360° (part ii)
TITLE: 360° (part ii)
CHARACTER/PAIRING: Ryo-centric, NEWS
RATING: G
WORD COUNT: 7,222
SUMMARY: He'd been waiting for his chance to go to war, but once he gets there, it's a little different than what he'd been expecting.
PART I
Whether or not it's unprofessional doesn't matter; what matters, is that the Lt. General was absolutely right. The peace between Osaka and Tokyo does nothing to alleviate the tensions between them. In just two months, an extra-right wing party, the Kansai National League, and military officers stage a coup of the government, expelling the just very-right wing Osaka People's Party. Once this team has the seal of the prime minister, the first thing they do is remobilize the military and declare war on Tokyo, clearly stating that they will retake the honor and glory that Tokyo stole from them.
The Osakan officers on the board immediately report, taking the first train down, nearly on fire with anger when they realize Ryo isn't on board, hasn't already reported in, and isn't answering his cell phone.
He's in Yamapi's office, hyperventilating into a bag while Koyama rubs his back.
"This can't be happening," he mumbles, voice distorted. "This can't be happening."
Yamapi isn't hyperventilating, but he does have his head in his hands, seeming very distraught.
More than 60% of the Osakan military reports for duty within a week, and the Tokyo military responds in like, claiming that they will only be engaging in defensive warfare, though the definition of that is left open-ended.
But, while a majority of Osakans reported in, many stayed hidden in Osaka, denied their military past, unwilling to keep fighting, and a few thousand even fled north, surrendered themselves, sought asylum - anything. Cannon-fodder, low-, mid- and high-rank officers alike flee to Tokyo, with no will to fight, the idea of living on as a POW or detainee sounding infinitely better than further warfare.
With such a large influx of what should be enemy soldiers, but most definitely aren't, the Tokyo military and bureaucracy have no idea what to do with so many of them.
The meeting is like chaos, all levels of generals talking over each other, stressing about Osaka's advance towards Tokyo, but also the Osakan deserters that are looking to them for help. And yet, in the midst of so many generals, it's Captain Masuda, standing right behind Lt. Gen Sakurai's chair through the whole meeting, who figures out exactly what to do. The answer is a simple kind of genius.
Put Colonel Yamashita in charge of them.
He's given absolute freedom in his charge of them, and he takes it on with glee, dragging Ryo, Koyama and Tegoshi with him as support. But, completely without meaning or planning it, others follow too, attracted by the colonel's charisma, his history of integrating the two warring sides at the Chichijima facility and unbridled optimism.
Men who should have reported to their bases in Tokyo, Yokohama, Saitama and elsewhere, instead, report to his little encampment in eastern part of Yamanashi, ignoring the calls of their proper commanding officers.
There is never any quarreling among the Osakans and Tokyoites there; it's just like on Chichijima, but freer, more natural, almost like a fairy tale, and it makes Yamapi determined to change the fates of their island nation.
A little more than a week later, giant boxes are delivered late at night, Yamapi and Koyama carefully counting them and checking their contents, before stuffing them into a storage shed to deal with again the morning. Ryo watches from the opening of his tent, groggy, and doesn't understand until morning what just happened.
They're uniforms, in a brilliant shade of bluish-emerald; neither wholly Osakan or Tokyo, right in the middle. There are enough for all present, in the proper sizes, and not a single person rejects the new uniform. They happily accept them, chattering with those near them in line like giddy schoolchildren, and then rush off to transfer the patches that symbolize their respective ranks.
Ryo feels a little silly when he's handed his own by Tegoshi, smiling.
"But I'm a spy."
Tegoshi laughs. "You're Ryo-kun."
It takes several days for every one to get theirs, and once the rush is done, Ryo can't help but ask Yamapi how he managed this.
"Shige is really good at getting things," is all he says, cryptic, but so simple at the same time.
Any military strategist or leader, regardless of where their loyalties lie, have to admit the Osakan push towards Tokyo is spectacular, catching every one in their wake completely off-guard. They don't stop for more than an half a day during their three week push north, until they reach Shizuoka, just 180 kilometers from Tokyo to consolidate, with other forces halting along the Chuo/Nagano/Joshin Expressway, waiting to see what Tokyo's response will be.
Tokyo's answer is to fortify the city's defenses, and the surrounding districts cry out, left completely defenseless in the face of Osaka's threatening stance, and the emerald-wearing officers all go to Yamapi.
"No advancing army leaves civilians untouched. Remember what the Soviets did to the Germans in the last days of the second World War!"
"They will be especially harsh to those around Tokyo, whom they already view as enemies."
Yamapi sighs, torn, unsure.
Koyama leans over, whispering in his ear, "We really can't stand idly by as civilians are harmed."
"I know," he says, and asks for a team to go check on the limited supply of weapons they have in the sheds, and for every one to clean their weapons thoroughly in preparation.
Osaka is ready to push forward, ready to crush Tokyo completely, but just 5 hours into their march from Shizuoka, they are stopped, utterly, by just a few well placed mines and bullets. Their line of advancement is still and as the generals in green yell and scream and foot soldiers awkwardly stand-about, trying to figure out what happened, Tegoshi radios Yamapi back in Yamanashi, the smile evident in his voice.
The same things happen as other Osakan encampments attempt to advance from their positions in Nagano, Niigata and western Yamanashi. They are dead-still.
Tokyo is just as confused about the news as the Osakans. They wait and listen, calculating their positions, until the radio chatter, on all channel dies, and Colonel Yamashita comes on, forcing their attention, informing every one of where the pacifist officers of Osaka and Tokyo stand and are capable of.
"All Osakan battalions will retreat to 20 kilometers south of their last encampment. You will comply."
In the background noise of the radio message, some one says, in Kansai-Japanese, "Or we'll make you comply."
Osaka doesn't comply, and honestly, no one really expected them to.
Yamapi sits at his little makeshift desk and shakes his head, gives out the order to go ahead with the plan.
None of his officers can afford to shoot blindly; not when their supplies are so low. Each bullet, each mine, each grenade is precious, but Yamapi stresses to every one over the radio to minimize causalities.
"We're not here to kill any one. That defeats the purpose."
The Osakan forces are scattered and confused, weary of this new enemy in emerald, whose members may very well be their friends, or their enemies. It's impossible to tell. Pushing them back 20 kilometers is nothing, done in just a few days.
The generals are frantic, enraged that this colonel from Tokyo has the balls to use Osakans against them. They curse his mother over the radio, over and over on every channel they can, hoping he hears it and feels at least a little bad about himself.
Yamapi hears it, but he doesn't deign to lower himself to their level. Ryo doesn't either, but he does get on the radio, and in perfect, natural Kansai Japanese - the kind that only a local boy would have - lets them all know that in the morning, delegates, diplomats and professional negotiators from the United Nations are arriving to settle this dispute and end all this crazy shit, and if you don't like it: suck it, bitches.
Ryo laughs when he signs off, and the other Osakan officers in the room laugh too. Yamapi looks a little confused, like maybe he doesn't understand Kansai humor.
"That was a little rude, Ryo-chan."
He shrugs, stomach filled with nervous-excited butterflies.
The professional negotiators know what they're doing, quickly getting to business, right away shooting down ideas from both Tokyo and Osaka; they know what works and aren't going to let pettiness threaten the dialogues.
They move along slow and steady, but advances are always being announced, and the process, being properly done, shows just how hastily and poorly done it was the first time. Public opinion slowly shifts to being behind peace, but Tokyo and Yamapi's forces are still nervous, and part-way through, they're pretty sure they've been figuratively fucked.
A bomb goes off in Osaka, downtown, near the parliamentary building, fingers are all pointed at Tokyo, some at Yamapi and his officers. It's panic, and the Osakans walk out of the talks.
Things looks like their going to go to shit again. The only saving grace is that the generals in Tokyo send Yamapi supplies, to replace what was lost during their push-back.
"Do you really think it was done by some one from Tokyo?" Masuda asks over the radio, voice doubtful.
"Probably not," Koyama mutters, sewing a button back onto his uniform. "Tokyo has more to lose from continuing the fight, right?"
"But that would mean it was Osaka bombing Osaka, and that's-"
"Not entirely out of the realm of possibility," Ryo says, interrupting Yamapi. "The new government there has a legitimacy built around warfare against Tokyo. If there's a real peace between the cities, that's it- they're out of power."
Koyama looks up from his sewing, eyes wide. "... You really think they'd kill civilians, the people of their very city, just to stay in power?"
Without any hesitation, Ryo replies, "Yes."
Yamapi is silent for a long time before he looks Ryo right in the eyes, "I need you to do something."
Ryo nods.
"Massu?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Call Shige. Tell him to get Ryo-chan the works."
