34 Massacre Highway: Be Calmed
"For God hath given us the spirit of fear; and of helplessness, and of hate, and of insanity."
Neon Timothy 1:7 (Unified Standard Edition)
- - -
It had not been a great day.
And not just because it was raining cats and dogs around the bus stop she had taken shelter in.
Hitomi had been shot at (a recurring theme for the week), tased, kidnapped, trussed like a pig, and repeatedly punched in the gut by the sociopathic sidekick of a livestreaming mass-shooter.
She was cold, wet, and splattered from face to feet with blood - most of it not hers.
Although, at the moment, she was VERY concerned about the small amount of blood that was, in fact, smeared on one part of the bench.
Who knew that running hot and heavy through a retribution-fueled adrenaline rush and taking a few hits to the stomach could kickstart her menstrual cycle a few days early?
Nobody, that's who.
Hitomi didn't taste blood in her mouth at least, so hopefully she had gotten away without any internal damage.
The sun's last rays of orange and red light were being strangled by the billowing stormfront moving in from the west and it was getting darker faster and faster by the minute.
That was fine.
At least nobody could probably see her while she changed inside the bus stop. It lacked a full enclosure; mostly just some darkly tinted glass walls with an opening on one side.
She just didn't have the strength to care about modesty right now.
Hitomi reached into the duffel bag and rooted around for a change of clothing. She needed something fairly warm given the sudden chill, so picked out a tumble of (relatively) clean clothes that included a pair of warm-looking wool tights, a long skirt, and a comfy looking sweater.
She also grabbed out some clean underwear.
Belatedly she realized it was almost the same outfit that she had worn when everything had started.
On Day Zero.
It was nice of Keiko to have washed everything for her before they left the embassy and... Hitomi's brain couldn't go any further, because from her vantage point in the bus stop she could still see the lights of the interstate down below and it immediately brought up an image of Keiko taking that sniper shot right in front of her and...
Hitomi mechanically fetched out her feminine products from the toiletry bag buried under the clothes and quickly peeled off her muddy, bloody clothing and changed into her new outfit.
She used a relatively clean portion of her soaked hoodie that she had discarded to wipe the grime off of her shoes.
Then she sat back on the bench, and, looking over at the... "evidence", used the basically ruined-anyway hoodie to wipe that up too.
She wrapped all the dirty clothes up in a ball, trying to leaving the outer layer to be the cleanest parts of cloth that she could see, and stuffed it all back in her duffel bag towards the bottom, pulling the clean clothes further up.
Then she stared out into the rain and darkness.
"Don't think about it," she said to herself.
Don't think about her.
Immediately Keiko's face was replaced with Sakura's and Hitomi flinched.
Just... don't.
Hitomi realized she was having trouble breathing.
Do something else.
She instinctively reached into her laptop bag and fetched out her phone.
Oh.
Oh wow. There were a lot of messages, again. A lot of missed calls.
She noticed the embassy's number had been trying to reach her basically every 15 minutes for... the last two hours or so.
Her thumb slid tapped the last attempted call and it rang for a moment, quietly in her lap, before she lifted it up to her ear as a voice began speaking.
"Hello? This is the Embassy of Japan in the United States of America, Washington D.C., how may I direct your call?"
She paused for a moment, unsure what to say.
"Hello? How may I help you?" the voice repeated.
"Hisakawa Hitomi for, um, the ambassador, please," she said at last.
"Yes ma'am! One moment! We've been expecting your call. Please, just stay on the line, OK?"
"Y-yes."
There was a rapid series of clicks in the background and then the line's tone changed from a low-buzz in the background to a crystal-clear connection: it must've been forwarded off to a cell-phone.
"Ms. Hisakawa?" the ambassador's voice came through, loud and clear and full of obvious concern.
"Mr. Ambassador, um, hi. I'm... I'm here," she said.
