30.[]:《》¡Now sir a war is woN!

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i. 1942—reflection

A. The Peacekeeper

The syzygy must have been mismarked on the calendar. 

Summer had come and gone in the blink of an eye. 

Allegedly, the syzygy—whatever it was—was supposed to have happened at the end of July. If not then, then at the end of August. Allegedly, there had been a contingency plan—whatever it was—in development to disrupt the syzygy which would have—again, allegedly—been accelerated by the war.

Ruminating on this missed date, the peacekeeper withdrew a stack of folders from her suitcase that rested by her feet and selected a clipped, worn packet. ‘Updated 1942. 11,’ it said on the corner, although the peacekeeper knew it was already outdated. 

The first page read—

June 5th, 1942. The Kingdom of Leo and the Dukedom of Cancer declare war on Aquarius. 
June 6th, 1942. Cancerian troops seen moving across Taurusian and Ariesian borders. Both countries grant them passage. 
June 9th, 1942. Cancerian troops seen in tandem with Leonian troops in Oroslita. 
June 11th, 1942. Aquarius requests armament support from Capricorn. 
June 12th, 1942. Capricorn concedes and supplies an unknown amount of conductors to the Aquarian army. 
June 14th, 1942. A battalion of Cancerian and Leonian soldiers seen crossing the Aquarian-Virgoan border.
June 17th, 1942. A Capricornian convoy transporting conducting equipment is attacked purportedly by Cancerian forces.

The third page read—

July 5th, 1942. Geminian prime minister refused meeting with acting First Chairman of International Relations Department. NOTE: This is the 8th refusal since June 15th.
July 6th, 1942. Gemini ratified documents forming an alliance with Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces.
July 15th, 1942. General Nil Abero marches a battalion through Ophiuchus towards Capricorn for alleged support.
July 21st, 1942 was the date of the last entry on the page.

The last page of the packet—the twenty-first page—was one that the peacekeeper had looked over just a moment ago. On that page was her reason for her journey. Armistice of a small pocket of Capricornians, Cancerians, and Sagittarians.

The peacekeeper supposed that the syzygy could have fit somewhere in-between the third page and fourth page of the packet. 

“What do you think of the high profiles involved?” the peacekeeper’s companion asked across from her. 

The peacekeeper looked up from her files. The v-lights of the train had been kept off to conserve vitae for the generator conductor powering the v-train. This left the window as the only source of light in their train compartment and even that left much to be desired.  Although it was morning, the sun was not visible in the sky. The clouds were keeping it hidden away. 

‘Clouds.’

The peacekeeper recognized the unique color and shape of them, though she was not a meteorologist by any means. These types of clouds could be considered seasonal in a sardonic mindset. Rarities that would only follow natural disasters such as forest fires—rather, the ashen plumes that would arise from them—and also man-made disasters.

“I’d like to say it’s nice to see a few familiar faces,” the peacekeeper replied, “and it’s nice to see that they’re doing a bit of that passive resistance, but I’m concerned about how their countries will view and treat them when they get back home.”

“The Cancerian president seems enthused at welcoming back his men, though I’m sure if he were dealing with Aquarius instead, it’d be a different story.”

The peacekeeper’s fingers thrummed against the files. “That emperor on the other hand—I wouldn’t be surprised if he ordered them to commit suicide the moment they stepped back into Sagittarius.”

The peacekeeper’s companion replied, “Do you really believe a child would order something like that?” 

“The person pulling his puppet strings might,” the peacekeeper said. “I guess I shouldn’t be complaining. The fact that they’re still reaching out to us for things like this gives us purpose. Would be nice if they got back into funding Ophiuchus though. I heard from Luca that even the back-up funds are running low. They’re going to start asking us to cut our hours or to work pro-bono.” 

“Wouldn’t you say that pro-bono work should come easy to people in our profession?”

“Easy to say when you’re from a wealthy family—no offense.” The peacekeeper thrummed her fingers again. “There’s a reason why we’re on this ‘case.’ There’s not many people left to hand it off to. International Relations has been chaotic without Seamus.”

“The amnesty of twelve different countries managed solely by a single department of maybe fifty or so men? Hubris.”

The peacekeeper smiled wryly. “At least Virgo’s remained neutral. Most likely not because of us, but that’s one less thing to worry about.”

“So neutral that they reject all outside contact—even ours. So neutral that they go on the offensive when anyone crosses their borders whether it be by land, sea, or sky. So neutral that whoever steps foot in their country is immediately detained.”

“Aggressive neutrality. The more that are locked up, the less people we have to worry about.”

“Locking away the problem and letting it fester instead of dealing with the situation? Apathy.”

“I knew you’d say something like that. Are you worried about her?”

The peacekeeper’s companion remained silent.

“And him?”

B. The Hauptmann

“Honor, glory, victory!”

The chants the military academies taught the newly enlisted soldiers to say when they marched into camp matched synchronously with their stomping black boots were ridiculous. The Wahrer Service Act which went into effect mid-September of that year had shortened the length of schooling required at military academies and bootcamps which had led to an influx of newcomers to the frontlines. Some were so green that they had not even yet held a conductor.

The hauptmann had adopted the habit of sending those newly enlisted—those who were barely old enough to drink—to collect the military tags after a skirmish. They would learn that way. They would learn that they were only one unlucky step away from ending up just the same. Fear was a good teacher.

They hated him—his subordinates. His relationship with the 567th Division of the Linkes Horn Battalion was a far cry from his relationship with 212th Division of the Border Force. His reputation was smeared. Prior to becoming appointed as commander of this division, he had been appointed the commander of the Blaeur Vogel penal unit. Prior to this, he had been demoted to a landser and worked on the front lines as part of a mine disarmament party. Prior to this, he had stood before the generals and acting Kaiser of his country and had been deemed a traitorous coward.

And prior to that?

The hauptmann had been something akin to a rebellious revolutionary which was a rather heated title for someone of his age. Everything had changed so quickly since then, however. It was easy to imagine that their entire operation had been but a dream. One day he was discussing follow-up plans on an outreach through Virgo, and the next he was standing in the middle of the Capital surrounded by the Militarpolizei. 

Now, the hauptmann sat beneath a dull gray tarp that had been pulled over four equidistant slabs of rock which had been conducted out from the ground. The space underneath was large enough to fit a long table, some chairs, and some crates.

Beyond the shadow of the tarp was a dense forest with thick trunks and deep green leaves that caught some of the rainfall from overhead. The hauptmann could make out clusters of men and women taking refuge beneath the branches. Half wore the dark gray uniforms of his country and the other half wore beige uniforms with copper clasps. 

The Chevalier entered the makeshift tent and sat across from the hauptmann. He placed a bottle of wine on the table. The hauptmann politely shook his head and instead stood and offered his hand.

The chevalier accepted the gesture before sitting down. “You would decline an offer of the finest wine in Cancer? Well, the finest in Cancer after our wineries in Avignon were quite literally dispensed into obliteration by your air raids.”

The hauptmann said nothing and joined him. 

“Your men don’t seem to appreciate the lull in the battlefield,” the chevalier noted. 

“Better for a young man to live a long life as a coward, then live a short one as a hero.”

“Don’t they usually say the opposite in your country? And that’s a daring thing to say for a ranking officer, isn’t it?”

“The ones who say the opposite are the ones who’ve lived long lives. Long enough to write down sayings people like us use to boost morale.” 

“I agree.” The chevalier glanced out the opposite end of the tent. “You and I are comrades in earning the occasional disdained looks from our units.”

“The word comrades holds a lot of weight in times like these,” the hauptmann warned.

“I’m aware.”

“We met before, haven’t we?”

The chevalier remained quiet for some time. “Yes, quite literally through a dear friend of mine. That time and the pain that came after seem so far away. Like a dream.”

“One man’s dream is another’s unfortunate reality.”

“I see you’re not a romantic, hauptmann.” The chevalier hesitated for a moment before he held out a gloved hand. A small shard of colored glass rested there. Most likely a piece from a blown out window. He gripped it tightly and his palm glowed pink.

The hauptmann tensed and pulled back in his seat. He fisted his ungloved hand.

The chevalier held up a placating hand. The light in his other palm dimmed. A colorful wine glass now rested on it. He poured himself a drink, swirled the glass, smelled the glass’s rim.  “I’d heard from a friend that you had certain plans. I didn’t think I’d meet you out here because of those plans. What happened?”

A general in black and silver entered the tent. The chevalier stood up and shook the general’s hand. They exchanged some words before the chevalier departed. 

The hauptmann looked up at the general. The general looked down at the hauptmann. The rain pattered. A crack of thunder masked the pop of gunfire.  The general’s uniform was clean unlike the hauptmann’s. Only marred by rain. The friends allowed the moment to saturate.

The general said, “You made the right call.” He placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. “You saved 200 of our men. You saved 200 of our allies’ men.”

“And I saved 400 of the enemies’ men.”

“Yes, the enemy. That Kaptaan says it’s simply fact that you saved 800 men.”

“The Kaptaan?”

“Yes, a very young man. Too young to be in command of that many—though he shares joint command with that chevalier. He’ll be here shortly with the peacekeepers so we can discuss terms.”

C. The Soldier

Although the soldier had made the choice to leave everything behind, the soldier had been the thing to be left behind. It was as if all their efforts, hopes, and dreams had been for nothing. Her single act of rebellion had amounted to nothing.

A ‘deserter,’ they called her. A ‘coward’. No honor, glory, loyalty, bravery, and whatever words the fresh-from-the-academy landsers chewed up and spat out. But even someone without those qualities had their uses out here—especially if they were ‘rare’ like her. Not many could bury people alive with a flick of the hand. That was why she didn’t spend long in the penal unit.

The soldier’s country had not invested in the locomotive boom at the beginning of the decade, instead choosing to invest in weapons and weapon development. For this reason, while the soldier’s pockets were filled up with weapons and back-up weapons, she had to trudge on foot to her destination alongside her fellow company mates.

They walked on foot from town to city to village to town with cheers riding on their backs. It was while trudging through her eleventh town that the soldier had heard on the news of the air raids. The enemy was trying to prevent their company from meeting up with the main line, they said. We must not give in, they said. Shelter, they said. Do your part, they said. 

It did not feel real to the soldier. The soldier had never heard nor seen of battle in her homeland—only on the southern borders. It was only passing through the fifteenth village did the reality solidify for her.

While her company took rest in an abandoned school building on the outskirts of what was once a village, she disembarked on a surveying operation into the desolation along with several other soldiers. She started through a barren, black long strip of earth that extended into the distance. She stopped short in the middle of the strip and looked left and then right where reed fields should have been. Just ahead of her there should have been a post made up of stacked crates abandoned from the local farms. That was where the military recruiter should have stood handing out plates of Kasespatzle. If she stared past the path into the distance, she should have been able to see small buildings spread far and few in-between and beyond that a small prairie dotted with a dozen or so log houses.

The soldier did not see any of that.

She continued down the path with the other soldiers as her mind went to those who should have been in those buildings, houses, and so on. When she finally reached the village, she took in the pieces of wood and metal scattered on the ground in front of dilapidated buildings. She tried not to take in the blood stains, the pieces of discarded clothing, the toppled infant’s carriage, but it was impossible.

The soldier focused on a point in the distance as she headed through the remains. If she didn’t focus, then she would think and if she thought then she would lose it here in front of those accompanying her. Eventually, she spotted a still standing building that she realized was once a bakery.

Upon entering the building, she stared up at the wooden ceiling carved with the initials of all the town’s residents—rather, she looked up at where it should have been. The sky, gray and wretched, greeted her cruelly.

The soldier pressed back against the wall behind her and let out the sob she had been holding in. It was too loud so she shoved her fist into her mouth to quiet it.  Her body shook with tremors with the effort until she was left heaving and gasping for air.

Where was everyone? Where were they? Were they alive? Did they escape in time? Were they serving in some other unit?

The unknown terrified her.

A warm hand pressed against her shoulder. When she looked up, she found a man she could not consider a friend nor an enemy. Another older man stood behind that man. This man she considered a friend, but he looked almost like her father.

So, she sobbed.

D. The Guard

The outsiders would not heed their warnings. Week after week, they would dare to cross the guard’s homeland borders without hesitation. To the outsiders, their country was merely a needed stopping point on their path to their war.

The guard had been given a duty to keep the outsiders true to their name: outsiders. No matter who it was, no matter how much they shouted, threatened, pleaded, they were not allowed in.

The guard swore to her duties on her name. Swearing on her name was a promise to the death. After all, the guard’s name was gifted to her by her parents, and she had chosen to keep her name. There was no other in her tribe that shared her name, but everyone in her tribe shared her last name. That was how their country put value both to the individual and to the community they were a part of.

Those outside the guard’s country did not have this instilled in them. This was why the war had begun, some of her fellow guards had argued. The guard did not know if she agreed with them, but they served together all the same.

That was, until a sudden decree was made one day—

“Let them in.”

