Anomie.07.1

Zhen

Ari pulled the brim of their fedora down over their eyes as they moved into the Kawa-Nangan checkpoint. They reached into their satchel, preparing. It was early evening in the city formerly known as Brisbane (in this world: Hanran Hara no chūton-chi); barely a town compared to the place Ari called home on their own world. There was just the barest hint of purplish blue lining the horizon, and the first stray drops of rain were beginning to fall. Off in the distance, thunder rumbled out an unevenly paced metronome.

The checkpoint was small; just pylons and a demountable fence, crowded in with four Auxiliary Police, in their ugly, poorly-fitted khaki-grey mockeries of Kempeitai dress-uniforms; their faded, fabric caps with small, cheap-looking Imperial and Auxiliary-specific insignia badges, and their general air of unearned superiority. With a small bow and a held breath, Ari presented their documents - Rōdō kyoka-shō and Identity Card - keeping their eyes down and straight ahead as the Kempei grunt shuffled the papers, glancing at Ari with that specific kind of suspicion reserved for people who were enjoying their authority a little too much. Ari felt a couple of stray muscles just below their left eye tense involuntarily, but remained otherwise statue-still.

“Sorenara, dōzo.” The grunt finally conceded, waving Ari past. Ari absently wondered if he even knew Japanese, or if he’d just learned to sound out the requisite handful of phrases required for Kempeitai boot-licking duties. With the complexion of a marshmallow, Ari suspected they knew the answer.

“Arigatō gozaimasu.” Ari muttered with a slightly deeper bow, clutching the documents as they were handed back, stuffing them back into their satchel. “Fucking Aux.” They muttered to themself as they moved out of audible range. The rain was starting to come down a little harder now, and Ari pulled their trench-coat around themself, making a dash for a nearby, sheltered tram-stop. Kawa-Nangan was mostly empty; just a smattering of commuter foot traffic - almost exclusively permit-holding whites like Ari, the ‘Nankai‑dōjin’ - making their way back from work to their assigned districts. Uniformly, they avoided eye contact, maintaining large bubbles of deliberately disinterested personal space. Ari should’ve been doing the same. They knew they should have known better. Should have moved swiftly - head down, no looking back - and jumped the first passing tram. Just…disappeared into the night. They could hear Tash’s voice in their head, going over the risks, point by point…of Sage, reminding them that doing good didn’t require dying in service if it. It was a small thing - staying; looking back - but seen at the wrong moment, by the wrong set of eyes? Potentially fatal. And yet, they had to see it happen.

They checked their watch, before - again - fiddling nervously with the brim of their fedora. They rolled their eyes at the unbidden image of themselves from the outside in, tipping it, exclaiming: ‘m’lady’.

“Too far from home for brainrot.” Ari muttered to themself, looking out across the river. Their eyes were drawn to - even here, so very far from home - the Helios Foundation building. Was it a Multiversal constant? A -

- KRAAK-OOOOOM

Ari flinched back against the tram shelter wall, exhaling raggedly, for - it felt like - the first time in days, as they watched the colonial-era, sandstone City Hall building blow wildly apart, huge chunks of stone making it as far as the river, backlit by an enormous fireball rising out of the wreckage. Ari smiled to themself, tipping their fedora as the shockwave rippled out across the river and through Kawa-Nangan. The place that, in their world, people called ‘South Bank’.

“Tsumibito ni yoake wa otozurenai, motherfuckers.” They smiled, echoing the Resistance slogan reclaimed from early-Occupation Imperial warnings to potential insurgents, typically emblazoned on posters astride deliberately hyper-visible gallows: “Dawn comes not for the guilty”. Reaching a hand out to grasp the cold, vertical pole in the back entrance to a passing tram, Ari pulled themself in.

Yi

Ari carefully closed the door behind them. They hadn’t been followed; they knew that much for sure. The Aux weren’t particularly competent: the Kempeitai seemed to take an inordinate amount of pleasure in deputising fucking idiots, after all. Ari expected there was an element of theatre in it. Mockery. Raising up the cultural dregs of white former-Australia (‘Ōsutoraria tōbu’ now, apparently) to serve as empowered representatives. There were - Ari supposed - certain advantages to dealing with racists. Occasionally. Where prejudice made them do stupid shit.

