Chapter 1: Preface and Meeting the Girls of the 82nd.

The war with the Neuroi ended on August 13th/14th, 1947. Everyone left across the face of the Earth knows this and it is already being put into history books just a few short months after. Indeed, the entire history of the war is being hastily gathered, compiled and written down as reconstruction takes place across the world. So why should I bother to write this? There are certainly those more qualified than I am already at work on it. They will focus on famous battles and Witches (most notably those who served in the 501st), note dates and times and try to calculate just how much was lost in the defense of humanity. I am not writing about that so much as I am writing how it was to be a Witch during the war. There are also several things I want to put into writing (events, people, places, the final attack) before they are distorted by embellishment and gossip into fanciful legends. Sadly, this has already started for some things. Some of this will not be easy to read, it is not easy to write, but it must be told. I can not say that my experiences were how every Witch lived, only how my comrades and I did.

It is impossible to talk about the war and not mention the 501st Joint Fighter Wing. They were the most publicized and glamorized unit in the war. Most of them were already famous aces in their home countries before the 501st was formed and as a unit they achieved some amazing victories, but their lives were not close to ours. We did not live in a luxurious castle with separate rooms, we lived in barracks with our beds only a few feet apart. We did not leisurely wait about hundreds of miles from the front lines for a Neuroi to be sighted, we hunted. I remember seeing propaganda posters of them hung up around our base; pictures of various members of the 501st posing dramatically with their weapons as if in combat. We did not have time for such trivial things.

It must sound like I despise them or perhaps just harbor an intense envy of them, and during the war of course I did. Most Witches I have spoken to admit to having moments of hatred for the 501st and even more moments of jealousy, we would all have been liars to say otherwise. Of course we wanted to live in a castle with our own rooms instead of bedding down in dark barracks. We would have loved to sit by the ocean under the warm sun simply waiting for the enemy to come to us instead of flying through harsh winds and snow to launch an attack on the Hives near the Ural Mountains. No matter what we thought of the Witches in the 501st at any given time we followed their lives. When the evening news broadcast came on we would all gather around the radio and listen for anything about the 501st. We would cheer their victories and mourn their few losses because no matter how differently we lived from them, we were all Witches.

The Witches of the 501st can not be blamed for how they lived while their unit was active and I doubt any of them had any choice about joining either. Even when I first heard news of the formation of a multi-national fighter wing I knew that the main reason was nothing more than propaganda. It was a way of easing the growing tensions of the people. Rumors, sometimes presented as hotly-spoken truths, that The United States of Liberion was in league with the Neuroi since they had yet to be directly attacked; or that Fuso was actually controlling the Neuroi spread across the nations. To stop the people from wanting a fellow human's blood the 501st Joint Fighter Wing was created and shown off to the world at every possible moment. The message was clear, if these Witches from all different countries could live and fight together every citizen should as well. It worked.

That is enough about the 501st for now though I will go into more detail of their individual lives after the second time the unit was disbanded. They were the faces of the war and their deeds deserve to be recorded with a harsh eye before the actual details are lost. For now I will tell you about the time I spent with my unit during the war. My name is Mstislav Lisitskaia

and I served with the 82nd Orussian Heavy Attack Wing, also known as the Ox-Girls.

I grew up on a farm, as many Orussians did at that time, with my mother who was a seamstress by trade and my father who had been in the Orussian Army until he was discharged due to injury. The first two fingers on his right hand are missing and to this day he will not tell me how he lost them. The day the draft letter came telling me that I was now in the Orussian Air Force both of my parents burst into tears. In the following weeks my mother was prone to fits of crying and clinging to me, telling me that she wouldn't let them take me. My father spoke less and less to me, spending most of his time outside staring at the sky. It became so uncomfortable that I remember wishing I was already gone and in training. The night before I left for the military base my father set me down at the kitchen table across from him, poured two glasses of Vodka and sat one of them down in front of me. I had never drank alcohol before, I was only fifteen at the time, but I was not going to refuse my father. He raised his glass and I mimicked him.

"To Orussia, to the World, because now that they have you this war shall surely be won." he toasted and then drained his glass in one gulp.

