A\N: I'm certain I made a complete mess of judicial procedure. Hope it's at least entertaining.

Disclaimer: I do not own Youjo Senki

Further note: This story's discussion thread is on SpaceBattles Forum's Creative Writing section.

Chapter 5

I had originally planned to do everything I could to stretch out the trial as long as possible. After all, a successful military operation didn't happen without careful planning and proper scouting of the land, and the same applied to a prison break. After the first day of my trial came to a close on the first of November, I was starting to suspect this bit of planning may have been superfluous. On that first day, we never even got past the opening statements.

The prosecutor was the first to speak and he took up over two hours on his opening remarks. He also seemed to spend most of that time not talking about proving my guilt, but trying to convince the audience (including the reporters) to look past the fact that they were prosecuting a 12-year-old girl.

I had to keep from smirking. It seems coming to the court in a simple civilian dress that emphasized my small size and youth was already paying dividends. I'd been worried that military judges might frown upon seeing me out of uniform for what was supposed to be a judgement on my actions as a soldier, but so far no one had objected.

Naturally, when it was my defense counsel Meyers' turn to make his opening remarks, he blithely ignored the question of my guilt, and spent well over an hour harping on my youth, my theoretical childish innocence, my orphan status, and my supposedly pious upbringing. I didn't expect it to make much of a difference, of course. It's a rule in politics to never start an inquiry you don't already know the results to, and I'm sure the same extended to this trial. But if they were going to find me guilty anyway, I was going to do my best to make them look like puppy-kicking mustache-twirling villains.

Both lawyers went on for so long that soon I got sick and tired of being constantly reminded of my status as a child. Honestly, it infuriated me that after having worked so hard to be taken seriously as a professional soldier, I would have to now undo all that work and emphasize my childishness where the whole world could see it. But there is no tactic too low when your life is on the line, so I grit my teeth and bore it. Thus concluded the first day.

Later that evening, I got to do something far more productive - have a private meeting with Visha. Well, it was supposed to be private, but I wouldn't put it past the Albish secret service to try and listen in anyway. Luckily, there were quite a few tricks we could use to beat the primitive listening devices of the era. Holding the most secret portions of our conversation next to an open bathroom door with running water in the background, just for starters. Morse code tapped out on our hands as we held them was another. And of course, the third was giving any theoretical listeners a whole lot of useless dross to listen to, including a small contest between the two of us to see who could come up with the most insulting way to describe the judges.

Alas, Visha's observations only confirmed what I had suspected - moving to a foreign country didn't seem to have reduced the amount of security surrounding me. The Albish, if anything, seemed a lot more cautious. While the number of regular guards seemed reasonable, they had gone to the trouble of dedicating an entire mage company to security, working in three shifts. This meant there was never less than four aerial mages on duty at any given time, with two escorting me personally and two patrolling the skies for external threats. This neatly removed any possibility of brute force. Without a combat-rated orb of my own, trying to take on a combat mage was an exercise in futility unless I somehow achieved total surprise.

There was good news though - Visha had managed to smuggle the orbs into the quarters where she was staying (by the simple expedient of bribing one of her ship's sailors to do it for her), and might even manage to get them into the building where the trial was being held. Getting them into my hands would be a lot more difficult, judging by how thoroughly they searched her when she came to visit. Still, we could work with this.

It was on the fifth day of the trial that I was finally called to the stand, and by this time my patience was badly frayed. For over four days I had to sit silently through the parade of witnesses called to testify against me, and a less controlled individual may well have been frothing at the mouth at the sheer density of half-truths and hypocrisy. I also realized that this tribunal wasn't going to focus on the Brest incident - oh no, they were going to go over every single action I had taken during the war, looking for additional charges to stick to me.

The first witness was a survivor from that first company of Legadonian mages I'd ever tangled with. They didn't suggest I had done anything wrong, but the prosecutor insisted that the testimony was important to show that even at the age of nine I had possessed an 'insatiable bloodlust'. Since I wasn't asked to speak, I couldn't explain that the reason I'd been laughing like a lunatic was because I'd overdone the mental doping spell.

Several similar testimonies had followed, particularly after I got saddled with the Type 95 and got into the bad habit of broadcasting my Being X-induced insanity on open comms. Those mindless prayers and proclamations I had recited was now being held as proof that I had encouraged my fellow soldiers to fight without quarter and take no prisoners. Never mind that, being an aerial mage mostly fighting other aerial mages, taking prisoners was slightly impractical.

