NationStates

Yulia Constantinovich Covalciuc ita Novokh was nobody’s inferior. She walked with a swagger that made sure that anyone who saw her knew that, if the various tokens of the Great Civilization’s citizenship didn’t make that abundantly clear, from a Menelmacari style Egalmoth shaska blade at her hip to the ablative projector hand cannon that sat on the other side of her uniform jacket, and the small ring inscribed with sine script on her left hand. Rakishly attired she wore the crimson of the Novokh as coloured flashes on military uniform, high boots and the Ankh of the Triarch at her breast declaiming who she was for anyone who didn’t get it from less subtle signs, along with the pins of an officer in the Astral Fleet.

She was not on that duty though, but the uniform helped reinforce her look, and optics were all important. It wasn’t just for show though, she’d spent years before the mast to wear it this well. But she had more than one role.

She was a trained iterator.

This was one of the strangest vocations of the Great Civilization, one that fell within the remit of the Recruitment Service, a name that itself made foreigners scratch their heads. Most nations had an immigration service, but the Great Civilization regarded itself not as a nation-state but as a flexible mesh of ideas and memetic principles that could be adapted to any land or environment.

It did not regard foreigners as fundamentally a people to be tolerated or integrated slowly, but as people to be actively sought out. To a large degree that meant dealing with the downtrodden, and the oppressed. The people of stable and prosperous lands certainly followed the path she had walked since she had escaped the South Lands as barely more than a kit, but outreach to the poor and destitute worked better.

The Great Civilization could provide all the education one might want to compete, and opportunities abounded. And even if one didn’t want to, spending time as a lotus-eater for a century or two was no shame either, when one had been downtrodden.

That hadn’t been the route that Yulia had taken though, she had been young and filled with boundless energy when she had last blown a raspberry at a scowling Turtleshroomer border guard at Gerry’s gates, while a towering necron had looked on. She had thrown herself into school, utterly different yet eerily similar, and she had begged her parents to travel to other worlds, she had spent her teenage years on a Great Ship, a miles-wide city-craft, the Remembrance of Rythek, and (to their disapproval, initially) she had studied magic and astronavigation.

She was not a spellcaster as such but she had stood on the silver decks of the Astral Fleet in the inner and outer planes, and fought with daemons and elementals, and explored the cities built upon the backs of dead gods, and she owned a small arsenal of magical artefacts.

Later in life she’d reflected that that was probably to get as far away from the land of her birth as possible, and so she had trained as an Iterator.

Iterators were volunteers and professionals who worked with the Recruitment service to physically go to people and explain what the Great Civilization could offer. For those who were volunteers, this was often those they’d relate to, or who they would look up to.

Uniformed services worked especially well. It was one thing to see an impervious towering necron, but seeing your own kind among them was a different matter. It instantly gave one a better conception of what one could be, and in some cases made people feel ashamed at their own state. That was a useful driver too; the shame people felt at an impoverished condition was a natural driver toward better, some people resented that, but for the majority the sudden realisation that came with seeing your own kind in uniform and a position of power was one that pushed more positive feelings.

She crossed the Reaper’s yard, where troops and personnel of every sort were gathered. There were Menelmacari and Barbonians, Hiluxians and North Landers. Mercenaries, liaisons, tourists, and more. There were most of all C’tani. The Treaty Compliance Navigator Corps was an organisation with precious few limits and a well-founded reputation for brutality.

The Turtleshroomers had, after their war against the Necrontyr Empire, ceded land, but insisted that no one in their country would enforce a law protecting sapient equines from murder, after the C'tani had prevented their attempted genocide. Their negotiators had suggested that the only way to prevent lynching was for the Great Civilization to send death squads into Turtleshroom. They had imagined that the starfarers would be too squeamish to do so. In this respect they had underestimated the 'ferocious altruism' of the C'tani. Ranisath, then the leader of the Great Civilization, had simply accepted this as an offer, and so the Treaty Compliance Navigators, also known as the Reapers, or the Death Squads, had been born.

Leaping to the back of an open-topped grav-car and holding the roll-bar, she looked over to the others travelling with her, held out her hands. A trio of rifles, sleek silver things that could assist their owner’s aim, were thrown up to her and she put them into sleeves down the centre of the small vehicle.

“Hop in,” she called.

Her group wasn’t going to the Zim Belt, but to a different part of Turtleshroom, and they were all Iterators. The Navigator vehicle was a cousin to the Land Speeder STC, one of the rugged and ubiquitous designs that served all across the galaxy in any kind of rough terrain where the Great Civilization wanted anyone to be able to handle a vehicle, without explaining too much of their own technology.

Four seats and a set of laser guns mounted above the rear seats on a periscope arrangement gave plenty of tactical options besides these weapons, and Yulia checked the controls again.

Shields and camo fields were ready, and once her comrades were strapped in she pulled up into the air, soaring toward the wall, and flying over it, taking a moment to swerve toward the guards on the Turtleshroom side of the border, buzzing them at low altitude and sticking her tongue out at them for old time's sake, then opening up the throttle. The vehicle growled, and she leaned into the wind as it shot through the sands, deflectors taking the worst of the grit out of the air as they hit two hundred kilometres per hour in a minute.

“Aaaargh.” One of her four fellows cried, as the ground shot by. “This was a terrible idea.”

“Speeders are speedy,” she said, “it’s in the name.”

“I mean the lunch,” he moaned. He was the one she hadn’t prepared a gun for, the tortoise next to her was called Jeramiah ita Oruscar, he was younger than her, one of the orphans of the Zim Belt war.

He wore the badge of a Treaty Navigator on the back of his shell, but he sat in a travel pod, with weapons on it. It might be strange to consider him as an enforcer of the rough justice of the Gerry treaty, but he had little compassion for his fellows. They were a broken people who kicked downward, and his parents had been prepared to leave him in a jungle log house while they threw themselves into lynch mobs against gauss flayers.

They would have to learn.

Yulia grinned, she was still sure that Jeramiah wasn’t comfortable with high speeds. It just wasn’t tortoise-like.

They shot across the landscape toward the train line that connected Jonesboro, the Turtleshroom capital, with Nekoland, the new internal deportation destination. Dericks and poor townships shot by beneath them, and she paid them no heed.

A towering construct sat near the tracks, while a siding had been constructed by scarabs, the ubiquitous metal weaving beetle constructs of the Great Civilization, to pull long deportation trains from their route.

She swerved the land speeder toward the monolith, where necrons stood watch.

The speeder came to rest and she jumped out, holding one of the rifles ass she looked at the train snaking its way toward the ambush site.

The tracks clicked ahead of them as the switches the scarabs had installed, isolated from Turtleshroomer control, redirected the train toward them. It wouldn’t crash, signals had been put up to instruct the driver to halt, but even if he did not, a scarab would flit down and decouple the locomotive from the carriages. They had installed a double-ended siding loop, if the locomotive continued on they would find themselves just hurtling down the track with no carriages.

Simultaneously yardmasters and train dispatchers up and down the line were informed by telephones or radio signals directly cutting into their station that the train had been pulled for inspection by the Treaty Compliance Navigators.

The moment the carriages rolled to a stop one way or the other the necrons would step into action. They were Necron Sentinels, upgraded from the last war, dedicated peacekeeping troops, with a host of new tricks, but the most primal had never changed. Their sheer size and the prospect of lethal firepower they possessed.

“REAPER INSPECTION, STAND TO AND PREPARE TO BE BOARDED. ALL TURTLESHROOM GOVERNMENT FORCES WILL STAND DOWN OR BE FIRED UPON. TURTLESHROOM POLICE WILL ASSUME SURRENDER POSITIONS FOR INSPECTION. REFUSAL TO COMPLY IS OBSTRUCTION AND YOU WILL BE FIRED UPON.”

The noise was earsplitting and Yulia winced. Her hearing was much sharper than a human’s, and even some way back from the line of the machine soldiers approaching the train. With her rifle held comfortably in the crook of her arm, dangling on its strap, she approached the train.

The interception was accompanied by a group of observer-support personnel from allied and Valkian nations, deputized as Treaty Compliance Navigators alongside her group.

“There may be some shooting,” Yulia said on the radio headset she wore, issued to the observer-support crew. “Remember folks, ponies are very flexible and sneaky, and pretty small, so a Turtleshroomer might have hidden them anywhere. Keep your eyes open,” she said with self-conscious irony.

THREAD IS CONTINUED FROM THIS: viewtopic.php?p=39604094#p39604094

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JANUARY 5TH, DRY SEASON, 2021 AD
SOVEREIGN AUTONOMOUS PARISH OF COTTONSANDS, SOMEWHERE WEST OF NEKOLAND
DRY DRY DESERT, TURTLESHROOM

"They built an obelisk."

The massive red-eared slider turtle mumbled under his breath as the train tracks moved, and were approaching off from the straight rail to the side rail. This was routine in most parts of the country, with weighing stations and other whistle stops, repair centers, and for the steam engines still running, refilling their water and oil. However, the glowing lights, jarring right-angles that glowed, and giant obelisks immediately gave away what was happening.

Joachim Smart, the turtle in question, was a representative of the Bureau of Nomadic Data, which was originally a statistician's department in the Ministry of Domestic Affairs that underwent mission creep early in its inception. In modern times, its primary role was to escort nomadic caravans, protect otherwise unaccompanied cross-country trips by notable persons, and keep stability when both voluntary population exchanges and involuntary deportations were sending people across the country. Normally, it escorted the magical talking skeletons and mysterious anthropomorphic creatures of the Undead Gypsies through TurtleShroom and to the western border. Rather than actually providing security or conducting the operations themselves, they oversaw and supervised the activities on each train, while actual soldiers provided actual security.

Agents of the Bureau were instantly recognizable by their solid white outfits. Humans wore matching white suits with white ties, boasting slick sunglasses and white dress shoes, with white sashes. Turtles, such as this one, had white ribbons draped over their shell like layers of a cake. The badge gave the employer away, too.

Joachim looked to the steam engine's engineer, also a turtle, and then to several other turtles on scaffolding, each manning the various pistons and levers of the boiler, or regulating the tubes and pipes feeding oil to it to be combusted. He had a few minutes before the engine would be diverted.

The conductor nodded to the engineer and spoke over the steam engine's intercom.

"Attention all Tom cats and Molly cats, kittens and litters. The train will be undergoing a mandatory inspection for horse-based contraband. As we pull into the inspection zone, you will exit onto the field opposite the platform and line up by family units while the train is searched."

A mushroom translator, who had entered for this purpose, then repeated the directive in Russian, which was the primary language spoken by Nekomimis. The conductor picked up his red hurricane lantern as the train diverged onto the slide rails and slowed to a stop. A loud hiss was released and the smokestack stopped its exhaust.

There was a pause and more speech. Someone probably left the microphone on.

"That ain't no obelisk." one of the boiler operators was speaking. "I thought obelisks were like the ones in Egypt?"

"Necrons build obelisks like that, but I think they have a ship class called obelisks." was the engineer's reply. "That's what my sister said when she was drafted. So at least it's not a permanent structure."

"Glob that thing's big."


On the opposite side of the station, TurtleShroomian soldiers opened the cars' doors and led the Nekomimis out into the cool desert night. Families congregated away from the platform as TurtleShroomian soldiers on camels, undrawn whips folded in their holsters and brandishing squirt bottles on their waist, provided crowd control and deterrence to runaways.

With the locomotive having halted, the conductor crawled down off his platform and onto the scaffolding connecting the steam engine to the oil tanker car that replaced what would be a coal-based steam train's tinder box.

Holding the red hurricane lantern in his mouth, the conductor waved it towards the station as a signal for a train stopping or starting. It represented "all clear". The Necrons, plenty familiar with the practices and safety rules of TurtleShroomian trains, reciprocated with a red beam of light instead of a lantern of their own. He placed his lantern down.

He crawled onto the platform, his adorable little bowtie and his Velcro-affixed pocket watch shining in the lights given off by the massive ship. Even at his highest extension of five feet, he was dwarfed by the parties confronting him.

He lowered his neck and his two front feet in a bowing posture before raising back up. Joachim now joined the conductor and bowed as well, as custom uniformly required.

"Long night, huh?" the conductor tried to lighten the mood.

The sidearm next to his neck and bowtie dwarfed the heat being packed by the death squad in front of him. Joachim's more powerful, standard rifle, mounted like a turret on his back with a harness for his jaw to manipulate and fire, was nothing. It was an assault rifle too, the switch set to semi-automatic.

"We already know why y'all are here." Joachim began. "Let's get this ovuh with."

Joachim gestured with his neck to the doors of each car, which by now had been emptied of chimeras, only the litter of the litany of foods and nutrients serving as flooring.

"There ain't no ponies on this train and the h-"

He took a double take at Yumia. Remembering the Necrons, he decided not to say "hand licker". Nonetheless, he mistook Yumia for a chimera aristocrat that was being deported.

"Hey! What are you doin'? I don't care how wealthy you are, you don't get no special treatment! Get with the rest of 'em! -and the guns go in the luggage! You get 'em back when we get there!"

A human soldier on a Bactrian camel walked in front of the locomotive and peaked over. The camel snorted and looked intensely at Yumia with distrust, almost reciprocating his master's veiled disgust. The camel's rider was putting on his best polite face, engaging in the usual sugar coating of his disdain of hand lickers with patronizing, but audibly respectful manners.

"Come on conductor, that ain't no way to act."

Joachim descended from the locomotive and looked at the conductor, who was crawling back on the train.

"Why is this h- this Nekomimi aristocrat on the platform and not with the rest of them?"

"I'm workin' on it. Just be nice."

The soldier, meanwhile, put on a smile, clearly one of awkwardness and discomfort, as he pushed up his glasses. He saw Yumia's guns, but retained a poker face.
Hand lickers don't EVER use their guns unless you shoot first.

"Young lady, Clyde and I heard you speakin'. You seem lost."

He paused as Yumia did not respond. Some hand lickers didn't know English very well, and she was also armed, so mistakes could not be made now. He reached for an index card and pushed up his glasses again, pronouncing the Russian phonetically from the car.

"Vy..... govorite.... po-Ang... lijski?"

He asked if she spoke English, but in Russian.

There was no reply*. Clyde snorted again, not growing any fonder of Yumia and her massive guns. The rider reached out his hand.

"Right this way, ma'am. We'll get you back to your fam'ly unit, sure as the sun shines."

"..."

Yumia wasn't moving. In fact, her cocky posture almost seemed if she was mocking him. He waited for a few minutes, arm still outstretched, waiting to see if she understood.

"Ma'am, please step away from the death squad and follow me. I ain't seen as your friend for a reason, but they ain't no better. You can't trust 'em, and I know you don't believe me, but if your ma's in the crowd, ask her. She'll reciprocate."

"..."

The soldier dismounted his camel and whispered to Joachim after approaching the turtle, turning his back to Yumia.

"Dude, you ain't supposed to put the deaf ones on the train with the others. They are too fragile to be tracked across the country like that. They need special transport. The Comfy Cars. Do you have any idea what Central** is gone do if they figure out we put a deaf one on the normal train by accident? He's gone tan our hides!"

Joachim whispered back.

"There ain't no deaf hand licker on this train, boy."

"Joachim, don't say that near the bots**! They heard you say it, you know that! 'Sides, there most certainly is! Miss 'Aristocat' there ain't hearin' nothin!"

It was evident to the Necron party that the two TurtleShroomers were under a lot of stress from this long trip. The two began to bicker as they forgot about Yumia, their voices increasing in decibels as they began to blame each other for not realizing they boarded a supposedly disabled chimera aristocrat. That bickering became screaming as they both yelled about what was going to happen to them because a deaf chimera wasn't on the comfortable transport for the sick and disabled.

"HAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!"

Clyde was annoyed, and apparently, several chimera kittens on the other side had started to cry.

"OH, SO NOW IT'S MY FAULT THAT MISTER NOMADIC DATA DIDN'T GET HIS NOMADIC DATA RIGHT, HMM?"

"WELL MAYBE IF YOUR PIECE OF POOP SUPERIOR OFFICER HAD VERIFIED MY DATA ON TIME, WE WOULDN'T BE IN THIS MESS!"

"HAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!! HAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!"

"THIS WOULDN'T EVER'A HAPPENED IF Y'ALL HADN'T SPENT SO LONG IN THE BATHROOM BEFORE WE LEFT!"

"WELL EXCUSE ME FOR HAVING TO EAT DAILY, BOY! MISTER THIRTY DAYS WITHOUT WATER!"

"THAT'S THE TORTOISES, BOY! DID YO' MOMMA DROP Y'ALL ON YOUR HEAD? I'M GONE BE OUT'TA A JOB! YOU THINK MAH WIFE CAN SUPPORT ME AND TEN KIDS?"

"YOUR WAHF'S THE BREADWINNUH! SHE'S THREE TIMES YOUR SIZE!"

"YOU GET DOWN HERE AND SAY THAT TO MY FACE, BOY!"

"BOY!"

"BOY!"

"HAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!! HAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!"

"WILL YOU SHUT UP?!"

"DON'T YOU SPEAK LIKE THAT TO CLYDE!"

"WELL MAYBE IF YOU PAID ENOUGH ATTEN-"

"THAT AIN'T MY JOB! YOU OVERSAW THIS THING!"

"-BUT YOU WERE IN CHARGE OF CHECKING TO MAKE SURE THE DISABLED HAND LICKERS WERE IN THE COMFY CARS WHEN WE LEFT!"

"YEAH, AND? YOU THINK I KNEW THE NAMES AND DISABILITIES OF THESE CATS BY HAHT? ASK CENTRAL! I DID WHAT THEY SAID!"

"OH LOOK, IT'S THE NUREMBURG THING AGAIN, YOU [SLUR FOR A HOMOSEXUAL]! TAKE THE 'L' AND ADMIT Y'ALL SCREWED UP!"

"BUTT [SLUR FOR A HOMOSEXUAL]! YOUR MOTHER ONLY HAD ELEVEN SCUTES****!"

"YOU SAY THAT TO MY BEAK, [SLUR FOR A HOMOSEXUAL]! * NOM * "

"HAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!! HAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!"

When Joachim bit the soldier, it was over. He gripped Joachim's neck as Joachim hissed, with Joachim biting at his knuckles and making him let go. The soldier quickly disarmed Joachim by tearing off the guiding mechanisms for his rifle, while Joachim had bit onto his sidearm and tossed it onto the train tracks. Blood caked the soldier's hands from Joachim's biting.

The soldier and Joachim simultaneously drew their tasers, one in his good hand and one in his mouth, respectively. The fired at once, twitching violently before falling to the floor, finally quiet.

"HAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!! HAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!! HAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!! HAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!"

Clyde continued screaming, distressed and upset that his master was hurt. That, plus screaming of grumpy Nekomimi kids and the low rumbling of the engine's machinations were a disconcordant cacophony that the Necrons beheld in bewilderment.

Finally, as things drew quiet, the conductor outstretched his neck and stared at Joachim and the soldier on the floor. He looked to Yumia, then to the Necrons, and slowly, awkwardly withdrew his neck back into the train, quietly closing the door and pretending he didn't see what he just observed.

The Necrons realized the TurtleShroomers weren't any happier than the chimeras in this massive political operation, and the mass deportation was rubbing their nerves raw. It was going to be a wild night.

"Hmph. It's always a pleasure to see a whelp on their first hunt, but must they really go about all the formalities?"

A white-haired Far Northerner let out a gravelly chuckle, idly watching the spectacle around the makeshift checkpoint with a certain amusement. Her accent was particularly harsh, difficult for even North Landers to decipher, and the gruffness of her voice lent no favors in this endeavor. However, it was because of this unique roughness, that there were few that were unable to recognize her, or at the very least, her title - Fiona the White Fang.

Though, admittedly, while the White Fang Company might have been renowned as the oldest mercenary band in the North Lands, their most recent endeavors in the South Lands had only begun a few years ago. It was understandable if the South Landers were not quite aware of White Fang, but in that time, she had become definitely aware of them. Employed by the Sky Landers, the so-called Great Civilization, she had lead a number of expeditions into the South Lands over the past few years. The majority of these were uneventful; the Sky Landers practically using her as their personal errand boy, but as long as the coin was good, she was willing to see whatever concerns they had through.

It was through these expeditions, that White Fang had become modestly acquainted with the animal-eared folk of the South Lands and their circumstances. Simply put, the South Landers treated all animal-eared folk as lower than the sands beneath them, justified by whatever fragile morality and religious texts that they could muster. This was not any particular revelation, as North Landers had been subjected to the same practices, with even somebody as prominent as High Priestess Lang being forced into a cage during a diplomatic mission. Of course, when it came between the fickle justifications of the South Landers, and the relative positions upon the food chain by the North Landers, it was also exceedingly clear that one belief was far more tangible than the other.

The animal-eared folk of the South Lands, however, did not quite establish this correlation. They were far too pacifistic, and much too keen on obliging the South Landers despite any mistreatment they received. Rarely would they retaliate if provoked, were far too easily dissuaded by the most mundane of deterrents, and when offered the choice between mutilation in exchange for fair treatment, there were only too many willing to accept the offer. The North Landers referred to them as 'Domesticated Cat-Ears', a derogatory term associating them with livestock, as it seemed that the South Landers had done quite a number in conditioning them into submissiveness and subservience. White Fang herself found it difficult to decide on what disgusted her more; the treatment of the animal-eared by the South Landers, or the willingness of those in the South Lands to simply accept it.

In the end, it did not matter what White Fang thought. The only decision that mercenaries like her needed to make were the contracts they accepted, everything after that was execution; and it just so happened that the Sky Landers were again fattening her purse.

The wolf-eared mercenary grasped the badge that she had fashioned into a necklace, bearing the title and device of 'Treaty Compliance Navigator'. Ironically, she could not read these words, stamped out in a drastically foreign tongue from her own, but when she was presented the badge in Gerry, her eyes glimmered with avarice. The North Landers knew them as 'Butcher Badges', 'Meal Medals', or 'Sky Lands Silver'; devices that rendered the bearer effectively immune in the South Lands, worth several times the bearer's weight in gold. There were only a few mercenaries who knew the exact terms of the Treaty of Gerry, but anything that could be even minutely inferred as an obstruction in treaty enforcement, while in possession of the badge, was subject to lethal and potentially disproportionate force. This was a particularly wide definition of the treaty, but the South Landers were known to bend legal definitions to their own whims within the boundaries of the letter, and the Sky Landers seemed keen to follow the example.

That said, if the Sky Landers merely wished to enforce their treaties with the South Landers, they did not require the assistance of White Fang or her company. The North Landers alone would have been superfluous, considering the martial prowess of the Iron Golems, but the Sky Landers had also taken it upon themselves to contract other mercenaries throughout Valkia, with the devices of the Barboneians and Hiluxians being particularly prominent. An international coalition of mercenaries, issued a badge dictating their authority, and united underneath the Sky Landers for the singular cause of treaty enforcement. Ostensibly, it was a show of force against the South Landers, but White Fang could not help but wonder if it also served the purpose of persuading the Domesticated Cat-Ears that the Sky Landers and Valkia were one in the same.

When the South Landers finally neared into the checkpoint with their train, there had been a momentary pause as the hulk of machinery continued to push forward with a decisive vigor. Being confined to the track, there were only two ways that any encounter could go, and some mercenaries displayed a certain disturbing giddiness to what seemed like a forgone conclusion. But as the train began to slow, and an audible hiss heard as the brakes engaged, any hope for immediate hostilities were swiftly dashed. This would be a routine inspection, and as the South Landers waved their red lamps to signal their acceptance, many grumbled in frustration for want of amusement.

"I'm glad that the South Landers could see reason for once." One of the wolf-eared North Landers smiled, letting out a sigh of relief, "Even if it required such an overwhelming presence."

