Fanfic #148 A Young Girl's Guerilla War by Readhead (Youjo Senki/Saga of Tanya the Evil X Code Geass)
This fanfic is a crossover between Youjo Senki and Code Geass following Tanya in the world of Code Geass. I really like this fic because it takes a look at the pre canon resistance of Japan which I never really thought about and builds the world on that.
Synopsis: Tanya dies in an artillery barrage on the Rhine Front, contrary to both her and Being X's plans. Unwilling to let his chew toy escape so easily, Being X reincarnates Tanya back into Japan... Six years before Britannia conquers Area 11.
Rated: M
words: 42k
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/a-young-girls-guerilla-war-youjo-senki-saga-of-tanya-the-evil-x-code-geass.971950/reader/
Here's the first chapter:
The shrill whistle of incoming shells startled me awake, but before my mind had fully engaged I was already in motion. Rolling out of my cot, I began to reach for the computation orb hanging from my jacket even as my sleepy brain tried desperately to come to terms with the situation. Time seemed to slow as the incoming scream crescendo'ed, and I lunged forward, heaving myself across the dark confines of the flimsy canvas tent, scrabbling for my one shield against the shrapnel and concussive power of high-explosive 105 shells.
How is the artillery reaching us?! We're miles behind the li-
Even as my reaching fingers closed around the Type 97, the endless second of noise and confused panic ended abruptly in an incandescence of white light and overwhelming noise. There was no way to describe the moments that came immediately after, but as the light faded and the sound of the explosion was drowned out by the fresh bursts of following shells, the pain slammed through my shredded nerves and crashed my train of thought. The shock of being shelled, and the shock of... something... happening to me had left me numb, but my rational and well-trained mind recovered in seconds. I knew that the darkness surrounding me was not caused by the tent's canopy blocking out all light, as the cheap material barely kept out the glare of the constant star shells at the best of times, and besides, I couldn't blink. In fact...
Experimentation and empirical evidence are important, I argued with myself, trying to convince my unwilling body to move. I must take stock of any damage so I can plan accordingly.
Despite these sound arguments, I felt a quiver of fear deep inside me at the prospect of what I might discover, but I quashed that emotion as unworthy of a professional soldier and a rational individual, and so forced myself to move, to touch my face with my left hand to see what was covering my eyes... Or I tried to. For one reason or another, my left arm didn't seem to be obeying my orders. In fact, I couldn't feel it at all beneath the shoulder. How peculiar. I tried to lift my right arm instead, but found a similarly strange result when only the upper part of my arm twitched into motion.
That shell must have detonated very close to my tent. My internal voice was absurdly calm. I had always tried to remain calm about issues and problems I could do little about, considering raging against things beyond my control a childish reaction at best, but... I can't feel my arms. I can't move my eyes. I can feel my body, but... The numbness from the explosion was fading fast, and every scrap of rationality and emotional control I'd built up over two lives struggled to maintain my internal calm and deny the obvious implications.
And all of a sudden, I couldn't deny the obvious any longer. I had spent almost a year on the Rhine Front, months of intense combat in the trenches and the skies over the torn and blasted land, and I had seen many men die from the relentless and impersonal explosions of the artillery. Almost universally, soldiers agreed that death by artillery was the worst – it shredded the body, leaving horrible injuries on the living and reducing the dead to mince. At least getting shot left a mostly-clean corpse behind, something that could be buried in a casket instead of a coffee can. The worst part of shelling was how inescapable it was, and how you could never be sure you were safe...
Aerial mages, of course, didn't feel the same existential horror that the mundane infantry felt about artillery. Very rarely were mages killed by artillery strikes, as most of our time at the front was spent airborne, and even a weak magic shield could protect against most shrapnel and blast waves. Aerial mages tended to fear other aerial mages, aces like myself, rather than the impersonal grinding horror of drumfire or the sudden hurricane bursts of shells that heralded another enemy attack across No Man's Land.
But... I hadn't been airborne. I hadn't been awake enough to spin up a shield, or to fly away from the impact. I had been asleep in a tent after a twenty-eight hour patrol with the rest of the 203rd, preparing for Operation Revolving Door and keeping the Republic's mages away from our lines...
Is this what you wanted, Being X? I snarled inside my mind, my mouth unaccountably unresponsive. Did you think this would make me pray, hmm? Foolishness! I channeled my rising panic into anger at the alleged divinity, yelling at him and stridently ignoring the painful tingling beginning to fill my body as the numbness continued to dwindle away. How is this supposed to encourage faith?! Death by artillery is purely bad luck, and if anything proves your lack of omnipotence! If you were a god, you wouldn't let something as uncaring and random as artillery simply kill your flock! What terrible human resource management!
