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Teruko drums her fingers against her leg as she waits for the results of the Hunting Dogs’ evaluation. Either they’re about to go to jail for helping commit war crimes, or they’re going to be cleared of any wrongdoing. Her uniform feels so wrong even as she waits to see if she’s ever going to wear it again after today.
A man walks out of the conference room in front of her, and offers her two papers. The top one explains that they have been cleared, and she lets out a breath of relief.
Maybe now we can go back to working, and back to some semblance of normal.
She flips to the second paper, which details a mission.
“What is this?” she asks, looking back up.
“It’s your next mission.”
“But we haven’t even had our maintenance surgeries, and this seems pretty urgent since it says they’re probably going to strike again tomorrow.”
“Yes, well, you’re going to do this first. Your surgeries aren’t scheduled for a few more days, but we don’t have anyone else to send. You’re not going to deny it, are you?” the man asks, staring hard at Teruko, who hasn’t been looked at with such venom in a while.
“No, I’m sure we can manage. Everyone’s symptoms are still managable enough that we should be able to get this done.”
She stands up, wincing as the ache in her joints flares back up. She walks back to the dorms slowly, trying to figure out how she’s going to tell her team about this. Jouno and Tachihara are still recovering from their stints as vampires, and now they have to go on this mission. It doesn’t seem particularly hard, it’s just a few armed robberies that were committed by people with abilities. Normally this wouldn’t even be in their league, but right now, she’s still worried. Especially since it has a residence, but not a bio on their abilities.
Jouno is sitting on the couch, leaning back with his arms folded across his chest. Tecchou is sitting on the floor, playing with the carpet. Teruko can hear Tachihara in the kitchen, probably making lunch. Jouno perks up as soon as she closes the door.
“Tachihara, get in here. How’d it go?” he asks, sitting up.
“We were cleared, and our surgeries are scheduled in a few days,” Teruko says once Tachihara is in the doorway.
“That’s great,” Tachihara says, and Tecchou breathes a large sigh.
“I’m not done yet. All of that is great, but they do want us to do a small mission in the meantime.”
Jouno pinches the bridge of his nose, but he doesn’t sound annoyed when he asks, “Ok, what do you mean by small?”
Teruko explains what they have to do, and Jouno nods.
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
Tachihara rubs his eyes, which while they’re fully healed, have still been pretty irritated.
“If anyone doesn’t feel up for going, don’t worry about it,” Teruko says.
“I think I’m just going to stay here. My eyes have been giving me issues today. They keep watering so much I can barely see.”
“Then you should probably let someone else cook lunch. What are you making?”
“I’m just making sandwiches.”
“Ok, well, Tecchou, are you coming?”
Tecchou shrugs, and Teruko bites her lip. While Tecchou came out the best physically, everything hit him the hardest mentally.
“I think we can handle it by ourselves,” Jouno says softly.
Teruko hums, dropping down beside Jouno. Her phone buzzes as soon as she sits down, and she grabs it.
“They said that we should be in the car already. I guess lunch will have to wait. What do you need to do to get ready?”
“I just need to get my boots.”
Jouno pulls himself off of the couch, keeping a hand on the table as he makes his way around the couch. Teruko stands up, and heads to the car. Jouno joins her a few minutes later, and they go to the confirmed residence of the criminals.
Jouno walks around the back while Teruko goes through the front door. The criminals aren’t hard to arrest, they’re in and out in ten minutes. Teruko gets a phone call while they’re dropping the criminals off at the police station.
“Hello, this is Vice-Commander Teruko Ookura.”
“Yes, ma’am, have you completed your mission yet?” A woman on the other end asks, her tone short and aggravated.
“Yes, we have.”
“Oh.” She sounds surprised now. “Well then, I guess you and your team wouldn’t mind handling the press conference that we put together to talk about the vampire incident.”
“No, ma’am, just send me the address, and we’ll head there now.”
I can’t believe they tried to trick us. They definitely thought we weren’t going to be able to show up, and that would have looked so bad for us. You know what, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the press conference isn’t for another couple hours, or something.
Jouno walks out of the station as a location comes through Teruko’s texts.
“Hey, we have to go to a press conference.”
“When does it start?”
“I’m not sure, but it’s twenty minutes away from here, so we should go now.”
Jouno nods, then climbs back into the car. There’s someone waiting outside for them when they get there.
“Good, you’re already dressed. They’re about to call you on. If you want to make it, you better hurry.”
Teruko bites her lip, then grabs Jouno’s hand. She pulls him along behind her as she runs inside. They introduce the Hunting Dogs right as Teurko pulls Jouno through the door.
“Hi, we’re here,” Teruko says, letting go of Jouno’s hand. She can see multiple people staring at their interlocked hands before she lets go, and her face goes a little pink.
Almost everyone is glaring at them. She walks over to the microphone.
“Why are there only two of you? Were you the only ones left after the incident?” a woman in the front asks.
“No, the only one involved was the Commander. My other two members are at home recovering right now.”
“Sir, why did you guys allow him to do what he did?”
“We didn’t, we didn’t know,” Teruko says, and the man makes a face.
“I was asking your colleague.”
Jouno clears his throat.
“Teruko is in charge, so she knows just as much, if not more than me, about anything you can ask. She answered your question truthfully, and correctly.”
“How can anyone trust you with the fact that everything happened under your noses? You were supposed to protect people.”
“We tried. We protected as many people as we could, and we’ve done a lot of good things. Helped a lot of good people, but we trusted the Commander with our lives. Most of us almost lost ours, because of our faith in him. Just like you all trusted him to keep you safe, we trusted him to do the same for us. Security is a lot higher now, and there have been investigations following the incident. We’ve all been cleared of blame, which includes willful neglect.”
The conversation continues in the same way, only getting more aggressive as they ask more questions. Jouno and Teruko answer as calmly as they can, and continue to try to deescalate the situation, but Teruko is furious by the time it’s over.
“I was really hoping we could go back to normal,” she says to Jouno as they walk back to the car.
“They’re scared, and they don’t trust us. There isn’t anything we can do about that, even though we didn’t do anything wrong. We just have to keep working, and try to regain some of that trust that we used to have. It won’t be easy at work either, because they’re just as angry at us. They think we should have prevented it, and that we didn’t try hard enough. There’s nothing that we can do to convince them that we did what we thought was the right thing, so we have to just do the best we can from here on out, and hope it’s enough,” Jouno says.
Teruko sighs.
“I guess you’re right. We just need to get back to work, and try to put all of this behind us, though that’s not going to be as easy as I thought it was going to be.”