Courtly Chronicles 10

[Tanya Degurechaff von Goethe aka Tenya Deguchiya aka Archduchess von Goethe, circa 1929, age 14]

The feeling at court was rather optimistic about the war. With the rest of the continent properly suppressed, they could focus much larger concentrations of forces on the communist threat.

The war crimes tribunal was still ongoing, but Tanya got the feeling that De Lugo would walk from any consequence, given how things were shaking out. Disappointing, but it didn’t really matter.

The Archduke had returned to his duties, informing the Kaiser on the capabilities of his magical resources as well as performing magic at his command. He wasn’t exactly pleased to be doing so, but the Kaiser had threatened to remove him from his position if he kept delegating everything to Tanya.

Meanwhile, Tanya was making the rounds on the diplomatic circuit, trying to make sure that public opinion on the communists was low enough that no one decided to prop them up to make the Empire’s war more difficult.

“This is monstrous!” Shouted President Colridge as Tanya finished showing the mage orb recording from the latest communist atrocity. President-elect Hooper seemed similarly disturbed.

“It is.” Tanya said sadly. Their primary propaganda tool against the other western powers were recordings taken by her students, who were quite diligent in their work once Tanya explained her reasoning. Intelligent soldiers like mages had to be could easily appreciate the virtues of a plan meant to keep the Rus away from American bullets and bombs.

Fortunately, the Rus were too arrogant to put too much effort into hiding their ethnic cleansings, brutalizing of dissidents, and utter contempt for anything resembling human decency. There was plenty of evidence to find as the front advanced into their territory. Even if they had to translate the interviews themselves for the important gentlemen in front of them.

“This is what communism leads to, Mr. President.” Tanya said after the pair of men had a chance to gather their thoughts. “In order to create the system, the current power structures are overthrown and replaced with authoritarian demagogues, who commit any and all evils to consolidate and maintain their power. The seized means of production are used to create an inefficient shitshow of a planned economy, which while doomed in the long run… can make an awful lot of military hardware in the short term.” Tanya shrugs. “When combined with the corvee system that comes with the planned economy, that’s an awful lot of men in the military on top of that.” After a dramatic pause, Tanya brought out a recorded image of a large portion of the Rus Navy sailing out into the Mediterranean. “The communists are depraved, they are anathema to our capitalist society, and most of all…” Tanya double checked her audience, who were hanging on their every word. Still got it. “They are a threat. ”

They were not complete fools, however. They immediately started questioning the hard numbers on the information the Empire had gathered, which Tanya eagerly provided, some simply by showing more samples and others by instructing their retinue to provide the documents they had brought for that purpose.

“Now, the communists can’t defeat the mighty Empire, of course. Not alone.” Tanya said with obviously fake arrogance.

“Of course not.” President Colridge said lightly in agreement, clearly understanding what Tanya was getting at.

“Offensive operations, on the other hand…” Tanya continued. “General Winter and Marshall Mud are master strategists, and logistics are… strained. So I come to the point of this visit: The Empire would find quite productive use for a loan, to secure vital equipment from your world-class industrial markets.”

They already knew that asking for a loan was the point of the visit. It wasn’t a secret, and Tanya’s people had talked with the President’s people… but they had invited Tanya to convince them that it was worth doing.

When it comes to a modern war, one of the best places to be was in debt to the Americans. Their soldiers are adequately trained at best and their core of veterans is tiny, with massive logistics trains to get anything done. But if you have American factories fueling your war machine… The American government is enslaved to their wallets as tightly any teenage boy is to their lower head.

President Colridge hummed and hawed on the matter. “Well, it would be improper for a lame duck such as myself to make such an important decision, I think.” He turns to President-elect Hooper. “What do you think, old chap?”

“These atrocities must be stopped.” Hooper insisted. He was properly incensed by the truth, good. “The American people won’t accept military intervention, but loans?” He grinned. “We can do that.” He suddenly remembered that he didn’t actually have the power to do that. “We’ll need to talk numbers, of course, and get it approved by congress, but that’s just politics at work.” American banks have already loaned some money to the Imperial war effort, but without the Federal bank offering one, most of them were hesitant to risk particularly large sums. A few million dollars would be plenty to allow the Empire to finish putting the boot to the Rus.

