2024-06-22: But What If?

• Log: 2024-06-22: But What If?
• Cast: Murasaki El-Amari
• Where: Aboard the Uzume
• Date: U.C. 0099 06 22
• Summary: In the Aftermath of the Mobile Doll Factory Attack, Murasaki El-Amari reflects on how she got here, and the assassination of Lord Uzumi Nara Attha

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An hour after the Lunar Mobile Doll Facility attack.

The fight at the Lunar Mobile Doll base was finally over, thankfully. Short a leg, Murasaki’s smoking, sparking Astray hit the catch net and was brought to a halt, the entire suit being hosed down with fire suppressant material as she quickly punched in the emergency shut down. Opening the hatch, she kicked off and flew through zero gravity to the pilot’s hallway leading to the briefing room, the artificial gravity holding her down once more. The debriefing was tense, to say the least. Terminal had put out a hand in good faith to at the very least keep the Operation Meteor scientists alive.

NUNE had decided to slap the hand away and spit in their faces.

Murasaki and Captain Lancaster had managed to fight one of this new adversarial group, the Dawn of Fold’s leaders to a stand still. From the radio chatter between the two, it was clear Captain Lancaster knew the Wanzer pilot, and the entire time, Murasaki felt like an ant trying to intervene in a clash of gods. The way the Wanzer pilot acted and seemed to be able to get into her mind...Murasaki was still incredibly uncomfortable whenever she thought of it.

By the end of the debriefing, although it wasn’t explicitly said, at the very least among the pilots in that room, one sentiment was certainly clear: Terminal and NUNE were not friends. The pilots dispersed, various grumblings of upset echoing through the halls. Murasaki just wanted a shower. Badly. She put her flight suit into a locker, and stripped out of the body suit she wore under it before tossing that into a laundry bin. The shower was warm, and she spent a long while in it, stewing over the battle.

Murasaki had approached Terminal because she felt she really had no where else to go. Right now she needed allies and information, and she needed them badly. Terminal was full of previous Three Ships Alliance members, all of whom had come to Orb to rescue them from invasion. But it was clear that many in Terminal had their own agendas, and she needed to put the feelers out and prove herself to earn allies and get information.

Someone, somewhere, knew who killed Lord Uzumi. Terminal was her best bet to finding out who did it, why they did it, and having allies behind her when things finally came to a head. As she felt the water sprinkle down on her, she thought back to what happened. Trying to recall any detail she had blocked out...

January 5th, 0098

Aboard the Orb diplomatic shuttle, Murasaki sat in the back corner of the aircraft as it approached its destination. Officially, it was the Nagoya district of Area 11. To Murasaki, it was always, always, going to be Southern Japan. She had found herself in an interesting spot after the end of the Bloody Valentine conflict. Cagalli Yula Attha had plucked her as a bodyguard for her little adventure in North Africa, after she had returned from the destruction of Heliopolis. To their surprise, Col Ledonir Kisaka was already there, returning home to pick up arms. The three had quite the adventure fighting alongside a group known as the Desert Dawn, led by an old friend of Lord Uzumi. They had hitched a ride with an Earth Federation warship, the Archangel after they defeated The Desert Tiger Corps, and managed to return to Orb. After the invasion, Cagalli had convinced her father to take Murasaki on as a bodyguard, and so far things had been uneventful.

Until of course, the bloodstained Princess exterminated hundreds of Japanese civilians in her “Special Administrative Zone”. Martial Law was in place, and it was clear that the Britannian’s priority was flushing out the Black Knights, rather than helping the victims of their atrocities. The Orb Union however saw the plight of the Japanese and had reached out for permission to deliver aid into the territory. To show how serious they were, Lord Uzumi himself was flying in to lead negotiations.

Murasaki looked out the window, as the coast of Japan came into view. Murasaki was only fourteen years old when she last saw that coastline. It was after the Britannian invasion, after the Matsuyama Gene riots that saw her parents killed before her eyes, and a very, very narrow escape to Orb. Murasaki was half coordinator. Only her mother had undergone the treatment, but in the eyes of the rioters, Murasaki was the evidence of a sin worthy of death. Her father was a genetic traitor, and so he was killed too. But his unaltered natural birth meant that to many up in the PLANTs, she was impure. tainted. Orb was the only place in the world she could go, and not be judged, or hated.