Speaking of prisoners, they'd somehow dug up the Dacian general the 203rd had captured during Dacia's aborted invasion. As soon as I saw him on the stand, I knew my unknown enemy in the Imperial government was still working overtime to screw me over. I could tell the court was genuinely affected by the broken man who with quiet sincerity quoted my words on that day, "Kill everyone but the commanding officer." It was so infuriating I wanted to stand up and scream, "We would have captured the rest except the idiots died too quickly!" It was not my fault the entire population at the Dacian HQ died within 15 seconds of fighting - that's what happens when you stand out in the open in volley formation against aerial mages.

Then they brought in witnesses from Legadonia. Luckily, that campaign had been as clean as a military operation could get, so the prosecutor was stuck rehashing old territory trying to establish my ruthlessness, my competence, and clearly this little girl is the spawn of the devil so let's all just ignore her age, shall we? The only interesting bit was when they brought in some officer from Albion Intelligence to testify how a neutral Albish outpost in Legadonia had been bombarded without warning by yours truly. All I could think was, 'Is that what I'd been shooting at that day?'

After that, they got onto Arenne. I'd expected it once I realized the way this trial was going, but it was still hard to sit through having myself slandered as a butcher and murderer of civilians when the rules of war that all nations agreed to abide by clearly classified the people of Arenne as enemy combatants. There was not a whisper about the Empire prisoners that had been executed by the partisans, not a word about the Francois mages using the city to conduct a guerrilla campaign, nor about the repeated warnings to evacuate that I had given them. Listening to the prosecution, it sounded as if I and the rest of the Empire army had rocked up to the city and proceeded to bombard it into rubble solely for my personal amusement.

It was only after this, at long last, that we arrived on the subject of Brest. The first accusation, naturally, was violating the armistice agreement. Even if the armistice wasn't going into effect until midnight, it was still a bit of a grey area. Here, they actually got somewhat clever. The V-1 rockets I had used to travel to Brest were designed to break apart in mid-air once they reached their destination, and the heavy nose cone was made to act as an impromptu kinetic weapon. Although in this case most of the cones had ended in the water, the two that had landed in the city was being held up as proof that I had fired the first shot, and the poor Francois army was only defending itself when they ignored all my demands to stand down and filled the sky with flak.

And then of course, came my use of the Type 95. While I had stuck to my original story of an accidental overload, the prosecutor insisted that the explosion had been triggered by malice aforethought, with thousands of civilians dead without being given an order to evacuate, and thousands of tons of 'neutral' Allied Kingdom shipping sunk without a formal declaration of war. The only part of that he got right was me deliberately setting off the Type 95, but the rest of his tirade made it a 'stopped clock' kind of accuracy. I was forced to admit though, he certainly made it all sound convincing if you were willing to ignore the colossal hypocrisy in calling the AK neutral. Damn, but the Albish were really milking the fact that they weren't officially in a state of war for all it was worth, weren't they?

By the time I was finally called to the stand I was understandably irritated. My temper further deteriorated when, instead of questioning me, the prosecutor spent the next twenty minutes exhorting the audience to look past my outward exterior to the evil that lay within. He didn't outright compare my physical appearance to the supposed beauty of the Devil before the fall from grace, but he certainly implied it. It was all I could do to keep my face from twitching with annoyance by the time he actually started in on me.

His first question had nothing to do with the facts, but another long-winded sentence that ended with "...do you at all regret the thousands of lives that have been lost at your hands?"

Well, at least that was an easy one. "I do not only regret the lives lost by my hands, but all lives lost since the beginning of this conflict. War is nothing but a most regrettable waste." My answer was delivered in clear if accented Albish. After considering the matter, I decided my knowledge of their language was known to too many people to keep secret (I'd taken a course on it in War College as an easy way to bump my grade), and it would at least let me make myself understood without relying on a translator.

"And yet your regret does not seem to have stopped you, or even slowed you down! Where was your regret when you claimed the lives of 10,000 civilians at Arrene, and another 5,000 at Brest?"

"I was a soldier under orders, and an officer that had sworn an oath of service. Just because I regret what I had to do while in uniform is no reason not to do it. After all, where would civilization be if we all broke our word when it became inconvenient?" Such a defense wouldn't fly back in my world after Nuremberg, but here no such precedent existed, and I doubted they were going to set one over my misdeeds, which compared to the rest of this war had been quite minor.

"And does you oath include attacking and murdering citizens of neutral parties without warning or provocation?"

I blame my worn temper for what happened next. I laughed. The bright cheerful laugh that my new body was blessed with, it cut right through the entire room. I knew it was a mistake even as the echoes faded, but it would look even worse if I tried to backtrack. So I had to keep going, "Neutral? Surely you jest! Any student of history can tell you that the Allied Kingdom has had but one foreign policy objective in the last five hundred years - to create a weak and disunited Europe."

