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A Practical Guide to a Cushy Retirement ( Youjo Senki/APGTE )

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Pickler disappeared into the back and now the machines run perfectly, but also double as siege engines.
Robber and his crew are lurking somewhere. Ratface keeps bringing in supplies that have 'fallen off a truck.'
Juniper has developed an intricate campaign plan to expand operations to the entire region.
Adjutant has all the paperwork running smoothly, but encourages open mic poetry nights and is sleeping with half the customers.
Hanno is channeling the ghosts of past baristas to improve his own coffee making.
Scribe spends most of her time trying to sabotage the competition.
 
Probably could work if someone powerful enough gets hooked on the stuff and swears cruel and unusal - as in, even the locals see it as beyond cruel - punishment on the first brain-dead imbecile to mess sith their special place, and consecutively worsening punishments for the following offenses.

Also? Imagine for a second Reincarnated Visha running said coffee shop, trying to find that person who will recognize her coffee in the first sip.
 
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Chapter 8: Paene
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    • "The dance of flesh and iron so beloved by those living in the shadow of the Tower is just another form of prayer. Really, the high nobility of Praes consists of some of the most pious people I've ever known."

    -Attributed to Dread Emperor Benevolent.


    -I twisted and whirled, the blunted edge of the standard Legion issue blade narrowly missing my side. In retaliation, my right arm spasmed in a series of convoluted signs, the shorthands for the proper spell-shaping I technically had to perform in order to achieve the desired effect. Fortunately, the Trismegistan magical system had the time and again proven to be a little more... flexible than the Germanian one. My hand shimmered, something remarkably similar to a heat haze setting over it.

    Then I punched the offender in the gut.

    With a squeak and a wheezing cry of alarm, she flew off the ramparts and hit the ground ten feet below with a resounding thud. Hopefully, she hadn't broken anything or started internally bleeding. But then again, the healers ( the proper ones, not me and the other cadets ) back in the Academy could fix that and more, and as a plus that would mean she was out for the rest of the, admittedly very likely to end soon, exercise. Still.

    I stopped looking at the woman moaning on the ground and dodged the orc who decided to sneak up on me and forgot to be quiet while doing so. Unbalanced and out of position, he just had the time to arrest his momentum before I kicked him off the wall with the same spell applied to my foot, careful to aim a little to the side so he wouldn't land on my previous opponent.

    I turned my back on their twitching bodies and glanced at the rest of them. Two on the left side, three on the right, huh. They didn't seem to be in any hurry to attack me, which meant they were here to contain me and make sure I wasn't going anywhere, not that I was planning to.

    It looked like they finally decided I wasn't worth it. Smart people, took only twelve of them suffering second-degree burns and other assorted injuries.

    The overeager idiots lying in the inner courtyard aside.

    "If you all rushed me from both sides, you probably could overwhelm me before I got off more than two spells at most," I suggested conversationally. The large man to the right, the lieutenant who had led the attack on this side of the wall if I read his stripes correctly, stared back at me with a look of profound skepticism. The goblin on the left, who had probably been separated from her line, snorted out loud. That was fair; I didn't believe it either.

    The telltale signs of magical exhaustion were yet to make themselves known. In fact, I felt great. That was probably adrenaline talking, but I figured I had more than enough time to make sure the first five to ten cadets trying to dance with me would regret it.

    ...Honestly, I was just killing time at this point.

    Captain Ratface was really, really, really unfit for his role, that much was clear. What would it be, the twelfth defeat in a row? This was but his latest screwup in his capacity as my commanding officer. It wasn't even surprising anymore.

    I glanced back at the watchtower standing in the middle of the courtyard. For this exercise, our company was given to defend a small fort. A hundred against a hundred, atop the fortifications and with an added advantage of not really having to do anything to win aside from hiding behind the walls. Should be an easy win, right?

    The flag of the Rat Company was slowly drooping to the ground to be replaced by the standard of the Tiger Company. Left and right to me, the still conscious survivors of the assault on my side of the wall let out a loud cheer.

    Apparently, wrong.

    Captain Ratface decided that even distribution of the troops on each side of the wall would be the most obvious and most likely to succeed option. Which wasn't wrong per se. The problem was, if the opponent wasn't a drooling imbecile, they would understand that, too. If the defenders didn't leave a ready reserve of soldiers to reinforce the defense where needed, as I and half a dozen other officers had suggested, that left the attackers an unprecedented opportunity to maneuver around the static layout. Captain Aisha was not, in fact, a drooling imbecile.

