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)
After a few moments passed, I opened my eyes again.
That confused me.
It irritated me a bit, too, to be honest. Even though I had been ready to die, and I had even tried to will myself to, I found myself still lying in a bawling Visha's arms.
…
'...The fuck?'
I tried again. I tried to visualize and imagine the spirit within my body breaking out through my forehead and flying into the open sky above me. Free at last.
…
It didn't happen.
It was really starting to piss me off.
'Why the fuck is this taking so long?!'
Seriously. This was getting ridiculous. I had always thought that death scenes were supposed to be relatively quick affairs. That's what it was like in all the movies, anyway. Whoever was dying on the big screen would only get a few moments to internally monologue their last thoughts and then they would slip away super dramatically just as they finished.
My death scene was not like this at all.
It just…dragged out. Pointlessly. Needlessly. I had already internally monologued everything important and I had nothing else to say. So there was no reason for me to still be here.
It was just getting awkward, now.
…
…
…
Movie directors were all fucking liars. Every single one of them. Now I was going to have to wait for God knows how long until my body finally gave up its pointless struggle.
…On the bright side, I guess that meant I could enjoy my adjutant's company for a little while longer.
She had really soft arms.
…
…
…
It was actually kinda nice.
Warm.
…
…
…
'Fuck it.'
I guess I had the energy in me for one last rant to pass the time. My adjutant's enveloping, warm, squishiness wasn't enough to pacify me completely, after all.
I was still pissed.
Why was I so pissed?
I'm so glad you asked. Allow me to explain.
The laws of physics were being suspended to prolong my suffering.
How did I know this?
Simple.
Me still being alive literally made no sense anymore. There was no natural explanation for it. From every angle you looked at it, it was impossible. I couldn't feel my heart beating. I wasn't breathing. My throat had been slashed open. My spinal cord had been severed. I had been beaten into the ground and tortured by a sadistic psychopath that had been beyond eager to play out her deepest, most violent fantasies with me as the target.
…But I was still here. Thinking. Somehow.
How many more things needed to happen for me to just fucking die? That seemed like a sufficient list to me. Every single one of those things on their own should have been enough to finish me off. It completely mystified me how I was still here. It made no sense.
…And on top of all of that, there was the absurd amount of blood that I'd lost. People don't survive shit like this for this long.
Had Being X himself intervened just to make it so that I couldn't die until he was good and satisfied with my misery first?
Probably.
Fucker.
That sounded exactly like something he would do.
A few moments later…
'Actually…nevermind. So that's what's going on.'
It took me a few moments to find it, but there actually was a better explanation.
As much as I was tempted to believe in that asshole's divine intervention just to spite me as it would grant legitimacy to my outrage, there was a way to explain this without resorting to that.
'Visha…'
The answer was literally the same as it had been with Mary. It was her spells. She was healing me just enough to stop me from dying. That was the real thing that was prolonging this so much. I had completely underestimated what magic could do.
I had been thinking about this whole situation the wrong way. My body wasn't displaying any kind of mysterious tenacity at all. I literally should be dead. I would be dead if not for Visha keeping my head above the water like this.
Her eyes were squeezed shut and on her face was a look of utmost concentration. She was doing all sorts of wild, wacky, and crazy shit with her magic inside my body―pulling out all the stops. Her black magic medical spells were causing all of this and she was a far better healer than I had given her credit for.
People died when they lost a certain amount of blood. That was just a fact of nature. You needed a certain amount of it to continue functioning and once you fell below that threshold, that was it for you.
Since I was absolutely certain that I had crossed that threshold a while back―seriously, it was almost comical just how much red was splattered all around me―this was the only explanation I could think of that didn't involve divine intervention by a cosmic asshole.
Visha's spells were the culprit. Among many other things, they were functioning as artificial blood. They had to be. Otherwise, I would have blacked out. Visha had to be putting me through some sort of mana-based blood transfusion where my lost red blood cells were being replaced by some sort of magical equivalent that did the same thing.
There were now two substances inside my body that oxygenated my tissues―the few red blood cells I had left and whatever Visha was pumping my veins full of. Both of those things were performing the same task, so even though I had lost way more than the required amount of blood to kill me under normal circumstances, these weren't normal circumstances. This artificial blood was picking up the slack that its natural counterpart left behind.
You could get a lot closer to death in this new world than in my old world while still remaining alive, it would seem.
Magical healing was a total game-changer. And unlike Mary who had only been using it on a superficial level to give herself more time to have her fun with me, Visha was going all out and was genuinely trying to improve my condition with it.
Unfortunately, however, she wouldn't be able to do that. Magical healing wasn't all-powerful. My case was one such example of its limitations.
My body was so fucked up right now that even literal magic couldn't do much to help. I could only be held in a form of stasis. I was practically hooked up to a life support machine right now that was powered by my adjutant's mana reserve.
