Mages of Interpol 15 (Youjo Senki)

[LoreleiFlowers]

Lorelei Note:
This is a prologue series.t is really depressing and does not have action and adventure like the main Mages of I15 plot. It gives some extra background context for character relationships in the 1950s.

---

On the train to Berun - 27th of July, 1933
17 years before Present

Discomfort, frustration, and concern flowed through Major Matheus Johan Weiss as he sat across from his commander Lieutenant Colonel Tanya von Degurechaff in the train cart. They had disarmed as instructed and were on the train to Berun to get officially discharged before returning to civilian life. Matheus was disappointed with his country surrendering. Germanians had sacrificed so much during the war and to see their country lose despite all that felt like the politicians spitting on the graves of the fallen. Some still wanted to fight, but they followed their orders anyway.

Tanya ruffled through her newspaper, and Matheus observed her rather than diving into a book or other similar distraction. First thing he noticed was just how much she had changed. When he first met her, she must have been ten years old. In retrospect, it was ridiculous that a tiny girl was made his superior. Despite her achievements, it was like no one questioned it. The girl, a woman now, had this intense old soul aura around her that silenced any objections in her competency and authority from her subordinates.

How many times had Tanya had to literally remind him that she was in fact a little girl? There was that time he forgot she was too young to drink. Then there was that time she had to remind him that her weaker voice wouldn't carry in the plane without magical assistance. They couldn't use magic since the enemy could detect that, so she had asked him to speak on her behalf. The reminder that she could not open a bank account on her own as a woman hit him particularly hard as Tanya quickly proved to him how learned she was in all matters of business and finance. He even let her guide him on how to save money and invest.

Matheus sighed. Now with the war over, the distinguished commander across from him would become just another nameless young woman in the crowd. It pained the man that Tanya, who had literally taken bullets for him and could outclass him in magecraft, would go into a world that would attempt to bend her into someone's submissive wife and treat her like she was less than guys like him. It seemed insulting after all he had experienced first hand what she could achieve when in a leadership position. Even the idea that women had their own separate but equal sphere of specialty felt cruel when applied to Tanya. She was a spirit who needed the freedom to become who she was. Gender roles would just be a suffocating cage for her.

"Tanya," he started. The tiny blonde lowered her newspaper, revealing a strained neutral expression. His commander had puffy eyes with bags under them indicating she had another rough night. When she didn't complain about the casual use of her given name, he continued. "Do you have plans for civilian life?"

Tanya folded her newspaper, and Matheus reached forward with an offered hand, which she gently accepted without comment. He massaged her small, calloused palms with his thumb. It was a gesture the few surviving members of the original 203rd Ariel Mage Battalion knew about to calm down their commander. In 1931, something broke in their commander, and Tanya needed regular physical contact to calm down whenever she was grounded for more than a few days. Sometimes people had to hold her at night to help her fall asleep. Due to the immense blood debt Matheus and the others had for the young woman, who had been just a little girl for most of the time they had known her, they put aside social graces and fear of awkwardness to make sure Tanya could be functional and happy.

Tanya had just been their commander at the beginning. Now it was like she became two different people depending on whether she was in the sky or on the ground. In the sky, the old soul was like a much older sister defending her younger siblings. This Tanya had prescient certainty, terrifying competence, and inspiring charisma. On the ground, she became like the battalion's younger sister or daughter in need of constant coddling through the traumas of war. Since they were on the ground now, Matheus could sense his commander's craving for familial contact to stabilize her mind. The older man's paternal instincts overtook him, and he approached Tanya like a father would his daughter.

With just this little contact from him to her, Tanya calmed down enough to organize her thoughts into her typically analytical response.

"I always dreamed of peace," the blue-eyed woman replied. "But all my plans are thrown to the wind now that we have lost."

She took a deep breath before continuing.

"On one hand, our economy will be strained due to the reparations we owe to our enemies though they could have been much worse if we had an unconditional surrender. The bad economy will further limit my career options. On the other hand, the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, who played a major role in getting the government to surrender before the situation got worse, are advocating for a new law that will give women equal social and economic rights as well as the right to vote." (1)

"Do you think they will be successful?"

"Given the Frauenüberschuss, the government will have little ability to refuse their demands in our country and abroad. Even the staunchest traditionalist cannot deny the reality that there are just not enough men to go back to the ways things were before the war. Current figures place the imbalance between the sexes at eight million more females than males in the Empire.

"This will inevitably have consequences on our culture. First, females will need to stay in the workforce in order to cover the vacancies left by those who…." She stopped to tighten her grip on his hand and recentered herself.


"Second, Doppelverdiener households where both the man and woman earn income will become the norm. Some males will, for the first time, have to contend with female earners making more than them, and that will…may result in resentment."

Tanya almost never considered people's emotions in her strategic calculations, but Matheus knew her prophetic pronouncements well. The woman could predict the future with uncanny ease due to her prodigal genius. The older soldier did not want to admit it, but he knew there would be many men who would feel emasculated by her and lash out.

It was not unheard of for smart and forthright women to get told to shut up and just look pretty while the guys made decisions. Matheus remembered one of his neighbors who physically chastised his wife in front of him when he was young. While it was becoming more and more frowned upon in the new century, social pressure alone could not hold husbands and fathers accountable for their abuse.

"Third, males from other countries as well as — um, never mind about that — anyways my point Germanian men will have greater competition for courtship. All of these factors are fuel for an anti-feminist and xenophobic reactionary movement in service of bringing back Germania to some supposed 'Glory Days'...I believe. It depends on how much the more reasonable reparations impact our economy and how our new Kaiser-less government manages its working class policy interests." (2)

Matheus took a few moments to process what Tanya just said. When she would wax expository like this, he couldn't always follow her alien logic. The little prodigy would just reduce society and warfare to economic forces for her terrifyingly accurate predictions. It is like human beings were just resources or animals in her eyes, but part of him suspected it helped her not feel what was going on around her. While her analysis often objectified humanity as whole, this cold aspect of her intellect only applied to those outside her Salamander Kampfgruppe. For people like Matheus, he knew the woman saw a person who mattered and whose life was priceless.

"But do you have any concrete plans for your future, Tanya?" Matheus pressed as he squeezed her small hand reassuringly. He knew he could get her to switch to a healthier, more personable way of thinking when he had her focused on herself and those she cared about.

"Not yet. I haven't had enough time to figure out where I can work. I thought at least that I would be staying at the Serbryakov residence with Visha in the short term, but the two of us are still working out the details about that after…. Also, I will need your help when we arrive in Berun to deposit my wages in the bank."

Matheus had to sponsor Tanya for her bank account due to her age, gender, and lack of family when she was a minor. During their leave, the older man would take his superior to check on her accounts and investments. This was where he discovered just how talented she was in matters of personal finance. The look in her eyes when she got a return on a well thought out investment left a deep impression on him, and a paternal pride swelled in his breast.

"I was thinking that you and I could work for my family's business," Matheus suggested. "My father and uncles are fairly well-connected, and I would be able to vouch for your acumen."

It went unsaid that she would have one of her family — the 203rd — with her at work and to escort her so she was never alone. While it might be humiliating to live under the expectation that she, as a woman, should strive to always be escorted by a man, he knew that there had always been exceptions for working class women. Things needed to be done, and women did what they had to do. It just came with more risk. He just did not want anything to happen to her. She had gone through enough.

"What kind of work would that be?" she inquired. "I want to know the industry, scope of work, compensation, and benefits."

"I cannot dive into all of the details because I don't know them," Matheus replied honestly. "It would start with an apprenticeship. Your costs would be covered along with an allowance for housing. We traded primarily in clocks, but during the war, we had shifted towards the creation of computation orbs."

Her eyes went wide at that. "Do you think we will be able to get some?"

He glanced around just in case someone was eavesdropping or about to enter before quietly nodding. It had been a few days, and already many of the aerial mages including Tanya and Matheus had been struggling with their disarmament. The survivors of the original 203rd had seen the most action and fought on every front. They could no longer live apart from the magic that had kept them alive on the battlefield for ten years without palpable consequences to their mental health.

Going from superhuman powers that have a computation orb allowed back to the mundane hurt in a way that was hard to describe. If he had to place it, they felt both like they were amputated from a part of themselves and rendered profoundly vulnerable like a snail without its shell. Aerial mages always had to be ready to fly or put up a barrier. Their hands would regularly double check that a computation orb was around their necks, and the back of their minds regularly rerun the formulas for spells necessary to keep them safe. Their instincts screamed that someone might shoot at them, and the lack of access to magic stopped them from being able to soothe that paranoia.

Then it was like a lightbulb went off above the blonde's head.

"I read a story in the paper," Tanya said as she pointed one finger awkwardly over her arm, which was currently occupied holding his hand, towards the page she had just been reading. It said Magic Marauders Pillage the Countryside. "Law enforcement is having trouble dealing with mages with military-grade equipment. Being able to deflect gunshots and fly away from pursuers make them impossible for regular law enforcement to handle. I know all of you are battlemaniacs. Perhaps we should see if the police would be interested in hiring us as mage specialists?"

"Are you sure?" he asked with a bit of pain in his voice. "Do you think it would be good for you to be involved in something like that?"

She squeezed his hand back for a moment in sincerity. "I do. I hate war. You know this. I just need to get back up there where I am not dealing with this irrational cruelty on the ground."

Thankfully, she is self-aware, but she is also very sensitive to how people treat her.

Unaware of his thoughts, she continued. "As much as my reason rankles against violence, you know how my brain works now. I see a person, and I know how to take them down efficiently. Our experiences have awoken instincts deep down in my rat brain, which want me to fight and hunt with my pack."

Matheus frowned. He didn't want to resign himself to violence. He certainly did not want to condemn her to it either. She could be so much more.

"This wouldn't be like war," she attempted to placate him. Tanya could understand frowns, and this wasn't their first conversation about life after the war. "It isn't about wasting lives and turning all the fruits of industry, science, and culture into yet more craters in the ground for some stupid, undefinable dream of victory that can never become reality. This time is about making the world a better place. It is about saving lives. It is about preventing the disruption of industry and increasing productivity."

"What about working with my family?"

"I don't think it is going to work out. Non-mages are terrified of us. I am afraid if I don't find outlets, I will hurt someone."

Tanya had a habit with casually threatening people during her time on the Eastern Front to keep discipline. Matheus had the unfortunate experience of having to calm down Tanya whenever someone told her that she couldn't do something whether it was something she was certain would end the war or because she just happened to be a woman. When whatever happened that broke her a few years ago, she no longer tolerated these acts of disrespect against her dignity as a human being.

The rest of the world didn't deserve her, Matheus thought. If only she could have been born in a world where she could just be her.

They stayed quiet for a while. Then Viktoriya entered the room with coffee. The tall woman had a special talent for brewing coffee, which their coffee-addicted commander appreciated immensely. Matheus did not like that the blonde woman drank so much.

As long as the tall Germanian had known Tanya, she just could not leave work unfinished sometimes. In the early years of the war, it was like she was afraid something bad would happen to her if she did not go above and beyond constantly. Then it seemed like she would just find some reason not to relax. Matheus still remembered how everyone else in the battalion had their vacations approved while Visha had to do schoolwork assigned by their commander and received remedial education for not meeting Tanya's aspirations for her. Eventually, it became clear it was a problem deeper than sheer habit or occupational paranoia.

The two let go of each other's hands. Tanya scooted to the side, so that Visha could join them. The adjutant poured three cups of coffee before telling Matheus to make room for her on his side of their table in the train cabin. The man blinked uncomprehendingly for a moment. The adjutant had always sat near Tanya, giving her attention and comfort.

Why was she acting so distant? Matheus wondered.

Once they were all seated, Viktoriya and Matheus on one side and Tanya alone on the other, Matheus cleared his throat.

"So are we going to talk about this?" he began.

"No," Visha replied.

Tanya seemed hurt. "It is sensitive," she clarified a bit.

Matheus sighed. "Whatever it is, I will not judge."

Visha and Tanya shared a glance before the blonde nodded. Visha leaned into the slightly taller man to whisper.

"Tanya has desires for me."

Matheus blinked. It was the worst kept secret among the 203rd that Tanya was what they called a homosexual. Her attention got taken up by women just like many of the other men of the battalion though she understandably kept it to herself and would never be creepy about it. While Tanya was definitely unique when it came to women, Matheus was sure anyone regardless of gender would come out different if they went through their adolescence on the front lines. Despite Tanya's marginal status, the old guard of the 203rd made sure no one ever let the wrong ears hear of her secret.

The Eulenburg Affair demonstrated how much damage accusations of homosexuality could do, and no one wanted that to happen to Tanya. The Eulenburg Affair involved Maximilian Tarken accusing the Kaiser's best friend Prince Nikolas of Eulenburg of having a carnal affair with one of the generals in the Kaiser's cabinet. This resulted in the worst domestic scandal in the Empire's history as the countless accusations and counter accusations led the public to call the Kaiser's cabinet the Liebenberg Round Table. With the Prince of Eulenburg and his cosmopolitan Weltpolitik out, Maximilian Tarken and his faction could enact their highly aggressive foreign policy, which was why Germania decided to keep counter invading countries and demanded a vague, maximalist victory before considering peace. (3)

The three soldiers decided to take this to Tanya's train cabin where they locked the door behind them for greater privacy.

"Are you avoiding her because of her nature or because you feel threatened by her feelings?"

Visha glanced downwards ashamed. Redness entered her cheeks. "It is more complicated than that."

"How so? You don't act like this in front of other soldiers who had a crush on you."

"That is different," the Russy refugee unhelpfully started. "We don't share a tent. We don't change in front of each other. Their love is healthy."

Matheus frowned. It was complicated. Female homosexuality was not a crime per se, but Tanya was in danger of not only losing her career but other forms of state action. Her battalion had long since shed such prejudices under Tanya's careful implementation of her "Non-Discrimination Policy" and annual training for officers, or, at least, Matheus had thought that was the case. Apparently, it wasn't.

"And what is wrong with Tanya's feelings?" There was an age difference of six years between the two, but sometimes people have to rebuff the feelings of those much younger than them. That did not mean treating them like threats to their safety, all things equal.

"I don't mean that. I have read that lesbianism is triggered by traumatic experiences. I was hoping if I wean her off of me that she will go back to being a normal girl." (4)

If this conversation hadn't been so serious, he would have laughed at the idea of Tanya ever being normal. Plus, normal was not acceptable in 203rd. While Matheus had always struggled with how his commander went against tradition and expectations on the battlefield, he still accepted the totality of his commander at the end of the day.

In response to Visha's claim, Tanya leaned in. "I can respect a certain amount of distance. I want you to be comfortable too, and the sooner I get over this emotion, the better for both of us."

"May I ask a question?" Matheus asked, seeking a time out.

They both nodded.

"Visha, did you just learn about Tanya?"

She nodded slowly.

He facepalmed.

"Okay," he started with some frustration. "Tanya do you believe you will stop being a homosexual if you get over this years old crush of yours?"

Both blinked.

"You knew?"

After explaining that the 203rd had been supporting their commander behind the scenes to the two youngest members of the original aerial mage battalion, he awaited Tanya's response to his question.

"No. I can say with near certainty that I know myself well enough that I do not like men that way and won't."

Matheus felt weird having to be the adult for his commander sometimes, but this was not one of them.

"So, Visha, do you think it is unfair to Tanya to treat her so differently from everyone else? You promised to live together at least for the short term. It will be painfully obvious that you have some kind of issue between you if you pointedly avoid each other."

Visha sighed in frustration. "Are you saying I am in the wrong here?"

This would explain why Tanya has been more stressed than usual and why her lack of sleep, the black-haired man concluded. Visha who normally supports her has cut Tanya off from physical contact that she needs to function on the ground.

"No," Tanya rejected. "It is important to have boundaries and make informed decisions. You have a choice with whom you spend time and share space. While you can respect why I wouldn't couldn't tell you easily, you know now."

Matheus didn't like how Tanya was responding. The younger woman was acting like she was the one who had to do all the accommodating, and this logic taken too far would result in Tanya avoiding all spaces with other women. It was neither practical nor fair to Tanya to self-segregate herself like that, the man thought, but held his tongue. He didn't want to contradict his commander and didn't know if his thoughts on the matter were correct either.

Visha processed this for a couple moments. "I still will let you stay with my family but-"

"You don't feel comfortable with me being so close anymore. I will have to find another place to live. I understand."

Tanya had a very expressive face that betrayed her inner pain. Matheus felt a pang in his heart.

"But I promised that I would trust you. I was very clear."

"And you had the right to change your mind after promising to help me," Tanya replied earnestly. "It was the heat of the moment. You spoke from your heart before your head caught up. I have seen it before. You don't have to worry."

Visha's actions annoyed the older man deeply. If the adjutant had promised that it was completely fine that Tanya desired her and then changed her mind right while they were on their way home, then that was pretty rough for Tanya. The commander had almost no options outside of returning to the convent. That wasn't a great option given the commander's very open atheism and stressed reactions to religious expectations.

Matheus also noticed that the little woman definitely had let her mind do the talking. It was clear on her face that her heart was a mess and wasn't taking new distance with her adjutant well.

"I might have a way to help," Matheus began. "What if you stay with me, Tanya?"

"Matheus, you are a single man," Tanya replied. "You can't live with an unmarried woman."

"Normally, no, but you are an orphan, and so I can adopt you, I think. While we finalize the paperwork, you can stay at Visha's home. When it is completed, you can be my daughter. How does that sound?"

Tanya's face evolved through concern, fear, happiness, and frustration before landing on contentment.

"That would be most practical for my situation."

That was Tanya for "yes".

---

On the Streets of Berun - 28th of July, 1933

Viktoriya Ivanovna Serebryakov walked down the street with her former commander in tow. She kept her pace brisk, forcing the much shorter girl to put in effort to keep up. It was mean, but Viktoriya did not want to face Tanya right now.

As they passed a sign post indicating they were on the street her parent's townhouse was on, the former adjutant reflected upon her time with the child prodigy Tanya von Degurechaff. They first met on the Rhine Front under constant threat of artillery shells. The only thing scarier than death above was that little girl who was inexplicably both her superior and there on the frontlines as well.

The General Staff seemed enamored with the little girl. Her theories of logistics, total warfare, rapid response aerial battalions, and the highly flexible kampfgruppen had proven invaluable during the war. The General Staff decided to put that girl - only ten years old at the time - in charge of creating the first elite aerial battalion and later the first kampfgruppe to test her theories and then proceeded to unleash her and her subordinates onto every front imaginable and for the riskiest operations.The General Staff had only assigned tall brunette to serve as the prodigy's adjutant because they were both female and Tanya gave her a high evaluation..

None of Tanya's life really added up, Viktoriya felt. Tanya's intelligence was not like that of a smart child, but that of an adult. Tanya knew things she had no business knowing. At the time, there was a sense in everyone that knew the little commander that the insanity of this new age of war had taken over. Their superiors painted Tanya as the epitome of how desperate the war had become that the General Staff was willing to use a little girl - which was a symbol of innocence in popular understanding - to commit extreme violence. That was the thing though. Tanya wasn't some innocent girl.

During the war, Viktoriya had idolized the small commander as a peace-loving individual. Tanya had even saved their lives a hundred times and deserved to be recognized as a great hero. When the war ended, it was like a spell had ended, and Viktoriya felt the bizarreness of finally internalizing who Tanya actually was. A fear for the commander Viktoriya hadn't felt since they had first met came back the night after Tanya confessed.

The nineteen-year-old blonde woman was hiding something big, and it wasn't her atypical desires.

As they walked to her parent's home, Viktoriya theorized that Tanya must be an alien from another world. It made perfect sense to the twenty-three year old leading the way to her parents' home. She had been reading about outer space, and some scientists had theorized about space-faring aliens using hyper-advanced computation orbs to traverse the stars and may have visited their planet at some point. Some tabloids even speculated these aliens hid in plain sight among them. In fact, Viktoriya had occasionally caught Tanya using her alien language while singing in the shower, swearing, and sleep talking. Oh, the little alien had thought herself so clever, trying to make up all sorts of excuses for her weird behavior, but Viktoriya was onto her.

Tanya being from Planet Cruton or other popular theory of the alien's homeworld was fine though. An alien didn't mean monster. Viktoriya still had a blood debt to the commander even if she might be some kind of extraterrestrial. If Tanya was an alien, then she was probably stranded on this planet. It would explain why she didn't have parents and had such foreign cultural sensibilities.

What had bothered Viktoriya more, surprisingly in a way, was that Tanya had feelings for her. The former adjutant just thought Tanya was being just an affectionate friend. Now Viktoriya feared that Tanya had taken advantage of her to stare at her with lustful eyes. Was that need for hugs and physical contact just a trick to get close to her?

Viktoriya came to a sudden stop. She had definitely gone too far. They needed to go back a block. Looking backwards, she saw the 149cm of the former commander jogging to catch up.

Many would be surprised to find this out, but White Silver was not that physically fit. The younger woman had developed a bad habit during her basic training of overusing magic enhancements to make sure she met or exceeded any physical requirement. The problem was such overreliance results in the body not actually getting actual exercise. It was good for improving one's magical reserves and control, which was one reason why Tanya was an exceptional mage. Now she was without her computation orb, the small woman would struggle to do physical activities she had no problems with before. Combine that with the hot summer sun, and Tanya had become a sweaty mess.

"Are we here?" Tanya huffed and puffed out.

Viktoriya just started walking back the way they had come, leaving a baffled blonde woman in her wake.

Thankfully, it did not take long to correct.

Viktoriya walked up the steps to the door of her parents' home and rang the bell. Soon her mother opened the door. She was much like Viktoriya though a bit shorter and much softer. Viktoriya had inherited her height from her father as well as her mother's appetite. The constant use of calorie-intensive magic and physical strain on the front kept Viktoriya lean. Unlike her former commander, Viktoriya actually let her body do the lion's share of physical activity. This not only freed up some of her focus to keep up with the prodigy in magical battles but also gave Viktoriya a toned body.

"Viktoriya, you are home," Mrs. Serebryakov gushed in her native Russy upon opening the door before switching to heavily accented Germanian. "And who is that behind you?"

"This is…," Visha started as she searched her brain for the right address for the maybe-alien. "Fraulein Degurechaff."

"Oh, you must have served with my daughter. I was so proud of her, reaching first lieutenant. I must thank her commander for recommending my smart little girl for officer training. I hope Visha treated you well, darling. Oh, where are my manners? You look like you are burning up out there, young lady. Please come in."

The older Serebryakov ushered them in. Once they were seated on the couch in the living room — Viktoriya sitting as far away from her guest as possible, her mother decided to break the ice while serving some water to them both. Frustration filled Visha due to her mom putting her back into the box called "child". She already felt old rhythms and habits starting to take hold of her.

"So what brings the young miss to our home?" her mother began.

Tanya took a deep draught of water before answering. "I don't really have a home to go to, so we were hoping that I could stay here for a few days." The blonde's voice had a morose edge to it that Viktoriya knew was a result of how uneasy she was becoming on the ground as well as this rift that had sprung up between them.

"Oh dear, do you have at least some parents or family?" the matriarch continued.

"I am an orphan."

"Oh dearie, how dreadful! Do you at least have any dresses to change into? You can't walk around Berun in your uniform."

Tanya paused in the conversation. "The last dress I owned was before the war. I doubt it would still fit me."

"Dear heavens, you poor girl. That is it! You are staying with us. Viktoriya, prepare our guest a bath and then pull out one of your old dresses. She needs to change out of that uniform. Also, your father will be home soon, and I will let him know that he needs to take this little lady to the boutique at once to get an outfit."

Viktoriya had a shocked expression. First Matheus and now her mother were treating Tanya von Degurechaff like some little girl who needed constant coddling. This woman had led men into battle before she went through puberty. She had committed acts some would reasonably consider war crimes. She did this all the while having an air of maturity and confidence greater than men in their thirties, yet somehow, now that the war was over, that spell she felt confounded people to treat her like an adult when she was a child had reversed. Now they were treating an adult like she was some pitiful little child.

Was this some alien magic she had weaved around them? Viktoriya thought.

"Daughter, please. Your father will be home soon, and I want to make sure the young Fraulein Degurechaff is presentable when he arrives. The sweet girl is just covered in sweat."

Viktoriya opened her mouth but said nothing. She knew better than to disobey her mother. She began to move to the stairs.

"And bring up the girl's luggage to the guest room? They look awfully heavy and the girl is so frail and tired."

The former adjutant balled up a fist behind her back in frustration. With a forced smile, she leaned down, took the bag in one arm easily enough, and finally made her way upstairs.

She completed all of her tasks with practiced ease. From a young age, her family had raised Viktoriya to be a servant to nobles and royalty. The Russy had long elevated mages to noble status, and her family was no exception. However, when the communists had taken over, mages became the primary target of persecution. Her family had fled Russy and found a new home for themselves in Germania. Tanya had put Viktoriya's training to the test during the last several years when Visha served as the younger girl's adjutant.

Coming down stairs, Viktoriya saw her mother holding Tanya's hand and rubbing her back reassuringly.

"Your bath should be ready dear," the matriarch stated encouragingly. "Hurry up."

Tanya eased herself up and made her way to the stairs where she made one of her head bows. "Thank you, Visha."

Viktoriya remained quiet, which her mother picked up on. Once Tanya had shut the door to the upstairs bathroom, her mother snapped at her.

"Why are you being so distant with her?" she demanded in Russy. "Were you responsible for her during the war?"

"I was," Viktoriya replied confused. As an adjutant, she was, in a sense, responsible for Tanya. "It is complicated."

"The war hurt that young girl. She needs care. You are her elder, yet here you are acting like she barely exists. That girl really appreciates you, and you are hurting her with this attitude of yours. Don't pretend you aren't. I know you, my daughter."

"It is complicated!"

"Then explain it to me. The war is over. You don't have to keep what you are doing in the military a secret anymore."

"I can't!"

"You can't or you have gotten some pig-headed grudge against this poor girl. I remember when you bullied Elya because she was more developed than you when you were kids. You became good friends when I set you straight. Is this the same thing?"

Viktoriya blushed in frustration and embarrassment, but couldn't formulate a response to explain why this wasn't the issue at all. She was in her twenties for gods' sake. Viktoriya didn't have such childish rivalries anymore. Unfortunately for the former adjutant, her mother took her silence as confirmation of her theory and simply further put her daughter back into the familiar mental box of being her problem child.

Now I want you to go with your father and help that girl at the tailor's. She needs a friend right now. The girl was just telling me how thankful she was to you when she broke out in tears that she tried to hide from me. Whatever the problem is, resolve it."

It wasn't an order, but it might as well have been.

---

Wien, Germania - 12th of August, 1933

General Hans von Zettour sat in his temporary office while the peace accords hammered out what the future of his country would be.

He had just finished reading an article about the fate of Colonel Lergen. The poor man had the misfortune of getting all the credit for every dirty operation assigned to and executed by Tanya von Degurechaff. Much of this was due to an intelligence operation to fool the Ildoans into giving Germania a better deal in the peace negotiations during the early years of the invasion into the Russy Federation. Lergen had become the face for the Salamander Kampfgruppe on paper to pull it off. It had been successful, but his government had failed to accept the peace agreement back then.

Though they lost the war, it wasn't all bad. Tanya von Degurechaff and her subordinates had continued to pull miracle after miracle off during the war allowing for a softer defeat. The reparations would be bearable even if grief would be too much for many.

It struck Zettour that most people did not know who the frightfully young Lieutenant Colonel was. Many in the General Staff did not want to draw attention to the fact that they had used a prepubescent child in experiments and had her fight on the front lines. On paper, it was horrifying. In reality, it was also horrifying but ameliorated somewhat by Degurechaff's prodigal and bizarrely mature mind. Still it was a deep shame that Germania would never be able to publicly acknowledge Degurechaff's contributions without putting her into international crosshairs.

Lergen had insisted some cultists had summoned Degurechaff from another plane of existence and put her into the body of an orphan. Her knowledge of logistics went far beyond anything she learned at the War College, and her theory of Total War was something only a demon could imagine that easily and with so little emotion. The colonel just did not have any way to prove his wild theory and knew he was not allowed to direct any unwanted attention to the little girl.

Speaking of "devil", he spotted a letter on his desk from a "Tanya von Weiss". The contents revealed it to be former Tanya von Degurechaff. Her former vice commander had apparently recently adopted her. The young woman underlined three times to make it unmissable that her name change was not due to marrying a man.

Her Vice Commander was much older than her, so it makes sense. Honestly, I just can't ever imagine the young woman ever settling down to raise kids and care for a home.

The Weiss family particularly caught his attention. It was known for the manufacturing of many of the single-core orbs during the war. The dual core Type 97 used by the 203rd were created in a specialized facility, but many of the standard issue orbs came from Weiss's family. It was mildly concerning coincidence, especially given the current problem plaguing the continent with the rogue mages.

Surprisingly, though not all that surprising given this was the mage formerly known as Degurechaff, the letter contained a proposal for an international policing agency to handle organized crime. The idea was something people had been just beginning to talk about as drugs and stolen goods were smuggled across borders and overseas. The new issue of criminals with magic ability flying away from the scene of the crime had only further complicated law enforcement.

The former lieutenant colonel also laid out in a fairly detailed fashion how former aerial mages could have gainful and productive employment as key part of this "Interpol" as specialists dealing with the new age of magically enhanced crime. The key reason is only better equipped and superiorly trained mages would be able to handle other mages effectively. Zettour knew from the war how essential aerial mages ended up being.

Like her suggestions for creating the 203rd and the Salamander Kampfgruppe, Zettour had all the intentions of bringing her idea to his contacts in the international community here at Wein. He would go even further and have the diplomats use the lending of Germania aerial mages to Interpol to get some leverage in the post-war negotiations and ingratiate the other nations to the humble loser of the Great War.

The General just hoped this and their League of Nations plan would actually stop another one of these wars.

---

Notes:
1) See: Wikipedia on Feminism in Germany
2) Based on "Gender as a destabilizing factor of Weimar society" by Donna-Marie Bohan
3) See: Wikipedia on Eulenburg Affair
4) Paradis, Meghan C (2016) "Shifting Understandings of Lesbianism in Imperial and Weimar Germany," Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark: Vol. 2, Article 4.

 

[LoreleiFlowers]

Berun, Germania - 30th of October, 1933
17 years before the Present

I fiddled with the components with the clockwork of a Weiss-32 model computation orb on my bedroom desk. Master Nikolaus Weiss, who was Matheus' father and now, therefore, my grandfather, had instructed me to practice deconstructing, cleaning, and then reconstructing it. My decade of experience caring for my over-engineered Germanian machine pistol aided me immensely in this task. My apprenticeship with the Weiss family, of which I am now part, would take approximately five years.

As I went through the motions of my second time deconstructing the orb, I reflected upon the last few weeks. The day I left the Serebryakov household, the matriarch, and her husband hugged me and promised that I would be welcomed back anytime. They had spent my whole time with them, fussing over me and treating me like a cute little girl. I definitely had mixed feelings about it, given how much it reminded me of that incident in 1931, but I didn't complain. Visha kept distant and refused to acknowledge me as I left after I said my final thanks and apology to her. I could hear her mother chewing her out as Matheus escorted me to his car.

The week that followed hit me hard. Visha has been with me almost every day for the last ten years. The sudden absence of her from my side, which often came with the smell of her morning brew and her ear to listen to my struggles, left me addled and aching all over. I wondered if this is how divorce must feel like when one partner suddenly revealed they no longer loved you. There had been signs that she was straight before I confessed my feelings. There had been signs she shared some of her parents' prejudices against homosexual people. However, I had hoped she would see past those and accept me anyway.

It hurt knowing her parents' love was conditional. In my mind, they showered me with love and affection just like Visha had in her own way, but if they learned the truth, love would turn into hate and affection into cold shoulders. Every time they told me how beautiful I was and how I was sure to get a husband soon who would take care of me, they just sent another dagger into me. They thought they were being kind, but I almost preferred Visha's distant behavior over their constant flow of hurtful assumptions.

There is no happiness in a world where you cannot be seen for who you are. I knew this too well. I was an awful judge of emotions, but even I knew that this kind of love was intensely hollow.

Visha's response to sharing a sensitive piece of myself had become the model for how I saw the kindness of anyone who did not know the truth about me. I was only a little girl who needed love in strangers' eyes until they realized my secret and decided I was no longer human but rather a bringer of cultural erosion and a supposed goddess' wrath.

Part of me speculated in a spirit of dark humor that some people saw me as the alien or the demon in their horror stories, robbing me of my personhood in their moral cosmology. I knew my friends didn't actually think that about me because that would be just silly, but part of me believed they did. They saw a child who did not make sense and needed to rationalize that behavior. I could never explain why I was so different, though. I would just be sent to the mental asylum if I did. Then, I would never see them again. It would be a fate worse than death.

So being my full self and happy would never be possible.

I wiped my face. It was getting hard to see. I sat there for a long time until I could force myself to work and not feel like this. Even when I did, my mind kept chugging along this line of thought.

I thought about how Matheus would bring me to places full of people who loved and appreciated him throughout his life. He would someday get married. He had the right to get married. People would celebrate the occasion. He would be rewarded by society for it. They would love him for all of him.

Spending time with his social circle helped, but there was this suffocating pressure that the whole situation put on me. Everyone hurt me even in their kindest gesture, except for Weiss and the 203rd, who visited me. It was like I had to pretend every smile and expression of gratitude in order to play along with this narrative that I was a Normal like them.

I haven't felt this way since I was a man in my past life when I blindly accepted that society had rules and that rules needed to be followed. In this world, though, where I was born, every rule clearly became yet another unjust binding on my freedom and flourishing.

I also worried that I was preventing Matheus from finding a partner. Would she be okay with another adult, an unrelated woman in the household — one who dominated Matheus' attention and needed regular physical comfort? How would he broach the subject of my sexuality since that would be a deal breaker if the three of us lived together? Would it be the first thing he needed to establish, risking spreading my secret widely? Or would it be the last thing he told them before going forward with an engagement after he invested significant time courting her to get to that point?

This all assumed I never moved out, but the idea of being alone again tormented me even when I thought of it. I could not conscience living without Weiss at the moment.

Perhaps it was selfish of me to have hoped at all for a relationship with Visha. To think that a woman who couldn't feel the same way about me would give me the affection my heart desired anyway. That she would risk her livelihood and the bright future her parents promised her for me. Or that some twist of fate would occur, and I would find that she was bisexual and would still entertain my affections on the side despite the dangers that would follow such an affair. I just wanted her to hold me again.

Look at how irrational and selfish I have become.

During the adoption, Matheus had given me the choice of taking his family name. It was a rather emotional thing for me, which meant I really did not know what to think of the matter. If I had to describe it, I would say I had this visceral need for connection. The 203rd had been my family in spirit these last several years. My relationship with them had surpassed anything from my first life by kilometers. I burst into messy tears as I accepted his name. It was my official recognition of this connection. Degurechaff became a middle name, and my full name was now Tanya Degurechaff von Weiss, retaining my knighthood. I typically just introduced myself as Tanya von Weiss.

Over the course of the last couple of months, I depended on Matheus to travel anywhere. He had insisted that I wear the dress Visha's father had purchased for me for the first few weeks due to laws criminalizing cross-dressing, but we increasingly spotted women in outfits that challenged those laws. It was evidently not a law the police in Berun wanted to enforce for some reason neither Matheus nor I had picked up on. Regardless, that got me permission to get out of a dress I hated into my preferred trousers, blouses, turtlenecks, and overcoats.

Doubts hit me as I considered my clothing preferences. Was I a fake woman since I didn't like wearing dresses? Was I just fooling myself? Was I just a straight man like my father but placed into the shell of a small woman? Did I prefer this form due to some perversion of heterosexual attraction?

I busied myself with my computation orb cleaning practice as my self-doubt about my gender plagued me. Many of my doubts grew out of seeds of things I had heard in my first life. I had never learned much about these topics in Japan. It was unprofessional to talk about such things. Even as a human resources manager, we had only the bare minimum instruction about sexual and gender diversity, and it definitely did not go into how to figure out oneself. There was no guidebook or manual I could reference to make sense of my situation. Matheus had no clue, either. We could not just ask strangers either, as far as we were aware.

Neither Matheus nor I knew where to start to get me help. Just having one person who understood a fraction of what I was experiencing would have given me a necessary outlet. As much as Matheus loved me as a good father figure should, he did not understand what I was going through. He did not know what to say. He was always holding his tongue in uncertainty. Should I be upset because it is unfair? Or should I learn to just cope with unfairness? Was I overreacting? Or was my reaction completely justified?

When I had just finished reconstructing the computation orb for the second time that evening, I heard a knock on the door. My former vice commander, now my father, was out socializing after work, so it fell on me to see who was at the door.

I took my practice computation orb with me. When I reached the door, I ran the flight spell so that I could get eye-level with the spy hole. An unknown woman with a beautiful face stood on the other side. She had an expression I couldn't read, but I struggled with reading expressions in general, so that was usual.

When I opened the door, I picked up a mana signal from the woman revving up a spell. I reflexively activated a shield spell, and there I was there, hovering mid-air as we just stared at each other. The woman had her hand in her pocket, probably grabbing at a concealed computation orb of her own. Given how short-sighted Germania and other countries had been with the rapid development of more advanced computation orbs, there was now a lot of hardware on the streets that could turn a mage into an extremely nimble fighter plane with reinforced plating. Due to the efficiency of modern computation orb technology, civilians could easily get access to what should have been military-grade hardware. Now, I was face-to-face with a stranger with that technology at the door.

"I am a friend of Visha," the woman stated tensely. I held my aggressive stance for a moment and then slowly deactivated my spells. I kept my hand on my Weiss-32, which I had selected for my assigned maintenance practice because it had the flight spell programmed in it. "My name is Elena Müller. Would you be Tanya von Degurechaff?"

"That was my name once."

Müller's expression changed. I think I saw a smirk. Why would changing my name amuse her?

"I am here to talk. Visha told me what happened between you two, and I am here to smooth things out on her behalf. May I come in?"

I hesitated momentarily but then gestured inside.

As Müller came into the apartment, I took a moment to take her in mentally. The woman was a redhead that had black roots. Hair dye, probably. She was Germanian based on her rounded facial features. Her outfit especially stood out because it was no dress but a fashionable spin on the familiar pilot outfit worn by notables like Amelia Earhart. Her version highlighted her curvy and busty figure well. Müller was of average height at approximately 168cm, and that 20cm she had over me gave her figure a femme fatale gravitas that mine could never have, no matter how hard Being X's part shot of the puberty hammer hit me. My mind started wondering if we could date before I reigned it in.

I chastised myself for what my brain had done. For starters, why was my brain immediately evaluating her body like this? I was putting her body in categories and comparing myself to her in ways I never did with men. Sure, I could identify men I knew in a crowd based on their features, but it is like my brain just doesn't bother describing them at all. Men just blurred into the background while women my age popped into focus everywhere I went. Then my brain just deconstructs these women based on what makes them attractive to me or not.

Visha's uncomfortable expression when she told me that we couldn't share a room anymore flashed through my mind. I felt awful, like I had done something wrong and that the most recent victim of my pubescent brain was Elena Müller.

"So, are you all alone here?" the other woman inquired as she took a seat in our small dining and living room.

"I also live with my former Vice Commander Matheus. Would you like some coffee, Mrs. Müller?"

"Yes, please."

I went into the kitchen and went to work while we continued talking.

"So what do you do…Ms. Degurechaff?"

"Oh, my family name is Weiss now. Adoption, not marriage. I work at the Weiss family business cleaning and maintaining computation orbs. Soon, I will learn how to make some of the parts. You said that you came on behalf of my former adjutant."

I kept my speech professional but positive as if I were talking to a customer in my first life.

"Yes," Müller replied as her face got more serious. "Visha and I have known each other for fourteen years - that is four years before she joined your unit. Visha has always been…the words escape me at the moment. The important thing is she doesn't hate you. After she and I talked, things between you were more complicated than they seemed. She doesn't want to hurt you, I promise, but she needs time to figure some things out."

I stared at the water as it started heating up.

"Ms. Weiss?"

"Yes, I am listening." I had zoned out. That was happening more often.

"So, how are you feeling, if I may ask?"

I poured the hot water over some ground coffee for my cup as I took some time to respond.

