Fred
Retired Staff
Kotori watched the scenery fly by as the West Line train cut along the land outside of Ketsurui no Iori.
Most of it was snow-covered plains, with farm houses and buildings of red and brown providing the only break in the white ground and white-grey sky. Occasionally there were tractors left out, the snow turning tall features of the landscape into shorter, hulking masses of mechanisms and metal. Blades from cutters and plows stuck into the air, sometimes blending in, other times half-buried into the ground with dug up dirt crumbled around them. The clouds were light, but on the horizon to the north, toward KnI, they were a deep purple and bloated with a fresh storm.
KnI was nestled into a large valley against the Koriyama Mountains reached by cresting over a small range of sub-300-meter-tall mountains. The city was surrounded by a wall of starship-grade armor, maybe 25 meters tall, with one gate. The other ways into the city either were over the wall -- floating, flying, etc. -- or underneath it, which is what trains did, slipping into underground tunnels at the valley floor and coming out through one of the gardens and into the train station.
The garden mostly was snow, with the evergreen trees adding the only color. The train station's tiled walls and pillars were red or white, with intermittent signs placed on them telling travelers they were at Michiko Station. The train pulled into the stop, which thankfully had an overhang to shield passengers from the falling snow once they stepped off.
Kotori was the only one in her car. Yuumi told her that she would have someone waiting for her — a Yamataian representative of the movement she was to talk to. Kotori had the man's name as "Kerry Murakami." He had no description, but he was of Raltean descent, so he likely would stand out. He was told to be looking for Kotori too.
When the train stopped, the princess unhurriedly stood from her table in the lounge and made to the egress, stepped down the few stairs to the docks, and then left the dock platform to enter the station proper. A leisurely pace lead her through the station, past the ticket booth and convenience stores; and the nekovalkyrja wove her way through the terminal's other commuters as she followed the signs leading to the parking lot at the station's front.
Her progress was slow, and she meant it to be that way. It was for the same reason she had chosen to spend most of the trip in the train car's lounge rather than her cabin: she wanted to admire the scenery. It was not through a tourist-like impressionable curiosity or guarded wariness so much as an eagerness to expand her horizons.
Kotori loved Yamatai, but she knew so little of her homeland past the Ketsurui and the military. Her limited ventures downtown and in the suburbs scratched the bare surface of what was to see on her homeworld. If she was going to help administer it and the Empire beyond, Kotori wanted to see it.
Brass-and-glass doubledoors were shoved open and she emerged back outside on an ample sidewalk bordering an expansive car park. She stepped clear from the flow of people and stepped beyond the station building's overhang, flipping her mantle's hood up over her head and donning gloves as she made to wait for Murakami as she rehearsed in her mind the reason for her coming to Ketsurui no Iori —
So far, the divide appears to stand between civilians and the military, was what she thought. While nekovalkyrja are dominant within the military, the rest seems more a perception of social class than anything else. Melisson called that "the ruling class and the cattle they rule over". Only the circumstances make that perception more blatant to these people.
A sudden gale lifted powdery snow off the streets, coaxing her eyes to closed and her hands to adjust her furred hood to a snugger fit in a vain attempt to ease the discomfort. The falling snow kept coming, even as the wind blew, then sliced, around Kotori. As she stood on the curb of the street, waiting for anyone to guide her somewhere, a deeply bronzed man in a black, lined trenchcoat and peaked black cap approached her from the side. She saw the black of his tie, then the darkness of his eyes.
He wasn't a native to KnI with that deep a tan. When he spoke to her, he put his hands together in front of him and made a small bow with his head and shoulders. He was large, Kotori saw, with broad shoulders and muscled arms that tugged at the seams of his coat when he bent them at the elbow. He also wore polished shoes that could fit both of her feet. He wasn't an ID-SOL, but maybe he had the blood of one.
"S'cuse me miss," he said in Yamataian, the words rumbling from his throat. Kotori placed the accent as western.
