Well, the progression of Teana's Travels Book 5 has been slowed to a crawl so as to give Negima canon time to advance, so I don't end up stepping on the toes of future canon revelations. In the mean time, I've decided to start work on this little side-project: the backstory of the universe shown in Book 3. This fic will cover how the Phoenix League formed and fought its way free of the vile, corrupt Sol Confederacy, along with later conflicts between then and the arrival of the Starshot.

In case you've forgotten, this universe is essentially a heavily modified timeline of the Rejuve Verse created by "Lurking Dragon"; the heaviest modifications are the Confederacy (which is horribly corrupt and oppressive in this timeline), the tone (original was basically a spanking-fetishist's universe; this is a Darker And Edgier wartime fic), and the date (2800s in the original canon, 2500s in this universe).

TO SITE ADMINS AND TO HATERS/REJUVE-VERSE-PURISTS/OTHER FOLK: This fic is a vital portion of the Teana's Travels series, giving backstory for a universe AND introducing characters who WILL make appearances later in the main series, some of them with fairly major roles. Deletion of this fic, for whatever reason, would leave a huge, gaping plot hole for future works in the main series, and would undermine the characterization of future-introduced individuals. If you don't like it, don't read it.

I'm throwing in an extensive disclaimer (including characters who won't make appearances for a little while), but if I miss anyone or anything let me know and I'll add it.

Also, in case anyone's forgotten, the Teana's Travels series now has a TV-Tropes page. That page will now also cover this fic. Get crackin', folks!

-DISCLAIMER-

I do not own and did not create the Rejuve Verse; it is the creation of "Lurking Dragon", as are the characters John Devine, Melody Marston-Johnson (and her penni-parents), Jane Smythe, President M'Butu, Ms. Garrett, and the species the Jalaxians, the Drakonians, and the Rigellians

The species known as Aspatrians are the creation of "Professor Bob"

The character Grace Staunton-Howard is the creation of "Haley Brimley", though the incarnation of her seen in this series is radically different from the original, due to life experiences having shaped her personality and viewpoints.

Various characters and races are from the members of the "Bottoms Valley" forums: Ken/Kate Scott-Compton, Dan/Dani Wilson, and Mr. and Mrs. Compton (user "Casey"); the Kyyreni race (user "Kaido"); Claudia (user "Kazunari"); Klara Leads, Kairi, the Lucavi race, and a brief mention of Eve (user "Nekochild", though my version of Klara is somewhat different from NC's characterization of her); the twins Jemmi (user "Darkriver") and Jenny (user "Ishy"); Ishtar (user "Ishy"; my name for her (and Kairi's) species, "Elvaan", is my creation, with Ishy's "Space Elf" serving as a common colloquialism). Various individuals mentioned here have personalities different from their personal "canon", as well as different histories.

Various characters (Miles Fairbrass, Harold Henriksen, John Shepherd, Leonid Dragovich, others) are my own creations

TECHNOLOGY USED BY THE PHOENIX LEAGUE DUE TO TRANSDIMENSIONAL LINKAGE AND FORGES:

Halo is the property of Bungie Studios and 343 Industries (Forerunner tech; UNSC weapons, vehicles, and tech)

StarCraft is the property of Blizzard Entertainment (Terran weapons, vehicles, and tech)

Gears of War is the property of Epic Games (COG weapons, vehicles, and tech)

Star Wars is the property of George Lucas (blaster weaponry and the term "droid"; no lightsabers, though)

Call of Duty series is the property of Infinity Ward and Treyarch (the fact that this timeline is the distant future of the Call of Duty / Modern Warfare universe, with appropriate in-story mentions of pivotal events, and some of my OCs are descendants of CoD/MW important characters)

Transformers is the property of Hasbro (oh-so-brief in-universe mentions & homage, as well as two characters' aliases)

-CHAPTER START-

In 2087 AD, exploration ships of the newborn Sol Confederacy discovered ancient tech aboard a derelict and long-abandoned space station of nonhuman origin orbiting a dead planet in the Tau Ceti System. Once they puzzled out how to work the damn things, humanity realized that this new tech could completely revolutionize nearly everything about human life and civilization. A person affected by the technology would be "de-aged" into childhood (though only physically; no memory loss or significant personality changes unless they were set back to less than 24 months or so of age).

This kind of tech revolutionized the way lives are lived, and the concept of age. Getting too old? Just "rejuve" into a kid and live again. Horribly injured, too much so to save through standard medicine? Rejuve, and your kid self is in perfect condition. Need to learn something that'll literally take more than a single lifetime to learn? Learn as much of it as you can, rejuve, keep the knowledge, and keep learning more of it. Essentially, lifespans could now be measured in centuries.

