Yeah, I'm walking through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear its evil: thou aren't with me; but I carry a big stick, and it comforts me.
Neon Psalm 23:4 (Unified Standard Edition)
- - -
Hitomi was walked out the Latvian embassy door by Captain Arpa, who introduced her to Corporal Ivanova, her escort.
He was a tall, lanky looking soldier with ruffled brown hair and piercing blue-grey eyes. It felt like she had to turn her head all the way up just to make eye contact with him; he must be at least six and a half feet tall. He simply towered over her, and, she noticed, even over the Captain.
He was in fatigues rather than the dress uniforms she had seen on the soldiers earlier, a set of grey and blue colors that blended in with the darkly lit city around them.
Oh, it was night. The time had passed so quickly since the assault in Sheridan Circle. Despite the Vice President - oh, well, actually now he was the new President - despite the new President's speech it looked like things hadn't calmed down overly much.
Sheridan Circle itself was well lit by floodlights, but no cars were moving along the streets. Many vehicles were abandoned. Windshields were smashed, passenger windows shattered, trunks were broken into. Looters had obviously been stripping the easy targets bare as the evening had worn on.
"Now, Corporal Ivanova doesn't speak fluent English, but he should be able to get by," he assured Hitomi.
The corporal nodded, "Yes."
Captain Arpa bowed politely to her, "Thank you again for what you did, I will share your heroics with our ministers when I debrief them."
"Oh, no, that's too much - you don't have to-" Hitomi tried to say, but he shushed her.
"But it will be my pleasure, and now, ah, off to the Japanese embassy - it is growing ever darker, and I think time is of the essence, yes?"
Hitomi nodded in agreement, and hefted her laptop satchel over her shoulder again. The embassy doctor had kindly wrapped her arm in gauze on top of some sort of pain-relieving ointment, and with her sleeve rolled down you couldn't tell anything was wrong with her left arm.
She was now holding Mr. Pipe in her right hand, and, after waving goodbye to Captain Arpa, began following along with the corporal as they briskly began walking up the sidewalk to the north.
As they walked Hitomi tried to engage the young corporal in conversation, first by thanking him, but his only answer was: "Yes."
She wasn't sure if her was just messing with her, or conserving his mental faculties for threat assessment. Fighting in an urban environment - it sounded like a JSDF story from her brother's manga.
Massachusetts Ave was a long street, full of embassies and apartments in a variety of styles from the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. The variety of stonework, both in hue and cut, was actually fascinating to Hitomi as they picked their way along the sidewalk, avoiding the few people that passed them without talking.
It seemed like the corporal, armed with sub-machine gun, was an intimidating figure and no one wanted to try to mug them underneath the yellow lights of the city lampposts.
She stumbled a bit when her pipe's hook caught on the ground. Oh. She hadn't realized she'd been so close to dragging it on the ground but her right arm was getting tired of holding it as she walked. The corporal turned in concern, but quickly identified the clanging sound for what it was, and lifted up the pipe (with her hand), and placed the heaviest part on her shoulder.
"Like a baseball bat,."
Why hadn't she thought of that? This was so much easier than holding it just with her hand hanging down with its weight.
The corporal's hand was on top of hers, gently brushing - oh god, she hopes he couldn't see her mad blushing in the streetlight. It felt so nice to be treated gently after everything.
But the moment was quick to end. Just as quickly as he had helped guide her pipe to a good resting place atop her shoulder he had turned and was beckoning her to follow.
There were soldiers milling in the front of several of the embassies, and it was clear that a few of them had pooled their sparse resources to form a sort of common defense.
They passed a body half fallen out of the passenger side of a car, and the corporal leaned down to check its pulse, but no, the man was dead.
"In case of ambush," Corporal Ivanovo said simply.
She nodded, and they continued on, passing the Korean embassy and another very foreign sounding one that started with K but had too many letters for her to parse out.
Suddenly Hitomi stopped.
The corporal turned, "What?"
Hitomi didn't know what to say.
She was watching an image of herself walk forwards and then crumple to the ground. The image flickered and disappeared.
Hitomi stayed still.
CRACK.
The sharp report of a gunshot rang out in the night, and then, several feet in front of her and to the left a sharp *ting* sliced off the concrete and a small gouge appeared in the sidewalk.
"THIS WAY!" she yelled, mentally thanking her strange power. She weaved left, moving further away from the street and broke into a run, with the corporal right alongside her.
More gunfire sounded, one shot, two - a pause - three and four and five all within a second, she could feel the those seconds coming to life in every hot breath leaving her body, every swishing of her skirt, bounce and jostle of her bag. Every sling of her pipe - now off her shoulder and gripped tight by its midsection - with every pump of her arms.
"GO!" the corporal yelled, unable to identify where the gunfire was coming from. For all they knew they were stuck in a crossfire between the various embassy guards and some hidden attackers shooting from the alleyways. It was too dark. There was no way to know.
Her body fell over with a stumble, while another flicker-her kept running before its not-her shoulder was blasted away. The image died again as another bullet tore up the concrete at the spot she would've been in if she hadn't stumbled, and the corporal grabbed her pipe and tried to pull her up, urging her onwards.
