A Young Girl's Guerilla War

by RagnartheSemiGreen

Tanya dies in an artillery barrage on the Rhine Front, contrary to both her and Being X's plans. Unwilling to let his chew toy escape so easily, Being X reincarnates Tanya back into Japan... Six years before Britannia conquers Area 11. (First posted on Space Battles)

18. Chapter 17: A Training Arc (Pt 1)

Chapter 17: A Training Arc (Part 1)

(To my Ukrainian readers - and according to FF analytics I have at least a few of you - stay strong. As an American, I am ashamed that we have not done more for you in your hour of need. I hope that like the evil empire in my silly story, your oppressor likewise will fall one day. Some day, I hope to visit free Kyiv myself.

Slava Ukraine!

A big thank you to Siatru, and to Grig9700, Sunny, WrandmWaffles, and Daemon for beta reading this chapter.)

It took almost a week to hear back from Kyoto House, after the Christmas Debacle. Frankly, I was somewhat surprised to hear back from them at all, considering the disastrous outcome of our mission. It was tempting to pass the blame onto the Six Houses – after all, I had only decided to attempt the murder of Britannians because of their testing objective – but passing the buck is a sign of poor leadership and unprofessionalism, and so I had refrained from doing so, even internally. At least, as soon as the initial shock from Kallen's telephoned report had worn off.

I still had a hard time believing it. Not because I doubted Kallen's information, and certainly not because I doubted the Britannians would happily murder any Japanese, Honorary status be damned, given half a chance; I had just expected better from an empire that ruled nearly half of the entire world. I could only imagine what General Zettour would have said, if a mob of off-duty Germanian soldiers had run rampant over a friendly population – and just imagining what Colonel Lehgen would have done made me wince.

While the Britannians were unquestionably cruel in a way that far surpassed the cold ruthless calculus of the General Staff, I had honestly expected their apparent cultural emphasis on chivalry and "honorable" public conduct to prevent mass reprisals against the Honorary Britannians. I had known that reprisals were possible, and that legal reprisals against a handful of scapegoats were all but guaranteed, but I'd considered the prospect of full on mob violence the worst case scenario, an improbable outcome. And, while I had expected smashed windows and mass beatings as part of that worst case outcome... I hadn't expected the torture. When the Britannians had conducted their reprisals in the ghetto, it was a cold affair, for the most part. Sure, some soldiers laughed at the weeping and pleading relatives of the unlucky Numbers plucked from the crowd, and some of the self-appointed executioners smiled, clearly enjoying their work, but the killings themselves were quick – up against a wall, a bullet, and an imperious "Next!" Kallen's photography depicted an entirely different degree of horror, one that fell quantitatively short of the mass executions in the ghetto, but far exceeded those murders when judged on quality.

Moving beyond the sheer sadism unleashed by the Britannian horde, whipped into a frenzy and led by off-duty soldiers of the Purist Faction, the economic impact of the Christmas Incident had to have been vast. I lacked access to any economic data for the Area, or to any data that described the total losses, but from Kallen's first hand account and from reports the Rising Sun had received from Eleven streetcleaners, electricians, plumbers, and construction workers brought in to clean up after the mess and repair the salvageable structures, the damage was immense. Likely millions of pounds worth of property value had been wiped out in hours, not to mention the multitude of knock-on effects from shops primarily patronized by Honorary Britannians losing profits, lost wages... and considering the predatory nature of the Area's courts, and how deeply in bed they obviously were with moneyed nobles, I doubted that any Honorary Britannian who sunk into debt as a result of the pogrom would retain their land. The chances that any of the victims would win any civil claims against identified rioters were likewise slim.

This later point had brought my thoughts back to Kyoto as I tried to map out the likely impacts of the disaster. I had no idea how deep or far the tendrils of the organization had sunk into the society of Area 11, but as the most wealthy of the Honorary Britannians – as well as the core of the old elite of pre-war Japan – I was certain that the Six Houses of Kyoto had probably invested heavily into the Honorary Britannian neighborhoods of the Tokyo Settlement. If their investments had been lost and client businesses smashed up as a result of the riot my lack of forethought had inadvertently provoked, I could easily see them dropping any support for the Kozuki Organization. I had honestly expected that as rumor upon rumor of uncontrolled fires and looted shops had spread through the ghetto. My real fear had been that Kyoto, in a fit of pique, would leverage its resources against us, either taking direct revenge on us or handing us over to the Britannians as the true killers of three Purist soldiers.

So, I'd immediately started making amends. As the reports of families being driven from their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs – if they were lucky – began to drift in, I saw an opportunity to make a concrete apology to Kyoto House and to soothe my own guilt. I had tasked Nagata, Aina, Ohgi, and the newly arrived Kallen - still in her Britannian clothes – with driving the rented truck into the Tokyo Settlement with a full load for a change. They'd set up two of our portable kerosene fueled stoves in a park where several hundred of the newly homeless Honorary Britannians had fled for lack of anywhere else to go and had started conducting a typical Rising Sun dinner as best they could, considering the outdoor location. They'd taken a significant portion of the spare second-hand clothing we'd had available for distribution too, as well as all the pre-packed daily food boxes we had on hand. The reaction to my orders had been decidedly mixed; most of the group seemed at the very least willing to do as I said – Kallen and Naoto had both been happy, at least, and Ohgi had looked pleased, even after I'd asked him to stop ruffling my hair – but Chihiro had looked infuriated.

"They're our enemies, dammit!" I had just been thankful she'd chosen to explode while we were still in the Kozuki Organization's secret basement, instead of opting for a more public display. "They're traitors, Tanya! Just as bad as the fucking Brits themselves! Why the fuck are you giving them our damned supplies? We should be taking the chance to hit them while they're down!"

I had let the words hang in the air, face impassive as I met Chihiro's eyes. She had been panting, as if her shuddering breaths indicated the difficulty of merely keeping herself in check. Then, slowly and deliberately, I'd broken eye contact and looked around the room, evaluating the mood amongst those present. Nobody else had seemed particularly ready to stand up and support Chihiro – Souichiro in particular had looked incensed – but everybody had been staring at me, clearly waiting for my response. Shit! How do I justify this to terrorists? This is the wrong audience for altruism, but I can't tell them about Kyoto House – especially since we haven't made a deal yet!

"Is that really what you think we should be doing, Chihiro?" I had asked, buying time. I'd barely noticed her eager nod, as I'd been keeping my eyes on the broader audience just as much as on the zealot burning up with righteous fury in front of me. Fucking fanatics. I wish I could slap the stupid out of each and every one. "In that case, you are a fool." As she blanched with fury, I had continued, suddenly understanding exactly how I'd justify our need to soothe our secret backers. "The Honorary Britannians were bought and paid for by our enemies, that is true. But! The Britannians have just attacked them with, as the Honoraries are sure to see it, absolutely no provocation. They've just been kicked to the curb, Chihiro, which means that purchased loyalty is weak right now. Easy to undermine. The Britannians have done our work for us by driving off the Honorary Britannians – now, we need to put in our own bid for their loyalty."

"Loyalty?!" Chihiro had spat. "What the fuck do those bastards know about loyalty? They spit on Japan with everything they do, every breath they take! They have no loyalty except to their own skins!"

"Maybe." I allowed, "But the Britannians just tried to flay those skins away. They'll go back and lick their cruel master's hand eventually, like the beaten dogs that they are – but before they do that, if we can help them out under the guise of the Rising Sun while they're weak, while they're hurting from the kick in the ribs, well... Chihiro, who do you think we're fighting?"

"The Britannians!"

"Correct. The Britannians. Not the Honorary Britannians. And if we can make inroads on their loyalty now, well..." I had smiled at Chihiro, deliberately showing as many teeth as I could. To my pleasure, she'd taken a step back. Remember this, Chihiro. "How many knives in the dark can I buy now, at bargain basement prices? How many friendly fire accidents? How many cups of afternoon tea spiked with arsenic?" I had taken a step forward, and had reached up and given Chihiro a friendly clap on the shoulder. "This isn't charity, Chihiro, make no mistake – I'm buying us friends on the other side for cheap. I'm sure my investment will yield fruit soon enough."

