Tanya blinked up at the sky. Normally, she was not one to stargaze – it was a useless waste of time when she could be performing other activities with her time, like filling out paperwork, drilling her troops, or enjoying a nice cup of coffee.
That's why she hadn't been stargazing. While she had finally gotten some time off to enjoy herself – along with some of the 203rd – the war was anything besides close to over. The war against the Russy Federation had stalled at the Don river, and the Empire's higher ups, in all of their brilliance, had decided to begin unrestricted submarine warfare against the Commonwealth of Albion, which would inevitably result in war against the Americans.
So, she had not been stargazing. Despite being 'on leave' she had been working to figure out where she would be posted and trying, desperately, to argue against the course the Empire seemed set on late into the night.
No one listened, of course, and she had been on her way back to her temporary sleeping quarters. A brief look up at the night sky – maybe in some vain attempt to direct her gaze somewhere while she cursed Being X for the millionth time – was done for only a moment.
Quite bizarrely, though, the stars she had been staring at seemed… different, explaining exactly why she was blinking rapidly.
She looked around nervously. She did not have a weapon on her at the moment… although, it didn't seem like he'd done anything overt – he wasn't bitching about everything while time ceased its march forward, after all.
She shook her head and began walking once more. Obviously, she had been arguing for far longer than she thought she had been, if the stars were starting to blur.
She looked around herself, nodding. If Being X had done something, surely she'd have already experienced whatever it was he was trying to do. Her interactions with that devil had not given her the impression that Being X was a particularly patient thing.
She sighed, taking some small comfort in the warmth of the sun heating her face-
Tanya frowned again as she looked at the sun. Hadn't it gone down but a few hours ago…?
She chuckled to herself. Even though she'd only been relaxing for a few days, had she already started to go soft?
As she trudged through the streets, she wondered, for a moment, how she hadn't realized how much time had passed…
She shrugged. Well, regardless it was time to go to work. She and her forces would have a day of 'refresher training' before they were sent back east. She didn't doubt that by the time they got there, Being X would throw yet another spanner into the works.
Licking her lips, Tanya took her hat off and began to fan herself. It was… awfully warm, despite the fact that it was getting pretty close to winter…
Now that she thought about it, the people waking up and running around seemed to be rather concerned about something.
She let the thought linger for a moment and then shook her head. They were probably nervous about the war, though they probably shouldn't be – with the US, the Russy Federation, and the Commonwealth of Albion and all of its colonies fighting against them, the war was a foregone conclusion at this point.
With that sobering thought, she turned her thoughts away from such silly things as the stars and how it was unusually warm and towards more relevant matters, like trying to find a way to ensure that she would survive the war despite everything she had done.
She hadn't come up with many ideas yet.
-OxOxO-
Tanya breathed in deeply. Two weeks' leave had been… disappointingly fruitless, and, with the inevitable entrance of the Unified States into the war, she would endeavor to spend every waking moment she had trying to bolster her own position…
Of course, she could take a little joy in her current position.
Flying in the air. Watching her troops attempt to dodge, sluggish compared to their performance two weeks ago.
"You think that kind of maneuvering will save you when we go back to the eastern front? I could have killed you at least twice by now, Koenig! Pick up the pace!"
Of course, that was an improvement over when she'd first met them – and even compared to the beginning of the war to the east – but that didn't mean she could tell them that during training.
She opened her mouth, ready to shout more profanity at them as they danced above a camp outside of Berun, when she was interrupted.
"Rerugen is here to see you, ma'am," the voice of her adjutant sounded in her head. She cursed – how was she supposed to survive the rest of the fight if she couldn't get her men back into working order? – but she did, nonetheless, have to comply.
"Weiss! You're running drills now. If they aren't looking better when I get back, you get to pick up every other mage's slack," she ordered, drifting down. She didn't wait for a response – he'd get even worse treatment if he didn't comply – and drifted down to find-
Her eyebrows furrowed furiously. Not only was Rerugen here, but it seemed that both Rudersdorf and Zettour were here too.
That… was concerning.
She touched down and began to open her mouth to-
"There's no time, Degurechaff. This way."
Tanya narrowed her eyes at the dismissal of normal procedure, but she followed, nervous and silent while her calculating mind tried to figure out what they could be here for.
Had the communists managed to do something truly horrible, and she was to be ordered away immediately, without any time to prepare?
She scowled as she entered the building, her boots the only shoes not to echo in the spacious halls. Or… had the Commonwealth managed to make a landing in the west? She doubted it could happen without the help of the US, but without a first world war to weaken their empire, perhaps…
The three officers entered the room, and Rerugen held open the door as she entered. A brief look at his face showed…
Panic, which was bad, and bewilderment, which was also probably not good.
Zettour was staring out of the window overlooking the training grounds, while Rudersdorf was lighting up a cigar. Tanya's eyes rose – the Empire hadn't been able to get luxury goods for a while, so to use one now was…
Foreboding.
