--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

The rain poured down all day, that peculiarly savage rain that came to Gotham three or four times a year. The heavy drops, driven by hard winds, hit like plastic riot-control bullets, with the added bonus of leaving every bodily surface they landed on soaking wet as well as battered. Above, the heavy overcast rendered the city—never the galaxy's most cheerful—even gloomier than usual. Nightfall, when it came, was merely a diminution of what weak daylight that had managed to seep through the overcast, an almost imperceptible slide of the sky from grey to black.

As late evening settled like a shroud on the East End, Gotham's toughest borough, the pelting rain and gusting wind kept everybody inside. Even the city's street criminals, who were renowned across known space for their hardiness, stayed out of it any way they could. The street corners and alleys, usually hotspots of dubious activity late into the night, were deserted.

Almost deserted.

Down Gotham's most notorious passage, an alleyway so infamous for violence and danger that it appeared on actual maps of the city as "Crime Alley", went a single figure. Shrouded from head to foot in black, evidently indifferent to the sheets of rain slashing down the alley, this individual walked with unhurried but purposeful stride toward the low white building at the end of the block, then paused before the side entrance—one of the only lighted doorways in this part of town at this hour—and seemed to be regarding the sign.

EAST END FREE CLINIC, it read in large, friendly letters, glowing green-on-white above the door. Beside the entrance another sign, this one rendered in red neon tubes, declared, EMERGENCY ENTRANCE. WE NEVER CLOSE.

The cloaked figure stood motionless for a long moment, then seemed to square its shoulders before stepping forward. The automatic door failed to notice, remaining firmly closed against the weather... but the figure in black passed through the armored glass as though it weren't there.

The room beyond was as empty as the alley outside, but brightly lit and considerably cleaner: a small but well-equipped emergency medical bay, with a couple of biobeds and neatly arranged carts and cabinets of equipment. The cloaked figure passed through without paying the contents of the room any attention, leaving no trace behind—not even moisture on the floor, despite having just come in from the pouring rain.

Classical music filtered down the darkened hallway beyond the emergency room, coming from the lighted doorway at the far end. The silent figure walked up the hall and turned into that doorway.

This room was a laboratory, dominated by a long central bench with a wooden top scarred and stained from long, hard use. Counters and cabinets lined the walls, along with various pieces of technical equipment. Unlike the emergency room, the lab had an occupant: a lone woman in a white lab coat. Incredibly pale, she had blonde hair drawn into a pair of pigtails, one dyed jet black and the other crayon red. She stood with her back to the door, working at the console of a large, expensive-looking machine.

The cloaked figure paused as if surveying the room, then stepped inside. It made for the door on the far side of the lab, and gave every indication of ignoring the lab-coated woman until the latter suddenly spoke. She said only a single word, but with such sharp finality that it halted the black-clad figure in its tracks:

"Stop."

The figure in the cloak froze, its body language evincing surprise. When it spoke, its voice was touched with a chilly, hollow, ethereal quality—but underneath that, it was unmistakably also the voice of a woman. What it said, after a brief, startled pause, was,

"... You can see me?"

"Yeah, I see you, reaper," the woman in the lab coat replied. She completed whatever she was doing to the device, then turned to face the figure in black. Fist on hip, she cracked a sardonic little smile, her blue eyes twinkling with something that was not quite mirth. "I'm a doctor and I run with a weird crowd. This ain't my first rodeo with your kind."

The reaper's face was invisible in the darkness of her hood, but from her posture, she seemed to be regarding the doctor as she regained her composure. Her voice had lost the touch of shock and was cool and clinical as she said,

"I'm not here for you, Dr. Quinzel."

"You ain't here for anybody tonight, reaps," the doctor shot back. Pointing to the machine she'd just been working at, she said, "The synth's working on a fresh batch of D-342 right now. It'll be ready in five minutes. Then I gotta titrate it, say five or six more. I'm that close."

The reaper shook her hooded head. "Too late." One skeletal hand emerged from her cloak, holding a small hourglass. As the last grain of its sand fell into the lower chamber, the reaper went coldly on, "The boy's time is up."

Dr. Harley Quinzel's eyes narrowed. She had just heard something in the spectral figure's voice she would never have expected, but recognized immediately: a familiar sort of strain, the sound of a person keeping her voice level with an exertion of will.

She's frontin', Harley realized. Why?

What she said aloud was, "Like hell it is."

Reaching to her side, she withdrew an object from behind the synthesizer cabinet—an object so out-of-context in this environment, so distinctly un-medical, that it took the reaper a moment to recognize it: a metal baseball bat, its shaft wrapped in black electrical tape, barrel decorated with festive stickers depicting cartoon stars and ringed planets. The doctor rested the bat on her shoulder with the casual ease of long familiarity, the threat in her eyes unsubtle, and went on,

"I dunno why I can see you tonight. Somethin' in the air, maybe somethin' to do with the weather—Gotham doin' Gotham things," she added with a faint smirk. "But I can. Which means you're gonna stand right there an' let me work..." The smirk became less faint and entirely unfriendly, her eyes hardening. "... Or we're gonna hafta go outside an' have a frank exchange of views, you 'n me."

The reaper regarded her in silence for a moment, then turned the hourglass over and placed it on the counter next to her with a sharp, final click.

"Ten minutes," she said flatly.

Lacking either the time or the inclination to quibble, Harley set her bat aside and got to work. When the fresh compound came out of the synth, she set about cutting it with the right moderating agents, a complex process that required a precise match between the final composition and the patient's biochemical baseline. Ordinarily she'd have had an assistant or two to help with this, but not now, in the middle of the night, with Pam away at that damn conference.

