Chapter 4: A Stressful Conversation

(AN: A bit of a shorter chapter this time around, but very dialogue heavy. I had to push my comfort zone a bit with this one, so I hope you guys like it. This chapter is supposed to be the end point for our first mini-arc, revolving around Tanya joining the Kozuki Cell. After this I'm gonna have to start generating some suspicious internet history to research modern guerrilla tactics, I think. Anyway, thank you all very much for your comments and criticism. The comments make me want to write, and the criticism helps me improve my writing. And a big thank you to Siatru for beta reading this chapter.)

As we began to trudge back to the hideout, I felt the usual tremors as the adrenaline released by the fight slowly worked its way out of my body. Looking over at Kallen from the corner of my eye, she seemed similarly shaky on her feet, and with an oddly blank expression on her face. I hadn't known the girl for very long, but everything I'd seen personally or heard from Naoto and Ohgi about her told me this was very unlike her. I turned my attention back to the street ahead and pondered why she'd look so hollow, considering we'd won a nearly flawless victory – neither of us had been injured, after all, and no hostiles had escaped to tattle to the Britannians or to gangsters about us.

Suddenly, I realized that she'd probably been treated like a princess her entire life, considering how she had been formally adopted by Lord Statdfeld as his legitimate heir, unlike Naoto, and how her older brother apparently doted on her. She'd probably never been in the ghetto before, nor been accosted on the streets by thugs. Such an experience was probably disconcerting for a well-bred young noble who'd never fought before... Although, that didn't fully explain her hollow-eyed gaze. Honestly, it's like she just stood watch on the Rhine or something! Finally, that clicked the last piece of the puzzle into place.

She's never fought before, I realized, which means she's almost certainly never killed before either. I considered that she might have killed before, as political assassination seemed a natural extension of the state ideology of Social Darwinism, but I discarded that thought. Disappearing rivals seemed like adult work instead of a task for the young heir to a noble house, if only because most of my age peers couldn't keep a purloined candy bar secret, much less a body. Which meant that she had just stood her own personal watch, and it also meant that she was in a similar position to I had been after Norden: the social rules of her society prohibited any display of emotional weakness or vulnerability resulting from combat. If I'd let anyone know how it had felt, coming so close to death and knowing that I'd sent others into the hands of Being X... Well, I'd probably have been court-martialed for cowardice, or discharged from the military and left bereft of my pension and rank.

This put me in a tricky position, as I wanted to both reassure her about her actions and to press my advantage and network with her, while not making her think I saw her as a weakling or vulnerable by acknowledging the stress she was under.

So, I decided to start warming her up through small-talk. Gotta build a bridge to cross the river.

"We should probably hurry back – Ohgi brought a fine pot of stew in to share today, but I don't trust that lot to save any for us." Food was a safe topic and a great icebreaker. After all, everybody gets hungry just the same, and nobody can ever be sure where their next meal's coming from. "I don't know where he got it, but he usually brings the food to these meetings even though I never see him cooking."

Kallen didn't appear to have heard me, as she gave no reaction and just continued walking straight ahead. Guess food isn't as interesting if you're a noble, huh? Time for the second arrow in my social quiver.

"Have you ever been to Shinjuku before? It's not exactly a great place to visit, at least these days, but it was quite an industrious area before the Conquest." Ugh, dammit, that was terrible! My social quiver wasn't as deep as I would like, apparently. What do children talk about? More to the point, what do noble children talk about? At least this time Kallen had grunted a response, decidedly unladylike but at least an acknowledgment that she'd heard me.

Well, I knew at least one topic she'd certainly be passionate about, and hopefully would be eager to brag about.

"That's quite a lovely knife you've got! Good steel, and it looks eminently concealable. Where did you get it? I want one just like it!" I'd gotten a good look at her clasp knife when I'd handed it back to her, and it was a fine piece. Interestingly, instead of a typical hilt, it was attached to a miniature makeup bag, and apparently when folded away was visually undetectable. Perhaps she really does have some experience disappearing enemies of her house after all...

That my last conversational gambit had struck home was immediately apparent, as Kallen whipped around on her heel, turning to face me. However, instead of the happy smile of a kid with a toy to show off or the joy of an enthusiast given license to spout off about their pet obsession I'd expected, her flaring nostrils and furrowed brow indicated a wildly different reaction than anticipated.

