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Chapter 10: It beginsNotes:

Option "A" has won the poll from last chapter. Don´t be sad if that is not what you wanted. I hope that I can make this really interesting and it helps immensely with Emilia´s character development.

EDIT: I am going to sleep now and this fic sits at 1969 views. I will be very curious if by tomorrow morning the count has reached 2000. As always thanks for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Chapter 10

The last day before the royal selection was uneventful. Training continued as normal for half the day and then they spoke about the mission again and played through multiple disaster scenarios. All squads knew their positions or patrol routes for the next day intricately before Tanya sent them to bed.

As the last part of her preparations she picked up each of the eight members of Alpha Squad and flew them onto the roof of the royal palace while they were hidden by the darkness of the night. A feat that would be nearly impossible in broad daylight, because Tanya was far slower and more visible with something as heavy as a person strapped to her back.

All of them were blindfolded to prevent panic attacks from the experience of soaring through the sky for the first time. When they were at their proper positions and had established who was on night duty she went back home to get a few more hours of sleep in. She knew from experience that it paid well to be well rested.

Four hours later and it was time. The day had come. Her first true test in this crazy new world. Tanya wanted nothing less than worry about becoming queen of a medieval country, but now she to anyways. Her burning desire to live was leaving her with no choice in this regard. She had to win the royal selection and stomp out her competition before they could do the same thing to her.

The maids had already prepared her outfit for the day. Her normal combat uniform would not do so she had designed her new attire after her old parade uniform. Reinhard had wanted a dress for her at first, but she vehemently refused. She would not let herself be degraded by a monster of tulle and silk!

Knee-high, black leather boots that gleamed from excessive polish and green, reinforced trousers seemed not very ladylike in Reinhard´s opinion, but she didn't care. The multiple visible and hidden pockets allowed her to stow away all the necessities of daily life. A combat knife, painkillers, spare bullets, a compass and a lighter.

Up next was her silver belt that shone brightly in the morning sun. Her holster with the emergency pistol was strapped to her right side and her new cutlass found its home on her left. She reflexively checked all the pockets of her jacket and examined her shirt underneath to verify if she had buttoned it up correctly.

Lastly came her cape that would conceal her weapons in public and add a dramatic flair to her entrance. It had no tactical use, but for some reason she was fond of it already. Her old hat had been slightly modified to display the dragon´s symbol instead of the imperial one. It had also finally been fixed so that it would no longer slide down over her eyes when she moved too much. A change she was very much thankful for. Such were the wonders of a half-way functioning economy that had enough resources to spare for a single hat. In comparison the empire had been a service wasteland thanks to the war-torn hellhole it had become.

Freshly donned in her new gala attire she made her way to the dining room to greet Reinhard. Her knight was already waiting in his normal royal knight uniform. What had she even expected? At least it was nice how diligently he was waiting for her. He already was an invaluable subordinate.

As soon as they left the main building Tanya disguised herself with the illusion of a big, old man she had seen on the street the day before. They then proceeded to board a fine, but relatively unassuming looking carriage and left the estate through a back exit away from the main roads.

Thanks to this decision they made it through the morning traffic fairly quickly and arrived at the royal palace roughly two hours early. Not only would this over-punctuality seen as a sign of respect by the sage council, but it also would prevent the other candidates from surprising them.

Only after making sure that they were alone in the corridor leading to the throne room did Tanya drop her illusionary facade. The reason was that she needed to identify herself and to show her weapons to the guard at the door. Even if it was incomplete security it was better than none at all in Tanya´s opinion.

The limitations of this system were soon made obvious when the guard could not even identify her pistol as a weapon and accepted her excuse that the cutlass at her side "was just for show and was a symbol of friendship between her and her knight". Tanya did not like to resort to emotional manipulation with her girlish voice and big, blue eyes, but if it worked who was she to ignore the easy chance to smuggle lethal weapons into the meeting?

If she had designed the security then she would have forced every guest to list all of their accessories and their purpose beforehand. This way nobody could abuse the system like she just did. But alas, most people were trusting idiots.

Inside the empty throne room she decided test her communication with Alpha Squad. To do this she just created an illusionary picture herself outside the window where she presumed her men were hiding.

Projections without direct line of sight were usually incredibly difficult and their application got only progressively harder the further away the illusion was being casted. But Tanya could handle it. She had not been called the eleventh goddess without reason after all.

"Alpha Squad do you copy? If yes then display green in the discussed place."

She looked up at the second window on the west side and lo and behold the left corner turned green.

"Well done Alpha Squad. Now remember stay calm and watch the position of the sun carefully. You don't want to cast your shadows from outside on the glass."

The tiny speck of colour changed to red to show that her message had been received.

"The hunt is on my lovely, little trainees. Stay vigilant. Silver One out."

She cut the connection to her projection and began to hide herself in a corner of the room that allowed her to see most of the room and the podium on the front at once. Her optic camouflage was so good that even Reinhard had trouble finding her when he came back from greeting his colleagues as ordered. He had to look as normal as possible in the eyes of his fellow knights to not spoil the surprise after all.

"I am here Reinhard."

"Ah, simply incredible Milady. Your skills of stealth and tactics have surely led to many of your victories on the battlefield I presume?"

"Yes they have. But that is not what I wanted to discuss with you. Do you still remember your instructions my knight?"

"Of course Milady. I will not even hint at the possibility that I know you or that I am involved in the royal selection until you show yourself to the public."

"Very good. Now please go back to your knightly duties, whatever they may be."

"At once Milady."

He bowed and left the empty throne room again.

Tanya was bored out of her mind when half an hour later the first guest started to trickle in. She observed them closely and made pictures of their faces with her computation orb. All of them were nobles or at least very rich which came to no surprise. They stayed at the right side of the room. The royal guards on the other hand occupied the left side.

Finally, an hour later and everybody seemed to have arrived. With the exception of the royal candidates of course. Another reason why Tanya had wanted to be early and hide herself was because she wanted to assess the strengths and weaknesses of her rivals first and use this analysis to present herself in a favourable light to the public. If she appeared last then she held information sovereignty and could accurately explain why all other candidates were inferior to her.

After what felt like an eternity of tense waiting the massive doors swung open to present the four most important persons (excluding Tanya) of the whole event. With this act, the royal selection for the throne of Lugnica had officially begun.

Notes:

Do you want the royal selection to go over "peacfully" or do you think something bad should happen?

A = Peace (violence with words does not count :) )

B = confrontation (with swords)