Chapter 1: Last Days of an Untold StoryPart 1
Here it was. My last day in the litterbox, and strange as it was to say, I think I was going to miss this place.
"Hey Tarn, Clocking out?" Daniel asked.
Daniel was a tallish guy, skinny in the beanpole kind of way, dark hair and glasses. I liked Daniel, he wasn't the most friendly person around, but he wasn't an asshole either, and was the sort of person happy to help a person out… as long as he wasn't busy with his own stuff anyway.
"Heading out," I corrected. "Last day on the job."
His eyebrows shot up, "That's today? Jeez man, you should have reminded me."
"We had my going away party on Wednesday," I reminded him. "Remember, cake and everything?"
Daniel winced, "Yeah, sorry man. Slipped my mind. One last night on the town? We never hit up that new place that opened up last week," he said.
"No can do," I said with an apologetic wave. "I ship out in a couple of hours. I had to pack this morning in advance."
Not that I had a lot to pack… or that I could bring most of it with me.
"Jeeze, right out of the frying pan and into the fire, huh?" he asked. "Well, good luck."
"I should be wishing you that," I said. "You better hope whoever they have replacing me is willing to let you use the broom closet."
"Ah man… I didn't think of that," he grimaced. "I mean, we've been using her office more often-"
"Which 'her'?" I teased further.
"their offices," he corrected. "But, yeah, that was a nice spot… So, any idea where you're going?"
"Basic. Completing my Agent training," I explained.
"Right, you said you were going to be an Agent," he said. "They almost got me for field work like that, you know? Chatted up a class D scouter and everything."
"Only for your waifu in the office to snatch you up before they managed to put her favorite stress toy into the line of fire," I smirked. "I know you've told me the story about a hundred times."
"It's a good story, and it's told a lot better than that," he shot back. "But yeah. Point is… I've got some contacts in that direction if you were to say… need a favor to pay back for those days."
"Don't do anything that could get you or yours in trouble," I said immediately. "You and Tanya have a good thing, I wouldn't want to put that, or either of your positions in any sort of jeopardy," Daniel was a good guy, but he could get a bit… Mono-focused, at times. Not often, but sometimes he'd just lose all sense of consequences in pursuit of a goal. Which admittedly had done him as much good as bad.
It'd landed him Tanya as a waifu somehow, despite him being a spindly, bureaucratic twig after all.
"Don't worry about it," he waved off my concern. "I won't do anything reckless."
"I've heard that before," I said, only half teasing. "Still… thank you. I'll drop you a line when I can. Well, if I'm still alive," I added in full gallows humor.
"You'll make it," he said with confidence I didn't mirror. "You're the most reliable man with a mop I've ever met," he said.
"Nice alliteration," I added dryly. "But seriously-"
"I'm not going to put myself at risk," he reassured. "Now get out of here. You've only got a few hours left?" he asked.
"Yeah, I was going to stop by the memorial first," I said. "You know. Say bye to the bug, Carol, the others."
His mouth pulled into a thin line. "Yeah… I get it. Not how I'd spend my last hour in town, but I get it."
"You'd spend your last hour in time fucking the mayor somehow," I pointed out.
"I mean… she's got nice legs," he argued.
I rolled my eyes, but smiled. "Never change Dan. Never change. But I do have to go," I said seriously.
He nodded, "Good luck."
I started off. "Sayonara Dan. Check your mail after I'm gone."
That was probably the easiest of my goodbyes.
The trip to the memorial was quick. Getting to the right spot at the memorial took a bit longer. The list of names stretched across the walls of the entire level. Some names were simply carved in, others gilded or furnished in some way or another. Bug's, Wasp's, was actually filled in with green metal pulled directly from his remains. A tradition for Cybertronians of his era and background. Leaving a literal part of themselves behind.
Carol's by comparison was a simple name on the board, not too far from his, as was Jets. As was Macs. Wolf's was rimmed in fine silver. Truesilver. Iron's was a small plaque that had his service metals embellished into the sides. Asuka's likely decorated though with her it was just a rank and ribbon. Conan's was backed on steel, because of course it was.
I never did find out if he was actually that Conan or not. He'd certainly liked his poetry.
Reaching into my workbag, I pulled out a drink. Took a swig, then poured the rest out for my friends. No words needed to be said, yet somehow it was harder not saying them.
"May we be friends again in another life," I said once the bottle was dry. "Good bye."
And then it was out the door, and onto the bus.
I'd brought a novel with me to kill time on the trip, but I found my eyes focused on the window, taking in the city on that last pass through.
It was… a sight. Even after ten years, it kinda blew me away. Steel roads wider than superhighways flanked by megastructures reaching kilometers into the sky above and earth below. The more mortal scale buildings, built on, or in many cases, in all this ancient construction, built in thousands of hundreds of different styles sourced from just as many cultures. Growing off of it like some kind of flowering moss on ancient boulders.
Though, in truth, the megastructures were actually a lot older than any rock back on Earth. And very little of the new construction was actually 'built' into it. Just transported from various salvage operations scattered across the multiverse.
Patchwork city they called it. One Slutlife's premiere tourism and business worlds. A place you could see any sight, find any vice, make any deal.
I watched a dragon fly through the skyroads, huffing smoke in frustration as they adjusted a tie large enough to serve as a small boat's sail, clearly talking over the phone, while a giant betentacled mass worked as a crossing guard at a side road, deftly following all vehicles and pedestrians with it's dozens of eyestocks, while it gestures a kindergarten class of elves to pass. A billboard promoting the re-election of district representative Barbie over her competitor archduke Vecna.
The smell of one of my favorite noodle shops hit, then the first burger place I'd visited when I got here.
And then I was there. The Astroport. One of the four main transport hubs of the city.
I passed through security, obligingly letting my mind drift, as I passed through-
Then shot a quick look over at the tall, pointy eared security elf- no security eldar who'd goosed me on the way through.
She smirked.
I snorted and rolled my eyes at her. Cute, but I wasn't that easy. She'd have to buy me dinner first at least, and I was about to ship out.
"Disappointing," she lamented. "You're actually my type. You're on door P8."
That exchange done, I went over, waited, watching as a few others slowly filed into place. A tallish dark skinned man with glasses, an extremely heavily built asian guy who didn't stop smirking, a strict looking brunette lady with freckles, an exhausted looking blond guy with glasses in a trenchcoat, a rather androgynous ginger… guy (?) in a suit, and a pale girl in full gothic regalia with an asian tilt to her eyes, all eventually joining me.