Shige delivers the materials himself, though he denies that he missed every one, or that he wanted to see how great their camp is.
"These things are important," he says with a complaining tone. "I couldn't trust them to just any one!"
Ryo picks through the manila envelope, pulling out transport papers and a very authentic passport for a Hokkaido Republic citizen named Ishikawa Keisuke. There's also an Osakan passport in there, for Hirano Hideo, and other pertaining documents. Ryo takes a good look through everything, checking over the kanji and listed hometowns, birthdays, committing everything to memory. He knows to keep the Kansai documents well hidden on his person until he's back in Osaka.
"And your uniform," Shige says, handing over a wrapped package. "You're a police officer from Kobe helping with the investigation. Find the report, the real one, because they'll definitely hide it, and bring it back."
"Easy enough," Ryo mutters, trying on the jacket of his police uniform.
Yamapi laughs. "How's it feel to be spying against the city that trained you to spy against Tokyo?"
"Whatever," Ryo says, shrugging. "Somethings are more important than hometown bullshit."
Getting into Osaka is no problem; no one suspects shit from Hokkaido people, they're so simple and honest.
Once he's there, locked in a bathroom stall, he changes into the uniform, hiding Ishikawa's passport and documents in a secret pocket of his jacket. He checks it in the mirror, while an old man washes his hands; it lays flat, perfect against his chest, the little packet of documents absolutely invisible.
Entering the Osaka Police Department is a bit more difficult; it's on high alert after the bombing and security checks him over so many times, he's sure they suspect something.
An Osaka officer pats him down, looking guilty, "We appreciate all the help Kobe's given, really." he says. "Sorry for making you go through all this."
"You've got a city to protect," Ryo replies, shaking the other's hand once he's done. "I completely understand."
He's careful around the other Kobe officers around, but they're from such a variety of different departments and things are so hectic, that they don't bother with Ryo too much. He's just another face out of many there, half-jogging up and down hallways with arms full of papers and reports. He has to wait nearly two weeks - far longer than he'd wanted, and he's sure that Yamapi's worried - until there's a moment when the halls are bare, and the only people in the office are asleep at their desks, and he can sneak upstairs, into the deputy chief's office and check things out.
He has nothing, which means he either keeps it on himself, or the deputy chief is being kept out of the loop, purposefully. Ryo sits, waits, watches the chief; takes him a cup of tea one day, and the chief eyes him wearily.
"Sorry to bother you," Ryo says, sheepishly. "Tomoko-san tripped, and I thought coming up the stairs on a hurt ankle wouldn't be good for her..."
The chief's eyes light up. "Oh! Oh, it's no problem, thank you for looking out for her."
Ryo smiles, bows as he leaves, and slips a little block of foam into the lock in the door jam on his way out.
And six hours later, when the chief closes and locks the door, going home for a few hours to sleep, Ryo pops the door open with no trouble and downloads the full contents on his computer onto a little flash drive.
Just as it took a long time for Ryo to be able to get the documents, it's taking him a while to find the time to decode everything. The whole process makes him nervous, because he doesn't even know if he has the document about the bombing, or if it's conclusive, because as far as he knows, the investigation is still going on.
He gets a hint the next day, when he goes into the department and the chief is in the process of kicking out every single Kobe officer.
"I don't know who you people are anymore!" He's screaming, "Betrayers!"
Ryo frowns, because he knows for a fact that his drive didn't leave a mark on the chief's operating system; there's no way the chief would have known.
They're all packed onto a train, straight back to Kobe. Ryo is lucky enough to get a seat, right next to the head of the delegation.
"I don't understand," he's mumbling, and Ryo inquires with a simple, "Sir?"
"I don't like it either, but the truth is the truth." He turns to Ryo. "I worry for Osaka."
He can't get anything else out of the leader, but it piques Ryo's interest, and he's already planning how to get back to Osaka.
It's not easy, and it involves hitchhiking with some farmers, but Ryo makes it back to Osaka within a few days. He ditches the police uniform right away; he's going to have to find a new way into the department.
He has little options before him, and he can't exactly waltz into a police department as Ishikawa from Hokkaido, because he was just there are Hirano from Kobe, and they aren't so stupid as to not recognize him. He's completely on his own, with no back-up, and this time, it's not so easy as checking over forms and laying low.
He figures going the cliche modern ninja way in is his only way, and at the least, it'll make a good story.
Getting in isn't that hard; he just blends in with some angry, rightists going in to complain about how slow the investigation is going ("Even though every one knows it was Tokyo!" Ryo hisses and the woman next to him nods in agreement.).
He feigns a search for the bathroom, ducks into a storage closest that was always left unlocked, and changes into a janitor's jumpsuit that he finds there. Ryo laughs quietly to himself in the hallway, window cleaner in his left hand, paper towels in the right.
He gets lucky when an internal security guy from the government calls him down to the basement.
"There's a leak from a pipe down here and we're all worried about the water damage."
"I'm more than happy to take a look," Ryo says, smiling and bowing, following him into the basement levels of the department where he'd been unable to go as Hirano.
The leak is an easy fix, even for Ryo, who has no idea what he's doing. The security guys leave him to find his own way out ("You remember?" "Yes, sir, it's no problem."), but he doesn't leave at all, just searches quietly in room after room of boxes of documents.
He feels overwhelmed with all the paper, unsure of where to start and if he'll ever find what he needs. But he goes to the first box in the first room and starts.
As bullets whizz over his head and a grenade causes a small landslide to his left, Yamapi takes a casual sip from his canteen and wipes dirt off his uniform. He picks up the radio, clicking it on.
"How's it going on your end, Koki?"
There's a long pause, before he comes back with a "Shiiiiiit, Colonel. Pure shit. We're totally out of grenades."
"I'll see what I can do."
He puts the radio down, grabs his rifle and peeks over the sandbags, looks for a minute before he lines up the obvious enemy sniper hiding on top of an apartment building in his sights and shots him in the shoulder. He flails and fall back behind cover; Yamapi figures it's a six-week recovery, maybe longer.
"What kind of shitty sniper lets the sun reflect off their scope?" He mutters, turning back around and getting the radio. "Shige!"
"What?!" He snaps back, instantly, like he'd been waiting.
"Koki needs grenades."
"I'm aware of that! But Sergeant Murakami needs more ammunition and Lieutenant Kamenashi needs medkits and Massu needs more fucking soldiers in Niigata, and I can only do so much!"
"You're you, Shige," Yamapi says, passing his canteen to a little private from Osaka who's out of water. "You'll get it done."
Ryo bascially camps in the storage rooms in the basement. He doesn't know how long he spends down there; there aren't any windows, and he sleep fitfully in corners of rooms, hidden by stacks of boxes for a few hours a day when he can't hear anything on the other side of the door. It's a timeless vortex of nothingness and paper cuts.
But it's all worth it when he finds, shoved in a box with old employment records from before he was even born, a sealed manila envelope, with inside a report on the bombing that caused Osaka to leave the negotiating table, with the signatures of officers from both Kobe and Osaka, detailing every step and that, unfortunately, the only conclusion there was to make with the evidence on hand was that Tokyo had nothing to do with the bombing. "The desperation of the KNL-military government is palpable" it says, "With public opinion turning in favor of the dialogues led by the United Nations, they acted as any cornered beast does; they attempted to change the tide in their favor, rally their base. But most importantly, they knew they must return the people of Osaka to a life of fear and ensure that Tokyo remained the consummate enemy figure. Essentially, an orchestrated terrorist campaign against Osakans, with military operatives in the right places, at the right moments, to spread rumors of Tokyo's treachery and evil."
He holds the report close to his chest, and spends several hours planning how exactly he is going to get this back to Yamapi.
While he'd been working to find the report, Ryo lost touch with what was happening at the line of conflict near Shizuoka. By the time he exits the police department in a suit he nicked from a locker, the city is buzzing with war, and he flashes back to when he was 16 years old, and the city had that same imminent-war feeling. It scares him a little as he walks through the city, the report hidden under his coat.
His plan is to catch a train north with the Hokkaido-Ishikawa passport. He's ultimately hoping that transport officials take pity on him, seeing him as an antsy foreigner, trying to get home and out of a near-warzone. That comes crashing down as soon as he's at the ticket window.
"I hate to tell you Mr. Ishikawa, but the trains are only going as far of Nagoya these days."
"Huh? But that's so far south of what I need..."
"I understand, but the military has taken control of all the trains lines and they've set Nagoya as the end-of-the-line for civilian trains."
The horrified look on Ryo's face isn't part of his acting the part at all. "Isn't there any way further up north?"
The ticket attendant thinks for a moment before he says, "Charter a plane?"