She was (almost literally) juggling three test tubes while looking up a ratio in the back of a well-thumbed textbook when the flask containing the main solution slipped out from between her fingers. Cursing, she caught it, nearly spilling one of the tubes in the process, then turned to the black figure watching her in silence and thrust the flask toward her, snapping,

"Hold this."

The doctor's command was issued with such casual, natural authority that the reaper found herself obeying automatically, as if by instinct. From holding the flask, it was a short hop to active participation in the process, and before she knew it, she was in the next room, standing by the patient's bedside—not to take his soul, but to watch as Harley gave him the injection that would render that service unnecessary.

"There," said Harley, setting the spray hypo aside, as the little boy's fitful tossing ceased and he settled into a restful sleep. "That oughta do the job." Smiling, she reached and brushed his dark hair away from his closed eyes. "Poor kid. Grodd only knows where a ten-year-old street kid from Little Sicily picked up the Spican marthambles in the first place—me and Doc Fries got some epidemiology to do this weekend."

"Mm," the reaper agreed, nodding.

There was a slightly awkward silence.

"I should go," said the reaper.

"Yeah," agreed Harley. "I guess ya should. Nothin' for ya here tonight."

Without replying, the reaper turned and started to leave the room. Just as she reached the door leading back to the lab, Harley's voice stopped her.

"Hey."

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

"For what?"

Harley nodded toward her sleeping patient. "For givin' Tonio... however much longer he's got now."

The reaper hesitated, as if uncertain what to say, then fell back on the old standby of "nothing" and left the room.

She paused in the lab to collect her hourglass, then retraced her steps to the exit and stepped out into the night. While she was inside, the rain had stopped, and the streets of Gotham were now shrouded in fog—fog that felt more like low-pressure steam, given the warmth of the July night.

Standing in the middle of the alley was another, taller figure in a black robe. At the sight of him, the reaper pulled up short.

"Forseti?" she said, sounding surprised and faintly alarmed. "What are you doing here?"

INTERESTING APPROACH, Forseti not-really-replied in his eerie, sepulchral voice, which sounded more like it was emanating from a deep well than anything with the figure of a man.

"I—" the reaper said, but then her voice trailed off and she hung her head. "I... I have no excuse, sir."

THAT WASN'T SARCASM, Forseti replied, surprising her again. I REALLY DO FIND IT INTERESTING.

The reaper looked up. "You're... you're not angry?"

WHY SHOULD I BE ANGRY?

"I... I ignored my assignment. I let that doctor sway me from my task." The reaper shrugged. "I even helped her."

Forseti nodded. I SAW.

"Are..." The reaper hesitated, then asked, "Are you here to finish the job for me?"

Forseti shook his head. NO. I'M HERE FOR YOU, NOT ANTONIO DINARDI. HE CAN HAVE, AS DOCTOR QUINZEL SO APTLY PUT IT, HOWEVER MUCH LONGER HE'S GOT NOW.

The reaper cocked her head quizzically. "You sound like you know her."

WE'VE MET, Forseti said dryly. Then, returning to the matter at hand, he said, TELEUTE WANTS TO SEE YOU.

The reaper consulted her hourglass as if it were an oracle of some kind, then said, "I still have three more on my list for tonight—"

I'LL LOOK AFTER THEM, Forseti told her. YOU GO BACK AND GET YOURSELF TO THE HEAD OFFICE.

"They're my responsibility—" the reaper began, but Forseti silenced her by reaching out and placing his pale, gaunt hand on her shoulder.

MORI, he said, not unkindly, taking the hourglass from her with his other hand. I'LL TAKE IT FROM HERE. With a slight smirk audible in his unearthly voice, he added, I HAVE DONE THIS A TIME OR TWO, YOU KNOW. I PROBABLY WON'T SCREW IT UP.

Mori lowered her head. "Yes, sir."

Mort Plaza
New Oslo, Hel

When Mori arrived at the outdoor patio of the Mort Plaza Starbucks, few there took any particular notice. Such creatures came and went from this place all the time, after all. At least this one wasn't riding a flaming skeletal horse like that showoff Slade.

The reaper paused just inside the low fence that divided the patio from the street and looked around. The person she was here to see wasn't hard to find. Slouched in the overstuffed chair in the corner, her cowboy-booted feet up on the table, Teleute glanced up from under the broad brim of her hat of the day (a black Stetson in the classic "Boss of the Plains" style) and gave her the universal "yo, over here" sign.

"Howdy, cowpoke," said Teleute in an exaggerated Western accent, touching her hat. "Pull up a chair and set a spell."

"... OK?" said Mori awkwardly, doing as instructed. Unlike her boss, she sat upright, hands on knees, like a student called into the vice-principal's office.

Teleute considered her subordinate with keen, dark eyes, their expression far more serious than the rest of her casual demeanor suggested; then, sighing, she swung her feet off the table and sat up, if not as bolt upright as Mori, at least a little more conventionally. Leaning forward, she said in her normal voice, without preamble,

"Forseti's worried about you."

Mori drew back slightly in surprise. "Me? Why?"

"I think you know why," Teleute replied. "You drive yourself harder than any three other psychopomps in his department. Or mine, for that matter. You volunteer for more assignments on top of your normal caseload, and you cherry-pick the hardest ones." She leaned farther forward, elbows on the table, her gaze boring into the darkness within Mori's still-raised cowl. "Accident victims, especially young ones with a lot left to live for. Terminally ill kids. People caught up in violent crimes. Anybody fated to go before what mortals think of as 'their time'."