"What the hell is wrong with you?! You're just chatting on and on about food and the damned scenery! Don't you care that we just killed four men?!" I immediately began backpedaling from the image of feminine fury before me, but Kallen pursued relentlessly, taking a step forward for each pace I reeled back. "They're dead! I killed one of them myself, and I don't think I'll ever fucking feel clean again!"

Clearly, I'd touched a nerve.

Time to re-contextualize our conversation before she either pulled her knife back out again, or I tripped over something and broke my skull open on the curb.

"You think I don't know they're dead?!" I snapped back, trying to seize some part of the initiative back. "I've spent years in Shinjuku Ghetto! I lived through the Conquest! I've seen more mass executions with my own eyes than I've had birthdays! I know what death looks like!"

I remembered how, four months after my mother and I had been moved to Shinjuku, a hundred random Elevens, rounded up from the tenements we lived in, had been lined up against a wall and shot after a Britannian with a broken neck was found in an alleyway. Nobody even knew if he'd been murdered, he could have just fallen over and broken his own neck by accident. He probably had been murdered, but that was immaterial. Under armed guard, I along with everyone else in the building at the time had been forced to walk past the heap of corpses piled three or four deep in bloody heaps in front of the wall. That had been the first time I'd seen Britannian justice in action.

"Trust me, spend enough time down here in the dirt, and you'll see plenty of death too!" I took a deep breath, and continued more calmly. "Besides, they deserved what they got. What did you think they were gonna do to you?"

That question seemed to take some of the wind out of her sails, as Kallen stopped walking towards me. "I... I know they weren't gonna do anything good!" She snapped, her voice still waspish. "I'm not an idiot! But..." Her voice tapered off into silence, and she wrapped her arms protectively around her waist.

I shrugged. I understood that she was still feeling shaken after her blooding, but I wasn't sure what else we could have done, once things escalated to violence. "You'd already pulled a knife on them before I arrived." I pointed out reasonably, "What did you think you were going to do with it? A threat only works if you're willing to back it up, after all."

"Dammit, I know! I hadn't thought that far ahead!" Kallen was still emotional, but it felt like her anger was flagging, like she was running out of steam. "I just wanted them to go away and leave me alone." Her arms tightened around her waist, and she suddenly sat down on the curb, like her legs couldn't support her.

She's not wounded, is she? Panic flared through me at the prospect. Naoto would gut me like a fish if his sister had a scratch on her, and collapsing like that made me suspect significant blood loss. But, I couldn't see any blood, and when we'd been moving the bodies earlier, she hadn't looked in pain... Worried, I sat down next to her – if I remained on my feet, I'd loom over her like an authority figure, even with my sadly diminutive height.

"I just wanted them to leave me alone..." Kallen sighed and rested her forehead against her knees. "I know they were bad people, but I just can't stop seeing his face!" The last bit came out in a distinctly wet, keening tone. "I just kept stabbing him over and over and there was so much blood all over my hands!"

I gingerly patted her back, trying to figure out how to deal with all this... emoting. She was about the same age Visha had been when I'd met her, and older than I'd been when I'd first killed, but Visha had already completed basic training by that point and I was a special case. I'd never had to deal with this guilt in other people before, and the most similar experience I could remember was when Grantz had lost perspective during the Battle for Arene. I didn't know how to fix this. Even back when I was working in HR, I'd had difficulty dealing with the raw emotional outbursts that grief and trauma inspired, and I'd usually managed to delegate those particular cases to my coworkers.

"I don't think you've done anything wrong." I offered, my voice more tentative than I'd intended. "I mean, they were going to hurt you. They just were unlucky when they chose you as their victim." I continued absentmindedly patting her back as I rambled on. "I don't think you're a bad person for defending yourself."

Suddenly, inspiration crossed my mind – if she was Naoto's sister, perhaps his decision to fight for his people was matched by her own actions? "Besides, what if you hadn't helped me stop them? What if they found some other poor girl on her own, who didn't have a gun or a knife to defend herself with?" I stopped patting her back, as it didn't seem to be doing much, and instead focused on putting all my energy into my reassurance. "You know they've probably done that in the past, and they probably would've done it again. But they won't, Kallen. We stopped them, and made it so they'd never hurt anyone else again. So don't feel bad about it, okay? It was a shock – the first time is always hard – but you're doing the same thing your brother is. You're taking the fight to the vultures feasting on our people in their darkest hour."