To my surprise, I found the lack of any response horrifying. While I had never been happy to hear from that obnoxious false god before, hearing from anybody, anything would have been a welcome distraction from my current situation. Worse, if he wasn't responding... Being X? Are... Are you there...?
Only silence. I was alone. And I had no mouth, no eyes, no hands. No magic. I was alone, and I was dying, and I was so scared, and so tired, and I just wanted some of Visha's coffee and a bar of chocolate and Please, please, please! Help me! Did you want prayer? That's what you wanted, right?! I'll pray to you! I'll use the Type 95! Just please! Help me! Not like this! I don't want to die like this!
A few minutes after the shell had exploded fifty meters from her tent, Tanya von Degurchaff died from exsanguination caused by her injuries sustained from the shrapnel.
A minute after that, Being X returned from his celestial coffee break to check in on his pet nonbeliever, and rolling thunder momentarily blotted out the sounds of war as he cursed his bad luck. Acting quickly, he was able to grab the nonbeliever's soul from the processing queue – quite full today, and managed to divert it to himself instead. He still had a point to make, a soul to redeem... and no damned random frankish cannon was going to end his game prematurely!
And so, for the second time, Tanya found herself in the body of a newborn. Big blue eyes blinked once, twice, and then immediately began tearing up as the tiny frame of the infant released an astonishingly loud howl of outrage.
The world paused. The nurse, thankfully not a nun this time and dressed in a uniform identical to those from my memories of hospital trips in my first life, stopped jotting down notes on her clipboard and looked up at me. I was struck by the memory of eyes and faces moving in another frozen moment, and was struck with a deep sense of anger and shame. I knew that Being X wouldn't let me escape so easily, and had clearly decided to force another life on me once more to continue his ridiculous attempt to prove his divine nature. That explained the anger. The shame came from knowing that, in the end, I had broken down and asked for his help. I had given up the fight and, like a drowning man, reached for even the flimsiest of life-ropes to save me. I was certain that he'd gloat about that, about how he'd always known I'd pray in the end...
HELLO AGAIN, MY CHILD. IT SEEMS AS IF YOUR PREVIOUS TEST WAS CUT SHORT.
Quit playing around, you incompetent! I snarled back. If you're here to gloat, you should spend your time doing your job instead! If you were my employee, I would reprimand you for misuse of company time!
Somehow, the puppeted nurse's face looked... embarrassed? Chagrined, maybe?
DUE TO UNFORESEEN ISSUES, YOUR LAST LIFE ENDED BEFORE I HAD ORDAINED IT TO DO SO. AS A RESULT, I HAVE DECIDED TO GENEROUSLY GRANT YOU ANOTHER ATTEMPT AT TRUE GRACE.
Wait, he... It hadn't intended for me to die? That wasn't a gambit by Being X to make me pray? My mind reeled at the thought. On one hand, I had been proven unambiguously correct – this creature was no god. It hadn't intended for me to die, yet I had, proving that it was not omnipotent. And seeing how it hadn't mentioned my last futile prayer, the only truly sincere prayer I had ever made, it clearly wasn't omniscient either. On the other hand, it meant that the only time I had sincerely prayed, nobody had heard it, and this new life wasn't the result of any faith or such nonsense, but the pure pettiness of a bully who couldn't stand to let his victim escape, even through death.
Oh, spare me your lies – you and I both know you're no god. That artillery shell was more a god than you are, and did a far better job inspiring faith than any amount of petty bureaucrats ever will!
YOUR CONTINUED LACK OF FAITH SADDENS ME, BUT YOUR ADMITTENCE OF ANY DEGREE OF FAITH GIVES ME HOPE FOR THE SALVATION OF YOUR SOUL. I SHALL GIVE YOU ANOTHER LIFE OF WAR AND STRUGGLE, THAT YOU MIGHT COME TO KNOW ME ONCE AND FOR ALL. GO FORTH AND PREACH MY EVANGEL.
And just like that, time resumed. The false god vanished, the nurse returned to her notations, and free of any social expectation or need for emotional constraint, my new body screamed its wrath at this latest injustice until I was gagged with a bottle of formula.
Another life... Years as an infant, learning to walk and talk again... And then puberty... I'd barely started it last time around, damn the lack of nutrition in Imperial Army rations... Damn you, Being X! I hope this whole affair stands as a black mark upon whatever record your supervisors maintain!