"I don't understand it all that well," I began. "She was also so competent and understanding, everything a commander could have wanted from a subordinate. We had been together so long. I thought she would understand and that something could be arranged."

My cup overflowed as I lost control of my pouring. I tsk'd as hot water contacted my skin in my frantic effort to clean up the mess.

"You loved her, didn't you?" the woman in the other room asked. Her voice had softened. She wasn't offended by my homosexuality. Was she touched by the situation?

"I don't know." Despite all my private thoughts, I did not have enough confidence to speak confidently about whether what I had counted as love or not.

"Do you still want to be with her?"

"I don't know why it matters. She doesn't want to be with me. Visha made that abundantly clear."

"Yes, but if she had said yes. If she had accepted your feelings even if she did not share them, then what?"

I had finished cleaning up the mess and poured Müller her cup. I reentered the living room and served the coffee. I took a sip of mine before answering. It was dark and bitter, just how I liked it. My coffee couldn't compare with Visha's. While it wasn't nearly as terrible as ersatz coffee, it still felt like a sorry substitute for the taste I had gotten used to over the last decade.

"I don't know," I replied. I had naively focused just on telling her how I felt without really thinking about life away from the battlefield. I took a deep breath before continuing. "Perhaps Visha and I could have shared an apartment for a little while. Just having her around. That…would be enough. I would just focus on my work, and it would be enough. If she needed some support, I would be there. She would be successful in whatever she wanted to do, and I would be there."

Müller considered her coffee but didn't take a sip.

"We have milk but no cream or sugar right now," I explained. The war economy still made getting certain things incredibly hard.

She shrugged. "I guess I will have coffee the Tanya way." Taking a sip, I could see she didn't like it. I don't know if it was because her tastes were not the same as mine or just that my brewing was lackluster. Wiping her mouth on a napkin, which smeared her maroon lipstick a little bit on the cloth, Müller continued talking. "You might not know this, but Visha could never have been your roommate after the war. Her father wants to keep his eyes on her until she gets married. He would have never allowed Visha to live on her own. He still thinks that she will lose her virginity if she is off on her own without supervision and lose, by extension, her ability to get married to a respectable husband."

I drank from my bitter brew, unsure how to respond.

Visha also had it rough as a straight woman. I had Matheus, who just wanted to understand me and support me — as a proper father should, and my former adjutant had parents who "supported" her to conform to their expectations. The greater the expectation placed on who a person is supposed to be, the less you respect who that person actually is. The more you want a person to think a certain way, the less you want them to actually think. Not once did Visha's parents legitimately ask what I wanted in a way that left room for me to answer honestly. The few times I did, walking outside the box they put me in, they overruled the decision for "my own good." It was an authoritarian way of parenting.

"But I have to ask," Müller added because I had remained silent. I was just not suited for conversing anymore. "Do you think that just living with her would have been enough?"

How much have I wanted to be able to fly away from this awful world and surround myself with the 203rd right then and there — to be on a battlefield that made sense?

"Tanya, would it have been enough?"

"I don't know," I answered quickly before calming down and explaining. "Being there would just have to be enough. What other options do I have? What can I even do?"

"You can go out and fight for a world where you don't have to settle for that version of enough."

I blinked. What was she talking about?

"So, how often do you spend the day alone in this small apartment?" Müller inquired, abruptly changing the subject.

"Why do you ask?" I questioned back gently. It might have been a confession. I couldn't be with Matheus all the time. His position in the family business required him to go on trips with his father, and mine required me to stay put and practice.

"I am just trying to understand the former commander of my best friend," Müller answered cryptically. For some reason, she had a smirk on her face. I turned my head away from her and stared out the window. My face felt warm, and realizing that made me all the more embarrassed. "You are so cute, Tanya. Why do you join me for a walk?"

"But we shouldn't. It is getting late, and law enforcement will-"

"Will do nothing. You and I are mages. Wear whatever you want, and then put your favorite aerial mage medal. Even someone letting the men lock her inside a dingy apartment like this must have heard about the chaos going on in Europa."

"Even if that is the case, society has rules, and we must obey."

Müller chuckled at my reply. "Tanya," she started, making sure I was looking at her. When she had my attention, she leaned forward, causing me to panic for a different reason. The twenty-five-year-old had to know what she was doing in that outfit. "You owe society nothing. Definitely not to a society that thinks you belong in some insane asylum for your harmless natural inclinations. If anything, society owes you a debt."

My sensibilities balked at the classic radical line. I tried to form a response, but she leaned further across the table.

"So what do you say? Will you condemn yourself to a life in a lonely but safe prison or come with me and see what is possible when you do something you aren't supposed to do, but you know in your heart it is so right?" she whispered into my ear.

I gulped. Words wouldn't come out. My head betrayed me, and I nodded.

"Good girl," the older woman said in a sultry voice that completely malfunctioned my brain. I didn't even know who this person was, and my irrational, hormonal brain was making me act so unprofessionally. Matheus would be so ashamed of me right now.

When I came back to my senses, I was outside the apartment, walking somewhere with this person I had just met. I changed into my brown trench coat. Upon my lapel, I proudly placed my Silver Wings Assault Badge with Oak Leaves. I had left that I was going out with a friend on the counter for Matheus if he got home before me.

"Where are we going?" I inquired, looking around. I hadn't been outside without a male chaperone in what felt like forever.

"I'm going to a club to meet some of my like-minded folks. I think you will like them, Goldilocks."

"Goldilocks?"

Again, Müller had thrown me off with her free-spirited charisma. She had me completed at the mercy of her flow. How the last few years had whittled down my will that I could just be pushed around like this.

"It is a nickname. You should be used to changing your name. I go by Elya to my friends. You can call me that too now."

My mental perspective of my situation spun by how fast things were moving. She had already moved to the informal "you" in Germanian, like we were close friends or family — or a couple. Normally, I would have balked immediately, but I did not want to push back. I wanted to follow her lead. My desperation for her attention must be so obvious. I think I am feeling embarrassed — very embarrassed.

She went on talking as I kept up beside her on our trip to a club. "Did you know I am the one who gave Visha her nickname?"

"I didn't know that." It seemed there were a lot of things I didn't know about Viktoriya. Ten years with her, and I didn't know her best friend was this Elya person. I knew Visha sent letters to a friend, but I had started the 203rd with a paradigm of professionalism. I didn't talk about friends and family, and Visha reciprocated. I only knew her family's refugee status because the fact her family spoke Russy at home had been relevant to our operations on the Eastern Front.

"So, do you like it?" Elya inquired. "Goldilocks, I mean."

"Not really." I don't want to be compared to a child in a frilly dress from a children's story for multiple reasons.

"What would you like your nickname to be then?"

"Nichts." I had just said "nothing" in Germanian.

"Nichts it is then."

"Wait, that is not what I meant."

"Come on. I think it is interesting. It is like Odysseus tricking the Cyclops by saying he is Nobody. You are a brilliant strategist and epic hero, so the comparison to Odysseus just fits."

My cheeks warmed from the compliments. Her voice was so nice, and my heart did flips when she talked to me. I was about to suggest Odyssia instead, but I chose to keep listening to her.

"Being called Nichts will be pretty interesting, I think. It was like calling some tall 'Smalls.' You know, opposites. Calling you nothing is just emphasizing that you are really something."

The way she made me feel talking to me. My mind was mentally screaming. I really did want to be something, or rather someone, to Elya or a person just like her. Maybe someday I will find someone who made my heart flip, cared for all of me, and would let me love them. Elya proved to be pretty convincing about accepting that nickname despite my earlier reservations. She really had this real talent to just change my mind on things.

As we walked down the street, I saw all sorts of people walking around. Most women had hats with flowers in them and long dresses that went all the way down to their ankles in a show of modesty. Those kinds of outfits were what I had felt forced to wear based on customs and traditions in Germania. Theoretically, law enforcement could have charged Elya and me with crossdressing, which was a crime in this time period. These more traditionally dressed women sometimes glared at us like we were a pair of delinquents.

The traditionally dressed women I saw on the street either came in groups greater than three or with a male chaperone. We were the only group of two without a man.

While I internally balked at the still mostly intact patriarchy, I still obeyed per se. I was a person of order at my heart. Society offered us a social contract. We may not agree with everything that our country does, but we need to respect the law generally. As long as society respected individual liberties and provided the means to change the rules through some kind of democratic tool, who was I to complain?

That was the problem, though. Since I was born Tanya von Degurechaff, I have never had those liberties or access to the democratic system. I tolerated the sex discrimination with the understanding that, eventually, I would be granted freedom. I just had to affect assimilation into Germanian society and wait. Women like Elya and Visha didn't know that. They only knew the yoke of severe oppression.

My eyes caught a fancily dressed woman walking down a street. I almost missed that she had a man, her husband probably, on her arm. I really needed to work on this male-blindness I developed. Men were just so much less interesting to my hormone-addled brain than women, and this was going to become a serious problem if I didn't curb its excesses.

Was I this bad in my first life? A lot of my adolescence in that life was a blank to me. I think I repressed my memories of that time. How could puberty give such a response, like how one might react to trauma? Maybe it was just a relic of Being X messing with my mind. I had forgotten my name until I had that awful experience of returning to my past life for one day.

"We are here," Elya announced, waking me from my mental wandering. She moved aside so I could see a gaudy building with the name "The Golden City Club" emblazoned with bright light bulbs. I saw a man with an aerial mage badge out front. I didn't recognize him, but I could tell he had a computation orb in his left pocket. My instincts caused my hackles to rise temporarily until I was done figuring out my options for killing him if he attacked for some reason. Based on Elya's own subconscious reaching for hers in her jacket, I wasn't the only one who picked up some concerning habits. War had changed us, and the only thing we had learned to fear was someone attacking us in our sleep or another mage while we were awake.

"Names?" the male aerial mage asked.

"Elena Müller and Tanya von Degurechaff," my guide replied, using my old name.

Had she already reserved a place for me at the club today before visiting me? That was some confidence.

The guy used a spell to send a message a short distance before nodding his head. Given the advances in computation orb technology during the war, communication spells were undetectable except at close range unless one was casting specific interception spells.

Elya then led me inside the establishment. There, I realized I was out of my depth. The place was clearly a bar. I had been to bars before with my coworkers in my last life, but this was not the same at all. It was something I imagined a proto-typical gay bar to look like. There was a lot of cross-dressing, dancing in couples of all kinds, and modern music by this world's standards. Frankly, my Japanese salaryman brain lacked the pre-requisite experience and terminology to fully encapsulate what I saw with any completeness or tact. I thought it best if I avoided saying something wrong now I was outside my natural habit of the cubicle or the battlefield.

Based on what I knew, this was the kind of place law enforcement liked to raid. Some of the people patronizing the establishment were clearly not just here to talk with others like themselves. What caught my eyes, in particular, was what appeared to be the proprietor of the establishment paying off some well-dressed individuals near the back door.

Given that each of those men with rings on their hands carried concealed guns and computation orbs, I guess they were mobsters. At least, they matched some of the descriptions of one of the organized crime syndicates that had swiped a bunch of computation orbs and taken root in Berun. It would explain why the bar wasn't afraid of raids from law enforcement.

"Um, Elya, when you said I was going to fight, what exactly did you mean?"

The taller woman gave me an amused look. "You will find out soon."

My hackles raised. What had I gotten myself into? If Elya was in league with some yakuza-like organization, then I was screwed. She knew my name, where I lived, and my family. These ring-wearing mobsters might even go after Matheus, and then they would have me completely under their control, as I would do anything to protect him. I had to follow along with Elya's plan, or Matheus or I might wake up without a computation orb at the bottom of the Müggelsee and our feet encased in concrete.

She guided me to the second story, where there were some private rooms, and I did my best to remain calm. These rooms were suited for conducting meetings and had a large semicircle sofa that wrapped around a round table. There were also individual chairs against the wall that could be placed on the other side of the round table as needed. Each room had a bed that folded into the wall and could be dropped. From the looks of it, some people might be mixing business and pleasure in the other rooms.

Our room already had three individuals in it: two women—one in her mid-forties with very pale skin, brown hair, and serious brown eyes. The other younger woman was my age, with caramel skin, raven black hair, and enchanting amber eyes. There was also one guy.

Stop it, brain! That guy is saying something. It might even be important!

"--is Hilary Brecht, and this young lady is Sonetto Esfahani," the man said, introducing everyone. Unfortunately, I had only gotten the two women's names and completely missed when he gave his own. This was bad. I never made this kind of mistake in my past life.

(AN: This Sonetto is not the Sonnetto from the 1950s. The latter is named after this Sonetto, though.)


Keep composure. No one will find out.

Elya fortunately led the conversation on our behalf. "Mrs. Brecht and I know each other already from the BDF. For those who don't know, you can just call me Elya. It is better that way. The one next to me goes by Tanya von Weiss, formerly known as Lieutenant Colonel Tanya von Degurechaff. She is one of the twelve knights of the Imperial War College, a recipient of the Silver Wings Assault Badge at the tender age of nine years, and the best person to be our muscle."

All eyes turned to me as I processed being voluntold to be the "muscle" of the dubious organization they were part of.

I definitely did not have the "muscle" look. Due to my diminutive height and penchant for using magic to assist with physical activities, I retained an embarrassingly weak appearance. I also had become a bit of a shut-in.

In a sense, I felt vindicated. Visha and Matheus had told me I was too paranoid when I confessed some of the reasoning behind some of my life decisions. Going outside with a stranger had already found me pulled into something most certainly dangerous.

"Why have I not heard of her if she is so accomplished?" Sonetto inquired, interjecting before the man could ask the same question.

The answer to their question is that the General Staff decided to put all the credit and, more importantly, all the blame for my actions on Erich von Lergen. It was all in order to obtain a peace deal through the Kingdom of Ildoa, which fell through due to politics. I couldn't just tell anyone that. Strict confidentiality and my own safety depended on maintaining this duplicity. Given that Lergen was probably going to get a lot of time or executed for my actions during the war, I was in no hurry to correct the record. It was just unfortunate my friend had to suffer in my stead.

I looked at Elya for help answering.

"Just take my word for it," the redheaded woman assured Sonetto. "Have I ever led you astray with my recommendations?"

The other three did not seem convinced. Since my life might be on the line here, I needed to play the role of the professional mercenary.

"Ms. Müller, I don't recall agreeing to be someone's muscle quite yet," I began. I immediately noticed how my voice dropped into a very familiar huskier rasp. "I would like to at least know more about what I am being asked to do before trading my services."

With that line, Tanya von Weiss had returned to her place inside her room all alone. Now, I was Nichts, the grizzled Germanian veteran who was ready for business. All I needed was my helmet, goggles, and mantle, and I would be in another uniform that sealed away but also protected that crying girl. Where Tanya von Weiss could not go outside or fight, Nichts person valued for her power and expertise could and would. People did not just respect her for her combat prowess; they paid her for it.

I was surprised by how easy this was. Then I realized this was hardly the first time I had spun a persona like this. The Salaryman and Soldier were just earlier versions to this new emerging self. It was not complete until I got a new uniform. That can be fixed later.

Hilary Brecht smiled. I had a feeling she was a woman who liked to negotiate and discuss details.

"Our associates have a few jobs where our interests align that require a mage your caliber to undertake," Hilary Brecht began. "If you haven't noticed, the country is in chaos. Organized crime has filled the vacuum as the provisional government figures itself out. Law enforcement lacks the technology and personnel to handle the situation. In chaos like this, we don't want the wrong people taking advantage of the situation and ruining all the effort we put into moving the clock forward on progress. The stakes for us are quite high."

She said "us" in a way that made it clear she meant people like us. What that meant specifically, I was not sure. Did she mean women, homosexual people, or something else?

Hilary continued explaining her position in this conversation. "We need to act now more than ever to take control of our future. If we don't, the people deciding our future will be those who want to bring us back into that horrendous war. That is why, in an alliance with the provisional government and law enforcement, my group has taken the initiative and made sure we could have this meeting. We need mages we can trust to fight on our side who will help us make sure this new constitution gets through."

Feminists like Hilary Brecht had the provisional government by the balls. Like most of the countries that had lost a huge chunk of their male population in the war, there was a reckoning. The monopoly of violence and culture necessary to enforce patriarchy had started cracking. Necessity forced women, whether they wanted to or not, into new roles. A combination of changing cultural norms over the last century and now just plain lack of men around meant women did not have to fear quite as much for their physical safety if they stepped out of the patriarchal line — Doctrine of Chastisement and all that jazz.

Tanya von Weiss might get mushy and sensitive about all this, but I was Nichts now. She was a tough-as-nails veteran. She most certainly did not let sad things affect her. Though I was certain by this point that I wasn't dealing with gangsters anymore, I felt strong as Nichts and had this urge to maintain character.

"And what do I get out of this?"

This earned me an offended look from Sonetto Esfahani. Was she angry at me?

Elya, at least, expected my response.

"We have some patrons among the Scientific Humanitarians and the BDF who can compensate you. Jobs will be paid out in one to five hundred marks based on how much our patrons invest. Some weeks may be busier than others. You may be required to travel around the nation for other jobs. Ms. Esfahani, one other person, and I will be on your team to assist as fellow mages, but neither Esahani nor I are combat mages like you. Additionally, I can convince some scientist friends to contract your family's company to produce the next generation of cutting-edge computation orb technology."

I desperately wanted to get my hands on a dual-core, and having these contracts would mean that I would have access to them as an apprentice in the company. The Weiss-32 I had was functional and better than the Type 13 Standard operation orb I used at the beginning of the war in some ways, but it had nothing on the dual-core Type 97 or the orbs the Russy Federation had started in 1929 that could produce barrier spells so dense we had to dump large amounts of mana into our penetration spells just to do the slightest bit of damage.

"If I am going to conduct some enhanced negotiations with your opposition for you and your associates, I will need a few other things. First, a retainer fee of one thousand marks. Second, I want none of this work associated with my real name. You can credit Nichts if it puts me in a good light, but I don't want any of our unfriendly competition tracing our operations back to me or my family."

The four others at the table looked each other in the eyes, and eventually, the man nodded.

"We can agree with that," the man whose name I still didn't know said. "However, we won't give you a retainer fee until we have proof that you can do the work we need you to do."

"I can accept that, sir," I confirmed nonchalantly. "When do we get started?"

"Sunday," the guy answered.

I clutched my stomach a bit. That was only a few days. I don't even know the whole team yet. I know Hilary said they wanted to seize the moment, but I didn't think she had meant so soon.

"We should also probably have some dinner," the still-nameless man added with a laugh. He looked at me quite intensely.

Why was he doing that? Did I have something on my coat? I looked down and saw something out of the ordinary.

Then Elya glanced between the two of us.

"Mr. Handel, if you would do us a favor and ring for service?" Elya requested.

The guy pressed a button on the wall near where he was sitting, causing a ringing noise, but more importantly, he confirmed his last name. Now, I didn't have to just say "sir" or vaguely talk in his direction.

While Mr. Handel was distracted, the redhead who had brought me here whispered in my ear again. "Why don't you talk to Sonetto? She is really nice."

Then, like magic, she had Mr. Handel and Mrs. Brecht's undivided attention. They discussed some complicated things involving concessions from the provisional government officials and getting proper authority from law enforcement to take extrajudicial approaches to rectify the post-war lawlessness.

I turned to Ms. Esfahani. She was quite pretty. I wasn't sure if "Sonetto" had one or two Ns, but I assumed two since its root "sonnet" had two.

I readied myself to talk to a woman who was my nominal age. It was a lot of pressure. I checked what I knew about the subject.

…

Wait, how do you talk to women?!

Images of lecturing and training my troops flashed through my mind.

Brain, I mean: How do you talk to women who are not your subordinates?!

At this rate, I going to make every woman I fall in love with into my subordinate just so I can have a conversation with them that I know how to have. That was problematic for multiple reasons. I also was not great at knowing how I felt about anything. Was I going to have to second guess myself now every time I got a new female subordinate if I recruited them because they were competent or because I was attracted to them and their competence?

In order to calm down again, I let the shell of Nichts settle upon me. I went through the mental script of small talk I used in my past life to do business lunches. That actually worked until we got our meals. I had some potatoes, wurst, and a salad. It was heavy, but mages needed it if they were going to fight.

Sonetto Esfahani just had a large Cobb salad.

"So what is your family like," the black-haired woman asked me.

"Well, I have Matheus…he is my adoptive father," I attempted to explain. "He used to be my vice commander during the war, but our roles have somewhat reversed as we both adapted to this whole situation. I appreciate how he has taken to the role after the war. I can't praise him enough.

"There is my adoptive grandfather Nikolaus. I am apprenticing under him in how to make and maintain computation orbs. I have only been doing maintenance, but I receive a small stipend for my apprenticeship that helps cover a good portion of our rent. My old battalion, the 203rd, is also my family. They visit me regularly to see how I am doing."

Soneto's amber eyes glowed softly as she regarded me. I had only seen eyes like that on that Legadonian soldier who would just never die. I didn't know how she had eyes like that.

"How about you, any family?" I turned the question around.

In response, she frowned and stared off towards a corner of the room. "My family and I don't talk. I moved to Berun after the war ended because I heard it was safer here for me. My family doesn't know where I am, and I don't want them to know. The Scientific Humanitarians took me in and got me into contact with Mrs. Brecht. Elya has also been helping me a lot or at least likes my special talent."

"Special talent?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Look," she said and raised her left hand towards me. Her hand was delicate, and she had long and slender fingers. I wanted to reach out and touch that hand due to a habit I had formed with Matheus. I was already struggling to hold my composure, and a yearning for contact grew at the back of my mind.

Then, a white lily blossomed in her hand. It was extraordinary for multiple reasons. First, I hadn't sensed the use of a computation orb. This was foci-less formula casting. Since foci cause pulses of mana when one casts a spell in them, brute-forcing the mental math like this significantly reduced the detectability that a spell was being cast.

Second, this was definitely an illusion, but it was so close to the real thing that it would have fooled me for long enough to be effective in the heat of combat. I was no slouch in mental math, but Esfahani was clearly on another level entirely. I had always wondered how a savant mage would hold up as an aerial mage. I am certain they would prove quite formidable by being able to hold one additional spell active.

Her being a real prodigy reminded me how I was just a fake one, and I felt a pang of what I guess was a shame for that. I still don't know why people like Zettour thought my college essays were out-of-this-world. I cheated with future knowledge on some, but some were just my ideas on this or that. I got the same praise regardless. I just could not believe any of it. Were they just trying to say something nice? Perhaps they pitied me? Maybe it was like when your child brings you their macaroni art, and you are obliged out of familial affection to rain praises upon the child. (It was not a policy with which my father agreed in my first life.) Regardless of everyone's opinions of me, whenever I met real talented individuals who were clearly smarter than me in some way, I knew I was not special and new. I was comfortable at my real place in the middle of the bell curve.

Never gold, always silver. My father in Japan just wanted to brag about his supposedly gifted boy, but that boy kept getting second over and over. The boy might as well have gotten last place for all it was worth.

"Ms. Esfahani, you are quite a talented mathematician," I sincerely complimented her, my voice returning to its unforced pitch. "This is a fairly good illusion."

She smiled but then frowned. Had I said something rude?

"Thanks," Esfahani replied while focusing her attention on my face. "But are you okay, Ms. Nichts?"

Elya bumped me to get my attention discreetly and then offered her hand below the table. I took it. Her hands were soft, unlike Matheus'. I rubbed my small thumb against her knuckles. The little gesture quickly reassured me that I was safe, acknowledged, and had someone who could care. I wasn't yet fully comfortable. This had been a downer of a day before this, and my Nichts shell was too incomplete to keep all the Tanya von Weiss inside. From experience of being in this state of distress several times before, I would have needed an arm around the shoulder and the ability to lean into someone's side in order to get comfortable mentally. Still, the small amount of contact was both discreet and would help restabilize my mood.

"It is nothing," I lied. There was nothing I could say. Visha must have explained my circumstances to Elya. I was glad that she did not fear me or treat any contact with me with suspicion. At least, it didn't appear that way. If anything, she seemed to enjoy my behavior.

After a few more minutes, the redhead spoke up to the group.

"I think Nichts here has had enough sitting around," she said, continuing to come to my rescue. I vaguely nodded. "Do you think you are ready to leave?"

I shook my head. The other three in the room looked curious about my behavior. How was I supposed to explain it to them? Elya and I couldn't just walk outside holding hands. Even if having aerial mage badges gave us some immunity, the newspapers had me properly terrified of what happened to homosexual people when they did get punished. I did not want to be experimented upon ever again with something like weird organ transplants to "cure" my supposed "gender invertedness" or tossed into a mental asylum.

This is a gay bar place, so they probably understand that then. It was the mental health thing. Elya and I were the only ones here that were veterans.

"How about a dance, then?" Elya suggested. None of the others seemed to care, and somehow, I was the only one surprised by the offer.

I was about to decline but stopped when I focused on her face. My cheeks flushed. It wasn't that she had a unique expression. The woman just had this beautiful face, and my precious reason fled me. I nodded softly, not trusting my tongue to say anything coherent. My stomach was all butterflies.

Elya's attentive gaze unwrapped what little remained of the shell I had made for myself, like a pair of scissors gently cutting through a flimsy screen. When she was done, my heart was once more fully exposed to her.

After excusing us, she gripped my hand firmly and led me downstairs.

I took in what the other dancers were doing. It was a partner dance of some sort involving sliding and gliding across the floor as sweet jazz imported from the Unified States played in the background.

"Do you know how to do the Foxtrot?" Elya softly inquired. I shook my head. I had never heard of it. It definitely was not a traditional Germanian dance or ballet I had learned in the orphanage. "Okay, I will show you."

She took my other hand as I took in what was about to happen. Due to the difference in height and knowledge, she performed the leading role in the dance. I still had a lot of issues with my gender that I hadn't unpacked yet. Playing the follower role both set my heart aflutter and made me feel like I was doing something wrong. There was a part of me that felt like I was signaling weakness. I wanted people to respect me. I also did not want to get hurt.

I could even mentally feel the physical reprimand from my first father for what I was doing right now.

"I know you are scared, and everything in your mind is screaming at you to stop and go at the same time," Elya diagnosed. This is another reminder of how much of an open book my face could be. I want you to focus just on me and this dance. Forget about the world. Just you and me—music, our hands together, and follow me."

I did as she instructed. I stared at her eyes. It wasn't hard. She was drop-dead gorgeous. She had a very tasteful amount of skillfully applied makeup that enhanced her charm. The red she had dyed her hair really gave her curls a pop to them. I could really imagine her being an actress. I did not know how she had so much time to learn how to master her appearance like this during the war as a mage, but I could hardly care while I had my existence so completely under her spell.

I took a deep breath, and she started to move at the perfect moment.

The dance was incredibly easy, or at least Elya made it easy for me. Round and round we went. I felt my hunger for contact ebb, and my heart swell. I didn't understand any of this. Rationality had been my steadfast partner for decades, and now Elya had shoved it aside and swept me into her storm. We hadn't even known each other for over a day. Honestly, I don't know why Elya was doing this or if any of this was normal. How long do you wait to invite a stranger to a dance at a bar like this? Was there a detailed manual on this? There had to—

"Focus, my little Nichts," my dance partner instructed as I started to lag behind.

Yes, ma'am! the inner soldier in me replied.

I dumped all my worries on the wayside once again about why and just focused on the here and now.

After a few minutes, the dance fully replenished my touch batteries, and then some. It was still disappointing for it to end. The rest of the night was mostly a blur, as Elya was my sole focus. I vaguely recall she had taken me around to meet various people she knew. Part of me at least remembers there were other people out there, Matheus, and I could finally talk to them about my situation.

When she took me home, I was surprised to find Matheus waiting for me. Surprisingly, he was a good sport about the whole going out without him. I think he may have wanted me to take more initiative in making my own friends and finding people like myself. As for me joining a mercenary operation to take out targets for law enforcement and others, I will wait until it comes up for now.

How do you explain to a guy that you are probably killing people on the weekends?

Matheus was definitely not going to be happy about me going back to that battlefield for which my mage instincts yearned.


Lorelei's Note:
I have a lot of experience with stigma stress. When I rewrote the first half of this chapter, I was crying due to just how familiar I am with those feelings. The intro is a bit long, but I hope it is alright.

We finally learn the origin story of the Nichts moniker and why Sonnetto's name has two Ns. Sonetto is her own person, and we will learn a bit more about her in the next chapter. The authorial reason there are two characters with this name is that I changed my mind about whether to publish this prologue chapter and decided to make a story reason for it. I basically redesigned Sonnetto in the 1950s timeline and then later made both versions canonical. I also added an N in the remake by accident for the same reason Tanya did.

1950s Sonnetto doesn't know who 1930s Sonetto is other than she is an old friend of Tanya's.

I got the name "Sonetto" from a character in Reverse: 1999, which is a game I like.

 

[LoreleiFlowers]

Marketplace, Berun - 1st of November, 1933

Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing. - Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead.

That quote flitted through my mind as I shopped on my own for my family's needs and something that would help me keep the Nichts persona stick better. I read The Fountainhead in my first life in my senior year of high school in my first life, and it changed my life. The story is about a man with unconventional but innovative ideas who goes against the grain of society. It pits genius against society. While the depiction of the female lead makes me recoil in retrospect, I did not think about that as an angsty teenager. I wanted desperately to be one of those world-changing geniuses, not only so that my father could brag about my achievements to my aunts and uncles but so that I could have control over my life.

For the New Intellectual served as Ayn Rand's more developed conception of the role of genius few in society. As she wrote:

"The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains. Such is the nature of the 'competition' between the strong and the weak of intellect. Such is the pattern of 'exploitation' for which you have damned the strong."
[Ayn Rand (1963). "For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)", p. 152]

Rand used the word "exploitation" very deliberately, for it is not the worker who is exploited, as the communists would have us believe, but rather these geniuses. The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule), which underlies views like Rand's, states that roughly 80% of the production or benefits come from approximately 20% of the stock or population. Italian polymath Vilfredo Pareto, for whom the principle is named, discovered that 80% of the land was owned by 20% of the population. Joseph M. Juran further developed this theory and recharacterized it as the "vital few and the useful many" in order to make it clear that the other 80% of the population is not entirely useless.

At first, I attempted to emulate those great geniuses. Still, my long line of silver and bronze trophies and constant double-guess sabotaging my university entrance exams had soon proven to my father and me that I was no genius. I lacked the intoxicatingly attractive confidence of Rand's heroes in the face of uncertainty and society's dictates that made their smarts transcend into the realm of real genius.

Rand and Juran, thankfully, saw a place for me. If I could not be at the top and being at the bottom was unforgivable, then I would settle for being in the useful middle. Mediocrity — my silver existence — led me to a position in middle management. In this life, that had meant a lieutenant colonel.

That was why it was vital for me to find meaningful work in the post-war period. For all of Matheus' attempts to bolster confidence in my supposed competence, his father, Nikolas Weiss, fully expected me to get married and quit shortly after that.

I was not a NEET who consumed but did not produce. I was definitely not a communist who, in a jealous rage, killed off the geniuses they depended upon to survive and was surprised when a deadly famine occurred. I would not steal from those who had just because I failed to procure for my survival. Everyone had to take responsibility for themselves. If you cannot support yourself on your own as those geniuses could, then you should find a genius for whom to be useful. That person would not be a husband to me for countless reasons. Elya's team of scientists and activists was a start.

I went through the pitiful selection of foods available. While the Unified States had quickly rallied to prevent the Francois and Albish from starving, that borderline socialist country currently under the Reconstructionists decided that their soldiers should not share food with Germanians, fearing giving us plentiful calories would drive us into rebellion. I could not believe that anyone wanted war anymore.

It seemed so irrational, yet when I broached the subject with Matheus, he felt like we should have won. It did not matter to me. The sunk cost fallacy had no hold upon me. Sometimes, you had to cut someone or an entire division loose. Attachment only led to less efficiency, and less efficiency meant less production. What we needed was more production, not less.

I sighed.

"Oh, Fraulein Weiss, it is nice to see you, but you really shouldn't shop alone!"

I turned to see Mr. Serebryakov. He looked thinner and exhausted. Despite his noble background, even he had to get food for his family.

"It is fine. Being alone, that is. I know how to shop for myself."

"A smart girl like you, I don't doubt you. It is just that you know it isn't safe."

He wasn't wrong. Some of the soldiers of the occupying forces lacked discipline. More than once, Matheus had taken the time to help one of our neighbors who had gotten put into their place or taken advantage of. Germania lacked the leverage to object during the temporary supervision in the few months after the war. These soldiers left lawlessness in their wake as criminal elements filled the void.

I nodded but kept on my shopping.

"You don't mind if I join you."

I had no qualms. He was a free man. He could do as he pleased, and his company was not entirely objectionable.

Fortunately, the soldiers, who aggressively reminded us of our supposed blame in all this suffering, will be leaving shortly. As much as the Unified States simultaneously supervised and dictated the resulting peace with their humanitarian leverage, we had the conditional surrender that guaranteed us a greater degree of national self-determination. This Germania was closer to the Imperial Germany of my last life but still significantly divergent from that incarnation of the country. Our Foreign Minister Tarken might have had a revanchist agenda, but Minister Harden of my previous life was aggressively pursuing war if my memory served me right.

My Germania had a more peaceful overall bent. For example, Germania being invaded characterized the early years of the war, with many of us in the military striving to end the war as soon as possible. The dining hall at Headquarters purposefully fed the General Staff terrible food similar to what soldiers might have on the front lines in order to make sure the General Staff never got a taste for war or lost sight of what it was like for us soldiers.

With the nearly inedible food we have after the war, people might lose a taste for peace.

Germania was certainly no paper tiger before the war, but that did not justify our enemies declaring war preemptively. This made the depictions of us as heartless monsters who deserved this all the more insulting.

Heartless…what a familiar epithet.

"I know the competition is hard," Herr Serbyakova commented as we mutually struggled to pick out anything from the legally available food. "But you are a beautiful and diligent girl. I am sure you will find a husband soon."

Mr. Serebryakov did not mean anything wrong about what he said. One just needed to smile and nod along. I had practiced smiling in the mirror, actually. Elya had told me it would make people think I was safe and gentle. Given how Mr. Serebryakov did not treat me like a threat, it must have worked.

Perhaps if I had known how to smile properly, my adjutant would have reacted better.

"How are things with the young Frau Serebryakov?" I inquired. I could not call her Fraulein (or Miss). My former adjutant was in her late twenties.

"My sweet Viktoriya is…." He paused, searching for a polite way to say something. "Doing her best. We have tried to pair her with a nice Russy mage from our side of town, but it did not work out."

"She has gotten…." I lacked a polite way to say the same thing. My former adjutant had gotten intense. Where Matheus had become more desperately empathetic, and I had gotten mopey, for lack of a better word, Viktoriya had gotten claws.

She had reached that age where her parents feared she would become a "leftover woman". Like this unappetizing partially rotten apple I honestly considered buying, society considered women who reached their thirties as having been passed over. To be fair, Serebryakov did not look a day over twenty-five. All of my 203rd had quite the vitality, and even the stress of war and food shortages had failed to prematurely age them. Herr Serebryakov, for comparison, looked ten years older than his fifty-three.

My long-term friend Maximilian von Ugar had been in his forties but looked even older. He was practically knocking on death's door with a cough he could never shake. His daughter and I have been doing our best for him, but we knew his time was coming soon. There was no medicine, and I lacked any training in the highly technical field of healing magic, which created countless tumors without a proper understanding of what you were actually doing.

"You know, on Sunday, our Orthodox church is holding a soup kitchen," the Russy man mentioned. Both Matheus and Herr Serbyrakov had tried to get me to their respective churches. I had not desired it, even if food was offered. The price was too steep. The one time I had gone with Herr Serbyrakov and his family, I couldn't help but feel besieged and threatened. It didn't matter how kind they acted. Their faith taught people to submit and obey, and every icon and verse cut into my sense of self like razor wire.

I don't care if being a puppet or some kind of instrument of Being X makes them happy. That would be death to me. My only happiness was in being free in a way that I sometimes struggled to articulate, even with the helpful guide that Rand had provided me in my last life.

I declined him politely, keeping my thoughts off my face. Elya had been very insistent that I learn to school my features. By just going out and doing more things, my irrational excesses became significantly more straightforward to manage. I just needed to finish piecing myself back together.

Despite rejecting his offer and finishing my shopping, the tall man decided to keep following me to the army surplus store.

The factories had plenty of plain uniforms left after the war, and there was plenty from which to choose, even if no shirts or pants would fit my unique proportions. What I needed was going to be different from what I had during the war but similar. I did not need to be an instrument of efficient war, but my peace would be the product of violence.

"Why are you here, Fraulein? Do you need another dress? If you damaged the one we bought you, my darling girl can teach you how to make one. You can also just make one with a bolt of cloth. Matheus has a sowing machine for you to use, right?"

I did know how to use a sewing machine. I was self-sufficient. You could often buy your own patterns and then just make your own clothes. That was what was expected. Women typically wore cotton dyed black or other dark colors. It was easier to clean after the quotidian drudgery. Gentlemen like Herr Serbryakov wore fabrics and colors of status, such as velvet and pink. They didn't get on their hands and feet and clean floors or deal with any of the other countless tasks expected of wives and daughters.

"Just getting some work clothes," I answered honestly. "It is all really nothing to be concerned about."

You should dress for the job you want, after all. If you wear the clothes of drudgery, expect drudgery. I refused to be at the bottom. I would not survive the shame.

Serbryakov, for his part, opted to just watch over me. I found a helmet, some flight goggles, and a flight jacket. It might not have Kevlar, which didn't exist yet, but I knew I would feel safer and could affect more of that confidence I valued in geniuses if I had a new "suit" for Nichts.

He thankfully stopped chaperoning me once I arrived back at my home. I thanked him. Even with a computation orb on my person, it was better not to deal with the unsavory types. These Ring Clubs were forming that had previously serviced the soldiers passing through, but sex trafficking had seen an uptick as there were plenty of women having to make do alone in the post-war period. Some became prostitutes out of desperation, but others had even less choice.

---

Serebryakov Residence - 2nd of November, 1933

Hate and spite had taken the world and driven it mad with violence that consumed so many lives. Viktoriya Ivanovna Serebryakov was no exception. The other people in Berun were no exception. A brick had been tossed through their front window while they had been about to have lunch together as a family. There was a message on it in Germanian saying something along the lines of "Commies get lost".

"No," Visha whispered.

"Child, we must get into the bathroom away from the windows," her mother urged her daughter in Russy. The matriarch grabbed Visha's arm, trying vainly to get the young woman to move, but Visha's stance did not permit her to yield.

"No!" the daughter shouted. She pulled herself from her mother's grip and marched to the front door, where her father had stepped out to get a look at the perpetrators.

Visha picked up her father's antique foci from its hiding place and took the brink. She charged the building material in her hand with a sniping formula. It would not be powerful, but a brick could do enough damage to send a message.

The perpetrators had gotten back in their car and had just begun to accelerate away. One perpetrator even wore a worn-out infantry uniform.

Visha lifted her arm to throw, but her father attempted to restrain her arm. A gentleman and civilian like her father had no chance to hold her long. It was enough time, though, for the vandals to get away.

"Why are you letting them go?" Visha replied pointedly in Germanian. While she would still use Russy with her parents often, at times like this, she wanted to highlight her new nationality - her loyalty to the Fatherland for all to hear. "The communists wanted to kill us! I fought for this country. I killed countless Russy soldiers defending it. Why do I need to tolerate those bigots?!"

"Viktoriya, stop this now!" Her father attempted to slap her. He had had it with both her wilfulness and the way she now regularly emphasized how many Russy soldiers she had killed. Her attitude towards her ancestral land had soured from the sheer quantity of criticisms of the Reds from her former commander. Couple that with her biographical trauma, vaguely remembered from her childhood but supplemented with her parents' account of events, and Visha had gained a hatred for the communist incarnation of her homeland. Now, there was just the Fatherland in her heart.

Visha easily stopped his chastisement by simply grabbing his wrist the way her former commander had taught her.

He was no longer stronger than her. He did not get to punish his little child anymore whenever she wasn't being the perfect, obedient, and quiet noble girl, which she could never go back to being. He did not get to stop her. He had not earned the right. He had not fought in the war.

He thinks that Tanya is the perfect angel. The kind of girl he wished I was. Oh boy, how much I want to burst that bubble.

