[Prologue] From the Ashes

"It's still a bad example. Police officers are supposed to be good examples. And the tea is just fine. Thank you."

It was difficult to cage Shizu's eyes; they weren't even on Andrea. They were elsewhere. And now she was frowning. Gently, she sipped the tea, turning her attention to nobody in particular. Apparently, some spot near the middle of the table, which she viewed with regret, as if somehow she'd known, all along, she deserved this sort of assignment. The person giving out assignments had sure had a sense of humor.

It wasn't enough she had to have been set up for failure in the Star Army. They were doing it to her here, too. The thought worried at the edge of her consciousness, driving her deeper into herself.

Miserably, she asked, "Am I on some sort of gameshow?"

Andrea looked at the young man as he spoke up. Timid, shy and seemingly naive, though the last thing was hard to judge, as the Nepleslian woman only knew him for about a minute. That said he seemed to care about laws. About their proper stating.

The small neko did not even really got on Andrea's nerves. She knew where she was coming from and Andy could understand her motives. It actually made the nepleslian detective respect the neko more. As much as she looked like her life ended, she stood by her beliefs or beliefs she was taught. Smoking was bad in the Yamatai seemingly, as no one bothered to learn that electronic cigarette was just as innocent as jasmine tea.

Andrea could make some remark back, but she decided to stay quiet. She was still waiting till someone tells her where she can find Araiah. To not provoke the short neko anymore she took her cig and put it in the breast pocket of her jacket.

"You can find the Lieutenant over there." Trudy said to Andrea making a notion to Araiah's general location with her head before returning her attention to adjusting her watch, Can't believe i forgot to adjust this thing she thought adjusting the time so it was in sync with the office clock. Trudy smiled as she put her watch back on, happy that everything should fall within her various schedules on her data pad, and took out one of Lilly's homemade cookies to celebrate. Her ears perked up as she took a bite of out of the chocolate chip cookie, and a small smile started to spread across her face. The smile quickly faded along with the perkiness of her ears when she saw Shizu's sad demeanor, taking out another cookie she offered it to her

"Homemade cookie? Their chocolate chip."

Shizu took the cookie, and looked at it, gray eyes heavy.

Then, she took a bite of it, appeared thoughtful for a moment, swallowed, and then said, "Thanks."

Shizu looked at the half-bit cookie as if it were truly the last cookie in the world. Her ears flattened, somewhat pitiably, her sharp features darkened by black resignation and a complete lack of hope. Eventually, without looking up, she addressed the Lieutenant.

"I signed on as a Detective, because I got tired of not having a job, and I am a former operative."

She perked just slightly. Such was her demeanor that even the slightest change in the aura of misery and dejection was like a little candle in a very dark place. "Do we have bunks, at the station house?"

"This won't do," Araiah muttered to herself as the demonstrating between the members went back and forth. Well, it was Unit 4 for a reason, after all.

"Yes, yes, we have bunks." the blue-haired Nekovalkyrja said as she stood up and moved to the white board. "I am Lieutenant Morita, and I am in charge of this station. Now please, sit down, and make yourselves comfortable and listen up."

She gave a nod towards the group.

"It's no time to fight over small things like electronic cigarettes and sour moods. From now on, you all are family. The streets out there can be dangerous, and the people you're protecting will be looking to you for guidance and protection."

Her eyes locked on Shizu for a moment.

"I know some of you have military experience. In police and military life, you get a gun and there's danger. But that's about where the similarities end."

She took two markers, one black, and one red in her hand as she turned to the board and wrote down YNP to one side and KYOTO on the other, in black. She drew a large line under each word, then placed the black marker on its holder as she popped off the cap to the red marker.

"Now," she said. "Tell me some things you think about when you look at these words."

As an example she wrote down "PRIDE" under YNP and "BIG CITY" under KYOTO.

"For example, I think of pride when I think of the YNP, how I need to best represent the uniform when I'm out on the field. And I wrote down 'big city' here, because, obviously Kyoto is huge, but it also means there are a lot of people watching and expecting things from us."

With that, she fell silent and waited for group input.

The YNP, and Kyoto?

Shizu rubbed her scalp again, her hair having gone every which way in spite of the hair clips. It was pretty useless trying to control that much hair. She'd thought about cutting it every once in a while, going for a shorter style, but... Well, everybody liked it. Shizu couldn't bring herself to even try. So now, like always, she just gathered up every stray stand that had worked its way forward around her shoulders, and tossed it back.

Then, she went back to her tea, sipping it slowly. It had cooled, just a little, but not very much. It still burnt her lips just a little bit.