Ryo knows for a fact he doesn't have anywhere near enough money for that. He buys a ticket for Nagoya, and figures he'll assess and change the plan as the situation there warrants.
Nagoya is worse than Osaka.
The city is filled with soldiers on R&R and Ryo walks in the shadows, avoiding people as much as possible. He feels more like an enemy spy in this city than he ever did in Tokyo, even though he's surrounded with the accent of his childhood and family and memories.
He listens to the chatter of other's while he lies low, and learns that the line is still near Shizuoka, with little change, perhaps a few hundred meters in either direct in a given day. The Osakan soldiers curse and damn the forces of Colonel Yamashita, but they don't refer to him so respectfully; Ryo has to hold himself back from physically attacking them for the slurs they direct at his friend and the others.
After a few days, he decides to head north through back-country roads, or on the Tokai-Hokuriku Expressway if it's open and not overrun with the Osakan military. Shizuoka will be tense and heavily militarized; his hope is that Niigata, far from either other major cities, will have a line easier to slip through.
So he steals a car, and gets the hell out of Nagoya.
Once he passes into Gifu, which is a blast from the past itself, the number of soldiers peters out and it's an easy drive on the expressway. He keeps up his Hokkaido alias, since he's sure that both Osaka and Tokyo have spies and espionage officers workers out here, even if Gifu is staying neutral this time around (or so he heard in Nagoya).
As he gets further north and enters the southern bit of Toyama, he starts worrying again, whether getting through the line here is the best idea. He checks in with the train station here, about whether there are trains going into Tokyo-allied territories.
The attendants apologize, saying no civilian line is willing to run back-and-forth across the line of combat. They aren't any help at all.
As he lies across the bench seat of the car, trying to get a few hours of sleep, and he decides he'll sneak back into the Tokyo side the same way he did when he was a proud Osakan - through Gifu's porous borders, deep in the woods, camping and hiking for days. Only this time, there's no one waiting for him as a specific spot to point him in the right direction, and he has to hope to hell Osakans aren't patrolling the mountains.
The roads get him as far as the north slope of Mt. Terashi, where he abandons the car.
He meanders to the northeast as he goes, using a makeshift compass, always listening carefully for helicopters and the crunching of sticks under military boots. He can't move as quickly as he did more than a year and a half ago, since he's lacking the proper supplies to do so. It takes him five and a half days to reach Nagano, and when he gets there, he's immediately on guard.
There are Osakan troops everywhere, and he knows he's near the line of combat. He breaks out in a cold sweat. By the end of the day, he's been questioned by the military police four times, and with each question, Ryo's heart thumps loudly in his chest and he wants to scream and cry at the same time. But he keeps his cool, remembers his training so clearly, even if it's been quite a while.
"I'm just trying to get home," he keeps saying, voice tense. "I went to Osaka a while because I'd been wanting to go, but... the hostilities started again and..."
"Poor bastard," they always say. Or "Yer people are a little yellow for not taking a side, but this really sucks for you."
He awkwardly bounces around the little towns of Nagano, trying to find a way to slip through, but there's never an opportune moment, and the report on the bombing is weighing heavily against his shoulders, like he's carrying a boulder at all times. During the day and night, he can hear gun shots and grenades off the distance; he knows he's close. But now that he's come so far, it seems like the Tokyo-side is even further away.
He can't see any way through the line, or out of this situation.
It's past seven weeks from when Yamapi sent Ryo off with false documents and mission. The first few weeks, he didn't worry, because he knew this would take time. But as the calender pushes closes to two months, he can't help but feel nervous, that Ryo-chan has certainly been captured and is on trial for treason and will be put to death. It keeps him awake at night, even though he knows he needs to sleep.
Koyama tries to soothe him, saying that these things take a long time, he needs to be patient and trust in Ryo. It doesn't work though, just makes Yamapi feel guilty for sending him out in the first place. There's little they can actually do but wait.
Shige is far detached from the front-lines and the line of combat; he's in Tokyo, still working with counter-espionage, and in his spare time, working with his contacts to ensure shipments of medical supplies, and ammunition and grenades to Yamapi's forces. Koyama and Tegoshi have a tag-team system, taking turns in filling him in on the details.
"Have you heard anything about Ryo-chan?" Koyama always asks, because Yamapi can't bring himself to do it.
Shige sighs. "No, and even if they've caught him, they wouldn't just announce it. My people in Osaka and the other areas have their eyes out for him, to help him if they run into him, but I've only got a couple dozen people spread around Osaka, Chugoku, Shikoku and Kyushu. I doubt he'll be lucky enough to find one of them."
Koyama's sadface is audible over the radio, even though it shouldn't be.
Shige resigns himself to knowing he's going to end up doing something stupid to find their lost friend.
Making fake Osaka and Hokkaido passport is a run-of-the-mill sort of thing for Shige, forging a Canadian one is a little more complicated, but not outside of his skills.
Grant Kurobe, a third-generation Japanese-Canadian, and an official of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
"Hello," he says in heavily accented Japanese, over-stressing his n's and ch's, handing his documents to an Osakan military officer just south of Shizuoka. "I've been asked to, um, make sure....how do you say?....."
The officer waves him in, obviously not in the mood to listen to a sankeijin stumble over his Japanese.
Shige looses track of how many times that tactic works. He starts in the south and steadily works his way north, checking in with the Tokyo spies that he's able to safely meet with. He goes through the whole line, ending in Niigata and makes his way back across the line to meet with Massu.
"I didn't find a single trace of him. Anywhere," Shige says over his tea.
"Don't you think Ryo-kun would have made himself really hard to find? I bet he's freaking out a little, where ever he is."
Shige snorts. "I find it assuming that every one assumes that he must have found the report is just waiting on the Osaka side of the line for us to pick him up."
"You've already found him once in difficult circumstances," Massu says, kicking the leg of Shige's chair playfully. "Finding him again really shouldn't be that tough."
So, Shige crosses back over the line (in a different spot, of course), and continues the search, expanding upon his previous tactics, mostly by asking about displaced persons and those stranded due to the conflicts.
As he moves through parts of Toyama and Nagano, he hears from various storekeepers and townspeople about a very frantic Hokkaido man with a mole near his eye (the women always remember the mole, while their husbands and boyfriends look on wearily), trying to get home after having been stuck in Osaka for some time. He never digs too much about that one man, because it might rouse suspicion, but as he keeps moving south, he continues to hear about this man, and after a few more stops and further physical details, Shige knows he's on the trail.
Shige finds him, four kilometers from the Osaka side of the line of combat, getting hassled by some military police. The one officer, a fellow at least 200 centimeters tall is holding an Hokkaido passport over his head, mocking Ryo while the other calls him a 'yellow mountain savage'. Ryo looks distraught, his face paler and thinner than Shige remembers. He's asking for his passport back, pleading with them to just let him go home.
Sweeping in to his rescue would be suspicious; ICRC officials are sparse on the line and the MPs will think it odd he arrived at just the right moment to save this Ishikawa from Hokkaido.
The harass him for another 20 minutes before a calls comes through on their radio and they leave, with the Hokkaido passport. Ryo stands in the road, the dust kicked up from their jeep all around him.
Shige comes around from behind the boarded up shop he'd been hiding behind and walks towards Ryo, who hears the dirt crunching and knows some one is coming up behind him. He turns slowly, like he's got no life let in him, and stares as Shige for a long moment before his face dawns in realizations. But he doesn't call out, doesn't run towards Shige; just keeps standing there, his body language curious and his eyes relieved.
"Hello," Shige says, smiling, still in his choppy sankeijin Japanese. "it seems like you're in a bit of trouble."
Ryo nods. "I think I'm trapped here."
"Let me buy you a cup of tea, and I'll see what I can do."
They enter a little tea house together, filled mostly with soldiers, and they talk as though they don't know each other for another hour, before they leave again, and head south, hitching a ride with a news correspondent team from Okinawa. They get off the truck in Hokuto, even closer to the line than they were in the little town where Shige found Ryo.
Hokuto has a press and humanitarian zone on its outskirts, where those non-combatants are able to pass through.
Ryo says it'll be a problem; "I don't have any documents."
Shige hands him a Chinese passport, his picture and name Xin Li next to it. "Leave the talking to me."
It's a long line and a long wait to get up to the office where officers arbitrarily decide who's let through and who isn't. The two of them don't talk at all during the wait.
"Where are you from?" The officer asks the two of them, a sneer on his face.
"Toronto," Shige says smiling, he gestures to Ryo. "He doesn't speak any Japanese - just Mandarin and English - but he's from Hong Kong."
"And you're with the Red Cross."
