Chapter 2 – Reasoning with the devil

"So, now that we're up in the air, care to tell me what's going on? In every fucking detail?" Toshiro asked a bit irritated.

"Don't get angry, Toshiro…"

"How couldn't I get angry?! I smell that my grandmother being terminal is just a smokescreen behind which you want to pull something off!" Toshiro yelled.

"Please, Toshiro, calm down…"

"I won't calm down!" Toshiro shouted while walking circles. "Why can't you tell everything straight from the bat?!"

"Sit down, Colonel! That's an order!" Adolfine yelled.

Toshiro was stumped by Adolfine's behavior, but he sat down.

"Don't forget I'm your superior, Toshiro… Okay, I will tell you everything now."

"Oh you'd better…" Toshiro grumbled.

"First of all – your grandmother is sick, just as I presented it, without any doubt and mystifications."

"At least you didn't lie about it…" Toshiro mumbled. "I would throw you out of this plane…"

"Ahem… The second reason, would be that your dear Uncle wants you to attend to his birthday party."

"Uncs want me on his birthday party? Well, he could just fucking call me, I would've taken Yoshika and the works… But it's still a whole damn week till that, why now? Because of the flight time, right?"

"Precisely. There's also third reason – your lack of qualifications, Toshiro."

"Oh? What am I missing, according to the high and mighty Wehrmacht?"

"You never received proper officer training, Toshiro, be it the IFN or the Wehrmacht. And Yoshika, who is a reservist, had one…"

"Oh crap… You're right… And I'm a Colonel, a rank away from a Brigadier General, hah! So, you'll probably sending me to a crash course, right?"

"Yes. It will take two weeks, maximally condensed, since you're apt enough to pull this through."

"But I would have two more weeks or so till Yoshika arrives in Europe, right?"

"That's the fourth reason now, Toshiro. You will assist Ursula in improving and finishing the new wave of prototype equipment, that's being made especially for you… As usual…"

"Now you're cooking with gas, Adolfine, I always look forward to some upgrades. But where would I employ it, huh? Transvaal?"

"Reason Nummer Fünf, Toshiro, one I didn't want to mention just yet, but given your little outburst, I think it's necessary now… You will be transferred to Sint-Truiden after you'll finish everything in Neue Karlsland."

Toshiro looked at her with fire burning in his eyes.

"Don't look at me like that, Toshiro. Look at the bright side, you'll be on the same continent as Yoshika, it's not that far from Belgica to Helvetia… You'll even have special permission to use your new Striker to visit her in Basel."

"And why am I being transferred there?" He asked.

"Command has started devising a plan of the operation to recapture Karlsland. The working codename is 'Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein'. We will attack from both the west, from land and air, and from south, through land, air and… river…"

"River? What, you're going to float the Yamato on the Rhine? Hah! Preposterous!"

"That's the plan…" Adolfine said calmly.

"Wait, wait… You will be using some elaborate buoyancy system to float an almost seventy two thousand ton battleship up a river?!" Toshiro asked totally surprised.

"That's the plan. The Fuso Navy scientists must be real crackpots…"

"Yeah, I guess they are…" Toshiro sighed. "So… Got any info on that Shizuka gal?"

"I'm well prepared, Toshiro." She answered and pulled out a dossier out of her trusty locker.

Toshiro took it and started reading it.

Shizuka Hattori

She looks like Mio's daughter would look like…

Rank: Sergeant

Heh, at least she won't have direct power over her. Ah, well, Yoshika didn't actually dump the IFN as she said, she's a permanent reserve now.

Height: 159 cm

She's taller than Yoshika…

Date of Birth: August 18, 1931

So she's two years younger and…

"Hey, Adolfine… It appears that she has birthday the same as Yoshika and Sanya."

"Nice coincidence, I knew you'd spot it out. So, what do you think about her?"

"As I already pondered, she looks like Mio's daughter would look like."

"Hahahaha!"

"Heh, yeah… I hope she will protect my Yoshika…. By the way, how will they be travelling?"

"The battleship Amagi will take them to Pas-de-Calais. I believe you know where that is?"

"Just too well… You know about Minna's boyfriend, right?"

"Yes… Poor girl… I know all the details..." Adolfine said with a solemn voice.

"Anyway… Are there any more reasons you pulled me out of my new home, where I had three hot meals, a warm bed and a girl that loves me above her own life?"

"There is one reason left, but I'm risking my neck just telling you it exists…"

"Okay, Adolfine, you told me enough not to be pissed off like a hornets nest in a bears ass. I'm sorry for being such a grump…"

"I understand you, Toshiro… At least I think I do... You probably had a nice thing going on with Yoshika, right?"

"Yeah… We're almost like a married couple now…"

"Talking about Yoshika… How does she cope with the loss of her magic? And maybe you could tell me about how Mio feels?"

"Mio is a really simple case, really. She found a new passion in being a drill instructor. The poor cadets, my gods… She even taught Yoshika some self-defense techniques, so that's probably why she tried to shoo you off with that knife."

"Yes, that was a bit of a shock for me."

"She was just waving it as a warning. Yoshika would never hurt or, gods forbid, kill another human being on purpose."

"As I thought, but thanks for making it clear…"

"She had a phase in Romagna though…"

"Hmm?"

