Mages of Interpol 15 (Youjo Senki)

[LoreleiFlowers]

Last Time in Mages of Interpol 15: Tanya was captured by the Silver Legion and hypnotized to do horrible things. Now, she is free, and her time of vengeance is nearly upon her.

Content Warning: The Silver Legion is super prejudiced. Expect sexism, racism, homophobia, and more.

Disclaimer: This chapter is about alt-history of the interwar period. Defeating fascists and revolution plays a major role in this chapter.

Lorelei's Note: We have over 300 pages published since the first chapter was posted on July 20th, 2024. Seeing that I started with 75 pages pre-written, that is quite a pace to finish a book-length story. I hope you enjoy the finale of the first volume.

Also, remember the characters are characters, not me.

---

Sugar House Prison, Unified States - 15th November, 1915

37 years ago

Ramona Mercer blinked back tears as the cold stung her cheeks. She was just sixteen but had already experienced hard labor and had taken a man's life. Still, the coldness from her past and from the fall day had nothing on the coldness before her.

"You don't have to watch this," Amber Canary stated with a warmness that painted over the tragedy.

The child-like elder had taken Ramona in after her parents had died from the diseases of despair and the coldness of winter. They had long given up life by the time Ramona had been taken into the boarding schools to be de-Indianed. Several of her fellow kids died from exposure as the dorms had been completed before they got taken from their parents, and it was those same kids who were expected to finish building those on behalf of the school. They were being trained to be useful workers, after all.

Ramona had survived due to the blessing of magic that kept her body warm as the snow took others' lives. She had been spared from the forced sterilizations the other women received due to her blessings, as others had their futures decided for them.

The winter paints the world in white ubiquity. 'Isn't the winter so pretty?' Arthur Pelley says, as the season takes and takes and leaves the world without color. But one day, this winter shall pass. Underneath that snow, we wait for a moment to emerge and bring spring and life back to the world.

She didn't see the Canaries as family. Amber was still a good friend. They taught each other about their families and traditions.

"I need to see this," the teenager replied with steel-like determination.

The police kept the gathered crowd back as they prepared to execute Joe Hill. Pulitzer's sensationalist journalists crowded up front, blocking the view for most of the people there in solidarity with the victim of injustice. Governor Arthur Pelley of the Silver Legion party gave a speech about how supposed Mr. Hill had killed a police officer and a son in a grocery store. Ramona knew that wasn't true, but he was the scapegoat.

In the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason, they explained that the Silver Legion "thought that Joe Hill was a friendless tramp, a Nord, and worst of all, a Wobblie, so he had no right to live anyway. It was his duty to be the scapegoat." Wobblies were worker activists in the IWW, and Mr. Hill definitely had friends with the anarchists who fought the cruelty of the system around them with any means at their disposal.

"Any last words?" Governor Pelley, who was also the president of the Silver Oil Company, inquired of his victim as the firing squad loaded their rifles in their box. "Your silence during the trial condemned you enough. Nothing you say now will matter."

The activist wasn't going to waste a chance to spread the word of his cause. "Everyone, don't mourn me. Organize. You have to organize."

The stupid governor did not know how wrong he was. Mr. Hill's silence had saved Ramona and her friends from the same fate, and his words now would plant the seeds for when spring came.

Pelley had Hill blindfolded and restrained to a chair before getting out of the way. Journalists took copious photos. His fellow activists knew to keep their voices down. If they agitated, they might end up just like Hill — a martyr he might be, but that was two fewer hands to build the movement.

The firing squad in their blacksmith shop hesitated despite getting the order to fight.

"Fire—go on and fire!" Joe Hill roared angrily, urging them to confront the cruelty the soldiers knew they were doing.

Helen Keller, U.S. President Wilson, and the Norden Embassy had all decried the sham trial and the coming execution. Arthur Pelley and his judges did not listen to any authority other than their own.

The firing squad died. Ramona learned that real power came from the end of the gun — not words, not elected officials, and certainly not pleas for morality. That day, the governor found dynamite on his driveway. They suspected it had been the IWW and the anarchists. They did not know it had been Ramona. She had wrapped the dynamite in a paper in the same color as Arthur Pelley's concrete. The police defused it, and the evilest man in the world went to bed in his warm white and silver sheets while the wobblies took Mr. Hill's ashes out of state so that he might be laid to rest away outside the borders the Silver Legion controlled.

The Canary's didn't know it had been her. Amber might have understood. Mary certainly wouldn't and would have kicked out the girl rather than have her bring trouble to her house and her family.

"Let's go home," Amber suggested, keeping her words few lest she say something she shouldn't.

As they walked home together, the old war vet told Ramona fanciful stories. She didn't care for fairytales anymore. Reality had made her grow up fast, and it was that she needed to live in reality.

---

Rural Midwestern Unified States - 5th of December, 1952


Ramona Mercer carefully carved and imbued her ammunition with enchantments as the snow fell around her. She despised the snow.

If she had anything to be happy about, it was that she took Joe Hill's words to heart, and it paid off. Lashing out blindly was not good enough. She needed to be precise and surgical in her action, but the organs of revolution also required to be gathered.

"You really think the Old Federation was better than the Federation after the Second Revolution?" Damien commented, aghast at Ramona.

Damien had joined the ranks of the Revolutionary Army from the Students Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which had increasingly adopted the 'Brotsky Insurgency Process' praxis. Ramona didn't know much about the young activist besides that he had clearly dropped the nonviolent part now that revolution was upon them.

To be fair, Damien didn't know much about her. What she did know was that his anti-authoritarian, grassroots stuff didn't appeal to her as much as the reliance on more seasoned leadership under the Marksist-Levinist vanguard style to get a movement past the finish line. Urban civic revolutionaries like Damien might be able to bring out the numbers, but they are far too fractious and intolerant of nationalism and the Bolshevization of their ranks.

"Yes, I think was the greatest leader the Federation ever had," the mage calmly replied as she etched the next part of the glyph. "You shouldn't compare what they had back then to any romantic conception of a perfect government you have in your head. We don't live in a fairyland. Instead, compare to what came before. It was leagues better than the tsarist regime. We gave people new rights, freedoms, and opportunities they never had before."

During the war, when the then-adult Ramona was conscripted like all poor mages, the woman learned of the Old Federation from fighting beside them. She knew how they had overthrown their tyrants and then proceeded to defeat everyone who dared to invade their new country. Not only had they done it, but they had a detailed blueprint that anyone who wanted to be free to expel the tyrants in their land and set up a government for the people. More importantly, it worked. Countless subjugated people could use the Marksist-Levinist praxis to be free finally. No more starving, no more Arthur Pelleys. It wouldn't be a fairytale, but it would be a land for their people that could survive the evil imperialists in America and Europa.

"What about the purges?" the man pressed her.

"'What about the purges?' The Western media overblows them completely and conflates all the things going on together. Many people didn't get sentenced. If anything, Dzhugashvili didn't kill enough opportunists, imperialists, and revisionists. If he had, the Second Revolution would never have happened. That coup only sowed confusion and division within the Federation. These new parties represent different class interests, undoing years of Comrade Joseph Dzhugashvili and Comrade Vladimir Levin's hard work."

"I have met a person who fled the Old Federation," Damien claimed with a dumbfounded expression as if he were talking to a person from another reality. "He told me how horrible it was."

"Probably imperialist scum," the woman scoffed. "The West loves inviting the poor fascists and imperialists over and giving them a platform to advocate for how awful it was that we were mean to them. Of course, we were harsh on them. Imperialists rape, pillage, and kill. Have you heard of the pogroms?"

"Yes, I have, but the person I met was a baker," Damien countered. "He wasn't some rich capitalist. He supported the party. Still, he saw how bad it was getting. Joseph Dzhugashvili disbanded the women's councils, banned abortion and divorce, threw homosexual men and women into labor camps and asylums, and ended gender-affirming surgeries for trans people. He undid so much progress that had occurred under Vladimir Levin and Leon Brotsky. If Joseph Dzhugashvili hadn't taken power, my friend claimed it wouldn't have devolved into the power-hungry, self-glorifying cult of personality it became. We don't need White Silvers in proletariat drag."

Ramona picked up the brass cartridge and blew on it to let the metal cool and the ink of her enchantment dry. Enchanting ammunition was based on traditional arcane knowledge. The robber barons in the Unified States had taken the previously unpatented traditional arcane knowledge, claimed it as their own, and then sent their armies to conquer her homeland with factory-made enchanted ammunition.

Ramona had actually taught the old ways of enchanting ammunition to the settler Amber "Calamity" Canary. Her former student believed in the tenets of liberation theology despite being a secular cultural Heartist, and they had seen each other as comrades when fighting imperialists during the Great War.

As for dealing with her current interlocutor, there were limits to how much debating she would do. She imagined how she felt now, which was how Joseph Dzhugashvili felt when dealing with Leon Brotsky back in the day. There is a lot of criticism and not a lot of effective leadership.

As Ramona understood it, real power came at the end of a gun. People in the real world needed to accept that to have a lasting legacy — that is, a revolution that succeeded in its ambition and survived against the onslaught of capitalist invaders and spycraft, you were going to have to use that gun. To put it another way, Death was ugly, and power frightened people. To lead, you had to have a foot in both death and power, which gave people like her interlocutor plenty of ammunition to play the morally superior opposition.

It was time to turn things around instead of being on the receiving end.

"What do you believe in, Damien?" Romona inquired, getting back to the painstaking work of making enchanted ammunition by hand.

"I am definitely not Orthodox. I am up with the World Federationist camp with the others who see themselves as left communist and fans of Brotsky's administration."

Typical World Federationist. They want all the ideas and interests at the table even when they are directly opposed to one another. Their lack of consistency and clarity makes them weak under pressure.

