Okay. This is (everyone join in, now) MY FIRST ATTEMPT AT  
FANFICTION. Just a random thought on a slow morning. So  
please be kind. 
 
Comments, good or bad, are welcome.

 
 
Mobile Delivery System 
 
The Captain cursed as he looked over the plans spread across  
the hood of his car. "Shimatta. Didn't _anyone_ notice anything  
out of the ordinary when this place was being built? The  
contractors, the suppliers, the construction crews, the _zoning  
inspectors_, _ANYONE_?" 
 
On paper, it was a small, walled, gated apartment complex, fairly  
upscale, located in a nice district. You'd expect it to be well-built,  
solid, earthquake-proofed, designed to give its tenants the  
security they would demand in these more violent times... But  
this was a _fortress_, specifically intended to hold off a police  
assault. Even the army would have had its problems penetrating  
the complex. The walls were high and reinforced; it would take a  
demolitions expert to blow a hole through them. Not that it would  
matter much, though, since the open ground between the wall  
and the building was covered from all angles by firing positions  
established in the building's windows (bulletproof glass, covered  
by an equally resistant steel mesh).  
 
The men at the scene had learned just how well-prepared the  
building's occupants were before the Captain arrived. One  
policeman had already been shot when half the squad tried  
climbing over while the rest tried a distracting attack at the gate.  
When reinforcements arrived, special sniper units had been  
sent to set up in the windows and on the roofs of surrounding  
buildings, only to discover that the "apartment"'s defenders had  
anticipated them, and had automatic weapons zeroed in on the  
best positions. 
 
The Lieutenant had even tried to make a weak joke out of it. He  
said he wished he'd taken that transfer to the Clock Hill district,  
where his sister lived, when it had been offered to him. At least  
the apartment buildings _there_ were so run-down they wouldn't  
stand up to a moderately wild party, let alone a police assault. 
 
"They must have been planning this for _years_," the Captain  
muttered. And they had. He considered the plans again. By the  
time anyone in authority had learned that the building's owner  
had been operating under an alias, it had already been  
completed. By the time someone had discovered the true  
owner's...religious affiliations...the main police investigation was  
already underway, and was already going wrong. And now, what  
was rumored to be the most violent "doomsday" cult in Japan  
had holed up in a heavily fortified urban stronghold no-one in  
the police had suspected they had, until that morning. 
 
The Lieutenant walked over to the Captain's car; the Captain  
could tell by the look on his face that he had bad news. Not  
unexpected, but enough to add a few new furrows to his   
permanent scowl. 
 
"Captain, we need an armored car _at least_ to break through  
the gates, and a mobile battering ram to break through into the  
building itself." 
 
"And of course we don't have anything remotely like that on  
call." 
 
The Lieutenant offered him a sickly grin. "This isn't the United  
States, sir. Perhaps the Army can help us out." 
 
The Captain sighed. "No time to wait. We have to resolve this  
situation _now_. We can't afford to let it escalate, and the  
department won't accept mere containment of the problem." The  
Japanese public had been getting tired of reading the headlines  
these kinds of incidents generated. It was now unspoken police  
policy to deal with terrorist threats by acting first, rather than by  
waiting to see what would develop and then reacting to it. 
 
The Lieutenant was silent for a moment. "Sir, my men and I are  
ready to go in again, if you give the word." 
 
"That's stupid talk!" his superior snapped at him angrily. "I'm  
_not_ going to order a frontal assault and then just hope for the  
best for lack of anything better to do. We need to call in  
support." 
 
"From where? We already have people here from a half a dozen  
districts. And where are we going to find anything reasonably  
mobile that packs a heavy enough punch to break through the  
toughest defenses I've ever seen?" 
 
The Captain nodded to his adjutant, who was nearby talking  
energetically on a cell phone. "I may just have an answer for you  
in a moment, Lieutenant." His adjutant nodded back to him as he  
handed over the phone. "Have you gotten through yet?" 
 
"Yes, sir. I've described what we need, and they say they can  
handle it." 
 
