36 Massacre Highway: Two's Company

"Hey you, don't believe every voice in your head, just listen to the voices don't say they're God: they're the least crazy."

Neon 1 John 4:1 (Unified Standard Edition)

- - -

When Hitomi had first gotten to the bus stop she had fully expected to break down in tears once she sat down on the bench. After all, it was getting dark, it was raining, and there wouldn't be anyone to see or judge her for taking a moment to pour out her exhaustion and stress.

She could even scream if she wanted: no one was out in this weather, and doubly so because most people were probably buckling down due to the warning that had been flashing on her phone.

"TERRORIST THREAT. SHELTER IN PLACE."

The text message continued to pop up in intervals from the Emergency Broadcasting System, highlighted in red with a scary looking "bang" - or exclamation mark as the non-techies called it.

But she hadn't cried.

Scream? Yes. But she had already washed and cleaned up any evidence for that particular moment of frustration and made sure she wouldn't be embarrassed when the embassy's car found her.

In fact, she didn't need to cry at all: Keiko was alive! Her one friend from the embassy, well, maybe Dr. Nagisa too, or the ambassador? Hmm, she didn't think she was friends with the ambassador as much as had become one of his "concerns."

So she distracted herself.

Hitomi kept flicking through her phone, unable to tear herself away from the news articles describing the mass shooting she had personally put an end to. She just couldn't help herself - like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime - her curiosity about what had happened couldn't be contained.

In short order she learned what an "Incel" was.

How ridiculous.

The guy was "involuntarily celibate" - in other words, he couldn't get laid. So he hated women and, deciding that souls weren't real and life didn't matter, figured he'd take as many people with him on the way out from this world.

No great mission, no great cause: just an attention seeking manchild that hated women.

Great.

From Hitomi's perspective this illustrated exactly what the embassy had been worried about. When you take away the moral underpinnings of a society, no matter how secular it seems on the surface, that was nearly totally dependent on some ancient "religious" code that had suddenly crumbled, how much of a percent of the population needed to be disaffected before absolute chaos erupted?

Apparently not much.

The phone buzzed in her hands. Minako!

"Hello? Minako?" she answered, excited all at once.

"HITOMIIIIII! Ahhh, thank god! You're alright! HEY! SHE'S ALRIGHT!" Minako yelled to someone else as she greeted her best girlfriend from their exchange program.

"Y-yeah! I'm OK!" Hitomi assured her.

"We were so worried, I thought the worst - you know, after we heard about the busses!"

"You knew about that?"

"Yeah! I'm at Dulles with the rest of our evacuation group! We've been hanging on all the news, and I knew you were coming from the embassy, and then that terrible thing, with the shooting, and then, we didn't know if it happened before you got there or not and we hadn't heard from anyone and then the soldiers were talking about how several of the busses had been abandoned and -"

"Whoa, whoa, Minako, calm down, it's OK. I was way... behind... the fire-"

Minako wasn't having it: "But my guy - sorry, the soldier who's with my group - he said YOU were the one who told everyone to get off the bus! They're ALL telling the story about how you personally lead everyone off and escaped! I mean, you're a LEGEND here in the hangar!"

"W-what? I'm a what? And what - a hangar?"

"Oh yeah, a lot of us are in a JAL hangar - you know, Japanese Airlines? The hotels are all full. At least that's what they're saying, and yeah, there's like a couple hundred of us here. It's nuts. Super squished. Lots of cots and futons. Some of the early arrivers actually got tatami mats - lucky - anyways, Hitomi! Hitomi, hey, listen, the sergeant also said something but I didn't believe it at first and then he got shut down by his commanding officer and I've gotta ask..." her voice dropped to a whisper, as though she were leaning into the corner of the hangar where no one could hear her.

"What?" Hitomi wondered worriedly.

"Is it true a nurse got shot? Like, with a real bullet?"

Hitomi paused for a moment, thankful that Minako had no idea about Hitomi's incursion into the sniper's building, "Y-yeah... right in front of me, but they saved her."

"Oh thank god! I can't wait to get home and away from these gun nuts. I thought it was cute when Chad wanted to show me his dad's collection but now I'm so over it. OH! Oh my god, Chad has been so thoughtful, he's been sending me chocolate covered strawberries to share with everyone here since he knows we're roughing it!"

"That's... really nice Minako," Hitomi smiled into the phone.

Suddenly a light came glaring in the foggy rain, reflecting a bright blue-white across the darkened panes of the bus stop.

"Hey, gotta go, talk to you soon! Sorry!" Hitomi quicky said and then turned off the phone.

A car door opened and shut, then another, and Hitomi stood up, pushing her bag behind her to see.

"Hello?" she called out.

A man poked his head into the bus stop - an American! Crap! He didn't look like a cop - he had a dark jacket on and a tie, and then so did his partner who also stepped into view.

Were they CIA? NSA? FBI? What were the other three-letters she needed to worry about?

"Excuse us, Miss?" the one began, looking at her.

Think fast Hitomi!

"Umm... hi?" she greeted in her best Valley Girl accent, trying as hard as she could to not sound Japanese, "Susan. Can I... help you?"

They looked at each other and then stepped further into the bus stop, making her instinctively back up and grab her phone.

"HEY!" she yelled, acting as confused as possible, "I'll call the police!"

She made a show of dialing, and quickly hit the embassy's number, silencing the volume.

The one fellow, who had a crop of closely cut blond hair, shook his head and backed up, saying "Oh hey, sorry, it's raining, that's all. We're looking for a girl wearing jeans and a hoodie - have you seen anyone like that?"