Most kept to themselves, but some of them got chatty.
"At first I was really worried about being selected by Class D," the Goth girl, apparently of the 'Perky Goth' variety, explained. "But apparently they're really nice? I mean, it's legal focused, not a drum circle, but they're supposed to be really chill? I'm not really a fighter, make love not war."
"Make love huh?" The body builder asked, a wide smile on his face.
She looked at him for a moment, just staring for a solid second before. "Yeah, I mean… Okay don't think this is weird of me, but I kinda grew up in a commune? Not like, communist commune, but like… off the grid and stuff. Daddy was a draft dodger," she explained.
"You say that with pride," the other woman said, distaste clear in her voice.
"Well, yeah," Ms Perky Goth said. "He didn't even support the government, not the war. We were going to move up to Canada originally, but mom kept fighting him in legal to try and get hold of me. I ended up living mostly with my Aunt. Who was like a total flower child."
"I suppose it's no betrayal if you were never loyal to begin with," The other woman replied, though this was clearly a diplomatic concession on her part, rather than true feelings. "My family has served in Class B for generations."
"Yeah what's with that?" The big guy asked. "All these class things. They some sort of aptitude rank?" he asked with a cocky smirk crossing his face.
"They're more like political factions. Class C here, one of the C-reeps," I said with a wave. "We're part of team Eldritch abomination."
The stern brunette looked at me in surprise. "You're a legacy?"
I shook my head. "Acclimatized. I had a ten year dip in town. I pretty much picked up the local culture."
She inclined her head regardless. "A decade of service is more than enough to be considered a proper citizen."
"What are the other classes?" the tall black guy asked, "I'm a Class B too," he added.
"Class-B," She said, giving him a look that clearly said 'we are not the same' "Operates under the patronage of a number of classical immortals. Dragons, members of the Celtic and Norse pantheon, Lords and Ladies numerous others."
I gave her a side eye at that. She was new wasn't she? Trying to hide something that obvious. "Think 'fairy tales'. Specifically, the Grimm Brothers' versions," I added. Not outright calling her out on her misrepresentation. "Most divisions have a flagship 'type', but they're all a hodgepodge to some degree or another. Class E's the Celestial Bureaucracy, but you get your odd 'noble demon' type, lots of ascendant or empowered humans, and some of the classical pantheons like the Hellenistic gods. Zeus, Hestia and the like."
"While Class-D are mostly the undead," The Class-B woman continued. "They have few prominent powers within their ranks, but they serve primarily as intermediaries between the other divisions, and that neutrality provides a great deal of stability to their position."
"And Class-A?" the big guy asked, and if anything he was grinning wider at this point.
"Devils," Both the Class-B lady and I said at the same time.
At this point the intercom dinged. "Portal Eight, is now opening. Portal Eight, is now opening…"
"That's us," I said, getting up to my feet "See you on the other side."
It was time to see what we were made of.
Part 2
Once we got to basic, they split us up, and checked us over, decontaminated us, tossed us a bunch of uniforms, then, before we could even properly situate ourselves, marched us out in front of the barracks to meet our drill instructor.
The uniforms were nice at least. They were khaki-like heavy cotton in military beige. Lots of buttons, no zippers, and adorned only with a Slutlife logo on the left breast and our various branch patches on the right. Very 'World War II chic'.
The bodybuilder guy, 'Cain', was apparently in Class A. Much to no one's surprise. Well to be fair I figured he might also be class E, the Celestials. They had a lot of Cultivator types and they often had the same air.
Our resident, highly androgynous Ginger turned joined our perky goth flower child on team D-eadbeat. While the quite Blonde guy who hadn't been up for chatting joined me as a fellow C-reep.
The uniform was also surprisingly comfy considering this was meant to be the place where they broke us down to rebuild us. Which was overall a bad sign for how rough the training was likely to be.
The seven of us filed out to the front, where we joined another dozen people standing in lines.
"New arrivals, form up," The Drill Sergeant at the head, a brunette woman with bright blue eyes, a stark white version of our uniform with added rank bars, and a kind expression… that was for some reason extremely alarming. "Line by line, in your divisions, new arrivals to the front."
Slowly we sorted into place. And it was clear that either this was an unbalanced spread of divisions, or we weren't the last group to arrive.
Five minutes later, the second proved to be true, as another group filed in. Once again our Drill Sergeant, calmly and politely, not yelling even a little, directed them, "Line by line, in your divisions, new arrivals to the front."
They filed in, leaving us in five rows of five. A traditional company training company was twenty five, so this should be it.
And yet we received no instructions. Instead we just stood there silently in parade formation still… for the first few seconds. Then people began to squirm.
Eventually someone in Division E spoke up, "when-"
"Drop and give me ten," The Drill Sergeant said at once. And surprisingly, the potential recruit, after only a moment's hesitation, did so.
The sergeant tilted her head, still smiling. "Tradition," she said in amusement, seemingly as an explanation. "Hello everyone. I am your training instructor for your stay, Captain Nanoha Takamachi," she announced.
A ripple ripped through the crowd as we all suddenly realized just why her smile had appeared so terrifying. Nanoha Takamachi was a big name in Anime. One with a lot of titles both in her setting and in real life. Titles like 'White Devil', 'Magical Girl Gundam Chan' 'The Mahō Shōjo (Magical girl) who is a Ma Hō Shōjo (Demonic Cannon Girl)', 'The Befriender'.
Of course, not everyone here was into Anime enough to recognize her, but they tended to pick up the uneasiness of those who did.
"I see a lot of you recognize me, don't feel bad if you don't. I'm a bit of a niche figure," she said humbly, still smiling. "All you really need to know is that I am here to instruct and test you in your capacity to become an Agent for the Company."
The mood I felt about that was… mixed. On one hand, yay! We got to be taught by Nanoha… on the other hand? Oh crap. We were about to be taught by Nanoha.
"I'll admit, I'm not much of a traditional Drill Sergeant," she said, still smiling, as the class E person doing push ups finished up, to their feet as she explained this. "I'm not really one to yell most of the time. And my standards are a bit higher than what most consider reasonable… So to start with that. I'm about to do the kindest and cruelest thing I can do for you," she gestured off to the side. "Direct you to the exit."
