Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex Fan Fiction ❯ My Magical Gate Experience Was Ruined, As I Expected ❯ YGS: 19 ( Chapter 19 )

[Batou]

I’d been assigned to assist Itami and Hikigaya’s operations at the empire’s capitol city, such as it was. We were supposed to continue negotiations for their surrender, only it wasn’t being presented that way, which is why it was going to fail. The Diet idiots were sabotaging this entire project with a badly considered peace treaty.

The whole capitol was no larger than my neighborhood in Chiba, and smelled like an open sewer. I hadn’t suffered such assaults on my senses, and such poverty, since Mexico. Itami’s sergeant was wounded (bad back) and was getting rehab back in Japan. Getting to terms with his team and the dignitaries was a bit more settled than they had been in their visit to Tokyo. The city was full of poor people, disease, plague fleas, even more disease, slave markets, slaves, and soldiers. We also had recon troops in parts of the city, and we had allies in certain mansions outside town, including some count and his allies, who wanted peace as hard as they could, and the other side was Pina Co Lada’s insane family, who wanted to keep slaughtering people and slavery forever.

A pair of jets flew overhead and blew up the senate dome. I watched the smoke rise and smiled. That would get their attention. A little more pointed negotiation. Maybe this wasn’t entirely doomed.

We were driving wagons to the Count’s mansion, loaded down with various manufactured goods, silks, swords, the equivalent of glass beads for the natives. Stuff to use as bribes. Exotic portable wealth for corrupt politicians and their lackeys. With so many dead in the first battles, the war hawk faction was weak and had little to offer. Most of their men and sons were dead, mulched in the battlefield and the tunnel floor inside the Gate. We had Komachi to thank for that last one. The arrival of the giant dragon head, which was my first time seeing it… wow. Komachi killed that? I was impressed. I looked forward to future dinner parties where I’d get to hear the story. The elf girl, Tuka Luna Marceau, looked happy at seeing the monster that killed her village, and her father, dead. Some of the madness that had been gripping her mind faded to the relief of Itami’s medic.

One of Itami’s men was working at a spy, a cook at the feast in local plainclothes. Apparently mustard didn’t exist here so the flavor was a favorite by guests eating the various meat skewers being served. They ate seasoned grilled meat, drank wine, and talked politics and business, which were mostly the same thing. I circulated, listening. In the distance I could hear Itami’s men demonstrating rifle fire, mortars, and showing just how badly outgunned these imperials were. The call went out over the radio to hide from the arrival of Pina’s insane prince of a brother. I watched him. I did not like him. He looked like the sort of trouble best introduced to 2500 feet per second of copper jacketed lead. This entire negotiation plan is madness.

The louse stole a bit of the feast food and left after insulting everyone he saw, his soldiers looking nervous and put upon.

“Tell me why we can’t end that trash?” I asked Itami when he finally showed up.

“I have orders, and so do you,” he said, but I could see he agreed with me. Itami wasn’t entirely dumb.

++++++++

[Batou]

The following morning, at Oh Dark Thirty we got an emergency message to prepare for an earthquake from Itami’s medic, as reported from the local beast-people who could apparently sense the foreshocks. The sergeant on the security detail at the medical clinic for the whores in the slum said he’d been at Kobe when the quake struck and dogs went missing and howled for several days before the quake hit. We went outside the mansion and waited. There was a pulse that made me dizzy, and then rolling from a quake. Big one, maybe a seven. All the stone in the area creaked and hissed and some of the mortar shot out as sand and dust between close-laid stones. The princess was freaking out. Itami walked through it until it stopped. We’re Japanese. We are used to earthquakes. The princess got even more upset, insisting we escort her to her father’s throne room. Ebina came with us, all in uniform now, though Itami was in his dress blues without the coat, his sidearm but no rifle. I fixed bayonet, as did Hina Ebina. We escorted her Royal Highness past dazed and frightened Roman-looking guards who ignored their duty in terror from the moving earth, and got all the way to the throne room. The emperor was a sullen and depraved example of a typically inbred royal personage. He’d clung to power by killing his allies and enemies in equal measure. He ruled an empire of slaves. I wanted to shoot him.

