The waters of the Ogasawara Islands, over 1,000 kilometers southwest of Tokyo Metropolis.
Above the sea, the night was moonless and windy, the waves surging; below it, powerful undercurrents churned.
A black Ohio Class nuclear submarine slipped silently through the ocean, its cylindrical hull streamlined into a teardrop shape.
"That's Iwo Jima, the island our grandfathers fought the Japanese over."
In the submarine's control room, the chief engineer gazed through the periscope at a tiny black speck almost impossible to make out on the surface and murmured with a complicated expression:
"President Bush Sr. probably never imagined that while they were fighting their bloody battles, a great Japanese demon like the Nine-Tails Demon Fox lay hidden right beneath their feet."
The Battle of Iwo Jima, fought between Japan and the United States near the end of World War II for possession of this easily defended, difficult-to-assault island, was one of the most brutal and arduous amphibious landing operations of the Pacific Ocean War. Nearly thirty thousand soldiers from both sides died.
"Bush Sr. was a pilot back then, wasn't he? Ugh..."
Hearing the chief engineer's words, the bearded captain beside him remembered the sashimi the Mexican head cook had prepared before they sailed, and felt both physically and psychologically sick.
But he had been the one who told the Mexican he wanted fish.
The bearded captain could only swallow his rising bile with a twisted expression.
One of this special operation's targets was Japan's great monster, the Nine-Tails Demon Fox.
To pray for good luck and express his wish to wipe out the Japs, the bearded captain had specifically ordered sashimi, an iconic Japanese dish.
"That's close enough. Don't go any farther. We don't want to alert those two monsters," the bearded captain said gravely.
"Two monsters? What other monster