Tokyo: Proving one's position from behind the scenes

The morning light seeped through the gaps between the buildings on the east side of Arakawa Ward, turning the sky over the entire area into a thin gray-blue.

Then the roar of the helicopter tore through the gray-blue.

Two UH-60s flew low over the southeast, their rotor noise sounding like a giant saw cutting back and forth across the city. They flew so low that the anti-theft alarms of several parked cars on the road were simultaneously triggered by the blast waves, their sharp buzzing sounds mixing with the roar of the rotors to create a chilling cacophony.

Arakawa Ward, 6:42 AM.

Commuters walking from the station stopped and looked up. A convenience store clerk peeked out from behind the automatic doors. A young mother pushing a stroller stood frozen on the sidewalk; the baby in the stroller was crying from the noise, but the mother forgot to comfort the baby, simply staring blankly at the two military helicopters that shouldn't be there.

The helicopter hovered directly above the headquarters of the "Remnant Wolf Group".

They are a yakuza organization that originated from Adachi Ward, and they are among the more developed yakuza groups.

It was a four-story gray building with a stainless steel roller shutter door at the main entrance, the facade of which was smudged by something.

Six ropes were dropped from the side doors of the two helicopters.

The figures in black tactical uniforms slid swiftly down the rope, their movements clean and efficient; the moment their boots touched the ground, they were already holding their weapons. They wore black helmets, goggles obscuring the upper half of their faces, and dark gray face masks covering the lower half. Magazine pouches and communicators hung on the chest of their tactical vests, and secondary weapons were tucked into holsters on their thighs.

Upon landing, without any commands, the twelve people automatically split into three groups: one group blocked the main entrance, one group circled around to the back of the building, and the third group occupied the high ground across the street.

Then they began to disperse the crowd of onlookers.

"Back off! Back off!"

A man in tactical gear walked towards the crowd, one hand gripping a weapon, the other pushing forward with his palm facing outward, a gesture of dispersal. His voice, muffled but clear enough from behind his helmet and mask, came through. The crowd didn't react immediately; several people were still filming with their phones. He walked over, grabbed the nearest phone, snatched it from the photographer's hand, and threw it to the ground. His boot stomped on it, the sound of the screen shattering drowned out by the roar of the rotors.

The crowd began to back away.

Several Metropolitan Police Department Operations Division vehicles parked on the roadside received the same treatment. A man in tactical uniform walked up to the car and said something in accented English. The officers inside couldn't hear him, so he repeated it, louder. The officers hesitated for a few seconds, then started the engine and backed the car out of the cordon.

Naoya Taniguchi stood outside the cordon.

Today he was wearing that black leather jacket, zipped up to the collar, and his military boot laces were tied tighter than usual. His gaze passed over the group of figures in black tactical uniforms and landed on the main gate of the "Crippled Wolf Group" headquarters.

Nobuko Yoshida emerged from the large hole burned through the roller shutter door.

She was wearing an obviously oversized dark gray hooded sweatshirt, the sleeves extending far beyond her to cover most of her hand, leaving only the five fingers gripping the sword hilt visible. She wore black sweatpants, the cuffs bunched up at her ankles, and sneakers.

Her right hand still gripped the heavy sword. The sword's dark red sheen was more clearly visible in the daylight than at night, emanating from within, as if an inextinguishable fire was slowly burning deep within the blade. The flame-like patterns on the sword appeared an even deeper, almost blackish, dark red in the daylight, spreading from the hilt to the tip. She named this sword—"Demon Slayer."

Her face was expressionless.

The fourteen-year-old girl's face still retained a hint of baby fat on her cheekbones, but her expression made her look older than fourteen. Her expression was empty, as if there was a gate deep within her consciousness, shutting out all her emotions, leaving only a clean, pure focus in front of it.

Her gaze swept over the black figures surrounding the entire building. From left to right, from right to left. Then she continued walking forward.

Commissioner Smith, sitting at Yokosuka base, remotely commanded the special forces. In his view, these lads were there to negotiate, and America would soon have its own superhumans.

"Fire."

The order came from the command channel. The speaker wasn't physically present; the voice was transmitted via radio signal to the headsets of twelve people from somewhere. The voice was steady, with the nonchalant tone one would expect after issuing numerous commands.

Commissioner Smith's voice exploded from the same channel almost simultaneously.

"Cease fire! Who gave the order! Stop!"

His voice was so loud that a brief whistling sound came through the communicator. But it was too late.

All twelve weapons fired simultaneously.

One after another, tranquilizer darts were fired from the muzzle. The darts were made of translucent plastic and contained a pale yellow anesthetic. The initial velocity of the tranquilizer darts was slower than that of live bullets, but with twelve weapons firing simultaneously at close range, the tranquilizer darts wove a dense net of fire in the air, converging on Nobuko Yoshida from three directions.