When Mori didn't reply, Teleute sat back, folding her arms, and continued, "The ones least willing to go. The ones who don't understand what's happening. The most traumatic partings of the thread. You take them all. Go out of your way to claim them before any of your colleagues."

"Is there a problem with the quality of my work?" asked Mori in a quiet, level voice.

"No," Teleute replied, shaking her head. "Quite the contrary. You handle those cases with grace. Even beauty. Practically every spirit you reap is at peace by the time they arrive here, no matter how hard it was for them to let go. You're the best we have. An artist."

Mori sat silent for a moment, almost unable to process the compliment, and then said haltingly, "Thank... thank you."

"It's just the truth."

"But... if that's the case, then why did Forseti—"

"Because you're grinding yourself to dust," Teleute said, her voice rising slightly. "All that misery, that pain and fear, at a pace that shocked even me when Forseti brought me your file. You never take a break, have no life outside your work. Even you can't keep that up forever. You'll destroy yourself."

"I'm not..." Mori began, but Teleute cut her off again—not with an argument, but instead a question, asked in a quieter, gentler tone of voice.

"What are you punishing yourself for, Calliope?"

This time Mori's startled recoil was anything but slight; she sat back so sharply it made her chair legs rattle on the patio paving, her skeletal hands involuntarily rising as if to placate her superior.

"Yes, I know who you are," Teleute said calmly, placing her own hands flat on the table. "I know the Names of everyone in Hel. I know you're the last of Hela's shinigami. And I know why there are no others left."

"I..." Mori said, then trailed off as it belatedly occurred to her that she had no idea what she meant to say next.

The silence stretched between them like a desert, lasting an eternity in a moment.

Then, sitting back in her chair and throwing her feet back up on the table, Teleute broke the moment and said cheerfully,

"Forseti asked me to send you on vacation, but since you're constitutionally incapable of taking time off, I've got a new job for you to do instead."

"... Huh?" was all Mori could come up with in reply.

"I'm pulling you off standard duties," said Teleute. With a negligent flick of her hand, she tossed a manila file folder she hadn't been holding a moment before across the table to Mori and went on, "I want you to look in on a buddy of mine who's got himself into kind of a situation in another timeline. Mind you, there's a war on, so it's possible you might end up with some reaping to do along the way, but that's not what I want you to focus on."

Puzzled, Mori picked up the folder and opened it, examining the top page of the dossier within. Then she looked up and said in a faintly incredulous tone,

"Nineteen forty-six?"

"That's what Marcy told me," Teleute confirmed, shrugging.

Mori reached up and pushed back her cowl. Regarding Teleute with the most skeptical look a person with a bare skull for a head can muster, she said wryly,

"I think I might be a little obvious."

Teleute frowned thoughtfully. "Point, I didn't think of that." Then, shrugging, she snapped her fingers.

"What—aaah!" Mori cried in surprise, bolting up from her seat, as she was briefly engulfed by mystic light.

The sudden flash drew the attention of everyone else on the patio and in the vicinity around it, so that they were all looking as the light faded and revealed what lay within. Where, a moment before, had been a skeletal figure in a ragged black robe and cloak, there now stood a well-built young woman of slightly greater than average height, clad in a snug-fitting, gold-trimmed black dress with a high slit up one side and a plunging neckline, her long pink hair topped with a black tiara supporting a decorative veil.

"What the heck?!" Mori blurted, regarding her suddenly-non-skeletal hands in shock, as the patrons and staff of the coffee shop applauded.

"There you go," said Teleute cheerfully. "Sit down, willya, people are staring."

Her new face glowing scarlet all the way to the ears, Mori resumed her seat.

"So here's the deal," Teleute went on. "I'm promoting you to dís Second Class (Provisional). You'll be on special assignment, so for the time being you'll report directly to me. Forseti's already on board."

Mori looked back down at the open folder, considering the photograph paperclipped to the inside of the cover, then rereading the top page again before raising her crimson eyes to her boss and saying in some confusion,

"This guy's an immortal. You're sending a reaper to watch over somebody who can't die?"

"He can die," Teleute told her, sobering. "It just takes a lot of work. The enemies he's currently in the process of making might be able to get it done, though. That's where you come in."

"I..." Mori shook her head, still hopelessly bemused, and closed the folder. She sighed, puffing out her new cheeks (what a weird sensation), then met Teleute's eyes again and said with a sort of skeptical-but-game resignation, "I'll do my best."

Teleute smiled. "I know you will. Look, just... don't sweat the small stuff for once. OK? Go there, be yourself, let what happens happen. You'll adapt." Then, signaling to the waiter, she continued, "Before you go, though, you should really try coffee, now that you're equipped to appreciate it."

Some time later, after a still-bewildered Mori had taken leave of her superior and gone off to present herself to Heimdall for onward transit, Forseti sat down in the seat she had lately occupied and asked,

SO HOW DID IT GO?

Teleute chuckled. "I think she'll be fine," she said.

I HOPE YOU'RE RIGHT. THAT ONE'S BEEN THROUGH ENOUGH.

"Mm," Teleute agreed, thoughtfully swirling the remains of her Americano and considering the pattern they made. Then, in a speculative murmur, she said, "The last shinigami..."

AND GOOD RIDDANCE TO THE REST OF THEM, said Forseti bluntly.

"Amen, brother," Teleute said, and drank the last swallow of her coffee.

