A/N:

This is a total rewrite so everything will be different.

The video's title above is "Hymn of North Atlantic Treaty Organization". Yes, it's official and has no lyrics.

...

Camp Takeyama, Yokosuka, Japan, 2018.

Just another day of this grueling, but excitable education called Basic Training, an introduction to the Army.

Along with fellow reserve officer training cadets from Tokyo University and seven other Tokyo colleges, I am currently facing a man-sized target, with my task is to score a good shot.

I have a solid grip with my Type 89 rifle, exhaled steadily while my eyes only focused on the target, and pulled the trigger.

Crack crack!

"You're closer to perfection, Cadet Hatamoto!"

"Thank you, Drill sergeant!"

"A little left and you got A." I paid attention to the input from one of our drill instructors, First Sergeant Ando Kikuchi.

I'll do this better, and with the exact adjustment from the DI, I took aim according to the DI's input to compensate for the wind's direction, and my thumb moved on the trigger.

"YATTA!" (I did it). The rushing sensation inside my body, and a big smile parched on my mouth.

Just like when I won a piano competition, or graduated with flying colors back in high school...

My eyes went on a fellow cadet, a girl on the same age as me.

"You're getting better each day."

"Thank you, and you too, Kokoro-chan. Heck, you got a perfect shot earlier than me!"

Meet Kokoro Yamaguchi, one of my best friend.

"Yeah. Come on, let's get back to the business at hand!"

Ah, well, the day on the field was still long.

You might wonder why suddenly, a boy with a privileged background like me, whose father is a conglomerate, decided to add military training and the associated scholarship in college, when my family is more than able to pay for my education?

The cause still pained me when I remember it. However, it's high time for the truth to be known.

......

Two years ago.

I was only in my sophomore year at high school. It has been two years that my family and I lived not in the family's mansion, but in the Kantei.

That place is the official residence of the Prime Minister of Japan thanks to the fact that the current Prime Minister was also my mother, Hatamoto Miku.

She's an inspiration for me to learn to play piano, in particular, which became a hobby, primarily, but also the means of honing my competitive soul.

On that day, instead of my family's driver, two men and a woman in black suits who were part of my mother's security details picked me up from school.

Then, I found my father crying in front of his laptop. He's working from home that day. Uncle Michiko was trying to comfort his elder brother. For all I know, she was to be back from an important meeting in the Diet.

The TV inside the residence revealed the harsh reality that I have to face. My heart was now in million pieces, as well as my father and my little brother Katsuma.

Prime Minister Hatamoto Miku was killed in an accident just four kilometers from the Diet.

Followed by the details about how the car she was in had lost control and collided with a truck.

Nothing I can do to bring my mother back. Yet I am still thirsty for an answer to "Why?"

I put aside any thought for revenge to focus on the funeral. That day, I played Funeral March on stage with Kokoro who played the violin.

We played facing my mother's open coffin, wrapped in Hinomaru and guarded by four members of the Japanese National Defense Forces, one from each branch; Army, Navy, Air Force, and the Coast Guard (1), plus two police officers, while people across Japan paid their respect, from Emperor Katsuhito to the common citizens as well as foreign representatives.

Even the Emperor himself was in tears from my playing.

Uncle Michiko kept me and my little brother, Katsuma, company when my father was called to the podium to give his own eulogy and hope for the future.

When my mom's cortege was underway to the cemetery from the Diet building where she was laid, the main boulevards of Tokyo was flooded with mourners, waving the Hinomaru and throwing flowers as the convoy passed through.

I fixed my sight into the sky as military jets, 21 in exact, flew over the city in formation. Dad explained to us that it's their way to pay their final respect to my mum.

At the burial ceremony, I went on to Kokoro and her parents for a few words, I remember how her father put his hands on me.

"You are a strong man, and you can pass through this."

While Kokoro was able to attend directly, two other best friends of mine let me know that they were watching it live via television with their parents, thanks to the government has ordered a national holiday to be observed for the funeral, followed by seven-day national mourning, with Japanese flags nationwide and overseas were flown half-staff during that period.

Be strong, buddy. Your mother will always with you - Himari Nakayama

I don't know what to tell you other than deep condolences to our prime minister, your beloved mother. You'll live. And I mean it - Izumi Kugimiya

We took comfort with each other. And I remember what her dad told her.

"Be there for him, anywhere he'll go."

"I will, father, It's an honor."

Long story short, as people moved on and Mom's position as both Prime Minister and the leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party has been assumed by Masaru Honma, the Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, the ensuing investigation found evidence that someone deep inside the government's garage had sabotaged the supposed-to-be safe official car used by the Prime Minister.

That revelation was followed by a public confession uploaded on YouTube by the one supposed to be responsible, a former top-secret employee of the Prime Minister's Office who has gone to hiding. Before Tokyo Police got him, however, he's already taken his life.

A week after that, back in the mansion, my father suddenly whisked me to a safe room that I don't know to exist before.

"The news did not tell you the full story."

"What do you mean, father?"

"The suicide of that man is not the end of the story."

I've not yet come to terms that my mother's death was deliberate. And now this.