That brought a wave of shock through the group. What, was she just failing us en masse? Was this some sort of test? I don't think most people here genuinely thought the former, but some who looked pissed, shocked or horrified definitely did.
"At any point in time, you can leave," she said. "This isn't a draft or obligation. If any of you feel the need to leave, someone else can take your place, and if you don't complete your training, I don't believe that any of the time you'll spend here is wasted. Even if everyone of you drops out, the Company will have made a net profit, and I will have had a chance to improve my abilities as an instructor. This is your opportunity to learn and prove yourself. I will work with you as best I am able to help you do that. But to do so I will ask many difficult things. Things you might believe are impossible, and as long as you remain I will demand that you try to accomplish them. Do you understand me?"
"Yes Captain," some of us said.
"And the rest of you?" she asked, still smiling that damned smile.
"Yes Captain!" we all said this time.
"Wonderful!" she beamed. "Now to start with! We're going to do a quick tour of the grounds. And by that I mean laps until you drop," she said, holding out her hand as a familiar white, gold and pink staff appeared in her hand. Dozens of bright pink orbs forming above it a half second later, making half of us flinch back.
"Now follow me!" she directed taking off at an unreasonably fast jog, as each of the pink spheres either shot into the sky… or flew over our heads.
Needless to say, a lot of the more ignorant among us freaked the fuck out and started running. Which was good motivation I suppose. Even if they weren't in any danger… probably.
No, my money was that it was just a search spell that she was using to literally keep an (artificial) eye on every last one of us at the same time. Blunt, but I probably should have expected that from Ms. 'Full Power/Complete Annihilation'.
I mean I could be wrong. She did have attack spells that looked the same from a visual standpoint, but she probably wouldn't hit us with that right at the start…
Probably.
Well, not before announcing some sort of combat exercise, which 'a jog' probably didn't count as.
Probably.
Were those lights gradually getting closer as we ran?
I slightly upped my pace as I followed the rest of the group- well more was herded around with the rest of the group. In the worst case, this was currently only an 'outrun the bear' situation, and I saw a few guys who looked a lot worse at cardio than I was. As long as the first person touched by them didn't get zapped, they were probably fine to touch.
Probably.
I kept my breath measured as I ran, and kept my pace steady as I did. Right up until the first person to reach their limit, a rather overweight guy with black hair and bad acne, came to a stop, and their sphere crashed into them while they were bent over and wheezing.
Said sphere proceeded to zap the shit out of them, shocking them with bolts of pink/white energy holding them up in instantly formed cuffs around their hands and feet… before setting them back on the ground feet first.
"I said to run until you drop," Nanoha's polite voice echoed from all the remaining, primed, not searching spell spheres. Well to be fair they definitely had searching as part of their structure. "I need to see what I'm working with after all!" she added cheerfully.
"She's allowed to to do that!?" someone asked, as all of us suddenly picked up the pace a bit.
"She's our instructor, she can do what she sees fit," the 'Legacy' from B I'd met at the astroport explained. I think her name was…. Dalilah, Darla? Something that started with D.
"Well fuck this," a redhaired man (not the Ginger from the Astroport) with a Class A tag said. "I didn't sign on for this!"
"You can leave," Ms. D from B replied coldly.
He didn't leave, instead jogging on.
As this byplay happened, I noticed a new sphere shooting out from her part in the line towards the guy who'd just been zapped… leading to him yelping and running away from it, only for it to zip ahead and redirect him back towards the right direction at threat of another zap.
"Devil… she's a devil!" a blonde haired girl, skinny in an unhealthy way, with a class B tag, breathed out beside me, as we ran.
"Offense taken!" a man with brown hair and glasses said, smiling unnaturally as he jogged at a steady pace. "Besides! She's no devil! She's something far worse! A magical girl trying to help us with the power of friendship!" he grinned wider.
I let out a short laugh at that, but then refocused on my breathing, as I worked to try and keep the sphere behind me without burning myself out too fast… I wanted to make a good general showing after all.
The better Ms Takamachi knew me, after all, the better she could break me past my limits. This wasn't a punishment, hard as it was, this was an opportunity. And I was going to make the very most of it that I could!
Probably.
Part 3
Nanoha wasn't satisfied until she'd literally run us all into the ground. Until our stamina wore out, our legs failed from under us, and in one case someone literally had a heart attack trying to keep moving.
Nanoha had responded with a 'simple' healing spell to get them back on their feet… then got them moving again.
It was grueling. It was long. Ridiculously so. Some of us managed to last almost half a day and some might have lasted even longer if it wasn't for the fact the spheres had been speeding up, just very slowly. I'd guess by maybe a couple of centimeters-per-second each hour or so we ran.
Though it really felt like they were moving faster by the end.
I made it surprisingly far, being the fourth last to drop, behind my fellow C-reep from the airport (the blonde guy), a very young master vibing guy from Class E, and surprisingly, a girl from Class B with shockingly blue hair that I was now suspecting was not dyed. Mostly because of how she managed to drag things out a full hour and a half-hour beyond the rest of us.
As for what we did when we waited? Well, after Nanoha gave us a courtesy zap to make sure we were done done, we were dragged over by our bindings to lay on the ground next to a table full of cups of orange juice and crackers, each labeled 'take one'.
Which I did, eventually. Once the sky stopped spinning.
"Need a hand?" the black guy with glasses asked me while I was in that waiting period.
"I'll be fine," I exhaled. "Not my first rodeo…" not even the most brutal to be honest. Having an attack spell at my back the entire time was tense, but at least it was waiting for me to slip up, not actively flying for my head along with dozens of other projectiles.
Some of my old workers really worked to put the pain in 'paintball'. Though that was admittedly a lot more fun than just running in a very long circle, even if it always resulted in a trip to the medical ward.
With a groan I sat myself up, noting the blonde guy had crashed out beside me.
"So, Class C right?" my apparent helper said. "I heard you guys also lose your name. Unless you being a 'Legacy' changes that?" he asked looking over at our mutual acquaintance from the Astroport.
"Nope, lost it," I confirmed. "I'm not a Legacy the same way she is. She grew up in the company, knew to do things like ask for special exemptions in advance. I just acclimatized after signing my contract." I paused, in reconsideration. "Or rather after my original did."
"Your original?" he asked cautiously.