The prosecutor's eyes flickered in annoyance, but he kept a bland face. I waited just long enough for the counsel to open his mouth, before overriding him as I continued my rant, "In the pursuit of this policy, you have fought with Legadonia against the Hapsburgs, with the former Dutch against Ispagnia, with Prussia against Osterry and Francois, and with the Francois against the Rus. And while you encouraged the continental powers to squabble over minor bits of territory, your fleets carried your flag to a quarter of the globe. So why would you change, when it has worked so well? The last time someone came close to uniting the continent was Bonaparte, and the Kingdom first funded, then led the war against the Francois Empire. Now the Prussian Empire stands the preeminent European power, and suddenly we have neutral Allied army posts present on the battlefields of Legadonia. Neutral shipping that is present in numbers just as the Francois needed a naval evacuation. Less than six months ago my unit was ambushed by a battalion of Albish-speaking mages - I suppose they were neutral as well!"

For a moment, it looked as if I might draw the prosecutor into a debate on European military history. Unfortunately, he kept his cool, and simply asked that my entire speech be struck from the record as being full of speculation and irrelevant. The motion was granted, but I saw some definite hints of amusement from the American and Imperial judges. At this point, I'd take my victories where I found them.

It seemed making me lose my temper had been the goal all along, because I was asked to step down shortly afterwards, at which point the prosecutor finally wrapped up his case. Come Monday, it would be the turn of the defense.

Over the weekend, Meyers and I went over our strategy. I did not need my lawyer to tell me I'd screwed up badly by snapping the way I did. The opposition was doing their best to paint me as violent and unstable, and giving rein to my temper was the worst thing I could have done. Now that it had happened once, I could expect every effort to provoke me again. However, I confidently assured Meyers that it would not happen again. He seemed dubious, but I could not ease his worries by revealing I planned to rely on my meditative variant of the mental doping spell to keep my cool.

But while I was confident in keeping my temper, it seems Meyers' own confidence in my case had been shaken. That Saturday evening, he brought me a new plea deal, and strongly recommended I take it. In exchange for accepting some lesser charges and a promise never to set foot in Europe, I'd be sentenced to only a few years in a minimum security prison in the Unified States. Furthermore, as long as I behaved, I'd be up for parole in a year's time - at which point, depending on how I cooperated, the Americans might be willing to grant me a provisional citizenship.

If I had been guilty of a fraction of the things they were accusing me of, it would have been a fair deal. Even with my innocence, there is something to be said for accepting a false sentence in order to avoid the risk of something worse. However, the big issue was trust. Could I trust them to keep this deal? Even the lesser charges I was confessing to could carry a sentence of up to twenty years. If they took my confession and then slammed me with the maximum, who would protest? Certainly not the Empire! And as for the promise of parole, that might as well have been a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. I'd seen enough Hollywood movies to not fancy my chances in the American prison system. Besides, part of me was loath to accept an unearned sentence. It felt like buckling under to Being X all over again.

Still, there was one part of the deal that interested me. The idea of quitting war-torn Europe for America, the land of opportunity - that was definitely attractive. Especially since I suspected the Francois and Legadonians were simply going to re-arm and come around for Round 2 within the decade, this time with Albion and Rus playing a more active role. If I could arrange an exile to the States without that pesky conviction, that would be ideal. Now, I just had to get Meyers to pass on the idea in a way that would seem attractive to the powers that be.

I tried to relax into a soft expression that would bring my youth to the fore and I said to my lawyer, "It's not that I am not interested in taking the easier path. But to accept guilt embarrasses not just me, but the Empire itself. To confess to war crimes would taint the entire victory, and lay the seeds of future conflict. I can resign from the army, I can even leave Europe for the sake of peace, but don't ask me to betray the Fatherland like this."

There, that was the best I could do. I was known as a fanatical patriot, so it should be easy to believe I would refuse to drag the Empire's reputation in the mud even to save my own skin. But ultimately, all they should care about was removing me from the battlefield. As long as they got me out of Europe and away from the front, why should they care about anything else?

Sunday, November 7, 1925, Judges' Chambers

Mueller, the Imperial judge on the Tribunal, shrugged as he looked at his Albish counterpart. "I warned you, Rutherford. Major Degurechaff is somewhat infamous for both her intelligence and her stubbornness. She's not going to give up, not as long as she believes she can win."

"But she can't! Her lawyer should have already let her know the score. She's skirted enough rules that we could justify putting her away for a long time, even if she's technically in the clear."