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And so, my third life began. This one was something of a mixed bag from the word go, as I had been reborn in my native land of Japan, yet retained my female body from my second life. Shockingly, for a Japanese child, I seemed to have retained more than just my gender from my previously life – a look at my reflection in the window into the maternity ward showed that I had the same bright blue eyes as before, and I could see a hint of blonde fuzz beneath the warm knitted cap on my head.
I was happy that I had been reborn in such a reasonable time. Judging by the garb of adults – parents, doctors, and nurses – that passed through the ward, I had been reborn around the same time my first life had ended. That meant I was born in a country and time where logic, rationality, and hierarchy were prioritized, and where my skills from my first life could smoothly transfer over. In a way, I supposed that Being X had done me a favor by reincarnating me in such an ideal and peaceful time, presumably by accident. I decided that I would capitalize upon its mistake, and live my life to the fullest here, far from the shells and mud and blood of my previous life.
And so, I grew.
Years passed. I was walking and talking once more within a year or so, and had finally managed to strengthen my new mouth and tongue to the point where I could speak in full sentences by the time I was two. My life was fairly easy as a non-orphaned child, even if only my mother seemed to be in the picture, and even though she had to frequently leave me with a neighbor woman after I was fully weaned. My mother seemed to work nights, presumably at some sort of hostess club considering her work outfits, and never seemed to be around much as she slept during most of the day. The neighbor woman she left me with made sure that I was fed adequately, and otherwise thankfully left me alone in a cradle for the first year, and then a pen for the second and third. I taught myself to use the toilet as soon as I had the leg strength to do so, freeing myself from the indignation of diapers and further reducing the number of times she had to interact with me.
Unfortunately, this left me with long periods of time on my hands with little I could do as far as professional development or education went. I began to keep myself occupied by reading whatever scrap of paper I could find, and by jolting down and solving various geometric proofs and algebraic equations to keep my math skills somewhat fresh. This seemed to spook the woman, as she reacted poorly the first time she found one of my proofs. I know that my handwriting is poor, especially considering the weak hands I'm working with, but I don't think it merited wide eyes or such a sudden and startling intake of breath.
Thankfully, this fright on her part yielded a solution to my boredom. My mother opted to enroll me in kindergarten earlier than normal, giving me something to do with myself other than scribble on loose envelopes and the like. The program she enrolled me in was highly-structured, with all activities geared towards admittance into a private elementary school. While this would undeniably tax my mother's income, I made sure to focus on my studies, hoping I could do well enough to earn some form of scholarship for admittance. Failing that, if I had to attend public school, perhaps good exam scores could earn me advanced placement or whatnot. This would be my first path on the road to success, so I couldn't do anything but my best.
And in the end, my best proved good enough. I somehow managed to be awarded a full-tuition scholarship to an elementary school at age four, which clearly must have been desperate to increase enrollment if they were willing to hand out free rides to kindergarteners. My mother was deeply relieved by the news, as it certainly meant that she could save more money from her hostess job. Hopefully this would go into continuing to pay our rent and bills, and she would be relieved enough to stop spending so much of her income on cheap beer and terrible sake.
My first year of elementary school went tolerably well. Math and Japanese were, of course, no issue for me, and I was even able to impress a foreign language instructor with my rusty English. History class was a bit more interesting, because while Japan's history was much as I remembered it, there were a handful of references to peculiar differences. Some mineral called 'Sakuradite' was apparently a major export of Japan, and Perry's ships had had electric motors. Clearly, my impressions of my new world over the last four years had been at least partially in error – this was not my original Japan, but one quite similar to the Japan I remembered. I decided to investigate a bit further, and requested a world history primer from my history teacher. The middle-aged man was kind, and gave me a 3rd grade textbook to read after I finished my homework. He seemed gratified by my interest in his subject, particularly as I recited the old saw about "those who do not learn from history".
Returning to my desk, I found that world history outside of Japan was strikingly different from what I remembered from my past two lives. For one thing, the bulk of the Americas appeared to be united under a British empire. Given that the name of this superstate was the "Holy Britannian Empire", I could only assume that was Being X's favored player in this world's geopolitics. All of Europe and Russia, as well as most of Africa, appeared to have also been united under a single flag as well, called Europa United. Interestingly, despite the "Britannian" empire, the British Isles were part of the EU. A third superpower united most of mainland Asia, including China and India, and was called the Chinese Federation. Apart from the three major players, apparently the fractious Middle East had united into a federation of its own as well, with an independent Kingdom of Zilkhstan to its east. Strangely enough, Australia appeared to be entirely independent and went almost entirely unmentioned throughout the textbook. It was as if the entire world had decided to ignore the continent.
