The Black Whispered

By Isaac M. Zavelsky

Chapter 1 – Questions

Location: Tuatha de Daanan, Somewhere in the north pacific

Time: 03:00 hrs (Time zone +10 GMT)

Date: March 10th, 2006

Some four months after the incident on the Pacific Christmas had passed; it was yet another quiet and boring day in the depths of the ocean for the Captain of MITHRIL's flagship vessel. For the past four months she sat in her chair pondering how she lost to Kaname, but in the end, every result or answer she got felt like a dagger in her heart. The lack of activity to get it of her mind was starting to bug her; normally Amalgam wouldn't take anything more then eight weeks for them to decide on another attack.

But it seems for now; their key sources of power had been severed since the capture of the pacific Christmas had been boarded. MITHRIL's intelligence department was working harder then ever to try getting facts straight, they're failure to notice the secret aboard Pacific Christmas and the incorrect details of the Western Pacific Fleet's whereabouts was a massive embarrassment on their part. Theresa had taken some pride in their ability to cloak their location to MITHRIL's own intelligence department.

But for now they had only been busting pirate gangs out along the Pacific Ocean shipping channels; considerably boring work considering the abilities of this submarine. It also left the PRT and SRT teams almost useless.

"Report all stations" Theresa spoke, she could've taken a break anytime in the last three hours, but her ongoing hope for some activity to occur made her push to stay at her post.

"No new Surface contacts, that American Frigate is still 250km away 51 degree's madam" the Sonar operator replied.

Tessa at this time occasionally liked to have the Tuatha de Daanan linger around another ship, particularly so she could have something detected on the radar. Such a childish thing to do with a five billion dollar ship, but nobody else had to know her intentions

"Captain, the American ship is not really doing anything special; do you want to break off course?"

"Okay, Helm…" Theresa looked at the map for a moment, they were 1000km from Fiji and about 3400km from Japan, maybe she could turn around, find a nice island to sunbath on. The thought was somewhat intriguing and enjoyable, but it wouldn't happen today.

"…Helm, come port to 020 and maintain speed at 24 knots"

The course would take her the opposite direction from a sunny beach in the south and towards the Bering Strait in the north. Nothing special was up there; it was all soviet territorial waters, perhaps Theresa would be lucky and by chance run into a Soviet Alfa or Akutta Class attack submarine and maybe tease it for a few hours. That thought felt now more pleasant then a sunny day on a beach; some pressure and excitement to liven up her day.

"Mardukas-san, would you mind taking command, I think ill take my rest now"

Commander Richard Mardukas had arrived on the bridge originally to replace Tessa on third watch at midnight, but her instance on staying on the bridge forced her to remain where she was. Commander Mardukas had enough experience in his years commanding submarines in the British navy to know when it was a good idea to get some sleep; but with Theresa's enthusiasm and the unpredictable natural of MITHRIL's operations department, he could slightly understand her intentions and will

"I think it's a good, idea, you haven't slept at all in a day" the commander spoke quietly, Before Theresa could say so, he added "ill inform you if something happens"

"The Executive officer will now take command" Theresa announced before leaving her chair and the bridge.

Theresa slowly walked down the narrow corridors of the submarine to her private quarters. She felt exhausted for some reason, but having doing nothing all day. She disrobed her kakis uniform and changed into sleepwear, feeling rather tire from staring at blue screen all day. Before she went to doze into a deep sleep, she picked up a photograph off her desk and slowly slumbered towards her bunk, she picked up the picture and held it above her, only seeing the outline of her and Sousuke standing next to each other that time Sgt Major Melissa Mao challenged her to a Arm slave fight.

Staring at the picture she had placed on the side shelf of her bunk, Theresa wondered what that other girl would be doing today to her favorite Sergeant.

Location: Tokyo Jindai Municipal High School, Tokyo

Time: 08:10 hrs

Date: March 10th, 2006

It was yet another normal and peacefully day at Jindai high school; relativity speaking that is. For almost a year now, everyday seamed to be yet another adventure for the students of this school as they would experience some sort of explosion, interrogation, or other militant activity despite the obvious absence of reason for such activates. As weird as these activates were; it seemed that as if nobody was deeply effected enough to stop it, despite the fact that for over the period of one year; it felt like Jindai high had been completed rebuilt twice as a result of these 'incidents'.

Inside the shoe locker room at the entrance, certain 2nd year student of class 4 was laying out some trigger cables which had been attached to a small chunk of moulded explosives on his shoe locker. Automatically anyone who was within vicinity of this are of school decided to go about their business a lot quicker and for this matter take their shoes with them. After some time had passed after the arrival of this student, everyone seemed to ignore the obvious problems that were caused. For the administration and student body council, it was somewhat of a mixed blessing, having bullying and masher rates decline, whist build repair and insurance was on the rise. But what or who was this person that cause this change, who was responsible to all this mayhem and panic? The answer was in the form of 2nd year Class 4 student number 41, Sousuke Sagara.