The idiot prince entered with a Japanese girl, crying for help, shackled, and then threw insults at our pet princess. Itami demanded the girl’s release. The prince sneered and ordered his guards to attack us.

“Ebina. Batou. These are yours. Leave the prince for interrogation.” I shouldered my rifle and fired into the shields, killing three men per bullet, to their terrified screams. Ebina did the same and in moments the throne room guards were bleeding out on the floor. It was a gruesome display these fools had clearly not believed were true, until now. Ebina set aside her rifle and pulled on her weighted gloves. She approached the prince, who continued to stare in disbelief and uppercut him so hard teeth flew out. On the ground she started to batter him left to right and Itami approached and pointed his pistol at the barely conscious face.

“You took slaves?” he said in bastard Latin. “Where are they?”

“Unk.. unk… died… mines. Weak,” he sputtered. I looked at the girl, who’d been horribly abused and saw a rabbit woman come forward and stand over the prince. She felt familiar.

“NO!” she said. “You mustn’t kill the prince!” Itami looked at her, gun still pointing at the slaver prince below him. I stepped forward, seized her around the waist, and stepped away bearing her with me. There was a shot and the prince went still. The woman stank and she cried out, hitting me with her elbows. The flack vest absorbed it. I released her to fall to the ground, where she started crying in rage and defeat. She was a slave too, and showed terrible abuse. Itami looked shocked, but resignation covered his face. He turned to examine the emperor, aimed and fired once, then twice.

Pina Co Lada screamed.

I suppose, all things being equal, this was sort of a bad day.

++++

I have to say we did well to leave the palace, though Pina insisted on staying. One of her brothers was a moderate and had some concept of just how screwed their empire was. With Molt assassinated, and the evil prince put down like the animal he was, we extracted the two slaves: one a Japanese girl getting treated by our medic, and the other the odd rabbit woman who felt so familiar to me.

“Batou. Husband. I know you,” she eventually said in her bastard latin. “I am called Tyuule.”

Ah. Another case. Saki would be perturbed. This woman was quite unwell, and knowing the abuses of the depraved prince, probably a wealth of STDs and serious medical problems. She’s been raped and tortured, obviously, and who knew what had been happening to her before that. The corpsman turned her attention to Tyuule and dealt with the surface wounds, recommending treatment via airlift to Alnus base. They would need a lab to check what diseases she had, and access to a pharmacy to treat them. And probably a psychologist and as long as we’re wishing, a memory wipe of the last few months, or year.

“Itami. This is a Case 9 condition,” I reported to him. He sighed, looking dejected.

“I am in so much trouble,” he admitted.

“Stop thinking about your career. This empire is a cancer. The Doves back home need a kick up the ass. It could only end in death over here. The empire is a diseased monster which needs to die to save any of the people worth saving. We can work with the good people. The empire was sick when they attacked Ginza, and sick when it sent its vassals to die to our guns. It needs to die, and we should finish the job. We might give Pina and her brother a chance. They might be able to deal with us, if they don’t get deposed by more madmen. That’s the best we can hope for. You can plead your case to Hikigaya.”

“Which one?” he asked.

“Hachiman understands brutal political realities, and the ways of dirty politics and negotiations. Komachi… I’m not sure. Did you see the dragon? She killed it, you know. She might have turned the prince into chunks and lit the throne room on fire. Make your case to Hachiman before you go see the general. I wanted to shoot them too.”

I think, on balance, that the situation could have been a whole lot worse. If the evil emperor were still alive we’d be dealing with his mad schemes to kill us. If the Prince were alive, we’d be facing assassins and probably some kind of secret police enforcers killing our allies and making little girls into orphans, where they’d latch onto one of our diplomats and threaten to marry them. The prince would probably attack his own sister and put her in jail, ready for gang rape and torture because his syphilitic brain hadn’t killed him yet. All in all? This was necessary. Better now than after our allies were too dead to vote.