E. The Royals

The woman had royal blood running through her veins. So did the man whose corpse was wedged beneath the once tall and proud Monadic temple. Only a year ago this man was her rival, perhaps bitter enemy. Only a month ago this man was someone she trusted with her life, perhaps someone she considered a friend.

The royal knew what her people would whisper betrayal and shame if they caught sight of her thoughts, but she could not help but think them. She almost shed a tear.

The royal was approached by a young man who shared her face.

“We were caught off guard,” the royal’s brother said. “It’s not your fault.”

“I’m glad it wasn’t you,” the royal replied.

F. The Civilians

The band of soldiers in their beige uniforms and copper clasps marched in rows of six down Pungale Street. Bright orange flags hung from the buildings surrounding the march and pedestrians watched on from doorways, windows, alleys. The younger onlookers cheered, while the older observed in silence.

From the twelfth floor window of a highrise that overlooked the march, the civilian took drags of her pipe as she watched them. 

“It’s like deja vu. Two decades ago, you’d’ve seen the same thing if you looked out that window.”

The civilian put out her cigarette in the ashtray at the oval table she sat at and turned to face the sottotenente across from her. 

“You talk as if you saw action during that time,” the civilian replied. She gestured to the second clasp on his shoulder. It was shinier than the one before it. “Congratulations on the promotion.”

The sottotenente smiled. “Thank you.” He took a drag of his v-cigarette and tapped it out onto the ashtray between them. “So, we should get to business then?”

The civilian reached into a hidden compartment just below the table and pulled out a thick manilla folder sealed with wax. She pushed it towards him but left her hand on its cover. The sottotenente picked up the suitcase beside him and placed it on the table.

The civilian did not lift her hand.

The sottotenente reached into the folds of his uniform and pulled out a clipped pack of paper. He placed it onto the suitcase and tapped it.

“I know how your organization does business,” the sottotenente said. “But, this is the first time I’ve heard of you acting as information brokers. Filling in the empty role Astante left behind?”

“Our merchandise has simply changed,” the civilian replied. 

“You’re doing your country a great service.” 

“For a price, yes,” the civilian replied. 

The civilian removed her hand from the folder and took the suitcase and papers. The sottotenente took the folder. The civilian stood. The sottotenente remained seated.

The sottotenente gestured to the civilian’s seat and waited for her to sit back down.

“I’ve heard a couple rumors recently.” The sottotenente leaned forward and looked around the dim apartment room. “That you have on your hands very capable individuals. Individuals capable of helping us get a head start in this war.”

“Is there such a thing as a head start in a war—especially since it’s already far from it’s beginning?”

“It’s unconventional, I know, but think about how many lives we could save,” the sottotenente pressed. He paused for a long while. “They’re here, aren’t they?”

The civilian said, “They’re not yours to take.”

The sottotenente frowned. “Do you not care for your country? For the men and women laying their lives down out there for you?” 

The civilian’s associate emerged from the darkness and stood behind the sottotenente. The gun in the associate’s hand was pointed to the back of the sottotenente’s head. The sottotenente barely had the time to reach for his holster before a bang! rang out through the building. The sottotenente collapsed on the table.

The civilian clicked her tongue and whipped some of the blood from her face. “That was rash.”

“He would’ve died on his next deployment anyways,” the civillian’s associate replied. “I gave him a peaceful death. Not like he didn’t deserve it.”

“I suppose that what he gets for assuming that we’re common civilians he can step on,” the civilian—no, the boss—agreed.

“He’s just a small fish. I’ll get Max to deliver the information to his bosses.”

The boss nodded before exiting the room and heading down the hall towards the lavatory. Before she made it to her destination, she was stopped by a small group. A man in a wheelchair, a frail-looking woman, a woman with mousy brown hair, a young man wearing a raggedy sailor’s cap, and an adolescent with clear eyes.

The civilians—rather, those who had accepted to become civilians.

“We’re moving again,” the boss told them before going to wash off the blood stains on her face.

*

The civilian had become accustomed to never staying in one place long—which was ironic in the sense that before she had always stayed in one place. Aside from her sibling, the people who she had spent the last several months with were the opposite of that. For instance, her other sibling’s childhood friend who accompanied them had spent a majority of the decade moving across the Aquarian-Capricornian border as a nurse. Then there was the sailor turned pirate and also the adolescent who simply stated upon introduction— 

“I’m an adventurer. And a pirate.”

The civilian had also become accustomed to seeing desolation whenever the boss told them they needed to move. The abandoned places that were freshly riddled with vitae-bolt marks were surprisingly the safest to occuply, although some of the younger children the civilian found in her care did not seem to share the same sentiment. The civilian was not good with children nor comfort, but the nurse was. However, the nurse was always looking towards the skyline with regret. 

“Don’t think about anything stupid,” the boss would say to her and to the civillian’s sibling. “There’s nothing you can do against countries that want to commit suicide.”

𖡼 𖡼 𖡼

ii. 1969—refraction 

A. The Teacher

Hauptmann Volker Weingartner’s head pounded as he drifted into consciousness. It took a moment for him to get his bearings. He was sitting at a long wooden table that was littered with colorful sheets of paper. A humming above his head emanated from what appeared to be a v-light that had an odd illuminance to it.

Across from him were General Vogel, General von Spiel, and the Geminian primo capitano who were just stirring from unconsciousness too. To his left were the two familiar peacekeepers who were there to regulate their prisoner exchange. To his right was—

“Kapitan Kramer…?” Volker realized in confusion.

Aquarian Kapitan Dunya Kramer lifted her head and winced. She scanned the room before tensing and reaching for her belt. When she looked back at him, her eyes widened. “Weingartner? What are you doing here? Where… were you all those months ago?” 

“In your exact same situation.” Volker opened his mouth and then closed it. He allowed a moment to pass. “I read about your unit’s movements in the papers. You were in the north, weren’t you?”

Kramer confirmed this with a curt nod. “And you?”

“In the south. Our Capricornian-Geminian unit had a skirmish with a Cancerian-Sagittarian one. 

“My company was at a stalemate with a Sagittarian unit,” Kramer replied. “Just us.”

“What is this?” The Geminian primo capitano grunted as he stirred. “Where are we?” He tensed. “Where is the enemy?”

Groans resounded around the room at the Geminian’s booming shout. Volker came to realize the walls of the room they were in were lined with the unconscious bodies of Geminian, Aquarian, and Capricornian soldiers. Correction—formerly unconscious. He recognized Friedhelm, Wilhelm Fischer,  and Emilia Bergmann among them. Nikita Knovak as well. Where were the rest of them?

Had they possibly been sent through that gate of that ELPIS Leader? Contact, finally, after all of these months? Was this one of his exitless rooms?

Volker did another scan of the room.

No, that didn’t seem to be the case. There was a door just behind him. 

There was a crinkling sound. Volker turned to find that General Vogel had picked up one of the papers on the table. It was unusually colorful—it looked almost as if it had been painted instead of printed. He placed the paper down onto the table and tapped at a familiar, blinding white symbol printed there.

General von Spiel—Martin—frowned as he studied it and then looked around the room. There were similar posters half-hanging on the walls, Volker realized. 

“So this is ELPIS?” Martin asked, gaze straying to Volker.

Another groan. The two peacekeepers had finally stirred. One of them took the paper from Vogel’s hands. She scanned it before handing it back to him.

“No, something’s different,” the peacekeeper said. “I’m not in the ELPIS Department, but I know enough to know that ELPIS doesn’t recruit people by handing out fliers.” 

“Your peacekeeping organization has been wrong before,” the Geminian capitano said testily.

“Then is this a Sagittarian trick?” Martin tried next, whispering to Vogel. “A Cancerian one?”

“I’m not so sure about that,” the peacekeeper, Gabrielle Law, answered, tapping her companion. “Alice, are you okay?”

Alice nodded slowly, still holding her head. Her gaze swept the room and lingered on the Aquarians. “I agree with your assumption that this isn’t an ELPIS ploy. We haven’t seen any ELPIS movement in months.”

Whispering began as more of the soldiers stirred around them.

“Bergmann, Fischer,” Vogel said, turning and gesturing to the two sitting directly behind him against the wall. “Go check the perimeter. See if you can find anyone else. Everyone, at ease.”

“Take Bella with you,” the Geminian capitano said.

“Knovak, go with them,” Kramer ordered.

Bergmann looked to Volker who nodded. She and the other named men and women rose from their positions, exchanged looks, and then headed towards the door. The door, however, swung open before they could reach to open it. 

Fortuna Romano, whom Volker had not seen in months, stood in the doorway. He hadn’t known her well at all and had only met her briefly when their paths intersected during their summer operationik8. Behind her stood Allen Foxman. And behind him—

“Vater?”

Volker’s daughter and his granddaughter stood in the group behind the Geminians. Behind them stood Viktoria Waltz, Ludwig Waltz in his chair, and—if Volker recalled correctly from the previous winter—Ludwig’s wife. Behind them even further gathered adolescents and a handful of scrappy-looking men and women.

“Civilians?” Vogel asked, eyes narrowing. “What is this?”

“That’s Fortuna Romano,” the Geminian capitano replied, rising to a stand. “We were able to ambush the Piscese on the Tiare ‘Aute Marsh because of some information they provided to us. I don’t know who’s with them.”

Fortuna eyed him before glancing at the peacekeepers and offering the slightest head nod. 

“Well, maybe it is all Francis,” the man behind Fortuna said. Volker recognized him, though he had simply been introduced to Volker as simply ‘Boss Allen’ during the past summer. He gave Volker a nod though he didn’t seem to acknowledge anyone else.

“But why?” Fortuna muttered. 

“What do you know about this, Romano?” The Geminian capitano gestured and spoke in his native tongue.

“As much as you do,” Fortuna replied. She eyed the conductors the soldiers were holding.

The Geminian signaled for his unit to lower their weapons. After they complied, Vogel and Martin signaled for everyone else to do the same.

Fortuna let out a sigh. “I see you haven’t found out yet.”

“Found out what exactly?” Gabrielle asked. “Let’s not be mysterious now, shall we? At least not until we get on the same page—though that defeats the purpose of being mysterious. You know what I mean.”

It was clear that the two were familiar with each other—but from where? The sensible thing to assume was that they knew each other through a True Conductor. 

Fortuna abruptly reached for the rifle proto-conductor of the Geminian soldier beside her and forced his finger to the trigger. The motion was so abrupt and unexpected that the man couldn’t jerk away in time before she pointed the nose of the weapon at herself and forced him to pull the trigger. Shouts resonated and heads ducker.  

Nothing came out. Not even a blip of vitae. A misfire? No, there was nothing indicating that. A cracked conducting core then? Volker was no expert on conductor manufacturing, but he knew that conductor misfires were quite explosive. 

“It’s not just proto-conductors,” Fortuna stated. 

Gabrielle paused and then lifted her gloved hand. She snapped her fingers. 

Nothing.

Volker flexed his fingers and concentrated. His palms felt cold. 

Nothing.

B. The Students

Beijixing Mai stared down Arjun Uttaretara and the Cancerian chevalier beside him. Across from her was an Ariesian Knight who was the third-in-command of the battalion she had been marching with. The first- and second-in-command were nowhere to be seen. Her soldiers—the people of Sagittarius’s clans—and several Cancerian soldiers and Ariesians were in the hall just beyond the closed door of the room they’d found themselves in. The rest of their company was missing. Mai deduced that it had to be some sort of Aquarian trick as they had just been caught in an Aquarian ambush.

Embarrassing. 

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Arjun had said in response to her conjecture. “That’s never helped anyone.”

It was easy for him to take a pacifist’s approach. She greatly disapproved of his ceasefire in northern Pisces. It was as if he didn’t care about those who had laid down their lives to get where they were. 

“You’re also Yuseong Claire’s relative, aren’t you?” the chevalier asked suddenly. “I’m deeply sorry for your loss.”

The name caused Mai to temporarily lose track of her thoughts. She frowned. “You knew Haneul?”

Bejixing Kai, Mai’s brother, stiffened beside her.

“Yes, we were familiar with each other,” the chevalier replied. “We… met through mutual friends.”

Of course he knew Haneul. Haneul was the type of person who’d try to befriend everyone and anyone—because any and every connection would help achieve his goal.

“Familiar?” Mai asked, eyes narrowed. “How so?”

The chevalier merely smiled. “I’m Renee LeBlanc.” He took her hand and placed a kiss on it.

Mai immediately claimed back her hand. Those in the northern countries truly had no sense of shame.

Four knocks resounded on the door behind her. 

“Come in.”

Two masked soldiers entered the room and kneeled before her.

“My Lady, we came across an enemy camp in the building adjacent to this one,” said one. “Aquarians, Capricornians, Geminians. The area appears abandoned besides that. We found a great wall on the periphery as well. We weren’t able to discern what’s beyond it.”

“So it’s another ambush attempt?” Mai pondered, eyes narrowed. But why hadn’t they attacked yet?

“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it that,” an unfamiliar voice drew out in Common from the doorway.