Tanya wryly smiled at the man. “I completely understand. As I mentioned earlier, Nippon had a democracy too, albeit a parliamentary system, so I’m well aware of how long it can take to get something through a legislative body.” Even with Tanya’s immense influence, they usually had to spend over a dozen hours a week directly speaking to politicians to get things done within three months, even if the modern age meant that most of those hours didn’t require face-to-face interaction. Fortunately, they don’t have any other job or familial obligations, so that should help compensate for the lack of default influence.“Let’s start lining things up to hit the ground running after your inauguration in March, and see if we can get these new supplies ready and on Imperial rail in time for a summer offensive.”

President-elect Hooper grunted at the time table. “Ambitious. I like that.”

“Of course, a new President getting something ‘controversial’ through Congress within the first hundred days would reflect quite well on you.” Tanya mentioned. “Which has very little to do with your decision, of course.”

“Of course.” Hooper replied. “We’ll need to put noses to grindstones to get things done.”

“I wouldn’t dream of taking up too much of your time during the busy transition.” Tanya said. “But if you could provide some knowledgeable aides that could introduce me to influential senators and representatives, share some Capitol Hill gossip, things of that nature… I could handle some of the lobbying.” Read: most of it. “I am at your disposal.”

“We’re going to get along just fine, Archduchess.” Hooper said.

---------------------------

Being a foreign pro hero had a lot in common with being a regular diplomatic envoy. The topics of serious discussion were different, but the pageantry was the same. Tanya took all three meals a day with a different politician or group of them, along with whoever held that politician in their pocket.

“What in the world am I looking at?” Tanya said, confused.

The smug industrialist of the American military’s preferred computation orb company, Mr. Hughes, grinned at Tanya’s confusion. “That right there, is the future!” He insisted. “I guarantee you that your fancy Imperial orbs can’t get this kind of precision!

“Ah.” Tanya said sarcastically. “I thought I was looking at a very expensive bomb. Have you tested this disaster?” Putting the bomb down, Tanya went back to her sandwich.

Mr. Hughes glared at Tanya as she ate. “Of course we have.” He said, affronted. “It’s the most efficient design in existence, and the sustaining loop software means that the mage’s concentration need not be as absolute as before.”

Tanya digested the information. “So that’s what that’s supposed to be.” She eventually said. “It needs more safety features. Once you’ve done that, then I can see it being quite useful for precision industrial service. Like making better orbs.” Really, the sustaining loop design was just a half-assed dual core setup, in Tanya’s estimation. The type 97 had something similar as a holdover from the type 95’s mana solidification infrastructure.

“It’s supposed to be milspec.” Mr. Hughes insisted, to Tanya’s derisive snort. It did explain why he made the thing so small… Industrial computation devices tend to be the size of suitcases. Orbs are specifically for personal use.

“It will explode if you go over eighty kT.” Tanya explained, which caused Mr. Hughes to suppress a flinch. “Even our start of war orbs could do one-twenty. It’ll just lead to dead mages if you bring these to the battlefield.”

“How would you fix it, if you’re so smart?” Mr. Hughes snarked. Ah, that’s why he was so eager to show off ‘military secrets’ to a foreigner. He wanted design advice. They had suspected as much.

Well, they can spin this. “I’m afraid I’m far too busy to really dig into the design process.” Tanya said, discarding it. “I’m not in a hurry, though. I’d be bored to tears if I finished early, and my good tinkering tools are all back in Berun.”

Mr. Hughes, to his credit, knew exactly what Tanya was getting at. “I’m sure I could set up a small workshop for your use. Purely as a gesture of cooperation, of course.”

“That does sound tempting.” Tanya pretended to admit. “But my social calendar is still stuffed to the brim, lobbying for some solidarity against the vile communists. I probably won’t need it, if things don’t suddenly take a turn.”

Mr. Hughes grinned as he took back the orb. “Personally, I think offering a loan to the Empire is a far more sensible financial decision than supporting the Francois ever was.” He was a reasonably skilled suckup, but Tanya’s heard better. “I was telling my friend, Mr. Chaser, about that very thing yesterday at lunch.”

Tanya smiled at his name dropping of one of America’s largest bank owners. “Well, until my calendar frees up, I can only give the most basic advice: The easiest way to improve an orb’s throughput is to improve its material composition. If I don’t miss my guess, this doesn’t have a scrap of gold in it. It’s expensive, but then again, any good orb is.”