To keep the human population from ballooning out of control, strict measures were enacted: the Kensington Protocol, a mandatory, reversible sterilization performed during childhood, to be released only if the people involved passed a government test that ensure they had what it took to be parents, and that the local population wasn't already at peak; and the Fujikawa Protocol, which artificially delays puberty until around mid-to-late high-school age. As a consequence of the latter, the legal age of adulthood was raised to 21; this causes some problems, however, when young-adult people from colonies who did not use the Fujikawa Protocol (and thus still had the age of adulthood at 18) tried to visit colonies that did, only to find that, despite being the same physical state as a Fujikawa-user in their mid-20s, were technically and legally children on said worlds. The general solution is for those who are above their worlds' legal age but below the core worlds' is to simply avoid traveling to the core worlds if at all possible until they reached 21.

By the mid 26th century, the human population was "only" a little over 10 billion, thanks to these methods of population control. Even so, besides the Sol System, there were 16 inhabited Inner Colonies, and 25 inhabited Outer Colonies (and 775 uninhabited Outer worlds still under Confederate jurisdiction, visited by specially-created machines to harvest valuable resources for the inhabited worlds to use).

But by far the biggest change was to the justice system. Under the new system, criminals of all types, rather than incarceration or execution, are forcefully rejuved and placed in the "care" of "parents" who give scheduled, harsh, and often-unearned spankings and humiliations; the length and severity of a "sentence" was usually proportionate to the crime. The system was supposed to operate on the principle of "make them realize what they did was wrong, and then raise them right." This was dubbed the Penitatas Program.

Things worked smoothly for a few decades. But then things went wrong.

A few decades after the establishment of Rejuve Tech, corruption took root within the Sol Confederacy. Over the years, decades, and centuries, it grew and grew and grew. By the mid 26th century, corruption and oppression were positively rampant within the Confederacy, at nearly every rung on the ladder, in civilian, military, and government positions. People in the highest echelons of government worked to suppress any dissent against their rule. Millions of people – peaceful protestors, dissenters, and even people who knew too much or were even just in the wrong place at the wrong time – were snatched up, branded with trumped-up and/or wholly fabricated charges, and "pennied"… or, failing that, assassinated. Several other atrocities were committed as well, which may or may not be mentioned later on. And all the while, a carefully elaborate ruse was constructed to keep the populace at large from learning the true depths of depravity their government had fallen into; nearly all of the rank-and-file military were ignorant of the real situation, as were some of the higher-ups. Even the Confederacy's Presidents were kept in the dark, being tricked into thinking they had some form of power or influence when they were really just figureheads, with the data on the corruption's influence and actions carefully hidden from them. The Confederacy's nonhuman allies were also kept in the dark (though some races, such as the Kyyreni, the Lucavi – who the Confederacy hadn't even technically proven the existence of due to their stealth - , and the Elvaan, were already distrusting of the Confederacy for various reasons).

Various small movements sprung up all over Human Space over the years, but they were small enough that they either never got off the ground or were viciously stomped out by the corrupt Confederacy. But that would soon change…

However, before we cover the beginnings of what would be the corrupt regime's doom, let us focus on a certain person: a physically-young girl, used as a scapegoat/"fall-guy" in an embezzlement scam and made a "penni" for it, and her first steps towards becoming something far greater…

-SCENE BREAK-

A-Ville Elementary Courtyard

Albany, New York

October 25th, 2550 AD

She had always been weak.

Thanks in part to being raised by a mother stressed out by the death in combat of her husband, she had grown into a woman who nearly always folded and caved in to demands and to even mildly-tenacious requests. When Donald Tenfeld had wooed her, promised her things, said that they were just borrowing the money and were gonna pay it back, she believed and followed; even when her judgment and instincts started to inform her that something was wrong, she meekly, obediently bended to his will. And then he skipped out-system, leaving her to suffer for the things that he had done and had made her do.

She'd seen the Medicalos – a small five-year-old girl – being accosted by the two technically-eight-year-old boys with broken circles on their hands and knives in their hands, had recognized them as the Clyde brothers, a duo who had done something almost unheard of: escape from their captivity. They'd been all over the news lately; both had, as adults, been the two leaders of a vicious gang, who considered a prestigious kill as necessity to advance in the ranks. After being captured and made "broken-circle pennies", they'd somehow escaped before they could be "broken", and had been at large for about a month. Here they'd been trying to earn their first kill of their "new" life.

