With Fumie's position insecure, an election was called for the students to decide on what to do regarding the instability the school was still facing. With Pravda now in control of Saunders, the outskirts of the school were starting to break away but for Fumie, she had more pressing issues to focus on. With the election around the corner, she was ready to gauge her popularity.
"Okay we're going to get ourselves ready for the election, with the students and people starting to feel more comfortable around us, we should see who they will choose." Fumie told the group what exactly was going to happen. "Remember, the proletariat should be able to choose what they wish. I don't want any fraud with this election right?"
"Right." The students said in unison." Fumie nodded as if they were going to hold this election. Himari and Yuri were patiently waiting in the background, they were going to make their attempt to wrestle some of that power away from Fumie and the rest of Pravda.
A little while later, the ballots were up. They were going to choose who they were going to vote for. The only person running was Fumie and it was a measly yes or no question if they would have approved for someone else to take her place. The ballot box was a simple cardboard box with a slit in the middle to deposit the ballots. The ballot box was going to be changed every time a hundred and fifty ballots were entered. Yuri and Himari were watching from afar and they had a plan.
"Since this school has a high number of black and brown skinned students, I've collected up all of the faces that are still loyal to the school and us and I've decided to run them through. I got ten different faces and ten different names for these students and since this will amount to a few thousand, we can easily put the election into our favor and Fumie will have no choice but to hand the election over to us." Yuri explained that she was willing to try everything to prevent Pravda from getting off of the ground.
"How long did it take for you to do all of this?" Himari asked Yuri how long did this take her. Yuri paused and began to think about it on how long this really took her.
"A few hours? I managed to snag a lot of blank ballots and filled them all out with our party and with their names placed, we got a bunch of boxes and therefore we can easily win this election." Yuri explained that she was prepared to try to throw Pravda off balance and try to win the election herself. They watched as the last few students submitted their ballots and now was the chance to do the classic trick to win, good old ballot stuffing. They moved in the boxes with the ballots they had and left them among the boxes of ballots that had been casted.
Fumie was waiting for the results of the election while the students were counting up the votes that had been left for them people last night. Fumie and Lisa were chatting among themselves while the votes were being counted up. They had set up the council of People's Commissars, Fumie's own cabinet with her in charge.
"I am willing to say that we have made a lot of progress so far, of course we'll win easily, the proletariat sensing that they're on our side would know that they would vote for us. I can safely say that victory is easily within our grasp." Fumie began.
"Yep, this was an easy win for us, other than the enemies we're fighting that are now on the outskirts of the school and Kuromorimine I'm still trying to plan out, I can say we should have the school perfectly stable within the next week or two. We got the support of the proletariat." Lisa told Fumie that this election was nothing more than a total victory for Pravda, there was no way they were going to lose this election.
"Hey Fumie… we lost the election." Polina began. Fumie's eyes went wide, she thought her plan was fool proof and her chances of winning were a hundred percent. Who was this new winner and what did they want them for?
"W… What?" Fumie stuttered a bit, she didn't know who was this foe that came in and decided to turn the election in their favor.
"Black Students Matter won, we lost." Polina continued to explain. Fumie went over to the ballot boxes where the students had submitted the votes and after reading through at least one of them. Fumie knew that she had a conclusion.
"Those don't count." Fumie told Polina to skip over and discard the votes from the opposing party. "If Himari and Yuri want to play this game, I'll prove that Black Students Matter is counter-revolutionary." Fumie swore that Himari and Yuri were starting to overstay their welcome and they were going to pay for it.
Yuri meanwhile was attempting to consolidate more power for herself. She was making a long list of what Fumie had to approve if the school was going to function again. She was ready to treat her like a puppet, what she didn't realize was the fact that Fumie was playing by her own rules, she wasn't going to let the opportunity go to waste.
"I am pleased to announce that we have won the election. I'm going to invite a few hundred male students for an all night party, ladies are allowed to do it too." Yuri told them that they were going to have a wonderful party which would probably devolve into what the students would call an absolute mess. "Play bunnies for all. I'm also pleased to announce that I'm going to give more autonomy to all the black…" Yuri was cut off as the door began to buckle as someone was banging to get inside. Then the door came down as standing in the doorway was Fumie and the Red Guards she was able to spare to use.
"Yuri, we need to talk about something." Fumie began. She began to move in the room with the students flanking around to take up position behind her.
"Talk? I won the election and there is nothing you can do about it." Yuri explained to Fumie that she won the election and there wasn't anything that Fumie was going to do to change that. Fumie knew she needed to go on the offensive and quickly neutralize Yuri.
