I Have Returned, but I Cannot Lay down My Gun

"Then, I guess we can say that the most urgent fires are out, right?"

"The problem is, it's not just one or two fires, it's like a dozen or so burning. That’s what makes it an issue."

"Now, after the operation, we're back and you're already causing a scene, huh? I think I need to just tape your mouth shut."

"No, what did I even do—Ubbub…!"

The Dagger team returned to Central Park.

What should I say? It hadn’t been long since the Dagger team was formed, and whenever they went out on an operation, people would cheer and clap when they saw them, but now, things weren’t quite the same.

However, instead… what can I say, there was respect. They’d salute, you know, the kind of thing where they didn’t really perform a full-on military salute, but everyone would kind of take care of them and treat them well.

If you suddenly ask why I’m saying all this... well, I guess it’s because it’s been a while since I felt that again. Honestly, if I were in the opposite position, I would probably say "thank you" too.@@novelbin@@

If every time we went out, we came back with a victory, I guess some respect is in order.

‘Of course, the operators were designed to bring victories even in such extreme situations, but...’

It’s not like the federal government gave a small budget to develop the gear. The amount spent was enough to cover several years’ worth of budgets for a major government department. So, something like this should be expected, right?

Of course, when you look at the incredible—no, even fundamental technology lines derived from developing the gear, and the potential to integrate those across society, it seems that they could easily recover the costs. But...

The world’s collapsed, what else can you do?

Anyway, that's not the important part.

As it was said, the Dagger team could confidently say that the most urgent fires were out.

They hadn’t retaken New York Stewart International Airport yet, and it couldn’t really be said that they had completely stopped the allied forces’ push to split Albany and New York, and during the retreat, they had around a hundred or so US military casualties. But...

The Dagger team seized the opportunity created by the counterattack, grabbing the throat of the enemy airborne brigade and snapping their necks cleanly. The bottom line was that the advance of the allied forces, whether southward or northward, had been stopped.