Despite my relative academic success, my school life was considerably less than ideal. With my decidedly non-Japanese blonde hair and blue eyes, I was immediately marked out as different, a hafu or the like. Fortunately, once most of the other children realized that petty taunts about my appearance rolled off my back, they began to simply ignore and exclude me from their socializing, which was fine with me. The few who tried to shove me were dealt with as gently as I could manage before bringing over a teacher. To my joy, I discovered that Being X had slipped up once more, and I retained the magic I'd been born with in my second life. Like riding a bicycle, the years of disuse hadn't dulled my memories of casting body and reflex enhancements more or less continuously for years of combat, but I lacked any sort of orb to effectively use my power. The most I could do was minor physical enhancements, but those proved more than adequate for dealing with fellow children. Fortunately, as I was a small girl two years younger than my assailants, I was never blamed for any of these altercations, and my record remained free of any reprimands.
Petty schoolyard squabbles aside, another source of anxiety had begun to intrude upon my life. Every day on my walk home, I passed a convenience store that had a television tuned to the NHK news channel. Each day, the news reported increased aggression by the Britannians in across the world. As 2008 ATB drew to a close, the Britannians began an invasion in Indochina, nominally part of the Chinese Federation. While Japan was not directly targeted, the Britannian Empire had begun to assert heavy economic pressure on Japan, despite the government's statements of protest. Knowing Being X, and having experienced first-hand the march to war back in the Empire in my previous life, I was certain that things would go from bad to worse. This concern fueled my resolve to succeed as a student – after all, if I was a diligent student, the likelihood of being put on some sort of labor rota or last ditch militia in the worst case scenario would naturally decrease.
I tried to inquire with my mother about the scraps of news I'd managed to compile, as I knew from my first life that drunken men often revealed an unwise amount of information to attractive ladies, and I hoped she might have some sort of insight about the spiraling national crisis. Unfortunately, after my first mention of the Britannians, she interrupted with a rant about my heretofore unknown father, completely derailing the conversation. Apparently, he had been a Britannian merchant seaman who had engaged her services one night before leaving port. He had claimed to have a vasectomy, and used his own condom which had apparently been past its use-by date, as it had torn and she had not noticed. Beyond that point, her drunken ranting had grown ever more indecipherable, and I did my best to tune it out as I mulled over the newly discovered information. Apparently, my mother didn't work as a hostess as I'd thought, and I was half-Britannian by blood and a spitting female image of my father. This failed to explain why I'd ended up with the name "Tanya" again, but perhaps it did partially explain my mother's seeming unwillingness to interact with me, even if did betray her lackluster parental skills.
And so, another two years went by. I skipped another grade, at the recommendations of the History and English teachers, who were both overly impressed with my paltry skills. But, being a rational and socially conscious individual, I kindly thanked them both for their recommendations and moved on. I enrolled as a 4th grader at age 6, and continued to study diligently knowing that in a mere two years I would have to be ready for middle school entrance exams.
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The inevitable war, when it finally came, began after a masterful fakeout by the Britannian empire. The government of Japan had managed to walk a diplomatic tightrope for years, leveraging its supply of Sakuradite to make any attack on it by one of the three superpowers unthinkable, as the other two would counter to prevent the Sakuradite mines falling into enemy hands. As such, Prime Minister Kururugi had been apparently gotten overly comfortable, and had clearly let the military slide when it came to drawing up adequate plans for the defense of the islands. He'd clearly underpaid whatever intelligence services he'd had at his disposal as well, as nobody had realized the Britannian fleet movements in the Indian Ocean had been a feint until it was far too late.
The war had been brutal and one-sided. The Britannians used combined arms tactics with incredible success, complete with airstrikes, naval bombardments, and operations conducted by infantry formations supported by armored units. The deciding factor, though, was obviously the "Knightmare Frames" that had blitzed through Japanese coastal defenses and effortlessly destroyed any Japanese tank or APC unlucky enough to encounter them. These Knightmares, torn straight from any mecha anime you could name, looked patently absurd to me, skating through the narrow streets of Tokyo and wrecking incredible damage on every piece of infrastructure in their path. I suppose I couldn't be overly critical, considering how silly I'd no doubt looked swooping around like a magical girl in my previous life, but they looked... clunky, somehow, to me.
Clunky though they might be, their effectiveness was undeniable. Within a day, the war was effectively decided. Some lucky fool managed to win a victory over the Britannians at Itsukushima, and even more impressively managed to retreat into the mountainous interior of central Honshu without being run down by the Britannians, but ultimately his victory was futile. The government surrendered unconditionally a month after hostilities began, and Japan became Area 11. Apparently, there was talk about the army attempting to establish a redoubt in Hokkaido, but all such whispers abruptly ended after the news of Prime Minister Kururugi's ritual suicide was broadcast.