“You’re fucking late.” Tash snapped, emerging from the kitchen.

“Is that any way to talk to a hero of the Resistance?” Ari smirked.

“Yeah, it’s all over the radio. Congrats. The entire Southside’ll be crawling with Kempeitai by morning.”

“I think you overestimate how much of a shit they give about British colonial architecture.”

“This isn’t an apocalypse, dipshit: this is an Occupation…Government. Did you pay like…any attention in modern history classes in high school? The Empire of the Rising Sun do not fuck around when it comes to cracking down on unruly colonials. I love you, but…fuck, Ari. Please don’t get us killed.”

“I know. I’m not taking it lightly. It’s the adrenaline: Look,” Ari explained, holding out an arm, letting Tash see their shaking fingers. “I swear I’m not underestimating it.”

“Oh yeah. So careful terrorism, was it?”

“You know how this works: I didn’t know the play until just before we went live with it. But…I’m not sorry we did it. The Resistance needed this. Something big; symbolic.”

“I’d rather something big and strategic. That’s a thing I could get behind.”

“Sage and Hatsu are on it. But in the meantime…you know how dire things are, here. Yeah, the Kempeitai are gonna hit back, but exactly when were they ever not? We get the boot on people’s necks to slip for just a second, and…that’s hope.”

“I know. I get it. But we need you. Me and Sage. Y’know? So…do what you gotta do, but…keep coming home.” Tash smiled sadly. They turned, making their way back to the kitchen, returning with…mostly rice in a shallow bowl, topped with a depressingly small amount of something brown and fried.

“Miso?” Ari asked hopefully.

“No, we’re down to Tsukadani rations until next Tuesday.” Tash set the bowl down on the small table, before pulling Ari into a hug. “How was it, anyway?”

“Scary.” Ari breathed. “Beyond scary. I wish you’d been there.”

“I wish I could have been.” Tash let them go, miming a set of scales with small grin: “Kinda…half for you, half for the fireworks…”

“I can live with fifty-fifty.”

“Eh, might be more like forty-sixty if I’m honest. You know I’m a sucker for a good explosion.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ve met the girls you date.” Ari smiled, watching Tash try extremely hard to look mad through the beginnings of involuntary laughter.

“Eat your fucking food, Che Gueverra.” They settled on. Ari rolled their eyes, sitting down at the table.

“Where is Sage, anyway?”

“Oh, she’s…using her degree.”

“Fuck. And you’re worrying about me? A Systems Engineer in this context is…what’s that movie, where the Nazis find a modern stealth bomber?”

“No idea.”

“Well, she’s that. A cheat code to working out the most efficient things to hit and the most effective ways to hit them. What’s that phrase Maya loves so much? The thing she keeps calling Kade?”

“‘Outside context problem’.” Tash clarified, sitting down across from Ari. They reached out towards the bowl, but Ari stabbed at their fingers with their chopsticks. “Ow!”

“Heroes need protein.” Ari chuckled.

“It’s not like they’d put her on the line, right?”

“Not deliberately. But if the Japanese get a hold of her - ”

“ - Okay, yeah, point taken.” Tash muttered, before pointing down at the bowl. “Eat.”

Shi

After eating, Ari and Tash had made their way - slowly, cautiously - further out from the city. Reliant on the trams and trains - Nankai‑dōjin weren’t allowed to use cars, after all - they’d made their way into the Gimu‑ka jūtaku chitai. Slum-like and overcrowded, bounded by check-points and razor-wire fencing, getting in was never as much of a problem as getting out (though the Resistance had procedures for that), and they’d passed by the Aux guards without trouble.

