To Wrest Loyalty

[StaolDerg]

The inselni frowned again. From two centuries of experience, she knew well that interrogators were charismatic. Some had that innate ability to separate themselves from their base ideals entirely in the interest of their task. What were the chances that this one wasn't? What were the chances that this Kumo was in fact telling some kind of truth? Amperiad taught that change comes with time- nothing is permanent, everything grows and falls the same. To survive, all things must change and adapt. So had Kumosenkan adapted? Had Kumosenkan really... bowed to foreigners themselves? 

The very thought by itself felt wrong by simple concept. Again she wondered how Kumosenkan would ever willingly release Elenria unless it had found another source of resources. She cursed himself again for being too young to read peoples' bodies. Never enough time. 

And yet, what wasn't the truth? She knew well, -far well than he felt he should've ever had the right to- that much what they had done had been unjust to the bystanders of the larger picture. Bombing those trains... did they really hold food? Not the food cars carrying war material in deception, but in fact, aid for ailing family? She couldn't believe that any such news from a Kumo could be with merit.

Very grudgingly, the inselni opened up. "...Say I believe you. What do you want to let me go home?"

She told himself- assured herself- that it was just a test of the waters, just to see where the river flowed from. It was an open road she could always turn back from.

[Sophie]

A sense of relief rolled through Kousaka's body. She smiled and thought to herself 'I'm glad all that false empathy training wasn't for nothing. I never should've doubted my own abilities.' She lent forward and smiled, "I wouldn't need much to let you go home. Just some answers to a few questions, and a promise." She thought on her feet that she should disguise her real question. "I need you to promise that you'll help us get in contact with Royalist leadership. I need to know who royalist leaders are and what they want from Kumosenkan. I need to know what we can do to make the terrorist attacks stop. I need to know where the Galran weapons came from. And I need to know what leaks there are in the provisional government." She spoke as if listing things off of her grocery list.

"If you don't know the answer to any of these that's fine. The most important question is getting us into contact with your leadership." She threw out that last curveball to try one last time to disguise her real question.

[StaolDerg]

Royalist leadership? The weapons' origin? Leaks in TAKPOE? Who did this woman think she was, the High Command? An intelligence officer? Shed been tricked- taken advantage of! Her trust had been shattered by the false empathy, the crocodile tears of a Kumo, of all people. Mother was right. She never did seem to learn until the wrong moment. Oh, if only she'd had more time... she hadn't even lasted a single round. Not even torture and she'd been made a clown of.

The inselni froze. Crestfallen and furious at the same time for the puppet she'd nearly been made of and the hopes that the Kumo had dashed, she snarled furiously. "Who do you think I am, some gullible intelligence officer? The Greatferns may submit by the thousand of Yairen you hand their generals, but you can put me back in the cell for all I care. You want the attacks to stop? Fuck off our home. Never come back, you conniving bastards. Glory to the cresting star- you'll never take Elenria from us!"

[Sophie]

Kousaka frowned and stood allowing her full height to tower over the Inselni. "Such a shame. You could've actually helped build a better future for Elenria. We would have been much more open to listening to your demands if you had just told us where the guns came from. Oh well, I guess you have no value to me anymore." Suddenly, Kirino Kousaka drove her fist into the face of the Royalists dazing her. She turned around and began walking out, "Don't move, someone will be here to see to you soon."

Outside of the room to where a, less disgusted, group of Elenrians were watching through the mirror. Let her stew for at least an hour before re-restraining her. I'll file a report of her official arrest and she'll be put on trial for treason and terrorism." She sighed shaking her head and putting her hands to her temples. "You again," she pointed to the officer she spoke with, "let's chat." She walked back into the break room and sat. A cigarette was awaiting her in her suit jacket that was still waiting in the room. Its stink soon filled the room and she began speaking. "Alright, you were right. It seems like playing on their honor is the right move, but I think we went in the wrong direction with it. These people have hundreds of years of deep-seated fears and prejudices regarding Kumosenkan, but I'm willing to bet they feel almost nothing for their supplier. What do you think of playing their honor against the supplier, instead of in Kumosenkan's favor?"

