Gra Gryning

[Cherico]

Ralph Essen


The film ended.

"That was surprisingly even handed."

Merlin shrugged.

"Yeah the official stuff the yanks gave their troops was always pretty mild. Now the stuff made for the home front? That could get a little wild."

"Really?"

"Oh yeah, it was war, one of the worst ones out there. Everyone who fought the Japanese dehumanized them in different ways. You know, to make it easier to pull the trigger. You guys, the yanks? You compared them to robots, your propaganda during the war years was bloody mild."

"Really?"

"Oh yeah, read some of the Blinky Bill books they made during the war. They were really racist actually. We aussy were a whole lot less restrained on that front than you lot, we basically compared the Japanese to monkeys at every turn."

I shrugged.

"It was a different time."

"You think we were racist though? no one tops the Chinese for anti Japanese propaganda. Yanks compared them to robots and we compared them to animals but as far as the Chinese back then were concerned the Japanese were demons straight from hell."

I turned and looked at the one Chinese member of my crew.

"Yeah...that hasn't changed that much, we still look down on and hate the Japanese."

"But wasn't that decades ago?"

He laughed.

"Oh...oh, you have no idea. One thing my people are really really good at is holding grudges and after what the Japanese pulled during the war? they're going to be in our bad books for at least a hundred years. And that's a number that has gone down because the Russians managed to make what they pulled look like child's play. And no, we do not buy the Japanese sob story that it was all the fault of the evil black prince who corrupted the government."

He leaned back.

"We're not stupid, though we do appreciate that they went through the effort to find a scapegoat rather than trying to pretend that nothing happened."

I looked at the Australian.

"Yeah, we don't buy it either but we more or less let things go after you yanks nuked them."

I turned my head and turned back to the other man.

"We built a statue of the people who nuked japan and put it in our nation's capital, just to piss the Japanese off."

He paused.

"No regrets."

 

[Cherico]

Brian Mc Clain


I took a drink of tea as Graves stared out the window.

"It's hard to believe it's come to this mate."

I shrugged.

"Seems like the world's gone mad."

I had, at that point, been in the graves house for a couple days.

"Fair Dikim."

I stared at the man.

"You're um."

"Less of a prat than expected? The trick is to have a really horrid reputation and then, when people meet you in real life, the bar will be so bloody low that you can't help but surpass their expectations."

I nodded.

"So Brian, what did you do before the war?"

I sighed.

"Sold curios from the mandies."

Graves nodded.

"Nice honest work."

I felt a little surprised at his statement.

"If you're expecting me to brag."

He pointed at a sign.

"Pride goeth before the fall."

"Family motto. Well, not the original one, we figured out we needed a new one after the incident."

"I still don't know how you lot bloody survived, Darwin still has a crater where your old home used to be."

Graves blinked at me.

"That thing's still bloody there?"

"Fair Dikum, before the invasion we used it as a place to make out. Proposed to me wife there."

"Damn...."

He sighed.

"Trick of it, why we survived is this, you know about curses."

"Yes?"

"Well, long and short of it, curses just alter probability. Stack the deck, as it were. Thing is you can only stack the deck so much before it goes around the bend and becomes good luck."

"Really?"

"Pull out a coin."

I did so.

"All right, Now flip it in the air and let it land on the ground, I'm going to call it."

I flipped the coin.

"Edge."

The coin landed on the ground on edge, I looked at him.

"Do it again."

I flipped more and more coins and watched them fall on edge.

"That's bloody ace."

"Has limits of course. You see, if we brag, that bad luck comes, right as rain and slaps us right in the face...but that's why we always seem to come out on top financially...They say the curse will stop affecting us after the 7th generation."

"Doesn't seem like a curse."

I heard a knock and graves sighed.

"I'm bloody great."

"Um sir."

The boy slipped and hot tea slammed into Graves' face. He just looked at me knowingly.

"Sir! I'm sorry and."

"Don't worry 'bout it. This one was on me boy. I only yell at you if you cock things up, now fetch more tea."

The boy ran off and he wiped off the hot water.

"Every time....look, after what happened to your town you're welcome to stay with us."

"My families up north."

"They can come here."

"My country needs me."

The man sighed.

"I understand that, did some time in the service myself."

I couldn't picture someone as wealthy as graves in the military.

"Really? I was stationed in the western front."

"I got lucky. I was stationed in Africa, spent the entire war chasing ghosts, any stories?"

I closed my eyes.

"We were on leave, it was late in the war and they let us visit England. you know the motherland? me and my mate were sitting down, decompressing when this white feather girl shows up."

Graves grimaced.

"Heard about them."

"Yeah and they were every bit as obnoxious as the tales say. So she gives us a piece of her very limited mind, doesn't let us get in an word in edgewise, when this woman shows up in a purple uniform."

"Yank?"

"Got it in one, the yank tries to sit down. She looks tired, right? And the white feather girl goes into this tirade about how this random sheila is braver than all of us, the yank gets up out her chair and then says four words."

I paused.

"What did you do?"

Graves nodded and leaned in.

"White feather girl doesn't have a response to that so the yank calls her a hypocrite and a coward and a cunt. Rather than just walk on by, the crazy bint slaps the yank."

Graves grimaced.

"And then?"

"And then the yank beat the stuffing out of the stupid cunt, threw her out of the train very next stop. All of us soldier boys? We cheered."

I smiled at the memory.

"And that's how me mate met his wife."

Graves slapped his knee.

"Ace stuff. Sounds like a winner."

I smiled.

"She was. But she was a Mandy and when he came back with her the city gave him a choice Darwin or her. He chose her and I never saw him again."

Graves nodded.

"That seems to be the way of things."

"Think they will get better, graves?"

"I don't know Brian. But it wont be my family that changes things, we're fuck ups, the entire lot but maybe maybe our kids can fix our sorry mess."

"Don't envy them."

I got up.

"Gotta go, there's a war on."

We shook hands and I left to get into my truck, to go back into the war.

 

[Cherico]

Brian Mc Clain


I drove down the endless flatlands back to the wizard town of Kathrine. I felt a sense of worry that grew as I got closer to the town. The feeling only got stronger when I noticed the smell of smoke. I drove closer and then noticed walls had been erected all around the town.

"business?"

I blinked and looked, and saw my son?

"Billy?"

"Oh. hi Da."

His face was covered in soot, and his eyes looked tired.

"What happened?"

"The Japanese attacked...it didn't go so well for them."

I looked at the pile of dead bodies.

"You don't say."

"Mind lending a hand? I have to bury them."

I got out of the truck and grabbed a shovel, started digging. I looked at Billy as he calmly dug a hole.

"Billy?"

He looked up at me.

"What is it da?"

"Um...why are you doing this?"

"Volunteered, I helped kill these men only fair that I help bury them."

He put away another chunk of dirt, he was calm about this, too calm. It reminded me of some thing.

"So you killed someone?"

"Yeah da, been forced to do it a couple times, it's the war you know."

We looked at the hole and grabbed one of the corpses, then I froze.

"Bloody hell."

I backed off.

"What's wrong da?"

"His arm...it's tattooed and I don't know what it does."

My son rolled up the dead man's arm, exposing more of the tatoo.

"Huh....looking at it and...I don't know what it does."

He dropped the arm and pulled his note book out of his shirt pocket.

"Billy?"

"I'm looking and...I don't think he has a self destruct rune on him...I mean it would have gone off already if he had one."

"Maybe it's connected to the rest of him?"

Billy nodded and we got together and took off his shirt. The dead man's body was covered with Tatoos of various sorts.

"Billy that's...that's extensive work, the man must have been an absolute freaking beast in combat."

"Hmm, I don't know. Sure it covers most of his body but it seems like a bit of a slap dash job."

"Slap dash? Look at it, the man must be covered in enchantments, I only have a single Tatoo and that's to help me breath underwater."

"Which you got because you're afraid of drowning."

"Bloody right I am. During the last war the Jerry submarines were everywhere, it's just good sense to go to the mandy's and get that basic work done."

Billy continued to carefully examine the corpse.

"I...I don't think these tattoos do anything da."

I stared at him.

"What are you bloody talking about?"

"I think that the tats are purely for looks. ya know, to show off."

I stared at the body and then at Billy.

"That's bloody stupid, why get a tat if it doesn't bloody do anything? At that point you're just wasting skin and space on nonsense."

Billy shrugged.

"I don't get it either, it just doesn't seem practical."

He shrugged and grabbed the man's legs.

"Little help da?"

I grabbed his arms and we put his body into the ground and then covered it up with dirt. Job done with, we got into my truck and went to town. A hastely made metal gate opened up and let us in. I drove forward and then stopped and stared.

"Son?"

A cat was sleeping on a box. But the cat was surrounded by a glowing blue ball, the ball slowly changed shape, becoming square and then changing into a pyramid and then back into a ball.

"What's going on?"

"Oh that's just whiskers."

Billy sounded bored.

"He's a good cat and."

"Son, that isn't what I'm talking about?"

My son sighed.

"Whiskers is a guardian beast."

I turned and stared at him.

"Ok! Humans are not the only creatures on earth with souls, most beings have some magic but it isn't advanced enough to be a soul. There are six creatures who have souls. there are Whales, Dolphins, Crows, Owls, Dogs and Cats. Humans have the heaviest souls at 21 grams, Whale and dolphin souls weigh 13 grams, A cats soul weighs 9 grams, a dogs 7, and Owl and crow souls weigh 3 grams. If you have a soul, you can use magic of a sorts."

"Of a sorts."

"You need to be sentient, biologically capable of a certain level of ethics and have a soul to use seasonal magic. But if you initate a creature that isn't sentient into seasonal magic you can create a familiar or guardian beast."

He pointed at whiskers.

"When a cat is initiated they gain the ability to create forcefields. The color changes based on the season they're initiated in, blue for winter, green for spring, red for summer, and yellow for fall but they all have the same powers."

"And these fields of force?"

"Are fully capable of stopping bullets, explosions and other things. It has a side effect, changes a cat's behavior, makes them protective. Winter cats will latch onto a person and obsessively protect them, spring cats will protect a building, summer cats will protect a family and autum cats will protect an organization."

The cat opened its eyes and yawned as its owner exited a bar.

"Come on then."

The cat created a glowing platform, and then jumped on it, the creature purred as it floated next to his master.

"And...that's rare?"

"It's mostly done by cockneys. They're big on their magic cats but outside of their bit of London and the people who travel elsewhere, it's not common."

He shrugged.

"Whiskers' owner is from London, tells me that the cockney areas of London are untouched. The cats wont let their bit of the city get hurt by the Jerrys."

"If that's true then why aren't they more common?"

Billy shrugged.

"Don't know da, don't know."
​

 

[Cherico]

Brian Mc Clain



My wife hugged me when I got back to... well, not our home but our living quarters. She had a meal, cooked a simple stew made out of roo. Not the reds of course, Mandy's were protective of their reds, but one of the greys I think.

"Glad you got here safely."

"Glad to be back love."

She looked at me.

"You're worried?"

"I'm fine."

"No Brian...when you worry about things you don't use as much slang, I notice these things."

"Well there's a war going on."

She let out a breath.

"That's true but...I think it's something more."

I took another bite of bread.

"Billy's acting odd."

My wife nodded.

"Well he's been drafted into fighting in this damned war, that's going to change things about isn't it?"

I thought about it.

"No, not odd like that. look, I was on the front, I saw things. Folks, normal ones, they would hesitate to pull a trigger and, after they killed a man, it would shake you up."

"I will talk to billy, help get his spirits up."

"No, its not like that, Billy was just fine. He buried the body of a dead Jap with no problem."

"So our boy has some tougher stuff in him."

I felt a sense of frustration.

"That wasn't tougher stuff. He just wasn't affected by it, the horror of it all. Back during the war, only three people who could just shrug that kind of nonsense off like it was nothing. Veterans, folks who had a screw loose and....mandy's."

My wife looked up.

"What?"

"It's not that they're bad people but they're all about their rules, their code you know. They could be the nicest blokes you ever met but put them in a uniform, tell 'em to kill? And they would kill, no hesitation, no problems. First time every time, it gave a lot of blokes the creeps."

My wife looked around.

"It's not just the blokes Bruce...The Sheilas, the Mandy ones, they don't act like normal Sheilas, don't think like normal Sheilas."

I stared at her.

"I'm sorry honey but can you explain?"

She took a bite of her own bread and closed her eyes.

"Back home in Darwin...it's hard to explain but even if you didn't like a sheila, you knew that there was a sisterhood of sorts you know? Even if you didn't like each other, you were still one of the girls."

"Mandy girls aren't like that?"

"Not at all. They're colder than normal girls, they don't try to see your side of the story. It's all facts, it's all results, they don't have that compassion that normal sheilas have..."

She sighed.

"And that's not all. Nothing here seems right, people will just walk on the bloody walls or on the ceiling to get places and even the bloody food is different."

She pulled out her purse and pulled out a glowing ball.

"What's that?"

She cut the ball open.

"Zap fruit. It's not even from bloody earth and the mandy's eat it."

I looked at the fruit as it slowly shifted color.

"I'm going to try a bite."

"Bruce don't you dare, it can't possibly be safe."

I pulled out a spoon and looked at the cut up half, there was a large pit and I took a spoonful of the fruit. I took a bite and blinked.

"It pops in your mouth."

My wife looked at me in horror.