Friday, July 12, 1946
Paris, Gallia
Dimension GCC #332/S

Pierre Laverdière, the SNCF clerk at window number 3 of the Gare de l'Est's ticket hall, looked up from completing the previous customer's paperwork and said, "Next," in the usual tone of faintly harassed boredom that characterized his profession.

The boredom dissolved at the sight of the person standind before his window. He was no stranger to unusual-looking women passing through the station, what with the war and all. Gare de l'Est was the most likely station for, as an example, witches bound for the Karlsland front to use, since the lines it served were the most direct route to said front.

Even in that company, though, this one stood out. Tallish, buxom, with the type of open face that always made him think instinctively of Liberions, she was dressed in an arrestingly peculiar uniform even by wartime standards, and her hair was the most remarkable bright pink—roots and eyebrows included.

"Next train to Colmar, s'il vous plait," she said in a low, husky voice, sliding a folded sheet of pasteboard into the cutout at the bottom of the window.

Taking it up and opening it, Pierre saw that it was a SHAEF priority pass in the name of one Calliope Mori, granting the aforesaid individual authority to travel anywhere in the war zone. All the stamps appeared to be in order, and the face in the photograph could only belong to the woman standing before him, intense red eyes and all. He was interested to note that nowhere did it specify what branch of which Allied Forces service she belonged to. That usually meant that the person in question was especially important and not to be questioned.

Mine not to wonder why, thought Pierre, and he generated the requested ticket, handing it back enfolded within the pass.

"Your train leaves from Platform 12 in fifteen minutes, Mademoiselle," he said. "Pleasant travels."

"Merci," she replied, taking the documents, and she was gone.

Calliope made her way to Platform 12 without trouble, and managed to climb aboard the train without incident, in spite of the fact that she still wasn't quite used to walking in these heeled shoes. She had to walk forward two cars before she found an empty second-class compartment. As she entered, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the glass of the door and paused for a second to consider the still-unfamiliar form that looked back at her.

Not too bad, really, she admitted to herself, and then, a touch ruefully, I always imagined myself as more of a tomboy type, but it is what it is.

Then, seating herself, she propped her elbow on the windowsill, chin in hand, and gazed out at the platform, waiting for the train to get underway.

Just before it did, while the conductors were blowing their whistles and doors were slamming all up and down the train, the compartment door opened and someone came in. Turning, Calliope glanced with mild curiosity at the new arrival—then pulled a hard double-take, because the figure in the doorway was worth a second look.

Like her own current form, the newcomer was a young woman in a black uniform, but there the similarities ended. The uniform was completely different, for one thing, consisting mainly of a tight-fitting sailor-collared vest that didn't quite meet a skirt so abbreviated it was really more of a grandiose belt—the kind of thing only a witch could get away with in public in this era. She wore a military-style beret on top of a mane of flame-orange hair that faded to a curious shade of pale green at the end, and regarded the occupant of the compartment she'd just entered with wide, slightly startled violet eyes.

"Ah, 'tschuldigung," she said, blinking, then gestured to the bench opposite the one Calliope was sitting on. "Er, is this side taken?"

"Huh?" Calliope replied, and then, recovering her wits, "Oh, uh, no, be my guest."

"Danke," said the redhead, entering the compartment the rest of the way.

Our Witches at War Special Episode: Mythic Dawn
Chapter 1: "Death Takes a (Mandatory) Holiday"
by Benjamin D. Hutchins
© 2024 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

Nearly a month after it began, the evacuation of western Europe had gone surprisingly, even stunningly well, given the colossal scale of the undertaking and the conditions under which it was carried out. Under the codename "Operation Bifröst" and the protection of the Kaiser's Reichswehr, virtually the entire civilian population of Karlsland flooded out of the doomed country. Some went north through Daneland to Baltland, some southwest to Helvetia, but the vast bulk of the survivors went west, through Gallia, picking up that equally doomed nation's populace as they went.

Seaports all up and down the Atlantic coast received orderly convoys of trucks, buses, trains—anything that could carry people and what few possessions they'd managed to carry with them. Under the watchful eyes of the Royal Navy, what remained of the Reichsmarine, and a detachment from the Imperial Fusōnese Navy, and air cover from the surviving Allied witch forces, virtually all the hulls in the North Atlantic—merchant, military, even private recreational—flowed through those ports, arriving empty and leaving laden with fleeing, frightened humanity. This was Operation Dynamo, which would go down in history as the most famous of the many moving parts of the larger operation.

In a matter of weeks, the Kaiser's forces and their allies had evacuated tens of millions from the center and west of Europe, emptying the cities and the countryside before the irresistible advance of the Neuroi... but somehow there always seemed to be more, and as the Neuroi pressed ever closer to the coast and Gallian resistance crumbled, the orderliness of the evacuation started to fall apart. Last-ditch rearguard actions, some of them of heartbreaking nobility and courage, bought time, but only so much.

Just off the coast at Boulogne-sur-Mer, the captain of one of the Allied warships charged with protecting the evacuation knew in his bones that today was the last. Of the operation; of any meaningful human presence in continental Europe; very possibly of their lives. They were out of time. The Neuroi were upon them.

The port of Boulogne was jammed with one last desperate wave of humanity, struggling to escape however they could. The large ships had gone, but the beaches were alive with smaller craft. The boats of the Royal Britannian Lifeboat Service had come across from Folkestone and Dover, braving the unfavorable tide and the advance air units of the Neuroi spearhead. So, too, had a legion of private vessels—motor launches, speedboats, even sailing yachts, all taking as many as they could.