Thinking of her former commander, Visha recognized Tanya had transformed her into someone who did not bend to such feeble adversity as what her father brought forth. The blonde genius had treated every soldier as equal regardless of gender or ancestry. Everyone was defined by their strength, discipline, and competence. She had been remade through a baptism of blood, mud, and sweat on the battlefield into a Germanian soldier. People like those vandals and her father belonged to a universe where absolute nonsense ruled over the world.

A bitter feeling entered Visha's gut as her regret for her awful actions toward her decade-long commander started to come to the surface. She then renewed her focus on the now. The Visha of now was staring down her father.

Her father nursed his wrist as a spark of fear entered his eyes. "It will not end well if we antagonize them," he warned.

"What do you think my commander would have done if some idiot tried this with one of us?"

The fear grew in him. Visha could sense it. A predatory instinct took hold as she took a step forward. He took a few steps back. He was a gentleman, she very much wasn't. The cute, innocent Visha had died near the end of the war when their loss was inevitable. Her father did not comprehend that Tanya and Visha were professional killers who knew how to efficiently use violence for maximum but always purposeful effect.

He didn't respond, so she answered. "We had turned our own guns on our own if they tried to desert the front lines when we needed them to hold. No one has ever done something this foolish before."

She didn't think Tanya would actually kill someone for being a bigot, but she would have definitely filed paperwork to make their lives a living hell. Maybe she would send them to some bunker where they would die the moment enemy artillery got in range of the juicy, easily spotted target.

She waited for him to recompose himself enough to respond.

"The neighbors can hear you, Viktoriya."

"Do I look like I care or don't know that?"

"If you had hurt those men, you know what would have happened. I don't want to lose you."

He was right about the consequences, and that pissed her off even more. The law enforcement only saw a Russy. Their noble status afforded them some perks, but with the monarchy abolished in the aftermath of the war, gone too was the Kaiser's protection for the Russy nobility that fled into his country. It was not uncommon for thugs and even some police to make snide remarks about her family when they were out. If her family were hurt, the police ignored it. If a Russy like them dared to retaliate, the Russy in Berun all knew there would be trumped-up charges against them. No jury or judge would side with a Russy over a Germanian. Not after so many had died in the meat grinder of the Eastern Front.

Visha walked down the steps and stormed off towards a bar called the Charred Barrel, which she knew Elya frequented. Other veterans hung out there.

Her father and mother did not bother to stop her. Her display of effective aggression had cowed them.

The rest of the way to the Charred Barrel, Visha reflected on the past couple of months of doing marriage interviews with suitors from her social class. Visha found some of them quite fetching, but things had not been working out. Some men found her height, bearing, or personality unattractive, which further fueled Visha's father to try to steer her to an affected cute and sweet personality that played into the popular romantic fantasy of the time. She could be gentle, kind, and sweet, but not when she was angry, which had become more regular these days under her parent's care.

The suitors who took a keen interest in her bothered Visha for another reason. The tall brunette's skin crawled under her attention. This had been a problem she always had to a certain extent. She did not like sexual attention, which was awkward because she did like men and wanted a relationship with one like other married couples. If Visha could find a good man who was neither attracted to her like that nor offended by her Visha-ness, that would be her ideal.

It did not take her long to get to the Charred Barrel. Inside, male and female mages mingled like they did during the war. Visha stood out because she was in a dress. She actually liked dresses, but she didn't think they were very flattering on her. At least not the more traditional ones her parents bought her. Ironically, Tanya hated wearing dresses but looked beautiful in them — like a doll in some ways.

She quickly spotted Elya's dyed red hair. The pseudo redhead was in her favorite femme'd up pilot uniform and sitting in a booth with some new guy Visha did not know.

"You guys sound really strong," Elya complimented him. She had this affected dimness that really bothered Visha. Their old friend post-war friend circle struggled to tolerate the new Elya. "And four of you are capable of using dual cores? You must be smart. How did you get them? I have to know."

"Yeah, we are quite something," the man boasted. He had drunk himself a bit silly from the euphoria of having Elya inflicting so much focused attention on him and from the woman's frequent encouragement. The poor guy hadn't even eaten the food he had ordered. Elya had gotten him eating out of her hand like nothing.

"I shouldn't be saying this," the man answered after another draft from his beer glass. "But my group got us some old Type 97s from the warehouse down in the old Moabit. The Kaiser's Men, made up of some of the old palace honor guards, are giving them to people who join up. You also have to do a psych exam to prove that you will not abuse the power or something, but it is crazy they did not charge anything."

Visha remembered the Type 97 well. It was dual-core technology that gave the 203rd an advantage in the middle of the war before their enemies developed their dual-core computation orbs. It took a skilled mage to use the finicky Type 97, so if this guy and his friends could actually use them, they were at least competent.

"Hey, Michael, it is time to go," a random man shouted towards the guy across from Elya.

"But my cheese sausage!"

"Should have thought about that before you ordered, so stop talking to the dame before we all get fired for being late for our shift."

The dejected man surrendered his plate of freshly ordered Germania delicacy to Elya before apologizing apologetically. Once he left, Visha slid into his place and placed the brick on the table. Elya raised an eyebrow, noticing the bits of glass and the message on it, but did not question the building material. It should explain everything about the rage and annoyance emanating from Visha.

The tall woman glanced at the abandoned meal. After a gesture and a nod from her friend and no one seeming to care, the brunette dug into it.

"You're incorrigible, Visha," Elya muttered with a shake of her head. "Where does this appetite come from?"

The woman blinked. "Mmhmm, cough, 'a soldier's duty is to eat' and 'you never know when your next meal will be, so eat while you still can.'"

"Tanya?"

Visha frowned. She had hoped not to talk about her former commander. Her silence gave away the source of her quotation. Doing a Tanya impersonation out of habit did not do her many favors.

"Don't you normally eat with your family today?" Elya inquired.

The redhead's voice had dropped the previous bubbly affectation and now sounded painfully like the best friend VIsha had once known before the war. It was the voice Visha wanted to hear. Something familiar to anchor her psyche. The vapid flirt Elya, who had pissed the brunette off only moments ago, had become a person to whom Visha could vent. A part of the aerial mage noticed this shift, but Visha needed someone like the Germanian girl who befriended her at the boarding school right now. Her mind deluded itself that the Old Elya had not died in the war, just like the Old Visha.

Visha properly swallowed this time before speaking. Her manners had not completely eroded away during the war, regardless of what her father said. "I have finally told my dad off."

The brunette woman ordered a fresh glass of water to help clear her throat. Visha had always disliked the smell of alcohol for whatever reason. Also, she didn't have a lot of money.

Visha ordered her thoughts about what had just happened and waited for her drink. When it finally arrived, the tall brunette spilled her guts to her best friend. Elya, for her part, patiently listened to all her exhortations about everything her parents were doing wrong and how the worst suitor of the bunch thought it was appropriate to tell her how she should dress for him. Visha was very clear she did not want to change for anyone. If they didn't like her, that was their problem, not hers.

When it was all out of her system, Visha took a moment to get into the bar. What set the Charred Barrel as an arcanist bar was the prohibition against smoking. Aerial mages like Elya and Visha depended on their lungs to survive at high altitudes, even with magic assisting them. The military had forbidden mages from smoking to preserve the tactical advantage superior altitude provided. Also, Tanya had a strong dislike for smoking. She even claimed that it caused lung cancer, though she could not point to any evidence.

Visha trusted Tanya, though. The girl's alien mind always understood this insane world before anyone else.

"Radioing in Visha," Elya japed childishly. "Report back to the conversation at once."

The former asylum-seeking refugee squirmed a bit.

"Thinking about Tanya, hmmm?" the pseudo-redhead correctly guessed. It was a sensitive subject, and Elya knew it.

"No!" Visha replied a bit too loudly, earning them stares from other tables. "No."

Elya smiled wickedly, just like she had when gossiping with her as a teenager in the dorm rooms.

"You. Are. Lying." How that woman could just figure out anything about a person with no effort was beyond Visha. "You two were very close during the war. I get it. I really do. You care about her a lot. Just not, you know."

Elya rolled her hand in the air in a vague gesture that made perfect sense only to Visha.

"By the way, unrelated," the redhead said in a way that made it very clear the topic was actually, in fact, related. "A couple of nights ago, I went Mr. Degurechaff's place and showed him out to a club."

Mr. Degurechaff?

"I gave him your apology," Elya continued. "He goes by Mr. Weiss now. Adopted by you guys' vice commander. Anyway, he was so cute when we danced together. I got to feel what it was like to be you. Towering over my partner. It is actually quite an experience. Makes me feel powerful. I think I like it."

Visha's ears went bright red as she figured out her friend was referring to Tanya. Gendering the petite woman as a man was clever because it would not raise suspicion of homosexual behavior and amusing because Tanya was, underneath her calloused professional soldier exterior, a kind-hearted, peace-loving girl who acted so cute when she had a bit of chocolate. You could practically see flowers bloom behind her whenever she had her favorite treat. At least, that was Visha's thoughts on the matter.

"I am sure she, I mean he liked it," Visha stuttered.

"Immensely, unfortunately, in some regards. He was so desperate, and he would have said no to anything I asked. Part of me wishes I hadn't ever met him that day."

Visha choked for a moment.

"You aren't? Did you?"

"No, you know me, Visha," she answered. It sounded convincing, and Visha believed it because she knew this Elya. The Elya-before-Tanya was a different person. Visha did not know what that Elya would or wouldn't do. "I will admit, though, that I like being liked. I don't care by whom. There is a joy in having someone's undivided attention."

Elya stretched her arms as she said that last bit, and then the redhead pointed at her own brown eyes.

"His biggest issue at first was his eyes. For all his supposed discipline, his eyes struggled to maintain it. To be fair, I leaned into it. A people pleaser, that's me."

Visha furrowed her brow. This did not sit right with her. The New Elya flickered into the foreground, ruining the illusion. Is she trying to be honest through blatant dishonesty?

"Anyway," Elya continued. "I could tell Degurechaff wanted to be polite and respectful, but his gaze would be drawn like a moth to flame. He had to catch himself once or twice when we first met. I think the late bloomer is in the middle of the worst of it, unfortunately. It should calm down when it runs its course, and Degurechaff had already self-corrected significantly after getting out of the house some more when I talked to him yesterday evening. I think I also might have met him at a particularly bad time when we first met."

That explains why the others in the 203rd figured the lieutenant colonel's sexuality out, but it deepened Visha's discomfort and embarrassment. She felt dense. Why hadn't anyone told her? Why hadn't Tanya told her sooner? Was Tanya keeping other secrets from her?

"Why are you doing this to him?" Visha pivoted, trying to take back control of the conversation. "It is awful to manipulate people like this, especially if you are not sincere."

Elya sighed as sincere guilt flickered through her affectation. It was as if she had baited the hook with her choice of phrasing and framing to get Visha to confirm her guilt.

"What did you do during the war, Elya?" Visha had to ask. The tall woman knew her experiences had changed her, but her old friend's transformation did not resemble any of the other aerial mages Visha knew.

"And I can't tell you what I was up to, just like you can't tell me."

Visha sat on that. After chewing on some food for a while to process her feelings and clear her throat, the taller woman returned to the previous subject. "How bad is Degurechaff?"

"He is still hurting. The war hurt him. The Empire hurt him. You hurt him with how you treated him after rejecting him. It is a lot to be open to someone you think you trust, and they betray you. I know what that is like more than anyone. Frankly, he needs help and people at his side to process the war and all the shit that is going on right now and not to feel so alone. He might be an adult, but going through puberty just makes all of this far worse for him."

"Are you using him?"

"No," she answered in a way that clearly conveyed to Visha that Elya meant the opposite. "How I see it, if I need him, and we do, I am going to at least help him with that loneliness. Being in that flat all alone without feeling like he was allowed to go outside on his own was clearly hard on him. I am using what feels like a soft touch by my standards, and he needs that touch badly. You weren't wrong about the whole touch-starved thing. I didn't know it was possible to be like that. It is like he sees freedom he desperately needs in others and drinks it up through contact to soothe his caged soul."

It was a really odd way to put it, but Elya always had this very exacting way of describing people. Visha knew that she had felt something was off when she had attended to Tanya before the older woman had put a stop to it. When she held Tanya, Visha's mind had drifted towards a peace where they were free from that war, where they could stop fighting and move on to new things with all their brothers and sisters with them. Free to be the person you wanted to be without all these demands on you.

Peace was freedom like an impossibly large sky above every demand or an ocean beyond the reach of her parents. In every direction you went, nothing impeded your path. No parents held you back. No general staff were in this peace, issuing yet another.

Visha took a deep breath. If Elya was going to bait Visha into giving her a guilt trip, then the taller woman would reciprocate.

"Did he take my apology well?"

"Like anyone who received it from a middleman." Her friend's snappy reply came with the suddenness and sharpness of a hidden dagger. The pang of guilt it induced matched Visha's need to feel it perfectly. Elya's exacting insight had made her an excellent gift-giver before the war, but now her gifts served a different purpose. "If you want to make it better between the two of you, talk to him yourself. Be honest about what is still bothering you. I can tell you didn't tell me everything."

"Fine, fine, I will."

Elya took a deep breath. "So there is a job coming up. We need talented people like you. Don't ask questions until you meet up with the rest of the team. Let's just say a familiar face has asked us for help."

The taller woman didn't immediately respond. She was still reeling from the massive guilt trip.

"Hey," Elya added. "You obviously want some time away from your parents. You have a lot of pent-up aggression you want to get out, and what better way than to serve the Fatherland with your best friend? I will even make sure you meet with the Colonel and get to have a nice long chat about things. Namely, with you apologizing. He has already apologized enough to you for every real and imaginary thing he could have possibly done to deserve this."

Viktoriya knew she didn't want to go back home.

"When is your team meeting, and when are they being deployed?"

"This afternoon and every day until Sunday, the 5th of November."

"How soon do you head to this meeting today?"

"When you finish this meal. I made sure it wasn't far away."

---

Ten minutes later, in a cozy Ugar residence in Schöneburg district

Sonetto Esfahani went still. A very excited Herr Ugar's daughter next to her kept asking all sorts of questions about why her eyes glowed and how her magic worked. "Next to her", in this context, meant sitting about an inch from her, which was her primary source of stress.
(Reminder that Sonetto is not the 1950s Sonnetto.)

"Kakania, please give our guest some time and space to talk," Herr Ugar commanded between coughing fits. He laid back in a recliner. A glass of water on the nearby stand soothed his throat. It had run out as the man of the house finished the sentence.

Conscious of her father again, Kakania rushed off to the sink with the glass. Despite the intensity of her fixation on the "anomaly" that was the Ildoan-Tunisiyahan woman, the young teenager did want to be a good person. Her father assured Sonetto of this as his daughter did what she could for the dying man.

"She is an awful lot like Colonel Degure…Fraulein Tanya," Herr Ugar commented offhandedly.

The yellow-eyed woman did not know what to make of the comment. Tanya came across as a bit cynical, but she did not seem socially blind like Kakania. The blonde Germanian further developed an impression of carefulness with other people. She had once mispronounced Sonetto's surname and profusely apologized for it like she had committed some kind of relationship-ending mistake.

Is Tanya sensitive to rejection?

Herr Ugar chuckled at something he observed in Sonetto's expression and then hastily drank a bit of water as his daughter came back.

"Oh, they have differences," he commented as if having read her mind.

"Who has differences, Papi?"

"Oh, it is nothing, dear. Why don't you take a seat? This time a bit further from Fraulein Sonetto."

His daughter did as instructed but then started tapping her foot.

"No tapping, please, dear."

The girl picked up her legs and hugged them as she leaned against the arm of the couch. Sonetto found someone fifteen acting this way quite queer.

The father clearly loved his daughter dearly, but he confessed to Sonetto that he did not know how to help her. He wanted to set her up for success and saw these odd behaviors as a detriment to that. Ugar did not want other kids bullying her and wanted to make sure Kakania could be part of a polite society where so many doors would be open to her.

Turning his attention back to the Sonetto, Maximilian von Ugar addressed her again. "Sorry about that. You don't know Tanya very well, but I have been her friend since college."

The genius mage blinked her glowing eyes.

"Can you believe she was younger than Kakania here when she graduated near the top of her class from War College? She was one of the best of the best among Germanian officers. It is where she got her knighthood and the von in her name, as well as where we met."

Tanya's mysterious nobility, which her father did not have, did peak Sonetto's interest.

"Assume you have a question about your teammate regarding this upcoming operation?" Maximilian inquired, insightful as ever. Elya highly recommended him as a person who had a way with people.

"Is Tanya afraid of me?" Sonetto took the offered opportunity to help solve the puzzle that was this Germanian prodigy. "I mean that I hate her or something."

"To a degree. She has been a bit out of sorts, her former Vice Commander has told me. It took me longer to realize she was terrified of everyone to a degree. There was a time when she was afraid of me in a different way. She doesn't understand how you or I feel. Our responses to her actions, which she perceives as perfectly rational, confound her. Because she cannot predict what we will do, Tanya is plagued with fears about what we will do if she messes up. Sometimes, this is a panic attack over being sent to the firing squad for failing a mission. Sometimes, this is a ruthless removal of people she perceives as going after something she wants. Her father and I have been talking for a long time about what we can do for her."

But why does she think the world is so cutthroat? Why does anything less than perfect terrify her?

"Is there a way to assure her that if you are mad at her, you will let her know first before jumping to extremes?" She followed up. Sonetto had literally said as much to Tanya, but the woman did not stop being hyper-sensitive to anything, and her brain convinced her that it might be a mistake.

"I assume there has to be, but you are better off asking her father."

As Ugar took a break from talking, Sonetto glanced at the teenager on the other side of the coach. The girl looked all bottled up. The stress of doing nothing and people talking about things that did not interest her radiated off her.

While they waited for the others to arrive, Sonetto decided to engage in a topic that interested both Kakania and her but, importantly, was not specifically about her.

Formulae, the topic she chose, was something Sonetto could do like no one else. Numbers had a beauty, music, and, quite literally, a magic to them. Countless sequences and patterns made themselves known to her unique mind. In many ways, Sonetto saw the world as made up of numbers. As a young child, she could interact with these numbers to produce the effects of cantrips even without foci. It had terrified her parents at first, but then she became one of the gifted or virtuosos.

"Virtuoso" might sound nice, but it had caused Sonetto nothing but suffering. Those who celebrated geniuses did not know how alienating it can be. No sooner had she outshone her older brother than her brother started tormenting her. He had hated that she was better than him. He felt dumb next to her. Getting her to stop shining made him feel better.

Sonetto could not turn off the glow of her eyes, but she could become passive around him. Let him play the games while she just watched and not cry when he quit before she won. This understanding carried onto her social life. Anytime anyone called her smart, she would quickly assure them that "she was normal" or that "everyone has their talents".

Her experience with her brother made her feel like her talent made others feel bad. It taught her that she was vane and a braggart to take pride in anything she did well. Sonetto did not make friends as easily as her brother, and by just insisting that she was normal and carefully following his expectations for her, her brother just barely let her hang out with his plentiful friends.

Self-hatred only got worse as fascism rose in Ildoa. Sonetto was different in another way — her orientation. While Ildoa decriminalized homosexuality in 1890, the moral police made public admonishments and exiled this minority. This was what had ended Sonetto's once-promising prospect of being a mathematician. While her brother taught her to hate her talent, those who loved numbers gave her a place to be her full self. She thought it would be OK to be her even fuller self. Someone reported her to the moral police, and the young college woman found herself headed off for Berun, the place for "immoral" to find a new life.

Everyone knew Berun in Germania was one of the best places to find community and safety if you were a transsexual or homosexual. She did not know anywhere else to go. The war was over. Things just needed time to get started again.

One thing led to another, and Sonetto went to the Golden City club and met with the Scientific Humanitarians and various Friendship Associations. She delighted in all the little lesbian publications that Berun had. Nothing like this was in Ildoa, as far as she was aware, not that her friends in mathematics were particularly savvy.

There was a knock at the door.

"Me!" Kakania proclaimed.

Sonetto arched an eyebrow.

"That is her way of saying that she has the door," Ugar clarified. "Apparently, 'me' is just more efficient for her than 'got it'. Fraulein Tanya's conversation on business management had quite the impression on her, though I don't think my friend intended it to have this effect on my Kakania. I hope she grows out of it."

Tanya entered the living room with Kakania holding her hand like a child pulling her wagon. The blonde, for her part, did not seem at all annoyed. Tanya had brought a few notepads and an aerial mage duffel bag.

"What is in the bag?" Sonetto wondered.

"Oh, it is really nothing."

The yellow-eyed mathematician did not press further.

After pleasantries and light conversation, they all got to waiting for Elya and her mysterious last member of their team for the operation on behalf of Germania's law enforcement into a warehouse suspected to contain stolen computation orbs.

This is where Kaka—

Like clockwork, the young Ugar started flicking her hands as Tanya continued her performative small talk with her friend.

"Sweetie, you need to stop fidgeting, especially around guests."

The fifteen-year-old just struggled to co-exist in a world where other people gave each other social updates, discussed the weather, or lamented the food situation. Try as he might, Maximilian could force Kakania to do small talk. The girl hated it. When the stress with this sphere of social reality got to the teenager, the pattern-seeking Sonetto noticed that it inevitably resulted in the teenager tapping, rocking, or ringing out her hands. Each time it happened, her father told her to stop, which caused Kakania to become a ball of anxiety.

Tanya handed over some things to the younger teenager.

"This notebook contains my ideas about where magic is going. Would you like to review it? Feel free to edit it or write your thoughts in the margins. I also got you an older edition of the next year's textbook. I know you already finished the current year, so I thought you would get a head start. Don't worry about it not being the current edition. They don't change much between editions, I promise. I checked it, and it is still accurate for the most part. I inserted notes where the book is outdated."

Kakania took the offered stack of parchment and book with several slips of paper in it with gusto. The girl then twisted to the side and proceeded to use Tanya's shoulder as a backrest as she got started working. The two had taken to the couch perpendicular to the one Sonetto was on, leaving the 'mathemagician' comfortably with her personal bubble untrespassed.

The father was about to correct his daughter's behavior again, but Tanya interjected.

"It is quite alright," she claimed. "This is perfectly fine for me."

"She should still—"

"Have permission!" Kakania declared proudly.

Tanya nodded her confirmation. "It is so, Herr Ugar. As I see it, we should not impose what we would not like on other people. There is nothing harmful in her act if I am okay with it. If she is comfortable this way, then how is this any different than a hug or other more common social gesture? She is quite free-spirited. I think people should be able to go against the conventions of society, for that is what makes the innovations of our geniuses possible. It would be a shame to stifle that in her."

Sonetto gave her teammate a dubious look. The blonde veteran mage had a questionable parenting style. There was an agreement between Maximilian and the Weisses that Kakania would live with them after his passing, Sonnetto had been told. In her opinion, Matheus Weiss had the more common sense of the two Weisses.

Tanya's philosophy of general permissibility outside the most obvious guardrails made some sense to Sonetto, who had chaffed under harmful parenting practices of the time. The mathematician, however, thought that allowing a child to check out from social expectations to this extent might cause problems down the line. There had to be a Silver Mean between an excess of conformity and a deficit, just like the ancient philosopher had argued.

As Sonetto saw it, Kakania wouldn't have to just interact with Tanya in the future. She knew how reinforcing negative experiences could be in creating bad habits. She did not want Kakania to use her struggles with talking to strangers as a justification for not having meaningful conversations with anyone other than people as tolerant as Tanya.

Then there was the whole fact that Tanya also apparently had ungodly high standards. The homework Tanya assigned Kakania was not something most fifteen-year-olds would be expected to do. The veteran war mage had called it "cram school" with a look that blended nostalgia with vicarious pride.

While Sonetto had just met Tanya, the last couple of days had been extremely illuminating in terms of her teammate's character.

Sonetto sipped at her coffee and then traced the Zhangzi cup's circumference with her left index finger. Its excellent craftsmanship soothed the woman from Ildoa.

Kakania then started bragging to her father about how she was going to become a great scientist when she grew up and how Tanya would set up a job just for her. While the girl sounded excited, her enthusiasm contained a double sadness, Sonetto knew from Ugar's private admission.

The first sadness came from the death of Kakania's mother a couple of years ago, which her fathers would soon come in a few months. Maximilian had become part of the provisional government, handling law enforcement issues in the former Empire. Still, it was clear to his coworkers and family that work was something he could no longer do. Magical healing was what both his mother had needed and her father currently needed. At the same time, Kakania could not do magic like Sonetto or Tanya. The girl's obsession with all things arcane stemmed from the desperate desire to save their lives. A lot of her ideas may seem to be cool gadgets, but underneath lay a view that magic should help people.

The second came from a feeling of powerlessness. The world swirled around Kakania, doing what it willed, and it only seemed like the mages could fly above it. By diving into Tanya and Sonetto's experiences, Kakania had claimed a vicarious sense of that power. The girl wanted to be helpful, to be part of the world of magic where no one got sick, and the impossible became possible.

Another knock came to the door.

"Me!"

Soon, Elya came into the living room with a brunette stranger with her. The newcomer was quite tall for a woman. She had apparent Russy features and a warrior's edge lurking behind her otherwise peaceful expression.

"This is—" The redhead began.

"Tanya!" the Russy interjected. "Why is she here? Why didn't you tell me?"

"You need to talk to her. You want to talk to her. I need you on this team."

"Elya, not this again. What has gotten into you? You never were like this when we were kids. Why do you think you can set me up like this? You keep doing this to me and your friends since the war ended. Everyone has had it with you."

Sonetto reeled from the frantic, barely contained rage that bubbled out of the still-unnamed brunette.

Tanya just excused herself to go to the bathroom, hiding her face in her hands and taking her duffel bag with her.

---

"Freedom (noun):..."

They kept arguing outside. I could no longer hear those two anymore. I unzipped my bag. While I did not expect to see her yet, Nichts had another purpose other than to make the ideal mercenary for law enforcement. Now, I had a chance to impress her with a version of me that would not cause problems for us.

"To ask Nichts."

I took the goggles and placed them over my eyes. I wanted people to ask for me again, just like before.

"To expect Nichts."

I lifted the helmet and placed it upon my head, tucking in my hair carefully so as to not let anything out. I wanted people to expect me to be there. For my enemies to fear me but for my allies to know I would be coming to their aid.

"To depend on Nichts."

Finally, I lifted up the slightly too-large mantle. It contained my body and obscured my form. I wanted people to depend on me.

Agent Nichts adjusted her collar and inspected her appearance.

She looked composed.

A practiced smile effortlessly came to her face as the mercenary left the bathroom.

Serebryakov never has to deal with the Tanya with a bleeding heart again. I am the only one who understands how to maintain a professional work relationship and has no need for anyone else. They can trust me. I am free of everything unnecessary. I am Nothing; I am Nichts.

 

[LoreleiFlowers]

Interpol HQ, Berun - 10th of February, 1950

Sonnetto stood next to the one-way window outside the interrogation room. Next to her was her chief officer and housemate, Tanya von Weiss.

The short blonde was mentally prepping herself to grill the Tanechka's Angels, whom they had captured earlier that month. The three elf-like women sat waiting for what would be their last questioning before they were released as part of the bargain prosecutors made with the criminal mastermind Tanechka. Tanya had not gotten a chance to actually speak with any of the Angels yet due to the higher-ups in the International Court and the League of Nations grilling her about what Masquerade had done.

"Okay, so Sonnetto," Tanya signed anxiously. "Communists like these nutjobs believe everything they do is perfectly reasonable and fine even when the facts are staring them right in the face. The ideology justifies everything. They will never admit to any wrongdoing or apologize."

"So what is the point of interrogating them further?" the alchemical woman inquired.

"I got to at least tell the higher-ups that I tried to ask if they would spill the beans on Tanechka's location."

Sonnetto knew that her short housemate did not specifically have to do this interrogation. There were plenty of others who could have. She rarely did them herself due to her desire to keep her identity a secret.

"This feels like an excuse for you to vent your frustrations and prejudices on your ideological foes. Remember, we have agents from Russy and Jugoslavija in Interpol, too. You could get in trouble if you go around calling them all them nutjobs. You even wrote the rule that we are not supposed to talk politics on the job. You will get written up and have to do sensitivity training."

"They are not prejudices if they are grounded in facts," Tanya retorted, conflating slander and prejudice in a way that excused her myopias.

"I still think you will be surprised if you actually talk to them."

Her blonde housemate would not budge on it. Her certainty in her prejudices was as ironclad as any brimstone preacher's faith in the Lord.

Sonnetto could do nothing but shake her head in exasperation.

Sometimes, Tanya acts like she popped into the world from another time and place. Her worldview could be so anachronistic and, sometimes, even ahistorical.

The alchemical woman frowned ever so slightly after Tanya walked away. It was distressing for her to hear the same old tropes of hate-filled language even when it wasn't directed at herself. The language preceded the violence, and the mental association between those two was forever emblazoned in Roxanne's brain from the time of Alexander Magnus' bloody conquest of Persia.

Sonnetto wished Tanya could leave that battlefield behind from the 1920s. The communists were not the enemy anymore. Sure, some of them, like the Angels, committed crimes and were willing to use deadly force against Interpol agents, but not all communists did stuff like that. Sonnetto personally did not like the Angels, but she still thought Tanya approached the interrogation from a mindset beset by overblown prejudice rather than reality.

Sonnetto then turned to watch from the window.

Her mind turned to Tanya's birthday on July 18th. She planned to confess her desire to have a romantic relationship with Tanya then. It was about time, too. They had been living together for some years, and they had become quite close. The alchemical woman hoped that the blonde woman would accept her feelings even if there were no physical attraction behind her desire. They could make something work even if Tanya had reservations.

Then Tanya entered the room with the supposedly unapologetic Angels. As the officer of the law started her spiel, the three communists glanced at each other.

"That's her."

"It has to be. Just look at her."

"She's a few years older and healthier, but her face is the same from the painting."

"What are you talking about?" Tanya was thrown off completely.

"We are so sorry!" One proclaimed for the group.

"I know we can never make it right. Is there anything we can do?"

"I have to tell you how much you mean so much to us — no, to everyone! You really made such a difference in the world."

"May I hug you? If that is alright, that is."

Tanya quickly stepped back as the three Angels leaned forward on the table and started profusely showing sympathy for some unimaginable reason. The blonde then took a few moments to figure out where to continue in her practiced script.

"I want to know where Tanechka is!" Tanya demanded. Sonnetto could tell Tanya had intended to sound tough there, but without her Nichts persona, the short Germanian could not pull off being intimidating in a conversation. Fang might disagree, but Tanya being hypnotized was an exceptional circumstance.

While a flurry of excited conversation followed in the interrogation room, someone came down the hall and timidly signaled for Sonnetto's attention.

"Agent S, may I have a moment?" the person asked her.

The person who summoned Sonnetto was Agent U, who served as Interpol's Chief Scientist for all things arcane and otherwise supernatural. The scientist was a non-mage in her early 30s with brown hair styled in a practical short bob. She was a middling height, a few inches taller than Sonnetto. Agent U also had the pale skin of a white Germanian who did not get out much.

Agent U only ever referred to people by "Agent" followed up by the the first letter of their surname or pseudonym. Calamity had actually taken up the habit as well in order to keep communication in combat fast. In the Chief Scientist's case, Sonnetto had a hunch that Agent U was so trapped in her own world that she just did not "waste" mental resources on "trivial" things like people's full names. It could be infuriating, but Sonnetto kept her thoughts to herself. Agent U also only introduced herself using the same system, so Sonnetto and most other people did not know her by her full name.

The alchemical woman went to the hallway and out of earshot of the interrogation. Sonnetto could have sworn she saw a lavender tail with a purple tuff of fur poking out from Agent U's lab, but that could not have been possible. Demons didn't actually exist, did they?

"Thank you, Agent S. I need you to tell Agent N when she is done interrogating that I have a situation I need to report. I will be busy running urgent tests on— correction, with my assistants. Do you understand?"

Sonnetto just gave a thumbs up, and Agent U walked off without a word of "Thanks". Social niceties just did not naturally register with the Chief Scientist. They were "inefficient", after all. Niceties "should be assumed" just to save time. At least, that was what Sonnetto thought the brunette's philosophy was based on their frequent interactions synthesizing new alchemical formulae that Sonnetto could use. One of those formulae might actually enable her to speak, so it was not like the officer from Bactria did not appreciate the Chief Scientist on the whole.

While Agent U had a deficit in consideration, this was far from unusual for Sonnetto. Many people kind of just talked at the officer, telling her to do things. The alchemical woman had many marginalizing differences between her and the majority of Germanians around her.

That mattered a lot in a democracy like Germania's, in which being part of the majority gave one power. One's deservedness of respect and inclusion regularly came down to whether a person saw you as "one of us" or not. It was tribalism but as a form of governance. As long as people adhered uncritically to democratic norms, there would always be a dominant majority unaccountably wielding their power upon this or that marginal group.

From Sonnetto's perspective, it was very telling that these democracies, in their historical mythologies, celebrated every time they found a way to say:

"These people whom we once mistreated are not so different than us. What we thought were important differences were actually unimportant. Oh, what fools we were! We should not have treated them so differently because they there different in an important way. But all of that is in the past! We are better now. We will now include them in our majority coalition. However, these other people, their differences matter!"

And so the cycle would continue ad infinitum with zero self-awareness, in Sonnetto's opinion, until there was a reckoning with the question about what to do about people stubbornly always having yet more differences that made empathy hard. With more and more liberal democracies following the Silver Legion's lead on answering the question with "fuck empathy", Sonnetto feared for the future of the world.

In her own personal situation, some differences she had with the Germanian majority caused frustrating social dynamics for her to have to navigate, to say the least. For example, since Sonnetto could not talk like other people, some people just did not bother talking to her. Sometimes, it was because they were nervous they would speak to her incorrectly and be offensive. Other times, it was because it did not even cross their mind that they should have a conversation with her. It wasn't impossible to talk to her without understanding sign language. It just required time and patience.

With just this barrier, Sonnetto could see the contours of social reality bend around her, excluding her from social citizenship. She was not only left out of conversations but from the very idea of having a conversation with her. It was one reason why Tanya was so remarkable. The war vet had, without a second thought, learned sign language and set up accommodations not only in Sonnetto's social life but also opened the door for non-humiliating work.

Did Tanya learn this approach towards accommodation from the War College?

Sonnetto guessed that there might be a connection. Many veterans had lost eyes and limbs during the war. Tanya had helped set up Interpol in the aftermath of the war when mages needed to find work and baked in many of workplace norms to make accommodation the default. Tanya had described it as "returning to her forte", whatever that meant.

Not all her differences led to unwelcome social dynamics for Sonnetto. Namely, her alchemical tattoos might make her stand out, but they also make her no one important. People would not believe that the former Empress of Persia — or, rather, her body — might be this woman with tattoos and radically short hair. Being someone in Roxanne's life came with suffocating expectations. It had been like chains for Roxanne to be the Empress, and Sonnetto wanted none of those chains for herself. She had no desire to be anyone's someone aside from Tanya's.

Tanya also has a strong sense of her own difference to others, which Sonnetto had come to see more clearly after their talk at the restaurant a few weeks ago. It was the talk that Figmund Sreud had interrupted. In Sonnetto's crimson eyes, it was the blonde did not see herself as belonging to anything aside from her family. If you cut that one tether, Tanya might very well drift away entirely from the world. It was like she could have chosen not to be in his world. She even treated her ethnicity as something merely accidental, which it was, but also as if she did not see herself as Germanian in any other way than that was how people saw her. It was something Tanya accepted about social reality.

This reminded Sonnetto that there was still a whole well of secrets in Tanya.

For example, once, when they were planning a vacation, they considered going to the Akitsuhima Dominion. Tanya had been quite excited — at least, as excited as the woman let herself be. Then, while she was explaining how the Akinese might regard Sonnetto and what to do in those situations, Tanya looked like she had realized something but did not say what it was. Solemnity had draped itself upon her tiny frame with a crushing weight, and Tanya went to bed early. They decided that going on a trip could wait until Tanya felt better.

They still have not gone on a real vacation in the several years they have known each other.

Sonnetto wanted to press Tanya about what the problem was, but it felt like doing that would result in the same thing Sonnetto had heard from some of Tanya's exes. They would get to a point where they would insist that Tanya explain herself, and Tanya would refuse or, worse, lie. Then, their relationship would fall apart. Tanya was often oblivious about her own emotions due to a combination of subconscious repression and her brain functioning uniquely. Carefully talking to her about these emotions could bring them to the forefront of her mind, where she could notice them and process them more appropriately. The situations where Tanya was obviously lying, however, were what made relationships hard, if not impossible.

Sonnetto knew she had to press Tanya, though. She wanted to be one of Tanya's someones — not just the person who had to wait for Tanya to come home from her current use of stress-relief-oriented, surface-level relationships. Sonnetto wanted more than surface-level. A word did not exist for she wanted, but she knew she wanted it. She felt it every time she held Tanya. It was like Tanya was a possibility itself, and it was as ironic as it was painful that Tanya refused to accept the possibilities within herself.

Elya had often said that the "truth would set you free." On her birthday, Sonnetto would take Tanya on a date, and she would confess and ask for the truth that would free Tanya.

Speaking of the Devil, the blonde woman finally came out of the interrogation room. She looked like someone had spun her in circles several times. Sonnetto had been distracted with her own thoughts, so she had missed what had put Tanya in this state.

"So, how did it go?" Sonnetto inquired.

"They just tentatively promise me a meeting over coffee and maybe a dinner with Tanechka."

"Like a date?" the woman from Bactria had romance on her mind.

"Be serious, Sonnetto. I am not just having coffee with communists for frivolous reasons. This could be our big chance to catch her."

"What else would you two be doing together?"

"We have not figured that out yet. The Angels will get back to me closer to our meeting date."

"Do you think they will actually let you meet her if it would be a trap? They hate Interpol."

"That is the thing. They love me for some unfathomable reason, or so they say. They always do this thing where they know exactly how to get under my skin. This is just like that one time the commies put me in a cell full of things they knew would trigger me. I bet they planned this whole scheme with coffee ahead of time. They know all my weaknesses. Damn, commies. All they do is cause me grief."

Tanya Degurechaff von Weiss said that last part aloud.

"Weiss!" came a heavy voice.

Senior Officer Johann Armstrong had stopped a few feet behind Tanya. He had just happened to be in the hallway when Tanya had vented her age-old contempt against her hated foe. This foe of hers just happened to be people belonging to an increasingly popular ideological faction in global politics in this new era of revolution. This, in turn, meant more Interpol officers were coming from communist nations or had joined their local parties. One just so happened to be one of Tanya's superiors.

"Sir!"

"In my office now."

Sonnetto did warn her.

Hopefully, the sensitivity training will help Tanya.

 

[LoreleiFlowers]

Lorelei's Note:

The events of this chapter happen sometime after Chapter 13. This chapter is mostly about economics from different perspectives at the time. This is fiction, and I try to make it clear that I don't condone the obviously evil, genocidal-defending rhetoric of some of these characters. I am not also trying to make false equivalencies between very different ideologies but instead airing out their respective dirty laundry. I enjoy writing from various philosophical perspectives, but I have neglected the Keynesians of this period.

This chapter serves as a historical context during the Interwar Period. Where YS canon combines elements of both World Wars, I am taking elements of World War II and one hypothetical World War III from our world.

If you don't like economics, nerdiness, and politics, you can skip this side story. Some things will overlap with what was said in chapter 14.

---

League of Nations Monetary and Financial Conference - Wien, Germania - 7th of July, 1950 (1)
Back to the Present

Sir Evan Jude Kaines drained his first cup of coffee as he mentally groaned. He did not know why he bothered going to this conference. They were supposed to be forging alliances through a global monetary and financial system that would tie economies together and preserve peace. Instead, the catastrophizing socialists from the developing world and the theocratic capitalists from the Unified States would not get along.

Kaines was an economist representing the Allied Kingdom and Commonwealth of Great Albion. While liberation theology, Gandhi socialism, Orthodox Marksist-Levinist socialism, Tanechkism, and Brotskyism were all familiar to the man, he had to quickly read up on the Silver Legion's economic theology of 'Legionism' for the conference. All the grunts carried a copy of The White Silver Creed, which apparently had been translated and abridged from its Germanian version, which had a different title. Kaines did not know how to get the original one since it was not available in stores. Apparently, the Unified States required high school students to read the abridged version, along with Eric Arthur Briar's Animal Farm and 1984, which satirized and amplified the horrors of the Old Federation.