"The negative emotions she felt while I was gone "training" piled up, and whenever Yoshika felt I was in "danger" of being "taken" by another girl, she would flip. Or at that one time I was April Fooled and she smacked Erica…" Toshiro sighed.

"Wow…"

"Well, I wanted to smack Erica too. Do you know how fucking painful it is when the inner side of your hand gets ripped off?"

"Youch, what the hell happened?"

"Cyanoacrylic glue on a doorknob…"

"Whoops. Well, combined with your strength… And the solidness of that door you had in your room… It was that one, right?"

"Yup. But all ended well. I purified Yoshika and that's that."

"What a wild ride… So, returning to Mio?"

"I asked her what she's feeling, now that she can't fly on her own. You know what she told me?"

"Nope, no clue."

"As long as I stand on my two legs, I will fight the Neuroi, even in the most indirect ways."

"All Mio… Then I guess Yoshika didn't make the transition so smoothly?"

"Yes, there was a hitch… About a week after we returned, Michiko, her cousin visited her in the clinic. She helped us peeling a daikon for beef stew, and she cut herself in the finger. Yoshika extended her hands towards Michiko, but she took them back after a few seconds of awkward silence. Then she simply went to the… operating room, and she patched Michiko up with a bandage and hydrogen peroxide. It didn't look like anything would happen, but after supper, when we were starting to snuggle in bed, she suddenly started crying her eyes out…"

"What is it, Yoshika? Why are you crying? Don't you want to snuggle with your future husband?"

"No, no, stupid… It's… You saw it today, right?"

"See what?"

"I tried to heal Michiko with my magic… I total forgot I'm now a barren wasteland in terms of magical power… Even Kuji has trouble communicating with me…"

"Do you have any regrets, Yoshika? Do you wish that you didn't do what you did?"

Yoshika looked at me with guilty eyes and said, "No, I don't regret saving you, the 501st, and all the people of Venezia, Romagna and gods know who else… But I wish there would be some other way I could have done that…"

"You were going on the spur of the moment, Yoshika. And I'm grateful to you… You don't even know how much… I too wish it could be done in a less invasive way but… Look at the other side – we can be together now. Now I can fulfil my promise towards you, the promise I gave you on the Akagi – to protect you as long as I live."

"And then we had sex."

"You didn't have to say that…"

"Geheheheh… So now you know how the two coped with losing their magic. Anything else you want to know?"

"Do you have a set date for your wedding?"

"Thinking ahead are you? No, we didn't bother with that shit, although Sayaka is pushing us gently. We want to use our holy time of engagement to sort out the differences, get to know each other even better et cetera."

"Just don't take too long, or she might run away from you, heehee…"

"I heavily doubt it, Adolfine. For Yoshika to dump me, I would have to, dunno… fuck some stranger I guess? But probably even then we could mitigate the danger to our relationship through an honest talk and some good shagging."

"You are being really arrogant right now, you know?"

"Adolfine, Adolfine… Firstly, Yuki won't let me do anything wrong, secondly – Yoshika is head over heels in love with me, and that's mutual. Only the end of the world could extinguish that fire… And after what we did while in Pescara, sheesh… I think that if I banged you in front of her, she'd just kick me off and fist you herself."

"Wh-what?!"

"Ahahah! This is something new for you, huh? You know, Yoshika is bicurious."

"No way! She told me she's bi but… Such aggression?"

"Sounds impossible, but it's true. And it goes on! We had a literal orgy in Pescara."

Adolfine looked at him with enormous eyes.

"Me, Yoshika, Shirley and – drumroll – Minna."

"You all… Did it with each other?!"

"Hah, if you'd see what happened, we all would probably be thrown around the whole globe as punishment, hahaha!"

"I suddenly feel less comfortable with you…"

"Don't worry, Adolfine, you're off limit to me, just as any other woman without Yoshika's consent."

"Yoshika's consent?! She lets you bang other women?!"

"No, no, it doesn't work like that. I can only do it, if Yoshika's also participating, so basically any –some." Toshiro explained calmly.

"Mein Gott… The things that are going inside of the witch units…"

"Hey, I doubt such wickedness is going on in every all-witch unit. The 501st is special since I joined, heh…"

"I hope you didn't make more conquests, right?"

"As I said…"

"Good, good, I understand…" Adolfine sighed. "You are really lucky to have such a liberal girlfriend… I would forbid my man to even look at other women, if I was in a relationship…"

"Adolfine… Sex without love is just a physical exercise so to speak, nothing more."

"That's what you both say… I have a more conservative viewpoint."

"Like a True Soldier of Karlsland, right?"

"Hah, yes! So… We have slightly over a day till we land in Hawaii… What will we do until that?"

"Do you have a deck of cards?"

Adolfine reached to her locker, and pulled out a new deck.

"Prepared for every occasion, Toshiro." She said with a smug face. "Are we playing for money?"

"Of course! But I have a fifty pound limit."

"Fifty pounds it is then. We should go really low on the bids, since we have a fuckload of time…"

"On we go. Texas hold'em?"

"Why of course!"

Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein – the German name for the offensive plan in the Ardennes that became more known as the Battle of the Bulge

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