Disclaimer: I don't own Youjo Senki or any of its characters.

Discord: A3dTszc

(See A/N at the top of Chapter 1 for context)

I never really liked the colour of my hair. That shrill blonde was the colour equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.

It was ugly. I was ugly. Not freakishly ugly, but definitely below the average. Ugly enough that it made me uncomfortable to look at myself in the mirror.

My hair in particular was just awful. It was way too bright and loud and it made everyone that didn't already know me think I was a fun, happy-go-lucky girl with a chipper attitude that was just an overall joy to be around—like all the other blonde girls in the entire fucking galaxy, apparently.

I swear they all knew something that I didn't. Because I was the singular exception to the rule. I had literally never met a blonde girl in this world that was a miserable piece of shit like me. Every single one of them had instead been way too happy and it hurt my eyes to look at them for too long. Apparently, that was the norm, too, so everyone got the wrong idea when they first met me because they expected me to be like that, too.

I was sick of it.

I preferred darker hair. Like my adjutant's. Her hair was way better than mine and the colour of it was just lovely. It was this beautiful mixture between brown and blonde that suited her perfectly. She was a dirty blonde that leaned a little heavier toward the brown end of the spectrum than the blonde—but have you seen that texture? It was a real joy to look at and it sometimes made me want to run my fingers through it and pet her like a puppy.

Why couldn't I have been born with incredible hair like that?

Fucking Being X. He made every single girl in the entire world attractive except for me.

I hated him for making me look the way I do. Being thrown into a girl's body was already bad enough, but was it too much to ask to be at least a 2 on the 1-10 attractiveness scale?

I was a fucking -5.

I was pretty much flat everywhere, I was skinny, lanky, a veritable midget, I had hideous hair, and the list just went on.

Ever since my reincarnation, I had cursed the hair Being X had given me and wished I had been reborn as a brunette instead. After meeting Visha I had revised that wish to being reborn with hair like her's but the idea was the same. Brunettes were better than blondes and dirty blondes were better than brunettes.

Well…those were better colours on me, anyway. Blonde was fine on other girls with more positive personalities, but not on me. For me, it was the worst colour. It was false advertising as it was seen as inviting even though I hated pretty much everyone.

I would look way better as a brunette or with dirty blonde hair than with that screeching, piss-yellow that I had been reborn with. Having hair like that would have easily been enough to bump me up to a -1 on the attractiveness scale for sure—a solid 4 step jump up from where I was now.

That was my opinion on the matter. Blonde hair was the lowest of the low for my body type and personality and I'd almost rather be bald.

…But it would seem that I wouldn't have to worry about that anymore. Because Being X, after all of these years, had finally granted me my wish.

I was a brunette now.

…

Yipee.

Upgrade.

…

I certainly wished he would have granted my wish in a more hygienic fashion, though. Even though there probably wasn't a single atom of piss-yellow remaining in my hair, I'd rather that was due to the colour pigment in my hair actually changing rather than having it all just coated in filth. His solution only covered up the problem and didn't actually solve it.

That asshole had granted me my wish vindictively. It was malicious compliance. Being X had carefully scrutinized the wording of my wish and went to great lengths to misinterpret what I wanted and then he granted my wish in the most underhanded way possible and in a manner that he knew I'd hate.

I wanted brown hair so he gave me brown hair.

…By getting his slave Mary Sioux to drown me in the filthiest filth she could find.

…

…

…

It was still an improvement, though, if you asked me.

I really hated my hair.

"Wake up!"

I awoke to a punch in the face.

I flopped to the ground like a dead fish and tried to make sense of my surroundings.

It took me several moments to recollect myself and remember where I was.

Thankfully, the punch had cleared some of the dirt from my eyes so I could actually see again.

"I didn't give you permission to fall asleep you piece of shit!"

…Oh yeah. This was still happening.

"You disgusting fucking cow! You sicken me! I bet you enjoyed that shit, didn't you?!"

I actually hadn't enjoyed it very much at all, thanks for asking.

Mary looked down at me like I was the single most disgusting thing she had ever seen. Like I was something she'd scrape off the side of a public toilet. But there was a morbid curiosity in her gaze, too. It was as if I disgusted her so much that she couldn't help but be mesmerized and look at me even closer.