“It has some gold.” Mr. Hughes corrected.

“It needs more.” Tanya insisted.

Mr. Hughes snorted angrily, but didn’t argue further.

Another productive day.

---------------------------

One positive aspect of the American trip was that they were perfectly willing to let Tanya bring their own personal type 97 everywhere. They’d like to say that it was because the Americans trusted them to remain diplomatic and not go around threatening people, but the truth was that the President was one of the few that acknowledged that Tanya was more dangerous without an orb than they were when using one, and it gave them a reason to deny her an Imperial military escort. So Tanya just had Elya and Monika along, which was just fine in Tanya’s books.

“Have you ever played golf before, Missy?” asked Mr. McCain as they pulled into his country club, one of the Senators from Florida. “Maybe when you were a man?”

“Once.” Tanya admitted. “There was an important dignitary that loved the game, and he insisted I join him, he bet that I couldn’t beat him even with magic.” The dignitary was the #1 hero of Canada at the time, and Tanya was trying to get him to endorse an international cooperative venture. It worked.

“Oh? How’d you do?”

“Eighteen holes in one.” Tanya replied as they left the car. “In his defense, it was a tie.” Slip’s quirk allowed him to create little tunnels of vacuum that pulled things along, including himself. A modest-sounding quirk, but he was often considered the fastest hero in the world at the time, so great was his skill in using it.

“You can do that?” Mr. McCain asked. “Now that I’d like to see. Just play twice, once with magic and then again without magic after each shot. You can use my wife’s clubs.”

Tanya suppressed a sigh. Well, they did block out the whole day to schmooze with the senator and his special interest groups (most importantly, textile interests). “That should be do-able, Senator.”

One of the negative aspects of the American trip is being painfully reminded of how horribly racist everyone is. It was one thing to have offensive stereotypes of an entire nation that isn’t your own, even if it is a colonial holding, but the gentlemen who were servers, busboys, and bartenders in this country club were Americans too.

In short order, everyone was sufficiently supplied with alcohol and golfing supplies, as redundant as that statement was. Tanya refused, of course. “Never use magic drunk. You will not like the results.”

The players of this round were four: Tanya, Senator McCain, a Mr. Levine, the CEO of a company that made sturdy work clothing, and finally Pastor Cherry, who just seemed to be a personal friend of the senator.

“It’s a beautiful day for golf!” Announced the pastor. “Praise the lord!”

“Amen.” Agreed Senator McCain.

Briefly, Tanya wondered what Being X was doing. If he was trying to make their life difficult, they hadn’t been doing a very good job. But then again, he was a very busy being.

“This hole’s three par.” Explained the senator. “You do know what that means, right?”

“It means that the creators of the course expected a moderately skilled player to be able to complete the course in three swings.” Tanya rattled off.

The pastor went first, praying for a good shot before executing an impressively far drive, nearly but not quite reaching the closely cropped grass surrounding the hole. There was a smattering of polite clapping.

Mr. Levine went next, making a much less impressive drive that barely cleared the sandbar in the center of the course.

Senator McCain finished the men’s efforts, launching his ball straight into the small pond that was so far off to the side that it was debatable on whether it even counted as a hazard. “Hrm. The wind got it, I lost track.” He claimed. “Boy, go find it.” He told his caddy, who was an enthusiastic nineteen year old boy.

“Yessir, Mr. Senator!” The caddy said, saluting. He then proceeded to start towards the lake to presumably ‘find’ the ball in a place that was definitely not the pond. Tanya rolled their eyes at the pageantry.

“I believe it would be my turn then, gentlemen?” Tanya proposed. They had to admit, the current fashion of a dress with a hat, with a skirt that, for once, wasn’t ridiculously cumbersome, was quite practical for dealing with the subtropical heat of this particular slice of America. Did they start that trend with their own dress selections, when they were in public using clothes that weren’t deliberately in fashion? No, they never wore a hat like this. Must be a coincidence.

“By all means.” The Senator said, completely ignoring the risk to his caddy by allowing another person to have their stroke.

Well, it’s not like the boy was on the course. He still had to go near where it landed before planting a new one. “As promised, first I will use magic. Monika? Give me any of them.” As instructed, Monika passed Tanya the putter.