Kotori's fur-framed face — the cold weather lent her porcelain skin a blush — turned to what she hoped was her guide. "Murakami-san?"
"I'm one of his," the man replied. "Wilhelm. I have a car waiting to take you to him."
"Komban wa, Wilhelm-san." Kotori turned entirely to face him and answered his bow with one of her own. "Yoroshiku gozaimasu."
Wilhelm nodded, and guided the Neko across the street in the snow, then past it to the parking lot. After walking by many snow-buried cars, Wilhelm turned to a blue hovervan with tinted windows and opened the left back door, behind the driver.
Kotori politely tilted her head in a bow, then gathered her dress just so in order to slide into the back seat of the vehicle.
"Watch your head," Wilhelm said, as he shut the door.
Kotori turned her head to nod to him, keeping her body out of the way from the door.
Click!
Too late. When Kotori looked to the source of the noise, she saw a Type 28C/C NSP's high-gloss silver finish glinting at her with the dome light of the car's cabin. The sound was the safety coming off; whether it was on normal or stun, she could not tell.
"Just a precaution," the Yamataian woman with Neko ears said. "I don't want to shoot."
A gun! Kotori tensed in her seat at the realization, her expression taut. She had expected there could be trouble due to unrest, but this was hardly how she had pictured it going. That made her feel painfully naive. Nyton would've never fallen for that.
The soldier's impulse to pre-emptively lash out was strong, but she stiffled it. Too Ketsurui... it rarely served us well. The princess ruled out Kikyô's involvement. Too many holes in this approach, not ruthless enough. Which left circumstances hinting at desperate people scrabbling for any shred of control they could get their hands on.
So, instead, Kotori regained her composure and reclined against her seat. "Indeed you do not," she replied, striving to remain calm. "Which begs the question: what compels you to be ready to do so?"
"A damaged ransom can be worth more than a healthy one," the Yamataian woman said as Wilhelm slipped into the driver's seat. "But the boss wants you whole at the start. Like I said. A precaution."
The van rumbled to life, and the windshield wipers started to push away the snow and ice that had formed on it.
"Sou ka." Kotori had to struggle very hard to maintain her cool. What she heard sounded too much like calculated ill will on the part of people she had come to mediate with; and likely in favor of. It unpleasantly reminded her of the Lorath.
She then ran over Yuumi's instructions again, balancing the weight of her goals against her personnal safety and her prestige as royalty. She wondered about how Nyton would view the situation, how Yukari would, how Kôsuka would, how Tom would.
Thinking of what changed Tom during the Miharu mission had her thoughts turn dark on the subject of Murakami Kerry. That man chose terrorism, likely thinking that his self-righteousness and conviction justified it. In response, her throat nearly choked with indignation.
There. It was then that she decided. There was no point in just getting carted off to a place where she would be outnumbered and consigned to be a hostage. She still had nightmares of her time on the Black Sakura. She would attack.
But not in blind anger. The memory of the Lorath scientist's head exploding back when she had left her indignation unchecked onboard the Sakura helped keep her in check from acting on rash impulse. Action still needed to match her purpose.
First, she needed to know where Murakami was.
Kotori began filtering telepathic communications on the part of the two users in front of her: if they sent anything, even encrypted, she'd know. In addition — using some insights mined in her Yui metadata — she even accessed PANTHEON to view the recent backlog of point-to-point telepathic communication to determine the locations of sender-receiver.
So far, there was no telepathic communication between the two. Point-to-point telepathic communication logs revealed where she was headed — just as Yuumi told her, most of the activity was in the southwest of the city. Most of the communication involved talk of watches, supplies, orders and the like.
Kerry Murakami wasn't mentioned by name, but several people referenced a "face." Perhaps that was him.
She also checked to see how active the car's onboard computer was: the GPS system might have already been accessed to provide directions to wherever Murakami laired. If the trip back from the train station remained unfamiliar to the driver, it was possible he had logged a request for guiding directions. Kotori could work with that too.