The author of the Creed, who went by 'White Silver', came across as a far more developed version of the young F. A. Mayek and his contentious ideas. Her essay on Planned Economies started with a lampooning of the Kaines' theories. Instead of taking the mainstream view that destabilized capitalism resulted in fascism because the ownership of the means of production remained private, Silver insisted that the planned economy produced fascism and socialism. She referred to the two extremes as totalitarian and claimed that the 'humanitarianism' of Kaines' policies resulted in a constant ceding of more and more economic freedom.

She imagined a spectrum with maximum freedom proposed by libertarianism on one end and minimum freedom proposed by communism and fascism on the other. She proposed a free market where no moral considerations were ever externally imposed by the public upon a person's discretion in how they used their capital, with exceptions for a narrow definition of coercive violence because 'when does a person decide to stop questioning the decisions of what people do with their property'. Essentially, White Silver had created a slippery slope argument where the judgment and prudence of the governing body were not trusted to know when to stop.

The mainstream academic view at the time of what made an economy capitalist or socialist was who owned the means of production. When given a choice between fascism (a political order) and socialism (economic order), the bourgeoisie tended to go for fascism because they maintained their ownership over capital. By 'destabilized capitalism' causing fascism, the mainstream idea was that when an economy fell apart due to rampant unemployment and inflation in a capitalist system like what existed during the Great Depression, discontent and reactionary populism gave rise to fascists. That was why one could have a capitalist fascist state like the Unified States was under the Silver Legion.

It was interesting, however, to the economist how fascists had deluded themselves into thinking they were on the side of freedom while creating all sorts of loopholes to discriminate, oppress, incarcerate, and kill minorities as a matter of maintaining cultural homogeneity and racial hierarchy — a Janus system of that gives economic freedom for some but suffocating desperation for others. Some people just lacked Kaines' enlightened understanding of the world and did not comprehend the difference between necessity and actual prejudices.

Had White Silver not written her theories before the Great Depression, the Albish economist would have dismissed her as a historical revisionist. He could forgive her for not actually knowing what would happen in the future. Free market capitalism of the early twentieth century had created out-of-control monopolization, consumption, and production. When consumption took a hit in one section of the economy, it resulted in a domino effect due to the asymmetry in production. Businesses crumbled and laid off their workers, which led to more unemployment. In turn, more unemployment led to less consumption. This vicious cycle continued consuming not only one nation but spreading across the world as the trading partners with the Unified States got sucked into the same vicious cycle like a whirlpool.

Realizing that there were vulnerabilities in the economy at both the national and international levels, countries across the world adopted Kaines' theories to great success. They now had safeguards in place to prevent overproduction, underconsumption, excessive inflation, and unemployment. Monopolies where business failure would impact the economy too much were broken up. Savings accounts now had government insurance in case of bank failure, where people would hardly even notice that the government had temporarily propped up their bank as the solvent company was transferred to a new owner.

White Silver's prescriptive economics made her quite the stooge for them. She recommended more than an unplanned economy to avoid the supposed eventual 'totalitarianism' and 'hubris' of Kaines' theories. Instead of going to an unembedded free market where the state left markets to themselves, like what had existed before the Great Depression to some extent, she proposed embedded capitalism where the function of the state was to protect the free market.

Under her embedded capitalism, the state would have a well-funded police force and military, which would maintain the 'freedom' of the market domestically and abroad. The state would also proactively protect the interests of businesses by stamping out socialism globally, limiting the power of unions, keeping taxes on businesses to a minimum, eliminating most regulations, and financially supporting businesses in times of crisis. Instead of managing consumption through welfare under Kaines' planned economy, White Silver insisted that supporting businesses with these 'free market' policies would trickle down to prosperity for the ordinary people.

Sir Evan Jude Kaines could not be more skeptical of Silver's claims, given all the research to the contrary; however, her theories presupposed the inability of science to understand the economy and what was best for people at the grand scale, denouncing such efforts as 'scientism' and 'human hubris'. Then, the amateur economist took up the philosopher's pen to predict history with her novel definitions.

Reading between the lines, the Albish economist saw propaganda for a country run by monopolists for monopolists. Her ideal state would only support monopolists in growing their businesses even larger. The workers have little to no means to secure the means of survival democratically through welfare or collectively through unions without swift crackdowns from the state. Kaines could already hear the monopolists cheering for lower taxes and not having to deal with pesky strikes or bargaining with unions.

The constantly destabilized economy, according to the mainstream view stated earlier, would result in fascism like Silver Legion's theocratic racist ideology that built off of the discontent in the working class. With the socialist revolutionaries brutally suppressed, the Silver Legion was the only shop in town for recruitment for the countless frustrated working-class people from whom to draw membership for a populist movement. They just needed to keep directing them towards 'enemies' blamed for their suffering. These enemies had to be anyone other than the monopolists who benefited from the workers' exploitation.

Kaines sighed, finished his coffee, and put aside his frustrations with how the Silver Legion demonized him. He had read their favorite book, and now he had to deal with the real deal at the conference.

The League of Nations had gathered the supposedly most influential and successful economic theorists around the world to head a commission. Their stated objective was to prevent another war, prevent future market crashes, and lessen the impact of individual nations on global markets. They were supposed to do this through the adoption of multilateral financial cooperation and the creation of new international organizations like the World Bank (1). From Kaine's perspective, the following were the most notable attendees, but only because of their influence on world events:

• Allied Kingdom - Sir Evan Jude Kaines himself, who was associated with the Pacifist Coalition Party and the most accomplished living economist of his time.
• Unified States - Alistair Drake Whittle (1), who was a mouthpiece of Silver Legion cultist historical revisionism and espoused the Silver Legion called 'Legionism'. They were similar to the Die-Hard Capitalist Faction but far more extreme. They were warmongers, anti-bureaucracy, and advocated global genocide towards communists.
• Russy Federation - Abel Adams, who roared Brotsky's platitudes and got into a frenzy when confronted with sweet reasonableness and tolerance. (2) Essentially, another example of how communists were just the Party of Catastrophe. (3) The Brotsky faction did not trust liberals, took a pro-war stance against the spread of fascism, and had a rather anti-bureaucratic position on planned economies.

Unfortunately for Kaines, the Federation saw him as an imperialism-defending monster, and the Unified States considered him the second coming of Karl Marks. Kaines saw himself as a centrist in a world largely on board with a proven track record of his theories on getting the world out of the Great Depression. Fortunately, the representative of the Unified States, Alistair Whittle, had actually been generally amicable to Sir Evan Jude Kaines, unlike Abel Auburn, who couldn't keep his catastrophizing criticisms to himself.

Where Alistair Whittle advocated for the elimination of technocrats, Abel Adams pushed the Brotskyist line of decentralization. Both saw bureaucracy as evil and advocated for increasing the 'freedom of the people' through their different economic paradigms. For Kaines, freedom was a good thing, but there was such a thing as too much freedom and too little administration. As he had told an Old Federation technocrat buddy of his:

"The people of the world would support my policies if they could only understand them. People just can't comprehend their needs at the national and international levels, nor can they analyze problems scientifically. They need experts like us to guide them to a more prosperous and peaceful future. They just don't know how much civil servants and subject-matter experts are the backbone of any well-functioning society because we are not in the limelight like politicians.

"However, if people actually got to meet their civil servants, the people would never elect us. They would fall for whichever charismatic dunderheads caught their eye with nice-sounding, empty promises and a smile. Democracy like this results in simple ideas that just don't work in the real world.

"As for the libertarian types, both the Communist and Capitalist variants will doom their countries by making those democratic reforms. All of those inevitably shift control to regional governments. They are effectively advocating for lobotomies and then putting their hands and stomachs in charge. That is what happens when you eliminate the civil servants and transfer their responsibilities away from the central government. At least the Dzhugashvilis and Churbills of the world knew enough to have experts like us in charge of a centralized administration." (6)

Getting down to the business of their commission, Sir Evan Jude Kaines introduced the next subject of the conference.

"On the topic of reparations. I continue to oppose onerous reparations against the countries who have lost their wars. As I predicted during the peace negotiations in Londonium, the policy of lighter reparations on Germania has ended the cycle of revanchism we had seen leading up to the Great War. Now, Germania is a staunch European ally in our now interconnected markets." (7)

"There is no counterfactual evidence of this," Whittle countered. "We can't possibly know if lessening war reparations from what the Francois Republic proposed actually led to Germania becoming more docile. In fact, they were more ready for war because they had more resources to plow into their industry. My colleague Kaines is just ceding more power over reparation policy from prosperous nations to the League of Nations by hobbling the natural way in which countries compete for resources to stabilize and encourage industry. Going against nature by having this international body intervene in this process actually makes wars more likely to happen because there are few consequences for going to war.

"The Unified States' perspective is that no one is more responsible for the Old Federation's adventurist warmongering than Kaines and his policies. His ideas have led governments astray here in Europe. For example, his policies empower workers to form unions, which not only stifle businesses but are hotbeds for communism. The Silver Legion instead recommends that we form tight military alliances to safeguard markets from communist terrorists, construct military bases along the border with the Federation, and swiftly punish them with economic sanctions and military force if they send their terrorists across our borders."

Kaines wanted to scream but bit his tongue. He didn't know where to start. Whittle had done a whole gish gallop of widely controversial claims and then ended with the story on everyone's mind — Brotsky's supposedly 'rogue' Red Guard mages attempting to blow up Zhangzi Express. Each claim would take several times longer to disprove than it took Whittle to say, and it was important to deescalate tensions, not build them up. The public would interpret it as Kaines losing the 'debate' when it aired on television or when people read the countless papers monopolized by Henry Pulitzer.

That being said, Kaines still mentally groaned as he had to listen to war-mongering Brotskyist next.

"I agree with the economist from the Allied Kingdom on lessening the reparations on Germania," Adams began, attempting to sound reasonable. "But only that far. Kaines values peace so much that he exacerbates injustices in the world. Under General Secretary Brotsky, we are doing hard work to give justice to people harmed by the Old Federation." (9)

While the current leader of the Federation was disgusted with the starvations under Dzhugashvili, Leon Brotsky still had countless authoritarian tendencies himself. His propagandists merely covered up his blood-stained record with slogans about being the kinder version of communism. The only reason why anyone thought Brotsky was better than the former leader was that he had the benefit of the opposition party when he wasn't in power and spent all of his time criticizing the Old Federation for its evident failings with the benefit of hindsight and not having to be the person who made those decisions. If Brotsky had been in charge back then, Kaines was certain the radical would have done much of the same things and also pursued expanding the Federation even more aggressively. Those in the Albish Prime Minister's cabinet had told Kaines that Leon Brotsky planned to invade Norden and was funding a putsch by the Brotskyist faction in fascist Ispagnia.

"What about the people forcibly relocated in the Federation?" Whittle retorted to the Brotskyist Adams. "Are they going to get reparations and brought back to their former homes?"

"Brotsky holds the position that the mixing of the races will create one true race of mankind," he replied. "Bringing an end to racial divisions, which is why General Secretary Brotsky supports the policy of mixing of ethnic groups within the New Federation. He actually got his ideas from the melting pot of the Unified States." (10)

The Legionist's face twisted in disgust. "Don't you know this will cause birth defects and lowered IQ? You can't just mix people like that. People from different stocks are biologically incompatible. This is why we banned such unconscionable unions in my country." (11)

Kaines was a eugenicist as much as any self-respecting intellectual of the time. He could have brought up Brotsky's culpability when the man, as a leader in the Red Guard, horrifically put down the Kronstadt rebellion; however, the Albish scholar felt the committee had gotten off-topic as more members jumped in to add their opinions about the races of the world.

Clearing his throat, the famous Albish economist addressed Adams. "What are you suggesting we do about reparations?"

"We believe this commission uses the powers invested in the League of Nations and the International Court to implement reparations to punish crimes against humanity and non-mages committed by countries. Currently, the policies focus on individuals and organizations but have no mechanism for stopping countries from committing the same crimes. Reparations from the offending country to the harmed populations should be this tool of justice."

"General Secretary has long advocated for the proletariat using any means necessary to secure a socialist government, including terrorism," Kaines pointed out. (20) "Are you suggesting that we should impose reparations on the Federation for their crimes against humanity and non-mages as well?"

"The Brotsky administration holds that those actions are only necessary because of the actions of the Unified States and their allies. They force us to have to match their tactics and militarization. I remind you, Russy had an agrarian economy of mostly peasants before the revolutionary socialists had their revolution. Our socialist planned economy has allowed us to industrialize and provide robust public education rapidly. We have some of the most outstanding scientists in the world, and magetech has significantly closed the gap with the Unified States, which has a massive headstart.

"The Federation believes that the Unified States' genocidal fear of socialism is a reaction to our progress as it threatens the hegemony their capitalists desire over world affairs. They are forcing us to enact unfortunate policies of necessity to keep up with their arms race, resulting in the impoverishment of our people since we have to move production capacity from quality-of-life improvements to military production. Their constant spying requires us to have ridiculous safeguards, which forces us to do more surveillance of our population and be paranoid. Their espionage requires us to divert resources and personnel further away from improving the lives of our people.

"We have regularly pleaded with the Unified States to stop their unprovoked warmongering, but they have taken the path of destroying socialism in the world. Peace with them is impossible. Because they use spies against us, we must use spies against them. Because they use terrorism against us, we use terrorism against them. Because they fund coups against socialist administrations (elected or otherwise), we have to do the same. The evils of capitalism create the evils of opposing it."

Adams had provoked the Silver Legion economist once more. After a prolonged debate of perspectives between the two, Kaines brought it back to the subject of reparations. The Albish man worked as the voice of reason between the two men who represented, in his opinion, two equally culpable warmongering administrations. Leon Brotsky wanted capitalism to end in the entire world. Unless he had gotten more pragmatic after getting into power, then Brotsky would have pursued the communist version of jingoism.

"We believe that reparations would curtail the Unified States and allow us to stop this foolish arms race," Abel Adams claimed. "Actual peace would be best for the Russy Federation instead of this build-up towards war."

"What you really want is wealth redistribution on a global scale," Whittle raged with his face going slightly red. "No nation with a proper nationalist government would agree to give the wealth that is rightfully theirs through conquest to some foreign people. The job of an ethical government is to act in accordance with the guiding star of the nation's self-interest. If anyone asks for reparations from the Unified States, they can take our money from our cold, dead hands because you will have to kill us first. Be warned, we have the most powerful military the world has ever seen."

Kaines had to take a moment to formulate a response. Instead of reacting to Whittle, he focused on Adams.

"I think such reparation policies would just encourage countries having antagonistic relationships, seeing themselves as victims justified in getting paid back," Kaines responded with exhausted professionalism. "What if the crime is incredibly heinous? How far back and how thoroughly will they comb history until they have satisfied their desire for justice?"

The Albish economist then took a sip of his coffee before continuing. Talking to these idiots drained him far too much.

"Granting this power to the ICC will lead to requests for exorbitant amounts of remedial funds," Kaines explained. "If they don't get those funds, the victim country will feel justified in war. If they do get them, then the perpetrator country will see it as humiliation, justifying revanchism. Additionally, while I support common welfare, which includes this redistribution function, the purpose of that welfare isn't justice but peace and stability. That is why I do not support reparations like you propose. In the spirit of fairness, I am curious about what crime you think deserves the ICC and Interpol interceding on."

"I would like to start with the starvation of the people of Bengal during the Great War," Adams replied. "We believe that reparations are owed to the people of Bengal when Winston Churbull diverted food from the region to Albion. (12) His actions resulted in four million people in Bengal starving to death because they did not have enough food available to eat. (12) Despite Albish pushback from the imperial administration, Churbull insisted, claiming, 'I hate Bharati. They are beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.' (12, 13) It is clearly a crime against humanity."

The Albish economist creased his brow in confusion as Abel Adams concluded by reading this from his prepared notes.

"Okay, now this is getting rather personal," the Kaines replied. "You no doubt know that I served as the advisor with special authority for the Bharati financial and monetary policy. I supported and proposed that the Prime Minister and his administration reduce consumption in Bharat to cover the abnormal war expenditure. (14) War is a time of necessity. I have changed my mind about my 'profit inflation' strategy, but peace is what will avoid those situations of necessity.

"As for Churbill's comments, this was and still is the orthodox Albish imperial attitude, even if you don't like it. (12) First, the Bharati simply missed the bus for the industrial revolution. (13) Don't blame us for them missing it. As the great playwright stated, 'Foul is fair, and fair is foul; for foul is useful, and fair is not.' (15) What I mean is that opportunism, which you see as exploitation and unfair, has led to the prosperity that we have today.

"We can most clearly see the soundness of my economics whenever foreigners come over from their less developed countries like your Russy Federation. They are absolutely dumbfounded by the abundance of quantity and variety they see at our grocery stores. Many of them obviously want to emulate the West after seeing the benefits that my policies deliver to our national populations who adore and vote consistently against catastrophizing socialist parties like yours, Adams. Unfortunately, some backward people, like that agitating revolutionary socialist Gandhi, have gotten the idea that escaping our professionally managed imperial governance is best for them. They have this misguided sense of fairness and aren't patient enough to see where it is all ultimately headed."

The Albish economist took a deep breath. It was not enjoyable having to represent the voice of reason.

"If they were patient instead of overreacting like you," Kaines continued. "Then they would eventually see that experts with proven track records like me are guiding the entire world to economic bliss. (15) People need to stop this revolution or premature abandonment of capitalism nonsense. We on this committee should all keep level heads. I suggest we instead commit to the following these four governing principles — controlling population (which will reduce famines), avoiding war and civil dissent (with suppression if needed), willingness to entrust scientists, and managing the rate of accumulation of production and consumption (which will also reduce famines). (15) Eventually, everyone will be uplifted into prosperity, and the gods of avarice, usury, and precaution will cease to be necessary. (15) We can live in socialism then instead of jumping ahead like you in the Federation."

"You are calling your genocide—" the socialist started to retort.

"Stop there," Sir Evan Kaines interjected. "I don't want to hear any moralizing about causing famines from someone representing Russy Federation."

Adams bit his tongue in forced civility. As for the Silver Legionist, Whittle had opted to keep quiet while the centrist and the socialist butted heads.

"Our committee is here to make sure famines can be managed properly," Kaines reminded the communists. "When they do occur, the devastation can be contained to the proper level by the World Bank and other organizations we are to form."

"Oh, I understand where you are coming from, Kaines," the Legionist claimed. "Noble aspirations, all of them with this World Bank. We at the Unified States fully support its creation, but we think the US dollar should be used instead of your proposed global currency as we already have a very stable currency, which is pegged to the gold standard. (1) If you would like our support in its creation, that and a few minor changes are all we ask for."

This offer surprised the Albish economist. Despite their unseemly domestic policies, the Americans actually came across as quite reasonable. That did not mean this wasn't a big ask. It would give the US a lot of power over global monetary policy. Kaines was well aware that the US happily joined in alliances as long as they got to take the lead and never felt imposed upon by others.

Kaines was stuck between swallowing his unease or flat-out rejecting the Unified States. The former would move the US and Europa, becoming allies, while the latter would leave Europa in between the Russy Federation and Unified States. Leon Brotsky did not trust liberals not to betray socialists, advocating for the United Front alliance of exclusively socialist administrations and parties.

If Europa kept siding with the Unified States, the newly elected President Leon Plum of France would find his plan to protect his country doomed. Plum advocated for the Popular Front alliance between liberals and communists. He was in search of allies since his country was partially surrounded by fascism from Ispagnia, Ildoa, and, if one included the control of the ocean, the Unified States. Their only potential liberal allies were Germania and Albion. The Russy Federation wanted Francios Republic to give Dzayer its independence, which the Republic would never do, further pushing Plum's country towards joining the Unified States' fascist faction. Like the Allied Kingdom, the Francois Republic had a lot of historical ties with the Unified States. While liberals hated fascism, they hated communists too.

Given the diplomatic head start of the Unified States, the Republic might, out of necessity, join the fascist faction, which would, in turn, prove Leon Brotsky was right that liberals are not to be trusted.

As for Sir Evan Jude Kaines, he had little love for the Francois. The Albish and the Francois have a long-lasting rivalry. If the communists invaded Europa in their fear of being snuffed out of existence, his country would join up with the Unified States and the Republic against a communist threat under current diplomatic conditions. Germania could go either way, having plenty of reasons for not trusting the Federation and the other European partners, as well as being the center of a lot of undesirable foreign public-opinion influence campaigns by the fascists and communist powers.

However, this commission was here to prevent war. The Federation just had to be okay with the World Bank as proposed by Kaines without significant changes.

"Having read your proposal for how the World Bank should function," Adams stated tersely when his turn came. "I can only see it as a way to dangle the means of survival in front of desperate countries to get them to agree to conditions they wouldn't otherwise. You are just setting up the usury as the global policy to keep your empires going after all your colonies get their independence."

"Surely, we can compromise," Kaines offered.

Adams calmed down. "Actually, we do have one offered by the Popular—"

"What is so wrong about about making a little profit?" Whittle interjected with a smug smile, setting off the Brotskist again with some tactical understatement.

"This is why we say Western empires depend too much on draining the rest of the world of the value of their hard work in order to keep your opulence going," the representative of the Federation lectured. "Your governments need to exploit other countries to stay in power, too. By pumping in a constant inflow of wealth into your countries, you keep your 'patiently' complicit local populations voting for their current capitalist administrations that will never become socialist, as you theorize. The voters in Albion have rationalized, like you did earlier, why the rest of the world has to suffer for their benefit. You may care about the workers in your country, but Albish people clearly don't care about the plight in your out-of-sight colonies. This is why socialism rises in the rest of the world and goes nowhere in Western Europa. Fortunately, there is no way any of the League of Nations will allow your proposal to pass as is."

Kaines rubbed his forehead. The Party of Catastrophe struck again to moralize impractically.

'Adams is right about one thing,' Kaines thought to himself while finishing his second cup of coffee. 'There is no way for my policies to get enacted.'

The Party of Catastrophe had simply too much representation in the current League of Nations. The League would never accept Kaines' proposals without some compromises, and his country would never accept radical socialist ones. If the League insisted on enforcing socialism at this conference, much of Europa and the Unified States would abandon the international organization and just form a new one where they are in charge. Kaines did not know how to feel about potentially becoming an ally with the Silver Legion as more and more of the horrors in that country came to light.

Adams went forward to propose the United Front recommendation instead. This policy recommended that the World Bank essentially provide direct aid and welfare to people in poverty on a global scale without strings attached. The United Front did not trust representative democracies to give the money to the people who needed it the most, so it wanted the World Bank to have offices where everyday people could enter and get the aid they needed. It would be another step towards federalizing the League of Nations.

Kaines had no issue giving welfare to his people and giving strategic humanitarian aid to foreign governments to stabilize their national markets, which was in Kaines and Popular Front's proposals to different extents; however, the Federation representative kept pivoting to the overly ambitious policies of the United Front. The cash-flushed countries of Europa and Unified States would never agree to be required to give significant amounts of humanitarian aid to communities struggling in capitalist and socialist countries across the globe.

As for the Unified States, Alistair Drake Whittle advocated for something called 'microfinance'. The American proposal combined the direct aid model the United Front put forward with capitalism. Whittle argued that with small loans, anyone could become a small business owner. The person would have to pay back these loans with interest, but with a bit of money upfront, poor people in the world could purchase the tools for their trade. Even more dramatically, Whittle encouraged the phasing of most humanitarian aid and replaced it with for-profit microloans. The American proposal would definitely go well with social welfare and feminist advocates as it would allow women also to get loans and have their own businesses.

What Kaines saw as a novel idea that played a lot to his progressive sensibilities, Adams saw as predatory. In essence, the Federation representative argued that the Legionist model for microloans would create a class of debtors because the markets would become saturated with too many people selling the same services and goods. Instead of some failing and having to try something else, all of them would feel the pinch of shrinking profits and default on these loans. Then, they will start having to get loans to pay off their loans, and it will spiral out of control. Adams cautioned against ever using credit to prop up struggling markets because it reinforces unstable extractionism that eventually leads to a credit crisis. (cite)

Things just stagnated between the three groups from there.

As Kaines got up, Whittle got his attention.

"You know, I heard that Ablion has a silver deficit," the American opened. "America can help."

The Albish economist paused. His country had been pressuring Zhangzi to end its Hong Kong policy. Trade with Zhangzi produced a deficit, straining Albion's silver-based monetary system. Still, Kaines hesitated.

"You should speak with the Foreign Office," the economist stated.

"Trust me, we have tried," Whittle added, hands raised as if caught red-handed. "They won't talk to us. I was hoping you would put in a good word in for us. The papers tell you Albish such awful things about us. Instead, why don't you and the Foreign Office organize a visit to America? I will show you that there is nothing to fear about us. If we have not assuaged all your concerns, then you are always free to walk away, but I have a feeling Albion will like what we are doing with Legionism. You really have to see our suburban Whittletons: clean streets, no crime, and beautiful, affordable homes.

"If you see everything is all good in America, we can reforge diplomatic relations. We even have twenty shipping containers of silver bullion we can send to Albion right now, which will be more than enough to reverse your deficit. We hope that signing a treaty with us will lead to a powerful and lucrative alliance between our countries that will last until the end of time."

The Albishman doubted that all his concerns would be erased, but the silver was too much to pass up.

Whittle offered a hand.

"I will let the Prime Minister know," Evan Kaines replied, shaking it.

---

Hashington, D.C., Unified States, July 18th, 1950

A knock came to the door right after the middle of the night, awakening Sir Evan Jude Kaines from his slumber.

He pulled himself out of bed, put on some shoes, and went to the door.

A woman of the American economically enforced underclass stood there in her hotel uniform.

Kaines had known that what he saw in the suburb of Whittleton was too good to be true. The school for children of non-white children was too idyllic compared to the violence U.S. President Yockey promised them in his speeches to his blood-thirsty base. When Kaines went to a recently integrated diner, he received a note from a black waitress on a napkin.

'It is time to wake up from the dream,' the note had said.

The woman before him was the same person as the waitress but in a different uniform. She tapped her ear, causing an illusion to distort for a moment. Then, she muttered something.

She is one of Tanechka's elves! He realized.

"Please follow me, Mr. Kaines," she told him. Her voice weighed down his ears with heavy politeness.

One of the things Albish man had noticed was not so much the friendliness of all Americans to him but the almost excessive politeness the people of color had for him. Indigenous people in the Albish colonies could sometimes be like this, too, due to the stiff penalties for hurting Albish citizens. America took it to another level, and it became scary. Even with his pride in his people, Kaines didn't want people to think he would have them killed if they insulted him.

The unnamed woman guided him down into the hotel service area and then the kitchen, where several individuals in their Sunday clothes were waiting for him.

"Thank you kindly for waking up, Mr. Kaines, sir," the leader addressed him. He was a black man with very short hair. "You can call me Bishop. My friends here needed to talk to you before you, if that is alright."

"It is, Mr. Bishop."

The leader walked up and offered a hand, which Kaines shook.

"Good, good. You have some confidence." Bishop seemed pleased with his firm handshake. "You will need to keep that up for what is to come."

"What do you mean?"

"I am on a CIA list. All of us are. If they find out you met me, you might never get home. We can also never be completely certain when the FBI has an agent within our midst to disrupt our efforts to free ourselves, but we have tried our best to vet everyone present here. (20) You getting home with this knowledge is a Hail Goddess to save us all."

Kaines went pale at the thought that he might already be a dead man walking, having met them.

"Your Secret Service does the same, we are told," Bishop stated, nodding to the Tanechka's Angel. "Make sure not to share what you see here with Eric Arthur Briar. He is an informant for the Albish Secret Service and helps them hunt those with ties with revolutionaries. (19) He is a friend of yours, right?"

"Yes, but…he served in the Ispagnia Civil War for the Brotskists. By Jove, I had no idea. He knows I am not a revolutionary socialist. I am a reformer!"

"We are just trying to protect you and us. Now you have met us. You know our faces. The CIA tortures people for information even if you don't know anything."

What had he just walked himself into?

"However, before I go any further, I need to know if you are ready to see the truth. You can walk away now and stay ignorant of what the Silver Legion has planned. That will be enough to spare your life, perhaps; however, if you know, the Silver Legion will hunt you down the moment they realize it.

"I..uh…oh my." He wiped his brow with a handkerchief provided to him by the elf-like woman. "Oh, thank you."

Kaines could walk away, and the Prime Minister would probably accept the deal for the twenty crates of silver for the alliance. He could find out what was behind this facade of well-trimmed lawns and benign problems. It was like the people hardly knew they were at war. They debated it, but they just did not take it with the gravity it deserved. Some of the white Americans to whom Kaines had spoken suggested that even questioning the war killed troops. Most of them barely knew anything about what Europeans thought about their actions, living in their comfortable suburban worlds. Some didn't even believe that a genocide was happening to the Aztecs and was just a product of the lying press to make President Yockey look bad. These people didn't know what was going on in their own country, and if they didn't, Kaines would have to ask people who did.

In the end, the economist's academic and freethinking curiosity won out, and he nodded. "Yes, I would like to know."

"Do you really want to know?"

Now, he was doubting himself again. Kaines could walk away again.

No, I have to think about not only my future but also the rest of my country.

"Yes, let me know."

"As you say, Mr. Kaines, sir," Bishop stated solemnly.

The eloquent, well-dressed man handed Kaines a book, which looked like any Lord of Faith holy book one would find in a church pew.

"What is this?"

"Everything you need to know. Open it up."

He flipped it open.

The Silver-Diamond Manifesto was the title on the cover. The book had a false cover, just like the country.

"This is the unabridged version of not only the great fool of a Goddess, White Silver's essays but, more importantly, Richard Diamond's plan as he envisioned it several years ago. We believe it has only gotten more elaborate since then. The abridged White Silver Creed available for everyone is a part of a public opinion-shaping campaign by the Unified States called Operation Mockingbird. (16)

"You need to memorize this book to the best you can and then recreate it for the people in Europa. You have more reach than us. Before the Silver Legion took power, the moderates of the world turn deaf years when we insist that we need total, direct, and immediate abolition of poverty. (17) Now, the Silver Legion takes advantage of the moderates' inability to see the genocide by just exacerbating the conditions of poverty while keeping them out of sight. The white moderates are rewarded affluence and privileges for following along the path carefully set out before them by the Silver Legion. It is so seamless they don't see the gears of genocide turning underneath their feet.

"When we try to work with the moderates, they will only go so far as to fight against the signs of injustice that are visible to them in their daily lives. For example, you have seen that the townsfolk in Whittleton gave us the right to sit at the same lunch counter in one town, but that does little good if you can't buy a hamburger. (17) They go as far as to expect to be thanked for the gesture. Everything they don't see in their lives is treated as make-believe, nonsense, or purely academic.

"Regardless, right now, we need as many people in key areas who can get the word out of the Unified States about what is going on before it is too late. You have the world's ear right now, Mr. Kaines. We want you to use that power while you still have it. Work with our movement to not only stand with us but the entire world."

"The entire world?" Kaines muttered in disbelief. It was incredible.

"Okay, now you understand the stakes," Bishop stated. "You need to go back to your room. Memorize that book. Put it on the nightstand when you are done. Once you get back, be prudent. If you need to be rescued, put a potted plant on your balcony facing the street. The Angels will get you out of your country and bring you somewhere safe. We are trusting you with this much because all of our lives depend on the Silver Legion being stopped before whatever their final plan is enacted."

He nodded and went back to his room. The unnamed woman gave him a coffee, and Kaines got to work.

The book contained a collection of essays by Richard Diamond and 'White Silver', starting with the eponymous manifesto. The manifesto section paraphrased White Silver's more moderate ideas but layered in Diamond's far more reactionary contempt for the non-mages and the incompetent based on extremist interpretations of a capitalist version of Social Darwinism.

The unabridged version of White Silver came across as extraordinarily tolerant of minorities in her writings about human resource management, recommending countless ways to make a flourishing workplace. Her ideas regarding business management, strategy, and marketing were so ingenious to a century ahead of their time. In Kaines' opinion, while she had no hope in economic theory, her ideas in the business sphere alone would have been enough to get her a professorship at a university in the world. Had she just stuck to business and not ventured into economics, Kaines' gradualist approach wouldn't be under threat of being reversed extremely violently at a great loss of global self-determination, democracy, and human life, as prescribed by Richard Diamond in the later pages.

If she had any prejudice in these business writings, it was that White Silver had a rather ruthless perspective of the 'incompetent'. Richard Diamond had taken this particular prejudice to a genocidal extreme, recommending explicitly that if a worker could not meet ever-increasing levels of excellence, they deserved to be fired. Mages, in particular, were to be promoted through subsidizing their reproduction and through the eventual sterilization of non-mages over time. In the Silver Legion's America, which was run by monopolies that shared Diamond's view, such unemployment generally meant death by starvation, being forced into hard labor under terrible conditions in privately run prisons since homelessness was a crime, or volunteering as shock troops with low life-expectancy in the Legion's planned wars.

Diamond argued that their deaths would take their inferior genetics, which made them stupid and unproductive, out of the gene pool. The businessman further claimed Kaines' theories would cause humans to 'evolve into a dumber species by supporting the families of these inferior people'. So now, not only was Kaines the first step to totalitarianism, but also the one causing humanity to become stupid apes again.

Notes left in the margins of the book implied the suicide rates in the Unified States were a lot higher than the Silver Legion reported. Mental health in the country, unlike the rest of the world, involves convincing the workers that they must accept what they cannot change in order to not worry about it anymore and having them take expensive, addictive medication. The pills had no actual evidence of any effectiveness from what Albish experts could determine despite what the American pharmaceutical companies claimed. Doctors in the Unified States apparently recommended the medication to their patients if they reported any signs of persistent depression or anxiety. These medications had several other side effects, which concerned Kaines deeply when an investigative report appeared on the subject.

The Unified States mental healthcare system was actually White Silver's idea in the book and was apparently written as a suggestion for the military originally. She recommended that companies and the military pay for some of the therapy to help keep workers productive, which is called cognitive behavioral therapy. She dubiously hypothesized that depression was not the result of the conditions in a person's life but a chemical imbalance in their brain, recommending a medication to fix that. The employee was the problem, not their circumstances under monopolist rule.

While Kaines could imagine that maybe a few people had a brain with chemical adjustment needs, one could not explain the epidemic in the Unified States mentioned in the handwritten notes with anything other than the constant sense of desperation in the country. There were no widespread mental health crises under the planned economies of Western Europa aside from the traumatic stress disorders in their veterans from the Great War, which was partially why, for everyone's mental health, Kaines aggressively pushed for pacifism. People being optimistic about their futures, having peace of mind from a safety net, and having time to rest went a long way to making people much less anxious and depressed.

The only people who benefited from the out-of-control mental health crisis in the Unified States were the monopolists providing the medication and therapy, which did nothing to remedy the actual cause of it because, again, the peace of mind in even partially managed economies and welfare were 'evil totalitarianism' under this convenient framing that White Silver used.

Sir Evan Kaines noticed that Richard Diamond used the term 'neoliberalism' quite differently than White Silver. The named co-writer envisioned it as a single global political economy that would transition the world into Legionism, which he explained later. Most importantly, under this neoliberalism, public power has been diminished to negligible levels through the hollowing out of public institutions of change (the 'evil' bureaucracy) and the breaking up of society down into individuals with no sense of collective power. After that, the public will be wholly suborned to private power.

One could see it as a monopolist version of invisible world domination. It suggests that people globally gradually lose all faith that anything can be done to resist or reform Diamond's proposed neoliberalism. If people do resist, they will be ignored (if non-threatening) or suppressed and arrested. People have to run out of energy and believe that nothing they do can do anything. At the international level, the global monopolists will secure gradual but eventual control of the world through funding coups, directing military interventions, and co-opting national and international institutions.

The global system of unmitigated extractionism will have three core groupings of territories in the monopolist's empire. At the bottom of the world hierarchy would be the resource-rich, undeveloped countries, managed by propped-up dictators and the occasional coup to replace uncooperative leaders. Industrialized territories with large populations were in the middle and would provide cheap skilled labor managed by subordinated 'democracies' and co-opted so-called 'socialist' states. At the top would be the financiers who provided funding for military policing of the globe and tax havens available for the ultra-wealthy and their corporations.

While Diamond suggested using propaganda (called 'marketing') to poison the idea of violent resistance to capitalist or co-opted 'socialist' governments, the significant control over opinion would be the monopolization of the global press and the capture of major national political parties. Owning the newspapers and suborning the political class will not only pump out more propaganda but also hide the horrors of that system from the public by keeping the range of available opinions available to consume within an acceptable range. Diamond emphasized the paramount importance of discrediting trust in authority (like Kaines) and repeating conflicting untruths that had more power, the more obviously false they were. The public's 'excess energies' would be directed to manufactured conflicts meant to distract them from the constant ceding of more and more power to the monopolists.

The entrepreneur behind it all stated terrifyingly:
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything those who are Legion believe is false. (18) They must believe that which gives them power is evil and that which deprives them of it is good. The poors must believe that everyone speaking Albish is more American than having Democracy. That what is 'wrong' is necessary even when it isn't. That what is least important is the most important. They must forget what they were upset about yesterday, have too many different things to be upset about, or simply disengage and drown themselves in entertainment. We must create ways for them to consume constantly. When the poors can no longer think of anything else other than working to survive until they die and doing so with a smile 'because it is the right thing to do', that is when we know we have won."

All of this was depicted as a good outcome by the entrepreneur that would restore the world to its supposed 'proper order of competition and a hierarchy of mankind', and Kaines was ignoring the more genocidal language in other sections at this point.

This hierarchy would end in the de facto slavery of most of the human population. First, wages would stagnate as collective bargaining powers were eliminated, and the monopolists slowly but steadily eeked out better and better deals from their workers on how much of the value of their labor went into the monopolists' pockets instead of a worker. Imagine producing $100 worth of goods or services and slowly going from retaining $60 of that value in wages to only retaining $20.

The second phase of enslavement would be the issuing of cheap credit. In order to fill the gap created by stagnating wages, the 'poors' would be given credit that would allow them to maintain 'comfortable' levels of consumption without having to tighten their belts. Then, the monopolists would just increase prices once the 'poors' all got used to using credit. Credit issuers would start by targeting people specifically whose ability to pay back was dubious because the penalties for non-payment, particularly the ridiculous interest rates, would result in rapidly accelerating debt. Likewise, the middle class of educated experts would eventually be saddled with student debt that most would not be able to dig themselves out of. People in the poorest countries would be sucked into this debt cycle through the use of for-profit microloans instead of traditional humanitarian aid. The goal would be to make as many people as possible into debt slaves forced to work for the monopolists to pay back their debts.

The third phase would be the war-looting phase. Since a credit crisis would inevitably happen with so many people on the verge of default, the final means of propping up the neoliberal system would be war. By simply killing other people for their territory, wars would become a winner-take-all means to stay afloat to fill that gap exacerbated by not only low wages but having to pay interest on their consumption. A world made out of desperate poors would become a world full of 'faith-inducing conflict just as the Lord of Faith intended', according to Richard Diamond.

The way to keep the 'poors' from attacking the monopolists for stuff would be by creating a system where they fought each other in proxy warzones. Without any sense of collective existence, the monopolists can create artificial ones in a culture of fighting for the various monopolists' teams. The 'poors' would hand their war spoils to their monopolist overlords and be granted the right to live a bit longer before the next war games.

Despite the fact that none of this explicitly required a country annexing more territory, Diamond wrote in a later essay in the book that he believed 'neoliberalism' was too unstable due to the impossibility of managing global public opinion with too many cultures. He claimed that all non-Angel-American cultures would have to be eradicated, and valuable people (people who were not 'undesirable' minorities) would have to be assimilated in order to make them easier to manage. While a single global culture would make collectivism easier, Diamond demonstrated through countless examples how to break up the 'poors' into a tangled mess of disorganization even when they ostensibly share the same culture. He determined that conquering the world would be the fastest way to achieve managed individualism under monoculturalism and end a culture of empathy and solidarity-inducing pluralism forever.

