"Espionage was never my strong suit," Sergeant Mari Kurokawa admitted, adjusting the hem of her dress to conceal much of her cleavage.

"I joined the SDF so I wouldn't have to do this back home," Sergeant Shino Kurobayashi growled from behind the bar top. She kept herself busy with the empty glasses on the rack, visibly refusing to be seen in this backwater tavern in one of the shadiest districts in this provincial trading hub. Her short frilly skirt and tight aproned tunic made for a horrible combination: too much skin on display, too little room for her diaphragm to properly function.

Kurokawa rounded the bar and hefted four empty tankards from the shelf next to her fellow agent's head. From below, Kurobayashi allowed a slight guffaw as to how the team's medic had managed to maintain such a deceptive mien even as she knew she was uncomfortable with what they had to wear just to keep their disguise.

"Help me with the food service, already," Mari moaned through her teeth.

Shino stifled a groan. She so hated her position right now. But certain circumstances demanded their duty no matter the context. She had to bite down her lip at the sneers she was starting to get from the more inebriated clientele. Even after getting a few hoots and toots from serving the drinks to the tables, she managed to hold it in.

"Cheer up, Shino," Mari egged, casually pushing away a leering drunk. "We're not having it that bad."

"Really?" Kurobayashi snarled, looking for the other two members of their team who were supposed to come through those doors hours ago. "Where the hell are those lunkheads?"

"I didn't sign up for this," Kuruta whined.

"Shut up and keep playing the disguise," Tomita groveled.

The two undercover SDF soldiers meandered carefully through the dwindling plebeian crowd, managing to stay away from the canal that happened to be where everyone dumped their wastes, organic and all.

"We have trained spies for this!" Kuruta muttered amid a pained grimace borne from the aching in his toes for wearing these damned tight heels. "Why didn't the general send them instead?"

Tomita threw him a stern look over his shoulder. Or at least it looked stern underneath that thick make-up and lipstick. "Because his hands are tied. Now keep up or we'll blow our cover!"

"Oh, my," a deep voice crowed from one of the open windows. The woman—man?—blew a puff of smoke while a pair of hairy muscled arms loomed over the window sill. "Two new faces? My, my. The crime lords are getting busier and busier."

Kuruta and Tomita hoped that their humiliation did not show on their cheeks as they hurried past the pimp, their wooden heels clacking against the cobblestone as they passed the throngs of multi-racial prostitutes and their mix of clientele. They did not deny that some of them had bulges in places where they shouldn't. As discomforting as it was, at least it made their cover more believable. What was important was that they had the intel and that the girls would be waiting for them at the tavern. At least they were having it easy.

"At least we look pretty," Tomita said with a poor smile with the tavern coming into view.

"I don't want to think about it," Kuruta whinnied, lifting his dress so he could easily sprint to the front door. By then, he could finally wash all this make-up off his face. That and the all the hickeys.

Major Akira Yanagida limped on his single crutch to the board tacked on the wall. The red dots were now making sense as he added one more to the web of ribbons. It all started in Italica, then moved to Elbe, then to the other outlying settlements in the territories of the Empire's vassal states. He eased back to take in what they knew so far.

"We should have gone with him," Lelei muttered.

Yanagida craned his head to the table in the far corner. "We've done all we could."

"You don't draft soldiers, do you?" the mage inquired from his right. Her curious eyes studied the map. Pins marking where Captain Youji Itami was last seen, threads showing his movements.

"Not anymore," Akira replied.

"Not anymore?"

"I'm not in the mood to give you a history lesson, Lelei." He sighed, not wanting to opine on the precursor to the JSDF. "But to sate your curiosity, we used to rely on conscripts for a time. A long time ago. That's as much as I'll tell you right now."

"So Itami willingly joined."

Yanagida slumped back into his chair. On his desk was an open dossier and psychological profile of their rogue hero. "He was a volunteer like the rest of us. I didn't think he would end up like this. He was doing so well. What happened to him?"

Lelei eyed him for the first time in the day. "Knowing him, after three years of faithful service, there would be no doubt that he would break."

"And now we have to find him before he does anything stupid." The major paused to wipe his glasses and the sweat off the bridge of his nose. "Damn it. I didn't sign up for this."

ORIGINALLY DRAFTED: March 20, 2017

LAST EDITED: July 24, 2017

UPLOADED: July 24, 2017

NOTE: I wanted to get this off my chest. And off my hard drive.