The GPS was clean. Wiped, in fact. Likely on purpose. However Wilhelm got around, he did it on memory.
Secondly, she needed to attend to her own safety.
The princess hemosynthetically adapted her eyes for infrared vision and studied both the driving Wilhelm and his gun-wielding female companion to glimpse the presence of other weaponry on their persons. Wilhelm had a cold, cylindrical object slipped inside of his uncomfortably tight suit jacket. A baton, collapsable, possibly a stun type. The Yamataian woman was using her only weapon.
Another thing to be concerned about was possible accomplices. They weren't followed out of the train station parking lot, and they pulled away without going above a meter or so off the road. KnI was an old city, explaining the presence of streets. Kotori's memories provided her with little additional data. No telepathic communication, no other points highlighted as sources of other telepathic correspondence. No one was around Wilhelm before he approached Kotori. It was just those two.
One additional check: Seat belts. They were wearing them.
Finally, Kotori's mind connected Vermillion's AIES. The machine, still in Kyoto, would only take an instant to get to her once its teleportation module charged up. She might have need of it shortly.
Now that she had taken stock of the situation, Kotori figured this was as good as she would get if she wanted to regain control of the situation. She quietly waited until they were on a relatively quiet street, and then acted: using her anti-gravity control, she overrode the influence of the hovervan's grav-drive and swiftly upended it.
The result? Sending it crashing roof-first unto the snowy pavement. Inertially anchored to her seat, torso hunched forward and arms shielding her head, Kotori was betting on her surviving the crash much better than her captors.
The van went fast. Upended, the vehicle crashed hard on its roof, a massive boom filling the cabin, but its emergency systems kicked in to cut off the power to the drive. The van skid several dozen meters along the snow-covered road, with the roof caved in some. Wilhelm and the Yamataian woman were thrown about in their seats, shaking and then going somewhat slack when the van came to a stop. Kotori looked for the pistol, but didn't see it. It wasn't in the woman's hand.
Within a couple seconds, Wilhelm and the woman were stirring, groaning, little cuts on their face from the safety glass, their heads almost touching the snow that had collected on the cabin's roof — now the floor — as they helplessly hung in their seats.
The tops of the back doors looked crushed. The front doors were in much worse shape.
Kotori then dared breathe, somewhat amazed both at the sheer violence her plan had brought about and at its success.
Still 'sitting' at her seat, she gingerly uncoiled some and looked at the two stunned people in the front seat before deciding on her next move: reaching back into her obi with both hands to bring out her NSPs. Her eyes narrowed in grim intent as she pumped out a stun bolt into each.
The two went slack, arms falling from their struggles with the seat belts and into the snow.
Kotori's service pistols went back into their concealed holsters, and next with flicks of her wrists she brought out her kama: a sharp metallic sound sounding off as the switchblades sprung into position. The neko promptly brought them to bear on the backdoor closest to her, swiftly carving a rectangle that — along with a well-placed kick — created the apperture needed for her to emerge from the doomed vehicle.
At was when she stood outside the hovercar's wreck that a wave of whooziness hit her, coaxing her to hang unto the upended vehicle for balance a moment. She shook her head, regained her bearings, and flipped down her furred hood as she summoned for Vermillion.
With a CRACK-KA-BOOSH the red machine appeared floating overhead, the shockwave of its appearance briefly whipping Kotori's hair around like a dark flag. She waved Vermillion down and once the robot's claws touched upon the snowy street its chestplate swivelled open to allow its owner entry.
The nekovalkyrja sprung up and got herself seated into the mecha's control cavity, though she then hunched forward, setting her elbows on her still-dangling legs.
She breathed in, closed her eyes, and slowly exhaled. She was still seeing stars, but she felt better. She wasn't going to be held hostage. She could think without seeing before the threatening maw of a service pistol, so much like she had ended up facing when she had failed to escape the Black Sakura with Hanako.
It was then that she second-doubted herself. Her purpose, meeting Murakami, was still met whether or not she was held at gunpoint. However, from there, had she had any trust she could somehow talk herself out of that predicament and reach the resolution Yuumi had wanted her to reach?