The Captain raised the headset to his ear; he wanted to confirm  
this for himself. "Hello. Yes. That's right. When can it be here?"  
The captain checked his watch. "Yes. I understand. We'll be  
ready." He returned the phone to his adjutant and drew a deep  
breath. "All right. Tell the squad commanders to pull back from  
the gate but _only_ the gate. Lt. Saito..." he turned to look  
carefully at an entirely too young and too eager face staring  
back at him from under an enormous helmet. Good grief. Had he  
ever been that young himself? "Have your team ready to  
advance into the building in _exactly_  fifteen minutes."  
 
*** 
 
The leader of the cult smiled. He had had a very good morning,  
despite being woken up to be told that one of his closest, most  
trusted followers had been a police spy. The traitor had been  
dealt with before breakfast, though unfortunately not before he  
had managed to get a message out to his true masters. A few  
phone calls had gathered the hard core of his followers to this  
place. And these were men of _unquestionable_ loyalty,  
completely committed to their cause and to him, personally. 
 
He smiled as he remembered the effort he had put into planning  
every detail of the construction of this headquarters, built  
painstakingly to his exact specifications. It had all been worth it.  
Preparing it for this day had been an even more long-term  
endeavor, though it its way equally as fulfilling to his sense of  
pride. It had taken years of work, dozens of aliases, to  
accumulate so vast a stockpile of illegal weapons, so much  
ammunition. Finding suppliers had not been difficult.  
Transporting it into the country had been much harder. But even  
the traditionally alert Japanese security forces had proven  
vulnerable to the right mix of subversion, stealth, trickery, and  
bribery. 
 
Finding suppliers willing to help him build up his _special_  
arsenal had been a different matter, though. But he had enjoyed  
complete success where others had met only partial, or had  
failed completely. He had learned that the world was a wide  
market, and that there were indeed countries willing to trade a  
few hundred pounds of unstable chemical compounds for the  
security of yen. There were even some who were willing to part  
with their carefully-prepared mixtures in exchange for not much  
more than the promise that they would actually be used in  
"combat" conditions--just to see if they were as effective as  
some had theorized. 
 
Once the police had arrived, the leader had had even more fun  
than he thought he would. He had especially enjoyed shouting  
his own ultimatum out through his own (more powerful)  
megaphone in answer to police demands that he surrender. 
 
By now the media must have heard about the standoff. He  
couldn't expect more than nationwide television coverage right  
away--this wasn't the United States, after all--but let the siege  
drag on, and the death toll mount, and soon enough CNN would  
have its correspondents on the scene. And then would be the  
time to show the world exactly what he had prepared for. This  
would not be so simple a matter as the spectacle of a shocking,  
fiery blaze viewed only by distant cameras, as at Waco in  
America, nor as sudden, and as suddenly over, as the gassing  
of some insignificant worker bees in the Tokyo subway. His  
plans included a much grander, more _personal_ finale. Just a  
few hours more, he estimated, and he would be ready to take his  
place at the center of a spreading cloud of devastation that  
would embrace the entire city... 
 
A commotion of voices from the front of his complex drew him  
out of his reverie. He walked out to restore the blessed silence  
by reassuring his men that all was going according to plan. 
 
His followers were looking out from their windows, pointing at  
the police barricades. "What is happening?" 
 
"It's the police, sensei. They're falling back from the gate. Could  
they be getting ready to attack us once more?" 
 
The leader smiled yet again. "If they do, they will be taught a  
lesson all the harsher for being repeated. Do not concern  
yourselves with their pitiful preparations." 
 
But the men continued to stare and point and comment. The  
police weren't just withdrawing from the front of the gate; they  
were clearing the street for as far as the eye could see, moving  
cars, waving each other back, readying the way for...something.  
The cultists could almost see the police clutching their weapons  
tighter in anticipation. Something was going to happen. 
 
And the leader had no idea what it was. He had left no detail to  
chance. He _knew_ his own strength, and with as absolute  
certainty the strength of his opponents. He _knew_ they had  
access to no weapon or vehicle that could breach his defenses;  
nothing that could arrive quickly enough, or strike swiftly  
enough, to prevent him from accomplishing his ultimate goal.  
What could they have planned...? 
 