The ‘headquarters’ itself was a glorified basement; an underground installation hidden below an unassuming duplex; unaffiliated with the Resistance and housing several families. The reinforced concrete and carefully sealed upper entranceways kept it separate, and the only way in (or out) was a roundabout tunnel accessible via a street-level grate and a maintenance chute. Ari and Tash made their way in - careful to avoid prying eyes - finding Sage, Andrew and Hatsu poring over documents. Ari pulled Sage into a quick, silent hug. Glaring at them, Sage punched their shoulder a little harder than necessary, miming an explosion with outstretched hands and rolling her eyes. Ari shrugged, affecting innocence, and Sage and Tash exchanged a glance, Tash nodding in agreement.

Hatsu - he flatly refused to tell them his real name - took one final glance over the plans. His brow furrowed. After a moment, he nodded slowly to himself, looking up.

“This will work.” He acknowledged.

“I know.” Sage nodded, folding her arms across her chest. Hatsu glanced around, noticing Ari and Tash had joined them.

“Ahh, konbanwa, Gaijin.” Hatsu greeted them. Ari saw Tash shaking her head. The word still rubbed her up the wrong way, even knowing it didn’t carry quite the same cultural meaning as it had back on their own worlds. So far as Ari had been able to tell, the epithet, from Hatsu, simply meant ‘Outside Person’. An almost…affectionate nod to their ‘otherworldly’ status. Hatsu turned to Ari, specifically. “The operation went without incident?”

“Yeah.” Ari nodded. “Got back across the river and out of dodge in record time. I think we’re all good.”

“Told you it’d be fine.” Andrew seconded from across the room.

“Oh, so you were in on it?” Tash inferred. “A heads up might’ve been nice, Andy.”

“You know how it - ”

“ - Say ‘compartmentalisation’, I fucking dare you.”

“Well it is actually that, Tash. That’s our rice and cabbage.” Andrew shrugged.

“All the same. That was new. So eff-why-eye, you put either of my people within spitting distance of high explosives again, and I don’t get at minimum a fucking warning…” Tash trailed off, letting the threat hang in the air. Ari glanced at Andrew. Watched him process that. Watched him decide on the ‘smart’ response.

“Understood. And anytime you feel like taking those gloves of yours off - ” He hazarded.

“ - Gonna need a better pitch than ‘fuck up a landmark’ to get my gloves off.” They raised an eyebrow.

“That’s not a ‘no’.” Andrew noted.

“No. It’s not.” Tash conceded, glancing at Hatsu, who’d moved beside Ari.

“Any trouble with the ‘Aux’?” Hatsu asked.

“They’re furniture.” Ari shook their head. Hatsu frowned.

“You continue to underestimate stupidity, Ari-san. Clever people generally do. You fail to see that stupid people suffer from a failure to comprehend when it would be intelligent to forebear.”

“Yeah, I’ll take that on board.” Ari rolled their eyes, exchanging an affectionate little glance with Hatsu. “So what’s the play?”

“Well…” Sage slowly enunciated.

“Oh, that’s not good.” Tash frowned.

“No, no, it’s fine. Andy and Hatsu had this idea. About surveillance. The Kempeitai’ve been ramping it up, lately - like, it’s fine, it’s not…flock cameras - ”

“ - ‘Flock Cameras’?” Hatsu raised an eyebrow.

“It’s a thing from our worlds, don’t worry about it.” Sage waved off the question. “So it’s just old-school surveillance, but we were thinking, if we could knock out a bunch of that infrastructure, it’d be a setback. And it’d probably make them less bold about reprisals, if they were a little…blinder. So I was thinking - ”

“ - Oh god, she’s gonna pitch an EMP, isn’t she?” Tash glanced over at Ari. Ari nodded.

“You guys are the fucking worst.” Sage frowned a sullen little frown. “I come up with this whole plan - ”

“ - You mean you remembered the plot of like…six thousand movies?” Ari corrected.

“Yeah, they haven’t seen them; they don’t exist in this world. You’re making me look like a hack, and it’s actually a really solid plan, you guys.”

“Sorry. Sorry.” Tash pulled Sage in, squeezing her around the shoulders. “Run us through it.”