No. That's not what I believed, she realized, pursing her lips at the unpleasant thought. Kotori had no cause to believe she was especially convincing — officer meetings onboard the Miharu had always been controversial affairs with her officers butting head with her is some way or another. She was new at this: there was no reason she should have expected miracles.
Getting ransomed would've hardly helped matters either. It would have made the Ketsurui look weak, and would have had brimmed her prestige as a Ketsurui princess. Right now, she was showing that she was not to be thriffled with. It was very Ketsurui. It was much closer to gunboat diplomacy than Kotori would have liked.
But that's how it was. They started it first, she thought as she gave a baleful glare toward the two comatose people in the ruined hovercar. Pointing a weapon that could kill me, mentioning my having more value as ransom if I was damaged. Was it that hard to just escort me to where I was meant to go, and let me discuss matters without that axe over my head? After all I've done in the past to try and save you?
Again, she breathed out, and slowly took in the briskly cold air in. Stick to the things that matter, Kotori.
The two in the car were still part of the people her clan ruled over. She needed to make sure they would be looked after. She opened a PANTHEON line to the local law-enforcement station and sent out a text message:
She took mental inventory of the organized encrypted lines the protesters had established in a surprisingly military fashion — amongst the discontents were surely retired military personnel — and accessed several of them. Not all. I do want them to believe they have a few that have not been compromised so I can still overhear their chatter.
Then, she transmitted: "I am Ketsurui Kotori. I have had the displeasure of being held at gunpoint by the agents you sent to fetch me, in a blatant attempt to seize me hostage and ransom me.
"To say I took a dim view of such an attempt would be an understatement. I came in good faith to help mediate a resolution beneficial to you... and this is what I get? Understand that I did not pour four years of my life to save this planet from Eve's and Melisson's machinations only to be treated so disgracefully.
"So, now that I've had your two agents sent to the hospital, your current predicament begs the question: what now? I was lead to believe that you were going hungry and that you wanted to have your wishes better represented. Do you still wish to parlay and reach a peaceful resolution?"
Kotori's message was not immediately returned. The silence meant she could hear the sirens of law enforcement rushing toward the van and its occupants, as snow began to pile upon Vermillion.
Three minutes passed before a reply tickled at the Neko's mind.
"No," the voice — a female's — said. "I think we're done here. Tell your government we're through."
Kotori closed her eyes. "It is your government too. What did you expect? That it would support you when you stooped to criminal and treasonous actions?" The eyes opened, angrier. "Maybe it's fine for you to feel like you want to rebel, but what about the people that depend on you?
"Tell me, where do you want this to go? Rebellion? Bullets flying around? Do you actually think you can win? Will it truly put food in your belly?
"I can work with you if you wish to improve your situation," Kotori finished with. "But I won't work with criminals and traitors. Choose which you wish to be."
Another long pause.
"You've proven yourself to be like your kin, not the reasoned person we were led to believe you would be," the voice replied. "We will find another way."
"Tch," Kotori's head sank to rest between her knees. The taste of bile reached her tongue — in this case that felt pretty much like the taste of failure. 'Sometime, you lose' she had been taught. Sometimes knowing when to lose meant being able to win later on. Forcing her hand further here and now didn't seem to hold much in the way of payoff.
"It is easier to lord over the reason of others when you refrain from taking hostages at gunpoint. I will claim guilt for assuring my survival and my freedom. Condemn it all you want, but it is hardly a trait unique to nekovalkyrja," Kotori pointed out before giving a succinct: "Sayonara."
Not expecting any last minute change of mind, Kotori had Vermillion turn around, climb in altitude, and then speed back toward Kyoto.