    Though I did have a thing or two to say about her dating choices. The horrifying thing was, that according to the rumors, Ratface hadn't even been her worst choice. Well, nobody can be proficient in all things.

    We had been overruled and, as a result, I had been positioned on the southern ramparts with two other cadets from my line. The four smaller watchtowers on the corners of the walls each had had two mages attached to them to lob the fireballs at the enemy from the lofty height.

    Hadn't helped us any when Aisha had feinted to the north to draw out our forces and then when we'd committed, attacked the southwestern tower. Effectively, from my side of things at that point, she had had to deal with only six Mages against her fifteen, since two cadets on the western ramparts had been sent north to reinforce that side. I would have said something arrogant here, like "Luckily, one of those six Mages was me." but it wasn't really warranted.

    Granted, I apparently had larger reserves and learned magic with what my teacher called a "completely natural for a Claimant alacrity". Personally, I thought that my colleagues were just being lazy. Six hours of uninterrupted sleep, every night? Thanks, but no, I had my professional pride and work ethic, dammit.

    All in all, that currently only equaled me to any three other cadets in my line, two if one of them was Killian, though she was obviously sandbagging during our sparring matches. I could maybe take down five, on a very good day, but my ability to do so without burning down my side of the fort by myself was... debatable. Ten was a pipe dream.

    Luckily for me, I hadn't had to take on ten. The attackers had scaled the western wall, taken over the tower, then proceeded northwards to hit the rest of our forces in the rear, leaving only a token force on the tower to defend against a counterattack. Unlike the good lieutenant Garram who commanded the defense of the south wall, I'd argued against doing just that and had been promptly 'rewarded' with another attack at the southeastern tower, led by Captain Aisha and another five Mages. Garram had promptly ordered me ( ignoring that he technically didn't have authority to do it since I was outside his quite short chain of command ) to defend against that instead and still gone on to try and retake our own tower.

    Considering that I was now surrounded from two sides and the central watchtower had just been taken over by the victorious forces of the Tiger Company, we both obviously failed. Aisha hadn't tried to take over the second tower, she just half-collapsed it to prevent our side from easily reinforcing this rampart, then, from what I'd glimpsed in-between the immediate fighting, hopped over and into the courtyard to defend the main assaulting force from the laggards on the eastern and northern walls.

    "Good game, guys," I sighed. "See you back at lunch."

    The cheers died shortly. Did I say something wrong?

    ...I didn't have time to think about it.

    I trudged towards the nearest ladder. Had to find and report to Lieutenant Killian, if she was still conscious. Then I had to gather the rest of my tenth, organize those who required urgent medical attention and maybe even provide some of it myself without killing anyone. Joy.

    Who the fuck had invented the stupid rule that a Captain could be officially deposed only after thirteen consecutive defeats, anyway?

    ————————

    "Well," My teacher asked me. "Why didn't you take over?"

    I looked at him askance, incredulous. Was that a trick question?

    Almost a week passed after our company's latest fiasco, but this was the first time I've met my teacher since then. He apparently had "things" to take care of somewhere outside the capital, so he'd encouraged me to spend the time we usually did on my extracurricular education to train my tenth under the guise of figuring out what exactly my "Aspect" pertains. The reasoning had been that, if I was able to Know things, I would be able to teach them more effectively, too.

    I had no idea whether the idea was sound or he'd just offered it to create some busywork for me while he was out of town, and I didn't care that much, either. The activity itself was worthwhile anyway and technically obligatory under the War College rules, though I did know a lot of people who skipped a couple in order to pass a drink or five in Ater. I figured that the Academy knew but didn't make much of an issue as long as we continued to perform adequately and didn't do it too often.

    Well, not in my tenth. At least, not as often as two times a week. Were they actually expecting to use the abilities they learned here on the battlefield, or did they think we were here to braid each other's hair and tell stories by the campfire?

    The results were... actually promising. I couldn't say much, because we started only two weeks ago, but I had been worried a little I wouldn't be able to instill the appropriate discipline and standards without artillery and the constant risk of hypothermia. Still, we made do.

    I snapped out of my musings and confronted the question again. Normally, I wouldn't take so long to answer anything, but this was outlandish enough to give me pause. I wasn't quite so naive I didn't know that sometimes you had to suborn someone's authority in order to do your job, I had done that enough during my careers. But, outright usurping it? In Japan, I would've been lucky to be sacked without a severance package. In Germania? During wartime, that would've qualified as treason. The punishment for treason was summary execution. That wasn't particularly unique for the country in question, too. Unless I was mistaken, even during my time the vast majority of the world's militaries operated under the same principle.