Sage laid out the play: the key mechanical piece involved the use of scavenged Imperial battery storage devices to hack together explosives that would create small-scale electro-magnetic pulses, allowing them to strategically cripple key points in the Kempeitai’s emerging surveillance apparatus. Sage had workshopped a map of target locations with Andrew - a ‘wishlist’ of high value targets underscored with a range of more feasible options - which was what they’d been presenting to Hatsu. Ari could see that the page in Hatsu’s hand had a few annotations: lines through some targets; circles around others. Hatsu was clearly past the uncertainty phase, and well into actual logistics.

Ari nodded to themself as Sage finished up. It was smart. And Hatsu was right: It would work. And it would provide openings for other kinds of targeted attacks in the resulting chaos. The main question wasn’t feasibility, but what the other Resistance cells’ risk appetite would be in the context of significant potential reward. Ari glanced at Hatsu, grinning wryly. Hatsu returned the smile, reaching out to briefly grip Ari’s shoulder.

“What about reprisals? We’re already bracing for what comes next after y’all turned City Hall into fucking confetti.” Tash observed. “Seems like the time to lay low for a bit, no?”

“Key to the overall, ongoing strategy,” Hatsu shook his head. “Is that the Empire do not want Ōsutoraria. The Occupation in the east was always the result of countering Dai San Teikoku’s interests in the west of the continent. The Empire's hand was forced.”

“What does that change, materially?” Tash asked.

“Everything.” Hatsu intoned. “The Empire is overextended. Reprisals are for show, rather than an indicator of control. Their presence here is weak, and they cannot meaningfully reinforce the colony without drawing forces from where they are elsewhere needed.”

“So…if we keep the pressure on…” Andrew followed on, clearly on the same page: “That’s how you break the camel’s back. Not with one straw; with a thousand.”

“Well said.” Hatsu nodded to Andrew.

“Where are your people, in this?” Tash asked Hatsu.

“The majority of the work being done by Yūhi no aikoku‑sha‑tachi - the Imperial Resistance - is occurring in Naichi itself, and in the productive colonies: Chūshi, Hokushi…Kome-koku nishikaigan hogo-ryō. We are limited in what we can provide, here. But we will do what we can.”

“And what can you do?” Andrew asked, before reconsidering: “Don’t take that the wrong way, Hatsu; you know that I know what we owe you.”

“Debts are for peacetime.” Hatsu waved off Andrew’s concern. “Simply, if you can provide the people, we can provide the arms. We are also…willing to open some potentially dangerous doors.” Hatsu offered reluctantly. “We have an operative inside the Kanchō‑gai. They can provide access.”

“Holy shit.” Andrew shook his head. “Been saving that for a rainy day, have you?”

“In the interests of disclosure…” Hatsu hedged: “This is a singular opportunity. Not something I would be offering if I did not believe it could be leveraged in full. Hence, why I have waited until now to offer it. Providing this access can happen once. In doing so, the operative will be…” Hatsu paused: “What is that phrase your people use? ‘Burned’? After this, the asset will be ‘burned’.”

“Is the asset someone we’ve worked with?” Andrew asked. “It’s…more than we expected. So much more. Taking down the District would be huge. But before I commit resources, I’d need to know we can trust the asset to follow through.” Hatsu glanced off towards the corner of the room. Ari could see the machinery turning behind his eyes.

“Fuck.” Ari sighed, lips tightening into a scowl. “The asset is you, isn’t it?”

“As you say.” Hatsu admitted carefully. “The asset is me.”

“No.” Sage cut in. “Absolutely not.”

“My friend…” Hatsu paused, considering. He reached out, placing a hand on Sage’s shoulder. “This is war.”

Zhong Fu

The Resistance operated as a diffuse, distributed collection of operative cells. Upon arriving - however that’d happened - on this world, Ari, Tash and Sage had ended up on the run from the Auxiliary Police, before being taken in and protected by one of those cells. While Tash had taken to deliberately hiding her telekinesis, Ari’s unwillingness to not participate in Resistance actions, and Sage’s inability to not weigh in on Resistance strategies had resulted in them being, as a group, seconded to Andrew and Hatsu; the ones the other Resistance members referred to obliquely as the ‘Background Men’: The ad hoc, unofficial, but unchallenged strategic leadership of the project. The ones known by reputation, but not by name or face.