The plane landed at an airport teeming with Britannian troops and security. As Murasaki sat in the car that drove them through the streets she could see more troops at every corner and rooftop, armoured vehicles blocking off streets and anyone trying to get too close being detained with a hard amount of brutality beforehand. Things were incredibly tense, and she couldn’t help but think that this could have been accomplished with a video call. But of course, Lord Uzumi was not going to send Orb Union aid workers to a spot that he himself hadn’t gone.

The motorcade halted inside a walled-off compound, surrounding a very luxurious Britannian style mansion. This was the home of the governor of the Special Administrative Zone, and as Murasaki stepped out of the car, she could hear the sounds of distant gunfire and explosions, hitting home that this was an oasis of supposed safety in the middle of a warzone. The meeting itself was unremarkable. Lord Uzumi was supposed to be meeting with Viceroy Cornelia Li Britannia who had taken over in the wake of the death of Princess Euphemia, but on their arrival was unable to attend, sending some flunky whose name Murasaki did not care to remember. But of course, Lord Uzumi had worked his stature and presence, easily convincing the Britannians to allow a generous amount of supplies and permission to set up aid camps throughout Southern Japan with a small contingent of Orb Union Peacekeepers as protection. It was shockingly cordial for the Britannians...or at least that was Murasaki’s perception.

As Lord Uzumi’s entourage exited the mansion, his secretary turned to Murasaki, her face pale. She had forgotten her purse. Murasaki sighed, not afraid to show her annoyance, but said she would go back and retrieve it. The other bodyguards nodded, and Murasaki turned back to walk up the steps. Inside she informed the butler of the situation, and waited as he went up to retrieve it.

Then, all hell broke loose. A massive blast shook the ground, and the two large wooden doors smashed open, throwing Murasaki to the ground, and shattering every window and any other piece of glass in the building. Murasaki shook to her senses, and through the shattered doorway, could see billowing smoke and flames. She pushed herself up and stumbled outside, and to her horror, she saw Lord Uzumi’s car was shattered and in flames. The passengers and driver were still in their seats, but Murasaki could see that there was nothing she could do. All of them were dead, and burning. Britannian troops began to swarm and secure the area, their shouts and boot falls mixing in with the sounds of sirens.

Then, Murasaki saw a glint on a rooftop across the street. A figure was up there, and even from the distance, she could tell it was someone with a camera. Someone had recorded the bombing. Murasaki went off in a dead sprint, past the burning hulk of the vehicle. While she wasn’t as physically enhanced as a pure coordinator, she was still able to move at an incredible speed, plowing her way through the shop on the bottom floor, which also had been trashed by the explosion, and into the back room. But as she pushed her way in, something smashed into her from the side, and knocked her down once more. As she regained her senses, she could see someone push open the emergency exit, and escape back out into daylight. Murasaki didn’t even care what had hit her, she dragged herself back to her feet, and maintained her pursuit.

Bursting back out into the alley, she could see at the end, the figure once more, with a dark object in his hand, pointed at her. Murasaki reacted instantly, diving out of the way as two gunshots hit the brickwork behind her. She pushed herself up, and reached under her coat to retrieve the pistol holstered under her arm, and ran to the corner of the alley, only to find the figure had fled once more. Murasaki started running once more, turning the corner to see that only meters away, someone was being dragged into another alley, screaming for help.

She rounded the corner, pistol at the ready. She wasn’t certain if the overturned trash cans were already like that, but she could hear shouting and screaming around the other corner. Murasaki advanced cautiously, figuring out a plan, now knowing she was about to round the next corner, and into a hostage situation. She stepped out, weapon at the ready.

The alley was a dead end, and the figure was struggling with a woman, his hand clamped over her mouth, the muzzle of his own pistol pressed up under her jaw. The woman was trying to claw at his arms but his thick looking jacket was rendering the entire effort meaningless. The man had European features.

“Let her go!” Murasaki ordered in Japanese. “I don’t speak mongrel!” The man shouted back in English, hiking the woman off her feet to try and wrangle control. “I said let her GO!” Murasaki ordered again, matching languages. “Not a chance, not unless I’m walking out of here!” The man yelled, pointing his gun at Murasaki. “Tell me why you were recording the bombing and I’ll consider it!” Murasaki kept her weapon aimed on the man, slowly inching forward.

A sick grin went on the man’s face.