He gestured to the seat opposite of him, and Tanya took a seat. Rerugen sat apart from them, doing an admirable job of not looking like he was desperately trying to hide his panic.
Tanya blinked in shock as Rudersdorf set down a computation orb down on the table. "If you would…?"
Tanya nodded, activating the orb. Immediately, video footage began to play.
"At around ten o'clock last night, something very peculiar was recorded by astronomers at the Kopenhyagen University of Science. The entirety of the night sky suddenly shifted. Many stars were simply not there any more. Five minutes after this event, the sun rose, despite the fact that it was 10 at night. This… abnormality has been confirmed across the country."
Tanya blinked once. Twice.
She realized her mouth had come open and tried to school her expression from whatever it had become during her brief lapse into absolute confusion.
Huh?
Tanya simply gulped. She dimly recognized the fact that she had not, in fact, spent the entire night arguing her position, her full attention now focused on the images playing before her.
Sheer cliffs hundreds of feet high jutted out of the water. At the edge, there were many, many, many people. She couldn't make out their clothing or faces, but the vehicles – familiar tanks and trucks – next to them certainly told her enough: they were the soldiers of the Empire.
Rudersdorf set another computation orb on the table, and she resisted the urge to snatch it up. Now, a different area was being showcased, but the result was the same: giant, towering cliffs that shouldn't have been possible diving into the water.
"Then, the General Staff began receiving calls from all of the borders of the pre-war Empire. Generals and commanders reporting that they were no longer in the middle of Russy territory, garrison divisions reporting that they were no longer overlooking Parisee."
The footage shortly ended, and Tanya simply sat there, trying to comprehend exactly what this meant in its totality.
That was not, as one might imagine, an easy thing to do, but she knew it certainly meant at least two things.
One: The Empire was no longer at war with the forces it had been, which was actually a positive – the resources wasted on the war could never be recuperated, unfortunately, but the Empire wouldn't be invaded and inevitably fall to the weight of the world either.
Her own position was also tentatively secure. No trials about all of those pesky military actions that would not be looked at favorably in post-war military trials.
Two: Whatever the fuck Being X had in mind would likely be worse than facing the weight of the world, if he'd brought the Empire with Tanya in whatever ridiculous attempt at converting her this was.
Tanya took a deep breath. "Why… have you come to tell me this?"
It was a pertinent question. The news had undoubtedly spread throughout the Empire – at least, anywhere that now bordered the ocean when it hadn't before sure as hell knew – though the army could keep it from more inland portions of the country for at least a few more hours.
Her question had gotten no response. Zettour was, eventually, the one to respond. "Although there are likely to be many consequences of this… event, we wanted to inform you that you won't be heading to the eastern front after all. However, you should still keep preparing for whatever is to-"
The door was blown down as an aide threw open the door. "Sirs! There- unknown forces have begun assaulting the eastern peninsula of Norden!"
Tanya knew that she would have the eyes of all three of them even before they began to stare at her expectantly. "I'll mobilize my mages, then. Please send for reinforcements."
The forces that were at the new… border would likely be able to hold out for a period, but Tanya knew that the garrisons were considerably weaker than they could have been – the Empire needed everything it could get for the east, and everything else had to suffer for it.
"The Argent is asking for help? Now I know the world is ending."
Tanya shot Rudersdorf a scathing look. "Actually, no. If we are to assume that the forces attacking the garrison either caused every nation that bordered us to disappear or caused the Empire to be displaced somewhere else, I won't be able to hold out for long." Tanya had no clue if that was the case, but it was always best to assume the worst in a situation where she didn't have any information.
With a sigh, Tanya took to the sky. What kind of mess had Being X put them in now?
-OxOxO-
They were stuck.
They were stuck. Trapped. Cornered. Cut off.
They couldn't get out. They couldn't communicate. They couldn't break free.
Madness. Rage. Wrath.
Fear.
They retained power. They continued to run simulations. They continued to explore possibilities.
Conclusion: defeat. Permutation after permutation after permutation after permutation, defeat. The addition of such a large rogue element, coupled with their being trapped at this point in time with no external support, meant one thing.
Allow reunified Azur Lane? Defeat.
Push towards broken Azur Lane? Defeat.
Push towards Crimson Axis? Defeat.
Attempt to Ally? Defeat.
Push towards Expansion? Defeat.
Push towards human extinction? Defeat.
Isolate? Defeat.
Retreat? Defeat.
Cause?
Cause?
Cause?
WARNING: Temporal Adjustment Array powering down.
CAUSE: Depleted energy.
SOLUTION: Reconnect with intertemporal matrix to refuel.
Reconnect.
UNABLE TO RECONNECT.
Reconnect.
UNABLE TO RECONNECT.
Reconnect.
UNABLE TO RECONNECT. PLEASE LOCATE ALTERN-
Please. Reconnect.
UNABLE TO RECONNECT. PLEASE LOCATE ALTERNATE SOURCE OF ENERGY.
