The battered Wyrm was beginning to break apart. Saburou Kenta knew it, too. He could feel it in every echoing groan, in every pop and crack the stressed chassis let out when he tried to push the overworked engines to go even faster. Laser-bored holes were etched into every panel of the ship, and it was a miracle the thing was still in one piece, let alone still flying.
Meanwhile, a pursuing Eagle drifted lazily behind the stricken fighter, clearly in no hurry to finish the job. The outcome of the skirmish was already clear. That said, Saburou still clung to the old ways. The ship behind him was no Katana, that much was true; but the Eagle was flashing a Chrysanthemum IFF. Kusari was steeped in tradition, every aspect of society influenced by age-old aspects of culture. Warriors were frequently spared after a battle, their escape pods left in space that they might be rescued and fight another day. Saburou was no ace pilot, but on the few occasions he had shot down a criminal he had honoured this rite, as he felt was only proper. After all, the Blood Dragon who'd downed him on his very first patrol as a rookie had done the same for him.
Now, as his fighter disintegrated around him, he hoped to receive the same mercy once again. After all, this was a mere domestic spat, so to speak; compared to the vicious war and fighting on the frontlines against Bretonia. And, he surmised, a lot of the Chrysanthemums were just young girls pressured into a cause they didn't really believe in. Cardamine addicts with no place else to go, no heart for the true cause. That ran contrary to his training, which would have had him believe that they were all dangerous terrorists to be killed on sight, but he'd seen enough scared young women brought in over the years to doubt the official line of thinking. He wasn't even Naval Forces, just a lone State Police officer on a routine patrol. It was likely that the girl could be negotiated with.
Junsa-cho Kenta Saburou was in the middle of opening a comms channel when the volley of lasers ripped through the unshielded capsule, killing him instantly.
...
Kyoko Yamazaki let go of the flight stick, both arms thrown into the air in a celebratory pose. Her expression was wild, flushed with triumph and the thrill of the kill. One more step towards Matsuda's dream, she thought, letting her Eagle spin through space with no hands on the controls. The Cardamine high was mixing with the adrenaline to produce a truly intoxicating feeling, and Kyoko revelled in it. It was at times like this she knew this was what she'd been born to do. Nothing felt better. It felt glorious, all of it. Speeding through the purples and oranges of Hokkaido's nebulae in pursuit of a faint enemy signature, rolling and turning her fighter through space in a dogfight, and finally ending the duel by popping her enemy's pod, watching the fragments spiral away into the nebula. She had no time to spare for Samuran puppets, and that was all the State Police were these days.
Eventually, she came to her senses, and reined the ship in. After dialling Ainu's co-ordinates into the nav computer, she fumbled with the pockets of her flight suit, searching for more Cardamine. Unlike some of the Chrysanthemums, Kyoko adored the drug and the thrill it gave her. Sure, lifelong dependency was...jarring, but the benefits far outweighed the single downside, in her opinion. Ainu was hardly in short supply, anyway. I am, though, she realised, finding her pockets empty. She already felt irritable just knowing she was out of extra vials. The mask she was wearing provided enough to sustain her over a long flight, but enough was getting less and less satisfying these days. Kyoko needed her extra hit, especially after such excitement.
Letting her eyes drift around the ship's interior, her gaze alighted on the piece of paper she kept pinned to the cockpit lid. A real paper page, taken from one of Matsuda's greatest works. It was only a copy, of course, but having it pinned there reminded her of why she fought, what the struggle was all about. How could her devotion ever waver, with a part of a work of Matsuda's kept by her side at all times? They would carve out Matsuda's vision for her, piece by bloody piece, until a matriarchy reined from New Tokyo, just as depicted in Golden Chrysanthemum in Bloom. Until then, Kyoko would shoot down and exterminate every last person who dared stand in the way of Matsuda's utopia.