And like any other morning; this morning was no exception to the rest. Within a few seconds and a loud bang, the main entry to Jindai Municipal High School, was a blacked roomed with the smell of burning rubber and smouldering rubble of were once shoe lockers.

"You war minded Baka!" echoed the voice of reason, Kaname Chidori; who seemed to be the only person in this high school who could never put up with his antics.

"But Chidori…"

"Nobody would ever put anything in your locker! Everyone here knows you you'll never see it, cause you just blow it up before you have a chance!"

As aforementioned, someone forgot an unwritten rule in these school halls, and that was never to give Sousuke a love letter through the shoe locker. For the third time this month, the shoe lockers of Jindai Municipal High School were a smouldering pile of twisted metal and destroyed shoes. All around the epi-centre of the blast, which was the now former shoe locker of Sousuke Sagara; Students were getting off the floor and brushing the soot off their once clean uniforms; two of those people were Kyoko Tokiwa and Shinji Kazama whom were walking in the door when the blast forced them out of the building.

"Calm down Kana-Chan, you'll live longer" Kyoko said quietly,

"I won't! I won't! I WON'T!" Kaname yelled as she continued to shake Sousuke's body by the neck. As if it was like a magic shield, Kaname seemed the only human being to be able to make psychical contact with Sousuke and subdue him. Anyone else would've met their deaths have they even attempted. It seemed a paper fan was the only weapon in the world that could force Sousuke to stop.

"Then hurry up with this, we have classics in five minutes" Kyoko replied.

After some more yelling and strangling, Kaname finally let go of Sousuke and matched with intense fury in her footsteps towards Classroom 2-4. Shinji and Kyoko walked over to Sousuke whom was now sitting upright on the floor.

"Those two sure get along well; at least someone is there to equal Sagara-kun" Kyoko spoke.

"Which girl was it this time?" Shinji replied

"A girl in Class 1-3, just transferred to this school, I don't think she's experience a locker explosion yet" Kyoko talked in a tone that sounded like was conducting an investigation over a murder "I think she obviously was sending a love letter, but she just doesn't know the rules"

"Did you check for a letter?" Shinji asked,

"Yea, its right here" Kyoko took a pink envelope addressed to Sousuke out of her pocket. Recently Kyoko would inspect Sousuke's locker for a letter, as a way of attempting to lower the number of explosions per month. However Kyoko wouldn't really save anything; her tampering of the box would only make Sousuke blow it up anyway. This required quiet observation of his shoe locker in the afternoon and maybe writing a note on his locker every morning to say someone has left a message.

"Who should we give it to; the girl or Sagara-kun?" Shinji spoke as they both walked to class.

"This one is twelfth one we've recovered intact, so we could give it to Sagara-kun"

"But didn't he suspect there was anthrax in the previous five and blew it up in the classroom instead?

"I don't know, if we give it Sagara-kun; even if he opened it, he could just misinterpret it to be a threat"

"But we've got the letter intact, how could he possibly misinterpret it?" Shinji then remembered how bad Sousuke is with Classics and Japanese; having interpreted everything as a military code, disregard what century the literature was written in.

"Then we keep this, as with the others" Kyoko sighed, "then at lunchtime, ill track down this girl and tell her the bad news"

Both of them entered the classroom for classics and took on the embarrassing site of Sousuke cleaning his pistols before class began

Location: Tuatha de Daanan, 25km inside Soviet Union territorial Waters

Time: 14:00 hrs (Time zone +11 GMT)

Date: March 10th, 2006

Even though Commander had high hopes of finding at least a Soviet Navy Patrol boat, so far the screen remained empty of contacts. Even with the Tuatha de Daanan's advanced SONAR technology, they hadn't even come across a shark. It was at times like these everyone wished that A21 or some other minor terrorist organization would actually cause trouble. Then they would have an excuse to be under pressure.

It was the absence of even fish that got Commander Mardukas got annoyed. He had the slightly imaginative intention of surfacing the Tuatha de Daanan in enemy waters and casting one of Sousuke's fishing line over the side to waste time.

"Any contacts?" the commander asked,

"Non what-so-ever, not even a single piece of plankton floating around" the sonar officer replied

"Check for icebergs, water temperature, any unnatural anomalies"

"Aye sir" both the Sonar and Science Station replied

Mardukas slumped back in the command chair; supposable at any one time, there is 300,000; both civilian and military. How is it they managed to cover 2/20 of the earth surface in water and find only one ship? Were the entire Soviet and American pacific fleets in at their respective naval stations? Impossible, none of the super powers would be even half as crazy to do that.