"I have sources in the government. Son, before your mom went on to become the Prime Minister."

"Go on, father. I'm on ears."

"I have no authorization. But I have arranged for you to know the truth..."

......

I can't believe it. The source turned out to be another of my uncles. This time from my mother's side. His name is Takahashi Kujou.

A brief description; his job is quite in the shade of things, he never told the big family his real nature of it except the fact that he was once a paratrooper in back-then the Ground Self-Defense Force and the subsequent Japanese National Army in the late 1970s to the late 1990s.

The arrangement called him to pay me a visit.

"I failed my little sister. And I won't screw up again. You are her son, you have to know the entire truth on her passing."

"What do you mean, Uncle Takahashi?"

"A couple days before her murder, the Public Security was tracking four men, arrived in Japan from a Kuala Lumpur-outbound flight..."

"I don't understand, what does it related to you, Uncle? Do you mean that you were one of them?"

"I am part of that mission..."

I gasped as I digested the fact that upon his retirement from the Army, he was working for the Public Security Intelligence Agency, Japan's internal intelligence.

He then described how the Prime Minister's office was suspected to contain moles working for a hostile foreign power. And for Uncle Takahashi, a familial obligation to protect his own sister means he took the mission religiously.

Unfortunately, one such operation ended up badly for the PSIA, when a short but violent gun battle in an abandoned warehouse with an unknown force caused four agents to lose their life. Only Uncle Takahashi lived to tell the tale.

Five heavily armed men, with good Japanese but were mostly speaking Chinese.

The lead man sports a short military cut, a pair of high riding boots, armed with an M4 carbine on his hands, and a bayonet mounted under the barrel.

The curious thing was, he has a hint of having Japanese blood. Tall, with a scar on his left face and a mole on his left chest.

Badly wounded, Uncle Takahashi barely made up the words spoken by the man and two of the latter's surviving followers, in a Chinese accented English.

"Leave him. We have to execute the Plan B."

"Understood, Black Tiger."

They did not notice Takahashi lying motionlessly inside the janitor's station. He waited until the gunmen left the area, and proceeded to grab the equipment of his comrades before fleeing the area and getting his injuries treated by a local clinic under oath.

"And so, Uncle, this Black Tiger killed my mum?"

"Yes, Ryutaro. This one here," his hand went on a hidden figure, holding a pistol, near one of the ladders. "Was Kuniwo Magohachi."

I scowled. "That coward who sabotaged the car and killed himself later. Only for dollars, he killed Mum!"

"There is evidence that Black Tiger and his people are working for the Chinese government..."

That was a final straw for me, and it makes sense. The Chinese Communist government would be happy to get rid of my mother, which openly stands with the democracy movement in Hong Kong, switched Japan's recognition from China to Taiwan and sold lethal arms to them, supports India in its border disputes with China... stationed warships and aircraft in the South China Sea... and most importantly, confiscated Chinese and Hong Kong government's assets in Japan or stored in Japanese-owned banks as part of worldwide sanction against that country...

"Thanks to its duty being internal intelligence, the Public Security is no longer looking at him unless he returned to Japanese soil. His possible locations are all in China and Hong Kong, but also few leads in Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, and both North and South Korea."

"Let me guess... you know how much I want justice for my mum."

"Exactly. And I know one way to reach it."

He handed me a brochure.

"The Reserve Officer's Training Corps." I quipped, referring to one of the ways for becoming an officer in the Japanese National Defense Forces.

"As you will definitely attend college... I think this is the best way."

Fair enough. Sooner or later I'll be supposed to replace Dad anyway...

He continued. "And I want you to look at this carefully." then his hands put down something golden, in the shape of a parachute imposed over a pair of wings.

"There is another group wearing this. What is it?"

"Special forces, Uncle, I guess?"

"Correct."

"Go on, Uncle."

"Back to what we left off... those guys, The Special Forces Brigade or Tokushusakusendan. Best of the best the JNA can offer. Don't tell anyone not even your father nor your girlfriend, unless she wants to be one as well..."

He wants me to not only join the Army... but become a special forces? That's perplexing. But why the desire is there inside me? For my mother...

"You have good motivation, and Takayama had told me that you are good at shooting."

"Well, Uncle, since I am 14, my dad taught me that, slowly but surely, for self defense. My mum and dad told me that people like me have to be fit too, anyway. But there is always room for improvement."

"The Army can help you improve it faster, Ryutaro. When there's a will, there's a way. The question is, will you take it?"

Sure, we have a good number of much experienced adults both in the intelligence and special forces. The Black Tiger might have been tracked, or killed already... who knows.

But the surest way to figure it out was to follow the trail by myself. And so, this will be an opportunity to get him with my own hands for sake of justice for my mother, our Prime Minister. To restore the family's honor. In short, this is an unexpected call for a different adventure.

"I'll take it. Uncle."

......

(1). The Japan Coast Guard is under control of Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport in peacetime, however in this story, it's considered a de facto fourth branch of the armed forces ever since the Article 9 revision in 1982, and the Prime Minister has authority to transfer it into the aegis of Ministry of Defense at any time, or by the Diet during wartime.