That conversation six days ago had been off the cuff and speculative in nature. If I were being entirely frank, I had been trying to retroactively justify my humanitarian impulses, and had been more or less laying out the best case scenario. I knew that gratitude had a remarkably short shelf life, and I doubted that a few bowls of soup and some second-hand jackets would mean much to a group not locked into a hand-to-mouth existence like the residents of Shinjuku were. I had not expected much of a return on my investment, beyond the satisfaction in knowing that I had done what I could to make up for my mistakes.

In light of everything that had passed since my brief meeting with the man from Kyoto, the phone call was confusing, to say the least.

"Well done, Miss Hawthorne." A familiar voice greeted me from the tinny speakers of the burner phone. "My superiors have received your message; they had suspected you might have had a hand in inciting the unpleasantness on Christmas Eve, but claiming credit by passing information through a Britannian reporter was inspired. Personally, I'm shocked Hi-TV showed that photograph on the news, even with the face blurred out."

"Thank you. I hope this counts as a concrete achievement." I responded smoothly, smiling politely at the wall in front of me as my mind whirled. A reporter? I never contacted a reporter! ...Wait, are they talking about the guy Kallen handed her information off to? Is that how they learned of my involvement?!

The bastard chuckled, somehow almost as condescending over the phone as he had been in person. "It certainly counted for something. You truly don't do anything halfway, do you?"

"Any job worth doing is worth doing well." The banality slipped out easily as I tried to figure out what the man on the other end of the line was implying. Did Kyoto believe that the riot had been my intention all along? It was hard to figure out what else he could mean, since knifing three random men hardly counted as a masterful counterstroke. Time to layer in some propaganda to burnish my credentials further. "Especially when the end goal is the prosperity and liberty of all Japanese."

"Quite." The dry voice replied, making it clear what it's owner thought about such war aims. "Regardless, in light of both your recent success and the actions you took in the follow-up, we have decided to extend limited support to your organization." There was a pause. "The key word is limited, though. Some of our membership is... dubious about taking you on as a new client, as we are already supporting a number of other groups."

"Understood." I truly did understand. The Kyoto Group were walking a thin line here, supporting Japanese insurgents while simultaneously mining Sakuradite and producing weaponry for the Britannians. I was certain that they were extremely careful doling out just enough resources to keep Area Eleven at a simmer without actually giving the various rebel groups enough oxygen to truly set the country on fire. Considering the outcome of the Christmas Incident and the conservative nature of the two-faced oligarchs sitting in Kyoto, I would just consider myself lucky that they hadn't already written off the Kozuki Organization, myself included, as too risky an investment. "In that case, I'm already prepared to request your organization's assistance."

"Oh?" The man sounded mildly surprised. Had he really expected me to be unprepared, even when he was calling me at four in the morning? I'm just glad the phone didn't wake up Ohgi – I'm tired of getting nagged about my sleep schedule. "Well, let's hear it. What do you want?"

"We need training space and material, preferably outside the Greater Tokyo Area." My request was somewhat blunt, but I figured it was time to get down to brass tacks. "We're experiencing something of a recruitment spike at the moment, but lack the training facilities and equipment to actually put all of the new recruits to work."

Honestly, I was understating the current scope of our difficulties. Only a few hours after the last of the fires in the trashed Honorary Britannian neighborhoods had guttered out, the clean up process had begun. Plenty of Elevens, hungry and cold in Shinjuku, had leapt at the suddenly available jobs – not to mention Concession Work Permits – that various Britannian companies had posted at the labor exchanges and at the checkpoints into the ghetto. I could only assume that the companies involved were either the holding companies that had acted as the Honorary Britannians' landlords, or were the lucky winners of whatever contract bidding process the Administration had conducted. Regardless, any Japanese with experience as a builder, a roofer, a plumber, or an electrician had been snapped up and put to work patching up damaged buildings, while lots of unskilled men and women had found work as street cleaners, toting and hauling rubble and salvage as the Britannians desired.

Besides pouring a bit of money, scant though the wages were, into the Shinjuku economy and thankfully feeding all the employed Elevens for at least a few days, the sudden employment spike had also given many of those in Shinjuku a first hand view of renewed Britannian savagery. While this reminder was scarcely needed, since most of us lived in structures that still bore the marks of the Conquest, it had badly scared plenty of Elevens. "If this could happen to the ones who played by Britannia's rules now, years after the Conquest, what would they do to us?" was the question on everybody's lips in the streets of Shinjuku – the dull complacency strengthened by slow starvation and exacerbated by the sheer hopelessness of our situation had been shaken by the prospect of a more immediately tortuous death.

And as scared people do, plenty of the Elevens who had gone into the Concession during the clean-up process had looked for answers, for reassurance. Many of those seekers had beaten a path to the Rising Sun's door as soon as they had gotten back to Shinjuku; from there, the more determined or angry Japanese were taken aside by Inoue, Chihiro or Tamaki. All said, in the last week the Kozuki Organization had abruptly gained a pool of almost three hundred eager recruits, an abundance of warm bodies that were currently useless to us without training and equipment.

This sudden embarrassment of recruits was already turning into something of a double-edged sword. Our previous training cohorts had been limited – the four former gangsters under Tamaki, and four of the formerly enslaved women under Chihiro. Even that small number had strained our capacity to arm and train; the idea of training almost fifty times that number in the cramped basement hideout was ludicrous.

The sound of the man from Kyoto sucking air through his teeth came down the line, which made me wince. I remembered enough from my first life to know that a salaryman making that noise was about to either consult with his manager, or give you bad news. Fortunately for me, it was the former. "I'll have to get back to you on that," he finally said. "That's... both considerably more and less than what we were anticipating from your first request."

This time, the wince wasn't just the twitching of half-forgotten reflexes – it was a full cringe, brought about by the knowledge that I had just made a mistake. Dammit! I overestimated our value in their eyes and asked for far too much! I've just conceded the initiative and made him think I'm a fool! Gritting my teeth, I forced myself to pay attention to the remainder of the ramblings coming down the line.

"I'll have to check with management about the details. That said..." The Kyoto man paused, hmm-ing into the phone for a moment. He's just toying with me at this point, the bastard! "That said, I think we should be able to fulfill your request, at least partially." What?! "One of our organization's other partners has a significant amount of hidden enclaves in the rural and alpine provinces. I'm sure that they could be convinced to allow you to use one such enclave as a training camp. That said..." Here comes the other shoe, dammit... "My organization is only going to provide limited logistical support and supplies for this training operation of yours. You will have to prove your continued worth in order to earn our continued support."

I should have known. The Six Houses of Kyoto had maintained their fortunes and their power by making themselves invaluable to the Britannian Administration and the insurgent factions alike. They would never give support without making sure plenty of strings were attached. Forcing me to negotiate with other groups competing for Kyoto's backing in order to actually make use of said support neatly demonstrated that tactical diplomacy. They'd fulfilled their end of the bargain, or at least they would claim they had, and forcing me to grovel for scraps from their "partners" just to keep day to day operations up meant it'd be unlikely that I'd be able to cut Kyoto's strings any time soon.

Unless they've been pulling this maneuver on all the groups they support... In which case, I just need them to see that we're not competing for a single suitor, but facing a common foe...

I kept that mutinous thought in mind as I ran through the proper thankful courtesies and expressed my urgent desire to hear back from Kyoto as soon as my interlocutor could consult his superiors. That part, at least, wasn't feigned; idle hands are, according to the nuns that had raised me in my previous life, the devil's playthings, and the last thing I wanted was for the several hundred hotheads who had rallied to our banner to have enough free time to think and reconsider their decision to join us.

Fortunately, Kyoto was apparently sincere in their willingness to extend their assistance, as only a few hours later I answered another call from the still-nameless man from Kyoto.

