Tanya starts from Zero by A_Morte_Perpetua_Machina_Libera_Nos

Summary:

Tanya has won the great war! But Being X whisks her away to a new world or is it even Being X´s doing? Who knows.

All she knows for sure is that her luck seems always terrible. And that this time she will get her happy ending no matter the cost.

Notes:

I am sorry to start another story, but the words just started flowing out of my fingers. There was no holding back :(

It´s the same reason as last time. I searched for this crossover here and on fanfiction.net, but couldn´t find it so I made it myself.

Requests and annotations are always welcome in the comments.

Chapter 1: Confused awakening

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Chapter 1

She smiled happily. She had done it! Finally! With all her might had she hammered peace into this stupid, irrational world, had she levelled cities to the ground and pounded mountains to dust so that the slaughter could end. She had won the war against all odds and crushed her opposition. Even the meddling of Being X couldn't stop her. After sixteen gruelling years in either poverty or mortal danger she would be finally able to live a life away from struggle and hardship! It was hard to believe, but she had well earned it.

Her promotion to Colonel last minute was the cherry on top. Maybe in a few years after all the paperwork was done, she could retire early and enjoy her nice officer´s pension. That would be wonderful. But before that she wanted nothing more at the moment than to get out of her uniform. Coming fresh from the battlefield after quelling a minor rebellion in the city nearby, she was in need of rest. Looking intimidating and firing a few warning shots was nothing exhausting for her, but after years of missions without sleep for days on end she had plenty of naps to catch up to.

She opened the door to her room in the "requisitioned" hotel that her battalion occupied for the time being and was ready to unsling her rifle from her aching shoulders as a strange sense of nausea overcame her. What was that? Thinking nothing of it she took another step forward and blinked.

When she opened her eyes a split-second later everything erupted in blinding light. Years of trained instincts kicked in and she immediately threw up a mage shield. Her gun seemed to teleport to her hand in an instant and she cast a major enhancement formula on herself. All of this happened before her eyes had even the chance to adapt to the sudden increase in radiation.

As they did she was left speechless. There were not many things that could shock a veteran of her calibre. Especially not someone who had argued with a spiteful would-be deity. Multiple times! But being transported to a fantasy realm was apparently one of them.

Her magically enhanced brain raced at for normal mortals unfathomable speeds. She analyzed the crowd and made a worrying discovery: There were people with animal heads and features, but all of them walked upright. They were dressed in colourful, but medieval looking clothes which matched the surrounding architecture. It looked, for lack of a better word like fantasy... For what else could this be? She sent out a self-developed illusion disruption formula which yielded no results. It must all be real!

She turned her head in slow-motion to take in the scenery in front her, even though to any outside observer it must have looked like she was breaking her neck at the speed with which she was moving. Nothing that she was able to see looked like a threat to her at the moment. If this was indeed a medieval society, than guns and grenades were likely nonexistent. But if such biologically absurd things like demi-humans and giant domesticated lizards existed, than magic probably did as well; and there was no telling how powerful it in this world could be.

Now after she was sure that she probably had a few seconds to make a plan, without being shot at with anything that could actually be a threat to her, she tried to think about her next move. That bastard Being X must be at fault! He was almost certainly sore about his loss and did the stupidest thing he could think of by robbing her of her hard earned life of comfort. Was there no end to his arrogant cruelty? Nonetheless philosophy could wait for later.

Tanya was probably alone in this new world, because where she had just come from there had certainly not been any cat-people. That meant that her precious battalion would not be able to help her, so she had to rely entirely on herself. What could she do? Gathering good intel was the first step for any successful covert operation and she needed it more than ever in order to not get noticed by the general populace. Who knew what the people here did with outsiders? Maybe it was custom to eat them for all she knew.

So to learn more about this strange culture she needed to blend in with the crowd, which was difficult considering her current attire. Using an illusionary formula to disguise herself she quickly created an immaterial mantel to cover up her uniform. She kept her mage shield up but lowered its intensity so that it was now completely invisible to the naked eye. Her rifle was promptly switched for her combat knife which she hid inside her sleeve.

All of this happened in barely six seconds since her arrival, thanks to her extensive use of enhancement magic and her brilliant intellect. She wasn't called a child prodigy and the empire´s best soldier for nothing. Due to the short duration of her preparations in real time only a single child seemed to have noticed her, but luckily kept quieted.

Colonel Degurechaff, as she would have been called if her titles meant anything in this land, made her way to the nearest alleyway and leaned inconspicuously against a wall to listen in on the mundane conversations of the citizens. This brought the second shock of the day: The townsfolk were not conversing in English or German, but in Japanese!