Mueller shrugged. "Precocious intelligence aside, she is still a child. Children do not understand politics, that takes experience. She does not understand that in the current political climate she cannot be allowed to roam free."

The American representative spoke up then, "That's cold, man. I know we agreed to all this, but the Empire seems way too ready to toss a supposed war hero under the bus. What's the catch? What aren't you telling us about her?"

Mueller shrugged. "No catch, as you put it. It's just that the good Major is a rather divisive figure at the moment. Her blatant insubordination is drawing admiration and condemnation in equal amounts, and it was decided it would be best if she was removed from the Empire. Since all of you wanted the same thing, I don't see the problem."

"Yes, well, your precocious child is making us a laughing stock. That little rant of hers got printed verbatim in half the Londinium papers! Is she going to go on like that?" came the rejoinder from Rutherford.

A careless shrug showed exactly how much the Empire cared about Albion's probable embarrassment.

It was Monday, and we were doing our best to prove the accusations against me were a load of old tosh (as the Albish would say).

To make sure I could keep my temper, I was in my magically-reinforced meditative state. I didn't like it much since it numbed the world around me, but it was excellent for not letting the slings and barbs of fortune get through my composure. Thus mentally girded, I set about the task at hand.

First, there were the many witnesses that the prosecution had called to paint me as some sort of bloodthirsty lunatic. While my character was supposedly not on trial, I knew a political move when I saw one, and countered it with Visha and Weiss. They both went up there and did a sterling job painting me as a tough but fair commander who always went the extra mile to look out for her men. This was nothing unexpected - I was an HR professional, if I couldn't promote employee productivity and happiness then I would not have risen as quickly as I did in my last life.

Weiss even went on to mention our attack on the Dacian capital and how I had insisted on following the rules of war and issuing a warning before giving the attack order. It seemed Weiss was learning how to make the rules work for him instead of the other way round, as he made no mention of how I had delivered the warning in my most childish voice in order to make sure the enemy did not take it seriously. I almost smiled - it was always pleasing for a boss to see how an employee had grown under their tutelage.

After that came the time to actually counter the charges. Here, I could have gone into the motivations, the details, the reasoning behind my actions. That would have been foolish. The fact was, the rules of war were on my side. The more I tried to argue the details, the more the opposition could obfuscate the matter by bringing in morality and ethics and maybe even religion.

Besides, the last week had been long enough to put my escape plan into place. Now it was simply holding out to see if I could somehow pull a win in the courtroom. So, I had no reason to beat around the bush.

My defense was thus, simple. Arenne was a case where all civilians had been evacuated, and anyone who was still left in the city was clearly an enemy combatant. That they did not wear uniforms did not stop their capacity for violence - as exhibited by recordings of the execution of Imperial prisoners.

Brest was even simpler - a military operation against a legitimate target. That an armistice had been agreed to was irrelevant, as it was not yet in effect. The great enthusiasm with which the Francois had unloaded their weapons on me showed that they must have agreed with my interpretation. The subsequent destruction of the port was regrettable, but I was not responsible for what was ultimately an equipment malfunction. My evidence? The obituaries of the three flight mages that died testing the Type 95, my own protest (in writing) against using what was ultimately a poorly understood piece of equipment, and Dr. Schugel's own final report explaining the working of his masterpiece (a three-page long sermon on the divine perfection of the device and the glory of god, with absolutely no concrete technical explanation).

The last detail was my supposed refusal to take prisoners, the prime witness being the Dacian general. Here, I demanded the general be brought back to the stand, and then asked a simple question - during the entire 'battle', did any of his HQ guard actually call out to surrender?

I could see he was tempted to lie, but credit to him, he admitted that no, they hadn't. Then he screamed, "But that's because that she-devil killed them all before they even had a chance!"

Now, at this point, he should have been silenced by the court. But it seemed judicial impartiality was in abeyance as in the extended silence following his cry, everyone turned to look at me, even though I was not in the witness box and technically not allowed to speak. Well, what could I say, but the truth? "It is not my fault your soldiers are so incompetent they can't even survive long enough to surrender." They quickly removed him after that which was just as well. He looked on the verge of either crying or attacking me, and that was more drama than I needed.

All in all, the whole defense was wrapped up shortly after lunch. Which meant we could now move on to cross-examination - the fun part of the exercise, or at least so I remembered from TV courtroom dramas. The prosecution went first, and immediately called upon me. Interesting, I thought they'd want to attack Visha or Weiss, throw their testimony into doubt since they were my subordinates. Still, this was good for me. My only weakness was my temper, and I had that under control.

