not the bad ones. They become angels and visit earth to help people."

"We could definitely use the help." She stretched like a cat awakening from a long nap. "So what do the bad ones become?"

"Little blue penguins." Kayoto couldn't help but to laugh. "With peg legs and crudely stitched bodies and they have clean-up the angels' houses until they have enough money to reincarnate."

Her imagination flooded with the thought of a pink Mitsuko-Penguin (complete with two lumps on its chest, representing the mammoth gonzo-boobs she had in life) polishing Angel-Yuko's collection. "Thanks." She said with a smile as her laughter died down. "I needed that."

"No problem." He finally understood why Hiroki was so nervous when she was about to kiss him; that smile of hers pretty enough to make him flustered. Then again Yoshio always figured that he'd end up like his mom and be ignored by the opposite sex until he was twenty-one.

"Sorry I took so long." Hiroki finally returned with the screwed-off handle of a broom in tow.

He gazed at their leader's new weapon. "Maybe you could tape those arrowheads you made to the ends and you'd have a spear."

"Not a bad idea." In the midst of all the chaos, death, and fear, Yoshio had to wonder if just maybe this horrid game wasn't a complete nightmare.

White

"I, Mizuho Inada, swear that I will make it out of here." Away from the safety of the Ivory Tower, Mizuho carved her friend's names into the dirt and drew a coffin around each one with her kitana. "And when I come back I will make the demon, Kamon, and the abysmal lords he serves pay for their sins." Saluting their mock graves, she walked off to join the others. Any fear she would've had going through with Yukie's plan was replaced with the righteous anger of an ancient god.

Even if the rest of the Ivory Crusaders preferred to forget they were heroes and go back to their old lives, Mizuho never would. Of the hundreds of kids The Program killed every year, she was sure that at least a fourth of those kids' families, lovers, and friends could rally under her banner. Slowly and surely they would gain power and return their dictator to the Hell that spawned him. She then remembered a mustached man once told her that tree of freedom must be occasionally watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants; truer words were never spoken.

She turned back to her team as they stood twenty feet from their assigned boat, watching they sky for the other team's flares to light.

"Ready?" Yukie asked the second the flares lighted the sky.

"Hell yes." Grasping her kitana tight enough to make her knuckles turn white, Mizuho and her team silently made her way towards the boat. Having the guns, Sakura and Yukie took the front while she and Tadakatsu followed behind.

Even her injured leg couldn't keep Sakura from lagging behind, renewing Mizuho's faith in the plan. Truth be told, Mizuho never gave much credit to the short-haired girl; too flighty and love-struck if you asked her. She sure didn't know how to shut-up when her boyfriend bought her that stupid handbag. Boyfriend or not, Sakura was now carrying a warrior's determination, even as two shadowy figures leapt from a pair of nearby bushes and plugged her full of holes.

"Sakura!" Mizuho found herself screaming in pure horror. One of the figures pointed it's gun at Mizuho only to have the three shots whiz past her when Tadakatsu tacked her to the ground to get her out of the way while Yukie blasted a few holes into the other figure's head.

"Mizuho..." Sakura's weakened voice drew her attention.

"Sakura. Thank the Gods you're alive." She threw one of Sakura's bloody arms over her shoulder. "Come on, we can still get out of here."

Her unintentional innocence made Sakura smile as if Mizuho was just a cute little kid. "Tell Kazuhiko that I love him." She coughed up a spot of blood. "And Yoshimi that I'm...so-sorry that I...wasn't there for her..."

"You're not dead yet." Sakura stopped breathing; a dreamer to the end. "Goddamnit!" She angrily let her corpse drop on the ground and ran to the second figure like an enraged tiger with her kitana as her claws, striking so much fear that it couldn't stop her from nearly slicing its neck off.

"..." Yukie's blood ran cold at first at the sight of its blood gushing out and seconds later when the body fell near a patch of moonlight, revealing a familiar face.

"Wait a minute." Tadakatsu ran up to the newly fallen body, wiping the freshly-sprayed blood to get a better look. "That's the guy that robbed my dad's store."

Yukie immediately ran to the other body. "Sanji Kuromoya."