How was that possible? Sixteen years of living in another world and a good portion of memory fragmentation from her cursed Type 95 had made recalling anything from her first life a difficult task, but she spoke her native language still fluently enough. After overcoming the irritation of adapting to something that she would have never guessed to ever need again she quickly learned a great many useful things.

Firstly, this place was called Lugnica and, if she interpreted the conversation of some merchants correctly, they were in the capital of the kingdom; though some kid made a joke about there not being a king currently. Curious. Who ruled the land in that case? She filed that away for further study.

Secondly, magic existed here or at least the concept of it. It was hard to confirm because nobody openly used it, but people talked about it without apparent wonder or disdain so it was logical enough to assume that it was commonplace.

Thirdly, and most importantly, these were normal civilians. She wasn't exactly an expert on the matter as she only exchanged a few pleasantries with the waitress at the small cafe Visha liked to visit from time to time. Visha...

A wave of sadness hit her. Of all things in the empire she would miss Visha the most. Tanya hoped that she would be alright without her commander. Nonsense! Viktorya was a strong woman that could surmount every difficulty! She was her best trainee and had nearly killed as many enemies as Tanya herself. Had she not been forged from the strongest steel the empire had to offer than she would have broken long ago! They all would continue without her, They had to, because that was the way she had envisioned them to be.

Her loyal subordinates. Her faithful meat-shields. Her trusted... friends.

But there was no sense in dwelling on the past. She could only move forward now. The next thing she wanted to find was a public library. It sounded unrealistic, but this place looked crazy enough that it was worth a try in her opinion.

As she made her way through the crowded streets with the hood of her illusionary cape pulled deep over her face, she noticed a child lying on street in front of a rapidly approaching carriage drawn by one of these giant lizard-creatures. While she would normally have waited for another person to come to the rescue, nobody amongst the bystanders seemed to spring into action.

Cursing her foolish decision already while she was running she took off without using her magic. That could possibly attract unwanted attention after all. She was fit enough without it to still be faster than most, contrary to what her regrettably short stature might say about that. With one grip to the forearm of the child she ripped it off the floor and propelled them both out of harm's way onto the side walk.

Ideally that would have been enough, but the mother of the little troublemaker was unpleasantly thankful and demanded to compensate Tanya. When she asked for the nearest library the woman had no clue so instead Tanya asked for small amount of currency as she was currently totally broke. Considering the frown on the mother´s face this had not been the demand she had been looking for, but she couldn't just back out now after she had promised to reward her for the rescue of her child. What the individual coins were worth was unfortunately still a mystery.

After that little stunt on the main street she wanted to lay low a little bit to slip out of the collective memory. It was bad enough that she had been in the eye of the public for a few minutes. No need to make it worse. Another dark alleyway was perfect for solving that. A problem only arose when it ended in a dead end and she was cornered by a bunch of thugs trying to rob her. Keyword "trying". On dash forward and she was in striking range. Then, with one magically enhanced punch to the face she knocked out the leader before she disposed of the second robber with a kick as well. That left only the smallest one standing, who was shaking in fear when she levelled a baleful glare at him.

Tanya had no desire to hurt children, but these were criminals. They chose to not become valuable members of society, but instead worked actively against that. Thieves and Robbers lived off the hard work of others and contributed nothing. And if she couldn't stand one thing then it was parasites. Through her foggy memory she recalled that it had been exactly that type of person that killed her all those years ago.

So she had no problem with scaring or eventually forcibly motivating the young criminal to get some useful information out of him. Now that she was presented with the opportunity to extract some valuable facts out of him, she wasn't going to pass that up. Asking for them otherwise may make her inexperience look suspicious. If things escalated she could permanently get rid of them all or deliver them to the nearest police station or however such an institution here was called.

Just as she wanted to begin her interrogation though, a new distraction showed up. A little girl in exceptionally skimpy clothing raced in their direction while yelling:

"Out of my way!"

Nobody was that much in a hurry if they were not fleeing from something. Taking into account that this alley was a dead end, the girl had surly not thought this through. Why was she fleeing? Probably because she had done something bad. Perhaps the girl stole something? That theory seemed plausible enough in view of her torn clothes.

Should Tanya stop her? A decision had to be made.

Notes:

Maybe I was not clear enough on that, but the question at the end was adressed at you, the reader. I would like feedback if I should take the canon route or do something completly different.

EDIT: Next time if there is a decision to be made I will make it more obvious. I cannot hold back any longer so expect the next chapter soon.