Stranger Aeons

"I have done things no human being should have ever done." - Anonymous medical assistant of Unit 731

Arc 1: Last Train From The Saw Mill

Episode 1: The Setting Sun

Stranger Aeons was not always a well-equipped and well funded company. It was primarily due to a few odd factors and blind luck we managed to afford several of our facilities and weapons. Before I tell you about our latest job, I'd like to take a moment to tell you about our first. It involved one of the most sick, twisted, and downright disgusting bits of history, period. The true tragedy is how little many people knew of it. A quest for recognizing the past became a driving force behind a series of sick murders around Japan.

So, you might ask how a gaijin like myself (and several other employees) became involved in such a case. Well, I'll just start with the story, and let the rest explain itself. s

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The story started a while ago when Sanada Yoko, our designated "legal liasion" for local law enforcement informed one of our employees, Nakamura Akira, about a murder. While Akira would normally be apathetic about this sort of thing (having seen his fair share of death and violence), Yoko got to the point that made him vomit. His grandfather had been vivisected, his brain cut out with a hatchet, and is blood and feces used to write on the wall. His grandmother had been knocked out and was currently in the hospital.

As for myself, I heard about it "through the grapevine," or more precisely, from shouting down the hallways. Akira's cursing was quite audible, and when I saw him running towards the restroom to empty his lunch into the nearby bathroom, I knew he'd be wanting to talk with someone about it. Since I was the employee he saw the most (since I held all the guns and weapons), it would likely be me.

Aki wasn't so much the type to remain quiet about his internal issues. His blunt comments had been the reason he had been discharged from the JSDF, after all. So, about ten minutes later, my hunch proved correct, and he was telling me every detail of the murder. He didn't have any photographs, but he did list every detail that Sanada-san had told him. One of them, in particular, caught my interest. The killer had written the number "731" on the wall in his grandfather's own blood and feces.

"Yes, my grandpa did serve in Manchuria in WWII," Akira replied to my latest question. "But what's that have to do with anything?"

I grinned as I replied. "Did he ever talk about what he did there?"

Akira shook his head. "He never talked about the war much. But he did visit a few obscure villages there ever year to donate money..."

It was time to give Nakamura a history lesson, then. Perhaps get a bit into the head of our killer. If the motive was what I think it was, then things would be getting nasty for certain Japanese WWII vets.