Chapter One: Historical Experience is Written in Blood and Iron
I'm a steamroller, baby
And I'm rolling on down the line
Hell, you better get outta my way now
Before I roll all over you
Iron and blood.
Taylor Hebert has been shoved in her own locker, trapped within its metal confines, encased and imprisoned in a cocoon of metal: iron.
She is not alone. Dozens of rotting menstrual products crowd her, and they've been here long enough that hundreds of tiny life forms crowd them, feasting on the very element that pollutes them: blood.
The bugs are a metaphor for Taylor's social status and self-image and quite frankly you're stupid for not noticing that, but they are not a metaphor that is relevant to this story.
As she molders like so many sodden pads, Taylor wishes her school life was not like this. Everybody has a right to a tampon-free educational experience, but she is nonetheless sealed in a coffin of discarded menstrual cups.
This is not Emma's fault.
Well, it obviously is, but it's also more broadly the fault of neoliberal capitalism.
Globalization led to widespread economic depression, which led to Winslow being underfunded, which led to underpaid teachers and administrators deferring to the wealthy lawyer Alan Barnes.
Fucking capitalism. She could get rid of Emma, but another Emma would only rise up in her place.
This is the result of a systemic failure.
Suddenly an eldritch crystallized being of gargantuan proportions taps her on the figurative shoulder.
It shows her a utopia where the people care for each other and ensure they can learn and work without fear or oppression or alienation.
Destination?
Taylor agrees.
The way is revealed to her: the masses unite behind a column of tanks, which roll forward under a flag the color of the blood they spill.
Trajectory?
Taylor agrees.
Then she changes.
Blood and iron.
It looks like this: a normal high school hallway, populated by a handful of students-some mutely stunned, some openly amused-gawking at a particular locker. There is a puddle of vomit on the ground in front of this locker.
Then, suddenly, a D-10T2S (for those of you who don't wish to interrupt your fic-reading experience to google Soviet armament terminology, that's a tank gun) punches through the locker door. The barrel emerges inch by inch-slowly, painfully, because Taylor is not yet used to turning into a T55A Main Battle Tank.
Yet.
She adapts quickly. The remainder of the tank bursts forth from the wall of lockers, and a few unlucky but doubtlessly counterrevolutionary students are ground beneath her treads. The hallway is destroyed as the tank makes her way to the gymnasium. Remaining students run shrieking away, but more tanks follow them and herd them (as well as all the other students, teachers, and administrators) to the gym, too.
It sounds like this: Taylor explaining, through the screaming whir of a dozen V-55 engines, that the students are now free to simply study instead of being exploited for entertainment by bullies and exploited for labor in group projects.
Then it sounds like self-criticism read in shaky, quavering voices. Even people who were bad elements and rightists this morning can join, provided they confess their crimes and explain what they did wrong in public. It sounds like a struggle session as the freshly liberated students come to terms with the injustices committed against them under the old system.
It feels like this: getting crushed by a tank, if you're Madison or Greg or Sparky; being forced into the airplane stress position, if you're Emma or Blackwell or Gladly; turning into a shadow and fleeing, if you're Sophia. If you're Taylor, it feels like the world is being put right.
Also, these are Communist tanks, so running over protesting students only makes them happier and more powerful.
It tastes and smells like this: blood and smoke.
As far as the Protectorate can make out, the students who were Madison, Greg, and Sparky spontaneously disappeared and the remainder trashed the place in a fit of anti-authoritarian pique. You'd think the scale of destruction would clearly indicate "parahuman intervention," but the witnesses aren't talking and the establishment sees what it wants to see.
What it sees is a social problem, and it acts to stamp it out before the teeming hordes of poor Winslow students (I told you the bugs were a metaphor, seriously, this chapter is short, can you not remember 200 lousy words back?) can threaten the privileged students of Arcadia and Immaculata, which are the only other high schools in the entire state of New Hampusetts.
This is all very upsetting to Miss Militia, who is a bougie running dog, and to Armsmaster, who resents achievements made by the masses and not his own self, and to Alan Barnes, whose substance deserves to be eaten, and to the wealthy and powerful in general, because the youth these days are getting out of control and they need control of the youth.
While everyone is being upset, Taylor goes to a hardware store and steals (there being no ethical consumption under capitalism) an ice pick. She goes home and cuts her hair into a bob and dons a Mao suit that was stashed in her mother's closet. This ensemble will serve as her costume when she is not being a fleet of tanks.
She ends the day a hero ready to do more heroism.