"Don't relax yet. The South Landers are a shifty sort." Another cat-eared North Lander in Commonwealth Navy fatigues replied, "They'll wave the white flag one minute, before crashing the moon down on you the next."

The South Landers, for their part, disembarked the train with their best face. They had a surprisingly cordial demeanor, barely masking an evident disgust of the situation, as they began unloading the animal-eared passengers from the attached carriages. The North Landers maintained their own disgust, watching as the South Landers lined the Domesticated Cat-Ears together like cattle, clutching their rifles tightly as they waited for the Sky Landers to go through the formalities.

While the majority of North Landers had been focused upon the South Landers, White Fang had taken more of an interest with the leader of this entire operation, a Domesticated Cat-Ear named Yulia. She made no effort to hide that she hailed from the South Lands, but acted with a self-assured confidence that was unbecoming of them. She was young, spry, and filled with a boundless energy, compared to the sullen faces of her brethren before the South Landers. Her chest held out her accomplishments, a highly-decorated officer at such a young age, although it would take several decades before the white-haired mercenary would consider her anything more than an inexperienced whelp. Nonetheless, it was modestly impressive, not because of the various accolades, but for the fact that a Domesticated Cat-Ear had managed to break free from its chains to becoming something reminiscent of a North Lander.

White Fang smirked with a certain respect to the cat-eared leader.

Like many things, the South Landers did not share this similar respect. Instead, they attempted to corral Yulia with the other Domesticated Cat-Ears from the train. The initial demand was filled with vitriol, more becoming of the South Landers' distaste for the animal-eared folk, but swiftly changed tune in light of the Sky Landers. Further attempts at kindly words, promises to reunite her with family, and even attempting to sow distrust with the Sky Landers were tried, but with equally similar results. It was almost entertaining, perhaps even more so, as she held a rifle against them the entire time, while they continued in attempts to persuade her as if the woman was incapable of violence. White Fang was eager to see an escalation, but the South Landers began quarreling amongst one another, before exchanging blows and rendering themselves incapacitated at Yulia's feet. It was an embarrassing display.

"Well, the South Lands have never been much for amusement." The wolf-eared mercenary let out a gruff laugh, before looking over at the North Lander in military fatigues, "The South Landers have finished unloading the train. Yukon, you and your company can began 'inspection' at the discretion of the Sky Landers. Remember, 'Equines' and not Domesticated Cat-Ears."

"Yes, Captain." Yukon saluted, her black-hair and cat-ears prominently sticking out of her white field cap, before approaching the train with her compatriots.

"I'm not questioning your decisions, but why are you mainly sending in the White Battalion, rather than your own White Fang Company? They aren't regarded as the 'cleanest' mercenaries." Another North Lander asked, his light blue hair and wolf-ears displayed prominently on his head, watching the cat-eared girl proceed to shout at some South Landers with her rifle in hand, "That aside, why contract the Hound Dog Company either? If it were anyone else, I would understand, but you are already acquainted with the South Lands - you don't need a tracker."

White Fang brandished her usual wolfish grin.

There were many mercenary bands in the North Lands, and while the White Fang Company was the oldest amongst them, there were more notorious ones. The White Battalion was one of them, formed in the ashes of the wars brought about by the Commonwealth. Named for the surplus winter fatigues of the Commonwealth Navy, they were a relatively young company, but one that was well-trained, equipped, and experienced from their previous conflicts. However, it was not their background, as much as their acts, that attracted their infamy. Wherever the White Battalion was paid to march, they would only leave atrocity in their wake. The majority of North Landers viewed them as a bloodthirsty band of whores, coin secondary to an indulgence in violence; composed of every cutthroat, brigand, and criminal who just happened to serve in a military. However, for whatever reputation preceded them, they were viewed as a reliable sort; and during the Barboneian excursions into the North Lands, in the wider mercenary alliance, they were the ones who bore the brunt of direct fighting. Something that White Fang had come to recognize them for.

Of course, for somebody in Hound Dog Company to openly slander the White Battalion, it was cutting themselves on their own blade. They were hardly formed under better circumstances, established to assist the Sky Landers in their hunts against the South Landers. Terms like 'Meal Medals' initially came from them, as the Hound Dog Company went from escorting wealthy patrons in their hunts, to participating in some themselves. The North Landers generally overlooked their atrocities, holding South Landers as far lesser creatures on the food chain, but their hands were just as bloodied as any other mercenary company. Oftentimes, Hound Dog Company became synonymous with the Sky Landers, derogatorily referred to as 'hunting hounds', as they infrequently accepted contracts outside the lucrative South Lands border. Nevertheless, when they could be persuaded from the South Lands, they were professional trackers, able to follow even a single wounded person for weeks until they closed in for the kill.

White Fang had subcontracted the two companies for this endeavor. While she would normally have entrusted such an endeavor to her own White Fang Company, she had assumed that the inspections would not require the full size of a mercenary company, equating to several hundred North Landers. Instead, she opted for a handful of her own officers, a few mercenaries from the Hound Dog Company, and filled the rest with a couple of squads from the White Battalion - no more than thirty-five people total. It was sufficient enough for something as rudimentary as 'treaty inspections', while letting her move swiftly with the rest of the Sky Landers and their associated mercenary contingent. Though, judging by the poor showing of the South Landers before Yulia, even such a small number of North Landers may have been too optimistic.

"You're right, Mle. I don't need a tracker." The white-haired mercenary hummed, "The truth is that I cannot understand the Sky Lander tongue, and that the Hound Dog Company accepts enough contracts with them to where they do. Cerys acted as the intermediary between me and the Sky Landers, but since I couldn't part her from her master, I needed a replacement to bridge communication between me and our cat-eared captain."

"You just needed a translator?" Mle said, mildly annoyed at the revelation, "The finest mercenaries in the South Lands, and you contracted us for a translator? The Sky Landers have tools for that, you know?"

"True, but then I would not have the opportunity to accost you." White Fang laughed, "It is the same reasoning that I contracted the White Battalion - to accost the South Landers."

She pointed to the black-haired, cat-eared girl, actively pointing a rifle at a group of South Landers, demanding them to move away from the Domesticated Cat-Ears and the train.

"Are you deaf? I said move!" Yukon shouted, violently shoving one of them away with her rifle, as some other North Landers immediately followed her example, "Away from the train! Fifty yards! Prone on the ground, face down!"

The South Landers grumbled, but otherwise maintained a stoic face throughout her prodding. They glanced at the other North Landers, wolf-eared and fox-eared, and while they held a certain distain, there was a slightly different expression than when they had stared at the animal-eared folk from the South Lands - calm, composed, but more concerned. The cat-eared North Lander was keen to take notice.

"Don't confuse me with one of your Domesticated Cat-Ears!" Yukon shouted in the North Lander tongue, hitting a South Lander with her rifle butt onto the ground, before switching back to English, "You might think of me as any other cat-eared folk, but I am a North Lander through and through. If you even look back at the train, I won't be afraid to regard it as obstructing treaty compliance, and reaffirm where you lie on the food chain!"

She held out her badge, smiling with a sadistic expression, before ordering one squad to restraint the South Landers with zip ties, while another was to tend to the other animal-eared folk.

"I like her. She's a lively sort." White Fang nodded in approval.

"Cat-eared folk are always a lively sort." Mle sighed, holding his rifle in the crook of one arm, "It's just she's the worst kind of lively sort."

"It is said that there are two kinds of hunters; the ones who take pride in the kill, and the ones who do not." The white-haired mercenary explained in her gravelly voice, "Most are the first kind; eager to track their prey, and deliver the kill with a single, clean blow - they take pride in perfection. The second kind take pleasure in the wails and cries of their prey, for them, the finishing blow is something that must only come when it is necessary - they take pride in the act."

"I know the adage." The wolf-eared boy said, blatantly shutting down her monologue, "I'm just saying that the ones like her are the worst."

"Are they?" White Fang pondered, glancing at the animal-eared folk watching her abuse of their tormentors.

Mle stood there in silence. He knew what the Far Northerner was implying. Every North Lander held roughly the same opinion.

"It is no secret that our cat-eared captain hails from the South Lands. I don't know her tale, but it is evident that she had escaped to the Sky Lands." She continued, smiling as she glanced at Yulia, "She could have lived the carefree life of a Sky Lander, filled her belly with every manner of morsel, and there would be none to criticize. Yet, she returned here, to the South Lands, in order to accost her former oppressors."

"She came here to rescue her animal-eared brethren." Mle stated, "Besides, it is foolish to assume that every Domesticated Cat-Ear is like that."

"But even if it is even one in ten, it would only be inevitable for the South Landers to concede?" White Fang asked, "If there were more cat-eared folk like Yukon or Yulia in their ranks, would the South Landers not have to find pause in their endeavors? Would the Domesticated Cat-Ears not have better leverage than merely accepting whatever the South Landers offer them?"

"I understand what you're saying, but what you are saying is far too optimistic."

"It is as you said, the cat-eared folk are a lively sort. It is just a matter of letting them want to live."

Yulia watched as the Turtleshroomers approached with an amused smirk on her face. When they shouted racist abuse at her she simply continued to smile, she stayed silent waiting for them to look at the other C’tani next to her and twig what was going on, before they somehow failed to do that, and instead pulled out tasers. She tensed slightly, ready to spring on them, they would be dead in moments, she was wearing a full skin suit beneath her armour, which was proof against such things, and they wouldn’t be able to secure a headshot.

Then they stunned each other, and appeared to feint or pass out from the stress and pain of it.

“Okay, that’s going on the ‘tubes,” Jeramiah said from next to her, and hit one of the controls on his disc.

The nearest necron reached out and grabbed Clyde’s reins, pulling the rider down by the waist and handing him like a sack of potatoes to one of its comrades. They did not verbalize commands or coordination, but moved in eerie silence, as Clyde was led off toward the monolith, where a series of tables groaned under the weight of huge plastic bottles of water.

One of the Necron Sentinels addressed the assembled mercenaries.

“We will be doing some on the job training, that means that we will be sending several teams to search the train and then evaluating performance, so this stop will be longer than usual,” the machine said, a female voice speaking a Barboneian dialect to the Extra Territorial Group personnel, “Don’t forget to check under the train, too, and drain the oil tank, we are looking for dead ponies as well as living ones, so that will mean siphoning the fuel out and making the crew pump it back in after you have used the endoscopic camera. Make the crew do the work. Keep your distance in case they set themselves on fire doing this,” she added, after the last display.

Clyde wasn’t the only one who got water, though.

The Nekos were the point of the operation and this was when Yulia went into action.

She leaped over the rails with quiet grace as the mercenaries removed the Turtleshroomers, leaving only the Nekos.

The Turtleshroomers talked a good game about how domesticated their nekos were, and how good Nekoland would be, but only a few minutes ago they’d been acting as though they were worried that the prisoners would run heedlessly into the desert.

She spoke in their language, speaking aloud and calmly.

“Hello everyone, while we’re conducting our search and training we’ve prepared some additional refreshments over here,” she said, “there are also toilets and shelter from the sun.”

These refreshments were arranged by the group of Necrons, and Recruitment Service personnel, rather than the mercenaries, there were limits. As much as the Necrons had a fierce reputation, they were a lot less likely to do something random, when they enacted violence it was inevitably precise.

She wasn’t going to go straight in with the sales pitch, it was a conversational law that someone would ask her about how she had come to be wearing a C’tani officer’s uniform.

While Yulia witnessed the general insanity of the TurtleShroomers and the North Lander mercenaries under White Fang tormented the train crew, two small clouds of dust appeared on the horizon, rapidly approaching the strange commotion. As they came closer and closer, it was clear to anyone who was observing them who they were; It was an ETG squad in two rusty pick-ups, acting as one of the many mercenary groups hired by the Great Civilization as Treaty Compliance Navigators.

As usual, they were late. Over the sounds of a loose exhaust, squealing brakes, an over-tightened belt, and shouts of Finnish profanity, an absolutely deranged music track played, blasted from a jury-rigged audio system bolted into the back of one of the pick-ups, barely leaving room for a mounted machine-gun. The trucks split from their route, flanking either side of the train, and their crews departed, though one man was left in each truck to man the guns.

The Barboneian mercenaries, ten in total counting the men on the guns, were a strange-looking sort. Shaved heads covered by ballcaps baring the logo of their organization, tan plate-carriers over red t-shirts or polos, an assortment of weapons in their hands, from Kalashnikovs to various model Valmets. A few had keffiyehs for the scorching heat, and some still wore the dog tags from their time in the Greater Barboneian Army. The leader of the group was probably the strangest-looking of all. Tall, clean shaven, a SCAR-H in his hands and a freakishly wide grin on his face. Over his plate carrier he wore a gákti, a traditional Cyrillic piece of apparel. This was none other than Ráidner Laaksonen, a veteran of the Northern War and surprisingly competent gun for hire, who had developed a bit of a reputation for eccentricity and his willingness to take the "shit jobs" among the ETG, which is likely why he was chosen to travel to TurtleShroom on their behalf for the contract.

No one else sane would have.

Ráidner maintained his grin as he approached the train with his men, especially upon seeing the collected group of North Landers who had already begun keeping the TurtleShroomers in check. Some of his men, however, who themselves had been in quite good mood, quickly soured upon seeing them. While it had been quite some time since any of them had seen conflict with North Lander mercenaries, either with the armed forces or when they had later joined the ETG, many of them still held animosity towards them in general. And oftentimes, it was not unwarranted. Ráidner, however, was much more open minded.

"Ah, our northern comrades!" he declared in a sing-songy way to his men as they walked. "White Fang, as I live and breathe! I haven't seen her in AGES! And she beat us here! A pity. But there'll still be plenty for us to do, I reckon." "Yeah, plenty of shit work for us to do," grumbled a younger man holding an RK 62. "Let me guess, we're gonna lead around the some poor sods to look for the horses, an' then watch the chimera-in-chief try and convince the freaks of nature to actually stop having terrible lives?" Ráidner smirked at him, and nodded. "Precisely! But think about it. We're getting paid to do basically nothing, Gabe. And you know how good this stuff makes our company look in the eyes of the C'tan? Besides, once we're done here, we can crack open another case of beer and enjoy ourselves!"

The Barboneians gathered near Yulia and the others, occasionally side-eyeing any North Lander who was too close for comfort. They stood at rapt attention as the Necron Sentinel addressed them, somewhat surprised to be spoken to in Finnish. Ráidner nodded. "Great, we've got orders. You heard her, boys. We've got horses to.... Uh... Look for."

Without a word, the mercenaries split up, some climbing into the carriages to look around, a few pulling out flashlights from their packs and looking underneath the frames and chassis for anything. Some even bothered to actually crawl underneath to get a better view. Gabriel, the one with the RK 62, and two others roughly forced a few TurtleShroomers from their collected assembly and began shouting at them in a mix of Finnish and English to begin draining the train's oil tank. "What is this, a retirement community? I know some of you are literally turtles, but come on, pick up the damn pace!" Gabriel shouted. "I've got a couple dozen rounds of 7.62 with your names on it if you don't hurry up!"

Ráidner, meanwhile, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, some foreign brand called Bridgeport, and lit one. There was shouting, moaning, crying, grumbling, whining... He sighed contently. It was all chaos, but chaos was music to his ears.

He loved his damned job sometimes.

"That wretched sound..."

Yukon grumbled, the cat-ears sticking out from her field cap twitching with a notable irritation, as she motioned the muzzle of her rifle away from a restrained South Lander who breathed a sigh of relief. The other North Landers all lifted their heads up at a similar time, much to the confusion of the South Landers, who meekly looked up at the armed guards who - harassing them minutes earlier - seemed to stop. There was a certain scowl across the faces of the White Battalion, looking into the distance, as White Fang smirked with amusement. Mle seemed confused, but otherwise glanced in the same direction, curious as to what the commotion was about.

When the source of the disturbance arrived, with its pomp, circumstance, and terrible music, many of the North Landers could barely hide their distain. It was a different emotion than the contempt that the South Landers held for the animal-eared folk, far closer to an intense hatred than a simple distaste. Many clutched their rifles, ready to turn them upon their newfound guests, but were dissuaded from a glance to their cat-eared lieutenant, who simply gritted her teeth in disgust.

"Lake Landers..."

It would be an understatement to say that the North Landers and Barboneians did not get along, and it would be a blatant lie to describe their incursions into the North Lands as a simple expedition. The White Battalion, in particular, held a considerable hostility, having torched and razed their way through Barboneian petroleum facilities as easily as the Extra Territorial Group did North Lander villages. If anything, they were far more similar than anyone would have liked to admit, but anyone saying such things aloud would only encourage a fight.

"Heh, if it isn't the Mad Dog." White Fang grinned as she watched the man disembark, not necessarily paying attention to the his appearance, as much as the carefree demeanor, "I'm surprised the little whelp survived this long to see the South Lands, but I guess if any Lake Lander would be here, it would have to be him."

"A friend?" Mle asked, unacquainted with the peculiar relationships of the North Lands.

"Oh no. If the circumstances had been different, I am sure we would not spare a second thought to carve out each other's throats. I would certainly would not have spared him in the North Lands." The white-haired mercenary laughed, looking over to the Sky Landers, who were continuing the inspection in spite of any disruption, "It just so happens that we are both coincidentally in a foreign land, and are not being paid to kill each other at the moment, so we can afford to be a little cordial. Yesterday's enemies are today's allies and so on, as the old saying goes."

An Iron Golem of the Sky Landers addressed the coalition of mercenaries, addressing the Barboneians in particular, as the rowdy group quieted down somewhat to fulfill their orders. White Fang looked to Mle expectedly, ignorant of anything the Sky Landers had been wishing to convey to the Far Northerner, forcing the wolf-eared boy to translate.

"They are evaluating the mercenaries, so the inspection will take longer than usual." Mle sighed, rubbing his face in embarrassment for being forced into such a role, "There were also orders issued to the Lake Landers in their tongue, so I guess the Sky Landers are sending them in first?"

"It sounds just about how the Sky Landers carry themselves about." White Fang shrugged, glancing over to Yulia as she made her way to the animal-eared South Landers while the Iron Golems managed logistical duties, "In the end, they are just trying to buy time to convince the Domesticated Cat-Ears of their benevolence. If some South Landers get accosted by either the Lake Landers or North Landers in the meantime, then so be it.""

An audible gunshot could be heard across the checkpoint.

"If you move from that spot, South Lander, I will kill you." Yukon growled, the cat-eared girl staring at one of the prisoners with a wide, unsettling gaze, "You will comply, or I will make your death slow."

"Pick up the pace! If you don't move right now, you won't be moving at all!" An opposing voice ordered, coming from a Barboneian, his rifle also trained near the man, "I don't have all day!"

The South Lander laid there, paralyzed as to the conflicting orders, holding his arms up in want of mercy. He slowly attempted to raise himself from the ground for the Barboneian; the audible crack of the North Lander's rifle immediately going off next to him, as sand lifted up from the discharge fell from the air. Returning to his initial position, there was another audible crack as the Barboneian did the same, this time for doing the opposite. This went back and forth for several sporadic gunshots, the South Lander threatened for moving, and threatened for not moving, as the two mercenaries stared each other down.

"We have orders to detain the South Landers during the inspection." Yukon said, firing another round without so much as even breaking eye contact.

"We have orders to have them search the train." The Barboneian replied, also firing another round.

"There were no such orders." She coldly replied, another crack ringing out from her rifle.

"They were in Finnish." He retorted, with a similar crack sounding from his rifle.

Bang. Bang. Several more shots rung out, as the gunfire became frequent enough to attract attention from onlookers, much to the blatant disregard of the two mercenaries. Many of these were joined with the panicked shouts of the South Lander, caught between the two, although they seemed to become less out of genuine fear, and more out of instinct after a certain point.

Eventually, there was an audible click instead of the usual crack; the South Lander letting out the beginning of a yelp, before training off from the realization that a gunshot had not actually occurred. There was a belated scream as the Barboneian fired, perhaps out of expectation, as he looked back at the cat-eared North Lander. Yukon maintained her stare at her counterpart for a brief moment, slowly shifting her gaze to the twenty-round magazine of her rifle, before looking at the longer thirty-round magazine of the Barboneian.

She grumbled, biting her lower lip, as she locked the bolt of her rifle back and grabbed a pair of fresh clips from her coat pocket.

"What are you waiting for? Get moving!" The Barboneian shouted at the South Lander, firing off the rest of the magazine into the ground, as a number of other South Landers got up and rushed to the train during the brief lull in gunfire.

Yukon stood there for several moments. Pushing a fresh set of cartridges into her rifle, flicking off the empty clip, and repeating the process a few more times. She continued to look at her weapon, ignoring the Barboneian as he simply took out a magazine, knocked off the previous one, and stuck it in with one clean motion. There was a pause as both of them racked their rifles into battery, as they returned to looking at each other with a certain animosity.

Then simultaneous laughter.

"That's such a shitty win." The cat-eared North Lander shook her head.

"I was wondering how long it would take you to notice." The Barboneian grinned.

"Did you see the South Lander's face when I dry-fired and then you immediately shot anyway?"

"Fucking hilarious!"

"Yukon, a lieutenant of the White Battalion." She introduced herself.

"Like the foreign tobacco?" He laughed.

"Something like that! Hey, want some war salt?"

"War salt? What is... isn't this Pervitin?"

“Hiluxians would be a serious threat to the world if they could ever stop fighting each other.”

- Unknown

Hiluxian interests in Turtleshroom were always haphazard. They were content to ignore their perpetual interest in enslaving other nekos, largely out of a perpetual disinterest in the plight of 'broken' nekos, to a lesser degree because of the sheer disparity in size between the two nations.

Nonetheless, their recent intervention in Niekas, and subsequent humiliation at the hands of Hiluxian and Allanean fighters, had convinced them once again of the benefits of rallying around the hatred of their strange neighbors, especially now that the younger, liberal urbanites of Kiamat began to see themselves as capable of, and interested in, influencing the world for the better within and without Hiluxia.

Asla would be lying if she claimed to have quite the same level of care in improving the so called Nekolanders' rights.

Level headed, calm under pressure, able to herd the men under her command with strict words and stricter punishment for the exceptionally disobedient. She was the quintessential Hiluxian woman, a tired gaze aimed at the horizon, and then the train itself, as her transport moved on.

They were a small detachment, huddled around a few vehicles. Three pickup trucks, a scout car, and the APC, each heavily modified from their original use to better fit the Mercenary work-load.

The BTR in particular almost gave the illusion of modernity, if one ignored their typical crampedness, once considered a non-issue for older Hiluxians, now more so for the properly fed Hiluxians of today.

The pickup trucks approached, the BTR keeping a slight distance from the rest of the crew. A 30mm gun didn't need to be up close and personal to be a threat, especially not with the functioning electronics within to help aim the foul autocannon.

"You think they're gonna kill anyone today?" The NCO spoke, cigarette in hand. Bashir, once Zara, spoke with the temper expected of an NCO. It was hard to believe he was a Kiamati, with how rough and tumble and crude he could get. His face was kept clean shaven, his black hair concealed beneath a helmet and his skin

"Probably, if they can get away with it."

"Shame. Maybe they'll learn to stop being cunts about everything this time."

"Can't stop a pig from wallowing in shit, I'm afraid."

Nonetheless, from a relative distance, she could see everything transpiring through binocs. The idiocy of two TSers tazing each other was especially notable.

"Can you believe someone willingly lets these people oppress them? If the ponies or the local Qutani had any fucking brains we wouldn't need to be here. They'd be doing all the killing for us."

"Just keep your eyes out for uh, signs of pony smuggling. We're going to be pretty busy today from the look of things."