The distance made sense to Ari: Andrew’s cover was critical to maintain, being relatively senior in the Nankai‑dōjin bureaucratic structure, and Hatsu - Japanese and an unknown quantity who claimed to be affiliated with the Imperial insurgency - were both men who had good reasons to opt for distance. Ari privately suspected that - beyond compartmentalisation - Hatsu’s ethnicity in specific weighed fairly significantly into their distance from other cells. The assumed prejudice wasn’t something Hatsu seemed particularly inclined to blame the Nankai‑dōjin Resistance for. Ari remembered the first time it had come up, explicitly: when, in the beginning, Ari had admitted to Hatsu what they, Tash and Sage were, and the two of them had run through - at length - the differences between their worlds; the questions of why things were so different. It was a conversation that had needed revisiting. Again, and again. And - over time - it had become something of a tradition for Ari and Hatsu. More often than not, the ritual took place huddled together in a corner of the Headquarters, or sometimes in a slum-gutter on the outskirts of the Gimu‑ka jūtaku chitai. They’d share a bottle of Andrew's bootleg gin, or some contraband Sake Hatsu had managed to source, covering things that felt important until the sun came up...and the ‘prejudice thing’, as Ari tended to refer to it, came up more than occasionally. Overall, Ari wasn’t quite so forgiving as Hatsu on the matter, they’d found. After all, Ari knew: they had insights about their own culture that Hatsu probably didn’t. Or, at minimum, that they had less academic distance from than he did. And it wasn’t just racism that tilted Ari's perspective. Ari remembered their own transition; and then ‘Transition Mark 2’ as Tash occasionally, sarcastically referred to their mutual ‘schism with the binary’. Ari was deeply, painfully aware of what Australian prejudice was, and wasn’t. What it was was, was a thing that remoulded and metastasised reactively against varied targets; same hate, different shape. What it wasn’t...was a thing that required a justification as superficially valid as an ongoing Occupation. Ari sighed, shaking their head.

The silence continued - broken only by occasional under-breath exclamations - as Sage continued to fiddle with her prototype EMP device (i.e. bomb), as Hatsu and Andrew pored over reports and dossiers, and as Tash slowly massaged Ari’s shoulders and Ari themself stared off into the middle distance.

What was the defining hinge, they wondered? Hatsu was convinced that it was the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact holding firm, which it hadn’t on Ari’s world. That, combined with America’s entire fleet being docked during Pearl Harbour, probably explained all that needed to be explained about how the Axis had won the war. Beyond that, Mexico invading the Southern United States, Churchill’s assassination, the Cable Street Massacre, and the capitulation of the United Kingdom…sure. But Ari couldn’t help but wonder. Because it wasn’t that simple, was it? Historically, they knew…the axis hadn’t had the inertia they claimed to. Fascists didn’t tend to. They had a mythology of self, backed by a lopsided economy built on the disenfranchisement of their ‘Others’, and a lot of people who were too stupid to realise how stupid they were. In Ari’s estimation, that house of cards should’ve toppled, regardless of which cards went where. Especially in a world that was willing to resist the way it currently was. Especially…in a world where men like Hatsu existed. It all summed up to something that had been gnawing at them for...weeks, now. Months. Ari sighed again, reaching back over their shoulder for one of Tash’s hands, squeezing silently. Tash squeezed back, gently pressing their lips to the back of Ari’s head.

“It’s okay.”

“Not so sure it is, actually.” Ari whispered. “Come with me.” They got to their feet.

“We’re going out for some air.” Tash said.

“Don’t get seen. Don’t talk carelessly around the normies.” Andrew muttered from his papers without looking up. Ari smirked at the use of that word. Sage had flippantly used it to refer to non-Resistance civilians exactly one time that they could recall, and Andrew had immediately glommed onto it as shorthand. Ari and Tash made their way through the passage, and up into the street.