"We're clones,'' the blonde haired guy said, sitting himself up. "The Company doesn't just clone product, it also clones more useful agents. Technically speaking, we're as much natives as she is," he said, nodding towards her.
Said woman scowled, "It's not the same. Outsiders, regardless of their origin, are almost always ignorant, filled with misassumptions, of what is possible, what is practical, what the true nature of a great many things is, and on more than one occasion, completely useless delusions of morality," she argued. "Which is why more than half our time here will be wasted correcting that ignorance."
"That's one way to look at it," Glasses said. "Another is that you're basically telling me you've got a free pass on more than half the stuff they're going to test us on."
"Sometimes you just need to put all the pegs through the same square hole," the blonde man said. "It might not be a perfect system, but it works to get reliable results. Even if someone is raised within the company you can't be sure they'll actually be educated in everything they need to know. And unless you're training an entire batch of identical clones, tailoring everything to everyone's personal abilities just isn't practical "
"There also might be side lessons," I noted. "One of the primary arguments against homeschooling is a lack of socialization." Kids are cruel, but life's a bitch, while there might be better ways to train how to deal with people than being thrown into the deep end, but it did force kids to adapt coping strategies.
Well, that or buckle under the strain.
"Yeah, I noticed," Goth girl from the terminal said. "I'm Stacy by the way."
"Tarn," I replied.
"Mary," Our resident Legacy greeted.
"Wait, I thought you said you lost your name?" our apparently nameless man from Class B said.
"I did, ten years ago, when I started my work contract," I replied. "I picked up a new one."
"Steven," The other Division C contractor said. "Did anyone else take a work contract?"
"I didn't even know that was a thing," Our nameless fellow said annoyed. "How does that work exactly?"
"The company offers the opportunity to work menial labor in unwanted or short staffed positions in return for a bonus to your initial contract, and an increase to your effective grade," Mary explained. "I did a five year tour as a translator on a border world."
"There's also a secondary contract if you do a full ten year tour," Steven explained. "Though the company generally likes to pair weak contracts with strong ones when giving out multiple contracts," he explained. "And I worked as an air conditioner repairman back in the city for the last ten years."
"The point increase alone is pretty sizable," I noted. "Thirty percent off of initial value. That's excluding things like mission modifiers, though it does factor in things like the variable starting value of different world options," I added. "And I was a Janitor."
"Delivery girl," Stacy said with a wave of her hand. "It wasn't actually that bad a job! I got to meet a lot of interesting people at least."
"Well that sucks," Our nameless fellow said clearly feeling left out. "Any chance I can retake that?"
"I wouldn't bother," Mary replied. "It might be possible, but it would be at a significant delay. And you're already slotted into an elite training cadre at the moment. The opportunity cost would be too great. If you want more points, there are always managers higher in the company looking to offer them for favors, both as official missions and not. Even gaining an additional contract isn't impossible."
"Wait, it isn't?" Stacy asked, sounding surprised.
"What? Did you think this was one of your simple 'CYOAs'?" The Class B woman asked. "You have been selected for employment in a company. Bonus pay for added work is to be expected. As are contract renegotiations."
"Then why did you do it?" The other Class B applicant asked. "If it's no big deal, five years seems like a long time."
"Tradition," the stern woman replied. "As I said, my family has been serving within class B for generations. There are certain agreements, both spoken and unspoken, that go along with that legacy."
Meaning she had both connections, and probably obligations beyond the normal prospective agent. That was something to watch out for.
"If you say so," the nameless man said, sounding dubious. "And… call me Greg," he said. "Always liked Greg as a name."
"Nice to meet you Greg!" Stacy said. "So where did all the others go?"
"Forming cliques of their own," I noted glancing out at some of the other groups that were forming, including both our 'missing' members from the Astroport. The quiet ginger, and the big guy with the dangerous smile.
The latter of which was looking right at us. No, right at Stacy, while beaming that exact same, Patrick Bateman, grin.
I frowned, yeah… this… could be trouble.
Ugh, and me without my mop.
Part 4
Once Blue Girl finally collapsed with exhaustion, Nanoha brought us all back up to the front.
"Well, you're not the worst I've had to work with," she said simply, neither praising nor dismissive, which was actually somehow worse. "No one quit. Everyone gave it their best, on the field, I'd imagine only half of you would be dead right now!"
That earned a few grumbles.
"Stacy, Alexander, 83J-B, Hanz, and Philup? All of you go give me one more lap," she said in response to that. "The rest of us will stand here waiting."
There was a momentary hesitation in two of the listed men, but all four did take off jogging… well, trying to jog in some cases. Right now most of us have our legs feeling like deep-fried rubber bands.
That silenced the grumbles, though some people still clearly were irritated.
Once the last of them (Hanz) got back into position, Nanoha started up again. "To be clear. This process will take as long as it takes. The facility is designed with temporal manipulation in mind to facilitate your lessons. I, personally, am unaging. If it takes weeks, it takes weeks, if it takes decades, it takes decades. The only clocks over your heads are your own. But those clocks are ticking. Now since you've had a chance to rest, we'll be moving onto the next exercise."
"But we haven't even unpacked yet!" Someone snapped.
And it was understandable why. We were varying levels of tired, both from exertion, and what was certainly varying levels of jetlag (portallag? portalag?). Most of us were probably hungry, and I knew despite the orange juice, I was as thirsty as a fish in a desert.
And I'd both been zapped enough times with various flavors of healing bullshit to be in physically 'perfect' health, and got a few very basic 'tune up' biomods back at work. I could only imagine how bad off the normal folks were, to say nothing of the ones like Hanz who were more than a little on the chubby side.
"Another lap, Mr Philiup," she said to the recently returned man. "Don't worry, your next one will be pushups." She then finally let the smile drop as she looked at him seriously. "Though if you'd prefer… the Exit is right over there," she reminded him with a gesture.
He grunted then started off around the block again, even slower this time.
This time no one complained.
"Alright, next exercise," she said beaming at them, despite themselves, I heard a few muffled groans or whines.
Luckily, either that didn't count, or our instructor decided to take mercy on us for the first time since we met her. Instead of calling out the 'disruptive' trainees, Nanoha gestured behind her. "There's a field in front of you. Once I stop talking, you'll have thirty minutes to dig a trench in it before I begin trying to snipe you from across it," she gestured to a lawn chair she'd set up over by the barracks.
What fucking good would a trench do against a woman who could fly? Or use homing attacks? Or blast clear through the dirt.