She'd seen how nobody was around, not even teachers, and she'd uncharacteristically leapt in to save the victim.

Now, the victim was roughed up but still conscious, but paralyzed with fear, as the brothers had turned their attention to the would-be rescuer.

She was pinned on her hands & knees, a foot pressing into her back and a hand pulling back on her ponytail of long, blonde hair, causing pain to crawl across her scalp. She was beaten and bruised all over, and several cuts marred her skin, including one across her right cheek and another over the black "P" on the back of her right hand, the black of the nano-dye and the red of her blood mixing together in her vision.

She was weak. The boys said so as they taunted and beat her, berating her for trying to be a hero when she couldn't even save herself. She had been weak for a long, long time. She realized this now. The other girl would die if she was weak, and so would she herself. She sorrowfully embraced this epiphany. But… she had been weak for too long. She shouldn't be weak…

There was a sound as her hand managed to grab hold of the knife that the other brother, standing near the Medicalos, had dropped, and with a single motion brought the weapon behind her back and sliced through her ponytail near the base; the boy pinning her was thrown off-balance, the long hair in his grip no longer attached to the head it grew from, sending him stumbling backwards, off of her.

She stood up. And as she turned to face the Clyde brothers, her now shoulder-length golden-blond hair blowing in a sudden breeze, her eyes holding fortitude, courage, determination, and will such that they never had before, Melody Johnson, born Melody Marston, made a solemn vow to herself, a message clear in her gaze that she directed at them:

She would never be weak again.

Both boys visibly flinched slightly at the look she gave them, but that passed. The unarmed one charged her first, going for a left feint leading into a right-hand attack. But he'd used that against her earlier when they double-teamed her, and she wouldn't fall for the same trick twice. Melody moved to her right – his left – and dodged his actual attack by inches, getting an up-close look at his surprised face as he neared her… which became a look of surprised pain as her arm lashed out just below his neck, her arm-strike and the boy's own momentum combining to clothesline him, knocking him off his feet. The other boy charged, knife drawn, but Melody yanked the first one to his feet and swung/threw him toward the other, sending him stumbling uncontrolled into his armed brother's path. The armed one couldn't react in time, his knife sent flying harmlessly as they collided.

The two boys untangled themselves, got to their feet, and rushed her again, this time together. The slightly taller, previously-armed one reached her first, accidentally outpacing his brother, and Melody narrowly dodged a right cross; she then grabbed his arm and flipped/threw him past her, turning his momentum against him and causing him to land hard on his back. The other reached her, and landed a punch, but she rolled with it, minimizing the damage. She lashed out with a kick at his left kneecap, causing that leg to buckle from pain. She then hit him with a hand-chop to the side of the head, and then grabbed hold of his shirt, and pulled him down… into her rising knee, which smashed hard into his solar plexus. He doubled over and collapsed in a heap.

The first one was on his feet again, and had picked up his now-downed brother's knife (the one Melody had freed herself with). He lunged at her, and she narrowly avoided a stab to the eye. She dodged a few more hits by mere centimeters, and during one of those she suddenly felt a pain mid-torso. She ignored it, catching his knife-hand and squeezing & twisting the wrist hard, until she felt something crack and the knife fell out of his hand. She then went on her counterattack, hitting the stunned would-be-murderer with blow after blow. By the end of it, he was wobbling on his feet, hunched over lightly. He stumbled forward, starting to fall.

And then, time seemed to work in slow-motion as Melody delivered her final hit: a rising palm-thrust with her right hand that impacted his lower jaw from below with (for a child) tremendous force. For a split-second, he was actually airborne, the strike sending him up and backwards. He landed hard on his back, unconscious before he even hit the ground.

Melody stood, panting lightly, still in the position from having made her last strike, her right hand held up at an angle, the blood running down her hand from the knife-slash across the black "P" on the back. After several seconds, she then slowly lowered her arm and stood straight, fists by her sides, eyes closed. She raised her head and opened her eyes, staring into the sky, a breeze blowing through her now-short golden-blonde hair, as the little girl she'd just saved looked on with absolute reverence and awe.

The sound of footsteps running closer killed the silence, as Ms. Garrett ran toward the scene, followed closely by Joshua & Mary Johnson, Melody's "penni-parents". Joshua took a tertiary look at the scene, and immediately advanced on Melody with an angry look in his eyes, only for the little Medicalos to step in-between him and Mel, a defiant glare in her eyes.