"Thank god. Your escort lost track of you during the shooting, we can guess what happened, though, given... well, Ms. Hisakawa, where are you now?"
"I'm in a bus stop, it's where, um, Nurse Murata and I had stopped before we went back down to help after the... fire."
She heard the ambassador saying something unintelligible to someone else in the background, and then he responded a few seconds later.
"Yes, I'm - we're all sorry to hear about what happened to Nurse Murata. We hope her recovery will be swift, now, where exa-"
"She's OK!?" Hitomi yelled desperately, processing what the ambassador had just said.
"You- ah, you didn't know? Yes, she took a shot in her upper chest, but towards her shoulder, she's in the ICU right now. She told us, well, this isn't a secure line, Hitomi, I'm sorry, we can explain more later."
"Oh my god," she breathed out, shaking, partly in exhaustion and partly in exhilaration, "Oh my god, thank god, I thought - I thought she -"
"Yes, Ms. Hisakawa, I understand - now - I need you to tell me where, exactly, you are. You said a bus stop? Are there any identifying marks?"
Hitomi looked up and around the interior of the bus stop, checking for signage.
"Um... I don't see anything... specific, maybe its outside, but I can't see through the rain very well, hold on..." she explained, standing and walking to the entrance of the bus stop.
She noticed that there was a green street sign near the street corner and two numbers, printed on black and white decals, slapped on the side of the bus stop's entrance post.
"OK, it's uh, Jermantown... street, #57? I think?"
"Right, alright, we'll have a car there in..." someone said something to the ambassador in the background, "About 10 minutes. The JSDF were already, discreetly, mind you, looking for you. Just stay right there Ms. Hisakawa."
"OK."
"Alright. You'll be safe, right there," the ambassador managed to assure her and command her at the same time.
The call ended.
Hitomi's mind wandered and she couldn't help but wonder why they had spelled "German Town" as "Jermantown", but chalked it up to another Americanism.
She almost wanted to get her laptop out of her bag and do some coding, but realized by the time she booted it up and handled the WiFi hotspot and tethering her... escort would probably be there.
Hitomi hoped the JSDF weren't going to turn her over to the American police, but then again, the ambassador knew about her special powers - she shouldn't worry.
Instead, she thumbed her way to one of the major news sites.
"MYSTERY WOMAN ENDS FAIRFAX MASS SHOOTING" the headline ran.
With a picture.
A picture of her rear-end and her trusty steel pipe held at her side.
They say the camera adds on ten pounds or something like that, but even with all that "extra weight" the screencap made it clear to the entire world Hitomi Hisakawa - "mystery woman" - did, in fact, have a flat-looking butt.
Just like that stupid commentator on the livestream had mocked.
"Damnit," she swore to herself.
- - -
"You're out of your goddamned mind, this is a joke - a hacker-driven fakenews gambit, right?!" the President of the United States said sharply, tossing a folder across the table.
It was a small table, and it was airborne.
The president and his senior staff at hand in the White House had been evacuated to Air Force One when news of the mass shooting ten minutes to the west of D.C. had broken.
"No, sir, we've confirmed it, it really happened. And all the footage from the livestream of the attack was archived, unaltered, just like this. Those are real pictures."
The jet was already veering, banking back towards the capital of the country, towards the bright lights of of the coast and away from the god-forsaken mountains that the plane had been cruising over for the last few hours.
The president was unimpressed.
"So you're telling me that the same girl who tore up those cultists in Sheridan Circle just, what, magically appeared in Fairfax and PUT DOWN our latest domestic terrorist while we've been sitting up here flying in circles like scared chickens?"
"Sir, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have put it like that, exactly, but on the main points, yes, it appears to be the same actor. She even had the same weapon - that length of steel pipe."
The president took a swig of the decaf that had been steaming in front of him on the table while he read the latest file.