As long as she still had energy left in the tank and wasn't disrupted, I couldn't die.
…But at the same time, that's all she could do. She could stop me from dying for the time being but she couldn't actually save me. She could only stall and buy more time.
How would that help, though?
I'm honestly asking.
Buying time wouldn't do anything. No one in the world could save me, so it's not like there was some ultimate medic who was secretly on their way to my position right now and that just needed Visha to hold out a few more minutes for them to get there.
There was no endgame to Visha's plan. It was completely futile. She was just burning energy for no reason.
She was trying to inflate a balloon with a bunch of holes in it. She was frantically pumping and pumping away with all her might but all the air she pumped in just flew right back out. Without fixing the balloon first, she couldn't make any long-term progress. The best she could do is reach a state of equilibrium where she pumped in the same amount of air that leaked out.
That's what she was doing, by the way.
But, like…why, though? You know?
There was no step 2.
It required tremendous effort to keep me in this state. My lovely adjutant was going to get all tuckered out.
'What will you do then, Visha?'
She needed to give up. That was the only option remaining.
If she wasn't careful, I'd drag her down with me. She couldn't afford to waste all of this energy like this. Our current position was unbelievably exposed and an enemy mage could show up at any time. We were in an active warzone and she was probably lighting up every single magical detector for miles right now. As a named mage, her specific magical signature would be recognized.
The Federation almost certainly knew that the Devil's Wing was here right now. Alone. Vulnerable. And they'd even know that she was frantically trying to heal someone by analyzing the waveform of the spells she was using from a distance. They had probably already scrambled a couple of mage battalions to try and take her out.
Visha needed her energy more than I did if she wanted to make it out of here alive.
She had to give up on me. I couldn't be moved. My condition was so far beyond 'critical' that you probably needed a new term to describe it. Pulling me out of that mud hole and bringing me over here had nearly finished me off and I would not survive another flight. She could not fly and heal simultaneously. So Visha was stuck here, wide open, completely alone, trying to reanimate a corpse.
'Get out of here already! I don't want you dying for me!'
She was such an overachiever and didn't know when to quit. In times like these, it was a terrible trait to have.
She was in complete denial.
I really hoped I would die soon. The sooner I died, the sooner Visha would leave and get to safety.
But my survival wasn't up to me. Until she ran out of power, I literally couldn't die.
A little while later…
'God fucking dammit! You're really starting to piss me the fuck off!'
This very well might have been the single most frustrating experience of my life.
When had my adjutant become this top-of-the-line, world-class healer?! How the fuck was she still managing this?!
Healing wasn't easy. At all. It was one of the most difficult things you could do with your magic. To be a competent healer, you needed to be one of those super-rare, top-class, elite magical prodigies with a huge mana pool. We're talking the cream of the crop, here. You needed to be among the top 0.01% of mages.
But even among them, what Visha was doing to me right now was unbelievable. She was fucking skilled. There were probably only a few dozen people in the entire world that even had the potential to do it to the extent that she was doing it right now.
Seriously. She had to be setting all kinds of records. The sheer amount of power she was pumping into me…it burned. I could smell it―the familiar smell of burnt human flesh. She was literally rearranging all of my organs and she was not even trying to be delicate about it. She was in Emergency: "Holy shit" mode right now and was being extremely aggressive with her energy in some half-baked, desperate attempt to fix all the damage and save me. And while it wasn't working, it was enough to keep me from passing out.
It raised so many questions, though.
There was a reason why there was such a huge lack of talented magical healers and why it was such a rare skill in wartime. The mages that were powerful enough to do it were extremely hard to find, and even when you did find one that had the potential to learn, there was a better use for them than keeping them confined to a hospital.
Magical healing, while incredibly powerful, just wasn't an efficient use of resources. The amount of energy you needed for it was absurd. Tying down a mage with enough energy and skill to do it just wasn't worth it. A healing mage could go from 100% to zero after healing just one person. And they wouldn't even be able to finish the job with that either most of the time. Usually, all of that energy would only stabilize their patient just enough so that another healing mage could take over.
Healing people was just so much harder than blowing them up.
If that same healing mage instead used all their energy to fight on the front lines, they'd kill hundreds of enemies and do tremendous amounts of damage in the same amount of time it would have taken them to save whoever it was that needed saving.
It was a catch-22 situation. If someone was injured enough to require magical healing, then healing them magically wasn't worth it. It would require too much energy from a mage that was too powerful to tie down. That mage would have a far greater impact on the course of the war if they instead spent that energy fighting on the front lines.
Magical healing was only ever useful in those unbelievably rare cases where the calculation swung the other way. Only when you did the analysis and determined that the person you wanted to heal was so important to the Empire that they outweighed the opportunity cost of removing a prodigious mage from the front lines for an extended period of time, was it ever worth it. So it was used on VIPs only―high ranking generals and political leaders, mostly. Maybe on super important captured POWs, too―people that had important information that our 'interrogators' needed to pry out of them.