A woman stood there surrounded by conductors of various type aimed at her face. Her arms were raised but her expression was rather unperturbed.

“You were followed,” Mai chastised the kneeling two.

“By a peacekeeper,” the woman said, arm still raised as she stepped into the room. She tapped on the white sash on her arm. 

“Gabrielle Law,” the Ariesian knight identified, brows rising.

The peacekeeper raised a hand in greeting. “Charming, right? Your last name, I mean.”

Charming nodded. 

Gabrielle Law. The First Chair of General Investigations. She was also the acting Head Chairman of Ophiuchus at the moment. Mai had voted for her during the elections. 

“Why are you here? Did you bring us here?” 

“Peacekeepers have no power here,” one of the Cancerian soldiers snapped. 

Cancerians. No sense for time and place.

“And neither do you conductors.” Gabrielle Law sighed, “so just put them down.” She gestured to Mai’s conductor-gloved hand with her own.

Mai frowned and flexed her gloved hand. Her heart started hammering when she did not feel the familiar warm buzz in her palm.

Defective. 

Mai looked over to her closest masked guard and nodded. He pulled out a conducting blade, but it did not come to life. His action prompted the guard beside him to try the same. Nothing. The Ariesian knight pulled out his own conductor and shook it once. Nothing again. The chain of attempts continued with each result being the same.

All of them were defective? No, this wasn’t good. What if they were ambushed now? They would be done for. Even if they managed to collect enough non-conductor-based weapons, they would stand no match against conductors themselves.

“What is this?” Mai asked with a frown as she tried to keep her demeanor calm. “Did you peacekeepers develop some new conductor-disrupting device?”

Like what happened back in the Prognoikos Aurora Reservoirs this past summer…?

Gabrielle’s brows rose. “Well, now that is a good idea. But no, this isn’t my doing. I’m assuming that you all ended up here from somewhere else?”

A gasp suddenly resounded.

Mai looked past Gabrielle Law and down the hall. Her guards, the Ariesian knights, and the Cancerian soldiers had formed a parted sea around a single woman clothed in dark green robes. In her hands was a conducting spear with its long point flickering a neon green.

Gabrielle Law pointed to the woman and arched a brow. “You—you’re not Sagittarian, Ariesian, or Cancerian, are you?”

C. Ndotoan

Nia Imamu found herself at the center of attention. She did not know how she found herself here in this position. The moments leading up to this moment were unclear. She had been keeping tabs on the Capricornians, Geminians, and Sagittarians gathered at the lip of the southern border. Her task had been to ensure that they didn’t encroach on her country’s border.

Now, she was surrounded by them, and nothing about her surroundings was familiar. She had tried her best to stay hidden among the Cancerians—specifically, those who had some Virgoan background to them. There was some irony to her situation, she was certain.

The peacekeeper named Gabrielle Law pointed to Nia’s conductor. “Do you speak Common? Would you mind deactivating your conductor? Just to… de-escalate things? You’re a chieftain guard, aren’t you?”

Nia had become perturbed when she had overheard them speaking about their conductors no longer working, so when she had been able to activate, she had thought it a trap. 

“I heard from a lucky bird that some of you may or may not be familiar with being in these types of situations where you find yourself somewhere you weren’t before with no footwork involved,” Gabrielle said, turning back to the commanders in the room. “I think we can find some common ground here. The group in that other building are in your same predicament.”

“You want us to work together with the enemy?” 

“Well—”

A loud boom shook the entire building. Nia pulled her conductor close, watching.

Gabrielle Law stiffened before darting down the hall. She barely made it five steps before another loud boom resounded. This sound was deafeningly loud and was followed by yet another boom! before the wall to Gabrielle’s left blew outwards. The force of the explosion was so great that the rubble blew right through the opposite wall and took down several soldiers and the peacekeeper with it. 

A figure clothed only in black stepped in from the smoky opening. Their face was obscured by an odd black, metallic orb that covered their entire head, and in their hands was a metal pipe that looked like it had been torn off from the outside of a building. 

Who was this newcomer aligned with? Capricorn? Aquarius? Gemini? Was that a helmet?

“There you guys are,” the figure said, voice muffled by the helmet. “All holed up here, huh?” 

Groaning resounded from the debris.

“Thought you could get an ambush on us, huh?” the figure theatrically drew out. He pointed directly at Nia.  “Well, let’s rumble.”

“That’s kind of cheesy, isn’t it?” Gabrielle’s voice came out strong even as she pulled herself out from beneath some rubble. She staggered a bit as she brushed some of the dust from her suit before she studied the lone figure with a frown.

“That’s a lot of talk,” the figure hissed before twirling out a lead pipe—a pipe that soon became consumed by pulsating lime green light, “for A.D.U.I. punks like you.”

What…?

“Saint candidates…?”  the Cancerian chevalier breathed.

*

It was difficult for Nia to keep track of what happened next. A wave of men and women in black flooded the room and began swinging their vitae-coated weapons at random. Their faces were obscured by black,  odd-looking, reflective helmets, and their inclination for violence was ghastly. It didn’t matter if it was a living or non-living thing—whatever it was, they swung their weapons at it with little restraint.  

Glass shattered, wood splintered, people fell left and right. The buildings around them shook.

The commanders shouted orders. Soldiers and knights dispersed down the hall and through the opposite gaping hole in the wall. Nia had somehow found herself outside as well running along the soldiers, knights, and black-clothed figures. Some of the soldiers managed to disarm their assailants but those interactions ended with a brawl that left both parties scuffling on the floor. Others fired off non-conductor weapons at the assailants, but in the chaos, Nia could not tell how effective this was.

‘Assailants’. It was difficult to consider any party here an ally. Certainly, they didn’t consider each other allies—

A loud shout resonated for her right, and Nia turned just in time to see a black-clothed figure lunge at her with a pulsating orange pipe. Nia ducked the swing and whipped out her spear. She swept the oncoming man right off of his feet before smacking him hard in his helmet. The helmet fractured and splintered—

“Are you crazy, lady?!”  came the man’s muffled shout before he threw down his pipe which dimmed as soon as it left his grip. Then, he whipped off his helmet and revealed a youthful head of black curls. “This is expensive!”

Nia would have been more put off by his casual demeanor if it weren’t for the fact that he looked familiar. And not in a pleasant way, Nia realized in cold confusion. She had seen this man before. One and a half decades ago.  In a marshy field, he’d lay bleeding out before her, whimpering, begging, wheezing as the sound of gunfire cracked around them. She hadn’t spared him a thought before driving her spear into his abdomen, though his face had occasionally appeared in her dreams after that.

Impossible. It had to be a look-a-like. Or a relative?

Nia flipped her spear around and pointed its tip at him. He did not look afraid, merely confused. She could not follow through with the action like she had all those years before. 

She turned on her heels and ran several meters before colliding with an older man with peppered hair.  They stumbled backwards and stared at each other for a long while. Nia recognized the man. She had been spying on him only hours earlier—keeping watch to make sure he did not dare go over her country’s borders. 

The man lunged at her. He lunged at her and knocked her out of the path of a pair of glowing chains that hurtled out from nowhere.

Clink, clink, clink—

The man on top of her rolled off and looked towards the sound. A figure stood there dressed in a black jacket and a bright, polka-dotted dress. Beside that figure stood another who had a pulsating purple-blue pipe in hand. The one in the polka-dot dress lifted their left hand up and sent the chains hurtling up to the sky. 

A Manipulator?

The woman pointed downwards.

Clink, clink, clink—

Bang! Bang!

The polka-dressed figure yelped and stumbled backwards into the arms of the figure with the blue-purple pipe. The older man who’d collided with Nia was holding a pistol still billowing out smoke. His brows were furrowed, and his gaze was focused on the pulsating blue-purple pipe—a pipe that soon went hurtling in their direction. Nia threw up her conducting spear again and deflected the vitae-coated pipe before it cracked against the older man’s head. 

The pipe ricocheted and nearly took out a brawling duo standing to her right. The weapon had dimmed by that point, so when it clattered to the ground a meter away, Nia was able to identify that it was not a pipe but a baseball bat of some kind.

Nia looked back up at the man who had thrown it. He was steadying the polka-dot dress woman still but seemed to be glaring at them. The man pointed directly at them and then slowly pointed downwards with his thumb. Clearly, he had placed a target on their backs. 

“This way. Quickly.”

The older man whom Nia had just saved from decapitation after he’d saved her himself spoke with a voice of authority. Before Nia knew what she was doing, she was following him through the chaos and into a narrow alleyway.

Booms and cracks resounded as Nia settled beside the man against the wall. She took a moment to catch her breath before she turned to the man. Now that she was looking at him up close instead of from afar, she noted that his uniform was worn and sported no medals—odd, given the fact that the markings on his shoulder pads ranked him as a captain in the country.

“I’m Volker,” the man introduced himself, extending his hand. “Volker Weingartner.”

Nia looked down at his hand.

“You’re not a part of my regiment,” he said. “And you don’t seem to be in any other regiment that I’m familiar with.”

“I am Nia. Nia Imamu.”

“Imamu…?” Volker’s brows met. “You wouldn’t happen to know an Atienna Imamu, would you?”

Nia stared at him. “You know of Miss Imamu?”

It wasn’t outlandish to think Atienna associated with people like this in her previous profession. She had been an advisor to diplomat, after all. Perhaps she had met him in Die Hauptstadt last winter?

“Have you seen her?” he asked, voice even.

Nia frowned.

“Weingartner?” a voice above them called.

Nia looked up and saw an open window just above their heads. A familiar face was looking down at them from the sill. Gabrielle Law. A blonde woman stood beside her as did the Cancerian and the curly-haired, dark-skinned Sagittarian Nia had seen earlier. Behind them stood one of the Capricornian generals Nia had been spying on.

“I advise you get in there quickly before you draw attention,” came a thick voice from the opposite building.

Upon turning, Nia registered that the window of the building opposite to them was open and was also filled with faces. Among them were two other Saggitarians of lighter complexion and the Ariesian commanding knight. Also with them was an unfamiliar young woman who looked of Geminian descent and a thin man in a business suit. Out of place just like Nia herself was.

“And you’re certain, Beijixing,” the Capricornian general addressed the female Sagittarian across from him, “that these helmeted people are not your allies?”

“No, General von Spiel,” Beijixing replied tersely. “They’re not. Why would I endanger my own clan members? If anything, that sounds like something a Capricornian strategist would do. A Capricornian trick. Or an Aquarian one. A Geminian one wouldn’t be so far off either. Sacrificing your own.”

“More like a Saggitarian trick,” interjected one of the soldiers. “Or an Ariesian one.” He glanced back at the chevalier. “Or a Cancerian one.”

“Okay, okay,” Gabrielle Law interjected, hands raised. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves now. We’re in a bad situation. We can’t use our conductors.” She glanced down at Nia. “At least most of us can’t. And we’re being chased down by people who can conduct without conductors for whatever reason. I think this is the perfect time to call a temporary armistice.”

General von Spiel frowned.

The cloaked soldiers behind Beijixing burst out into protests. Although Nia could not understand them, it was not difficult to discern their outrage. One single word from Beijxing, however, silenced them.

“You understand what you’re asking?” Beijixing asked, staring at the Caprcironian general.

“We have a general, a chevalier of considerable rank, a Saggitarian clan leader, and an Ariesian knight who’s currently the highest commanding officer of his country here at the moment,” Gabrielle drew. “Good authority to authorize an armistice.”

“And the Aquarians?” 

“I’m sure Kramer would be completely willing to put things aside.”

“Do you know how many I’ve lost to Kramer’s squadron?” Beijixing asked. “You’re asking to put that aside?”

“Most of us have been asked to put things aside before,” Gabrielle replied, “and that was after a couple of decades of fighting. After that, we worked together for another decade, so I hope it’s not too much to ask to set things aside for just a short time.”

A beat of silence.

“If we are dealing with the party I think we’re dealing with,” General von Spiel stated, “it may be in our best interests to work together.”

“Last I recall, General, there were twelve saint candidates possible,” the chevalier said. “This is much more than that, so I doubt we are dealing with them.”

General von Spiel turned to the chevalier. “You know of saint candidates?”

“Of course.”

“Everyone here who’s a commanding officer minus this Ariesian knight standing beside me,” the Geminian woman beside Beijixing drew, “has had an encounter with the saint candidates. Most of you here have had an encounter with ELPIS as well. Gabrielle Law, Alice Kingsley, General Fritz von Spiel, Hauptmann Volker Weingartner, Friedhelm Heimler, Wilhelm Fischer, Beijixing Mai, Beijixing Kai, Arjun Uttaretara, Renee LeBlanc”—with each name and title, she nodded at the person— “Allen Foxman and Fortuna Romano. We’re no strangers to the term syzygy nor are we strangers to the higher energy level of vitae, so let’s not get caught up in formalities.”

“Well said,” Gabrielle noted.