"Stacy," she said, highlighting the perky goth girl from class D "Your test results lock you in as Flagbearer, you coordinate the class. Everyone else? Your job is to follow her directions."
Stacy actually seemed to pale from that, "I'm in charge?"
Nanoha's beamed cheerfully at her, tilting her head and closing her eyes, "Yes! Good job on acting like a leader and asking for clarification," her eyes opened though her smile didn't slip. "Nine minutes, forty nine seconds."
"Go!" Stacy said, pointing ahead. "Charge! Start digging!"
That earned a few more groans, but no actual words, and as a mass we lurched forward.
To our luck, the 'field' was more of a sand pit, and I knew sand pits. Easy to dig into, but without bracing of some kind or moisture they didn't have much structure. We weren't going to be able to just dig down, we'd need to build up the sides as much as we could.
So I did just that getting down on my hands and knees and beginning to dig and push the stand up between where I started and Nanoha, building up an artificial sand bank.
"This is bullshit!" Philup, called out again.
"That's a lap Mr Philiup!" Nanoha called out from her spot.
"Fuck this!" he said getting up to his feet. "This is not what I signed up for,"
And then he marched off to the gate.
Nearby, I could see Mary exhale sharply, watching the man leave with an odd mix of pity and scorn… before turning back to her job digging. Though unlike me she was just trying to make a hole, something hard to do as the loose packed sand was already sliding back in.
I coughed hard at her, and showed my approach a bit bit more dramatically for a moment.
She blinked, eyebrows shooting up for a moment, then immediately copied me.
Stacy, to her credit, was digging on her own…. Entirely aimlessly. But she was supposed to be leading. Hell, she was apparently the only one allowed to lead.
This was bad.
I dug as fast as I could, working with Mary to jointly build up a mound we could hide in, silently joined by 'Greg' as saw what we were doing and moved over, abandoning his half a hole to join us.
All of us were trying, but most of us were tired, hungry, and dried out. Eventually the clock ran its course.
"Times up!" Nanoha said.
Then we got to experience a face full of Pink.
Pink hurts, by the way. It hurts a lot. It tastes like Stockholm syndrome and friendship.
After that though? Merciful, yet terrifying, unconsciousness.
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...
…
"Wakey wakey everyone," Nanoha said cheerfully, sending a bolt of panic directly down my spine.
Looking up, I shot up, my head darting around, and found…
…That, I was laying on a cot in a very normal seeming Barracks. Moreover, everyone else was also here. Well not on my cot. They had their own-
Well, almost everyone. There was one cot near the end which was visibly empty.
"Have fun everyone?" Nanoha asked. "Twenty four out of twenty five, an impressive turn out! You're a much more promising class than I expected!" she praised. "I hope your lot will be ready to help out our new potential agent now that Mr. Philip has decided to drop from the program."
Most people's eyes lingered towards the empty bed.
"As I said, the exit is always open," she explained politely. "What I didn't add explicitly, was that once you step through it. You will not be coming back. There will be no transit to another agency, no appeals to retest into the program. You'll be free to seek independent employment, but your prospects as an Agent will end. No contract, no powers, no waifus, no access to company sourced and protected worlds."
She tilted her head, whimsically, "And to be clear. That is itself an option! Many independent individuals have accomplished great things throughout Omniversal history! Most don't, but it's possible," she said making clear without words that actually doing so was pure schmuck bait.
No one spoke up, and I wasn't sure if it was because they wanted to hear more, or just because they feared more laps.
Nanoha continued. "If you do want access to those resources however, you need to function as part of the company that is providing them, at least until you repay their value. That is the purpose of this camp," she explained. "And to be clear, as long as you're polite and raise your hand first, I will happily answer some questions."
Most people hesitated, but not all. Hands shot into the air.
"Yes 83J-B," she said.
"Why do only some of us have names?" the fae patronized individual asked.
"Officially," Our instructor began, "Some divisions interact with certain hazards more regularly, which often use true names as vectors," she explained. "Given the heavy use of Company cloning, it was deemed a useful safety precaution to remove that vector as a common weakness."
Which naturally brought up the question and answer that yes, most of us were clones.
The third question however was more relevant to our current circumstances. "What exactly was the lesson that all of that was supposed to teach? Or was it just to weed out the uncommitted?" one of my fellow C-reeps asked. Not Steven, but a nameless black haired man.
"In a way it was," she said. "To be a part of an organization, means you need to accept being part of an organization. Which means you will often be asked to take part in situations that either seemingly or actually have no real purpose, or are carried out inefficiently. Sometimes you will be asked to do impossible or unreasonable things. Often you will be given what seem like unreasonable, or incapable superiors, even without factoring in how your contracts might change your perspective."
She then gestured to the empty bed. "And you might decide that's not worth it. That's the calculation you'll need to make every time. In every world you enter, there will be some kind of organization. Sometimes it will be an elaborate bureaucracy, sometimes just the rule of the jungle. And some of these organizations can sometimes offer amazing resources! However, if you want to join them, you will need to tough it out enough to gain the opportunity to use them. Even if it's just to find the right opening to more dynamically acquire them," she added looking over several of the faces from Class A.
Which… fair enough.
"For today, you will be given such a calculated opportunity," she said. "While the first half of your day will be reviewing and selecting individual lesson plans, the afternoon will be another team exercise. Only the people who succeed in that exercise will be sleeping here tonight. Everyone else will learn to make do with sleeping bags outside, and it is mosquito season," she added with a small grimace and an accepting smile, in a 'what can you do'. "It'll be up to you to decide how much time you invest in preparing for each."
Stacy raised her hand. "Am I in charge again?" she asked, not looking eager at the prospect.
"You are the flag bearer," she said. "And will remain such for the duration of your time in boot."
"Oh," the class D woman said, "Fuck."
Honestly? It was hard to blame her.
"That'll be a lap!" Nanoha said with a smile.
Part 5
The remainder of the Q & A session was surprisingly short, most of it was practical questions. 'What were these lessons she was talking about', 'could we advise Stacy in her role as flag bearer' and, of course, 'did we get to eat breakfast before doing all of this?'
There was also a 'joke' question about if she was available for purchase once we got our contacts. Which, on one hand? I was impressed by the balls on that guy. On the other? Yeah no, that was stupid as hell, and didn't even make her flinch when she mentioned with zero hesitation that while she herself was spoken for, her clone line was indeed available… to people with the contracts needed to access it.
