Unfit for Duty |
|
Rating : R (for violence and character death) Fandom : Ghost in the Shell: Stand-Alone Complex Spoilers: for season 1 ‘Jungle Cruise’. Summary: Marco Amoretti’s superiors trained him to hurt people. They didn’t teach him to stop. Disclaimer: I certainly don't own Ghost in the Shell though I do recommend it enthusiastically. |
|
Marco Amoretti sits in the back of the stolen van. He watches the house across the street. The grass is a vibrant green and well-tended but it will need mowing in another week or two. He looks down and notices a loose fibre caught on the edge of his pants. The pants don’t fit properly because they’re not his own. He’s not even sure if the previous owner is still alive. It has been several hours by now. Captivity is not an option. It is not an excuse. You must not fail. He wishes he still had his own clothes, and maybe his beanie or at least a cap to cover the metal plates on the top of his head. His ears are still flesh and he always liked the feel of fabric against them. It goes without saying that he wishes he had his own knife (not military issue but personally selected), a victim of his own choosing and his own kit (all his tools wrapped in cloth). He’ll make do, though. He was taught to survive in some of the world’s most inhospitable places - a suburban street in Japan is not exactly a hardship. He can survive anywhere because this is what he’s supposed to do. It would be a crime to render yourself unfit for duty. It’s treason. The life is more difficult than he thought it would be. War is not pretty and he knows this. He feels like the poster child for the ugliness of nations colliding. It’s economic and political in ways that he had not anticipated. He would like it to end, he would like the endless routine to change, but there are still rules to be followed. He cannot make himself unfit for duty. There is no stopping and no way back. He can only go forward. They are like stray dogs, blindly trusting and eager for your attention. He brushes the loose fibre away. It’s white and synthetic. The threads wind around each other in a complex weave that makes the fabric hard to break. It’s from the straight jacket they’d tried to bind him in, tried to capture him in. Marco wants to laugh at them for that, at the Japanese Police and their Public Security. It’s as if they have forgotten that a prisoner of war has a duty to escape and complete his mission, against all odds. They should never have allowed him to live. Now he’s free again, still doing what he was trained for. Sometimes it is far too easy. They let you into their homes. He remembers the Japanese cyborg Ranger from the War. So large, muscled and blond that he doesn’t look Japanese anymore to Marco’s eyes. Marco wonders how the Ranger’s unblinking eyes see him and whether the Ranger notices the smooth metallic dome of Marco’s head. They seem to be about the same age but it is difficult to be sure. Like all cyborgs, the Ranger doesn’t age on the outside. Strong men may depend on others, and this makes them vulnerable. There were times that Marco stayed to watch the aftermath. He has played the innocent bystander, come to help clean-up while in his mind he is cataloguing and critiquing the fruits of his labour. He is familiar with the ways of violence. There is only so much even the toughest man can take when he knows the victims, or when the victims are women and children. He has seen grown men weep and collapse as the mass graves were filled. Marco has made them break and never laid a hand on them. Ironically, a small few grew so enraged and crazed with what they’d seen that they probably understood what it was to be a man of Marco’s duty clearer than anyone else could. They never lived long after that, though. Their will to fight will fail as the corpses pile up. We will win the War. He does not do this for pleasure but from the duty they taught him. It is easier to do without thought now that it has become habit and he does not like to deviate from it unless it is required. For this reason, it has been a long time since he last killed a man. He’s killed enough women and children to become immune to their noises, the peculiar high-pitched whimpers and hacking noises of barely human animals. He rarely notices them anymore. Hearing the screams in a deep, masculine voice is unfamiliar enough to raise the hair on his forearms. It’s not enough to stop him. They will try to fight back, to avenge, but your violence must be endless. There is blood on his fingernails. Marco picks at it with his other hand. He watches through the van’s tinted windows as the Ranger parks his car on the street and walks across the grass, casual and relaxed. The grass is wet with rain and it darkens the hem of his pants. Marco watches the Ranger and wonders again what kind of man this Cyborg is. Marco remembers him as strong, and believed completely that this Ranger would have enough rage to do for Marco what Marco could never do for himself. If you are captured, you must escape. Make them pay for the indignity. There is one question that Marco wants the answer to, though. He knows the Ranger has the physical strength to kill but does he have the will to kill Marco? Killing women in the Ranger’s city hasn’t been enough, so Marco has upped the stakes. His hand has been played and there’s nothing left now but to watch and wait. Across the lawn, the Ranger stiffens and pulls his hands from the pockets of his jacket. Either he’s noticed that the lock on the house’s front door was forced or he’s heard the wailing from the baby boy lying abandoned and untended in his cot. He’s not casual now. Marco sits cross-legged in the back of the van and counts the seconds it takes for the Ranger to make it through the door, and down the hall to the kitchen of the Togusa household. Of course these acts are sanctioned by your superiors. It’s just a job. As he works the last of the blood out from under his thumbnail, he hears the scream of pure rage that comes from the house. There’s no doubt that it’s a man who is yelling wordlessly, as full of grief as it is pure anger and violence. It makes the hairs on Marco’s forearms stand on end. There is no way of knowing which corpse will hurt the Ranger the most. It might be the partner, the softly-spoken former detective, who broke his bonds twice before Marco was finished. Then again, maybe the Ranger is not immune to the sight of the wife’s splayed remains, blood coating her own set of kitchen knives. It would not be the body of the five-year old girl, because that’s in the back of the house and the Ranger hasn’t gotten that far yet. He will later. Afterwards? Afterwards you will go home, the War will be over and life will be good. The front door of the house splinters when the Ranger barrels back through it, barely seeming to register the destruction of property. The Ranger’s augmented eyes easily pick out Marco’s silhouette in the van. The Ranger charges across the lawn like a missile locked on its target, although perhaps a train is a more appropriate analogy for such a large man. Marco waits for him because he’s not done yet. There’s still a question to be answered. He wants to know if the Ranger is strong enough to do what he needs. The End The End |