"Oh my god, you're going to die. They bloody poisoned you, those."

I took another bite and chewed it, taking in the popping sensation.

"It's actually not bad, tastes a bit like a mixture of Watermelon and Oranges."

My wife shook her head as I took another bite.

"What? It's actually pretty good and you get used to the popping...might be worth having again love."

She shook her head as I took out a knife. I was surprised to find out that I could spread the fruit on my toast like butter and, as I took more bites, I closed my eyes.

"Saw a flying cat?"

My sheila nodded.

"Yesn that's owned by the Ness family, they're from London...I think the whole thing's bizarre but they're cockneys, so what did you expect."

"I didn't know that nonsense was real love...I always thought it was something they made up for in children's books from the motherland you know."

My girl put her hand on mine.

"You said it, right? Were in the nevernever now, different rules. Wish I could go home but there's no home to go back to."

I squeezed her hand.

"We will make a new one, a better one."

 

[Cherico]

Brian Mc Clain



My wife hugged me when I got back to... well, not our home but our living quarters. She had a meal, cooked a simple stew made out of roo. Not the reds of course, Mandy's were protective of their reds, but one of the greys I think.

"Glad you got here safely."

"Glad to be back love."

She looked at me.

"You're worried?"

"I'm fine."

"No Brian...when you worry about things you don't use as much slang, I notice these things."

"Well there's a war going on."

She let out a breath.

"That's true but...I think it's something more."

I took another bite of bread.

"Billy's acting odd."

My wife nodded.

"Well he's been drafted into fighting in this damned war, that's going to change things about isn't it?"

I thought about it.

"No, not odd like that. look, I was on the front, I saw things. Folks, normal ones, they would hesitate to pull a trigger and, after they killed a man, it would shake you up."

"I will talk to billy, help get his spirits up."

"No, its not like that, Billy was just fine. He buried the body of a dead Jap with no problem."

"So our boy has some tougher stuff in him."

I felt a sense of frustration.

"That wasn't tougher stuff. He just wasn't affected by it, the horror of it all. Back during the war, only three people who could just shrug that kind of nonsense off like it was nothing. Veterans, folks who had a screw loose and....mandy's."

My wife looked up.

"What?"

"It's not that they're bad people but they're all about their rules, their code you know. They could be the nicest blokes you ever met but put them in a uniform, tell 'em to kill? And they would kill, no hesitation, no problems. First time every time, it gave a lot of blokes the creeps."

My wife looked around.

"It's not just the blokes Bruce...The Sheilas, the Mandy ones, they don't act like normal Sheilas, don't think like normal Sheilas."

I stared at her.

"I'm sorry honey but can you explain?"

She took a bite of her own bread and closed her eyes.

"Back home in Darwin...it's hard to explain but even if you didn't like a sheila, you knew that there was a sisterhood of sorts you know? Even if you didn't like each other, you were still one of the girls."

"Mandy girls aren't like that?"

"Not at all. They're colder than normal girls, they don't try to see your side of the story. It's all facts, it's all results, they don't have that compassion that normal sheilas have..."

She sighed.

"And that's not all. Nothing here seems right, people will just walk on the bloody walls or on the ceiling to get places and even the bloody food is different."

She pulled out her purse and pulled out a glowing ball.

"What's that?"

She cut the ball open.

"Zap fruit. It's not even from bloody earth and the mandy's eat it."

I looked at the fruit as it slowly shifted color.

"I'm going to try a bite."

"Bruce don't you dare, it can't possibly be safe."

I pulled out a spoon and looked at the cut up half, there was a large pit and I took a spoonful of the fruit. I took a bite and blinked.

"It pops in your mouth."

My wife looked at me in horror.

"Oh my god, you're going to die. They bloody poisoned you, those."

I took another bite and chewed it, taking in the popping sensation.

"It's actually not bad, tastes a bit like a mixture of Watermelon and Oranges."

My wife shook her head as I took another bite.

"What? It's actually pretty good and you get used to the popping...might be worth having again love."

She shook her head as I took out a knife. I was surprised to find out that I could spread the fruit on my toast like butter and, as I took more bites, I closed my eyes.

"Saw a flying cat?"

My sheila nodded.

"Yesn that's owned by the Ness family, they're from London...I think the whole thing's bizarre but they're cockneys, so what did you expect."

"I didn't know that nonsense was real love...I always thought it was something they made up for in children's books from the motherland you know."

My girl put her hand on mine.

"You said it, right? Were in the nevernever now, different rules. Wish I could go home but there's no home to go back to."

I squeezed her hand.

"We will make a new one, a better one."

 

[Cherico]

Japanese Text book



Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, the black prince, brought great shame and dishonor to both the Japanese nation and its people. It is difficult to talk about such shameful matters but it is important that we learn about such a horrid man, to understand why Japan created the system of checks and balances it has today and how to recognize men with evil intentions so we can prevent them from getting power and bringing another disaster to our people.

Japan, before the Black Prince tainted our country's honor and reputation, was an enlightened and innocent country. We understood the great changes that magic and western technology had brought into the world and adapted to it. However, all around us, we noticed that our Asian brothers were in either states of barbarism or states of bondage. So we decided to use our power to help others.

When Korea was in a state of chaos, the Korean royal family invited us in to re-establish order in their country. We did more than that, we brought the light and wonder of civilization back into korea. As china collapsed we tried our best to save as many Chinese civilians from their disorganized collapse. And, of course, even then we understood the darkness that laid inside the Russian heart and regrettably were forced to go to war to defend both ourselves and our brother countries from their evil.

But, in our zeal to improve the world, we overlooked the darkness that existed in our own nation. we were a naïve country back then and didn't understand that evil men could corrupt even the purest of intentions. Japan unfortunately had to learn this lesson the hard way and we are teaching you today so that this will never happen again.

The black prince was born in 1887, the 8th son of a prince and a lady. He grew up in a life of priviledge and wealth but, even as a child, this was not enough for him and he screamed for ever more. He learned how to mask his evil intentions and nature from other people and managed to trick the ailing emperor Meji into giving him the undeserved honor to start a new branch of the imperial family.

But this great and supreme honor was not enough for him, so he schemed with other evil men to corrupt and subvert the government to his own ends. Thus he and others started using dirty tactics like blackmail, threats and even assassination to eliminate those that stood between him and power. He did his best to hide the truth of his nature and actions from his Nephew, Emperor Hirohito.

But Hirohito, as isolated from the truth of what was happening to his country as most of his fellow countrymen, started to suspect his uncle's ill intentions. He decided to entrust his uncle with a command, in hopes that it would teach him responsibility and bring him back on the path of righteousness.

He was Naïve and the innocent people of china paid the price for that naivety. The black prince saw this command not as a lesson but a chance to finally act out his sadism and freely express his evil nature in safety. So he gathered an army of the worst souls in Japan and engaged in a campaign of senseless slaughter.

He tried to hide his evil and depravity but, slowly, the people of Japan were starting to figure out the true nature of the black prince and his evil actions. Knowing that the time of judgement was coming upon them, the black prince and his evil conspirators looked for a distraction. They pushed the powers around them, trying to sow the seeds of discord between japan and other nations.

As their desperation grew, their actions grew in their depravity until they were left with war as the only viable way to escape punishment for their actions. The black prince's warped mind thought he could earn forgiveness with conquest and so he plotted the sneak attack on pearl harbor, the Darwin Massacre and the numerous other atrocities that he forced our military to commit.

1.8 million Japanese people would die because of the Black Prince's mad grab for power. Our nation's reputation will be forever tarnished by his horrid actions and, because of what he did, our land was occupied by outside nations. Thankfully the Japanese people were lucky, the victorious allies did not want to destroy us but to make sure that men like the Black Prince would never led our people astray ever again.

This is why we have an independent judiciary. This is why we have a separation of powers. And this is why the Japanese self defense force is not allowed to go into politics. It took a lot of work to undo the damage that the Black Prince did to our nation, to once again be accepted as one of the righteous nations of the earth.

But we did that hard work and, when the most evil nation that humanity has ever known destroyed the world, we stood by our allies and we were rewarded for our just actions with our own world.

Japan is now blessed with all the resources and land it could ever want and need. you, the children of Japan, will enjoy this bounty but it is also up to you to keep your eyes open and make sure that another Black Prince does not take power and destroy our nation again.

 

[Cherico]

Jack Churchill



"You are under orders to make sure the princess does not do anything risky."

This was the sentence that started my life as a royal body guard.

"You do know of my reputation right?"

I was a well known madman.

"Yes, look our other plans to rein the princess in have all failed. The woman has a gift for sneaking past the royal guards which she did and."

"Snuck into London and helped dig people out of the rubble caused by fritz's blitz."

The man looked at me with disdain.

"The crown princess shouldn't be rummaging through the rubble, that matter should be left in other hands."

I mentally marked down the man as a ponce and let him continue.

"So we found out she had a fancy for that greek fellow."

"Prince Phillip."

He waved me off.

"And thought that, maybe an early marriage would rein in her wild impulses. instead this happens."

He pulled out a news paper I looked at the head line 'Princess Elisabeth kills 5 german commandos.'

She sat on top of her loyal corgie, a sword reached high into the sky, her husband held onto her with one arm and the other held a tommy gun in the air.

"This, this bloody event just ruins the royal reputation. This woman is supposed to be our queen some day. What kind of Queen kills commandos?"

I looked him straight in the eye.

"A Scottish one."

The man turned a delightful shade of purple, the kind of purple me great aunt's rug was made out of back in the days when parliament sold the royal color to pay off its war debts.

"That is besides the fact. My plan is simple, you are quite simply mad, the princess likewise is no doubt also mad, therefore I think it likely that your madness will counteract one another."

The man had, quite simply put, tempted fate. It was my duty as a gentleman to make sure he paid lady fate her fair due.

"I see your point."

I was led into another room where the princess waited. She looked at me with appraisal, her Corgie Dookie laid on her lap on his back as she rubbed his belly, the dog's eyes were closed and his tongue was out.

"I heard there's been quite a bit of nonsense going around these parts."

she continued to lovingly stroke her dog.

"World's full of nonsense. it's the war I'm afraid."

I looked her in the eye.

"Technically I am supposed to put an end to it but the man who gave me the order was very rude. So, If there's any nonsense about, I want in."

She looked at me and then smiled. The room went cold, the fire that had lit the room went out and I saw a strange glow. I looked up and saw a certificate of graduation from compass academy, then I saw other photos, of her next to the old bird, and an award as valedictorian.

"So....what made the king let his daughter go to a yankee school?"

She smiled and continued to rub the dog's belly.

"No one honestly thought I would be in line to inherit. I mean my uncle ran off with a divorcee, no one saw that one coming, and when I was seven I pestered my father to learn the mystic arts. He thought that forcing me to choose between leaving England for 3 years or staying would make me drop the subject."

I nodded. Above her fire place I noticed a sword.

"Oh you noticed Excalibur? not the original of course. It was my gift for graduating at the top of my class, worked very hard for it actually."

"I bet you did, your highness."

She looked at me.

"You wouldn't lie to a member of the royal family, would you?"

"Of course not miss."

"Good then grab some weapons the Germans have thrown a party and a few of our boys have unfortunately gotten stuck there."

My throat was dry.

"Really?"

"They're absolutely horrid hosts. I mean the food, the music, the ambiance, all of it is quite lacking. And anyways all of them have been away from home for a bit too long."

She snapped her fingers and the dog rolled around and yawned. He landed on the ground and floofed out.

"Dookie….we're going to crash a party."

The dog slumped on the ground.

"reh."

The princess gave him a look and the dog grudgingly got up and followed her, I did the same some. Guards raised their rifles as she passed, she glared at them and they walked away. This continued until we got into a car.

"Philip."

The man hugged her and opened the car, she sat next to him while I took a seat in the back.

"Who's the fellow?"

"A new recruit for the mission."

Her husband nodded.

"Do you think this is a good idea? I mean it's awfully dangerous."

The princess turned her head.

"January 9th is Caterday is it not?"

Phil nodded.

"Yes, it's where the east end celebrates the king of cats and people put on Cat ears, put out milk for strays, make cat treats and other nonsense."

"I assure you Philip, if we pull this off, I would love to celebrate Caterday with you, ears and all."

The man raised a finger as if deep in thought.

"Well, my concerns have been addressed."

We continued onwards until we were outside of town. Philip dragged a box out of the trunk as a selection of rough looking men surrounded us, then an airship landed.

"Think you can pull it off?"

"With ease gentlemen."

The queen pulled a music box out of her pocket and we all got aboard. She placed the music box on the ground and went into a different room. I said nothing as the other men leaned against the walls. The Princess's consort for his part brought out a tommy gun and started loading it.

The music played and I felt the world tilt. When it was finished the princess came out in full armor, she lowered the visor and kicked open a door.

"Hmm Germany...."

She lifted a finger and I looked down at the POW camp below us.

"Dreadful weather. Well waste not, want not."

The jewelry on her armor glowed a bright blue as her hands moved then it started raining and then snowing. We stood there for hours, waiting.

"Dookie...Come boy there's work to be done."

The dog barked and grew to the size of a horse. She got on the creature's back and then jumped out the door. I looked at her husband in horror.

"Well, best to follow her."

He opened his large box and brought out carpets, lots of flying carpets, we got on them and I followed them to the ground. Once we got there we proceded to cut up Jerries with guns and other odds and ends.