"36.66364390064412, 138.61372273644204" The man rattled off a string of numbers in lieu of any kind of a greeting. Fortunately, I had a notepad close at hand. "Just north of Kusatsu, in the Gunma Prefecture, there's an abandoned high school complex that used to serve the surrounding villages before the war. Now, well..." The man allowed himself a dry laugh. "Our partners have volunteered it for your use. Anything for the Cause, as you say."

I forced a smile, taking care not to grit my teeth at his condescending tone. Naoto, seated across the table, raised an inquisitive eyebrow, but I just shook my head. "Please convey our thanks and gratitude to your partners." I replied as sweetly as I could manage. "We appreciate their willingness to assist with the liberation of our people."

Another dry chuckle. "Thank them yourself, Miss Hawthorne. A liaison is waiting at the site for you and your first batch of recruits. He will also be your point of contact with our partner organization for any follow-up negotiations. I'm sure you'll have no problems cooperating on advancing your shared cause." Something about the way the Kyoto representative had said that last sentence made me feel vaguely uneasy. He sounded too smug, too pleased with himself, like he had made some secret joke. That uneasy feeling was almost immediately justified by the Kyoto man's parting words. "Make sure you bring that servant of yours with you to do the talking – Major Onoda won't take kindly to dealing with a mixed-blood girl, no matter how many gutter rats she brings with her."

After the bastard from Kyoto had abruptly hung up on me, I had immediately begun preparations. I knew we were on a timer – after all, who knew how long this Major Onoda would linger at the abandoned school – and so I'd ended up delegating a great deal of the work.

Thanks to all of his time spent renting trucks and other miscellaneous vehicles for Rising Sun operations, Nagata had been put in charge of finding transport. As anticipated, he'd come through admirably, and had secured an ancient bus, once the pride of some long forgotten charter tour company. Unlike the trucks we typically used, this had been a direct purchase, since Inoue had discovered that some vehicle purchases qualified as tax-deductible business investments. Thankfully, Nagata had quickly grown proficient with the rattling death-trap, leaving us in presumably safe hands.

Naoto, assisted by Tamaki, had combed through the lists of recruits and picked out the most promising and the most likely to leave if they got too bored. In the end, they had agreed on a final list of sixty men and women from Shinjuku. Most of this first cohort would be on the older side for Shinjuku – in their early to mid thirties – but the leavening of hot-headed teenagers would hopefully invigorate the group. If all went well, this cohort's members would be able to act in a similar capacity to Tamaki, training and leading small groups of fighters. In other words, if things went according to plan, these would be our non-commissioned officers and training cadre.

Ohgi had sat down with Inoue and put together an operational plan for the Rising Sun Association, with an eye towards both maintaining our ongoing charitable operations and finding construction work in the ghetto for the other two hundred odd recruits who wouldn't be accompanying the first cohort in the Gunma mountains. Unless negotiations with the mysterious partner organization broke down completely, Ohgi and I wouldn't be back in Shinjuku until late spring, if not early summer, which meant that Inoue would be stuck with my half of the administrative tasks as well as her own share. Fortunately, her new assistant, Kasumi, was already proving an asset, so hopefully Inoue wouldn't be too swamped. I'd encouraged her to pick out a handful of recruits from the remaining pool for logistics training, but Inoue had felt uncertain about her ability to teach while keeping standards up. I could only hope she would reconsider that stance – we would need more administrators to keep our growing organization functional, just as much as we would need more drivers, more mechanics, and always more soldiers.

While my comrades handled the logistics, I'd managed to carve out a few hours one evening to meet with Kallen. We'd met to discuss her continued information gathering activities at Ashford, as well as to devise a press strategy, now that Kallen was officially a member of the Fourth Estate. Surprisingly, Diethard had proven true to his word; hours after Kallen had sent her photos and her recorded interview, along with a sample article that she had rapidly typed up detailing her experience walking through the torched Honorary Britannian neighborhood, a reply had arrived in her burner account's inbox. That reply had included a piecework contract with Hi-TV as well as a decidedly slimy thank you note from the blond producer. Which had led me to discover a fly in the ointment Kallen hadn't felt the need to point out earlier.

"Miss Cardemonde?" I gave the blushing Kallen an unimpressed look, trying to ignore the rising anger and panic. "If you're going to be a journalist, Kallen, to say nothing of already being a spy, you need to learn how to lie convincingly."

"I know, dammit!" Kallen growled back, running her hand through her already disorderly hair in a manner very reminiscent of her brother. "I panicked, okay? It was the first thing I could think of!"

I took a moment to calm myself down. As much as I wanted to rip into Kallen over this screw-up, I knew that it would be unproductive. Kallen knew that she had made a mistake, and chastising her wouldn't help. A bad leader shames their subordinates, a good leader educates them. "Do you understand why I'm worried, Kallen?"

Kallen slumped in her chair and groaned. "Yeah, yeah... If that bastard looks into the name, he's gonna find Rivalz. Who's listed as the noble sponsor of the Rising Sun in the paperwork we filed with the Administration."

I nodded. "That's true – it is a potential security breach. That said, I'm actually not that concerned about that particular aspect."

Wide blue eyes flew open and looked incredulously at me from across the scarred table. "You're not worried?! I just gave a producer who might be the creepiest man I've ever met and not stabbed a link between me and the guy we need to keep our organization functional! I just handed over a huge link between myself and the Rising Sun to a male Milly who actually gets paid to pry into other people's business! If he finds out that my last name is Kozuki, and starts asking questions... I'm fucked!" As she'd railed against herself, Kallen had scooted forwards as if propelled by some internal spring, leaning forwards towards me as she'd hammered out her last point.

"You did hand him some clues, yes, but I don't think that matters in this context." I smiled back at her, taking care to keep my eyes on her face, and to not to look down her shirt. She is your friend, and she is upset. She is also the daughter of our beneficiary. No. "Kallen, you and Rivalz taking a trip to a recently pillaged Honorary Britannian neighborhood would be the easiest thing to write off." I pitched my voice low and dramatic, mimicking a narrator's voice as best as I could with my still annoyingly childish voice. "Boy takes girl on thrilling motorcycle trip, hoping to impress and charm her with his bravery and devil-may-care attitude towards danger." She smiled slightly at that, and I returned to my normal pitch. "Boy gets a bit more danger than he'd counted on, goes to a hospital, and the girl talks about her experience to a reporter." I shrugged. "Silly, but easy to explain away."

I leaned forward, which for some reason prompted her to lean back. Pity, th... No. "Your real mistake was blatantly lying about your name, especially after you told him about being a student reporter. There are only so many Kallens in Japan, and only so many schools with newspaper clubs. If you had simply introduced yourself as Kallen, or if you had given your real last name, he might have dug a bit, but would have just had it confirmed that Kallen Stadtfeld is, indeed, a student reporter. Lying at all was the mistake – it didn't give you anything, and it will make him think you are trying to hide something."

Kallen groaned again, and rubbed at the compact that concealed her knife. "Dammit, you're right – but what do I do about it?"

I shrugged. "Don't bring it up unless Diethard does. If he asks, tell him you didn't want to give out your name to a strange man, and act offended if he gets pushy about it. If he keeps pushing after that, well... We can consider other solutions at that point."

Lesson hopefully taught, I moved on to the intended reason for our meeting. Kallen, thankfully, didn't care that she was unlikely to get any credit for her work as a stringer – in fact, I was proud to learn that she'd already considered the advantages of being an uncredited writer, namely that she might be able to slip anti-Administration, or at least, pro-Japanese, content into the mouths of actual named reporters, who would then take the fall if the Administration came calling. From there, I went over strategies to foster as much resentment for the status quo as possible. I wasn't a master of journalism or marketing, of course, but I had some lingering memories of marketing meetings from back in my first life, as well as a great deal of familiarity with the propaganda produced by both sides in my second life. Kallen had already come up with her own series of ideas about how to shatter the "Clovisland" image the Administration was so desperate to push; I left our meeting knowing that at the very least she wouldn't be devoured by the camera toting vultures.