Most of it was snow-covered plains, with farm houses and buildings of red and brown providing the only break in the white ground and white-grey sky. Occasionally there were tractors left out, the snow turning tall features of the landscape into shorter, hulking masses of mechanisms and metal. Blades from cutters and plows stuck into the air, sometimes blending in, other times half-buried into the ground with dug up dirt crumbled around them. The clouds were light, but on the horizon to the north, toward KnI, they were a deep purple and bloated with a fresh storm.
KnI was nestled into a large valley against the Koriyama Mountains reached by cresting over a small range of sub-300-meter-tall mountains. The city was surrounded by a wall of starship-grade armor, maybe 25 meters tall, with one gate. The other ways into the city either were over the wall -- floating, flying, etc. -- or underneath it, which is what trains did, slipping into underground tunnels at the valley floor and coming out through one of the gardens and into the train station.
The garden mostly was snow, with the evergreen trees adding the only color. The train station's tiled walls and pillars were red or white, with intermittent signs placed on them telling travelers they were at Michiko Station. The train pulled into the stop, which thankfully had an overhang to shield passengers from the falling snow once they stepped off.
Kotori was the only one in her car. Yuumi told her that she would have someone waiting for her — a Yamataian representative of the movement she was to talk to. Kotori had the man's name as "Kerry Murakami." He had no description, but he was of Raltean descent, so he likely would stand out. He was told to be looking for Kotori too.
When the train stopped, the princess unhurriedly stood from her table in the lounge and made to the egress, stepped down the few stairs to the docks, and then left the dock platform to enter the station proper. A leisurely pace lead her through the station, past the ticket booth and convenience stores; and the nekovalkyrja wove her way through the terminal's other commuters as she followed the signs leading to the parking lot at the station's front.
Her progress was slow, and she meant it to be that way. It was for the same reason she had chosen to spend most of the trip in the train car's lounge rather than her cabin: she wanted to admire the scenery. It was not through a tourist-like impressionable curiosity or guarded wariness so much as an eagerness to expand her horizons.
Kotori loved Yamatai, but she knew so little of her homeland past the Ketsurui and the military. Her limited ventures downtown and in the suburbs scratched the bare surface of what was to see on her homeworld. If she was going to help administer it and the Empire beyond, Kotori wanted to see it.
Brass-and-glass doubledoors were shoved open and she emerged back outside on an ample sidewalk bordering an expansive car park. She stepped clear from the flow of people and stepped beyond the station building's overhang, flipping her mantle's hood up over her head and donning gloves as she made to wait for Murakami as she rehearsed in her mind the reason for her coming to Ketsurui no Iori —
Kotori allowed herself a wry smile: nonNeko. Yuumi meant well, but refering to the people in question thus cut a clear divide that gave Kotori some insights on how they could feel the nekovalkyrja would 'lord' over them.
So far, the divide appears to stand between civilians and the military, was what she thought. While nekovalkyrja are dominant within the military, the rest seems more a perception of social class than anything else. Melisson called that "the ruling class and the cattle they rule over". Only the circumstances make that perception more blatant to these people.
A sudden gale lifted powdery snow off the streets, coaxing her eyes to closed and her hands to adjust her furred hood to a snugger fit in a vain attempt to ease the discomfort. The falling snow kept coming, even as the wind blew, then sliced, around Kotori. As she stood on the curb of the street, waiting for anyone to guide her somewhere, a deeply bronzed man in a black, lined trenchcoat and peaked black cap approached her from the side. She saw the black of his tie, then the darkness of his eyes.
He wasn't a native to KnI with that deep a tan. When he spoke to her, he put his hands together in front of him and made a small bow with his head and shoulders. He was large, Kotori saw, with broad shoulders and muscled arms that tugged at the seams of his coat when he bent them at the elbow. He also wore polished shoes that could fit both of her feet. He wasn't an ID-SOL, but maybe he had the blood of one.
"S'cuse me miss," he said in Yamataian, the words rumbling from his throat. Kotori placed the accent as western.
Kotori's fur-framed face — the cold weather lent her porcelain skin a blush — turned to what she hoped was her guide. "Murakami-san?"
"I'm one of his," the man replied. "Wilhelm. I have a car waiting to take you to him."