I followed suit somehow managing to swallow the burning liquid all at once. I was both embarrassed and filled with pride at my father's words. He filled our glasses again and we began to sip at the Vodka as he told me what to expect when I got to the base. He told me that my first days there were going to be the worst of my life not because of the intense physical training but because of the hazing. I had never heard the word 'hazing' before and I asked him to explain it. He hesitated for a moment, took two more shots, and then began to explain. He told me that the other members in my unit would beat me, yell at me, call me names and anything else they could do to try and break me. After hearing that I downed my shot and held my glass out for a refill. My father went on to tell me that no matter what they did or how badly it hurt that I could not give in. If I had to cry I had to do it silently. I could not yell at them, could not fight back. He told me that I had to take everything they did to me and remain standing strong. If I were able to do this he told me that I would be closer than family to the people in my unit. I did not understand how he could think something like that and he didn't bother to explain any further. He sent me to bed that night slightly drunk and terrified.

The next morning I was on a bus by myself headed north to begin my military career. I spent the entire ride trying to convince myself that my father had been wrong. Maybe the men did that to each other in the Army but certainly not Witches. I was the one who was wrong of course but the things my father had described were nothing compared to what was waiting for me.

When I arrived at the base it was late in the afternoon and I was instructed to simply go to a low building with the number 82 painted on the side. It was the barracks that I would call home for a long time. When I entered the barracks I was surprised to find it empty, just two rows of beds along either of the walls with footlockers in front of each of them. There were names painted on the tops of five of the footlockers, the rest were blank. I opened the one with my last name on it and found a uniform shirt, black stockings, boots, a grey t-shirt with '82nd' printed on it and a pistol in a holster. I shut the footlocker without touching anything and sat on top of it feeling nervous and unsure of what to do. I do not know how long I waited before I heard the approaching voices outside. They sounded cheerful and were punctuated with laughter. I felt my heart rise at that moment now almost certain that my father had been wrong about the hazing.

The door opened and four girls walked in dressed in their uniforms, pistols strapped against their chests. The cheerfulness and laughter was gone and the looks on their faces as they approached me were frightening. It was obvious that the girl with the short red hair and scar that ran from her bottom lip to her left eye was the leader of the group. She stood directly in front of me with the other three girls spread out from her, boxing me in. I glanced at them all quickly noticing that all of them had a silver ring pierced through their noses between their nostrils. They all seemed to be waiting for me to say something so despite how hard my heart was beating and telling me to run I stood up and introduced myself.

"Hey, my name is Mstislav Lisit–

That was as far as I got before the girl with red hair hit me. It was an open-handed smack that felt like a right hook to my cheek. The blow was hard enough to stagger me and tears immediately sprang up in my eyes. Before I could recover one of the other girls kicked the back of my knee and sent me to the floor. I started to push myself up but a hard kick to the stomach knocked the breath out of me and collapsed me back to the floor. Someone sat on my back and grabbed a handful of my hair, pulling hard and holding so that my face was upturned and I was looking at their leader.

"Anything else to say, filthy farm girl?" She asked.

"No Ma'am!" The words were out of my mouth before I realized that it was the wrong choice to speak at all.

This was met with my hair being pulled harder and a kick to my left kidney.

"No Sir, you fucking useless thing!." She screamed at me.

"No Sir!" I shouted, again before I could think better of it.

The girl pulling my hair suddenly changed direction and slammed my face into the concrete floor. My nose didn't break but it did begin to pour blood immediately and when my head was wrenched back a few drops flew and landed on the redhead's shirt.

"You stupid bitch!" The anger in her voice was pure. "You ruined my shirt! It's bad enough you come in here and make everything stink as bad as you do, but then you ruin my shirt? You stupid animal!"

The weight on my back suddenly disappeared and I was hauled roughly to my feet. The lower half of my face was already sticky with blood and I could hear drops of it spattering onto the concrete floor. My vision, which had been clouded by tears, was cleared again as I was hit twice more in the face.

The redhead made a noise of disgust as she looked down at her hand which was covered in my blood, "I'm going to go wash this filthy animal's blood off of me. Make sure she knows her place by the time I get back."

As soon as she was gone another one of the girls stepped in front of me and grinned so wide that I could see nearly all of her teeth, noticing that she was missing a tooth near the back of her mouth. She was shorter than I was with blonde hair that was cut into a bob and dull blue eyes. He nose looked like it had been broken at least once before. I wondered if her missing tooth and broken nose were a result of her hazing. Was I going to be hurt that badly?