“I have mixed feelings about this.” Ari admitted, looking around. It was late - around one in the morning - and the streets were clear. The Nankai‑dōjin were, functionally, an indentured and heavily utilised captive labour force, so sleep-hours tended to be very much that.

“Well of course. So do I.”

“No, I mean…doesn’t this feel a bit…tropey?”

“I don’t follow.”

“I don’t know how to describe it, beyond…doesn’t it feel a little…convenient? If we take out the District, with the entire administration inside, the colony will probably fall. Not tomorrow, but it will happen.”

“I mean…maybe? It’s a bit of a stretch.”

“Maybe it is. But it’s in the realm of possibility.”

“Sure.”

“So why now? Why, when for - what - eighty years, has this situation sat in something resembling stasis, and then a reckoning happens now, while we’re here? With Andrew, this…effective, stoic Resistance leader, and Hatsu, who is providing exactly what we need, exactly when we need it? And he’s so selfless about it. So calm. Have you ever seen him get angry? About anything? Or even seen him just be wrong about something?”

“What’re you getting at?” Tash cocked their head, reaching into their pocket and extracting a pack of cigarettes with an elegant wave of blue, flourished Kanji characters across its front. They offered one to Ari, who nodded. Wordlessly, Tash lit themself up before doing the same for Ari. Tash shivered a little as they exhaled a small, initial cloud of smoke.

“I don’t know.” Ari enunciated through pooling smoke, continuing on: “But something feels…off. And I can’t shake it.”

“We’re from the multiverse, Ari. Me, you and Sage, we’re three alternate versions of the same person. I can tell you wanna pitch something crazy, and I need you to know…I’ll take it seriously if you do, okay? Crazy is our lives.” Ari took a moment to process that, avoiding eye contact; exhaling a thin trail of smoke into the slightly chilly, post-rainfall night air.

“I think this is a story.” they admitted.

“You mean that…literally?” Tash confirmed.

“Yeah. It feels…built? Like…it’s not an if-this-then-that progression, here, it’s…front-loaded, and the logic is reverse engineered.”

“Too esoteric. Try again, please.”

“Okay. So…the Occupation makes sense in a vacuum. Looking around, this world is plausible. But the history of it, the genesis…it just isn’t. With the exception of some breathless conspiracists, nobody who knows anything about World War Two actually thinks the axis had a shot at winning. Not to the extent of establishing an ongoing global order. Logistically, just…no. Neither Germany nor Japan could’ve sustained that. Their methodologies didn’t have scale, or staying power. And, somehow, they’ve had almost a century of ongoing, relative stability?”

“Right. And on the ground level, Andrew and Hatsu serve too much of a purpose in what’s happening right now. Like they’re cogs in a machine, rather than messy, organic parts of a system.”

“Yeah. Exactly.”

“It’s…difficult, right?” Tash acknowledged, slowly. “Cause, first…if you are right, how can we verify that? Second, what would it change? I’m thinking about us, the nature of the Alters: we’re iterations on a ‘self’, y’know? Parts of the ‘multiversal self’? And our worlds are all iterations, too. Where do we draw the line around ‘real’ and ‘not real’, if there are fully realised people, here, living and dying within an internally coherent reality? How are we not just another version of that?”

“I mean, I agree. That’s not…quite my concern.”

“What’s your concern, my love?” Tash asked patiently, taking a long drag on their cigarette.

“The coincidence of us being here, it…kind of implicates us, no? Doesn’t it feel like, if this is a story, and we’re coming in from outside of it…with extra capacity over someone from here, we should be using that?”

“Aren’t we? Isn’t that what we’re doing currently?”

“Not to the extent that we could.” Ari said slowly.

“You mean, to the extent that I could?” Tash asked. “With my powers. You’re wanting me to…pull a ‘Kade’?”