I looked away from Kallen, and let my eyes drift up into the sky. I wondered how many people in Shinjuku, or in all of Area 11, just needed this kind of justification to inflict the same level of violence as Kallen had displayed? Hopefully quite a few. We're going to need to start recruiting if we want to make real progress.

"I'll tell you a secret," I began to speak again, heart in my mouth. I could feel this was my chance to get in with Kallen, but to forge a truly strong relationship I would need to expose a degree of vulnerability to level the playing field, since I'd seen her lose control. If I didn't equal out the power balance, it would taint our future relationship, which would both inhibit my long-term goal of security and might isolate the one person of a similar age I could be anything close to open with. After all, if Kallen betrayed me to an outsider, she'd be compromising the security of her brother's cell. And if I gave her a bit of power over me, then perhaps she'd be willing to reciprocate in the future?

"I don't like fighting. I hate the waste of lives, of material, of energy, and of potential." I closed my eyes and wondered what this street had looked like before the Conquest. Prosperous and busy, no doubt. "I hate it all. If I had my way, I'd never pick up a gun again in my life." There, it was out. A sincere expression of vulnerability. Hopefully she wouldn't tell Naoto about it – such sentiments were probably grounds for immediate dismissal from both the cell and life.

"But," I continued, looking back at Kallen again, "it's worth it for the prospect of victory. Fighting like this, for me, is a sacrifice, one I'm willing to make for my goals." I tried to catch her eye, but she was still burying her face against her knees. "That feeling you've got, that guilt... It's a sacrifice too, I think. It's the price you paid to make life for the people in the Ghetto just a bit better, and maybe to save the lives of some future victims."

Kallen didn't respond, but at least she didn't look like she was crying any longer. It sounded like her breathing had stabilized and deepened too, so hopefully she'd taken the time as I rambled on to calm down a bit.

"You want to join your brother's cell, right? The way Ohgi tells it, that's all you ever talk about."

That got a weak chuckle out of Kallen. "Yeah, but he always says crap like I'm too young to fight and such." She looked up from her knees and gave me a searching look, like she was looking for something I was concealing. "How'd you get him to let you in? No way you're older then me."

I shrugged, unsure exactly what I'd said that had won him over anyway. "The Britannians killed my mother, and I never knew my father. Ohgi was good enough to give me a place to sleep." I wondered if I should mention the sack of grenades before deciding that talking about our arms cache in public was a bad idea. "One thing just led to another after that point, I suppose."

She seemed interested and engaged, so I decided to throw a conversational ball back to see if I could keep her moving in the right direction. "Why do you want to join up so badly? Why do you want to fight, Kallen?"

Kallen froze, and for a moment I wondered if I'd screwed up again, but she shook herself and started speaking only a moment later. "Well... why do any Japanese wanna fight, huh? Nobody likes being forced to eat dirt... And I remember what life was like before the Britannians showed up." She sighed again and looked back down at her knees. "It was nice, we were like a family... Dad was always around, and that made Mom happy... And this was before she lost her spine and sold out..." The hint of anger when she mentioned her father, and borderline snarl when mentioning her mother indicated Kallen's past wasn't as happy as she described it, but I kept quiet and let her talk. "Naoto would help me with my homework, and we'd go on family trips to Mount Fuji and stuff..."

She paused for a moment, and then turned back to face me again. "I want that happiness back, and I want that happiness for everyone else too. I want to see a free and peaceful Japan where we can live our lives without being afraid, without having to hide who we are or face their hate." And then a steel familiar from interacting with Naoto entered her eyes, and her expression firmed. "And I want revenge on all the bastards who take advantage of suffering people to get rich or whatever. We didn't do anything to deserve any of this, and those bastards just do whatever they want and say it's just and right. Bastards!"

That last bit seemed even more passionate than her opinions about her parents, so I remained quiet and gestured for her to continue talking. I don't think she needed that invitation, as she continued to vomit accumulated thoughts and feelings that I sensed had been building for some time. "My father enrolled me in a private school, Ashford Academy. It's full of some of the snootiest noble brats you'll ever see, Tanya! They're all so spoiled and self-absorbed – they don't care what they're wealth's based on! They don't care whose bones their houses are built on top of! They just care about who's seeing who, or which team's gonna win some stupid game! Whenever they remember us Japanese exist, they say the worst things, and tell awful, nasty jokes! I hate them all! And worst of all, I've gotta pretend I'm just like them! Just as stupid and self-involved as they are!"