“They can conduct without conductors, but they seem untrained and unskilled,” General von Spiel drew. “I suggest we use tactics to disperse, disarm, and then—”

“Nia…?”

Nia turned at the call towards the left opening of the alleyway. There stood a cluster of men and women. Several of those familiar faces she had not seen in ages. Bachiru Imamu. Sefu Imamu. Safiyah. And foreigners. All dressed in rather outrageous clothing. With them was Atienna Imamu, dressed similarly. 

Nia unlatched herself from Volker’s side and jogged over to them in confusion. Sefu greeted her first with an unorthodox embrace.

“Nia!” he pressed. “It is you, isn’t it, Nia?”

“Are you alright?” Bachiru asked.

Before Nia could answer, Volker rose to a stand too. He stared at two of the men in the group. “Stein? Kleine? Is that you?”

“Hauptmann!” came a cry of relief. 

A young man wearing a pair of glasses broke off from that group and jogged up to them. Nia tensed at his approach but he offered a hesitant smile before whipping into a salute directed at Volker.

“That’s Grenadier Klaus Kleine, isn’t it? The reports said you died during an ELPIS attack,” Von Spiel drew, staring at Klaus before looking down the alleyway.  “And Derik Stein—he’s wanted for desertion. He approached the window. “What do you know about our situation—”

“What year is it?” Kleine pressed. “What year do you think it is?” He scanned them. “You’re in uniforms, sir. You’re in our uniforms.” He turned to the new coming approaching group. “They’re in their uniforms.”

“At ease, Kleine. What do you mean? It’s 1942.” Volker frowned. “Where have you been? I thought you…”

A look of half-relief broke across Kleine’s face as he whipped back to the man. “We’ve been here, sir. In Ndoto. For the past two weeks we’ve been stuck here.”

Ndoto? Did he mean Ngoto? Nia wondered. No, nothing here alluded to Ngoto.

He made no sense. He was talking like a madman. 

Nia looked back at Sefu, Bachiru, Safiyah, and then Atienna. 

Why had they been travelling with a madman?

“Carl!” 

Nia looked back towards the opposite window that Fortuna Romano and Allen Foxman were now half leaning out of. One of the foreigners in Atienna’s group broke off and approached the two with a wild wave.

“Fortuna! Allen!” he shouted, approaching the window.  “Fuckin’ hell. It’s good to see you.  Are your heads on straight—”

“Where the hell have you been?” Allen interjected. He leapt out of the window and gripped Carl’s shoulders tightly. “Carl, are you okay? Carl—where’s Francis? Cadence?”

“They’re probably back at his mansion,” Carl answered. “They’re heads’ve been messed up by this place, but Francis—he’s…” He hesitated. “Allen, he’s like himself again.”

Gabrielle called out, “So, is he the one who brought us here? Your brother? Francis Foxman, right?” 

Carl squinted at her. “What? No. Francis is stuck here like us.” He paused. “Wait a minute. How’d you get here? Did you climb over those gates? Is this a rescue deal?”

“No,” Allen answered curtly.

Carl shook his head. “Damn. Then it looks like you’re in the same situation that we were in two weeks ago.”

“Two weeks ago?”

“Yeah, when we first got here,” Carl grumbled. “Been two weeks since I’ve seen your ugly mug, Al. Good to see that you’re—”

“Two weeks?” Allen interjected. “Carl, I haven’t seen you in almost half a year.”

There was an uneasy silence that settled over the newcomers. Something was being stretched thin—though Nia couldn’t tell what.

“What do you mean half a year?” Kleine whispered.

“That can’t be,” Safiyah murmured. She looked to NIa then and stared at her. “It can’t be—”

“That can’t be right.” Carl pulled back. He looked Allen up and down before glancing back at the group he’d come with. “Wait. What if they’ve got VNW too?”

“VNW? Volker interjected. “What is… VNW?”

“I suggest you all get in at once,” Bejixing Mai interjected, eyes narrowing, seemingly completely unaffected by everything folding before her. “Before we draw the attention of these alleged saint candidates—”

“They’re not saint candidates,” Atienna, who had been unbelievably quiet the entire time. “They’re…”

Gabrielle Law frowned. “Wait, how do you know who we’re talking—”

The alleyway became illuminated in a cool glow. At the opposite end of the alley stood the familiar helmeted figure with his glowing bat in hand. Behind him stood five other figures—the most notable one had the print of a blue scorpion on his helmet. 

“The fuck are you looking at?” Stein snapped, taking a daring step forward.

What was he? Nia thought incredulously. An idiot?

One of the helmeted figures threw out their hand and sent out a deep blue wreath of flame in their direction.

“Run!” Nia shouted to Bachiru and Atienna. She grabbed Bachiru’s wrist, while Sefu grabbed Atienna’s.

They darted down the alley with the flames licking at their feet. Nia could hear some others following behind them. When she looked over her shoulder, she spied Volker and a Capricornian soldier tapping after them. She did not know where the peacekeeper was nor the other people she’d seen in the window, though she could hear shouting and popping in the distance.

“This way,” Volker said.

They twisted down the alley only to look over their shoulders and find that the one with the bat was still at their heels. Volker turned and fired off some shots with pistol but their pursuer easily deflected them with either purposeful or accidentally swipes of his weapon. Soon, Volker appeared to be out of bullets.

“He’s after me and Nia,” Volker panted. “We need to split up.”

Nia looked back at Atienna and Bachiru and then Sefu whom she had watched over and worked with for a decade. She looked back at Volker and nodded.

When they turned another corner, Volker pulled something off of belt and handed it to the other Capricornian soldier with them. “Let’s draw some of them out onto the rooftop,” he said, pointing to the building beside them. “We can ambush some of them there. Fischer, head to the opposite building and go to the rooftop. Keep your eyes open and shoot. Make it count.”

The Capricornian nodded. “Yes, sir.” 

Nia turned to Sefu. “Sefu, take Bachiru and Atienna and go.” When Sefu frowned, she tapped his cheek and said, “Our duty is rooted.”

Sefu formed an M with his hand and placed it over his chest before repeating the oath. He moved to usher Atienna and a protesting and confused Bachiru in the opposite direction from them. Atienna’s gaze lingered on Nia. Something was odd about her—but Nia couldn’t place what. 

Nia ducked forward as a pulsating disk flew over her head and cracked through a window just in front of her. It took a moment for her to realize that that disk had been the lid of a trashcan and another moment to realize that she’d been rather close to losing her head.

She followed Volker into that building through the new broken window and pounded up the stairs at the back of the building. As they wound up the floor, Nia could hear their pursuer hot on their feet, clambering rather inelegantly after them.

Soon, they burst out onto the rooftop that was fenced in, and Nia whipped around with her conducting spear just in time to block a downward strike from their pursuer. His brute strength was startling—almost inhuman—and Nia found that she had to angle her spear to slide his weapon out from her own in order to not buckle beneath him. When he stumbled forward, she sent up her foot and clipped him in the helmet. The man stumbled backwards for a moment, and Nia chanced a jab at his abdomen. He sent out his foot before she could do so, and soon she was staring down the glow of his bat. 

Click!

The man paused. 

“Put your hands in the air,” Volker said calmly from behind the man, pointing his pistol at his back.

Nia wondered if he’d reloaded it or if he was bluffing.

Instead of obeying, the figure whipped around and pointed his weapon at Volker. “You hurt Iris,” he snapped. “You hurt my friend!”

Volker paused. Nia paused as well. The man’s accent was thick and clearly Capricornian. What was this? A Capricornian trick against their enemies? No, Volker appeared confused too—

The helmeted man took a threatening step forward before a bang! rang out and glass shattered out from his helmet. The man stumbled towards the stairwell entrance and his bat clattered to the ground. A bullet was visibly lodged in his helmet, and when Nia followed the trajectory of the bullet, she spotted Fischer perched at the edge of the building and reloading his pistol. Before the man could fire another shot, a cluster of helmeted men and women stormed onto the rooftop behind him. 

But Nia didn’t have the time to feel concern for him.  The helmet man in front of Nia groaned,ripped the helmet from his head, and tossed it onto the ground.  Brushing out shards of glass from his blond hair, he reached for a network of pipes on the outside of the housing of the stairwell and wrapped his fingers around just one of the pipes. It burned a purple-blue before he quite literally ripped it from the wall. He twirled it once, creating a moon-like after-image.

Volker’s eyes widened. “Werner…?”

The man named Werner lunged at Volker and grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt. Nia lurched forward to stop him but Werner sent her back with a kick. Werner then lifted Volker off the ground and threw him against the fence behind the stairwell before picking him back up and pinning him against the metal wire.

“Apologize,” Werner demanded. “Now!”

Volker struggled against Werner’s grip. He switched over to Capricornian which Nia struggled to understand. “What? What are you saying? Werner, it’s me.”

“That doesn’t sound like an apology,” Werner replied in the same language, tightening his grip. “Hansel can’t golf for a week because of what you guys did to his arm,  and Hansel loves golfing! ”

Volker barely choked out. “What—”

Werner cut him off with a crack to the face. The weapon in his hand seared into the wall just above Volker’s head. “Apologize. Now—”

“Werner!” came a shout. “Stop!”

Nia turned and saw Atienna standing at the entrance of the stairwell.

“Huh? Atienna…?” Werner’s head perked up and he brightened for a moment before his brows met. “What are you doing here?”

They knew each other?

Atienna raised her hand placatingly. “Calm do—”

Werner whipped back to Volker. “You kidnapped my friend?” He lifted his fist again—

“Boss! Boss, wait!”

Another figure stampeded out onto the rooftop beside Atienna. It was one of the helmet people. 

Werner paused. “O-man?”

“Boss, put him down. He’s my—” it was difficult to hear what O-man was saying through his helmet. 

Werner asked, “Your what?”

Again, O-man spoke muffled. 

Werner cocked his head. “Huh? I can’t understand you, O-man.”

This O-man let out what sounded like a frustrated sigh before he whipped off his helmet as well revealing a rather youthful and angry face. “He’s my professor!” 

Volker let out a breath. “Is that… Otto Vogt?’

“He’s your teacher?” Werner slowly set Volker down.

Volker held his face and stared at Werner and then at Otto. 

 “I didn’t know your teacher was part of the ADUI,” Werner said.

“He’s not.” Otto grimaced. “He’s a part of ELPIS.”

Werner’s brows rose. “ELPIS is part of the ADUI? No, that can’t be.” He gasped. “J-man would never—”

“No, boss.” Otto sighed. “They’re not a part of the ADUI. It looks like there was a mix-up. These aren’t the guys we were supposed to throw down with.” 

Werner glanced at Volker who was still holding his face. “How’d that happen?”

“Probably because we got here too early,” Otto muttered. “But don’t let you-know-who hear about it.”

Nia had no idea what was happening. 

Werner waved his hands in the air and jumped up and down facing the rooftop. “Hey! You guys! Stop! They’re not the ADUI.”

The men who were scuffling over there stopped. The one named Wihelm was on top of one of the helmeted members and stared wide-eyed at Werner. 

Atienna pointed to the pipe in Werner’s hand. “Werner, could you please put that down for a moment?”

“Oh, yeah. Okay.”  Werner flicked his hand holding the pipe and the light dimmed. He turned to Volker. “Hey, I’m sorry about punching you in the face. Are you okay?”

Why was This Werner listening to Atienna? What was their relation to each other?

Volker’s eyes did not leave Otto, and he pressed himself further back against the fence. “Who is that? Who are you?” He looked back at Werner and then at Atienna. “What is going on?”

Werner scratched his head. “I don’t know what’s going on. I guess you’re not the ADUI?”

“What’s the… ADUI?”

Werner began, “A club—”

“A gang. The worst of the worst. We’re helping keep the immigrant districts clean of trash like them,” Otto amended. He eyed Volker and appeared sheepish for a moment. “I’m really sorry for the mix up, professor. We can drop you off at the nearest hospital and we’ll handle everything.” When Volker didn’t respond, Otto frowned. “Look. What we’re doing here hasn’t been shut down by any guidance officers or anything so—”

“Who are you?” Volker repeated. “You’re not Otto Vogt.”

Otto stared at him before he stiffened and took a step back. “Boss, I think he’s got VNW.” He looked Volker up and down before scoffing. “That’s what you people get when you mess around at the gates.”

“But, O-man, we’re at the gates too—”

Otto cleared his throat. 

Volker’s gaze flicked between the two men. Bewilderment melted to apprehension. 

“This isn’t Scorpio,” Atienna interjected, gaining and holding Voker’s gaze. “Ah, I mean—if Scorpio is involved, it can’t be him acting alone. At least, I don’t believe so.” She pursed her lips and then said, “The situation here is… complicated. Werner… isn’t being manipulated. This isn’t… the Werner that you know. At least, not exactly…”

A boom rumbled in the distance.  

“Is this about the mushrooms again?” Werner wondered.

Volker stared at him for a moment, and then at Otto, and then back at him. “So the ones who are attacking us—they’re with you?”

Werner nodded a bit enthusiastically. 