Standing a short distance offshore, unable to dock for lack of anywhere to do it, the captain of the Imperial Fusōnese Navy destroyer Kagerō surveyed the nearest beach through binoculars, his face grim. These people, Commander Hideyoshi Tanaka knew, had come the farthest, and were the most exhausted and desperate of all. Most of them were Ostmarkers, who had come halfway across Europe in the aftermath of their homeland's fall. They were the best part of 700 miles from Vienna as the witch flew—probably a far greater, more circuitous distance on foot over what few roads remained.

Now they had run out of land. They stood on the beach in little groups—families, acquaintances made on the road, who knew—gazing out to sea or looking back in fear.

"Sir," came the voice of Tanaka's XO at his elbow. "Signal from Command: 'Situation untenable. All ships prepare to withdraw.'"

Tanaka grunted acknowledgement, not bothering even to waste words acknowledging that non-news. Smoke was rising from the last band of inland fortifications, and even now the crimson flashes of Neuroi plasma beams could be seen flickering in the distance. He filed that information away and returned his attention to the people on the beach. Some of them had realized that the flotilla of small craft, working its way down the coastline from the north, had begun to turn back.

The captain's fingers tightened on his binoculars as the full horror of the situation arrived for him. These few dozen people, survivors of who knew what dangers and privations in their odyssey to reach the sea, had come within sight of rescue, only to watch as it turned away and fled before reaching them. The Neuroi had pursued them to the very edge of the continent... and would now kill them.

"Mr. Kondō," he snapped. "Man all boats. Volunteers only."

"Sir?" asked his XO, puzzled.

Handing the binoculars to the younger officer, the captain told him, "We're going to take those people off."

The Kagerō shore party hit the beach mere minutes later, having manned and launched the ship's four boats in record time. Tanaka himself was the first to arrive: brandishing his sheathed standard-issue katana to make himself more obvious, he leaped out of the captain's launch into knee-deep water and waded ashore, bellowing for his men to follow.

Working as fast as they could, conscious of the approaching peril, the Fusōnese sailors drew their craft as far up the sand as they dared, then herded groups of startled refugees to them. Ranging up and down the beach, shouting direction and encouragement to his men, Captain Tanaka scanned the crowd of those still waiting.

Perhaps owing to their Teutonic roots, or maybe just out of exhaustion and shock, the Ostmarkers were an orderly bunch even under these conditions. They didn't rush the boats, but waited to be called, then got aboard as quickly as possible. The oldest and youngest among them, the men helped aboard as kindly as they could, though with more urgency than grace.

"It'll take at least one more run to get them all, sir," the junior lieutenant detailed to command the third lifeboat reported, slightly out of breath from his exertions, as the captain reached his end of the beach.

Tanaka only nodded at the young officer's report, having reached the same conclusion on his run down here from his own launch's grounding point. He was ashamed to admit to himself that he couldn't remember the man's name. The lieutenant had only been posted to the Kagerō two weeks before, just before they left Folkestone to help cover Dynamo, and everyone aboard had been too busy since then to get acquainted with the new junior.

Then it came to him in a flash of memory—he had the same family name as an old classmate of Tanaka's from Etajima. No relation, and he still couldn't remember his given name, but it would do for the moment.

"Mr. Takanashi," he said. "Take the boats back to Kagerō, unload, and get back here as fast as you can. Tell Mr. Kondō to bring her in close and rig for anti-aircraft. This may get hot before we can take off the second batch."

Takanashi did not hesitate; with a salute as crisp as if they'd been on the parade ground at the academy, he replied, "Aye aye, Captain," and turned to shout departure orders to the men.

As the boats pulled hard for Kagerō, Tanaka and the handful of men left behind from each one moved up the beach, consolidating the remaining refugees and dividing them up into boatloads. This operation confirmed the captain's calculations: The second run would be a tight squeeze, but there would be no need for a third.

Above, a triangle formation of witches roared by, the exhausts of their Striker Units flaming, bound for the battle zone farther inland—but not much farther, to judge from the noise. The refugees instinctively huddled even closer together. As Tanaka had seen them doing through his binoculars earlier, some glanced fearfully eastward, but now most of them kept their gaze resolutely seaward, staring out at Kagerō while she crept as close to shore as Iwao Kondō dared bring her.

Presently, after what felt like an eternity, the boats returned. As they drew nearer to the beach, Tanaka saw that Takanashi had had the presence of mind to switch out their crews, putting fresh men on the oars—a good move, and one that had slipped Tanaka's mind entirely in the heat of the moment. There would certainly have been no shortage of volunteers. Practically every man aboard had clamored to go on the first run, in spite of the fact that the entire evolution was technically against their orders. The thought brought a tiny smile to Tanaka's face, even under the circumstances.

It makes a man proud to be a sailor, he thought, and then set to ushering the remaining refugees toward the arriving boats.

This task was given greater urgency by the appearance of many-legged black shapes on the beachside quay, crushing down the last row of buildings and making for the high shingle, perhaps two hundred meters away. Tanaka had to admire the Ostmarkers' nerve; even now they didn't panic, in spite of everything they'd been through to get this far. Neither did any of Kagerō's men.

Determined to uphold naval tradition and be the last to leave, as he had been the first to arrive, Tanaka gave his traditional place aboard the launch to one last refugee, then ran down the line, checking each boat as it pushed off. Just as he arrived at lifeboat number three, Lieutenant Takanashi suddenly ceased beckoning for him to hurry and pointed, his face taking on a look of horror.

"Captain!" he cried. "Look there!"