"Water temperature is five degrees Celsius, two icebergs from the artic reported 250km away, just came inside our sensor range" the science station officer reported "Weather on the surface looks like a storm, heavy cloud cover and some light rain it seems"

Nothing important; everything was plain an simple, maybe they had gone though a time portal to some time 2000 years ago since their broke off with course with the American frigate. Even then, they surreally would've spotted a fishing boat anyway. No, it was just his imagination wildly possessing him; it was yet another boring day on the Tuatha de Daanan.

"Sonar contact" the sonar announced "Bearing 025, distance 250km"

Finally, something to amuse with, with any luck; the 'duke' could have another submarine to toy around with.

"Can you identify the contact?"

"Negative, my guess it's a fishing boat or something by its signal strength"

"Sonar, what's the position of those two icebergs at the moment?" Commander Mardukas started to check is surroundings just to see what was there to play with.

"Iceberg 1 is bearing 010 at 230km, and iceberg 2 is…" the science station officer paused for a moment

"Well?" where is it?"

"Sir, Iceberg 2 is Bearing 025, 249.99 km away"

"Double check that…"

"I just did, the target is inside the iceberg"

"Helm, lay in a course for 025, remain at 20 knots only" the command rang out orders to his crew; Commander Mardukas clenched his fist, a ship inside a iceberg? Perhaps it was underneath the iceberg, perhaps a Russian submarine wedged into the ice somehow. The logic behind this was impossible.

"Sir, nothing appears to be under the iceberg, and the signal scan shows that the signal is 25 meters deep into the iceberg on the surface level" the science officer continued to update the commander,

In order to create a 25 meters of ice, it would take 20 to 50 years of natural formation depending on the conditions. A frozen artifact, and a ship no less? It could be anything from a Diesel submarine to a small fishing boat.

"Sir, were not sure why or how, but I think Tuatha de Daanan's SONAR controls might be malfunctioning at the moment"

"What makes you say that?" commander Mardukas wouldn't love to hear this. Tuatha de Daanan's RADAR and SONAR systems were the best available anywhere and their performance factors were yet unmatched; saying they broke down or malfunctioning would destroy the legend that came with them.

"Well, we can confirm that there is an object, but…" the sonar officer remained quiet

"What?"

"The object seems to making some noise, in some way"

Command Richard Mardukas had been in the naval service of some description for 25 years, he had heard and see some weird things in that time; but this one suddenly took the grand prize of being the weirdest. He immediately went to the phone before hesitating for a moment, pausing for a second, only then did he pick up the receiver and then dialed for Captain Testarossa's Quarters.

Location: Tokyo Jindai Municipal High School, Tokyo

Time: 15:00 hrs

Date: March 10th, 2006

After a hectic morning, and another boring of class of Classics; Kyoko and Shinji were again at lunch sitting in class while waiting for Sousuke and Kaname to return from the student council summons. Shinji was reading quietly through his latest issue of Jane's annuals; Arm Slave Recognition Guide as Kyoko came back into the classroom and sat down to her home made lunch she left on her desk.

"Did you send back that letter?" Shinji said still focused on his magazine

"Yes, but the girl was assuming the letter had somehow made it to Sagara-kun, I found her standing exactly where she would be on the letter, she was heartbroken and demanded that 'I give him the letter, instead of hogging Sagara-kun for myself'" While she didn't actually tell Kaname about this; both Shinji and Kyoko started to operate a side operation of relaying the letters and information that had the possibility of misinterpretation, away from Sousuke in a desperate attempt to curtail the amount of unnecessary explosions and interrogations that took place on school grounds.

"My question is, how can one person like Sagara-kun interpret a love letter as death threat?"

"He's full of mysteries? Like why he keeps saying that he'll protect Kana-Chan since the first day when they met, he feels like he has this job to protect her or something"

"But against what?" Shinji replied in succession "Sure, Chidori-san makes a few enemies here and there, but not something that would require a professional mercenary for personal protection"

"Maybe it's the other way around, maybe it's Kana-Chan protecting Sagara-kun"

Shinji laughed, much to Kyoko's disappointment. But Shinji had a point somewhere; Kaname was strong and before Sousuke entered their lives; she had held the title of being the number one most attractive girl you wouldn't want to date. But there had been some serious lapses in the past year where for a week after a certain unknown event; Kaname would be uneasy and very quiet, especially after that trip she took with Sousuke to the 'southern island'.

"I think Chidori-san has actually softened up since Sagara-kun arrived" Shinji noted,

"That's true" Kyoko noted, "But why would she be so understanding about him?"

"I don't know, Sagara-kun has some weird habits and his unexplained absences…."

"Do you think that Sagara-kun goes off the play war on those days?" Kyoko pondered,

"You're kidding right, he plays war here!" Shinji replied, putting down his magazine "and not pretend war, it's like he still is in Afghanistan!"