"Yes, Osaka and Tokyo are both signatories to the Geneva Convention, as I'm sure you are aware. Our superiors charged us with making sure both sides are following the protocol; we're moving onto checking over the Tokyo side of the line."
The officer nods, like he didn't hear a word Shige said, just stares hard and long at both their passports, finally sighing and stamping them both, waving the pair through to the backdoor.
Once they're safely on the Tokyo side of the line, Ryo grabs Shige around the shoulders in a man-hug. "Thank you," he says, voice tight.
Shige pats him on the shoulder. "Every one was getting worried, since you were gone for so long."
Ryo pulls away smiling. "It was tough, getting there and finding the report and then... I couldn't find a way through the line at all."
"It's gotten really bad. Now let's find a fucking phone so I can call Yamashita-kun and let him know you're back."
They find a phone, but the line to Yamapi is dead. Ryo automatically assumes the worst and Shige refrains from smacking him in the back of the head.
"If we could find a shortwave radio we could pick him up no problem," Shige mutters, dialing to the counter-espionage office. "It's Katou," he says, right away. "I'm on the Tokyo-side of Hokuto and I need a car, motorcycle, I don't care, just something that will get me to Colonel Yamashita."
Shige abruptly hangs up, turning to Ryo. "We've got to wait an hour, but we'll have a car, and then we'll really be home free."
Turns out it's only 45 minutes.
A little private comes with a car, getting out and saluting them both before they all climb in.
"We radioed the colonel to let him know you're both on the way," he says. "He seemed very...."
"Excited," Shige says, like there's no other alternative.
"He'd better fucking be," Ryo mutters from the backseat.
And he is, running out of the command center once he hears the jeep, screaming, "Ryo-chan!" loudly and flailing like a child. "You made it back!"
"Yeah," Ryo sighs, smiling, pulling the rumpled report out from his jacket. "And look what I found."
When Yamapi gets ahold of that report, he immediately turns it right over to the real International Committee of the Red Cross, which makes Shige laugh a little at the irony.
It's checked for authenticity, and once that's cleared, it hits the international news press, being disseminated all over the world, and people are horrified and disgusted with the Osakan prime minister.
Osaka tries to censor all the news, or keep it out entirely, but when it's something this big and scandalous, none of their efforts are worth much. It doesn't help when cassette tapes and meeting notes are anonymously leaked by some one in the government, directly implicating the prime minister and three generals in the planning and execution of the bombing.
There's a period of disbelief within Osaka, but as the news sinks in, more documents and meeting records are leaked and one of the implicated general's takes his own life, the people come to understand their situation; that their government was built around war and cared nothing for the actual people of Osaka. Denial moves into acceptance, and public opinion shifts back to the UN-led dialogues, supporting the properly negotiated end of hostilities.
The Osakan generals at the line of combat order their troops to unconditionally stand down.
The Tokyoites and Osakans under Yamapi's informal command do the same, glad for the rest, but continue to look towards Yamapi for orders.
"It's probably fine for you all to go home," he says, Ryo and Koyama right behind him. "Everything's going to turn out okay this time around."
Yet, they all stay, just in case Yamapi needs them again.
He doesn't; 10 days later, a humbled and embarrassed Osakan Lieutenant General, the highest ranked member of the military-government to have an innocent status in relation to the bombing, and the Tokyo prime minister sign the new peace treaty. And this time, there's dancing in the streets in both Tokyo and Osaka.
As the people of both cities move past the war, they remain weary of the politicians, not trusting them in the least. Incumbents are booted from office in unprecedented numbers, but there is no real leader among the new parliamentarians and they accomplish little.
It's in a completely off-handed manner, that a news anchor in Tokyo muses on air about whether or not Colonel Yamashita, the unifying figure of the late days of the war, has any political aspirations.
It doesn't matter whether he does or not, because people love the idea. Interviews with former POWs in Osaka all attest to the colonel's patient and kind nature, and that it goes without saying he would listen to the concerns of Osaka. Tokyo citizens find him admirable and honorable, a uniter of men in times of desperation; if he can do it in wartime, he can do it in the Tokyo parliament.
Yamapi ignores them all, just keeps doing what he'd been doing; making sure all the Osakans that had joined him are comfortably back at their homes and the military's items are returned to them.
A news crew tracks him down though, and accosts him.
He frowns as they fire off questions at him. "What are your economic policy stances, Colonel?" "Do you have any comment on the bombing trials going on in Osaka?" "Is there any one you would like to see as the new prime minister of Osaka, once the interim elections are held?"
"I," Yamapi begins, and the reporter leans in, "just want to surf."
The cameraman chokes on a laugh and the reporter smacks him on the arm.
There's a call from some where past a the few last tents, a raspy Kansai voice yelling, "Pi, come here and deal with these bureaucrats!"
"Who was that? I thought your press release said all the Osakans that had joined you already returned south?" The reporter asks.
"Oh, that's just Ryo-chan. He's a man of two cities."
"Pi! Hurry up!"
Yamapi smiles and wanders off to deal with these bureaucrats.
There's a news report that night saying that Colonel Yamashita does, in fact, have a favorite for the position of Osakan prime minister.
"This mystery man, referred to by the Colonel by his first name, was praised as being 'a man of two cities'," the anchor stays, smiling vapidly.
Most people ignore the report. Especially Yamapi and Ryo.
But even after the new elections in both cities are wrapped up and the new prime ministers are inaugurated, Yamapi isn't left alone. There's still a large movement wanting him to be in office, not this other fellow.
"Won't you even consider it, Colonel?" An interviewer asks while doing a story on the Yamanashi camp that Yamapi led.
He seems to actually consider it, until Tegoshi, in the corner of the room, speaks up, "Eh? But then you wouldn't be able to surf as much, right Yamashita-kun? Or at all."
Yamapi's face falls and looks apologetically at the reporter. "I'm sorry, but I really love the sea."
There aren't any good waves in Tokyo. Or Chiba, Or Kanagawa. Or anywhere else easy to get to.
After years of living on an island in the Pacific Ocean, the quality of waves never having been an issue, Yamapi finds that Japan proper just isn't the place to be for surfing. He sits on the beach, bummed out, while Ryo uses the small waves for practice, since he's still just a novice. Shige is several tens of meters away, trying to fish from a cement pier. Koyama and Tegoshi are slowly burying Massu in the sand; they say he deserves it for falling asleep.
The military structures are shaken up, stream-lined and minimized. The Tokyo generals aren't willing to completely absolve Yamapi of his dereliction of duty, yet they can't punish a culturally powerful and loved figure like him. Instead he's given an honorable discharge and kept on retainer for consultative purposes. Koyama, Tegoshi, Massu and Shige meet similar ends, for their own dereliction, disobeying orders and improper use of state military resources.
Ryo has a bit more difficult time, since he could, under Osaka law, be tried for crimes against the state and treason for his spying and theft from the Osaka Police Department. The new government is torn on what to do; he was part of Colonel Yamashita's united officers, and public opinion is ever increasingly against disciplining those officers, yet, there's the matter of the espionage and theft he committed.
The new prime minister asks for Ryo to return to Osaka for a hearing.
"Nothing more," he assures Ryo through political channels. "We just want to understand what happened and know the timeline. You won't be held or prosecuted."
Ryo hears that and laughs, sends a postcard to the prime minister with 'no' written in black, bold lettering, and another to his parents, but that one says 'sorry for making so much trouble for you'.
The six of them pool their resources, buy a boat, pack it with their things and get the hell out of Tokyo. They sail around the waters off the Japanese coast for a few weeks, stopping by the little islands they find to restock on food and other necessities.
The moment they reach the port on Hachijo Island, the other five can all see Yamapi fall in love. The port master directs him to the best surfing on the island, in his rough, accented Japanese, and he's gone, leaving the others to their own devices.
At the end of the first week, none of them can imagine leaving. So, they don't.
Even though this island, and many of the others far off-shore are holdings or were technically allied with Tokyo during the war, it never reached these islands. The natives don't mind their new neighbors and they don't turn their heads and stare when Ryo walks down the street with Yamapi, or Tegoshi, or any of the others, speaking in differing accents.
The news spreads around Tokyo and Osaka among the men who had allied themselves with neither city, and instead Yamapi; that he's left the main islands of Japan, and whether he realizes it or not, is trying to recreate the feeling of Chichijima from so long ago. More than a few move to follow him once more.
The naval officer Ikuta arrives one day, smiling, with a surf board under his arm.
"There's a couple people up north on Miyake Island, too," he says later in the day, sitting with Yamapi and Ryo on the beach. "Reintegration is going well between the cities, but..."
"Some of us are more enlightened than others," Ryo mutters.
Yamapi laughs and throws a little handful of sand. "This is a better way to live anyways. With the sea," and then shyly, he adds, "and these important people."