There was a terrible stillness. Then, a faint noise filtered  
through--a...ringing. Not solemn, like the tolling of a bell the  
leader would have thought proper to the occasion, but a  
childish, toylike jingling. 
 
The cultists hesitated, looking at each other in confusion. All  
except for one, who gasped as he peered out through the  
bulletproof mesh that covered the  window that was his post. He  
yelled an incomprehensible warning, then threw himself on the  
floor, covering his head with his hands. The others stared at  
him, while the leader sputtered his surprise, too shocked to  
scream imprecations at his follower's cowardice. 
 
But everyone looked up when the impact came. A thump they  
could feel shuddering down through the building's structural  
supports and into the floor. A grinding crunch that sent cement  
dust filtering down from the ceiling. Terrified men backed away  
from the walls, on which the plaster was suddenly spiderwebbed  
with tiny cracks.  
 
<This cannot be!> The leader yammered in his mind, even in his  
horror too well-disciplined to give way to his sudden fears. <This  
fortress is impregnable! Every inch of steel and concrete-- 
nothing the police have, nothing the army can bring in, should  
be able to do this to my base...!!!> 
 
The leader knelt briefly, scooping up one of the  
submachineguns dropped by his men as they backed into the  
center of the room, whimpering with fear. He stepped forward,  
yelling defiance and leveling the weapon at the wall, which  
echoed with the thunder of an unbelievable pounding from the  
outside. Above it all came the jangling sound, louder and more  
insistent.  
 
He screamed once more, and his men moaned with terror, as  
the wall bulged inward and literally burst. Buried under chunks  
of concrete and twisted steel, he never saw what it was that had  
brought his insane dream to an end. 
 
On top of the rubble was perched a bicycle. Its bell rang merrily. 
 
"Nihao! Is delivery from Cat Cafe." 
 
Tear gas canisters clattered and hissed around the smiling  
Chinese girl, and flash-bang grenades added to the confusion.  
"Go go go!" yelled a voice from outside. 
 
"Is two orders of pork ramen..." 
 
A squad of jacketed and helmeted police stormed through the  
hole in the wall (and the better part of the ceiling). The first ones  
through covered the cultists, whose will to resist, already shaken  
by the "blast", had collapsed completely in the face of the  
purple-haired apparition, who coughed slightly and waved away  
dust and gas before beaming and continuing: 
 
"...three orders fried rice..." 
 
"Get down! Get down! Hands on your heads!" 
 
"...and one House Noodle Special." 
 
The rest fanned out, racing for the back rooms and the second  
floor. Yells of "Clear!" "Clear!" echoed back to the Lieutenant.  
The Chinese girl just stood there, waiting, as the Lieutenant  
signaled that the building had been secured. Not a single cultist  
had managed to get off a shot. 
 
The Captain clambered over the rubble as the dust began to  
settle and the chaos of shouts and frightened cries died away.  
He reached for his wallet. 
 
"That's for me. Here. Does this cover it?" 
 
The girl counted, then looked up apologetically. 
 
"Is extra charge for delivery outside of Nerima district." 
 
"Er. I think I have a coupon somewhere. Is it still good?" 
 
"Aiyah. Must to use coupon for dine-in only." 
 
"Oh. Lieutenant? Do you think you could help me out here...?"  
The Lieutenant looked at his superior officer, then at the girl.  
She was still smiling...for now. He handed the cash over. 
 
"Thank you! Please to call again!" The girl re-mounted her bike  
and sped off down the street past silent clusters of policemen,  
the bell on her handlebar still ringing brightly. 
 
"Here, Lieutenant. When things calm down a bit, split this up  
among your men. You deserve it." 
 
The Captain walked back to his car, where he met his adjutant. 
 
"It's going to be a long afternoon, sir, I think." 
 
"Yes. So much for my late lunch." He patted his wallet ruefully. 
 
"Not to worry, Captain. I think we can probably stop for some  
quick take-out on our way back to the station. I know a good  
okonomiyaki place not far from here..." 
 
 
 
Jim Champagne 
jwchampagne@msn.com