“Call them off.”

Otto frowned. “Hey. No offense, professor, but we’re not listening to a VNW.”

That seemed senseless. What was even a VNW?

“Werner, since this is all one big misunderstanding, we should try to settle down, don’t you think?” Atienna interjected. “And then we can all get to… get to know each other.”

Werner. “Oh, yeah. Sure thing! I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

Questionable. 

Werner reached down and picked up the pipe he’d discarded moments earlier. Nia tensed as he coated it with vitae with a snap of his wrist. He then walked to the fence of the building, wound up his arm, and hurled the pulsating weapon into the air.

“Our signal,” Werner piped, hands on hips as he turned to face them.

As the phantom circle spun in the night sky behind him, Nia was vaguely reminded of the moon.

D. The Guidance Officer

“Cheers!”

Gabrielle Law was rather surprised at how easily their assailants had thrown down their arms and weapons. As soon as that viate-coated rebar hurtled through the air, all of the helmeted men and women became docile. The same couldn’t be said for Gabrielle’s fellow non-helmeted folks.

Gabrielle herself had taken the opportunity to smash the man who had been formerly assaulting her with a stray crow bar she’d found on the ground. The man had scrambled back with raised hands and had whipped off his helmet to reveal none other than Nil Abero. Geminian general. Warhawk. Walked with a battalion straight through Ophiuchus to Capricorn without a care in the world. Stormed the lip of Pisces just the same.

Gabrielle only had the displeasure of meeting him once before. He’d been the one of the few generals to respond to her invitation for peace talks during the beginning of the war and he’d even seemed completely earnest and willing to listen during negotiations. After their days long talk, however, he halted all contact with her aside from a single letter that read in Geminian, I am not interested.

“A pretty girl like you with a hard swing like that?” Nil had asked while Gabrielle had stared in shock. “I’m in love.”

Needless to say after Gabrielle realized the man wasn’t making a lick of sense, she went off to find the others.  Now, she found herself weaving through rows of un-helmeted men and women. They were cheering, chattering, drinking heavily from odd-looking bottles of beer. Even more odd-looking was their clothing.

Eventually, she found herself passing through a sparsely dotted gap in people. Beyond that gap were men and women dressed familiarly. Military uniforms, worn out faces. The space in-between the two groups—a border, in a sense, dividing. Ironic. Everyone on that other side had wanted to kill each other just half an hour ago. Well, no. What they had wanted to do was win or get revenge or something similar. 

Gabrielle passed through the outer ring of soldiers and into the heart of the opposite side. There in a small clearing between buildings she found Alice, Capricornian generals, a familiar Capricornian captain, Beijixing Mai, Renee, Kramer, one Alexander Charming, Arjun, Fortuna, Allen, and a handful of other faces that were vaguely familiar to her. They were sitting calmly together at a makeshift table of crates. Good to see that they knew when to be diplomatic. Well, at least in this particular instance they did.

“Gabrielle,” Alice acknowledged her arrival. “You’re okay.”

Gabrielle patted Alice on the shoulder. “Glad to see you’re okay too. You won’t believe who I saw just now.”  

“Oh, I think I would believe you.”

Gabrielle looked towards a small circle clustered together at the edge of the clearing.  They were dressed almost as oddly as the now unhelmeted people a little ways off. 

After a pause, Gabrielle nodded at one particular member of the group. “Atienna Imamu, right? I’ve got to say that you’ve really changed up your style since the Week of Blindness.”

“Oh? Have I?” Atienna responded. Her gaze flickered momentarily to her left towards Renee.

The chevalier was staring intensely at Atienna. Interesting—and not in the stereotypical romantic Cancerian way.  Gabrielle had always thought the chevalier an interesting character. Their paths seemed intertwined ever since they’d encountered each other in the Piscese city-town. She wondered if the Cancerian soldiers dotting the crowd around them knew that he was a True Conductor, if they knew he was an informant to Ophiuchus, if they knew anything about him at all. 

“So, how’s my pal Jericho?” Gabrielle asked. “Haven’t heard from him in a long time. You know him, right? Saw him once or twice or more than that?”

Atienna stared at her for a moment. “I… don’t know.”

What?

Alice frowned from beside Gabrielle.

“You don’t know?”

“I mean… I haven’t quite figured it out yet—”

The one who could conduct with her conductor and who currently sat behind Atienna stared at Atienna. I’m fancy, a lot of stares were being directed to one Atienna Imamu.

“Where are we?” The Geminian captain interjected, demanded. “Is this a Virgoan trick then? Some sort of ploy to fake at becoming what Ophiuchus was during the Reservoir War—”

“Please don’t make baseless accusations that have no ground in reality,” the man sitting beside Atienna said. He looked out at all of them and said calmly, “Right now. You are in Ndoto. How did you get there?”

Bachiru, if Gabrielle recalled correctly. He’d been a somewhat important political figure that Ophiuchus had been keeping tabs on since Virgo left isolation two summers ago.

“Here?” Renee arched a brow. “It is a bit difficult to understand how you got somewhere when you don’t even know where that somewhere is, no? Where’s Ndoto—”

“I’ve brought beer!” 

Two men in leather jackets and a boy in a bright red blazer entered their circle. The one who made the exclamation was masterfully holding about 20 bottles of beer while his leather-jacketed companion masterfully wielded a disgruntled glare and his blazer-wearing companion looked around with amusement.

“Prince Chance?” Ariesian Knight Alexander Charming echoed Gabrielle’s confusion.

Whispering started amongst the gathered soldiers. The generals exchanged looks.

Gabrielle took a step forward as Charming went right up to the prince.

“Prince Chance.” Alexander stopped short in front of him before bowing and then coming back up to a stand. “Where have you been?”

Olive rocked back on his feet and looked Alexander up and down. “Coach Charming, I did not think you’d think you’d pull of the whole knight-in-shining armor thing off. You think you’re my knight? Does that mean I can call the shots from now on? So, if I say that you have to run twenty laps, not the team, then my word is set in stone, right?”

Olive’s words seemed to have bewildered Charming so much that it left the knight speechless. 

Olive snorted and he patted the man on the shoulder. “You are having it rough, coach.”

There was something wrong with Olive, Gabrielle realized. She gave a two fingered whistle to gain the adolescent’s attention.

Olive swore before he nudged the beer-holding man beside him. “Guidance Office Law has VNW too…?”

“That man behind Olive is Otto Vogt,” Alice informed Gabrielle quietly. “From what I’ve heard, he died last winter. And you know who the man Olive is talking to is—”

Werner Waltz. Their paths had skirted each other frequently since two summers ago. Gabrielle never got the impression that he was a free-spirit and yet—

“Here!” Werner stood in front of Gabrielle holding two bottles of beer. He popped the tab of one open with the tab of another and handed her the open one.

“Thanks.” Gabrielle accepted the bottle and took a sip. 

Warm.

“Can I have one?” Olive asked, joining him. 

“Don’t you have school tomorrow, Ollie?” Werner asked. “Maybe I should take you home?”

“What? You don’t want me here?”

“Huh? No, of course I do! I’m glad you showed up—”

Olive held out his hand. “Tomorrow’s the weekend, Werner. No school.”

Gabrielle stared.

What in the world were they talking about?

“Oh yeah!” Werner nonchalantly handed the prince an open bottle. Charming and Atienna tensed at this but only Charming moved forward. The man stopped short when Olive made eye contact with him and took a big gulp.

“And how old are you to be drinking alcohol, Your Highness?” Gabrielle asked.

Olive choked on the bottle and started hacking. Werner patted him on the back in alarm. Once Olive recovered, he glanced up at her. He opened then closed his mouth before asking, “I’m sorry, but… Do you know who you are, Miss Law, to be asking me that?”

‘Miss Law’? What—

“What is going on here, Waltz?” Vogel interjected. “Where is Ndoto? Where are we? Is that the Ariesian prince?”

Olive snickered.

“Where…?” Werner whipped around and thought about it for a moment before he chuckled. “I’m not really good at geography—”

“Enough with this act, Waltz,” Vogel interjected. “Is this where you’ve been hiding after deserting?” He glanced over at some of the members of Atienna’s group. “Is this where you’ve all been hiding?”

“Huh…?” Werner frowned a bit before looking over at Atienna. “Desserts…?” He followed Vogel’s gaze to the group before he brightened. “Oh, if you have questions about acting, you should ask Klaus! He’s really, really good at acting. He’s in a play right now, right?”

Klaus Kleine whom Gabrielle recognized from the Week of Blindness tensed at the attention. 

“Oh, I know what’s going on!” Werner interjected suddenly.

“Do you…?” Volker asked, loosely gripping the beer bottle he’d  been given. Though the question seemed judgemental, Gabrielle got the sense that he was being earnest.

“I do!” Werner nodded. “Don’t worry, guys—”

Vogel grimaced.

“–that’s all VNW.” Werner tapped his temple. “All that stuff that you think happened didn’t actually happen. It’s all fake.”

“What?” Beijixing Mai frowned.

“Yeah, I thought we established that, boss.” Otto sighed. He jerked his head off into the distance. “It’s because you dumbasses got too close to the gates during your protest. Too close to the border.”

“What’s VNW?” Renee asked.

“Von-Neumann Weigner disease,” Otto explained. “Basically a psychological disorder that’s a side effect of being in the presence of the tree.”

“The tree?”

Olive gasped. “Don’t tell me your VNW is so bad that you don’t know what a tree is anymore?”

Saints. 

“Like Werner said, you guys are crazy out of your minds right now,” Otto continued, ignoring the prince. “You’re sick. What you think is real isn’t. You need to wake up. It’s 1969, and we’re in paradise.”

There was a pause. In the silence, Gabrielle could hear faint music playing from somewhere in the group of formerly helmeted people. Had they put on a radio? In the middle of all this? 

Werner was starting to sway to the song. 

“What? That’s ridiculous.” The Geminian captain frowned. “Do you expect us to believe this nonsense?” He whipped to the Sagittarians—specifically to one Arjun Uttaretara. “This must be a Sagittarian—”

Mai clicked her tongue. “How many times are you going to accuse unassociated parties of unwarranted things?” She turned back to Otto. “You expect us to believe that nonsense, Capricornian?”

“The hell is that? I don’t expect you to believe anything,” Otto replied. “I’m telling you as it is. There’s no whatever this is—” He gestured to them. “Whatever war you’re yapping head off about—it doesn’t exist. You’re not some generals or war heroes. You’re citizens like us who stuck their heads where they shouldn’t.” He did a swig of his bottle. “Take it or leave it. I’m tired of being a broken record to VNWs.”

Volker frowned.

“And what of our uniforms?” Renee asked. “Is this all make believe too?”

“Those look like historic relics you’d find in the museums in the Child of the World District,” Otto said after looking the man up and down. “Don’t tell me you bozos went off and stole them for your demonstration.”

Olive whistled. “That’s a crime, you know?”

Werner frowned a bit. “Hey, O-man, you’re being kind of mean…”

“It must be Manipulation,” Von Spiel muttered, speaking into his hand. “Or some kind of Transmutation.” He shared a look with his fellow general and Volker Weingartner and then to the familiar older man sitting behind Volker. Friedhelm Heimler, if Gabrielle recalled correctly. “To be able to conduct without a conductor like that without saint candidacy…”

Something rather ravenous in Vogel’s eyes and the Geminian captain’s eyes glinted.

“May I… perform a health assessment on him?” a hesitant voice interjected.

Gabrielle looked up to find a young woman with mousy hair entering their circle. Her accent was faintly Capriocrnian, though her blouse and pants looked distinctly Geminian.

Charming took a step in front of her. “Are you Capricornian?”

“I am, but I’m not affiliated with the army,” the woman replied calmly. “I am a nurse first before anything else. I don’t want to start anything. That man there is my friend.”

“You’re Greta Strauss. I recognize you.” General Vogel frowned as he looked over Charming. “You were supposed to be serving on the northern front. You’re a deserter.”

Greta tensed and looked away. After a tense pause, Charming allowed Greta to pass.

Hm. For all of Capricorn’s rhetoric on loyalty and honor and service, it seemed like quite a lot of its people thought differently. Though—that was the case for all countries, wasn’t it?

“Greta?” Werner whirled around and threw out his arms at Greta’s approach. “Greta!” 

Greta startled. “I—yes—Werner—”

“What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be out here so late!” He shook her. “Gil’s probably really worried about you!”

“Gilbert…?” Greta breathed.

“Leutnant Wolff is here?” Volker asked.

Werner nodded, before his brows met. “Yeah, but you know his first name isn’t Leutnant… It’s Gil… bert.”

Greta sat him down before whipping out a flashlight from her back pocket. Much to Gabrielle’s surprise, Alice came to a stand beside her. Greta stared at her for a moment before Alice offered her a handshake. 

“Atienna, you’re affiliated with Werner, Olive, and Jericho, aren’t you?” Alice asked Atienna who sat a little ways away. “Do you know anything?”