"Yes ma'am." Was followed up by Bashir knocking the walls of the BTR, motioning to the infantry within to dismount.

"Alright you fucking dregs, let's move out!"

The Hiluxian mercenaries stood to the other mercenaries' perimeter, largely unfamiliar with their northern counterparts. Mostly deployed to foreign countries well outside of Valkia, those Mercenary units that had not taken permanent employ elsewhere, such as Kath's particularly abominable force in Catedonia, were only rarely seen operating close to home.

Largely, it was an effort to avoid a conflict of interest, as Hiluxia was unwilling to sour its relationships with Barboneian or North Lander polities. Turtleshroomers were given no such benefits. Indeed, Bashir had heard plenty of stories of that cursed 'Cuckoo' company of Shamshir operating in other areas of Turtleshroom, in reality nothing more than Hiluxian military veterans serving the state under a guise of deniability, notably unpleasant in conduct in Niekas and elsewhere.

In that regard, they likely would have fit in better in this situation, the North Landers and the Barboneians were already enjoying themselves at the Turtleshroomers expense. It did nothing for Bashir, though even he could not be willed to care for the suffering inflicted upon these glorified genocide guards.

Either way, they didn't come unprepared. Each member of the detachment wore a rather modern ballistic vest, the rest of their gear often placed within it on pouches or on a lightweight backpack for those more willing. Their helmets were unusual, rarely seen and not produced in Hiluxia, painted a flat tan color. They weren't pure steel, but they weren't crude plastic either, many of them customized and altered by their users with all sorts of mottos and crude slang. They mostly tried to stick to a simple three tone desert camouflage in their gear as well, though this seemed more akin to suggestion than hard fact. Most notably, they had enough room within their helmets to fit the ears of a Hiluxian neko within, giving them a slightly bulging appearance right where they should be.

Their rifles were typically Hiluxian, though most likely from the last batches of the M pattern rifles. Some had crude, metal stocks, some used a less foul wood. Their marksman used a similar, though longer rifle. They were effectively armed akin to the typical Hiluxian infantryman in that respect.

The guns of their transport were aimed largely at the Turtleshroomers', purposefully kept away from any nekos wherever possible. Their trucks and scout car by contrast merely aimed upwards for now, the former carrying a single heavy MG each, the latter carrying a twin barreled 23mm autocannon, notoriously beloved by Hiluxians in all but its actual intended use. Cages and thin plates of add-on armor adorned each vehicle, theoretically useful only for crude anti-tank weaponry, but nonetheless reassuring to the crews.

"Dunno why we don't just kill them or just send them running off already." One of the younger mercs spoke, clutching his rifle. "Fun as it is to play with your food, these guys aren't worth the effort."

"Let them play, the sooner they get off the sooner we can get out of here.” another merc spoke, clearly having seen a fair amount more.

“Shut it, focus on making sure no one tries anything stupid.” Bashir barked, quick to discipline his men into compliance.

{ OCC: Unconventional text coloring indicates a language spoken that is not English. }

JANUARY 5TH, DRY SEASON, 2021 AD
SOVEREIGN AUTONOMOUS PARISH OF COTTONSANDS, SOMEWHERE WEST OF NEKOLAND
DRY DRY DESERT, TURTLESHROOM

Comrade Commisar wrote:"We have orders to detain the South Landers during the inspection." Yukon said, firing another round without so much as even breaking eye contact.

"We have orders to have them search the train." The Barboneian replied, also firing another round.

"There were no such orders." She coldly replied, another crack ringing out from her rifle.

"They were in Finnish." He retorted, with a similar crack sounding from his rifle.

Bang. Bang. Several more shots rung out, as the gunfire became frequent enough to attract attention from onlookers, much to the blatant disregard of the two mercenaries. Many of these were joined with the panicked shouts of the South Lander, caught between the two, although they seemed to become less out of genuine fear, and more out of instinct after a certain point.

Blocked by the steam engine and only able to see the tip of the Necrontyr spaceship, the Nekomimi families huddled in the field together, terrified of the supposed bloodbath brought on between undisciplined sell swords the Necrons relied on to oppress TurtleShroomers. While oppressing TurtleShroomers was certainly not cause for concern, everyone in TurtleShroom knew of the decadence, brutality, and human sacrifice that the Necrons performed. TurtleShroomers were no opponents of disproportionate retribution, but the well-established fact that the Necrons never oppressed anyone that was not committing some sort of war crime or enslavement didn't ease them when they decided that TurtleShroom was somehow those who deserved to be peeled off by the Flayed Ones and worn on horseback.

"They're killing the TurtleShroomers..."

Hushed exchanges of a heavy dialect of Russian were feverishly exchanged as the gunfire and shouting continued. One mother and her kitten began speaking something different than the others.

"Based!"

"Hush, mawlish*. Whatever solution they bring us will just bring us to a nightmare of a different order. The Necrons are going to take us to their land of abortion and post scarcity, and we'll be just as depraved as them. Don't listen to a thing they say.

"Yes momma. What's an abortion?"

The mother Nekomimi, named Varushka, chuckled nervously, realizing her mistake.

"Well, let's say a Tom cat and a Molly** cat have a kit, but their would-be Babuskha doesn't want a grandkid. So they, being evil, kill the kitten rather than stand up to her. They don't want the responsibility."

"Momma... why would they do that?"

"[color=#BF80F]When you put yourself above the clowder***, everything dies on the alter of individualism. The only person that matters is themselves. Not the clowder, not kittens, nothing. You'll understand as you get older. You see, the Necrons think the path to true happiness is whatever makes you feel good. Who cares about others? Sure, some may care, but their society puts the self over the clowder."[/color]

"The Necron fliars said that they have clowders and close ties too. The even take clowder names like we do. It's the elves that are that way, they are the real evil."

"[color=#BF80F]Who told you that? Trust me on this, their pretend bonds aren't like ours. People that join societies like that become rotten themselves.[/color]"

"Momma, I don't want to go there! At least the TurtleShroomers won't tear up our families!"

"Fear not. The TurtleShroomers are rotten, but they break the body. The elves and the Necrons rot the soul. NONE OF THEM will touch you. I have a plan, so listen to Momma now. While they pick up the bodies of the TurtleShroomers, you and I will make a dash that way..."

She gestured with her tail to a small field of cacti.

"...and hide in the dunes until they call the search off. When I give the secret word I told you when we got on the train, that's your signal. Your father will stay here and hold them off until it's safe.[/quote]"

"[color=#BF80FF]Will Father make it?"

"Of course he will, Mawlish."

She rubbed her hand in her child's hair, ruffling it as well as pushing on his ears. The kitten purred softly as Varushka gave him a hug.

"Yes ma'am. I trust you."

An elderly chimera turned to face Varushka and her child.

"Are you crazy? The TurtleShroomers are inescapable. I don't trust the Nekoland Idea as far as I can throw it, but it's certainly better than covering ourselves up."

Varushka's ears slicked back, pressed tightly on the hair of her scalp.

"No one trusts the TurtleShroomers. Shouldn't we give the Necrons a chance? This can't be all we have to live for.[/color=#BF80FF]"

"[color=#BF80FF]You trust the Mecha-[PLURAL RUSSIAN TERM FOR A FEMALE DOG]?[color]"

"[color=#BF80FF]Shut up, hairball! Don't say that around Mikhail!"

Several other chimeras began to lecture the mother about what being uppity gets them. A Molly cat should not speak that way, she should not usurp the Tom cats and act against the clowder. Others said she was the reason TurtleShroomers hated them, and that if she were to remain calm, things would be fine, and if she went through with whatever crap she was about to pull, her actions would damage the whole clowder. The anger began to flare as the mother started calling them all close-minded cowards.

That's when Mikhail pointed to the train, watching Yulia practically pole vault over it. The chimeras suddenly fell silent.

The Ctan wrote:These refreshments were arranged by the group of Necrons, and Recruitment Service personnel, rather than the mercenaries, there were limits. As much as the Necrons had a fierce reputation, they were a lot less likely to do something random, when they enacted violence it was inevitably precise.

She wasn’t going to go straight in with the sales pitch, it was a conversational law that someone would ask her about how she had come to be wearing a C’tani officer’s uniform.

The TS Nekomimis put their hands and arms around their offspring and stepped back. Ears slicked back, tails extended upright. This had to be a trick.

The Ctan wrote:“Hello everyone, while we’re conducting our search and training we’ve prepared some additional refreshments over here,” she said, “there are also toilets and shelter from the sun.”

When Yulia spoke Russian, however, some of them bared their fangs, shocked to hear their own language coming out of a Necron stooge. Others, particularly younger ones, were more curious.

They were sizing her up. Was she a Valkian Nekomimi or a Land of Power Nekomimi? She had no breasts... whiskers under her nose, whiskers on her brow, with no eyebrows. Thin, catlike figure. She was definitely able to rotate her legs a hundred eighty degrees, the way her outfit was styled was clear, not to mention the acrobatics she did jumping over. -and then there were here eyes. Vertical slits that opened the opposite of the TurtleShroomers' eyes.

This was actually a Land of Power Nekomimi.

Yet she came with gunfire and Kitsune Devourers at her heels. This wasn't a good look for her.

The silence lasted for too long. One chimera stepped forward. This one was a Prince, that is, an elder of the village, as indicated by the Slavic ceremonial mace topped with a double-headed cat, and his brass circlet with pendilia hanging from it. This mace-scepter was as long as his forearm. His cat ears were pierced with multiple silver hoops and he sported a whispy beard. A square hat with a little feather had holes fitting for his ears. His distinct robe was patterned in a pretty royal blue with little stylized cat heads adorning it.

So this was a Land of Power Nekomimi? The elder knew how to prove it. Only TS Nekomimis recognized the Prince's Presentation.

"Molly, behold the elder of the clowder."

He outstretched the Slavic mace. Yulia kept her posture upright, not even budging. The elder was shocked. In his surprise, he started flicking his tail left and right.

She was supposed to wrap her tail around her, bow, and touch his scepter. He would then say for her to speak, "for speaking to one is speaking to all". Instead, she did nothing, causing the village elder to respond harshly.

"RrrrrRRROWWW! You DARE dishonor your Prince?!"

The other Nekomimis were offended as well. Some quiet growling and glares that may well be shooting daggers responded in an otherwise silent standoff.
TurtleShroom's society embraced gender equality when it incorporated the turtles' Khanate in to the country in 1796 AD. Female soldiers, officers, and politicians (especially among turtles) were seen as commonplace. No such thing existed in TS Nekomimi society, which was rigidly patriarchal in both politics and the military, where females worked grueling farm labor at home or raised the offspring.

(Actual cats are always matriarchal, but the TS Nekomimis, which are not fully cat, retained an ancient male-leading structure. It was a political absolute, but not entirely wholesale, though. At home and territorially, only female TS Nekomimis were in charge of the house, the family, and the father.)

The Necrons corrupted this Molly cat into thinking she could be an officer when she should have been at a desk directing whatever magic vertical hydroponics plant with which the Necrons feed their people. Or tending to her kittens. Did she even have kittens, or did she abort them? Deplorable.

"So you represent the Necrons? If you are going to try and sell your baby killing, skin flaying masters to this gord***, know that we accept no tricks from a Molly cat who clearly does not know her place. Especially a Molly cat that DARES command a host and whose riders are Kitsune Devourers and Barboneians!"

Murmurs of approval echoed in the crowd as the other Nekomimis naturally fell under their leader's influence.

"You can put on a show, but we all know whatever it really was. Did they kidnap you? That happened to several turtles, I heard. That's the only way a Molly cat would get uppity like that. Unless you actually joined those goons? I pity you, but by all means, make your pitch, kit. A Molly cat that doesn't know her place isn't going to get far. The TurtleShroomers are just as savage as you, letting Mollies into their officers, but even they don't serve a society whose libertine, toxic individualism rots their clowder apart. I'm sure there's a story behind that uniform, and not a good one."





* = Phonetic pronunciation of Russian "malish", spoken with an AW drawl in both TS English and Nekomimi Russian. It literally translates to "baby", and is used as a term of endearment and affection from a parent or adult to a child.''

** = RL gender terms for cats, same as "bull" and "cow" for cattle. The male is the Tom cat and the female is the Molly cat.

*** = Slavic fortified village on a hill. Used mostly by Russian Cossacks. TS Nekomimis use it to describe their individual clans united under a given Prince.

Yulia, Gerry, Age 12

Yulia licked her hand and rubbed it along the side of her face as she listened to her mother and father talk. The clowder had been settled for a while, the city was strange, full of life and light. Aunt Kisa was talking.

“I want to go in.”

“It’s unholy,” Sacha said, the older Neko was the head of the family and Yulia’s grandfather.

“It might be,” the Aunt said. “But I want to go in, and I am going in.”

“It’s sinful to go in there,” Sacha said, “and I forbid it.”

Kisa’s stubbed ears flattened against her head and she bared her fangs. The watchmen on the corner of the street let their eyes fall on the pair, brawling in the street was not tolerated, the necrons were rare on the street compared to regular Lawkeepers, and she had never seen a horror in the weeks since they’d arrived, even though she was childishly curious about the term; like many children, she had listened to the adults when they hadn’t imagined they were being heard, and Sacha had claimed that the necrons wore the skins of criminals in the street.

It would be many years before she saw a flayed one, in the service of the Great Civilization.

“What am I going to do, father? Lose my soul at the Last Judgement?”

Sacha opened his mouth and closed it again. The churches of Turtleshroom taught that chimaeras had no souls, that only humans did.

“It’s not right,” he said.

“I’m going anyway,” Kisa said, her mutilated ears returning to their normal position a little, as she stepped from the road between an avenue of sphinxes that sat in formal repose, their paws toward the roadway.

It felt strange to see statues of chimaeras, not like her, but different, out on the street, where they could be seen. It was a challenge, she would understand later.

The grandiose temple facade was of alabaster, with images of cat-headed goddesses and leonine creatures in stark relief, with cornices at the top. She had been told by the old pastor’s wife before they had left that such places existed, unholy. One register held the figures of an elf, the Supreme Overlord Ranisath striking down the Turtleshroomian deceivers, men and turtles and mushrooms held in a bundle about to be struck dead with a mace, their hands up before them. Behind him his wife Sirithil stood, holding a staff. The image lacked blood but not violence, and its placement gave a clear message; the southerners were enemies to be broken and slain. An equine figure with wings and a horn in a lunar headdress flew overhead, while another, more thickly set drove a chariot pulled by ponies of muscled strength who trampled down hundreds of toppled Turtleshroomers rendered in miniature.

It did not feel unholy, weirdly she felt safe. Somewhere in her mind for the last few weeks had lurked the belief that the Turtleshroomers could come over the city walls somehow and get her. The faces of terror depicted on them were clear. The preachers and protestors on the streets of Gerry who demanded Turtleshroomian law and morals had frightened her. She was ten, of course, she knew that this was not a picture or depiction, but the C’tani were confident enough to outright carve their triumph in stone and put it on the streets for all to see, she saw them in a new light now.

She had expected the doorway in the great gate to lead to an indoor space, echoing and plain like the church, instead it led to a vast courtyard, with cedar trees reaching for the sky and memorial stones around a peristyle court.

Kisa had been pensive the last few days, she hadn’t wanted to come, and Yulia hadn’t understood why, until she approached a woman, a North Lands Neko, or so she thought at the time, with walnut-dark skin and a high staff of gold who had approached the group.

Kisa had uncertainly bowed while grandfather had stood with his hackles up. She didn’t know why he looked so angry, but she had later understood the degree to which his authority had been challenged. He had never wanted to come, but even the boldest paterfamlias relented sometimes, and he had found himself carried forth.

“Greetings, I am the Oracle Takhat, here to speak the words of Sekhmet, She Before Whom Evil Trembles, how can I aid you?”

Sacha crossed himself, and the outlands Neko gave a small smile, as Kisa formulated a question.

“I wanted to ask… my husband died, a few years back. He was killed… by Turtleshroomers.” Or perhaps she only blamed them, Yulia didn’t quite understand at that age. “And I want some answers. I was told you were teaching here and I wanted to see you while you were here.”

“About those responsible or about the dead?” Takhat asked.

“About the dead. But… I have a question.”

“Yes?” Takhat asked.

“I want to see something to prove you know. People have lied to us forever, in the awful South Lands.”

The deposed patriarch rolled his eyes.

Takhat smiled, “What would convince you?”

“They say that you do magic from your gods. In the South Lands they say that these things are the work of demons. I want to see the difference. I want to see your gods.”

“I cannot summon the great gods to stand before you and answer questions,” Takhat said. “But I can bring something lesser if that is your wish.”

“Show me.”

The Oracle smiled.



Yulia, Great Ship Remembrance of Rythek, Age 13

School in the Great Civilization was very different to the old country. In the old country, schooling had been segregated, and the schoolhouse had been using books from thirty years ago, without enough funding to keep the glass in the windows. Here she went to a school with a dozen species. More strangely there were mixed-age groups, which was apparently the norm here. Back home and she understood in many places, education was inspired by military drills, but not so here.

The school was built with access to one of the miles-wide domes that studded the dorsal side of the Great Ship. At this age most children sought to become stronger and more worthy people, the mentors said. She had a lot to catch up with, but she wasn’t the only student with an impoverished background. Kaiya came from a place that called itself the Unitary Empire, she and Yulia spent a lot of time together. Neither of them had spoken a word of necrontyr a year ago, but happily, it was an easy language to learn, though writing it was proving difficult.

Weirdly though, or so she felt, a good part of schooling involved the outside, the Remembrance was a city-ship, a title it could claim without hyperbole. The school’s inner areas contained hydroponic rack-farms and aeroponic rows, while the students also managed one of the ship’s fisheries and a set of stables in the temperate midsection area. Sometimes they even helped out in the ship’s fabricatories.

She would later come to understand the whole curriculum was structured to ensure that the individual was rounded, to boost self-esteem and participation in society, for now, she thought it was no different from the mix of labour and schooling that the Turtleshroomers often employed on company towns.

Today it was the stables though.

The stables smelt of crisp straw and sweet hay, with an undertone of clean horses, they had been brushing down some of the horses as they’d come in from pasture, and the Yulia was working with half a dozen of her fellow students and one of the mentors.

“What do you think we’ll be doing for the play Yuli?” asked Ferieth.

Yulia admired Ferieth, though it was strange to realize that not only was Ferieth older than she was, she had been in school before Yulia had been born. Elves took a long time to raise to adulthood, and the schooling system was designed to move students at their own paces, for humans, one level of instruction took three years, for elves, well, it was longer for sure, Yulia hadn’t actually asked.

“I’ve no idea, the theme is supposed to be pioneers or journeys,” she said. She spoke in necrontyr, the language was designed to do a few things, but one of the ones she liked is that the vocabulary did precisely what you wanted. Every word had one meaning, her common was parochial, her Russian was a strange dialect and not spoken widely, her necrontyr… it took twelve weeks to become fluent and she already spoke it as well as Kethresh.

“I was thinking something about stasis journeys,” Kethresh suggested. She was a necrontyr, she was the other end of the scale. Kethresh was seven, but she was as old and mature as they were. The Necrontyr had always been a fast-breeding people, and their minds were sponge-like, Kethresh had joined the class more recently than Yulia, but she wasn’t sure she envied the other girl, who would be an adult in four more years.

Yulia nodded, “The science or the stories?”

Kethresh grinned, “Both,” she said. “What about you,” she asked Ferieth.

“I was thinking of the Great Journey.”

“Great Journey?” Yulia asked.

“Oh this is a good one,” Kethresh said, swapping the soft brush for a metal curry comb to work further on her mount.

“The Great Journey is the tale of how the Powers brought the Quendi from under the Shadow after Oromë the Great Rider found them. This was in the Days of the Trees, many long ages ago and things were all done on foot, for the most part,” she continued combing down the mare’s mane beside her. “The Quendi were preyed on by the earliest Orcs, and the intention of the Abhorred and his Master was that all should be subdued, so the Powers sent several counsellors, led by Curumo, to teach them the ways of arms, and of journeying. Many of the Quendi did not trust the Great Rider and his emissaries at first, and so Oromë asked for them to elect some to go to the West with him and learn what the Powers intended for them…”



Great Ship Remembrance of Rythek, Age 15

“Is that what I think it is, Auntie Kisa?”

The older Neko had asked her niece to watch, she had wanted to show someone, it seemed. The long table held an ornate samovar and with it a slim box. Three inches and a little more in length, a little wider, with ornate temple glyphs for life, health and strength on the top, and prescription details laser-inlaid on the side in three languages including Russian.

“I asked the ship to make it up this morning,” she said.

“Oh, wow,” she said, “can I pick it up?”

“Go ahead mawlish.”

She reached out to pick up the metal box, examining it from every end, reading the disclaimers within it.

The older Neko had her ears back and looked sleeker and stronger than she had, but this was something else. “I think your grandfather will disapprove,” Kisa laughed, “but I thought you might like to see.”

“Yes please,” she said, tail swishing.

“Can you pour me a tea?”

The young Neko took the samovar’s upper pot and poured out two cups of a tea that smelt of smoke, pinecones and wood-ash, a black brew that the older woman diluted with hot water from a spigot further down it, bringing it to taste, as Yulia sat down and did the same, paying attention to the exotic seeming box.

There were places where entire nations would mount wars to possess such a thing.

Kisa opened the box, and glimmering sand flowed from it as she tipped it into the tea, green grains catching the light like finely ground gunpowder.

In a single sharp gesture, she necked the tea.

Juvenats did not function by nanotechnology, at least not as outsiders understood it, they were something stranger, biological compounds that could unwind the complex damage caused by age. Within three weeks Kisa would be biologically twenty years younger, and stronger too, bones and muscles restored.

The young woman watched fascinated, feeling slightly foolish for expecting it to have been interesting beyond that moment. She raised her own cup, “To your health!” she toasted.



Yulia, Rememberance of Rythek, Age 18

Yulia wore silver robes. The ship’s forward decks showed the view of the original Rythek, once every year it came here, to the band of dust and asteroids that had given its name, a world that had once held a population in the trillions, lost during the Wars of Secession. Destroyed in a single atrocity by the Triarch forces.

The ancient civil war was one of the many things to learn from, Rythek was slowly re-coalescing, it had been sundered and scattered to rubble but most of its mass had not escaped its star’s gravity well. Another five million years would cause the planet to coalesce with a fraction of its original mass. A lively debate existed over whether that process should be hastened and altered to make the world inhabitable again, though the dense ecumenopolii that it represented were something the Great Civilization habitually avoided.

The observation deck was crowded with friends and family of those who were taking the oath today, administered by Kachal, Speaker of the Ship’s Council, the mayor of this interstellar city. Kachal was a Muneen, a species of huge avian scavengers that looked something like Terran corvids, if they came ten feet fall with gemlike eyes studding both their chests and heads. Kachal wore silver adornments on his wings and a constellation of stones drifted lazily around his head like the classic educational depiction of the electron shells of an atom.

+Yulia Covalciuc+ the birdlike being called, and she stepped forward, a notary holding out a Rod of Covenant, a weapon a little like a spear or a staff of office, horizontally, for her to place her hand on. She gripped it momentarily tightly, while the other hand was lifted and open.

“Ready,” she said.

+You may begin+ Kachal said.

Yulia’s ears stood up straight and her posture was sharp, her tail swishing through her robe, “I hereby renounce all claims on my loyalty held by any noble or nation, I reject all allegiance to any but the Great Civilization,” Yulia spoke loud and clear, she had chosen the more stringent wording, for she had no fondness for the nation from which she had come and certainly did not consider herself a dual citizen of any sort.

“I swear that such children or dependents as are in my care shall be protected and raised to their full potential in love and joy, and educated to the best of my ability to prepare them for this responsibility.

