What a mess.

  Two servicemen dead, fifteen refugees alongside them, over one hundred injured, and that was before Hazama took into account all the infrastructure damage. Power outages were easy enough to fix, prefab buildings could be brought in from Tokyo in a couple of hours, there were plenty of medical supplies to go around, but the 'calm' would take far longer to return to normal.

  A natural disaster over the course of a few minutes did what tens of thousands of soldiers failed to do over months, damaging Alnus base.

  It wasn't natural, that much was painfully obvious.

  An earthquake with the magical Gate seemingly being at the epicenter more than made that obvious. Not just that, but wholly localized on the Special Region side. Not a single tremor in Tokyo, even as all of Alnus Hill was shaken to its core.

  And as if the damage caused by the quake wasn't enough, there was almost a riot by a segment of the refugee popution who thought this was some sort of 'divine punishment' from their gods.

  That problem solved itself thankfully enough as a counter protest successfully argued that the gods would have caused far more destruction if they truly wished for Alnus base's destruction and that Rory Mercury would not be working alongside them if they disapproved of the Japanese.

  Thankfully, the crowds amicably dispersed before the MP's had to get involved.

  One crumb of good news, he supposed.

  On the issue of the Gate, Hazama spent over an hour in a meeting with a number of local magical experts discussing what the possible cause might have been given the Gate had not done anything like this in the almost half year it had existed.

  Experts….

  Never in his life did he ever think he'd be chairing a meeting of local wizards and mages working with the JSDF to aid in understanding magical phenomena. Even after everything he's heard and seen, the reports and video he's seen, even after all his discussions with Mr. Cato and Ms. Lelei about magic, a part of his mind still wanted to refuse that magic existed.

  While none of them could agree on a single cause outright one of the mages, Arian or somesuch, proposed that it might be reted to the Gate's means of 'tethering' the worlds together. That is, the magic behind the Gate that actually connects Earth to the Special Region. He proposed that someone, or something, was trying to close the Gate and the quakes were the result of it.

  The analogy Arian, or was it Arius, used was someone trying to sm a door shut but someone's foot was in the way.

  Since the man cimed to have been a part of a group of Imperial mages that manifested the Gate in the first pce, though forced to work against his own will by Imperial authorities, Hazama could concede that the man probably had a reasonably good idea of the mechanics behind the Gate. At least, the magical ones.

  The other mages, chiefly Mr. Cato, argued that only a god could do such a thing. Arian agreed, which only caused the meeting to descend into circur arguments about how powerful their local deities were and how it could and could not be done, or what could stop a god's power. The general could swear that the former Imperial mage's golden eyes shined with amused from all the arguments his theory caused.

  Ignoring local beliefs about the power of gods, regardless of if this was an intentional attack or simply a magical phenomena, what was clear was that the Gate was not as secure as the government once thought.

  And this was all before Lieutenant Itami and his group came back from Sadera with Miss Noriko and the reality of more ensved Japanese citizens came to the forefront.

  No sooner had the girl been put in intensive care that the order for a retaliatory airstrike came in. And Hazama wanted to curse the damn politicians' knee jerk reaction the moment the orders were handed to him.

  It wasn't the airstrike itself he opposed, Hazama had already worked out a list of potential strike targets weeks ago should the conflict with the Empire start up again. Military bases, forts, troop camps, sites that could be struck one after another to put pressure on the Imperial military to show how pointless continuing the war was.

  it was the location the cabinet chose.

  "These people only understand strength," he was told. "We need to show them that they are not in control of the situation no matter how much they delude themselves otherwise."

  Putting aside the revetion of Noriko, bombing the Imperial Senate, the legisture of the Empire, was a dangerous escation he did not agree with.

  He was certain that this was not going to cow the Imperials into submission like the cabinet believed, but push them to keep fighting. This was not going to be seen as a proportional strike against the Imperial military, but as an attack on the leadership themselves. A leadership who, if Princess Pina and Mr. Suguwara's notes were accurate, would feel honorbound by their moral code to keep fighting.

  That's not even taking into account what the Empire will do to the Japanese citizens they already have in retaliation.

  But for as much as he disagreed with this course of action, how he just knew in his bones that this was going to make the situation worse, he was a soldier and followed his orders.

  Hazama did what he could to minimize casualties, he ordered his people still in the capital to quietly make sure the structure was empty and guide the bomb to make sure it went off exactly where it was supposed to and not even a centimeter off target

  But sadly, recent news made neither of these issues his top priority.

  "Miss Mercury found him, sir," Yanagida expined while leading Hazama through the morgue. "He was shoved in a supply closet in the armory. The coroner puts the time of death at around 23:00 hours."

  "A little after the quake then?"

  "Yes sir."

  And that was another headache he had to deal with alongside all the other issues at hand.