She turned around and made a show of putting the phone down on the bench, playing along, hoping that the call had connected. In the reflection on the other side of the bus stop she could see the one agent leering at her skirt-covered derriere.

Creep.

"Uhhhh, no," she said, turning back around, hitting the "no" with as snide a tone as she could manage, "I've been stuck in here thanks to the rain and the, uh, shooting or whatever," she said as loudly as she could, hoping they'd think she was just trying to talk over the rain, praying the embassy could hear the conversation.

Keep your words simple, Hitomi, avoid the L sounds! Sound American!

"OK, I getcha, look, we need to find this girl, maybe you saw her earlier in the day?" said the other, flipping through his phone, and then showed her a picture of Hitomi herself, but from the rear, wearing her hoodie and jeans from fifteen minutes before.

"This is what she was wearing."

Thank goodness she had changed clothes.

She had... to change clothes.

Wow. Did her power of personal defense have no shame? It made her ruin her jeans with a hastened period just so these guys wouldn't catch on that she was the same girl who put down the mass shooter?

"Um, haven't seen her... is she one of the bad guys?" she said, playing up the accent again. She and Diamond used to mock Tiffany Hernst, daughter of Jeremiah Fitzgerald Hernst III and a royal, spoiled princess of a girl who they shared a science lab with.

She was insufferable and her voice was very... "extra."

So, in her honor, Hitomi was going all in with sounding as Californian Asian-American as possible.

"We believe she may be dangerous, yes, you should -"

But his partner interrupted, "What're you doing out here at this time of night? What did you say your name was?" he asked, very rudely.

Play it cool Hitomi.

"Uh, OK, like," yessssss Hitomi, use the 'like' word, Americans eat that up! Wait, no! NO! You can't say the R/L said very clearly! And, sure enough, the eyebrow of the suspicious partner raised, "Totally not your business, but I was supposed to meet my boyfriend for shopping."

"Uh huh, and your name?"

"Susan, I said that already," she replied, acting annoyed.

"Susan...?" he trailed off, waiting for a last name.

"Smith. Susan Smith. And my boyfriend's name is Chad," she said, thinking of Minako. That's it Hitomi, act like Minako! Go nuts!

"Sooo, can you leave? You're scaring me and I was ALREADY scared. I saw the news on my phone and my boyfriend will be here soon to get me. Can you just leave me alone? PLEASE?"

The one agent looked ashamed of himself, and elbowed the other one who was still giving her a hard time.

"Come on, we need to keep looking," he said, ready to leave.

The other was unconvinced, looking past her and noticing the duffel bag, "You were meeting your boyfriend for shopping? What's that for then?" He pointed at the heavy looking cloth sack.

His partner, who had been just about to give up, suddenly narrowed his eyes and nodded at his partner, then stepped forward.

Crap. CRAP. The duffel bag. CRAP CRAP CRAP.

Lots of bloody clothes.

Bloody clothes fitting the EXACT DESCRIPTION as the "mystery woman" because Hitomi WAS the "mystery woman!"

Suddenly another set of headlights filled the illuminated space, this time more yellowish-white.

Another car door opened and shut with a loud bang and then a loud voice called out, "Susannn! You in there? Is this the right spot?"

"YEAH!" she yelled back, "I'm in here! Chad!"

Awesome. The embassy staff were awesome. They had been listening to the conversation on her phone after all!

She quickly reached behind her and snatched up the phone, killing the call, as the two Americans turned around just as her "boyfriend" - "Chad" - walked into the now VERY cramped bus stop.

He was wearing a sweater and slacks, had mussed up black hair, and sported a shiny set of ear piercings in one ear that reflected the water droplets of the rain as he stepped into the bus stop.

Hitomi was instantly floored. Maybe she could snag him as an *actual* boyfriend? He was, as the real Mrs. Smith would say, "a real hunk."

Although... that just left her confused, since the last intimate moment she had had was with... well, Sakura, and that hadn't been unpleasant at all, and... get your mind in the game, Hitomi!

"Wha-? What's going on in here? Suzy you OK?" he asked with confusion, then sharply, in an impeccable English accent, "Susan? Who're these guys?"

"Hey, sorry, we're detectives, your girlfriend was just answering some questions, we'll be -"

"Excuse me? Questions? Answering what? Why?" he asked, playacting it all masterfully as he turned the interrogation around on the two white American guys alone with the teenage girl in a dark bus stop.

"Hey look buddy, we're done here, you're all free to go. Be safe," and with that they just bustled past "Chad" and got back in their car, pulling away quickly.

The embassy man helped grab her duffel bag while she grabbed her laptop satchel and phone, and, saying nothing, motioned back towards his car: a beautiful black Lexus with tinted windows.

After she got into the passenger's side she noticed a hastily discarded tie and jacket on the floor in front of her, and realized the agent must've stripped down to look less official. Then she yelped as in the rear-view mirror behind her two other agents, one an armed soldier from the JSDF, and a female embassy worker, popped up from laying on the backseat.

"AH!"

"Sorry, sorry," they both said to her.

The driver, no longer in fake-boyfriend mode, chuckled, saying, "You handled yourself very well, Ms. Hisakawa, nice thinking on keeping the call open. Made your extraction... less messy. We weren't expecting the Americans to have already reached you."

She nodded, having realized that Japan's government had a deep and abiding interest in her "powers" - hence the armed soldier hidden in the car.

A soldier who probably was authorized to discreetly... handle any obstacles in keeping her out of American hands.

She shuddered involuntarily.

Then she looked over at her rescuer, noticing again his strong jawline, and blushed.

"Thank you, and... for what it's worth, you make a good, uh, Chad."

It had been a while since Hitomi had heard laughter, and it felt good when the car filled with it.