Something told me, he probably wasn't going to end up being one of the people with that access.
Or… maybe he would? Spite was a hell of a motivator, and it hadn't escaped me that a number of things had been… oddly well timed. The way the first 'jog till you drop' exercise had worked had given those most physically out of shape the most time to recover from it, with one specific individual who dragged things out even further to give even the last few a break. An individual who, I would note, bounced back over the time of the punitive laps.
And it'd make sense that someone would speak out as well. People had been given time to stop and chat after all, and no one had been punished that way until after time needed to be bought. Nanoha had even offered to switch punishments to something more time convenient after a period.
Likewise, the harsh treatment could potentially be perfectly calibrated. Once again, there was just one outlier who had been pushed past their limit, and quit, serving as an example for the rest of us.
Could this whole thing be planned? Nanoha had certainly pulled off more complex bits of timing and behavioral prediction in her series, and with the sort of advantages her position provided her, it'd be easy. I wanted to say she wouldn't be the sort personality-wise but… there had been tendencies, and with who knew what else she'd picked up working for The Company…
Yeah, the more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed.
In the end, it didn't matter much. If I was right, then probably meant that she was laser focused on doing exactly what her job outlined. Turning us into a bunch of capable field agents, which was a good thing. If I was wrong?
Well, I simply wouldn't copy 36I-B's mistake of pissing off a person of mass destruction. At least, not until I could attain a peer rank.
After that? …I'd admit the idea of trading 'friendship beams' with the likes of Nanoha was… appealing, to me. In a friendly way of course.
Of course, that was in the future. In the present I, or rather we, had more immediate concerns.
"Why do I have a course on speaking deep?" Stacy asked.
"Deep Speech," Steven corrected. "It's the primary language in class C. The language of Eldritch abominations," he further elaborated. "You're in class D. The Company's primary legal division, so you need to know all the languages used by the divisions in it."
"Technically Deep Speech is more of a trading pidgin," I elaborated a bit. "Mix of R'lyehian, Gith, Aklo, Quevquel, Common, and a mix of other languages from the far realms. One part spoken, one part sign, one part telepathy. The sign part's meant to be done with tentacles, but fingers can do it… if with a really bad accent."
"They also call it finger speech because of that," Steven confirmed. "You don't need to know all the parts of it. Or be able to do all of them. That's the point. It's used by a lot of things, not all of which have eyes, or mouths, or tentacles, or telepathy. It's a trade language, everyone who knows it can say enough to be understood, but you need to understand all of it, because whoever you're talking to might not use the parts you can."
"That's caused problems in the past," Mary commented, checking boxes. "Word of advice? Pay very close attention to every variation of the words 'lunch', 'offer' and 'small'."
"That sounds like a story," Greg said, sitting down with a lunch full of steak and eggs.
"Not a fun one," she said with a shake of her head.
"I actually recommend all the language courses to everyone," I said. "They're useful to pick up, and normally unaugmented humans can't learn them. There are aspects or parts to them that you just can't pick up on or replicate right. They'll give you a sort of booster to help with that. Get you fluent in a couple of weeks of light practice. Not every contract offers translation options," I suggested.
Neither of mine did, at least as an automatic thing. There was stuff that could allow active translation, but all of them were conditional and not one hundred percent reliable.
"There's a lot of them," Stacy said, looking disheartened. "This many… why are three, three, kind of elvish? And etiquette? Do we really need to learn all this stuff?"
"Not immediately," Mary said dismissively. "Only a madman would try and pick up everything all at once. Particularly since most contracts do offer things such as allspeech, or skill enhancers that will make learning through such courses later far quicker and easier," she explained. "Trying to learn the equivalent of dozens of college degrees while going through boot camp? As our instructor stated, they can literally make the time for us to do it, but I can think of more enjoyable methods of driving myself insane."
"Plus some of its niche in use," I said. "You don't need to learn about warp geometry if you're never going into space. You probably won't need to pick up fencing if you're staying in a place where all the duels are fought in battlemechs. That sort of thing."
"What did you sign up for?" Stacy asked me, seeing that I'd already checked my boxes and was focusing on food.
"Me?" I blinked. Then shrugged and slid my sheet over, "That's not all of it. I did most of the book stuff by mail order already," I admitted. "Janitorial work left me a lot of time to listen to audiobooks." It was how I knew about the language thing. They'd mailed the lozenges to me to take while I'd listened. Which were a complete headache.
Stacy blinked as she looked over what I'd checked. "That's… still a lot."
Mary scowled at my mention of my by mail lessons. "I've heard mixed reviews of those."
I frowned. "Maybe I should add a few more courses as a refresher? You're native of division B right? Sut na- nin andaith?" I half spoke half sung to her.
She grimaced. "Heni- a uglui" she shot back in a far more lyrical tone, the sound of bells almost audible in each word.
"But you did understand," I confirmed. "Alright, I'll grab a refresher on the main languages… and etiquette, and maybe a few others," I grimace. "Ugh, so much for saving time." The ethics courses could go fuck themselves though. I'd seen what the local standards were in those regards.
"Hey, better than what we got," Greg said after shoveling half his food in his mouth. "Okay, what about this exercise thing? We doing that?"
"I have to," Stacy said, sounding miserable. "Everyone who wants to has to be led by me."
Normally I wasn't much of a sucker for a pretty face… a sob story on the other hand? Those, those sometimes got to me.
I sighed, "Alright, what's the task?" I asked her, hoping she at least had an overview.
Part 6
The starting 'group challenge' Nanoha had prepared for Stacy was a standard Bootcamp gauntlet. Running through tires, climbing a wall, multiple push up segments, the works, only worse, because there were team aspects to it. The wall? Yeah, the rope was gone, and we'd need to work together to climb over it. Crawling across the rope bridge? There were two ropes, but they were both unsupported on one side, so people on one end would need to loop them up around the post and hold onto them so that they could cross, because tying them down was not allowed. The last line up of pushups only counted if someone was sitting on you.
It was sadistic.
Could it be done? Sure, several people in the batch could pull it off trivally. But on the low end, several of the tasks were outright impossible for some of the batch in their current state of physical fitness. Some of the tasks could be managed with enough assistance, but not all of them.
Which meant Stacy either had to 'cut the fat' or try and fail with everyone. Either way, she was going to be dealing with a lot of hurt feelings.