Convincing these more progressive types with fiery, youthful idealism and opinions born of encountering new ideas for the first time was not the veteran's strong suit. They had just shucked off the authority of their parents and bought Brotsky's bottom-up grassroots theory of permanent revolution. They, at most, could get a concession from the powerful through such tactics. Without the necessary evil of the top-down Orthodox approach, they will never be in charge of anything. They even rejected Martin Bishop of the Southern Universalist Leadership Conference for being too authoritarian and emphasizing singular charismatic leadership. As Ramona saw it, people like Damien were so anti-establishment that they were allergic to having any meaningful power at all.

Ramona took a deep breath and figured out how best to levy her criticisms of the other side of the Orthodox-Worldist divide tactically.

"You know why we call it left communism? Because they left communism." She started giving a weak chuckle at the cliche joke before getting serious again.

"As for Brotsky, he is not as bad as his followers," she continued before a steely edge entered her voice. "No group supposedly inside worker's cause has done more harm to the revolution than the Brotskyists. They spend so much time criticizing successful revolutions and very little time actually advocating for them. Imperialists love hiring them because Brotskists are a useful tool to dissuade revolutionaries from Marksist-Levinism, the praxis that actually works to liberate people in the real world. When the Brotskyists have a successful revolution against people who aren't other Marksists, then I will take them seriously."

They sat there for a moment in silence. To his credit, the World Federationists didn't go on and on about how Brotskyists just need a chance to prove themselves capable of change.

Some people in the distance started singing some of Odyssia Ono's famous socialist song This Land is Your Land, which loudly proclaimed the land and its beauty belonged to one and all. To Ramona, the song offensively erased how all these 'immigrants' came to be on this land and who was there before. IWW people would sing this song and Same Boat Now, which asked black people to put aside the forced relocation of African people to North America to focus on worker solidarity. The World Federationists loved these songs. The Orthodox factions, not so much.

"What are your thoughts about nationalism, Damien?" she inquired.

"That it leads to war and exists to divide people and keep labor trapped like serfs on a piece of land."

He wasn't wrong in some regards. Sweatshop countries and unequal exchange definitely made policing borders important to capitalists to keep cheap labor where they wanted it to be.

"Do you want to know what a nation means to me?" she inquired.

He shook his head. It was a rhetorical question anyway. Damien didn't know her perspective at all.

"Freedom," she began with a bit of fire entering her voice. "Dignity. Control over your destiny. The ability to stand tall. The ability to have your own language and culture. To have people who are like you and understand you to be in charge and make decisions that respect you and your family."

"You want an ethnostate?" the man blinked when he connected the dots behind the words. "That is what the Destiny Manifest was about."

"That was not what the Destiny Manifest was about. That was the opposite of what I wanted. That is a group of people who think no one else matters but them, and so they get to take and take and take and then kill and kick out all the people they find there."

"But you want to kick people out of places."

"Damien, people have tried to live side-by-side with the colonizers for decades. It ain't getting better. The Black Liberation Movement gets this. The Brown Berets know this. The American Indian Movement knows this. Before you criticize it, look around the entire globe. How do you get freedom from oppressors?"

"Revolution, of course, but—"

"No, revolution is just a result. It is nationalism and class solidarity. In order to have solidarity, you have to circle your culture and your common conditions. If you don't, you will crumble. Most successful revolutions are an alloy of nationalism and working-class struggle. What you are going to find is that colonial liberals at the centrist edge of your faction, who are only here strategically to oust Yockey, will take power and then send the Silver Legion armies under them on all of us. They don't want what we want. They want to bring back their preferred liberal democratic order where they are at the top, and we are at the bottom, being snuffed out quietly."

Damien rubbed his forehead. Most of the people in the SNCC knew that compromising with moderates was a recipe for being backstabbed. It was why the Popular Front didn't work. It was why Brotsky pushed for the United Front. However, just like the Commonwealth had joined up when they were threatened by the Silver Legion, a bunch of liberals in America had joined up in the revolution because the current Legionist administration did not serve their interests.

The man couldn't contradict her on reality history had made clear over and over. She might look younger than she was due to being a war mage, but her voice carried experience and study in its texture.

"Ramona, may I ask if there anything good you can say about the Reformed Federation and the Brotsky administration?" the man wondered, referring to the very much internationalist revolutionary core of communism in the modern world.

"Yes, Brotsky didn't sign the Defensive Pact with the Unified States," the mage soldier replied evenly. "It would have given him an opening to invade Europa and helped the poor people there communize; however, no one should trust fascists. Just like the Silver Legion planned to do with the Commonwealth, they would have done to the Federation."

"Is there any criticism of the Old Federation that you won't immediately respond with 'Western propaganda', 'traitors', or 'it was necessary at the time'?" the idealist inquired. "There seems to be no room for you to be wrong anywhere with all of these canned responses."

"That is because I don't have time to go over all the literature and history with you."

"I have read history from communists during this period. A lot of people in the World Congress despise the Old Federation."

"Many of those are not proper dialecticians but revisionists, opportunists, idealists, and people who would rather argue than get things done. By changing things that shouldn't be changed in order to just distance themselves from the Old Federation like this, they move off the path to communism and undermine their own revolutions like you World Federationists."

"Do you accept any criticisms?!" the man cried.

"Of course, we make mistakes. Who doesn't?"

She shook her head in exasperation and continued to enchant her ammo.

"Look at what Dzhugashvili accomplished," Ramond continued after a few moments. "People were pulled out of their backward poverty, where they were using wooden hoes, into being more literate, better educated, and better fed than even the richest capitalist nations. The entirety of the Imperial core in Europa fears the Federation due to all of Dzhugashvili's accomplishments as its great leader. Capitalists want to contain us because they know Marksist-Levinist administrations are so effective at creating superpowers out of even once agrarian economies. They are already afraid of what Zhangzi will become. Marxist-Levinists have done more in decades than what capitalist countries can only do after centuries of imperialism, taking advantage of millions of people and their resources in Afrika, South and Central America, and Asia. People have doctors for the first time. People are learning to read when their colonial masters wouldn't let them and in their own language. Marksist-Levinism helps people stand tall."

"But it also creates cults of personality by focusing everything on standing behind charismatic faces of the party."

"Cults of personality?! The colonial settlers have their Founding Fathers. Why can't the Old Federation have pride in its vanguard? This seems like a double—"

"No, I can't take all this Dzhugashvili apologetics anymore." Damien got up and claimed the last word in the showy way, in Ramona's opinion, that idealists love having. "I have talked to fundies with more open minds than you. I just can't see you as anything other than the fascist version of a communist."

You are the one without an open mind, the gunner thought privately. There was no point in debating with fools. That was why she had her gun when push became shove.

To be fair, Ramona was a hard-liner. She turned off many other Marksist-Levinists, especially the more democratic and internationalist ones, but she did not care. Half-measures were not enough. Calls to be polite and sit on one's hands as colonists and capitalists raped, pillaged, and did atrocity after atrocity would no longer persuade her or her vanguard of fellow hard-liners. Dzhugashvili was a hero to everyone who wanted their own country in a world full of monsters who tore people apart for profit and their countless complicit lackeys who moralized about being patient and jumping through the electoral hoops that the monsters had rigged.

Damn anyone who thought I should ask politely to be free as my brothers and sisters die. They can die a hundred times over for their disgusting, pearl-clutching rhetoric. It is so easy to tell others to be gentle when one isn't the one suffering.

After painstaking work to reach perfection, the fruits of Ramona's hard labor lay before her — three bullets. Each promised certain death for an enemy of the revolution. Freed from the toil, she made sure to get some leisure time with her friends by joining them in some fun before they headed out. Everyone deserves time to enjoy life.

Not much later, word spread that they needed to move to the suburban town of Autumn's Meadow to counter the Legion's Horde of non-mage zealots. While they were a threat to the revolution, more significant threats were her aim. Ramona knew she was not throwing away her shot.

---

Silver House Lawn in Chicago, Unified States - 5th of December, 1952


President Yockey stood in the recording booth with his mages, carefully patrolling the vicinity. A magetech engineer gave him the thumbs-up when they were rolling.

"My fellow Americans, this is your President, Francis Yockey, here for a very important Pyre-side chat.

"As you know, the lying press has slandered me and your fellow Real Americans terribly. As you all know, you can only trust me and the Pulitzer News Network for all your information, for only we are truthful and accurate. We have all the answers, and only I can bring our country out of humiliation into greatness. It will be just like it used to be in that glorious past that we all remember when everything was better. Back when men were men and women were women, the races never mixed, and women couldn't vote. You all know that democracy has failed us by causing the subversion of our culture and the mixing of peoples that should not be mixed. That is why we need to place our trust in the Silver Legion."

He took a moment to take a sip of soda before continuing.

"I am telling you that everything boils down to us versus them, truth versus lies. Close your ears to the lying press, the coastal elites, and the foreign infiltrators who tell you horrible falsehoods like that what you are doing is wrong. They wish to make you hate your country and tempt you off the Silver path, but Real Americans like us stay on that path and push past all doubts. White Silver imbues us with truth and honesty. We Real Americans live in reality and follow first principles.

"Now, listen to me and only me, for we are at a turning point in history where we must revitalize our culture again with Old Faith spirit. We need to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press — in short, we must burn out the poison of immorality, which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess."

The President then went on and on about each marginalized group that was the 'real threat' to America and had really 'impoverished' his base. Francis Yockey celebrated how he had continued Arthur Pelley's 'Aztec Repatriation' program from the late 1930s with his new initiative called 'Operation Kickback'. (1) Just like Pelley's, his initiative had moved over a million Aztec-looking people out of the country, (1) freeing up valuable real estate for Yockey's eager friends. The colonists had conquered the American Southwest fair and square over a century ago. That meant they got to do whatever they wanted with those animals, especially now that the agribusiness didn't need many of them anymore.