And so, two days later, I slipped away from Shinjuku, Ohgi in tow, content that I had left the Kozuki Organization and the Rising Sun in good hands. After all, Naoto would still be on hand to keep everything moving, and since he was the leader anyway I really shouldn't have felt such proprietary concern about making sure the organization that had adopted me would still be there when I got back. At least Ohgi and Nagata will be with me... Soon, Ohgi and I joined Nagata at the rendezvous point, and waited for our first cohort to trickle in by ones and twos.

It had taken ingenuity, patience, and a significant amount of money, but we had managed it in the end. Ohgi, Nagata, myself, and a bus packed with sixty recruits fresh from the Shinjuku Ghetto bumped down the potholed surface of Prefectural Road 55, slowly picking our way over the icy surface. Every now and then, we'd had to get out of the bus and dig out the snow and sleet from under the tires, and once we'd even had to physically push the bus up and over a spot of black ice, but we'd managed it. Cold, tired, and hungry, we had arrived at our new home for the next few months.

As Nagata brought the bus to a shuddering stop outside the abandoned school, I scanned what little I could see of the huddled buildings. Even in the depths of January, the school was enfolded by the surrounding forest, the emerald green cedar boughs almost completely obscuring my view. The patches in the protective camouflage of the canopy by skeletal deciduous trees revealed that the school was in remarkably good shape, considering that it had likely stood abandoned for at least a few years.

The man from Kyoto hadn't specified when the villages from which the student body had been drawn had been wiped out, but a quick internet search conducted by Kallen indicated that the "Healing Hot Springs Resort" at nearby Kusatsu had opened under Britannian management three years ago. I could only assume that the surrounding villages, not to mention the townsfolk of the famous historic onsen town of Kusatsu, had ceased to trouble the Britannians shortly before that point.

"Any sign of the contact we're supposed to meet? What was his name... Onoda?" Ohgi asked, leaning over me from his seat by the aisle to peer out the window. "We should probably start getting all of our things unpacked and inside before we lose the daylight."

I nodded. We had only been able to bring a small amount of supplies with us on the bus, most of which was crammed into the storage compartment under our feet. Said compartment was full to the bursting with a week's rations for all sixty-three of us, the stoves and cooking fuel necessary to heat the water for the porridge and for cleaning, blankets and sleeping bags, first aid equipment, six assault rifles and the same number of pistols, as much ammunition as Naoto thought he could spare, and several jerry cans of fuel for the bus.

As impressive as that small mountain of supplies had looked neatly packed away in the compartment, and as heavy as it had all been whenever we'd had to help the bus up the unmaintained and snow-choked mountain roads, I knew that I had taken a major risk coming here. We had brought all the supplies we could spare, and there was no chance of resupply until Nagata returned to Shinjuku with the bus. More provisions, as well as all of the other materials we would need in the course of training, would have to come from the mysterious "partner organization". An organization whose representative had yet to present himself, despite the noisy and slow arrival of a tour bus crammed with the best Shinjuku had to offer.

That said, the mysterious aspect of the partner organization was paper thin. As far as I knew, there was only one resistance organization in Japan that both controlled enough territory to "lease" out land to another organization as training grounds and used military ranks.

The Japanese Liberation Front, or JLF, had spent almost six years sitting in their mountain bunkers, periodically raiding down from their strongholds and attacking isolated Britannian garrisons and patrols, as well as any locals accused of collaboration. They were the deadest of the dead enders, the last remnants of the Japanese Army that had so totally failed in its bid to defend Japan against the invading Britannians, that had indeed failed so badly that Prime Minister Kururugi had committed seppuku in response to their shameful display. Or, at least, so went the rumors.

Personally, I was in no great hurry to encounter the JLF, and indeed had vaguely hoped I would never have to personally deal with them in my bid to put Lord Stadtfeld in the Viceregal Palace. Not only had the JLF done nothing to actually help any of the enslaved Japanese or to substantively oppose the Britannian occupation, but based on what I remembered from my education before the Conquest, I suspected that the Japanese Army that had been crushed by the Britannians had looked and behaved very similarly to the unlamented Imperial Japanese Army from my first life.

They had, by all accounts, gone to their deaths with an all too familiar cry of "Nippon Banzai!"

Looking back on the Conquest, I was shocked that they hadn't attempted any Saipan-style forced mass suicides once it had become clear that Japan was lost – I could only assume that Prime Minister Kururugi's suicide had taken the wind from their sails. The Prime Minister's suicide had effectively marked the end of organized and open resistance to the Britannian invasion, which raised a number of interesting questions, including that of the Emperor. Or, rather, the question of why the Emperor seemed to be missing.

I didn't remember any mentions of the Imperial Family in my elementary school classes, and I didn't remember anybody bemoaning the deaths of the Imperial Family in the wake of the Conquest. I knew that we had had an empire at one point, since I remembered that Commodore Perry had opened Japan up in this universe just as before, but I couldn't remember learning any of our country's history past that point before the whole question of national history had abruptly become irrelevant.

Questions about what, exactly, was keeping the JLF fighting aside, I was now going to have to deal with a representative of that organization. I dimly remembered that units of the IJA from my first life had continued the war for years after the surrender, and that some holdouts had, well... held out until the Seventies.

And those had just been scattered individuals on jungle islands, cut off and alone. With their command and control intact, who knows how long they're ready to sit in their bunkers? The snow crunched under my boots as I waded forward, following in Ohgi's footsteps as he broke a trail for me. The school itself might have been protected from the heavy snowfall of mountainous central Japan, but drifts almost three feet deep were between us and the ancient wooden sign marking the entrance.

I had tried to take the lead when we had stepped up the bus, but before I could take a single step Ohgi had gently but insistently moved me aside and taken the lead. I felt somewhat guilty at using his larger bulk as an impromptu snow plow, but I wasn't going to fight for the right to exhaust myself in the snow. Plus, if that crazy antique bastard is lurking up ahead with a rifle, I'd rather he see an obviously Japanese face first.

Behind us, Nagata directed the recruits as they unloaded crates of supplies from the bus and joined me, a long chain of porters following in Ohgi's wake. Together, we slogged through the snow into the compound of buildings. To our left was a line of dilapidated two story buildings that bore the instantly recognizable hallmark of institutional housing the world over. To our right loomed an impressive neo-Classical structure, complete with Roman-style pillars in white. Time had not been kind to the once-alabaster facade; the presumably marble edifice was streaked with all kinds of stains, and the stairs were carpeted in a thick layer of rotting leaves under a crusting of wind-blown snow. Ahead of us and to the right, past the apparent receiving hall, a three story building with a high canted roof lurked. Presumably that had been the actual school building, where all the classes had been taught. Dimly, through the lengthening shadows, I could see a cluster of other, smaller buildings out past the main school building.

The only sign of life came from one of the probable classrooms. The third story window was dimly lit from inside, but anything other than the faint orange glow was impossible to make out through the smudged and dirty pane. It did not escape my attention that the window had a perfect view over the entrance to the school compound, perfect for an observer or a sniper. Good thing Ohgi was in front if Major Onoda really is set up in there. I doubted that he was – if so, he wouldn't have left that light on. Which means that's where he wants us to meet him.

I turned back to the line of bedraggled recruits following me, with Nagata bringing up the end of the line. "Welcome to your new home for the next three months!" I yelled, cupping both hands over my mouth to make sure everybody could hear me despite the wind. "I'd love to promise you a trip to the lovely Kusatsu hot springs, but sadly they are closed until we finish cleaning the Britannian filth out of them." I paused, allowing for the mandatory pity chuckle before continuing on, pointing at one of the nearby dorms. "Haul everything into that building for now and do what Nagata tells you – the sooner you unpack, the sooner you eat! Get to it!"

Trusting that Nagata would be able to handle the details, I turned around and caught Ohgi's eye, gesturing at the lit window. He nodded, mouth set in a grim line. "What's your plan for the meeting, Tanya?"