I didn't envy her. Tried to help out, and let her know I wouldn't personally mind sleeping on the ground, but it wasn't an easy choice to make. Particularly when Greg popped in how he very much would mind sleeping on the ground. With Mary advising that Stacy should focus more on keeping the goodwill of 'high performers' over chaff. And Steven electing to stay silent on the matter.
Stacy decided to try and get everyone across. At least at first. That seemed the fair thing, and if she was going to be 'flag bearer' then she would bear the flag and carry the team to victory or defeat.
The good part of that was, having accepted that we weren't going to pull it off, we could now focus on more important things, like reappraising optional training seminars and their value.
The bad part was…. Just because we were doomed didn't mean Stacy would accept that we were doomed, and worse, seemed to be trying to think of a way to succeed anyway.
Poorly.
"Charge!" she yelled out directing us to rush across the tie tracks.
"Chaaaarge!" she yelled as we reached the climbing wall, leading most of us to look at each other for a moment and my own eye to twitch as she seemingly immediately forgot the plan. "Wait I mean… um… form a pyramid? Like cheerleaders! Was anyone here a cheerleader?"
"Chaaaaaaaaarge?" she said less enthusiastically, looking over the rope pit looking around for answers we were not allowed to give.
What was quickly becoming clear was that while Stacy had a good amount of heart, she wasn't exactly an expert lateral thinker. It didn't help that her first idea was literally to go to Nanoha and ask to change things to make it more possible for everyone to accomplish, when I suspected the entire purpose was to make that impossible. At least at first.
Then again, what did I know? Maybe being able to recognize and ask exactly that was what Nanoha wanted Stacy to learn? Who knew how personalized everything was.
Don't get me wrong. We still tried to help out- well, most of us. Greg had been at least partially won over by Stacy's whole leadership speech, but Mary visibly checked out once she realized Stacy wasn't going to let her lead by proxy. She still hung out with us, offering a few token words of advice and conversation, mostly minor agreements or distracting tidbits of company lore, but she was clearly mostly staying in the group for insider knowledge.
Which… I couldn't really blame her for, since I was also largely viewing this as a practice run by this point. A chance to get hints on how to succeed at future challenges, or just learn whatever lessons Nanoha was teaching us. Even if that was just how to endure hardship.
Which… was probably a large part of it, given Nanoha's earlier speech about enduring under rough management. But also might have been how to make a difference under such management. Because while we'd failed the 'mission' halfway through, a lot of us quickly noticed that Nanoha's wording for each challenge was… particular.
There were bypasses. The rope challenge? There was nothing in the wording preventing someone from getting down in the muck below and lifting a person for support as they climbed across it. Hell, the wording even hinted at it! Stacy hadn't picked up on it though. The final kind of push ups had to have someone else putting weight on you while you did them but were unspecified otherwise, meaning you could use 'half' pushups with your knee as the fulcrum and someone sitting on your caves. She even showed off the way to cheat some of them!
Which was frustrating as fuck in a way, because Stacy missed all of it. Which left most people pissed to the point of refusing to coordinate, or outright dropping out of the exercise, not the camp, but just deciding that sleeping on a bed at night wasn't worth it.
After all, the other side of the coin of Nanoha's statement was to recognize when a reward wasn't worth the hassle of bad management.
For those of us who stayed however… Well, once the sun set and the exercise ended, we let her know about all the obvious stuff she missed.
"You stupid fucking bitch!"
Some voiced themselves a bit more rudely than others.
"Well, fuck yall too!" She shot back in a progressively stronger southern twang. "You think you can do better? Guess what! You probably can! You think I don't know that? I didn't ask for this, but I'm stuck with it! And you're stuck with me. If you wanna things to go better, help me!" she shot back.
"You could quit," One of the other cadets yelled out, this one from class A, unsurprisingly.
"That's a bad idea," Mary said, surprisingly coming to Stacy's defense. "You heard the instructor, this whole thing is a test. If Stacy leaves, we'll either get someone just as incompetent, or likely be failed out entirely."
Ouch.
Stacy winced, but held firm against the backbiting defense. "Look, I know today… wasn't great," she said. "But if you just explain things…. I know I don't get obvious stuff, but I will listen!"
The masses hesitated at that.
"She does," I confirmed. "You remember the wall? We planned that and she executed it," I said in her defense.
Not perfectly, but she did. "And Stacy's fighting on the front lines too," I added. "She didn't ask for this, but think about it. Isn't this really a learning opportunity?" I added in question. "How many stories have a chosen one? Or some sort of clingy McGuffin, or some other situation that makes one person key to dealing with all sorts of stuff? How many of those people are not who you'd want to work with, or under normally? Company bullshit isn't going to cover all of that, so this is important."
That… managed to get most of the people over it. The rest seemed mostly content to leave things be.
Mostly.
Steve, Mary, Greg and I made sure to keep watch at night in shifts in case anyone decided to make any less verbal complaints while she was sleeping.
I'm not sure if that was strictly necessary or not, however… later at night, while keeping watch, I did notice a few people wandering around, and I also noticed them very much noticing me. It could be coincidence, bathroom breaks were to be expected after all, but…
Let's just say we kept up the guard rotation habit for the rest of our stay. Even if it dug into what was already an uncomfortable night's sleep.
On the bright side? On the following day Nanoha offered us the exact same challenge, and this time? This time we pulled it off.
Part 7
That pretty much set the course for our general 'success' rate. Nanoha would introduce a new group challenge, that wasn't directly possible, but had a bunch of blatantly obvious workarounds, which Stacy would near universally miss leading to a night on the dirt. Then we'd recoup, explain everything to Stacy, then plan out a new approach which we'd then make use of the next day.
I mean it wasn't like clockwork. Sometimes Nanoha would change things up by giving two different tasks in a row, or three repeats, or revisit an old one, but generally our success rate was around fifty percent.
Well except for the people who tried on day one anyway. Needless to say a lot of people skipped once they saw it was a new task.
Which was a mistake for some of them, since with the… let's call them 'less proactive' members of the group around? We actually managed to brute force our way through a few of them! Though it might have been the right call for people like Hanz, who never quite managed to lose the weight; Clod, who religiously stuck to their diet until their end of boot; and C1485, who was… well, C1485.
We still managed to (often literally) carry them through the 'mapped' exercises at least.