They didn't expect us, so we were able to make short work of the guards. With that done we gathered the POWs and got them onto the airship.

I was, of course, fired for the whole mess. But that was what it was like, working for the queen during the war.
​

 

[Cherico]

Brian Mc Clain



With the arrival of a fresh new day I got to work. Kathrine really didn't need my help as a shopkeep but I knew a little about cars and volunteered to help maintain the trucks, cars and growing fleet of hastily made armored trucks. It was hard work but I got paid decent quid for it. I took some quid out of the bank and went to a bar to celebrate my new job.

The bar was small and owned by a nice mandy family, I ordered a beer and sat down.

"Brian? Is that you?"

I looked up and barely kept myself from gasping.

"Jack! Bloody hell mate it's been forever and a day."

I waved him over and he took a seat at my table.

"It's been forever mate. How are things going in Darwin."

He grimaced as if remembering some thing.

"Before, you know, the war and all."

I shrugged.

"After you left I went into curios, sold them to the outside world, made a good living. And how are you doing Jack? haven't seen or heard from you since you and your Sheila left town."

Jack closed his eyes.

"It was rough those early years, the two of us wandering the outback looking for work. Eventually I got lucky though, found a rancher that was looking for someone to manage his roo's."

I nodded.

"So good work?"

"Yeah, eventually I got enough quid to buy my own farm. These days I grow Zap fruit, me and the miss's have one of the biggest ranches outside of Algeria."

I stared at him.

"Never heard of the stuff before the war."

Jack shrugged.

"It's a French thing, mostly, they put it on their toast, in candy and desserts and the like. But for the most part it's a breky thing with them."

"Can you tell me more?"

Jack beamed.

"They're a pain in the arse to grow. Can't be too wet because they're a desert plants and they can only be grown on a ley line because they use 'em for sustenance and such. The French discovered that the bloody things grow like weeds in the sahara and, since they own Algeria..."

"They grew a lot."

"Biggest export to the mother land, their full of vitamins, taste great."

"Like a mixture of Water mellon and."

"Oranges, I know. And kids love the way they pop in your mouth and the fact that they glow. They also keep really well and the fruit just spreads like butter. There are other places that grow Zap fruit. The yanks grow 'em in New mexico and Arizona and we grow em in the outback but."

"Desert and leylines."

I smiled at him.

"You lost weight mate."

He nodded.

"Yeah I know, used to be fat Jack. Now I'm almost bloody healthy."

"Wife's doing?"

"Keeps me on burner when I get a little too heavy, makes sure I eat right, and of course farming's pretty physical, so I get lots of exercise."

I smiled at him.

"Glad you're doing well, I'm sorry things."

Jack waved me off.

"None of that Nonsense Brian. You were the only mate who had me back when I came back with Gwen. Everyone else considered it a bloody scandal, said I was trash and all that. You stood up for me."

"For all the good it did."

The old feelings of guilt returned.

"None of that Brian, you were a good mate."

I smiled at him.

"So what's it like being married to a mandy."

Jack lifted an eyebrow.

"Don't think Gwen counts as a Mandy she's a yank."

"Well then what's it like being married to a witch."

He motioned for my drink and I let him have my brew. He took a sip.

"Fair."

"What?"

"Fair, Gwen's always been fair with me. now I'm not going to lie a witch can come off as bossy and pushy, especially at first, but they don't play games. They have their little rules that you have to follow or they will get mad of course."

"Sounds like a pain."

"Like your Sheila doesn't do the same thing?"

"Point taken."

"so anyways they have their little rules but they tell yah up front what those rules are and they don't change on you. I dated a few other sheilas and it was always so bloody exhausting, like nothing was ever bloody good enough."

"To be fair you dated a lot of crazy bints Jack."

"Fair Dinkum, but with Gwen, as long as I'm following through on her little code, then things are right as rain."

"Wife says the mandy's are cold."

Jack shrugged.

"They kind of are, but they're fair and, in the end, I kind of prefer that."

I nodded.

"To each his own mate."

He took another sip.

"Well I best buy you a beer to make up for the one I stole from you."

"Jack it's no problem."

He waved me off.

"No fair's fair mate, and we have some catching up to do."
​

 

[Cherico]

Brian Mc Clain


"So what brings you to the bar Jack?"

He slowly sipped his brew.

"Business, I live further south. I come up here to sell Zap fruit."

I blinked.

"I had one of those, they taste like a mixture of water melon and oranges."

Jack nodded.

"I know, I make the things. When I was starting out all we could afford was land in the desert, only things that grow there is Zap fruit, so me and the misses would grow them and sell them up here."

He paused.

"We were going to talk to someone who was going to organize something with the other Zap fruit growers. Thought he died during the invasion but apparently he got out just in time."

"What do they look like?"

Jack leaned back.

"Creepy."

I blinked.

"What?"

"Imagine a grotesque pile of pure white bone sprouting from the ground. Now imagine glowing little orbs, growing out of what looks like outstretched clawed hands."

He paused.

"The plants look creepy and ugly as hell but the fruits are actually pretty tasty. The plants produce fruit four times a year and they grow great in deserts and don't require watering and they're surprisingly easy to harvest too."

The door opened and a man walked in with a cat floating next to him. He looked around the bar and sighed as he walked up to Jack and held out his hand.

"Jack."

"Stanly."

He had an accent.

"From London?"

"You can take the boy out the east end but you can't take the east end out of the boy, name's Stanly."

He shook our hands, and I took that moment to get the measure of the bloke. His suit was shabby, not dirty but a kind of well worn kind of shabbiness that comes with the passage of time. He wore a simple tweed hat that matched his brown suit. his tie, which was also brown, was also worn and shabby.

His skin was pink and his nose was sunburned and peeling.

"What brings you to Australia?"

He smiled and sat down, he opened up a suit case as his cat floated down to his leg, moving its head as if on the lookout for trouble.

He placed two cue balls on the table.

"Look at these two cue balls. One of them is made out of Ivory and one of them is made out of Zap tree wood, so which one is made out of actual Ivory, tell me? Cant tell the difference? That's because there isn't any. Ivory is made out of this stuff called Dentin, it's in teeth, it's in tusks and Zap tree wood is basically made out of the stuff."

He pauses.

"You are looking at the tree that killed the Ivory market. In the old days you had to go to Africa, kill an elephant and get their tusks to get half way decent Ivory. The Zap fruit tree destroyed the old Ivory trade. Why go all the way into the bush when you can just grow a whole tree of the damned stuff in your colonies. So people stopped using elephant ivory and switched wholesale to zapwood tree. Only people who still buy elephant ivory are the Chinese and that's as an impotence remedy."

"Right. Back to it, Zap wood trees can't stand too much moisture, they either die or won't grow and you have to grow them on a line, they're finicky that way. There are only three countries on earth that grow the blooming things, The yanks in Arizona and New Mexico, the French in Algeria and Australia. If you haven't heard of the Australian zap wood trees it's because it's mainly grown in western Australia."

He lights a cigarette.

"In a little patch of desert to the northeast of Perth. So, the French were the first to get into the Zap wood trade. Some French bloke walks into compass, asks if Merlin has anything of interest and then asks nicely for a sample and gets it. Man's name was Auclair and if that name rings a bell then you know they're a big deal. One of the richest families in the French empire."

He takes a deep drag.

"So the market for Ivory crashes and this leaves the bloody French with a near monopoly. Well, we can't have that, so we brits go to compass and also ask nicely for some Zap wood tree and then have an absolute devil of a time finding a place where it can grow."

"Australia."

"Yep, so they start growing it in western Australia and Perth, which used to be nothing, became the port where pretty much the entire empire's supply of Zap wood got exported to the outside world. It's the industry that built that city."

"Sounds like a big deal."

"It is. So Ivory gets used to make piano keys, billiard balls, statues, chests, all sorts of things and people discover more ways to use it and demand goes up. And that little portion of desert in western Australia simply isn't enough any more and the war? Wars made it worse but Australia has other deserts, including one that bloody surrounds Alice springs."

"And that's why you're here in Australia?"

"Got it in one, I work for the billiard supply company in Manchester. We're a new company trying to make it into the big leagues and the other blokes? They're leaning hard on current Zap wood tree producers not to sell to us."

"Isn't that illegal?"

"Lots of things are illegal but happen anyways, so we decide to bypass that whole mess and get on the ground floor of a brand new Zap wood tree industry in the northern territory. It would have turned out brilliantly too, if the Japanese hadn't tossed the whole deal into the rubbish bin."

He leaned back.

"Missed Caterday because of this bloody war."

"Caterday?"

"Oi, it's a day were the whole east end gets together to celebrate tommy ward and his magical cat Grimalkin, the first rhyming cat."

He put his hand on his cat's head.

"Oh, and what's it like?"

"People put on cat ears, make kitty shaped treats and have a parade but honestly it's mostly an excuse to get drunk."

"So like any other holiday then."

He nodded at my statement.

"Pretty much."
​

 

[Cherico]

Brian Mc Clain


"So how's the industry doing?"

Jack was trying to be diplomatic, it made sense to get along with your future business partners.

"Actually pretty well, the war has increased the demand for a good game of billiards of all varieties but I think what you really want to know about is the Ivory trade."

He pulled out a slip of paper.

"So, the Ivory trade is currently worth around a 240 million pounds a year, down from what it used to be. The French dominate the industry and make around 192 million pounds a year from Algeria's Zap wood tree farms."

My eyes widened.

"They control 80% of the worlds Ivory trade, this is one of the reasons why the French go out of their way to settle native French men in Algeria, brought in the Christian arabs during the great exodus and why they stomped the berbers whenever they felt they were getting uppity. Algeria is their most profitable colony which may be why they decided to retreat there when the jerry's invaded."

He sighed.

"We, the british empire, control 15% of the Ivory trade so that's around 36 million pounds coming out of Australia. A sizable amount but no where near French level of control. Finally you have the yanks, they control 4% of the trade and make around 9.6 million pounds a year, but the yanks? They're a nonfactor, their producers pretty much just sell to the domestic market. They don't really export which means your biggest competitors are the French."

"Figures."

"That's the long and short of it. Now as a Zap wood tree producer you don't just make money off the wood but off the fruit too, and as you know that can bring in some pound notes too."

He leaned back.

"So, Jacky boy, that amount of Zap wood tree, you still good for it?"

Jack nodded.

"Of course."

"Right...so I've been talking to a couple of the other business men and the government and we got ourselves a plan."

Jack leaned in.

"Can't tell you because it's state secrets and all that but, once the Japs are out of the picture, I still want that bloody Zap wood, you understand."

"Can't go home empty handed?"

"Jacky boy, I missed Caterday for this bloody mess, you better believe I'm not going to let go of that bloody wood. That said they're looking for a few volunteers to spot out the Japanese positions and take something out."

I leaned in.

"Take what out?"

Stanly brought out a map.

"This here? It's the water treatment center, turns salt water into fresh, if that goes the city of Darwin runs out of water."

I stared at the building.

"I used to live close to it."

"You thinking about volunteering?"

I thought about it.

"I'm in."

"Good, once that thing blows no more water for the japs and then our friends can stay thirsty."

It was risky but I was rather bored of the motorpool and wanted something to do. And, who knows, it might be a bit of fun or I might die but honestly dying in a fight sounded better than dying in me bed. At least it was more dignified.

 

[Cherico]

Magical beasts

Joan Baran


The Seven magical creatures of earth, or at least the ones capable of magic, are humans, Dogs, Cats, Owls, Ravens, Dolfins and whales. But just because a beast has a soul it doesn't mean it will receive the same abilities and power that others receive, especially when a creature is limited by the power of its soul and its mental capacity.

The first creature capable of magic is man. Because the human race is capable of true reason and moral capability they are the only species on the planet capable of practicing magic as the ancient phenix did. Because life is so rare in the galaxy we are the only known species capable of true magic with that great races demise.

The Next species I will talk about is whales. They are capable of some magic ability and it is true that the French did imbue a white wale with magical might during the napoleonic wars. But this proved to be an absolute disaster. The creature could not be controlled and would spend the rest of its life hunting whaling ships, transports and war ships of all sides with out any discrimination.

It took an international group of ships led by captain Ahab to finally slay the whale and this effort would result in his own death. It is because of the white wale incident that it is against international law to awaken whales.

The next race are dolphins, This was attempted a few times in south America. Dolphins, when awakened, gained the ability to change their shape and species. However the result had a very alien mindset and, once again, could not be controlled by their attempted masters. The resulting creatures could be kind or cruel on a whim and could become violent at any moment. It was for those reasons that awakening dolphins Is like wise illegal.

Owls and Ravens, the next races I will speak of, have the same behavior at awakening as they become bonded familars of their owners. They comprehend and obey their masters, acting almost as an extension of them. Their masters can also see through their familiar's eyes. Because of this gifting a Crow or an owl familiar to the blind is a common practice in lands that allow the practice of magic. But these creatures were also used as spies and servants in times of war and otherwise.

The French Raven core, started by Napoleon, used their beast's gifts well, helping the French win more then one battle. They are in fact still used for this purpose by multiple governments to this day. The British and their colonies use owls for this purpose, mostly to be contrary.

The next race I will talk about are dogs. The germans were the first to use awakened dogs in warfare, under Gerhard von Scharnhorst of the Prussian army. He created his Teufel Hunde or devil dogs as a way to even the odds against Napoleon's elite vanguard unit which was composed solely of magic users.