The great about Operation Kickback and the mass incarnation initiative was that they put the inferior beings in places where they wouldn't be organizing for welfare or revolution.

As for religion, Yockey honestly disliked the Old Faith for its ever-present themes of hierarchy inversion, where the poor were blessed and not the rich, as well as the idea that voluntary poverty was a good thing. Yockey, however, could fake it. He needed to employ such theater to manipulate the ethnonationalists and religious nationalists in the Silver Legion's base into focusing their efforts on whatever the monopolists also wanted.

For example, business nationalists hated unions. Public schools were rife with unions. ethnonationalists hated how public schools mixed people, and religious nationalists hated them for their institutional secularism. Ending public schooling made them all happy because it would get rid of the union and create a system where the now exclusively for-profit schools could choose their students under whatever criteria they wanted, just like employers do when hiring people. Goodbye education for pesky minorities who would become much more manageable workers if they couldn't read or write.

Really, only a few people actually needed to think in society. The moment they got a machine that could replace all the workers, Yockey would happily get rid of all of the parasites known as the working class and kick them out of his country.

Finding common denominators to unify the ruling coalition under a monopolist-benefiting ideology had been Yockey's life work, and it had proven immensely profitable. As long as the other groups got what they wanted (a monocultural theocracy), the monopolists could do away with democratic norms and rule as they saw fit. The White Silver Creed of absolute private property rights had stealthily been made a foundational part of the Swordist faith and the new post-war American monoculture. Now, to believe in anything other than monopolist rule was to be demonic and un-American.

After his speech was done and the people sent out to wreak havoc on inferior beings, Yockey left the Silver House in Chicago and boarded a flight to Wien, Germania. This would mean that Emperor Cassander and Empress Roxanne would just have to meet with the Goddess alone, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Richard Diamond didn't trust things were safe. Yockey, following his friend's lead, would abandon the ship as well.

It would look bad, and stock in the Unified States would plummet if their leader indicated he didn't trust the country was a going concern. President Yockey still trusted that the Goddess would kill the revolutionaries, but he also trusted that the United Front would have an assassin after him. He wouldn't end up like George Lundeen did during the Great War.

---

Freedom's Egg somewhere in Chicago, Unified States - 5th of December, 1952


I watched the snow as it fell outside the window of my little house, which was made of ticky tacky. Soon, the fake neighborhood would be painted in white ubiquity. In my bones, I could feel the change was coming to America, and so was the snow. I hoped the revolutionaries dressed warmly.

Despite all my worries and rage, I somehow found the ability to laugh in the moment of calm I had before the show started, and I could leave my gilded cage. The banter of my friends did my old soul good.

"But I want to live in society!" Laurence "Masquerade" Drake cried in mock frustration.

"No more society!" Polyxena Mironova declared dramatically with a raised fist. "Return to monkey!"

The two had a great dynamic together, and their antics were the medicine I needed to distract myself from my pain as well as feel somewhat normal again — wings and all. It was good to find out Polyxena's real name now. Apparently, she and Masquerade had gotten past a lot of their relationship struggles over the years after Polyxena ended her partnership with the Albish Secret Service. They would have to live in a country that didn't ally with the Commonwealth, but that wasn't too hard. Polyxena had even let me know that the couple planned to have a child after they settled somewhere. As for the fate of MI15, it was one step at a time before any big decisions were made.

I wanted to have a child, too. I wasn't sure if it was the hormones in my body, instinct, or what, but every time when my friends and loved ones had a child, the desire would swirl through my being. Settling down with Sonnetto had been my plan, but one didn't make decisions unilaterally in a relationship. I wonder if my love still wanted to work in MI15. I certainly did. Maybe we could convince Matheus to join, too.

Back to the subject of having a child, this life had left me severely traumatized. I didn't know if I could handle the responsibilities of being a good mother. How does someone have as much pain in them as me and not become such a dysregulated individual? I had intense minority stress that plagued the back of my mind constantly. My mind generated paranoid fantasies of every possible sneer and ostracism if word spread of my various peculiarities. After several decades of hiding behind a mask of conformity in my first life as a 'salaryman' and this life as a 'perfect officer', nothing terrified me more than being without its safety. Only in Berun had I ever lived even the slightest bit openly, and everywhere else was hypervigilance for every potential belligerent bigot or vengeful veteran.

I really have way too many enemies. Is this what life on hard mode feels like?

"Tanya," Polyxena stated, getting me out of my thoughts. "Do you want to know about how Borislava, Laurie, and I applied to become your new neighbors?"

'Laurie' was what the assassin affectionately dubbed Masquerade. The man embraced the name with his typical passion for artistic subversion. Didn't he know that by subverting expectations, all he did was reinforce them? Regardless, whatever made the man happy was none of the business within reason.

I nodded to Polyxena's question, not trusting to speak right now lest I say something I regret. Irrational behavior from the extremes of emotions, and I had a long and troubled history. It had pushed me in front of a train and caused me to run right into a trap that put me in this silver cage of supposed suburban splendor.

"So we three former spies posed as professional actors," the assassin began her story.

"I am a professional actor," Masquerade interjected.

"Yes, you are, dear. You are very accomplished!"

"Okay, I am awfully sorry. I should not have not interrupted like that."

"You are forgiven," Polyxena placated. "I love you." Kiss

Turning to me, she continued. "So Borislava and I had to play being the wife. Obviously, there were no single women in your neighborhood, given the artificial culture of Freedom's Egg. Before you ask, yes, it was a bit of a challenge dealing with Borislava. She is just so damn competitive."

"I had to play the husband," Masquerade commented. "It was rather awkward having to perform matrimonial bliss with Borislava."

"Why was that?" I inquired in confusion. He clearly would have had to pair with several actresses.

"For starters, she is my girlfriend's ex," he admitted.

"Okay, I can see that causing some tension," I replied with a shake of my head. I knew the politics of relationships well now.

"She also tried to kill me during the Museum heist case," the thespian added with exaggerated nonchalance.

A peel of laughter leaped from my mouth.

"Well, we patched things up now," Polyxena commented with a surprising amount of grace for someone whose significant other had almost died. "She didn't know Tanechka was using the Angels in that highly performative heist to make my cover as a free agent working for the Albish Secret Service more believable. Spycraft requires a level of deceit even within our own ranks. Borislava understands this, and we are all friends again despite our strongly held political differences."

"I swear she still holds a grudge," the Albish man confessed, pulling at his ascot. The couple were the absolute image of American yuppies.

"Like I said, she is just competitive," the woman repeated calmly. "None of those hijinks during the auditions were because my ex was out to get you. As for the other competitors, she very much was making sure they didn't win."

"Well, luckily, you and I won in the end."

"I killed it on stage," Polyxena bragged, puffing out her chest.

"You definitely slay, dear."

"Literally," I added in a weak attempt at humor, which was not my strong suit. My imagination told me that Polyxena's dark humor didn't put off the Silver Legionists as much as did other people.

"Speaking of people who wanted to kill you, dear," the assassin added. "Can I tell Tanya the Warrick and Lundeen story?"

I had no idea who those two were without more context. I probably met individuals with those names, but they probably meant other spies.

"It is all old news now," Masquerade replied with a smile. "Go ahead. I am sure Elya won't mind."

"Elya?" I blinked in surprise. "Now I need to know. What did my friend do?"

"Well, during the war, she had infiltrated the U.S. government under the name Sally Warrick in order to discourage this country from joining the allies against Germania," Polyxena explained with a bit of smug joy. "She would get her senators and congressional staffers to read speeches she wrote for them on the congressional floor, and those speeches would then be added to the congressional record. Then, using Congress' ability to print and mail records to the public on the taxpayer dollar, Elya created a very effective and relatively cheap anti-war and pro-Germania propaganda campaign.

"You would be proud of how under-budget and efficient her influencing campaign had been. In order to pull this stunt off, your friend had subverted several staffers and legislators by settling their debts, assisting them in a time of desperation, or helping them find discrete ways to satisfy their carnal desires during the Prohibition era."

"The intelligence community calls her the Genie of Germania for a reason," Masquerade smartly added when he saw an opening. "Legend says she grants a person their deepest wish but at a terrible price."

"I know that moniker," Tanya exclaimed. "The Genie appears in cinema all the time to seduce men and their wives, trying to turn them into traitors to the Unified States. I appear as well as both the Devil of the Rhine punishing the unfaithful and as White Silver, the one who leads empires to impossible victories. Both sicken me a bit."

"Well, as for Elya, she sure felt like a devil during the war," Masquerade admitted. "We were losing the diplomacy game with the Unified States. Based on my intelligence, the allies backed the Silver Legion, who were far more jingoistic. Despite their love of Germanian culture, they saw an opportunity to pick at the remains of Europa near the end of the war like a vulture to road kill. The Empire just happened to be on its last legs and had many enemies that could become many allies to the monopolists in the Silver Legion as their party started gaining momentum in the polls and more seats in government."

"We shouldn't forget about Senator Lundeen," Polyxena mentioned. "He is key to this part of the story."

"I remember that name now!" I commented. "He was the Senator from Minnesota who was working with Germania. He died in a car accident. It was a big deal because it led to America joining the war."

Masquerade went stiff, but Polyxena kept going.

"Exactly, it worked more wonderfully than Borislava and I could have ever hoped," the assassin stated. "My ex, always the pyromaniac among the Russy spies back then, had planted a bomb in his car with the hope he would just die. He was blocking the vote for the Unified State to join the war. He kept employing anti-communist propaganda to dissuade people from working with the Old Federation and saying that both Germania and Albion were equally empires with terrible track records on human rights.

"What Borislava and I didn't expect was for a briefcase full of Elya's speeches to be in the car and to survive the explosion. Instead of having to pin the blame on Germania for the death of a Senator, everyone now knew Germania had effectively plundered the coffers of the federal government to manipulate public opinion. While the revelation had turned the public against the Reconstructionists and the Grand Old South Party, it gave the public a casus belli to rally behind. Your friend Elya blamed poor Laurie here for the stunt, but my sweetie would never do something like that. He is too nice to use such methods."