[StaolDerg]

The officer sighed, kneading his brow. "It could work," he admitted, "But odds are some kind of honorable bond has been made... with someone, at least. That'll obscure and complicate exactly who is responsible depending on who made the bond in the first place, but given what the Territorial Army knows about the Royalist military structure, we have at least the name of whoever authorized the order of the weapons and that of any other orders that this foreign beneficiary has provided. I'll do my best to let you understand just how the whole relationship with the prisoner should work if we want this to go right, but please bear with me, Kousaka-kama. It gets mixed up easily."

He took a deep breath, then began to carefully explain. "Since we don't need them to spit in our face when we begin explaining, start out passively. Don't suck up to them, don't talk down to them. By sympathetic and ask about their injuries, but whatever you do, don't mention their families until later, but do ask about their communities, their hobbies. I advise outdoors or scholarly topics to ease the conversation into a more... affable mood. I don't recall him having an inselni's scar and he's two years over the average Expeditionary, so it should be safe to assume that he's of Queendom honor. This means that he cares most about his community- so ask deeper about himself and his family, his friends, his home. Ask most about his past ancestors. I'll leave the convincing to you, but essentially you want to convince him that his elder family would've wanted him to be happy at home and be happy-" He caugh himself almost saying "with the Kumo occupation," realizing that he could very well earn a libel charge, quickly correcting his near mistake. "-content with the current government leadership. I hope that makes sense?"

[Sophie]

"Wow, should I buy him a new condo and have him tell me about his third wife too? I mean spirits my wife gives me fewer instructions on how to make her mom's special curry." She shook her head and rolled her eyes at the officer. "Here's an idea. What if we told him that during another raid on the next day against a Royalist base. Except, when we showed up everyone was already dead. Slaughtered with the Galran weapons and the base was torched of any evidence. Convince them their foreign contact betrayed their honor, and light a fire under them to want to get revenge."

[StaolDerg]

"And they won't believe a single word of it. Not from our mouths and certainly not without any evidence. What reason do they have to trust us even if they believe it? They by all means find us to be worse, if anything. We'd have better luck getting him drunk as hell and talking about philosophy and literature for ten hours straight, if only because they have taste for such. With respect, Kousaka-kama, is there anything rooted in truth that we could use to start off?" He paused, remembering the mention of the food trains. "Wait. We could perhaps bring up the food trains to him- show him that they were loaded with food and aid. Honor demands that they make right all that they do wrong- we have a chance that he'd agree to help if we convince him that he caused part of the famine?"

[Sophie]

"Wait," She looked at him with genuine surprise and began sifting through her briefcase of files. She brought out a manilla folder and opened it on the table. "Yes! Yes, one month ago almost to the day a train was blown up in a very similar fashion to another one that WAS a weapons shipment. This one was filled to the brim with food and grain. There was only one survivor because he pretended to die when the engine exploded. The entire thing burned as the Royalists lined up the civilian administrators and executed them. The, and I'm quoting, 'scary guy in charge said it was a ruse and to not hesitate.' They destroyed the first attempt at food relief in that area. It was carrying over ten thousand tons of food. The Empress canceled all relief into that entire sector of Elenria until she could be guaranteed the area was secure. Food is not a resource we have to waste in Kumosenkan."

She had pulled out several photographs taken of the incident after it happened. The cars were torched and one image showed blood up against one of the cars. "I even have the manifest from the car." She pulled up the shipping manifest signed by Empress Reitō herself. "And thankfully we do have some images of the cargo." Images of blacked crates filled with spoiled and ruined food. A dozen images, one for each car showed nothing but destroyed food and not a single weapon in sight.

[StaolDerg]

The officer nodded. "Use that. All of it. The more we can turn his conscience, the better. Remember to state the date that it was done, as well as read out several names of those killed in the execution. It should prove more than sufficient." 