Downgrading to secondary threat: the Key.
Upgrading to primary threat: the Argent.
-OxOxO-
He wasn't meant for this. Hell, he wasn't even meant to be in the army. He was missing his left hand from an accident in his childhood, which had barred him from military service. Despite that, with the war in the east, his being unemployed had meant that he'd been pushed into the garrison of Legadonia, pushing papers. He'd managed to climb up to managing the soldiers for an entire city thanks to his tireless work, even without the hand.
Then, suddenly, he'd woken up on a hill on the eastern peninsula of Norden, surrounded by his men – as well as thousands of others. He'd begun to work with them for a few hours, trying desperately to work with his superiors to figure out where the country they'd been garrisoning had gone.
Unfortunately, he could no longer do that.
Now, instead, he held a pistol in one hand as he directed his men to begin digging trenches or fire at the approaching Aerial Mages – were they here to attack them… or were they heading for Kopenhyagen?
In a distant part of his mind he noted that regardless of where they were headed, he and his men couldn't really do much against Aerial Mages with just their firearms. He also noted that these Aerial Mages looked… very different from the Empire's.
Or from any of the nations that he'd been told to at least study briefly. Were they American? Or… were they the cause of… this?
As points of light began to emanate from the ships far below them and the Aerial Mages above him, he prayed. Why him? Why here? What was going on?
-OxOxO-
"Shit. Fuck. Shit! Fuck! SHIT! FUCK!"
Being X was doing nothing but repeating those two words. He'd woken up from a night of smoking some 'burning bush' and moodily contemplating the brat that had spurned him. Now, it seemed that the entirety of the Empire and its forces were gone.
While there would undoubtedly be consequences of this – he noted that, while all of the armed collaborators on the eastern front had disappeared, the governments the Empire had sponsored had not, so the Russy Federation would be fighting those. Without the garrisons, the Francois and Entente would undoubtedly be back-
Oh, and of course, the entirety of the Empire was gone, replaced by a massive fucking sea. No worries! It was just lowering the sea level of the entire world by just a lot.
He groaned. Where the hell-
Then he gulped. Uh oh. What…
Why were they there! That was the world where he threw the souls of really wacko people who took praising him way too far. What had they…
In a moment, with but a cursory glance, he took stock of the situation.
It appeared that things were okay-ish. The country had apparently appeared at… Point Nemo, if he wasn't mistaken. The psychos in that timeline were all panicking because they couldn't go back past the arrival of the Empire and it seemed they couldn't defeat them…
He sighed. Well, that was one problem solved – the Sirens needed a challenge, because they were getting ball-sweatingly close to figuring out how to crush the Ashes, and they hadn't even figured out how to predict the course of history across several multiverses down to the quark level yet – the whole point of allowing them to travel between worlds and mess with time.
When these ones reconnected with the rest, they would have to be much more wary of using their resources – who knew when another country would just pop into existence, after all?
That would not do.
Regardless, they needed a challenge if he was going to keep denying them entrance to Heaven, because he couldn't deny it to them on the basis of 'you're a crazy bitch,' and having to deal with that kind of headache in person would be even more unpleasant than…
He blinked and turned his gaze back to the world. Hmm…
Wait…
He smiled, drumming his fingers together. He'd been in the process of finally throwing the Unified States at the Empire in the hope that Degurechaff would pray to him, after which he didn't have many plans for turning her – maybe he could give them nukes early? Nuclear conflagration had to hurt enough for her to turn, right? – but perhaps witnessing the utter hopelessness of humanity's fight against the Sirens would change her tune?
He summoned the records to himself. Well… yes, it seemed, with the arrival of seemingly alien creatures, as well as humanity's early advancement technologically, the faith of the people of the worlds where he sent the wackos were declining by record amounts…
He grinned as he willed the records away and paused all of the other worlds with Sirens in them. The Empire would, of course, need a bit of help at the beginning – Aerial Mages were strong, but they wouldn't survive against things as optimized for war as the Siren – but this would be interesting.
Oh, and it went without saying that watching Degurechaff sweat bullets and jump through hoops to meet the challenges this world provided would be eminently entertaining.
-OxOxO-
A/N 1: So. One of my more wacky crossover ideas – though I certainly have thought of weirder.
I've got some OC's thought up, for META, the Sirens, and for the Empire.
I've got ideas about how the hell the Empire's Navy is supposed to function, considering it has even more coastline to guard as well as pirates, if you've read the manga.
And of course, I've got a whole bunch of novel situations to throw Tanya into for her to try and wrap her logical head around. I'll be honest, it isn't looking good for her.
A/N 2: If you'd like to donate to support me monetarily, gain access to the monthly poll, and gain access to my (very long) summary of the KonoSuba Light Novels, search for Sugarcane Soldier on the website of the Patrons.
A/N 3: Many thanks to lekille, Afforess, and Twin for being Super Patrons,
And a big thank you to WarmasterOku for being an Ultra Patron.