    "Are you trying to get me killed?" I asked him bluntly. He preferred bluntness and seemingly expected the same from me, so I tried to oblige him. It was... refreshing. No need to figure out the understated motivations or hidden agendas, just say what you want and expect the same from your conversant.

    In that regard, he was one of the best teachers I've ever had, though I would never admit it to anyone, much less to him. Unless I got paid outrageously, that is.

    Tazin waved his hand dismissively.

    "I'd have tried something subtler had I felt the need," he said. How oddly reassuring. "I don't actually expect you to become a Captain. If nothing else, being a commanding officer of an active detachment is illegal for mages unless you happen to have 'Dread' attached before your name."

    "An active detachment?" I echoed.

    "A Legion, normally," he elaborated. "But during the War College semester, a company qualifies, too. The rule is older than the most recent Reforms, actually. During the reign of Dread Emperor... someone or other, a few mage-generals rose in open rebellion. One of them happened to be a Warlock of the time, so she quite predictably won when they killed the previous Tyrant and turned on each other. The first decree of Dread Empress Sinistra the First was to institute this rule so that the same wouldn't happen to her. The nobles of the time didn't like it, the country descended into another civil war, blah blah blah, an ordinary afternoon in Praes.

    "The important part is that," he finished. "Quite understandably, neither the Black Knight nor anyone before him trying to modernize our army felt the need to repeal the rule."

    I nodded along. The history lesson wasn't unwelcome, but it wasn't that important, either.

    "So what were you suggesting, then?" I asked.

    "It wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility for you to engineer a situation where your insight and knowledge help your company achieve a victory," he began. I opened my mouth to protest, but he raised his hand to quiet me down before I could. "Spare me the false modesty. I've seen your marks on Tactics. Let's just say, you certainly have more of a chance to win a war game than most of the cadets in your company." He muttered something under his breath, almost a noise of a throat being cleared instead of words, before continuing. "More importantly, you could feasibly do it in such a way that the rest of the company would realize it, too. Then, you make a bargain: he gets the prestige, you get the actual authority. Unless the boy is even more of a fool than the rumors say, he'd accept. Mind, he wouldn't be happy or grateful," he mused. "But what do you care about these things, anyway?"

    Huh. That sounded... rather a lot like what I'd been doing during the final years of my tenure as an Imperial Mage. During that time, however, I hadn't really had a choice. Losing meant dying more often than not. Did I care enough about winning to attract any unwelcome attention? The usual stress of command? The responsibility before my peers who would have a new target to blame if I screwed up instead?

    Besides, the day after tomorrow would be the time for another war game. If Ratface lost this one, as well, someone else would have to replace him. There was the question of how well his replacement would do and who would that be, since the most obvious pick, Leitenant Garram, had apparently sustained injuries threatening enough he wouldn't be able to join us for the rest of the semester, but again, what was it to me? I didn't even care about how losing affected my academic score. Now that I had ample experience on the matter, I knew that the best and the brightest weren't allocated to the rear echelons to come up with new stratagems and tactics like you would expect in a rational world. Instead, they were thrown right in front of the enemy, more often than not without proper resources or support.

    "Since you are a 'genius', you obviously can do more with less, and we need these resources somewhere else." That was the phrase I'd heard variations of with almost depressing regularity.

    Sadly, I wasn't a genius, just particularly diligent. For me, that meant that I had almost died more times than I could count on the fingers of my two hands, and then I died anyway, just a few weeks before the end of the war.

    So, on balance, doing too well during studies wasn't particularly preferable, either. Guess my countrymen did have a point when they said that the nail sticking out gets hammered down. I just... didn't want to believe it.

    "I need to think about it," I finally said.

    Tazin shrugged.

    "See that you do," he answered easily. "You just need to be aware that the option exists. Learn to play the game before others learn how to play you."

    ————————

    So that was what I doing in the tavern another day later, thinking. Honest.

    Well, I certainly didn't drink anything alcoholic. Depressingly enough, after my eighteenth birthday in the second world, I found out that this body was a lightweight. The headache had been atrocious, and I hadn't managed to figure out what I said or did under the influence no matter how much I threatened Weiss and the boys with "additional training exercises", so it was bound to have been something truly embarrassing. Couldn't blame them. Couldn't push them too hard either, or they'd have shown their hand and revealed the prime blackmail material they had undoubtedly managed to gather during my bout of drunkenness. At least, that was something I would have done to a particularly tetchy boss, and I held no particular illusions about how my subordinates viewed me. I was, how people said it, a "hardass".