This had limited success but it was enough that they became a part of the Prussian military. This spread to other militaries across the globe. Teuful hunde or devil dogs come in five main flavors, winter, spring, summer, autum and mount.

All devil dogs have a protective aura, the ability to walk on any surface and a third power. Most breeds of dog gain a breath weapon based on their season, ice for winter, dust and stone for spring, fire for summer and wind for autum. Some breeds of dogs, most famously the corgie, grow into large mounts for their owners. This feature is also shared by saint bernards and other herding dogs.

Winter dogs were adapted by quite a few fire departments. Autum and Spring dogs were widely used by various military groups and swat units. The mount breeds became popular amongst more wealthy individuals. But summer dogs, the original devil dogs, were rare outside of germany.

This was because the dog's ability to breath fire made them an obvious fire hazard and it took careful training to make sure the dogs were not a danger to themselves, others and everything else. During world war two summer dogs or devil dogs would be intrinsically linked with the SS in the imagination of the world community. Their use in several atrocities, like the bordeaux massacre, forever tainted their image and, after the war, the dogs were put to death by the victorious allies.

Turning to the last race that can use magic we find the common house cat. The rhyming cats have a reputation in media for being loyal protectors, especially in England. It is thought by some that they can cast magic like a human. Truthfully they are mostly limited to the creation of force fields of various size and shapes.

However they do have mana and, with an enchanted collar, they can aid their masters with various spells if properly trained, giving the illusion that they can do more.

With this said different cultures use guardian beasts differently.

Americans tend to have an adversion to giving non sentient creatures magic and the practice is highly regulated and rare. The british love their enchanted cats and give their owners tax breaks, loyal mounted dogs are loved by the royal family, winter dogs are used by firefighters and Owls are used in the military and by the blind. However summer dogs are illegal to own in the country and are heavily mentally corollated with the Nazis.

In japan the Shinto priests campaigned for a monopoly over rhyming cats and were able to receive it, the military likewise campaigned for a monopoly over enchanted dogs with summer dogs being a favorite, especially for the black prince. After the war the reputation of devil dogs in japan was irreparably tainted with their association with the lost war. Rhyming cats however were not involved in the war and mostly just protected Japan's historic temples from bombing.

Koreans for their part prefered to use enchanted birds and they remain popular pets there. The Chinese share America's apprehension with enchanted beasts and strictly regulates the trade.

Culture.

The british holiday of Caterday was created in honor of Tomas ward and his enchanted cat after his death in 1840 in the east end. The holiday remained a purely east end tradition until world war 2. With rhyming cats in the news for their heroic defense of their city the tradition of Caterday spread to the rest of London and then to the rest of great britain. It was then adopted by various commonwealth countries like New Zealand, Australia and south Africa. After world war two the Japanese adopted Caterday but it is celebrated very differently than in the commonwealth.

In the commonwealth Caterday is a celebration of cats where people wear cat ears, eat cat shaped treats, drink alcohol, and give gifts to their house cats.

In Japan Caterday was adopted by the national confectioners association as a paired holiday to valentines day. In japan on Valentines day women give chocolate to men as an expression of love, friendship, courtesy or just obligation. The Japanese wanted a holiday where the opposite occurred. Having heard about Caterday by british occupation troops they decided to make things fair by having Caterday be a romantic holiday like Valentines day.

On January 9th men will give chocolates to the women they like and on february 14th girls will return the favor. Japanese Caterday likewise has the tradition of wearing cat ears and cat treats and it is tradition for young men in love to go to a shrine and pay respects to the shrine cat to gain luck in their efforts to gain love. The british version of the holiday simply does not have the romantic aspects that Japanese Caterday has and commonwealth countries often are left perplexed about romantic films centered around the holiday.

Enchanted birds too have a holiday, though it is only practiced in Brazil, this is called all Owls day. The holiday is celebrated on November 15th and it honors the day when Brazil's magic community was able to foil a military coup against the royal family. Using their owl familiars to pass messages and spy on the conspirators the magi were able to foil their plans and save the country.

For this action a national holiday was declared. All owls day is celebrated with a parade where men and women dress up like owls. Children hold dolls that represent the men who attempted the coup at the end of the parade the dolls are hung and the children set them on fire.

Devil Dogs used to have a holiday on May 2nd called Devil dog's day that represented their use and successful defense of Berlin in the famous May siege but that holiday is no longer celebrated due to its deep association with the Nazi regime.

 

[Cherico]

Brian Mc Clain


"No talking."

Five Carpets, five bombs, five maps and two words.

The bombs were simple time bombs as a few of the people back in Kathrine had experience with explosives. At first I thought these were explosive experts from the war but that turned out not to be the case. There was commercial mining in the Outback and a few of the boys used that bit of knowhow to make our bombs.

We flew in silence, low to the ground in the darkness, until we got close to the northern coast and then waited until we got to the desal plant. I remembered for a moment going there with my mates when I was younger. We would jump the fence, have a few brews and just explore the place.

We landed on the rooftop and our leader brought out some lock picks. I shook my head and just turned the doorknob. He stared at me as I whispered.

"They never lock that door."

We went inside and my heart beat a little faster, it reminded me of my time spent on the western front, wandering no man's land at night and wondering if tonight was the night I was going to die. We crept down into the plant and found it to be completely dark.

The five of us separated and looked at our maps with enchanted goggles. I crept to my portion of the plant on the north east side towards the area that took in the sea water. I felt a sense of bloody nerves take over as I crept through the darkness, there wasn't an ounce of sound as I crawled downstairs.

It was bloody creepy there in the dark, alone. I expected guards, maybe not a lot of them but someone or something. Instead there was more darkness and silence, I got down into the basement level without a bloody fight and then I went through the doors of the plant until I finally got to the main pipes.

When I got to the pipes I took off my pack and brought out the homemade bombs, all of them used clocks.

"Three bloody hours."

There were seven main pipes and over 30 bombs because there's no kill quite like overkill mate. I set them up along the pipes and pressed the buttons and then I crept up to the roof. I didn't know if the others had been caught or were dead, If I had been lucky or not. I took a deep breath and opened the door to find the other 4 men waiting for me.

They motioned in the darkness and we got on our carpets, the five of us were silent as we flew in the night.

"There wasn't any one there."

Stanley the cockney was the one who broke the silence, I looked at the others and they nodded. One of them, a bloke I didn't know, spoke up.

"Did they even know where the city got its water from?"

We shrugged.

"Because, if the Japs didn't know where the city got its water from, why would they protect the plant?"

"Someone would have told them in the city."

The bloke nodded.

"Don't mean to be rude but did they actually talk to anyone before they wrecked shop?"

The five of us were silent deep in thought.

"So what you're saying is that we weren't in any danger at all?"

The bloke shrugged.

"I'm not saying that, I'm just saying that, if they killed the city before they knew it, then they're not going to know what needs to be protected and such and if you don't know that then why send guards?"

I decided to change the subject.

"How long will it take for them to run out of water?"

The bloke sighed.

"24 hours before the city's tap runs out. if they're smart they stocked up on water and with rationing they might last months. If they didn't then they're going to have a real hard time."

"by the way how are we keeping them from just steam rolling us?"

The bloke smiled.

"Illusions and a little space manipulation. Every time they come after us we take pot shots at them, they give a little chase and then end up exactly where they started."

"And that works?"

"Yes, takes a lot of people to pull off. Every now and then their mages manage to dispel them but they use a weaker kind of magic than we can so we just kind of brute force things out as best we can. Some times we lose people but for the most part it works out."

"Must be the best illusion ever."

"Nah, reward for best illusion goes to the old bird."

"Really? what did he do?"

"Made the entire country of Denmark think they lived in a world of darkness and silence for seven months...Danes are still kind of mad about the whole thing, they lost Greenland which became Israel."

"Any way we could do something like that?"

The bloke shook his head.

"Merlin tapped every leyline and nexus in Denmark to pull off that stunt, and he was workin' against people who didn't have any magical defenses. Nah, you can't do things like that any more. Every country on the planet has some kind of defense or a magi who can shut something like that done."

He paused.

"It was a simple spell done on a massive scale, world's smaller now."

I looked ahead.

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

"Hell if I know sir."
​

 

[Cherico]

Brian Mc Clain

I suppose it was too much to ask that the japs kindly give up and go home after we turned off the spigot but, from what I hear, now they were trying to drive their army south.

"'Nother airship."

Billy's words echoed in our house. When I first got to Kathrine I wondered if the home we were at was the largest one in the city, if they were rich enough to have walls that made the place look like a small mountain, but that turned out not to be the case. The mandy's built their homes to be large and massive. The empty small town inside of the walls was not the exception but the rule.

Personally it seemed just rather wasteful to me to have so much space and barely use any of it, but that was their way and it gave them an illusion of wealth and grandness. After talking to Jack I found out the truth of it as most mandy's, far from being wealthy, were just getting by.

"Haven't seen that many airships in my life."

Billy looked at the ship as it landed and offloaded more mandy's, more equipment, more guns.

"Because we destroyed all of the airship companies."

I rolled my eyes at my son's statement.

"Don't go on about that nonsense Billy. The reason they got rid of em was because they weren't safe. why, the Hindenburg."

"The Hindenburg used non alchemically treated hydrogen. It didn't have any of the magical safety features that were a part of the standard practices and procedures of the Monroe pact airships. Airships at that point had been doing cross atlantic and pacific travel for close to a hundred years dad. There were companies that were incredibly profitable and then, suddenly, after the Hindenburg all of them were forcibly closed down. Despite a safety record that beat out both regular ships and trains."

I blinked.

"But the hindenburg killed almost everyone abord."

"It was made by a german airship company that didn't have enough magi to make them properly anymore. What really happened dad, was that the empire saw a chance to destroy all of the airship companies all at once."

"And why would we do that?"

"Because they made our blockades practically useless during the great war. The silver line alone probably added months to the jerry's war effort. They took the empires greatest strength and ignored it and had been doing so for generations. It helped that there were people with interests that coincided with ours. The trains and shipping companies wanted them out of the market, the new airplane companies wanted them gone, we just used every newspaper we had and caused a panic to eliminate them. The oil and car companies did some thing similar to the trolley companies in the states."

"So these airships are?"

"The survivors of the purge da, old things that were just left in the outback to rot when the laws changed and we drove 'em all out of business."

He got up and stretched.

"Got a mission tonight with the others."

He looked at me.

"You going to be ok da?"

"Bloody hell boy, I should be asking you the same thing. I just work with the bloody motorpool…"

I paused.

"Speaking of which, how is it out there?"

"It's been about a month since you cut them off from the water."

"Thought that would have killed em."

Billy sighed.

"Command thinks they prepared for that, filled the bath tubs, did some rationing, had their magi make the salt water drinkable, that sort of thing."

"So it was all useless then."

"No da, I've been out there. The enemy's thinner now, more hungry and more sloppy. We have been getting more kills, wearing them down and such. They still fight like demons but there's a listlessness to them that they didn't have when they first came here."

I clenched my hands.

"Feel kind of helpless."

"Battles are won with blood and iron. But wars are won with food and water."

I blinked.

"And that's?"

"An old phenix saying. I think it was coined by general One Eye, after the algebra wars."

I blinked.

"What?"

"The algebra wars. When the phenix discovered algebra it touched off a series of religious wars that killed millions of people."

I stared at him.

"Millions of people died over bloody math?"

My son stared at me.

"How many people died because the serbians bombed a hotel?"

I lifted a finger.

"Good point. Let's change the subject. Lots of cars have been in lately, look like a bloody mess, trucks, taxis. Where are we getting the bloody oil for 'em all?"

Billy took a sip of water.

"Bio diesel."

"And that's a magic thing?"

"Well, you saw those big tanks of water? They're filled to the brim with algae. Once the algae is finished growing it's put in another part of the house and they use magic to process it and turn it into petrol. It's one of Australia's biggest export, Yanks, Brazilians and Israelis do it too. You just need some magi to set it all up and keep it running."

I closed my eyes.

"So how did all that come about then?"

"You really want to know da?"

"Yes."

Billy looked at me strangly.

"Why? You never much cared about this stuff before. It was always rugby or criket or some other sport."

"I'm trying to get closer to you boy, stop being so cheeky."

My son opened the book.

"Well, it starts in America. There was this company called standard oil, owned by this fella named John D. Rockafeller."

"Never heard of em."

My son nodded.

"There's a reason for that. Well, anyways, he had a monopoly on all the oil companies in the united states. Man was ruthless, had a bunch of judges, and politicians in his pocket. He destroyed his rivals and he was hard on his employees."

"Sounds like a bad man."

"One of the worst. Well he had labor problems and used these thugs called the pinkertons to do his dirty work. They would spy on his workers, rough 'em up and even kill them."

I frowned.

"Something like that would have brought in the local seven to handle that kind of nonsense."

"Yanks don't have sevens to kill the bad sorts in the government Da."

"Well, they should."

"Can I continue?"

I sighed.

"Fine."

"So, the workers get fed up and they have a general strike. Whole country shuts down because of it and that fella's thugs can't keep things in order. It gets so bad that they think about calling in the army but that would look bad so the president asks the old bird to handle it."

"and?"