The prosecutor didn't waste time. The legal interpretation under which I had destroyed Arenne - was I not the author behind it? "I proposed it. But it was the Empire's legal authorities who decreed it correct and made it military policy. The destruction of Arenne itself was a direct order from Berun, under the interpretation that, yes, I had proposed."

And did it not bother me in the slightest that helpless women and children had been caught up in the bombardment? That was such a ridiculous question to ask me, I couldn't help but smile. "I killed six aerial mages at the age of nine. They even gave me a medal for it. Age is no bar to being a threat."

What about all the civilians in Brest? None of them had been given the chance to evacuate. "I was not targeting them. Their deaths were caused by faulty equipment that I was forced to use under protest. Should I feel guilty every time a poorly made artillery piece or engine blows up?"

He kept at it until recess, but he never came close to tripping me up. The cross-examination would continue tomorrow, but I was confident I could keep him at bay, and after that it would be our turn to tear into his witnesses. Even if it meant nothing in the end, I couldn't help but feel I was giving a good accounting of myself.

Judges' Chambers

This time, all six of the judges were present, and it was the Waldish judge that started the conversation as he addressed the Imperial representative. "Colonel Mueller, what is wrong with that girl?"

"I'm... not sure what you mean?"

"Are you serious? Can you not see that was not normal behavior for a twelve-year-old? We were talking the deaths of thousands, and the most emotion we got out of her was mild irritation! She smiled while discussing the deaths of women and children!"

"Well, to be fair, she has been exposed to the horrors of war from a very early age. Is it that surprising that her behavior is a bit off?"

"Oh, don't act as if this is someone else's fault! Might I remind you it was your Empire that allowed a pre-teen girl onto the battlefield in the first place?"

"Now, now, let's all calm down," stepped in the American judge. "I admit, her behavior was quite abnormal, though. Mueller, what does her latest psych eval say?"

"Psych eval?"

The Imperial's puzzled tone froze the entire room. Then the American spoke slowly, as if trying to disbelieve the words coming out of his mouth, "Are you trying to tell me... that you put a city-killing weapon in the hands of a twelve-year-old... without first checking to see if she was sane?"

"Well, we didn't know it could kill a city back then, did we?" Upon seeing the distinctly unamused expressions on the faces of his fellow judges, Mueller hurried on, "But I'm sure it must have been done at some point. I just haven't seen it myself."

"Well find it!" came the furious rejoinder. "This is unbelievable. Even an ordinary aerial mage with an ordinary orb can flatten this building if he flips out, and Tanya von Degurechaff is the opposite of ordinary! When we offered to play host to her, it was with the understanding that she was overpowered - not an overpowered lunatic!"

"Agreed. This was a serious oversight." said the Waldish judge, while simultaneously glaring down the Francois judge who had opened his mouth to object. "We'll declare a pause to the proceedings until you can find those evaluations."

Friday, November 11, Judges' Chambers

"No evaluation? Are you kidding me?"

Mueller had the grace to look embarrassed. "Our mental tests were designed for adult candidates. It was decided they wouldn't apply to an eight-year-old, so the psych evaluation was waived until Degurechaff had gone through puberty. The file recommended she be administered one after she turned fifteen, and in the meantime her commanders were asked to keep an eye on her."

"And none of them spotted anything amiss?" came the question from Rutherford of Albion.

"Many of them commented on her astounding maturity and intellect. She was smart, obedient, talented, hardworking, a harsh disciplinarian, and as her first action proved, a natural born killer. In many ways, she was an ideal officer candidate, age notwithstanding. Only one of her superiors ever raised any concerns about her mental state, but the litany of praise from others resulted in his report being swept under the rug as an isolated incident."

"And what was this lone officer's comment on the girl?"

"That she was a full blown psychopath with extremely violent tendencies and should be treated with extreme caution."

"And you ignored a report like that?!"

"To be fair, the report was based on a single incident during her days as a trainee that was never repeated. She was deemed to have learned her lesson from the resulting reprimand, and further investigation was refused."

"You mean she learned how to hide her lunacy under a veneer of civilization. Do you understand why we must be rid of her?" cried out the Francois gentleman.

"Now, now, let's not go overboard." replied Mueller calmly. "As the youngest aerial mage officer in the Empire, I can assure you she has been under enormous scrutiny from day one. A single bout of misbehavior is hardly the same as a mental disorder. We've all had our bad days."

"None the less, this should be investigated properly," declared Rutherford. "We need to get a trained professional to look at the recordings of her testimony, and maybe even examine her in person."

