Stay quiet and do as you're told

Just as we had hoped, the air base we had used for cover was empty. With the jets out for the parade, there was hardly a point wasting personnel patrolling an empty lot, which gave us a perfect jumping off point for the rest of the plan.

The problem was… well… the rest of the plan.

“I’ve both good news and bad news,” Ryou said, returning from scouting around the base. “The good news is that I’ve located the colonel. The bad news is that he has locked himself in his office.”

“And that’s bad news why? If he’s already alone, can’t we go in and snatch him?”

“The door is alarmed, and we can hardly expect to go breaking windows without being heard. Forced entry to the colonel’s office would alert every member of staff in the facility, so unless your plan is complete extermination of the JSDF it’s probably best we find an alternative.”

“A simple ‘there’s an alarm’ would have sufficed, y’know.”

“Irrelevant. We will need a way to draw him out of his office without raising suspicion. Have you any ideas?”

We both stopped to think for a moment. It was a difficult question to answer, especially with the restrictive nature of the mission. The easiest way to draw out the commanding officer would be to start openly causing trouble, but that wouldn’t work for… obvious reasons.

We could start sabotaging stuff? No, odds are he’d just delegate jobs like that without a second thought. As long as he could tell other people to do stuff for him, we probably wouldn’t get him out of there.

…as long as he can tell other people…

“Ryou, all comms within the base are fully private other than lines explicitly dedicated to outside communication, right?”

“That’s certainly how it seemed on my rounds.”

“So if we cut lines within the base, he’d have no communication outside of his office, right?”

“All comm systems are wireless, so far as I can tell.”

“There must be something to facilitate those connections, right? Antennae, servers, something that allows wireless communication without satellites?” I questioned. Ryou put her hand to her chin for a moment, thinking through the proposal. After a few seconds, a sly smirk stretched onto her face.

“Hmm… I may just be able to work with that…”

Something about that smile on her face sincerely worried me. And made me glad she was on my side.

***

The colonel had tried calling three separate members of his staff, and not a single one had responded. The major, the captain, even the sergeant major failed to pick up. It had moved past the point of insubordination and had become cause for suspicion. Either his own staff had cut off communication with him, or there was an issue with the base’s internal comms array.

Sighing, he rose to his feet and left his office, no doubt to locate the source of the problem and fire whichever idiot was responsible.

There were technical staff on sight whose primary role was the upkeep of equipment, including internal communications. If there was anyone at the base who would know what was wrong, it would be them, so logically that was his first stop.

He passed by one of the patrol pairs making their rounds of the base, neither of whom seemed to have noticed any issues, so he walked on by with little more than a nod. There was nothing else of note on his journey to the technician’s building, and he entered without much ado. He presumably didn’t think twice about the possibility of a trap.

To his surprise, he found no one in the front office of the building. Assuming they had to be in a meeting, he made his way through the hallways to the meeting room, where he once again found no one.

“Maybe they’ve already gotten to fixing the issue?” he muttered to himself, “but, that could hardly require the entire staff…”

Concern starting to grow, he made his way towards the vehicle workshop. If there was anyone at all on base that he could rely to always be at their post, it was those grease monkeys. With any luck they’d at least know where their bosses were.

“Hello? Anyone here?” he said, stepping into the workshop nervously. He had no reason to be nervous, of course, he was the highest ranking person on the base. But the quiet was, ironically, disquieting.

When no response came, he walked further in, but found no one at all. Now there was definitely cause for suspicion. The mechanics leaving their post? Unheard of. They practically slept in there, for god’s sake.

His anxiety was already beginning to rise, but it suddenly spiked when he turned and realised the door had shut behind him. He was certain he left it open.

The lights went out. He could still see because of daylight from the windows, but the room had become far more dim.

There was a rustling sound behind him. He spun on the spot, catching only a glimpse of something cloaked in black moving behind a nearby truck. There was someone in there with him.

He sprinted over to the alarm and slammed with his fist, but no sound was made. The wires had been cut. He was trapped and alone, stuck in there with god-knows-who. Or god-knows-what.

He gulped, and slowly crept along the wall, hoping whatever it was wouldn’t spot him.

Another sound. He snapped his head towards it, backing away slowly and carefully, until he bumped something metal behind him. A storage unit, one that should have been filled with electrical tools. Instead, when the door opened, it was the body of one of the mechanics that fell in front of him.

“AH-!” He leaped back and began to scream, but was cut off when something was forced into his mouth and tied around the back of his head.

“Shh… easy does it…” said a voice from behind him. “He’s not dead, don’t you worry yourself. Of course, the same won’t be said for you if we don’t get what we want. So be a lamb, stay quiet and do as you’re told, okay?”

That voice, of course, belonged to Ryou, who had been lying in wait in the workshop for a good while now.

