The Opening Shot of the Pacific War
December 15, 2022

Time: 1:00 JST

Taiwan wakes to fire.

In the dead of night, Shina unleashes its opening salvo: coordinated missile strikes ripple across the island, targeting key infrastructure with chilling precision. Missile strikes hit infrastructure across Taiwan. Military installations, highways, naval ports, pillboxes, all hit from Shina launches located around Taiwan. National Freeway 1, once named the MacArthur Thruway, especially was hit. The missile strikes cause thousands of casualties and several deaths.

The night is clear. The illuminated surface of the moon is at 58% and getting smaller by the day. Shina could have chosen a better time, but now is better than a month from now.

Nippon managed to ferry over her last division to Taiwan in the preceding days. Half-trained and missing more than half of its MBTs, the division can simply provide covering support against a Shina landing force. Its role is clear: buy time, bleed the enemy, hold the line.

Nikkei 225 futures have plummeted. Polymarket has odds in Shina's favor of winning the war, let alone a war happening in the first place. But the mood in Tokio surprisingly is optimistic. Some doom and gloom posts on 2ch as usual, with one user going so far as to ask "Why does Japan have a military in 2022? We're literally on the verge of collapse." But the rest of the country has found hope that Nippon can pull off a victory here and reclaim its status that it lost after the tragic mistake of the Second World War.

The first missiles have fallen. The world watches.

And Japan remembers what it means to stand on the edge.