The latter woman’s eyes were focused on Werner and Olive.

“I don’t know,” Atienna replied. “I honestly wish I did. I don’t know anything about them.”

“Hurtful,” Olive noted, although he was grinning.

Greta flashed the light in Werner’s eyes abruptly.

Olive immediately frowned. 

“His pupils are dilating in response to the light…” the woman drew slowly as she pocketed the light a moment after. “Usually, the opposite occurs.” 

“Dilation in response to light…” Alice muttered. “A sign of a neurological issue of some sort or…” She stared down at him. “Are you taking anything?”

“Taking anything? Like stealing? No, I’d never!” He stared at Alice for a moment. “Aren’t you Doctor Kingsley? J-man’s professor?”

Greta and Alice both paused, staring back at him.

“Hey,” Olive said. “Don’t flash that light around so much. He has a condition.”

“And you?” 

“Me?” Olive snickered. “I’m always in peak condition.”

Werner nodded. “Ollie’s a football star. He’s the best on his team.”

Olive nodded as if he was eating it all up—whatever ‘it’ was.

“This is how he normally is,” one of the Capricornians said from beside Klaus. He had a scar running from his left temple to right cheek, and he looked vaguely familiar—though nothing about the floral-patterned blouse he wore was familiar at all. “It’s not what you think—”

“Paps?”

Gabrielle turned towards the call and found a young man in a leather jacket pushing through the gangly crowd and then through the sitting soldiers towards them. Another interjector, it seemed. Some of the soldiers rose to a stand and ogled the man as he approached. 

Volker tensed.

The young man briskly walked to Friedhelm. He dropped the beer bottle he’d been holding, and it shattered like petals on the ground..

“What are you doing here, Paps?” the young man whispered. “What are you doing with ELPIS? It’s dangerous—”

Friedhelm rose to an unstable stand. “H-Hein… rich?” 

Werner perked up and looked between the young man and Friedhelm. “Oh, is that your dad, Hein? I was wondering why he looked familiar!”

Heinrich glanced at Werner, nodded, and placed a hand on Friedhelm’s arm. “What? Yes, Paps, it’s me. Why are you acting like this?”

Friedhelm shakily gripped Heinrich’s arms. “Heinrich! Is it… really you? It can’t…” He squeezed the man’s arms. “Heinrich…”

The young man, Heinrich, looked around somewhat bewildered. But, when he spoke next, his tone was gentle as were his hands when he rested them on Friedhelm’s arms as well. “Yes, it’s me. What’s going on?”

Friedhelm said nothing and shakily pulled the younger man tight, close. “Heinrich.” He slipped into his native tongue as he began to shake uncontrollably and cling to the younger man.

Gabrielle realized what she was witnessing now after putting two and two together. This was a scene she had witnessed many times before. Two family members reuniting—though, in her time, the reunion was between a corpse and a mourner.

Olive clapped quietly.

“Oh!” Werner snapped his fingers and pointed to Von Spiel. “I remember now! Your Fritz’s dad, aren’t you?”

Martin von Spiel’s gaze flicked from Friedhelm and Heinrich’s embrace to Werner. “What is this? How is—” His gaze then flicked to Otto. “Is… Fritz here?”

“Spiel,” Vogel said warningly.

“Huh? Well, no, not here.” Werner took a sip of his beer bottle as his gaze lingered on Heimler. “He’s probably home.”

“Home…?”

“He used to kick it with us,” Werner continued, “but you know he settled down, got married, adopted a kid, and retired from our club. Yulia actually swung by just the other day—”

Martin’s expression and demeanor were unreadable.

“What’s all this?” another voice rang out—annoyingly familiar. “So, what are we doing?”

Gabrielle turned to see Nil Abero,  a vaguely Aquarian-looking woman, and a helmeted man approaching them. The helmeted man had a rather interesting print of dark blue scorpion on his helmet. If that wasn’t a red flag, then Gabrielle didn’t know what was. Behind the trio came a cluster of leather-jacketed men and women. 

The generals and the soldiers were visibly tense.

The Geminian captain shot up to a stand and stared at Abero. “General Abero?”

Abero stared at the captain for a moment as he came to a stop before he squinted. “Valentino? The hell are you doing out here?”

The Geminian captain pulled back. “Where… have you been, General?”

Whispering was spreading out from the outer ring of soldiers. 

Abero stared at him. “What?” 

“We’ve still got to face the ADUI tonight and a quarter of the men are beat,” the helmeted man beside Abero said, nodding at Werner. “Are we going to get some compensation for that or what, boss?”

His voice was familiar and not in a good way.

“And whose fault was that?” The woman asked. “You were the ones who wanted to get here early.”

“If we followed your itinerary then we’d never get anything done.” With that, the scorpion helmet man pulled off his helmet and revealed a youthful face with a dark head of hair and a trimmed mustache. 

“It’s the Kaiser…” Klaus stammered, tensing, wide-eyed.

Kaiser Kafke Netzche didn’t even look anyone in the eye. “I’m not giving out autographs.”

“It can’t be the Kaiser,” Von Spiel muttered under his breath before his gaze trailed to Heinrich. “It can’t—”

Vogel looked like he was about to fall over. “You’re not the Kaiser.”

“A Transmutationist’s work. Or a Diverger’s. It has to be—”

Now, the Kaiser frowned. He eyed Werner. “Why the hell are they calling me your cat? What did you tell them?”

What?

Abero slapped Kafke’s shoulders from behind. He gave the man a shake. “It’s because you’ve got the personality of a prickly pussy cat. What? Are you upset they aren’t fawning over you?”

“Kafke’s a really good baseball player,” Werner interjected, placing his bottle down momentarily to a wield an imaginary bat. He took a swing. “He’s our district’s mascot!”

“Mascot?” Von Spiel repeated. 

Kafke seemed to puff out his chest a bit which was ridiculous to witness. 

“Stop rubbin’ his ego,” a crisp voice rang out. “‘E’s got enough of it already.”

Gabrielle recognized the ginger-haired woman who stepped out from behind the Kaiser. Her eyes were wild and bright. Iris McKillop. Rumored to have drunk the blood of children during the Reservoir War. A war criminal turned apparent ELPIS Leader. Dead mid-Week of Blindness according to Jericho.

Iris jabbed a finger at Volker as she leaned on Werner’s shoulder. “That hurt, bastard.”

Volker stared at her chest and abdomen for a long time. Then,  he slowly pulled out a pistol from his belt and emptied its chamber into his palm. He stared at it for a moment before slowly turning his hand over above the makeshift table. Small rubber pellets clattered down onto the wood.

Clicks and clacks resounded after realization seemed to settle in amongst the crowd. Not even their bullets functioned properly here.

Vogel asked calmly despite the chaos around him— “How dare you pretend to be the Kaiser?”

Kafke slapped Abero’s hands off his shoulders before eyeing Vogel.  “Listen. Who do you think I am to be giving me that hairy eyeball?”

The hairy what?

“You’re not the Kaiser,” Vogel repeated, stiffening now.

“You’ve got that right.” Kafke took a step forward and slapped his foot down on the makeshift table in between them. “Do you know who you crossed paths with? Do you know whose time you wasted? Punk.”

“It’d be nice to get an explanation actually,” Gabrielle interjected, stepping forward. “With or without the theatrics. We’re more than a little lost here.”

Kafke looked her up and down. 

“Oh, this’ll be good,” Olive whispered.

“Back in the 50s,” Kafke said, shrugging his jacket, “there were eight groups that ran the nighttime scene in Ndoto’s districts.”

Oh great, so they were going the theatrical route. 

“Immigrants to Ndoto because you know the people already living here are already a part of Ndoto,” Abero interjected. “But the others—”

“We’re still lonely wolves,” the Aquarian woman said. “And lonely wolves gather together.”

Olive snorted. When Iris and Abero glared at him, he coughed, clapped, and gave a thumbs up.

“Veter, Augen auf Herzen, Lightrock Beaters, Hall of Wings, Ali d’angelo, Lovers Lane, Laureates, Akai Sharin,” Kafke continued. “Each one from a different district. Each one wanting their own piece of the night. Fights over territory so big that they send guidance officers to crack down on it, so big that they started ten different outreach programs to try and shut them down.”

There was that word again. Guidance officers. The prince had called her that. 

“Then on May 26, 1962, a battle broke out between all those groups in the Child of the World District.”

May 26th? It was 20 years off but that was the date the war began.

“But neither group was the one who came up on top. Instead, it was a lone outsider who beat down and then united all groups into one.”

Abero thumbed Werner who was on his third bottle.

“That infamous day has been known since then as”—Kafke took in a breath— “The ‘Battle Between the Trash Bin and the Lamppost on the 67th Avenue of the Child of The World District On May 26, 1962.’”

What?

There was a stretch of silence.

“That’s a very elaborate story and a very fascinating battle name,” Gabrielle drew slowly. 

“I told you we should’ve named the battle something less specific.” Abero sighed. “Even Mladen’s idea was better.”

Mladen…? Pi?

Abero spread his hands. “‘The Twilight Battle’. Now doesn’t that have a nice ring to it?”

“No!” Kafke pushed him off again. “How will we know what battle it is if we aren’t specific—”

“We’re the A.L.L.A.H.V.LA.!” Werner exclaimed,  clicking his bottle against Otto’s.

It was all very chaotic. And surreal. It sounded like the beginning of a joke. ‘The Kaiser, Gemini’s greatest warhawk, the Ariesian prince, and a Capricornian soldier walk into a bar…’

“No, Werner,” Kafke said slowly in a half-whisper. “We talked about this. We all agreed that we’d call ourselves V.A.L.H.A.L.L.A.”

“Oh… Oh, yeah—”

“How is that fair?” Abero interrupted again. He nodded at the Aquarian woman. “Her group’s name is the very first letter of the acronym.”

Kafke held up a finger. “Let’s not start again. Your group’s the second ‘A’—”

“What?” Abero recoiled. “I thought Ali d’angelo was the first ‘A’!”

“No, Augen auf Herzen is the first ‘A’.” Kafke waved him off. “We already decided how it was going to be. Anyways, some parts of each group broke off and started trying to claim their own territory. The ADUI is one of them, and we can’t have that, can we?”

Cheering resounded. 

“What in the world…?” the Geminian captain Valentino murmured. 

Abero and Kafke turned to the man simultaneously. Again, almost comical.

“They have VNW,” Otto interjected. “We’ve been beating up and getting beaten by people crazed out of their minds. They think they’re in the middle of a war or something.”

Kafke quieted then and took a step back. As did Abero. As did the Aquarian woman standing with them as did the people who had come with them.

“We’re not going to catch VNW are we?” someone whispered.

There was a familiar sort of tension in the air. Tension from fear, distrust, apprehension. The worst kind of tension to come to life in a group of people with big cultural, belief, personality differences. Ironically, Gabrielle wasn’t worried about a fight breaking out between the countries actually at war, but a fight between the warring countries collectively and VALHALLA.

Fear was a dangerous thing.

More whispering.

This was definitely bad—

Werner put his arms up. “Hey, it’s okay!”

“In what world is hanging out with VNWs ‘okay’?” Abero half-hissed. 

“Uhm… well…. They think they’re soldiers, right?” Werner pressed, eyeing Volker.

Volker nodded slowly. 

“That means we fought soldiers and… won!” Werner spread his arms. “That’s awesome, isn’t it?”

There was a beat of silence before thunderous whooping and cheering broke out. Bottles were thrown, hugs and high-fives were exchanged as the energy of the area reached an all time high. 

The Kaiser hopped up onto the makeshift table and kicked off the items that were placed on it—much to the displeasure and horror of the generals and commanders sitting there. A jacketed woman hoisted up a large, sleek, radio-like device onto the table, while a man set up a pair of two rectangular cubes just beside it. Speakers…? They looked strange. The commanders at the table immediately stumbled back in alarm.

Gabrielle started forward just as Kafke connected rubber wires from the rectangular cubes to the central radio. In that instant, a loud cacophonic sound burst out from the speakers. Gabrielle immediately went to cover her ears and ducked low for cover. When she got her bearings, she lifted her head and found the area flooded with VALHALLA members. All of them were rowdily dancing or shouting over each other. Kafke was dancing with Abero on the table, while Werner was sharing a mad duet with Iris. 

“This is madness.”

“This is unnatural.”

Gabrielle turned to find Arjun, Kramer, Renee, and Volker standing beside her.

“In my country,” Kramer, who had been quiet and observant the entire time, spoke suddenly, “there is a word just like that name. Valhalla. Valhol. You may know it as one of our mountain tribes, but it was named after something else.” She looked out towards the sea of people, and when Gabrielle followed her gaze, she spotted former peacekeeper Mladen conversing with the Aquarian woman who had accompanied Abero and the Kaiser.  “In our folklore, that is where soldiers and warriors who have died in battle go to rest.”

“What are you saying?” Volker asked. 

“She’s saying,” Gabrielle said, “that we’re in the land of the dead.”

E. The Immigrant

“Who are you?” 