“You’ve been holding back to protect us from exposure, but…maybe - ”

“ - Oh for fucks sake.” Tash rolled their eyes, pushing Ari sharply. “You wanna save Hatsu, don’t you? Is this whole…philosophical tangent an excuse to rescue your boyfriend from a sacrifice he’s choosing - ”

“ - Okay, first, not my boyfriend. I’m not even into guys.” Ari insisted. Vehemently.

“Oh please. We always said we’d embrace fluidity if it happened to us, and I’ve seen the way you look at him.” Tash paused, smirking. “You know he looks at you the same way, right?”

“Even if…” Ari sighed, rapidly distancing themself from…all of that. “It’s not about that. Maybe he’s a trope. Maybe he’s an archetype. But he’s a good one. Sometimes the multiverse makes those, y’know? People who’re just…pretty great.”

“Yeah. Now and then.” Tash stepped forward, bumping affectionately into Ari, headbutting their way under Ari’s arm. Ari squeezed Tash a little, eliciting a short, sharp ’squeak’.

“And like…there’s a reason flattened portrayals get popular. It’s because they have utility, and resonance, and yeah: I don’t want him to die doing something we could do for him. Not when this world…needs people like him. Not when the story would be better with him than without.”

“I want to be clear about it, though. If I do this, it won’t be for him. I’ll do it for you, because you’re asking me to and I love you. I’ll do it for Sage, because it blurs the target this whole op is gonna paint on her back. And…yeah, honestly, I’ll do it because…well, the Empire is fucked. The people they’ve hurt…the things they’ve done? The near-century of ethnic and political repression and re-ordering? Yeah, it deserves counterpoint. And I’m thinking…if their hold on Australia crumbles, that makes them look weak. Maybe it’s a domino back in the other direction. But…” Tash used the final word like punctuation; leaving it hanging between them for emphasis: “You know that if this place actually runs on alt-history narrative logic, that probably means that this variable triggers the Nazis to move on the Empire, right? Are you ready for that?”

“It’s true. But that was always going to be a likely result of actual Resistance success.”

“Yes, my love.” Tash agreed. “But there’s a difference between steps forward in a protracted struggle and bringing superpowers to the front lines. And…I know my powers are up to taking out the Kanchō‑gai. That doesn’t mean I have what it takes to fight off the Third fucking Reich. Kade could, maybe, but I’ve got a bare sliver of her power. So, like I said…I’ll do it for you, and for Sage, and because I’d love to make the Empire hurt…but I need to know that we’re on the same page about my capacity with…whatever comes next.”

“They’re tired. The Resistance.” Ari admitted. “I just want to…cheat. Speed up what’s going to happen anyway. Not lose Hatsu in the process.”

“For the Resistance, or for you?”

“That’s the beauty of a win-win. I don’t have to choose.”

“Well…if we’re gearing up to do something fucking stupid, I think we’d better loop in Sage.” Tash sighed.

Bi

Twenty devices were distributed to Resistance cells throughout Hanran Hara no chūton-chi. Timing was synchronised, targets allocated, manpower assigned to post-actions, and secondary intentions discussed. The western cells immediately argued for leveraging the confusion to liberate the - ironically named, in Ari’s estimation - Hiseisantekina rōdō shūyōsho. The ‘Unproductive labour camps’. These, past the cities outskirts, held thousands upon thousands of people deemed by the Empire as not fit to hold a Rōdō kyoka-shō ‘work-pass’, along either disability, ‘social disruptiveness’ or ‘ethnic suitability’ rationales. Andrew was all for this as a secondary goal, but had concerns about splitting focus from what had become - in his eyes - the primary goal: neutralising the Kanchō‑gai.

Sage posited an alternate take: that splitting focus was good, actually.

“So the Camps are here, around the Enoggera Reservoir.” She pointed to a disorganised blue blotch on the map.

“Keimusho damu chiiki.” Hatsu muttered a brief translation.

“Yeah. And the Kanchō‑gai is here,” She dragged her finger south-easterly: “In St Lucia.”

“Chūō zōn.” Hatsu nodded.

“That’s a decent distance, and the Kempeitai have no reason to think we’d be stupid enough to try hitting UQ.”

