297 Show of force

It was going well. Too well...

People didn't get to his position without at least a modicum of intellectual capabilities.

Moto-tsune sighed. According to... hmm... he couldn't really figure what he called it. Strategy? not really, it was in fact probably the very antithesis to strategy. Probability? Chaos?

Maybe just 'Life' would do fine. Yes... according to the rules of life as he believed it, a strategy or plan would be bound to never achieve it's full effect. There was always a factor that would change or alter even the most perfectly thought out plans.

It could be that the enemy had something prepared on their side, hiding their strength until the threat was revealed. In other instances, and he considered this with as much disbelief as any other who heard this story second-hand from those who were at the scene, it could be as simple as a slippery floor.

During one particular mission, a whole squad was apparently taken down by a newly mopped floor, simple, but with the discrepancies within their own team, the whole mission ended with nearly a third of their ranks wiped out.

So more than anything, a perfectly executed plan scared him. Because if little things did not mess with the strategy, slowly whittling away at it's efficacy, that meant that a monkey wrench of a disturbance was coming in sooner or later.

'Knock, Knock!'

The doors of the command center gave a resounding echo, one which made him flinch.

"Hello Mr. Moto..." A crackled baritone voice rang out.

Speak of the devil, the monkey wrench was knocking politely on his door.

"Mr. Bartram, I believe I specifically instructed you to desist from addressing me so casually..." He sneered in response, the low-life stench of a thug coming off the man was making him feel extremely nauseous.

"Oh I think after all our cooperation, you'd ought to relax a little." He spoke, pushing the door open without so much as an invite. The control room went quiet. Men and women who were previously observing the battlefield and relaying orders to those on the ground turned to look at the person who was nonchalantly trespassing.

This stupid pleb, most of them thought. They recognized him as the leader of this remote settlement. A year taking care of this rag tag bunch of people must've gotten to his head. The control room was a restricted area, entering it during war time had heavy repercussions even to high standing commanders.

This guy wasn't even given a rank under their military. At most he was considered a local liaison, regardless of how the local community viewed him. With how Mr Moto-tsune usually handled things, the man might as well be considered dead.

To their astonishment however, Mr Moto-tsune just stood there quietly, even as he gave the man a deadly glare.

"Fine if you won't let me get close because of our past relations with each other, how about for some future opportunities, hmm?" Bartram said in response.

"What do you want?" Moto-tsune's pressure didn't let up one bit.

"Haha! Interested I see." He roared, his hand reaching behind his body.

Moto-tsune's hand instinctively reached out for his gun.

"Whoa whoa, hold your horses!" He raised his hands up, in the right a pristine bottle with what was probably alcohol inside, in the other two glass shot bottles. "We can't talk about deals without some alcohol."

Propping the bottle on a near by table, he sat down and poured a drink for two, pointing at the other seat, inviting Mr Moto-tsune to join him.

"If you haven't noticed, we're still at war." Moto-tsune spoke still standing taut.

"Oh please our side is going to win easily, without a doubt." He replied after downing his drink.

Feeling more uncomfortable as time passed, he opened his mouth to ask. "May I ask how you are so confident?"

"Because I know that you yourself are quite confident about this war." He replied, pouring himself another one. "Whoo! that's good!, can you believe that one of my men was hiding this thing? I shouldn't have killed him so quick."

"And why would you think that?" Moto-tsune asked, finally sitting himself down.

"The way you do things makes it clear." Bartram slid the other glass forward, only to find it suddenly stopped by Moto-tsune's finger, witha grimace, he decided it was easier to just drink from his own cup. "Haaa! the squad stationed above the city, the gas grenades, a threat and a deterrent, you don't want to kill them, you want them to stop bearing their fangs and bow under this organization you follow... you're still giving them some leeway..."

"Our men are dying out there..."

"Ah! I wasn't finished... but since you brought it up, those are just your... eh little guns so to say. Most of them aren't even legit soldiers, eh, maybe some, but the rest... new recruits, and let me guess, deserters and war criminals?" The longer this conversation went, the more nervous Moto-tsune felt, he hadn't disclosed anything to the man besides what he was supposed to do. "I'm sure you have something around here that can blow them to kingdom come... how you say... mercy can only be given by those in a position to give it."

"But you see... I don't like the way you do this." His face turned flush after the 4th glass. "If we keep them alive, then we'd need to share our resources no? In this bountiful place, why you would want to let others take a share of what can be yours alone?"

"They're humans as well." Moto-tsune stated.

"Not our humans, even in your precious Central, everyone calls them 'Neumans', or so I heard."

"That is not the will of the world government, we want all humans..."

"Ah, but it is the will of the people." Bartram interrupted. "The people, your people, don't want to be put in the same position as these other worlders, that's why they try to differentiate them from their own."

'Clack!' Moto-tsune raised from his seat. "Excuse me Mr. Bartram, but I have a war to run, so if you're only here to discuss your ideologies or propose the genocide of humans you're wasting your time, we have already discussed your share of the land when this all blows over, if you are not satisfied with it then you can take it up with Central's administration, though I don't think they'd let an animal like you past the door."

"A little sharp aren't we? I haven't even given my proposal yet, let me do it the way you do it?" Bartram clicked his fingers, and two of the control rooms personnel stood up, to the shock of the colleagues sitting next to them.

In the next, they pulled out guns from their sides and began shooting at their coworkers.

The shooting stopped almost as soon as it had begun, the assailants all done in with a bullet to the head or their vitals. "That is impressive Mr. Moto!" Bartram laughed. Nobody had known when he had taken it out, but his handgun was already in his hand when the shooting started. Three of the assailants had been taken down before they had even been able to take a shot. Another five were able to shoot down quite a few people resulting in the whole area turning into a bloody mess.

"When'd you notice?" Bartram asked curiously, "Oh! calm down now, I'm just trying to apply the same tactics that you used..." Moto-tsune's gun was now pointed directly at him.

"I thought that the men on the ground were moving through the plan phases to quickly, at first I thought maybe there was a problem in communications, or they had just made some mistakes. But when you walked in here, I started becoming suspicious." Bartram was wholly impressed at the Japanese man's capability. "At some point I just assumed you had control of some people in here or someone out there. But if this is your idea of a threat I am greatly disappointed. Your proposal is denied."

"Again you jump the gun, I haven't given my proposal yet, I'm sorry my threat seems to lack luster, I was hoping they would do better or you'd at least hesitate since they were one of your own." He said, despite the death of the assailants under him, Moto-tsune still had a feeling of danger, Bartram's confidence despite being in point blank range of his gun made him all the more uneasy. "Maybe my show of force would do better."

In the next moment the walls of the control room groaned, light began to leak in as the corners began to come off and slip from the frame of the building. Outside the roar of engines could be heard, the place trembling in response.

And all at once they were exposed, leaving only the skeleton of the building intact. And in every one's vision was a plethora of men armed to the teeth, the reserve group.