Emilia looked up from the lip of the beer bottle she’d been handed half an hour ago. She was sitting at a makeshift table of crates at the very edge of the area where the generals, the other commanders, and the peacekeepers were discussing things with the hauptmann, Otto, and the Kaiser. The ‘hauptmann’, ‘Otto’, the ‘Kaiser.’

She had passed by the former two men as she’d made her way past the confusion and ruckus to this area. The hauptmann hadn’t recognized her, but Otto had. She had thought it some cruel trick of some kind by the enemy, but she figured she wasn’t important enough to the enemy—the saint candidates, ELPIS, the other side of the war—to warrant a trick like this. So, she had assumed it was a trick against the hauptmann, but before she could think of whether to cry, shout, or run, Otto had slapped her on the shoulder—

“Emilia? What are you doing out here? You can’t hang out with this kind of crowd. What the hell would your siblings say if they caught you? Didn’t you tell me you caught Ana sneaking out a week ago.” 

Her siblings? Her siblings whom she didn’t know the fates of. Whether they were alive. Whether they were serving. Whether they were dead. 

“You’ve seen my siblings?” was all Emilia could ask.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Otto had recoiled a moment after. “Shit. Don’t tell me you have VNW too.”

“My siblings?”—like a broken record. 

Otto frowned a bit before he placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Yeah, I’ll take you to them later. Need to take care of some things first.”

And now—

“I asked you who you were.”

—now, Emilia was witnessing another encounter between two apparently familiarly unfamiliar parties. She recognized a select few of them. On the left there was Beijixing Mai and Arjun Uttaretara whom Hauptman Weingartner was supposed to be having prisoner exchange discussions with. On the right there was an Aquarian-looking man, a Sagitttarian girl, and another Saggitarian-looking boy whom Emilia swore she had seen an obituary of in the papers. 

It was quite dark and so it was difficult to really make out faces—especially in the chaos of the dancing crowd. So—perhaps she was simply mistaken. 

The Sagittarian boy pointed to his face. “Me? I’m Claire.”

Mai looked between the girl standing beside Claire and Claire himself. “Are you of sound mind, Eunji?”

The girl, Eunji, tensed and then nodded. “I am.” She hesitated, then said, “Mai… it’s good to see—”

“If you’re of sound mind, then you can’t possibly believe that person is your brother. Yuseong Haneul is dead.”

Eunji paled and the Aquarian glowered.

“Well, that’s harsh,” Claire noted. “Weren’t you listening to what Ollie and the others were saying? Whatever you think is real isn’t. Instead of asking me who I am, shouldn’t you be asking yourself who you really are?” 

Arjun looked as if he wanted to say something, but the music abruptly switched from the odd violin beat to an even more odd, rapid, inhuman tones.

“Oh, I love this song!” Claire declared before he grabbed the Aquarian standing beside him and started swaying back and forth.

The Aquarian appeared just as bewildered as the Sagittarians around them. As he looked back at Eunji as if for guidance, another young adolescent stepped in-between the Aquarian and Claire.

“Lavi…” Eunji murmured.

“I’ll dance with you,” Lavi said, intonation flat.

Claire merely grinned as Lavi joined him. Their dance was odder than anything Emilia had ever seen before. Rather than them dancing with each other, it seemed to Emilia that they were dancing against each other. 

Claire abruptly pointed past and over Lavi’s shoulder. He was doing finger guns to the beat and when Emilia followed the direction of the point, she found the hauptmann dancing alongside—Iota? The ELPIS Leader she had faced on that train bound to the capital. It was the version of Iota who had died—not the one whom Emilia had formed an uneasy alliance with.

Emilia looked back to Claire to find that Lavi had slightly edged him back quite a distance. Abruptly Claire whipped around and started finger-pointing to the beat in the opposite direction. This time a peculiarly-dressed Virgoan occupied the direction of his point. Atienna Imamu, was it?

Emilia couldn’t help but think that despite the ridiculous way the two adolescents were doing, it was her and the others watching the two were the ones being ridiculed.

As the music died down to a different song and Lavi departed, another Sagittarian woman emerged from behind Mai. The woman was wearing a porcelain mask of a rather monstrous face, but when she slowly pulled it down, the face beneath it was rich with human relief and grief.

Eunji’s voice shook as she whispered. “Soha…?”

The woman named Soha immediately sank to a bow in front of the girl and muttered something shakily in some Sagittarian language. An apology? Eunji sank down to her knees and held the woman. When the woman got back up on her feet, she stared at Claire. Claire stared back—

“I’ve brought more beer!”

Emiia turned to find the hauptmann approaching her flanked by Klaus Kleine and Derik Stein. The hauptmann went around, handing out the bottles of beer and breaking up the tension while Klaus and Stein approached her.

“Klaus…” Emilia rose to a stand. 

“Emilia.” Klaus stood awkwardly in place for a moment before closing the distance between them. “Are you okay?”

Emilia responded by holding him close. He returned the gesture, and she felt her eyes burn as relief and anguish overcame her at once. “It’s all gone, Klaus. Everything.”

Klaus merely tightened his grip on her.

After the moment passed, they pulled away from each other. Derik was watching them with crossed arms.

“Stein.”

The man offered her a small wave. Of course. That was Derik. Not one for sentimentalities.

They eventually settled back around her makeshift table and sat in silence as the music echoed around them. 

“Is it true? It’s been months…?” Klaus asked.

Emilia nodded. “And… they’re saying here that all of that is fake?”

Klaus nodded.

The hauptmann, four bottles in hand, broke into their little gathered circle. He handed them out indiscriminately before taking a seat beside Emilia. 

“So, you know O-man and Klaus?” he asked, studying her curiously. 

Emilia was caught off guard by his bright disposition and the smell of alcohol that clung to his jacket. 

“Otto and Klaus! You go to school with them?”

Emilia shook her head. “No, sir—”

The hauptmann frowned slightly. “Aw, you don’t have to call me ‘sir’. It makes me feel old. You can just call me Werner.”

Emilia hesitated.

“Just go along with it,” Stein said. “He’ll believe anything you say.”

“You don’t know me… Werner?” Emilia tried after a long pause. “You don’t recognize me?”

Werner studied her. “I think I’ve seen you around with O-man before at his school. You hang with his friend Alwin, right?”

“Alwin…” Emilia breathed.

“He’s here,” Klaus confirmed. “But he’s not… Alwin.”

Emilia swallowed. “Klaus… my village was… there was an air raid.” She put a shaky hand to her mouth to calm herself. “Do you know if…?”

Klaus paled.

“They’re fine, Bergmann,” Stein said unexpectedly. “At least they were fine the last time I checked. Don’t know what’s happened to them after this Ndoto shit.” He thumbed Werner. “There was this whole plan to get all the people the saint candidates were holding hostage and put them in a safe place. The hauptmann wanted your family was included in that list even though we thought you were dead.”

Emilia felt her heart squeeze and she turned to the hauptmann as her eyes began to burn even more. Gratitude was on her tongue but she could not force them out since she knew she’d also be forcing out a sob. 

Werner patted her on the shoulder. “Aw, don’t cry, Emi. Can I call you, Emi? I don’t really know what’s going on, but whatever you think happened, didn’t really happen! It’s all VNW—”

“And that’s my cue to get out of here.” Stein rose from his seat and trekked back into the crowd. 

His spot was soon occupied by two familiar landsers. Newly enlisted young men who had barely seen battle. If she were much younger and less seasoned, she would call them her bullies. However, to her now, they were just children.

“So what’s going on?” one of them asked. “What’d the generals say? Are we still fighting?”

“I didn’t catch much,” Emilia replied. “But it seems like there’s a temporary armistice.”

Both landsers frowned.

“I bet you’d like that,” one of them remarked. “Guess that means you don’t have to become a deserter a second time around.” He glance at Klaus. “You Capricornian?”

“I am.”

“I don’t recognize you. Another deserter then?” He eyed Werner next. “And you—”

“Isn’t that Kalts Auge?” whispered the other.

The landser’s eyes widened. “Is it..?” His eyes brightened for a moment before a smirk overrode his features. “Was he your hauptmann? Makes sense for a deserter to lead other deserters. Birds of a feather flock together.”

“A deserter? What’s that? I keep hearing people say it,” Werner wondered. “Deserter? Oh! Like desserts? Someone who likes desserts? Oh, I’m definitely a desserter then! Are you a desserter, Emilia?”

Emilia felt her cheeks burn as the two landsers burst out laughing. Werner started laughing along with them which caused the two landsers to laugh even harder. Emilia felt something boil in her chest.

“A deserter and proud of it!” the landser crowed.

“Werner,” Klaus whispered with a grimace, “a deserter is someone who… runs away from service..”

Werner stopped laughing. “A person who runs away…?”

“It’s not a nice word,” Klaus tried to explain. “They’re calling us… flakes, in a way. It’s not a good thing.”

Werner felt silent for a moment before he said, “Oh, so you were calling Emi and Klaus cowards?”

The landser barely had the chance to snort before the hauptmann grabbed the back of his head and slammed his face into the makeshift table once and then twice. He stumbled back when Werner released him but Werner was already throwing another punch that cracked against his cheek. This time, the landser fell on his back, and Werner pounced on him and began pounding him again and again.

Emilia shot up in disbelief and alarm as did Klaus. 

The other landser lunged at Werner but Klaus quickly tackled the man to the side. The onlookers who caught on to the chaos started whooping and cheering as Werner beat down on the boy again and again. 

It was too much—

“Stop it, Werner! Stop!” A man entered the foray accompanied by a woman. The man managed to jump on top of Werner and pull him off of the whimpering landser. “Calm down!”

Werner immediately whipped around to the man. He was visibly shaking.  “He called Emi a coward! Are you agreeing with him?”

The man took a step back, holding up his hands. “What? No, of course not. Werner, what is going on with you?”

It was Ludwig Waltz. And that woman—Viktoria. Emilia hadn’t seen them since last winter before the Week of Blindness. She almost didn’t recognize them. Her eyes immediately became drawn to Ludwig’s legs. He was not… in a wheelchair. 

Otto entered the area at that moment and took one quick sweep of everything before walking over to Werner. He threw an arm over the man’s shoulder before shoving a bottle of beer into his hands.

“No use fighting crazy people, boss. Come on.” He led Werner away from the scene. 

As they walked past Emilia, Werner stopped short and asked, “So, are you a desserter, Emi? Do you like desserts?”

Emilia regarded him hesitantly for a moment, before responding quietly, “Yes, I am.”

F. ???

An odd atmosphere had settled over the clearing on which the members of V.A.L.H.A.L.L.A. and the supposed residents of Signum had fought. There was music cracking out from a stereo radio at the center of the clearing, and quite a few VALHALLA members were dancing rather erratically along to it. The residents of Signum—or perhaps those who thought they were residents of Signum—went down three paths: observing dissonantly, forced to join in the activities, and whispering amongst themselves.  

Atienna Imamu herself watched them all quietly from the same spot she had occupied since the battle between the two groups had ended. Most of the others who had occupied her circle had wandered off into the crowd. The only ones who were sitting with her were Nia, Safiyah, and Bachiru.

The commanders alongside peacekeepers Gabrielle Law and Alice Kingsley had moved to a different makeshift table made of stacked wooden blocks and were discussing whos, whats, wheres, and whens animatedly.  

Alice Kingsley looked up from the discussion and met eyes with Atienna. There was a pause and some stillness before the former approached the latter.

“May I speak with you?” Alice asked.

Atienna rose and Sefu with her.

“Privately.”

Atienna nodded. 

—however, there was no privacy in the area. Sound and music bled in from every direction and there was no space that was not occupied by a dancing group. Still, Atienna and Alice managed to find a small corner at the edge of the field.

“This is our first time meeting face-to-face in person,” Alice Kingsley said. 

“It is… in a way.”

“Is Jericho here as well?”

Atienna nodded.

“Is he like Werner and Olive?”

Atienna paused and then nodded.

Alice scanned the area, taking in the dancing figures, the watching figures, the stumbling figures. “From what I’ve gathered, it appears as if there’s some sort of mass delusion occuring. A folie de plusiers of sorts. Leutnant Gilbert Wolff was unaffected when he first came here or so I’m told. So, interacting with people who are under a delusion must incline certain individuals to adopt the same state of mind. Labeling those who don’t fall under the delusion as delusional themselves is a means of manipulation. ” She scanned the clearing. “As for these walking ghosts… it must be conducting of some kind.” 

“That’s a succinct theory,” Atienna replied.

“Succinct…?” Alice regarded her. 

Atienna held her gaze for a long while before she asked, “Is this what you meant by trying something else?” 

“I’m sorry?” Alice Kingsley frowned. “What do you mean?”

Atienna quieted. “Nevermind—”

A loud cacophonic, resonating roar cracked through the night. The sound became even more amplified as one of the jacketed women went over to turn down the music blaring from the speakers.

Vogel rose from the makeshift table across from the radio table that he’d moved to with the other commanders.“What is that sound?”