"Is that really necessary? After all, she's going to be exiled anyway," observed Mueller. The Ildoan and Waldish judges both looked upset at this, but neither of them were in a position to protest for various reasons.

"Yes, but convicting her was always going to raise questions given the tenuous nature of the case against her," came the reply. "A medical opinion is much harder to ignore. Besides, I don't really see the objection. A pleasant stay in a rest home is much better than a conviction for war crimes."

Mueller seemed distinctly unhappy at this, but didn't raise any vocal objections when his fellow judges agreed to implement the suggestion.

Tuesday, November 15, 1925

I didn't show it, but the sudden suspension of the trial for a full week had me rattled. I couldn't help but think that the strong defense I had mounted had led to my persecutors seeking an alternate route of attack. Unfortunately, I was proven right.

Doctor Henry Smith was kindly faced, calm voiced, and someone I would have cheerfully strangled in the crib. He got up on the stand, and with the calm assurance of someone with the appropriate medical degree and over twenty years of experience in the field of psychology, firmly declared me as 'mentally aberrant'. He didn't come out and declare me insane though, oh no. He patiently explained that, without properly examining me in person, he would not make any sort of formal diagnosis. However, simply by studying the recordings of me on the witness stand, he had no hesitation in declaring my behavior as extremely out of the norm for a young lady of my tender years. Whether this was due to some natural deviation in the brain or due to my early exposure to the horrors of war, it was impossible to say. But I was apparently abnormal, and I needed to be properly examined so I could be diagnosed and a course of treatment prescribed.

At least the prosecution was thorough. Not satisfied with one testimony, they brought forward two others, who more or less repeated the words of the first. The last one seemed almost inappropriately excited at the thought of 'examining' me. I made a mental note to put a bullet in his brain should the opportunity present itself, for the sake of his patients.

Even as part of me was drowning in despair, the other part couldn't help but admire the insidious nature of this attack. The only way to refute it would be to allow myself to be examined. But even if I got a perfectly fair and unbiased psychiatrist to look me over, I knew that I couldn't escape. After all, I was a grown man trapped in the body of a little girl. And leaving that aside, I was fully aware that my focus on rationalism had placed me outside the norm even in my past life. Combine those two, and only an utterly corrupt or incompetent psychiatrist would ever give me a clean bill of health.

Some might think an asylum might be better than a prison. They were fools. With a prison, you at least had a date of release. In an asylum, you were only ever getting out if your doctor permitted it. Escaping would be easier, you say? Unlike prisons, asylums had the right to keep their inmates drugged to the gills and chained to their beds. And depending on the country, asylum patients might even be forbidden legal representation, so good luck using the law to get yourself out. To declare a person insane was to effectively revoke his most basic human rights, and this was in the enlightened 21st century. The state of mental health in this primitive society didn't even bear thinking about. Weren't lobotomies coming into style sometime around now?

I briefly toyed with accepting their plea bargain, but there was no point. My enemies had stumbled on the perfect tool to keep me permanently incarcerated, they had no need to make a deal with me now.

No, it seemed the final contingency was going to come into play after all. Rather than fearing the life of a criminal on the run, I felt exhilaration. All my choices had been stripped away, all false hope denied, my back was to the wall and my enemies in front. Sad to say, but this was a situation I was far too familiar with in this life. Even as Meyers prattled on next to me, I felt the familiar combat high singing through my veins. There were still a few days left in this trial. No matter. I was determined that I would only need one.

The same day, Berun Military HQ

General Zettour stood in front of his superior and tried not to snarl. No, not my superior. Merely an officer of higher rank.

"You want me to go to Londinium, and order the Major to accept this ridiculous plea bargain? Confess to crimes she didn't commit and accept exile and imprisonment across the ocean?"

"Please, Zettour, you need to understand. It is one thing for a soldier to get... over-zealous... in times of war. But to have her be declared insane? Think of the dishonor! Or do you think those mind-quacks could be convinced that the Major is an ordinary little girl?"

"Ordinary?" growled Zettour. "Tanya von Degurechaff is nothing less than extraordinary, and you know it!"

"Extraordinary. Insane. It's a fine line, Zettour. And do we really want such an excellent soldier being consigned to the loony bin?" The senior general Plotzen pushed across an envelope stamped by an elaborate seal. "Here, this is a guarantee signed by the Emperor himself. He's already spoken to the Americans. As long as the Major accepts the plea bargain, she'll be given the lightest possible sentence. Her subsequent exile will come with a guaranteed stipend and a decent living space. The might of the Empire backs this, it will not be violated."