One of the interesting things about orb magic that didn’t play out with their quirk was that there was an illusory user interface that looked rather impressive. The problem was, Tanya didn’t have a program in the orb for cheating at golf. Therefore, they tuned up the type 97 with the homing formula interface… which Tanya just remembered also acted like a mundane rangefinder and wind speed detector. Which was something they normally needed support equipment to get. Well, the orb was support equipment, from a certain point of view.

Lazily, Tanya whacked the ball that Monika placed on the tee with the putter, sending it screaming forth faster than any of their balls did. It curved in the air and planted itself right in the hole, causing the flag sticking out of it to wiggle as the force fully transferred to the cage in the hole rather than leading to a bounce. “Behold, the power of an aerial mage.”

“By the lord…” The pastor whispered as the other two politely clapped at the display. The caddies and assorted spectators also applauded, but less enthusiastically.

“Now Monika, once more: The driver.” After a moment to allow the pastor’s caddy to point out which one was the driver for her, Monika followed Tanya’s instructions.

Briefly, Tanya wondered how well they’d do without knowing the wind and distance conditions ahead of time. It looks like they’ll never know, because they do know, and hitting things at a precise angle and level of force is a trivial exercise for Mathemagician’s passive benefits. They managed to get the ball on the green in one stroke.

The men shouted indignantly at Tanya’s performance, but Tanya quoted ballistic arc and leverage calculations at them until they got the picture. The rest of the holes followed more or less the same pattern: the Senator cheated outrageously, the others let him and played a more or less competitive game against each other, and Tanya talked up the communist threat while beating them handily.

Just another day on the job. At least Tanya convinced Mr. Levine that it would be in his best interests to give the Imperial Army a good deal on clothing once they secure that war loan. Even if it did require Tanya having to give him some draft advertisements gratis. It had been an awful long time since Tanya had cause to use that part of their UA education.

Another diplomatic lesson when dealing with a democracy: businesses large enough for advertising budgets were propagandists for hire, if you can give them a suitable message to push.

Just a few more trips like this and they could be away from this racist shithole of a country… and right back to the equally racist Empire. This century sucks… Mutant discrimination was bad enough… This is just pathetic.

---------------------------

Chicago was a different kind of shithole in comparison to Florida. Miraculously, it still had the same name as in their original timeline… But it was still quite racist. The flavor of awful that this city peddled had more to do with the massive crime rate fueled by the foolish nationwide ban on alcohol.

For example, when discussing potential purchases with the local steel mills, factories, and meatpackers, they were offered alcohol with paper-thin dodges to the legality in every meeting. The industrialists were quick to resort to threats whenever Tanya suggested going to one of their competitors as a bargaining position, tried to push absurd rates as they smelled blood in the water, and overall just acted like Yakuza.

The foreign sounds of jazz filled the air of the club as Monika danced with some random American. There was still some regret, with how Tanya shoved the maid into taking on more and greater responsibilities… without truly giving them the freedom to be anything but a servant. But from their first life, they knew just how important a loyal and efficient assistant was, and every time Tanya offered to let her leave… she refused. Monika was nineteen now, but there was still a part of them that couldn’t see her as anything but that barely educated thirteen year old girl who was commanded to follow Tanya around and do whatever they say.

“Cheer up, Tanya.” Elya said as she sipped at her drink. Diplomatic immunity meant that they could pretty much ignore the anti-alcohol laws, and given that they regularly received alcohol as gifts during the meetings… Elya was rarely completely sober during the trip. At least she was almost as effective at her actual job while tipsy than she was while sober. There was a sizable portion of the hero industry who frequently drank to help them handle the rigors of the job, so they couldn’t judge Elya too harshly for their alcoholism. Spycraft could be even worse than hero work, after all. “You can’t win them all. I’ve been talking to people, and if you really want things done around here, you have to talk to the Union bosses.” The local Yakuza, in other words.

Normally, unions are just supposed to ensure that the businesses don’t cheat their workers by allowing for collective bargaining. This is important as a check for the excesses of the capitalist system. But in Chicago? This was merely where the local Yakuza thugs drew their power from.

Tanya groaned at the advice. “I hate dealing with organized crime…” Tanya whined. “They’re always so self-important just because they can muster dozens of grown men who are willing to use violence at whoever they don’t like.” Parasites,every single one of them. “It’s always so… uncivilized.” The ‘Supernova class’ of UA took Japan by storm, and had broken pretty much every single remaining organized crime group larger than one hundred people within ten years of graduation… Mostly because All for One kept extensive files on most of them. Sure, these crime rings were bigger, but they also didn’t have strong quirks backing them up.