“I swear to uphold the memory of those who lived before me as members of the Great Civilization and its antecedents.

“I swear to pursue civic virtues in public life and to commit myself to the welfare of my society, its citizens and people.

“I swear to preserve the secrets of the Great Civilization, its technologies, deeds and lore, from all outsiders as specified in law and to add all pertinent lore and knowledge which I encounter to the same, for the preservation and advancement of knowledge and the sciences.

“I swear to oppose the Primordial Annihilator, its works, and its followers in thought and deed.

“I swear to discharge with all responsibility each authority and trust placed in me in public life, and to maintain financial probity and legitimate commerce.

“I swear to guard and keep the law, defend all of our people by my own hand and bear arms on behalf of the Great Civilization at need.

“I testify that I enter this covenant freely and without any reservation or deception; may the Good Gods Witness my Oath,” some people used ‘affirm’ rather than swear, and specific religious additions varied, but Yulia had chosen the one that would impress her Aunt.

+Then be so recognized,+ he said, +Yulia Constantinovich Covalciuc, Citizen of the Great Civilization, and take up your duties.+



Yulia, Here and Now

“I greet you with rightful honour prince, and though you are not my prince, for I am no stray, I am here to do you honour and give you a true gord for your seat, one where you can sit with pride,” Yulia said; she had a whole extended family of course, though she might have called them a glaring for certainly she was doing so. If she had actually been asked to suggest who her knyaz was, it would surely have been Kachal, who had been returned as Speaker twice more since she had taken the oath. She had no interest in considering her family as a political unit, she had been taught how to care by the legends of a dozen cultures.

She didn’t look remotely intimidated, standing as proud as a statue of Oromë might have.

She looked at the Nekos before her, and at the occasional glances that darted in the direction of the gunfire, and she spoke in necrontyr for a moment, some six words or less, almost whispered, a request to the Necrons.

She looked at the group around her, and then she spoke clearly and stridently, “You have heard a lot about how bad we are. How we are degenerate. How honest labour makes honest men and women, toms and mollies, and how such things are forgotten in a land of orgies and decadence. How plenty makes one arch and cruel.

“You have heard this from people who took your homes and herd you with whips. Who sent you on this trip with a ration of two bottles of water and potato chips for a child on a journey where most children will weep through the night. The same people who call mothers ‘breeders’ and who call children ‘spawn’ and call all of us ‘mutants.’

“I say to you now the reason the Turtleshroomers know the C’tani a brutal people is because we are a just people. They say the same of their prisons, they are brutal to criminals they say. Do you not feel like a crime has been committed against you?

“You have heard much-exaggerated tales of foreign lands. I will tell you some answers. No, I was not kidnapped, and I have a whole family, and yes, they have land and jobs, and wealth too. And none of them is forced to take jobs where they are insulted daily by people who take are taking comfort in the idea that no matter how much their life is miserable, they can still spit on them.

“But I am not here to sell you on one nation alone, I am here to offer to take you anywhere you wish. I love the nation that raised me from a kitten to the woman I am now, a nation that renders aid as best it can to those who are in pain, here and across the stars, but it is not the only righteous nation. There are many lands and places where you won’t be called ‘hand-lickers’ and sprayed in the face as harassment. You have just had your homes stolen, why allow the thieves to tell you where to live next?”

1 Yávië 31938

Jones Found Bridge, Wistful Wilds (Haiz)

The jungle night was a riot of sound. Insects, frogs, nocturnal birds.... they made it very easy for Tharkû to be unseen and unheard. From here, he could see the bridge a kilometer downstream, a soaring arch across a chasm nearly two kilometers across and over four hundred meters deep, at the bottom of which coursed the rushing river that had carved the gorge long ago. He had to admit the construction was impressive in a way. A fine enough piece of engineering, no doubt raised at eye-watering expense. The Jones Found Bridge was the crown jewel of the crucial railway line the Turtleshroomers had built across the Wilds to South Auskral, and Tharkû was proud of the fact he was the last one who would ever behold it intact.

Tharkû raised a scope to his eyes; through the multispectral optic the bridge stood out in stark contrast, as bright as day, against the rock and trees of the cliffs behind it. Carefully, he designated target locations along the structure. The base of the arch at both ends, and a number of the abutments, together, would bring the bridge crashing down. Additional sites at each end, for additional charges that would lie in wait; the 'shroomers would have to bring equipment up at both ends to conduct salvage and begin repairs, and the only way to do that was by rail. Such equipment's arrival would detonate the mines, sending the salvage equipment and its locomotives into the gorge, and further demolishing the crossing.

He sensed movements behind him. "The last patrol just passed. We have a couple hours until the next one, but there will be a train in forty minutes if you want some extra scalps." rumbled Klurtz. "How will we be placing the explosives?"

Tharkû grinned. "Our clients have provided us the finest technology. We have drones to do the deployment." Tharkû gestured to a veritable flock of small gravitic drones, each of which carried a cylinder about a foot long by four inches in diameter, and ringed with ominous yellow and black hazard markings. Tharkû began to activate them, one by one, and the drones, one by one, flashed green lights as they finished receiving their target coordinates.

"Boomex?" asked Klurtz.

"No. Boomex won't be enough, unless we brought far too much of it. TSers overbuilt the shit out of this thing to complicate exactly this sort of operation. So we have been issued antimatter cutting charges."

Tharkû grinned toothily as the last drone finished its prep sequence. "Now, fly, my little birds. Fly."

Lifting off as one, the drones boosted into the night, vanishing into the darkness. With painstaking care, each drone placed its deadly cargo, kiss-kissing the mighty structural supports, clinging in place with gecko pads that activated on contact.

Forty minutes later, Tharkû and Klurtz were watching as the locomotive's horn sounded plaintively as the train approached from the direction of Auskral, laden with all the sort of goods the TSers needed. As the train reached the center of the bridge, the flash of the cutting charges split the night, and there was a distant roar and wail of twisting metal and crashing rolling stock, punctuated by the staccato thumps of one secondary explosion after another. In moments the entire canyon was a hellscape of flame and twisted steel.

MV Ever Granite
Navigatic Ocean

At about the same time, a ship steamed south towards Dire Dire Docks. She was a bulk ore carrier, one of the very largest of her kind, more than four hundred meters long. But today, Ever Granite had a very special delivery to make.

It wasn't the cargo. The cargo was a full hold of cement. Perfectly ordinary in every way.

Rather, it was the passengers. Hidden just below deck were a number of helicopters, manned by more orcish mercenaries, members of the shadowy Elgar Group PMC. Just before Dire Dire Docks appeared on the horizon, the holds opened, the helicopters lifted off, and scattered in a number of directions.

There was nobody left on board; Ever Granite was being controlled remotely, and this would be her final voyage.

From all directions the helicopters converged on Dire Dire Docks. At key points all over the port, they landed, disgorging heavily-armed uruk-hai mercenaries. They moved quickly, but not particularly silently. There was some security and military presence, but they were caught wholly by surprise. A few bursts from their weapons, and the orcs had no more 'shroomers to worry about.

The next couple hours were spent planting demolition charges of various types in much the same fashion that Tharkû had. Gantry cranes, bulk loading equipment, fuel tanks, locomotives, and an entire yard full of containers destined for TurtleShroom got the Elgar Group's special brand of attention. The end of the operation coincided with the arrival of Ever Granite to the port; rather than proceeding into the harbor, she stopped in the channel, turned sideways, and a ripple of explosions seared down the length of her hull. She sank in moments, and the nature of her cargo ensured that removing her would be the work of many months. Simultaneously, the explosions planted throughout Dire Dire Docks also detonated.

Similar scenes would play out at crucial TSer rail bridges, junctions, and railheads throughout South Auskral, Haiz, and the terra nullius, not to mention a string of ports along the South Auskrali coast. By sunrise, the ports of Dyrenforth, Pyka, George's Landing, and Komeyt were flaming ruins, devoid of life or anything of value, each with their own scuttled bulk hauler blocking the channel.

The Street of a Million Gods, Gerry

Prigoshnakh sat on a bench on the sidewalk the following morning, watching the crowds of pilgrims go this way and that. He found it fascinating, this place, where more religions than he could easily count - it was certainly not a million, and he was pretty sure it was not quite even a thousand, yet, but it seemed a new temple was raised every other week - seemed to coexist without issue. But he wasn't here as just a tourist. Something vibrated in his pocket, and Prigoshnakh reached in, drawing out the unregistered, prepaid comm. It was a simple global, not even one of the more modern handbrains, but it did the job it needed to do.

"Talk to me."

Prigoshnakh grinned as the report came through. His was not a pleasant smile, baring sharp teeth, and canines almost large enough to be considered tusks. "Good. I'll let her know." He hung up, then dialed another address, answered promptly by an elegant, refined female voice.

"Elgar. It's done. ....our payment?" he asked.

"Already transferred."

He checked his handbrain; she was right. That got an even bigger grin out of him. "Well, my Lady. It's been a pleasure doing business with you."

"It won't be the last time. We'll be in touch," she said, and hung up.

Prigoshnakh laughed to himself, a low, rumbling sound. In burly hands he snapped the burner comm in two and tossed it into a recycler. Then he stood up and vanished into the crowd of pilgrims.

JANUARY 5TH, DRY SEASON, 2021 AD
SOVEREIGN AUTONOMOUS PARISH OF COTTONSANDS, SOMEWHERE WEST OF NEKOLAND
DRY DRY DESERT, TURTLESHROOM


The desert winds whipped around the robes of the Prince and billowed the Slavic clothes of the other Nekomimis, anxiously waiting for their Prince to reply. He did not blink, maintaining his stare and matching Yulia's own eyes with intensity. The only sound the Prince could hear, besides the shouting over near the train and the winds of the Dry Dry Desert, was the clinking of the more elaborate, hanging earrings on his cat ears. He pushed his glasses up his pointed nose.

Turning to the myriad of Nekomimis behind him, he took a deep breath, and spoke, again in the drawled Russian dialect both were raised to speak.

"You offer a myriad of benefits, kit. You promise me a shinier throne, you promise the earth's bounty on a jade platter. The wealth of nations at our feet... but you forget your raising. I would not expect a Molly with no humility to recall, but the great sin of the Necron..."

He raised up his hand, bejewled in rings. He lifted a finger.

"It is is not that they kill TurtleShroomers. I pity them not."

Two fingers.

"It is not that their lives of sex and drugs and a lack of restraint bring forth the Corruption. Righteous cats have no fear of that."

The Prince's left ear twitched. Just barely, as he took an uncomfortable pause.

"Yet somehow this uppity Molly has escaped that.[/quote]" he thought.

No matter. Three fingers.

"[color=#BF80FF]It is not even that they whisk our weaker kin off, for your society can always use more bodies. We have no need of that, or you."

He pressed the three fingers together and pointed at Yulia.

"What we hate, and what your society cannot escape, is the embrace of expressive, even toxic, individuality. You have traded your loyalties from your clowder, you have forsaken your own clan's Prince, for what clowder would afford a Molly a soldierly office, and you have refused to demonstrate filial piety in my presence."

"What it at work in your society reflects on your unbent back and your unblinking gaze- no such behavior for a Molly is desierable. Your society is thus: that whatever a Necron desires, it must become reality; what the Necron desires should then be reality. Sure, your masters have the technology to do it, but that does not mean you should."

The Prince flicked his tail sharply, back and forth.

"The line of reasoning is behind the elimination of the clowder in more libertine societies. Take, for example, this: two Molly cats, engorged in their own insatiable lusts, deliberately enter into a sterile and dishonorable union prone to the excesses that bring for the Corruption. Haven chosen a relationship that is sterile, they demand a kitten they did not sire, take advantage of adoption to declare an unrelated child their kitten, and then portray those who did not go through labor as having done so."

He sighed.

"While the kitten has lost his father, his mother, or both. It started by separating marriage from reproduction, then sex from the potential of producing kittens, and with the technology your masters achieve, probably kittens without sex."

"By my seventh grandfather, I sound like a TurtleShroomer." he thought.

"-but that's a tangeant. I am giving examples: what you desire, you make real. Bad ideas have victims."

He gestured his hands outward, his people behind him.

"Let's say we give you exactly what you want. We line up and travel to your land. You promise me a throne, you stuff our bellies until we grow fat. The laziest of us get put in your machines to be self-pleasured forever. The rest of us hold onto our customs and live in luxury."

He looked back at Yulia with an intense glare.

"-but you forget the secret ingredient, your plan all along. The youth."

"Twenty, thirty, forty years from now, our kittens' kittens will have known nothing but your lands. They will see your glamor, see your expressive individualism, how anything can be yours and there are no inhibtions beyond getting flogged for saying [SLUR FOR A HOMOSEXUAL] or [SLUR FOR A TURTLESHROOMER]. I mean, I get it, those laws are fair, youv'e got to stop the Corruption and all, but still."

"One by one, they will abandon us. Their ways. Their kin. Their Prince. They will run off and serve your armies, run your civil service, make your money. They will become you."

"-and when all our kittens become you, they will look back at those still living right and laugh, unbent and unknowing of how to behave, and laugh. They will have done what no degenerate in our old homeland could do. They will have broken us. The TurtleShroomers break our bodies, but they never broke our clowder's bonds or our souls. Your society's self-centered life rots the soul."

"-and when our kittens are indistinguishable from you, you will absorb them to your civilization, your mission accomplished...."

"-and when they leave, I can no longer protect them."

Menelmacar wrote:-snip-

Grandstand Territory, Greater Commonwealth of Asahina

"Attention, all South Landers, you are to turn back immediately! Unauthorized passage by foreigners through the Grandstand Territory has been suspended indefinitely. I repeat, unauthorized passage by foreigners through the Grandstand Territory has been suspended indefinitely. By order of the High Admiral, all foreigners without valid authorization shall be detained and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Attention..."

The Turtleshroom enclave of Dire Docks had always been a particular headache for the Commonwealth Navy. A foreign settlement in the sovereign territory of another nation was frustrating on its own, but coupled with several rail connections that ran through the Commonwealth, operating as if they did not exist in a state of limbo incensed the Commonwealth Navy Headquarters to no end. Time and time again, since the conclusion of the War of Red, the Commonwealth demanded that the South Landers vacate Dire Docks and cease the constant violations of Commonwealth sovereignty - often against deaf ears. Plans were made for the invasion and subsequent occupation of the city, although duplicitous South Lander political maneuvering managed to keep such endeavors at bay in the war room, at least until Turtleshroom orchestrated a coup against South Auskral in an attempt to maintain their access to the sea.

If these slights and insults were not enough, the Commonwealth Navy often had to endure foreigners involved in South Lands' affairs, who repeatedly targeted Dire Docks for its role as the sole maritime hub of Turtleshroom. Radars throughout Grandstand and North Auskral received unknown contacts who passed through Commonwealth territory, much to the alarm of military personnel, before engaging Dire Docks without so much as a word to their intentions. Of course, as with anything involving the South Landers, that was hardly the end of any grievances; and in the aftermath of the attacks, there would always be a deluge of refugees fleeing the city and its destruction. Likewise, the Commonwealth was wary to assist these refugees, both because the status of Dire Docks had yet to be resolved in any satisfactory manner, and because they wished no hand in foreign affairs that were typically responding to the most recent South Lands' atrocity. Most were simply detained and interrogated before being deported back to Turtleshroom after several weeks of processing, and much to the chagrin of the Commonwealth Navy, many returned later to Dire Docks to reconstruct the razed city and continue business as usual.

Of course, with the blaring instructions to return to Dire Docks even as the city was ruptured by another series of explosions, it was clear that Commonwealth policy had shifted. What had been a relatively undisturbed border outside of railway lines sparsely dotted with outposts, had since become heavily-fortified military checkpoints, occupied by Commonwealth Navy marines with light tanks, machine guns, and a far more scrutinizing eye. Refugees fleeing by rail were surprised to find their trains diverted, switched onto adjacent tracks, and ordered to slow their engines to a stop as military personnel marched forward to search and detain its passengers. The conductors bold enough to continue ended up finding themselves derailed, at which point reception became far more hostile. Those brazen enough to travel by foot or bus found themselves in similar circumstances, stopped by the traditional blue-grey fatigues of the Commonwealth Navy, before coldly being instructed to return to the city, or risk serious charges if they continued. The mere formalities of illegal entry and lack of documentation had been replaced by espionage and conspiracy, and anyone daring enough to ignore these warnings, swiftly found themselves on a train to Grandstand where they would spend the next few months enjoying the ocean from one of the many prison ships anchored in the Navigatic.

Perhaps the most unusual aspect of this newfound policy, was the fact that it was not the result of any South Lands' shenanigans, but rather, the Bamigan port explosion from several weeks prior. The destruction of the distant Darussalami port had attracted concern within the Commonwealth Navy, who heavily investigated the incident while reviewing security procedures in their ports, and at the recommendations of the Intelligence Division and Engineer Corps, tightened regulations regarding travel and maritime commerce until facilities could be reinforced. This had been especially true for the Grandstand Territory, the province of the military capital, and the area where trains bound to Dire Docks from the South Lands had to pass through. In fact, with the occasional attack on Dire Docks, just outside of earshot from Grandstand, the Commonwealth Navy had all but exhausted their patience for the Turtleshroom enclave - a fact that many South Landers found out about, as their pleas were answered with shouts and rifle butts.

"What a mess." High Admiral Norman Walker sighed, adjusting his field cap as he cast a tired eye at the border proceedings.

"It's always a mess." Emily Caulfield, his adjutant, remarked indifferently, "The longer we keep ignoring Dire Docks, the more we're going to have to endure these repeated attacks and refugee waves."

"I was holding it off in hopes arranging the tonnage treaties with the South Landers."

"Tonnage treaties we would not have to make, had we addressed it before they couped the South Auskral government."

"And now Aleksander Pikul lives underneath our roof." Walker shook his head, squatting down in exhaustion from the whole ordeal, "For such a tactless peoples, they sure turn former enemies into friends decently enough."

Emily offered no comment to the High Admiral's musings, instead differing to a handful of documents she removed from her messenger bag, continuing to stand beside the man as she read them out. The calm yet purposeful voice cutting its way through the sounds of distant chaos, shouts, and cries.

"The immediate Intelligence Division report is as follows: At roughly 2000 hours, an unknown ship was spotted on radar by the CNWS Hellhound in the Navigatic Sea, attempts to hail by radio were unsuccessful. Investigating, the Hellhound made visual contact at 2200 hours and via spotlight signals, identified the ship as the MV Ever Granite, who was suffering from radio failure and stated their intentions to make port at Dire Docks. The Ever Granite declined assistance, declared that there were on a tight schedule, and dissuaded the Hellhound from escorting it to harbor, which subsequently returned to maritime patrol."

"From brief interrogations of South Landers, it can be concluded that around 0000 hours, there was the sound of distant rotors and gunfire throughout the city, followed by a series of sporadic explosions at around 0200 hours. Statements seem to imply that much of the damage was relatively confined to the harbor, although the Intelligence Division cannot independently confirm this at the moment. There are reports of minor radar returns scattering throughout the Grandstand Territory in the hours following the explosions in Dire Docks, with the majority travelling in the direction of Gerry and its territories - various attempts to hail the unknowns by radio were unsuccessful."

"Additionally, similar incidents were reported by Intelligence Division agents in several ports throughout South Auskral; gunfire, followed with multiple explosions, and damage largely limited to port infrastructure. Judging from the targets, timing, and methods of operation, it can be assumed with moderate confidence that the attacks were designated against Turtleshroom and its allies by a heavily-coordinated force, and that the extent of targets and damage probably exceed what can be confirmed by the Commonwealth Navy. It can also be assumed with significant confidence that these attacks are unrelated to the Bamigan port explosion. The Intelligence Division will continue to monitor the situation and append these reports as needed, although they have no recommendations at this time."

The High Admiral continued to squat on the cracked desert soil, processing the information given to him with a certain indifference. There seemed to be no want of enemies from the South Landers, cycling through them as if they were the protagonist in a cheap crimefighting comic. From North Landers to Sky Landers to Far Landers, the man could hardly be roused anymore from such reports of yet another group adding themselves to the already lengthy list. It was getting cliché at this point.

"It would have been better if they had just razed the city." Walker grumbled, looking up at the dark blue morning sky, "Now we have to clean up the mess."

"They did. The South Landers just came back and rebuilt it. Now it's being attacked. Again."

"Yes, Dire Docks, and even South Auskral now, too." The High Admiral let out a heavy sigh, standing up with some effort, "I suppose its a sign that simply biding our time won't change anything."

"I wonder how you could have come up with that idea." Emily stated, crossing her arms resentfully, "If bide your time again, it could be Grandstand instead of Pyka next time. So, are you ready to act now, High Admiral?"

"No, but I do have to act." Walker stretched, taking a breath before assuming a more dignified demeanor to an unimpressed adjutant, "Arrange for the Engineer Corps to begin removing South Lands' rail infrastructure in the Grandstand Territory. No more material or personnel are allowed in or out of Dire Docks via the Commonwealth without explicit authorization by the GHQ. If anyone asks any questions, reaffirm our security procedures after Bamigan, and how they are further justified by the Dire Docks attack."

"I'm sure you're aware that without land or sea infrastructure, Dire Docks will starve, and that the South Landers will probably take that about as well as you'd expect?" Emily noted, jotting down an order on some notes to be carried out later.

"Then I suppose we can finally come to an agreement on Dire Docks." The High Admiral smirked faintly, before continuing, "We will be officially informing the South Landers of these changes, of course, although the grace period will probably coincide with whatever food stores still exist in the city. Given that these are the South Landers, it will probably more enough to last a few months, although it's doubtful that it will last long enough to repair vital harbor infrastructure, so there's no impetus on our part."

"Another plan for biding time..."

"Yes, but I have some more actionable orders to satisfy your restlessness too." Walker stated, much to the adjutant's surprise.

"Mobilize the North Auskral Fleet."

Yulia, Great Ship Remembrance of Rythek, Age 15

‘Woop!’

Yulia leapt from the back of the freight-rail to the next, the internal channels of the haulage modules that surged through the interior of the vast ship. Most of the passenger pods of the ship travelled through internal ducts no wider than their diameter, but here there was just enough space to do something totally reckless.

She reached out and caught the dividing stanchion as she leapt down onto the next haulage unit as it passed. Whirling head over heels she sprang from the ceiling to grip a handhold on the haulage unit heading the opposite way. She landed with catlike grace and posed, keeping her head down to avoid a lower stanchion as they shot through the ship.

She wore pied twill garments with flakweave padding in them, with a tight belt at her midriff holding a slender blade and a multi-tool. The wind whipped through her hair and she clung onto the back of the haulage module like a tick.

She panted as it headed back to the terminal, and grinned at her friends, bounding down and landing with a tuck and roll. Her kindred were acrobatic, and there were several families on the Rememberence of Rythek now, but even so she was startlingly acrobatic and ranked fleet-wide for her age and species group (Nekos were clustered with elves and even Aeldari in acrobatics).

She panted and removed the wrappers from her wrists, small inertial compensators within them powering down - being graceful enough to make the jump was one thing but very few species had the anatomy to grab onto something travelling at a relative three hundred twenty kilometres per hour. There was another along her spine for her head and torso.

Breathing heavily she grinned, ‘Pay up Feri,’ she said.

Ferieth frowned but dutifully handed over a dozen coins while everyone else grinned at him.

The door opened. They were on the observation deck of the ship’s tertiary logistics bay, just over the freightway. Shadowed in the doorway stood Constable Skandras, one of the small team of lawkeepers stationed on the city ship. Crime in the Great Civilization was rare, but there were still police.

‘Fast,’ Yulia said.