Common footsoldiers―even other aerial mages―were generally not worth the resource expenditure to put an elite magical prodigy through months of intense, non-combat-related training and then permanently confining them to a field hospital in the rear. A single highly skilled, prodigious mage outweighed hundreds of average mages, after all, and the Empire constantly proved as much. It's what we were known for. Investing in a small number of extremely talented aerial mages to cause devastating damage.
Tying even one of our elites down in a non-combat role went against doctrine, even if doing so would save hundreds of lives.
Those hundreds of lives just never outweighed the sheer amount of damage they could have otherwise inflicted. Average-quality mages were common enough to be replaced when they were lost, and so were regular infantry.
…That's not to say that they were seen as completely expendable, though. We still tried to save them. We just made use of our well-funded, non-magical medical corps for that.
Regular medics.
And their success rate―while not amazing―was good enough. If the regular medics couldn't save you, then healing you magically would be necessary, but that would run into the catch-22 and would require too much effort to be worth it.
The calculation had been done, and injuries of this type―nearly lethal injuries that ordinary medics couldn't save you from but that healing magic could save you from―were deemed rare enough that it had been decided to just allow everyone suffering from them to die so that we could keep our elite mages where they needed to be.
That's what made no sense about this situation, though.
Why the fuck had Visha been allowed to learn?
I hadn't been allowed!
Believe me, I had tried to get into that program. Many times. Being confined to a hospital as a healer sounded like a dream job, after all. I had attempted all manner of different ways to get myself deployed somewhere safer over the years and becoming a healer had been one of them.
…Of course, as I'm sure you'd expect by now, every single plan I had ever come up with to do that had ended up getting thwarted in the end.
I had been told that I was: 'too valuable' and was 'needed where I was'.
Visha was without question the third strongest mage in the entire world, though, so why the fuck had she been allowed when I hadn't?! The same logic should have applied!
I was so jealous right now. The only reason I could think of for why she might have been allowed to learn was if the higher-ups planned on re-assigning her to become a personal medic slash bodyguard for some sort of hotshot VIP.
Who the hell was it?! The fucking Kaiser?!
Fuck. It was such a stupid idea even in that case. It's not like the Kaiser was going to be battling on the front lines so why the hell would he need this ultimate combat mage at his side?
And no one had told me anything about this! Were they planning on pulling a fast one on me?!
I wasn't about to let her get reassigned somewhere else right out from under me! Not without one hell of a fight first! She was mine, god dammit!
Visha was not the person to pick to become a magical healer if one was needed. Plenty of weaker mages would have sufficed. While you needed a magical prodigy…they didn't need to be on Visha's level. She was a monster. She was way too strong and way too talented at aerial combat to reposition her like that.
And to top it all off…she was my adjutant. Wasn't she supposed to be spending all her time at my side? It had to have taken months to learn how to do what she was doing to me right now. Probably closer to a year. I definitely would have noticed her absence if she had been gone for that long. The 203rd would have been significantly weakened all throughout that time.
…
…
…
Though, now that I'm thinking about it…I didn't actually know, did I?
Had she actually been gone for that long?
…
I couldn't remember. Everything was foggy and I was beginning to realize that the gaps in my memory were both more numerous and wider than I had originally thought. To put it bluntly, the Type 95 had completely fried my brain and I didn't have the slightest clue about what the fuck was going on anymore. I remembered some things just fine but not others. There were huge gaps where I couldn't remember anything at all.
Had I just forgotten? Was it even possible to forget a period of time large enough for Visha to be completely trained as a healer during it?
Now that I was thinking about it…I did have this vague impression that it had been a really long time since I'd last seen her. Visha looked a little different than I remembered. Her hair was styled differently, she was a little thinner in some areas and, well…thicker in others, shall we say, and the structure of her face seemed to have changed a little. Her face was a bit sharper, more angular and hardened.
It's as if I hadn't seen her in a few months and during that time, she seemed to have matured a little.
So maybe she actually had been sent away on some sort of training mission to study magical healing and she was only just coming back to the front lines now.
It was very likely that this was the first time we had seen each other in months.
I had no idea why she would be allowed to leave the front like that in the middle of a war, but if all of this was true…
Heh heh.
Okay…that would actually be hilarious if it was true.
Could you imagine?
Picture this:
Visha leaves her comrades behind on the front lines to go back to the capital on a new mission from the higher-ups to study magical healing. She spends months going through an unbelievable off-screen training montage full of blood, sweat, and tears as the war rages on without her, and every day she dreams of reuniting with her comrades as a totally new woman with a new skill set so they could all win the war together.