"Don't you dare!" she cried out in her little voice. "She saved me! These boys were gonna kill me, but she jumped in and saved me! She almost got killed, just to save me, someone she doesn't even know! How could you even think of punishing her for being a hero?-!"

The man stepped back, shocked. Ms. Garrett looked around at the scene, seeing two knives scattered about and the bloody slashes on Melody… and then she took a closer look at the unconscious boys.

"Holy crap…" she said. "These are the Clyde Brothers! Melody… took down the Clyde Brothers?-!"

The other two adults gasped; the infamous escaped duo who'd been all over the news lately… and Mel had fought them both off? Mary took a closer look at Melody. The girl's eyes held an intensity the likes of which she'd only ever seen before in the hardest-core of soldiers in holo-recordings. Her long ponytail was gone, hacked off and laying on the ground nearby, leaving her slightly-uneven hair hanging just long enough to lightly brush against her shoulders. She had various bruises and cuts from the beating she'd taken. There was a knife-slash on her right cheek, below her eye, blood having run down from it. Another slash was across the penni-mark on her right hand, the black "P" obscured by blood. And… her eyes locked on a spot just above Melody's stomach. Melody followed her gaze, and touched her hand to a small tear in her shirt. She hissed in pain, and her two fingers came back with blood on them.

"Huh" Mel said, sounding utterly calm and blasé about the whole thing, "guess I didn't dodge all of them…"

Mary stepped forward and lifted Melody's shirt… and went pale. It wasn't very deep-looking, but Melody had been stabbed right below the ribcage. As Ms. Garrett saw this, she then radioed for emergency personnel; soon, a VTOL ambulance was on the way, along with a police cruiser. Melody simply sat, applying pressure to her own wound to slow the bleeding. Mary and Joshua were left utterly stunned as Mel simply sat quietly and tended to herself, never once even showing anything more than a slight wince whenever she shifted the hand pressing on the wound, and completely ignoring the bloody gashes on her hand and cheek. All the while, the girl's eyes remained hard and calm, her gaze holding weight it never had before.

-SCENE BREAK-

Johnson Residence

Albany, New York

November 12th, 2550

The past half a month had been… different. As she was tended to at the hospital, Melody had adamantly refused nanobot restoration of her three most prominent wounds, wishing to let them become scars which would remind her of "the weakling (she) used to be and will never be again". Due to her accomplishments, the hospital and the court acquiesced, and Melody now bore a small, thin scar on her right cheek, another across the back of her right hand that cut across the black "P" there, and in the center of her chest another scar marked where she had taken a stab (the doctor had said that, had it been any farther in, it would've hit something vital). After Melody had been patched up, Ms. Garrett had kindly evened out the rough cut of Mel's hair from when she'd sliced herself free.

Mel's accomplishments in taking down the Clyde Brothers had made the news. Footage from a security camera showed how she'd leapt to the little Medicalos' defense, and how she'd turned the fight around to take the escaped murderers down for the count. The most notable rewards were that her sentence as a Penni was reduced by one-third in terms of length, and she was also given three full weeks free of court-scheduled "punishments"; granted, "earned" punishments, for infractions, were still okayed, but she hadn't gotten any of those because she hadn't done anything to warrant them since the incident. She'd gotten quite the attention at school, and the girl she'd saved was practically hero-worshipping her now, but she paid it all little mind.

While being tended to at the hospital, she'd spoken to Mary & Joshua and to Ms. Garret, making known her epiphany and self-vow. How she had been "weak" her entire life, and now sought to rid herself of that "weakness". True to her word, Melody had spent nearly all of her time since that day mentally reinventing herself, going over her inner thought processes, making decisions, reevaluating herself, and working to strengthen her own resolve, focus her willpower, continue to change her outlook, and utterly quash the hints of her meek, "helpless" previous self. The change was startling: Melody was now somewhat quiet, though only because she the inquisitive, "how may I help you" attitude of her old self; when she did speak, it was short, straight, to-the-point, and far more serious than any child had the right to be (according to Joshua's description), the high tone of a sweet little girl now gone from her voice. Her eyes showed a steeliness and strength that belonged more to a trained soldier or such than a physically-a-child, her gaze scrutinizing every person that spoke to her; a few people were a tad unnerved by the intensity in her eyes now. A test ordered by a suspicious Joshua showed that her nano-web was still online, but she was supplanting and overcoming it through a combination of emotional self-control, drive, and sheer willpower; Melody's will had increased dramatically in strength over the weeks as her psyche and her mind adapted, evolved, and changed.