"Komban wa, Wilhelm-san." Kotori turned entirely to face him and answered his bow with one of her own. "Yoroshiku gozaimasu."
Wilhelm nodded, and guided the Neko across the street in the snow, then past it to the parking lot. After walking by many snow-buried cars, Wilhelm turned to a blue hovervan with tinted windows and opened the left back door, behind the driver.
Kotori politely tilted her head in a bow, then gathered her dress just so in order to slide into the back seat of the vehicle.
"Watch your head," Wilhelm said, as he shut the door.
Kotori turned her head to nod to him, keeping her body out of the way from the door.
Click!
Too late. When Kotori looked to the source of the noise, she saw a Type 28C/C NSP's high-gloss silver finish glinting at her with the dome light of the car's cabin. The sound was the safety coming off; whether it was on normal or stun, she could not tell.
"Just a precaution," the Yamataian woman with Neko ears said. "I don't want to shoot."
A gun! Kotori tensed in her seat at the realization, her expression taut. She had expected there could be trouble due to unrest, but this was hardly how she had pictured it going. That made her feel painfully naive. Nyton would've never fallen for that.
The soldier's impulse to pre-emptively lash out was strong, but she stiffled it. Too Ketsurui... it rarely served us well. The princess ruled out Kikyô's involvement. Too many holes in this approach, not ruthless enough. Which left circumstances hinting at desperate people scrabbling for any shred of control they could get their hands on.
So, instead, Kotori regained her composure and reclined against her seat. "Indeed you do not," she replied, striving to remain calm. "Which begs the question: what compels you to be ready to do so?"
"A damaged ransom can be worth more than a healthy one," the Yamataian woman said as Wilhelm slipped into the driver's seat. "But the boss wants you whole at the start. Like I said. A precaution."
The van rumbled to life, and the windshield wipers started to push away the snow and ice that had formed on it.
"Sou ka." Kotori had to struggle very hard to maintain her cool. What she heard sounded too much like calculated ill will on the part of people she had come to mediate with; and likely in favor of. It unpleasantly reminded her of the Lorath.
She then ran over Yuumi's instructions again, balancing the weight of her goals against her personnal safety and her prestige as royalty. She wondered about how Nyton would view the situation, how Yukari would, how Kôsuka would, how Tom would.
Thinking of what changed Tom during the Miharu mission had her thoughts turn dark on the subject of Murakami Kerry. That man chose terrorism, likely thinking that his self-righteousness and conviction justified it. In response, her throat nearly choked with indignation.
There. It was then that she decided. There was no point in just getting carted off to a place where she would be outnumbered and consigned to be a hostage. She still had nightmares of her time on the Black Sakura. She would attack.
But not in blind anger. The memory of the Lorath scientist's head exploding back when she had left her indignation unchecked onboard the Sakura helped keep her in check from acting on rash impulse. Action still needed to match her purpose.
First, she needed to know where Murakami was.
Kotori began filtering telepathic communications on the part of the two users in front of her: if they sent anything, even encrypted, she'd know. In addition — using some insights mined in her Yui metadata — she even accessed PANTHEON to view the recent backlog of point-to-point telepathic communication to determine the locations of sender-receiver.
So far, there was no telepathic communication between the two. Point-to-point telepathic communication logs revealed where she was headed — just as Yuumi told her, most of the activity was in the southwest of the city. Most of the communication involved talk of watches, supplies, orders and the like.
Kerry Murakami wasn't mentioned by name, but several people referenced a "face." Perhaps that was him.
She also checked to see how active the car's onboard computer was: the GPS system might have already been accessed to provide directions to wherever Murakami laired. If the trip back from the train station remained unfamiliar to the driver, it was possible he had logged a request for guiding directions. Kotori could work with that too.
The GPS was clean. Wiped, in fact. Likely on purpose. However Wilhelm got around, he did it on memory.
Secondly, she needed to attend to her own safety.