"Do you even know what I had to give the Latvians to keep that whole thing hushed up? Jesus Christ in a Bread Basket, and the Koreans? They were all next door ready to call up CNN and Fox and, god help me, OANN. Do you understand? We don't NEED a fairytale heroine rushing to the rescue while our COUNTRY IS FALLING APART AT THE SEAMS!" he ended with a yelling rebuke.
No one said anything.
"At least tell me we've got our hands on her. They found her when they went into the building, right?"
The president heard an audible gulp from one of his aides and set his mug down, sighing in disappointment.
"No?"
His Secretary of Homeland Defense, who had just happened to be in White House that day and thus joined the evacuation, spoke: "No, sir, she got away. We've got facial recognition running through the city cameras right now, but, given the weather... We actually might have a hit soon on her cellphone, if she has one."
"Everyone has a cellphone, Gary."
"Yessir, well, the NSA has been busy collating all the Stingray records for the area since... the, well, since this all started sir. They're certain to narrow her identity down once they identify all the cellphone traffic."
"Good. We need her. I've seen the tapes - no one fights like that Gary. She's either a ninja or she's part of this whole... angel/alien... thing. We need her alive."
"Understood, sir, we'll make sur-" Gary started to respond but was cut off by the president.
"Wait, HOW?"
"Sir?"
"How in the ever-living HELL did she get away? The place was surrounded, you told me that two, TWO full SWAT teams were on site. Arlington and Fairfax. How are you sure she still isn't in there, hiding in an airduct or something like that?"
Another advisor shifted in their seat, scooting over on the long, cushioned row to face the president.
"Ah, sir, I can explain that, I just was in touch with the ground asking the same question."
"Well?"
"It turns out there were two of them sir, the terrorists: the shooter, who we saw on the livestream, and then his accomplice, who was handling the getaway van. He's also the one who managed to procure the claymores and mines and guns, apparently, from a national guard repository, of all things."
The president's eyebrows furrowed.
"That was them?" he asked, thinking of the fire that had decimated the Virginia weapons repo. "And they expected to get away?"
"Maybe, sir, the one did, at least. We've been interrogating him."
"Ho. Lee. Shit. He's alive?"
"Yessir. But here's the strange thing. So he comes flying out of the parking garage in his van, and of course they fill the thing full of lead. He actually took three bullets: non-lethal hits it turns out. But when they got to him? He was, I kid you not, zip tied to the steering wheel and the girl had thrown the thing into Drive with the cruise control on. She must've escaped in the rain while they were all chasing the van."
"You're kidding me."
"Nossir."
"Well that's... that's just fucking impressive, isn't it?"
"Yessir."
"And you're sure she wasn't in on it?"
"Yessir, pretty sure. The boy - he's thirteen - made that quite and colorfully clear, sir."
The president took another swing of his coffee.
"Well. Damn. Now I'm not sure whether I oughta give her a medal or have her dissected by those eggheads at Area 51."
"Ha, yes, sir."
He turned to the Secretary.
"Gary, what do you think?"
The other man chuckled, then said, "You're the president, sir, no reason you can't do both."
"Damn right. Well, go on Gary, she's on foot. Go tell them to canvas all the bus stops and underpasses where someone might take shelter during a downpour - shouldn't be too hard, eh?"
"Yes sir, I'm on it."
The man left to go use the radio and the president resumed his small talk as the plane continued it's trajectory change back to D.C.
An alarm filled the cabin unexpectedly and the president swiftly tabled his coffee and crouched up. "What the hell?"
As quickly as it had come it was gone - not a radar lock or something dangerous to the aircraft, then. They heard feet pounding down the aisle and an Air Force officer, and a Major came straight to the group of men, carrying a paper dispatch - paper!
"Sir, Eyes Only, right off the wire," the uniformed officer stated, handing the paper directly to the president.
The words didn't parse for a moment as the president's eyes scanned them once, then again.
"My god."
He placed the dispatch down on the table in view of his staff.
"The sons of bitches did it. They nuked Mecca."
