Chapter 30.5- Doom Days

XXXXX- HAROLD LONGSTAFF

Has to be a fucking joke, he thought to himself as he walked back into the camp that he had called home for the better part of the decade. He had been proud of his work. An enforcer for the ICW, a position that made him one of the most important men in the world as he worked to enforce the will of the government that governed other governments. Of course, he hadn’t truly thought that after his first month on the hob. He ended up staying because the pay was great and steady, the reputation was great for picking up birds on leave and he got to basically spend his time doing nothing.

The Nations of the world paid lip-service to the ICW, and the ICW did not try to upset that delicate balance by actually using the enforcers they had on payroll for something useful. No, they turned them into glorified body guards on a barren stretch of rock formations that matter little. That had been his opinion until the 25th of December when the rebels in Magical Asia struck at the Hogwarts school and killed the Emperor’s favourite daughter. Truthfully, the word on the street was that she was the only one of his legions of offspring that the Japanese Emperor could actually tolerate. That meant that the rebels had picked the one target that he would have no choice but to respond to.

He had ignored bombings, mass killings, sudden disappearances of his key government officials with the air of someone who didn’t even notice but this was not something he would ignore. And that had meant that there had been a notable tension in the air for the last few weeks as they waited for the other shoe to drop. They had their duties and even with provocation, their orders were to respond with extreme prejudice if Japan breached the argument signed with the ICW.

Perhaps this was even a good thing, he wondered. The tension was going to lighten a fair bit, The shoe had finally dropped. Three magical Indian villages, wiped from the map like they had never even been there. It was brutal, it was probably cruel, but it was unmistakable Japanese, and now that the emperor had had his pound of flesh, they could rest easy. Things could go back to normal for a decade or so until he was long finished with this posting and could leave this all in his past.

Of course, that ended up being very optimistic of him. He walked into the command tent and was met with a face that he recognised from the newspapers they received from Japanese territory very regularly. Mutsuhito, the Emperor’s oldest surviving Son. He looked just like the moving pictures. A stern man in his middle age who looked like he would pass as handsome if he bothered to smile more, or if not smile, to at least pretend he didn’t think everyone and everything around him was worth less than poo.