"Dear, perhaps we shouldn't—"

"Did you cause America to join the war against the Empire?" I wondered with exasperation. "The Silver Legion took power because they found out about those speeches?!"

The assassin went quiet as she realized her misstep.

"To be fair, everyone was trying to turn the Unified States to their side during the Great War," Masquerade attempted to appease her.

"Well, there was a silver lining to all of this," Polyxena added. "Because Elya fled the Unified States for her life and chased after us to the Russy Federation, your friend was in a great position to negotiate a ceasefire so that you could be rescued from Loria's dollhouse, which also led to the coup against that damned tyrannical counter-revolutionary Dzhugashvili."

"What?!" I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Everything about my imprisonment made a lot more horrifying sense now.

"Perhaps we should discuss something other than that, honey," the thespian commented before whispering something in Russy that I couldn't hear.

"Oh…uhhhh," Polyxena stammered. "Your bag! Wait right there."

Masquerade and I were left alone for a moment as Polyxena went back to their 'house' across the street. The man had to keep up his spell to hijack the video and audio feed from the computation orbs in the room. It was horrifying that people watched my every move. Interestingly, once my brainwashing had been broken, I apparently disappeared from the video feed. That would be a valuable ability for the infiltration mission when I got back to Mages of Interpol missions again.

Work, how I miss you so much. Life is empty without you. Only Sonnetto and my family are more important to me than you.

Masquerade pulled me into a hug with his free hand while I distracted myself from a mental breakdown by having a mental conversation with the personification of my occupation. I might need some therapy from a professional who didn't think homosexuality was a disease.

"It is all going to be fine," my acting captain promised. "We will get you out of here, and you can live with us and your family again."

"Thank you," I muttered and rubbed my eyes with his silly ascot, which he had given me in the absence of an immediately apparent better option.

Polyxena popped back soon after and plopped the white poppy duffel bag Masquerade had gifted me a couple of years ago. The bag had a bunch of familiar objects like the bosun whistle Calamity gave me, as well as my favorite novels, puzzle books, and letters from my friends and family, including Visha, to whom I really needed to talk at some point. Each object brought a bit more normalcy back to my bizarre, horrific situation. I had no idea how the assassin got it in here, but she came across as a person who knew how to do 'questionable' things easily.

"Tadaa!" the assassin exclaimed as she pulled out a grumpy cat stuffed animal that Sonnetto had made for me.

I glomped onto it. It was childish of me. I knew that, but the thought had nagged me ever since I fully fused with Sonnetto long ago that I needed to permit myself just to do things that made me happy more often. 'If one never took time in the present to be satisfied, then one might find they miss every chance,' as Sonnetto would tell me. Her words rang to my very core. How often had I missed a way out of my misery in the past because I wouldn't permit myself to take it?

Regardless, I would soon have an excellent opportunity to leave this prison and rejoin Sonnetto and take out a majority of high-ranking Silver Legionists. With a bit of misdirection, we had given the Legion the impression that I was not ready to move out yet, which let the Revolutionary Army advance. At the same time, the Silver Legion mostly sat on their asses, waiting patiently for their Goddess.

---

Autumn's Meadow, Ohio - 6th of December, 1952


Amber "Calamity" Canary held her rifle close to her chest as angry chants of the Silver Legion's Hoarding Horde (HH) echoed outside. The Silver Legion had created the HH as their non-mage paramilitary organization to do unofficially approved acts of violence on behalf of the party. The gunslinger kept her breathing steady, but depending on what happened, people could die. The house had gone quiet like the forest when a predator prowled nearby.

Demiguichi Akria and two Aztec families hid in the attic above her. The former had come to assist the revolutionaries in messaging, organizing, and logistics on behalf of Tanechka's Angels and the United Front. The families had come to the Unified States as seasonal migrant farmers before the Immigration Act set harsh quotas in order to make America more Northern European. The modern planter aristocracy depended on the cheap labor they could get out of families like theirs. The fat cats lobbied to give their workforce permanent resident status instead of having them trapped south of the border years ago. Then, automation in the agricultural industry drummed out countless farm laborers out of work.

That was where Autumn's Meadow, Ohio, came in. The town had a labor shortage for their businesses. The mayor had incentivized the now-unemployed mining and farming families to come to the town by subsidizing their move and providing temporary housing. That housing prevented them from being arrested by the Silver Legion for homelessness and crimes of desperation. Many of them also received housing vouchers that got them into permanent dwellings. The initiative came with generous support from the town's local business community. Even the governor of Ohio also supported the measure.

Unfortunately, hatred of the different and foreign reigned supreme as the Silver Legion repeatedly doubled down on their conspiracy theories and genocidal rhetoric.

"Get out here, you murderers!" one of the paramilitary raged loudly outside.

"Fang, I am not joking," Masquerade told the team. "It is like their whole White Silver ideology has roots from another world."

Calamity had entered a communication spell with the whole team sans Sonnetto, who was still in a puppet state. The homunculus needed Tanya to feed her divine mana in order to maintain her personality, and hopefully, reuniting with the Germanian war vet would solve that problem. Without the divine mana of 'freedom', Sonnetto was nothing more than a machine that resembled a person — a robot.

"Don't blame me for this!" Tanya griped. "Nothing in my old essays could have caused this blood sacrifice nonsense."

A couple of days earlier, President Yockey had claimed the Aztecs living in the Unified States were not only colluding with the rebels in the occupied Aztec Empire but snatching white kids to sacrifice to their gods. The HH had taken this conspiracy theory seriously and responded by bombing temples, demanding answers from city officials, and storming the streets in Autumn's Meadow. Schools, hospitals, and entire neighborhoods had been evacuated to protect the people from the bloodthirsty paramilitary grunts.

The Brown Berets and Calamity had volunteered to defend their communities that couldn't get out in time like the two upstairs as the HH stormed the streets. Brown Berets were mostly Chicano people who had created their own paramilitary organization to resist the violence against their communities from the legionist administration and their goons. Right now, fighting off this many HH grunts would be a death sentence for the Brown Berets, and Calamity was still very limited in what she was allowed to do as a magical Interpol officer. The hope was that the Legion wouldn't find them before reinforcements arrived.

A young woman with the signature beret on her head noticed a Legionist passerby at the window. Luckily, the Legionist hadn't seen them in their hiding spots.

"This cannot be real," Masquerade commented, completely dumbfounded. "If you had told me that this much destruction was being wrought just because the President had spread a baseless rumor about migrants doing human sacrifices, I would have told you it was all bollocks and not believed you."

"It is that they don't live in reality anymore that makes this possible," Tanya stated demurely. "Pulitzer once told Vicky that he can't even print facts anymore. The consumers of his yellow journalism won't believe it. Not only will they demand the facts be redacted and replaced with unhinged conspiracy theories, but they will declare the news outlet communist. Those 'journalists' who report the truth get torn to shreds."

'You know you live in a pre-legionist society when everything the ruling coalition believes is false,' Richard Diamond had written in his Silver-Diamond Manifesto. 'You know you live in a Legionist society when large swaths of people so strongly desire to live in unreality that they lash out at any attempt to take them out of it.'

For the Tejan Sharpshooter, what had terrified her and her family about the Hoarding Horde was that they absolutely adored the poster child of anti-unionism, Henry Phord, who plowed his immense wealth towards spreading hate and ignorance through various papers and books like The International Heartist: The World's Foremost Problem. As the title of that book suggested, central to his ideology was that Heartists and international institutions were the source of everything evil in the world. His conspiracy theories had also gained significant ground in Germania. (2)
While the rest of MI15 chatted, Calamity had to stay quiet because a single noise could alert the Legionists right outside, she feared. Her teammates knew that. The gunslinger would just cut the spell and stop listening to them if action broke out. For now, listening to them kept her nerves in check.

Then came the loud thumping at the door as the Legionists tried to break inside. They had erected a barricade. Had a mage been knocking at the door, then they would have already broken through.

"We know you filthy monsters are inside," the Silver Legion grunt shouted without a hint of irony.

You know you live in a Legionist society when the weakest and least capable of defending themselves are declared to be the most dangerous and evil. In contrast, those who are actually the most powerful and evil are sanctified.

"Captain M, they are not mages." Calamity reported as she moved. "What is my clearance?".

Masquerade kept hesitating despite all the progress he had made. The gunslinger only practically had access to lethal force. The post-Great-War consensus had been that mages were not allowed to use violence against non-mages unless permitted by the proper authorities. The pacifism-inclined thespian who became an illusionist for a reason had to make a decision fast.

Then came the sound of someone climbing a ladder.

"They are going for the attic window!" Calamity shouted and started hustling to the place where the vulnerable civilians hid.

She pulled down the attic door.

"Down now!" she commanded. "M, what is my clearance? Now, please!"

"C Clearance."

"So, you are asking me to tussle with Legionists with bare fists?"

Calamity couldn't use most spells modern mages could use and had severely limited options. She specialized in taking down mages, not non-mages.

Then, a tremendous amount of mana flowed into her, and the sclera of her eyes went black.

'I don't know what I am doing, but I hope this helps, Officer Calamity.'

That thought sounded like Calamity's own, but it couldn't have been.

'It's me, Tanya.'

'Ta~~mity?'

Calamity Tamantha held her head as markings appeared all over her skin, granting her access to a whole host of new spells she usually didn't have.

So much information flowed into the body that used to belong to Calamity alone. Tamantha now understood how pension plans and corporate sub-ledgers worked, or one could say she now knew how to make a Colt .45 shoot three times in quick succession. The fusion of Tanya and Calamity's minds had been a complete accident based on the former's memories. The Germanian war vet had wanted just to send some of her power through her Purpose divinity connection with Calamity but had overshot it and somehow combined them into one individual.