He mused over the number dead on the reports. Those poor families- he recognized some of them himself. *That's a great number we can pin on him- don't let up for a moment. In fact, I think I know some of those who were affected by the lack of food..." he brushed off the distraction, shuffling together thr documentation and handing it back to Kousaka. "That should be enough, ma'am. With luck, we'll have those names- without having to raise more than a few papers."

[Sophie]

Kousaka nodded with the same smile on her face when she began speaking with her first subject of the day. She collected every picture she had laid out and shoved them all back into her manilla folder. She practically jumped out of her seat with her folder in hand. Before she darted out of the room she looked the officer in the eye. "As soon as you get the names of those affected by the famine come and get me. I don't care if I'm mid-sentence I'm going to need those names." With that, she left in a hurry.

Kirino Kousaka took a moment to collect herself as she stared through the mirror at her last chance at success. 'This has to work. It will work.' She thought to herself. She made sure to wipe the smile off her face and put on a solemn and distracted face. She walked through the door and stared at the human tied to his chair for a long while. "Good evening Melpaika Salkari. I'm Kirino Kousaka. I," she hesitated and collected her thoughts while putting a closed hand to her mouth. "I want to ask you something I always assumed people like you knew better than me." She paused again before looking the human in the eye. "I want to ask you about honor. Because until about a month ago I thought I was finally starting to understand what honor meant."

The man stared in slight confusion at the Kumo and she sat before him, her eyes darting back and forth between his as if searching his soul. "I was studying the Royalists for the past year, trying to figure out what honor meant to me. I was told what better way to learn about honor than from people whose entire lives are based on it, right? And up until a month ago, I felt like I got it. I was finally starting to understand what honor meant and how I could apply it to my own life. Then you did something completely contrary to EVERYTHING I had just learned. Something I thought Royalists only did in Kumo propaganda. You blew up a train, filled with food relief for Elenrian citizens in need. Worse yet, you murdered the hundred civilian administrators on board. They were ELENRIANS."

Her eyes and voice were filled with desperation as she spoke. Her voice shook with confusion and anger. "Help me understand this because I've spent the past month trying to figure it out and I've got nothing."

[StaolDerg]

Salkari was silent. Surely this was a ruse. Surely this was another trick. The scars beneath his left cheek had taught him what happened if one trusted the word of Kumosenkan- almost certain death. The Kumo were nowhere new to forcing words out of others' mouths- the only thing that stood between the mission of the Royalists and Kumosenkan's tyranny was a picket line of those captured, each dying to preserve Elenria as they knew it. Hundreds, thousands had held the line, for to fail would've long spelled the end of the Royalist movement. He would not fail here, he held to himself. 'Kapri's orders must be carried through by all means in this final, blazing shot of glory.

"You lie." he accused her, glaring right back. "It's almost laughable how exaggerated that claim sounds- where's the evidence, you big bastard? Or have you been playing with paint again?"

[Sophie]

"I wish I was lying Salkari. I really do." She glared at him and took a few steps back. She opened up her manilla folder and pulled out the train's manifest to begin with. "Fessera 13th, 1945. The Mersia 112 was loaded with 11,650 tons of meats, fruits, vegetables, grain, and other foodstuffs at Aundi Bay. The train was dispatched to Cavera in accordance with the recently passed 'Elenrian food relief act of 1945.' Eighteen hours later, on Fessera 14th the train came to a halt as a truck was stuck on the tracks, and the assumed owner of the truck was waving at the train operator to try and get him to stop. The moment the train stopped an explosive device was detonated under its engine. The two engineers were killed instantly."

She set the manifest on his lap. The manifest detailed the full cargo of the train as well as the personnel on board. "A division of Royalist soldiers appeared out of the brush and forcibly evacuated the entirety of the civilian administrators on board. The Royalist in charge claimed that the train was carrying a massive shipment of weapons to Territorial soldiers and had to be destroyed. The civilians protested, informing him of the nature of their mission. To bring relief to starving Elenrians. The Royalists refused to hear it and they ordered the civilians to join them or die." She paused and grimaced at the Royalist. "Every last one of them was executed. Every bite of food within was then destroyed by fire or explosives."