"What's he doing here?" Mizuho asked, wiping her kitana on the grass. It wasn't like he was that hard to forget. It's not everyday that you saw some senior that not even the Kiriyama family would mess with crying like a little girl when the police hauled his butt away for selling dope in school.

"Monsters." A few angry tears fell from Yukie's eyes. "The Program must've promised them their freedom if they did this."

"Oh God." Tadakatsu began to go pale. "Mayumi."

"I'm sure she's fine." Yukie could almost swear that voice of doubt that haunted her at the light house was laughing it's ass off at her optimism. "Her and Shou have those extra grenades, remember." Bad girl or not, at least Yoshimi was nice enough to share the rest of her team's hand grenades with her and Mayumi's teams.

At first Yukie thought that she was only doing it because Yamamoto put her up to it, but then Sakura immediately jumped to Yoshimi's defense when she shared her feelings with her late teammate. And when Sakura said that she "shouldn't judge people by the bad choices they've made", only perplexed Yukie even more.

"Get them!" One of the soldier's bullets whizzed by Yukie's head as he and his partner left the safety of their post to finish them off.

"Mizuho. Tadakatsu. Take them out." She tossed Tadakatsu her gun and took the six-shooter resting limply in Sanji's hand. "I'll get the boat started."

With a brief, silent prayer for Sakura and anyone else might've died while her plan was in action, she ran blindly toward the boat with her gun blazing. The remaining two bullets in her gun knocked down one of the soldiers with a pair of shots to the chest as her teammates took out the other one. It was cold, but she had to see this thing through. Mizuho's quick smile and thumbs-up renewed Yukie's confidence while she plunged her kitana into surviving soldier's injured chest. The nagging voice was now as dead as those soldiers the second she made her way to boat's ignition, turned the key, and witnessed both the engine and her collar explode the second she got it to start up.

"..." All Tadakatsu could do was stare almost catatonically the second Yukie's head separated from her neck and landed in the water. He began to feel a warm stream of tears fall from his eyes; damn it, this wasn't supposed to happen. Sure his team was becoming a bit of a trap magnet, but as much as he hated to admit it, he almost believed Mizuho's "good always prevails" bullshit. Yuiichiro definitely would've fallen for it hook, line and sinker.

Yuiichiro, good ol' Yuiichiro. He wondered if Mayumi would ever forgive him for putting his childhood best friend's safety over her when he voted to stay (provided that she ever found out.) If the girls' optimism was right, the both of them would be alright. After all his team had been through, they deserved the at least some of their hopes to come true.

"Game over, Tadakatsu." Mizuho said; her enthusiasm drained from her very being as she jabbed her kitana into the sand and feel to her knees. "Game over."

Watching Mizuho as the cold, hard reality of The Program finally set it, was disturbing in its own right. Gone was the school space case with her wild dreams, the messed-up little stories she wrote in Composition class, and her samurai fantasies when ever she had Sakura's kitana in her hands. She'd almost be cute (when Tadakatsu thought about it), if she toned it down a bit. Ok, not this toned-down where she was practically another person staring at her knees.

"Who the Hell was I kidding?" She said, unable to lift her head as if it would be too painful to even attempt. "The Ivory Tower, our great destiny, it's all bullshit."

"This isn't a game, Mizuho."

"I know that!" Her head snapped back up. "Just because everyone laughs at me doesn't mean I'm oblivious." She pulled herself up, leaving her kitana in the ground, not a single tear marred her face. "Maybe it just helped me keep my mind off this crap. Sakura had her boyfriend. Yukie had her plan. Kaori and Megumi had their "husbands." And you, well, you're a guy; you don't have to worry about that kind of stuff."

"So you don't think I care, do you?" Now wasn't the time, but he couldn't help in feeling a little offended.

"Of course not," Mizuho struggled to find the words, but if felt like they slipped out of her hands when she tried to grab them. "It's just that you guys, especially you jock types, are better at keeping it in. That's all." She let out an embarrassed groan. "Never mind."

Some hero she turned out to be. Hero? Ha! She couldn't even make a halfway decent loser if she tried. All those dreams and fantasies and look where they got her? If she just kept her "righteous fury" to herself, they'd be stuck with that tie, but knowing Yukie's charisma, she'd convince them all to stay.