And hey, the actual courses started up, and those were actually pretty neat! Mind Numbingly boring in some cases, but also exciting in others!
Like hot dropping from orbit into 'enemy' controlled airspace. Which was really less about learning what to do, and more about learning how to follow what are nominally simple instructions in what was rather… hectic conditions. Which was honestly a pretty thrilling experience! I mean I didn't even like heights, but that somehow kind of made it better?
"Holy shit Kenny just exploded!"
"Those bastards!"
"OH GOD MY LEG!"
"HAHHAHAHAHAHA! THIS IS GREAT!"
For some reason, most of my fellow entries didn't seem to really enjoy it. Was I the weird one?
No, clearly, I was just enjoying perfectly normal thrills. I mean didn't people go skydiving all the time? This… wasn't really any different was it? I mean sure the flak sucked when it hit you, but you just pulped if it hit most of the time, and the one out of ten you did survive the pain didn't last that long until you hit the ground! Hell, one time I even survived the exercise after one airburst clipped me. Died immediately after landing, hemorrhaging hamburger of a leg, shattered lungs, and who knew how many pulped internals would do that, but a win was a win right? And besides, we had resurrection tethers for the exercise so it wasn't like there was any permanent damage!
Though speaking of damage! The combat courses! Oh man, the combat courses!
"KAR EN TUK! Kosten VETAR! KAR EN TUK! JU TE ASUTS!" I sang merrily as I swung my khornite-inspired chainaxe into my vaguely impish, mostly humanoid 'sparing partner' generously provided by Division A. Throwing my weight into it as they blocked with their arm, to help the whirling teeth of the weapon continue to bite in, though the sacrificial limb, into their torso, taking a half step once it finished chewing through that, just like Bug taught me way back in the day, so that the sudden lack of resistance didn't throw me off my feet. Continuing the motion into a whirl that caught the downswing of an undead knight's sword. "KAR EN TUK!"
Nanoha tilted her head as she stood off to the side, giving me a somewhat concerned-looking thumbs up. All the while our guest lecturer Kratos yelled at me to stop singing and keep fighting.
Really wish we got a 'dad of war' incarnation of the guy for that. He'd probably be more mellow about people doing shit their own way.
Some of the 'boring' stuff was also pretty fun. I mean there was some fascinating stuff in ritual processes, and in eldritch genealogy. Even sylvan court etiquette had some neat stuff in it even if the stress levels involved in all of it were so very much not worth the effort where avoidable.
"So the big thing with trying to mix eldritch and fae ritual processes is to not cross the streams," Steven explained to our group over lunch. This was after a 'good' day for having a bed, so morale was generally up. "Eldritch magic, at least on the mortally accessible level, works by tapping into higher dimensions. Normally just the dream layer, but sometimes into the cosmic bleed between universes, or even higher levels of reality. It's rare to go beyond the dream layer though since even that can give you some pretty god-like effects. Time travel, resurrection, spontaneous generation of matter or life. Higher reality stuff is more potent and powerful, but at that layer you're so distant in how reality works, it's like someone in a movie trying to influence someone in the audience. In theory it's doable, but in practice, it's really hard to pull off, and you're probably not going to be able to properly control the reaction. There's just too big of a divide in both layers of reality and between the one 'asking' and the one 'doing'."
"While power from the fae realms draws from more earthly means, such as the local ley lines, or parallel timelines," Mary deduced. "Let me guess, the risk is of the 'wording' of one request being misinterpreted by the other?"
"Or 'distracting' it, yeah," I added in. "It's why most mixed source rituals call for multiple casters enacting parts separately, so that you only really need to plug the puzzle pieces together on either the effect part of the ritual, or nearby it. Though it doesn't always work that way. A lot of the ones enacting a living or aware force can be surprisingly transitory. There's one neat ritual, where the vast bulk of power involved doesn't even affect the universe you cast it from, but provides a useful sort of 'transaction fee' for the caster just for facilitating it. Effectively, hiring yourself out for translation work."
"The spirit of class C in action," she mused.
"Like mediating between gangstas and rich bitches from corporate," Greg mused. "I get it. Just gotta think like a record company."
"It's not really a negotiation," Steven argued. "Most of the time you're not really 'talking' with things like Cthulhu. We're not really 'real' from their perspective. That's part of why most of the rituals involve things on the cosmic scale of things. The 'Stars' being right. It's hard to get their attention directly, so it's easier to just take advantage of things they're already doing."
"To ride the wave rather than direct the current," I analogized. "Yeah, I get what you mean."
"Still sounds like dealing with corporate to me," Greg snorted.
Stacy groaned from her spot on the table. Not a promising sign for today's exercise.
"Another new one?" I asked her, as we got closer to the end, the more unique challenges had been set for us, though it was mostly made up of parts recycled from earlier exercises.
Mostly.
"This one's got two new parts, and that rope thing from the first week. Do you remember how that one works?" she asked.
"We just had someone else help lift them across," Greg said. "Wording was just that we couldn't use our legs to cross the pit except with the rope. I mean by wording you could also drag yourself across, or handstand through I guess, but the mud was almost two feet deep, so not exactly a great option there."
"She has been altering the wording somewhat lately," Mary mused. "We might need to think of some alternatives."
"I'll brainstorm on that one in my next course," I offered. "I've got another combat class coming up. This one involves shotguns," I tried to hide my glee… and apparently failed.
"Weren't you a fucking janitor?" Greg asked, giving me a look. "What? Were you some kinda special forces SOB before all this? Where the fuck does a janitor learn this crap?"
"The blood pits of Kaon," I said bluntly. "Mostly the new additions designed for human scale stuff. We called it 'the litterbox' because it was mostly a basic sandpit, that was regularly well… you can imagine," I explained.
"That explains, so much about you," Mary mused.
"It was a job," I said with a shrug. "Anyway Stace, try not to stress out too much. We've only got a few more days of boot as is. Even if we end up sleeping in the dirt every night, it's not that much longer. We get through that, finish the graduation mission, then we're up and clear."
And as much as it seemed like taunting fate… I was actually feeling pretty confident about that graduation mission. I'd seen the success rates before, and while they were intimidating, we'd been doing a lot better than average to begin with. I doubted things would go bloodlessly, but we were about as prepared as we could be at this point. At the time I was entirely willing to put money we'd get out with minimal losses.
Needless to say, I was wrong. So, very, very wrong.