For my part, I was, of course, less than thrilled about Japan's unceremonious and thorough defeat, and I couldn't help compare the defense efforts here to the Empire's ceaseless watch on the Rhine. Still, at first I assumed that the swift conquest of such a modern nation would decrease the amount and degree of social dislocation suffered by the defeated population. After all, the government had surrendered practically intact, and only some areas of the cities had seen intense enough fighting to completely level the local structures and roads. Most of the infrastructure remained intact, so surely life could proceed on as it generally had before we'd lost our independence. I was soon disabused of such enlightened thoughts as the true face of Britannian occupation became known.
First, we were not citizens of Britannia, rather we were Numbers, non-Britannian residents of conquered lands. As Numbers, we had no political rights and few social rights, and apparently Britannia did not recognize any concept of universal human rights either. Functionally, being a Number meant being a member of a slave population from birth, even though we could work and own money and property. If a Britannian claimed such property as their own, claims would apparently go through Britannian courts, who apparently routinely sided with the Britannian plaintiffs even when they entirely lacked evidence. Further, if any Number was believed to be a member of a resistance organization, they could be executed immediately by any member of the Britannian police or armed forces who apprehended them.
Second, the Britannians immediately made their presence known by removing all Japanese from significant parts of Tokyo and other large cities, designating entire districts as part of the Britannian Concession. The only time Japanese, or Elevens as we were now, could enter the Concession was if we were employed there, and we were required to leave as soon as our shift ended. These Britannian-only areas were the only places rebuilt after the end of the war, with Eleven districts being left in states ranging from disrepair to outright ruin.
This was unacceptable, for me. While I had never particularly considered myself a nationalist – after all, enlightened self-interest was the principle motivator of an ideal capitalist system – the almost contemptuous way the Britannians had slapped us down rankled my Japanese heart. Further, this degradation of my personal circumstances was nothing short of a slap in the face. I had done nothing to wrong the Britannian Empire or any of its agents! I had wanted nothing but a comfortable life, and I had spent years of mostly solitary hard work towards that goal! I had done my best to be a good student, and to respect my mother – the little I saw of her – but suddenly all of that work was wasted. And for what? For a government that had believed that we could stand against an empire that stretched across continents? For an empire that was so hungry for Sakuradite that they couldn't simply buy it like civilized men, but had to wrest it away by force?
Going from a tolerable position as a precocious student working her way up the social and educational ladder into respectability to a position as a second-class citizen in my own homeland severely hurt my belief in the system. Both my previous lives had taught me that, given hard work and time, any sane society would let a dedicated individual climb the ladder to safe and comfortable respectability. Even the war-mad lunatics in my second life's government had given me a shiny medal and a promotion after I demonstrated my loyalty and utility for them over Norden. But this time around... This time I hadn't been able to do anything to either help my countrymen or help the invaders. I was a non-entity, a powerless child who at worst was just another piece of collateral damage waiting to happen. I was lucky I hadn't been blown up again in the invasion, or been attacked by angry Japanese wanting to hurt someone they saw as Britannian.
Matters failed to improve for either myself or Tokyo. The Britannian Concession seemed to grow daily, and soon my district was designated as Britannian-only. My mother and I were moved to Shinjuku Ghetto, a region that had seen particularly harsh fighting between the retreating Japanese Army and the invading Britannians. Available housing was minimal, to say the least, and to make matters worse we had only been permitted to take a single bag of possessions each when we were evicted from our apartment. My schoolbag was crammed full of clothes, while my mother's suitcase contained whatever household goods would fit as well as our identification papers. We hadn't bothered taking my mother's meager supply of Japanese currency, as it had been declared invalid, and so we arrived in Shinjuku penniless with barely more than the clothes on our backs. There was barely any housing available, and no schools or hospitals to speak of. Fortunately, my mother found a room in an apartment that the owner was willing to rent to us, and she began working again. She managed to secure employment in the Britannian Concession for a frightfully poor wage, and I didn't ask about the bruises she frequently returned home with, nor how she managed to pay the rent and keep us fed.
For my part, as formal education was no longer an option, I entered the workforce as well, helping a neighborhood association that had formed from the local evacuees remove rubble from the street. The work was hard, especially for my six year old frame, but the minor strength enhancement I could reliably cast made it doable. I still carried far fewer bricks and chunks of rubble to the wheelbarrow than the other workers, but I doubted anybody would judge a kid too harshly for being unproductive compared to adults. The payment was equally lousy – a bowl of watery miso with vague shapes floating in it for breakfast, and a bowl of whatever was cooking in the communal pot at dinnertime – but it was enough to ward off starvation.