Mizuho quickly turned her back to Tadakatsu when she felt a tear force itself from her eye. If she just listened to Yukie, Sakura and her team's much smarter leader would still be alive. And who knows who else they could've saved if they stayed?

"Stop crying you idiot!" Mizuho mentally screamed as she felt those rebellious tears run down her face as punishment for her sins.

"Mizuho?" It was like his voice didn't exist at all. She just stood there, a tense, quivering mess of emotions, ready to explode. "Damn it." He tried to think. "Yuuichiro was better at handling this crap than I am. Think Tadakatsu, what would he do?" Then it hit him. "Milady." He got down on one knee, his head bowed like a noble prince to his fair damsel. "I, Tadakatsu Hatagami, pledge thy service to ye."

"Don't make fun of me!"

"I am not, my fair lady. Thy will is my command." He quickly peeked his head up, Mizuho stifled a laugh. "Dub thee so I may aid thee in thy quest."

Mizuho just shook head, ran over to pull her kitana from the sand and then to Tadakatsu to begin. "I dub thee Sir Edmund: The Puppy-Kicker."

"How about you don't.”

"Fine. Then how does Lord Tiamat sound?"

"Whatever." With a laugh, she raised her kitana and knighted him.

"God, I hope no one saw me." Tadakatsu unknowingly said out load as Mizuho helped him up.

"Yeah, you did look pretty stupid down there." She smiled back at him, ready to face reality.

Blue

This was definitely not what Takako or the rest of the Blue Team expected when they reached the one of ends of the island. She knew good and well that Yutaka's Revenge failed when the last death call rang with Hiroshi and Megumi's names on its lips, but she wouldn't give up hope that it at least concerned the guards enough to leave their posts.

What greeted them where two corpses in prison jumpsuits and a heap of smoke in the distance from where the guards' boat would be. Thoughts of Hiroki entered her head when her eyes came across the first corpse, a large, strong male, shot several times in the chest. She breathed sigh of relief after she ran to his side and looked upon the face of a middle-aged man with graying hair and stout features. Then her regret kicked in. The poor man looked so sad; as if something he wanted so badly was cruelly taken away from him before he got the chance to even act upon it.

"I know how you feel." Takako unknowingly muttered.

"I'm so sorry, Takako." Yuiichiro said putting his hand on her shoulder.

"Thanks." She placed one of her hands over his, savoring the warmth and compassion that had made its way to this cold, heartless island. She just knew he was blushing. As cute as it was (kind of like when ever Hiroki would unconsciously place his index finger against the side of his nose when he was at loss for words), she decided against looking up to avoid embarrassing him.

"Did you know him?"

"Not really. I could just relate to him, that's all." Takako gave one last look at the fallen man before accepting Yuiichiro's help in getting up. "Hope you find what you're looking for."

"Any clue on the other one, Mitsu?" He turned to Mistuko who was examining the other body.

"You remember Ai Shirumi?" Mitsuko snuck the white-haired corpse's six-shooter into her bag. Her teammates shook their heads. "From Class A. The one all the seniors called Snowball."

"Because of her white hair, right?"

"Uh, right." Mitsuko rolled her eyes, she just didn't have the heart to tell him that it had more to do with her oral talent with the same nickname than the fact that her hair started going grey at twelve. As amusing as it would've been to see his face when she would obviously have to explain it to him, now was not the time.

Who would've thought Ai's little attempt to protest the school in fear of being drafted into The Program would've lead her here. "Such a pity." She mused as Yuiichiro helped her up. "I could've used a third girl."

Even Hirono and Yoshimi were cool with the idea when she revealed her plan on the bus before it gassed them, at least Yoshimi was. Hirono just mock pouted, "Oh and I had my heart set on Mayumi Tendo" and then busted-up laughing. When she thought about it, she was going to miss those two.

"Mitsuko!" Yoshimi's voice drew Mitsuko and her team to the smoking wreck where the guards' boat (complete with two dead guards and a very much alive Yamamoto) lay.

"Yoshimi." Mitsuko mustered up all the cheer she could. Yoshimi, just as loyal as she's always been. Waiting to run to her boss with open arms, a big smile, and her gun drawn out, ready to fire...

End of Chapter 11. 22 Students remain.