She'd also started training her body, doing what she could when she could to try and get herself into "better shape" so that, if she ever had to fight again, she'd come out of it quicker and with less injuries. But it was also to work off stress. Mel had come to realize that, now that she went over her pre-rejuve memories and of things she'd seen since, there was something… wrong with the Confederacy. She'd soon heard whispers, rumors, of everything from protests that mysteriously vanished overnight, to corruption and even suppression of various people and things. Also, she'd gone over what Donald had done to her, and it had finally sunken in just how badly he had used and betrayed her. This revelation left her angry, a desire for eventual revenge taking root in her heart.

Today, her "family" (she scoffed) was in the living room, while she herself sat in her own room, having just finished a little workout. She gave a sigh, and walked over to her radio. She tuned it to her usual favorite listening station, but instead caught the last half of a hacked broadcast. A broadcast that would lead to events to totally change her life, and serve as a harbinger of things to come:

"Our teachers and prophets are false!" shouted the voice of what sounded like a young boy, yet speaking like an adult, with great fervor. "Open your eyes, my brethren! They would use the creations and sins of our forefathers to broadcast their lies and bring ruin to us all! The Confederacy is evil; marred with vile corruption and greed, filled with those who seek only to feed their own lust for power! In their hands, the Penitatas Program has become a tool to suppress and enslave the righteous and innocent! It is slavery! The evil men and women who lay claim to humanity's worlds must be deposed!"

"Remove the veils they have placed over your eyes!" came the voice of a girl, again sounding physically young but definitely not mentally so. "Brothers and sisters, it is time that we cast aside our differences, throw out notions of race, nationality, or religion, and unite! The Confederacy is an oppressive regime of corrupt enslavers and rampant avarice, a stain on the history of humanity! A stain that must be scrubbed out! They have enslaved and tortured people for over 350 years! They have heaped one vastly disproportionate punishment upon us after another! The corrupt frame the clean, the guilty punish the innocent! Those of us who simply seek the rights of safety, solidarity, and comfort are punished the same as traitors, rapists, and mass-murderers! When our people seek the rights they are entitled to have simply by existing, they are struck down and reigned in like animals! Billions of us have suffered unjustly at the hands of monsters in human form! They control our emotions like puppets; suppress with great violence all attempts at self-defense! It is an outrage; an utter violation of humanity not seen since the days of the dictators of the early 1900s!"

"That is why we must fight! Rise up, my brethren! Join hand in hand, and assist your fellow sufferers in fighting for a better future! Punish the insolent, evil ones who claim Earth and her colonies in their own greedy names! Reclaim humanity's right to freedom and prosperity! Their time of oppression and corruption nears its end! We must unify, so that we may see our flag ascend over the capitals of humanity!"

"My brethren, to achieve the freedom we have so long deserved, you – we – must fight! The seeds of righteous rebellion have taken root and sprouted! As I speak, our numbers grow by the day! Our forges prepare the tools that we shall use to reclaim our stolen freedom! Each of us must fight! To arms, my brothers and sisters, to arms! Even many who are not pennies have seen the truth and pledged their support to our noble cause, sworn to fight alongside us! We must take up the sword, and bring death to all those who spread suffering and corruption across the worlds, along with those who defend them! We shall crush them with our might! We shall burn them with the cleansing fire in our hearts and souls! We shall break them with our iron will! Failing all else, we shall drown them in our own blood and bury them beneath our dead! Unite, my children! Show them that we do not fear them! Bring justice, equality, and freedom back to the human race! Fight with every last breath for the freedom of yourself and your people! Make them pay for the horrors they have inflicted upon us! Fight to bring true peace and freedom back to Earth and Her colonies, and wipe away the evil ones until not a hint of their vile taint on our kind's history remains! Stand together!-! Join the fight for freedom!-! …My brothers… my sisters… my people… it is time."

The broadcast then cut out, and after a few seconds it returned to the normal music. But the message was out. Billions across the worlds had heard this one transmission; those not yet part of the "growing numbers" had gotten their first introduction to the coming storm. Melody sat on her bed, eyes wide as she processed it all. Thick corruption in the Confederacy… a growing insurrection… Things were heating up. And one thing that Melody knew was that she wanted a piece of the action, to make a difference.

Two days later, she received an encrypted e-mail, untraceable and only readable from her personal terminal. And offer of admittance.

She accepted.

War was coming. In all its glory… and all its horror.

-CHAPTER END-

Gonna wait a few days before Chap. 2; gotta see responses. Please R&R, no flames/attacks, and visit & add to the Trope page