While I tried my best to simply carry on with my life as best I could and not make trouble for myself or my neighbors, not all the newly minted Elevens around me were equally thoughtful. Even before the first Britannian colonists arrived, the first resistance groups had begun to coalesce. Groups of soldiers who had thrown off their uniforms but kept their rifles, sons and daughters of the civilians killed during the fighting, various criminal organizations, and random groups of angry young men all mixed and blurred in a disreputable soup in the corners of Shinjuku Ghetto, and soon graffiti from various organizations began appearing everywhere. Daubed on walls of crumbling apartment blocks and subway tunnels crammed full of homeless refugees from the new Concession, the tags proclaimed that Japan still lived, and that the Yamato Spirit was in the hands of groups like "The Blood of the Samurai" and "The Black Sea Society". Fanciful names and unfounded boasting, in my opinion. So far, none of these groups had done much more than throw stones at Britannian patrols, probably because the soldiers tended to respond with uncontrolled bursts of indiscriminate gunfire.
I respected their desire to continue to fight, but I couldn't help but resent the new rebel groups almost as much as I resented the Britannians. Their feeble attempts to resist the grinding wheels of oppression did nothing to actually help anybody in the ghetto, as far as I could tell, and every time they actually did something that irritated the Britannians, the reprisals were both brutal and inevitable. I'd read about the Irish Troubles as a child, back in my first life during Contemporary History classes, but my years in the Shinjuku Ghetto showed that even the most iron-handed of the British had been as respectful of the laws of war as I had ever been, compared to the conduct of the Britannians. The first time a drunken Britannian soldier, staggering back to the Concession from some dive bar near the border of the ghetto, had been knifed in the kidney and left to die on the street, I'd been somewhat gleeful. The surge of knowing that the Japanese had gotten some of their own back was intoxicating, and reminded me of the pleasure of raining artillery spells down on Entente fortifications. That joyous feeling turned to choking ash when I heard about the British response the next day. One hundred random Elevens had been grabbed off the streets, lined up against the wall, and unceremoniously shot. One didn't need my mastery of signaling theory to understand the message the Britannians were sending. The price of a single Britannian life was a hundred Eleven lives. My enthusiasm for the resistance dimmed after that particular incident, and I resolved to keep my head down as best I could.
And so, time ground on. I continued to haul rubble for my daily meals as my mother continued to work at night. While we eventually got the streets mostly cleared of rubble and debris, the overcrowded tenements of Shinjuku continued to fall apart, even as the incredibly gaudy architecture of the new Britannian Concession rose ever higher, dominating the skyline with spires and towers, all built upon the conquered ruins of Tokyo. The never ending construction of the Concession, as well as the numerous suburban housing projects for Britannian families and the construction of manors for the nobles who had come to live and administer Area 11, had the side benefit of pumping some Britannian money into the Japanese sector, and gradually conditions improved. Few people were outright starving anymore, and jobs other than street cleaning began to open up. It did my heart proud to see the flower of the free market beginning to spring anew from the cracked cement of Shinjuku.
Of course, the free market was no longer constrained to respectable public actors. The policing of the slum had degenerated as the Britannians grew more confident in their conquest, and the only time armed incursions of Britannian police intruded into Shinjuku was when one of the resistance groups or another did something to aggravate the Britannians. In those cases, APCs full of soldiers backed by Knight Police – demilitarized Knightmare Frames armed with "non-lethal" weapons – would storm whatever building or tunnel had been identified as a rebel hideout. They'd drag away anybody who wasn't killed in the course of these stormings, and sometimes the lucky ones would even return to the Ghetto. The unlucky either disappeared entirely, or ended up on one of the chain gangs building the new mag-lev high-speed rail for the Britannians. Admittedly, this was a large step up from the mass executions of the first year after the Conquest, but it was still collective punishment. Arguably worse, this lack of any sort of policing meant that gangs more or less operated at will in the ghetto. Drug use and alcoholism skyrocketed, and any feeble business the Britannians allowed to grow in the slums was inevitably crushed under demands for protection money. Honestly, I had hoped that the omnipresent poverty of the ghetto would improve things, as nobody here had anything left to steal. Unfortunately, my understanding of the criminal mind was clearly lacking, as the gangs continued to fight for whatever scraps fell from the Britannian table instead of trying to actually grow their capital through gainful employment.