…But then after she's finally finished her training and is sent back to the front with her fantastic new abilities that she was just so eager to show off to her superior, she arrives and finds me just fucking dead in a ditch like this on her first day back before getting a chance to even say hello?
Heh heh.
If that happened in a movie, I'd probably cry laughing.
Unfortunately, however…because this was Visha we were talking about, for some reason, I couldn't find it in me to do that.
I actually felt a little bad for her.
That was unusual for me―feeling bad for other people. I wasn't even aware that I could do that. My body didn't know how.
But it was true. I felt bad for her. And I really hoped that this situation wouldn't make her lose confidence in herself. She had to know that this wasn't her fault…
A little while later…
'Okay, I think that's enough now, Visha. It's time.'
I was done.
Nothing more needed to be said. I was in constant agonizing pain and I couldn't do anything else other than just lay there like a vegetable. We had long since passed the point where all her efforts just prolonged my suffering.
I didn't want to live like this anymore.
I was trapped. Every last bit of control over my own body had now been stripped from me. Not even the muscles in my face or my eyelids were working anymore.
My eyes were wide open and completely blank. I couldn't focus on anything. I was locked in.
I would fail every single test that a doctor could administer to check for signs of life right now except for perhaps a brain scan.
Ten out of ten doctors would have called it quits by now and declared 'time of death'.
Visha was not one of them.
"I'll never give up on you!" she cried, as she continued pouring her energy into me. "Never!"
'For fuck's sake! Maybe you should! Enough is enough, okay?!'
I was tired. I just wanted to go to sleep. I was so fucking done.
She had made exactly zero progress in healing me. Actually, it was negative progress. I was in worse shape now than I had been when she had started. All her power and skill was nothing in the face of the catastrophic bodily shutdown I was going through.
'This is it, Visha. The end of the line. There's no going back. Just…let go.'
It would be so easy.
Visha looked down and stared into my lifeless eyes.
"Please, Colonel," she cried. "It wasn't supposed to be like this. I can't do this without you…"
In another time and another situation, I'd have probably been amused at just how miserable she looked right now. I was an asshole, after all, and I thought that things like that were funny―when people 'ugly cried' the way she was ugly crying.
…But for some reason, when it was Visha, seeing her like this bothered me. She was a total wreck right now to the point that she could hardly speak without slurring her words and I didn't understand why.
It was super confusing.
Honestly, I don't think I had ever really understood her.
Our relationship was…weird, to say the least. I had never heard of anyone else having anything like what we had before. The closest analogue I could think of for the dynamic between us was that Visha had started treating me like I was her pet dog.
Seriously.
It was the weirdest thing. And I mostly just…went along with it because I was so confused and curious about why she was doing it and I was hoping to find out.
She checked all the boxes of a typical dog owner with me as her chosen pet.
Here were a couple of examples:
She always tried to find excuses to cuddle with me. Especially when it was cold outside and we were in our foxholes at the front and we were trying to get some sleep.
But she did it at other times, too.
She would fucking waterboard me with these long-winded, winding, essay-style arguments in all kinds of situations that would ultimately culminate in an explanation for why cuddling was such a great idea and how we should do it right now.
It was the solution to practically every problem, according to her. But the fact that she would go so far out of her own way to try and convince me to do that…
It was textbook dog owner behaviour. Dog owners cuddled with their dogs all the time, after all. And they were usually pretty insistent about it.
Just like Visha.
She was very touchy, too. She'd pet me as if I were a dog. She'd also hug me and brush my hair to make sure I was properly groomed.
Like a dog.
She also fed and watered me every day. Well…sort of. The water was actually coffee in my case, but otherwise, that's pretty much what was happening.
There were so many parallels.
Every time I entered the same room as her, her eyes would immediately light up and her whole mood would instantly improve. Visibly so. She found joy in showering me with affection, just as a dog owner found joy in being affectionate with their dog.
She cooed at me and gushed over how 'cute' she apparently thought I was all the time, too.
That was the biggest hint, really.
Because I was 100% not cute. I couldn't even look at my own reflection without wanting to throw up. I was an abomination both inside and out and ten out of ten people would agree.
If some random asshole on the side of the street called me 'cute'…I'd beat the fuck out of them on the spot, no joke.
It meant one of two things. Either they were mocking me, or they were lying to me in a vain attempt to try and make me feel better about myself and my wretched existence.
Both cases deserved a beating if you asked me. I was well aware of how ugly I was already, thank you very much, and I didn't appreciate being reminded of it.
Condescending piece of shit.
I let Visha get away with it only because we had history together and I didn't want to ruin our chemistry by being overly controlling.
But this was how I knew what Visha truly thought of me. I wasn't cute in any way, shape, or form when going by the standard definition of the word, but there was an alternate definition of that word and that's the one she was using.
This second definition referred to the type of 'cute' that was reserved for when the subject was an animal. In particular, an ugly animal.