“This plan was dangerous as hell, Ryou,” I said, stepping out of the shadows behind her. “D’you know how hard it was to tail the guy all the way from his office without getting spotted by the constant patrols?” Not to mention it being boring as hell. I had to narrate the guy’s every move to keep myself entertained.

“I was tasked with non-lethally incapacitating an entire department without raising suspicion, yet you feel you have place to complain about following a single person?”

“That just means it was dangerous for both of us!”

“Oh, calm yourself, dearie. We were successful, were we not? We have our target, and there are no conscious witnesses. There’s little use complaining about a job well done.”

“Alright, fine, I’ll wind it in. But we can’t take any more risks like this, got it?”

“I wouldn’t worry so much. Cutting communications within the base also removed the ability to contact those outside of it. So long as we’re out of sight underground, the limited staff available on site will hardly pose an adequate threat.”

“If you’re sure…” I sighed. “Let’s just get moving, shall we?”

“Please, lead the way, dear girl.” She looked down at the shaking colonel, an evil smirk on her face. “Congratulations, colonel. You’re now a revolutionary. I look forward to our partnership.”

Christ, girl, do you need to ham it up any more?

***

After several minutes of creeping around the base, and more than one instance of having to threaten the colonel into silence, we finally found our way to the door down to the databank. It was unguarded, most likely because its existence was a closely kept secret, and the hermetic lock was damn near impossible to break.

“Alright, soldier boy, here’s the deal,” I said, looking him dead in his terrified eyes. “We’re gonna take that gag out of your mouth, and you’re gonna tell us the code for the lock. You scream, we cut your throat. You refuse to tell us the code, we cut your hands off. Got it?”

The man nodded frantically. The Coward.

Ryou untied the gag, and the man breathed a deep breath. Frankly, I didn’t know if the gag had been making it difficult to breathe or if he was just panicking.

“The code. Talk.”

“It’s… 180…903…290…808.”

I typed the 12 digits into the keypad at the door, then scanned the employee ID I had swiped from his pocket. To my surprise, the door opened immediately.

“Didn’t even try tricking us once? You disappoint me.”

“Trust me, you girls don’t wanna go down th-” he was cut off by Ryou stuffing the gag back in his mouth.

“Yeah, yeah, save your threats. Just do yourself a favour, keep quiet until we need you again. Ryou, let’s get moving.”

“As you wish, dearie.”

Past the door was a set of dark metal stairs that clacked with each step we took. Judging the noise to be too much risk, Ryou closed the door behind us. We had to just pray we’d be able to open it again.

The stairs went surprisingly far down, so low that they must have stretched below the underground electrics and plumbing of the base. They clearly desperately wanted to keep the databank a secret. I was almost excited to find out why.

After what felt like minutes of walking, we finally reached the bottom of the stairs and entered a short hallway. I opened the door at the end of the hallway and stepped inside, Ryou and the colonel a few steps behind. Inside we found ourselves in a dark domed room, far wider than I had expected, and seemingly almost completely empty. All around the one curved wall were enormous flat screens, stretching several metres above the ground.

One look at the terror on the colonel’s face told me we’d been had.

“It’s a trap, grab the door!” I yelled, but the door slammed itself shut. I grabbed the handle and pulled, but it almost felt magnetically locked.

Magnetically…

Fuck…

No, no, no… not her… anyone but her.

“LADIES AAAAAAAND GENTLEMEN!”

An all too familiar voice echoed around the dome. I froze. Not her. Not now.

“WELCOOOOOOME TO THE MAIN EEEEEVENT!”

Every screen in the dome turned on at the same time, the dark room suddenly filled with light. Every screen showed the same thing, a live camera feed of us.

Shit. Fuck. This can’t be happening.

“THE SHOWDOWN OF A LIFETIME, THE LEGENDARY AND MYSTERIOUS RONIN, FACING OFF AGAINST YOUR REIGNING CHAMPION…”

Why her? Why does it have to be her?

“THE ELECTRIC PRINCESS HERSELF, DENKAAAAA FUJIKOOOOO!”

Premonition.

I dived towards Ryou and threw both of us out of harm’s way at the last possible moment.

The colonel wasn’t so lucky. A bolt of lightning struck the ground near him, side-flashing him and likely killing him instantly.

Shit… there went our access to the databank.

From a hole in the top of the dome, a girl I had hoped to never run into slowly descended towards the ground on a metal wire, staring us both down with a monstrous grin. She touched down in the dead centre of the room and drew the jagged scrap of iron she called a sword.

“So… it’s truly her…” muttered Ryou.

Of course she would recognise the name. There was no one in the business who hadn’t heard that moniker.

The most infamous magical girl still in service.

The last person you ever wanted to see when out on a mission.

Denka Fujiko. The Electric Princess.