There was no time to think about the countless existential questions running through this fusion's mind. Newly empowered, Tamantha took point. She hoped that she could at least be a bullet sponge for the non-mages at her flank who would have to do the likely necessary lethal violence she legally couldn't do even for self-defense under her current clearance.

Now I see-sawed into being too darn powerful.

"Tanya just disappeared!"

"She fused with her…me, long story. Explain later, boss."

The fused mage climbed the stairs after all the civies got downstairs. When Tamantha got up there, she saw Akira defending herself the best she could with her pacifistic martial arts called Aikido. The revolutionary used her martial techniques to redirect her opponents' attacks to neutralize the force. While it did not harm the murderous HH, it bought time for the families to escape.

Tamantha summoned a bubble with Tanya's new water magic around herself and the two armed paramilitary volunteers. They took out intruders as they filed through the window, but the Brown Berets got caught reloading simultaneously when one man timed his entrance into the building accordingly.

"Surrender or the Zhangzi rat gets it," the HH officer screamed as he jumped through the window and pulled out his gun to shoot Akira. The volunteer forces didn't have time to react. The man might have been an idiot to enter the building when a forcefield protected the Berets, but he was committed to killing at least the Angel.

Bang!

Tamantha had quickly drawn her pistol and shot him before he could even react. It was a precarious maneuver, but with Calamity's knowledge and Tanya's acceleration spell, it was possible to pull off.

"Calamity, you didn't…."

"I did what I had to. Please trust me on this, sir."

Separately, neither half of Tamantha would have made the shot. Tanya was too afraid of potentially taking career-ending actions, and Calamity would not hesitate with a hostage present. Together, Tamantha could take that shot by overcoming the impediment to action contained in each half of themselves.

"Akira, you look like your lunch is on the way out. You gonna be okay?"

"I will be fine, Ms. Calamity. Just shaken."

The Angel was a hyper empath with misophonia. In combat, she was a liability because not only did violence result in her vicariously feeling pain acutely, but loud noises caused her sensory overload.

Tamantha kicked the ladder down before more of the Hoarding Horde could climb up.

"What are we gonna do, Akira? This location is compromised."

Tamantha also didn't want to get used to killing non-mages. That included this Legion horde stuck in a delusion in which they saw themselves as the real victims and marginal groups as somehow the evil orchestraters of this horror show. The horde sadly exemplified how Legionism hurt everyone and twisted them into an Us versus Them struggle. That didn't absolve the horde of their guilt, from which they mentally sprinted away at every possible chance by delving deeper into their preferred unreality.

Still, Tamantha refused to forget the personhood in everyone because when we do, we can see more clearly our own moral failings. To see only a monster is to refuse to see how we all have bits and bobs in our brains that can make us turn into a person just like the HH or Yockey. Our nature enables evil, so we must resolutely educate ourselves in history and love.

"Can you—" the rattled woman began but stopped to start ventilating in stress.

"Steady now, dearie," the fusion said as she kept guard of the window. "Deep breaths. I think that will hold them."

What had just happened must have hit Akira completely. That could happen as adrenaline decreased and one started processing. Recruits all struggled with it, but Akira was a person who would never get used to it.

That was fine. What made her weaker in some areas made her fantastic in others. While Tanya's low empathy allowed her to think logically in high-intensity situations quickly, Akira's high empathy allowed her to comprehend and synthesize how others felt into a story that spoke to their collective dream.

Peaking out the attic window, Tamantha could see the HH retreating for some reason as their leaders waved them off. Something was going to happen.

The fusion turned to Akira, who had calmed down and checked in with her fellow elf-like agents of Tanechka's revolutionary mage corp.

"It will be ten more minutes before reinforcements arrive," Akira confirmed. "However, we have legionist mages on the way so they can carpet bomb the approach revolutionary forces with explosive formulas. Do you think you can handle them before you get in range?"

"Captain, is my clearance still C?" Tamantha called in the MI15 channel.

"Agent Calamity, I am escalating this to clearance B. Stop those mages."

Clearance A was nearly impossible to get and usually required League of Nations pre-approval, but B was very workable. It gave Tamantha a lot more room to work with in using force to mitigate the HH's violence as well.

In defending the innocent, like here in Autumn's Meadow, sometimes regrettable things like lethal violence became necessary. Behind her bubble, with Calamity's rifle in hand and Tanya's mana supply, the fusion readied to defend against the Legionist mages. Tamantha extended the range of her weapon and vision and locked sights on the approaching mages.

Suddenly, eleven more guiding formulas appeared in tandem. Tamantha could feel the mana of her allies, allowing her to multiply her firepower. One shot became twelve, taking out entire squads of enemy mages per pull of the trigger. The sky filled with a multi-colored death as the various hues of her comrades' mana formed rainbows that arced and swerved after their targets before splitting after the mages engaging in evasive maneuvers.

After she eliminated a battalion, the enemy mages realized they were dealing with a divine-classed mage and retreated. Tamantha kept her sights on them as they got out of her weapon's extended range. There wasn't much she could do if they tried to fly around her, as her flight speed was still abysmal. Only a few new spells had become available to her, like the bubble one.

Tanya separated from Calamity at that point, needing to take care of things on her end.

"What was that?!" the gunslinger shouted. Now, she was herself again.

"Fusion…," Tanya replied.

"I know that, but I didn't exist! Okay, partner, what is my name really quickly?"

"Calamity, lass," Masquerade answered. "What is wrong?"

"I kept a lot of her memories," the tall Tejan replied. "They are hard to distinguish from my own."

"Same," Tanya admitted.

"You have to be careful with that. I can recall how our minds slowly shared more and more with each other. If you do that too long, we'll be more hitched together than a two-head cyclops."

"You still remember your sister's middle name?" Tanya inquired.

"Yeah. I do. Do you still remember the nuns walking you to get tested for magic?" Calamity had to ask. So many of Tanya's memories revealed horrifying things about the girl's life and past life.

"Yes," the otherworlder answered. "At least we don't seem to be losing pieces of ourselves."

That made Calamity remember something from Tanya's life.

"You used the Type-95 despite knowing it overwrote your personality and made you forget things!"

"It was necessary to keep my team alive."

"What are you smoking?! You did not have to do that! You had other options than sacrificing pieces of your soul to the war effort, the Mages of Interpol, or your sense of professional responsibility."

"Time out, please," Masquerade interjected. "While it is nice that Tanya is back in the house with us again, I have no idea what you are talking about."

Calamity pinched the bridge of her nose. "Tanya has been sacrificing her soul for decades by using a cursed computation orb?"

"Blimey!"

"Tanya, why?" Fang Shiyu wondered. He was still on the call with everyone else.

"Okay, please understand that the item is mind-warping. I may not have…had the best judgment in using it."

"Why didn't you tell anyone?"

"I didn't think anyone would believe me. Also... The Empire would not have let me stop using it, more so when it was clear we were losing the war. Then… you get used to not telling people things. It is a lot easier now. Back then, it was absolutely terrifying. I thought I would get thrown into some insane asylum or get experimented upon."

"Tanya…"

Much hugging could be heard on the other side of the communication spell in Freedom's Egg. Calamity had to wipe her own eyes because Tanya had had it extraordinarily rough. Her life had been an almost constant stream of suffering and dysregulation. So much could have been made better had her secrets not been so unbelievable.

When this is all over, I am going to do what I can for Tanya, Calamity thought to herself. She needs so much love that it is unbelievable.

At least they knew what the curse of her Purpose divinity was — becoming a fusion with a person slowly and steadily made the differences between the minds of two individuals disappear until they were essentially one person. One lost their individuality to be together in solidarity in this duality. It really put into perspective how much suffering having multiple divinities caused their holders.

Mary Canary, I hope we can convince you to let go of the two extra ones you have. I hate seeing you in so much pain due to whatever they are doing to you.

Calamity then heard the Revolutionary Army and United Front approach as they sang Whirlwind of Danger, calling upon people to join their army as they approached the capital.

Fang Shiyu's mother, Miu Tsui-fa, ran up to Calamity and Akira. While most of the Zhangzi forces stayed in their country defending against another Akinese invasion with the Federation backing them up, the Tejan's teammate Fang Shiyu and his family had come to the Unified States to support the revolution. Knocking the Unified States out would cut the Akitsuhima Dominion off from their powerful ally.

"I am so glad you are safe," the newcomer expressed with a beaming smile.

"Where's Fang?" Calamity inquired, temporarily putting aside her feelings about Tanya's situation to focus on the mission ahead.

"Shiyu had to run ahead. The people in Horton County needed help as soon as possible."

Looking around them, the Tejan noticed the Hoarding Horde had all fled for the hills and were nowhere in sight.

"It seems the enemy is gone. We should be safe to—"

BANG!

Calamity instinctually dropped to the ground only to watch Demiguichi Akira's lifeless body stagger and collapse onto the lawn. Then, the Angel's entire body disintegrated, leaving only her bloodied archery uniform behind.

"Anti-Mage bullets!" Calamity yelled, "Everyone, take cover!"

Yet, nothing more happened. They couldn't even find any Silver Legion snipers in the area, and they suspected whoever they were, they must have fled.

Akira did not deserve to die like that. If I find who did this….

Calamity hoped her heart was wrong about who was behind this assassination.

---

Horton County and then to Chicago - 6th of December, 1952



Fang had heard about the death of Akira, and he ran to the high school in Horton County as quickly as he could. There, he found himself in the middle of a confrontation between protestors and the Silver Legion's Enforcers. He soon found himself gritting his teeth as Water shot at him with a high-pressure fire hose during a snowy day, actually hurting despite his mana body. He had jumped in front of the blast to protect the children behind him. One man had done the same. His clothes ripped away, and his flesh was lacerated by the sheer force the fire hose could unleash.
The Enforcers had swarmed Horton County not only to assist the Hoard Horde in purifying the school but to crack down on a nonviolent protest. The HH hunted for evidence of their bizarre conspiracy theories. High school students in the Black Revolution had taken to the streets to protest nonviolently.