Visha saw me as if I was one of those really, really ugly dogs that only exist because humans are assholes that selectively breed deformities into them. You know…the types of dogs that are so inbred that they can't even breathe properly? The types that make those 'Hrrk!' 'Hrrk!' noises every time they try to inhale?
I was pretty much the human equivalent of that. And Visha called me 'cute' for the same reason that people called those disgusting fucking things cute. The uglier the dog, the 'cuter' they were when using this definition of the word.
That's what was happening here too. 'Cute' was code for ugly.
It was another box checked on my list.
…And I could keep going. The list was long, after all, and I had built up a strong case.
Next up on my list was the fact that she had a total disregard for her state of dress whenever I was around.
She saw me as so subhuman that the standard rules of modesty didn't apply in her mind when we were alone together.
It was exactly like how you'd act around your dog. Just as most people didn't care whether or not their dog saw them in their underwear, so too did Visha not care whether or not I saw her in her underwear.
I had literally once seen her strip in front of me. And she had given precisely zero fucks about it. In fact, to the contrary, she had made a show out of it―perhaps practicing some of her moves for whenever she got around to getting a boyfriend. I didn't really know.
That particular event still confused me to this day. Especially considering the fact that she had decided to get real close to me and invade my personal space right after.
In her underwear.
I'm pretty sure she was drunk at the time, honestly. It was the only explanation that made any sense. Because to be fair to her, this was the only time it had ever happened.
You should have seen her face, though. After I had raised a questioning brow and asked her exactly how drunk she was, it had gotten so red.
She had also gotten extremely frustrated for some reason. Probably because I had hit the nail right on the head.
I was pretty observant after all and I noticed things like that.
Anyway, she had obviously been drunk enough at the time for her cheeks to become inflamed. To this day I still didn't understand where she had even found that much alcohol. We had been in a bombed-out city at the time with little to no supplies of any kind.
But in any case, I ordered her to go to bed early that night to sleep off the effects.
She hadn't been able to meet my gaze for a week after that. A guilty conscience will do that, I suppose.
It was another box checked on my list. She didn't care if I saw her in her underwear and didn't care if I saw her do weird things when it was just the two of us alone together.
Just like how a dog owner treats their pet.
She fucking walked me like a dog too. She would take me to all sorts of places whenever we had some free time.
Without the leash, however, she was forced to improvise. So she would grab my hand and lead me around that way instead.
Again, it was textbook dog owner behaviour. What else was I supposed to think?
There were no other possibilities.
And then there were all the times when she had outright picked me up and plopped me down somewhere. Whether that was on her lap, on a chair beside her, on a table in front of her, or some other random place…it happened a lot. More than you'd expect for sure.
It was really, really weird.
Bold, too. The fact that she had the balls to do that to her superior officer was something else.
I guess she was just…encouraged by the fact that I had never put up any resistance or complained about any of this. So she kept getting bolder and bolder in how she acted around me and I had no idea why or what her goal was.
I just didn't understand.
…Oh yeah. She bathed me too. You know…in the same way you'd bathe your dog.
These weren't…full baths of course. I wasn't about to get naked around her, obviously. And unlike her, stripping down to my underwear in her presence was a step too far for me, too.
But whenever I returned from the battlefield soaked to the bone in the blood of my enemies, she'd be the one to wash it all out of my hair and off of my face. She insisted on it, even.
We had this whole…procedure. I'd walk into our private quarters after a crazy battle, sit down, and neither of us would say a word as she pulled up another chair and cleaned all the blood off of me. Then she'd spend way longer than necessary doing it and would eventually just start stroking my hair.
While it felt absolutely incredible, it was also very telling.
How many more examples did there need to be to convince everyone that I was a lowly dog in her eyes?
How about the two times she had kissed me? Would that do it?
On two separate occasions, she had done that.
These weren't kisses in the way you might be thinking, however. I was a dog to her, remember? Not a person. So, really, they were more of pecks than kisses. The type you'd give to a dog.
The first time she had done that, she had targeted my forehead and it was right after one of her usual, 'good morning' hugs.
To be fair to her, I'm pretty sure she had just been sleepy and had forgotten where she was at the moment. Because neither of us had ever mentioned it again. But the fact that it had come to her so naturally just proved my point that she saw nothing wrong with it deep down. It had been instinctive.
She 100% thought of me as her pet dog.
On the second occasion, she had kissed me on the cheek.
She had literally just woken up from a nightmare in that particular case. We had shared a bed and cuddled up together that night―because of course we did, as that's exactly what dogs and dog owners do with each other―and then she had suddenly jerked awake, met my eyes, and then promptly…delivered one.
It was another one of those moments where her inhibitions had been lowered and her true feelings toward me had leaked through to the surface.
I was her fucking pet dog, I'm telling you!
It was so weird!