"And merlin asks for full discretion to handle the whole matter any way he sees fit.From the president, from congress, he gets it. Now you're probably thinking that the union boys are in for a world of hurt but that's not the way it goes down. Merlin instead asks for seven leaders to negotiate a contract with Standard Oil, Rockafeller he gets to bring six boys with him to help him negotiate a contract and, because there is some serious bad blood, it's going to be a magic contract."

"That's a thing?"

"Yeah but it's rare. In order to be binding the contract has to be fair so you can't go being a right cunt to the other bloke and the person who breaks it? They suffer under a curse until things are made right. So the old bird has government mandate and Johny boy is told that he has to respect the rules of hospitality which means harming the union leaders is not allowed. The union boys get the same word."

I leaned in.

"So the meeting happens and this Rockafeller guy just will not budge. He insults the union folks, refuses to talk to 'em, calls 'em criminals while the old bird is telling him to be civil then he storms out of the school and leaves. The old bird tells him the negotiations are not over and that he will be forced to come back."

My son paused.

"So the union boys go around the city while they wait, you know see zone and some such. All seven of them are killed."

I grimaced.

"I take it that."

"Yeah Rockerfeller had them killed and then left town so smug and stuff ,pretended he had nothing to do with it. But the old bird knew and he put out a message to him in all the papers."

He opened his book.

"Dear Mr. Rockafeller, you have blood on your hands. You are directly responsible for the brutal murders of seven men. Do not try to pretend it was some random criminal, I am not stupid and I am not fooled. You have arrogantly broken a truce held under the principles of the right of hospitality. A principle you agreed to be bound to. If you are insulted by me questioning your honor, know this. You can not question something that does not exist. You think that your money, your power, your bought judges, police men and politicians can protect you from my wrath. Know this, they can't and won't. I will personally ruin you, I will remove all of your allies from power and then I will see you hanged. I am telling you this because I want you to know who sent you to hell. From Merlin the Phenix."

My son paused.

"In the next month he released the secret of biodiesel to farmers all around the US, gave 'em money to build the facilities for it and some such. Then, one by one, all of Rockafellers political allies lost elections. New laws were created and then the lawsuits came in. Within five years John D. Rockafeller was completely bankrupt and then he was put on trial for the murder of the seven union men and he was hanged for it."

My son calmly took another sip of water.

"And that's where biodiesel came from."

 

[Cherico]

Brian Mc Clain

A couple days later I woke up to a knock at the door. I opened it and saw Nick looking at me. She closed her eyes and took a breath.

"Mind if I came in?"

"It's still technically your property or your family's property... You know what I mean."

The girl walked in, her brown hair waved around a bit, and she looked at me nervously. She took a deep breath.

"I've come to ask for your permission to take your son's hand in holy matrimony."

I blinked and stared at the girl. She was a head shorter then Billy and had a wiry frame, her hair was brown and her eyes dark, her complexion was a shade of olive that was common in Greece proper and Anatolia.

"Well sir?"

"Nick…. I kind of wasn't expecting this conversation."

She took a breath but i tried to get a moment to get my mind to focus.

"Look, mind if I brew up some coffee? It's morning and I'm a bit out of sorts."

She nodded her head and sat down while I brewed two cuppas then I sat down.

"Well..."

I paused.

"You know you're both awfully young, right? I mean billy's 16 and you're um?"

"17."

"Right, so there's that and how do you plan on making things work and...I'm sorry."

I paused.

"I'm not used to being on this end of the conversation, just channeled me father in law there, for a bit...honestly I never expected to even have this conversation. I mean, I only have one child and he was a boy. Always figured that made it some other bloke's problem."

"So you're saying yes?"

"I kind of want to know, why? I mean I love Billy but he's not a strong bloke, he's not a fast one, his head's always kind of up in the clouds and some such. I'm not trying to be mean but you're a bit out of his league."

Nick closed her eyes.

"He's nice, he's sweet, he cares about my feelings, he's smart and he keeps his word."

"Yeah but in my day the sheilas cared more about how strong, tough and rich a bloke was."

"Maybe it's because I am a witch, I like those things but I like other things more. Maybe magic messes with your mind a little, with your value system. Or maybe I just like a bloke who listens to me and laughs at my bloody jokes. All I know is that, when I'm with your son I'm happy sir and I want to make him happy too."

She paused.

"I can find work, get enough money together and work things out. Property out here in the outbacks is pretty cheap."

I sighed.

"My boy wants to go to college."

"I'm not trying to take that away from him. I will support him there, just like he will support me."

I tried to change the subject.

"Your da."

"Has given his blessing, I'm asking for yours."

I closed my eyes and thought about it.

"If I said no I'd be the biggest bloody hypocrit in the world."

I sighed.

"You have me blessing. It will be harder than you think but If I could do it despite being thick as a brick then maybe there's hope for the both of you."

She smiled.

"Thank you Mr. Mc Clain, thank you."

With that she left. I got up and watched her drive off in her motorcycle and remembered doing the exact same thing at her age, I looked at a photo that my wife had of her da and sighed.

"You know...you're right it's bloody hard on this end. But I gave my blessing. too bad you never did."

I patted the photo and left the room, there was work to be done.
​

 

[Cherico]

Brian Mc Clain


"So."

I looked across at the father of the girl who wanted to raise my boy.

"How long has my son been a mage?"

Bran Giles looked up from his brandy over the fire.

"How did you figure it out?"

I stared him in the eye.

"Lots of things clicking together. He's been going on mission after mission while us normies have been used mostly in the rear."

"That's not enough proof by itself. Most of the normies here are either older people or small children."

I nodded.

"Thought that too except...I fought in the trenches, I fought side by side with mandy's..sorry magi."

Bran nodded at my correction and studied me.

"I actually spent time with them, got to know em. And when the fighting happened they didn't freeze, they didn't lose it. They just got down to business and then afterwards it's like the horror of it all didn't affect them like."

"Like it was all part of a contract?"

I nodded.

"When you touch magic, it touches you right back. Power like this isn't free, you are changed by it, mind, body and soul."

"And?"

"I'm a spring mage, I can look at your suit and instantly know where every patch is, every tear that has been repaired, I can sense exactly how far away some one is. Hell I could walk around here blind, but those senses? I can't describe them, not fully, and they do not shut off."

He took a sip of brandy.

"You make less promises, because when you break them it hurts you.Connections, responsibilities, they weigh heavier on you. The seasons give you power but they constrain you. But that wasn't it was it?"

I took in a breath.

"It wasn't the only thing. looking back he was able to organize magic curios so easily and quickly, always knew much more about magic, then there was the conversation with your daughter...she already asked you for your blessing and she said you gave it. You seem like the kind of man who keeps his cards close to his chest."

I paused.

"That was when every thing clicked together. So, how long?"

Bran closed his eyes.

"Remember when you forced your son to wander the outback alone?"

"He had food, water and a carpet."

Bran glared at me.

"It was still dangerously irresponsible. Well, he ended up wandering into my lands, half dying of thirst. Niko was puttering around on her bike and found him."

He closed his eyes.

"Niko was always a little harder then most girls, a little more rough and tumble. Part of it was being surrounded by her brothers, part of it was rebellion against her mother and part of it was no doubt my fault, but she decided to take your son in and nurse him back to health."

He opened his eyes.

"Looking back on it, that's when her crush started, when your boy's crush started. So when he was back to health, I sent him home but he came back, over and over again, pestering me to teach him the mystic arts."

"And?"

"And I agreed to initiate him into the mystic arts but I purposely made sure he contracted with winter, to force him to seek another master."

"and?"

"And he decided to learn from books, including the old compass textbooks handed down the family line. Your boy is a good healer and he knows enough about spirit magic to make it easier for him to learn faster."

"His grades improved."

"Spirit is the art of the mind, Life the art of the body. He's still thin but he's strong for his age and fast, my daughter's feelings grew stronger, as did your son."

He took another sip of brandy.

"It's common for boys apprenticed to a magi to marry their teacher's daughters. It's not nessarly something approved of, but it happens a lot."

I leaned back.

"So when's the wedding."

"Right after we kick the Japanese out of Australia."

He got up.

"So you're planning on waiting awhile then."

"Oh no...asking young hearts to love with caution is impossible in wartime."

He pulled back the curtains.

"Look outside."

The sun was about to set but I saw vehicles, ugly horrible vehicles and lots of them.

"What is that?"

"58,000..."

He smiled.

"58,000 home made tanks. You see the southern part of the country, the place where all the cities are, has not been idle. They took every truck, car and bus and went to every scrap yard and bolted on armor, then they strapped guns onto them, big guns. They're not proper tanks by any measure but they vastly outnumber the Japanese vehicles."

He smiled.

"It's been around 3 months now and we did our part. For 3 months we have been denieing the Japanese food and water. For 3 months we have summoned every poisonous insect, snake and spider in the outback and commanded them to strike their soldiers while they slept. For three months we have attacked them day and night. They have spent their ammo, their cannon, their gas chasing shadows."

His smile grew vicious.

"The Japanese came to Australia with 100,000 men, Mr. Mc Clain. In three months time we have managed to kill half of them. It's time to finish off the rest."

He looked at me warmly.

"Would you care to join the battle?"

I shrugged.

"Parties are better when there are lots of people."

"I quite agree."

We shook hands and admired the seemingly endless number of home made tanks.

 

[Cherico]

Brian Mc Clain


The Australian tanks didn't really deserve the honor of being called tanks, they were a mishmash of civilian vehicles with armor hastely riveted, welded and strapped on. They didn't use treads, instead they used regular wheels. They did have cannons but most vehicles needed to move the entire tank around to aim it. They were, as weapons of war, pieces of shit but by bloody god there were a lot of them.

"We can't attack immediately, we need to do repairs, fuel up and calibrate our guns."

Figured it wouldn't be that easy, the mandy forces my son was fighting with... no, no, IN were holding the line. Turns out we had to do the maintenance, lot of those rust buckets had problems. But the battle, the last one, was coming.

"Hey Da."

I looked at my son. He seemed taller now, more mature, his eyes looked far older than his actual age.

"You never told me you were a mandy."

He shrugged.

"You never asked."

"Fair Dinkum boy, but that's one of those things you should have volunteered."

"You honestly think ma would be able to keep it a secret da?"

I grimaced.

"And then I'd be kicked out of town, sunset laws and all."

"Fair enough, I suppose it doesn't matter any more no town to go back to."

My boy surprised me with a hug.

"Darwin wasn't all bad da, but it wasn't all good either. We can rebuild it, make it better."

"Damned straight."

We ended the hug as bells rang out.

"Wish you luck da."

"Same to you Billy."

My son was a man now. After spending most of my life trying to turn him into one, I now suddenly regretted the fact that it came too bloody soon. It was a perverse feeling but maybe I deserved to feel that way. I admit I wasn't the best father. I tried me best but I had more than my fair share of failures and bad decisions. Would Billy be a better da than me? Maybe. In all honesty, probably. But I did my best and, maybe despite me, he became a good man.

"Everyone into your vehicles!"

I got into one of the few tanks that had a gun that could be properly aimed and the convoy roared into battle. The mandy's moved ahead of us on their roos, their hands moving and the land was covered in mist then the noise of the horde of tanks vanished and became eerie silence.

Then I heard the sound of explosions. The sun rose as we attacked from the south, the noise prompted the Japanese to action but it was too little too late, their hastely constructed walls and defenses were overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

Then the japanense tanks stormed out. I watched as the front row of our homemade tanks were destroyed. The tanks continued forward and the second row also was destroyed. Our tanks responded in kind but most of our cannons missed or did superficial damage. The third line was destroyed by the Japanese tanks, and our tanks got ever closer to theirs. You would think the wreckage of the dead would stop that but the government had put homemade plows at the front of the tanks to move the dead out of their way.

I used my guns, aiming carefully, on the Japanese tanks. I managed to hit one dead on and was slightly comforted by the burning. Slowly but surely our remaining tanks continued forward, those of us who could aim concentrated our fire. From the back ranks those of us who couldn't rushed forward to do as much damage as they could before they died. After the 5th line died the Japanese tanks went silent.

They were out of ammo and every one knew it. They had, at this point, spent 3 months in Australia without a significant resupply, three months of chasing ghosts, three months shooting at illusions.

They were defenseless now and we rushed forward. It seemed forever but our guns slowly dismantled their tanks with our cannons and then we drove past them. Above us I heard the strum of an orchestra.

"heh, they really did it. Thought they were just blowing smoke up our arse."

I looked up and saw the airships. Music blared to the battlefield below as they dropped bombs onto the Japanese positions.

"Banzai!"

"Australians all let us rejoice,
For we are young and free;
We've golden soil and wealth for toil!"

Words joined the music as the Japanese infantry charged our tanks with bayonets.

"Our home is girt by sea;
Our land abounds in nature's gifts
Of beauty rich and rare"

I aimed my guns at a section of city that was strafing us with machine gun fire and watched an old warehouse blow up.

"In history's page, let every stage
Advance Australia Fair.
In joyful strains then let us sing,
Advance Australia Fair."

The city around us burned as more emaciated Japanese troops used up what ammo they had.

"Beneath our radiant Southern Cross
We'll toil with hearts and hands;
To make this Commonwealth of ours
Renowned of all the lands"

I saw roos jumping around the city, their mandy owners firing into Japanese positions and throwing grenades into the homes they hid in. Finally what remained of them screamed out banzai and charged.

"For those who've come across the seas
We've boundless plains to share;
With courage let us all combine
To Advance Australia Fair.
In joyful strains then let us sing,
Advance Australia Fair."