People can even know they are being shepherded into enslavement as long as these people who are aware lack a sense of collective identity. Wasting energy 'understanding' and 'abstracting' their suffering wouldn't change the fact they were enslaved. Diamond preferred that student debt slaves develop a culture of only 'thinking about things'. Intellectuals have the egotistical desire to be correct, and competition is the bedrock of individualistic culture. They would debate and argue, falling into different 'schools of thought' all the while never lifting a finger to help the 'poors' they wrote endlessly about in the abstract.

For the less educated 'poors', it was vital that they hate each other more than any group. Constantly supplying them with an 'Other' who would be blamed for the stagnate wages and loss of economic opportunity. While competition between different groups of 'poors' would help suppress wages, instead of being mad at the monopolists, they would see those they competed against as the real threat to their interests. This passionate competition among the 'poors' would be the basis for the teams-based proxy wars of the future.

In Diamond's plan, the Unified States would transition the whole world from Kainesianism to pacifying neoliberalism and finally to this global enslaved monoculture of Legionism. The Unified States would invade one country at a time as the rest of the world became subordinated to it through the pacification of neoliberalism. Eventually, he suspected the world would catch on to the seriousness of the monopolists' ambitions. Still, he believed that with prudent leadership, any circumstance could be navigated to lead to a global one-country Legionism system eventually. Alliances, non-aggression pacts, and divisive rhetoric would pacify and divide any potential opposition to their conquest until it was too late.

Getting to this point, Sir Evan Jude Kaines jumped when a knock came at the door. It was already morning, and he had only read half of the dense book. That had been more than enough, coupled with White Silver's prognosticating, to more than convince him that Kaines had to stop Prime Minister Catcherlain from signing the treaty.

If I can, and it isn't too late.

He opened the door to see one of his Silver Legionist handlers.

"Sir, you don't look alright," the uniformed mage inquired. "Were the beds not to your liking?"

"Yes, I uh—" Kaines realized before he finished his sentence the potential consequences of what he was saying. "I mean, the beds were the best I ever had. You must extend my sincerest thanks to the hotel staff. I just was up all night…reading the bible. Very faithful. You know how the Lord of Faith can speak to you at any time."

"The Lord of Faith is gone, sir."

"Uh…I meant the Goddess."

"She should be here by the year's end at the latest," the Legionist mage claimed bizarrely.

Kaines blinked, confused.

"If you want to come back and meet White Silver," the enforcer for American administration clarified. "As President Yockey declared upon the most holy White House balcony to his followers, not one year shall pass before the coming of the Goddess. We were all worried about why she had not arrived yet despite his earlier readings of the Silver prophecy, but sometimes the Goddess moves in unusual ways."

"Uh, yes, well, that would be something."

He had spoken to White Silver. Was she really a goddess, the Goddess? That might explain how she seemed to know the critical factors going on in geopolitics.

"Are you ready for breakfast? President Yockey would love you all to have one last all-American meal before you leave."

Kaines had to face the Silver Legion leadership one last time with a smile before getting the hell out of this country.

1. Office of the Historian. "Bretton Woods-GATT, 1941–1947." <https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/bretton-woods>
2. Ruggie, John Gerard. "International regimes, transactions, and change: embedded liberalism in the postwar economic order." <https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/john-ruggie/files/international_regimes_transactions.pdf>
3. Keynes, John Maynard. Essays in Biography. "Trotsky On England (Where is Britain Going?). Harcourt, Brace, 1933.
4. Keynes, John Maynard. The Nation & Athenaeum, 1925, Part I. "Am I a Liberal?" 1925. <https://www.hetwebsite.net/het/texts/keynes/keynes1925liberal.htm>
5. Kley, Roland, 'Cultural Evolution', Hayek's Social and Political Thought (Oxford, 1994; online edn, Oxford Academic, 3 Oct. 2011), <https://doi.org/10.1093/acprofso/9780198279167.003.0008>
6. I paraphrased from the Yes, Minister episode "Power to the People" (Season 2, Episode 5), which aired on the 7th of January, 1988. I took liberal inspiration from when Agnes Moorhouse and Sir Evan Appleby agreed to scuttle democratic reforms because both are defenders of a kind of technocracy.
7. History.com. "This Day in History: John Maynard Keynes Predicts Economic Chaos from the Treaty of Versailles." <https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/keynes-predicts-economic-chaos>
8. Albert Glotzer, "Martin Abern (1898-1949)," in Bernard K. Johnpoll and Harvey Klehr (eds.), Biographical Dictionary of the American Left. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986; pp. 1-2.
9. Based somewhat on RSFSR Law No. 1107-I "On the rehabilitation of repressed peoples" in 26 April 1991. Yes, we are going half a century later, but this is how I imagine a Trotskyist Russy Federation approach as well. The goal isn't to idealize Trotskyists since they have their flaws, too.
10. Trotsky, Leon. If America Should Go Communist. 1934
11. See Anti-Miscegenation Laws, State v. Pass, and Pace v. Alabama
12. Mallik S. Colonial Biopolitics and the Great Bengal Famine of 1943. GeoJournal. 2023;88(3):3205-3221. doi: 10.1007/s10708-022-10803-4. Epub 2022 Dec 6. PMID: 36531534; PMCID: PMC9735018.
13. Oppenheim, Maya. "Winston Churchill has as much blood on his hands as the worst genocidal dictators, claims Indian Politician." published in the Independent. 8 September, 2017. <https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/world-history/winston-churchill-genocide-dictator-shashi-tharoor-melbourne-writers-festival-a7936141.html>
14. Patnaik, Utsa. Profit Inflation, Keynes and the Holocaust in Bengal, 1943-1944. Economic & Political Weekly. Vol. 53, Issue No. 42, 20 Oct, 2018. <https://www.epw.in/journal/2018/42/special-articles/profit-inflation-keynes-and-holocaust.html>
15. Keynes, John Maynard. Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren. 1930. <https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/1930/our-grandchildren.htm>
16. See Operation Mockingbird, which is an alleged large-scale program of the CIA in real life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
17. Goodrich, Mathew Miles. The Forgotten Socialist History of Martin Luther King Jr. 15 January, 2018. Inthesetimes.com <https://inthesetimes.com/article/martin-luther-king-jr-day-socialism-capitalism>
18. Carberry, Joel F. Mirage of Dissent: The Mechanics of Controlled Opposition. 2023. <https://ia800503.us.archive.org/5/items/mirage-of-dissent-the-mechanics-of-controlled-opposition/Mirage%20of%20Dissent_The%20Mechanics%20of%20Controlled%20Opposition.pdf>
19. See Orwell's List: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell%27s_list
20. See COINTELPRO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

 

[LoreleiFlowers]

Book One Timeline of Relevant Events:

• 1930s
  • Europa:
    • The Great War ended with the Germanian Empire receiving a conditional surrender, which included the Kaiser stepping down.
    • Visha rejects Tanya's confession of love, and Matheus adopts the young former commander into his family, who teaches her how to program computation orbs.
    • Tanya, Visha, and Elya form a Freikorp (mercenary group) to keep the 'peace' as Germania creates its new government. Agent Nichts is Tanya's way of pretending to be the perfect law enforcement mercenary. Together, they stop the January Uprising and the putsch of the Kaiser's Men.
    • Tanya accidentally kills a brainwashed Warren Grantz, with whom Visha was engaged. Visha and Tanya go their separate ways. Matheus gets brainwashed but is trapped in that state as the hypnotist responsible, Figmund Sreud, goes into hiding.
    • Shortly after Germania reformed its government, Hans von Zettour, Elya, and Tanya worked together to create Interpol to go after rogue mages, organized crime, and terrorist groups.
  • Middle East
    • The Mandate of Power, Alexander Magnus, goes on a war of conquest, claiming most of Arabia and Persia for Magna Rumeli.
    • Alexander takes the Bactria Princess Roxanne for his first wife and bears with her a child, which he names after himself.
  • Americas
    • The Silver Legion takes power in the Unified States and quickly restructures the country into a fascist plutocracy.
    • The prison population in the Unified States balloons, and the country starts systematically targeting socialists, communists, and other anti-plutocrat radical groups.
    • The other countries in the Americas started having to aggressively resist the oligarch-controlled CIA and monopolists, which have begun instigating profit-driven regime changes.
    • American weapon manufacturer Richard Diamond kidnaps the family of the Mandate of Beginnings, Mary Canary.
• 1940s
  • Middle East
    • Richard Diamond uses Mary Canary's family as leverage to get her to kill Emperor Alexander when he is in one of his regular cursed moments of weakness.
    • The Rumelian Cassander assassinates Empress Roxanne, her mother-in-law, and her son during the chaos in order to seize power in Magna Rumeli.
    • The US and Europa balkanizes the Middle East. Laurence "Masquerade" Drake assists the nationalists in their struggle for independence, but only for that movement to be betrayed by the Albish and Francois leaders.
    • Cassander issues a red notice to get the Mages of Interpol to stop human experiments being conducted by one of his political rivals. There, the Interpol officer Tanya unwittingly finds the reanimated corpse of Empress Roxanne, who gains consciousness due to Tanya's still unknown Mandate of the Self. Tanya dubs this new person Sonnetto and invites her to live with her in Germania, where they live together.
  • Afrika
    • Francois Dzayer revolts against the Francois Republic, leading to a brutal and bloody conflict.
  • Asia
    • Zhangzi makes headway in expelling the foreign Uruan Dynasty and Akinese invaders with help from the Russy Federation and Tanechka's Angels. The three major Zhangzi liberation factions are the imperialists, nationalists, and communists. The Red Turban faction under Zhu Chongba is victorious but his hold over Zhangzi is very weak.
    • Fang Shiyu escapes Zhangzi because a martial artist and his followers are out to kill him. He eventually joins the Mages of Interpol in order to improve his martial arts ability.
• The Main part of the Story (1950s onward with chapter titles)
  • The Germanian Candidate - Amber "Calamity" Canary joins the Mages of Interpol to flee the Silver Legion and not be forced to assist in fascist violence. The Mages of Interpol 15 (MI15) defeat Figmund Sreud and free Matheus from his hypnotic trance.
  • Tanechka's Angels - Masquerade flubs a mission involving stopping communist propagandists known as Angels who are trying to expose the Albish Empire by targeting the Albish Royal Museum. The Commonwealth suspects MI15 are not loyal to Europa.
  • Woman on Fire - Liliya Ivanova Tanechka uses the release negotiations of her Angels to force Interpol to investigate Francois Republic's war crimes in Dzayer, particularly involving a Covert Corp paramilitary group. One thing leads to another, and Tanya's Mandate powers start to manifest more visibly.
  • Silver is Forever, so Die Another Day - Richard Diamond and Mary Canary kidnap Tanya, who escapes but without her Type-95 (good riddance).
  • Doctor Jones and the Search for La Destripadora - After pissing off the Francois Republic, MI15 decides it's best to go on a workcation around the world. Their first stop is Argentum, where they meet a Mandate named Khuyana Gonzalez, who becomes their friend by the end of the trip. Tanya, however, fully transforms into her soul form, which reflects a mix of Japanese and Germanian origins.
  • The Hustle at the Zhangzi Showdown - Richard Diamond orchestrates a situation in order to isolate Emperor Zhu and Empress Ma from outside help and to get the US a foothold in the country.
  • Gone with the Snow (it gets far more complicated from here on)
    • Richard Diamond has the Red Guard and Zhangzi Nationalists attempt to assassinate Emperor Zhu. His real goal is to get Empress Ma to hand over Zhangzi to a US puppet.
    • The Angel Demiguichi Akira stops Empress Ma before that can happen, instead transferring power to the Popular Front faction.
    • Mary Canary kills Avgust Zimin, the Mandate of Change. Now she is burdened by not only the memories of Avgust and Alexander, but the influence of their souls and the curses of their mandates.
    • Tanya and Sonnetto fuse into Sonata for the first time.
  • Kaines' Second Chance
    • Evan Jude Kaines learns from American socialists that the Unified States plans on eventually invading Europa. He uses this information to get the Commonwealth to start working against the Unified States.
  • In a Legion of All Her Own
    • Calamity flees to Zhangzi to escape being deported to the Unified States and receive treatment to make her ageless body mature into an adult.
    • Fang goes to Zhangzi to support MI12 and protect his friend, Emperor Zhu.
    • Masquerade goes into hiding because the Allied Kingdom knows he and his girlfriend have become compromised.
    • Cassander takes Sonnetto and uses her to become Emperor of Western Persia with the Unified States.
    • Tanya gets arrested by Mary Sue, and Tanya gets given to the Unified States, which brainwashes her into being their weapon of mass destruction and goddess to keep the populists in check.
    • Mary Canary and her family are handed over to the Commonwealth.
  • When Power Comes at the End of a Gun
    • The Unified States had a socialist revolution overthrowing the Silver Legion.
    • President Yockey escapes before the Silver Legion's government collapses.
    • Sonnetto almost dies, so Tanya permanently fuses with her to save her soul. Their fusion form, Sonata, wields the Mandates of Purpose and Self. She assists with the revolution in so far as she is acting as an Interpol officer with a grudge.
  • It Ends with the Truth
    • Sonata, Matheus, and Calamity move to the Democratic Federation of Abya Yala (formerly the western portion of the Unified States) because Germania is becoming increasingly fascist.
    • MI15 wrote a report on the Silver Legion emphasizing what fascism is in order to influence the world to steer away from it.
    • MI15 has become a globally focused team and has expanded its membership to include non-mage field agents.
    • Though Dzayer has gotten its independence, the leaders of the Francois Republic have decided to test its new superweapon - the arcanium bomb - in southern Dzayer. The Francois Republic has become the first country to develop weapons of mass destruction. Note that Mandates are functionally superweapons as well.
    • Germania's election leaves no clear party in charge. President Ropen of Germania has to decide who the next chancellor will be, and his decision could affect the entire world.
    • Sonata and Interpol finally bring Richard Diamond and his allies to justice.

 

[LoreleiFlowers]

The Democratic Federation of Abya Yala (and the World Federation movement)

Military:

• Centralized military following siege socialist pragmatism in regards to preparing for armed conflict with Europa.
• Citizen Militias are encouraged while Europa-funded rebel groups try to get a foothold in the country.

Economy:

• Dual-Track Pricing
  • Federal and state governments set quotas for essential goods but allow socially owned firms to sell goods at international market prices.
• Farming Co-ops
  • Individual families are trained to maintain and use heavy farm machinery for their communities.
  • Families work together on each of their assigned lots throughout the year.
  • The federal government sends experts out to communities to provide advice on best agricultural practices and to hear from the community about their innovations so that other communities may learn, too.
  • The federal government advises on what crops are most advantageous to produce under current market conditions, but farmers can pick their crops for themselves.
• State-Owned Enterprises
  • Mostly in the military, natural resources, housing, healthcare, and agriculture
  • It was relatively easy to transition to the socialist model because these industries were already market-controlling monopolies under the Silver Legion's plutocratic economy.
• Worker councils for most firms and small businesses. Individual ownership of small shops is allowed if there are no employees.
• Major Economic Struggles
  • Commodity Obsession - with people's needs met, people's wants have become their needs. Even though mass transportation is more ecological and cost-effective, everyone wants cars.
  • Essential Good Ratcheting - the price of power, healthcare, and high-quality housing cannot be increased without popular protest, even if the federal government's budget struggles to maintain them at historical prices.
  • Rural-Urban Divide - Attracted by lifestyles afforded to urban professionals, there is a demographic shift towards big cities. This leaves regions left aside for farming co-opts with insufficient population. Reforms to stop this migration are highly contentious, as locking people down in farming communities would create a class division between farmers and urbanites.
  • Managing Incentives and Worker Discipline - with people more free to pursue their own projects and unmotivated to work longer hours without greater incentives, people slack off, and the worker councils are rife with time sheet fraud and conspiracy. Reforms to address these problems have leaned more toward promoting commodity markets and adding more performance-driven incentives and hierarchical structures to worker councils.
  • Sanctions and adverse economic actions from imperialist countries (discussed more in the international relations section).

Government Structure:

• Governing Ideology - World Federadationism
  • It seeks to put the entire world in a single international socialist framework.
  • This ideology attempts to solve nation-state wars by eventually unifying the entire world, and it is contrasted with democratic confederalism, which sees breaking down nation-states into autonomous townships as the superior solution.
  • It sees its government as modular, where new member states can join it freely without coercion.
• Bicameral Central Legislature
  • Resides over the whole Democratic Federation
  • The People's House is a citizen's assembly (sortition) that advises and votes on policy as well as holds the Senate and administrative agencies accountable. Stakeholders for region-specific policies can be added to subcommittees to assist with deliberations.
  • The Senate is composed of the Founders' Party members, technocrats, and representatives of the regional workers' council. The Senate also contains the heads of central administrative agencies.
• Regional Governments
  • They must abide by the Central Legislature and World Federationist governing philosophy but otherwise have discretion for their regions.
  • The Democratic Federation of Abya Yala will become a regional government when another region joins.
• Democratic Confederation
  • These are autonomous townships that freely associate with one another.
  • They mostly consist of minor nationalities and adherents to non-statist ideologies like libertarianism, primitivism, and anarchism.
  • They have robust community militias and have protections from the overreach of the Democratic Federation.
  • The Democratic Federation committed to investing in autonomous zones related to historically marginalized and wronged populations, providing material support in building up infrastructure and industry while letting the community lead in how that support is utilized. The goal is to reach parity.
  • The Federation includes those in the Confederation in decision-making even though the federation is mostly uninvolved in the confederation.
  • Tensions exist over when and how the Federation can get involved if a Confederation township commits crimes against humanity and other gross moral ills.

International Relations (includes movements, not just nation-states):

• The Pan-Afrikan Movement
  • This is most closely aligned with the Abya Yala model of World Federationism. There is a belief that joining forces with Abya Yala will create a major counterweight to imperialism.
  • The Francois Republic gaining arcanium bomb capabilities has made major changes in the world balance perilous as the Francois Republic has invested interest in keeping its CFA-Franc zone under its thumb.
  • The Francois Republic has artificially balkanized its Afrikan holdings and required them to negotiate individually instead of collectively in order to maintain dominance in the region, but this also means that there aren't many organic cultural-linguistic nation-states in the continent, further supporting the Pan-Afrikan Movement.
• The Aztec Republic and Maya Democratic Confederation
  • Unlike the Democratic Federation of Abya Yala, the Aztec Republic (formerly the Empire) has a hostile relationship with its own Democratic Confederation faction.
  • The Aztec Republic has traumas related to the Silver Legion's genocides in their region and fears joining the World Federation will force them to grant greater autonomy and return more land to the Maya.
  • The country works as the middleman for most trade between Abya Yala and the socialist side of the world, and it leverages that role to reap enormous benefits through massive tariffs and negotiation power.
  • They received large reparations from the Unified States and some from Abya Yala, which sees itself as needing to share the burden of the guilt of what happened to the Aztecs.
• Anti-Revisionist Marksist-Levinists (MLs) and Marksist-Levinist-Taoists (MLTs)
  • MLs and MLTs are most prevalent in most of the world outside of Europa and Afrika.
  • They have too many differences with World Federationists to get along unless they have a common enemy. They both see the other as the lesser evil to capitalism, imperialism, and fascism.
  • These groups are typically more culturally conservative than World Federationists, particularly on women's rights and GLBT issues. They see the urban cosmopolitan progressivism of World Federationists as bourgeois. These ideologies focused primarily on economic rights and national independence rather than social realities.
  • MLs and MLTs lean stronger towards nationalism not only as a praxis of revolution but also as a way of measuring escaping imperialism and establishing self-sufficiency. In contrast, internationalism is seen as too prone to liberal betrayal and movement disintegration as revolutionary energies go in too many directions.
  • MLs and MLTs tend towards monoculturalism, which can cause what started as a national independence movement to turn into suppressing ethnic minorities within their new nation-states.
• Tanechkists (including Demiguichists and the Angels as a whole)
  • Their organizations exist as the feminist alternative to the masculine-dominated ML and MLT organizations.
  • Yalans tend to find working with Tanechkists much more palatable to their ML and MLT cousins.
  • Tanechkists have effective strategies to access hard-to-reach communities due to splitting the social front from the armed insurgency, which gives communities a face not associated with the violent aspects of the revolution.
  • They are much better at humanizing socialist causes to liberal audiences who lack a lot of the historical and social contexts behind why these movements have such momentum. In other words, they emphasize winning the narrative war with imperialist media, which strives to sanitize and justify its terrorizing of communities across the world. Tanechkists strive to get not only domestic populations but also the imperialist military to turn against imperial projections of oppression.
  • Imperialist countries have become extremely hostile to the Angels' propaganda and have implemented practices to keep their soldiers focused on completing the missions assigned to them without becoming disenchanted or persuaded.
• Francois Republic and Commonwealth
  • They barely recognize Abya Yala, encouraging both armed insurrection against the World Federation government as well as the reunification with the Eastern Unified States.
  • These two countries imposed illegal sanctions on the fledgling country, and the Albish Empire used the Royal Navy to blockade some of its major ports. Much of the Silver Legion's navy was seized by the Albish Empire along with the Pacific bases without Abya Yala's ability even to negotiate that point.
  • There is a brewing proxy conflict over Kuba, where the Francois Republic and Albish Empire intend to put a military base. The Tanechkist Angels have discovered plans that Francois Republic wants to develop an arcanium missile and silo it on Kuba as a way to encourage Abya Yala to become an exploitable private equity market again.
  • Abya Yala has reasonably large strategic oil reserves and produces most of the commodities and cash crops that Europa wants. The loss of these has created shock waves in Europa, which has to balance between public outcry to regain access to preferred American goods and a strategic desire to crush a potential socialist superpower that could not only pull Afrika out from under them but suffocate capitalism out of existence by preventing imperial trade relations.
• Zhangzi and the Russy Federation
  • Neither had a navy to challenge the Albish Empire, which had become incredibly powerful after seizing most of the US naval assets, including bases. This greatly reduces the amount of support they can give their ally through the Aztec Republic.
  • Zhangzi is focused on recovering from the massive death toll from the second Zhangzi-Akinese War. The Albish Empire began expanding military bases on the Akitsuhima Dominion and Formosa, boxing in Zhangzi, forcing the country to be isolated as famines started to take place.
  • The Russy Federation is spread thin from supporting Brotskyists in Argentum and Ispagnia to feeding the starving people in Zhangzi to its own domestic struggles. The decentralization programs under Ivan Smirnov's predecessor, Brotsky, made the Federation less organized at dealing with emerging threats but more efficient locally.
  • The Russy Federation and Zhangzi have growing tensions as the former to weigh its commitment to Zhangzi, and the latter obviously will take it very personally if their Russy allies leave them in the lurch; however, Abya Yala's massive agricultural output allows it to send large amounts of food supplies to Zhangzi, preventing a permanent split occurring.
  • There is a strong desire to get Zhangzi's industrial base off the ground as fast as possible to help shove the Albish Empire back for all of them.
• Arabia, Persia, and Magna Rumeli
  • Since Europa is also stretched thin and doesn't have the military-industrial base to hold back the Red Wave everywhere, the communist movement in Magna Rumeli and the nationalist movements across Arabia and Persia have been widely successful.
  • While they cannot help Abya Yala directly, they definitely do not want the old Unified States coming back…ever.
  • The independent countries are de-balkanizing and forming tighter-knit collective bargaining over internationally strategic oil reserves. Not only is this putting huge pressure on the Albish Empire, which simply could not afford its navy without cheap oil, but it also directed the strategic oil reserves to anti-imperialists.
  • Arabia and Persia are also developing their navies, which, if allowed to happen, will turn them into one of the leading naval superpowers. Because of this, it is in their interest that Magnua Rumeli's communist revolution be successful, but it acts as an additional barrier to Western aggression in the region.
  • They have effectively forced Western Europa to the negotiating table with favorable terms for the growing anti-imperialist bloc.

 

[LoreleiFlowers]

This side story follows the events of Chapter 21: The Trial

---

München, Germania - September, 1954

Due to the timing of Calamity Amb becoming available again, saving Mary Canary would have to wait until after my lesson at a München community center. A group of about two hundred men and women sat before me. They had come to learn how to prepare for the very likely escalation of occupation as every country dogpiled on Germania to 'help' us decide the future of our country. We all remembered or had heard stories of what had happened after the Great War, so I didn't have to persuade them how important it was to make sure people knew how to protect themselves before we had another occupation.

"Okay, we will end with a quick summary before we adjourn this meeting," I declared from the podium in the modestly sized meeting room. "First, stick with your group when traveling through the city as much as possible, and check in with each other regularly. By sticking to your group, you are less likely to be taken captive or mistreated by the occupying forces. Remember that their Rule-Resembling Order protects them but not you from them. Second, if you are alone, avoid the occupied areas and don't let soldiers lure you in food and supplies. If you are desperate for food, check with your neighbors or seek out a member of the Angel Corps for what you need. Thirdly and finally, if you see something, say something. Interpol officers will be around to help protect you under international law, but we can only intervene if we know something is happening."

After my wrap-up, I answered their questions and let them know what the next meetings would be about and their dates. We would be doing firearms training, drills, and best practices for hiding and organizing one's group. Interpol could not protect everyone alone. Soldiers were notorious for raping and torturing the dehumanized local populations in occupied territories, and the imperial powers had definitely demonized both Germanians as a whole and anti-imperialists in particular after the Great War.

I had rushed into my lesson this time, but I was a bit distracted. My cramps were extra painful this time, and while I usually would go on menstrual leave when in these situations, it was hard not to feel obligated to work through the pain during the preparation for a potential civil war. Unfortunately, we typically suffered such distracting cramps whenever our stress was exceptionally high, like now.

"I miss being a full homunculus," Sonnetto groaned. "How did you ever manage, dear?"

"Pain relief and mental clarity spells," the war vet claimed without looking her partner in the eyes.

"She magically doped herself," I explained frankly. "Which we are not going to do. We have over-the-counter pain suppressants that will have to suffice. I don't care if we miss work days when this happens. I don't want to build a habit of using that spell every time we are in pain."

Part of why Tanya became a sobbing mess during her captivity in the Russy Federation during the war was her inability to magically dope herself whenever she felt sad without a computation orb. She stopped using the spell after Visha and Matheus insisted that it wasn't worth bottling it in anymore. The spell didn't just adjust one's mood, though. It also allowed someone to defer processing emotions. Each deferral just incentivized the next use of the spell more because the feelings became more intense, creating a vicious loop.

While we commiserated between ourselves, one of the Interpol officers assisting with the meeting walked up to me while I packed my things.

"Hey, Captain Weiss, did you read the new article on Agent Canary's trial?" he inquired, beaming. "I got the recent Francois newspaper if you are interested."

Because I didn't trust what I would say, I used a new trick. If I put a bit of mana on my voice box, people would hear what they wanted to hear. Everyone but me would hear the same thing as my intended audience did. The great thing was I didn't have to use the tedious thought-to-speech spell.

"I am beyond done with the nonsense in the Francois press," I replied. "One journalist had the chutzpah to ask my sister after she mentioned wanting to read a novel in Albish if there were any bookstores in her country. At least two articles this week depicted Calamity and all Americans in Abya Yala as violent, barely literate, ultra-religious gun-nuts. The main liberal Francois newspaper keeps contrasting the Yalans with the so-called 'good, civilized, more European' Americans on the East Coast. I swear if I read another Francois news article dragging Calamity Amb's name through the mud, I will lose it."

My two halves gave me the side eye for using this spell. Tanya thought I was avoiding responsibility, and Sonnetto disliked not just directly telling people the truth. Regardless, it was my choice at the end of the day. I did what I could to help my two halves participate in conversations with others, but I was not going to let them treat me like some chauffeur or messenger all the time.

"Thank you, ma'am," he replied, beaming. "It is great to have another person who likes to stay informed. I will be sure to get you more articles so you can integrate them into your lectures. It is great we both have the same interests. Oh, you might like this one."

He flipped through the paper until he found an article about Lavarians and Prussens being 'victims' of the 'barbaric' socialist faction that 'tortured their children' — a kind of blood libel. Essentially, the article flattered the court by defaulting to the Prussen and Lavarian perspectives and extolling their exceptionalism.

Cultural exceptionalism served as an excuse for why the conquerer ethnic groups should continue to possess disproportional power over the country as a whole. Prussens notably dominated the military leadership. For example, both President Ropen and Tanya von Weiss were Prussen veterans who had gained considerable rank during the Great War. As for Lavaria, Rudolph Himmler and his party attempted to 'revitalize' Germiania's culture by making the country more monoculturally Lavarian. One of Himmler's initiatives required young women to wear Lavarian-style dresses in his millionaire-backed youth groups.

This assimilation of some minorities into Lavarian or Prussen identity came with the implicit acceptance of how the Unification of Germania transferred much of the wealth and land into the hands of the current Post-Unification ethnic duopoly. Tellingly, many people among the Prussen and Lavarian middle class had rallied under the NSP banner for the cause of 'purifying' Germania of so-called 'unfit' populations and 'degenerate' culture, which challenged their duopoly over culture, wealth, and governance.

In other words, a pro-imperialist framing dominated my coworker's article. It depicted the ethnic duopoly as the victims of irrational and monstrous Others, and those Others were basically told just to put down their red banners and return to the Prussen Enlightenment "Question but Obey" model popularized by Woltaire. That might have seemed progressive a century ago. People know that questions alone would not put bread on the table.

In fact, it was the journalist herself who should have asked more questions from those in power; however, it was understandable that she didn't. The Francois Republic had shifted well into siege capitalism by this point. Siege capitalism (or proto-fascism) was the bad cop to liberal capitalism's good cop. When the ordinary people got too revolutionary or resistant to imperialist wars, the bad cop would come out to crack down on dissent and manipulate the press's coverage related to domestic and foreign policy. The journalist could just be a victim of the action politique (ACPO) handling that crackdown on the freedom of the press in the Republic.

"What do you think?" the officer asked me after I skimmed it. "I think those who like the NSP should read articles like this to get our country back on track and tone down the deplorable rhetoric."

"What do you mean?" I wondered in utter bewilderment. Did we not read the same article?

"Look here how the article takes the NSP to task for their racist language," he replied while pointing at a small paragraph halfway through the article.

"I appreciate that you want to fight racism," I stated tersely, "but this article won't help for a lot of reasons. Namely, you don't fix oppression by making it more polite, especially if you plan on still arresting and killing people to put them back in their place."

It was at this point that I realized that I still had left my 'make people hear what they want to hear' spell active because the man thanked me for agreeing with him while encouraging him to expand his project. In a way, I was happy the spell prevented my bitter, frustrated, and pedantic monologue from being overheard, but I was worried about what he and others may have thought I said.

While Tanya and Sonnetto chastised me, Rex stowed away the last of his special inks and brushes and joined me. He had been working on some glove with a sigil on it with his Immortal homunculi guards during my talk.

Matheus and Calamity were good with us adopting Alexander "Rex" Magnus II. It did make me anxious that once we got to the safehouse this evening, we would potentially be meeting his father and Roxanne's husband again.

The sniper Ramona Mercer would join us for the walk home. Hilary Brecht, who led the United Front in Germania, ordered Ramona to guard my son for some reason, and Elya encouraged me to go along with it for now. I didn't blame Ramona for trying to kill Victoria Truman, but I could not help but be on edge.

"Moms, are we ready to go?" He signed me in Esharani, the Persian sign language.

"Yeah, get your…friends, and we will go."

He was lucky I had this uncanny polyglot ability, and sign language had a lot of intuitive elements that had made it a lingua franca in some regions at one point.

"I am happy you let me keep them," my son celebrated with a smile, referring to his guards. "I was so sure you wouldn't."

"Honestly, what else are we supposed to do? They could potentially get sentient at any moment, and leaving them somewhere is very irresponsible. Just promise to take care of them until then, Rex. Your other moms, grandpa, and I are very busy, so we won't be able to be there to help consistently."

"Grandpa doesn't have a job, though," the young homunculi countered.

"He is going to Uni. I want him focused on his studies when he isn't helping us avert war."

"You make it sound like he's also your son."

"It's complicated. Tanya was his superior for a decade. It is hard not to see him as someone to cultivate."

"Well, he is an adult and no longer her subordinate. Why are you managing his life?"

I froze.

"You look afraid," Ramona commented in Albish from her corner of the meeting room.

"Afraid of what?" Rex inquired, using his notepad again.

"I know that look very well. She is afraid of losing someone."

"She can't just control her family like this because she is afraid."

"Okay, that is enough, you two," I muttered. "I am tired of being psychoanalyzed. It never ends well for us."

We walked to our shelter location, continuing our banter. It was a barber shop in a back alley in München.

I waved at the barber, who smiled at us as we moved the small coffee table out of the way. I put my fingers on the checkered tile and found a groove in which I could get my nails. It was a bit hard, but quickly got the camouflage lid out of the way. The entrance could barely fit Matheus, who had to really squeeze in his shoulders. Luckily, I could get in and out of places with my mandate powers, no matter how much I changed my appearance.

Inside, there were hammocks, a small table, and pretty good ventilation. If you were going to be part of the resistance or protecting their rights, one was wise to get the best hiding places set up early. We had a stockpile of supplies and computation orbs designed for long-range communication. It was a bit barren, but if worst came to worst, it might be home for a while, depending on what happened.

Germania had built several basements and tunnels like this during the Great War and previous occupation. As Interpol Officers, my two halves had gotten entirely acquainted with these secret locations because the crime bosses and sex traffickers had taken advantage of them. The United Front forces would conduct their resistance activities from these tunnels when the Allied Forces arrived en masse.

Once Matheus came back, I could do my operation to rescue Mary Canary. Technically, nothing was stopping me from doing it before my adoptive father got back, but that would leave Ramona and Rex alone while Sonata went dormant. Neither of them knew Germanian. The Abya Yalan sniper also had a very understandable permanent chip (or several) on her shoulder with the world. Still, it put people off because of how uncompromising she was in fighting anything less than her definition of 'the right way'. I was tired of all the pushback I got because I knew pure workplace democracies didn't work.

My mind wandered as laid down and let the homunculi guards handle some tasks for us.

I wondered if Valve ever finished Half-Life 3 in Tanya's old world. I doubted it. Their no-hierarchy worker democracy had made the employees at that company so siloed to their personal creative projects that they barely completed anything anymore. The Soviet Union had a similar problem—a lot of impractical scientific inventions and rampant inefficiency. Everyone wanted to be a creative, and no one wanted to do labor.

Perhaps in a high-tech world where robots handled all the life-enabling labor, like food production, we could have such a relaxed lifestyle. We still were far from such a world.

One of the homunculi guards handed me a coffee and my lunch.

"Thank you," I said before chomping down on the turkey sandwich that had been made for me.

I sat down and got out a deck of playing cards and called on Rex and Ramona if they wanted to play some Old Maid to pass the time before I started my mission.

"So what is the glove about?" I inquired, gesturing to the object my son had been working on so long. I had my hands filled between eating and playing cards. Rex only looked at his cards once before placing them aside.

"It is an alchemist glove," Rex answered with pride. "All the young alchemists are making them."

"What is wrong with using Mehndi?"

"Mehndi are girly and take so much time to prepare."

"Men can do Mehndi too, Rex. There is no shame in it. Your uncle used them, too, and why is spending more time getting ready in the morning a bad thing?"

"Because I just want to jump out of bed and do stuff. Plus, alchemist gloves are cooler, though, and so much more high-tech. See this."

He pulled out a comic book called 'The Trials of Farhad and Shirin' with a depiction of an alchemist snapping his fingers and creating a torrent of flame.

Great, he has fallen for product placement.

"Is this glove safe?" I inquired, worried.

The young man twiddled his thumbs.

I guess that is a debatable question. Well, he is an adult. My son better not make me arrest him.

Flipping through the book, I saw that this Farhad wasn't all battles. There was a romance subplot here. On one page, for example, he did some pretty old-fashioned blood alchemy to create a field of red tulips for his love, Princess Shirin, which was sweat in a way. Apparently, it got derailed with a lot of geopolitical commentary at one point. It was probably a reflection of the turmoil happening in Persia right now.

Back to the game, we were getting to the last few cards.

I think the left card is the Old Maid, I thought.

I picked the right card out of Rex's hand on the table. It was the queen — the Old Mad.

Rex giggled silently.

"Did you really just use the Solidarity connection to mess with me?"

"Sonata, you have to take every advantage you can," Romona commented. She picked the last card she needed from Rex, who clearly didn't have the Old Maid after our exchange.

How often had they been messing with me this game, and I hadn't noticed? Next time, three can play at that game of throwing fake thoughts into their heads.

My other halves agreed.

Then, the secret entrance opened, and Matheus squirmed his way down.

He laid down his things.

"How are you doing, Sonata?"

I didn't really feel like telling him 'like shit', so I used the spell that would let him hear what he wanted to hear.

The tall Germanian man blinked and got teary-eyed. "I am so happy to hear that. You have no idea how long I have been waiting to hear that."

"Rex, what did I say?" I discreetly asked, shocked by this.

"You said that he was doing a great job, and you appreciated all the hard work he puts into being a good father for you."

My stomach sank.

"Tanya, you actually tell him that," Sonnetto instructed, her Empress's voice having slipped out by accident.

"I am already on it, honey," Tanya replied before sending her thoughts to Matheus. "Sonata, would you give him a hug for me."

I had my orders and gave him a 'tactical' hug he sorely needed.

The guy definitely put in a lot of hours trying to support and understand us. I cannot fathom what would have happened to Tanya if she hadn't had his help right after the war, so we really needed to check in on him and show appreciation. How much did Matheus think he was failing at being a good family member because we didn't regularly give him feedback?

I think there are a few morally ambiguous perks to this new spell.

"Sonata, please don't abuse it," Tanya chastised as she got ready for her mission with Sonnetto to rescue Mary Canary. "You could really cause a lot of problems for us if you don't know what you are saying."

"But this is so much easier than figuring out what people expect me to say," I pouted mentally.

 

[LoreleiFlowers]

This follows the events of Chapter 22

I had an essay worth of thoughts I needed to get out of my system. Feel free to skip if you don't like my essays on political theory.

---

Before a Press Conference - München, Germania - September, 1954

President Ropen was still feeling off after the shocker of all that had happened in the last couple of months, which had sent his political career in a very unexpected direction.

Tanya von Weiss and Elena Müller had tricked him into getting the NSP leaders arrested, and now he had to recover his reputation among the aristocrats and industrialists who backed the fascist movement. Harken, in the foreign office, was nearly breathing fire down his neck over messing everything up by getting fooled. He knew that Weiss had worked with Hilary Brecht for a long time during the provisional government period. That was why Ropen tolerated the avowed communist Brecht because her ally was such a straight-and-narrow imperialist and capitalist. The blonde mage Prussen being a lesbian didn't bother him. When Ropen was young, he spent a lot of time with gay men and lesbians among the aristocracy in Moscva and Berlin.

But Ropen had been fooled by Weiss' patriotic act. There were several clues to the woman's traitorous nature even before she became Agent Nichts and started a Freikorp. During her days as Degurechaff, she always gave the old aristocrat a sense that she despised authority, especially when he had caught her pointing her rifle at a statue of Lord of Faith as if practicing her aim to take on god. She even reportedly complained about government propaganda in the newspapers regularly during the war, though only to her closest allies, as some Germanian spies eavesdropping on her had discovered.

Tanya von Weiss might be a capitalist libertarian, but the whole point of that ideology was to confound potential communists into thinking that their freedom and liberation would come from austerity and more unfettered capitalism. As a proud follower of Edmund Burke and Otto von Bismark, conservatives like President Ropen knew that capitalism was foundational to preserving the aristocracy in the post-war Republic. The aristocrats existed by virtue of their land ownership, and capitalist libertarianism put retention of the aristocracy's wealth and land nearly above all else. However, libertarians are naturally suspicious of authority and their lies.

That was what made Rudolph Himmler's campaign so effective compared to the aristocratic conservatives trying to appeal to traditional militaristic leadership that Ropen had used in his campaigning. Himmler would say that the news and the politicians lied to people. He even took on the big banks. The ignorant plebians lapped it up because they could feel the lies and wanted a politician who would 'say it as it is', but Himmler was grifting them too. The finger always pointed away from his donors and towards their enemies, which included the big banks.