Even weirder, perhaps, was the timing of all these new developments between us. Because our relationship hadn't started out this way. Not at all. Not even close. She had been absolutely terrified of me for the longest time.
All these new developments had started way later. Years later.
The weird part, however, was that I could tell you the exact day the change happened.
I still had no explanation for why, but it had all started the day after my last birthday. Well…the last birthday I remembered, anyway. It could have been two birthdays ago. I couldn't recall exactly. But in any case, literally overnight, something changed in her mind and she had come to some sort of decision. It was as if a switch had flipped and I suddenly downgraded from 'close friend and comrade' to 'pet dog'.
It made no sense. None of it did.
Had I pissed her off or something?
I wouldn't be surprised. I hadn't noticed anything like that, but then again, I wasn't really all that great at reading other people's feelings.
So maybe I had.
There were a couple of reasons why I put up with it, though. Because make no mistake, I could have, at any time, shut all of this dog business down had I wanted to. I could have easily ordered her to stop and that would have been the end of it.
…But I didn't.
And reason number one for why I didn't was the one I just explained.
Curiosity and confusion. I was still trying to figure out the impenetrable mystery behind the sudden change and I couldn't very well do that if she stopped.
Reason number two, however, was that it was harmless.
She still treated me as her superior in every capacity and in every formal setting that she needed to. She followed all of my orders and treated me exactly as she always had whenever we were on duty and whenever anyone else was around.
It was only in private and in our off-time that she did any of this new stuff. So neither of our reputations were going to take a hit.
She also wasn't being an asshole about it. She treated me like a dog, sure, but it was like a dog that she loved wholeheartedly and unconditionally.
And she didn't talk to me in that stupid 'baby voice' that most dog owners used with their pets. Thankfully. She still treated me like an intelligent human being when it came to most things and didn't pretend that I was as dumb as a rock.
She also hadn't called me a 'good girl' yet or any variant thereof. So that was another point in her favour.
In addition, she hadn't gone from zero to a hundred in a single day. These developments in our relationship had started out extremely mild, and she only slowly built up the intensity after failing to get a reaction out of me.
Walking up to me and outright picking me up off the ground and then sitting me down on her lap, for example, would have been completely out of the question at first. It was only after she had first done a variety of other smaller things to build up to that over the course of many weeks and months that she had gotten the courage to do something so bold. And the same was true for all of her other noteworthy stunts.
It was a cycle. She would do something crazy, I wouldn't react to it, and then she'd build up the intensity a little bit for the next time. And my refusal to stop her had indirectly given her permission to proceed.
Of course, that left a pretty obvious question.
Why hadn't I stopped her from doing any of this?
While my previous two reasons played a role, my final reason was the most important.
It was…a little embarrassing to admit, though. And I'd certainly never say it out loud to anyone.
But have you fucking seen her?
My adjutant was so hot now. Her sex appeal was absolutely out of control. Especially right now with her new look.
So while I was…annoyed that she saw me as some sort of sick freak, her numerous―often pushy―attempts to get close to me were reasonable compensation in my mind.
I certainly wasn't about to complain when a ten out of ten supermodel babe fawned all over me. Whenever she did, I could actually pretend to be someone cool and interesting.
It was the closest I'd ever get to a relationship in this life, that was for sure. So I let it all slide. I really didn't mind the change. We had been through so much together over the years that there was pretty much nothing she could do anymore to truly piss me off.
She could walk up to me one day and explain in vivid detail about how she had just murdered a bunch of civilians, butchered them, and cannibalized their innards and then show me video evidence of her doing it and I'd mostly just shrug it off. Maybe I'd ask her a morbidly curious question or two about how it tasted, but that's about it.
We'd still be friends after.
It was truly difficult to think of something she could do to genuinely upset me. She'd probably have to become a communist to even get close.
Those fuckers…
Don't even get me started.
Anyway, those were the reasons for why I wasn't bothered when she started acting all weird around me.
In fact…I kind of leaned into it a little bit and indulged in her ministrations. It served as a great outlet for my daydreams and wish-fulfillment fantasies even if it did feel like I was playing with fire at times.
Her hugs were amazing, too. And she dished them out like cheap candy. No matter the occasion, a hug was usually in order according to her.
But just think about the geometry of the situation. My head just barely reached her shoulders due to our height difference. So when she hugged me, where would my head go?
Yes.
It would go there. Every single time. And it was fucking incredible.
They were huge by the way. Believe me. I would know. My face had been pressed into them so many times by now that I probably knew those things better than she did herself.
They were very nice indeed.
So these developments in our relationship were both annoying and stimulating at the same time and that mostly balanced it all out.
They also broke up the monotony of combat and cut through my boredom by giving me something to think about during my off-hours. It was a mystery to solve, after all, and that let me take my mind off things.
I was very grateful for that. It was a nice reprieve.