We advanced to the sea, in the distance I saw an old wargolem and a few remaining Japanese troops fleeing towards a damaged Japanese cruiser. Australia had been liberated, the city of Darwin was once again ours.
​

 

[Cherico]

Brian Mc Clain

The fighting ended as the sun set. They fought like demons despite being outnumbered, out of ammo and out of food and water. We dealt with several more banzai charges, a few faked surrenders, but in the end it was useless. We had broken their power early in the day, the rest of it was simply moping them up. When darkness came the sporadic scattered fighting ended and we took stock of what was left of the city.

Darwin was in ruins, but I expected that. We all expected that.

"Any survivors?"

I worked on one of the damaged tanks as the commander walked around.

"The Prince escaped, but we were able to kill the others who tried to flee. most of 'em decided to fight to the death rather then surrender. And of those that did..."

"Faked it?"

"Lost a few of our people to that stunt. Orders down the pipe is not to accept surrenders from Japanese troops unless we are absolutely sure they're disarmed. but that's not going to be a problem the winters did a full scan, no survivors."

"Really? I don't think we killed that many people?"

"We didn't, we vastly underestimated the number of people who died from hunger, disease, and thirst. They only brought enough food for one month of operations. They actually planned to live off the land."

The other man grimaced, unaware I was listening in.

"In the bloody desert?"

"It didn't work out. We found evidence of cannibalism, human bodies with bite marks on them and other such issues. I think by the time we got here they were down to 20,000 men, half starved and dying of thirst."

The general closed his eyes.

"We just finished them off."

"So how many survivors?"

"Of the campain? Two, the prince who escaped and one private Jiro Watanabe. We found him in a makeshift hospital. He's only alive because he was too sick to fight us."

"So we going to, you know..."

"Let him die? No...when the Japs massacred Darwin they let one person survive to tell the tale, it's poetic justice that we return the favor. Jiro's going to get the very best medical attention in the bloody country."

"So the city?"

I leaned in.

"Word from high up is this, we are building a full on naval base here in Darwin, a full on army base and airforce. If there's a branch of the military, they want it here in Darwin. They're also bringing some mandy's up from down south to build up the port into something that's actually usable."

"Won't that anger the locals? I mean they had a sunset law and."

"There are less then 300 survivors from the massacre, there is a bloody war going on, any laws that interfers with us fighting that war are officially fucking paper for the bloody loo, got that?"

"Yes sir."

"And get ready for new recruits, we are going to be training loads of blokes how to be proper fighting men. And, once they see this?"

He waved his hand towards the ruins.

"We wont have to explain why we're bloody fighting."

"SIR!"

A teenager brought the general a letter. He opened it and smiled.

"Sir?"

"Good news people, the yanks managed to kick the japs out of the phillipines. Singapore and Hongkong managed to hold and some people in Korea want to be friends. This war isn't over, not by a long shot, but by god things are about to turn around."

He smiled viciously.

"Well, get on it, the jap's aren't going to beat themselves people."

 

[Cherico]

Surivors of the Australian campain


Henry Ito


The Japanese invasion of Australia was one of the biggest military disasters in Japanese military history. Out of a force of 100,000 men only 2 survived. Prince Yasukiko Asaka and Jiro Watanabe, a prince of the nation and a conscript peasant. One of them was born into extreme wealth and privilege, the other was born into abject poverty.

The prince managed to escape the final battle by swimming to a Japanese cruiser sent to rescue the prince from certain death while others fought to the death to give him a chance to survive. Jiro Watanabe survived by being too sick and infirm to fight. The prince would escape and live out the rest of the war in japan, Jiro would spend the rest of the war in a prisoner of war camp after being nursed back to health by the Australian army.

While the prince lived in relative luxury while his people suffered, Jiro would spend his time as a prisoner of war in a POW camp outside of Sydney Australia. He would be the only prisoner in the camp for the duration of the war. Jiro decided to spend his time in the POW camp studying art, painting, drawing and getting an education.

When the war ended the two men's fates were switched. The prince was put on trial for war crimes, in exchange for testifying against him Jiro was given immunity to prosecution. Jiro would leave the trial a free man, the prince would spend the rest of his life in prison before he was hanged for his crimes against humanity. With the prince's death Jiro was the last and only survivor of the Australian invasion.

Jiro had been saved by the Australian people to tell the tale of what happened and with his new hard won art skills he became a mangaka. Jiro would work as an artist for many other artists before creating his most famous independent work "the black prince".

Jiro Watanabe, even years after the war was over, still felt a deep sense of anger, rage and betrayal over the late prince's decision to leave his men to die while he escaped to safety, an anger that he kept for his entire life. The Black Prince series was the result of this anger. While the series had excellent writing and art, the true reason for its success was that it came at the right time in the Japanese Zeigest.

Japan was still a badly damaged country when the black prince series was created. It's international reputation was tarnished and destroyed and, with the cold war, it was forced to ally and depend on the very countries it had commited atrocities against. The republic of china, Korea, the philipines, hongkong, Singapore, Australia, Indonesia, America. Japan had commited war crimes against all of them and now had to rely on their charity to survive because their defeat was total and complete.

Jiro's Black Prince series gave the Japanese something important, it gave them some one to blame. It was quite simply impossible to deny that atrocities had been commited by Japanese troops during the war, there was simply too much evidence to deny it. But the Japanese could rebuild their pride by blaming everything on the Black Prince and they did.

The series created the myth of the honorable Japanese serviceman and the evil and despicable officer class led by the depraved Black Prince. As the cold war went on, those who had worked for the previous regime were let out of prison and gained places in the Japanese government. They bought into the myth and used it as a way to explain away any past ethical crimes as something the black prince forced them to do against their will.

Japanese nationalists, even during the war, hated what they considered the Prince's cowardly escape while his men died and decided to buy into the national myth. In death the black prince became a cowardly evil figure that was featured in Japanese TV and movies about world war two, more akin to a demon or monster than a man. In Japanese textbooks more and more of the atrocities commited by the Japanese would be attributed to him until he became the chesssmaster behind the war.

Jiro, by contrast, would go on to create other mangas and eventually help found one of the largest magna companies, weekly shohen Jump. Jiro would die from advanced lung cancer in 1984, surrounded by his friends and family, one of the wealthiest men in japan and a respected father of Japanese Manga. The Black prince he destested so much in life died alone, stripped of all of his assests.

The contrasting fates of the two survivors of the Australian campaign helped shape modern day japan and make it the country it is today, for better or worse.
​

 

[Cherico]

Brian Mc Clain



The Anglican church of Australia had seen better days.

The walls were still riddled with bullets, the stained glass windows had been blasted out and a good portion of the roof was missing, letting in a beam of sunlight on my son as the bride walked down the aisle. Neither of them were dressed for the event, between rationing, the war and everything else these things had to be done on a budget.

So the bride came into the church in her motorcycle leathers and my son waited for her in a tweed jacket. They looked like a bit of a mishmash couple to be honest but maybe that was a good thing, they balanced each other out. My Billy needed some one a little rough and tumble to make sure the world didn't step on him and Nick needed his gentleness to balance out her wild tendencies.

My wife held my arm tight as one of the guests played an accordion, while it wasn't as good as the church organ it had to do because the churches organ had been destroyed during the fighting. I couldn't help but smile as my son got married.

"It's going to be all right."

I kissed my wife's head as she cried, and held her tight.

"Things got pretty dark but we're getting through them."

We were silent as our Billy said his vows. The young couple kissed and we headed out into the light. There wasn't a cake or a massive party, rationing and all that, so we just let them have access to one of the few still upright buildings for the night.

"Think it will end badly?"

My wife's words were worried as we walked back to our damaged home.

"We weren't that much older when we got hitched love."

She held my hand as we walked down the dark streets. All around us mandies were hard at work, piles of rubble rose and merged with damaged buildings, repairing them. In the distance new housing was in the process of being built for the homes of Anzack men with families and in the farthest distance, where the water treatment center sat, a giant new building was rising.

"Mr. Mc Clain?"

I froze and turned around, a soldier looked me in the eye.

"I'm told you used to run a curio shop?"

"Yes?"

"Did you personally organize them?"

"Part of the job mate, got to put like with like."

"Good, your country needs your services...I'm sorry about this but the commander needs your presence now."

My wife nodded and I went with him into one of the badly made armored tanks. We drove in silence to the old plant, guards surrounded the plant and saluted us as we drove past the walls. an older man looked at me as I got out of the tank.

"This the fellow?"

"Yes, Brian Mc Clain ran a curio operation in Darwin before the past nastiness."

The man nodded.

"Good...come with us."

I shrugged and walked alongside him to the inside of the plant to a large room filled with quartz. A number of mandies were working on some project inside, fiddling with the quartz room.

"Can we trust them?"

"Command says they're old enemies of the japs. Don't know if we can trust them, just know that they hate the Japanese far more than we do."

"Good enough for me but I still think their outfits are creepy."

"Keep it to yourself, if you do think that."

The mandies jumped.

"Is it ready?"

"Yes...it's an old principle, you just need two untapped nexus with users on both sides maintaining it. That makes the nexus useless for anything else though, its sucks mana like crazy."

"There's a river nearby, we can tap that for water. Now get too it."

The quartz machine turned on and a large portal opened, a man in a black outfit and a white mask walked out.

"Hello."

He looked eerie and creepy.

"My name's seagull, I heard you fellows had some problems with the Japanese?"

We nodded.

"Yes."

Seagull held out his hand, the commander shook it.

"Can your boys really give us access to Korea?"

"We already have a project going on with the yanks. we're in the mountains so dress appropriately."

The commander smiled.

"Noted. Fellows, this is Seagull, he's from a resistance group in Korea called the Jayu. He's going to give our boys direct access to the Japanese empire, make him feel at home."

We stood a little straighter at those words as the man in the mask looked at us.

"I hope we can all become close friends, or at the very least hate the same people."

The commander chuckled.

"No problem at all with the later mate...well men let's get on with it, there's a war to win."

 

[Cherico]

Ralph Essen



It was 1988 now, there wasn't much to say about it.

"Happy New year."

Lee said the words sarcastically as we drove in a bus we had gotten in the Ukraine. I nodded at his words while driving as suzy continued to use magic to try to scry for anything of use. Even with the equipment that compass had donated for the cause it had been a difficult and boring journey.

I sighed as we passed more blasted landscape.

"September 26th 1983, the day the world ended. You would think something would be around now, it's been five years."

"The new year just happened Lee, it hasn't been 5 years yet and we plastered the soviet union with everything we had, every military base, every town, every city. Hell we hit some areas just for the hell of it during the war. Principle of the thing."

Suzy looked up at us.

"I found something."

The four of us stopped and stared at her.

"According to my efforts we are close, we need to go north."

I turned the wheel and continued onward. My palms felt sweaty as we drove north through the gloomy dead lands of the soviet union.

"Stop...It's...outside."

I nodded.

"Everyone suit up."

We got into our radiation suits, set off the protective charms and went into the wasteland. We followed Suzy's lead as she held her enchanted compass and then she stopped.

"It's here."

I nodded and cracked my knuckles, I used a spell to scan the land.

"We have an opening half a klick away."

They nodded and followed me into the gray morning. We walked in silence until we found metallic shutters.

"A bunker.

I nodded at Lees statement. I brushed the dust off of a plaque and used a translation spell.

"Serpukhov-15."

I looked at my fellow magi and the four of us worked together to pry open the doors and we walked inside. The first thing we noticed were the corpses, well skeletons at that point. I tapped a water fountain and sighed.

Liam touched a dead body and spoke.

"The bunker was sealed from radiation but not their drinking water...that's the cause of death."

We split up and searched the facility. I stopped at one skeleton that was hunched over some paperwork.

"They doomed us all...I told them that it was a glitch in the system. The capitalists wouldn't send just 5 nuclear missiles at the soviet union and the early warning radar systems didn't detect anything inbound. But the leadership was too paranoid, they didn't listen and they killed us all."

Stanislav Petrov, the skeleton had a name, the body had a name. I took the notes and put them away. I ran into Liam who looked sick.

"A computer error."

"Liam."

"The fucking world ended, over a billion people died because of a FUCKING COMPUTER ERROR!"

"Liam."

He was tearing up crying.

"A fucking computer error, all of those people died because the soviets couldn't build computers that weren't pieces of SHIT!"

Liam kicked a wall.

"Liam."

"So many people FUCKING died!"

"Liam are you ok?"

He looked at me.

"Of course I'm not FUCKING OK! I just found out that my home planet was destroyed because of some glitchy computers. I'm fucking livid."

I gave him a hug as he continued to cry and rage.

"I was expecting something else, something.....something that explained all of this shit Ralph, not a fucking computer glitch."

"I know. All of us expected something more but we came here looking for the truth and that's what we got. No one ever said the truth was going to be easy, or fun or some thing we would like. But that's what we have, the truth.

Liam sat down on a nearby chair.

"So what now?"

"Nearest city within range is in Estonia. We're going to take every thing we can from this bunker then drive there. Our ship should meet us over there and then we go back to compass."

Liam got up.

"And then we go home and that's it. Every thing's over. That's the adventure of a lifetime, driving in a dead zone, finding a bunker and then just going home."

"Yeah."

"So what do we do now?"

"Now...the only thing we can do, rebuild our lives. Wish there was some thing more to it but it is what it is."