Just as Shinji replied, Mizuki walked in to the classroom carrying a few bags of lunch. She seemed nowhere near surprised from this morning's explosion. But then again, her shoe locker hadn't once yet had been damaged from any of the blasts.

"What are you two talking about?" Mizuki spoke as she sat down at her desk in front of Kyoko's desk.

"Sagara-kun, why he acts like he does"" Kyoko replied and continued to answer the other question "I suppose it's because of his upbringing, Sagara-kun isn't use to the peaceful lifestyle"

"But since when did he go to a school when your shoe locker was tampered to blow up!" Shinji Replied,

"It's something I've always wondered about Sagara-kun" Mizuki spoke up "How does he get away with it."

It didn't really matter if he would get away with it this time; in another few minutes, Sousuke would probably be walking in to class again like nothing had happened and Chidori would be fuming mad walking right behind him.

"Is it a conspiracy?" Shinji said "Sagara-kun has conducted interrogations, assaults, demolitions, explosions, and carries real or model weapons around, anyone else would've been sent to jail if they did the same, but Sagara-kun seems to get a pat on the back for his work"

"Do you think he bribes them? The principal and the school board?" Kyoko spoke, slightly excited by the thought of a conspiracy.

"Where would he get that sort of money? He doesn't exactly have a part time job, which that we know of" Shinji spoke in a more serious tone. Shinji was now obliviously swinging himself into to his conspiracy nut mode.

"Maybe…" Kyoko also getting imaginative about this "…maybe he's a government agent here to spy on kana-Chan!"

Shinji and Mizuki took a gaze of surprise to Kyoko's suggestion; it made perfect sense, almost.

"Nah, what could Chidori-san possibly have done to have a government agent on her tail? She isn't a global assassin" Shinji replied, "That's something I'd expect Sagara-kun to be"

Before they continue the discussion, the door behind them was slammed open.

"Speak of the devil, here they are" Kyoko spoke in a funny gesture,

As expected, Sousuke was a free man again. He had quietly walked in the wake of Kaname whom was infuriated with the outcome of the meeting. Two other students quickly removed themselves from the path of Kaname Chidori as she made her way to her desk.

"Honestly" Kaname grumbled under her breath "…diligently act of duty…..protecting the school…..OUR best interests!"

"I take it you got off the hook again" Kyoko looked over at Sousuke whom was taking seat at his desk.

"Affirmative, the school directive deemed their was no means to punish me for my security protocols"

"Security Protocols!" Kaname snapped "This is Jindai High, not Merdia Island!"

"Where?" Kyoko asked,

Kaname then suddenly realised she'd accidentally slipped the name of the island where MITHRIL had the Western Pacific fleet stationed, Sousuke's workplace. Sousuke pretended not to have heard that sentence and continued to retrieve his laptop from his bag.

"Nothing…nothing…" Kaname laughed suspiciously,

"Sure…" Kyoko looked at Kaname Broadly before concluding she wouldn't get an answer, "Sagara-kun, where is Merdia Island?"

Kaname dropped her mouth in shock when Kyoko asked that question. If Sousuke was as stupid as he always is and said it was classified, they were done for; there was no way Kyoko would let that down without getting fishy,

"It's the name of the Island resort I took Chidori-san four months ago" Sousuke said in a straight answer without hesitation,

"Okay that makes sense" Kyoko felt pleased and slightly disappointed that it wasn't something that he couldn't talk about, but looked over at Kaname who looked like she was about to have a heart attack.

"Are you okay Kana-Chan, it's like you were expecting Sagara-kun to say something else"

"I'm…fine" Kaname replied flatly,

Kyoto nodded, taking it down as extremely suspicious behaviour. But before they could continue the guessing game, Sousuke's mobile phone rang; almost immediately Kaname knew what this meant and she was angry to the bone.

"Hello…Understood…Route 2B… Level A alert?" Sousuke's tone unusually spiked, making Shinji and Kyoko both notice, "Understood…understood…confirmed, Uruz 7 out"

"Let me guess…" Kaname said in a sarcastic tone

"I'm sorry Chidori-san, I have something important to do, I only have be gone for…" as Sousuke said this, Kaname didn't hear a word of it, instead mimicking what she normally heard, not noticing that he only said overnight and not three days.

"Well have fun blowing stuff up…" Kaname continued her Sarcastic tone, but as she said this, Sousuke picked up his bags and left out the door "…and he's off again" Kaname's tone changed completely.

Kyoko rolled her eyes as the bell rang on time, signalling the start of English. She sat down and in a split notice wondered exactly what Sousuke's secret was.

A/N: Hey all; finally finished the good version of this chapter, hopefully this story will be more successful then Sakura's last chance in time, which is still being produced.

Thanks to those to pointed out this misspelling, on closer inspection, one of the jindai high scenes were also mistaken for year 2007, and later it was 2006.

Please review and ill write a new chapter soon.