    I figured I would put off experimenting at least until I was eighteen again and preferably locked inside a soundproof room with no witnesses in sight.

    In the meantime, I'd called off the latest drill with the tenth and told them to rest up before the next war game. It was probably a little surprising for them since I had done no such thing for the war game before, but they hadn't questioned it.

    ... I thought I'd seen Chris tearing up a little. Honestly, the guy needed to grow up. Forty pushups weren't meant to be something difficult, no matter how many miles you ran before.

    Instead of alcohol, I decided to try something from the local cuisine not prepared in the mess hall of our Academy.

    And I had to say, it wasn't too bad. A little on the spicy side, but after sixteen years of bland Callowan food and eighteen years of...ugh... Germanian culinary abominations... 'a little spicy' was surprisingly welcome.

    "Is this seat spoken for?" Someone said suddenly.

    I raised my head from enjoying my meal to see... huh. That wasn't what I expected.

    She was dressed in... her smile was... silky, flowing black hair... she had piercing yellow eyes, which was somehow significant, but I couldn't remember why. I was about to say no-

    Then something clicked, and everything went back to normal. That was a little weird. From my experience, I never paid too much attention to someone's outward appearance. Then again, everything happened at least once. In my defense, I'd never seen anyone dressed quite so... provocatively. I lowered my gaze, glancing at the elaborate bracelets covering her ankles. That her dress was short enough to show them off was-

    Oh. Oh.

    "I think you could do much better," I told her honestly.

    Her smile slipped a little.

    "How do you mean?" She asked me, sounding curious.

    "Well," I said, still a little flustered. "I'm just a sergeant, my pay isn't big-"

    "Oh," she started, making a purring noise with her throat. "I'm sure it won't- Wait."

    Her smile slipped even more.

    "What do you mean?"

    "I, uh," I cleared my throat. "I am not interested in your services. And if I were, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to afford them, anyway."

    Everyone in the tavern abruptly went silent.

    "Excuse me," she said frostily. "Did you just say that I'm a common whore?"

    I looked away, my ears burning. What was it with me? I'd never- Was that what mortification felt like?

    "I mean," I said, waving a hand vaguely in her direction. "Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against your profession-"

    "My profession?!"

    "... why are you dressed like this, then?" I asked with a sinking feeling. Ohshitohshitohshi-

    For a second, she glared at me with an expression of utter fury. Then, her features smoothed into a pleasant smile. Somehow, that was even more disconcerting.

    "You fucking ignorant Callowan bumpkin," she spoke sweetly, her voice dissonant with the content of her words. "You. Will. Regret. This."

    Without saying anything else, she stormed out. Everyone studiously avoided looking at me, for which I was thankful enough. I finished my meal as fast as I could, leaving the money on the table, before heading out and towards the barracks.

    Well. That was it for my first outing. Before my second one, I needed to ask some careful and very embarrassing questions about Praesi culture.

    Tomorrow couldn't happen soon enough. This war game was scheduled to occur over the entire weekend, so two or three days in the wilderness ought to do me good. Hopefully, another humiliating defeat would take my mind off this outrageous fiasco on my part.

    At least it was unlikely I would meet the woman again if I never visited that tavern. I didn't feel I had it in me to seek her out again and apologize, but. Ater was a big enough city for this continent. Honestly, what were the chances I would meet her again? Right, virtually none.
     
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    • Yep.

    Okay, to explain Akua's everything here, somewhat, because her Interlude wouldn't happen until the end of Book 1. Ah, mild spoilers for this story, I guess.

    Her plan was to get to know as much as she can about Tanya, then "lose" to her in a social interaction to initiate the Rule of Three.

    For that to happen, she put on an almost blatantly obvious enchantment that wouldn't give any problems to a Named Mage, if they try hard enough. If Tanya didn't try hard enough, then hey, another asset, probably not worth her time anyway.

    The problem is as soon as it started working, it was apparently snapped like a twig over the knee by... something, or someone.

    So, from Akua's perspective it was something like

    Tanya breaks the enchantment without even breaking sweat, then says something like "Oh hey, you're so bad at this you'd probably do better as a prostitute." while pretending to be completely unaware of anything.

    Those fucking Callowans, honestly. Poor Akua.
     