‘Whose idea was this then?’ Skandras said, looking down at her with unblinking avian eyes.

She sighed, ‘Mine, sir,’ she said.

‘Yulia Covalciuc, I would have expected better of you. Don’t you know how seriously you can get hurt with “freightrunning?” If you want to show off we have far better places.’

She averted her eyes, fidgeting slightly, ‘Sorry Sir.’

‘Why don’t you tell me what the risks are?’

‘Well…’ she said, ‘if I missed I’d probably go splat. But I’m sure that the ship..’

‘The ship only has level three supervision fields in the freightways, it’s not a public concourse, let alone a sports area, you would be lucky if it did manage to snatch-displace you in the… centisecond before you became a puree.’

She nodded, ‘Yes Sir,’ she said, she wasn’t intending to do it again. She didn’t feel any fear at the brush with death she’d escaped, even though she could understand the risks better now.

‘Now, I’m going to have to tell your parents.’

This, she feared.



The First Nekoland Incident

When the prince talked about Yulia as a symbol of excess individualism she looked down at her uniform, one eyebrow raised in surprise at the remarks. The gesture could be mistaken for deference until she lifted her hand to sweep sand from the sleeve of her uniform. She listened to his homophobia and inwardly wondered how many of this clowder were themselves gay, part of her wanted to cringe on their behalf. She wondered what had become of Jack Snipe, the C’tani bureaucrat who had allowed the Turtleshroomers to sign a peace that still let them keep their discriminatory laws against homosexuality. She suspected he might have been asked to resign.

‘I see you speak, prince, but it is Turtleshroomer words that I hear.

‘I have no masters, I am a citizen of the Great Civilization, and I have an equal stake in it to anyone from Ranisath himself on forward. You have masters, the Turtleshroomers control you and they make no bones about the division between you and them, they are deporting you to a ghetto even now. They may let you vote, but they do not let you live freely among them.

‘You say the Great Civilization wishes to exploit your people for labour, but the Turtleshroomers intend you to rise at five O’clock every day and commute to Jonesboro for menial labour; while I offer to give you land where you will be able to come and go as you please, if that is your wish.

‘You are right in your guess, the technology we possess could, hypothetically, bring forth children without parents, such things are closely proscribed and to do so is a crime, except in the reversal of species-extinction for treatment of sterility and the like. One does not simply create life irresponsibly. You think you know of the Great Civilization’s society, enough that you think it fits some definition of libertine rakehells,’ she might have used heck for another occasion but the word was rakehell, ‘that has been conjured by Turtleshroom apologetics, mixing fears dreamed up in depraved imaginations and dragging things out of context.

‘Do not listen to propaganda, there is a place for individuality and a place for community, no society lasts long without moderation between those two extremes. Here’s the truth, hear it well. Most people are straight, homosexuality is natural but the obsession with homosexuality that the Turtleshroomers have is a cultural phobia. Regardless of what may happen in Turtleshroom, the gays aren’t coming for your children; your children might be gay, but nothing you’ll find in my homeland will make them so.

‘Your children might indeed become me, though, or like me; that’s what happened to me after all. But look closely and tell me if I am truly so degraded as you fear? Would it be that bad for your grandsons and granddaughters to be as I am?

‘Certainly, I have not given you the salutary respect that might otherwise be your due, but while you may be an elder I am also here upon the business of the Arnastorana Telissat Amris. If you want to judge my filial piety, then consider this measure, the Scholars say The superior man serves his ruler in such a way that, when at court in his presence, his thought is how to discharge his loyal duty to the utmost, and when he retires from it, his thought is how to amend his errors. I would never pronounce myself excellent, I am not so hubristic even though you may think it strange for a woman to serve in such a role. It would bring shame to my own parents and it would serve the Great Civilization poorly if I gave such salutary respect to those outside the Great Civilization.

‘They say that you can protect your clowder; and yet,’ she gestured with an expansive sweep of her hand to the locomotive and carriages, ‘it is not the Turtleshroomers who provided water for you, nor would they let you do so. They would not let you stay in your old homes, and they promise you new ones, where you can be free of the codes of the neko-traitor John Raven,’ for the rumour had spread far and wide that he was a neko, one day Yulia intended to find out, ‘but they are also intent on keeping you all, keeping us all, for they would do it to me if they could, in a state of subjection.

‘You suggest that in becoming like me, your children will laugh at their parents. I do no such thing. You also say that by joining the “Great Civilization” that I have forsaken my own. You can have both, just like you are a Turtleshroomer. As am I in a small way, but the tone of it suggests I am a traitor. You say I am a shame to my parents and a traitor to our kindred? Let me show you that they still taught me of our own culture. I demand satisfaction. I know you won’t fight a woman, but I can appoint a champion,’ she said. She turned her gaze to her mercenaries as if counting who was available, reaching up to the earbud she wore, “Bashir and Mle, come join us. I need a champion by the local duelling rules.”’ Briefly, she wondered if being a champion in a duel got them extra pay; probably.

She wasn’t visibly angry, and she knew it would reduce ill feelings, but she needed them to pay attention and for the next prince to consider twice before running their mouth about such claims. More than that, part of this mission was to make sure that every other party in the region was aware of what the Turtleshroomers were up to. There was a limit to the disrespect other Valkians would take even from a mercenary employer¹.



Yulia, GCV Evebridge, Age 19

Midshipman Yulia ita Novokh watched the pale infinitude of the astral plane on the viewer, making corrections to the ship’s course. This was different from real space, every manner of plane was different, with different risks; these were the shallows, some of the easiest tasks. She was officially rated as an ensign, in common parlance at least, but she was not yet a substantive officer. This was her main break from study at Hylantar Universariate in the year; she would far rather this than a trip to the Corrodines.

‘Bring us to six three mark four,’ the captain said.

‘Aye aye,’ she replied as she adjusted a control, not every ship was helmed in a fully manual way, but this one was. The Enclave of Nathlkehrareth appeared briefly on the viewer as they came about, before falling away as they moved through the silver void.

The Pass Training Cruise - the term Pass, in this case, relating not to needing to pass to be part of it, though that was certainly required and not everyone did - but to a non-planetary time period of approximately a year (in fact derived from the average of pan-humanoid annual planetary cycles) was arranged once per year for six weeks to avoid was one of the first steps to a military career.

The Great Civilization’s military was often regarded as only its two most visible elements, the vast sapient warships of the engagement fleet, and the necrons, but there were many other positions tobe found, for a time these had been part of the deceptively named paramilitary Order of Peace (the name was actually from its role as an occupation constabulary force, in High Seroic the name was contextually closer to ‘Peacekeepers’ and some used that title for them in the various common tongues) but there were plenty of others.

Yulia’s interest was distant planes, places away from the normal aspect of space, and living crews were used for many ships in such harsh environments. Perhaps one day she would get to go somewhere truly wild and interesting, but for now, the Pass Training Cruise was more than enough.



Gerry, The Second Nekoland Incident, Some Years After the First - The Present

Yulia had not visibly aged, and the only difference in appearance from the first Nekoland Incident was the exchange of the two gold pins on each side of her collar and on her tunic lapel for a second set of sky-blue sapphires, a promotion that had been at the early end of the expected time in grade, but had come from the confidential service promotions route, given the sensitivity of some of her assignments.

She would rather have been actually sailing than grounded here, but there was still plenty to be done with the Turtleshroomers. Maybe next year she could get someone to take over.

Last night, the Menelmacari inaugurated what was hoped to be the Comprehensive Anti Turtleshroom Policy or CAT Policy. She was proud of that one. She was one of the few people who knew this, had the necessary security clearance to know this. ISA-8. Once the security clearance table had taken its initials from the agency responsible, but that had been abolished and replaced with several more task-focussed agencies, the initials remained, given the backronym of Information Security Assessment; it wasn’t broken after all, so no one had fixed it.

Today, while the Turtleshroomers were processing what had happened to their north and west, the next phase would begin on their east.

The legal situation was complex. The Treaty of Gerry, which had ceded the city, had promised peace, and while in principle treaties such as this did not continue indefinitely, it would not do to move to a war footing against Turtleshroom without being seen to exhaust every conceivable option; Turtleshroom could be defeated or even conquered, but it would not be helpful to give the C’tani a reputation for treating its treaties casualty.

But the Great Civilization had never signed a treaty with the “Undead Gypsies,” whose reputation as romantic nomads made them favourites of Turtleshroom. Enough that Turtleshroom had granted them usage of the unincorporated lands to the east of its internationally recognized borders.

Normally she would have frowned at taking a stand against people to manoeuvre others, but in this case it was not because they were itinerants, nor that they were undead; both communities existed in the Great Civilization. It was the reason that the Turtleshroomers overlooked that they were Undead; they were Fascists. Their last act on the international stage had been to send ten thousand troops to “Spread Fascist Influence” abroad. They had unhealthy ideas of what to do with Prisoners of War and more.

Right now, Necrons were being deployed to the primary roads from the unrecognised Fascist state into Turtleshroom, their orders were straightforward, to turn back any attempt from either side to travel. It was an act of war, but not against Turtleshroom.

Of course, even though these forces were used, that wasn’t how things were done in Valkia. The Necrons were being used for initial stopping forces, but far more had been planned.

And that was where Yulia came in, she had a list of calls to make; the time had come to get the gang back together.

There were fascists that needed to be placed in a ghetto.

---

OOC: ¹ They threatened me with a “Coward” role in the regional discord!

Chronology note: the Second Nekoland Incident occurs after the "Tsao Miracle" thread.

{ OOC: For the purposes of this post, all dialog is not in English, unless explicitly noted. }

The Ctan wrote:‘You are right in your guess, the technology we possess could, hypothetically, bring forth children without parents, such things are closely proscribed and to do so is a crime, except in the reversal of species-extinction for treatment of sterility and the like. One does not simply create life irresponsibly. You think you know of the Great Civilization’s society, enough that you think it fits some definition of libertine rakehells,’ she might have used heck for another occasion but the word was rakehell, ‘that has been conjured by Turtleshroom apologetics, mixing fears dreamed up in depraved imaginations and dragging things out of context.

"That you apologize for corrupting influences, to call them natural, are signs of your own hear-"

Yulia wouldn't let him finish.

The Ctan wrote:‘Your children might indeed become me, though, or like me; that’s what happened to me after all. But look closely and tell me if I am truly so degraded as you fear? Would it be that bad for your grandsons and granddaughters to be as I am?

The Prince said nothing, listening intently. His ears swiveled upon detecting murmers in the Nekomimis behind him, then returning forward. The fact that the Molly cat in front of her wasn't Corrupted, black and foaming while charging at his throat, was in itself a rebuke he feared, perhaps more than anything else.

The Ctan wrote:If you want to judge my filial piety, then consider this measure, the Scholars say The superior man serves his ruler in such a way that, when at court in his presence, his thought is how to discharge his loyal duty to the utmost, and when he retires from it, his thought is how to amend his errors. I would never pronounce myself excellent, I am not so hubristic even though you may think it strange for a woman to serve in such a role. It would bring shame to my own parents and it would serve the Great Civilization poorly if I gave such salutary respect to those outside the Great Civilization.

The Prince's ears visibly twitched. His tail swished as he maintained a neutral expression on his face, and even that was betrayed by his whiskers moving slightly.

"Nine cousins thrice removed." the Prince thought, trying to push back his urge to reply harshly, "She's right."

The Ctan wrote:You say I am a shame to my parents and a traitor to our kindred? Let me show you that they still taught me of our own culture. I demand satisfaction. I know you won’t fight a woman, but I can appoint a champion.’

Loud gasps and a few spit takes were heard in the huddled Nekomimis as their murmering and whispers rose in volume. The Prince's pupils grew wide and his ears slicked back as he raised one of his hands to his chest and stepped back, almost in a stagger motion. He whipped his tail back and forth, a look of disgust and shock overcoming his features.

A bead of sweat ran down the side of the Prince's face. He had reigned for twenty years and was in his forties now, and had barely lifted a finger from his throne. He wasn't obese, per se, but he wasn't in shape. Not like Yulia. He subconsciously placed a hand on the layer of fat on his stomach.
In contrast to the approachable "people's kings" of TurtleShroom proper, TS Nekomimi nobles were sharply distanced from their families, their embroidered deels deeply contrasting the Slavic Tolstoy shirts and loose clothes of the kin they oversee, and are a very, very rare example of a creature in TS territory that grows fat.

Any Nekomimi was expected to fight in a challenge, but only a Prince had no choice in the matter. A Prince who refused a challenge to a duel was worse than a traitor. If he even survived the riot after refusing, he would have been stripped naked and banished to his death, his circlet burnt and his name erased from the ledgers of his forefathers.

Several TurtleShroomers ran around the train, fearing a riot.

Speaking in the Nekomimi tongue, a turtle shouted, "What's all this?!"

The Prince turned to sound of the turtle, ears slicked back, and he hissed. Loudly.

The Prince replied in the same drawled language: "A matter of honor. Do not interfere."

The turtle realized they were going to fight. Several of the TurtleShroomers grinned, hoping to get a good laugh at a cat fight. Maybe they'd both scratch each other up.

The Prince turned back to Yulia, ears still flattened to his head, tail whipping back and forth.

"Darn your seventh grandfather! You caricature of a Nekomimi! You whore! You, merely a Molly cat, a kit, DARE challenge an Elder of the Clowder? I see a Molly cat that needs to be put in her place."

He hissed again.

"I am going to get my tail skinned." he thought.

The Prince's hand trembled slightly as he reached between the folds of his deel robe and removed what seemd to be a wooden whistle, decked in filligree of silver, on a rusty chain. Taking a deep breath, he blew it. It made a shriek, easily heard over the intensifying winds of the desert.

"A Knyaz Cat Fight Throw Down has been demanded of the Elder of the Clowder." he intoned, snapping his fingers. "Servants, bring forth the platters."

"I hope I'll live to put them back on." he thought.

For a moment, all was silent. The chimeric crowd parted ways as several female Nekomimis, baring Red Solo cups in the absence of the traditional silver platters, held the cups up to the Prince.

Slowly and with a slight flourish, his eyes never blinking, the Prince threw his mace into the sand and cracked his knuckles, wiggling his bejeweled fingers. He reached up to his earrings, first the long dangling ones, and placed them in the cups. Then the little gold rings, then the numerous studs. With catlike speed, he violently shook his head to straighten his ears and hair, his eyes narrowed as his gaze returned to Yulia. He was faintly growling.

One by one, he took his rings off, still not blinking, placing them in the cups. He removed his chain of office, then several smaller necklaces, and finally his thin glasses. Removing clips and jewels from his hair, taking of bengals, unchaining his bracelets and ankle bracelets, and taking off his shoes, he finally removed his circlet.

His ears twitched again.

"Servants, bring the linens for the Elder and the Champion."

Usually, these belted skirts were white linens, tied around the waist and extending past the kneecaps. Unfortunately, no linens could be brought. The TurtleShroomian agents did, though, have a white, splattered picnic tablecloth from last Sunday's Bureau of Nomadic Data lunch. They tore it in half and tossed it to the Prince, who failed to catch it. He bent over and picked it up.

Reaching to undo his deel robe, he unfolded it and, with a dramatic sweep, leaving his white boxers (with little hearts on them) and his pudgy stomach on display, he thrusted it off into the crowd. Assuming a fighting stance, he tied the tablecloth around his waist and secured it with a belt that had been given from the crowd.

The other tablecloth was handed to Yulia's champion.

"Servants, bring platters for the champion."

"I have to do this. Why me?" he thought, his nerves increasing.

The female Neokimis, with new Red Solo cups, went over to receive any jewelry, electronics, earpieces, and what-not from the champion.

"Lay out the censers."

"My Prince?"

"What?"

"Where can we get incense?"

"Do you really need to ask?"

The TurtleShroomers looked at each other and walked to the train. Incense was a big deal for both cultures.

In a few moments, they came back out with bronze poles, curved with a hook at the end, and matching bronze plates, suspended by three chains like a scale. Driving them into the dirt in a rhombus pattern, a small caged box was placed on each suspended plate, secured with Velcro to avoid the desert wind from knocking it over. They lit the incense, its faint smell only occasionally noticable in the wind. Several other Nekomimis scraped their feet in the sand to carve out an "arena".

The Prince spoke English for the first time in a while. He balled his fists and then unclenched them as he bent his knees.

"Don the linen and throw down, boy."

"By my great-grandfather, that boy sure looks strong."

The other Nekomimis began chanting in their language: "THROW DOWN! THROW DOWN! THROW DOWN!".

A male Nekomimi, this one wearing some jewelry but less bedecked, stepped forward, wearing the Prince's crown. A translator spoke English as he spoke the Nekomimi dialect of drawled Russian.

"Toms and Mollies, everyone knows the rules of the Knyaz Cat Fight Throw Down. By lot, we have chosen the judges for this event, and for the sake of impartiality, two TurtleShroomers and three of us will be on the panel. A majority determines the victors."

Each party was directed to stand in front of a censer, facing each other.

"My Prince. Champion. The rules are simple. Anything goes in a Knyaz Cat Fight Throw Down except the groin, the ears, and the eyes. Fists only. No claws if you have them, any use of claws or weapons is an immediate forfeiture. Fighters will attack until one of the following occurs: a fighter falls and cannot rise for more than twenty seconds, a fighter yields, a fighter is killed, a fighter is made to knock over a censer, a fighter so thoroughly dominatesd the other that the judges order mercy, or a fighter becomes too exhausted to continue, as decided by the judges."

"My Prince. Champion. Take your positions. On the Prince's blow of the Duelling Whistle, begin."

Ruckous cheers and hollers echoed from the Nekomimis. The Prince hissed again, bearing his fangs.

It was on like Genghis Khan.

Bashir had a disgusted look in his eyes the longer he watched the entire discussion between Yulia and that misshapen creature that supposedly called itself a prince. One didn't need a translator to get the gist of what they were arguing about; a bitter old man stuck in his ways content to kick down someone who refused to lick the boot like he did.

Bashir had lived through that. Bashir had seen others live through it. Indeed, there was a reason mercenaries like him were often called Strays, many of them left with nowhere left to go.

In that regard, the Prince's mere appearance spoke to his patheticness. It was the nature of the privileged to flaunt their nonexistent deed and wealth, it was downright hubristic to do so while being herded into a glorified concentration camp, as Bashir saw it.

They had a translator on hand of course, a scrappy kid from the Wildlands, as Hiluxians were prone to call what others might refer to as Terra Nullius. He'd lasted long enough to get the name Moggy, and though Bashir would never admit it to his face, he saw good things in him, provided Luck was with him.

It was something of a shock to hear Yulia call him out specifically regardless.

"Sounds like the tin-men need a cat-herder, Bashir." He could hear Asla say in turn. Already, the Hiluxians began to chuckle and jeer among themselves.

Bashir simply sighed as he dropped his rifle in the scorching sand beneath his feet. His sidearm, holster, and knives, would be handed right to Moggy, seemingly held in higher regard. The Hiluxians kept their weapons pointed at the Nekos with red cups, barking at them to keep their distance. Tradition never got in the way of company policy, and company policy was to never willingly give the locals company property without permission. Regardless, he was clear in his intentions, any such items coming off of his body first.

His body armor would come off next, followed up with more clothing until he was down to his pants. He held many scars on his chest, some from shrapnel, some from knives and bayonets, at least some surgical as well. His build was typical for a Qutani that had done plenty of labor, street-fighting and other assorted thuggery in youth, musculature complementing an otherwise lean structure.

He took a look at the tablecloth with some disdain, only putting it on for Yulia's sake.

His face was one of seriousness as he stared down his opponent. His own stance worked to keep his hands and feet exactly where he needed them.

When the Prince spoke, one word caught his ears.

Boy.

Most would have said he signed his death warrant with that word. Bashir merely cracked a grin in response.

"Shut up and fight, old man."

When the whistle blew, Bashir was ready.

Qutani were fast, faster than most humans at their peak. His feet and position propelled him forward with enough momentum to immediately throw a jab towards the Prince's jaw.

Qutani were a notoriously cruel and vicious people in the brawl, content with drawing out the suffering of their foes. Bashir did none of these things. Years of professionalism and violence had drilled into him the idea of ending a fight quickly. It also left the old fool with less excuses for what was to follow.

Qutani were the antithesis of the Nekomimi. Proud, individualistic, unwilling to slave away for authority unearned. Bashir embodied these ideals perfectly. He was a stray, and he loved every moment of it.

A hook followed the jab, and from there, he would try and force his opponent to the ground. There was a measured rage to his every action, not the wild thrashing and violence of a less experienced Qutani. This was as methodical a beatdown as one could deliver.

He wouldn't stop, he would keep striking the Prince's head with vicious blow after vicious blow once he had him exactly where he needed him, only relenting should he quit or stop moving, whichever came first.

JULY 31ST, WET SEASON, 2023 AD
MILITARY MANDATE OF WISTFUL WILDS
OLD HAIZ ZONE, TURTLESHROOM (DE FACTO)

Agent James Dwem yawned and stretched his small arms as he again darted his bright blue eyes across the feed of the machine he was staring at.

Appearing to be a little boy of no more than ten, sporting cyan blue hair under his helmet, and wearing a simple robe over a bulletproof vest, this child must have clearly been a situation where TurtleShroom lacked any watchmen and had to bring in the leftist kid from a middle school.

This could not be furhter from the truth. This was no little boy, however, but an adult Haiz human typical of the Homo sapiens haiz subspecies. His outfit had a sky blue sash reading "RUIN SENTINEL" on it and possessed a badge under his robe.
A patch was sewn onto the robe denoting the insignia of his office: the Office of Dangerous and Worrisome Engine Monitoring, Eradication, and Restraining of the Ruins of Haiz. De jure, they were a civilian component answering to the Border Patrol, DWEMERRH agents were not expected to fight anything.


The original Queen-dom of Haiz fell in a civil war, which TurtleShroom intervened in directly and managed to end in a draw. With the death of their Queen, the remaining aristocracy and wealthy noblemen and engineers took to the stars, leaving behind the lower classes and peasantry to TurtleShroom's welcoming arms. Approximately thirty million Haiz were left behind, making up 0.22% of the TurtleShroomian population.

Virtually incapable of violence and lacking an instinctual fight response, the Haiz relied on machines, extremely advanced technology and automated artillery to defend in their name. Haiz was called a land of "Anything but Modern Tech", and overcoming their species total lack of a fight response was the source of their technological intervention. Future Tech machinery is worth hundreds of billions in wealth. As TurtleShroom was unable to maintain or salvage most of this technology, with few exceptions, they sold what they could and distributed tens of billions of currency to the Haiz population directly (using the rest to pay off debts from the Dark Harvest and defending the Haiz in the civil war), creating a wealthy demographic that easily segued into a degree of political power.

It was for that reason that outposts in the old Haiz lands stood near the great rails through the unforgiving jungle. James was stationed at such an outpost.

Haiz were psychically attuned, capable of simple telepathy, dark vision, and telekinesis beneath the sapient mushroom population. Their machines, great and functioning in methods taking advantage of this attunement meant that a Haiz was needed to control them. This was the mission of DWEMERRH agents. The departure of Haiz engineers and spexcialists caused the machines to go wild, patrolling Haiz laboratories, settlements and structures, maintaining them and keeping forces out. They were waiting for the return of something that would never come back, and occasionally went haywire.

Agent James was greeted by a blaring alarm as he jumped off his stool and hid under the desk for a few seconds, before remembering what it was. Putting his helmet back on, he was made aware of an incoming message. Using technology most nations' railways had used for over forty years, the console pinpointed exactly what had occured and where, to thousands of a degree, taking advantage of electrified wires running on the rails.

