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Nagumo Shinobu let the door click closed behind her, balancing a sheaf of reports in one hand. Her partner was on the other side of the office, his rolling chair pulled up close to the steaming kettle. Despite the cold he had one bare foot out of its sandal, propped up on his knee. The unlit cigarette in his mouth twitched in time with his reading.
"I'm back," Nagumo said. Goto made a vaguely welcoming noise, flicked his eyes to hers for a second, and went back to poring over his report. More papers were strewn on every available surface, in no semblance of order, but Nagumo knew he'd have them all in place by the New Year. He'd left her side of the room untouched, as clean and neat as always. She rounded the desk and dropped her papers in the inbox, glancing out the window at her squad.
They were using the AV-98s to clear the morning's snowfall off the field, pushing it into the bay using wide sheets of corrugated metal as Labor-sized snow shovels. The noon sun glinted off the boxy shoulders of Gomioka's machine as it moved forward, each footfall steady and cautious as it approached the water's edge. She cracked a smile at that; nobody at Special Vehicles wanted a repeat of the Drowned Labor Incident.
She checked the assignment board next. Her lot were on duty for another three hours. Goto's division was off, though someone had penciled-in a "supply mission" to grab takeout from the Chinese place across the bridge. It wasn't exactly a traditional New Year's spread, but the idea felt special just the same. They'd been so busy with year-end reports and repairs that nobody'd had anything nicer than rice balls and pork buns for days.
"Did you order us anything?" she asked.
"Miso ramen and some gyoza."
"Perfect." She glanced over at the paper he was filling out. Personnel reports. No wonder he was so quiet. She'd finished hers days ago, in only a couple of hours; her bunch were as praiseworthy as ever. Isawa had even earned himself a commendation by scooping four children up out of a burning building, two tucked beneath each steel arm of his Ninety-Eight.
Goto's division was... more unusual. She wondered how he was going to put a positive spin on having to replace Machine Two's head for the third time in as many years. Or on the twenty oversized cans of Labor wax Office Izumi had burned through, for that matter, at nearly ten thousand yen each.
She smirked again, turning back to her own papers. If there was a way, then "Razor" Goto would find it.
"How's this?" he asked, reading from the paper in a high, officious voice. "Marksmanship in the field improved by almost eight percent this year, led by Officer Izumi's frequent refusal to draw her weapon..."
"Are you trying to prove whether the Chief reads those?"
"Well..." He scratched his foot for a moment, wiggling his toes.
"Honesty's the best policy," she said after a while.
Goto gave her a grin. "I always say so, too. But then, it's not exactly a lie..."
"Not exactly," she agreed. Then she flipped the newspaper open and checked the headlines. For once, Special Vehicles wasn't in them; New Year's was always the quietest time of year, except when it wasn't. She didn't pretend to understand the sort of mind that picked the holidays to go stealing Labors, but it happened now and again -- last year both divisions had spent the night out in the cold, blockading the Shuto Expressway before bringing a pair of Labor bank robbers to ground near Ueno. She could still remember how strange it had been to shout orders over the sound of temple bells.
"Anything stirring?" she asked.
"Not today. We got a call about some Labor movement outside Ikebukuro Station, but by the time Izumi and Shinohara arrived there was no one there."
"Kids joyriding again?"
"Maybe so. Hmm, how about this: 'thanks to the steadfast leadership of Sergeant Kumagami, the division's second squad has improved immeasurably. One example occurred on July 27, near Harajuku, when Machine Two became caught between two buildings after apprehending three rampaging Labors and destroying a fourth...'".
He trailed off, and it took Nagumo a second to put two and two together. "Didn't she have to drag Ohta out of the machine by his armpits?"
"See what I mean?" Goto said, tapping his pencil on the desk. "Steadfast."
"...wasn't he thrashing and screaming about revenge the whole time?"
"Stead. Fast."
She shook her head. "We did manage to make our quota this year. And your division got great scores in physical training, since you make them run around the building every time they mess up. You should mention that."
"I put that first. And again at the bottom."
"It's just as well," she murmured. "I don't think the Chief does read these." She met Goto's eyes for a moment, sharing the joke, and then looked past him out the window.
A small red scooter was just starting up the road: Noa and Asuma riding tandem, just as she'd told them not to do the last fifty times. The back was piled high with take-out bags.
"Hey. You ever regret not getting the Ingrams?"
The question startled her, and she looked back at Goto sharply. She found nothing in his eyes, nothing to explain why he'd asked such a personal question out of nowhere.
"I-- no. Not really." Goto raised an eyebrow at that, and before she could think she added, "They belong to Division 2." She wasn't quite sure where that thought had come from, but once spoken it struck her as self-evidently true.
"And the Ninety-Eights are yours," Goto agreed, turning back to his report. He signed the bottom in his wide, incomprehensible scrawl, then dropped the office stamp beside it in perfect order. "Happy New Year," he added, without looking up.
Nagumo smiled at that.
"Happy New Year."