CHARACTER/PAIRING: Ryo-centric, NEWS
RATING: G
WORD COUNT: 7,222
SUMMARY: He'd been waiting for his chance to go to war, but once he gets there, it's a little different than what he'd been expecting.
PART I
Whether or not it's unprofessional doesn't matter; what matters, is that the Lt. General was absolutely right. The peace between Osaka and Tokyo does nothing to alleviate the tensions between them. In just two months, an extra-right wing party, the Kansai National League, and military officers stage a coup of the government, expelling the just very-right wing Osaka People's Party. Once this team has the seal of the prime minister, the first thing they do is remobilize the military and declare war on Tokyo, clearly stating that they will retake the honor and glory that Tokyo stole from them.
The Osakan officers on the board immediately report, taking the first train down, nearly on fire with anger when they realize Ryo isn't on board, hasn't already reported in, and isn't answering his cell phone.
He's in Yamapi's office, hyperventilating into a bag while Koyama rubs his back.
"This can't be happening," he mumbles, voice distorted. "This can't be happening."
Yamapi isn't hyperventilating, but he does have his head in his hands, seeming very distraught.
More than 60% of the Osakan military reports for duty within a week, and the Tokyo military responds in like, claiming that they will only be engaging in defensive warfare, though the definition of that is left open-ended.
But, while a majority of Osakans reported in, many stayed hidden in Osaka, denied their military past, unwilling to keep fighting, and a few thousand even fled north, surrendered themselves, sought asylum - anything. Cannon-fodder, low-, mid- and high-rank officers alike flee to Tokyo, with no will to fight, the idea of living on as a POW or detainee sounding infinitely better than further warfare.
With such a large influx of what should be enemy soldiers, but most definitely aren't, the Tokyo military and bureaucracy have no idea what to do with so many of them.
The meeting is like chaos, all levels of generals talking over each other, stressing about Osaka's advance towards Tokyo, but also the Osakan deserters that are looking to them for help. And yet, in the midst of so many generals, it's Captain Masuda, standing right behind Lt. Gen Sakurai's chair through the whole meeting, who figures out exactly what to do. The answer is a simple kind of genius.
Put Colonel Yamashita in charge of them.
He's given absolute freedom in his charge of them, and he takes it on with glee, dragging Ryo, Koyama and Tegoshi with him as support. But, completely without meaning or planning it, others follow too, attracted by the colonel's charisma, his history of integrating the two warring sides at the Chichijima facility and unbridled optimism.
Men who should have reported to their bases in Tokyo, Yokohama, Saitama and elsewhere, instead, report to his little encampment in eastern part of Yamanashi, ignoring the calls of their proper commanding officers.
There is never any quarreling among the Osakans and Tokyoites there; it's just like on Chichijima, but freer, more natural, almost like a fairy tale, and it makes Yamapi determined to change the fates of their island nation.
A little more than a week later, giant boxes are delivered late at night, Yamapi and Koyama carefully counting them and checking their contents, before stuffing them into a storage shed to deal with again the morning. Ryo watches from the opening of his tent, groggy, and doesn't understand until morning what just happened.
They're uniforms, in a brilliant shade of bluish-emerald; neither wholly Osakan or Tokyo, right in the middle. There are enough for all present, in the proper sizes, and not a single person rejects the new uniform. They happily accept them, chattering with those near them in line like giddy schoolchildren, and then rush off to transfer the patches that symbolize their respective ranks.
Ryo feels a little silly when he's handed his own by Tegoshi, smiling.
"But I'm a spy."
Tegoshi laughs. "You're Ryo-kun."
It takes several days for every one to get theirs, and once the rush is done, Ryo can't help but ask Yamapi how he managed this.
"Shige is really good at getting things," is all he says, cryptic, but so simple at the same time.
Any military strategist or leader, regardless of where their loyalties lie, have to admit the Osakan push towards Tokyo is spectacular, catching every one in their wake completely off-guard. They don't stop for more than an half a day during their three week push north, until they reach Shizuoka, just 180 kilometers from Tokyo to consolidate, with other forces halting along the Chuo/Nagano/Joshin Expressway, waiting to see what Tokyo's response will be.
Tokyo's answer is to fortify the city's defenses, and the surrounding districts cry out, left completely defenseless in the face of Osaka's threatening stance, and the emerald-wearing officers all go to Yamapi.
"No advancing army leaves civilians untouched. Remember what the Soviets did to the Germans in the last days of the second World War!"
"They will be especially harsh to those around Tokyo, whom they already view as enemies."
Yamapi sighs, torn, unsure.
Koyama leans over, whispering in his ear, "We really can't stand idly by as civilians are harmed."
"I know," he says, and asks for a team to go check on the limited supply of weapons they have in the sheds, and for every one to clean their weapons thoroughly in preparation.
Osaka is ready to push forward, ready to crush Tokyo completely, but just 5 hours into their march from Shizuoka, they are stopped, utterly, by just a few well placed mines and bullets. Their line of advancement is still and as the generals in green yell and scream and foot soldiers awkwardly stand-about, trying to figure out what happened, Tegoshi radios Yamapi back in Yamanashi, the smile evident in his voice.
The same things happen as other Osakan encampments attempt to advance from their positions in Nagano, Niigata and western Yamanashi. They are dead-still.
Tokyo is just as confused about the news as the Osakans. They wait and listen, calculating their positions, until the radio chatter, on all channel dies, and Colonel Yamashita comes on, forcing their attention, informing every one of where the pacifist officers of Osaka and Tokyo stand and are capable of.
"All Osakan battalions will retreat to 20 kilometers south of their last encampment. You will comply."
In the background noise of the radio message, some one says, in Kansai-Japanese, "Or we'll make you comply."
Osaka doesn't comply, and honestly, no one really expected them to.
Yamapi sits at his little makeshift desk and shakes his head, gives out the order to go ahead with the plan.
None of his officers can afford to shoot blindly; not when their supplies are so low. Each bullet, each mine, each grenade is precious, but Yamapi stresses to every one over the radio to minimize causalities.
"We're not here to kill any one. That defeats the purpose."
The Osakan forces are scattered and confused, weary of this new enemy in emerald, whose members may very well be their friends, or their enemies. It's impossible to tell. Pushing them back 20 kilometers is nothing, done in just a few days.
The generals are frantic, enraged that this colonel from Tokyo has the balls to use Osakans against them. They curse his mother over the radio, over and over on every channel they can, hoping he hears it and feels at least a little bad about himself.
Yamapi hears it, but he doesn't deign to lower himself to their level. Ryo doesn't either, but he does get on the radio, and in perfect, natural Kansai Japanese - the kind that only a local boy would have - lets them all know that in the morning, delegates, diplomats and professional negotiators from the United Nations are arriving to settle this dispute and end all this crazy shit, and if you don't like it: suck it, bitches.
Ryo laughs when he signs off, and the other Osakan officers in the room laugh too. Yamapi looks a little confused, like maybe he doesn't understand Kansai humor.
"That was a little rude, Ryo-chan."
He shrugs, stomach filled with nervous-excited butterflies.
The professional negotiators know what they're doing, quickly getting to business, right away shooting down ideas from both Tokyo and Osaka; they know what works and aren't going to let pettiness threaten the dialogues.
They move along slow and steady, but advances are always being announced, and the process, being properly done, shows just how hastily and poorly done it was the first time. Public opinion slowly shifts to being behind peace, but Tokyo and Yamapi's forces are still nervous, and part-way through, they're pretty sure they've been figuratively fucked.
A bomb goes off in Osaka, downtown, near the parliamentary building, fingers are all pointed at Tokyo, some at Yamapi and his officers. It's panic, and the Osakans walk out of the talks.
Things looks like their going to go to shit again. The only saving grace is that the generals in Tokyo send Yamapi supplies, to replace what was lost during their push-back.
"Do you really think it was done by some one from Tokyo?" Masuda asks over the radio, voice doubtful.
"Probably not," Koyama mutters, sewing a button back onto his uniform. "Tokyo has more to lose from continuing the fight, right?"
"But that would mean it was Osaka bombing Osaka, and that's-"
"Not entirely out of the realm of possibility," Ryo says, interrupting Yamapi. "The new government there has a legitimacy built around warfare against Tokyo. If there's a real peace between the cities, that's it- they're out of power."
Koyama looks up from his sewing, eyes wide. "... You really think they'd kill civilians, the people of their very city, just to stay in power?"
Without any hesitation, Ryo replies, "Yes."
Yamapi is silent for a long time before he looks Ryo right in the eyes, "I need you to do something."
Ryo nods.
"Massu?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Call Shige. Tell him to get Ryo-chan the works."