With that said the five of us gathered every scrap of information we could find and put it into boxes and got it on the bus. We then drove towards Estonia, towards the last country on earth. Our feelings were strained with disappointment, anger and other emotions. We had the truth but in the end it didn't make any of us happier.
​

 

[Cherico]

Race to the Moon

Buzz Aldrin



There was no excuse for Sputnik, for the Russians beating us into space. We have literally had an actual alien space craft in our possession since the American revolution, with an actual alien there, with books to explain how it all worked. An alien who had every interest in sharing that knowledge because his home world was destroyed by an asteroid because his people didn't put enough effort into space until it was too late.

Robert H Goddard was one of the fathers of human rocketry and we almost completely and utterly squandered the lead he gave us because we considered one of the most important things humanity would ever do as buck Rodgers nonsense. The only reason we kept our lead was because the old bird heard about Goddard and funded him out of his own pocket during one of the worst economic disasters in human history.

We had every thing we needed to beat the soviets into space and we squandered it. So yeah, Sputnik that was our fault. We were lazy, we had all of the tools we needed and we spent 200 years just sitting on our butts. I mean seriously, why did it take over a hundred years for us to send in a horde of people to organize Compass's library?

So Sputnik was a massive blow to the American ego but maybe it was something we needed to go through. Because they finally sent some librarians over to organize the mess over in compass and finally started asking questions, which led to us finding out that over a hundred planets and moons were in the process of being terraformed! and oh yes, this was approved by president Rutherford B Haye. It turns out that the Hayes presidency was actually relevant.

No scrap that. That pretty much makes his presidency one of the most important ones in human history, we also found out that this process would all be finished by 1980....

So yeah. Now the space race was even more important and vital because there was some thing worth fighting about. So we contacted our allies told them about things and concentrated on organizing our space program.

So the Russians beat us to the first dog, the first chimp, but we managed to beat them into space with Alan Sheperd. Then the Cuban missile crisis happened and we all collectively freaked out about how close we came to the entire human race ending. Which of course led to the creation of project Rapture. Then of course the Chinese invaded India and their army shattered like glass which led to the sino indian war.

So between scrambling to save india from becoming another communist country and all of the other problems, there wasn't a lot of money left over for Nasa. We had to fight for every scrap we got and that caused delays. We probally could have gone to the moon even sooner if it wasn't for that but we managed to get there.

It was quite the accomplishment. It made me and Armstrong famous and in our hearts we thought, if things didn't go crazy then the whole solar system would be open to us, the whole galaxy and the universe itself.

Then the world ended, the old bird pulled out all of the stops to get our butts out of the fire.

Can't complain about the results, we're alive, and we have settled the solar system. I just wished it was under better circumstances...

So the space race, funny so many people considered it a waste of time and money but without it there wouldn't be any civilization left. I guess there's a lesson in that.

 

[Cherico]

Antartica the lonely kingdom


Olavi Heikkinen


The race to the antartic and the south pole was the great contest of the late 1800s. A land had been found that was potentially filled with resources and, with the example of Greenland, the nations of earth thought they could tame the land and turn it into something worthy of the name.

Great britain, France, Russia, Germany, Italy the great empires of the world set their stakes, determined to turn the land into a glorious coliony. Antartica had quite a few ley lines, it had resources and it was large. There was just one small problem.

You needed a small army of Magi to make it useful, a large amount of people to settle it and an incredibly powerful reagent to make it all work at once. Merlin had provided the reagent nessary to terraform portions of Greenland and create the Israeli star but he was firmly against gifting one to the imperial powers for their colonization efforts, stating that Israel formed a pact with him while they did not and that he was working on far more important matters.

The small army of Magi that would be needed thus became an even larger number. As for settlers they found that no one wanted to settle this frozen land and, of the few who did, most left after a couple of years. On top of this the imperial powers simply got in each other's way, feuding constantly instead of cooperating.

World war one spelled the end of the attempts to settle and conquer antartica. The germans had the most settlers there but the combined allied forces had more people and their colonial masters compelled them to go to war.

The conflict in anartica ended with each side destroying the vital infastructure the other needed to survive in that frozen land. All of the settlers were forced to either leave or die from thirst, starvation and the ever present cold.

To this day Antartica remains mostly unsettled. The last continent had managed to successfully avoid being conquered and, with the end of the world, this might remain the case for generations.

 

[Cherico]

Isko Bulan

CEO of Jollybee operations in California


Jollybee is the single most successful fast food restaurant chain in the solar system. Now people wonder how it became so successful, the answer is war and logistics. Jollybee as a company was founded by Tony Tan Caktiong about 78 but that's only the official story. The Caktiong family, which originally came from china, owned a host of restaurants scattered throughout the Philipines. When the Sino indian war happened Tony's family decided to sell to American servicemen.

In doing so he was able to befriend lower level troops and eventually formed relationships with the brass. He proposed an idea of mobile restaurants, using boats to serve the allied forces as a moral gesture. This proposal managed to come at the right time. The united states had a bunch of old liberty ships that were not being used so he was able to get them for a song. He bought around a hundred of the damned things, trained some people up and sailed them around india and through the Ganges river.

Tony lived on one of these restaurant ships and learned the ropes from his father who, by the nature of the war effort, had to serve meals that would appeal to the international effort. When the war was over the family was rather wealthy and unfortunatly his father passed on, leaving the family business to Tony.

Now rather then just sit on his laurels Tony decided to get his family together and organize the family business into one coherent whole. The family at this point had restaurants all over the philipines, around Australia and of course in india. They were all joined together under the Jolliebee name.

This gave the company a pretty solid customer base but Tony wasn't satisfied with being a regional player. The good news for him was that he had connections. The service men his family served during the sino-indian wars got promoted, they had positions of power and he was able to use his family's connections to them to build new Jolliebees near naval and army bases. During the early 70s that's how Jolliebee grew, if there was a NATO military base then there was a Jolliebee near them.

To spread farther the company decided to franchise building near highways and such. World war 3 proved to be the moment where we really broke ground as a company. The third world war had a result of pushing most companies into a depressive slump. A lot of the chains closed down, not because of lack of business but because for a lot of owners the end of the world caused them to question what they were doing with their lives.

We were able to acquire entire chains and networks during this period, the company almost tripled in size. By the time people had mentally recovered from the end we were the single largest fast food chain in the solar system, with restaurants on every inhabited world in the solar system.

So why did we succeed when so many other companies fail? Hmm honestly I think it comes down to the value system of the people of the philipines: adaptability and resilience. The philipino people are tough but they're able to adapt to change and deal with unforeseen disasters. That mentality was brought into the world of business and, when the world went to hell, we were there to pick up the pieces.

I'm proud to work for Jolliebee and it's nice knowing that, even if the apocalypse happens, we will always be there to serve people quality food for a reasonable price. After all, we have already done it once.

 

[Cherico]

Alexander Altunin general of the soviet union


I don't know why I'm bothering to write this, my capturers are probably going to throw this into the trash after I'm hung, and I very much doubt that these words will convince anyone of anything. So this is essentially just wasted time, something I'm writing for my own peace of mind before I die. Our side of the story as it were.

I don't know why the idiots at the politbureau decided to end the world, what motivated them to do so. I have a few guesses but I will write those down later, instead I will start with this.

The problem with nuclear war is this: once you launch, once you push that button, there is no going back. Everyone in the high command understood this. Once either side launched you were commited to total war...no, that drastically understates it. You were committed to a war of annihilation. Once we pushed that button... The only chance of Russian survival was to kill so many people that the enemy didn't have the strength to fight back.

We also understood that we couldn't allow any nation to survive, that any surviving states would be by their nature a threat to any future Russian successor state. This was official soviet policy and when that policy leaked and it caused the Scandinavian nations to join nato we didn't change it.

I think the politbureau wanted the West to understand that if they did a first strike, we would take every one else with us. There was just one small problem with that plan, time.

The soviet union, my country, former country, was great at projecting strength but that strength was mostly an illusion. Before world war 2 our population stood at around 150 million people. We lost 40 million people during the war. Roughly one in four Russians died. You westerners like to say we did it because of treachery or cowardice but the fact was...

We simply didn't have the strength to continue the fight. So, when Poland rebelled, we sat it out because enough of our boys had died and just concentrated on defeating Nazi forces that were still in our country. It's also why we reneged on our deal to help in the fight against japan.

When the most bloody war in Russian history was over, we wanted to prevent it from happening again so we took over the ex eastern pact countries. We turned them into the buddapest pact to make sure that we had a line of buffer countries. To give us time to recover but these buffer countries were hostile to us, expecially Ukraine, and we had to put in security forces to maintain them.

The West responded to what I consider to be a reasonable step by creating their own alliance set up against us. We looked around and realized we were surrounded by potential enemies again, just like the old eastern pact, and we were nowhere near recovered from the worst war in our nation's history.

So we intervened in the Chinese civil war to secure our southern borders. We intervened in the Korean war to remove a threat to our country, which failed. We intervened in the Sino-indian war because having India as an ally would have changed the game. We funded and supplied every revolutionary group on the planet to tie up our enemies' resources, but there was one small problem.

You kept getting stronger. You had the French economic miracle, the british one, the polish one, the Japanese one, the Italian one, the Korean one, the philipino one. Your economies just got stronger with time. Our industries started out behind your industries and we were only able to keep pace with our significant intelligence assets but it wasn't enough. In many industries, especially electronics, you were outpacing us.

And that's not getting into magic. That Fucking bird made our jobs, our lives, so much harder. You think it would be easy to infiltrate his school and sabotage it but the bird was incredibly good at ferreting out our agents. During the cold war he successfully compromised every single operative in Zone and had them giving us false information.

The fucking bird completely trashed our attempts to sneak into the Manhattan program and gave us false information that delayed our getting the bomb until 55. Then there's the fact that magic was just something that we were bad at. Standard Seasonal magi just did not do well in the soviet union, they either became politically unreliable or they sickened and died. We were forced to rely on the weaker qulipothic arts which we also did not trust.

So now, I guess, why we did it. Ended the world.

Quite simply put, we were running out of resources. Running a global spy network, having the large military we needed to keep our client states in order, the foreign aid, all of it was expensive. We could deal with it all when the price of oil was good during the 70s but the 80s had an oil glut on the market and we were now dealing with western backed insurgencies in our client states which were expensive.

And then you get to project rapture. With each year our single strongest weapons, nuclear weapons, became a weaker threat. Those worlds in the solar system were fully terraformed by 1980 and were now poker chips being used against us. In my opinion we launched because we were in a use it or lose it situation. As far as we were concerned the only reason the west wasn't launching was because they were not sure if project Rapture would work.

But then it did...we launched every thing we had at them. Nuclear, gas, bio weapons and...and you just vanished and we were just hitting empty terraformed land that had been swapped out. We had spent our load as it were and now the west was coming back for vengeance, and oh god your vengeance was something to behold.

You took out every city we had, my troops were outside this small town in Siberia with less then 5,000 people and you still nuked it, and once you had nuked everything your troops came in and...and there was no mercy. At that point Russia was dead and all we could do is make you bleed for it and honestly we didn't do a good job of it.

All of our factories were gone, all of our cities were gone, our crops were dying, every thing was full of radiation and it turns out we were not immune to the plagues we sent out across the world. When my forces fought against you we were starving, hungry and suffering from radiation sickness and god knows how many other diseases.

We tried to fight of course but you had more men, more food, more everything and we just collapsed. A few of us were taken prisoner and taken to Angolas world, the others were killed. I was one of the lucky ones.

So the future of the Russian people? I don't think we have one. The Angolans made a deliberate choice to separate Russian men and Russian women, putting us on islands on the opposite sides of the planet, then they just put some boats around us, put us on the island and shoot any one who tries to escape which is useless because the nearest island is too far away.

As for me...the verdict is guilty of crimes against humanity...tomorrow I'm going to be hung. I don't know what they were thinking when they pushed that button but our final roll of the dice was tossed and we lost.

Russia is dead and I die with my country.

 

[Cherico]

Ralph Essen



They gave me back my boat and the other members of my crew went to their respective home countries. As for myself I headed back to America, which was no longer in America. The sky was lit with the light of two moons, in the distance I saw the light of the great tree that held compass academy. I sat down and sighed as I sailed closer.

Lee sat next to me.

"It's beautiful, even from a distance."

I nodded at his words.

"One of the great wonders of the world....solar system..."

I took in a breath and let it out.

"You ok Ralph?"

"No...I'm just mourning the past."

I closed my eyes.

"So when people look back at us, at the 80s, what will they think of us?"

Lee sat next to me as I opened my eyes.

"Probably that it was a weird decade. Losing earth affected us all, I think we all kind of went a little crazy."

We sailed closer to the tree in silence. When we got to the docks we shook hands and parted ways then I looked at the massive tree.

"He's waiting for you."

I blinked one of the guards nodded, I noticed that he wore a sky blue turban.

"Are you? um?"

"New here, I work as part of the mission for compass."

I nodded.

"I'm ready."

I was taken to an elevator and waited for it to rise to the top. The doors opened and the guard nodded.

"He's up ahead."

"Thank you."

I walked forward through the hallway and watched as the door opened. Merlin stared at me from his massive desk. I took a seat and looked up at him, feeling a sense of unease.

"So it was all an accident."

I closed my eyes.

"I'm sorry I don't have better news."

Merlin closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"This isn't your fault."