Eventually, years had passed between the humiliation of our one day defeat and the present. Things had improved in some areas, and not so much in others. The Britannians had finally reopened schools for Elevens, and had begun to institute some public health measures after a nasty cholera outbreak in Osaka.
The schools were unfortunately subpar, and mostly focused on pushing Britannian propaganda. I learned much about the Social Darwinism beloved by our emperor, Charles zi Britannia, and much about the glories of the Britannian Empire, but very little of any real importance or use. For the first time, however, my mixed heritage broke my way, at least for a while. The Britannian instructors at the Shinjuku School for Elevens were very surprised and apparently confused at finding a blue-eyed blonde with the name "Hajime Tanya" in their classes, but soon decided that my last name indicated I was Eleven, phenotype be damned.
At first, I had tried to stick to my guns and keep soldiering along on the path to a safe desk job, swallowing all the propaganda for my teachers and repeating it back, but my hopes were soon dashed once more. I asked one of the Britannian teachers what potential employment this coursework was preparing us for, and the man could barely suppress a laugh. I was told that the only work for Elevens was menial labor, unless I got lucky enough to catch the eye of a noble and be employed by his household. The way he phrased that option made me uncomfortable, and so I attempted to hurry up and ask about joining the army, only to be once more disappointed. Apparently, Numbers weren't allowed to join the armed forces, lest we end up shooting ourselves in the foot, according to the instructor. As such, after only a month at the Shinjuku School for Elevens, I left and returned to work. The school administration didn't even have the courtesy to provide us with a free lunch to help the propaganda go down – even the nuns back at the orphanage had fed us.
While the need for strong arms to haul rubble had decreased, there was still plenty of work to do, and I could always find someone who would spare a meal or two for ten or twelve hours of manual labor. As a result, I had begun to put on some muscle from all the work, but the lack of food was probably badly stunting my future growth. I sometimes despaired that I would be even shorter in this life than I had been back in the Empire, particularly since the Britannians didn't seem interested in employing all these willing and hungry hands in any capacity above day labor. Even more disheartening, it seemed like the closest thing to a cushy job I could ever hope for by playing by their rules was an appointment as a janitor, or if I got profoundly lucky, a lowly office menial. The Britannians were even worse than the communists when it came to managing their human resources, I decided, probably as a result of their hereditary political elite who approved of assassination as a method of succession. Merit and hardwork didn't matter, only the ability to have the right connections and the right blood.
Worse than their lack of upwards mobility and reliance upon inheritance for political legitimacy, the Britannian system was deeply and profoundly racist. I looked just like them, but my surname and status as an Eleven made me practically sub-human. If an Eleven was publically beaten by Britannians, nothing would come of it, unless the Eleven tried to resist, in which case he'd be arrested for assault. This angered me on a number of levels. As an experienced manager, this acceptance of bias into the talent acquisition and management process galled me with its inherent inefficiency. As a rational person, this categorical judgement and abuse irritated me as an assault upon the rational basis of a just and equitable society. And as an individual, an Eleven, knowing that my place in the world was fixed, and that nothing I could ever do would make me a full human in the eyes of the invaders occupying my once and again homeland... I'm embarrassed to admit how the passionate emotions made my stomach churn with acid. I hadn't been this furious in years, not since I woke up for a second time as an infant. Once again, a power that I had done nothing to and which was far too strong for me to resist had forced me into a horrible and degrading situation.
I tried to press that train of thought down and continue my life of work, but it wouldn't leave my mind. In both the corporate culture of my first life and the military culture of my second life, schmoozing and connections were important, but they weren't the end-all, be-all. If you worked hard and showed results and promise, you could make a living for yourself. I had managed it as an orphan in my second life, after all. But here in my third life, Being X had really gotten me up against the wall. I wasn't a Britannian, much less a noble, so comfortable government employment wasn't even a dream for me this time around. No matter how I looked at it, there was no way for me to reach prosperity through the system as it existed.
Which only left me two options, which I thought about as I scrubbed floors, picked vegetables, swept streets, delivered packages, and tried to block out the sounds of my mother at night in the next room over with the owner of the apartment we sublet our room from. I could either try to reform the system from the inside, or I could try to tear it down. Frankly, neither appealed to me. Reform was impossible without leverage and connections, of which I had neither. Plus, considering how the government was a hereditary absolute monarchy with a hereditary aristocracy, any reforms I managed to get implemented could simply be overturned by whichever corrupt, inbred imbecile lucked into the throne next. Fighting the system seemed equally futile from where I was sitting. The combined military-industrial complex of my nation had been squashed in hours, and the only halfway effective resistance I'd ever heard of were the dead enders from that same army hiding up in the mountains. The local resistance cells were lucky if they had access to small arms and a handful of ammunition, and it seemed like any attempt to fight back they made simply made life worse for all the rest of us.