Shige delivers the materials himself, though he denies that he missed every one, or that he wanted to see how great their camp is.
"These things are important," he says with a complaining tone. "I couldn't trust them to just any one!"
Ryo picks through the manila envelope, pulling out transport papers and a very authentic passport for a Hokkaido Republic citizen named Ishikawa Keisuke. There's also an Osakan passport in there, for Hirano Hideo, and other pertaining documents. Ryo takes a good look through everything, checking over the kanji and listed hometowns, birthdays, committing everything to memory. He knows to keep the Kansai documents well hidden on his person until he's back in Osaka.
"And your uniform," Shige says, handing over a wrapped package. "You're a police officer from Kobe helping with the investigation. Find the report, the real one, because they'll definitely hide it, and bring it back."
"Easy enough," Ryo mutters, trying on the jacket of his police uniform.
Yamapi laughs. "How's it feel to be spying against the city that trained you to spy against Tokyo?"
"Whatever," Ryo says, shrugging. "Somethings are more important than hometown bullshit."
Getting into Osaka is no problem; no one suspects shit from Hokkaido people, they're so simple and honest.
Once he's there, locked in a bathroom stall, he changes into the uniform, hiding Ishikawa's passport and documents in a secret pocket of his jacket. He checks it in the mirror, while an old man washes his hands; it lays flat, perfect against his chest, the little packet of documents absolutely invisible.
Entering the Osaka Police Department is a bit more difficult; it's on high alert after the bombing and security checks him over so many times, he's sure they suspect something.
An Osaka officer pats him down, looking guilty, "We appreciate all the help Kobe's given, really." he says. "Sorry for making you go through all this."
"You've got a city to protect," Ryo replies, shaking the other's hand once he's done. "I completely understand."
He's careful around the other Kobe officers around, but they're from such a variety of different departments and things are so hectic, that they don't bother with Ryo too much. He's just another face out of many there, half-jogging up and down hallways with arms full of papers and reports. He has to wait nearly two weeks - far longer than he'd wanted, and he's sure that Yamapi's worried - until there's a moment when the halls are bare, and the only people in the office are asleep at their desks, and he can sneak upstairs, into the deputy chief's office and check things out.
He has nothing, which means he either keeps it on himself, or the deputy chief is being kept out of the loop, purposefully. Ryo sits, waits, watches the chief; takes him a cup of tea one day, and the chief eyes him wearily.
"Sorry to bother you," Ryo says, sheepishly. "Tomoko-san tripped, and I thought coming up the stairs on a hurt ankle wouldn't be good for her..."
The chief's eyes light up. "Oh! Oh, it's no problem, thank you for looking out for her."
Ryo smiles, bows as he leaves, and slips a little block of foam into the lock in the door jam on his way out.
And six hours later, when the chief closes and locks the door, going home for a few hours to sleep, Ryo pops the door open with no trouble and downloads the full contents on his computer onto a little flash drive.
Just as it took a long time for Ryo to be able to get the documents, it's taking him a while to find the time to decode everything. The whole process makes him nervous, because he doesn't even know if he has the document about the bombing, or if it's conclusive, because as far as he knows, the investigation is still going on.
He gets a hint the next day, when he goes into the department and the chief is in the process of kicking out every single Kobe officer.
"I don't know who you people are anymore!" He's screaming, "Betrayers!"
Ryo frowns, because he knows for a fact that his drive didn't leave a mark on the chief's operating system; there's no way the chief would have known.
They're all packed onto a train, straight back to Kobe. Ryo is lucky enough to get a seat, right next to the head of the delegation.
"I don't understand," he's mumbling, and Ryo inquires with a simple, "Sir?"
"I don't like it either, but the truth is the truth." He turns to Ryo. "I worry for Osaka."
He can't get anything else out of the leader, but it piques Ryo's interest, and he's already planning how to get back to Osaka.
It's not easy, and it involves hitchhiking with some farmers, but Ryo makes it back to Osaka within a few days. He ditches the police uniform right away; he's going to have to find a new way into the department.
He has little options before him, and he can't exactly waltz into a police department as Ishikawa from Hokkaido, because he was just there are Hirano from Kobe, and they aren't so stupid as to not recognize him. He's completely on his own, with no back-up, and this time, it's not so easy as checking over forms and laying low.
He figures going the cliche modern ninja way in is his only way, and at the least, it'll make a good story.
Getting in isn't that hard; he just blends in with some angry, rightists going in to complain about how slow the investigation is going ("Even though every one knows it was Tokyo!" Ryo hisses and the woman next to him nods in agreement.).
He feigns a search for the bathroom, ducks into a storage closest that was always left unlocked, and changes into a janitor's jumpsuit that he finds there. Ryo laughs quietly to himself in the hallway, window cleaner in his left hand, paper towels in the right.
He gets lucky when an internal security guy from the government calls him down to the basement.
"There's a leak from a pipe down here and we're all worried about the water damage."
"I'm more than happy to take a look," Ryo says, smiling and bowing, following him into the basement levels of the department where he'd been unable to go as Hirano.
The leak is an easy fix, even for Ryo, who has no idea what he's doing. The security guys leave him to find his own way out ("You remember?" "Yes, sir, it's no problem."), but he doesn't leave at all, just searches quietly in room after room of boxes of documents.
He feels overwhelmed with all the paper, unsure of where to start and if he'll ever find what he needs. But he goes to the first box in the first room and starts.
As bullets whizz over his head and a grenade causes a small landslide to his left, Yamapi takes a casual sip from his canteen and wipes dirt off his uniform. He picks up the radio, clicking it on.
"How's it going on your end, Koki?"
There's a long pause, before he comes back with a "Shiiiiiit, Colonel. Pure shit. We're totally out of grenades."
"I'll see what I can do."
He puts the radio down, grabs his rifle and peeks over the sandbags, looks for a minute before he lines up the obvious enemy sniper hiding on top of an apartment building in his sights and shots him in the shoulder. He flails and fall back behind cover; Yamapi figures it's a six-week recovery, maybe longer.
"What kind of shitty sniper lets the sun reflect off their scope?" He mutters, turning back around and getting the radio. "Shige!"
"What?!" He snaps back, instantly, like he'd been waiting.
"Koki needs grenades."
"I'm aware of that! But Sergeant Murakami needs more ammunition and Lieutenant Kamenashi needs medkits and Massu needs more fucking soldiers in Niigata, and I can only do so much!"
"You're you, Shige," Yamapi says, passing his canteen to a little private from Osaka who's out of water. "You'll get it done."
Ryo bascially camps in the storage rooms in the basement. He doesn't know how long he spends down there; there aren't any windows, and he sleep fitfully in corners of rooms, hidden by stacks of boxes for a few hours a day when he can't hear anything on the other side of the door. It's a timeless vortex of nothingness and paper cuts.
But it's all worth it when he finds, shoved in a box with old employment records from before he was even born, a sealed manila envelope, with inside a report on the bombing that caused Osaka to leave the negotiating table, with the signatures of officers from both Kobe and Osaka, detailing every step and that, unfortunately, the only conclusion there was to make with the evidence on hand was that Tokyo had nothing to do with the bombing. "The desperation of the KNL-military government is palpable" it says, "With public opinion turning in favor of the dialogues led by the United Nations, they acted as any cornered beast does; they attempted to change the tide in their favor, rally their base. But most importantly, they knew they must return the people of Osaka to a life of fear and ensure that Tokyo remained the consummate enemy figure. Essentially, an orchestrated terrorist campaign against Osakans, with military operatives in the right places, at the right moments, to spread rumors of Tokyo's treachery and evil."
He holds the report close to his chest, and spends several hours planning how exactly he is going to get this back to Yamapi.
While he'd been working to find the report, Ryo lost touch with what was happening at the line of conflict near Shizuoka. By the time he exits the police department in a suit he nicked from a locker, the city is buzzing with war, and he flashes back to when he was 16 years old, and the city had that same imminent-war feeling. It scares him a little as he walks through the city, the report hidden under his coat.
His plan is to catch a train north with the Hokkaido-Ishikawa passport. He's ultimately hoping that transport officials take pity on him, seeing him as an antsy foreigner, trying to get home and out of a near-warzone. That comes crashing down as soon as he's at the ticket window.
"I hate to tell you Mr. Ishikawa, but the trains are only going as far of Nagoya these days."
"Huh? But that's so far south of what I need..."
"I understand, but the military has taken control of all the trains lines and they've set Nagoya as the end-of-the-line for civilian trains."
The horrified look on Ryo's face isn't part of his acting the part at all. "Isn't there any way further up north?"
The ticket attendant thinks for a moment before he says, "Charter a plane?"