Slackening his pace so as not to lose his balance, Tanaka looked back, and what he saw made his blood run cold. The Neuroi ground units were halfway across the beach and closing, their stomping gait unhurried but inevitable...

... and Tanaka and his men had missed someone.

"Hell!" he spat. "Where did she come from?!"

"I'll go, sir—" Takanashi began, but Tanaka had already dug in his heels and reversed course. Throwing his sword to the junior man, he shouted,

"If I don't make it back, go without me! That's an order!"

Then, dismissing all thought of Takanashi or the boat from his mind, he lowered his head and ran as fast as he could.

The little girl—Tanaka didn't think she could be more than nine or ten years old—was twenty meters up the beach and running for the surf as fast as her legs could carry her. As they converged, Tanaka couldn't be that surprised they hadn't spotted her before now. Her clothes, little better than rags after what had to have been weeks on the road, were nearly the same color as the sand, and she wore a slate-colored cloak with the hood drawn up. She must have arrived at the seaside after the rest of them, with the Neuroi all but snapping at her heels.

Tanaka intercepted her rather in the style of the Liberion game of football, which he'd witnessed on a long-ago visit to Annapolis, scooping her off her feet in one outstretched arm and carrying her along like a parcel. Rather than try to stop and reverse again, he instead ran in an arc that would carry him back to the sea without wasting momentum.

Although a relatively young man for his rank, Tanaka was still beginning to feel winded as he hurtled back toward the boat. A man didn't have all that many opportunities to exercise on a ship the size of a Kagerō-class destroyer, or at least a senior officer didn't, and he was up a little from what had been his fighting weight at Etajima; but he shoved all thought of fatigue out of his head and ran for his life.

Takanashi, the boat's coxswain, and several of the refugees were yelling and gesticulating, urging the captain on, as he covered the last of the distance. He was considering whether to try to throw the girl aboard ahead of him, or just jump for it with her still under his arm, when a flash of heat and a tremendous concussion rolled over them from behind. Knocked off his feet, Tanaka tumbled head-over-heels into the surf alongside the boat, losing his hold on the child in the process.

Shaking his head to clear it, he rolled onto his back and saw one of the Neuroi machines only meters away, a glassy streak in the sand between it and the boat marking where it had missed with its first plasma beam. Watching its sweeping red optic brighten as it approached, he wondered how many seconds it would take to get off another shot.

Between them, the little girl he'd tried to save lay sprawled at the water's edge, unconscious or dead, Tanaka couldn't tell. The blast had flung the hood of her cloak back from her head, releasing a mass of lightly curly hair that glinted flame-orange in the afternoon sun. Tanaka noticed it in an abstract, half-dazed kind of way, remarking to himself that it was one of the most beautiful colors he'd ever seen—which was fitting, since he assumed it would also be one of the last.

"Sir!" cried Takanashi, his hands on the gunwale.

To Tanaka's surprise, the redheaded Ostmarker girl was neither unconscious nor dead. Stirring, she pulled herself to her feet, facing the oncoming Neuroi.

"Not me, Kazuto!" Tanaka called, the lieutenant's given name popping back into his head like a signal flare going off. "Grab the—"

The Neuroi fired.

The beam shrieked out, blood-red and sun-hot... and fragmented an inch before the open palm of the little Ostmarker's upraised left hand. Between them stood what looked like a witch's rune-circle shield, if those had been drawn in lines of pure orange flame instead of the usual cool blue light. Tanaka saw her hair fade to pale green at the tips as bunches of what looked like feathers of the same color dropped out of it behind her ears. The rest flamed as orange as ever as it blew back in the hot wind that now rushed around her, making her ragged cloak snap like a flag. Broken into a dozen splinters, the beam curved around her and the boat behind her, slashing uselessly into the sea.

For a few endless seconds, it seemed like a standoff, the tiny witch and the enormous war machine locked in a contest of human will against raw alien power. Then, with a shrill cry that rose above even the scream of the Neuroi's beam, the Ostmarker witch seemed to double her effort, then double it again, and turned the Neuroi's beam back upon it. By the time the Neuroi realized what was going on, it had already cut itself practically in half, disintegrating into silver snow with a sound like a cracked bell.

The little witch staggered backward, a wisp of smoke curling up from her palm, and she would've collapsed into the sea if Takanashi hadn't vaulted out of the boat and caught her.

Monday, June 10, 1940
somewhere in the Atlantic

When the word came up from sickbay that the one long-term patient housed there was finally awake, Lieutenant Takanashi reported there immediately. True to the news, he found the redheaded Ostmarker girl sitting up in bed, eating a bowl of soup. At the sight of him entering, she looked somewhere between surprised and wary.

"Hello there," said Takanashi in his native language. "Can you understand me?"

The puzzled look he got back answered that question fairly effectively in the negative, not much to his surprise. He didn't speak any Karlslandic, which he recalled was the principal language of Ostmark, so he took a gamble on English. Her face brightened at that, so he went on,

"You're aboard His Fusōnese Majesty's destroyer Kagerō. It was our boats that took you and the rest of the people you were with off the beach in Boulogne. I'm the fourth lieutenant; my name is Takanashi."

She considered him for a moment with keen violet eyes, then said, "I remember you. You were in the last boat, the one the older man carried me to."

Takanashi nodded. "That was Commander Tanaka—this ship's captain."

"Did he make it?" the girl wondered.

Takanashi smiled. "Yes he did—thanks to you. He's asleep right now, but I'm sure he'll come and visit you when he comes back on watch." The young officer dragged over a metal chair and sat down next to the bunk. "What's your name?"