On my eleventh birthday, my dithering over two unpalatable options was brought to a temporary end by an unforeseen change in my life circumstances. My relationship with my mother had never been... well, it had never really existed, to be honest. We had occupied the same space, and she's paid the rent, but I had worked all day and she worked all night. She had never expressed any sort of emotional attachment to me, even before the invasion, and I had returned her lack of interest with a pleasantly professional and detached face. Perhaps we could have been more than that, but I was never good at getting close to people, and she never seemed to get past my father's Britannian blonde hair and blue eyes.
She'd been found in one of the streets running from the checkpoints where Elevens could enter the Concession towards Shinjuku. I don't know the details of her death, but the young man, a Kanami Ohgi, who came and told me about her passing gently told me that she'd likely never seen it coming, whatever "it" was. I wasn't sure if I cared what had happened to her, but the impact of her sudden death on me was immediate, as our erstwhile landlord immediately kicked me out before Ohgi had even left. In a matter of minutes, I found myself back where I was after the invasion: on the street with an old schoolbag full of clothes without any money to my name or a place to go.
Fortunately, Ohgi, who it turned out was a former teacher, felt sorry for a newly orphaned girl thrust out onto the dilapidated Shinjuku streets, and offered to let me sleep on the floor of the room he shared with his best friend for a few days until I could figure something out. I was wary of his offer, considering I had only known the man for ten minutes, but I wasn't particularly spoiled for choice, and so I ended up accepting his kind gesture.
I followed the heavily quiffed man through Shinjuku to a slightly less rundown apartment building than my former residence, and walked up the urine-scented stairs to the seventh floor. Calling the somewhat dingy studio an apartment was generous, but beggars couldn't be choosers. Ohgi seemed somewhat anxious when speaking with me, and treated me with a peculiar degree of care, as if he thought I would crumble at any given moment. I could only assume that his background as a teacher made him particularly knowledgeable about the moodiness of children, and he was just trying to make me comfortable and not set me off over some small inconvenience or whatnot. The first few minutes passed quickly enough, as he lay out a spare blanket and pillow on the floor by the foot of one of the two beds occupying much of the dingy room and showed me where I could stash my bag of clothes, but after the initial flurry of activity ended an uncomfortable silence filled the room. Presumably, Ohgi had nothing further to say to me, and I certainly didn't feel any need to ask the man giving me free room any questions, lest he reconsider his generous offer.
Fortunately, the awkward atmosphere was broken only a half hour later, when Ohgi's roommate arrived. Kozuki Naoto instantly dominated the room as soon as he entered, a friendly smile on his face and a bulging bag dangling in one hand. He had the sort of easy charisma that any good recruiter would kill for, coupled with a handsome build. Interestingly, he was very clearly a half-breed like me – his eyes were too wide, his hair was a dark red, and he was tall for a Japanese man.
Ohgi exhaled an audible sigh of relief as Naoto locked the door behind him before getting to his feet. The two men greeted each other with an intensity I hadn't expected, half-hugging each other with a degree of emotion I didn't expect from my countrymen. I began to wonder about the true nature of their relationship, best friends sharing a room or something beyond, but quickly pushed it out of my head. No good HR manager lets biases or assumptions inform them about new hires, and I was proud of my ability to treat people without any of the biases I had grown up with in either my previous life in Japan, or my upbringing in a church orphanage. That said, I did feel a bit more secure in my new housing arrangement if what I suspected was true.
My thoughts about the possible nature of their relationship screeched to a sudden halt as Naoto opened the bag he'd brought on the table, revealing the numerous spherical objects haphazardly crammed into the old bowling bag. Even from across the room, I could recognize the distinctive 'pineapple' shape of modern hand grenades.
"The boys from the Yamato Faction over in Kasumigaseki got 'em from a supply truck they'd hijacked two months ago," Naoto was explaining to Ohgi "and they said they've got a line on a warehouse that's supposed to be full of landmines! Apparently, they're slated for some noble manor's outer security, but we can probably take a crate or three before they ship them out if we move before next weekend."
My eyes widened with disbelief as Ohgi chuckled at that alarming bit of news. "Tamaki's going to love them. I swear he's gonna blow his hands off one of these days, the way he clowns around with anything that goes 'Boom'!" He stepped away from the table, and gestured over towards me. "Hey, Naoto, enough about business for now – meet Hajime Tanya."