Of course, I never allowed any of these feelings of mine to shine through the iron wall that was my poker face. In fact, I almost saw it as a challenge.
No matter how crazy the shit Visha pulled became, it had become my goal to not so much as twitch in the face of it and act as though it were totally normal and that nothing unusual was happening.
In an attempt to understand what she was trying to do, I wanted to see how far she would take things. She kept escalating and I was so curious to see where she would draw the line and what her endgame was. Was she just trying to break through my widely regarded unflappable nature? Or was there some other trickery at play?
It was kind of fun, actually. I could tell that I surprised even her sometimes whenever I didn't react to whatever her most recent stunt was, especially when said stunt was particularly blatant.
I didn't understand why she seemed so frustrated by it at times, though. That part was unusual. It was as if she was expecting something from me and I kept failing her test.
I didn't get what she was trying to accomplish.
But one thing was for sure. I had no intentions of ever letting on that I had a secret crush on her.
I used to try and deny that I had such feelings but I had eventually given up on that delusion once I made the realization that it was just inevitable and that there was nothing wrong with it.
Fucking everybody had a secret crush on Visha. People like her were just born lucky and had everything handed to them. Unbelievably attractive, a magnetic charm, maxed out charisma…as the stereotypical 'popular girl', my adjutant had it all.
Any human being would have been drawn in.
That realization had lifted a tremendous weight off my shoulders back when I had first made it. There was no reason whatsoever to be ashamed that I was no exception.
…So long as I could pretend that it wasn't true, that is. As long as I could act as though those feelings weren't there, and live my life as though they weren't, then there was no cause for concern.
I just…didn't allow those feelings to control or influence any of my decisions.
It wasn't too difficult. I had two lifetimes' worth of experience pretending my emotions and feelings didn't exist and I was really good at it by now. So even though Visha's crazy exuberance strained my mental shields every now and then, she had never even come close to breaking through my poker face let alone reducing me to a flustered, blubbering mess like she was clearly trying to do, so my dignity remained intact.
If I had been reborn as a man, then maybe things would have been different between us. I might have even tried making a move on her myself. But since I hadn't been, it was a moot point.
It was probably a blessing in disguise anyway. Dating was such a rat race. Only stupid people did it. Life was so much simpler when you just chose not to participate in that mess. My adjutant's terrible luck with it constantly proved as much.
It was absolutely hilarious to me how terrible her luck with dating was. All kinds of strange men were lined up to ask for my adjutant's hand and they constantly made fools of themselves in the process and Visha had to spend so much time and effort trying to find polite excuses to turn them all down.
She was just way too nice.
If it were me in her position, I'd be fucking vicious as hell.
I guess that was the one good thing about being so ugly. I never had to worry about any of that. Not a single person had ever asked me out. I was so unattractive that people didn't even want to be seen next to me.
The last time I had been in the presence of a man in an informal setting, all it had taken was a single look from me to make his face go completely red from anger.
I hadn't had to say a thing. Apparently, I was so ugly that people got genuinely mad at the sight of me. As if my existence somehow violated the universe itself.
Luckily, my adjutant had been there. Otherwise, things might have gotten out of hand. When that man had suddenly approached and started asking me pushy, personal questions, perhaps in an effort to dig up some blackmail material on me, Visha had stepped in and, in the most passive-aggressive manner I had ever seen from her, proceeded to tell the man that I was 'off limits', whatever that meant, and that 'no one would make a move on her as long as I'm around you'd have to kill me first'.
I had really lucked out having a subordinate that went above and beyond to watch my back like that.
It was nice.
Anyway, Visha had the opposite problem that I did. People didn't get mad when they saw her, they got horny. She had to put in so much effort to stem the tidal wave of her suitors. Especially since her tastes were evidently so refined. She was extremely particular when it came to the types of people she was willing to date.
I didn't know what her preferences were exactly, but they had to be unbelievably specific as she had never found a single man to her standards yet. Despite her extreme popularity, she had never gone on so much as a single date with anyone before. She had turned everyone down and was still single to this day.
I had even entertained the notion that she might be asexual. It would certainly explain a lot. Especially since she kept using me as an excuse to get away from the swarm of men chasing after her.
She couldn't find a single one among the crowd, so maybe she just wasn't into romance. Who knew?
It wasn't any of my business anyway, I suppose.
Her personality did her no favours, though. She didn't have a mean bone in her body and she didn't seem to understand how her actions could be misinterpreted by others.
Just look at how she treated me, after all. Like her beloved pet dog. If she acted the way she did to me to any of those other men, they'd definitely misunderstand the situation and mistake it as her being interested in them.
Honestly, my adjutant was so oblivious. It was unbelievable, really. She had no idea what she did to the people around her and if she wasn't careful, someone with bad intentions might try and take advantage of her for it.