The smiling women who used to receive his deliveries seemed to have disappeared, reflected Jason with some regret. He'd been supplying Ainu with Cardamine fresh from Malta itself for years now, smuggling it with well-practised ease past the Kusari authorities to keep the Chrysanthemums in bloom. All these years he'd always enjoyed his trips, often spending some time relaxing in the famous Tea House. The atmosphere there had always been remarkably friendly, considering that the establishment was located on board a terrorist organisation's base.
In the past year, though... things had definitely changed. Gone were the welcoming and familiar faces who turned up to receive him. They had been replaced by more serious, grim looking women; women who peered at each crate with suspicion and strode around officiously. Sometimes, he even swore he glimpsed a few venomous glares aimed at him. It was a far cry from the idyllic port of call it had once been.
"We're done here. Get back on your ship," snapped one of the dock crew abruptly. A wild-looking girl, Jason thought. Didn't really look cut out for this sort of work. Then again, there weren't many moderates left on Ainu these days. She was probably another radicalist. "Hey, gaijin. Now." The Chrysanthemum gestured towards his transport as if he were stupid, hostility in her gaze.
"All right," responded Jason warily. He was seriously going to have to reconsider continuing to deliver here. He climbed back aboard his ship to prepare for undocking. The profit margins just weren't cutting it, and the neighbourhood had really gone to hell.
...
Kyoko's gaze bored into the retreating smuggler's back as he got back aboard his ship. She hated working up by the mooring points, but with so few Chrysanthemums left on Ainu these days everyone had to pitch in where and when they were needed, for the good of the movement. Ever since Gallia and the Kishiro coup...
Her blood boiled at the thought. Just because the new government had introduced a few minor reforms, it seemed like the movement had all but died overnight. Flocks of Chrysanthemums, elated at the news, had gone back to their birthplaces to "enjoy the new Kusari". Some idiot had spread the rumour that Cardamine was obtainable on a medical basis throughout Kusari nowadays, as the government was hoping to reintegrate the Chrysanthemums back into civilization.
She had protested the loudest, calling the excited horde of young women to see sense, that they had no reason to believe this unsubstantiated rumour, but in the end Kyoko's preaching fell on deaf ears. If only I could have found the one who started it all. I would have put a bullet in her skull without thinking twice. Whoever that- girl was, she single-handedly destroyed us. Probably a government agent. Sometimes, Matsuda's utopia seemed only to get further and further away from her.
Kyoko tossed the dataslate she was holding to the ground, fuming. "I'm going on patrol, Ibuki-san," she declared to the woman beside her. "But Kyoko-san-" began the other worker, before Kyoko strode through the control room's doors and out of hearing.
"I'll show them, Matsuda-sama," she muttered to herself, quickening her pace as she rushed along the corridor. She hurried past abandoned rooms, dark for months now, their inhabitants long gone. "Ainu is dying, your dream is dying, but we who remain are loyal and true." Sometimes, Kyoko even doubted that. Even the some of the radicals who remained thought her methods extreme, she knew. They couldn't shoulder the burden like she could. After all, what reason had she to feel guilty when she was utterly and irrevocably right? Let them doubt. I am the sword of Matsuda.As she went, she took a vial of Cardamine from her pocket and inhaled deeply. "I will not fail you!"
The Cardamine hit was a mistake, impassioned as she was, and Kyoko clenched the vial so hard it broke. Shards of glass dug into her palm and the pressurised gas inside went hissing into the station's atmosphere. Now positively incensed and in significant pain, she shouldered the door to the hangar bay open and flipped her Blossom's cockpit open.
Her hand coated the flight stick in blood as she gripped it tightly, but she blocked out the pain. Keying in launch codes and other pre-flight necessities with her left hand, Kyoko grinned manically, though nobody was there to see it. Matsuda's page was in her peripheral vision, still pinned to her cockpit lid. As always, she watches over me.
The fighter rocketed out of the bay, diving deep into the purples and oranges of the Shiden Cloud. There was work to be done.