Horrifyingly, the sight of unarmed students somehow provoked the Enforcers to unleash their high-pressure firehoses on the children on this cold winter day. While Fang had thrown himself before one of the hoses, he was not the real hero there. Non-mages lay on the ground, bloodied and beaten by the Enforcers. The elements and the non-magical tools of the Enforcers in Horton County threaten the protestors far more than they did Fang.

Pushing through the hose water by increasing his expenditure of ki, the martial artist ran up to the Enforcer. The violent racist yelped in fear as he didn't expect to deal with a mage. Fang shoved the hose into the air and then punched the firefighter to knock him out. Unlike the Calamity Amb, the martial artist could intervene easily between non-mages.

"We are approaching your location," Calamity called out. "Be on the lookout for an enemy sniper. They are taking out people in our movement. I am keeping your mother safe."

A few mage Enforcers rushed onto the scene and aimed to fire optical formulae at Fang. The martial artists accelerated his mind and reflexes, entering bullet time. He put his right middle and index fingers on his forehead, and suddenly, a bunch of afterimages appeared as he used a new technique he had learned. It wasn't as versatile as actual illusions. The images and he sprinted the confused and overwhelmed mages.

Fang deftly dodged the few shots that went his direction in his high-mana expenditure superspeed state. While his mana stores had grown over the last two years, he could not hold this state for more than a minute before mana exhaustion took him out. That was plenty to eliminate these enforcers.

Then, a bunch of vehicles entered the scene and formed a barricade. The Silver Legion planned to block the advancement of the approaching Revolutionary Army as they delayed as much as they could until Tanya deployed to assist them. At least, that was what they thought would happen. They had no idea that their goddess had joined the revolutionary's side, and soon, the seat of government in Chicago would be theirs.

It seemed that the enemy mages had no issue hurting children, so Fang had to take drastic measures to protect them. He pulled his mana into a ball in his hands, and then once it was the size of a football, he threw it. His arm motions guided the sphere of mana as it bashed into the mages and their vehicle-based barricade. The mana ball could only break a few barriers before running out of power.

Fang had overestimated how effective his new technique would be in real conditions on what had effectively become a battlefield. As the Enforcers raised their weapons, the martial artist desperately went back into his accelerated state. Mana's exhaustion would hit him soon.

Suddenly, Tanya's mana flowed into him far faster.

"Don't overdo it like you did with Calamity," He thought to himself about his friend.

"I won't."

He frowned at hearing a voice in his head that he hoped was Tanya's. It didn't sound any different than his normal mental voice, which made it spooky.

This time, instead of making a mana ball, he used the extreme amounts of mana available to him to form a disc attack. Cultivators rarely used these at his level because they were far too draining, but Tanya effectively pushed him up several ranks of cultivation temporarily. He tossed the disc, which could easily cut through barriers and people simultaneously. These were mages about to kill non-mages, children. It was Fang's obligation as an Interpol Officer to prevent that from happening. Mage lives were not more or less valuable than non-mages, but with power came the need to hold it accountable—the more power, the more accountable it needed to be.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Fang dodged two of the enemies' attacks that got out before they got cut down, but the third was an explosion formula. His legs moved with lightning speed as he grabbed each civilian in the range of the blast area and took them to safety. Even in bullet time, he couldn't hesitate a moment, or innocent lives would be lost.

As he dropped down the last person and it became clear that the coast was clear, Tanya must have tightened the tap of mana flow between him and his teammates because he felt exhaustion hit him. Fang would not fall unconscious. He had enough mana left to do a bit more fighting. It was his body that was strained.

"How are you?" Mae Shpigel called out as she rushed towards him with the Angel Kvetoslava Narcassus at her side.

Narcassus was a medical doctor who was doing her best to help the victims of the Silver Legion and the wounded in battle, along with her team of emergency personnel and volunteers. The elf-like communist got to starting triage and providing care.

Shpigel focused on Fang at the mage, who had just taken out a dozen mages, and the power of a superweapon was flowing through him.

"I will be okay," he answered Shpigel with a forced smile.

The war was hell, and now he has to see it in all its gruesomeness. Fascism was even more terrifying. The emaciated bodies of prisoners sat dying, locked in their cells. The prison wardens at Richard Diamond's command enacted a 'scorched earth' strategy of starving their prisoners to death before the Revolutionary Army could free them like the Union soldiers did during the Civil War. They had to stop to distribute emergency food supplies to the prisoners.

As Fang rested, one of the women's battalion approached, singing another one of their countless songs of solidarity. As they entered towns and cities, the songs were to encourage people who could volunteer and join them. It had been operational security that the date of the revolution had been kept from the general population, and songs played a role in disseminating coded information. People learned to listen to the songs that would tell them when to act.

This song — Bread and Roses — had a defiant but sad undertone that caught Fang off guard.

"What is it about?" Fang inquired in Russy. He didn't know Albish, but Mae Shpigel knew the language and assisted him with interpreting.

"It is based on a poem about the Lawrence Textile Strike," Mae Shpigel explained. "Many of them were women brought over as contract laborers from the Francois Republic and Norden, but at least fourteen nationalities speaking twenty-five different languages were present. The women were not seen as good enough for citizenship or the right to vote but good enough to spend their lives toiling away at the looms. Most of them did not live past the age of twenty-six, and they did not make enough to support their families. This song commemorates the women's struggle and those who died throughout the ages and during the strike. The song asks not only for bread but also roses because the heart starves as much as the body."

In short, it was a song of mourning, carrying the torch of an ancient struggle and a cry for the things that make life possible and meaningful. As Sonnetto would have told Fang, the lessons repeat themselves over and over. These high schoolers, those women decades ago, and his people in Zhangzi all had the same throughline of a call for dignity and equality. They did not want more than their oppressors but a life worth living. The difference was his people had taken the guns left behind by the Akinese and decided that the only way they would be free was if they made a new government of their own.

He looked around some more. Another thing that bothered him a lot. Fang decided to ask Shpigel about it.

"Why are there so few young children?" he inquired. He had seen plenty of high schoolers during their organizing in the Unified States but very few large families or toddlers.

"Many families of color, immigrant or otherwise, were forced or tricked into getting sterilizations, using the pretense of being given charitable medical care. We estimate that the Silver Legion has already sterilized half of American Indian women, and in California, Zhangzi and Aztecs are often sterilized without their knowledge or consent. (3)"

Fang sighed. Back in Germania, he heard the fascists drew lots of inspiration from the Unified States' eugenics practices. (3) The Revolutionary Army could not move fast enough to bring down the Silver Legion before they could hurt more people or inspire more nations to copy their tactics.

Or make them even worse.

"Okay, I have to focus on work now. May I ask more questions when we move out?"

"Sure, Mr. Fang."

"Thank you, Mrs. Shpigel."

The man drank some water and continued on his patrol. He didn't have time to think about any of this because he needed to keep an eye out for more danger, particularly that sniper. Since the assassin had killed Demiguichi Akira, MI15 suspected that Dr. Narcassus would be the next target. Both were Angels, after all.

So was my mother.

Narcassus was the Night Witch who almost killed Calamity during their Albish Museum case but survived because Interpol doesn't kill unconscious or surrendering mages. Fang watched her decide who could be saved and who was a lost cause based on the available resources and minimizing casualties. The Silver Legion had not responded to non-violent civil disobedience in kind, and the protesters had suffered grievous injuries. They did not know that an army from the United Front alliance would be rolling through.

Praxis of Civil Disobedience came from a tradition of deeply spiritual and nonviolent protest, according to Mae Shpigel. Tracing the thread of this ancient tradition back just a century ago, one could find the transcendentalist Ralph Waldeau Thoreau. The Unified States had imprisoned him for protesting its war of conquest against the Aztec Empire in the nineteenth century. A century later, Thoreau's Civil Disobedience inspired Gandhi, who went on to develop a non-materialist version of socialism and the praxis of universal uplift. Continuing back up the thread, one would find Gandhi's actions and beliefs would inspire the religious and nonviolent factions of the civil rights movement in the Unified States, including democratic socialists like Martin Bishop, who strove to abolish poverty and end capitalism as a central part of achieving equality.

Once the army had secured the town and gotten as many volunteers as they could arm, they headed toward Chicago. Fang called on Dr. Kvetoslava Narcassus and Mae Shpigel to join him on a tank descant. He wanted to keep close to the Angel in case the enemy sniper was hiding among the irregular forces in the army. He had more questions for Mrs. Shpigel.

"What do you think of the communists?" Fang Shiyu inquired of Shpigel.

"That is a hard question to answer, given there are so many tendencies," she replied with grim mirth, given their situation.

"What about you? Aren't you one of them?"

"No, I am neither a communist nor an anti-communist."

"What would you call yourself, then?" he followed up. A lot of this political stuff was beyond him, but Fang figured he really needed to know it. His country was going through a massive transformation. He wanted to understand what to expect.

"A Marksist humanist," she stated clearly. "I think that when we don't center people in our movements but just the material outcomes, we lose sight of the harm we do to achieve our ends."

"Instrumental rationality?"

"Precisely," Shpigel replied morosely. "When Leon Brotsky was exiled for his dissent, the party threw me downstairs. They lost sight of everything but the ends they wished to achieve and gave themselves an unlimited license to hurt those who threatened their vision."

"The vanguard party in my country is seizing power and doing something called 'Bolshevization'," Fang stated with some worry. "Do you think it will work out?"

"It could, or it could end up just like with the Old Federation with a cult of personality around one man." She turned to face the city of Chicago, where they would soon head towards after the army handled securing the area for the Revolutionary forces. "Like kings, you have great kings, but you can also have cruel ones. The problem is that without force, you can't hold the king accountable."