According to the highly inspirational Silver-Diamond Manifesto, "Suffering is real, and feelings don't care about facts." There was absolutely nothing the social democrat party or traditional conservatives could say about facts when they had developed a reputation for ignoring the suffering of the people. The Social Democrats and Liberals were notorious for pointing out all the lies conservatives tell people about race and sex to keep the workers fighting each other but ended up alienating the uneducated and rural voters. Why? Because they will ask things like, 'Why are you giving tax money to women to study feminism when men can't find jobs?'

The Social Democrats and the Liberals spin a story about how the uneducated voters are all racist, sexist, and 'stupid' without ever actually answering why — which was that a cadre aristocrats and industrialists fund to have scientists and newspapers spread hierarchy-justifying pseudoscience and propaganda. Instead, it was always the uneducated voters' fault. They make fighting Ropen, Himmler, and these racist voters into a mythological battle of good against evil.

So, it becomes a battle between four misinformed groups, as Richard Diamond had written in that anthology of Weiss and his essays. The first group of middle-class voters made broad, inclusive coalitions because they didn't feel the pinch of hard times enough to see other people as competition for scraps. The second group was poor union workers who have institutional traditions of inclusive solidarity holding them together. These two tend to vote for the "Left" and Liberal politicians.

The third group of poor landed voters tied their status and livelihood to their property and saw the redistribution of the little privilege they have to minorities and the poor as a threat to their lifestyle. The fourth and final group consisted of the working poor in financially precarious situations who are fighting for those scraps, as mentioned above. This group was most susceptible to propaganda like Himmler and Gobbel's. Immigrants, minorities, and women entering the workplace exacerbated the financial precarity for poor men and their dependent family members. These two groups tend to vote for "conservative" and fascist politicians.

Financial stressors like a recession were crucial moments for the Ropens and the Himmlers of the world to take power because increased financial precarity and layoffs eroded the first two groups and the increased percentage of the latter two. The big difference between Ropen and Himmler was that the social democrats honestly wanted to phase out capitalism and were giving unions full of revolutionaries far too much power. That was why there was a Civil War. Had Weiss just let Himmler take power, he could have culled out the revolutionaries and preserved capitalism. Like this, the well-promoted thought leaders for libertarianism were so comfortable putting Himmler-like dictators in power in other countries. All the Western powers knew that putting in such dictators was necessary every time Democracy threatened their aristocrats and industrialists too much.

Thankfully, once Himmler got rid of all these revolutionaries, the aristocrats and industrialists could manage society once more and make sure democracy never became a threat again. They would do this by controlling the number of revolutionaries. Austerity could be imposed during every recession to push people into the voter groups that were way more vulnerable to anti-Other propaganda. The voters would go along with austerity out of patriotic duty to tighten their belts for the country. Still, then they will find a ratchet effect where their social democracy doesn't come back even when they elect that party because all the parties have become run by mostly the same group of people.

In fact, voters will find their government having deficits due to the rich having locked in lower taxes. The deficits allow the rich to park their obscene wealth in safe and secure treasury notes that show up as assets on their financial statements and generate interest. The government will then give that lent money and their taxes back as subsidies and contracts. Deficits can also be used to justify further reductions in welfare and channel more money upwards to the rich. If taxes did increase, the ultrawealthy had ways to park their income in tax havens and just let the poor and middle class actually pay those taxes.

Despite what Tanya von Weiss and Richard Diamond said in their Manifesto, public education was just the taxpayers funding the training of future workers, so it was saving the rich money anyway because they shared the costs of that training with workers' families who also paid taxes for it and bought their own training supplies. In other words, the welfare that does get preserved will try to put as much of the financial burden on the workers as possible while being as profitable to the industrialists as possible. Public education would teach deference to authority, profitable patriotic virtues, and how to be efficient, task-oriented workers. Education will be focused on getting people into the workforce to serve the rich. Ropen was a big advocate for using tests to see which workers deserved to study academics or should be regulated to blue-collar work - the Abitur. Standardized testing, like the IQ tests before them, would help put the superior brains of the superior beings into jobs of their natural right.

Efficiency would be delightful and easily manageable. Since educated professionals were vulnerable to learning about how capitalism worked, it was necessary to cultivate the political Left academic into something that never advocated for revolution and had their lessons so inaccessible via technical jargon and the exclusive nature of higher education. This system would forever segregate the knowledge of how capitalism worked from the people who most needed to know about it to escape their financial precarity. These professors in Germania would even get several privileges and status symbols to further make them out of touch with the working poor. That will give them all sorts of conflicts of interest from ever rocking the boat too much.

By also controlling the media, foreign policy objectives and the limits of what was acceptable would be sustained. Voters would be told they lived in a democracy when they didn't in a meaningful way. Even in revolutionary countries like the Francois Republic, the voters would find themselves properly trained like the dogs they were into, never bearing their teeth because only bad dogs do that. Only non-violent protests that don't shake the boat too much will be legitimized, and only in a cultural way. In fact, social progress will replace economic progress for workers because it will give the educated a pretty story of progress and good winning against evil.

Prisons will still be hugely skewed towards hated minorities for slave labor. Norden, with its highly homogenous population, will probably be the only place where marginalization won't be as effective in developing its prison industry that kept the revolutionary-prone working poor locked up and watched. Prisons were the disprivileging way of getting rid of threats to the status quo, whereas educational institutions served as the privileging dismantling of threats. Still, schools had to be policed heavily since students were prone to figuring out how things actually worked. As for the current cadre of professors who had way too many revolutionary socialists, a quick, one-time culling of the herd would solve that problem forever, like what the Silver Legion had done and the Francois Republic was in the middle of doing.

If Ropen and Himmler were successful, then restarting the imperialism project would funnel a lot of wealth into Germania. All those goods will need consumers, which will require pulling people out of precarity into the middle class. Thankfully, by that point, liberal politicians will completely serve the donor class. Ropen can already imagine the ultra-wealthy industrialist Karl Klick deeply embedded in the future 'center' right party after making those concentration camps. These voters will guard their privileges so the threat of the Other can be propagandized to them. That was why Francois was having so much success dehumanizing Americans in Abya Yala as violent savages with a racist religion. It was paramount to the European powers to secure the oil in Tejas under socialist control, so the Republic and the Commonwealth were churning out anti-Yalan propaganda like crazy. While some liberal voters might call this Yalanphobia, most will see Yalans as no better than they currently see Himmler.

There wasn't any liberal notion that couldn't be twisted for imperialist projects. Gay rights? Some religious Americans in Abya Yala were theocrats who discriminated against homosexuals, so let's go save the gays by bombing their homes to kingdom come. Never mind that the Allied Powers were funding the White League, who were even more intolerant. It is the same with women's rights, religious rights, and secularism. The media would do such a great job of avoiding juxtaposing the seemingly contradictory policies of their government. The journalists would follow the accepted narrative, or they would find themselves pulled off the air or out of the biggest papers.

I wonder how many Europeans legitimately think they have freedom of the press? I wonder how many journalists think they do as well when they 'objectively' regurgitate government press releases in a rush to publish the information first?

Well, it wouldn't matter once the United Front was defeated.

 

[LoreleiFlowers]

This side story arc follows the events of Chapter 21: The Trial.

Reminder: this is just a story based loosely on history.

---

München, Germania - September, 1954

President Karl Ropen rolled his shoulders and mentally hyped himself up for his Press Conference, but his mind was stuck thinking about what had happened during Himmler's arrest.

Honestly, when Ropen spoke to Weiss at the dinner at Himmler's place, Ropen swore she was someone trying to be Tanya von Weiss and doing a bad job at it. He knew Weiss well enough that she would always give the perfect answer expected of any soldier or officer — not spill out some deeply personal feelings. Ropen had honestly suspected that the woman was incapable of introspection or independent thought after meeting her at the War College once during the war. He had seen some higher-ranking officers hazing her with ridiculous orders like doing a one-finger handstand while drinking water. She thought they were serious and found a suite of magical formulae to pull it off. To make matters worse, when the officers got caught hazing her, the woman thought it was her fault and went on to improve the formulae further to get a 'passing grade'.

Ropen had asked her why she did that, and Tanya von Weiss seemed to freeze up and went pale. It was like she didn't even know why or was incapable of saying why without betraying some unpatriotic thought. He apologized to her at the time and told her not to worry, which somehow made her panic even more. The young girl back then was really messed up in the head. Eventually, Ropen figured out that if he just gave her a small reprimand, she would calm down. It was like she acted like she had dodged a bullet from a firing squad.

Seriously, how does one function if one is afraid of everyone like that? It wasn't like I was going to kill her.

Looking at the mirror before him, the old Prussen aristocrat sighed and snapped his fingers when he saw his outfit was askew.

"You can do this, sir," a young aide commented, fixing the collar on the older Prussen.

"Thank you, Johann," Ropen stated. "What would I do without you?"

With that said, the aristocratic world leader strode out into the Press Conference.

The powder of cameras flashed, reels of film rolled, and a volley of questions all hit Ropen's good ear all at once. Suddenly, his confidence drained. While every politician and military leader gets used to talking in front of crowds to an extent, Ropen belonged to the era of radio and board meetings. Filmed press conferences changed everything, turning what was an affair of sounding confident into also looking confident. The newspapers regularly dissected his appearance, and right now, he had to get a grip on his bearings as the memories of the Great War percolated at the back of his mind.

"You can do this, sir," Johann mouthed.

For a moment, the President saw Johann's uncle — Prince Philip of Eulenburg.

How he missed that old man. It was one reason why Ropen had kept Johann around. It was a way of connecting to a past he wasn't ready to give up on and would fight to the death to preserve their memory. The United Front wanted to eradicate the past to make their future.

Over my dead body.

Returning to the present, Ropen finished his walk up to the podium. Journalists were already scribbling away about how he had an 'odd pause' and might not be confident about Germania's future. A stump speech about unity against the enemy infiltrators and within flowed out of his lips with practiced ease.

How many times had he said something similar during the Great War? Too many times, and now it was feeling like that war again. The Russy again attacked Germania pre-emptively out of paranoia. This time was simply more covertly.

Did the Russy know that politicians exaggerate and make grandiose promises all the time?

It wasn't like Himmler was actually going to go through with his Lebensraum plan to kill all the Russy. Everything was going to be fine.

Then came the questions.

"President Ropen, Parii Gazette wants to know how your administration plans on handling Interpol."

The politician took a deep breath, formulating his response. "Interpol and the League of Nations have ceased to be a legitimate institution that serves the interests of Germania or Europa. We have to recognize that they now fully serve the communists."

Ropen started pointing at one reporter after another.

"President, what does this mean for Germania's relationship with the League of Nations?"

"We plan on maintaining ties with the organization, and we are doing all that the other European nations can to maintain our seasoned leadership over international diplomacy and secure our future."

"What are your worries about the Russy Federation using the Tsar bomb?"

"They won't because if they do, the Allied Forces and Germania will wipe them off the face of the Earth."

"How do you respond to criticisms of excluding Hilary Brecht and the United Front from negotiations?"

"We don't negotiate with traitors."

"What is the plan to de-escalate the conflict?"

"We plan on doing that through a show of force. The Allied Powers are ready to face the Red Menace and show them that they can't possibly win against us. Even if you haven't been conscripted, we are looking for as many volunteers as possible to help save Germania from the traitors. Those who have committed the unforgivable act of overthrowing the government must be slain to the man, and that is why Menito Bussolini and I are working closely together to rescue Rudolph Himmler and other real Germanian patriots from the enemy."

He picked one last journalist to voice their question.

"München Daily, what about Agent Nichts? She is our country's hero but was involved in the arrest. Are you saying she isn't trustworthy?"

Ropen's stomach sank.

"I…Sorry, this press conference is over."

President Ropen about faced and marched away from the podium. The reporters would have a field day, but he honestly struggled to care. So depressed, angry, and frustrated was he. Thankfully, Johann already had the luxury sedan waiting for him.

"You did a great job, sir," the young boy chirped with a voice full of honey. He definitely knew what his job was. "Don't worry, I will have those reporters taken care of for you. You don't have to think about it. Also, everyone feels sad sometimes, and you have a very good reason to feel depressed, sir."

"Thank you, Johann."

"You are welcome, sir. We will be at the Global North Alliance meeting shortly, Mr. President."

Staring out the window at the protestors, he saw Germanians getting ready for another foreign occupation.

Ropen sighed. As they sped away from the München government office, the old Prussen scanned for signs of that stray Agent Nichts.

Because of Himmler's arrest, Ropen would have to kill ol' General Rommel's favorite hunting dog, White Silver. It was what it was. President Ropen had put down a bitch before who had gotten rabies, and this one would be no different now her brain had gotten infected with whatever the Yalans had infected her with to make her act like a completely different person. Some Francois special ops had told him that they would make it look like an accident.

If it was anyone other than Agent Nichts/White Silver, the old politician could have asked Germanian agents to do the deed instead of stooping to rely on the Francois. Unfortunately, but as expected, the frogs had lost track of her. They knew she was somewhere in München because she had been spotted giving a speech to locals on how to stay safe during the occupation, but 'it was like she had vanished, the soldiers had reported.

The Germanians knew that there were secret bunkers and tunnels throughout the country, but the Francois soldiers wouldn't know where they were. No one knew them better than MI15's leader, who had busted countless drug smugglers and sex traffickers in those tunnels. The tunnels had been built during the American occupation of Germania after the Great War.

"We are here, sir."

Ropen sighed. There was still no sign of her.

"Where are you?"

"I am right here, sir," Johann commented as he opened the door for Ropen.

"I am sorry. I was just thinking aloud."

"Oh, no need to apologize to me, sir."

President Ropen smiled at his aide and then entered the Unified States Embassy building. The Americans spared no expense and opted for the Jeffersonian architecture of the landed gentry, which used to rule their country like proper aristocrats. Karl Ropen had a fondness for the Americans who knew that power came from owning the land. That was why the landed gentry who founded the Unified States had only given themselves the right to vote before the power that was theirs alone was stolen from them.

That was why the reformists in Ropen's own country had to be stopped with Rudolph Himmler before it was too late. The framers of the new Germanian government had gone way too far in changing the status quo, and now the peasants wanted to finish off getting rid of the aristocrats who had made Germania great by abolishing class. Did the peasants forget the hard work of Otto von Bismark and other geniuses? No, they simply were too uneducated even to know what aristocrats did for this country and why their very lives depended on the brains of those aristocrats with the privilege and obligation to run the country.

Karl Ropen personally put in a hefty investment to have an astroturfed 'left' publication, Die Rote Ursache, manipulate the communists and revolutionary socialists into sitting out the election. First, this fake paper kept bringing up the Social Democratic Party's hypocrisy and collaboration in the murder of Rosa Lindenburg and suppression of the Spartacus League. Then, it would push accelerationism, which was the idea that revolution would be easier if things got worse. With all these Leftists out of the election, Rudolph Himmler and his party would earn a larger portion of the election and gain legitimacy. In power, the industrialists' lap dog Himmler would kill all those eager communists who thought the rest of the electorate would join up in hands with them. Of course, these comfortable peasants wouldn't. Communists were hated for a reason — the aristocrats had a well-funded media machine and university system to keep anti-communism widespread.

There wasn't supposed to be a revolution, but the Abya Yalan revolution, MI15's reports, and the League of Nations' news channels had undermined the aristocrats' control over their peasants. Then, the Federation covertly invaded their country. If it was just the domestic socialists, Himmler or he could have eradicated them without trouble, but the Federation was far scarier than a handful of purposefully disrupted communist cells.

Karl Ropen was terrified of what might happen. Getting into the meeting room, he encountered a sea of friendly faces of other great men to which the world owed a great deal but had started to abuse and mistreat. Only among these people could the politician feel like himself and act like his real self instead of performing for the wider public. A few servants were walking around with carts serving food.

Artistic Approximation of the kind of people present at the Global North Alliance Meeting​

Standing near the entrance, someone bumped into the President of Germania with a serving cart.

"Watch where you are going, pleb!" he called out.

But the person, a tall woman with harsh eyes and non-European features, kept pushing her cart. He swore he heard some kind of ticking that must have been a faulty wheel.

"Karl, over here," a man with a rapidly thinning mop of hair called out, distracting Ropen.

The Prussen tilted his head to see a surprising face — the leader of the Albish Labour Party.

"Mr. Hatel, is that you? What happened to Catcherlain?"

"Karl, we have known each other far too long. Call me Clement. As for Neber, the poor bloke's party didn't get enough votes in the election. We knew the people were done with the Tories, so we had to scramble to purge our radicals from our party before the election."

"Must have been a lot of work and caused quite a storm."

"It did, but along with arresting our anti-war voters, we were able to soften our victory enough to avoid destabilizing the status quo."

"It sounds like you did a wonderful job, old friend. In my opinion, the peasants are a selfish lot, only ever thinking about themselves and their stomachs, but never about us. That is why we have to look after ourselves."

"Much agreed, old bean. The commoners really need to learn how heavy the crown is, then they will realize how hard it really is to run a country. They have the luxury to complain, complain, complain. If they want socialism, they could just go over to the Federation, but they won't because the commoners know that without us orchestrating the dirty work of extracting all the luxury goods from the client-states, which the voters enjoy consuming, their quality of living will decrease."

"As I always say, we aristocrats are only a tiny, well-defended minority. We are less than one percent of the population. Still, we rich folk are all the socialists ever talk about in their perverse obsession with us and the private decisions we make for our governmental bodies that are none of their business. We also have so much to lose, and the peasants have nothing but the shirts off their backs and their lives. How can they possibly understand how we feel when they have never lost anything like us?"

"They can't," Hatel responded with a bit more vigor. Being with others of one's own kind really made all the chaos easier. "Do you think that if we gave them two shirts or a nice house, they would stop rebelling so much?"

"I am sure they would, but why should we have to suffer for them to follow the rules? We don't take orders from them. They should be listening to us! Not a single thing happens in our countries without us, and so we have to remember we have the power — not them!"

"You are right!" Hatel cheered. "Thanks, Karl. I knew talking to you would cheer me up."

"Any time, my friend. Now, let's go meet up with the others."

The two move away from the crowded entrance of the embassy meeting hall towards one of the cliches that had formed between the movers and shakers of aristocracy, industry, and finance. Ropen could see Menito Bussolini of Ildoa offering comfort to Charles Lintberg, an ambassador from the Unified States and the leader of the America First Committee.


View: https://youtu.be/kAtAMs614Jk?si=wQrJAiclV2i2rgJD&t=21

"Thanks so much, Mr. Bussolini," Lintberg stated as he got in close. A cameraman took their picture and then continued to do something more casual. "We have to thank you for that shipment of marble we needed."

"It really is not a big deal," Bussolini said to the American ambassador. "I am great friends with the architect. Your new Supreme Court building will be so beautiful when it has proper Ildoan marble in it and actually looks like it was plucked right out of the Ildoan Empire." (1)

"Once your judges start working," Ropen interjected, knowing he was welcome here. "They will pave the way to bring proper law and order back to your country."

"And Destiny Manifest," Bussolini added with a warm smile.

"Thanks, guys. I really needed something to bring me hope right now. Those mobs surrounded my house. Some were even chanting that they wanted to eat the rich. My family barely escaped with our lives and have taken shelter in one of our summer homes on the East Coast. The poors' primal screams still give me and the other members of the America First Committee nightmares."


View: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=D6YVrWQWDjo&si=0nREAgmKy4bDJTzK&t=16

"Those monsters! Don't they know words have consequences? They are trying to kill all of us, and for what — the crime of leading them and asking our proper compensation for our inheritance and deal-making."

The Prussen man was taken aback for a moment. In all the chaos of the civil war happening in Germania, he had forgotten that some of them had it far worse than him. It was very humbling.

"I was just talking to my old chap here," Hatel commented, trying to keep a positive note in his voice. "We only have each other, and it will be with solidarity that we will get through this hard time. No longer can we European and American aristocrats be fighting among each other with our armies. We have a common enemy now, and we will either fight together or fall."

"Well said, well said," Lintberg cheered while punching downwards toward the ground in defiance against the injustice of revolution. They all shared in the silly gesture, but in doing it, others took notice and started copying it in solidarity.

They all knew that compared to peasants, they had almost no power. The only thing that kept them safe was the compliance and pacification of the tyrannical majority.

Ropen had jitters standing so close to Bussolini. The Ildoan was an inspiration to all of them for what he had accomplished with his coup. Few believed they could pull off a dictatorship like his. As expensive as the theater of democracy was, it kept the peasants placated.

Yet, it seemed so liberating to imagine fascism, though — not having to pretend to be the servants of the public anymore. It would be a world without pretense, just unfiltered aristocracy. That was what everyone wanted deep down, just to be themselves. Such an existence would be so wonderful, too, but the prejudice against people like them was so awful. Those socialists wouldn't stop saying such hateful things and spreading the dogma of looting and unrest.

Soon after finishing their small, these movers and shakers gathered around the central desk.

"I have to thank all who gathered," Ropen began. "I know a lot of you had to take breaks from your valuable leisure time to come to help us Germanians as the Reds march on all of us. As many of you have probably noticed, the narrative from the League of Nations and United Front is that you all are criminals. The situation has never been more dire."

There were nods of approval all around.

Someone grumbled about how the aristocrats in Europa should have copied the Americans more by investing heavily in propagating a racialized sense of 'criminality' as the excuse to keep extensive slavery going in the 20th century. The Americans and Fascists really knew how to get rid of all the peasants who had enough backbone to use force to threaten the aristocrats. It would still take a generation or two before the well-fed livestock of middle-class consumers in Europa become completely domesticized. Learned helplessness was essential to preventing revolution. People had to believe that nothing could be done about their aristocrats killing commoners for any selfish reason while also believing that it was unforgivable to even think about killing aristocrats.

The Francois, in particular, had started to really get back to their roots lately. The peasants in Viet Bam would have their heads mounted on pikes outside their prisons. Soldiers would send pictures back to their loved ones of them, celebrating the proper policing of the peasantry. (2) It might be gruesome, but if you were too lenient with serfs, they would see that as a sign of weakness and might actually hurt a good person like those in this room.

But now it was time to make a demonstration of the communists in Germania.

"My attendant will keep this short for all of us before we can do the bidding."

Gesturing to Johann, who charged the computation orb on the table, an illusory map of Europa was displayed, and various places were highlighted.

"Right now, the areas we want to focus on," Johann stated. "First are the radio towers. The enemy is countering our propaganda. Before we officially begin our invasion of the stolen territory, we plan to take those out and then drown the area with fake newscasts to instill disorder in the region." (3)

The female server from earlier parked her cart near the center of the room, and then she pulled out a hair clip, twisted it a bit, and waved it over the silver dish cover like the hairclip was some kind of wand. He felt no mana coming off it.

His depressed and exhausted mind didn't really know how to process it, but his paranoia made him grab his computation orb in his pocket.

Then, the suspicious server just left the cart there and power-walked out of the meeting hall. No one else seemed to care or notice, so Ropen thought there must have been a reason for this or should get fired.

Click - an image of farms in the countryside of Germania.

"We have decided to import Agent Orange from America. Armies fight on their stomachs, so if we can cut off as much food from our enemy with this herbicide, we should be able to pacify them by winter."

Click - map view of Jugoslavja.

"Third, we have intelligence that several reports that Federation and United Front soldiers may be in Jugoslavja to the South East. While General Secretary Ditto states that his country is neutral, we have decided to revive Operation Menu and carpet bomb Jugoslavja. Our foreign policy experts believe that Hilary Brecht and the United Front might come to the negotiation table if we show how serious we are.

"To justify bombing the country back to the Stone Age, we have pinpointed the excuse of stopping an ethnic cleansing of a minority as the most salient with our domestic populations to manufacture sufficient consent. Our psychologists have recommended the term 'humanitarian bombings' to describe the new paradigm of propaganda.

"To head the operation, we have recruited Albion's Lt. Colonel Drake and will be deploying Trident to join up with him. We are calling it — Operation Merciful Angel."

Ropen knew from his secret agents that the Albish's super mage 'Trident' was untested, and many questioned if she would actually be able to perform. Still, if the people gathered didn't use every method available to them, the world would keep changing. Nothing was more terrifying to Ropen than the prospect of change and losing control over one's future.

Click - an image of agents infiltrating the United Front as they performed their anthem that Hilary Brecht wrote.

"We have also brought back Cointelpro from the Unified States to assist with the disruption of various groups within the United Front or KDP before they can do anything that threatens officials of the National Socialist Party or any of Germania's aristocracy."

Click, and an image of Georg Elser shows up.

"Second, Francois intelligence has determined that a group headed to Essen aims to—"

Click - now an image of a woman identified as 'Ramona Mercer - alias Francine Pegahmagabow - the Obijwe Sniper'.

Ropen ducked under the table and knocked it over. People screamed as he yelled at everyone to get down. He barely had time to pull Johann to his side and deploy his mage barrier before—

Kaaaaabbooooooooommmmm.

---

Off the Shore of Okenava Naval Base, Akitsuhima Dominion, in an Albish Submarine

"What do you mean we are deploying Trident now? She isn't ready."

"The United Front blew up the U.S. Embassy in München, killing most of the leaders of the Global North Alliance."

"But we haven't stabilized her yet after her last outburst caused her to become afraid of hurting her family and shut down."

"The Allied Forces are already marching into Germania, and they want Merciful Angel to start right away. If we don't get this supermage deployed, it will be the backup one."

No one on the submarine could stomach the idea of unleashing Omega — the Angel of Vengeance — Friendly Fire Personified — Mary 'Anyone but Her' Sue.

"I will get Canary deployed ASAP, sir!"

---

Citations:

1. Craven, Jackie. About the U.S. Supreme Court Building. Architecture and Symbolic Sculpture at the Highest Court, 1935. thoughtco.com. December 27, 2018. <https://www.thoughtco.com/us-supreme-court-building-by-cass-gilbert-177925#:~:text=It%20is%20said%20that%20Gilbert's,the%20iconic%20structure%20was%20completed.>
2. Vann, Michael G. "Of pirates, postcards, and public beheadings: the pedagogic execution in French colonial Indochina." Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques, vol. 36, no. 2, summer 2010, pp. 39+. Gale Academic OneFile, <link.gale.com/apps/doc/A233826807/AONE?u=anon~518c13a1&sid=googleScholar&xid=bcf5bedc> Accessed 16 Nov. 2024.
3. Central Intelligence Agency. Notes On Radio Broadcasting - Guatemala. 25 January 1954. <https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000917063.pdf>
4. FBI. Cointelpro. fbi.gov <https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro>

 

[LoreleiFlowers]

A section for those who want more historical context and analysis. The WNN is going to be biased against the West. We will get back to Tanya and Sonnetto in the next chapter.

---

World News Network TV Broadcast - September 1954 - Moments before news of the Global North Alliance Bombing Breaks (1, 2, 3)

Interviewer: Hello, Dr. Larenti. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us on such short notice. We at WNN and the public at large are very curious to get your expert opinion on what the Global North Alliance (GNA) plans are for Jugoslavja.

Larenti: Yes, the situation is extremely urgent as we see all the member states of GNA ramp up their propaganda machines to ready their populations for a multilateral decimation of the Eastern Orthodox-majority half of the Jugoslavja. President Ropen of Germania and President Billards of the Francois Republic have backed the monarchist faction in the Legalist-majority western half of the Jugoslavja. This concerted effort to destabilize the communist country could result in its complete collapse.

Interviewer: Doesn't the GNA's intervention go against the League of Nations' statutes?

Larenti: Yes, but it is important to note that the GNA was the response of the major capitalist powers against the rising power in the Socialist majority in the League of Nations and to bypass the League of Nations' Security Council, which often rules against them.

Interviewer: What would you say is the goal of the GNA's planned military intervention in Jugoslavja?

Larenti: For starters, they want to prevent the United Front in Northern Germania from going through a potentially friendly communist country to strike at Ropen's Southern Germania.

More importantly, this is a continuation of the GNA's campaign to dismantle and recolonize the Socialist East systematically. Take, for example, the collapse of Lostia, where the last supposedly communist president went against the popular referendum and dissolved parliament so he could institute Silver Legion's policy of Shock Therapy, where the country rapidly transitioned to oligarchy. State-owned capital was quickly sold to the highest bidder or given to allies and friends. People went from having rents take up 5% of their monthly income to 66% as the plutocrats that run the GNA swooped into vultures to exploit the population, which was defenseless from the most depraved excesses of profiteering. Agriculture was set up to feed the domestic population and quickly shifted to cash crops to be shipped to GNA member states to fuel their economy's dependence on consuming ever more for growth. 30% of the population over 30 in Lostia found themselves homeless and starving. Life expectancy was halved.

Furthermore, the GNA managed the elections, education, and press in Lostia to make sure only pro-West, pro-capitalist and revisionist history was presented to the public. In short, just like the Silver Legion tried to do in their own country, the GNA has started salting the soil to prevent socialism from ever emerging again.

I suspect the plan for Jugoslavja is the same, but with the Francois Republic involved, I believe the plan is to break up the country into smaller, more manageable parts like the Republic did with Central Afrika. So, in summation, the GNA's plan is to escalate the conflict until the entire region is so decimated and battered that it becomes dependent on the GNA, which will socially and economically re-engineer whatever remains of Jugoslavja into something that suits their vampiric economies.

Interviewer: 'Vampiric economies' — that is strong language for the West. Earlier, you mentioned propaganda. The Ambassador for Jugoslavja to the League of Nations has sent a letter to the League of Nations. In it, he condemned coverage in the West of the mounting conflict in his country, claiming the situation is, and I quote, 'the brutality of accusations, no longer represent propaganda but border on psychopathology'. Viewers can read the letter on the screen, but I have a copy for you as well, Dr. Larenti.

(Source: Ambassador Draomir Djokic's Letter to United Nations in 1993) (3)​

For those reading along at home, there is no evidence of the Orthodox forcibly impregnating Legalists with dog embryos. Also, it is biologically impossible for humans to give birth to dogs or human-dog hybrids, including people with animal-like mutations from mana poisoning.

Larenti: Policy experts around the world are disturbed by the blatant disregard for truth shown by GNA countries. I would like to say I was surprised when I first saw their coverage, but I am not. No matter how much the West attempts to distance themselves from the now disgraced Silver Legion, they keep using Pulitzer's strategies. Even politicians who condemned the anti-Heartist rhetoric of Himmler and the propaganda techniques of Gobbels are now using the same techniques of repetitious and ubiquitous falsehoods to manufacture consent in their domestic populations for genocidal interventions. Himmler and the NSP's Blood Libel against the Heartists has now become the Faithful Democratic Union's Dog Libel against the Orthodox. This is quite literally tabloid nonsense.

What we are seeing is that the Western press and political apparatus are in the middle of a multilateral campaign to dehumanize the Orthodox. The Dog Libel is just the beginning. We are manufacturing mass rape camps and all sorts of inhumane experiments without evidence. While rape does happen during war, Interpol has found no evidence to back up GNA's countless ludicrous claims, which are intended to make eradicating half of Jugoslavja justified. Also, like the National Socialist Party, the Ropen and his FDU conservative coalition have backed the Legalist separatists in their predations on the Orthodox ethnicities. Any and all crimes committed by the Orthodox are being magnified and blasted across the airwaves in Europa, while the ones done by the Legalists are being suppressed or not covered at all. If you were in the Francois Republic, you would led to believe that the Orthodox are monsters preying on poor, defenseless Legalists. Yes, there are war crimes on both sides, but the Orthodox are not monsters, and the Legalists are not innocent.

In other words, the European leaders have stacked the deck so that no matter what major political party one follows or which major newspaper their citizens read, any rational person with those 'facts' will conclude that military intervention is justified. The saddest thing about this is that today, the Legalists will be allies, but if the GNA had interests in the Middle East or North Afrika, suddenly, the Legalists would be suddenly gone from being innocent victims to horrible, backward monsters on par with the Silver Legion.

At the end of the day, most people are fundamentally the same. Everyone can be indoctrinated — secular or religious, capitalist or socialist. If people want the amount of rape and carnage to decrease, they should advocate for de-escalation, but even if the anti-war sentiment is high among the population, we see time and time again that the Western governments and media are so beholden to the interests of the richest men who stand to get even more wealthy if they can gobble up the Socialist East and then extract even more rents on the rest of us who have live on this planet.

Interviewer: You keep making comparisons to the now-disgraced National Socialist Party of Germania and its leader, Rudolph Himmler. European leaders, including many in the FDU, have since come out condemning Himmler after Agent Nichts released her report. What is your reasoning for making this connection between the centrists and the fascists?

Larenti: It is important to note that Himmler and people like Ropen have meaningful differences, but it is more a matter of the scale and, crucially, the location of their ambitions. Ropen is willing to work with oligarchs in other nations against common enemies in the East. Ropen believed he could control Himmler and the NSP, but MI15's report made oligarchs in the Francois Republic and Allied Kingdom skeptical that they could keep Himmler pointed towards the East. I swear MI15's report on the Silver Legion intentionally drew uncanny parallels with the German fascist movement. Right now, though, because these oligarchs across Europa have a common enemy in the League of Nations and the Socialist East, the rallying cry to rescue Himmler from his supposedly unjust arrest by Agent Nichts.

As for the connection, MI15 made that connection abundantly clear in their investigation, which is why the starling of Western Democracy has become a source of much ridicule behind closed doors. Interpol uncovered that the coal magnate Karl Klick, who was architecting Himmler's concentration camps for slave labor, had bribed all the major political parties of Germania, including some of the Social Democratic Party but particularly Ropen's coalition. I believe the press is calling this the Klick Affair.

While Western Liberal democracies might treat their domestic populations kindly, they are completely ruthless on the international stage. The Silver Legion Report indicated that the GNA would have dropped double the number of bombs and explosion formulae on just Viet Bam than were dropped on Europa and Asia in the Great War had there been a falling out between the Silver Legion and the other countries in the GNA. (4) Intelligence leaks indicate that GNA plans to carpet bomb Jugoslavja, which is a war crime forbidden by the League of Nations charter. Only the Unified States of Eastern America technically have the ability to commit such war crimes because they are not signers of the Remulus treaty.

Interviewer: But Interpol wouldn't let them do that would they?

Larenti: I would hope not. Given Agent Nichts' stance on stopping the Silver Legion before, I could see MI15 maneuvering to stop the GNA here.

Interviewer: Agent Nichts has historically been a strong ally of GNA, but lately, it seems that politicians in the West have started denouncing her. What changed?

Larenti: What changed was the Captain of MI15's willingness to go against the aims of Western Democracies. It started in 1950 when her team kept going against them. The last straw was her temporarily the Allied Kingdom and Silver Legion's plot to illegally instigate a coup through the theocratic monarchists in the Persian Empire.

Interviewer: Just like the GNA's tactics in Jugoslavja, where they are backing the Legalist Monarchists.

Larenti: Exactly. The GNA talks about a big game of democracy and liberalism, but its actions don't match their words. The liberal talking points act as a smokescreen. 'See, I am talking about freedom and democracy, not like those Silver Legion monsters'. The focus in Western propaganda is all appearances, and it gives their local populations the peace of mind that their politicians are good people when they are chasing after the same profit motives as the industrialists who backed the fascist movements.

This smokescreen of liberal values also allows the GNA to stack the deck of facts that suit their narrative by keeping the focus away from both the relevant history that came before and the consequences after GNA's interventions. I predict that in a few decades, after people have forgotten about GNA's hand in the Persian and Jugoslavja coups, capitalist Europa will paint the Legalists as intrinsically theocratic and backward to instigate anti-Legalist prejudice before invading the Middle East to secure oil reserves.

Interviewer: But there is evidence of ethnic cleansing efforts in Jugoslavja. Indeed, are you not saying this is all just propaganda?

Larenti: Of course not, but it is essential also to see that the GNA does not care about ethnic cleanings. The Ottoman Republic is part of the GNA, too, and that country is actively attempting to genocide its Curd population. The other GNA countries have no problems providing the Ottoman Republic with more funds, computation orbs, and bombs, which are being used to accelerate their eradication of the Curds, if the Ottoman leadership also plays the plausibly deniable middleman in some of the more egregious bombings of the Orthodox in Jugoslavja.

Interviewer: Why do you think the Federation has not gotten more actively involved in these satellite conflicts until the situation in Germania?

Larenti: Simple — they are spread thin. The Federation is doing everything it can, from supporting South Afrikans to end apartheid to alleviating the famine in Zhangzi to providing material support to Abya Yala to get its government off its feet to assist in the rebuilding of Viet Bam and Eastern Persia. What makes Germania different is that it borders on the psychotic capitalist powers and has the most developed industry in the entire world. Without Germania's assistance, the empires would crumble. Remember, the Great War resulted in a lot of colonies seizing an opportunity to get independence while the European countries were weakened.

Interviewer: According to GNA, the Russy Federation is the real empire expanding its reach to encompass the world. What do you say to that?

Larenti: For starters, I am just a foreign policy expert from Abya Yala, so I can't speak on behalf of any country. My support of the Federation's efforts in helping countries around the world against the West is qualified. Of course, I criticize the Federation. There are even monarchists in the Middle East I support because they are fighting back against imperial occupation, but I know enough to support everything they believe.

If we become neutral or withdraw our support due to ideological purity tests, we will end up sitting on our hands while the ruling class wins again and again. These oligarchs want their citizens to go silent when pressured to first condemn the Federation for this or that decontextualized action. If you don't condemn, you are dismissed as defending war crimes and can be ignored. It is a lose-lose scenario that only works when the oligarchs control the conversation by owning the media companies or running the government. Look how the disproportional number of war crimes of the NGA and its allies are obscured. These journalists quickly start dissembling and falling into whataboutism whenever these crimes come up because they have to keep the focus on the crimes of one group and away from their country. Controlling the conversation, picking the guests, and standing on their reputation as 'official' sources gives them immense power to shape public opinion and perceptions of conflicts.

In comparing the Russy Federation and the Global North Alliance, the Russy Federation is by far the lesser of the two evils in my eyes. Again, it is essential to distinguish between how the Global North Alliance treats its domestic populations and how it treats the rest of the world. It might be nice here in the Francois Republic, but if you were working in one of their textile factories in Viet Bam, the treatment is far worse there than the dreary grayness the Federation's public housing projects that the Francois press loves to mock. People flee the Federation for the West mostly because they are following the wealth, not unlike the countless people from the exploited capitalist client-states. Note that those from the capitalist client states and colonies can come to the West and finally enjoy the luxuries extracted from their countries, where those goods are often not available to them.

For an easy comparison between the Federation and GNA: take assassinating world leaders. It is well known that the GNA countries have actively been trying to assassinate socialist, communist, and even some liberal leaders who aren't under their thumb. Do these socialist countries declare war on the West when this happens? No. Do the Western leaders shed a tear when one of them successfully kills a socialist leader? No. But if a Western leader were to be assassinated like this, not only would it be war, but armageddon for the perpetrator.

Interviewer: What about so-called 'class traitors' — wait a minute, we are getting breaking news. (Her face goes deathly pale as her computation orb transmits a message into her mind.)

Larenti: What is it?

Interviewer: The Global North Alliance Conference, which was being held in München, has been bombed. Germania's President, Karl Ropen, has survived, but Menito Bussolini, Clement Hatel, and several ambassadors have died, including a US Ambassador.

Larenti: Do we know who did the bombing?

Interviewer: We were told it was the Orthodox faction of Jugoslavja, with help from the United Front.

Larenti: Who is your source?

Interviewer: The report came from the GNA.

---

Citations:

1. Parenti, Michael. To Kill A Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia. London, New York : Verso, 2000.
2. Parenti, Michael. Blackshirts and Reds. 1997
3. Djokic, Dragomir. Letter dated 3 February 1993 from the Charge d'affaires a.i. of the Permanent Mission of Yugoslavia to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General
4. In real life, the US and its allies did drop more than double the number of bombs on Vietnam than what was dropped on Europe and Asia during WWII - Thomas, Cooper, Esri's StoryMaps team. Bombing Missions of the Vietnam War. Storymaps.arcgis.com. <https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/2eae918ca40a4bd7a55390bba4735cdb>

The song on my mind when writing this chapter.


View: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=Smlg7sPUmRs&si=wH_W7MBHKejl4FxT

 

[LoreleiFlowers]

Previously on Mages of Interpol 15:

• Karl von Ropen plots with other members of the Global North Alliance on a bombing of Jugoslavja and retaking North Germania from the Russy Federation and Germanian United Front.
• Ramona Mercer bombs the US Embassy, and Ropen barely activates his shield just in time.