Well, it seemed like my suspicions about Lord Stadfeld were absolutely correct. He was clearly setting Kallen up to be his conduit into the ranks of the local nobility; the sons and daughters of local power players were her classmates, and through them she'd have access to all kinds of information and gossip, and would be able to distribute her own carefully selected bits of misdirection and propaganda once established as part of the scene. Truly, this shadowy noble was a masterful strategist, content to play the long game.

Unfortunately, like all great plans, the actual implementation required the participation of people who either didn't know or didn't see the full extent of the operation. Clearly, Kallen hadn't been briefed on her father's plan, or she wouldn't be so determined to join the Resistance's combat operations. Her potential value of a spy greatly outweighed the value of the Kozuki Cell, but she couldn't see it. This required a deft touch, but I couldn't let the opportunity slip by! Such a slip-up could throw the whole plan, as well as my own long-term survival, into jeopardy!

"Kallen, I understand what you're saying." I began, trying to sound as calm as possible. Didn't she know what was at stake? No, she doesn't. Why didn't Stadtfeld brief her himself?! "It's clear that you're putting up with a lot. But... it's part of your sacrifice for Japan too, isn't it?" Her look of befuddlement indicated she didn't understand what I was getting at. I sighed internally, and started again.

"Kallen, you are ideally placed to help the Resistance in incalculable ways right now." That got her attention.
"What do you mean?! How does sitting around pretending to be some worthless noble do anything for Japan?!"

The hook was set. Time to once again pick up the slack and do someone else's job for them. "You just said it yourself, Kallen – your father put you in a school with the offspring of the local nobility. You're right next to people who live in the same houses as the local powerbrokers, and who will one day grow up to inherit their family's wealth and power. Who knows what secrets they'll let slip in conversation? The son of an officer might talk about his father's deployments, or the daughter of a magnate might mention where her father's going to go for a business trip! You're sitting on a gold mine of information that could help the Resistance in so many ways!"

Her eyes widened with amazement, but I continued on, hammering the point home. "And it's not just information you could help the Resistance with from your position, Kallen! Say you drop a word here or a whisper there about some piece of propaganda we want the nobility to hear, they'll never thing twice about it because it's coming from someone they see as one of their own! And," I wasn't sure about this part, but I figured Naoto's sister would appreciate a sop thrown to her violent nature, "if we need to get some leverage on a particular noble, well... You know where their kids are. You know their schedules. If the Resistance needs to a handle on a noble, you'll be crucial to the success of a very important mission."

Alright, I'd made my point about her importance to the Resistance. Now, I had to seal the deal by making her position not only important, but enviable. Deep breaths. "You know, I'm kind of jealous of your position, Kallen."

"What?! Why?" Her eyes narrowed... did she suddenly decide that I'm a rival? "Do you want to be important to the Resistance or something?" Dammit!

"Not like that." I truthfully replied. Human intelligence had never been a specialty of mine, and I didn't think my skills lay in that direction. "Just... I miss going to school. I couldn't go after the Conquest – the schools all got shut down – and the Britannian one in the Ghetto isn't worth a damn." I turned away from Kallen and blinked, trying to get rid of the dust in my eyes. These streets are filthy. "I was pretty good at math, and not too bad at English either. But after the Conquest... Well, if I didn't work, I didn't get to eat, so school wasn't really an option. I've always wondered what I would've done in middle school and high school if the Conquest hadn't happened." The stupid dust wasn't going anywhere, and I found myself growing annoyed. I'd been building to a good point to encourage Kallen to stay in school instead of sneaking out to the slums and jeopardizing the plan, but here I was rambling on about my stupid discarded plans. It's not like I needed schooling, after all, but it had represented a path to success that I knew well and understood.

I nearly jumped out of my skin as a pair of arms snaked around my shoulders and pulled me in. Thankfully, I realized it was Kallen and stopped scrambling for my pistol – I hadn't needed Naoto's lecture to remind me pulling a gun on ally's was never a good idea. Unfortunately, once deadly force was off the table, I was at a loss for what the correct response should be to a sudden hug. When I'd received just such a hug from her brother, I'd just started crying, and I resolved to not repeat that particular performance. She'd pulled me against her chest and apparently rested her forehead on top of my skull. I suddenly understood what it felt like to be a teddy bear, and I wasn't sure I liked the experience or not.