I started walking forwards, no longer forced to shuffle behind Ohgi now that we'd entered the comparatively protected confines of what passed for the school's quad. Ohgi fell into step as I passed him, and he was kind enough to confine his much longer legs to short paces. I appreciated not having to scramble to keep up, like I had to do with Naoto from time to time before he remembered who he was walking with. "Unfortunately, we need to do whatever it takes to get the JLF's – excuse me, the "partner organization's" - cooperation and supplies. Without their supplies and equipment, we might as well pack the bus back up and head back to Shinjuku."

Ohgi hummed thoughtfully. "That's a bad negotiating position. What do we have that they want to buy supplies with?"

I shrugged. "That's what we'll have to find out from this Major Onoda. Hopefully he's still coherent after years of bunker life." I paused, considering how I should phrase my next point. "The man from Kyoto... indicated... that the good Major would not respond well if I took the lead so it might be beneficial if you handle the negotiations instead."

Ohgi stopped in his tracks and turned to look at me, a shocked expression on his face. "Absolutely not! Tanya, none of this would have been possible without you – all of these recruits got on a bus and came all the way out here into the mountains because of your reputation."

Coming from virtually anybody else, I would have taken Ohgi's statement as either brown-nosing or an attempt to dodge the responsibility for the unpleasant task of groveling for our dinners. Unfortunately, in Ohgi's case, I was afraid that he sincerely believed what he was saying, which would make it all the more difficult to talk some sense back into him.

Sighing with fond exasperation, I patted him on the elbow, doing my best to affirm my appreciation for his immediate support, unfounded though it was. "Ohgi, they signed up because they're terrified of the Britannians and the gangs, and because we promised to feed them. My only role was in facilitating their recruitment by advertising the opportunities membership in the Kozuki Organization presents. They joined us because we promised them an alternative other than a slow death by hunger or a speedy death by bullet." I chuckled, somewhat amused that anyone would believe that people would throw their lives away to sign up with a terrorist organization just because of me. "No, each of those recruits signed up for their own reasons, but I doubt any of them had much to do with me. Besides, we both know that Naoto is the charismatic leader around here."

As I spoke, Ohgi's look of shock slowly turned into an expression of confusion before settling on something that I couldn't fully pin down, but looked remarkably like indigestion. "Tanya... this isn't the time or the place for this conversation, but... for such a smart girl, you can be remarkably stupid at times." He shook his head, smiled at my indignant expression, and patted me on the head!

Before I could muster the words to express my fury at his condescending attitude – what the hell did he mean by "remarkably stupid" anyway?! - Ohgi turned and continued walking towards the class building, leaving me to scamper to catch up. "So," He continued in a more business-like tone, forcing me to set aside my irritation in favor of professionalism, "we're just playing this by ear, eh? I think the only things we can really trade against their support right now is the promise of future support and friendship. And that's pretty pitiful, as far as trade goes – plus, they don't know us, so they won't trust us."

"Mhm." I nodded, mentally inventorying our assets. "I think that we have two, potentially three, presently usable chips. Namely, access, information, and violence."

"Violence, huh?" Ohgi smiled at that, a somewhat wistful look crossing his features. In earlier times I would have assumed it was a gesture that he longed to return to the battlefield; now, I wasn't quite sure what that sad smile represented, but I doubted it was anything like blood lust. "I suppose that's always on the table for you, eh, Tanya? But... why would the JLF need our help for that? They've got an army, after all."

"Yes, they do." I agreed, nodding as I stated the obvious. "They've got an army that's spent years doing nothing in particular besides the occasional small scale raid. In other words, they've got an army that has forgotten how to fight."

"That makes sense – although I'd recommend finding a more diplomatic way to phrase that sentiment." Ohgi cautioned as we approached the door to the school, unsurprisingly finding it unlocked. "Access and information, though?"

I nodded, pitching my voice low and quiet in case the JLF representative was lurking around, trying to overhear our conversation. "How many spies do the JLF have in the Britannian Concession? How many connections to the Britannian and Honorary Britannian underclasses do they have? I'm betting very few if any. We have both. Access and information."

Ohgi nodded his understanding, looking a bit heartened that we wouldn't be meeting Major Onoda entirely cap in hand. I looked up at the shadowed staircase, where a trail in the dust and debris indicated recent traffic, and gritted my teeth. Well, no time like the present. This isn't going to get any more pleasant with time. Back straight and head held high, I followed Ohgi up the stairs to our presumably waiting interlocutor.

JANUARY 9, 2016 ATB

"THE SCHOOL" TRAINING FACILITY BARRACKS

0430

Training began bright and early for everybody at The School, especially for myself, Ohgi, and Nagata. As it had been for the last week, I was the first to wake up, slipping from my blankets just before five. The old school dormitory was as frigid as always, and I changed clothes as fast as possible, standing on the blankets to keep my bare feet from the icy linoleum as I pulled on my socks one by one. As soon as I was presentable, I shook Nagata and Ohgi awake as gently as was possible under the circumstances.

Then, much less gently, I woke the recruits. One of the supplementary items Nagata had brought along in the name of morale boosting was a crank powered tape player, which I had promptly appropriated for the morning alarm, as I lacked a bugle. The recruits had five minutes to get up, get dressed, and get outside from when I passed their door, tape player in hand. Any of the five man squads with tardy or undressed recruits got the joy of doing push ups until their buddies joined them.

After everybody was awake and sorted, we all went outside into the snow for a brisk run around the compounds and between the young trees that had sprung up on the old football field during the years The School had sat empty. Ohgi or Nagata took the lead, while I brought up the rear, encouraging any stragglers to keep up with the pack. After thirty minutes or a mile run without anybody slowing to a walk, whichever came first, we all returned to the dorm for breakfast, shivering as we hastily boiled water over the camping stoves to prepare thin miso flavored with tiny bits of dried meat, porridge, and cabbage.

Breakfast was a generous thirty minutes, after which it was time for more cardio, followed by calisthenics. Next came the first class of the day.

Each "class" was led by myself or Ohgi, and consisted of a thirty minute lecture followed by having the class break up into smaller groups for more hands-on work, with Ohgi and I circulating between groups. Topics ranged from weapon care and maintenance to first aid, from learning useful Britannian words and phrases to learning how to speak about our organization to civilians potentially interested in joining – after all, this cohort in particular would ideally be the base for our noncom corps, and recruiting sergeants were a must for any army. Every now and then, Nagata would step up to teach skills like driving, vehicle repair, or basic mechanics.

One of the many bottlenecks we had identified in the training process during the hasty planning sessions prior to setting out for the Gunma hinterlands was the huge ratio of recruits to available instructors. Fortunately, Ohgi had drawn on his experience as a teacher and devised a mitigation measure of sorts, inspired by the class representatives of the high school he'd once taught at.

"Appoint one of them squad leader for a day," he'd said, "and have it rotate each day. The squad leader will keep their squad on task, and any questions they've got go through the squad leader to us. That way, we only need to talk to twelve people, and they can correct their squads for us."

Naoto and I had both agreed that this was an excellent idea; not only did it simplify the tenuous classroom situation, the strategy also gave every recruit a small taste of leadership. Ideally, it would help Ohgi and I handpick the next generation of small unit commanders from the talent pool as well, although that was a longer term concern.

After that first class period came a short pre-lunch workout, mostly running and body weight exercises. Lunch generally consisted of another helping of porridge and vegetables, supplemented with miso , followed by another class period. Typically, the afternoon class focused on slightly more cerebral topics than the morning class, and included topics such as basic tactics, simple human intelligence collection skills, soft and hard interrogation, and the ins and outs of operational security.

Unlike the morning class, where all twelve squads remained with Ohgi and I in the former reception hall of The School, during the afternoon half of the class would remain inside with me as I conducted the class, while the other half went outside with Nagata and Ohgi to get better acquainted with the firearms we had brought with us from Shinjuku, as well as other practical martial skills. Each day, the halves swapped back and forth between us, so both groups got a roughly equal amount of practice.

It had been both somewhat intimidating and nostalgic the afternoon of the first day, standing alone in front of thirty men and women, every one of them older than me. Ohgi had been beside me in every prior situation like this in my life to date, from the first distribution at the Rising Sun's hall to that morning's class session. While I obviously didn't need him to be present, it had been reassuring to have someone at my side I could count on. Now that he was gone, out in the forest with the other half of the recruits and Nagata, I had nothing but my own self-assurance to fall back on in the face of all of those inquisitive stares.