“UQ?” Hatsu queried, brow furrowing.

“Yeah, the Kanchō‑gai was built out from the ‘Brisbane Line’ Command Center…” Tash explained. “Towards the end of the war, that was the main University of Queensland campus. The war plan in the event of invasion was to retreat back to St Lucia and hold that line. In our worlds, it never happened, but here, the Empire inherited that Command Center when Brisbane was overrun.”

“Mmhmm.” Sage nodded. “So if we have the western cells signal that they’re moving on Enoggera Reservoir, the Kempeitai’ll neatly assume that’s our primary, which will draw resources, which will give us more time and less resistance when we hit the Kanchō‑gai.”

“So we offer the western cells up for slaughter?” Andrew asked doubtfully.

“I thought about that.” Sage moved around the table, dragging her finger up and along a line of road on the map: “The Kempeitai’ll be taking this route, since it goes up and around Mt Cootha instead of through.”

“You sure about that?” Ari asked.

“There’s no other way that makes sense. And it means that they pass through here, right by Enoggera Creek. Between two mountains.” Sage stabbed at the map with her index finger.

“You’re thinking IEDs?” Andrew inferred. “You want to ambush the Kempeitai?”

“I want to killbox the Kempeitai.” Sage clarified, pausing for a couple of seconds of dramatic effect. She looked around the room, ensuring all eyes were on her before continuing: “I want forces on four sides with Hatsu’s gear, IED’s in the middle…I want spike strips for any cars that manage to make it through, and I want an EMP rigged to go off at the start of it to take out their higher level targeting and comms systems.”

“We’ll need to account for the EMP and our own equipment. We’ll be in quite close, and we don’t know the exact functional range on the pulse.” Hatsu mused, rubbing his chin. Sage just smirked, reaching down beside the table and grabbing for Ari’s satchel.

“So I’ve been working on this since we started looking into EMPs.” She pulled open the satchel for Hatsu. He raised an eyebrow.

“Is that a Faraday Cage?” He inferred from context.

“Faraday Tote.” Sage corrected, jiggling the bag. “I have a schematic you can send out to the cells. Pretty easy to hack together, and they’ll keep small electronics safe for anyone who needs to get within plausible range of a blast.” Sage turned to Andrew: “Does this sound feasible?”

“Honestly? I think it’ll have the western cells chomping at the bit.” He nodded slowly. “We’ve all spent far too long getting into it with the Aux. Taking the fight to the actual enemy? That’ll sell.” He paused, considering: “And we also have some ordnance that can go in the hills. Nothing fancy. Old stuff with manual targeting. Mortars, mostly.”

“Can your guys call a decent shot?” Sage asked.

“You bet.” Andrew grinned.

“Great. Love it.” Sage grinned right back.

“There’ll still be casualties.” Tash noted.

“It’s true.” Sage admitted. “This is a big swing. So we definitely need the guys fully bought in. We need to know they’re motivated and autonomous so that we can focus our cells on the Kanchō‑gai op.”

“I’ll get them keen.” Andrew assured her. “So we have the western cells on Kempeitai ambush and Camp liberations. We have the southern, northern, and eastern cells on strategic targets and Kempeitai infrastructure. Southern and eastern will move towards Chūō zōn on our signal and meet us there. The closest actual IJA garrison is in Kōwan Shūyō‑ku, so they won’t have time to redeploy - ”

“ - About that,” Sage cut in. “We’ve looped in the Sydney Resistance, yeah? Sorry, ‘Kōwan Shūyō‑ku’ or whatever?”

“We have advised that a large action will take place sometime in the coming week and that we will alert them when it begins.” Hatsu nodded. “They have plans to support the action, but - ”

“ - Compartmentalisation.” Sage shrugged. “Yeah, I get it. Well, I hope they’re ready to go when we pull the trigger.”

“They will be.” Hatsu confirmed.

“Should we move on to St Lucia?” Ari asked. Sage nodded.

“Yep. So…here’s what I’m thinking…”