    I am pretty sure the rule of three doesn't apply without a confrontation and since Tanya didn't realize it, it shouldn't count, right? There shouldn't be enough weight to this meeting, otherwise it would be impossible for Named to ever interact safely.
     
    I'm actually glad she didn't notice a person suddenly having a significant number of details (Milo cries out "Plooooot hooook!" whilst waving his plot notebook in the background), as then Tanya might have considered the person worthy of more attention and thought.
     
    For a second there we thought that was The Scribe, turns out; it's just the Heiress having her fashion style dragged through the mud.
     
    Honestly I don't expect Tanya to take over the command, even unofficially, because she actually doesn't give a damn about winning anything. She is a Claimant and as long as she proves useful to her leaders her performance in these games will really not matter in the long run of her career. On the other hand being seen as the kind to subvert her superior's rules to accumulate more power and prestige is the sort od thing that can get you flagged as "too dangrous and ambitious to leave alive". So really she has nothing to gain and everything to lose. Hell if her squad does badly enough she cannuse that as evidence of "I'm not fit for combat please put me behind a desk somewhere" so she actually stands to GAIN if the squad does poorly.
     
    I would respond by pointing out two things:

    First, Tanya doesn't really understand yet what it means to be a Claimant or how it will impact her future. She's still biased by her previous life experiences, that competence is the way to get your superior's approval.

    Second, I think Tanya has also been impacted by her second life as a commander. She knows how to do it right, and thus will naturally have a desire to do it right. It probably bothers her to see a command run so poorly. Now if Tanya understands how she could endanger herself by taking command, she wouldn't do it, but if she doesn't understand that, I suspect a small part of Tanya will be saying "thank goodness I can finally fix this mess of a command, and make it run right."
     
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    While it is true that she is not fully aware of the significance of her status as a claimant she is aware that she is receiving special treatment and attention from her status and that people are more naturally differing to her. In addition her commanding officer Black Knight didn't seem to object to her request for a logistical position, only noting that it was unexpected. Doing anything that could jeopardize her stance of "I would be better behind a desk than on the field", such as showing high level command ability, is something that she would want to avoid.

    She is also aware from a lifetime of personal experience that showing a lot of aptitude for military matters, especially if you are really powerful in terms of magic, is how you get "volunteered" for really dangerous situations. And since she knows that there is a major war brewing and wants to avoid it as much as possible she'll be on her guard to avoid any sort of "silver wings/special comand" type stuff she did before. She already has a lifetime of experience in what happens when she was too successful in the military. Better to nip that issue in the bud rather than get pulled into that vortex.
     
    Chapter 9: Pedes
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    • "Chance meetings of long-separated friends is the Creation's way to tell you you're currently fucked and need all the help you can get."
    -The Unauthorized Additions to the Two Hundred Heroic Axioms, Author Unknown.

    Ah, right. We're fighting against the First Company. Great.

    At least this would be over sooner than I expected. Maybe I would still have time to go over my notes for the upcoming exams. A silver lining, right?

    This time, we were playing "Capture the Flag". I assumed this was meant to simulate some nebulous situation where we would have to raid the enemy's camp for vital military intelligence while making sure they wouldn't be able to do the same. Or something.

    It taught us how to simultaneously commit offensive and defensive maneuvers, so maybe it wasn't meant to simulate anything other than a really involved war game.

    That said, we were as Lieutenant Nauk so colorfully put it, in deep shit. Firstly, Lieutenant Garram would quite predictably not be joining us. That was unfortunate: Garram was a bit of an ass, but he was a reliable ass. In absence of any other candidates, he had been the one everyone assumed would get the Captaincy when we inevitably lost this game. That also left one of our lines without a commanding officer.

    I'd expected Sergeant Hakram to finally get the promotion, but he'd apparently flunked one of the language courses. Again. That was getting a little suspicious, not that anyone asked my opinion. He was competent enough to assume command, I knew enough from the few talks I'd had with him over the months. There was just... no drive in him to do it. As a former HR manager, I was a little perplexed and irritated with him wasting his talent instead of climbing the corporate-, ahem, -Army ladder higher, but maybe he was just naturally unambitious. At least he made an excellent Sergeant. The southern wall would have collapsed even faster during the previous inglorious exercise if he hadn't picked up the pieces of his line after Garram's failure and helped me defend it. He was no slouch in a fight, either: as far as I remembered, he'd been the last cadet from his line to go down, though I hadn't quite seen the details. I'd been a little busy.