"I'm sorry, Tanya." She'd started crying again, I dimly noticed as I felt something wet trickle onto my scalp. "I've been complaining about the kids at school and feelin' left out and all that, and you've got it so much worse." Kallen sniffled, "I guess I am just like those spoiled bastards after all – I'm so worried about my own crap, I didn't realize how good I had it."

I honestly didn't know if this was a success or a failure. On one hand, Kallen clearly wasn't angry with me and hadn't pushed back on any of the points I'd made about the value of her position. On the other hand, I didn't know how making her cry again would impact the situation and this damned dust is still making my eyes water!

I tried to thing of how to smooth this latest apparent misstep over, and found myself at a loss once more. I'd somehow made her feel guilty or ashamed, to the point where she felt the need to hug me, presumably to try and comfort me because I didn't see how this would make her feel any better. Worse still, even with my relative lack of social interaction over the last eleven years, I knew that stiffly sitting here like a statue wouldn't improve the situation.

What would Visha do in this situation? I wondered, casting my mind back to the only significant female acquaintance I'd had in my past lives. An image of the Slavic girl came to mind, complete with her typically bright and enthusiastic smile, standing in a street in Berun waving at me and jogging over. The prickling in my eye got much worse, despite the lack of any breeze.

Moving on a vague instinct, I turned into the hug, and wrapped my arms around Kallen's waist. She didn't feel like Visha – she didn't have the hard muscle that years of harsh training and combat had put on my second, and she didn't have the smell of coffee and gunpowder that I remembered from all the times Visha had pressed a hot beverage into my hand after a patrol, but she was there, and that was good enough. Coffee! That's it! It had always been an absolute relief when Visha had handed me a cup of her specially prepared brew. But, no, I couldn't do that! I didn't have access to the beans, much less Visha's preternatural skill when it came to brewing it just right! What else did she do...? Ah, yes!

"I'll... I'll cook something for you!" My voice was disgustingly wet again, dammit, but the inner Visha in my head cheered and waved something that looked suspiciously like K-Brot at me. I chuckled at the memory of her chowing down on that awful stuff, ending in a hiccuping hitching breath. I'd eat a plate of K-Brot if I could see the 203rd again...

Then I remembered that I didn't have any money for groceries or ingredients, and that my cooking ability more or less began and ended with brick noodles and fried eggs, and tried to recant my offer. "O-on second thought, I'll make Ohgi cook you something!" Wait, that wasn't good either! Ohgi was my superior officer, I couldn't make him do anything! "I mean, I'll ask Ohgi to cook something for you!" Could Ohgi cook any better than I could? I don't think he actually made the food he brought around for dinner during meetings...

For some reason, this made Kallen laugh. I hadn't been trying to make a joke, but I didn't think she was laughing at me. That seemed out of character for her – she seemed more likely to stab me face to face than trying to slip a knife between my ribs from behind.

"Don't worry about all that!" She let go of me and I hastily followed suit, scrambling to my feet as she stood up, wiping at her face. "I know where Ohgi's secret snack stash is – Naoto told me! We don't need to bother to ask him for anything!"

Normally, I considered theft to be a decidedly antisocial action, usually reserved for the shiftless or the communist, but I had probably missed my chance at that stew... And it had been an awfully long time since I'd had any candy... And Kallen was smiling, with only a trace of the haunted expression she'd had before we'd sat down, and I felt like I couldn't deny her anything. She had every bit of her brother's charisma, effortless cheerful and deadly infective. I found myself smiling back at her, already salivating at the prospect of sweets.

"Well, what are we waiting for?!" I demanded, and began heading back to the hideout at a much faster pace than before. "C'mon, it's this way!" She easily caught up to me with her longer legs, and together we left that intolerably dusty street behind.

Unfortunately, all candy acquisitions were put on the back burner by the reception we received back at the hideout.

I'd temporarily forgotten all about my confrontation with Tamaki as I'd talked with Kallen, and only remembered when we turned the corner onto the block where the apartment building stood. Still, I wasn't actually a child so I didn't have the freedom to simply run away again, and so I'd led Kallen through the trash-strewn lobby and down the stairs to the sub-basement entrance.