Zettour studied the man for a long moment, then his lips pulled into a shark grin. "Ah. I see now. As long as she's a war criminal, it's all her fault. A verdict of insanity, though, puts the responsibility squarely on the Empire's shoulders."

His interlocutor stiffened, face darkening in anger. "You go too far. Are you refusing to follow orders, Major General Zettour?"

"Oh, I'll do it. And I'm sure she'll do it too, since it's a direct order. And, I suppose I'm glad she will even if it means losing her to the Americans." replied Zettour as he turned away. His last words were pitched just loud enough to carry, but soft enough that the general in the chair could pretend not to hear them. "After all, it's not like we deserve her anymore."

Wednesday, November 16, Londinium

It all started with a simple request. I asked to be escorted to the restroom. This was something I'd done often enough that the two mages escorting me did not even blink. Just as before, the two men took up their posts outside the ladies' room as I went in to do my business.

When I got there, I headed directly for the leftmost stall, and started feeling behind the cistern. There, in the same place I'd felt it the last three times I'd checked, was a small package stuck in place with sticky tape. Yes, I'd ripped this idea from The Godfather. It worked for me just as well as it had for Michael Corleone. Thank you, Visha.

Stepping out of the stall computation orb in hand, I took a deep breath. Showtime. The mage presence drastically complicated matters. My first trick was also the trickiest.

The first step was a blasting spell. There was no way a civilian orb could cast it, so instead I used the Junghans M2-G to leech any excess mana as I built it up in my bare hand. My experience with the Type 97 stood me in good stead here. The M2-G was utterly incapable of parallel casting, but my experience with the same meant I could hold one spell in my hand while doing something else with the orb - in this case, absorbing any leaked mana that might tip off my guards.

Once the blasting spell was ready, I let fly at a wall that I knew separated the restroom from a currently unoccupied office. Even as the spell was in the air, I was making a leap for the bit of wall above the doorway. The air around my fingernails (carefully filed into points) started to ripple, and the tiny mage blade spells bit deeply and smoothly into the brick.

Hanging on by one's fingertips might have been extremely difficult, if it weren't for body reinforcement. Even at the minimal level I was capable of, I was still a 25-kilo girl capable of bench-pressing 50. I dropped the mage blade spells, hanging on by grip alone, and activated an illusion of an undamaged wall. Just in time, too, as my escort stormed into the room.

While they cleared the corners in adequate fashion, I was somewhat disappointed none of them bothered to look up, instead all their attention was focused on the big hole in the wall. As they were gawking at that, I swung down and out into the hallway, and started to hustle, an illusion of a reporter I'd noticed in the audience covering myself.

I passed several people poking their heads out of their offices wondering what the ruckus was about, but no one stopped me as I followed the instructions from Visha and Weiss' meticulous scouting to a small locked side exit. Here, I had to drop the illusion and switch to an extremely low-power shield spell. Shield spells were all about creating solid shapes out of mana. In this case, the mana poured into the keyhole, and took the shape of a key.

One swift click, and I was out in an alley running beside the building, once more mimicking the wall. There was a guard at the alley exit, and credit to his discipline, he was ignoring the alarms that were starting to spread and maintaining his post. Unfortunately, he was no mage, so it was trivial to distract him with a projected noise and slip by him. The only anxious moment was when one of the mages on air patrol did a fly-by, but it seemed Albion mages were as incompetent as non-203rd Imperial mages when it came to spotting illusions.

As soon as I was out of sight of the courthouse, I dropped the full-body illusion. I'd been running it for less than a minute, and the civvie orb was already overheating. Instead, I kept my physical stature, and made only a few minor changes - eye color, hair color, facial features. Just enough to turn myself into what I had looked like when I was twelve in my previous life - if I had been born a girl. Unfortunately, I was still in women's clothing, or I could have taken my male features at twelve... well, nine, given my lack of height.

Akitsushimani were rare in Londinium, but my mastery of the language would allay any suspicion. Unlike Albish, no one knew I spoke the language.

Still, I was not out of the woods yet. My clothes were warm enough for the moment, but this was Londinium in winter. I needed a proper coat and other winter wear. Three blocks away I found them. Behind a skip carefully described to me by Visha, a backpack filled with warm clothes, a utility knife, trail mix, a second computation orb, and about thirty pounds sterling in currency.

I had just finished wrapping myself up when the sound of pounding feet sent my heart into my throat. Preparing to sell my life dearly, I couldn't help the gasp of relief when Visha came charging around the corner.

"What... what are you doing here? I swear if you've been followed..." I snarled, dropping my illusion.

"Don't (huff) worry, Major. Weiss is (huff) covering for me, no one saw me leave." The gleam of a computation orb in her hand explained how she'd pulled this off.