[StaolDerg]

"You-" Salkari paused, recognizing the manifest- to his sinking horror, he realized he'd been there, at that very operation. His unit had been responsible for planting the explosives, but the other soldiers had promised with their honor that there had been weapons aboard. They wouldn't've lied. Would they? What reason would they have? The deaths of the civilians he could understand, maybe justify- eighty years was long enough. Anyone who openly worked with the Royalists was easily a collaborator in betraying the Elenria. But over eleven thousand tons of food? Such amount seemed ludicrous to miss and unmistakable to be destroyed out of malice. He found himself questioning his own ideals, his own allies if they had gone too far. Had the soldiers justified that the villagers too were collaborators? The whole thought felt wrong, like some sore of hazy midwinter fever. 

His own family and community were long presumed dead, driven from their homes by government forces. He knew some might've made it to Elenria Horizon, but what were chances some had resettled with fellow villagers to the east? Had he unwittingly killed them through some misguided bout of extremism. He felt divided- he was divided. Part of him screamed of deception and war, the other of horror and fear that he'd broken his own honor. Nothing felt right anymore. He looked up as the door opened, a Territorial officer stepping in with another open folder, throwing the document directly before him, ahand still behind their back.

With a painful gut as he desperately wanted to wrench away from looking, he beheld a great obituary of those affected. On the first page that he could see along, he noticed his own brother's name. With falling hope he beheld his fate: Cause Of Death: Malnutrition. Without a word his eyes slowly tracked up to look at the still face of the Territorial as they revealed a paper packet, tearing it open to drop a beautiful silver ring onto the tabletop. Upon it, the characters of Salkari's own surname were engraved in Old Elenrian, testament to their heritage as Expeditionaries. He'd never seen his siblings without theirs- his own ring finger suddenly felt constrained, as if the ring on his own finger was cutting off blood.

He whispered lower than he ever thought possible in a broken croak, "By the moons, what have I done?"

He had asked for evidence, hadn't he? And now he had it before him, in all of its unholy glory.

Too much of it.

[Sophie]

"That food would have fed three-hundred and thirty-thousand people for a month. But in your people's blinded rage all they could do was see a territorial train and destroy." She opened the folder on the table and pushed it over to him. She began spreading out the dozens of pictures on it. "Here. Here are your weapons." She pointed to a picture of the recovered food. All of it was torched and unusable. Most of it still in the decimated train cars. "Forget not what you did with the 'soldiers' on board." She pointed out the picture of bullet holes in the side of a train car stained with blood. Next a picture of vigils placed alongside the train's final resting place. "What happened to your honor?"

[StaolDerg]

He tried to speak, but no words came out. What do you say to something you can't reverse? Something so grievous- where would he fathom to so much as apologize? Community, family- where was his honor was a great question- one that he had no answer for. The pictures and the names danced in his head like a perverted show, without music, without fanfare, by all means a mockery of everything he stood- had stood for. So badly he wanted to call it another lie, to wash away the horror of his acitions, and yet the cell he sat in very well was his open proud and deserving justice. He sought someone to blame, but... what would be the point? Blame who for what? At the end of the day, he had planted those explosives at the command of Kapri. He alone had not questioned a single order from High Command. The blood-spun web of lies and war propaganda seemed to undo before his eyes as he came to terms, finally looking at the Kumo before in the face, utterly broken.

"What do you want?"

Honor demanded he make right his wrongdoings. If that meant starting from a penal battalion, so be it. After all, all were numbers. To the Kumo, to themselves. If he fought, he promised himself, it would be for the Queen. He could not bring back the dead- the Royalists could not bring back Akel the First. But he could repent- if the Kumo would let him.