“You want to know so bad? What’s it worth to you?” He snarled, digging the muzzle deeper into the tearful woman’s temple. “How about the life of an Eleven?! Your choice, me or her! You let me live and I’ll tell you what you want to know, but only two of us are walking out of this alley!”

Murasaki gritted her teeth, as the woman, though her mouth covered, begged for her life with her eyes and struggling.

“COUNT OF THREE!” The man shouted.

Murasaki went over every option. The man had his hostage positioned to cover almost every part of him except the head and his arms.

“THREE!”

If Murasaki went for the arms, there was a risk the bullet hits just the wrong tendon and causes his hand, and trigger finger to contract. The hostage would be dead and it would be just as much her own doing as his.

“TWO!”

She looked at his legs and feet, but there was no way to hit them without hitting the hostage as well. But even if she shot through one of the hostage’s legs, it wasn’t a kill shot, he could still kill the hostage on his way down, or on the ground, all he needs is one pull of the trigger. Murasaki’s stomach trembled as she contemplated the alternative. What if he was being honest? What if he would tell her everything? Was one hostage worth not knowing who killed Lord Uzumi?

“ONE!”

A single trigger pull sealed it.

Murasaki stood, the barrel of her pistol smoking, a single shell casing bouncing on the concrete. The man fell, taking his hostage down with him. The woman threw the man’s arm off of her, and Murasaki barely felt her shove past and flee from the horrible scene. Murasaki didn’t expect nor care she didn’t say thank you. She didn’t feel at all like a hero. As she approached the man’s lifeless body, blood seeping from the unseen exit wound on the back of his head, his empty eyes staring up to the cloudy grey sky, the gravity of what she had done hit home for Murasaki. She searched his body, and found the camera. Opening it up, she watched the recording, watched Lord Uzumi and the rest of his staff enter his car, and the fireball that engulfed it. Nothing was said, not a cry of victory, not an explanation, nothing.

Murasaki checked the rest of the stored videos, but there were no other videos. Her hands quivered, as she slowly turned to the corpse, and without thinking, she fired the rest of the magazine into the body’s chest. Her only lead was dead, by her own hand.

In the present, Murasaki slammed her fist on the shower wall, her tears mixing in with the shower water. Every time she told herself the man was lying and had he killed the hostage he would have just killed her too, there was a biting, painful thought of those three awful, self-destructive words:

But what if?

Murasaki had too many theories.

The Britannians themselves? Orb had humiliated them in the war, maybe this was their way of showing force and dominance to the people of Orb? Viceroy Cornelia was supposed to be there. How convenient she suddenly had to send a disposable peon in her place. Was it just in case the bomb was too powerful? The Britannians had provided the vehicle, and the security, they had the perfect opportunity to carry out the plot.

The Black Knights? No that doesn’t make sense, Lord Uzumi was there to help the Japanese. But what if they had zero tolerance for collaboration of any sort? Was helping bring aid into the area enough to earn their wrath? What if it was a mistake? What if it was the Black Knights but he wasn’t the target? No, why hide it then? Besides, the camera man wasn’t Japanese and clearly had no love for them.

After the state funeral, the Seirans had started to make a push towards a political marriage between Cagalli and the heir apparent, Yuna Roma Seiran. Could this have been a plot to maneuver themselves into power? They were open about their wishes to see Orb closer to the Britannians, and their distrust of Coordinators. If they took power they could make those ties and start purging Coordinators, maybe not violently or en masse, but they could certainly make things miserable enough for them to want to leave. But maybe Murasaki was just projecting her anger and displeasure towards them. Maybe it was just a tragedy they saw opportunity in. Still disgusting but she couldn’t storm their estate and arrest them on a hunch. What if it wasn’t them but another one of Orb’s great families? What if they were working together?

What about NUNE itself? They were clearly looking to create a total hegemony over all of humanity, and some of those Gaia Sabres had free reign to do whatever they wished as long as it served their goals. Lord Uzumi was adamant that Orb’s independence and neutrality was paramount and Orb had refused any membership in NUNE. Had a Gaia Sabre set all this up to destabilize Orb? Justify NUNE intervention? Integrate Orb by force?

Murasaki exited out of the shower and dried off. She plodded back to her bunk, and plopped into bed, exhausted. She was in over her head, and the reality that defending the Mobile Doll Factory nearly cost her life was starting to overwhelm her.

She just didn’t know what to do.