  'Miss' Mercury. The superhuman, seemingly immortal, Apostle whose sole reason for aligning herself with the JSDF was Lieutenant Itami. For all the good will her siding with them has brought them with the local popution, just being near the woman made his skin crawl.

  At best, she was a sociopath, at worst, a ticking time bomb. In any other circumstance, he would have barred her from Alnus all together. While a clear asset to their forces, she was a dangerous variable.

  He didn't care what the Lieutenant cimed, the woman was a monster. He'd read the reports from her 'incident' back in Japan a few weeks ago. How the woman soaked up clip after clip of small arms fire without so much as stumbling. Add in her wanton killing of surrendering combatants, eyewitness accounts corroborating her killing efficiency, and her own admission of being willing to turn on the JSDF if her 'God' commanded it.

  Add in the reports of her strength and regenerative capabilities, he wasn't even sure if they could do anything more than slow her down if she decided to turn on them.

  For now, she was on their side.

  Another issue to deal with in the future.

  Reaching the isoted examination room, Yanagida motioned for the doctor to pull the tarp on the table.

  Beneath it was a corpse. His skin already drained of color, eyes almost bloody, and a thin red line ran across the length of his neck.

  "He was garroted?" Hazama could barely believe what he was seeing.

  "That's what we think, sir," the doctor expined, pointing to the wound. "I can't say if it was actually a garrote or not, but he was strangled by something small enough to break the skin, and tough enough to snap itself."

  "How did this happen?"

  "Sadly, the camera in question was destroyed before it happened, so we don't know," Yanagida pushed his gsses up and sighed. "And with all the panic from the earthquake, no one was in a position to report it."

  "So he was jumped?" Hazama worked out. "A target of opportunity in the panic?"

  "He fought back," the doctor chimed, pulling an arm out from under the tarp and twisting it so the man's palm was visible. It was covered in dried blood. "His hand is cut right down to the bone."

  Then why strangle him if the attacker had a knife capable of that, Hazama mused to himself. Though a possible answer came soon enough. "There were two attackers?"

  "Potentially more, sir," the officer cleared his throat, nervous about what he was about to say next. "Additionally, the armorer reported that several items are now unaccounted for from the armory's inventory. I have the list here sir-"

  Hazama snatched the paper from Yanagida and frowned at what he saw.

  Six rifles. Eleven sidearms. Five grenades. Three bullet proof vests. Four cases of ammunition of varying calibers. And the list went on and on. Small bits here and there, mismatched and seemingly taken at random. All amounting to one of the worst breaches of security he's ever seen; either on Earth or here.

  "I assume the chief suspects are those invisible men who broke into my quarters," he handed the list back. The 'why' is obvious enough. It was clear the Empire wanted to learn what made Japanese weapon's 'tick'. Not that the Imperials had the technical know how, much less an industrial base, to make use of anything they stole.

  "Yes, sir," the intelligence officer agreed. "The main issue now is figuring out if they are still in Alnus or if they slipped away in the confusion."

  "I'd say they're still here," Hazama reasoned to himself, "you can't move that amount of equipment on your person without it being obvious."

  "Alnus's main gates have been closed to civilian transit since the earthquake," Yanagida commented. "And there have been no reported breaches in our fencing or walls."

  "So they're most likely hidden among the refugees and civilians," the general nodded along with Yanagida with a sigh.

  The only thing more dangerous than the weapons stolen was said weapons being used by people with no idea how they worked amidst crowds of civilians.

  There were dozens of buildings and tents they could be hiding the equipment in. The MPs couldn't just go door to door in broad daylight, it would alert the saboteurs they were searching and give them time to escape if the MPs chose any domicile other than the culprits.

  "Consider this your top priority, Lieutenant," Yanagida straightened himself as Hazama gave him his orders. "Find the people who did this and recover as much of the equipment as possible. Draft up an announcement informing the civilians of the situation and how to contact us if they think they know something."

  "Isn't it a little risky tipping our hand like this, sir."

  "They know that we know this happened," he pointed to the man on the table. "There's no point in keeping it quiet. And if someone does see something that leads us to them, all the better."

  "It could inspire future break in attempts," Yanagida expined.

  "There will always be attempts to steal military hardware," Hazama countered. "Whatever we say won't change that."

  "I understand, sir," the officer nodded. "And if the situation gets… messy?"

  "Do everything in your power to keep civilian casualties to an absolute minimum," the general ordered.

  Even as Yanagida left the morgue, Hazama took a moment to himself and looked down at the young man who's life was cut short. More young men might soon join him at the rate things were going.

  Even without the situation with Noriko and the cabinet's decision to strike the Imperial capital, he could just feel that the previous lull in the conflict was nearly over, if it wasn't already.

  MidasMan