Ryo knows for a fact he doesn't have anywhere near enough money for that. He buys a ticket for Nagoya, and figures he'll assess and change the plan as the situation there warrants.
Nagoya is worse than Osaka.
The city is filled with soldiers on R&R and Ryo walks in the shadows, avoiding people as much as possible. He feels more like an enemy spy in this city than he ever did in Tokyo, even though he's surrounded with the accent of his childhood and family and memories.
He listens to the chatter of other's while he lies low, and learns that the line is still near Shizuoka, with little change, perhaps a few hundred meters in either direct in a given day. The Osakan soldiers curse and damn the forces of Colonel Yamashita, but they don't refer to him so respectfully; Ryo has to hold himself back from physically attacking them for the slurs they direct at his friend and the others.
After a few days, he decides to head north through back-country roads, or on the Tokai-Hokuriku Expressway if it's open and not overrun with the Osakan military. Shizuoka will be tense and heavily militarized; his hope is that Niigata, far from either other major cities, will have a line easier to slip through.
So he steals a car, and gets the hell out of Nagoya.
Once he passes into Gifu, which is a blast from the past itself, the number of soldiers peters out and it's an easy drive on the expressway. He keeps up his Hokkaido alias, since he's sure that both Osaka and Tokyo have spies and espionage officers workers out here, even if Gifu is staying neutral this time around (or so he heard in Nagoya).
As he gets further north and enters the southern bit of Toyama, he starts worrying again, whether getting through the line here is the best idea. He checks in with the train station here, about whether there are trains going into Tokyo-allied territories.
The attendants apologize, saying no civilian line is willing to run back-and-forth across the line of combat. They aren't any help at all.
As he lies across the bench seat of the car, trying to get a few hours of sleep, and he decides he'll sneak back into the Tokyo side the same way he did when he was a proud Osakan - through Gifu's porous borders, deep in the woods, camping and hiking for days. Only this time, there's no one waiting for him as a specific spot to point him in the right direction, and he has to hope to hell Osakans aren't patrolling the mountains.
The roads get him as far as the north slope of Mt. Terashi, where he abandons the car.
He meanders to the northeast as he goes, using a makeshift compass, always listening carefully for helicopters and the crunching of sticks under military boots. He can't move as quickly as he did more than a year and a half ago, since he's lacking the proper supplies to do so. It takes him five and a half days to reach Nagano, and when he gets there, he's immediately on guard.
There are Osakan troops everywhere, and he knows he's near the line of combat. He breaks out in a cold sweat. By the end of the day, he's been questioned by the military police four times, and with each question, Ryo's heart thumps loudly in his chest and he wants to scream and cry at the same time. But he keeps his cool, remembers his training so clearly, even if it's been quite a while.
"I'm just trying to get home," he keeps saying, voice tense. "I went to Osaka a while because I'd been wanting to go, but... the hostilities started again and..."
"Poor bastard," they always say. Or "Yer people are a little yellow for not taking a side, but this really sucks for you."
He awkwardly bounces around the little towns of Nagano, trying to find a way to slip through, but there's never an opportune moment, and the report on the bombing is weighing heavily against his shoulders, like he's carrying a boulder at all times. During the day and night, he can hear gun shots and grenades off the distance; he knows he's close. But now that he's come so far, it seems like the Tokyo-side is even further away.
He can't see any way through the line, or out of this situation.
It's past seven weeks from when Yamapi sent Ryo off with false documents and mission. The first few weeks, he didn't worry, because he knew this would take time. But as the calender pushes closes to two months, he can't help but feel nervous, that Ryo-chan has certainly been captured and is on trial for treason and will be put to death. It keeps him awake at night, even though he knows he needs to sleep.
Koyama tries to soothe him, saying that these things take a long time, he needs to be patient and trust in Ryo. It doesn't work though, just makes Yamapi feel guilty for sending him out in the first place. There's little they can actually do but wait.
Shige is far detached from the front-lines and the line of combat; he's in Tokyo, still working with counter-espionage, and in his spare time, working with his contacts to ensure shipments of medical supplies, and ammunition and grenades to Yamapi's forces. Koyama and Tegoshi have a tag-team system, taking turns in filling him in on the details.
"Have you heard anything about Ryo-chan?" Koyama always asks, because Yamapi can't bring himself to do it.
Shige sighs. "No, and even if they've caught him, they wouldn't just announce it. My people in Osaka and the other areas have their eyes out for him, to help him if they run into him, but I've only got a couple dozen people spread around Osaka, Chugoku, Shikoku and Kyushu. I doubt he'll be lucky enough to find one of them."
Koyama's sadface is audible over the radio, even though it shouldn't be.
Shige resigns himself to knowing he's going to end up doing something stupid to find their lost friend.
Making fake Osaka and Hokkaido passport is a run-of-the-mill sort of thing for Shige, forging a Canadian one is a little more complicated, but not outside of his skills.
Grant Kurobe, a third-generation Japanese-Canadian, and an official of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
"Hello," he says in heavily accented Japanese, over-stressing his n's and ch's, handing his documents to an Osakan military officer just south of Shizuoka. "I've been asked to, um, make sure....how do you say?....."
The officer waves him in, obviously not in the mood to listen to a sankeijin stumble over his Japanese.
Shige looses track of how many times that tactic works. He starts in the south and steadily works his way north, checking in with the Tokyo spies that he's able to safely meet with. He goes through the whole line, ending in Niigata and makes his way back across the line to meet with Massu.
"I didn't find a single trace of him. Anywhere," Shige says over his tea.
"Don't you think Ryo-kun would have made himself really hard to find? I bet he's freaking out a little, where ever he is."
Shige snorts. "I find it assuming that every one assumes that he must have found the report is just waiting on the Osaka side of the line for us to pick him up."
"You've already found him once in difficult circumstances," Massu says, kicking the leg of Shige's chair playfully. "Finding him again really shouldn't be that tough."
So, Shige crosses back over the line (in a different spot, of course), and continues the search, expanding upon his previous tactics, mostly by asking about displaced persons and those stranded due to the conflicts.
As he moves through parts of Toyama and Nagano, he hears from various storekeepers and townspeople about a very frantic Hokkaido man with a mole near his eye (the women always remember the mole, while their husbands and boyfriends look on wearily), trying to get home after having been stuck in Osaka for some time. He never digs too much about that one man, because it might rouse suspicion, but as he keeps moving south, he continues to hear about this man, and after a few more stops and further physical details, Shige knows he's on the trail.
Shige finds him, four kilometers from the Osaka side of the line of combat, getting hassled by some military police. The one officer, a fellow at least 200 centimeters tall is holding an Hokkaido passport over his head, mocking Ryo while the other calls him a 'yellow mountain savage'. Ryo looks distraught, his face paler and thinner than Shige remembers. He's asking for his passport back, pleading with them to just let him go home.
Sweeping in to his rescue would be suspicious; ICRC officials are sparse on the line and the MPs will think it odd he arrived at just the right moment to save this Ishikawa from Hokkaido.
The harass him for another 20 minutes before a calls comes through on their radio and they leave, with the Hokkaido passport. Ryo stands in the road, the dust kicked up from their jeep all around him.
Shige comes around from behind the boarded up shop he'd been hiding behind and walks towards Ryo, who hears the dirt crunching and knows some one is coming up behind him. He turns slowly, like he's got no life let in him, and stares as Shige for a long moment before his face dawns in realizations. But he doesn't call out, doesn't run towards Shige; just keeps standing there, his body language curious and his eyes relieved.
"Hello," Shige says, smiling, still in his choppy sankeijin Japanese. "it seems like you're in a bit of trouble."
Ryo nods. "I think I'm trapped here."
"Let me buy you a cup of tea, and I'll see what I can do."
They enter a little tea house together, filled mostly with soldiers, and they talk as though they don't know each other for another hour, before they leave again, and head south, hitching a ride with a news correspondent team from Okinawa. They get off the truck in Hokuto, even closer to the line than they were in the little town where Shige found Ryo.
Hokuto has a press and humanitarian zone on its outskirts, where those non-combatants are able to pass through.
Ryo says it'll be a problem; "I don't have any documents."
Shige hands him a Chinese passport, his picture and name Xin Li next to it. "Leave the talking to me."
It's a long line and a long wait to get up to the office where officers arbitrarily decide who's let through and who isn't. The two of them don't talk at all during the wait.
"Where are you from?" The officer asks the two of them, a sneer on his face.
"Toronto," Shige says smiling, he gestures to Ryo. "He doesn't speak any Japanese - just Mandarin and English - but he's from Hong Kong."
"And you're with the Red Cross."
"Yes, Osaka and Tokyo are both signatories to the Geneva Convention, as I'm sure you are aware. Our superiors charged us with making sure both sides are following the protocol; we're moving onto checking over the Tokyo side of the line."