My hazy daydream was suddenly interrupted when I felt Visha's hand on my cheek.
She looked deeply into my eyes.
"Please…don't go."
'Sorry. I have to go. Your dog is sick and it's time to put it down.'
Heh heh.
"There's something I've always wanted to tell you, Colonel."
'I already know, Visha. You don't have to say it. You're disappointed in me as we both know I could have done better.'
She probably even hated me a little bit, too. Or at least, she hated the fact that I was her boss. Her whole pet dog routine may have even been some sort of attempt to demean or humiliate me. Or gain power over me, anyway.
One of my biggest regrets was failing to find an answer to that.
But rest assured, I had understood her feelings completely and utterly and there were no misunderstandings between us.
"I'm so sorry I never had the courage to say this to you."
She looked deeply into my eyes and we shared a powerful moment together before she continued.
"I've always lo―"
Something suddenly blasted Visha in the side and she was launched off of me.
"No!" I heard her scream, horrified, as she was flung away.
All of her spells that had been keeping me alive simultaneously deactivated.
I couldn't see what had hit her, though. I wasn't facing in the right direction. All I could tell is that someone was now standing beside me in my blind spot.
'I wonder who it could be?'
"Get your filthy hands off my fucking cow you bitch!"
Oh.
I guess that cleared that right up.
I fucking hated this piece of shit. Every single time I thought she was gone, she came right back like a fucking malignant tumour.
I watched as Visha desperately got to her feet and tried to lunge back toward me to reactivate her medical spells and keep me from slipping away.
Mary, in a blur of speed, snatched the collar of Visha's flight suit at the last moment and yanked her back.
"And where do you think you're going?!"
Mary started to chuckle.
"I have to heal her! She's dying! Let me help her! Please!"
"Dying like the fucking dog she is. She deserves it. And you…I don't know who the hell you are but you're going to watch it happen, bitch. How dare you interrupt our private time together!"
Mary was strong. Magically, sure, but physically, too. She was a total Mary Sue and a powerhouse. So she easily overpowered Visha, forced her arms behind her back, forced her to her knees, grabbed her hair, and made her watch from a few meters away as I bled out in front of her.
So close, yet so far.
Without Visha's spells, my condition rapidly deteriorated and in only a handful of seconds, I went from being able to vaguely see blurry shapes, to being totally blind.
Before I did lose my sight, however, I managed to catch a glimpse of one last thing that made me want to let out a massive sigh of relief.
Way up in the sky.
I could see Weiss up there. Rapidly closing in.
Obviously, I couldn't actually recognize his physical features from so far away as he was just a speck from my point of view, but I had flown with him for so long that I could tell. I knew all of his little idiosyncrasies and the tiny subtleties and habits he had as he flew through the skies. I could identify him just by watching the path he traced through the air.
It was him. A hundred percent. And he was closing in fast from Mary's blind spot, on a perfect trajectory to catch her in an ambush.
He would know what to do. We had been over this many times. We had all discussed what to do if anyone ever came across that bitch Mary when I wasn't around. He knew not to engage head-on. Mary was a stupid fuck, after all, and didn't know how to effectively pursue an enemy. She fell for every trick and delaying tactic in the book. So when Weiss arrived, he'd be able to free my adjutant and get her the hell out of here, no problem.
He was the fourth-strongest mage in the world, after all. Literally no one else on the planet was better suited to rescuing Visha right now. I had absolute confidence in his success.
There was nothing more to worry about.
The last thing I managed to hear before blacking out completely was Visha thrashing around and screaming, desperately trying to free herself and make it over to me.
She couldn't manage it.
Mary kept laughing as she held her back.
…But at least I could die in peace, now. I had really hoped to make it another 20 or 30 seconds to watch as Weiss flew in like a fucking hero and saved the day, but it just wasn't meant to be.
This was good enough.
I blacked out. For real this time.
…
…
…
…But this was still not the end for me. Perhaps it was the end of my time in the waking world, but there was still one more thing to come. A realization. The most important one of my life. And it all transpired in the dying flickers of consciousness as my brain shut down.
The mind tends to wander during its final moments. Anyone who had ever had a near-death experience would tell you as much.
My mind wandered to some very strange places indeed.
Discord: A3dTszc
AN: This is basically the end of the prologue. All 5 of these chapters used to be one super long chapter. I split them up though. Shorter chapters are easier to edit.
We get into the meat of the story next chapter where she actually starts the long and arduous process of digging herself out of this hole.
The first set of revisions to the first 4 chapters of the story have been made as well. That's part of why this update took so long. Some stuff was removed, and some (semi-important) stuff was added. For instance, it was originally heavily implied that Tanya survived her ordeal with Mary only because Mary was periodically using healing magic on her to extend their time together. Somehow, that part got removed by mistake when I was juggling between all the various versions of that chapter. But it is back now.