A teleprinter much like those in use in obsolete submarines in the Region, whirred to life as its electrical motor began moving back and forth. The screeching dot-matrix behemoth howled, as if it itself was afraid of what it was printing.

Line by line, James read the alert. This alert was automatically generated by a computer.

Code: Select all

! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

ATTN: CRITICAL

TOTAL INFRASTRUCTURAL FAILURE ON GREAT JONES FOUND BRIDGE
FAILURE CLASS: COLLAPSE OF FOUNDATION

COORDINATES [LATITUDE/LONGITUDE]
RAIL NUMBER: ALL
RAIL CLASS: BRIDGE
LOSS ESTIMATION: ABSOLUTE
TIME DETECTED: 2:59 AM, JULY 31ST, 2023 AD

CLASS FIVE ALERT, MAD AUTOMATON MOBILIZATION PRESUMED

GET THERE NOW!!!


DWEMERHHR MONITORING SERVICE
TELEPRINTER
COMMUNICATION ARRAYS SENDING AND PRINTING THIS MESSAGE BROUGHT
TO YOU BY BELL SYSTEM OF TURTLESHROOM AND AMERICAN TELEPHONE
AND TELEGRAPH


Based Meme Mood Music

He grabbed the paper from the teleprinter after quickly pressing the "HERE IS" key, which denoted receipt of the message, and the number of his outpost.

Running as fast as his childlike legs could carry him, James bolted out of the small building he was stationed in, ran a few yards across the pavement, past the bathroom, and up multiple flights of stairs to the tall watchtower.

He kicked the door open, panting. He found his superior, Yelu, a human of Manchurian descent from the old Sino-Japanese Union*, resting his elbow with his helmet in his desk. He held his head in his left hand while idly twirling his traditional Cue braid with his right. Manchurian hairstyles had not changed since the conquest of his people by the Japanese Dystopians, and denoted a sense of identity among a group who, unlike many Jurchens across Nationstates, never got out of the steppes before the roaring force of House Uchicha** unified Japan and completely stomped the boot onto their faces.

Yelu sat up and placed his helmet back on.

"James!" Yelu asked, his English thickly accented, "What's wrong?"

James hurriedly gave him the paper. Yelu's response was akin to James', reading it over to make sure it's right. He looked to James and both nodded. They had to get going now.

Fortunately, they had Mister Neigh-Neigh.

What they didn't see, though, was the teleprinter producing a second notification.

It had happened twice.

---

JULY 31ST, WET SEASON, 2023 AD
CHANCELLERY PALACE, JONESBORO
DISTRICT OF THE CAPITOL, TURTLESHROOM

The fifth floor of the Chancellery Palace was the Tsars' residence, throne room, communications center, and office.

While Tsar Olvia slept and with Tsar Wip out on some errand, Tsar Maven Outtacountry had already gotten well more than the needed four hours that a turtle needed to function in the day, and so was taking some time to relax. Having ascended a ramp to a chair of beautiful tropical wood onto a dark hardwood table, the royal tortoise stretched his neck forward and gently lapped up the mug of South Lands Tea Company coffee that was placed there for him, easily preventing his imperial crown from slipping. It was black, just like he liked it.

He didn't get to finish it, because he saw several terrified human staff members running in, and then suddenly picking him up. Dangling for a moment, Tsar Outtacountry knew exactly what had taken place.

Something horrific had happened and they couldn't wait for him to crawl over. He was placed on a brass rolling cart and hurriedly pushed to the communications' room.


"THE BRIDGE DID WHAT?! TWICE?!"

---

JULY 31ST, WET SEASON, 2023 AD
DIRE DIRE DOCKS EXCLAVE
OCCUPIED GRANDSTAND TERRITORY
TURTLESHROOM (DE FACTO)


The Menelmacari mercenaries could not have executed a simpler plan. The mounted machine gunners in their watchtowers were easy pickings from the helicopters. Like action heroes, the orcs practically lept out of their helicopters, coordinging an immediate dispatching of the unsupecting watchtowers' occupants.

Over a dozen Oriental humans- by far the largest demographic in Dire Dire Docks -breathed their last, but in the ensuing panic, one had been left alive, and after about a hour of crawling in his own blood and vomit, he managed to hit the alarm button befor collapsing.

The air raid sirens rang out as several turtles grabbed the cranks of manual anti-aircraft turrets and feverishly rotated them to turn the machines upward. Looking through the night vision sensors, they found...

Nothing.

The skies were black as night, as usual, and not a single foreign aircraft had been seen. Why was the alarm pressed?

The watchmen radioed back to their commanding officers that someone must have hit the alarm by mistake, and returned to their missions. Several TurtleShroomers were dispatched to the watchtowers, but otherwise, it seemed all was normal.

They would find the bodies, but that would be far less worse than what was found next.

---

JULY 31ST, WET SEASON, 2023 AD
MILITARY MANDATE OF WISTFUL WILDS
OLD HAIZ ZONE, TURTLESHROOM (DE FACTO)


Mister Neigh Neigh was a horse, and a beautiful horse at that. Descended from an eight hundred year lineage dating back to the subjugation of the non-humans in the medieval period, these horses were originally bred for cavalry. That ended in 1934 AD, but the horses were still used by TurtleShroomers for sport, racing, competitions, and especially for navigating the "Green Hell" of a jungle unmolested by development.

The horse's hoofbeats were mixed with the sounds of the animals in the night, two contrasting ambiences denoting danger and calm.

Yelu was born for this. TurtleShroomers and his own people both enjoyed horse competitions, and while nearly ninety years had passed since horses had a war purpose, many TurtleShroomers raised and reared them for fun, sport, and profit.

That was when the Dark Harvest hit and, for several years, TurtleShroomers were barred from owning or using horses, devestating long-held live-action role play traditions and legacies from the horse lords that once ruled the country before the arrival of the Missionaries.

Now, years later, it was so good to be back in the saddle of a horse, and not a stubborn mule.
Yelu learned forward on Mister Neigh Neigh as James, comically suspended on Yelu's back in a harness- befitting the child he appeared to be -held up the large, burdensome antenna of GPS device in his left hand, and the attached tracker in his right.

The GPS tracker was quite primitive, even featuring a square-pixel black and white LCD screen instead of color, and the console alone was the size of a brick. Its antenna has half James' size.




The area of Haiz, one of the least developed outside of its ruins, was also the most documented wilderness, precisely because of how dangerous it is. Every inch of rail was mapped, and so the duo knew where to go.

It took about twenty minutes to arrive.

Yelu and James arrived to see several other DWEMERHHR agents scoping the ruins. The bridge over the great chasm was a total loss, and the wreckage of both the supply train and the repair equipment littered the gorge.

The Haiz that had already arrived were wearing what looked like giant domes of wires and sensors, connected to a device in their hand. On their sweating backs, an engine akin to a gas-powered leaf blower turned, making its puttering noises. Crudely reverse-engineered and requiring internal combustion to power, these monstrosities were the TurtleShroomian answers to the sleek, small consoles a Haiz could drive an automaton with back in the heyday of the Queen-dom.

James had forgotten his. Darn.

Several horses were hitched to trees and peacefully grazing or drinking from puddles, blissfully unaware of the absolute bloodbath that had occured.

Yelu dismounted Mister Neigh Neigh and removed James from his harnass. The Manchu and the Haiz walked up to several other TurtleShroomers, these similarly diverse and comprising of a few Haiz, a few Orientals, a few TS Whites, and some non-humans.

They were taking pictures and signing flashlights. Some descended into the gorge to assess the damage. Turtles were lowered by pulleys connected to trees or the mangled steel of the Great Jones Found Bridge, affixing chains around the waists of discovered bodies and signalling to be pulled back up.

A pile of bodies had been neatly stacked nearby, the wrists tied and the ankles bound, waiting to be loaded in body bags. Incense had been lit and a chaplains representing the major Christian faiths were already waving censers over the bodies.

Each time a body was brought up, some Christian TurtleShroomers would cross themselves and the Protestants would simply pray. Each of these creatures had a family, had loved ones, and had done nothing but ride a train that was meant to repair their bridge.

"For the love of Violet. There must have been at least eighty so far."

The victims seemed to be mostly turtles, which was common of railway employees, but multiple humans of all races were also scattered in the wreckage.

The Haiz couldn't bare to look at the bodies. After being photographed and given DNA swabs, the bodies' faces were veiled, per TS disaster recovery custom, and those with visible mutilation had tarps draped over them.

Placing his hands in his pockets and walking to his assigned position, Yelu stopped when he noticed something troubling. Yelu took a deep breath as he recognized a long Cue braid on one of the men tasked with repairing. The shirtless body, a man no more than twenty-five, was one of his own people.

Wait. Wait.

That meant...

He started to shake.

Tonight was his shift.

Did that mean...

"No no... Jesus, protect me..."

Yelu was a convert to Christianity, and right now, he was begging God for a reprieve. He reached under his robe and pulled out his pectoral cross necklace, gripping it with white knuckles.

"No, no, nonononono..."

Yelu ran over to the body, pushing a mushroom into the mud as he began feeling its torso for any identification.

Yelu lifted the veil and hit his knees.

There was the unmistakable scar on his chin from back in the GEIJD wars, and his strong facial features nearly matched his own. The same Cue. That full goatee, covering his whole chin and upper lip... Yelu's mother always joked about it. The body was clothed in a pair of overalls and sported a tool belt. He wore a yellow bandanna around his neck, a symbol of his heritage, of which he was always proud. (Yelu always thought that was a little much for his wardrobe.)
The bandanna was caked in blood.

Yelu put his hand under the body's head, between the Cue brain and the ground, and lifted up the head. The Manchu's slanted eyes were closed, unlike Yelu's, which were rapidly filling up with tears.

His brother.

"Babu..."

That was the nickname of his younger brother, Babutai. No one called him by his full name, not in GEIJD or TurtleShroom. In fact, no one even used his last name. He was just Babu.

Babu was an optimist in a repressive land. Never one to get down, he worked his depressing factory job day in and day out, clipboard in his hand and a song on his lips. When Yelu came home from a fourteen hour shift, Babu was there each night to give him a hug and sing him a Manchu song of his ancestors. Babu would stay up late for this every night... especially after their mother died in a factory accident and his father had "disappeared".

Babu was Yelu's greatest friend and lifelong companion, through thick and thin. What brother didn't have such a bond?

Babu always said that TurtleShroom would be a land of new life. The thoughts of what Babu said rushed in his mind. Babu said they would get rewarding jobs, jobs whose manual labor didn't come with commissars and beatings if they messed up. They would take women and have families. They would raise those children in Manchu culture and the culture of their new homeland.

They would be free. No Manchu hailed the People's Comrade-Emperor. Uchicha was a slur. The GEIJD was remarkably egalitarian in terms of the fact taht one's race or origin did not lower their status, but that wasn't much reprieve from the attempts to "Japonize" or "Sinicize" their culture and lifestyle. It was due to "counterrevolutionary" adherence to pre-National Bolshevik ideals that led to many Jurchen deaths. Beaten and depressed, the fall of the Empire, which many Orientals met with sorrow, was a de facto holidy for the GEIJD Jurchens.

Now Yelu was here. Now Yelu was free...

-but Yelu did not have Babu.

"Of new... life." Yelu thought.

Yelu leaned over and grabbed Babu's Cue braid, lifting his head and pulling his lifeless body closer to him. Yelu wrapped his arms around his shoulders, sobbing deeply. His Cue braid dripped in the mood as the sweat on his body washed some of Babu's blood onto his robe.

James, also weeping, walked over and placed a hand on Yelu's back, pulling his dirtied hair from the mud.

"Yelu. I'm... I'm so sorry."

Yelu shook his head.

"Wh-whoever did this... a thousand curses upon their house."

Thunder cracked as the rainforest began to live up to its name. Rain poured down in ropes, soaking everyone and staining the bodies.

Yelu would not let Babu go.

"Yelu... Yelu, you have to let us load his corpse."

Yelu would never let Babu go.

* = Better known by its exonym, the Greater Evil Imperial Japanese Dystopia.

** = Yes, the original GEIJD player actually chose this name. I thought nothing of it until some of my more "cultured" friends cackled upon seeing it.

Hiluxia wrote:Qutani were a notoriously cruel and vicious people in the brawl, content with drawing out the suffering of their foes. Bashir did none of these things. Years of professionalism and violence had drilled into him the idea of ending a fight quickly. It also left the old fool with less excuses for what was to follow.

Qutani were the antithesis of the Nekomimi. Proud, individualistic, unwilling to slave away for authority unearned. Bashir embodied these ideals perfectly. He was a stray, and he loved every moment of it.

A hook followed the jab, and from there, he would try and force his opponent to the ground. There was a measured rage to his every action, not the wild thrashing and violence of a less experienced Qutani. This was as methodical a beatdown as one could deliver.

He wouldn't stop, he would keep striking the Prince's head with vicious blow after vicious blow once he had him exactly where he needed him, only relenting should he quit or stop moving, whichever came first.

JANUARY 5TH, DRY SEASON, 2021 AD
SOVEREIGN AUTONOMOUS PARISH OF COTTONSANDS, SOMEWHERE WEST OF NEKOLAND
DRY DRY DESERT, TURTLESHROOM

Based Meme Music

The whistle barely left the Prince's mouth as Bashir charged him.

Bashir had the youth, the skills, and the violence, faster than any man, but the Prince had a card up his sleeve: his body.

TurtleShroomian Nekomimis, while certainly akin to men, were more cat than normal Nekomimis. Able to manipulate their legs, spine, and hips like "true" cats, they were capable of natural acrobatics and manipulation of limbs that a human could not. The glasses were to correct near-sighted vision, not to restore vision like a TurtleShroomer's heavy lenses functioned.

The Prince's whiskers pushed forward as he detected the rush of the air in Bashir's fists. What started with dodging was rapidly ended when Bashir went to strike him down. The Prince didn't see it coming and fell with a yowl, forced back onto his backside.

With the element of surprise, Bashir pulled no punches, wailing on his face. The Prince managed to move his head to avoid a critical blow to sensitive areas, but it was not enough. A crack above his eye, above his left eye socket immediately flooded the Prince's mind with howling pain and adrenaline. His nose was shattered, bleeding profusely.

Rotating his hips a full two hundred seventy degrees, he thrust his feet onto Bashir's chest, and with the force of a cornered cat, the Prince's feet pushed Bashir back as the Prince jumped up with cat reflexes. Blood poured down his nose as he threw his tail around like a whip, hissing and growling. The pain was worsening and so was the instinctive, animalistic panic.

The TS Nekomimis in the audience were cheering at a fever pitch as the TurtleShroomer judges and train workers were yelling as if they had been watching a cockfighting match. Some Kitsunes had gotten to the spectacle, practically roaring alongside the audiecne. Shouts and cheers covered even the sounds of the machinery of the Necrons, who were draining the oil of the trains.

Bashir wasn't even staggered, instantly returning to charge at him. The Prince leaned back and then pushed the full weight of his legs upward, soaring over Bashir in a front flip before landing on his feet. He turned around, yowling and screeching at Bashir.

Bashir, however, wasn't phased, because he knew the Prince's showmanship was for naught.

The Prince was fat. The Prince was not in shape. The Prince was panting.

That a forty-something, fat, hubristic cat-man could do anything he just did was a testament to his species' hidden potential, but nothing can last forever. Maybe if the Prince was as healthy and trained as Yulia, he would have won, but his panting was all the evidence Bashir needed to prove that he had run out of steam.

Bashir again dashed towards the Prince, jumping forwards and tackling him to the ground, pinning him. The punches were relentless.

Predicting he would swivel his hips and throw him off again, he punched the Prince's nose again, causing him to flinch. The Prince yowled again, hissing brutally as he readied his fists and tried to punch Bashir back. Unlike the Prince's naturally defensive prowess, the Prince was incapable of anything offensive.

He had never fought in his life and was running purely on cat instinct, which helped him defend his life in a deadly situation. Though faster than any human, the Prince's punches were in essence those of a child swinging at a bully who was holding him off with one hand. The Prince's air-swiping punches were evident of a person lacking any conscious knowledge of how to fight, and nothing connected with Bashir.

Bashir, of course, had a lifetime of training and scraps to tap into. Whereas the Prince was fighting purely on animalistic adrenaline and falling back to cat behaviors, Bashir had figured out the Prince's body's strengths and weaknesses.

With a blow to the Prince's solar plexus, he knocked the breath out of him, causing his shoulders to lay back into the dirt. Bashir then began punching, over and over, at the Prince's face until it was so damaged and bloody that it was unrecognizable... and he kept going.

The audience members couldn't help but wonder if a hubristic creature like the Prince had mistreated Bashir in the past, because the fight looked like it was getting personal.

As the beating continued, now moving to the rest of the Prince's body, the three TS Nekomimi judges stood up and raised their left hand with their wrist and fingers pointed downard. That was the signal to end the fight. The TurtleShroomian judges were too busy leaning forward and just enjoying the wailing.

"KHANGALTTAI!"

The audience fell silent.

This was the Mongolian word for "enough", and it caused the deputy who had previously announced the fight to rush in and push Bashir off. Bashir stepped back as the deputy ran over and proclaimed him the winner.

Reaching to the Prince to help him up, he found the Prince brutally beaten and bloodied, with a face caved in to the point of lacking recognition. He must have had his skull cracked in at least three places. His nose was pulp by this time, its bones completely ground up. The Prince's cat ears had swolen up into cauliflour ears. His feet, from the ankles downward, were contorted unnaturally. Bruises and internal bleeding, with cracked ribs and bones throughout, were present and as of now unseen... but the purple and blue was spreading.

Seeing his patriarch so brutally defiled, the deputy threw up on the spot, clutching his stomach and emptying his contents. Regaining his composure, the deputy placed his hand on the Prince's pulse, feeling to see if he was alive. He could detect a faint heartbeat.

Shaking slightly, he turned to Yulia.

"By the laws of the clowder and the house of the Prince, I, deputy to the Elder of the Clowder, do certify the decision of the majority of the judges and proclaim you, Yulia Constantinovich of Clowder Covalciuc, by virtue of trial by combat, the Champion-by-Proxy and superior cat of the Knyaz Throw Down. Champion Bashir, remove the Prince's linen and shred it."

Mirroring the deputy, all of the TS Nekomimis in the audience then kneeled onto one knee, made a right fist and put it on their chests, lowered their heads, and closed their eyes. Their ears turned sideways, opposite each other, and they wrapped their tails around themselves, running it under their legs. They remained in this position as the deputy transitioned his posture into a full kowtow before Yulia.

Reaching with his left hand, he removed the Prince's circlet and laid it into the sand, remaining in his bowed position.

"Champion. Behold the crown of the Elder of the Clowder. Take hold of it, and proclaim your glory."

The deputy inwardly had a disgust at a Molly cat even daring to do this, much less win.

Yulia was familiar with the custom. She reached for the circlet and held it above her head, in both hands, turning around to show it to the whole audience. The TS Nekomimi judges also kowtowed while the TS Nekomimis maintained their kneeling posture.

Rising from the kowtow posture into kneeling on both knees, the deputy bent his wrists downward in a cat-like posture, ears slicked back.

"As the Prince cannot, perform the re-coronation on the deputy, Champion."

She placed the circlet on the deputy's head. As per custom, she raised a hand and commanded him to rise back to a standing position.

The TS Nekomimi deputy rose. A second TS Nekomimi handed the deputy the Prince's mace, extending it outward.

"Champion, exalted and mighty. You win. Behold the Elder of the Clowder."

This was where Yulia was expected to bow to the Prince in response and, while taking a hand onto his mace. The audience, heads still lowered, looked upwards slightly to await if she would honor the duelling custom.

JANUARY 9TH, DRY SEASON, 2021 AD
THE FORBIDDEN PALACE
COLONY OF THE INCORPORATION AND GERRY
LAND OF POWER, GREAT CIVILIZATION OF THE C'TAN

"Announcing Great Khan Pallas Pallas of Clowder Möngkemanulmuur, Master and Lord, Father of the Princes, Cat-Lord of the Wild Blue Yonder, Etügen Eke's Tom, Balancer of the Cold Civil War, Restrainer of Eej*, Helmsman of the Broken Khuraltai, Breaker of Wickednss, Sober and Exalted, Thumb of the Scale, Lion of the Steppes, Panther of Sobriety, Keeper of Family Values, Eternal Patriarch, He Who Rocks the Cradle, Incorruptible and of Straight Tail, Glorious and Final Tom, Sovereign Autocrat of the Cats of All Cradle."



That was his cue. The Khan kicked open the doors of the temple. Numerous Necrontyr Scarab Engines chittering about, dusting the walls and cleaning the building, stopped what they were doing and lined up on each side of the room. In a way similar to the turtles of TurtleShroom, they lowered their bodies forward by retracting their legs, bowing in his presence.



The shaman, the only other TS Nekomimi in the room, fell to the floor in a full kowtow as his Khan passed, rising only after he was seated in the pew. Considered untouchable and powerful even beyond the Khan's temporal rule, he usually lived in ascetic squalor, travelling from his hut on the Palace grounds to the Street of a Thousand Gods, where he communed, interestingly enough, with Necrontyr pagan deities***.

A shaman's trance in Gerry was nothing like the mundane experiences of old Cradle or the pagans of TurtleShroom. With C'tan drugs and Future Tech experiences, his visions were transcendent and even prophetic. He had been introduced to Sekhmet the Bloodthirsty, Egyptian goddess of war, disease and its antidote, cats, and the vigor and strength to overcome weakness. Sekhmet clergy particularly sought out and recruited pagan Nekomimis to try and corral new recruits to follow Yulia's footsteps.

This was the method the shaman had used to influence his Khan to the ways of Gerry without changing his culture, values, or his chauvanism.
Dressed in flowing robes and a headress covering his head and face in ribbons, he beat his large skin drum, twirling and dancing with catlike grace, swishing his tail to the rythem.

"Etügen Eke bless you, Great Khan."

The Khan nodded with approval as the pew creaked under his weight.

No cat can stand before the Khan unless the Khan so permits.

A Scarab Engine flew into the room with a pitcher of water. The Khan dipped his hands into the water and began rubbing his face, then his arms, and then his chest.

A Khan does not lick himself. He is served.

This was the personal shrine in the massive Forbidden Palace of the Khan of Cradle. Khan Pallas' life in Gerry had not changed, the Nekomimis had insisted on it.

No, the food had gotten better. The airag had gotten stronger. Robots had replaced his hundreds of servants. The Khan got fatter until the body is round.

"I assume the sacrifice is ready?"

The language the Khan spoke had not changed in centuries. Whereas the modern TS Nekomimi spoke a dialect of Russian with a strong drawl, and their forefathers spoke the Classical Mongolian that still exists in some TurtleShroomian and southwestern Darussalemite circles, Clowder Möngkemanulmuur's Mongolian was so divorced from the TS Nekomimis that it required a translator.

A Necrontyr Scarab Engine translated the gruff words for the shaman. The shaman nodded as the Khan snapped his bejewelled, thick fingers.

Several Necrontyr Scarb Engines buzzed in, leading in a brownish-red mule. It brayed loudly and resisted the robots' harnass, but to no avail. Before the Dark Harvest, this sacrifice was a red horse, but some various, obvious changes to the society of what was once Cradle meant that was not acceptable.

This animal sacrifice was performed regularly, usually without the Khan's presence, but this was an important day for the ruler. He would perform the sacrifice himself.

For most pagans influenced by Mongolian shamanism, Tengri was the supreme god of the sky, but this was not the supreme god to a Nekomimi pagan. Etügen Eke was the Tengriist goddess of fertility, and the only female to which a Cradle Nekomimi bowed. Symbolic of the pro-natal and family-oriented politics of the Khanate and Cradle Nekomimis everywhere, the fiercely patriarchal Nekomimis called for their kittens' safe childbirth and long term future through sacrifices, entering trances, and other shamanistic rites.