At the same time, the situation had been undeniably nostalgic in a very bittersweet way. I hadn't stood in front of a group of trainees and students like I had that first day of training since the founding of the 203rd; the shades of my old comrades hung thick about the room. As it always was when they crossed my mind, it had been hard to... keep myself in check. It had been easy to keep my eyes steely and focused on my recruits – making eye contact with strangers was far preferable to looking behind me and to my right, at the empty space where someone should be standing.

That first night, after the training session, had been particularly troubled. I had lain awake for hours, spending time I should have been sleeping tossing and turning, engrossed in sharp-edged memories. I'd finally drifted off to sleep, and been disappointed in myself when I'd woken up with tears frozen to my face. I had thought I was done with crying. I hadn't cried since that talk with Naoto in the aftermath of the truck hijacking, but it seemed like the change of scenery coupled with the memories of my last life had been enough. Thankfully, since I was always the first to rise, I'd had time to scrub my face clean as best as I could with my sleeve. Ohgi might have reassured me that it wasn't a sign of weakness to ask for help, but... I just wasn't ready to talk about anything touching on my previous life. Besides, I didn't have the time, not in the inaugural week of our training program.

I had been surprised to find myself enjoying the role of instructor over the course of this first week– I had never really thought of myself as a teacher, and much of the "training" I had subjected the 203rd to had been administered with the intention of driving them away and scuttling the rapid-reaction concept, not actual education. Yet, standing in front of my thirty trainees that first day, I had been eager to pass on my knowledge, hungry to pass on every trick I could to refine these fellow scrapings of the Shinjuku ghettos into thorns in the hand of Britannia. That craving to teach, to instruct, to build had swollen and grown with each passing day.

My hunger to teach was happily reciprocated by the recruits' eagerness to learn. I had, frankly, been shocked by the lack of any push back from my students. None of them had objected to being taught by an almost twelve year old, nor had any objected to being instructed by a blue eyed blonde. The latter was not particularly surprising – between the Rising Sun's work and the knowledge that I had lived in Shinjuku since the Conquest, nobody seemed willing or interested in making an issue of my mixed heritage. The fact that nobody objected to being taught by a child was more surprising, but I could only assume that Ohgi's willingness to back me up, coupled with the minor reputation boost I'd gained thanks to the brawl at the Rising Sun, had helped lay their worries to rest. Which meant I didn't have to waste time proving my credentials to my subordinates and could instead focus getting down to the business of education.

Seven days of hard training and instruction later, I stood in front of my class again. "Welcome back from lunch, comrades! I hope you enjoyed it thoroughly." Strictly speaking, I had been with them in the cafeteria, thoroughly cleaned and returned to its original function, and had eaten the same ration of porridge and greens that they had, but that was immaterial. "Today, I won't bother you with a lecture or ramble at you with anecdotes! Instead..." I let the deliberate pause hang in the air, and was gratified to see all but one of the attendees unconsciously leaning in towards me, eager for the next words. "Instead, I will be giving you several scenarios, and each squad will have to put together a list of objectives, a plan, and a list of required materials! After you finish, you will meet with another squad, exchange plans, and critique each other!" And now, for the incentive. "The squad with the best plan for each scenario gets this class period off tomorrow afternoon!" That should light a fire under them.

I had planned for today to be something approaching a test for my students, or perhaps a lesson in practical application, but it seemed like the lesson would be a test for me as well. Leaning against the back wall of the classroom, Major Onoda Hiroo of the Japanese Liberation Front glared at me, clearly itching to make a nuisance of himself.

The initial meeting had gone just about as badly as I had feared. The Six Houses had clearly informed Major Onoda and his superiors about my mixed heritage, which meant that while he was clearly unhappy about my presence he at least lacked any excuse to "accidentally" bayonet me as I walked through the door. Robbed of the opportunity for overt hostility, Onoda had simply done his best to pretend that I did not, in fact, exist; he did not acknowledge my presence in any way, nor did he respond to anything that I said.

While frustrating, the situation was not entirely beyond all repair. Onoda was willing to speak with and negotiate through Ohgi, who being both obviously "pure" Japanese and a man apparently met his standards. As a result, poor Ohgi ended up working as something like a translator – Onoda would say something, I would reply, Ohgi would parrot what I had just said, and Onoda would reply. It was an intensely irritating experience, especially considering that Major Onoda and the rest of his collection of Pre-Conquest fossils had spent the years safe and well-fed in their mountain bunkers, while the rest of us had been forced to struggle for food and for shelter under the feet of the Britannians. Still, the JLF were undoubtedly the stronger of the two of us, and Onoda fully knew it, knew that we needed him and his supplies more than he needed us.

After a tortuous hour, just before my fraying patience had snapped entirely, we had finally come to an accord. The JLF would provide my training group with food, ammunition, cooking oil, and other necessities including winter weight gear, for the next three months. In exchange, after the first cohort of recruits was combat ready, the Kozuki Organization would conduct two operations against the Britannian forces stationed outside the Greater Tokyo Area in accordance with the wishes of the JLF. Also, Major Onoda would have the right to observe and participate in any and all training sessions without interference.

I was, to say the least, unhappy with the agreement, but didn't see any alternative. Besides, while the initial contract was decidedly disadvantageous, as more recruits arrived the Kozuki Organization would be able to haul in more materials sourced from Shinjuku, reducing our reliance on the JLF for the basics. Plus, the current contract meant that I had three months to make a solid impression on the JLF and specifically on Major Onoda. If I could win him over, or at least reduce his overt hostility to the point where a professional relationship was possible, future negotiations would be far easier.

Just a pity the man's such an ass.

This was the first time the good Major had shown up to a class when Ohgi wasn't also present, and it was difficult to tell if this represented a step forward or not. His presence presumably indicated that Onoda had finally realized that he couldn't simply dismiss me entirely, but the fact that he'd boldly strode through the door just after the last of the recruits had returned from lunch and heading straight to the back wall boded ill. Is he trying to undermine my control over the recruits? I couldn't see how that would benefit him or his organization, since these were the people I would be using for the two missions I owed him.

No, more likely than not, he was simply an unpleasant and racist relic of the past that I would have to work around as best as I could. If he went beyond simple unpleasantness, though, or tried anything against me or my recruits? I wouldn't let a dreg who hadn't had the decency to commit seppuku with his leader as he'd presumably sworn that he would hold me back. His Japan was, like it or not, dead. Hopefully, with the cooperation of Lord Stadtfeld, I would bring a new Japan into existence.

Turning my attention away from the mustachioed pain in the ass, I started outlining the first scenario to my class. "You have received intelligence from a reliable source that a certain address contains a significant amount of sellable drugs and currency, as well as other valuables, and that said valuables are about to be moved to an unknown location via truck. The structure has guards visible outside the entrances, and an unknown number of potential hostiles are inside. Your organization is short on funds, which prompted this operation. You have twenty minutes to discuss the scenario before comparing your work with another squad. If you have any questions, squad leaders, don't hesitate to ask."

By the time class had ended, I had run the recruits through three scenarios drawn from my time with the Kozuki Organization. After the truck scenario had come the station, with details modified to describe attacking a fortified bunker full of unwary soldiers, before I'd finally concluded with Naoto's thankfully aborted idea of attacking the expansion of the Sakuradite-powered MagLev system. Major Onoda had seemed disinterested in the first scenario, had frowned as he'd listened to the squads nearest him discuss how best to ambush the bunker's occupants, and had looked quite upset for some reason when I had stated my opinion that the third scenario was a foolish thing to attempt at all and had given the squad that had opted for a tactical retreat the victory. By the time the last of the recruits had tromped out on their way to the parked bus, where Nagata would instruct them about the finer points of engine maintenance, Major Onoda had looked fit to burst.