The princess hemosynthetically adapted her eyes for infrared vision and studied both the driving Wilhelm and his gun-wielding female companion to glimpse the presence of other weaponry on their persons. Wilhelm had a cold, cylindrical object slipped inside of his uncomfortably tight suit jacket. A baton, collapsable, possibly a stun type. The Yamataian woman was using her only weapon.
Another thing to be concerned about was possible accomplices. They weren't followed out of the train station parking lot, and they pulled away without going above a meter or so off the road. KnI was an old city, explaining the presence of streets. Kotori's memories provided her with little additional data. No telepathic communication, no other points highlighted as sources of other telepathic correspondence. No one was around Wilhelm before he approached Kotori. It was just those two.
One additional check: Seat belts. They were wearing them.
Finally, Kotori's mind connected Vermillion's AIES. The machine, still in Kyoto, would only take an instant to get to her once its teleportation module charged up. She might have need of it shortly.
Now that she had taken stock of the situation, Kotori figured this was as good as she would get if she wanted to regain control of the situation. She quietly waited until they were on a relatively quiet street, and then acted: using her anti-gravity control, she overrode the influence of the hovervan's grav-drive and swiftly upended it.
The result? Sending it crashing roof-first unto the snowy pavement. Inertially anchored to her seat, torso hunched forward and arms shielding her head, Kotori was betting on her surviving the crash much better than her captors.
The van went fast. Upended, the vehicle crashed hard on its roof, a massive boom filling the cabin, but its emergency systems kicked in to cut off the power to the drive. The van skid several dozen meters along the snow-covered road, with the roof caved in some. Wilhelm and the Yamataian woman were thrown about in their seats, shaking and then going somewhat slack when the van came to a stop. Kotori looked for the pistol, but didn't see it. It wasn't in the woman's hand.
Within a couple seconds, Wilhelm and the woman were stirring, groaning, little cuts on their face from the safety glass, their heads almost touching the snow that had collected on the cabin's roof — now the floor — as they helplessly hung in their seats.
The tops of the back doors looked crushed. The front doors were in much worse shape.
Kotori then dared breathe, somewhat amazed both at the sheer violence her plan had brought about and at its success.
Still 'sitting' at her seat, she gingerly uncoiled some and looked at the two stunned people in the front seat before deciding on her next move: reaching back into her obi with both hands to bring out her NSPs. Her eyes narrowed in grim intent as she pumped out a stun bolt into each.
The two went slack, arms falling from their struggles with the seat belts and into the snow.
Kotori's service pistols went back into their concealed holsters, and next with flicks of her wrists she brought out her kama: a sharp metallic sound sounding off as the switchblades sprung into position. The neko promptly brought them to bear on the backdoor closest to her, swiftly carving a rectangle that — along with a well-placed kick — created the apperture needed for her to emerge from the doomed vehicle.
At was when she stood outside the hovercar's wreck that a wave of whooziness hit her, coaxing her to hang unto the upended vehicle for balance a moment. She shook her head, regained her bearings, and flipped down her furred hood as she summoned for Vermillion.
With a CRACK-KA-BOOSH the red machine appeared floating overhead, the shockwave of its appearance briefly whipping Kotori's hair around like a dark flag. She waved Vermillion down and once the robot's claws touched upon the snowy street its chestplate swivelled open to allow its owner entry.
The nekovalkyrja sprung up and got herself seated into the mecha's control cavity, though she then hunched forward, setting her elbows on her still-dangling legs.
She breathed in, closed her eyes, and slowly exhaled. She was still seeing stars, but she felt better. She wasn't going to be held hostage. She could think without seeing before the threatening maw of a service pistol, so much like she had ended up facing when she had failed to escape the Black Sakura with Hanako.
It was then that she second-doubted herself. Her purpose, meeting Murakami, was still met whether or not she was held at gunpoint. However, from there, had she had any trust she could somehow talk herself out of that predicament and reach the resolution Yuumi had wanted her to reach?