Kyoto. It brought up a lot of images and experiences. Most of them were clubs. It was fascinating, how many things existed in Kyoto, but somehow Shizu had gravitated towards the night life. Dancing. Letting your guard down, just enough to buzz for a whole night helped a lot. Shizu had to resist the urge to sniff at herself, to see if she still smelled like the night, this morning. Truth was, she hadn't slept. Fake faces, and real people, and it somehow seemed a lot more pleasant than the idiots she was watching now.

A minkan-model, who looked like a Nepleslian, who pretty obviously smoked; she smelled like it. Drink, Shizu could stomach in quarts, but cigarettes were disgusting. Then there was mister-effiminate, and the late cookie girl, both in uniform.

So looking at the board... and then at the people she was working with?

Sip tea.

Bite cookie.

Shut mouth.

There really wasn't any sort of hope, not even a little holdout hope in the back of Shizu's brain, that this was going to get any better than the morning. She'd lost a girlfriend. Another one. What was wrong with her?

At least she could sleep in the station house, tonight.

Sashi's hand shot up like a child in a classroom.

"I know one! 'Justice' goes under YNP," He cheered, again like a child, "Because justice is the primary goal of the YNP! And we can put 'Justice' under Kyoto, too, because we're going to bring justice to Kyoto!"

Andrea gave lieutenant a nod and listened to her, while she took a mug and filled it with coffee from the table. She could use one after last night anyway. Nothing gets one ready for anything like cup of horrible police station coffee. She sipped a little and dragged one of the chairs to other, turning it around and sitting in a way, she could rest her arms on the backrest.

Andrea listened to Lt and shook her head a little. So this was the family talk. This group of investigators should be one happy family? How funny. Some naive kid, two young chicks and miss with "My puppy just died" face. Just great. Andrea had to force herself to not roll her eyes as Morita wrote YNP and Kyoto on the board and asked them what they think.

When the guy in the uniform just went and said his justice thingey, Andrea had to do her best to not guffaw. She facepalmed in her mind and just looked straight into her cup of coffee as if she was seeking some kind of integrity in there. She felt if she was in some bloody group therapy, when she should be out there upholding law instead.

Trudy nibbled on her cookie as she thought of something to add to the board. Deciding to be productive, she started making a webchart on her datapad, connecting words and Ideas about the YNP and Kyoto together with lines and little bubbles. After several minutes of writing, her chart started to look like a bowl of ramen noodles, with the absurd amount of bubbles and links.

What can connect to pavement? Construction workers? No I already have that here...... this is getting harder than I originally thought Trudy thought as she typed and frantically tried to think of other things to add to her web, and eventually to the board in front of her.

Araiah quickly scribbled down the word justice on the board with a nod.

"Yes, justice is very important," she said. "Very good, officer."

She turned around and surveyed the group, awaiting, with hope, some input from the rest of the group.

It didn't come. Her eyes furrowed and she crossed her arms with a glare.

"Fine. We'll play that way," she said. "Last person to put something meaningful on the board gets the shitty desk. Then the shitty equipment. Then the shitty car. How's that sound?"

"Truth," Shizu snapped, immediately, from behind her tea. "Under the YNP. Because we look for it."

I will not be having the shitty desk.

Andrea look at the written words. She was not sure if she should really take it seriously, but she did not want to get the drive the cranky car that stops all the time that every station has. That car was always given to you as punishment and Andy was sure that station mechanics were actually making sure it was in that horrible state.

"Courage," she said and pointed for letters YNP. "You need it on the job. As for the Kyoto.... just write 'Lies' there. This town is full of them." Nothing like cynism to ruin the day of someone else.

Trudy glanced over her notes quickly before saying "Duty under both, because it is both our duty to serve the YNP and Kyoto."

Sashi smiled around the room at everyone's suggestions, completely ignoring the possibility that he might, if he didn't make another one soon, end up with the coveted Shitty Car. Instead, Sashi stood and returned to the coffee pot to pour himself another cup.

"Coffee should go under Kyoto." Sashi said, mainly to himself, "Because we will drink coffee like a Nepleslian sailor pretty much all the time."

With a smirk, Araiah nodded to Sashi. The officer had diffused her sour mood somewhat.

"Fortunately, coffee's something we have in steady supply," she said. "But sure, what the hell."

Araiah's marker scribbled everyone's words onto the board. When she was finished, she capped the marker and tapped the plastic against the whiteboard.

The gesture appeared symbolic, as the Lieutenant's mood shifted quickly, like grains of sand blown on the wind.

"Pride, justice, truth, courage, duty," She said with a tap, "These common ideas joined us together, fueled, in some way, our desire to become members of the YNP. What we do, we do for the greater good, to help those in need and maintain the peace of the empire."