“That’s the ADUI” Across from Vogel, Kafke took a drag of the cigarette in his hands before tossing it on the ground and stomping it out with his foot. “Of course they show up two hours late.”

Abero, panting from his most recent dance, jogged over to him. “So, what’s the plan?”

“Obviously, we teach them a lesson—”

“Seriously?” One of the other jacketed men dancing nearby recoiled at this. “Are you serious? Man, I’m tired and I’m drunk and I sprained my ankle earlier!” 

“Are you that much of a letdown?” Kafke muttered.

“Hey…” Werner, who was also dancing nearby, stopped short and looked between the disputing men. “If Enrique doesn’t want to, then he doesn’t have to. It’s not fun if we force people, Kak-y.”

Kafke sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fine.” He pointed a finger in Enrique’s direction. “But don’t even think about coming with us next time.”

 “Whatever…” the offending man grumbled before walking away.

“Bye!” Werner waved. “See you next time!”

Enrique grunted and waved as he departed.

“I agree with his sentiment.” Volker detached himself from the table of commanders and approached the two. He regarded Kafke carefully before looking over to Werner. “You just finished a… battle and you have injured. We also have injured. I don’t want them to be pulled into another battle.”

“Doesn’t matter if you don’t want to be pulled into it,” Nil Abero said. “If you’re around, you’re going to pound town.”

“I understand that’s what the end result will be which is why I’m asking for a retreat,” Volker aid. “We do not have the resources to be pulled into—”

“No one’s asking you to fight,” Kafke muttered. 

“I am,” Abero interjected. “I mean look at what they did to poor Romana. You—Volker, is it? You look pretty good for an old man. I bet you can throw a punch or two.”

Volker stared at Abero for a long while before turning to Werner. “Werner, from what I’ve understood, you’re considered”—he glanced hesitantly a Kafke—“the leader of this group.”

Werner put his hands up. “There’s no leader here. We’re just a bunch of good friends hanging out.”

“They call you ‘boss.’”

Werner chuckled. “It’s a nickname.”

“A nickname?”

Werner nodded. 

“… alright.” Volker took a moment to recollect himself. “Now, Werner, since we’re all friends here, you don’t want anybody to get hurt anymore, right?”

“Right…”

“So we should leave,” Volker said. “How did you get here in the first place? May we accompany you so we can find a place to recuperate?” 

“We came here on our bikes.” Werner made a revving motion with his hands. “I think we could fit maybe…” He looked at his hand and started counting his fingers. “… three? On each bike? I think?” He counted again. “Wait…”

Before Volker could say anything else, General Vogel came to his side. “Hauptman Weingartner, do you think you have the authority to be making these kinds of deals and decisions?”

Vogel’s lips thinned. “Of course not, sir. Do you have a different suggestion?”

“No, but I think asking help from—”

Werner looked between them. “Hey, I don’t really get what’s getting on but Otto’s professor here was talking casual to me. I know you have VNW, but that doesn’t give you the right to be mean or rude.”

Vogel stared. 

Kafke cleared his throat. “Why are you listening to these guys , boss? They have VNW. They don’t know what he’s talking about. Don’t you want to get back at them for what they did to Hansel?”

“Yeah, I do…”

“Doesn’t it piss you off that they just got away with it scott free?”

Werner frowned. “Yeah, it does!”

Now, Volker and Vogel frowned.

“Werner.”

Atienna Imamu entered the scene. Atienna Imamu, a Virgoan. Virgoans who had not touched the war. All the Virgoans were outsiders to the Capricornians, the Sagittarians, the Aquarians, the Cancerians, the Geminians. On those grounds, they agreed. 

“Does Nico know about you being out here, Werner?” Atienna asked.

“Nico?” Volker wondered.

Werner froze. “No…”

“Does Cadence know? Does Jericho? Does Maria…?”

Werner averted his eyes. “Well, not exactly—”

“And would they be happy if they found out?”

“Probably… not…”

“Do you want them to find out?”

“No, I don’t—”

“I’ll tell them.”

Werner whipped to face Atienna and gasped. “You won’t!”

“I will,” Atienna said. “It’s dangerous and people could get hurt even more so. However—perhaps I wouldn’t need to if we didn’t do anything dangerous?”

Werner opened his mouth and then closed it. He turned to Kafke and Abero. “I think we should go home. I’m pretty tired, and we can all hang at Chlorowheat after!”

“Chlorowheat…?”

“Seriously?” Kafke shook his head before he put a hand on his hip. He thumbed behind him. “Fine, then I want to leave now so those ADUI idiots don’t think we’re leaving because of them.”

In a quite disorganized fashion, the VALHALLA members lead the members of Signum’s armies through the alleyways and to a large parking lot.  Sleek metallic bikes with rumbling engines glinted cool there in the night. To the residents of Signum, these vehicles were peculiar, futuristic variants of vehicles they knew. To the members of VALHALLA, this was an opportunity to show off their prized possessions. 

Werner found Atienna and Olive in the crowd and enthusiastically insisted they ride with him. He led them to a motorcycle that was slightly sleeker, slightly blacker than the others in the lot. 

“This is really cool,” Werner said as he offered them his back up helmet and backup backup helmet. “I’ve always wanted you guys to ride with me at the same time—”

Just before they loaded onto the bike, a man and a woman stepped onto their path. Ludwig and Viktoria Waltz. Once again. Only Atienna Imamu recognized them. 

“Oh, sorry. My bike is full. You can hop on with O-man,” Werner said when he noticed the two. “No one’s riding with him—”

Otto, who was just out of arms’ reach, called back, “My professor, his daughter, and some other guy.”

Werner craned his neck. “Some other guy?”

“Wilhelm. A guy who goes to my university. Not sure why he’s out here. I think he’s the guy who ruined your helmet.” Otto glanced at Atienna and Olive. “Shouldn’t the driver be wearing the helmet?” He shook his head. “Anyways, don’t you think it’s strange that there are so many VNWs popping up now, boss? It sounds like they’re all cuckoo-cuckoo about the same thing.” 

Werner shrugged.

“Hate to say this, but we should probably tell sell-out Gilbert or maybe even the chief guidance officer.”

“Mari?” Werner asked.

Atienna frowned.

“Exactly.”

Werner thought and then nodded, before ushering Ludwig and Viktoria to a different bike. 

Once the bikers and the riders were paired up and seated, they took off into the night. The roar of their engines broke through the silence of the dark paths lined with buildings. Soon, they broke away from buildings and out onto the open road with the wind whipping. 

Suddenly their path was lit up from behind by bright yellow high beams. As those in the rear looked behind them, they found a handful of blue helmeted motorcyclists sandwiched between two open-backed vehicles hurtling towards them. 

“It’s the ADUI!”

The VALHALLA rider at the rear who had Renee LeBlanc and Arjun Utaretara as his passengers was quickly swarmed by the other riders. One of them swung a pulsating purple pipe out at the driver but was thrown off balance as Arjun sent out a foot aimed at one of their wheels.

“Hey!” Werner immediately slowed down and fell between the assaulting ADUI members and the defending VALHALLA member. He immediately sent out his foot and kicked the off-balance member so hard that the rider tumbled off their bike and crashed and rolled into the other ADUI members who momentarily dispersed.

Otto slowed down as well and fell beside Werner.

By this point, their entire group was surrounded on the left and right. There was a moment of nothing, and then the shouting and swinging began. Cracking, shouting, scrapping, clanging—there was not a moment of silence as the entire night became illuminated by the glow of what the Signum residents understood was vitae.

“We’re at a disadvantage,” Volker said. “These v-ehicles are caging us in and they have us surrounded. We need to get out of this situation—”

Werner stared at Volker for a moment before he nodded. “I got it—”

“Wait—”

“Take the wheel!”

“Werner?!” Atienna startled from where she sat behind him and Olive. “Don’t—”

Olive merely laughed and lunged for the handlebars of the motorcycle as Werner quite literally leapt off of it. The man landed on the back of Otto’s motorcycle beside him. If it were not for the fact that Wilhelm who was sitting there grabbed hold of him, he would’ve tumbled down the road.

“Sir—”

Werner leapt again—this time landing haphazardly on the open back of the vehicle to their left. The blue helmeted group gathered there stumbled back at his arrival. Werner put his hand together as if he was actually holding a swingable weapon in them. He was not. It took a moment for him to realize this—but it was just soon enough for him to dodge the swing of a glowing yellow pipe. He tripped over his own feet a moment after and landed flat on his back. The yellow pipe-swinging ADUI member stepped over him and raised his vitae-coated pipe—

Atienna whipped off her helmet and hurled it at the man’s head. 

Crack!

The assaulting man stumbled back. 

Werner shot her a grateful look before ripping the pipe from the man’s hands and twirling it indigo. He then began to swing wildly, knocking over several men and women off the back of the car before finally driving the pipe through the driver side window of the vehicle. 

The next moment saw the vehicle swerving off road. Werner managed to leap back onto the back of Otto’s motorcycle just in time. He leapt again and landed just behind Atienna on his original motorcycle. 

“That was reckless,” Volker said in disbelief. “But—”

“Fucking fight you useless piece of shit!” Otto abruptly snapped, lurching over Volker and grabbing Wilhelm by the scruff. “If you could get everything you wanted tomorrow, why would you do nothing today?”

“What?” 

“Fight or drive, stupid!” Otto snapped, shoving a metal bat into the man’s hands. “Don’t make the professor break his back for you.”

Volker appeared bewildered, but Wilhelm held Otto’s gaze before nodding tightly. He whipped around and swung as an ADUI member driving beside them reached out with a bright orange hand. The hit sent the ADUI member swerving backwards and took out several other members with him. 

“We need to go faster!” one of the commanders shouted.

“It’s fine.” Otto rolled his eyes. “As soon as we go over that bridge up there, we’ll be out of the immigrant ring.”

Up ahead was a dark tunnel barely illuminated by small lights lining the sides of the tunnel itself. To some, it looked like the tunnel to the afterlife.

“Are you going to elaborate on why that is?”

“The guidance officer’s watch begins there. It’s fine.”

Just as Otto said, as they entered the cover of the bridge, the ADUI members slowed to a stop at the bridge’s lip. The silence that settled

They broke out of the darkness after two hours and were immediately washed over with soft, glowing rays. Open waters rippled below the bridge they were riding across, and a city glistened just beyond the waters. Bright and colorful that city was—even more saturated and twinkling than the Twin Cities, the residents of Signum originating from the Twin Cities thought. Above all of that sparkling rose a great white tree that pulsated faintly in the night.

“What is that?” Gabrielle muttered from a bike just behind Atienna’s. “Is that—”

“That’s the tree!” Werner shouted back to them. “Isn’t it pretty?”

Olive noted, “Makes a great night light.”

Whooping resounded a second after from the VALHALLA members. Shouts of victory, it seemed. Some of the residents of Signum did not understand such celebration. To many of them, their escape had not been a victory at all. To a few, however, there was an understanding that survival was the greatest victory of all.

The VALHALLA members quieted as they rode down the bridge and merged onto a crowded road, allowing the sound of the city around them to fill in the silence. Despite the late hour, the streets were full of life. Families, hand-in-hand walked down crowded sidewalks. In-between them weaved flower-necklace-wearing adults holding brightly painted signs—

OPEN THE GATES.

IT’S NOT US AND THEM.

WHAT IF IT WAS YOU OUTSIDE?

“ELPIS,” Otto muttered. “Crazy hippies.”

The buildings, shops, and their insides sparkled warmly. The television sets buzzing inside each played out uneventful newscasts and bright, colorful song broadcast videos. There was no sign of the wear and tear resulting from the war that the Signum residents believed they had just emerged from. To them, such a sight was foreign and unnatural.

The soldiers, commanders, peacekeepers were tense, confused, and weary—startling at every bright sight, every loud sound, every honk, every bang. As they rode deeper into the city, however, the tension and weariness faded into something calmer.

Should we relax? the residents of Signum wondered. Is it safe to relax? Are we allowed to relax?

It was a line that once they crossed they could never cross again. 

𖡼 𖡼 𖡼

iii. 19-42/69—diffusion 

“‘It’s everything I’ve ever wanted to achieve,’ Gabrielle Law said as the warmth from her surroundings finally reached her.’”

“Did she say that? Isn’t that out-of-character?” The man with the ever changing face scratched his chin. “And isn’t this whole bit way too long?”

“Perhaps… you’re quite the critic, aren’t you?”

The man shrugged. “How about the setting? Isn’t it too… mundane?”

“One would think that being in a high stress setting like war would draw out someone’s true, honest self,” the gardener drew, turning a page of the book, “but it’s in eras of peace and nothing that people reveal their true colors, don’t you think?”

The man didn’t seem convinced. 

“What would you do with your life and what would your dreams, beliefs, and goals be in a time where there’s nothing so apparent and deadly to fight against? What would you stand for? Fight for?” the gardener continued. “The answer to that shows who you truly are.”