She moved.

The sword, wielding its blade, traced an arc from her right side, its dark red blade drawing a complete semicircle in front of her. The sword moved so fast that it left a dark red afterimage in the air, like a shield made of light. The tranquilizer darts struck the dark red arc of light, none of them touching her body; the darts melted the instant they made contact with the sword.

She charged toward the enemy, her footsteps echoing short, muffled thuds on the asphalt. Her body was low to the ground, her center of gravity leaning forward, the Demon Slayer sword trailing behind her right side, its tip drawing a thin, fiery line across the earth. Her speed was abnormally fast; from a standstill to covering over ten meters, there was almost no acceleration, as if her body had omitted the process of inertia.

She rushed towards the first target. Before the man in tactical gear could react, his hand was still on the trigger of his weapon, the muzzle of his gun still tracking her movement, but she was already less than a step away from him.

The sword, wielding the Demon Slayer, swung upwards. The dark red sheen of the blade traced an upward arc in the air, starting at his waist and ending at his right shoulder. The blade sliced ​​through the outer fabric of his tactical vest, through the ceramic bulletproof plate inside, through the padding behind the plate, and then stopped. But the dark red flames emanating from the sword had already passed through his body.

His whole body burst into flames, he leaned forward and fell straight down, the helmet visor hitting the asphalt with a dull thud.

Nobuko Yoshida didn't stop to watch him fall. Her body had already turned towards her second target. As she turned, the Demon Slayer slashed horizontally, the blade drawing a dark red arc in the air. The arc swept across the second man's chest, then the third. The fourth.

She moved among the twelve men. It was a one-sided slaughter. Every movement was clean and efficient, from swinging her sword to sheathing it to turning to the next target; the entire process was like a precisely tuned machine. With each swing of her sword, one man fell. No one had time to fire a second shot, no one had time to draw a secondary weapon from its holster, and no one even had time to press the communicator button to call for backup.

She stopped, then turned and ran towards the Arakawa River.

In Nobuko Yoshida's view, the helicopters in the sky were more threatening than the twelve special forces soldiers.

The demon-slaying sword trailed behind her, its tip drawing a longer and brighter trail of fire across the ground. The surface of the Arakawa River gleamed with a leaden gray luster in the morning light. She leaped into the river. A white gash was smashed open in the water, then closed again.

Commissioner Smith stood in the communications room of Yokosuka base. His headset was still on, and his right hand gripped the microphone of the communicator until his knuckles turned white. In front of him was a wall of monitors, one of which was frozen on the frame of Nobuko Yoshida leaping into the Arakawa River.

He took off his headphones and placed them on the control panel. The movement was so subtle that the headphones barely made a sound when they touched the surface. Then he turned to look at the person sitting on the other side of the control panel. A middle-aged man in a naval uniform, with a colonel's rank insignia pinned to his collar.

"Who gave the order?"

His voice was calm.

"I."

The man who spoke stood in the doorway of the communications room. He was around fifty years old, wearing a suit, tie, and leather shoes. His hair was silver-gray and neatly combed back. He wore a smile that one only develops after decades of walking the corridors of Washington, the curve of his lips just right, neither too friendly nor too cold.

Commissioner Smith looked at him.

"You bypassed me and gave direct orders to the tactical squad in Yokosuka. Capture her alive with tranquilizer darts. Bring her back to base. Extract blood and tissue samples. Study the source of her abilities. Copy it. Mass-produce it. Is that it?"

That person did not deny it.

Commissioner Smith nodded slowly, as if confirming an answer he already knew but had been hoping was wrong.

"Shortsighted."

His tone was as calm as before, but when he said those four words, his voice dropped by half a tone. As a White House commissioner sent directly to the Western Pacific, he was knowledgeable about this kind of culture.

"What do you think you're dealing with? A fourteen-year-old Japanese girl? You should have seen the surveillance footage. You saw the girl jump from the third floor of the hospital ward, you saw her kill three yakuza organizations in two hours, you saw the power of the flames she used. And your conclusion is to send twelve people, use tranquilizer darts, capture her and study her, turning what was originally just a matter of a few dead islanders into this."

The man spoke. His voice was as calm as Commissioner Smith's.

"The pressure from above."

Commissioner Smith looked at him and remained silent for a few seconds.

"You idiot! If you could catch her, that would be fine. Now you've turned our only chance to establish contact with her into an enemy relationship. The higher-ups will only make you a scapegoat. How did you even get up here?"

Commissioner Smith walked to the door and opened it. The white light from the hallway shone on his face.

"I'm not going to deal with what happens next. You gave the orders, so you're responsible for cleaning up the mess."

He walked out. The door closed behind him.