"Ms. Nakamura, most of BSM votes are fake and you have casted them. I don't like the fact that you had decided to ballot stuff with these fake votes and we aren't happy about this." Fumie explained to Yuri that these votes weren't real and they had proved to go against the grain. The rifles began to point directly at Yuri and the students of the entire group. Fumie had one ultimatum to say to her. "Dissolve Black Students Matter or we'll shoot and kill you." Fumie gave the order that she wanted to intimidate Yuri into doing what she wanted her to do. She slid a piece of paper to Yuri and the latter began to read it. The message was basic and it summed up to: Sign here and give up your power. Yuri finished reading and she had one message for Fumie.
"No." Yuri replied. Fumie was furious as she wasn't one to take no for an answer. She turned back to her students that she brought in that Yuri wasn't going to yield to her demands. However, she had the power of her students behind her and she was ready to break them up.
"See! They're disobeying me, proving that Black Students Matter is counter-revolutionary!" Fumie explained to her guards that Yuri wasn't going to yield to her demands. Her only way to get them to do what she wanted to do was now by force. "Shut it down." Fumie ordered. The students flooded in as the students began firing away as Yuri knew she had to fight back but she was out gunned. One of the students swung the stock of the rifle and bashed Yuri in the head as the others were beaten severely.
Himari arrived after hearing the news that Yuri had been severely beaten up. She arrived at where their usual meeting building was to find Yuri and the other students standing outside as they had been severely beaten.
"What's going on?" Himari asked Yuri. Yuri still had her hand on her cheek as she was left with a black eye.
"Take a look for yourself." Yuri told her friend. Himari looked up to see Fumie nailing a few boards to the door. This was an obvious keep out type of message. She had decided to take out the opposition that lay before her. "Many of us and the business owners aren't happy that we're having our assembly closed by force. I'm willing to protest on these matters to make my demands clear." Yuri told Himari that she was going to protest to Fumie as she wasn't too happy about any of this going on. Himari looked at Yuri as she stormed off. She knew what Yuri was doing wasn't going to end well and there was nothing she could do to restrain her.
"This isn't going to end well." Himari told herself. As much as she wanted to support Yuri, she didn't think protesting was going to be the correct way to solve everything.
Yuri a little later had gathered a large crowd of people that were still on her side and whom they didn't have any connections to Kay, had staged a protest against Fumie thinking she was overstepping her boundaries and these boundaries were little red lines tightly squared off. For Fumie, she needed to make her position secure and not let these two walk all over her.
"End racism! More autonomy for Black and Brown students!" They chanted, Fumie was clearly not having any of this. She thought these students were starting to become unruly with this protest and decided to act. She sent in the Red Guard to disperse the protesters. The Red Guard students lined themselves up to the protesters. When Yuri saw this, she stepped forward, hoping that these students were going to join her side.
"Hey, are you going to join the protest with us?" Yuri asked. The Red Guard said nothing and they just pulled out their rifles. Within a couple of moments, they fired on the crowd of protesters. Yuri fled into the crowd as the protesters cried out as the Red Guard shot them up. For her. She wasn't liking the Pravda idea of Communism and Yuri was starting to think that Fumie was starting to set up a dictatorship. While she was implementing the changes that a normal communist would make, Fumie was also refusing to work with other groups of people and cracking down on opposition. For Fumie she knew she needed to keep law and order in the school and she couldn't use the Red Guard for all of it. She knew she needed to create more of a local force to deal with protesters.
That evening, Fumie had gathered the students around for an important meeting. Yuri was among the crowd, holding a revolver. She was going to attempt to make herself known. Fumie knew she needed to keep order if she was going to fulfill the people's demands.
"Students, I have some excellent news for us all. Something that will benefit us if we are to keep order in the school." Fumie began with an enthusiastic crowd. Yuri lifted herself up as she was dissatisfied with what was going on.
"Hey, Natalia. Are you setting up a dictatorship? I'll shoot you if you are!" Yuri threatened as she tried to make herself taller. She was keen on the idea of shooting Fumie up. Fumie knew she needed to do something about it.
"Of course not. What a crazy theory." Fumie explained that really wasn't a dictatorship she was setting up. She decided to clear her voice and continued to speak. "Anyway, I'm pleased to announce I'm setting up a secret police force to repress and kill traitors, and by traitors, I of course mean anyone not loyal to me." Fumie explained that the students will have their own police force to keep peace in the school. All that was required was for the person to be loyal to Fumie, for Yuri, she had enough. She drew his pistol from her shirt and fired three times, all of them striking Fumie in the throat and the left arm. Fumie fell off the box as if she was in pain. "OWIEOWIEOWIEOWIE!" Fumie passed out as the secret police went off to disperse the crowd with rifle fire. Yuri managed to slip away as the new police were beginning to round up all those that were involved. Since Yuri was slipping away, she was proving hard to get.