Mary tried to grab my hair and use it as a handle to pull me up and out of the mud pool…but she couldn't actually do it. As soon as she grabbed my hair and pulled, there was a slick, squelching sound and my hair slipped right out of her grasp.

Then she slipped and toppled over into the mud, too.

You know how sometimes you try and grab something only for it to slip out of your hand at the last moment so you lose your balance because you had already adjusted your posture to account for the extra weight of the thing you were trying to grab, but since it was no longer there you just flopped over ungracefully as a result?

That's what happened to her. She tripped and fell right into the mud.

I thought this was utterly uproarious.

…It was too bad that I couldn't laugh anymore because I definitely would have split my sides howling at her right then if I could.

It had been a very long time since I had seen something genuinely funny like this.

I couldn't even remember the last time I had laughed. At anything. Had I even done it a single time in this new life? A genuinely mirthful laugh at something funny? Not an evil cackle after a well-executed plan?

I don't know if I had ever done that. I just didn't find very many things funny.

But this was funny. Maybe it had something to do with all the blood loss and oxygen deprivation from being strangled, but I thought this was the single funniest thing I had ever seen. You just had to be there to know why.

Seeing that split second of panic in Mary's eyes when she lost her balance and stumbled, only to unceremoniously topple over and fall into the very same mud pool she had just forced me into…it was priceless.

My hair had become so filthy that it was now effectively ungrabbable. There was so much mud in it that there was no friction. So Mary couldn't drag me around with it anymore.

There were no words in my native language to describe just how fucking plastered with mud I was right now. From head to toe. The filthiest pig in the muddiest pen had nothing on me.

I was unidentifiable. If I walked down the streets of Berun as I was, not a single person would recognize me—and I was pretty famous, too. I was actually the single most famous soldier in the Empire. I was a household name and all sorts of pictures of me had been circulating in the newspapers for years now.

Despite that, no one would recognize me. People wouldn't even be able to tell what colour my hair was. My skin, too. Hell, it was probably impossible to even tell what gender I was.

I'd bet that not even the mages in the 203rd would recognize me right now if they saw me. I was absolutely caked in mud. It would probably take me 6 months of daily showers to finally get rid of it all.

You know…assuming I lived.

I probably looked like I had gone scuba diving in a septic tank. Probably smelled a bit like that too, due to the amount of time I'd spent under the loving care of that shit-eating walrus.

I was just a muddy, 3-dimensional shape, now, that only vaguely resembled a human being. That's how thick the coating of mud was. I looked more like some sort of swamp monster.

…But at least I now had two little eye holes to peek through. A few moments ago, all I had seen was darkness. But Mary had punched me in the nose and the impact had shaken loose some of the mud in my eye sockets.

Now I could see again.

Hooray.

There was lots of stuff to see.

I watched as Mary stood back up and glared down at me. Hard. As if it was somehow my fault that she had slipped and fallen into the mud.

"You're going to regret that you fucking cow."

'But I didn't do anything.'

I'm pretty sure it wasn't my fault that she had slipped. So it was unfair to punish me for it. It hadn't been planned.

…Not that I wasn't happy that it happened, mind you. I thought it was hilarious.

Sometimes I just got lucky.

'Are you finally going to kill me now? If we could get a move on, that would be great.'

I was still in a world of pain and I wanted it to stop.

Mary looked down at her hand in disgust.

"I can't believe you. You got my hand dirty."

'Oh, I'm so sorry. I wonder how that happened? Maybe it has something to do with you plunging my face into that mud hole and using it as a rag to scrub the bottom of it clean?'

If I had to take a guess, I'd say that's probably why her hand was dirty right now. It was also why all the skin on my left cheek was red and swollen. It had been crushed into the ground.

"We're not leaving by the way. Not until you thank me for feeding you your dinner."

'I'm definitely not gonna thank you for that so you'll be waiting a long time.'

I hadn't eaten any of that filth either, by the way. I may have been paralyzed from the neck down but my facial muscles were still functioning. I was more than capable of keeping my mouth closed to keep all the mud out.