No. That's not what I believed, she realized, pursing her lips at the unpleasant thought. Kotori had no cause to believe she was especially convincing — officer meetings onboard the Miharu had always been controversial affairs with her officers butting head with her is some way or another. She was new at this: there was no reason she should have expected miracles.
Getting ransomed would've hardly helped matters either. It would have made the Ketsurui look weak, and would have had brimmed her prestige as a Ketsurui princess. Right now, she was showing that she was not to be thriffled with. It was very Ketsurui. It was much closer to gunboat diplomacy than Kotori would have liked.
But that's how it was. They started it first, she thought as she gave a baleful glare toward the two comatose people in the ruined hovercar. Pointing a weapon that could kill me, mentioning my having more value as ransom if I was damaged. Was it that hard to just escort me to where I was meant to go, and let me discuss matters without that axe over my head? After all I've done in the past to try and save you?
Again, she breathed out, and slowly took in the briskly cold air in. Stick to the things that matter, Kotori.
The two in the car were still part of the people her clan ruled over. She needed to make sure they would be looked after. She opened a PANTHEON line to the local law-enforcement station and sent out a text message:
That done, Kotori gathered her legs into Vermillion's cockpit and the chestplate closed. Left in the dark, she used her SPINE connection to interface with the machine and sent it jumping up into the air to fly further toward the south-west of the city. The gargoyle-like robot's red-gold armored hide shimmered briefly before its thermoptic steath engaged and left it as a near-indistinguishable translucent outline.Kotori said:
She took mental inventory of the organized encrypted lines the protesters had established in a surprisingly military fashion — amongst the discontents were surely retired military personnel — and accessed several of them. Not all. I do want them to believe they have a few that have not been compromised so I can still overhear their chatter.
Then, she transmitted: "I am Ketsurui Kotori. I have had the displeasure of being held at gunpoint by the agents you sent to fetch me, in a blatant attempt to seize me hostage and ransom me.
"To say I took a dim view of such an attempt would be an understatement. I came in good faith to help mediate a resolution beneficial to you... and this is what I get? Understand that I did not pour four years of my life to save this planet from Eve's and Melisson's machinations only to be treated so disgracefully.
"So, now that I've had your two agents sent to the hospital, your current predicament begs the question: what now? I was lead to believe that you were going hungry and that you wanted to have your wishes better represented. Do you still wish to parlay and reach a peaceful resolution?"
Kotori's message was not immediately returned. The silence meant she could hear the sirens of law enforcement rushing toward the van and its occupants, as snow began to pile upon Vermillion.
Three minutes passed before a reply tickled at the Neko's mind.
"No," the voice — a female's — said. "I think we're done here. Tell your government we're through."
Kotori closed her eyes. "It is your government too. What did you expect? That it would support you when you stooped to criminal and treasonous actions?" The eyes opened, angrier. "Maybe it's fine for you to feel like you want to rebel, but what about the people that depend on you?
"Tell me, where do you want this to go? Rebellion? Bullets flying around? Do you actually think you can win? Will it truly put food in your belly?
"I can work with you if you wish to improve your situation," Kotori finished with. "But I won't work with criminals and traitors. Choose which you wish to be."
Another long pause.
"You've proven yourself to be like your kin, not the reasoned person we were led to believe you would be," the voice replied. "We will find another way."
"Tch," Kotori's head sank to rest between her knees. The taste of bile reached her tongue — in this case that felt pretty much like the taste of failure. 'Sometime, you lose' she had been taught. Sometimes knowing when to lose meant being able to win later on. Forcing her hand further here and now didn't seem to hold much in the way of payoff.
"It is easier to lord over the reason of others when you refrain from taking hostages at gunpoint. I will claim guilt for assuring my survival and my freedom. Condemn it all you want, but it is hardly a trait unique to nekovalkyrja," Kotori pointed out before giving a succinct: "Sayonara."
Not expecting any last minute change of mind, Kotori had Vermillion turn around, climb in altitude, and then speed back toward Kyoto.