"Well, fine, but why...?"

"Let me come with you!"

"What...? What about your family? Your friends?"

"They... they can manage without me. You'll be all alone..."

I could tell she didn't want to. No matter how her loyalty might drive her to make the offer, Visha had roots in the Empire. The cynical voice in my head was telling me that she might be willing now, but a few months separated from her loved ones would see her singing a different tune. Besides, cold rationality told me Visha was more likely to be liability than asset. No matter how valuable a trustworthy minion might be, I was no master of subterfuge, and Visha was much, much worse. I could barely conceal myself, hiding her as well was just inviting disaster.

Yet, in spite of what logic said, for the longest moment I was tempted to say yes. The reason was obvious as well. In both of my lives I had never had a subordinate so loyal and self-sacrificing. An asset like that was literally irreplaceable, yet here I was, forced to throw it aside. It must have been pain at the sheer waste that was threatening to bring tears to my eyes.

"No. Don't be stupid. Stick to the plan. You have your path for now, and I have mine. Farewell."

"Will we meet again?"

That brought me up short. The obvious answer was no, but I couldn't bring myself to say it. "If you have faith... in yourself. If you're smart enough. If you want it enough. Then anything is possible." Even as I spoke the trite words, I felt the need for something more. Yet, what could I say? For the last two years, Visha had simply been there. Doing whatever was needed (even if I didn't want her to). I'd never really examined my feelings for her, and now when the moment had come for me to speak, I didn't have the words.

As was my habit in this life, when all else failed, I turned to magic. Activating the empathic communication spell, I poured everything I felt towards Visha, and sent it to her. Hopefully, she'd make more sense of it than I could. I didn't wait to see her reaction, instead running off into the Londinium streets with a muttered goodbye.

Weiss was burning with curiosity as to what had happened to the Major, but he was too professional to ask where they might be heard. He and Visha had been confined to their quarters while the search for his superior - well, former superior now - went on. Luckily, their quarters shared a common room, so at least they could keep each other company. That, and a few whispered words from Visha had allayed the worst of his anxiety. Not to mention how glad he was Visha had managed to return before someone spotted the illusion he had created to mimic her.

Still, there was no denying that Visha was in a strange mood. She seemed completely lost in thought, alternately frowning and blushing, and Weiss didn't know what to make of it. He was wondering how the Major intended to pass this winter night - it was already well past evening - when the door to their quarters slammed open.

Both he and Visha leaped to their feet, first in defensive stances, then to attention, as a thunderous General Zettour stalked into the room. "Captain Weiss. Lieutenant Serebryakov. Can anyone of you tell me what in hell is going on here, and where the hell is Major Degurechaff?"

I looked at the boy. Judging by his awkward limbs and frame, he was around fourteen or fifteen. He was already fairly tall, and would be well past six feet once he stopped growing. Not that he looked so tall now, sitting on the cold pavement clutching a broken nose.

A red-haired girl my age was currently out cold in the gutter, since she'd been stupid enough to pull out a sharpened bit of metal that some might call a knife if they had sufficiently low standards.

The rest of his little coterie, a pair of scrawny boys a bit older than me, were looking at me with trepidation while trying to work up the courage to defend their leader's honor. I swiftly put paid to that by taking the rusty shank and twirling it around my hand in some flashy moves before making it vanish. Basic combat knife handling combined with some illusions, but more than enough to impress these punks.

Once I had left Visha, I had deliberately sought the seediest parts of the city, on the theory that it was the last place law enforcement would want to look. And I must have found it, judging by the little ambush I had almost walked into.

I looked over the four as the conscious ones stared at me silently. Honestly, their little setup hadn't been bad for untrained street kids. Two in front as distraction, two coming up silently from behind. And they'd been following me for a few blocks before picking a place with no witnesses. Their motive was obvious - my clothes were obviously better, newer and cleaner than any of theirs. Still, their actions showed a certain amount of patience and organization - or, at least, experience. And that was something I could work with, until I found something better.

Since I was back in my Aki girl disguise, I made sure to leave some of my past life's accent in my Albish: "Hello! Nice to meet you! I am Tina! You're pretty tough, but I'm tougher! What's your name?"

As I said this, I held out my hand to the leader. He looked up at me suspiciously for a long moment, then accepted it and let me pull him up. No stupid attempts at revenge or restarting the fight - good, he was already smarter than the Francois government. "Name's Oliver." he mumbled.

"Well Oliver, I'm new here. I could use friends. Would you like me to be your friend?"

A\N: Comment, please!