    So instead of that, we were getting a transfer from... somewhere. Nobody knew much about our new Lieutenant, aside from their name. "Callow", huh. Whoever came up with that for their name either had an imagination of a particularly unintelligent snail or didn't even care enough to try. It cheered up my countrymen at least, and even I couldn't help but be cautiously optimistic: the only realistic way a Callowan was getting a lieutenancy was if they proved their loyalty and competence to the Empire, i.e. served in the Thirteenth Legion, the one organized from the fresh recruits in the wake of Conquest. In other words, they were bound to be competent and experienced, having actually served in the Legions before, but not having attended the War College.

    Apparently, someone saw it as a mistake to be rectified, so they were transferred here to expand on their education. In fact, if my logical reasoning was correct, they might be the shoo-in for the promotion to captaincy. That was certainly unorthodox for what I came to observe about the Praesi Empire: they generally didn't trust their Callowan recruits to do the job right, the casual racism on an institutional level notwithstanding. So, it was someone who impressed the upper echelons of the Legions so much they'd changed the way things were usually done and sponsored a Callowan. If I cared about my military career, the new Lieutenant was the one I needed to latch on to get propelled up the ranks together with the rising star.

    Aside from that, our situation wasn't exactly to be envied, so I decided not to dwell on it. The rotation for this exercise meant that we were technically on the offense, with Captain Juniper and the First Company fortified in one specific old fort of the many scattered around Ater's countryside, while we were positioned in the nearby valley, though I wouldn't expect that to remain true for long.

    Captain Juniper was a cautious leader, true, but she's proved several times she could act quite aggressively when her opponent presented a weakness. And well, our company was nothing if not one big, glaring weakness.

    Honestly, I believed an attack would be coming as early as this evening, a few hours after the game officially started, though Lieutenant Killian thought it would be tomorrow morning at dawn when our latest rotation of sentries would be at their least attentive. That was certainly viable. We'd spent a few minutes discussing the possibilities and how our line would play into them, then agreed on a course of action: one of my tenth would be assigned to the sentries' watchtower for the first half of the night, while another one from the tenth she commanded directly would cover for the rest of it, sending someone to wake us both up a few hours before dawn.

    We had been busy preparing some surprises for the other companies since a few weeks ago, but, unfortunately, we'd never been able to implement them. That was fine; I hadn't been quite sure we'd be able to reliably come up with something until the last two or three conjoined drills we ran together, so it'd probably have been just us giving away the surprise before due time.

    Now I just needed to choose a watchman from my tenth. I figured Chris could use some toughening up.

    I was going to his tent to tell him the wonderful news, ( and maybe see the hope in his eyes die a little ) when I thought I heard a familiar voice from somewhere nearby, coming from the south:

    "-ant Hakram?"

    I turned around and looked in the direction of Hakram's line. Their tents were the closest to the southern end of the camp, positioned closely in a half-circle so that they could serve as a speed-bump for the attack from that side, the narrow gaps left between the tents on both outermost edges for soldiers to squeeze through, so I had to do just that to see-

    "That would be me," Hakram said in his usual rumbling voice. "You're our new lieutenant, then?"

    To see-

    "Lieutenant Callow," the voice agreed. I still couldn't see them from behind Hakram's broad back, but I already had a sinking suspicion-

    Sergeant Robber was loitering nearby, back from his scouting patrol. He was what you probably imagined when someone said "goblin" in a fantasy setting: sharp, pointy teeth, constantly showing in a leering grin; a nasty sense of humor, a penchant for violence... Robber had that constant air of shadiness surrounding him, which I supposed made him a really good scout. That, or a decent serial killer. I wasn't quite sure of the distinction in the Legions, though.

    I walked closer while Hakram was introducing him and shooing him away to report to Lieutenant Pickler, the feeling rising with each step-

    Until I finally managed to see who was standing in front of the mountain of an orc that was Hakram.

    "So which company did you transfer from, Lieutenant?" Hakram asked, only to be interrupted by me.

    "Catherine," I asked, absolutely bemused. "What the fuck are you even doing here?"

    ———————

    Catherine was our newest Lieutenant. Catherine. My friend from the orphanage. The one who wasn't due to take the exams for admission for a few more months, if what I remembered about her plans was accurate.

    That didn't make any sense whatsoever.

    Oh, she was looking at me, somewhat surprised and... angry?

    "...It's so good to see you too, Tanya," she said excitedly. "I'm so happy to finally meet you again, Tanya. Hello, how have you been? I've been juuuuust great."