"A cow like you must just love eating mud and shit and grass and whatever the fuck else was down there in that hole. That's part of God's plan, after all. Things have finally been restored to the way they should have been all along. With you in your proper fucking place at my feet, eating a healthy diet of mud. Isn't it wonderful? It's what you fucking deserve."

'How the hell am I still alive?' I asked myself, completely ignoring Mary. 'Shouldn't I have drowned in that mud pool? Did Mary pull me up at the last moment so that she could extend my suffering?'

If I hadn't drowned then I should have at least died from blood loss by now. I had lost a ton of it. Why hadn't that happened yet?

After thinking about it for a moment, I came to the conclusion that it was probably because of the mud itself. It was that thick, greasy, gooey type of mud that was super sticky. Because of that, my hypothesis was that it had formed a partial seal on some of my wounds.

It was tough for blood to leak out of my body when there was a wall of mud in the way.

That seal wouldn't stop the internal bleeding, though. So I was still fucked. It was just going to take a little longer.

"I asked you a fucking question, bitch. Answer."

'I can't fucking talk you piece of shit.'

Everything in my neck including my vocal cords had been pretty comprehensibly fucked, as the medical community might say. That would be their professional diagnosis. I wasn't even sure if I had vocal cords anymore, such was the extent of the mutilation I had suffered through.

"Don't want to talk? That's okay. You must just be hungry, still. Let's get you something more to eat."

'I'm not fucking hungry dammit! I swear to God there is nothing inside your head except for 3 solitary bean sprouts! That's it! The rest of it is hollow!'

Mary grabbed my head and plunged it back into the mud a moment later.

"Make sure you eat your fill this time you dirty fucking whore!"

The next time I came to it was to the sight of Mary's tongue. She was licking me and eating my blood again.

I was also in considerably more pain. Mary had not stopped having her fun with me even after I had blacked out.

'Please just fucking die already.'

I didn't understand how I kept waking up. Why couldn't I just fall asleep and not wake up?

I couldn't deal with this wall of pain any longer. It just kept getting worse and worse.

It was a total nightmare.

Mary grabbed my neck and started wringing it. Again. She handled my body like it was an inanimate object worth only whatever she could manage to squeeze out of it.

How the fuck was I still alive when she kept doing shit like this to my body?

'Please just stop already. I can't take any more of this.'

I was breaking. I could feel tears leaking out of my eyes.

"Oh? Are you awake again?"

'Fuck you.'

Mary clamped down on my neck like a vice, cutting off my air.

"Sh sh sh sh," she quietly shushed me as my eyes frantically darted around and the muscles in my face spasmed. "Keep your eyes open and look up at me, cow. I want to see the lights go out this time."

She giggled like a schoolgirl.

How long was this going to last?!

Why couldn't I just fucking die already?!

Christmas definitely sucks. Have I mentioned that yet? In case I haven't, it bears repeating.

I don't like Christmas.

…Because it sucks.

I was going to die on the holiday I hate the most, under the tender, loving, saliva-ridden ministrations of Mary fucking Sioux—the person I hate the most—my corpse was going to be desecrated and vandalized after giving my life in a war I never wanted to fight, and without ever knowing what happened to the rest of my comrades.

That might actually be the one thing I regret about this whole situation the most.

As much of a heartless bastard as I was, I had grown a little attached to my battalion—and my cute little adjutant in particular, the Goddess of coffee herself. I certainly wanted her and everyone else to survive this mess, anyway.

I couldn't see them as my meatshields anymore. You can only save each others' lives so many times on the battlefield before a mindset like that just becomes impossible to hold onto.

I genuinely hoped that they would make it through the war, now. I even wanted to see them again. Just one more time.

I could see their faces in my mind right now. Clearer than I ever had before.

I missed them.

I was in pain, I was terrified, I was alone, and I was completely without hope.

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

...Okay, I was also pretty salty right now if I'm being perfectly honest. Because no matter how you looked at it, I should not have lost a battle against this Mary Sioux bitch and none of this should have ever happened. In terms of raw skill, I was leagues ahead of her. Mary was so sloppy in all her movements and didn't know how to fight or use her power properly.