She froze again, unable to move, and Ivanova faced her, his back to the street, trying again to pull her up, and then a blossom of red appeared from the front of his chest, and he looked down with shock. He tried to say something to her, falling to his knees, he was mouthing something and in her horror she couldn't understand what he was trying to say in his limited English.
He gasped, then died, falling forwards.
Run.
RUN.
She was moving now, the hail of gunfire intensifying, and her feet flew over the pavement now, but her body wasn't her own. The pipe was suddenly braced in front of her, then a sharp metallic clang smashed it back down and into her shoulder.
Had she just deflected a bullet? Oh god, her wrist had been snapped back so hard, it hurt!
RUN!
She kept seeing fleeting ghosts of other-selves as she pelted down the street, one moment she would have control of herself, the next she would find herself jerking left or whipping her pipe around over her shoulder, preventing being shot in the back, taking another bruise for her trouble.
The gunfire ended with as much warning as it had first given - suddenly and without a discernible cause.
There! She could see the edge of the embassy's property and a line of soldiers up ahead. The Embassy of Japan had a fairly sprawling property, given the country's importance to American hegemony and trade in the Asia, but was itself a squat, boxy looking building of solid looking stone.
The normally empty courtyard, a large expanse of pavers for parking, was completely closed off by large plastic barricades - the sort you fill with water to make heavy and difficult to dislodge. Soldiers stood braced behind them, and lit flares adorned the edges of the property.
"STAY BACK! THIS AREA IS OFFLIMITS!" someone yelled at her in English from the other side as she ran forward, only a few more meters from safety.
"I'M JAPANESE! I'M A JAPANESE CITIZEN!" she yelled back as loudly and as clearly as she could, in Japanese, this time.
She could hear the words being relayed backwards towards the entrance: "A Japanese!"
"WALK. WALK SLOWLY TOWARDS THIS LIGHT."
A bright floodlight suddenly illuminated a gap in the barriers, and she slowly walked towards it, both hands up in the air.
"PUT DOWN THE PIPE!" the man with the megaphone said.
Aw... crap.
She tried to put it down.
And succeeded.
Oh thank god.
She carefully walked forward, holding her hands up, coming into view.
"Keep moving forwards! Through here!"
She passed the barriers and was suddenly pulled forwards by a strong arm, an officer from the JSDF, it looked like, but everything was still too dark and he had, for some reason, face-paint on.
"Are you a student? Employee?"
"Student! I'm a student! I study computer science. I got caught in Georgetown when everything began and I-"
He didn't let her finish, instead yelling behind him, "We have another one for processing!"
Then he turned to her, "Sorry, but we have to search you. There have been several... incidents."
She could imagine.
Hitomi was about to ask if a female soldier would be doing the check when rough hands quickly patted down her skirt and legs, then ran up the sides of her body and her back. She stood there in surprise, unable to even let out a squeak. Her brain re-engaged around the time he pulled her laptop and phone out of her bag, checking it for weapons.
"CLEAR!" he yelled again, tucking her things back in her bag for her.
Someone appeared at the embassy door and motioned for her to come inside, so she bowed to the officer and pulled the beckoning hand.
The inner hallway also had barriers set up. There was a desk, two soldiers flanking it, and some official looking embassy worker stamping forms and checking something on an open laptop. The woman behind the desk looked up at her, offering her a nod instead of a chair-based bow.
"Do you have your passport?"
"N-no. I wasn't at home when everything happened. I was close, so I came here."
The woman nodded and the soldiers looked at each other. "It looks like you didn't have an easy time, she pointed at Hitomi's sweater. Hitomi looked down, realizing for the first time that it was spattered with Corporal Ivanova's blood.
She began to tear up. He hadn't deserved to die. Her powers had... sacrificed him for her to take a bullet in her place. It was cruel.
This was all too cruel.
The soldiers shuffled with discomfort, one looking down directly at the official who had, Hitomi saw, subtly waved her hand in a negative motion, as though to discourage a course of action the soldier was suggesting.
"Are you affected by the experience?"
Hitomi's brain faulted, unable to comprehend the question.
"I-I'm sorry, but what do you mean?"
The official said, "Do you believe the Voice? This... Messenger? Does it matter to you? Do you have feelings of self-harm or the desire to harm others?"
"No! NO!" Hitomi exclaimed, "I don't want to hurt ANYBODY! The Voice was terrible, it was unfair, but I- I- lost friends getting me here, I had to..." she trailed off.
It must have been a believable answer, because the soldiers seemed to relax and the official nodded, clicking her mouse and asking her: "Name?"
"Hisakawa. Hisakawa Hitomi."
"Age?"
"17."
"Father's first name? Mother's?"
"My father's name is Kaito, my mother's is Rin."
The woman made a humming noise as she typed the names into her computer, moving her mouse around and clicking, obviously finding a record that she was reading.
"Alright, Ms. Hisakawa, I found your records. It says here your address is just across the border - why did you come here instead of heading to the home of your host family?"
"I-I um, couldn't. I was trapped in Georgetown and then my friends and I were attacked by a mob, it was terrible. I-I had to... defend myself." The woman nodded again, typing something into her computer.
"The wider internet and domestic phones are down, otherwise we would inform your host family that you're safe right now. However, we have a limited satcom connection to Japan. Would you like to call your parents?"
Hitomi nearly cried.
"Yes, please."