The scarabs pulled the mule over to the Ovoo altar and arranged several bricks into a square around it. The sham whispered to the mule in order to calm it.

Taking a knife of solid gold, the Khan effortlessly slit the mule's throat. It fell to the floor and twitched for a few seconds, and then it died. The Scarab Engines pounced on it, draining the mule of its blood and decapitating its head. They presented the blood in jars and gave them to the shaman for later use.

The head was hung over the alter.


"ETUGEN EKE!" the shaman cried, "BLESS THIS SACRIFICE!"

He circled the Ovoo altar three times, added three stones, and recited three chants. Two small statuettes on the Ovoo altar****, one red and one green, respectively faced west and east, which the shaman kissed. Scarab Engines dribbled blood on red statuette as the shaman screamed.

"NOW TAKE ME, ETUGEN EKE, BRING ME TO YOUR NURSERY, SHOW ME THE WAY!"

He feverishly paced as the Khan watched expectantly. The shaman drank various liquids on a table behind the Ovoo altar and poured them on himself. His pupils widened as he began to yowl, crouching down and then springing upwards, practically bouncing off the walls. Striking his drum, the Khan rose up and trying to move his obese body to the drum beat. He was feeling it. Both of them were.

The shaman ran faster and faster, eventually colliding with the Khan. As their heads struck each other, the Khan fell backwards, his weight cracking the pew.






The Khan sat up. He was not in the shrine. Everything was black, and a blinding white spotlight was shining over him. He looked at himself, and his body was translucent. It was the first time since he was a kitten that he could see his feet. After all, the Khan's body is round.

In the blackness, visions flashed in the corner of his eyes, colorful and immaterial, until they slowly began to form a single picture. It was of a fire, with sharply angled shapes forming a sigil around it.


Inside the fire was.......



It was the text of the Flexi communications device he had read a few days ago. Invented by Menelmacar, the Flexi interface was a foldable, easily manipulative, paper-thin, FT screen that could load and present data akin to a book or a newspaper, as well as being handled and bent like one. He had forgotten about it.
The text faded out as he read it, and a vision of a mangled TS Nekomimi's body, too broken to recognize, faded in. Under it was the word "PRINCE?" in the Khan's Mongolian.

The Khan said no words. Flashes of light and a brief glint of a red lioness' head came and went as the wind around him whipped his flowing robes. He looked left and right, as the lioness' head suddenly appeared before him. It spoke in his archaic tongue.


" W̷̭̙̘̣̌̊́͛́͆̀h̵̛͓̹̿̇̉ą̷̡͇̳̳̬̀ť̷̨͖̫͕̖̰͝ ̶̨̮̻̬̭͑̔͋ͅą̸͕̭͚͔̟̲̥̣̋̔̌̐̒̀̿͑͘r̶̨̡̳̬̺͇̥͇͒ȩ̴̨͇̰̦̠̖̲̮̓ͅ ̶̢̝̙̯̘̻͎̾̏͗y̶̛̳̰̩̹̳̫̎̉̌̎͋̉̈́̆̒ǫ̷̟̯͍̜̠̱̥̔̓́͒̇̈́u̵̧͈̪͇̦̔̎̒͐ ̶̮̞̦̣͙̺̫̻͋͐͘͝g̴̥͚̗̼͇̣̼͎̓̎̈́̆̄͛͌̕o̷̦̝͇͑í̴̺̦͙̺̳̄̿͗ņ̷̛̥͍̩̤͇͇̹̈́̃̂̓͆͛̈̀̚g̸̛̰̗̦͍͓͋̆̇̎̽͐̕ ̴̖̰͙̜̔̾̒̂̽͠t̸̛̙̗̭̻̮̼͔̂̀̿̋͌͗̈́͘͝o̶̫͖̤͂́͂͋̂̀͂ ̴͎̪͍̫͕̣͉̗͂̓̇d̷̙͎̮̫̖̖̾͌̃̊͋̆̽͆ơ̴͕̦͊̅̍̑ ̵͇̀̓̊̆̕͝ą̸̲̻̯͖̤̝͚̑͗̈́̈͊͊̂͌̅̈́b̴̮̮̌͂̉ơ̴̧̺̗̹͉̬̅̇̈̍͐̀͛̈̕͜û̵̦̥̙ṯ̸̯̞͇̈̒̒̿̄̇͗̂̓͗ ̵̧̤̫͕̝̗̀̐ỉ̵̪̝͚͚͒̓͋̚͝͝t̷̨̯̙̘͙͙̯̳̯̺̂̓̈́̌̄̑̕͝?̵̡̹̬͉̙̘͖͎̹̖́͒͝ T̸̢̧̙̼͍͕̩͕̪̲̭̝̙̦͉͓̋̇͐̆̄͌͐͂̊͗̉̽̈́͘̚͠h̸̡̞̠̮̙̹̪͙̗̼̻̤̗̖̑́̂̽͌̍͋ͅế̷̢̠̜̭̗̩̳̻̳̭̦̖͚̖̙̺͓́̆̆̈́̑̌̎̚͠ ̶̨̆͘p̴̨̥̗͎̘͔͔̱͖̑̊̓̓̔͛̿̂͐̂̐̈̕͘͜ͅͅṛ̶̻̮͈̥̥͇̻̀̍̍̐̄͊͋̚̚ͅį̴̙̖͍̟̪͍̱̭̞͖̼̜͇̪̼̊̒́͗̍̎͘ȩ̶̦͈̟͓̭̯̃̄̆̀̀̂̈̅͌̌̊͊̈́́̚͜͜͠ş̶̢̨͕̞͇̺͙̀̒̃̑̑̓̈́̏͝t̸̠͆͆̑̉̏̾̂́́̓̎̈̎̿̚ ̶̜͉̅̎̌̍̑̃̋̅̂̚͝ơ̶̡̩̝͙̳̼̣̼̬̮̞͗̏͂͒̔̏̓̆͘̚f̵̧̡̨̼̠͉̮͍͉̱̜̔͗̽͌̑͑̈́͑̚͝ ̸̧̙̩̫͚̤͚͙̝̹̭̺̫̦̐͜t̸̛̲͈̠͚̗͍̘̙͖̯̟͚͙͉͑̈͆͛͐͒́̓́̿͗̍͋̃̈́ȟ̴̦͚͎̥̭͍͙̺̜̱̲͉͎̈́̓̒̈́͜ȩ̵̲̟̔̃̊̇̒͒̍̒͝ͅ ̴̨͙͈̹̠̻̟̬͎̹͍̬̖̤̻̮̀́͊͊̅̐́̅̑̀͊̿̋̕͠l̸̟͙̆͂̽͆̆̒ḭ̸̢̡̝͍̬͉̤̞̦̞͇̻̯̥̱̍́̋ó̸̺̳͇͚̹͔͖͕̥͍͔̠̦͂n̸̝̘̻̋͜ë̶̡͕̲͖̝̟̰͈̹̬̜͐̍́̅̆̐͆̐̈́̆̑͘͝ͅŝ̴̢̨̬̪̗̲̤͚̬̱̯͋̒̾̚s̷̥̥͚͇͓̱̥͓̼̈͑͑ ̵̰̰̮͔̣̖͔̤̬̻̱̱̩̠̖̦͒̀̇̎́̈́̽̌̈́̊͐͂͆̔͐͜s̵̛͍̳̣̲̠͚͚̪͈̠̠͚͚͚̺̻̉̔̋̉̊̎̂͂͂̎̅́̇͊͒͗t̸̨͚̮͔̞̯͍̹̹̹̮̝̹̬̥̾ͅŗ̴̢̧̛̗͎̪̫̦̥̥̻̖̓̆͆̈͊̑̒̀̚̕͜o̶͎̝͓͚̽̄̍͘ķ̵̠͓̟͚͌̂ę̴̨̱̦͍̤̞̲̈́̀̌s̴̤̄͗̂̄͊͊͝ ̴͔̬̆ͅt̵̪͔͕̹̲̠̠̾͋͂̋̅̈́ḩ̸̲̦̙͉̯̥̬̮̬̹̬̟̲̠̄͊̀͊̂̌́̔́̔̀̈́̅̿͜͝e̵̦̘̣͕̖͔͐̓͆͠͠ ̷̢̯̼͕͈̞̦͍͈̳̓̋̾̍̓̕f̸̧̺̤͖͎͈̹͉͓̩̘̌͑̋̓͊̂̅̾̀̐̔͠ͅư̸͕͔͎͓͉̘̟̙̤̯̦͇̤̒͊̍̑̑͝ŗ̶̯̮̺̲̣͇͓͒ ̵̠̀̑̔ȯ̴̹̤̥͖̼̻̩̺̖̺̈́͘̕͜f̸̢̡̯̗͚͙̯͔͕̙̪̪̘̬̩̦̘͗͂̍̈́̾̀̐̀̄ ̵̛͚͔̼̬̤̭͖̹̭̖͎̂͊̈́͌̀͐͊̌̽͋͒̕̕͝͝Ȩ̶̹͔̗̩͚͚̭̝͚̩͍̜̞̼̅̒́͊̾̿t̶̤͙̝̲̲̳̔͋̉͛̉̓̕ú̶̧̡̱̹̹̜̭̥͉̥͙͓̺̭̯̀̌̓͆̄̚͠͠ͅģ̷̺͖̼̳̂͌̀̿͝ͅͅe̶͙̪̿̓͒̃̍͛̐̂̉̑̋̐͐n̷̡̡̡̤̩̫̝̺̫͍̫̲̩͓̦̫̥̔̾̋̊͝ ̸̡̡͚͓͍͙͖͖̫̥̭̝̙̦̃̑̈̍̂͛͜E̷̝̮̼̰͊̓k̶̡̧̨̯̦̰͍̘̙̩͓̟̹̽̍̉̀̈̓̿̔̊̏͆͌̋͘e̶̛͕͎̩͎̥͚̘̤͗̀̂̉͒̓͗̀̀͝͝͠͝ͅ.̶͍̱͇̻̪̙̖̻͙̋͋̈͆̃̃̕͜ͅ"
"


The Khan opened his mouth to speak, but said nothing, closing it again. A flash of light knocked the Khan backwards as he blacked out.

"What was he going to do about it?"




"My Khan! My Khan!"

Khan Pallas' eyes flickered open as his slit irises contracted to the paper lanterns suspended on the ceiling of the palace shrine. The shaman looked over him.

"You had a vision! What did it say!"

The Khan thought for a moment, and responded as the Scarab Engine translated.

"It said I have been a coward for a long, long time."




The body is round. The mind is racing.

Lumbering as fast as an obese Nekomimi could, the Khan left the shaman to ring the bells and light the incense to end the ritual. It was usually a sacriledge to leave without finishing, but the Khan and the shaman both knew that something more important than a mere rite had happened.

The priest of the lioness... Khan Pallas knew exactly what that was.







* = The name of Gerry during the Khanate of Cradle.

** = A pile of stones serving as a Tengriist altar.

*** = In real life, Tengriism (which was never an organized religion but rather, a blanket of shared deities and shamanistic rituals) was highly syncretic and meshed easily with other pagans and even organized faiths. For the shamanists remaining in TS Nekomimi society, the gods of the Necrons.

**** = The traditional symbols of an altar of Sekhmet. The red statue was Sekhmet and the green statue was Bastet's peaceful twin. Though not specifically invoked by the shaman, Ovoo altars were said to be influenced by what was on them (e.g. feathers representing birds that had various animist traits), so the shaman in this story placed them there in hopes of his visions being influenced by her as much as Etugen Eke.

***** = This is actually historically accurate. It was considered possible for a trance or maddened state in a shaman to be "contagious". Members in the audience would also fall under the "spell" of the shaman and dance or play drums themselves.

The First Nekoland Incident

Yulia didn’t smile, nor flinch as she watched the Prince get unceremoniously beaten, there was nothing to be said for his performance in her mind, she simply watched Bashir give him a solid thrashing. As she performed the small coronation she restrained her urge to make any sort of comment, though she found the notion of princes here to be almost quaint.

She raised him up again with a small smile, and then took a half step back, bowing from the hips, low and sincere, of course, there were other ways that a neko could communicate emotion, and though she was bowing, her tail had a life of its own, communicating with a slow swish-swish of authority the whole time.

She took hold of the bulava, gripping it by the shaft, for the codes gave no definition to how she should do it, and she was taking no oath here, she stood upright again and then she looked to the kneeling nekos.

‘First!’ she said, and held out a hand, and one of the Necrons passed her an object about six inches long, with teal bands around its brushed steel exterior, she took off a cap end and injected it into the battered prince, touching the contact section forward, an injector working briefly when she depressed the other end with a soft pneumatic hiss.

‘A mechanite serum, you still need to be evacuated, but you’ll live. You’ll probably be in better shape when it’s done than you have been in years,’ she said.

She did not give him anything for the pain though. That would dilute the deterrent effect of the lesson.

‘Now, let no one say that I am here to ruin your children, or take them from you,’ she said, ‘I did not come here to fight you, but those of you who have lost yourselves and speak only the words and thoughts of TurtleShroom should indeed fear the message I have come to bring you.’

She paced, ‘This spectacle is proof enough of it, your old Prince would oppose the idea that you would integrate into another culture for fear of losing our old ways,’ she said. She was an officer of the fleet first, but she was also a public speaker, an Iterator, and she was allowed some rhetorical flourish, ‘When you would have TurtleShroomers standing in judgement of our rituals!’

She pointed with one hand, sweeping her fingertip across the the judges, singling out the two TurtleShroomers, ‘TurtleShroomers who are so habitually dishonest a people that they renamed Cradle as “Gerry” to gloat. You have been told that this only happened because the Khan was weak, and this is true, but who is weaker, the one who succumbs to the trickery of the manipulator or the one who continues to serve him generations later because his soul is broken in like a horse at a mill wheel.

‘I am here to offer you the open steppe, not to toil at the capstan. I have been called a “whore,” and that I am here to sell you skin flaying and baby killing,’ she said, ‘here’s the truth, no one among our people will kill your babies, or encourage you to have abortions; the TurtleShroomers mean to keep your children in poverty, they did not choose to deport you to somewhere with facilities and amenities, they took your homes and they mean to work you like dogs until the day you die, without any opportunities to advance your position, and that will kill your children, all of them, kill their dreams, and kill their bodies slowly, for that is what poverty does.

‘For decades they denied us all – yes, me included here for I was a child in those days – the right to a legal personhood. They claimed that all nekos were “Pets” and they irradiated our people deliberately with their nuclear tests, then foisted those families on the C’tani when they fell sick. They abducted us and cut ears and tails off, and they made up a name for this mutilation, some of you experienced that, because they gave you a choice between work in the most demanding jobs and bodily integrity – and these people would say that we’re the ones that don’t respect your bodies and unborn. Their shameless lies are limitless.

‘And now, they say that they’ve carved out some land where you will at last be free, you won’t have to veil – while you’re there, but they don’t intend you to work there, just be out of sight when you’re not working in the thankless but vital jobs they don’t want to do themselves you’re still going to be treated like dirt when you go to Jonesboro,’ she said, pointing in the direction of the city.

‘And when you didn’t buy into this offer, why, they forced you. And that’s the essence of the difference, isn’t it? I am asking, they’re forcing. Who do you think has your best interests at heart?

‘The people who educated me, settled my family and made us their own, or the people who cut you, who irradiate you, who beat you, who spray you for humiliation, who take your homes away and load you into coaches to move you to a piece of desert where they still want you to do the same jobs for them, but with hours of extra commuting every day.

‘You fear that I am not one of you, I am most certainly so, and your enemies are my enemies. I am just not afraid of them anymore,’ she said, walking from the Nekos toward the disarmed Turtleshroomers, held under guard, who had rushed out of the positions they’d been ordered into in order to enjoy a neko fight.

‘You lot are lucky you weren’t shot for breaking position,’ she said to them, switching to the Inglish (as the C’tani called it) of the Turtleshroomers, ‘but you’re not being spared. I don’t want it said that we came here and simply pummelled a middle aged neko community leader. You are all guilty of breaking the commands of Treaty Compliance Navigators, the punishment is physical castigation. The degree is discretionary. Apply it please,’ she nodded to the nearest mercenaries.

She turned back to the Nekos, ‘There’s not a day that goes by when I don’t wonder how Ranisath and his people forgot about us, and they did. Would that we had the same protection that ponies have in this land,’ she said, ‘but better late than never. If you think that this treatment,' she gestured to the mercenaries and the Turtleshroomian Policemen behind her, 'is too harsh, remember that they have just shot any of your friends and neighbours who resisted having their homes taken. These same police thugs were laughing when they shot your neighbours for behaving with the values they claim are normal for TurtleShroomers; they're not laughing now.’

Some might imagine the victims would pity the TurtleShroomers, but these were people who had been denying them more than a packet of crisps for their treasured kittens a few hours ago after all, and there were limits for any human - chimeric or otherwise - and she doubted many would object to the mercenaries' violent work.

The First Nekoland Incident

"The whelp is sure fond of mewling where she should be bearing her fangs."

White Fang laughed.

The Far Northerner had been a silent observer to the endeavors of the Sky Landers and their mercenary contingent. She had watched as the South Landers had been corralled like livestock, as Yulia attempted to rally her own kin, and as their begrudging leader had been bested in the trials of combat. It was a curious affair, and definitely not one taken in a manner that would have been satisfactory in the North Lands, but White Fang understood that Yulia wished to pursue the matter in her own way - thus, she did not intervene.

"It was a good bout!" The mercenary captain grinned as Mle made his way back after the fight, "The only shame being that the wolves could not take part."

"Maybe it's a good thing." Mle smirked, shaking his head, "I don't think I could have ended it quite as resolutely as the South Lander."

"Hmph, among housecats? It would be no contest, your maws would be around his throat in an instant - though, I suppose it would not please the whelp trying to appeal to her folk."

"She is definitely putting in an effort to appease them." He let out an exasperated sigh, "She speaks with such pleasantries and ignores many slights, while they insult her as if they were South Landers themselves."

"It is a good thing, then, that she invoked the traditional rights - odd as they might be in the South Lands." She chuckled in her usual gravelly tone, "One respects nothing if not the sharpness of another's fangs. Yet with their attentions now whetted with blood, the question remains as to how the whelp will convince them of her mewlings?"

White Fang continued to watch as Yulia attempted to persuade her animal-eared brethren, though she could not understand the foreign tongue nor appreciate any flowery rhetoric. It was the subtle details that interested her. The smooth transition between syllables, the purposeful cadence in her voice, and the way she repeated interacted with the crowd; the Far Northerner didn't need to understand her to recognize the impassionate speech, though she found it rather rambling.

There had been a smaller intermission where Yulia turned to address the South Landers and their escorting mercenaries, briefly making a short statement, before returning to her original charge. Many of the hired guns were elated at her words, beginning to wale upon the South Landers with fists, kicks, and rifle butts without abandon. Yulia herself was nonchalant, continuing her speech as if the beatings in the background were nothing but an inconsequential ambience - an unusual juxtaposition - but one much to White Fang's amusement. Mle turned to the Far Northerner, gesturing as if that was their cue to intervene.

The two made their way to the North Lands contingent, who were all too eager to discipline the South Landers. Yulia had left the severity of the punishment at their discretion; a rather grisly proposition given the disposition of the infamous White Battalion, many of whom were addled on war salts and incensed by the earlier duel. Yukon herself had been pummeling a South Lander with her bare fists, although unlike the decisive Bashir, she took a sadistic care as to spare her victim from the most critical of blows.

"You seem rather excitable." White Fang mused, "Perhaps the whelp should have picked you as her champion? It certainly would have led to a more entertaining bout."

"This one was giving me trouble with the Lake Landers earlier." Yukon stated, pausing in her barrage to answer the question, her knuckles quivering from the blows, "Then he decided to run about during the duel."

"All the more peculiar, then, that you did not clamp down your maw when your fangs were firmly upon his throat!" The Far Northerner laughed, before gesturing behind her, "I am not one to spare wolves from what is their right, but it might be difficult for the whelp to muster her flock whilst we are busy bloodying the lambs - those without the joys of flesh can only recoil at the taste of iron."

Yukon glanced over to the slowly gathering audience, a collection of frightened and ecstatic faces at the behest of Yulia, who watched on with an ever morbid curiosity. She sneered in disgust. It was not as if the North Landers were dissuaded by onlookers to their deeds; and indeed, would probably engage in far more grotesque and mortally acts were it not for the present, if not fledgling, wishes of the Sky Landers. Rather, the fact that White Fang - who viewed violence in perhaps the fondest and most primal of ways - had petitioned against the impending carnage, bringing pause to the otherwise murderous band of mercenaries.

"Fear not, I will not deny you of your bloodlust, but bruises will heal and even broken bones will mend. Nay, the whelp wishes for her whimpers to be known; for the South Lands to carry the fleeting whispers of her deeds, her mercies, and her wrath long after this day is done. She wishes to leave a brand upon the lambs, upon the South Landers, as they have left upon her kin." White Fang stated, rallying the North Landers to her as she withdrew a dagger, glancing at Yulia to bear a wolfish grin, "I know not if the whelp shall have her justice, but I shall offer her my own - that lambs who sheer hounds should be shorn themselves!"

The North Landers cheered in an almost ravenous frenzy, withdrawing all manner of blades, as the Far Northerner held up her own to marshal the attention of Yulia and her ilk. Mle found the endeavor to be succinctly ironic, realizing through her thick Far Northern dialect, as to what she intended. White Fang grabbed the South Lander that Yukon had unceremoniously battered into the sand, still conscious, taking him onto his knees as she held the dagger flat again his temple. She called out, in her indistinguishable foreign tongue, for others to witness what was to transpire.

Rumors of the North Landers' cruelty, both real and imagined, had long spread throughout Valkia since time immemorable. They were nothing like their ostensibly related kin in the South Lands; they were man-eaters from the arctic fringes, without want of bloodthirst or savagery, motivated only by an insatiable hunger - they would not hesitate to kill. Her impromptu speech did nothing to expunge such thoughts, although Mle - adept in several tongues - summarized her words for the South Lander at her hands.

"Rejoice!" He comforted, although this consolation was but a fleeting one, "White Fang has decided to grant a mercy unto you, one befitting of the South Lands."

"As the South Landers once spared Yulia and her animal-eared kin from their oppression, so too shall the South Landers be spared from the wrath of the North Lands."

There was no misinterpretation in his words, the South Lander keenly aware as to what Mle was referring to.

"You will live, but you will not forget."

The First Nekoland Incident

"Moggy! Gun!"

The pale Wildlander tossed the gun, unchambered and with the magazine separate, towards his superior. Bashir loaded, aimed, and shot the knee of one of the hollering Turtleshroomers with the sort of bored precision one might expect from an office worker.

The rest of the Hiluxian mercenaries, hollering and cheering on their own, moved in to join their now honored champion.

Yulia demanded violence, and the mercs would deliver. Every Turtleshroomer that they got their hands on would face a lead bullet to their right knee, each done with quite an unpleasant level of precision that implied their was far from the first time they had engaged in such actions.

Bashir's troops were repeatedly whipped into shape and a modicum of discipline in spite of their nature, but the Sergeant knew the utility of letting them swing at those no one would bat an eye at.

He'd partaken in it too, another two bullets finding themselves lodged in two Turtleshroom soldiers, though he didn't share the glee of the rest of the grunts. Nonetheless, there was a method to their brutality, strictly enforced among each other. Only a few unfortunate Shroomers would feel the prick of the knife or the fist of a Qutani.

And then there was the commanding officers of the soldiers and the BND. It was only fitting to show them where their cruelty would end them.