"Hey there animal," she spoke in such a friendly voice I could almost feel the danger underneath her words, "I just want to know what the hell you think you are doing."

I didn't answer.

"Because I've never seen a stupid animal wear clothes or stand up on its hind legs like that." She continued, her wide grin never leaving her face. "I think you should act like the animal you are and stop pretending to be human."

Again, I was silent.

She looked past me at the other two girls who had been holding me in place and said simply, "Strip her."

They literally tore the clothes from my body ripping and destroying them leaving me completely naked. It was at this point that I felt the first few sobs try to grab at my chest as the three slowly circled around me. There was a moment where absolutely everything was still and then they descended on me.

"Look at its tits! How are you supposed to milk something that small?"

"Too fucking scrawny to be any use in the field."

Something shouted in a language I didn't understand.

They smacked my butt and my breasts, pinched and twisted my nipples, struck me hard nearly everywhere they could reach. I lost the battle to my tears then. My face burning with humiliation and my mind spinning terrified and confused I let out two loud sobs before I could manage to cut them off. The girl with the broken nose was immediately in front of me again, still grinning.

"Now you're going to cry from a little bit of teasing? Fucking pathetic." Her grin dropped into a sneer and her face screwed up as if just looking at me disgusted her. "All fours useless bitch!"

She was so quick that I never saw the hit coming, her fist was just suddenly buried below my ribs. My vision went black and I hit the floor unable to breathe. This girl, all of these girls, were actually trying to hurt me. I tried desperately to breathe in but my chest had seized up completely. I was going to die naked and bloody on a cold floor.

"I said all fours!" She screamed and placed her boot on my face, "Are you that stupid? Am I going to have to train you?"

She began to grind her boot heel into my face and the fresh pain brought me back a little. My chest unclenched and I could breathe again between fits of violent coughing. It felt like it took several long minutes but I was finally able to prop myself up on my hands and knees hoping that was what the girl wanted. I stared at the ground watching a mixture of blood, spit and tears form beneath my face. Someone snapped their fingers a few times next to my ear and I looked up instinctively. A pretty girl with brown hair braided against her scalp and deep green eyes was staring back down at me with a harsh look on her face. Her skin was a light olive color and I wondered if she were foreign.

She said something to me in a language I didn't understand and after a few moments of me staring dumbly up at her she squatted down in front of me, grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked my head back bringing my face inches from her's.

"I said speak," she said slowly. She was speaking Orussian but with a thick accent I didn't recognize, "tell us what kind of animal you are."

"I'm–

She smashed my face into the floor and yanked my head back up to face her in one quick, brutal motion. My face felt shattered and fresh blood began to pour again.

"I said speak, tell us what kind of animal you are." She repeated.

Somehow my brain put together that she wanted me to make noises like an animal. My familiar was an ox and having plowed the fields many times back at home with the yolk of oxen we owned I knew what they sounded like. I tried my best to mimic their lowing and snorting. I only managed to cough and sputter blood across the girl's boots but before she could do anything I tried again louder actually managing to make a noise similar to an ox.

All three of them laughed and the girl behind me, the one I still hadn't gotten a good look at said, "Oh no, was that supposed to be an ox? Kira's going to love this."

The sound of a door opening, "What am I going to love?" The redhead's name must be Kira.

Everything was becoming distant and hazy. I was losing consciousness quickly.

"This thing thinks she's an ox!"

"Ha! An ox? Its not even a slug! Does it know it's place?"

"For now."

One of them spit on me, "Clean up that blood, fucking animal, it stinks like you do."

I was flipped onto my back and one of them dropped onto my chest, straddling it, the sudden movement bringing my vision back into focus. At first I thought it was the girl with the broken nose but this girl's hair was long and pulled into a ponytail. Her blue eyes were brighter and her nose was normal, the two could have been sisters though. She leaned down so that our foreheads were touching and pinched one of my nipples, twisting hard.

"Welcome to the slaughterhouse, stupid animal." She whispered.

As she stood up she drove her knee into my stomach leaving me to gasp for breath in a slowly growing pool of my own blood. The four of them ignored me as I faded in and out of consciousness their cheerful voices and laughter following me down distantly as my eyes finally shut.

This was my introduction to the girls in the 82nd but it was by no means the end of my suffering at their hands.