---

Outside the Octagon Strawshirt Factory - New Amsterdam, Eastern Unified States of America - September 1954

A few weeks before the explosion at the US Embassy in München

(LN: there will be Tanya/Sonnetto stuff after this scene. Also, this chapter has elements of horror.)

Dolores Arsen sat on a bench across from the ruins of a factory, nursing a cigarette to life as she put her lighter back into her pocket right next to a detonator. Her inner jacket held her favorite revolver and some specialty ammo that could take down any mage. As an aerial mage and as a woman, society forbade her the vice of tobacco — not anymore. Mana would protect her lungs from any plague build-up, she figured. It was a little act of rebellion against a world that didn't want her to rule it.

While she waited for someone to arrive, she thought about the whole fiasco going on in Europa and how she could help. That was what the meeting was about — getting involved to make the world a better place for people like Arsen. Was there anything more commendable than that?

The West was doing its best to navigate a difficult time due to MI15 arresting a very important political asset — Rudolph Himmler. Arsen had also put a lot of dollars down on getting the national socialists elected. Their leader's arrest set back the fight against the very real threat of socialism to the way of life Arsen depended on for power.

In the Unified States, Arsen and her allies had put propaganda machines at full tilt. At her side lay a skimmed copy of the Zeitgeist magazine that declared Rudolph Himmler, the 'person of the year'. Underneath that, Arsen had her copy of that morning's The New Amsterdam Times, which was turned into an Op-Ed by Himmler titled 'The Art of Propaganda'. It was somewhat amusing to have a propaganda rag discuss propaganda. Sure, the journalists working for it didn't see themselves as propagandists, but people like Arsen wouldn't hire these poindexters if they didn't align their worldview to that of their employers. After people only saw the same opinions over and over again, views like Himmler's became normalized while questioning Himmler and his surrogates became the new radical position. That was why news pundits would show such open derision towards even extremely popular economic reforms that went against Arsen and her friends' interests. Journalists made for the best propagandists precisely because they didn't know they were propagandists.

Well, until they stepped out of line and lost their jobs. However, a jobless journalist was as good dead.

The Francois and Albish leaders had soured on fascism after the Silver Legion report by MI15, deepening the already tense divide among the movers and shakers of the Western World. These Europeans took Agent Nichts at her word when she said that the reactionaries that made up the base of fascism could not be controlled. According to the mysterious Interpol officer, people like Himmer and Bussolini wouldn't just swing to the East but also to their fellow capitalists who were doing their darnest to support fascists in fighting the frankly terrifying Russy Federation on their behalf. The Unified States and Common Wealth did everything they possibly could to eradicate the Federation before, from poison gas to countless invasions to backing nationalist counter-revolutionaries using White Silver's insurgency doctrines. After the Great War, the commies still refused to bend to going back to having an aristocracy or even a new-fangled oligarchy of New Money. It would be really nice to turn all those state-owned apartments into for-profit enterprises, sucking an ever-delectable drop of blood out of those fairly untapped human resources in the Federation. Fascism was the last resort with its militarism and base of people who would destroy anyone labeled the enemy. Fascists were best poised to bring an effective forever war since the liberals didn't want the war to touch their shores and ruin the real estate values.

As for Agent Nichts, she stubbornly retained a really good reputation among the masses in Europa — way above any politician or news outlet. That was why the Germanian industrialists had to work with that reputation, not against it. Movies were rapidly being produced that depicted the helmeted heroine as a pure, virtuous Germanian woman who gets seduced by an evil Abya Yalan seductress. This villainess intentionally looked like the now quite tall Amber Canary, and she would lead Agent Nichts with lies and her wiles into betraying her country. It was only when a strong Germanian man came to save the day that the spell would be broken, and the Nichts character would fall into his arms and be whisked by to Germania to get happily married to him.

Dolores Arsen was actually looking forward to the movie until the whole Germanian Civil War broke out, halting the production as filming schedules, venues, and actors had to be changed rapidly. Now, the movie might not come out until next year. Honestly, Arsen didn't think Agent Nichts fit the virtuous maiden archetype. Among oligarchical circles, it was rumored that the Interpol Officer had to be a gender invert, for the munchkin had to be packing some real balls to explain her hyper-aggressive behavior and insanely reckless decision to go after monopolists.

Well, she also had other entertainment that spewed fanciful dream-like unrealities than the movies in the meantime. For example, there was also the judicial system. What had caught Arsen's eye was the narrative the Francois authorities were running on in Amber Canary's trial. The Francois had settled on the story that the Tejan Sharpshooter ran an international terrorist organization with Ramona Mercer and Tanya von Degurechaff. It was hellbent on bringing an end to democracy and freedom like all terrorists did. These monsters had infiltrated MI15 and forced the secretly very shy and timid Agent Nichts into doing awful things like slandering and arresting Rudolph Himmler, which undermined the very sanctity of democracy since Karl Ropen, the people, had decided that he should be the next chancellor. Since Himmler was currently under remand at the Hague in Legadonia under the unwatchful eye of Mary Sue, championing the cause of his release from unjust imprisonment now served the Western leadership. Hopefully, Himmler will remember the favor when he gets the VIP treatment, which was only possible when one sufficiently served the interests of Global North Alliance.

Putting the past aside for a moment, Dolores Arsen took a long drag of her cigarette. She was growing impatient, awaiting her test to help the leader of an organization she wanted to join with capturing a traitor.

A very unseasonal bitter cold had come over the Atlantic from Europa, and her designer petticoat was not cutting it. The wind also blew in the smells of ash and death from the wreckage.

"That was your factory," said a voice that came out of nowhere, commenting behind her.

Arsen sucked in her breath in fright and immediately regretted it and started hacking up smoke.

"Did you have to sneak up on me?" the businesswoman spattered between spasmatic coughs.

Behind Arsen was a woman who wasn't there a moment ago. How did she move so quietly? Why didn't the cops holding the perimeter for Arsen let her know her guest had arrived?

The stranger's codename, according to the enigmatic Leader, was supposed to be 'Fifth Eye of the Spider'. This person had a handkerchief that covered her forehead. Supposedly, the Fifth had flown in from Europa after the whole Himmler had played his role.

"Are you alone?" the Albishwoman replied, ignoring the previous question.

"Of course. I have had enough leaks."

Arsen was going to uphold their operational security. You never knew who you could trust in this wicked world. Anyone could be a spy or switch sides at any moment without proper vetting.

The Global North Alliance (GNA) had created Eight Eyes to pool their intelligence resources together behind their enigmatic leader, who credibly claimed to be able to see the future. Arthur Pelley and Richard Diamond had vouched for this Oracle; however, Diamond had been old money and hoarded the Oracle to himself. Those like Dolores Arsen and Karl Klick, who had ridden the Gilded Age into prosperity and were new to money, wanted their rightful place at the big spenders' table, even if it meant creating some lucrative vacancies. The Oracle had agreed that a shake-up in the leadership was overdue. He had successfully navigated behind the scenes to be in charge of Eight Eyes and got New Money backing his secret coup against the aristocrats of the old system.

There had always been a fundamental tension between the Old and New Money. The Old Money had to keep justifying their existence as a kind of noble obligation. Their right came with a duty. The New Money had pulled themselves up from the bootstraps even if those bootstraps had to garotte a million necks on the way up and had golden soles to give a much-needed boost. Honestly, things had gotten so ruthless near the end of the Gilded Age leading into the Great Depression that it didn't take much to upset the system. With a few prophetic whispers here and there, the Oracle had gotten the New Money lined up to set the Old Money up as a scapegoat for the Silver Legion's 'evils', and now people like Dolores Arsen were so very close to handling the obscene amounts of power that were consolidated the GNA and Eight Eyes.

Among the periphery around the Eight Eyes, the Oracle went by the codename 'the Spider God'. It's pretentious if it weren't somewhat true. The gods walked among mortals. It was just a fact. One just needed to make sure those gods were on one's side, and all the blessings would follow. The Old Money had thought they could keep the gods under their thumbs, but New Money knew it was far better to be inside the god's inner orbit.

Arsen could relate to this god. She had enough struggles getting the men in the business world to see her as anything more than a woman. That was why she had to do whatever it took to get every advantage she could get out of this rigged system. Becoming an Eye of the Spider God who could see all and semi-reliably predict the future would serve her purposes. It was just a matter of a vacancy opening up for her to get her Eye.

As Arsen would say to those who didn't respect her methods, 'Don't blame the dame; blame the game.'

"Your factory?" the other woman in a black suit with trousers indicated the charred wreckage nearby with a lazy gesture.

"It was," she admitted readily.

"Your employees burn it down or something? There has been a lot of terrorism lately."

The businesswoman frowned and then mentally shifted gears.

"No, it wasn't something like that," Arsen replied after a moment. "My workers know better than to mess with the hand that lets them eat. The Angels and those Tanechkists will sooner find themselves facing a swift death from my revolver if they dared get close to any of my factories. Anyways, would you want to hear the truth — who really burned it down?"

"I would rather see it, but I will settle for hearing what web you weave," the Fifth answered with a yawn. Jet lag, it must have been.

The businesswoman wanted to fit in with the Eyes, so she instinctively mirrored a blase demeanor. "I did."

"...why?"

"It was profitable to do so."

"Insurance for the building?"

"Yes, and the contents."

"I smell burnt flesh," the Fifth commented, moving upwind of the building past where Arsen sat. Not everyone liked the reality of how the sausage gets made.

"I apologize. It was my policy to keep all my factories locked up, even during work hours. (1) Prevents theft — from my employees if they can't leave without my permission." Arsen took a deep breath in the pleasant aroma. "I will get rid of these ruins when the time is right. Until then, it is best to enjoy the beauty of nature."

The Fifth very momentarily stopped midstep.

Arsen continued the tale of her fortunate 'misfortune' with a predatory gleam in her smile. "I had to pay their families $75 per employee kabab for 'wrongful death'. (1) I fought the price tooth and nail. I already paid plenty to get the mesquite wood to make it."

"And you still made a profit?" the Fifth inquired with an unmistakable wobble in her voice.

"Of course, I told you I insured the contents. That obviously includes my employees. It was a delicious $400 each, so I netted $325 per employee. With 146 employees, it was a hefty sum when I needed it most." (1)

Arsen licked her unnaturally spikey teeth, intentionally showing them to her interlocutor. A minor mutation she got from the Great War when she was close to death and had a vision of a horrific creature made out of pure hunger. It was like Arsen's very soul became tied to the creature as its extension in the world of flesh and blood.

The agent of the Spider God tensed up.

"Something wrong?" Arsen asked with a rueful smile.

"I just thought about whether this is something common here in the States even after the reforms."

"You know what they say about closing doors? You break a window. The anti-legion reforms just meant we had to get more creative to get our fill. 'Dead Peasants Insurance', I call it. All my friends are doing it too. It is really catching on like wildfire in the business world. Newspapers and big box store retailers are all on this right now. Our human resource department gives us information on their medical and health history, and then we take life insurance programs on them. (2) Perfectly legal, and with plenty of safe bets, you can get just a bit more profit for your business. You should try it, too."

"I will put that under advisement." In translation, the Albish woman was politely avoiding criticizing American cultural norms. How succulently progressive. "Did you come up with this idea yourself?"

"No, of course not. This is another wonder from the diamond mine of White Silver. That woman is truly a goddess of the loophole and business acumen even if she was a bitch to face on the battlefield."

The Fifth was not the only one covering her face. Arsen had a mask that covered half of her face. 'Two-face,' the locals called her. Underneath it was the burn marks from where the woman of countless aliases, Tanya von Degurechaff, landed a successful explosion formula. Arsen never had a beautiful face as Degurechaff did, but the mask gave her an aura of menace and rugged toughness that made it clear she would dance with the devil and survive.

A silence grew between them, so the agent from the Allied Kingdom scanned the surroundings to double-check that the street had no on-lookers or eavesdroppers. The police tape and officers on Arsen's payroll made sure of that. This street was hers as long as she deemed it necessary. She had shared a few morsels of sensitive information with the Fifth in part to make the foreigner feel that this place was safe to talk about anything. How else would she impress the Spider God if she couldn't do that much?

"So, how is Operation Gladio going?" Arsen inquired, pivoting the conversation to business now the pleasantries were over.

"The operation is going as planned — all thanks to your handsome donation, Mrs. Arsen," the Fifth stated while adjusting her cufflinks nervously.

"You can thank the peasants and White Silver." The businesswoman gestured again to the remains of the Octagon Strawshirt Factory. Arsen could not help but lick her sharp teeth, looking for any piece of meat that might have gotten caught up there. She was getting hungry, and a mage had to eat.

The Fifth squirmed, unable to contain her visceral reaction to Arsen, who thought the other woman looked a bit like a worm skewered on the end of a hook.

Arsen rolled her hand. "Please continue. You can't just stop giving me just a taste. I hunger for far more of what you have to offer."

"Yes, ma'am," the Fifth squeaked. It was funny how ancient instincts activated when people were around Arsen. "We have recruited three dozen disaffected mage commandos — Datista loyalists, the Silver Hand, the Checkered Shirts in Kroatia, and so on."

"And how are Eight Eyes planning on pinning the pawns' actions on the Commies and MI15."

"The Oracle is taking care of recruiting and grooming the fall guys personally."

"No details?" Arsen inquired with a raised eyebrow and another drag of her cig.

"Not even I can know them," the Fifth replied weakly before a memory brought back a bit of energy. "Oh, there is one thing. Be ready in a month. The dominos will begin in the fall. There will be no missing it. The public will be completely on our side."

Dolores Arsen took one last drag of her cigarette before tossing it on the street.

While the Eight Eyes spied on all threats to the empires of the Global North Alliance, they spent even more resources on controlling what information their citizens consumed. Sure, unsanctioned sources would leak occasionally, but there was always a scandal that could be drummed off to keep the delicious sheeple too distracted and overwhelmed to cause any real problems.

"And the Oracle will get Agent Nichts off our backs?" the two-faced businesswoman followed up.

"She won't be a problem ever again."

"Good. I don't know who she really is, but that commie bootlicker is a real pro. It is like she knows how we White Silverists think. Get in our heads. She has her team issuing reports telling people how to cripple our operations. Who the fuck taught a mage meathead like Nichts how trust funds and wealth managers make everything we do possible? The socialists and former colonies have gone and cut me off from my tourist visa, and my family wealth manager was arrested after taking a connecting flight in Ispagnia. All of this was at her suggestion. It was why I had to take a more hands-on method of getting you your money in time with this stunt with the fire."

"Noted," the Fifth said flatly, trying to contain both fear and disgust.

"All I ask is that you make sure Nichts suffers," Arsen added with heat in her voice. This was a test, after all, and it became clear what it was now.

"Of course, ma'am. I have been told that the Francois have deployed their very best from the SDECE. They have selected to use arcanium tablets just like the Russies."

"They are pulling off another Noumié? Hopefully, it will prove more effective than that time they forced a little girl to deliver a grenade in a bouquet of flowers to that Lhana commie for us."

The Fifth teetered again as Arsen spoke. "Are you not satisfied with arcanium? It is said to be the absolute worst way to die — slow, painful, inevitable. No human can even sense that you spiked a meal or drink with it."

"No, it is very much sufficiently just for that commie wench Nichts," the businesswoman replied with a slight smile that revealed her sharp teeth.

After the Hattadans, one could always trust the Francois to make it clear not to oppose their iron-fisted rule. The female mage will never forget how the Hattadans put grenades in soup cans before sending them to starving Germanian soldiers as a 'humanitarian' gesture. It was said that Imperialists were some of the most fucked up after the war. While the Eight Eyes made sure people focused on the Devil of the Rhine as the 'the world's greatest war criminal', most of the new war crimes were actually the result of the Hattadan soldiers getting extra creative. Part of Arsen feared that Agent Nichts' vendetta against fascists was born out a desire for revenge for what happened to Germanian soldiers during the Great War when all the powers piled on them to keep the geopolitical balance in check.

"Then what is the problem?" the woman in the suit inquired with a suspicious, eager curiosity that escaped the clutches of well-disguised fear.

"I just fear that people will find it suspicious if the Francois tries the same stunt again."

"Why? The commies hate the GNA-aligned Interpol teams, and the MI15 has created plenty of grudges in the east over the years."

"But not Nichts for whatever reason. She is very popular among the Tanechkists in particular, and they have a lot of sway with the Popular Frontists." It clicked in Arsen's mind. "But she isn't with the Old Federationists, though. Jugoslavja is still very much in the Old Federationist camp, as are Lhana and Viet Bam. Credibly blame the escalation of World War on the Old Federationists, and we can split the internationalist left and the nationalist right of the Socialist East."

"And isolate Jugoslavja from its allies for the upcoming Operation Merciful Angel," the Fifth commented with a passable attempt at thinking like Arsen. "Divide and conquer."

"White Silver would love a plan like this," the half-masked businesswoman added before wiping some drool from her face. Arsen so liked isolating her prey.

"Oh? Why do you say that?"

"According to what I heard during my Silver Legion days, White Silver loves it when you hit multiple birds with one stone. I am sure a pure-blooded businesswoman like her would be completely behind this plan to destroy the East by killing Agent Nichts if she were in our organization instead of Interpol and could see the big picture like the Eight Eyes can."

The Fifth laughed nervously.

"What's so funny?"

"Oh, nothing."

Arsen wasn't convinced. The Fifth knew something she didn't, which would change soon.

The businesswoman took out her favorite revolver and loaded the gun with some enchanted rounds in front of the Fifth.

"Don't worry. I just find this comforting. Old habits die hard, right?"

The Fifth didn't calm down despite Arsen's comment.

"So, is there anything you want to talk about, Mrs. Fifth?"

"No. That was all I was to report to our very generous donor."

The Fifth started taking a few steps back.

"You know what I was told this meeting was about?" the businesswoman inquired.

This enchanted round supposedly took out the Immortal Empress. Arsen thought she loaded the last chamber.

The Fifth moved as if to answer and then bolted for it. The Agent was far too fast to be a non-mage. It didn't matter. The Americans may have been humiliated by the setback with the collapse of the Silver Legion, but the world should not forget who defined war after the Great War. Arsen survived the Devil. The Fifth would not survive Arsen.

The businesswoman in the designer petticoat lifted up her gun.

"The Spider God whispered in my ear that you were going to test me on finding a traitor."

She cocked it.

"I don't need any more hints."

Kabam!

She may have put too much mana in that shot as the revolver's barrel warped.

The Fifth ducked with supernatural speed. The bullet flew over the spy's head as she proceeded to try to get into the wreckage of the factory to break sightlines.

Fishing through the pocket in her petticoat, the businesswoman took out her lighter and then the detonator. She erected a barrier and put some mana into the device.

KABOOM!

The building erupted into a fiery explosion.

The Fifth flew out of the wreckage with a dual-core computation orb fully activated. How she hid activating it was beyond Arsen, but that was a mystery to solve later.

Kabam!

One more shot from her revolver, and the traitor went down in a tailspin. Arsen walked over to the quickly passing away woman. Up close, the war vet could see the extra eyeball that the Spider God gave the Fifth that had been hidden crudely under the handkerchief. The magical eye closed and then disappeared. At the same time, an illusion spell revealed the elven ears of an Angel — so the Fifth was just a Tanechkist who couldn't keep her act together in front of Arsen. It wasn't her fault if they lacked good taste in company. It begged the question of how she got so high in the ranks of the Eight Eyes without the Spider God knowing.

"You have done wonderfully for me, Dolores," a little voice whispered in the businesswoman's ear. "Your talents have proven themselves remarkable. We could really use someone like you in our organization if you can continue to prove yourself."

"What do you need me to do?" Arsen asked as she rubbed her potbelly.

"Just need you to deliver some explosives to Essen to our clueless fools."

Arsen figured that Essen was someplace in Europa, but the name just made her hungrier for some reason.

The woman knelt down and picked up the body to take back to the now-smoldering remnants of the factory. She wanted to cook it a bit more. Whatever happened during the war with that many-mawed horror may have turned her into a human-eating ghoul, but she wasn't a barbarian. Arsen had standards. An Angel's flesh would taste much better than those children and women from the factory. Plus, she didn't even have to pay $75 for her meal this time and stood to make far, far more if the promises the Oracle gave her turned out true.

"You will fit in nicely with the other eyes, Dolores, or should I call you Fifth? Welcome to the cult of the Spider God. As a kindness, I shall tell you my name. My name is Anansi. I look forward to working with you more. Allow me to explain what it means to be my Fifth Eye."

Arsen barely heard what the Oracle said next — so engrossed in preparing her special little barbeque among the flames and ashe. There is something about the West cannibalizing itself without access to its empires. During her onboarding, she experienced a short headache and then was very much aware that now she had a third eye that saw reality so clearly. It would grant her the ability to see through illusions, but Anansi could also see through it at will. At the price of her privacy came the ability to rule the world. That assumed that a spider could stomach a bit of gourmet ghoulish behavior.

---

Citations:

1. History.com Editors. "Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire." History.com. Original December 2, 2009; Updated: July 9, 2024. <https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/triangle-shirtwaist-fire>
2. Brooks, Ashlyn. Edited by Natasha Cornelius. "What is dead peasant insurance?" Bankrate.com. October 30, 2024. <https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/life-insurance/dead-peasant/#what-is-corporate-owned-life-insurance>

 

[LoreleiFlowers]

Bombs Away arc so far:

• Part 1: Karl von Ropen plots with other members of the Global North Alliance on a bombing of Jugoslavja and retaking North Germania from the Russy Federation and Germanian United Front. Ramona Mercer bombs the US Embassy, and Ropen barely activates his shield just in time.
• Part 2: While the League of Nations rages at the Global North Alliance's propaganda campaign to justify bombing Jugoslavja, the news of the bombing breaks.
• Part 3: A few weeks before the bombing in München, Anansi the Spider God is the shadow leader of Eight Eyes, an intelligence agency behind countless bombings, false flag operations, and regime chants. After having her kill a mole in his organization, he recruits the cannibal business woman Dolores Arsen to be his Fifth Eye and deliver bombs to Essen.

---

City of Londonium, Allied Kingdom - September 1954
One Week before the Explosion at the US Embassy in München

Fang Shiyu and his team had just finished a mission in Joseon, investigating the killing of thousands of student demonstrators. (1) Some of the former Silver Legion had been involved since the Ablish had seized all the American naval assets and recruited key personnel from the former fascist superpower. That case paled in comparison to bigger massacres by the Global North Alliance's proxy army in the Bodo League massacre, but MI12 was handling that one.

Captain Sonnetto and Captain Weiss had given Agent Fang several options for his next mission. First, Sonnetto had offered him a few Viet Bam cases, but he declined in consideration of his team. The Francois and American forces had taken Laigon in southern Viet Bam. Not only had they drowned the city in rape, (2) but they even wheeled out a guillotine to chop off the heads of anyone Vietbamese dissidents. (3) (4) His XO Jing-wei did not want to risk members of the team getting falsely arrested and made an example of the arbitrary justice system set up by the puppet government the GNA set up. Their analyst Fred Ho had warned the team about the risk of just being killed by the Francois in an Operation Gladio-style false flag attack to obstruct MI15's investigations and pin the blame on the Vietbamese seeking liberation from imperial rule yet again.

The second option Sonnetto gave him involved Civilian Air Transport. The company was suspected of being a front for Eight Eyes and behind the bombing of merchant ships in Nusantara. However, there was nothing to investigate there. The Nusantraran government had already captured the pilots who had conducted the murderous bombings. MI15 would just be glorified bodyguards as negotiations in the League of Nations between governments decided the pilots' fate. His team was geared for investigations in non-mage majority environments. It was a waste of their talents to just watch over prisoners.

Captain Mary Sue would have been a better fit given she had been 'promoted' to 'bodyguard' for very important prisoners going to the Hague. Apparently, she was guarding some politician named Rudolph Himmler, whom Tanya von Weiss had arrested. Mary Sue still had important jobs from time to time that utilized her skills. For example, Senior Officer Armstrong had sent Captain Sue on a one-mage mission to catch all the cats air-dropped into the Russy Federation by the GNA. No other mage had so much experience catching lost pets than that Legadonian Mandate.

While Operation Cat Drop had been supposedly getting rid of a rat infestation in the few remaining colonies of the Albish Empire, Operation Acoustic Kitty involved putting secret magical recording devices in the cats and recording the secret conversations of the communists. It was too diabolic. Everyone knew General Secretary Ivan Smirnov, and the Politburo couldn't resist adorable kittens. The leader had a famous fondness for cats.

Due to these bundles of cuteness, the GNA discovered how reluctant the Russy Federation was to use Arcanium bombs. That was why the GNA could be so aggressive in this game of chicken with weapons of magical destruction. The Federation may not want to wipe out a bunch of innocent workers in GNA countries, but that didn't stop them from getting directly involved in the Germania Civil War.

The last option Sonnetto gave Fang involved the accusations of ethnic cleansing in Jugoslavja. Agent Masquerade had been investigating the situation for over a year. It was one of the few missions he could go on since he was a wanted man in GNA countries for betraying the Albish Secret Service a few years back. He had only so far uncovered evidence of 3,000 murdered Legalists, which was indeed a serious crime, but this was a far cry from the 100,000 claimed by the GNA, who was ramping up for large-scale military intervention sometime in the imminent future. (5) (6) His findings called into serious question GNA's narrative of events for those in Western Europa who read League of Nations' accounts of atrocities. While intervention was necessary by League guidelines, carpet bombing Jugoslavja was like trying to prevent murders in a town by blowing up the entire town, which apparently was the standard modus operandi. All the GNA had to do was point at a crime against humanity committed by one group, and then it became a blank check to intervene and restructure a country, including breaking several international laws in the process.

Since Masquerade was pretty much done with his report and Interpol was pulling out before any military intervention happened, Fang had to turn down Sonnetto's last suggestion. That left only Tanya von Weiss' one. He had to agree it would be a good mission for his team — with the notable exception of him. Honestly, he wanted to be nearly anywhere else but where this mission had sent his team in MI15. Around him were the sounds of honking cars, the bells of the state-run Protester Church, someone pulling a wagon and calling for people to bring out their dead, and locals greeting each other with friendly insults.

"Welcome to the City of Londonium," Fred Ho announced with faux glee like he was a tour guide as they walked out of the train station. "You will never find a more vile den of thieves or dense web of secrets on the planet."

"Or the galaxy," Jing-wei muttered.

"I am actually kind of interested to get to work here," a third teammate announced. "Never been to Londonium. Will we get to see Duckingham Palace?"

Her name was Alana Stewart, an American from New Amsterdam who had been shuffled into MI15. She may have had elven ears, but Alana was no Angel. Another mage did an irreversible forced mutation in order to show solidarity with anti-imperialism. Since being misidentified as an Angel was problematic, the woman used that new nifty ear-concealing spell that real Angels used not to get murdered on sight in the West these days.

Alana Stewart by Naze​

"We are here to work," Fang reminded the newest teammate. "And if we get this done quickly, we can help Captain Tanya and Captain Sonnetto."

"But that is a warzone," Fred panicked. "The Times said that arcanium bombs might get dropped."

"I know. The battle will be intense."

Jing-wei facepalmed. "For like a half a second before the magical radiation kills us or mutates us into an unthinking grey goo. Agent Fang, I know you are in charge because Sonnetto said so, but focus on hitting the books, not punching Brown Shirts."

The martial artist looked for support from Agent Stewart, but her expression made it clear that she agreed with the others. Why couldn't he have been on Tanya's team? That woman might pretend to like boring stuff like chasing after tax evasion, but he knew deep down that battlemaniac belonged in one place — facing impossible odds on a battlefield that pushed her beyond her limits.

"Well, I am in charge, so I am saying we are going to focus on getting this done quickly," Fang declared in a huff. "We will meet with the informant, and then we will get out of here."

He then motioned to get a move on.

Stewart kept looking around at the strange new city for her while Ho explained how Londonium worked.

"The City of Londonium actually is a city within a city."

"Huh?"

"There are two Londoniums," Agent Ho stated, prideful in his research work. "The one we are in now is the privately owned and run part of the city. Private police, too."

Stewart grimaced, but Ho kept going.

"This city has the most banks in the world. Most of the money is handled in complete secrecy. Meetings behind closed doors are filled with coded language and use of irony that only strata of wealth managers know. No paper trails about where the money came from. According to my sources, 99% of the clients of the big private banks here are involved in tax evasion."

"Tax evasion, at the very least," Stewart commented dryly. "Money for sex trafficking, funding terrorist organizations, and the plundering of entire nations goes through here. Ugh, this is bringing back too many memories of the Silver Legion."

"Sorry, but you should know about how this place works if we ever come back here or go to the Lahamas to continue the investigations."

"That assumes the Commonwealth allows MI15 to come back at all," Jing-wei added with a yawn. "All signs are that the GNA is going to leave the League of Nations."

"They say that all the time," Ho countered. "Never do. The Allied Kingdom would have to be insane to leave the League. They would be out of the international monetary fund and all the other institutions the League offers."

"I don't know about that," Stewart said as she stopped to look at something. "What is happening in Germania and Jugoslavja is big. I think they are really going to do it this time."

Fang also paused to see what had caught her attention. It was a store with a sign on the window that said, "Die on your terms! Only $75 sterling! Free lottery ticket for your family or friends. Give them a chance at paradise on earth while you have pie in the sky [song]."

Another sign said, "Don't worry about paperwork. We will handle it for you."

There was a picture of a beggar getting warm clothes and a house in heaven while cash rained down on the woman's family below.

The Zhangzi monk clutched his gut. "Agent Ho, what am I looking at?"

"Assisted dying," Agent Ho explained. "After the Albish Empire fell apart, Albion could no longer support its economy in the old-fashioned colonial way, so it deindustrialized and financialized with these banks. That meant fewer jobs as they got sent overseas to cheaper countries, but also a shift to real estate speculation, resulting in a rapid rise in housing prices and homelessness. Since AK banned penal slavery, the bankers decided providing subsidized assist dying services was the 'more humane' solution."

"Well, they can always join the Albish Legion," Jing-wei grumbled. "They will get a shiny helmet and a pair of kinky boots [song]. With all the Silver Legion territory and military assets, there has to be a lot of jobs there."

"I doubt it," Agent Stewart countered. "A lot of what they are doing is using proxies. It is really hard to justify war plundering if your family comes back in a casket. They need the wars out of mind, and dead bodies remind people of that."

"Still, if the Albion was picking up our imperial holdings, wouldn't that reverse the degradation of the workers here?" Agent Stewart inquired. "Where is the money going if not here?"

"They call them secret jurisdictions," Agent Ho explained with a finger pointed in the air like he was a professor. "Essentially, the Commonwealth contains several tax havens that are not subject to oversight by the Albish citizens. Right now, the Lahamas is the place of choice. It is a beautiful tourist destination, too. All the wealth siphoned out of Afrika and Asia gets redirected to these offshore locations even if the banks are here in Londonium. That is why Afika countries can simultaneously be under crippling debt but can produce way more wealth that doesn't go towards that debt." (7)

Stewart frowned. "But the industry in the Allied Kingdom?"

"Well, there's no point in re-industrializing once you've already found cheaper labor in sweatshop countries. If they need more sweatshops, they will just militarily intervene in another country."

"Like Jugoslavja," Jing-wei pointed out.

Fang wanted to punch someone really badly but took a deep breath and subdued the unhealthy emotion. He increased his pace, hoping to avoid another thing that would set him off. The mission was just to talk to their contact.

If only the Weaver of Fate had been so kind to him, but alas, a Bharati beggar had called out to the frustrated martial artist.

"Hey, Mister," a Bharati beggar on the street called to Fang. "Spare a few sterlings for a poor man. The winter will be here sooner than you know."

Fang didn't have any money aside from the allowance he needed for necessities, so he turned to Jing-wei, who carried some funds for gift shopping. She put one hand up her sleeve to retrieve some cash stowed there but then stopped.

"Sorry, I don't have any."

She just floated away while making sure to keep her gaze forward. The martial artist caught up to her and glanced at the lavender imp with a bit of judgment.

"What? Would you give money to a person who would just use it to off themselves?"

Fang couldn't respond to that. He doubted a single sage ever had to deal with a situation like that.

While his mind was running from Jing-wei's question, the man accidentally bumped into a man in a tophat.

"Oi, watch where you are going, savage!" the man shouted at him.

"Sorry, sir. I meant no harm." Fang's life could literally be ruined as a mage if the man who likely could afford expensive lawyers accused him of assaulting him. While MI15 would back him up, it was instinctual at this point to be in countries like the Allied Kingdom.

The man glanced at the martial artist's robes. "What are you? A f#%$ot? Get away from me." With that, he harumpfed and stormed off. The guy was definitely not in a good mood.

Fang was left wondering what just happened. "What did he call me?"

Agent Ho, ever the scholar, offered his over-researched answer. "Literally, a bundle of sticks. It is a derogatory term for homosexuals. There are multiple explanations for how the term caught on, but one is that Europeans, particularly Prussens, would burn homosexuals at the stake about two centuries ago."

"In translation, that jerked called you something that should set aflame," Jing-wei commented dryly.

I guess that is why the Albish refer to cigarettes that way.

Given what the fascists in Germania were saying about Uranists like Tanya, Fang was worried about the practice of killing them with fire again. Uranism was the currently popular term in Germania to refer to homosexuality, referencing the Rumelian goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite (Uranus). Many Suffragists, Scientific Humanitarians, and socialists backed the efforts of Uranists to repeal Paragraph 175 in Germania.

Agent Stewart lifted a finger as if wanting to correct something but decided to keep it to herself.

"We are almost there," Fred Ho commented, trying and failing to lighten the mood. "We just have to negotiate with the VIP and we can get onto the next mission."

Fang gritted his teeth.

It was so rare for him to feel anger like this. Where were the bad guys he could punch? The enemy was always warlords and other martial artists…. When did the enemy become people who sat behind desks all day like his father? You couldn't punch them. They wore glasses and didn't know the first thing about fighting. It wasn't honorable. It wasn't like the ancient tales.

"How does a place become like this, Agent Ho?" he asked.

The other man in their team jogged to keep up with the mages. "Short answer: Trusts."

"What is the long answer?"

"Well, most wealth is in the land and everything built on it. It was only taxed when a person died. However, the Albish aristocrats decided to use a loophole, assigning their land to a trust managed by a younger relative who would outlive them. By doing this, they could both benefit from their wealth while not having to pay estate taxes upon their death.

"Since these trusts were sealed by swearing before the Goddess of Victory, Nike," Ho continued, gesturing to a statue that looked way too much like Tanya. "They were adjudicated in the ecclesiastical court of the Albish Protestor Church, which is filled with aristocrats and outside the democratic process."

"Wasn't the Protestor movement all about stopping corruption of the church?" Jing-wei inquired. "That is why they are called Protestors."

"Yes, but King James VIII wanted to get out of thumb of the Universalists and get a divorce," Ho answered with a flourish of his wrist. "So he co-opted the movement, had the King Henry Holy Book written in a specific way to solidify his divine right to rule over the Ildoan clerics, and then used Albish Protestors to crack down on anyone not loyal to the crown. Since the Eirish generally had no love for the Albish monarch, given they were and still are brutally oppressed, Eirland stayed mostly Universalist."

Agent Stewart raised her hand like she was still in a classroom, and Professor Agent Ho called on her.

"Um, my ancestors were Protestors, but the Albish persecuted them, too. That was why they fled to the Americas."

"Good point, Agent," the only non-mage complimented. "Yes, prisoners, persecuted religious minorities, and landed gentry went to the Albish colonies in the Americas. Bringing us back to these trusts has to do with the Albish colonial system. While Ispagnia excessively taxed their colonies, the Albish typically gave their aristocrats a tax haven in their colonies, which encouraged the immigration of these wealthy elites. That was a big reason why these merchants and landed gentry revolted when they saw their taxes increase in North America. They did not take kindly to having their bottom lines messed with by the crown overseas.

"The trust system lives on today under the watchful eyes of the wealth managers here in the Holy See of Capitalism that is Londonium and hidden from the public's oversight in secret jurisdictions in the tax havens in the Commonwealth."

With the lecture finished, they arrived at their destination — 185 Baker Street, Lloyds Bank.

The teller sneered at Agent Fang as he walked up to the Albishman. Did he just smell like a sterlingless beggar or something?

"How can I help you, sir?" the teller inquired.

"We are to collect some papers from Mrs. Paradise," he replied, recalling the secret passwords. "She just flew in from Panama."

The teller adjusted his stance, regarding Fang and his team for several moments. Then, the man pulled out a box covered in black velvet from a secret compartment. "Be careful of being too curious."

Fang knew to wait to take the offered box. He had to follow the instructions Senior Officer Elya Müller had given him, or the meeting would fall through. He took a deep breath and gave the last password. "Well, even if all hell breaks loose, Pandora still found hope, didn't she?"

The teller reduced his sneer a few degrees and opened the box's false bottom to provide the key. "Well, said, sir. Mrs. Paradise has been waiting for you. Would you like us to bring some tea?"

"Yes, do you have some jasmine?" Agent Jing-wei piped up as she snatched the key and then floated off to the meeting room.

"A pop for me, if it isn't a bother," Agent Stewart added.

"Coffee for me too, black," Agent Ho followed up.

The teller raised an eyebrow at the martial artists, who felt a bit embarrassed on behalf of his team.

"And for you, sir?"

"Green tea or water would be wonderful. Thank you."

"Anything you want, it is our pleasure to serve clients of the bank."

The meaning of the words didn't reach the teller's expression.

Only Fred Ho had any undercover work, but the rest of the team was absolutely hopeless in that regard.

The meeting room had a mahogany table surrounded by black leather office desks. Sitting on the far end of the table was a woman reading Zeitgeist magazine while munching on something that looked like baby back ribs. Countless things stood out about the woman, but what really got Fang's attention was her pointy teeth that made her look like a Nimerigar — a mythical man-eating creature from Shoshone folklore. According to Senior Officer Müller, the woman was only known by the codename 'Fifth' and was an undercover Angel who had infiltrated Eight Eyes, which served as GNA's intelligence apparatus. The Angels were putting a lot of trust in MI15 to let them contact their agent.

The Fifth glanced at Fang and his team. Her eyes lingered on Agent Stewart, particularly the novice Interpol Officer's ears, which were under illusion. The Fifth parted the hair on her forehead, and then, in a flash, she had a revolver pointed at Agent Stewart's noggin.

"What is the big idea?" the Fifth shouted, cocking her gun. "You thought you could fool me, huh?"

Go figure that a real Angel can tell when a fake Angel is around, even through illusion spells.

"No, no, she is on your side," Fang clamored, trying to de-escalate the situation. "She's fake but here to help you in the operation."

The Fifth stared at each member of the martial artist's team one at a time. Sweat slicked their necks as one wrong move could end when Agent Stewart died.

Having an Angel ready to kill my team on a mission to Albion if we make one wrong move is giving me serious deja vu.

The teller came into the room and deposited the drinks in front of each Agent's chair, seemingly oblivious to the standoff.

"Would you like any sugar or honey, sir?" he asked Fang.

The Zhangzi man glanced at the Fifth and then back to the teller, then back to the Fifth. With a nod of his head, Fang indicated he wanted the honey, which the teller placed on the table in a sterling pitcher next to the fine Zhangzi teacup.

Once the door shut behind the teller, the armed agent pulled up her weapon. Everyone had a sigh of relief on his team.

"Well, well, well, isn't that convenient," the Fifth commented. "You will do nicely."

She was referring to Alana Stewart, but what for was beyond Fang.

"Um, your New Amsterdam accent is compelling," the American agent noted aloud. "You sound native."

"Of course she does," Agent Ho pointed out. "She is probably a pro."

That made sense. Many Angels had backgrounds as spies. While Müller said the Fifth was an Albish woman, the New Amsterdam accent was likely part of the disguise.

The Fifth shrugged. "I don't know if I am a pro at talking like this."

She sat down and got back to her meal.

Jing-wei was staring at the Fifth intently, pissing off the feasting woman.

"What are you looking at?"

"Ugh, you have an illusion on your forehead."

The Fifth froze and then chewed on how to respond. "It is a wart. Don't want people to see it."