Fang frowned. Her words worried him.

"I have my own opinion," Dr. Narcassus stated. "I think that accountability is the key concept here. As someone who participated in the Second Revolution, holding people accountable was very much at the forefront of my mind. Obviously, forcibly overthrowing your government over and over again is not the right way."

"Then what is?" the man pressed.

"It is how you institutionalize accountability. Think about it — what do sexism, racism, monarchy, colonization, and dictators all have in common?"

He shrugged. These were not topics he understood all that well. He didn't realize he had been sexist or chauvinist until Tanya had addressed his behavior to him in a one-on-one meeting.

"They all have an unaccountable superior who exercises power on people below him with varying degrees of impunity. I call this 'upward accountability' because those below are accountable to those above them. This can and often does result in authoritarian and abusive behavior because the powerful don't have checks on that power. The abused has no formal way of stopping the abuser, who is often afforded the right to punish their inferiors. The sexists expect women to be lesser and accountable to their husbands and fathers. The monarch and the dictator hold his subjects accountable to his whims but exercise his power upon them as he pleases, punishing any resistance."

"And the employer?"

"A similar dynamic but much better than feudal and fascist relationships. The employer is unelected and imposes more expectations upon his employees than his employees can on him. The employer picks his employees, but employees can't oust their employer legally. With unchecked power comes varying degrees of unchecked abuses. Obviously, there are good superiors, but under the Silver Legion's 'profit over all' ideology, people are being drained of every last drop of value in their bodies."

"Then what is the solution?"

"Mixtures of downward accountability and mutual accountability depending on the context. Downward is when the powerful are made accountable to the people they wield power upon through various mechanisms that investigate, punish, and replace people who misuse the power given to them, like through democracy and term limits. Mutual accountability is when people hold each other accountable like a romantic relationship."

Fang thought about this. "I still don't see how we would implement such a thing in practice. Like how would a general of an army work if they were constantly questioned and challenged by those below them?"

"Good question, but alas, I don't have all the answers. Some communists deal away with military ranks for that reason, but it is a complicated political question, and I am a medical doctor."

Mae Shpigel listened to their exchange with curiosity the whole time. "A lot of this cannot really be figured out until actually in the position to make decisions in a real situation. I am sure the Americans will figure something out that will help us keep those in charge—"

BANG!

Fang had barely noticed the sniper before they shot. However, they were not aiming at Narcassus but Shpigel. He went into his accelerated state and tackled her midsentence.

The bullet impacted his left forearm, causing him to scream in pain. Despite some bruises, Shpigel was safe at least.

Fang, not so much. His hand fell off as his left arm started to disintegrate.

Phzzt

"Hold out your arm!" Narcassus shouted as she flew off the tank to meet them on the ground next to the road with a mage blade at the ready. He did as she told him.

Slice

His left arm fell off and disappeared before it hit the ground. Fang started to faint from blood loss as the doctor got to work saving his life. Had she not cut off his arm, whatever magic was in that bullet would have destroyed the rest of his body had the spell been allowed to keep spreading.

Calamity flew over to them and held overwatch, guarding them all.

"I think I know who the sniper is," the Tejan sharpshooter claimed on the Revolutionary Army's channel. "Only one person would use anti-biological rounds this potent."

She explained her hypothesis as the mages in the revolutionary forces started to sweep the area for the culprit before they could strike again.

---

Silver House Lawn

A few hours later

I walked with a contingent of Silver Legion mages guarding me.

"Goddess, are you well?" one of the mages inquired.

"Just peachy, thanks."

I had to pretend to be Victoria Truman for a little longer so I could reunite with Sonnetto. When she was safe, I would then fly to the city and clear the way for the revolutionary army.

I followed the Legion guards to the balcony as more zealots genuflected to me along the way. It took willpower not to keep my rage and discomfort to myself. I did not want to wear a mask like I had done for two decades. In my opinion, worship was a fundamentally wrong imposition to place upon a person. While individuals could worship whoever they wanted, asking people to worship you was what was wrong. No one deserved worship, especially if they demanded it. In fact, any being that demanded worship automatically didn't deserve any as they were far too narcissistic—instead, those who demanded worship in exchange for not suffering deserved the greatest contempt.

At the balcony, I saw her. I forgot about all those people calling on me to bless them.

My expression then turned into a glare as I noticed the man next to her — Emperor Cassander. He was the one who had killed her and her son. He had the gull to take advantage of her puppet-like state without me to feed her mana to make her his wife and declare himself Emperor of Persia.

I reached the railing and dismissed the mages at my side.

"You look splend—"

"Be quiet."

Cassander became aghast.

Outside the balcony were those zealots who offered their mana to the Goddess of Destiny Manifest, but that person did not exist.

"People, I have something I must confess," I began, keeping up my act a bit longer. "Your Goddess is an atheist."

Ironically, I think most gods are atheists since they don't believe they have a creator, but I mean a being that deserves worship.

I let those words sink in. People were understandably confused.

"I am not some unalloyed whatever you think I am. Nor am I just some blonde, blue-eyed germanian to foist your disgusting fascist capitalist ideology upon."

People started getting mad. They didn't like knowing how I really was. They wanted a White Silver, who was this strategic genius who proved that their belief about a hierarchy of beings was correct.

"Who I really am is the person who loves this amazing and beautiful woman right here."

I turned to the Sonnetto, who watched all of this passively, but I hoped, with my mana, she would come back. My hands took hers into mine, and I lifted them to my face as I stared into her crimson eyes. Then I put my forehead to hers as I transmitted more mana into her.

I could feel a spark there, hanging on for dear life inside her body. I hoped it would be enough to bring her back.

BANG!

A shot went off, interrupting my thoughts.

Time froze as I tried to figure out what to do—an enchanted bullet headed straight for me. From what Calamity described, it certainly would kill me. I had no idea how the assassin had even gotten in range to shoot me or was going to come after me.

This wasn't fair. I did nothing wrong. I didn't deserve to die like this. Not now. Not here.

Why can't I have anything? Why can't I have peace? Why do happiness and peace slip from my fingers every single time?

If I die, I am pretty sure I am not coming back like the other mandates. Being X made it very clear this would be my last life.

I wasted my first one chasing after a career that made everyone suffer. People hated me, and I didn't care. Now I know how foolish I was, and I don't even get to take the least number of steps towards doing all of these things that will bring me the peace I want. Like many people around me throughout my life, I want to fall in love and start a family. Being X would even taunt me with dreams about what could have been had I understood what love was back during the war.

As I futilely tried to move out of the way, a terrifying miracle occurred. Sonnetto woke up and shoved me out of the way.

The bullet struck her instead. Her regeneration couldn't counteract the much faster anti-biological spell that the shooter had used.

No!

This wasn't going to be how it ended.

In order to save her, I would have to sacrifice my individuality.

"May I?"

"I never want us to part again. Please, before it is too late."

Silver waves formed around us as we fused. Her personality and mine became one. Since Sonnetto no longer had a body, the spell thankfully fizzled out. In our union, Sonnetto and I were utterly destroyed and made new again. The world faded away for a moment.

---

Sonata's Soulscape

"Freedom?" The Devil Doll began with biting cynicism in her voice. "The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater."

She looked like a blonde young Tanya in the form of a doll with devil horns at the top of her head and red crystal eyes.

"Why can't... Why can't people decide how to live their own lives?" The cat plushie asked. "Isn't our existence as individuals the least we should be able to control?"

The cat plushie was white and had blue buttons for eyes. It kind of looked like Tanya, too, as if Tanya were a grumpy cat. Why was it so familiar-looking?

"The moment people lose the capacity to think, to question, that they just become animals headed to the slaughter without resisting... they stop being people, they lose what makes them human," the Devil Doll answered. "Then again, I am not a human, so what do I know?"

"Some people say there is a fine line between the brilliant and the insane, but I feel like it's actually fairly easy to tell them apart, with hindsight," an Akinese woman added. "Of course, that doesn't help you in the present, so if you really want to know if someone is insane or a genius, just talk to them and decide by yourself. You may make a mistake, but sometimes that's better than being warped with indecision. To live is to make choices. After all, the moment you can't make any choice is the moment you stop living."

The woman, too, looked like Tanya but had blonde fox ears at the top of her head and nine blonde, fluffy fox tails behind her.

"So tell me, little doll, are you free?" The Devil Doll interrogated what must have been Sonneto.

The Devil then tied the homunculus in puppet strings, only for the cat plushie to cut them with surprisingly sharp claws, and then Sonneto fell into a black void only for the fox woman, the... kitsune, to catch her.

"Who is the real Tanya?" The Akinese kitsune inquired with a smile. "Have you decided yet?"

"None of you are the real Tanya, but all of you are part of her. "

"Good, you are learning." The cat plushie said. "Be thankful we locked Tanya's pain away, for you are not ready for her yet. Now, wake up and pamper Tanya. We deserve it!"

I woke up only a moment after I fell unconscious. I was Sonneto, I was Tanya, I was… Sonata.

---

Silver House Lawn

Ramona Mercer frowned. Empress Roxanne had blocked her shot, and then something bizarre happened. That was her third shot.

The first one was for the revisionist Demiguichi Akira. She had corrupted the Zhangzi revolution by persuading the vanguardists there to incorporate a 'one country, two systems' and multiple parties into their new republic. Revisionism not only distorted Marksism with capitulations with the ruling class but would result in a kind of state-run capitalism like what the Silver Legion had. While Ramona could tolerate Markism-Levinism-Tanechkism (MLT), Demiguichism needed to stop spreading.

As Ramona's vanguard would say, 'Death to the Traitors', and that included all revisionists.