"See the officer among them?" Bashir pointed them out among the other Turtleshroomers in the area, to which Moggy gave a nod.

"Shoot that one."

"Yes sir."

He would be singled out from the rest, dragged if need be, before the pale Moggy. In his hands was a shotgun that was normally reserved for prison riots more than warfare, a roughly 4 gauge barrel pointing at the Officer.

In any other circumstance, Moggy would likely have hesitated to shoot a defenseless man. Here, he only grinned.

"Had a sister who lived in Turtleshroom. Got good grades, loved Jesus, planned to save herself for the perfect kitty. Course, then a cop had the good idea of putting some buckshot through her cause she didn't like that they were beating on an innocent Neko. Worst part is, the old man said it was her own fault for trying to help out another uppity Handlicker."

The barrel was pointed right at the Officer's face now.

"Guessing she felt something like how you're feeling now."

Bashir lit a cigarette as he heard and watched the buckshot colliding with flesh and bone. He was proud of Moggy, needless to say, finally flashing another smile.

Truthfully, the Hiluxians killed him of their own volition, though they doubted Yulia would mind.

"No shit there's no fuckin' dead ponies in there, dumbass. It's just an excuse to humiliate these sorry sacks of shit."

Gabriel Markkula held his rifle low, tapping his foot impatiently as he watched one of his comrades pull a TurtleShroomer away from the fuel tank, still clutching an endoscopic camera in his thin, bony hands. He shook his head in annoyance as he watched the tall man get pushed back into formation with the rest of those who had been gathered by the Barboneians. The ETG stood not too far away, various rifles kept trained on them in case they dared to run. Ráidner in particular was near one of the Siberia trucks, grinning his usual eerie grin as he enjoyed his cigarette. In the bed sat a gunner on one of the jury-rigged speakers, one hand clutching an ice-cold water bottle drawn from a cooler, and the other resting on the foregrip of the DShK. He took a long gulp, breathing a content sigh, before pulling his keffiyeh back up to cover his mouth.

"Sir, how mad would you be if I let loose a couple rounds on the North Landers over there?" he asked nonchalantly as he glanced down at Ráidner, who replied with a smirk and a puff of smoke.

"Well, I'd rather not be flayed alive today if I can help it, Emil."

The gunner huffed, before looking to the TurtleShroomers who had been gathered by his fellow mercenaries, then briefly at the bizarre duel between one of the Nekolanders and a Hiluxian mercenary.

"What about some of the TurtleShroomers? Can I shoot some of them?"

"If they start to run, sure. Until then, no."

The gunner let out a grunt of annoyance. Ráidner took a long drag of his cigarette, before exhaling and dropping the butt of it to the ground. He promptly put it out in the sand with a quick twist of his boot.

While the Barboneians weren't too close to the other groups of mercenaries, they were close enough that, when the command was given to provide "physical castigation" by Yulia, their eyes widened, and grins and smirks quickly crossed the faces of those who had them uncovered. Gabe looked over at Ráidner, who only gave a simple nod.

With approval granted, he quickly moved forward, towards the TurtleShroomer who had been checking the tank earlier, and with a swift motion slammed the butt of his rifle into the man's gut. With a pained grunt, he fell to his knees, before Gabe cracked the rifle over the back of the man's head, sending him flat to the ground. The other Barboneians quickly followed suit, hitting the TurtleShroomers with their guns, or just beating them generally with fists and feet. One poor soul found himself held in a chokehold with a pair of burly arms, moaning out for mercy, before another mercenary began to whale on him with rapid punches aimed at his chest.

Ráidner, however, looked unimpressed by all of this. He walked towards the violence, hands clasped behind his back, directly to Gabe, who was in the process of kicking his target in the stomach repeatedly. He looked up at his commanding officer with a raised eyebrow. "Sir?"

Ráidner flashed him a grin.

"You're doing it all wrong. All of you are, in fact."

The mercenaries around him went silent, the only sounds heard being the mumblings from the Nekolanders and the abuse the other groups were inflicting on the TurtleShroomers, along with the groanings coming from those at the Barboneians' feet.

"These... 'Men', if you can call them that, can tolerate pain well enough, I think. They live in TurtleShroom, for Christ's sake. Is their lot in life not suffering already?" He crouched down to look closely at the one Gabe had tormented.

"Wounds heal and close up. Bleeding stops. Bruises fade, eventually. Scars remain forever, sure," he said, glancing in the direction of the White Battalion as he said such, "and I'll have to commend White Fang for her creativity at some point. But I want these special few here to experience something different."

He opened up a holster attached to his belt and withdrew a Puoliautomaattinen 1936, a recoil operated, locked breech pistol with an eight-round magazine that was a veritable vintage in the modern age that Ráidner nonetheless treasured closely. Supposedly it had been used by his great grandfather to shoot two highway patrol officers near the Jezerskilender town he lived in on the moors. Following his incarceration and the pistol's subsequent release by the police to his wife, it became something of a family artifact, one which Ráidner was quite proud to have in his possession.

"Hold him down."

Ráidner stood up, and stepped back to give Gabe room to do so, the younger mercenary roughly holding the TurtleShroomer's head against the sand, tilted sideways so that he could at least breathe, albeit barely. Ráidner took aim, slightly in front of the TurtleShroomer's face, and fired. Gabe flinched in surprise, and turned his head away as the sand blew out and into the man's face, causing him to cry out, before Ráidner emptied the rest of the clip in even quicker succession, forcing the stinging sand to be unsettled into the TurtleShroomer's mouth, eyes, and nose. He sputtered and gasped for air as tears streamed down his face, trying to cough up the sediment forced into his lungs, his ears ringing loudly. His breathing was labored and haggard as Gabe forced him to his feet and pushed him back towards the rest of his group, the TurtleShroomer limping forward a few steps before collapsing to the ground before them in a fetal position. Ráidner ejected the magazine from his pistol, before quickly producing a fresh one and loading it. He grinned his usual grin.

"It's simple, maybe boring, but every time this man feels the sand beneath his feet, the smell of the desert, he will remember this moment, where it almost threatened to choke him out completely. And honestly, he was lucky. I only fired eight rounds. Imagine thirty, in rapid bursts. I doubt he'll be planning on visiting the beach anytime soon now." He chuckled, holstering his pistol.

"Do the same with the rest of them. If they can't walk themselves, drag them. You know the drill."

With that, he walked back over to the Siberia, pulling out his cigarette pack for the fifth time today. He patted the bottom before sliding one of the cylinders out of the top, pulling it out the rest of the way with his teeth and searching his pockets for his lighter. As the sound of automatic gunfire, gasps, and cries filled the air, he leaned against the bed, lighting the cigarette with a content sigh. The gunner stared down at him, eyes wide.

"...Not gonna lie, sir, the Hiluxian blowing that officer's head off was a bit more impressive."

Ráidner allowed his typical cheery demeanor to drop for a moment. He glared up at the gunner.

"Shut up, Emil."

January 2021 (Turtleshroomian Reckoning)

Gerry had grown tenfold in the last decade.

Now officially termed the Metropolitan Zone of Cradle, the city was likely larger than any in TurtleShroom. The Necrontyr had always loved to build and construct, and when allowed to have their way with any given area the Great Civilization’s enthusiastic engineers showed that habit was so deeply ingrained in their culture that it could have been a biological need. The housing stock of the city was constantly being built, for the first few years this had been done with the universal styles of GC Urbanism, buildings born from the minds of expert systems that made them to dozens of templates, kelak resin-core buildings with living metal rebar and structural plating; the advanced nature of these buildings was hidden though, by the preference to use brick and stone cladding appropriate to a local environment. This meant that the residential areas that had been laid down immediately after construction were a made of speckled granite, pale limestone and sunny dark orange sandstone.

Within six months of the end of the Dark Harvest, initial prefabrication and container responses to the slum conditions prevailing had begun to be replaced by hundreds of thousands of new housing units hitting the market for startlingly low prices, many with pools and courtyards, treasured parts of the desert-focussed design used by much of the Great Civilization.

Within two years, major demolition had begun in the city for the mouldering “commieblocks” had begun, with thousands of asbestos-and-concrete monstrosities being torn down by ever-hungry scarab swarms, and unceremoniously reprocessed into downcycled aggregate used for infill of the city’s vastly expanded parks.

Many of the faux-classic works of the TurtleShroomian Fascist government in the city had been likewise destined for an ignominious fate; the facades of fascist buildings often looked impressive, ut they were rarely considered to have architectural merit in themselves, and most such buildings had been dismantled, limestone and other pale materials reprocessed into raw building materials for new structures.

A few of the pale white statues created by the TurtleShroomers in the city had been subjected to the strange fate of being painted in realistic colours, where they had been retained for inoffensive messaging, transforming the austere and monolithic appearance to one of bright colour and rich dark flesh tones.

This was of course, paired with a vast network of other improvements, for one thing there were no “suicide showers” and even laundry buildings were rare in the newly rebuilt city, with white goods in every home and cars in every garage; robust supply chains meant that even if one did not want to buy a C’tani car (they produced a range of obnoxiously efficient wholly-electric cars at market-competitive prices with near-perfect safety records, not counting the flitters and modules that were more frequently used by GC citizens) there was plenty of choice.

Outside the walls of the Forbidden Palace, the city was changed beyond recognition, now bristling with institutions of theatre, the arts, places of revelry and inebriation, and of course, institutions of higher learning; no less than four universities had been founded in the city in the last decade.

It was in this context, that the Street of a Million Gods (there were close to a thousand temples actually on the Street, varying from the Grand Temple of Celestia Triumphant, through the Ovarist Temple, the Institute of Ascension Study, the Meeting House of Ishiri (largely closed to outsiders) and the Temple of the Fierce Unconquered Sun, to the small but enthusiastic mission of the New Gods) had to be read.

The Temple of Sekhmet was one of the larger establishments, with its grand pylon decorated with a distinct relief, as with the statues this was painted, in stark contrast to the alabaster materials, with images of cat-headed goddesses and leonine creatures in stark relief, with cornices at the top. One register held the figures of an elf, the Supreme Overlord Ranisath striking down the TurtleShroomian deceivers, men and turtles and mushrooms held in a bundle about to be struck dead with a mace, their hands up before them. Behind him his wife Sirithil stood, holding a staff. The image lacked blood but not violence, and its placement gave a clear message; triumph over TurtleShroom. An equine figure with wings and a horn in a lunar headdress flew overhead, while another, more thickly set drove a chariot pulled by ponies of muscled strength who trampled down hundreds of toppled TurtleShroomers rendered in miniature.

When the Khan sought out the chief priest of the temple of Sekhmet, there were actually two, the first was the Keeper of the God, a foreign neko woman, and the second was the Oracle of the Goddess, to whom he was soon directed.

This woman was a human, seemingly crabbed with age and with little patience. Her answers to inquries led to the same place; perhaps his vision was real, if it was, then the answer was the same as one that came from within, what the Great Khan Pallas Pallas needed to do, if he wanted to be of service to the goals of the goddess, and to establish his Name was to speak to the ruler of Gerry.

The Ruler of Gerry was not him; in many regards it was Nancy Wise, the Metropolitan Mayor of Gerry, but that was not the ruler he needed to speak to, instead he was sent to Geoffrey ita Xonthar Commissioner of Turtleshroomian Affairs and Governor of Gerry and the Incorporation…

January 2021 (Turtleshroomian Reckoning)

Calastran ita Seinaris had been one of the first officials to reach Gerry when Cyash had taken it, even before the treaty had happened. He had been deployed as a different sort of police officer. He had taken over from the dingy dungeons of the so-called Inquisition of TurtleShroom, moving into the exodus-ransacked offices with no more than ten staff.

From those offices he had led the Necrontyr Empire, as it was then, he had led a campaign of unadulterated repression, not against the people nor the poor, but against the predators who lingered in the penumbra between respectability and damnation.

The TurtleShroomers considered themselves a moral people, a bastion of purity and order.

Perhaps no one better than Calastran knew how inaccurate that was.

A city where the poor were forced to dig their own cellars to make space for their babies, and where people were kept in despair and want was not one where virtue could thrive.

He was a man who had brought hundreds of purveyors and procuresses to justice for their crimes of coercion and worse. He had built cases against many thousands of TurtleShroomers.

Where all such things were illegal, a breed of malefactor existed who sought to use coercion, false marriage, false promises of employment, and then the threat of ruination, criminalization, and more.

This was what the Nekos of TurtleShroom were used to in the old regime.

Calastran looked across his nose at Pallas Pallas as he entered the wide precinct of the Common Hall, the large complex that had been built at the core of the New City of Gerry. He stood beside Geoffrey ita Xonthar, his hands behind his back, watching the potentate.

A society where they had once found seventy people in two small houses gave no status to Pallas Pallas here. It may have been his fathers who had led their people into the poverty-fetishism of TurtleShroomian rule, but he had spent a whole life doing nothing to aid others. One simply couldn’t crawl out of isolation in a Forbidden City and claim loyalty, eminence and respectability. If they had ever been due, they had lapsed as surely as a field grown not with weeds but overtaken by a forest of gnarled trees.

It was he who had suggested how this potentate could begin to carry his considerable weight.

He’d wanted to be there when Jeff told him.

---

For Pallas Pallas the arrival in the Common Hall was one of quite a different sort of splendour than he was used to. The Great Civilization believed in equality, but it did not believe in austerity.

The vast majority of the building was open to the public, and the largest part of it was a garden the size of a cricket pitch, with fountains at its core and a colonnade that ran around its oval perimeter, the walls within covered in active chroma, bright hues of red and gold that shifted subtly in their motion, a vast mural that showed the heroes of the city; a few C’tani were there, Calastran was, Geoffrey was not.

Neither was Pallas Pallas.

From there, a flight of stairs made from pale anorthosite, guarded by Necron Lychguards. The murals continued up the stairwell on either side, there were many, many, Nekos there, policemen, surgeons, activists, solicitors and charity workers. Every stroke of the active chroma was applied by hand, and every stroke of it was a physical representation of the new order.

The room to which he was led was built with the region of Valkia on the floor, incised in the feldspar.

There, standing on Turtleshroom on the map, was Geoffrey ita Xonthar, to his left, the rail-thin figure of Calastran, to his right, a north lands neko, Cerys, known to be his secretary and often seen in the Mercenaries’ Quarter.

The man on Geoffrey’s right looked at Pallas with absolute disdain. The woman on his right seemed to be contemplating how best to butcher him to get to any tender meat without excess fat. The governor himself was dressed in a loose set of robes of multiple hues of green.

‘Welcome, Khan Pallas,’ the governor said, ‘I hear you wish to help your kin in the South?’

Menelmacar wrote:At about the same time, a ship steamed south towards Dire Dire Docks. She was a bulk ore carrier, one of the very largest of her kind, more than four hundred meters long. But today, Ever Granite had a very special delivery to make.

It wasn't the cargo. The cargo was a full hold of cement. Perfectly ordinary in every way.

Rather, it was the passengers. Hidden just below deck were a number of helicopters, manned by more orcish mercenaries, members of the shadowy Elgar Group PMC. Just before Dire Dire Docks appeared on the horizon, the holds opened, the helicopters lifted off, and scattered in a number of directions.

There was nobody left on board; Ever Granite was being controlled remotely, and this would be her final voyage.

TURTLESHROOM II wrote:They would find the bodies, but that would be far less worse than what was found next.

JULY 31ST, WET SEASON, 2023 AD
DIRE DIRE DOCKS EXCLAVE
OCCUPIED GRANDSTAND TERRITORY
TURTLESHROOM (DE FACTO)

What happened next came fast and came hard. As the watchtowers and garrisons were unknowingly now unmanned, no one was available to recognize the strange creatures walking around the docks. Using silent FT weaponry and stealth, their journeys were simple and took hours. Each TurtleShroomer they encountered was shot and dragged off. None of them were ever caught.

Menelmacar wrote:The next couple hours were spent planting demolition charges of various types in much the same fashion that Tharkû had. Gantry cranes, bulk loading equipment, fuel tanks, locomotives, and an entire yard full of containers destined for TurtleShroom got the Elgar Group's special brand of attention. The end of the operation coincided with the arrival of Ever Granite to the port; rather than proceeding into the harbor, she stopped in the channel, turned sideways, and a ripple of explosions seared down the length of her hull. She sank in moments, and the nature of her cargo ensured that removing her would be the work of many months. Simultaneously, the explosions planted throughout Dire Dire Docks also detonated.

Several turtles sat in a large tower, akin to one at an airport, and looked over huge, leather-bound ledgers placed to their left, and computers placed to their right. The radar slowly spun to indicate ship presence. All seemed normal.

Wait. That ship wasn't supposed to dock there. She was turning horizontally. Was she listing?

"Uhh..." one of the turtles turned his neck to another. "Did we order a shipment of concrete? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized in Dire Dire Docks?"

Turning from the console and opening the books, the second turtle thumbed through the pages, using his head to turn each one.

"We don't got no concrete shipment 'till three days from now. Entry nine hundred seventy-two, in the ninth tome."

The two turtles looked at each other an then back to the computer. Pressing his face to the built-in communications array, the first turtle spoke to what he assumed would be the captain of the ship.

"Attention, Ledger Entry Nine Hundred Seventy-Two, Volume Nine. This is the Harbor Master Tower of Dire Dire Docks, traffic controller twenty-two speaking. Y'all are early. Three days early, in fact. Do y'all copy?"

No response.

"Ledger Entry Nine Hundred Seventy-Two, Volume Nine, please reverse course and exit the port. We see you driving horizontally, and you're fixing to block traffic. Over."

The turtle looked to his colleague. The radar indicated the massive ship, perpindicular to the docks, was now blocking a full three ports, mere yards from the long docks. Horns from other ships began to sound as the Ever Granite slowed to a stop.

The turtles were getting annoyed.

"DUDE!! YOU ARE BLOCKING THE WAY!! SOMEONE IS GOING TO GET HURT! RESPOND! NOW!! MOVE YOUR DING-DANG BOAT!"

Now, most of the traffic controllers were warning other ships to stop. They said that the ship apparently broke down.

A third turtle called to the other two.

"Guys, I don't think this is on purpose. Something terrible must'a happened. Why else would the ship stop docking and turn caddywhompus like that?"

The turtles' eyes widened. The third turtle pressed his communications array's activiation button

"Oh FAST.You're right. Call in the Merchant Mercenary Marines. Get the boarding gear. Crank up the tugboats, 'cause we need to rescue-"

BANG!! BANG BANG BANG! BANG!

"SWEET DINKLEB-"

BANG!! BANG BANG! BANG! BANG!

The Ever Granite listed in the direction of the shore and rapidly sank to the sea floor.

All the way from the docks, a deep, groaning sound was heard, even over the screams of thousands of souls.

The crane. The big crane.

The turtles watched through the windows as it slowly leaned backwards before it came crashing down southwards, its iconic red bars shattering, the recurring color scheme in the entire exclave, breaking into mangled shrapnel and steal beams.

BANG!! BANG! BANG BANG! BANG!

Like a house's gas explosion, wooden scraps flew skywards, miles into the air, as the old-fashioned gangways and boardwalks leading to the ports lit up in flames.

BANG!! BANG! BANG BANG! BANG!

Several dozen yards behind that, on the concrete yard that was built to hold the weight of the heaviest containers in Nationstates, explosions shot holes in the crates, spilling goods of all kinds into the gaps where machinery and men travelled. Further cascading explosions broke the concrete. At the shore, whole chunks of concrete cracked off and crashed onto what was now driftwood.

Ships previously docked at the wooden docks, ready to be unloaded by the cranes that no longer existed, became trapped. Some were now listing or had holes in them. Others were already sunk, crushed by the cranes and towers collapsing on them. Not all of them fell inwards, after all, because the terrorists made sure of that.

Ships that had not docked where, fortunately, spared most of the disaster. This didn't count for much, though, because they were blocked by debries going in and the Ever Granite going out.

The two docks that weren't blocked by the Ever Granite also no longer existed. Their cranes, wood, and everything else now dotted the sea or was otherwise on fire.

Wait. One of the ships at port was a tanker. Didn't that mean there was an oil sli-

FWOOOM!!

The crowds consisting mostly of humans- well, the ones that were still alive -already gently streaming out of the work area in the drills they were practiced, suddenly picked up speed and turned into a full stampede. The fires had slurped up the oil and used the wooden scraps to jump to the containers, many of which had flammable materials, or worse.

Order broke down as the mostly Oriental employees ran from the now flaming shore and trying to surmount the piles of burning debries, cutting themselves, roasting themselves, and crushing others in a complete breakdown of training. It was every creature for himself, not because the turtles weren't valued, but because survival instincts had come into play. They left carts full of turtles behind as the flames attacked their clothes and quickly closed their escape routes.Trapped by the flames, the left behind turtles crawled into the ocean and swam from the shore, already covered in burns that peeled their skin. Others, both human and not, simply got stomped on until they fell unconscious. The traffic controllers tried to coordinate a response, but no drill or preparation could stop the panicked stampede of sapient beings once it started.

The roar of the Flying Boats overhead and the flame retardant chemicals that they dumped onto the conflagration was of no relief to the already dead and the total loss of goods. They were less interested in putting out the fires and more on what they did the last time the exclave was bombed: protect the residential and commercial areas from the blaze.

That was working, but once again, every facet of the actual cargo port was a total loss.

---

Menelmacar wrote:Similar scenes would play out at crucial TSer rail bridges, junctions, and railheads throughout South Auskral, Haiz, and the terra nullius, not to mention a string of ports along the South Auskrali coast. By sunrise, the ports of Dyrenforth, Pyka, George's Landing, and Komeyt were flaming ruins, devoid of life or anything of value, each with their own scuttled bulk hauler blocking the channel.

JULY 31ST, WET SEASON, 2023 AD
DIRE DIRE DOCKS EXCLAVE
SOVEREIGN AUTONOMOUS COVENANTS OF OF ALL-SOUTHRON AUSKRALIA
TURTLESHROOM

BANG!! BANG BANG! BANG! BANG!

Identical conditions to the Dire Dire Docks disaster were replicated in South Auskral, and again, the harbors and every facet of the loading and unloading of goods, plus the goods themselves, were gone.

While residential and commercial areas were spared in those situations, that could not and did not compensate for the thousands of lives lost and the hundreds of billions in lost cargo.

By the dawning of the sun, about ten thousand TurtleShroomers were dead and the rest of the cities' residents were sheltered in place, picking a god (or God) and praying to them (or Him) in desparation that no more explosions would target the non-industrial areas. They didn't, but that brief sigh of relief was only the opening to the panic that set in.

TurtleShroom had six months of all foreign imports in their stockpiles. South Auskral had the same.

Well, they could live without luxury goods. It's not like there would be a shortage of food or anything, given the domestic food security. Indeed, TurtleShroom had food abundance, so it's not like fami-

South Auskral was connected to TurtleShroom by rails that no longer existed. So was Dire Dire Docks. South Auskral was not a major farming zone.

Tens of millions of creatures wept and made their ways to churches and religious centers. They took hands and simply cried.

TurtleShroom had saved their country twice, and while the annexation of South Auskral wasn't uniformly adored- far from it -it was the TurtleShroomers they anticpated coming to save them. Again.

In the remote areas of South Auskral and the Wistful Wildes Military Mandate, anti-annexation Auskralian sleeper cells began to pour out into the frontier settlements, torching them and slaughtering every "traitor" official, policeman, and politician they could find. Even by rail, it would take hours before soldiers could pacify the borderlands between South Auskral.

TurtleShroom had been paralyzed, and there was one question on the mind of every TurtleShroom, muttered in every tongue spoken and whispered on every breath.

Who could have done this?