Jing-wei was about to retort, but Fang stopped her. Still, something about the Fifth made him feel like he was in danger. He liked that feeling, which made her more interesting to him. After they finished their drinks, they got down to sterling tacks.

"We were told we should help you with whatever you need for your operation," the martial artist explained, enjoying the warmth the tea gave him. "We have prepared a passport and transport to Essen for you."

The woman nodded. "Excellent. I do need help with a few things."

"Just name them, Miss."

"First, I need help getting my manager out of custody in Ispagnia. I just can't access my funds without him."

Fang turned to Jing-wei, who nodded.

"We can probably do that. Ispagnia's government is fully cooperative with us."

The Fifth whistled. "You guys must be good if you got a bunch of Brotskyists to work with you."

"Uh…, it isn't that much trouble," Fred Ho pointed out, having already down his coffee. "They have been working with us ever since Phranco got overthrown."

The Angel shook her head in disbelief. "Okay, my second demand is that I need help getting some sensitive luggage to Essen. I promise you that it won't be getting through customs without pulling some strings."

"We can probably help you do that," Fang commented. He figured it was sensitive files that the woman was secreting out of Londonium. "Any other ways we can assist?"

"Yeah," the Fifth replied before taking a meaty bite from her meal and licking the sauce off her fingers. Then, she pointed at Agent Stewart. "I want her to handle this luggage for me. I need her to deliver it to someone in Essen."

"Who is that, Miss Fifth?" the newest MI15 Interpol Officer inquired.

The Angel paused for a moment. She muttered under her breath. Fang knew that the Angels communicated with each other through their unique mutations. It was why the Fifth probably could tell Stewart was fake, he figured.

Finally, the Fifth answered him. "Yeah, her name is Ra…ugh…Ramona Mercer."

Fang knew who Mercer was, and if she was involved, then something huge was going down.

The Fifth flipped closed a manilla folder that was in front of her and full of presumably documents that implicated countless oligarchs in international crime.

"Oh, and one more thing: Don't tell anyone about my plans or me. Operational security."

She gave a toothy smile, and his teammates simultaneously paled like they saw a demon.

---

Citations:

1. "25 Years Ago: The Kwangju Massacre in South Korea." <https://www.democracynow.org/2005/5/18/25_years_ago_the_kwangju_massacre>
2. "The Politics of Rape in Vietnam." <https://www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC57scans/57.Vietnam.ThePoliticsRapeVietnam.pdf>
3. "When heads rolled in Vietnam" <https://huongduongtxd.com/theguillotine.pdf>
4. "The Vietnam War and the Case for Painful History" <https://www.theatlantic.com/membership/archive/2017/11/the-vietnam-war-and-the-case-for-painful-history/546068/>
5. "Serb killings 'exaggerated' by west" <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/aug/18/balkans3?CMP=share_btn_url>
6. "The Rational Destruction of Yugoslavia." <https://www.michael-parenti.org/article-the-rational-destruction-of-yugoslavia>
7. "Elites Loot Africa While Foreign Debt Mounts" <https://archive-yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/elites-loot-africa-while-foreign-debt-mounts>

A link to a documentary that was a major source of info for this chapter about London and offshoring.

 

[LoreleiFlowers]

Bombs Away arc so far:

• Part 1: Karl von Ropen plots with other members of the Global North Alliance on a bombing of Jugoslavja and retaking North Germania from the Russy Federation and Germanian United Front. Ramona Mercer bombs the US Embassy, and Ropen barely activates his shield just in time.
• Part 2: While the League of Nations rages at the Global North Alliance's propaganda campaign to justify bombing Jugoslavja, the news of the bombing breaks.
• Part 3: A few weeks before the bombing in München, Anansi the Spider God is the shadow leader of Eight Eyes, an intelligence agency behind countless bombings, false flag operations, and regime chants. After having her kill a mole in his organization, he recruits the cannibal business woman Dolores Arsen to be his Fifth Eye and deliver bombs to Essen.
• Part 4: Fang Shiyu's team misidentifies Dolores Arsen as Tanechka's mole in Global North Alliance going by the codename "The Fifth Eye". Simultaneously, Dolores Arsen is under the misunderstanding that Fang Shiyu and the others are spies on the GNA's payroll.

---

The Train from Hamburg to Essen - September 1954
Three days before the US Embassy in München gets bombed

Dolores "The Fifth Eye" Arsen picked at her teeth while the intelligence officers continued to eat their meals because they lacked initiative. From what she gathered, they were undercover as Interpol officers. It was useful, given that Interpol could operate in both North and South Germania.

"So, how did you like Hamburg?" Agent Ho inquired, putting down his slice of flammkuchen.

The businesswoman grinned. "Delicious."

"Yeah…my favorite restaurant was still open, but I thought you would appreciate the hospitals and architecture. Hamburg is one of the most modern and beautiful cities in the world."

Arsen tolerated Agent Ho. The man knew stuff but assumed everyone cared about the same things he did.

"Was there anything other than the food that you liked?" he asked with force neutrality in his tone.

"The paintings. That one about the apothecary caught my attention. What do you know about it?"

"Oh, yes, that was depicting medicinal cannibalism," Agent Ho began, switching into narration mode. "In Europa, the aristocrats would pay handsomely for mummies and various human body parts to be used in what was essentially fads for curing diseases, granting good health, and extending one's life. (1) In Germania, people would pay executioners for a pint of blood."

"Do they still do that?" she wondered aloud with excitement entering her voice.

"Of course not," he quickly replied. "We live in a time of science. Dark pacts and mummy cures are utter nonsense. The Albish phased out the practice for the most part in the 18th century."

It was disappointing to hear that. Thankfully, the mortician in Hamburg was relatively cooperative when she saw the number of zeros on her offer price, but she hoped Ho was wrong and that the executioners could be paid off. Freshness was key to preserving flavor. Dolores Arsen had many flaws, but she did like to think she was a gourmet.

"I don't know," Arsen replied. "I think there is more to those stories of creatures from the great beyond, and we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss them. Something wanted people to start feasting. I am sure of it."

Arsen gave a dark chuckle that unsettled everyone in the private cart.

"You want to hear a secret?" the endlessly hungry member of Eight Eyes inquired of the Agents, who looked worriedly at each other.

"Sure," Alani Stewart stated for the group.

"Legends speak of a city lost deep under the waves called Atlantis, where the Fountain of Eternal Youth lies. Rockefella was so set upon finding it to prevent his death from old age that he abandoned his businesses to his children while he rode the high seas. During one voyage, a creature came to him in his sleep, sensing his powerful mana and strong desire not to pass on."

Arsren put her hand on Agent Stewart's face and leaned in to pretend to whisper.

"And the creature spoke to the man in a language alien yet horrifically familiar, 'Give yourself to me, my love and everything you desire will be yours.'"

The orange-haired mage looked deep into Arsen's eyes — fully entranced and full of fear.

"The man — far from his empire and riches — completely held in the clutches of everything he desires said—"

"Yes," Stewart finished for the businesswoman.

"Yes. Exactly that." Arsen pulled her hand back, ending whatever eldritch magic had expressed itself in a charm.

The agent blinked as her senses seemed to return to her.

"What happened next?" Agent Fang questioned while giving his subordinate a concerned look.

"The next day, the door to his chambers opened, but what walked out was no longer a man but a creature more octopus than human. It had a cranium of copper, and its eight massive tentacles slithered ethereally to grab onto everything and anyone. Anything trapped in its clutches became possessed — puppets he could bend to its bidding."

Artist Depiction of Rockafella by Udo J Keppler​

"How do you know this?" Jing-wei questioned with suspicion.

"Let's just say someone who was there passed the story to me."

Knowing the spider god has its perks.

"Did Rockafella find the lost city?" Stewart followed up with fear.

"He knows where it is, but he can't get inside without capturing the goddess of the sea. Unfortunately, how does one catch Neptune when, like water, she always slips out of your grip?"

Fang blinked. "You don't mean—"

"This is a bunch of nonsense," Agent Ho announced. "There is no such thing as eldritch horrors."

"I don't know," Jing-wei countered. "I saw in the news that scientists now believe in a multiverse. Maybe there is a universe where such creatures exist, and they have pieced the viel. How can you be certain of anything with uncertainty being a principle of the universe."

"That isn't what the physicists and arcanists mean," he grumbled as the imp-like Zhangzi woman floated out of her wheelchair to pour herself another cup of hot cocoa, which was heated in a thermos with one of her magical devices.

"You all can disbelieve me at your own peril," Dolores Arsen commented blithely.

"Wow, spooky," Jing-wei joked, earning a chuckle from Agent Ho.

"Am I funny to you?" Arsen asked flatly, all humor leaving her face suddenly. "Am I a clown to you?"

"Uhhh…"

"Come on. Do I amuse you?"

"Yes…no?"

"Do you know what I have done to people?" the cannibal pressed.

"I meant no offense."

"You better not try me again. You can be replaced. Anyone can be replaced. Capice?"

"Capice…?" Jing-wei asked confused.

"The Fifth Eye means 'do you understand?'" Agent Stewart clarified, coming to Arsen's defense readily. Charms are so useful.

"Then why did she use a word we wouldn't understand."

"It is not my fault you don't know what words mean," Arsen stated in frustration.

"Everything about you is so sketchy," Jing-wei critiqued. The investigator then addressed her teammates in some language the businesswoman didn't know. Jing-wei said something about 'zhíjué'."

Arsen took a deep breath, trying to calm down. She imagined having a delicious Beruner, and she didn't mean the jelly donut. It helped keep her temper in check. She was getting hangry more often these days, even after eating so much regular food. It just wasn't the same as a fresh mage. The former Fifth Eye really spoiled the eldricht horror, and Arsen could feel its influence more acutely now in its ever-greater demands.

"Sorry, this mission has gotten me rather on edge," the businesswoman lied, fetching something from her pack. "Perhaps this will help put your worries at ease."

She tossed the folder of documents Anansi had her get from Llyod Bank. Jing-wei and Fred Ho opened it and poured over its contents while Arsen watched them run in mental circles, trying to figure out what this tangled web of information meant.

"There are Eight Eye and Global North Alliance top secret documents in here, guy," the imp declared to the others, getting their attention. They started diving up things.

"Does anyone know who James Sams or Unit 731 are?" Agent Fang asked.

Jing-wei hissed and whispered something to him in that foreign language, causing the martial artist to go pale.

"I have a document about Richard Diamond going to the Dominion in 1951 with research samples from his Kansas and Dzayerian Biolabs," Agent Ho stated in full analytical mode. "Something about the Butterfly of Kansas and the one that could kill fifty million. Any ideas what this could mean?"

"It seems to code words," Jing-wei pointed out as she flipped through a few more documents. "It could mean some kind of new super weapon. I know Mary Canary was called 'butterfly', but she is from Tejas. Was there some kind of weapon testing in Kansas that could have killed fifty million? I think we would have heard about something that big."

"Unless the information was suppressed."

"True, but without more information, we can't know if there is a link or a coincidence,"

"This record indicates James Sams is currently stationed on a research naval vessel off the shore of Joseon," Alani Stewart offered. "There is even a request for additional funding for a humanitarian mission to northern Joseon."

"Why would the Commonwealth and Americans do a humanitarian mission now all of a sudden? I don't buy it."

"They could be proving their sincerity to de-escalate the conflict."

"You don't bomb people and shoot civilians on sight and then turn around and give people blanks, food, and medicine in the heart of enemy territory."

"I know this isn't related, but there are documents about both Rockafella and Karl von Ropen negotiating with Francois' Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure [DGSE] to target some unnamed person in Germania.."

"Why would a proud Germanian like Ropen ask Francois to do a hit job when he has plenty of professional military personnel in München? Again, it doesn't make sense."

"Perhaps he doesn't trust his own military? I don't know. I am not familiar enough with Germanian politics."

"I found a receipt for a shipment of some Hamburgers. Wait, isn't this the address for the mortician we visited a few days ago? Is this how DGSE will get rid of the bodies?"

Arsen blinked. "Give me that!" she demanded, snatching that out of Agent Ho's hands. "It is related to something else and doesn't belong with that file."

The four intelligence officers quickly forgot about her mistake because they were all too focused on the revelations in the other documents.

The Fifth hadn't really looked through the documents yet, but Anansi told her to hand them over to them if they ever got suspicious of her really being in Eight Eyes. This intel would prove crucial for these spies' 'investigation' into the crimes of Old Money, who Arsen wanted to oust from power.

Stand aside, Rudolph Himmler. Women are here to prove that we can do everything that you would have done but better.

She had already scouted a few blondes to take up leadership positions in the Francois Republic, Ildoa, and Germania. Silver Legionism 2.0, now with a feminine face. It has all the reactionary politics Europeans loved, but nothing like fascism because women were in charge. She could see the wonderful matriarchy take over the globe already. The old men won't know what hit them.

"Hey, Mrs. Fifth," Jing-wei called out, waking Arsen from her fantasy. "What is this message about the itinerary on Francois President Billards' yacht? Do you think there is a hit out on him?"

Arsen simply shrugged. She knew the truth, but it was better not to leak anything related to her own plans. She hoped Billards liked the Albish cannel, for he was about to get very familiar with it.

"It could be the Dzayerians getting revenge for the Arcanium bomb testing," Agent Fang commented, keeping his eyes on Arsen.

"Or anything that happened during the revolution," Agent Ho added. "Guerrilla tactics and the People's War are common among independence movements. You could delegitimize practically every revolution in world history by saying they are breaking laws meant for professional soldiers. If your country gets occupied by a foreign army and you are a civilian who retaliates, does that mean all civilians become fair game?"

"It definitely makes litigating war crimes between irregulars and professional soldiers far harder," Jing-wei grumbled from her wheelchair as she skimmed a stack of documents. "As much as I hate to admit it, posing as civilians is a war crime for a reason because it lets imperialists justify shooting upon civilians."

"But the No Gun Ri massacre is a clear case because those were clearly refugees," Agent Ho argued. "The GNA had ordered their airforce and Calvary units to indiscriminately shoot any Joseon wearing white due to fear of anti-imperialists who had come from the north hiding among civilians; (1) however, the fact that the GNA is stonewalling and denying this happened points towards guilt. By the time the Joseon-GNA war finally ends, it will be too late."

"If they don't stonewall for decades," Alani Stewart added morosely. "Got to keep that good guy facade up. While the Federation and their proxies are not guiltless, the GNA is far from the liberators they pretend to be."

"There is something here related to Viet Bam called Project Phoenix," Jing-wei said, practically lighting up in mana and concern. "This document shows the Commonwealth and Americans are training civilian assassins to infiltrate independence movements and kill the leadership of various cadres. They were so fed up with Tanechka and Tao's People's War tactics and Brotsky's Insurgency Process that they decided to wield the same tactics against their enemies."

"But on a much larger budget," the orange-haired baseball fan Stewart commented mirthlessly. "This will disrupt everything they plan to do. Are the Francois involved?"

"Just Unified States and New Holland. Nope, correction, the Francois are providing 'enhanced interrogation' training, utilizing the knowledge that they had acquired during the suppression of the Dzayerian Revolution."

"Agent Ho, what do you think Project Phoenix's effectiveness will be?" the group's leader asked, trying to keep his cool.

"This will be devastating," he replied morosely. "Revolutions like this depend on recruiting people, developing cadres, and training people in Marksist-Levinism, which stresses centralized leadership of experts during the revolution. Take out those who know their philosophy and how to train people in combat, and a revolution will fall apart. Even if the people of Viet Bam ultimately win, their leaders will become paranoid, and it will sow great distrust for decades."

Wasn't it wonderful? Dolores Arsen thought. If we win, then Viet Bam will become open to wealth generation and extraction. If we lose, they will become a propaganda piece of how evil communism is due to the blatant militarism and frequent purges. I can't wait to expand this program globally.

As for the whole philosophy thing, it would probably sound odd to most Americans, but once you got into the Eight Eyes, you knew that discipline was the most dangerous. People fought and died for philosophy throughout the ages. For example, Thomas Payne's Common Sense was the most popular work during the American Revolution. It arguably won the war for the merchants and landed gentry by convincing the peasantry and workers to keep fighting. Edward Pellamy's Looking Backward was the 2nd most popular book in America by the end of the 19th century, right after Uncle Pom's Cabin. Looking Backward was such an impactful socialist work in the Unified States that it became the basis for many parts of FDH's New Deal.

Obviously, a dangerous book like Looking Backward wasn't taught in schools. Couldn't have another major reform like the New Deal happening. Uncle Pom's Cabin was fine. It did not challenge capitalism, just slavery. By treating slavery as a problem of a past separate from the exploitation of labor, it cognitively obfuscated the incentive structure that made slavery occur in the first place. In fact, the Eight Eyes had a whole content farm called the Congress for Culture Freedom (CCF) whose whole purpose was to socially engineer society into something more friendly to businesses in the Global North Alliance. (2)

Fang and his team knew what they needed to know about such things just like as they didn't need to know how Arsen made her first million. It was her first job for Eight Eyes. All she needed to do was send a small bottle of liquor to a high-ranking official in an Asian country that went boom when he opened it. Pop went the bottle, dead was the official, and lush was Arsen's bank account.

Given the Agent's demographics, they might not appreciate the story of her exploits.

"Thanks for sharing all of this with us, Fifth," Alani Stewart said with an apologetic expression. "Sorry, we doubted you."

The charm kept Stewart sympathetic to Arsen until the mana from the spell was expelled from the mind, Arsen attacked Stewart, or the businesswoman placed the charm on someone else. It was a gift of the jibbering maws from beyond for her feeding it to Angel, who had been the Fifth before her.

"Don't mention it," Arsen replied with another toothy grin. "It is the least I can do for those helping me fight for a better world where those crusty old aristocrats are all gone."

The crowd responded to this comment in a mixed manner. Stewart and Ho were behind the sentiment, but Jing-wei and Fang seemed noticeably more annoyed.

"What?" the businesswoman pressed. "Do you really think those relics deserve the power they have? Ropen and Carnegie have all gone senile. I swear. Some of them are preaching that they have to give up all their wealth when they die! I don't believe it."

Agent Ho seemed lost at this point, but Agent Stewart was still with her, obviously.

"Yeah, they are just saying that so people don't tax or scrutinize them," the pseudo-Angel claimed proudly. Arsen could see the other woman's elf-like ears twitch excitedly behind the illusion with her magical third eye.

"Agent, watch what you say," Fang interjected authoritatively. "As the captain has instructed us, we must watch how our bias affects us. Just because someone is wealthy does not mean that they do not sincerely believe what they say. Likewise, being a beggar or coming from poverty will not guarantee that one will be virtuous in power."

The imp-like spy gave an annoyed look at her superior. "I will not tolerate any criticism of the Emperor."

"I wouldn't think of it, Agent Jing-wei," the man replied serenely. "I am just saying Enlightenment can be arrived at from many paths, each starting from a different origin. I come from wealth, embrace poverty by choice, and seek to improve myself without excessive attachment to worldly things. As for Zhangzi, I must confess that I lament my father being removed from his post. His expertise in bureaucracy kept Imperial Zhangzi running in his district, and the Tao loyalist who replaced him did not know what he was doing. A good leader does not need to demand loyalty but earns it instead."

"Cheers to that!" Jing-wei exclaimed, placated by her boss' answer.

"But insufficient loyalty was precisely what made Zhangzi a mess," Agent Ho pointed out dutifully. "Politicians plotted against each other constantly, and if this Phoenix program expands, can you blame Tao for erring on caution instead of effectiveness? Sabotage can be deadlier than incompetence, and it can be hard to know which is which under so much pressure from the GNA."

"Good point, Agent," Fang replied with a smile, showing appreciation to his subordinate. "You could say we need to find a balance between too much trust and too little. Too much trust opens us up to bad actors. Too little leads us to exclude skilled and talented individuals. Also, contained in an extreme lack of trust in others is excessive trust in oneself and vice versa. Wisdom begins with being critical in both others and oneself."

"Wisely said, commander," Jing-wei complimented, chewing on his words for a few seconds. "Honestly, I think everything would have been better if Joseon, Viet Bam, and the other former vassal states had supported Emperor Zhu against Chairman Tao's power grab. The Emperor would never have let the Westerners invade those under his protection or mismanaged agriculture like this. What do you think, Fifth Eye?"

"I think that instead of worrying about who you should trust, you should worry about who is trying to get into our train cart," Arsen answered in a loud whisper while pointing behind them. She had just noticed the sound-dampening spell in her magic eye.

They followed her finger to a door whose knob had quietly started to turn. The door was supposed to be locked, and no one was supposed to bother them in their private cart.

Those who had their weapons grabbed them.

The door opened rapidly, revealing a beautiful Russy woman with long crimson hair and eyes as green as emeralds. She wore a yellow top and brown pants. A green snake appeared around her right arm while her left hand wielded a silver rapier that crackled softly with green flames.

Dolores Arsen had no idea who this person was but couldn't help imagining the woman playing the femme fatale in a major blockbuster.

Glancing at the others, none of them seemed to know who this person was aside from their leader, Agent Fang.

"Borislava Kransi, why are you here?" the man asked.

"I could say the same, Mr. Fang," Kransi replied in a voice as smooth as velvet. "As you can see, I did not come for a pleasant chat."

She lifted her blade to announce her intent.

"But we are on your side," Fang responded, raising his dukes. He was ever-ready for a fight.

"You keep terrible company for someone claiming to be working with us, but this is an opportunity for you to prove yourself a person of proper proletarian piety," the fiery spellsword eloquently stated while locking her eyes on Agent Stewart and then pointing her silvery rapier at the woman. "Stand aside, and let me get my vengeance on this fake angel."

"And if I refuse?" the man asked, channeling acceleration spells. He wasn't about to let one of his teammates get killed.

Sparks came off of the rapier.

"Then—"

Fang didn't let Kransi finish her sentence. A split second later, Fang Shiyu tackled Kransi, defenestrating both of them through the train cart's window. The others were left to fend off the backup the Angel had brought with her.

"Well, this train ride got a whole lot more interesting," Arsen commented, tossing her luggage to the orange-haired spy from Brooklyn. "Alani, take the package and avoid any fire or explosion formulae like your life depends on it."

Then, the businesswoman leveled her gun at the first person who dared to pop his head through the doorway and sniped the unlucky man right through his mage barrier like it was made of paper. He was dead before he even knew he was hit.

---

Agent Fang Shiyu's mechanical arm grabbed the edge of the window and swung up to the top of the train cart as Borislava Kransi sailed through the air from the sheer amount of force behind his strike. The sounds of a revolver and screaming echoed below, making it clear he had made the right call. They had come to kill Agent Stewart for some reason, and Kransi was about to cast a spell with her rapier. She could have consumed the entire cabin in flames.

"Everyone, Authorization B — focus on keeping our guest alive," Fang messaged his allies as he scanned for threats.

"I see you are the punch first, talk later type," the voice of the Russy ace emanated from behind Fang.

He did a handstand into a kick, hitting but an illusion. The man dashed to avoid an attack.

"You are one to talk," he stated.

The real Kransi landed on the cart a few meters away from him. One of her arms clutched her side as her snake hissed at him. He knew she wouldn't be done in with just one full-powered blow. How she defended from ki-disruption, however, was a surprise to him.

"If I wanted to kill all of you, I wouldn't have bothered trying to talk to you when I saw who—"

A few more gunshots and screams cut off the redhead.

It was clear someone sent her a message, and her face twisted in anger.

"Tanechka should have known better than trust status quo defenders like you class traitors," Kransi raged. "Last chance to get out of my way so that I may kill that dares to pretend to be one of us Angels after what she did or face my blade."

Fang got back into his fighting stance. "Bring it."

"Don't say I didn't give you chances."

BOOM!

A green torrent of flames shot straight at him. Coating his natural arm in ki, he split the attack like a wedge. He ran at her, deflecting the rapier with his prosthetic and pressuring her back with his flurry of blows.

"You have gotten better than last we fought, Mr. Fang," she complimented. "Let's see if you can keep it up."

"Less talking, more fighting."

He missed this. Tanya kept him from combat after his injury, giving MI12 (Zhangzi's team) the riskier missions in Joseon. He was still in warzones, but his team wasn't suited for offensive magic at all.

Kransi obliged his request for punting diplomacy aside by hyperaccelerating into a barrage of rapier strikes. He hissed out in pain as one barely grazed him, but due to the heat coming off the blade, it seared him. Despite only having that single weapon, she functionally became a blazing hot porcupine of death. Now, he was on the back foot.

What can I do?

His eyes scanned for options.

Destroy the ground below her? No, civilians are potentially under us in the train cart.

Wait until she burns through all her mana? No, at this rate, we will be back to the Fifth's train cart, and Kransi can blow them all up.

There is only one option.

He dashed back rapidly, surprising Kransi for a microsecond before conjuring a tiny blade of mana.

He tossed it at her, and the redhead tried to block it with a barrier and her blade. It went through the barrier like a hot knife through butter, but the rapier deflected it.

"What the—"

Before Kransi could get a baring, he tossed a dozen more. Tanya called them mana shuriken. He called them Shallow Tail knives. They were his answer to his captain's worry that he couldn't deal with guns or powerful magical barriers. His master in Zhangzi had really put him through the wringer.

As for the Angel, she had not seen this magic before, and she had to focus on blocking rather than attacking as fast as possible. He had the initiative. As Tanya would say, if you were reacting, you were losing.

Suddenly, a rock broke the sound barrier, aimed right at his head. Instead of dodging the expected way, Fang Shiyu threw a dozen more blades and then accelerated behind Kransi while she was distracted by his projectiles. Needless to say, the rock missed him. He went for a punch, but there was another trick up his opponent's sleeve — a snake up the sleeve specifically.

It bared its fangs at Fang. It required him to reel in his instincts to avoid recoiling and attacking despite its bite. It shouldn't be able to pierce his mana-infused skin.

Fang used punch.

It was super effective.

Kransi's red hair flowed behind her like a wind carp decoration as she careened away from the train yet again. There was enough ki-disruption in that attack to knock out an elephant. Before he could see what happened to the ace of the European branch of Tanechka's Angels, Jing-wei popped up next to him.

Several more sonic booms occurred as stones hailed at them like machine gun fire. Thankfully, Jing-wei was there in the nick of time with her barrier spell.

"Thank—"

Before he could say anything, a boulder came at them, transforming into a giant cup-like shape that could scoop them up and trap them.

He grabbed his XO Jing-wei and started running up the train away from the bizarre attack. Thankfully, the lavender mage's barrier held firm from the supersonic rocks that continuously pelted it. He could barely make out from the periphery the face of Zemfira Novikov, the earth master of the Tanechka angels. Even though it had been four years and he had Jing-wei's barrier this time, that mage terrified him. Being buried alive will stick with you.

"Watch out!" the tiny woman at his side shouted.

A second giant cup-shaped stone formed and tried to get him from the other side. He couldn't go backward or forward, so there was only one way left — up!

He lept high in the air.

"Agent Fang, why?!"

What was wrong?

"Oh…."

The cups just followed him upward. Without his nimbus summoned, gravity was just going to bring him back down.

He clung onto his XO, but her fly speed was atrocious. Everything became darkness as the two hollow hemispheres of the earth came together around them.

"I am—"

He shut up when his voice echoed off the sides of their prison, magnifying the noise terribly.

Jing-wei squirmed out of his grip and pulled out one of her magical devices. He couldn't see much, even with the soft glow of the magical barrier that kept them physically safe. Then the barrier was gone, and there was a pop noise.

His vice commander had just punctured their prison with a tiny enchanted hammer device.

Pop, pop, pop.

Each hit created a hole that a small child could crawl out of. With a few hits, there was plenty of space to hop out.

Fang Shiyu landed in a field with a bunch of black-and-white Germanian cattle grazing lazily. He had burned through a lot of mana just keeping up with Kransi but could probably catch up with the train that had continued off in the distance.

Why didn't the conductor stop?

Before he could move, he found his feet embedded in the ground. Every time the martial artist tried to pull them out, he just sunk further into the ground.

"Commander, think before you leap next time, please," Jing-wei griped.

The earth master flew up to them.

"We meet again, Fang Shiyu of Zhangzi."

"Why can't you fight me on even ground?" the man complained. "This can't be fun for you."

"I don't fight because it is fun," the earth master replied while rolling her eyes. "And why would I fight you in your specialty? How is that fair to me?"

She had him there.

Jing-wei facepalmed and muttered to herself. "Fang…you incorrible piece of…calm down, Jing-wei. What would your mother say?"

After re-centering herself, the magical device user focused on Novikov.

"Why did you attack us?" the lavender inquired.

"You attacked Borislava Kransi."

Jing-wei glared at Fang.

"And you killed our comrades," Novikov added with a biting edge to her voice as she started molding splinters of stone to skewer them if Jing-wei's barrier went down.

It was clear that the earth mage could kill Fang Shiyu at any point. The fact she hadn't yet meant that Novikov was willing to talk, a luxury when you had all the power. Jing-wei could probably win in a battle of attrition, given her countless magical devices and spare mana crystals. The prideful detective could probably outlast any mage in the world, granted they didn't have a way to bypass a magical barrier, which earth mages couldn't.

"So why did you break into our cabin?" Jing-wei inquired for the both of them.

"Because we were tracking a Silver Legionist who had killed one of our sisters in deep cover."

"And you thought Alani was a Silver Legionist?"

"If that she is going by now, then yes. Our intelligence said she was from New Amsterdam and posing as one of us."

Fang and Jing-wei looked at each other.

"There is no way."

"Well, she did come a rough side of town before she joined the force. Could she have gotten into a clash with the actual Angels at some point?"

Zemfira Novikov squinted at them. "Are you two really unaware that you are working with a mass murderer?"

This revelation startled the two of them.

"Jing-wei, it is obviously not Alani then."

"Obviously, this has to be—"

"Zemfira, don't listen to anything these two have to say," Kransi interjected, limping up to their position beside the train tracks.

"How are you still—"

"Conscious? Like I am going to tell you two class traitors. Novikov, locked them up. We will send them to the safe house."

The earth mage steadily conjured a prison of mana-laced stone around them.

"Don't resist," she commanded them while levitating them behind her. "Or do it and prove me right about you guys again. You are lucky many of my comrades stubbornly trust you."

"There is a misund—"

Before they could correct the record, they were fully encased inside.

They tried to message their allies magically, but nothing seemed to be getting through Novikov's prison.

---

Back on the Trian to Essen

"Keep this train moving," Dolores "The Fifth" Arsen commanded the conductor. "We are not stopping until we get to Essen."

BANG

She downed another one of the Angel's agents with her revolver. The enemy cried out in Germanian, but Arsen didn't understand what they were saying.

The conductor seemed to get her meaning even if he didn't speak Albish.

Alani Stewart had pulled out her bat and ran mana through it. One enemy found that one strike from the blunt weapon cracked his barrier, and another shattered it. The Agent then swung at the guy's legs, hitting him with a painful whack and sending him to the ground. Curiously, the man didn't seem to have any serious injuries.

"Huh?"

Fred Ho confiscated the man's computation orb and cuffed him.

"Agent U developed this bat for me," Agent Stewart explained as they took cover on either side of the door. "It allows me to take down mages and people nonlethally and without causing serious injuries. It combines Rumelian spellsword magic with Ki-magic from the East. Cool?"

Arsen blinked. She had been reloading her revolver but paused in shock at what she was hearing. Even bought-off officers would be way more willing to use lethal violence in a shootout. These were definitely not spies or method actors.

"You really are with Interpol," she said in dreadful epiphany.

"Yep, and I'm proud of it," Stewart replied, practically beaming. "Agent U and I have been working on new, less lethal weapons for Interpol to use in the field."

"I think you landed the job because Tanya wanted to talk baseball with someone," Agent Ho commented.

"All she does is obsess over statistics, trying to predict who will win based on lineups, batting averages, and high-dollar trading of players between teams. She takes all the fun out of a game!"

"Some people like data and high information competition," the mundie countered.

"You guys are Interpol," Arsen repeated, finally processing this fact.

"Are you okay, Fifth?" Stewart inquired with concern lining her voice.

"Give me him," she stated, switching gears.

Ho panicked as she forcibly took the cuffed man, knocked him out, and lifted his body in front of her. She boosted her strength with a spell and clicked a switch on her custom computation orb. It went from the legal mono-core to an illegal dual-core level.

"What are you—"

"Making sure I don't die," Arsen interrupted. "Keep that bag safe, you mooks."

Stewart watched as the businesswoman used the unconscious man as a body shield. Arsen walked into the train cart, where the United Front grunts had started taking position behind knocked-over tables.

Many hesitated, not wanting to hurt their comrade. Their reluctance to do what needed to be done would be their downfall. Arsen had no such lack of restraint.

A few tried to pierce her shield, but mundane weapons could not penetrate a dual-core shield. One person had the guts to load enchanted rounds. One bullet went straight through her body shield and hit her. Unlike movies, a body shield didn't absorb hits for you unless it had body armor. This poor sod in her off arm didn't, but she did.

After neutralizing the guy with enchanted rounds, she focused on the grunts. They were irregular combatants without war experience like Arsen had. Their weapons were a mismatch of hunting rifles and other civilian arms. They were definitely not expensive mage gear. Hide as they might, she knew what her revolver could and could not penetrate. Those tables were expensive and made of hardwood. Her gun was top of the line, but it couldn't piece something like that.

In addition, she couldn't reload one-handed. That was why she advanced to her enemy's position until she had a clean shot.

The one mage in their group saw this and wasn't going just to let her march into his mundie comrades' position. When he popped his head out of cover, Arsen took him out, but not before the Angel from the Germanian United Front had set an explosion formula in the conductor's room.

The thing about explosion formulae was they never went off instantly. The shark-toothed cannibal dumped the bleeding-out body and boosted back into the conductor's trolley. There, she clicked her computation orb into tri-core mode and did a highly complicated maneuver of putting her barrier around the denotation point. All of this had to happen in a split second. Only Stewart, with her mono-core acceleration, could keep up. Fred Ho wouldn't know what just happened until a few moments after the spell went off.

The grunts behind her started to pop out to shoot her. Her barrier was around the denotation point, not herself. With a tri-core, she could easily contain the explosion.

"That is a—"

"Don't yap, AHHHH, protect me!"

"Right!"

Alani Stewart covered Arsen's six, using her far more inferior mage barrier as a bullet sponge, and the non-mage combatants soon found themselves needing to retreat from the K.O. bat. Then, a bullet cracked through Stewart's barrier, grazing the officer from New Amsterdam.

"Dammit," Arsen swore as she forced herself to get back into the thick of things. Redeploying her barrier, she protected Stewart as if her life depended on it because it did. In the bag strapped to the Interpol officer's back were high-grade explosives. Not only would their going off mean this whole mission would fail, but Arsen also didn't know if she would survive in the blast zone.

Soon, all the Angels and Germanian United Forces were dead or unconscious. When they finally knew they were safe, the three regrouped.

"That was a tri-core," Stewart stated with awe.

"Don't have a cow, Agent," Ho replied. "That is a serious crime having one of those. The Fifth Eye just killed several non-mages. Those were Angel-affiliated fighters out there. I don't think the Fifth is an Angel at all."

Arsen was confused. When had she said anything about being an Angel?

"What are you doing, Agent Ho," Stewart countered, coming to the businesswoman's defense. "Not only did she save all of our lives, including the conductor's, but clearly is providing us essential intel for our investigations in the suspected criminal actions of the Federation and GNA."

"Why are you defending her when she is obviously suspicious? Everything she does has been giving me red flags since we met her."

"You are just uncomfortable when a woman is stronger than you," Stewart pushed back. The charm twisted her thoughts into the most malicious framing it could.

"That is not at all what this is. Jing-wei also felt this way earlier when we were talking in the Zhangzi language. Plus, why would I join a mage team in Interpol if I am afraid of emasculation?"

Arsen tsked him, backing up her entranced puppet.

Stewart had put Ho on the back foot defending himself. Even trying to disprove it made one look back, and people were more likely to remember the accusation than its defense. Ho appeared to know as fear got on his features. Accusations alone cost people their jobs all the time, especially the accusation that someone was a communist or simply sympathetic.

Malicious Framing was one of Dolores Arsen's favorite propaganda techniques. It was used all the time to dissolve any support for anti-capitalist movements — call them dictatorships, invaders, imperialists, brutal killers, terrorists, sexists, racists, fascists, etc. Force your critics to defend the revolutionaries' actions — real or manufactured — and you don't have to defend your own. At worst, your former critics fall into both sides' neutrality, and the GNA could continue to do all the same things it accused the other side with impunity.

Neutrality was a very powerful tool to prevent change. Not only did it funnel criticism into non-action, but it virtually always fought against people actually doing anything to stop people like Dolores Arsen from getting away with their plotting because the people trying to stop monopolists weren't perfect.

The key to this malicious framing strategy was never admitting fault on your end. Just keep accusing and deflecting to the other side. When you are defending, you are losing. When you apologize, you have to make concessions. In other words, you lose nothing by deflecting but lose everything the moment sorry graces your lips. Well, you can admit guilt after it was far too late to do anything about it. The justice system existed to punish scapegoats, get the disorderly poor off the streets, and purge anyone the plutocrats deemed were 'terrorists' from society after all.

The only way around the malicious framing was to see the bigger picture, but that skill was available only to the privileged few—like those in Eight Eyes who saw all and would one day decide all.

Agent Ho mustered enough courage for a counterargument.

"Alani, explain to me why the Germanian United Front and the Angels attacked us."

"Borislava was just being paranoid and went after me for my ears."

"You know who is also claiming to be an Angel," Agent Ho countered. "The Fifth here. She is supposed to be Albish but clearly uses Ildoan American slang. She sounds like some knockoff mafia boss from the movies."

One, ouch. Two, this explained why they thought she was an Angel. The previous Fifth had been Interpol's mole in Eight Eyes. Now they thought she was her. Well, Anansi did say this mission would put her to the ultimate test. This curveball was one hell of a test. The Spider God was practically hazing her by having her work directly with cops practically working on the Reds payroll whether they knew it or not.

The two Interpol officers kept arguing, and Arsen would let the charmed Stewart continue defending her.

"This could be a false flag operation," Agent Stewart continued, getting visibly angry. "Borislava could have been paid off to put a wedge between us and the Angels."

"Which one is she? A dogmatic extremist or an opportunist who abandons the Reds for a bit of bread?"

"She could just have been tricked. Bad intel."

"Or she had good intel but confused you with the Fifth."

"Why would the Fifth be a fake Angel? We receive confirmation from Tanechka herself that a top-secret operation had put the Fifth there. All of the intel we got from the Fifth looks completely legit to me."

Agent Ho bit his lip. It was clear he had doubts.

Dolores Arsen decided it was time to step in.

"How about I prove I am on your side," she stated. "I know a hit has been put on Tanya von Weiss."

"Why haven't you told us that sooner?" the man asked.

"Because my mission is more important," she lied through her pointy teeth. "I didn't want any more leaks. See how much people wanted to kill us that they even sent a heavy hitter like Borislava Kransi to kill us. I don't know how they got her around their finger, but we clearly need to be more cautious."

"Agent Ho, the VIP that Karl von Ropen is after," Stewart interjected excitedly. "That has to be her. Weiss is far too popular in Germania to trust the mission with his own assassins. That was why he made a deal with Francois, who hates her."

"I don't know why Stewart trusts you so much, but I will go along for this mission for now," Ho surrendered with a face that showed he really didn't like this. "Stewart, can you contact Fang or Jing-wei?"

"No, I have tried. They are cut off."

"Okay, I contact Captain Sonata and let her know to keep her head low. What do we have to do next, Fifth Eye?"

Arsen glanced around the room. "We should probably do something about these bodies?"

She gestured to the unconscious and dead United Front irregulars.

"What do you have in mind?" Agent Ho asked and immediately regretted it. Well, it wasn't like she told him the truth. Why would she?

---

Citations:

1. Macknight, Hugh. "Aristocracy 'ate human flesh'." Independent.com. May 20, 2011. <https://www.the-independent.com/life-style/history/aristocracy-ate-human-flesh-2287174.html>
2. Merchant, Brian. "The CIA Helped Build the Content Farm That Churns Out American Literature." Vice.com. February 11, 2014. <https://www.vice.com/en/article/how-the-cia-turned-american-literature-into-a-content-farm/>