"Kiara," the little witch replied. "Kiara Vögler." She glanced at the porthole, which told her nothing other than that it was daytime, then asked, "Where are we going?"

"Back to Fusō," Takanashi said. "We caught some fire from Neuroi air units on the way out of the Strait of Calais. Nothing too serious, but the Admiralty ordered us home for repairs."

Kiara blinked. "You're taking me to Fusō?" she asked, sounding astonished.

"I'm afraid so," said Takanashi, rubbing the back of his head with an awkward smile. "Since we weren't supposed to be taking anyone off the beach ourselves, the Admiralty didn't really have a plan for us carrying refugees. Eventually they decided we'd just bring you all home with us. It's a long trip... presumably by the time we get there, the Foreign Ministry and whichever other countries are involved will have figured something out."

With a thoughtful frown, Kiara mused, "I don't think I have a country any more." She turned her violet eyes to him, her gaze aged beyond her years by all she'd experienced, and added, "Ostmark is... gone."

Takanashi, who hadn't wanted to say it, decided on the spot that he couldn't bullshit this girl. "It seems so," he agreed with a nod. "Was anyone from your family with you on the beach? Anyone you know?"

That seemed unlikely, since in the week since their departure no one had come forward to claim her, but he felt he had to ask. He wasn't surprised when she shook her head.

"No," she said. "There's no one." With a matter-of-factness that he felt sure was masking tightly controlled emotion, she went on, "I don't think anyone else made it out."

"Well, these are confusing times," said Takanashi. "You never know—someone may turn up who thinks the same of you. In the meantime, we'll look after you." Then, his manner becoming brisker, he said, "I have to get back to my duties now, but I'll come and see you again soon. In the meantime, if you need anything, just ask Doc Okada."

Kiara's brow furrowed. "The man who gave me the soup? He's young for a doctor."

"Well, he's really a navy corpsman," Takanashi admitted. "A ship this small doesn't rate an actual doctor as ship's surgeon. The nickname is traditional. But he's good at his job," he assured her. "He'll take good care of you."

The lieutenant was on his way back to the chartroom when he bumped into Tanaka, who was just emerging from his quarters abaft the bridge.

"Ah, Mr. Takanashi," said the captain. "I'm told our youngest guest is awake at last."

"Yessir, I've just been to see her. Her name is Vögler, first name Kiara. It's as we feared, sir—she's an Ostmarker. No family. She thinks she's the only survivor."

"Hm," said Tanaka, rubbing a finger over his greying moustache. "Well, much can change in the time it'll take us to reach Sasebo. We'll just have to see what the powers that be come up with."

"Mm," Takanashi agreed, and then he said half-jokingly, "If worst comes to worst, she can always go and stay with my parents. I'm sure they'd love to have the company."

Friday, July 12, 1946
Gare de l'Est
Paris, Gallia

Kiara Takanashi alighted from the Métro train that had brought her down from Gare du Nord, grateful to be approaching the end of the long trip from Fusō to her new duty station. True, she still had one further lengthy train ride ahead of her, but compared with the several-week sea voyage from Yokosuka to Folkestone, what was another few hours in one of Gallia's comfortable trains?

Since she already had her onward ticket, she bypassed the ticket hall and went straight to the platform indicated on the stub. Her train from Calais had been slightly behind schedule, so the conductors were making their last calls for boarding when she arrived. She sprang hurriedly on board and made her way to the first of the second-class carriages as the staff buttoned up the train behind her. Passing up several compartments as too crowded for her liking, she spotted one she thought was empty and thrust the door open.

To her mild surprise, she found that the compartment was not empty; there was one person in it, a young woman in an ornate black-and-gold uniform she didn't recognize, sitting in the far corner where Kiara hadn't seen her through the corridor window. Her head was turned away as Kiara entered the compartment, evidently gazing out the window, so at first the Ostmarker saw only the back of her head and her long fall of straight, vividly pink hair.

At the sound of the door, she turned to see who was coming in, then blinked and looked again, her crimson eyes going wide, evidently startled by what she saw.

Equally surprised, Kiara fumbled for words momentarily and, out of sheer reflex, mumbled, "Ah, 'tschuldigung." Then, instinctively taking the stranger for a Liberion, she indicated the empty bench on the opposite side of the compartment and asked in English, "Er, is this side taken?"

"Huh?" the pink-haired girl replied, looking momentarily blank. Then she seemed to gather herself in, shaking her head slightly, and said, "Oh, uh, no, be my guest."

"Danke," said Kiara, entering the compartment the rest of the way.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

---

10:15 a.m., Thursday, 11th July, 1946
Top Secret Estate
... Derbyshire, Britannia
... Off the A624, just past the Chapel Milton railway viaduct, near the Tesco car park where all the fistfights keep happening
Dimension GCC #332/S

The prince was alerted to the fact she'd missed her alarm by the gentle caress of a balled-up copy of the Times upon her head.

She emerged from amidst a quite startling amount of toy sharks - a gift she had requested from the Baltlandic ambassador, for reasons nobody else had quite been able to ascertain - grumbling about something-or-other and rubbing at her forehead. The cause of his wakefulness was smirking in the corner like a cat with a newly-satisfied grudge.

"Hullo, Bin," said this cause, getting ideas quite above his station.

"Good morning, brother," the prince replied, restraint self-evident from her brother's lack of stab wounds. "Is there any important news, or did you just decide to wake me up for the fun of it?"