    Oh, she was being sarcastic.

    Hakram coughed uneasily.

    "I'll, uh, leave you to your reunion." And then he walked away, the traitor. Where was he going? This was his Lieutenant! At least show her to the Captain's tent, you, you-

    Ah.

    From my experience, I needed to find him again, and quickly, before I became a scornful lover who'd run away from her girlfriend to the Legions only for her to pull connections and find me again or some such nonsense. Hakram has an overly active imagination and a penchant for the gossip he could've employed much more effectively for the good of the company. Like finally getting promoted, for example.

    I pinched my nose.

    "Right, right," I said. "I'm sorry, Catherine, I was just... very surprised to see you. Pleasantly surprised," I added hastily before she started again.

    She stopped glaring at me with that somewhat scarily intense look, so I must have said something right.

    "Wouldn't figure that out from what you said."

    I opened my mouth to apologize, but she waved it away.

    "It's fine," she shrugged. "I wasn't expecting to find you here, either." She muttered something about having a talk with someone later, but I had no idea what that was about. She cleared her throat and came closer, her expression somewhat sheepish.

    "Also, while I'm here," she said in a lower voice. "I'm Lieutenant Callow, not Catherine."

    I arched an eyebrow.

    "One of the conditions of my admission, you could say," she elaborated. "I'll explain later, as soon as I clear up some small things with my generous patron."

    So she did have a patron. How she found one I had no idea, but I hoped they weren't just taking advantage of a young impressionable woman.

    That would be quite unacceptable, she was my friend, after all. Also, there was a faint hope that she hadn't gotten her position just by nepotism. Otherwise, we were even more screwed than moments ago.

    I peered at her for a few seconds. Her uniform was a little mismatched, not quite entirely fitting her, but she looked like she at least generally understood how to wear it. The sword she wore on her hip, however, was obviously high quality, if relatively unadorned. A fire motif?

    She looked a little taller, somehow, though I didn't think an inch she grew since I'd last seen her was to blame. I felt... something when looking at her. It wasn't anything tangible I could put into words. The closest I could come up with were, weirdly enough, recognition and... acknowledgment.

    Her eyes seemed a little older, too, though that might've been just my imagination. Perhaps we weren't fucked just yet, though I still held a healthy dose of skepticism. Even if Catherine knew what she was doing, one decent Lieutenant wasn't going to change the fact we were officially the worst company going against the officially best one.

    "In that case," I said slowly. "We might need to hurry and catch up with your Sergeant, Lieutenant Callow."

    ————————

    After finding Sergeant Hakram and dum- gently redepositing Catherine back on him, I quickly excused myself and resumed my duties. We could always reminisce together... later, once we were back in the College. For now, we had a job to do, hers arguably more important than mine, since she had to lead nineteen other cadets to my nine.

    One could argue it was my social obligation to lead her around the camp and answer her questions as the closest friend she had in the camp, which was probably what Hakram had assumed I would have done without asking me first, but I didn't really do favoritism. Any organization, doubly so a military one, would do better if its members didn't overly fraternize with each, that was a simple logical fact. I always used to thoroughly separate my personal affairs from my job, without messy feelings or irrational impulses getting into my way when it was time to make hard decisions, and I wasn't about to break away from such a useful habit.

    Unfortunately, not everyone thought like that, but I long since resigned myself to acknowledging my coworkers' shortcomings and either picking up the pieces after them or punishing them accordingly, according to their position relative to me. A pity-

    She had her own Sergeant, he could show her the ropes, and that was that.

    The sun was already setting. Once the night came, the games would officially start, which was quite sadistic of whoever came up with the exercise: a night assault in the forest was a foolish affair with many, many ways to go wrong, but just because it was stupid of the enemy to try it didn't mean we shouldn't safeguard against the possibility. Which meant a rotating night watch after a long day spent trekking and setting up the camp. To be fair, that would be exactly what was expected of us in the future, once we finished the College. Military life was glamorous like that.

    There was also a little problem that the First Company was disciplined and skilled enough they could possibly pull it off, which was why Killian and I were so on edge.
    I sat back against the tree on the edge of the forest bordering our camp, resting for a few minutes after the clamor of the day and thinking idly whether I should check up on Chris once again or go straight to bed, the ground under me not exactly damp, but not completely dry, either. It was almost pleasant in a way, considering these days I spent most of the time under the scorching sun of the rest of Praes. I wasn't exactly sure how this forest could exist in that environment, but the weather in this part of the continent could be described only as "fucking weird". I'd been told there are some parts of Praes that are semi-regularly pattered with ice storms, independent of the time of the year or trivial concerns like the temperature of the air and humidity.