She was a rookie that didn't deserve to win.

There were three reasons why she had.

The first was that she had caught me on a bad day. A really bad day. I hadn't slept properly in literal months prior to our battle. No exaggeration. I had been sustaining myself entirely on a series of custom-tailored mental enhancement spells of my own design and on the memory of Visha's coffee. I did not have access to the real thing right now, but my adjutant's coffee-making skills were so powerful that the mere memory was enough to sustain anyone.

That fatigue had been a decisive disadvantage.

The second reason I had lost was the obvious one. I had not been in control of myself during the fight. I couldn't even remember what had happened during it, so I had probably just wasted a bunch of energy on huge, flashy attacks as my mind was warped by the Type-95, turning me into a religious loon without any kind of battle sense.

I had probably not been following any sort of strategy during the fight.

The final reason I had lost the battle was that my pool of magic had been severely depleted before it had even started due to the constant combat I had been involved in recently.

I had been exhausted, weakened, and not in control of myself. All at the same time.

So of course I had lost. Fighting someone on Mary's level while suffering from bone-deep exhaustion just couldn't be done. Not when she was as fresh as a spring chicken herself.

Being part of a volunteer force attached to the Rus army, Mary was not being worked like a dog on the front lines like I was. She and her unit rarely had to fight. Most of the time, she only appeared on the battlefield whenever a sighting of me and my battalion had been confirmed in the area. At all other times, she was practically on vacation, living the good life in complete luxury with all her buddies in the rear.

I was so fucking jealous about that, by the way.

In any case, she had been fully rested and prepared for the battle while I had not been.

On top of that, there was also the fact that Mary had grown unnaturally powerful since our last encounter. Even more so than usual. Being X had given her yet another undeserved boost to her already incredible strength just so that he could fuck with me a little harder.

Mary hadn't pushed me hard enough last time, you see, and that just wouldn't do. How else would the Gods entertain themselves if I wasn't struggling for my life at every conceivable opportunity? It just wasn't fun for them when I always won, so they had raised the stakes again by powering up my opponent.

It felt like being in one of those Mexican cockfights, honestly. In one corner, there was me. And in the other, there was Mary. Then God, Jesus, Being X, and the Devil would all gather around to place bets on who would win and then we'd be thrown at each other like a pair of chickens that were meant to fight to the death. And when it became clear that I would always win those fights because Mary didn't train properly, had far less battle experience than me, and was just worse than me in every other category with the singular exception being the amount of raw, magical energy she contained—she actually had an edge over me in that area—they had decided to give advantages to my opponent and disadvantages to me to make it more fair.

I guess they just forgot about the fact that I had been completely drained this time. I hadn't been able to fight anywhere near my full potential.

The fight would have gone so much better if I had been fresh, I was sure.

It was a real shame. If I had known that Mary would be sent into battle anywhere near where I had been deployed, I would have been better prepared.

...But I guess that was all just water under the bridge now. Or rather, it was all mud under the Tanya.

Heh heh.

…That was a joke. You can laugh at it if you want.

Or don't. It was kinda lame, I guess.

But there was a lot of mud down there. That's all I'm saying.

…

This was the end for me.

I was going to die alone in a mud hole, drowning in a combination of mud, melted ice, and my own blood.

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

...At least, that's what I thought.

Suddenly, as the everliving hell was being wrenched and twisted out of my neck, the absolute shit was being beaten out of me, as my entire face and skull were being repeatedly bashed and submerged into the bloody mud pool underneath me with all the power of a hydraulic press, as Mary screamed her lungs out at me about how much I deserved everything that was happening, and as she sucked and chewed on my neck as though it were a dog-toy, I heard a furious shout from above.

"Get off of her!"

There was an explosion of movement and I heard an artillery spell go off.

I tried to focus my completely dazed and oxygen-starved eyes on whatever was happening.

Mary was hit by the attack dead on and was launched off of me and into the distance.

And just like that...the walrus that had been mauling me was gone and so was the planet-sized weight trying to cave in my windpipe.

The iron grip on it was finally gone.

I felt the ensuing wave of relief right down to my very soul.

I could finally breathe again.

I wanted to weep.

Discord: A3dTszc