The officer nods, like he didn't hear a word Shige said, just stares hard and long at both their passports, finally sighing and stamping them both, waving the pair through to the backdoor.
Once they're safely on the Tokyo side of the line, Ryo grabs Shige around the shoulders in a man-hug. "Thank you," he says, voice tight.
Shige pats him on the shoulder. "Every one was getting worried, since you were gone for so long."
Ryo pulls away smiling. "It was tough, getting there and finding the report and then... I couldn't find a way through the line at all."
"It's gotten really bad. Now let's find a fucking phone so I can call Yamashita-kun and let him know you're back."
They find a phone, but the line to Yamapi is dead. Ryo automatically assumes the worst and Shige refrains from smacking him in the back of the head.
"If we could find a shortwave radio we could pick him up no problem," Shige mutters, dialing to the counter-espionage office. "It's Katou," he says, right away. "I'm on the Tokyo-side of Hokuto and I need a car, motorcycle, I don't care, just something that will get me to Colonel Yamashita."
Shige abruptly hangs up, turning to Ryo. "We've got to wait an hour, but we'll have a car, and then we'll really be home free."
Turns out it's only 45 minutes.
A little private comes with a car, getting out and saluting them both before they all climb in.
"We radioed the colonel to let him know you're both on the way," he says. "He seemed very...."
"Excited," Shige says, like there's no other alternative.
"He'd better fucking be," Ryo mutters from the backseat.
And he is, running out of the command center once he hears the jeep, screaming, "Ryo-chan!" loudly and flailing like a child. "You made it back!"
"Yeah," Ryo sighs, smiling, pulling the rumpled report out from his jacket. "And look what I found."
When Yamapi gets ahold of that report, he immediately turns it right over to the real International Committee of the Red Cross, which makes Shige laugh a little at the irony.
It's checked for authenticity, and once that's cleared, it hits the international news press, being disseminated all over the world, and people are horrified and disgusted with the Osakan prime minister.
Osaka tries to censor all the news, or keep it out entirely, but when it's something this big and scandalous, none of their efforts are worth much. It doesn't help when cassette tapes and meeting notes are anonymously leaked by some one in the government, directly implicating the prime minister and three generals in the planning and execution of the bombing.
There's a period of disbelief within Osaka, but as the news sinks in, more documents and meeting records are leaked and one of the implicated general's takes his own life, the people come to understand their situation; that their government was built around war and cared nothing for the actual people of Osaka. Denial moves into acceptance, and public opinion shifts back to the UN-led dialogues, supporting the properly negotiated end of hostilities.
The Osakan generals at the line of combat order their troops to unconditionally stand down.
The Tokyoites and Osakans under Yamapi's informal command do the same, glad for the rest, but continue to look towards Yamapi for orders.
"It's probably fine for you all to go home," he says, Ryo and Koyama right behind him. "Everything's going to turn out okay this time around."
Yet, they all stay, just in case Yamapi needs them again.
He doesn't; 10 days later, a humbled and embarrassed Osakan Lieutenant General, the highest ranked member of the military-government to have an innocent status in relation to the bombing, and the Tokyo prime minister sign the new peace treaty. And this time, there's dancing in the streets in both Tokyo and Osaka.
As the people of both cities move past the war, they remain weary of the politicians, not trusting them in the least. Incumbents are booted from office in unprecedented numbers, but there is no real leader among the new parliamentarians and they accomplish little.
It's in a completely off-handed manner, that a news anchor in Tokyo muses on air about whether or not Colonel Yamashita, the unifying figure of the late days of the war, has any political aspirations.
It doesn't matter whether he does or not, because people love the idea. Interviews with former POWs in Osaka all attest to the colonel's patient and kind nature, and that it goes without saying he would listen to the concerns of Osaka. Tokyo citizens find him admirable and honorable, a uniter of men in times of desperation; if he can do it in wartime, he can do it in the Tokyo parliament.
Yamapi ignores them all, just keeps doing what he'd been doing; making sure all the Osakans that had joined him are comfortably back at their homes and the military's items are returned to them.
A news crew tracks him down though, and accosts him.
He frowns as they fire off questions at him. "What are your economic policy stances, Colonel?" "Do you have any comment on the bombing trials going on in Osaka?" "Is there any one you would like to see as the new prime minister of Osaka, once the interim elections are held?"
"I," Yamapi begins, and the reporter leans in, "just want to surf."
The cameraman chokes on a laugh and the reporter smacks him on the arm.
There's a call from some where past a the few last tents, a raspy Kansai voice yelling, "Pi, come here and deal with these bureaucrats!"
"Who was that? I thought your press release said all the Osakans that had joined you already returned south?" The reporter asks.
"Oh, that's just Ryo-chan. He's a man of two cities."
"Pi! Hurry up!"
Yamapi smiles and wanders off to deal with these bureaucrats.
There's a news report that night saying that Colonel Yamashita does, in fact, have a favorite for the position of Osakan prime minister.
"This mystery man, referred to by the Colonel by his first name, was praised as being 'a man of two cities'," the anchor stays, smiling vapidly.
Most people ignore the report. Especially Yamapi and Ryo.
But even after the new elections in both cities are wrapped up and the new prime ministers are inaugurated, Yamapi isn't left alone. There's still a large movement wanting him to be in office, not this other fellow.
"Won't you even consider it, Colonel?" An interviewer asks while doing a story on the Yamanashi camp that Yamapi led.
He seems to actually consider it, until Tegoshi, in the corner of the room, speaks up, "Eh? But then you wouldn't be able to surf as much, right Yamashita-kun? Or at all."
Yamapi's face falls and looks apologetically at the reporter. "I'm sorry, but I really love the sea."
There aren't any good waves in Tokyo. Or Chiba, Or Kanagawa. Or anywhere else easy to get to.
After years of living on an island in the Pacific Ocean, the quality of waves never having been an issue, Yamapi finds that Japan proper just isn't the place to be for surfing. He sits on the beach, bummed out, while Ryo uses the small waves for practice, since he's still just a novice. Shige is several tens of meters away, trying to fish from a cement pier. Koyama and Tegoshi are slowly burying Massu in the sand; they say he deserves it for falling asleep.
The military structures are shaken up, stream-lined and minimized. The Tokyo generals aren't willing to completely absolve Yamapi of his dereliction of duty, yet they can't punish a culturally powerful and loved figure like him. Instead he's given an honorable discharge and kept on retainer for consultative purposes. Koyama, Tegoshi, Massu and Shige meet similar ends, for their own dereliction, disobeying orders and improper use of state military resources.
Ryo has a bit more difficult time, since he could, under Osaka law, be tried for crimes against the state and treason for his spying and theft from the Osaka Police Department. The new government is torn on what to do; he was part of Colonel Yamashita's united officers, and public opinion is ever increasingly against disciplining those officers, yet, there's the matter of the espionage and theft he committed.
The new prime minister asks for Ryo to return to Osaka for a hearing.
"Nothing more," he assures Ryo through political channels. "We just want to understand what happened and know the timeline. You won't be held or prosecuted."
Ryo hears that and laughs, sends a postcard to the prime minister with 'no' written in black, bold lettering, and another to his parents, but that one says 'sorry for making so much trouble for you'.
The six of them pool their resources, buy a boat, pack it with their things and get the hell out of Tokyo. They sail around the waters off the Japanese coast for a few weeks, stopping by the little islands they find to restock on food and other necessities.
The moment they reach the port on Hachijo Island, the other five can all see Yamapi fall in love. The port master directs him to the best surfing on the island, in his rough, accented Japanese, and he's gone, leaving the others to their own devices.
At the end of the first week, none of them can imagine leaving. So, they don't.
Even though this island, and many of the others far off-shore are holdings or were technically allied with Tokyo during the war, it never reached these islands. The natives don't mind their new neighbors and they don't turn their heads and stare when Ryo walks down the street with Yamapi, or Tegoshi, or any of the others, speaking in differing accents.
The news spreads around Tokyo and Osaka among the men who had allied themselves with neither city, and instead Yamapi; that he's left the main islands of Japan, and whether he realizes it or not, is trying to recreate the feeling of Chichijima from so long ago. More than a few move to follow him once more.
The naval officer Ikuta arrives one day, smiling, with a surf board under his arm.
"There's a couple people up north on Miyake Island, too," he says later in the day, sitting with Yamapi and Ryo on the beach. "Reintegration is going well between the cities, but..."
"Some of us are more enlightened than others," Ryo mutters.
Yamapi laughs and throws a little handful of sand. "This is a better way to live anyways. With the sea," and then shyly, he adds, "and these important people."