The secret police that Fumie had set up were called the CHEKA being led by mostly adults from the disbanded Okhrana who were given a generous sum of money to side with her. Their task was to protect Fumie and her friends and bully and stamp out the opposition. After Yuri tried to assassinate Fumie and ended up failing and as a result, the CHEKA ramped up the oppression on the BSM students. Within the next day or two, what remained of BSM had scattered and disintegrated. Fumie was safe… for now.
While Fumie was recovering in her bed overseen by Katyusha. There was a knock on the door. Katyusha was quick to respond to whoever wanted to come in.
"Come in." Katyusha told whoever was at the door that they could come in. The door opened with Clementia walking in as she wanted to speak to Katyusha and Fumie.
"Any news about Natalia?" Clementia asked Katyusha how their leader was doing. Katyusha began to think for a moment before she began speaking.
"She's doing fine but things are still tense. We managed to scatter BSM students and I'm praying that they won't rise up again and attack. Either way we still need to begin patching the school together to get the students and people to be loyal to us." Katyusha explained that things were still not going good for them. Clementia needed to remind Fumie about something and she knew she needed to cut Katyusha off.
"I understand." Clementia replied to Katyusha. "So Fumie. We need to talk." Clementia began. Fumie lifted her head up to see what it was that Clementia was going to talk about.
"Yes Clementia?" Fumie asked Clementia if she knew what request she needed to make.
"Okay so we've promised the people an end to the war, land rights and food. We gave them land and food but we're still at war with Kuromorimine. We need to make peace." Clementia explained to Fumie that two out of three promises to the people had been fulfilled but the war was still raging and with new wars springing up along the outskirts of the school, making peace with Kuromorimine would free up significant resources and crush the rebellions. Fumie began to think about this, she was still unwell and knew that making peace with Kuromorimine wasn't going to be possible.
"We will make peace but with the recent events that happened which have left me where I am, I say we should send someone else to make peace with Kuromorimine." Fumie explained that the injuries she took had left her where she was and unable to do anything. Clementia and Katyusha looked at each other before they looked back at Fumie. They didn't know who they were going to send.
"Who should we send to negotiate peace with Kuromorimine?" Katyusha asked if they were unsure about what they were going to do. Fumie began to think about who they were going to send over to Kuromorimine if they were going to negotiate peace.
"Let's send Lisa to negotiate peace. Promote her to Commissar for Foreign Affairs and send her over." Fumie told the group that Lisa would be the best fit to send over if they were going to secure peace for Saunders that they were now controlling.
"Okay, I'll make the phone call to let them know." Clementia replied before she got up and left the room.
Clementia would pick up the phone a few minutes later as she dialed Manami's number. She placed the phone to her ear and began to listen. She didn't know who was going to pick up on the other side and she hoped Kuromorimine was going to answer her call. Finally after what seemed to be an eternity of waiting, the phone began to send the reply over.
"Hello?" Manami asked whoever was on the other side of the conversation.
"Yes hello, this is Clementia and I would like to negotiate peace with Kuromorimine." Clementia began. Manami's eyes widened, she was now ecstatic that Saunders had given up and was now suing for peace.
"Great. We heard of the revolution that placed Natalia and Pravda in charge and Count High School had called a truce when they figured out they had been cut off from any significant help." Manami explained that two schools had been taken out of the war and this call for peace was something they both needed.
"Okay good. Lisa is coming over tomorrow to negotiate peace terms with Kuromorimine. I hope you give us fair terms as we're dealing with school uprisings all across the ship." Clementia explained to Manami. Manami began to think about it for a second while trying to figure out what she was going to say.
"Okay, good luck trying to crush them and we'll be ready to talk when Fumie comes over." Manami told Clementia that they were open to whatever terms they were going to give them and both sides needed to think over what they were going to say to the other. Peace for Saunders was finally going to happen.
[A/N]: Short chapter that mainly deals with the struggle of Pravda on keeping their unruly students together as well as resistance from the other groups within Saunders. Fumie is stamping out anyone that stands in their way. Now that her position is a bit more secure, Fumie is going to take the next big step forward, making peace with Kuromorimine. With Count High School already making a truce and Saunders being negotiated out of the war, Kurmorimine can have one last chance on turning things around. Next chapter will be the peace treaty between them.
Also we're getting an influx of views, we're nearly at 4.2k and I'm amazed, we can hit 4.5k or even 5k in a matter of days. Keep reading and I will keep updating, I will see you later. Goodbye for now.