As soon as we entered, the chugging sounds of the generator were overwhelmed by seemingly everyone in the hideout yelling or shouting. Naoto was shouting something at Kallen, and judging by his expression he wasn't pleased to see her here. Ohgi was yelling at me, demanding to know where I'd run off to. Inoue was shouting at Tamaki, who had a look of harried desperation on his face and was walking towards me. The only island of calm was Nagata, who presumably only wasn't yelling because the soft-spoken man didn't want to contend with everyone else, and was willing to wait his turn to make a scene.

"Yes, fine, okay, but she saved my life, Naoto!" That exclamation from Kallen cut through the din, and successfully re-oriented everyone's attention away from me and towards her. She blushed slightly as every eye in the basement turned towards her, but gamely continued speaking. "There were four of them, all armed! No way I could've beaten them or gotten away before they grabbed me, but then Tanya showed up and blew three of 'em away!" And then those eyes turned my way instead. Thanks Kallen, I thought as I tried to ignore the rising heat high on my cheekbones and Being X damn these damned pubescent hormones!

"What about the fourth one?" Naoto, at least, was on the ball. "Did he get away?" He sounded very serious, and I wondered if he was more concerned about news of two Britannian looking girls wandering Shinjuku getting out, or about a man who had threatened his sister getting to live.

"I dealt with him." Kallen's voice was flat and curt, but happily she didn't seem as distraught as she had when we'd stopped up in the streets. Naoto looked at her for a moment longer, nodded, and then briefly embraced his sister.

Then, he came over to me and did the same thing. What is it with Kozukis and hugging me? I wondered if their whole family was equally touchy. It seemed wildly out of character for what I knew of Britannians, which admittedly wasn't much beyond their murderous policies and propaganda. Either way, I endured the embrace stolidly, sensing there would be no benefit in trying to squirm free of his arms.

"Thank you for protecting my sister." Naoto's breath was hot against my ear, and I could smell the onions from the soup on his breath. Nevertheless, such a direct expression of approval and praise made me feel like my hard work had been recognized. Further, such a commendation, a deliberate statement of the service rendered, likely meant a permanent step up in his estimations. Another step on the road to victory.

As Naoto pulled away from me, presumably to go fuss over his sister and make sure she was unscathed from her first kill, Tamaki made his way over. Every line of his face above the stiff grin he sported spoke of stress, and neither his casual slouch nor the hand resting easily on his neck distracted from the uneasy way he shifted back and forth on his feet.

He looked so uncomfortable that I decided to be the figuratively bigger man, and say my piece first.

"Tamaki, I'm sor-" "Ah, can it." I blinked in surprise as Tamaki interrupted my attempt to apologize. "I screwed up, and I'm sorry." He shuffled in place and looked down at his feet as I blinked again. "I shoulda known better than to call you that. I know you live in Shinjuku, and no Brits live in Shinjuku. And... And I probably shoulda been more serious when you asked me all that stuff." He grimaced, but managed to force the words out. "Ohgi told me about your mom. I'm sorry she's gone, kid. My old man got hit by a stray round back during the Conquest." He gulped nervously. "So, there. I'm sorry. I'll try not to mouth off at you again, okay?"

I realized my jaw was slack with amazement and hurriedly closed my mouth. I'd never expected Tamaki to apologize to me for anything, since I was lower on the seniority totem pole than him, but the really surprising part was how sincere and accurate his apology had been. He'd managed to correctly identify what had angered me, had apologized for it, and had managed to express his sincerity through personal anecdotes.

Overall, an ideal apology.

"Tamaki, I'm sorry. I over-reacted, and made things personal." I was annoyed by how wide his eyes had suddenly gotten. Was the idea of me recognizing and admitting my failures so inconceivable? I wasn't anything too special, not in this world of mechanical monsters driven by monstrous men. "There's nothing wrong with wanting to make your mark on the world. Just remember that everybody else has a right to live in this world before you mark it, alright?"

He smiled and laughed, and swaggered back off towards the firing range, the stress melting off leaving only the same obnoxious braggadocio as usual behind. Despite his insolent attitude, I couldn't help but bask in the glow of camaraderie. They were no 203rd , no living machine that could single-handedly turn a war around... But I'd built the 203rd from the ground up, which meant that I knew how to organize and train an independent, highly-mobile, and aggressive military command.

Just a pity I don't have any artillery.