I carefully ignored the fuming presence in the back of the room, taking time to straighten up the loose pages of notes on the desk I had commandeered. If Onoda had finally felt the need to interact directly with me, I was more than ready for him – relying on Ohgi to "translate" was a bad joke, and it wasted everybody's time. Just the same, a lot was riding on the continued cooperation of the JLF, and I couldn't afford to offend the Major to the point where he'd scuttle our whole partnership. It would be a foolish move, illogically motivated by personal rancor, but the same could be said for virtually everything he had done since we'd arrived.

I wondered why the remnants of the Japanese Army had seen fit to assign him as our liaison; my best guess was that some higher-up in the JLF did not want to work with us but did not want to risk offending Kyoto by refusing to help at all, and so had decided to task their most truculent officer with driving us off. It was the kind of stupid office politics I sadly could remember from both of my past lives, and it seemed all too unfortunately plausible.

Seeming to realize that if he wanted a conversation he'd have to be the initiator, Major Onoda peeled himself off the wall and made his way to the front of the classroom. I ceased shuffling the papers and turned my attention towards him as he came to a stop in front of my desk. I could immediately tell that this would not be a friendly conversation. He made no concession to my diminutive frame as he drew himself stiffly up to his full height, towering a foot and a half over me. Instead of angling his head down to look directly at me, only his eyes tracked downwards, leaving him glaring down his nose.

As far as attempts to assert dominance went, I judged his performance as distinctly unimpressive. Walking past a heap of corpses slumped against a wall, some of which had been my neighbors up until recently, had been fairly intimidating. The terror I had felt when I thought Naoto was going to tell me to leave had been intense, and had brought me to the brink of hysteria before I had realized I'd misread the situation. Comparatively, being looked down upon by this bastard was just a waste of my time. And I wasn't interested in wasting even a single minute that could be spent educating my recruits in a pointless staring match with this relic of the old order.

"Yes? Did you want something?" I spoke casually, pitching my tone towards the mildly inquisitive, doing my best to not offer any direct offense without kowtowing to the Major either. "If you've got any questions about the scenarios, I would be happy to explain further."

Breath hissed from Onoda's nostrils, but when he finally spoke, it was calmly, quietly. "Your tactics are cowardly and cheap. It is shameful that you are teaching your students to wage war in such a manner."

"And what would you propose, Major." I likewise kept my voice calm, but I didn't bother trying to warm up my icy tone. "Not all of us have a bunker to hide in for the next five years, nor do we have the weapons to face the foreign invaders toe to toe. What would you have us do? Shout 'Banzai!' and charge Knightmares with knives and pistols?"

Onoda's face tightened slightly, but to his credit he didn't rise to the bait. In fact, he suddenly seemed inexplicably looser, as if an unseen tension had just been removed. If this is a test... Did that mean I answered correctly? "True, directly confronting the Britannians is doomed to failure. But, from what I hear, you've never fought the Britannians, have you? You've only fought Japanese, in your slum..." He snorted slightly. "True Japanese, that is. You haven't even confronted the lapdogs of the Britannians. I even hear that you feed them, now that the puppies have been kicked by their master."

Keep calm. He's trying to piss you off... and he's doing a great job at it. "Unlike some people," I began, picking my words with care, "I plan for the future. After all, today's enemy is tomorrow's friend, especially after a demonstration of the cruelty and impotence of their current leadership." I smiled up at Onoda as my mind whirled, trying to find some way to deescalate the situation.

I needed Onoda and the resources he represented on my side – losing the JLF would not only kill the training camp concept, it would be a black mark against my capabilities as a leader in the eyes of my tentative backers in Kyoto House. On the other hand, I couldn't let him roll over me. The moment I showed my belly, Onoda would lose all respect for me, and would never accept me as anything close to an equal.

Suddenly, an idea struck me. If there was one thing that I remembered from my first life and my dealings with middle ranked managers in the corporate sphere, it was the overwhelming sense of pride this type had in their accomplishments and perceived abilities. My second life's experiences had indicated that the same held true for many middle-ranked military officers. Scoring conversational sparring points that would potentially bruise his ego did me no good – but perhaps flanking his defensiveness by appealing to that ego would. "Major Onoda, you were a member of the Republic of Japan's Army before the Conquest, correct?"

Major Onoda blinked, seemingly taken aback at my sudden change in tone and topic. "Yes, of course. I was assigned to the Komaki Garrison. Why? What do you care, girl?"

"Tanya. My name is Tanya." Showing interest was not a capitulation, and Onoda was a fool if he thought as much. "It is very impressive that you have survived so long. You must have learned a great deal during your time in uniform. You would be an excellent teacher for our recruits, most of whom know little about how to use a rifle or any number of other military skills." That's enough ego stroking... time to bait the hook. "Assuming, of course, that you haven't gotten too rusty. Five years is a long time to be out of the field, for a soldier."

Onoda snorted. "I might not have spent my years wading through the filth of Shinjuku, but I've hardly been out of the field for so long. Why do you think I was chosen to babysit you and your crowd of hoodlums, hmm?"

That was an interesting deflection, and raised several questions, but I wasn't interested in tangents at the moment. "Excellent. In that case, I am sure you have a great deal to teach my men, including how you were able to conduct honorable operations for the JLF. I am assuming that you were in uniform and only attacked military targets during these missions?"

Onoda had the grace to look moderately embarrassed for a moment, before rallying. "Irrelevant. Why should I waste my time teaching your gutter scrapings anything, hmm? Are you trying to cover up your own failings by farming out their education?"

"We are shorthanded, and you would make a quantitative difference in our instructive capacity." I replied calmly, refusing the bait. On the other hand... "But, I can understand your concerns. You have not yet had the opportunity to see any of us in action, and your information on our capabilities has come by way of third parties, not your own organization's observations." I didn't know for sure if Onoda knew anything about the Six Houses, as the name had not been mentioned even once in the first negotiating session. Best not to name-drop. Breaking OpSec would be terribly unprofessional... "If you would like, I would be happy to demonstrate my familiarity with the rifle, the pistol, the knife, or any similar skill. If such a demonstration would assist your decision on whether or not to share your skills, I believe Ohgi and the other half of the recruits are outside training with the rifles this very moment."

FEBRUARY 2, 2016 ATB
OUTSIDE "THE SCHOOL" TRAINING FACILITY
1630

Three weeks after my little "demonstration", a month after the first cohort and I had arrived at The School, the bus wheezed its way back into the center of the compound and disgorged its load of thirty fresh recruits from Shinjuku. With them in the bus came a cornucopia of badly needed supplies, including more ammunition for the training weapons, many more blankets, an abundance of multivitamin tablets and decongestant medications, and plenty of other tools to improve the educational experience.

The new recruits found six of the twelve squads of the first cohort waiting for them as soon as they got off the bus, and each of the more experienced recruits stepped forward to take responsibility for one of the new recruits. This particular concept had been one of Ohgi's brainwaves. Instead of wasting valuable instructional time on the basics, many of the simpler lessons on easily taught and rote topics could be passed student to student, freeing the instructors up to focus on teaching more advanced topics to greenhorns and the more advanced students alike.

And if I'm being honest... The fact that it gives us some badly needed free time is a relief...

It had been a stressful month, to say the least. Stressful in a manner to which I was no longer truly accustomed, I was sorry to say and even sorrier to find out. In a somewhat perverse way, I had grown acclimated over the years of my most recent life to gnawing hunger, to aching muscles, to a profound level of fear and helplessness in the face of death by forces wildly beyond my control. After joining the Kozuki Organization, I had grown familiar with the stress of combat, with the burden of responsibility. And yet, the stress of teaching, of cultivating my relationship with my trainees without compromising my need to be an effective teacher and subordinate leader... Even the stress of coming up with new lesson plans and new ways to explain topics and concepts in an easy and useful manner had been surprisingly difficult to get used to.

At some points, I had almost grown nostalgic for the nerve-jangling adrenaline boost that came from a close brush with death. Almost.