"Option two, obviously." The boy's grin widened. "Oh, but Mama said you ought to check the military dispatches once you woke up, said it would be relevant to your interests." He sauntered over to the door and opened it. "So really, I'm doing you a favour. You ought to thank me, and yet, not a word of gratitude. What's become of manners in this benighted age?"

The door slammed shut behind his sprinting form just as the first shark crashed into the lintel.

The prince, now awake (though at what cost she could not begin to speculate), picked up the shark and placed it back with its fellows, along with an apology and a tenderness quite absent from her dealings with, for example, irritating family members. With that vital business concluded, she dressed in her morning suit and wandered groggily down the stairs towards the breakfast table.

A low and husky voice emerged from the withdrawing-room as he trudged past. "It moves! It breathes! Some dare call it alive!"

"And a hearty good morning to you too, mother. Today is just a fountain of family goodwill, isn't it? First Ben, and now yourself." The prince did not peer round the door. She would only see the sparkle of the tonic water in a heavy-bottomed glass, and then would come an argument, and the day would be ruined for both of them once again.

"Did he remind you to check your little magazine?" Her voice echoed like the aftermath of a pistol shot in a secluded well.

"Yes, mother," the prince ground out, "though he did not say why. I can only presume his mind was on that Beetle character of whom he is so fond."

"His name is Bettel, as well you know," came Ben's voice from the same room.

The prince rolled her eyes, invisible to both, or perhaps to neither; she found she could not care. "I bow to your superior dedication as always, brother dear. Mother, I shall take my breakfast in the sunroom today, if you will forgive my absence."

"As you wish, dear," she said, her attention already elsewhere - on some new scheme to further bolster the estate's fortunes, the prince had no doubt. So she continued her slow march down the hardwood stairs until they had transitioned into marble, their rich, almost purple colour suddenly shattered into black and white. At least they were colours she favoured, though she supposed white and black were hardly colours at all.

She picked up the opened dispatches from the Neuroi Front, a thing almost like a tabloid magazine for the rear-echelon of military staff. It was the kind of publication that during the First Neuroi War would have been most welcome in the latrines during one of the milder dysentery outbreaks, or perhaps as a lining to prevent trench foot, but for all that it was unserious on a fundamental level it was at least something she could read other than society rumour-mongering. It was military rumour-mongering instead, of course, but such things could not be helped. There was no idle housewife quite so prone to gossip as an officer of the Britannian Armed Forces stuck behind a desk in the middle of a war.

She suspected a prank, of course; some tale of woe involving a poor unfortunate who looked like her, or wore a cravat the same way, or some other such mild insult that only family could get away with. Still, she thought as she leafed through the listings, it was something better to do than daydream about the multicoloured leaf-spirits that lived in the garden and gave small household objects to tiny men from space-

She turned the page and stopped dead. There it was. A lead. A lead.

The prince sprinted back up the stairs, breakfast forgotten, shoes clicking on the carpet. She dashed into her chamber and shut the door, locking it and placing a heavy bar into the brackets to ensure it was impassable without her knowing. Such secrecy was both necessary and not; her family knew she had a passing interest in this particular subject, but not the extent, and if she had her way they wouldn't until it was far too late.

She crawled under her bed and dragged out a corkboard, which she rested on her dresser before unlocking the heavy wooden cover and letting it thud to the floor. Her dresser drawer produced a thin pair of scissors; she trimmed the page out neatly and pinned it into place like a dying butterfly, and yet she felt as if wings of her own were blossoming from her shoulders.

Rittmeister von Katädien's smiling face would do that to a girl - many girls, in fact, and girl-adjacent identities of countless places - but to the prince, it was something that bit more special. She had no magic. She had no knowledge of the techniques of the Zauberschüle. For all that she was a prince, the principality of Kalaino was about twenty-eight square miles of turnip country near what used to be the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, and in any event her mother the Queen still held power there. In short, she had neither powers nor power, and was treated as any other young woman; a frippery at best and a tiresome distraction from issues of real importance at worst.

It was nothing like the real Kalaino, a world of its own, who knew how many worlds away.

"I'll find you, Gryphon. I have to find you. I have to. If anyone can get me home, it's you."

Thursday, July 11th, 2411
Royal Palace, Tellada City, Tellada
Kalaino, Indi sector (formerly Aidoru-Esekai sector)
Dimension GCC #100/W

"Do you think she'll come home again?"

It was a ritual, every morning, between the woman and the snail. It was a distraction from the latest squealing tantrum emanating from the throne room, if nothing else; Rinako Bellerose hadn't been the worst person for the job of ruling Kalaino, she might well have been the worst lifeform. There were crusted lumps on an unwashed frying pan that could govern a nation better than her. At the very least, they wouldn't have been quite so shrill.

"I have to," she replied. "I have to, Snebby. What choice do I have?"

"The same one I have," replied the snail. "None at all."

"I miss my wife." The woman turned her head, her eyes clouded over with distant thunder. "I want her here. I only want her here, these days. Everything else seems, I don't know. Faded, somehow."

Snebby inched across the breakfast table and rested his antennae on her hand. "She's fighting to come home, Juna. It might be hard to remember sometimes, but she is. I can feel it in my shell, just as you can in your cartilage. We just have to keep the home fires burning."

"I know," said Juna Unagi, her eyes downcast, her lightning meek little crackles. "I know."

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

i mean if it's open season on vtubers then it feels improper not to include John Vtuber herself. =]

What are the odds of somehow doing the Ame/Gonothan storyline from ENigmatic Recollection in Eyrie context?

'cuz that thing was the SHIT.