Elya pulled Tanya into a tight hug. “Don’t worry. So we’ve got a bit of a setback in our plans.” She plucked one of the greasy fries from Tanya’s basket. “Eat up, and try again from a different angle. We’re still in the game, we just need to figure out our plan of attack.” She punctuated her statement by shoving the fry into Tanya’s mouth.

After swallowing the fry, Tanya stood up. “You’re right. Let’s go back to the hotel.” Tanya quickly ate the remains of their meal and started towards the exit. “Monika!” Tanya called out, using German so her dance partner couldn’t understand. “We’re going back to the hotel, do you want the night off?”

The young girl hesitated at the question, giving a lovestruck look at the handsome dark-skinned lad who had been flirting with her for the last two hours between songs, as he was part of one of the two bands that took turns playing throughout the night. Eventually, she replied, also in German. “No! I’ll be right behind you.” She turned back to her dance partner, whispering to him in a scene that would not be out of place in a shoujo anime before following after them with only a small stumble in her step from the alcohol.

As the only sober one in the car, Tanya drove the crappy 20th century car. Sure, it was top of the line… but it was still a clunky mess. They were used to the level of technology in this century by now, but truly mechanical transmission was an exercise in aggravation. Traffic was similarly terrible, which was why Tanya never drove anywhere in their last life, sticking solely to public transport, limos, and using their limited driving skills to move large trucks and ambulances only.

“If you’re going to be meeting that boy before we leave town,” Tanya idly mentioned while turning into the hotel parking garage. “-I’ll be glad to allow you a day off. I know the diplomatic schedule is a bit punishing, but it’s important that we entwine American industry with Imperial logistics. Them supporting the communists against us is the only thing that could possibly cause us to lose, beyond a few incompetent commanders.” Well, it was the only thing that Tanya could anticipate as an actual possibility. “But it’s a marathon, not a sprint. A day here or there isn’t going to change anything.”

“Really? I thought you’d say yes.” Monika asked, before hiccuping. “Would tomorrow be okay? I said I’d meet him at Oak Park at noon.”

“That’s fine.” Tanya replied as they parked the car. “Taking a day off of my own sounds nice, after a day like this.” They could do some research on how to get some decent protein shakes made, and start on a serious fitness-building regimen. While they maintained flexibility and to some extent cardio exercises, they missed the manifold benefits of being at the peak of human physicality. Magical resistance training would handle most of the equipment, but there was no way to substitute the nutrition requirements of such a regimen. They’ll just crib off of Nezumi’s old program…

Wait. Something was wrong. It took far too long for Tanya to recognize the sound of a car moving far faster than the rest of traffic. Tanya rushed out to the street, already preparing their usual suite of formulas for stopping runaway vehicles.

The vehicle that was tearing down the road had no roof, and the man riding in the passenger seat was brandishing an iconic weapon: the tommy gun. The rapid bangs and pops of the weapon ran out as the drive-by shooting commenced, bullets impacting Tanya’s type-97 empowered mage barrier. Immediately, Tanya created a zone of chilly air along the whole street, neither gunpowder nor gasoline capable of ignition under the influence of the temperature regulation formula. It was also just barely warm enough to avoid hypothermia, so the driving villain reflexively braked in response to the bone-deep chill that permeated their bodies.

Within seconds, Tanya had torn the guns from the hands of the criminals and had stolen the key from the ignition, which allowed them to drop the wide area magic. The other vehicles that were disabled did not start back up immediately, but even in this time period it shouldn’t be that difficult to get them moving again.

“What do you think you’re doing, you madmen!” Tanya shouted as they disassembled the tommy gun right in front of the perps.

“I ain’t sayin’ nothin.” The gangster who was shooting said.

“The fuck you doing, dame?” The other passenger said. He brought out his own tommy gun, but Tanya took it away before he could get his finger on the trigger, disassembling it before he could fully register what Tanya did. “..the fuck?”

“That’s what I would like to know.” Said the police officer who walked up to the scene.

Wait. They weren’t a pro hero. Shit. “...I have diplomatic immunity.” Tanya pointed out.

It was far from the most comprehensive defense, but hopefully it won’t mess anything up.