Shattered Skies: The Morning Lights

CHAPTER 48: But the Tigers Come at Night

Chapter 48: But the Tigers Come at Night

-VERTEX ONE: 15.556984-

Arisugawa-no-miya Memorial Park

Minami-Azabu, Minato Ward, Tokyo

Inspector Jounichi Nakamura of the Minato Ward Police Department took his job with utmost seriousness. No one could dispute that. In fact, some would say that the man badly needed to loosen up. Nakamura would not even dignify those people with a response; a withering glare would be his only answer. It was his answer for a lot of things, to be fair.

Nakamura was just entering middle-age, with a bit of a bald patch forming on the back of his head and flecks of grey in his hair. He was stocky and solid, if not slightly portly, but he kept himself in shape. His morals and values were set in stone, and he stuck by them. In every respect, he thought, he was the model of what a Japanese man should be: stern, proud, obedient of authority, not quick with emotion, fiercely loyal to his job, his ward, his city, and his country. He wore the asahikage badge with greatest pride, and he strove to be always worthy of it.

The coming fall would mark his fifteenth year assigned to Azabu-Juuban and the surrounding areas. Which meant that, yes, he was around for all the "unfortunate incidents" that started around eight years ago, thank you very much. "Unfortunate incidents" was his default terminology for all parts of his job which fell outside the scope of typical police work. So yes, he would say testily if one asked him, he did know about the monsters. He saw the thousands of cases of inexplicable exhaustion, comas, and outright death that they caused, and the massive amounts of property damage they left behind. He knew of the many mysterious vendors and businesses which would appear out of nowhere with no licenses or registrations, become staggeringly popular for a few days, and then disappear overnight. He was there for the demons, the UFOs, the cult that sprung from Mugen Academy, the circus that planted itself in the downtown area for a month, the Three Lights concert disasters... If one asked him, he would grudgingly admit that he saw it all, and yes, it was all real.

If one continued to press him, as many people did, he would also admit that yes, he had seen the Sailor Senshi for himself. And yes, in fact, one of them had saved his life on one occasion... she lifted him up and carried him out of the way of a fearsome blade-handed creature. And yes, he had been the subject of a firestorm of attention after that happened, one that still plagued him to this day. Mentioning his media-bestowed nickname of "Sailor Keisatsu" in his presence was a guaranteed way of attracting one of his trademark angry glares, even years later.

"I am of course grateful to Jupiter-san for pulling me out of harm's way," he had said to the frenzy of cameras that greeted him the morning after the incident. "However, much as I appreciate the assistance of Jupiter-san and her compatriots, I cannot condone the actions of these so-called 'Sailor Senshi', for one reason: they are vigilantes, plain and simple. The Police Departments and the JSDF should be handling threats to this city and this nation; that's what we pay taxes for." The segment that aired on that evening's news only included the phrases "I am of course grateful to Jupiter-san for pulling me out of harm's way," and "I appreciate the assistance of Jupiter-san and her compatriots." Of course.

His celebrity afterward was supremely unwanted. Suddenly, he had found himself having to answer a deluge of inane questions from strangers, day after day: "No, I cannot confirm or deny that Jupiter-san is a human being." "No, I did not get a good look at Jupiter-san's face." "No, I do not know Jupiter-san's three sizes." But no matter how many times he answered these questions, new people would appear and pester him again with mostly the same ones, over and over again.