    I closed my eyes for what seemed like a moment, but it must have been a bit longer since when I opened them again, the sun was no longer there. Well, shit. I cursed inwardly, more than a little upset by my own lapse in discipline. It wasn't like I could expect anything from my troops if I didn't even meet my own standards.

    I sat up straighter, stretching out my spine and reviewing the timeline to figure out whether I still needed to get back to my tent. Probably not. I could still visit the watchtower and check our defenses one more time.

    Our first plan was to set up camp on the hill to have an easier time watching for the First Company. Glad that got shot down. The forest grew almost to the summit, patrolling that side would have been a nightmare. You could argue that our current setup wasn't much better, but at least there were fifty feet of clear ground between us and the forest now, and the side of the hill served as a natural wall to protect our camp from another side. It wasn't nearly as vertical as I'd have liked, and Juniper could always get her mage line on top of it to bombard us from above, but that'd require her to divide her forces, if only-

    "You've been avoiding me today," she accused me.

    I sighed. So we were doing this, looked like.

    "Yes, Catherine, that's exactly what I was doing," I told her, turning to face her, but not standing up yet.

    She seemed taken aback by my frank admission, maybe trying to figure out whether I was being sarcastic. I wasn't. Sarcasm and I weren't good friends. Which was weird, in hindsight, I never had any problems with veiled threats and hiding implications underneath a facade of geniality.

    "Why?" She asked, and... well, shit. She was genuinely upset. "Some horseshit about protecting my identity? Because I'm pretty sure that was blasted to Hells already."

    I hummed a little, not exactly disagreeing with her on that point. For whatever reason she needed to keep her real name secret, that ship sailed, drowned, then caught fire while still being underwater.

    "Catherine," I slowly started. "Why would you want me around on your first day in the Legions?" I was assuming, but I felt pretty safe in my assumptions. Catherine simply didn't have enough time to earn her rank by serving normally.

    "I don't know, maybe so that you could show me around, catch up with me on our lives in the last few months," she listed sarcastically. "Vouch to our Captain that I'm reliable?"

    "Are you?" I asked her idly. "Reliable, that is."

    She stared at me, speechless.

    "Catherine," I said, not unkindly. Or at least, as not unkindly as I was physically capable of. "We are in the Legions. As your friend, I am honestly very happy for you achieving your life goals and moving up in your life." Even though I wasn't exactly delighted to be here myself, I left unsaid. "But as a Sergeant of a Company you've applied into through less than honest means while skipping two ranks, I cannot help but feel a little apprehensive. And when we are out there on an exercise, I'm a Sergeant, not your friend."

    She grimaced but said nothing. I took that as an invitation to continue.

    "To be clear, I don't doubt your aptitude for applied violence," And I really didn't. Catherine had been quite quick on the draw on the rare occasions we discussed anything even remotely related to the military back in the orphanage. It wasn't just a passing fancy to her, she really had taken up to study everything she could find in the library. I hadn't even had to prod her that much for her to get started. "I don't even mind that you felt the need to acquire a Lieutenancy-"

    "I didn't," she interrupted. "Bla- My patron decided that."

    Well, that answered that.

    "Either way, I don't mind," I repeated. It would be pretty hypocritical of me to be bothered by that, considering my track record. "You just have to earn it the hard way now. Without engaging in undue nepotism." More of it, that is. "Helping you out would only shunt your growth as a military officer, in my opinion."

    She looked mollified by that, at least a little.

    "Well," she chuckled. "I can accept that. At least I know you didn't decide you hate my face." Catherine made an expression that I learned to associate with trouble, but before I could say anything, she walked closer to the tree I was sitting by, leaning on it and looking down on me, grinning. "It's because I'm too Callowan for you now, isn't it?" I didn't like where this was going. Something I felt about it must have shown on my face because her grin just got wider. "Oh, is that it? You just found yourself a pretty Soninke girl while I wasn't around. Was she-"

    We heard a shout of alarm coming from the west, and suddenly, I had a terrible feeling that for once in my life, I had to thank Being X for a timely intervention.

    A/N: err. Happy Valentine? This is my second draft instead of the usual fifth or seventh, soo, what I'm saying is that I might rewrite it later. Feel free to comment and criticize, I feel I didn't really get Catherine right this time around.

    Next chapter: Proverbia.
     
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