Thankfully, while he had never really warmed up to me, my demonstration apparently impressed Major Onoda enough that he had seen the virtues of maintaining a working relationship. While I was, of course, happy to have his cooperation, and hopefully the cooperation of his organization as well, in the short term I was just relieved to have another experienced fighter willing to take on some of the burden of instruction.

At first, Onoda had only been willing to teach basic weapons skills and the like to the trainees, but after a week or so he appeared to have been infected by the same hunger to teach that had taken hold of me during my first week as an instructor. Perhaps it was just the experience of having so many eyes fixed on you, eager and willing to listen to whatever you say, or perhaps it was a simple desire to maintain his pride by demonstrating the variety of skills under his command, but by the third week of the first training session, I had learned a few very interesting things about Major Onoda Hiroo.

Surprisingly, Onoda's original operational specialty had been in signal intelligence, and he had a great deal of familiarity with a variety of communication technologies, as well as some experience with interception of enemy communications. During his time with the JLF, he had developed something of a secondary specialty as a scout as a result of several missions involving sneaking into various rural outposts and either stealing code books and radios or planting listening devices or phone taps. He'd cultivated keen observational instincts when it came to evaluating the field strength of enemy units, and had apparently mastered the art of staying still for hours at a time, lurking under cover until the moment to infiltrate came.

In retrospect, this made his complaints about my ambush tactics decidedly hypocritical, but compared to his blatant racism and sense of superiority over all of the recruits, that was really the least of my problems with the man.

The only real issue I had had with Major Onoda had been heading off a scheme he'd come up with to "blood" the recruits. It had taken Ohgi, Nagata, and myself to convince him that kidnapping a number of Britannian civilians from the hot spring resort at Kusatsu for use as human targets was a bad idea. Onoda had insisted that it was a long-time tradition in the Japanese Army to make sure that recruits had the killer instinct by making them kill prisoners during the course of their training; I had no doubt that he was telling the truth about that. On the other hand, as I had pointed out to the Major, not only was the Kozuki Organization not the Japanese Army, we were also not a state actor, and thus lacked a supply of prisoners. Even if we got away with kidnapping a group of random Britannians for the first cohort, it would be impossible to do so for all the subsequent training groups. More than anything else, the logistical infeasibility convinced him to drop it.

As the new recruits found billets and dinner, I slipped away from The School, across the street, and through the surrounding forest and towards the nearby Kanayamazawa River. The forest was quiet, and the dense evergreen canopy kept the snow at a navigable level, and so I had taken to roaming the surroundings whenever I had a free moment in my busy schedule at The School. Neither of my previous lives had really given me the opportunity to get out into nature, save for military operations during my second life, and I found it immensely relaxing to step away from all of the works of humankind, just for a few moments. Bundled in the coat that Kallen had bought me, shod with a pair of Japanese military surplus combat boots crammed full of wadded up newspaper, it was easy to feel like the last person in the world under the primeval embrace of the broad cedar bows.

Down at a slight bend in the frozen river, I had found a large granite boulder standing nearly at the river's edge during an earlier exploration. It stood like some monument, some forgotten menhir, and it had probably stood in just the same way since the end of the last ice age. I was sure that, come the spring thaw, the river would rise and lap away at the boulder, but it had clearly hidden many secrets before, come water and time; when I had found it, I had discovered snack wrappers and soda bottles wedged under it, dating back from before the Conquest. It had probably once served as a place for students to sneak away from the eyes of their proctors at the school and to enjoy a few snacks and cigarettes away from adult supervision.

Now, that boulder hid my secret as well. I had, in truth, concealed one of the reasons I had pushed for the establishment of a training camp far outside of the densely populated core of Shinjuku, and far away from the innumerable prying eyes, from everybody, Ohgi and Naoto included. Ever since I had started eating better, ever since I had enough of a calorie surplus to start building muscle, my magical powers had become increasingly strong. I had been able to maintain my mental and physical enhancements for a longer period of time, and the intense use of both produced increasingly notable effects. When I had brawled with the gangsters at the Rising Sun dinner, I had overclocked my mental enhancement to the point where my perception of time had slowed down, giving me the freedom to analyze how and where my opponents would move and to prepare counters. The physical enhancement suite had almost sent me sprawling on the floor when I'd jumped over the table with far too much force, as my calibrations had been tied to my earlier functional levels.

This lack of awareness and familiarity with my newly expanded capacity had the potential to be a double-edged sword. For example, if I really had fallen to the ground during the brawl, I would have both undermined my entire presentation and left myself in a vulnerable position. I had been lucky that the low quality of my opposition had prevented them from capitalizing on my mistake – I couldn't count on similar strokes of luck in the future. And so, whenever I had time to myself, I slipped out into the forest to this spot, and practiced my magic as best as I could.

The first couple of weeks had been dedicated to re-familiarizing myself with the bread and butter enhancements I had relied upon for so long. It had been like returning to the gym after a period of absence and gradually working back up to your old weights, feeling muscles that had grown slack and lazy tighten and surge with new life. I had stumbled back to my bed with every muscle worn from the exertion of pushing myself to the edge and with my brain throbbing after the merciless abuse of the overclocking enhancements, but it had been worth it. Finally, after I felt confident in my command of my enhancement suite once more, I embarked on a new project.

Without the help of a computation orb or a similar device, flight was unfortunately far beyond my reach. I couldn't hope to complete the necessary calculations in my mind while simultaneously attempting to maneuver, nor did I have the magical capacity for unaided flight, even now that I had a decent diet. While true flight was out of the question, though, acceleration and movement along a vector very much wasn't.

When I flew, I had to overcome gravity, compensate for wind resistance, and account for a half-dozen other factors. Vector acceleration, however, did not require anything like that level of complexity. Instead of canceling out the force of gravity, all I had to do was pick a percieved direction and add a force vector pointed in said direction; the force applied would then determine how fast I would go. As perception is the root of experience, I should be able to alter my direction by simply canceling the first vector and making a new one with my facing as the new direction. In effect, this would cause me to rapidly plummet in any direction I chose by simply turning my body whichever way I wanted to go, and given sufficient experience, I was relatively certain I would be able to change the chosen direction in mid-movement, allowing me to maneuver along unpredictable zig-zagging lines, reducing my target profile.

This was not, by any measure, an easy process. My first few attempts at altering applying the theory had left me with nothing more than a sensation of intense vertigo and nausea, forcing me to stay in bed for a whole day. Ohgi had been surprisingly understanding of my need for bed rest, and even left a bottle of aspirin by my bed when he left for the morning training. All the female recruits had looked similarly sympathetic, which had finally clued me in on the misunderstanding of why I had spent a day curled up around myself, hoping that my gut would settle down. Truthfully, I was just happy that this particular source of unpleasantness had yet to rear its ugly head, but now that I had been eating adequately for several months, I was gloomily certain that shadow of my second life would soon be returning to haunt me once again.

Eventually, my training began to pay off. After some perseverance and much chewing of raw ginger to help cope with the nausea, I had finally gotten to the point where I could jump in the air, apply a vector to myself, and zoom twenty feet across the river's icy surface before turning and then hurling myself back the way I came. It wasn't flying, but the rush of wind for that precious second or two almost made me feel like I was back up in the clouds once more.

The night that the second cohort arrived, I had been practicing my vector acceleration as per normal, forcing rapid changes in the direction as I whizzed around the standing boulder. Between the certain knowledge that everybody else in the area was fully occupied moving the new recruits into the dormitory barracks and that heady nostalgic flying feeling, I had let myself sink fully into the delicious sensation of movement. In short, I had grown complacent, and had let my guard down.

"T-Tanya?"

...Oh shit!

"Tanya! What... What's going on? What are you doing?!" It was all I could do to keep control of my magic and not plow face first into the unyielding granite. Smashing down the rising panicky impulse, I ended the current vector analysis calculation in my head and let the re-established gravitational normalcy claim me, absentmindedly flexing my knees as I landed back on the stony river bank. Then, full of a mixed sensation of childish guilt and dread, I slowly turned to meet Ohgi's eyes, where he stood between the cedars at the edge of the forest.

Guess the secret's out now...