"With all due respect Mr. Essen I don't quite agree with you."

"You did everything you could to save humanity."

He opened his eyes.

"You know about my condition right?"

I grimaced.

"Yes...we talked about it, you're dying."

"In the phenix religion...your intentions do not matter. What matters, the only thing that matters, is results. If your actions in life resulted in the world being worse off then you go to hell, if the universe is better off because of your life choices then you go to heaven. Intentions do not matter."

He started coughing and wheezing, he took deep breaths until his fit ended.

"Sorry."

"It's our fault...we misused our gifts, your gifts, and."

"Don't tell me you were not ready."

Merlin sighed.

"No one is ever ready for anything. And what was I supposed to do? Stand over you in judgement, like some god."

He coughed.

"No...not my style. I'm afraid humanity, for all of its faults, is my people's successor. I can't expect you not to stumble and not to fall, all I can ask is that you pick yourselves back up and continue walking."

He coughed again.

"Well...let's talk about your reward. You and all the members of your party will be gifted with trust fund."

"Not a lump sum?"

"No...too much hassle in my experience. Better to have a steady income than be hit with a lot of money all at once."

"So what now Merlin?"

He coughed again.

"I have one last gift...the last part of humanity's inheritance...spent a lot of time working on it."

"And?"

"And it's a surprise, one that will start working when the stars are right."

He got up, got out of his chair.

"I know it doesn't seem like it but I am grateful Ralph, you gave me some closure."

I took in a breath.

"So what now?"

"Now? Now we live our lives one day at a time."
​

 

[Cherico]

Ralph Essen


A man stood between me and the docks.

"Mr. Essen."

I stretched.

"Mr. Riddle."

He nodded at me.

"If it helps, what you did means a lot to Merlin. It means a lot, to a lot of people."

I grimaced.

"The news."

"Isn't pleasant, yes. The world dying because of a computer error, I know, but humanity needed to know why, in order to prevent it from happening."

"And?"

"And originally the solution was a deep look into human nature but honestly fixing up computer errors is a lot easier than that."

I stood there in silence.

"That wasn't funny."

"I know. But I'm british, we use black humor to deal with our issues."

He sat down on a chair and I sat across from him.

"We needed to know. Even if we don't like the bloody answer we needed to know Mr. Essen."

I took a deep breath.

"So what's your next adventure?"

"I don't know."

My voice was rough.

"I thought the navy would give me some kind of direction but that never came. When I got out I thought doing this would give me a direction and now...now I'm just spinning my wheels."

The man across from me sighed and pulled out a box and tossed it at me.

"What's this?"

"Open it."

I did and saw a quartz crystal.

"What's that?"

"Memory crystal. The old phenix used them to record their memories for prosperity...This one is blank..."

"And?"

"And what you went through was important. Future generations need to know about it so record it, make records for the future."

I looked at the crystal.

"Whatever happens, whatever path you take it's all up to you now."

I put the crystal in my pocket.

"So what now?"

I looked outside the glass doors at the two moons in the sky.

"Now...now I don't have a place I think of as home, I'm going to fix that."

 

[Cherico]

Ralph Essen


The Le pen hotel offered me a free room, excutive suit. It was ok, it gave you a view of the great tree in the distance. I probably should be there instead of sulking in the hotel's bar.

"Mr. Essen?"

My eyes were closed as I sipped my iced coffee, I liked to be sober when I did my moping.

"Yeah."

I remembered the accent. The faint scent of roses got closer to me as she got closer, I opened my eyes and looked into her's. Golden eyes were locked onto mine, as my eyes took in more of her I noticed her pink hair, her unblemished caramel skin and her rather significant bust. She wore a rather carefully cut business suit.

"Marie...that's your name right?"

She smiled at me.

"It's been a while. I never had a chance to thank you for saving me."

"From the Russians."

"And helping me meet my father...we did a test it's...legit."

"And?"

"And that means I have dual citizenship now, I got a job in an office."

"Secretary?"

She smirked.

"Nice try but no. Accountant."

"Sounds like good work."

She sighed.

"Not really. Zone has had a glut of skilled labor for over 200 years now, so kind of a bad place to be an accountant."

I grimaced.

"That bad?"

"Yeah."

She looked at me, her eyes warm. I noticed that she bit her lip.

"Hoped I would catch you."

I took another sip of coffee.

"Why?"

"Well you saved me from a life of being a sex slave, so that's something."

She took a deep breath.

"Purple lipstick?"

"Yeah..."

"It suits you, bet your boyfriend loves it."

"I um..don't have one."

I nodded.

"Right your experience, that would mess up anyone."

She closed her eyes.

"I got lucky...well, not really. I didn't expect to get kidnapped and enslaved but...you were the first client...I was scared back home, people just thought as me as, you know, a body...you saw more than that."

"Thought I was pretty rude."

She shrugged.

"You got me out of a bad spot and you treated me like a human being."

"I thought girls liked being treated like princess's."

Marie frowned.

"When someone puts you on a pedestal the only thing you can do is fall."

She leaned against the table, an eyebrow open and then closed them and then raised them. I sipped my coffee as her face contorted in a variety of shapes.

"What are you doing?"

She sighed.

"Trying to flirt with you."

I leaned back in my chair.

"No offense but you're kind of bad at this."

She took in a deep breath.

"I've never really needed to flirt before, so you know there's that."

I turned away from her and sipped my coffee.

"Why Me? I'm old enough to be your father."

"I'm allowed to have preferences for older men."

I took another sip.

"So this isn't going to work?"

"I'm not saying that but I have been around long enough to know when someone has ulterior motives and I would like those out in the open Marie."

She tapped the table.

"I don't feel safe here in zone, don't feel safe period. Right now I feel safe."

"Sounds like something you should talk about with a therapist."

"Already did, for all the good it did."

She motioned for a drink, her hands shaking.

"So what's next for you?"

I looked at my mostly empty coffee cup.

"Don't know, I don't have to worry about money. Between the Navy and Compass...I'm good on that. I think I'm going to travel the solar system."

"Sounds lonely."

"Maybe."

"Can I come along?"

I thought about it, drifting through the solar system on a boat with Marie. It might be a special kind of hell but if I was going to wander the universe directionless then I might as well have company.

"Sure...what the hell."
​

 

[Cherico]

Ralph Essen October 13th

September 23 2000, the day Merlin died.

Merlin died on the same day that Earth died. I managed to find my old memory crystal, haven't touched the thing since the 80s.

"Come on dad, we need to get going."

I waved at my son, his hair was the same vibrant pink his mother had. It gave him some trouble but it made him a tough kid and you need that on the sea.

"I'm getting dressed as quickly as I can Louis."

My son nodded and let me get dressed in something that didn't make me look like the old sailor that I was.

"Louis, give your father some time."

Marie smiled at me, her hand on her stomach.

"Are you going?"

"To be ok. This is baby number five Ralph, we have experience with these things now."

She gave me a peck on the cheek.

"Come on, we have a funeral to go to."

I smiled at her and gave her a kiss back.

"EWE!"

I smiled as my youngest girl's face pinched up like a lemon. I ruffled her hair and the six of us got out of the family boat and onto land. We went into a bus and drove to the funeral site. The sky wasn't rainy or cold or gloomy. As new Hampshire weather went it was fine.

"They're holding the funeral in the open, so all of you have to wear sweaters."

The traffic was insane.

"Dad, is it true that Queen's going to be there?"

I nodded.

"Entire band. Freddy Mercury's going to play a song for him."

My son nodded.

"Should I try to get an autograph?"

I frowned at him.

"No...no, there is a time and place for these things Louis and a funeral isn't one of them."

The bus stopped and we walked out with the others. I saw people from all over the solar system there as we all took our seats. The funeral seemed to take forever, Merlin gave permission for any religion that wanted to give him funeral rites to do so. He joked that no one would bother. He was wrong, he was always his biggest critic.

So, one by one, the faiths of the world gave him a send off, priests, clerics, rabbis, Imans, atheists. When it was all over, it was midnight. Then, when it struck, a giant image of the old bird formed on a screen.

"If you're watching this...then I'm dead, I...I'm sorry I wasn't able to save more people, that I couldn't do more."

The bird coughed.

"But...the good news is that it's all finished, your final inheritance."

An image of the milky way formed.

"During my travels I found a bunch of blue stars that could be harvested to make reagents, like the ones used to terraform the solar system. I left probes in a lot of systems throughout the galaxy before I came to earth and I had an idea to make sure humanity had a proper send off when time forced me to leave you."

His face was full of emotion.

"108 billion star systems, I did the math, had it checked and triple checked. With what I gathered, with one ritual, I could terraform 108 billion worlds for the human race. But I needed prototypes. Israel was the first case and it worked, then the solar system proved that our last idea was functional and then I spent the next century working on this...my final gift."

Blue points broke out amongst the galaxy.

"It's all set up to start during the Galatic alignment In 2012. The terraformation process will be finished in 2112 and, when it is, there will be 108 billion planets for human beings to settle on. This is the final gift of the phenix people to the human race...with my death we permanently vanish into the past. It will be up to humanity to carry the tourch of life, civliazation and freedom to the stars."

He paused.

"I am proud of you, all of you. Good bye."

The image ended. The crowd was silent as a team of students past and present went around his coffin and took up the spokes. We then all walked in a procession towards the New Hampshire veteran's cemetary. No one said anything as we walked. When we got there Merlin was carefully laid into the ground.

Next to him were the graves of men who had fought with him during the revolution, those who had fallen in the war of 1812, the civil war, the world wars, my war. He was buried amongst them all and a part of me felt it was appropriate that he was laid to rest there.

Then the band came out. Mercury's hair was almost entirely white as was his mustache.

"Merlin asked me to play this song...it's called 'the show must go on'."

He played the song, diplomats, heads of state, former presidents, celebrities, former students, friends, family, rich and poor we all stood there in the darkness and mourned the loss of our friend.

Good bye Merlin, what ever happens thank you.

 

[Cherico]

Ralph Essen


"It's a big honor."

Riddle walked next to me. He leaned on his cane as we walked.

"I don't feel like I'm worthy of it."

Riddle shook his head.

"No. Finding out the truth about the war, that meant a lot to Merlin. It's up to you to do this."

The black maze located in Elwyn part.

"He made it, you know. After the revolution the goal was to have a place that would have the name of every compass student who died, every teacher who died. Merlin was sentimental like that."

We walked pass numerous names in numerous languages, under each name was their birthdate, their date of death and the time they went to school in compass. The maze was huge, I remembered visiting it once before I started school in compass. I thought it was creepy then, morbid, but now... Now seeing it how he saw it, it seemed respectful, seemed right. We stopped at an empty spot.

I opened a box and brought out a chisel. I put question marks for Merlin's date of birth, because not even he knew when he was born, and put down his date of death. then I carefully inscribed his name.

"Merlin, last of the phenix."

Tom sighed.

"It's the end of an era."

I held back the tears, it wouldn't do to cry, not now.

"It's like America lost its grandfather."

"Not just America...we all feel that way. Merlin was...a constant, it seemed like no matter what happened, what changed, he was always there. It's hard to have him gone."

"So who's the head master now."

"Me....but not for long, Neil will take over after I retire."

I looked at him.

"Neil deGrasse Tyson, he used to work in astrophysics."

"So, the school?"

Tom stared at Merlin's name tracing it with his finger.

"Compass has been labeled an historic landmark by the United nations, and of course the US. No one wants this school to close, not after all he's done for us."

"So the show goes on."

Tears ran down Toms face.

"Yes it does."

I gave him a hug and let the old man cry it out.

"Tom."

"Sorry."

"It's ok."

Tom composed himself.

"Before Merlin...I was nothing. I was just this poor orphan boy that nobody wanted. The first person to treat me like an actual human being was Merlin. The first place, the only place, that ever felt like home was Compass. He introduced me to my wife, he helped take care of my children..."

He took a deep breath.

"It's hard to see him go."

"I'm sorry for your loss."

"I will keep this school going for him, we all will."

The wind blew around the maze.

"He would have wanted it that way."

Tom nodded.

"So what now?"

I looked up at the night sky.

"Going to take my family and go to korea. There's someone there I have to talk too."

 

[Cherico]

Ralph Essen

2000 AD



I sat on the grass, staring at the glowing tree in the distance. My son sat next to me.

"Dad? Why aren't you asleep?"

I smiled at him.

"Sorry Louis, sometimes I can't sleep."

"Because Merlin died?"

I nodded my head.

"Yeah."

He was 11 years old now, I smiled remembering the trip he was conceived on, then our rush to get the marriage through before he was born...Good times. Probably the best years of my life.

"Dad."

My son hugged me.

"It's going to be ok dad."

I put my arm around him.

"You know I named you after one of the first students that Merlin ever taught."

My son blinked.

"Really?"

"Yeah really...you know Compass has open enrollment right now, I could sign you up."

My son stared at the glowing tree.

"Isn't that the same school you learned magic at?"

I nodded my head.

"Yes."

My son got up.

"They say it's going to be different without him."

I nodded my head.

"I know Louis, but it's going to be up to us, all of us, to keep his dream alive."

The wind russled my son's pink hair.

"Yeah dad that sounds nice."

I got off the grass and walked with him to the water's edge. He held my hand as we walked on the water towards Compass, towards a tradition that we were determined to keep alive.

Merlin was gone, the phenix were gone, but humanity remained and out there the stars were waiting for us.