The second enchanted bullet would be for Mae Shpigel. She had rejected dialectical materialism for something she called Marksist Humanism that synthesized Hegel and Marks. Like the current leader of the Federation, Shpigel viciously criticized the Old Federation, claiming that it 'rest[ed] on the mainspring of capitalism — paying the worker the minimum and extracting from him the maximum.' (2) This distortion led countless revolutionaries to believe that Marksist-Levinist governments were exploitative of the working class and the party was somehow a kind of ruling class. Ramona had tried to eliminate her before she embedded herself deeper into the Founders' Party and moved the scale of power further into World Federationism.

The third bullet was for White Silver. The arrogant, religious fanatic had declared herself a goddess and deviously tricked the people into thinking that her conduit powers were divine when that power really came from her duped followers. More importantly, no one had caused more devastation than this goddess wannabe. She had written the White Silver Creed that had persuaded so many people that being powerless was freedom and that unfettered corporate greed would somehow benefit the poor people in the long run when people were dying now and history proved otherwise. Even worse, Victoria Truman's floods and armies had killed countless Aztecs in the genocidal war in the south.

'No gods, no masters,' as the anarchists would say, and likewise, to be free, there had to be no White Silver who wanted people to worship her.

Ramona took out her only spare enchanted bullet and cocked her gun, but before she could fire, her old friend Amber Canary walked in front of the sniper and blocked Ramona's shot with her body.

"Why?" the Tejan demanded.

The woman must have snuck up on Ramona while she focused on her target. Her new height had certainly been surprising to see up close.

"For the future of my homeland," the Orthodox sniper answered.

"Tanya and Sonnetto are my family."

"I don't know who those people are, but Victoria Truman killed hundreds of thousands of people!" Ramona roared. "She has these people under her spell."

"Look at them, though!" Calamity shouted back, gesturing to the crowd.

The reality was that the Silver Legion screamed about a demon and demanded that the real goddess end this farce.

"Drop your gun, Ramona," her friend repeated.

She lowered her gun but did not drop it.

"She is a fascist—"

"She is practically two lesbians from Berun in a magical trench coat," Amber interjected, clearly holding back her rage and frustration. "I promise you neither Tanya nor Sonnetto wants to be associated with these people."

"You know that homosexuals have fascist tendencies, Amb."

Dzhugashvili and Moscva had stated this during the Old Federation days. It was why the CPUSA, who were not fans of the post-coup government, kicked out from the party the founder of the Mattachine Society, Harry Hay.

Amber looked absolutely dumbfounded.

"Ramona, it takes two seconds of thinking to know that the legionists and fascists ain't too fond of people like my friend over there," the American war vet countered. "She is taking them out right now. She is on the side of justice. You clearly aren't right now. So drop your gun. Don't make me ask again. I don't want to kill you even though I am pissed as all hell. You really hurt a person I care about and murdered another who didn't deserve it."

Ramona dropped her gun. Not because she was actually afraid of Amber actually hurt her. She knew the moral heart of her friend, which beat with all the blood that had been spilled over the ages and to the rhythm of history in all its guilts.

No, it was those idealistic eyes. Those damnable idealistic eyes begged her to show mercy to an imperialist dog like White Silver. It was always the moralizers who broke the will of revolutionaries—begging for nonviolence when that didn't work—calling for mercy when the person in question was not deserving of it. White Silver really didn't deserve any mercy, in Ramona's opinion.

Amber Canary picked up Ramona's rifle without dropping eye contact. The Tejan Sharpshooter was the only person in the world who could stop her with anything less than outgunning her, and Ramona did not know what to think about that. Was it wrong to have hesitated like that? Was it because Amber's eyes had become a mirror that made Ramona condemn herself? Or was it because she trusted her old friend's judgment?

Life had neither simple answers nor easy solutions to the problems that plagued Ramona and the people she fought for. She would just have to keep moving forward even while her loved one had her locked up. Would the other factions of the revolution understand her actions and why they were necessary, or would they group her with the other fascists like Damien had?

Calamity started talking to her team via a communication spell as she kept an eye on Ramona.

"Tanya,...Okay, I will call you Sonata," the other woman said to her team. "Having experienced fusion, I get it. We need you to get to clearing the way for the revolutionary army downtown. MI15 will help cover you. Are you in good shape for that, sis?"

Ramona watched as White Silver took off from the Silver House after dealing with the genocidal Silver Legion senior mage leadership with the other MIs. If one focused, one could hear the air filled with the sound of two women madly in love with one another and an enrage wave that desired to engulf all of the Silver Legion in its wake.

Suddenly, instead of the Angel of Destiny Manifest, Ramona could see a glimpse of another woman who was also two. This Sonata had joyous purple eyes, magical hair that resembled actual waves, and four arms, two carrying Zhangzi swords and two carrying pistols. How such a person had been trapped inside Victoria Truman and Empress Roxanne baffled Ramona to no end. So many things had not yet been explained.

"You see her, huh?" Calamity asked.

"Yeah."

"Took me quite a while myself," the Tejan admitted. "But she was definitely much more closed off back then. I think a lot more people will get to know who those two really are in the future."

Ramona watched as a magical wave overtook the city of Chicago. It didn't kill anyone or affect the approaching revolutionary army. Instead, Silver Legionists started floating off the ground, being carried away to detainment centers rapidly being set up by surprised Interpol officers. A lot of people wanted to en masse kill the Silver Legionists, from their paramilitary arm to the Enforcers to all the party officials. The League of Nations and Sonata clearly did not share such sentiments, hitting a balance between excessive violence and complicit inaction. It was something only possible because they had both the power to do it and the sense of responsibility to act professionally.

"She could rule this country with that much power," Ramona commented in awe and concern.

"She won't," Calamity responded.

"Why not? Sonata could have anything she wanted. She could make the whole world conform to her whims? What is stopping her?"

"Because she has met god and discovered he was a self-obsessed asshole. She knows what it is like to be the plaything of powerful megalomaniacs. Her entire being is defined in opposition to that kind of abuse."

"What does she believe in?" Ramona inquired.

"Freedom, self-determination, a desire for peaceful work, the love of her work, the love of her family of coworkers, and a deeply felt sense of professional responsibility towards one's organization."

"A trade unionist then?"

Calamity broke out laughing and had to wipe away a tear. It had broken the tension between them when Ramona had just minutes ago tried to kill this Sonata person. The sniper definitely wasn't off the hook in Calamity's eyes, but stress and sadness tended to make the darndest things funny.

"Don't say that around her…I don't know how much her Sonnetto side will mellow out the Tanya side. She is very sensitive right now to people claiming that she believes something she very much doesn't."

Two more mages soon flew to their location as Ramona awaited her fate for the murder of Demiguichi and the attempted murder of Mae Shpigel. One was a man with green eyes and a colorful mask. The other was a well-known elf-like assassin in her iconic green suit.

"Are you Ramona?" the woman inquired with a smile that laughed at death.

The sniper kept her mouth shut. There was a time when Ramona looked up to this assassin. Then this person betrayed everyone by working with the genocidal capitalist assholes in the Albish Empire and throwing her allies to Interpol.

"She is," Calamity answered for Ramona.

"Well, you probably think I am here to exact revenge for what you did to my comrade," the assassin stated cooly.

"What do you want of me?" Ramona had to ask the green-suited Angel.

"I come here on behalf of Tanechka, and we have an offer."

"Shoot."

"Ha…well, we need you to tell your vanguard to cooperate with the Unified Front, and we want some information from you."

"What if I refuse?" Ramona retorted.

"I could have your vanguard handed over to Interpol as one option. The other is Tanechka, who is very much willing to settle things Old Federation style. If you play like it is in the bad old days, expect to get hurt like it's the bad old days."

Essentially, going with the latter option meant a traitor's death. Tanechka might have overthrown the Old Federation, but that was because the leader of the Angels thought it was poorly managed, irresponsible to the conditions of the people, and had developed an aristocracy. She wasn't some idealist above using violence. If one got into the game of using violence, one had to expect to play by the rule that said 'might makes right'.

"I thought you said you weren't going to go around the rule of law?" the Albish man questioned with worry.

"We are in a country where the government had just been overthrown, for starters. Not much rule of law here. Second, I trust that she knows better than to go against Tanechka, who doesn't make idle threats, so at the end of the day, playing the rules set by Ramona here, we have not done anything wrong."

That was the rule that the ends justify the means. If you threatened someone to do the 'right' thing but didn't actually hurt them, does the end result of them doing that right thing mean the threat was not wrong?

Calamity definitely seemed concerned.

There was no guarantee that Tanechka would not just kill them anyway if she had the means to pull it off, which she might actually have. More concerningly, this standoff was far from the first rodeo for the mysterious green-suited assassin. Surrendering completely to the Tanechka felt horrible. The leader of the Angels had backed the World Federationists as a concession to the Russy Federation that saw those civic urban revolutionaries as the preferable ruling party over the Orthodox faction that largely hated Brotsky and his allies' guts.

Ramona took a deep breath and glanced at her friend Amber Canary.

"I surrender. What information do you want?"

"Simple. We know you know that you know where Richard Diamond went. Just tell us so, justice can be done."

Well, that was something they all could agree on.

---

Thanks Pinklestia101 for betareading and writing the dream sequence.

Citations:

1. Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. Not "A Nation of Immigrants": Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion. Beacon Press Books. 2021. Page xiv
2. Logsdon, Jonathan R. Power, Ignorance, and Anti-Semitism: Henry Ford and His War on Jews. Hanover College History Department. <https://history.hanover.edu/hhr/99/hhr99_2.html>
3. Ko, Lisa. Unwanted Sterilization and Eugenics Programs in the United States. PBS.org. 29 January, 2016. <https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/unwanted-sterilization-and-eugenics-programs-in-the-united-states/>

Dunayevskaya, Raya. Marxism and Freedom: From 1776 to Today. Raya Dunayevskaya Memorial Foundation. Published 2000.