She spoke the words with pride as she instinctively stood straighter, a glow of purpose radiating from her. But there was a sudden hardness which tempered that glow when she brought the marker to the word "LIES".

"If only it were that easy."

pop.

Below "LIES", in big letters, she wrote "CONTRADICTIONS". The marker squeaked against the whiteboard, as the Lieutenant pressed firmly against it.

She put the marker down and crossed her arms behind her back, clasping her wrist with her right arm.

"More than 30 million individuals live in Kyoto," she said. "Each with their own beliefs, attitudes and ideas about what the YNP means to them. From the local news vendor to the Empress herself, they all think something different of us."

She gave a sharp look to the group.

"30 million individuals. 30 million potential contradictions. And we juggle them all. We filter all of that, somehow, and find the truth in a city full of lies, as you eloquently put it. How are we to do so?"

Andrea smiled slightly at Araiah's theatrics. That woman surely knew how to play this game. Ah well Andrea decided to stop making her jobs worse. Those other naive guys in unit four needed it. They still had to feel this job was worth it and that they were doing something good. That was the truth too, they were doing something good. There was a lot of shit coming with the job though and they did not have to know about that yet. Andrea felt that ever cop needed to find that on his own.

Andrea found out and it made her bitter and bad woman. She wished she was like one man she used to work with. John Maverick, good cop. He was Nepleslian and worked as cop on Nepleslia too. He found that bad things already back in Nepleslia, maybe that made the job easier for him in Yamatai. He still had his beliefs and he was doing the job with pride. Andrea was loosing hers.

"I think we need to be careful at first." She said and put her hand in front of her mouth as if she had cigarette in it. It was not there, which made her look at her hand with displeased eyes. "Every man might be contradiction and every man might tell us lies. People often hold back things just to not look bad. Because we might find something about them too. We are doing this for them and they are making the job harder. That is a fact. We need to be careful then, about them, about us and about the crime too."

Sera Had been leaning on the far wall watching and thinking, She must have drifted deep into her head cheeses for it was some time before she spoke.

"The Only way to go about doing it is to accept all things as both lies and truths." pausing to let the others grasp the contradiction in her first statement. "We must sort through the statements and physical evidence, and glen the fine line that is Justice. Not Truth nor Lies but Justice. That is what we are here for right?"

She blushed as soon as she finished talking, she didn't mean to preach nor draw too much attention to herself on her first day in the unit. 'damn, they are all going to think I'm a rigid prude that is out to make points with the higher up.'

Shizu idly adjusted her shirt, which had bunched up in a somewhat awkward place as she gradually slid down against the back of her chair. Eventually she just sat up, set her tea down on the desk, pulled the shirt straight again at the lower hem, and took it off her shoulders a little with a flick of the collar. It wasn't that she wanted these people to look; she did, sort of. That had become a habit. But, it was beginning to become uncomfortable all of a sudden.

"You don't listen to a single thing they say," Shizu stated, her voice dipping back into its more regular, soft tenor as she idly ran her fingers through her hair. "Every opinion is useless. If we set aside all our preconceptions about what this is or isn't, the barest truth is that upholding the law is our job. If we have cases, we solve them not by being nice or holding hands, but by finding the truth and enough of it to give a prosecutor.

"Forgive me for saying so, Lieutenant, but this entire discussion seems rather frivolous. People are sheep. So, we find wolves in them, and then sick the dogs onto those wolves. I do not see the need to make this so complex."

"I agree with Miss Shizu!" Sashi intoned, appearing next to Shizu with a kettle to refresh her tea, "Not that your presentation is anything less than beautiful and correct, Araiah-sempai! But we have to do our work for any of it to matter! So let's hit the streets. I've been in another Special Investigations unit already, and we never had any of these fun little thought excersizes."

He didn't mention that they spent a lot of time making fun of him and only being nice when they wanted something. He also didn't mention that he nearly lost his job working with them-- placing him in Unit Four; The Reject Squad.

"So let's fight crime!"

Trudy had finally put away her datapad, making a mental note to reorganize it when she got the chance, and listened in to the others conversation. As she heard Shizu's comment about weeding out the wolfs from the sheep, she started to raise her hand in protest, but decided against it, remembering that she came from a S.W.A.T. unit and was used to being the attack dog.

Granted that is a viable tactic, we should at least try to listen and help the people we encounter because they might be telling the truth....or at least that's what the manual says. She thought to herself rubbing one of her ears in thought.

"I'll have to agree with Agent Sashi and in turn Miss Shizu, ma'm." Trudy said quietly, "We can sit here and discuss what it means to be in the YNP but unless we actually practice what we discuss we might as well be cadets back in the Academy again." Grabbing another cookie she quickly started nibbling on it, hoping she didn't overstep any boundaries.