by Simon Archer
And yet, I found myself morose long after the restructuring of the world order under the heroes. There was great evil underneath Mr. Yin, but also great unity as well. In fact, though I would not say such things aloud, I would say that it is thanks to Mr. Yin uniting the world under one banner that we could enjoy such rich peace in his absence.
Without his forceful hand keeping us together, I feared that the nations of the world might yet again devolve to violence and war as it had done so many decades ago. The heroes liberated us from the shackles of Mr. Yin’s tyranny, but the cost, it seemed, would prove our inevitable downfall. We were lost and slowly beginning to realize it. Worse than that, we were helpless to stop it. I was helpless to stop it.
The heroes, it seemed, were also not quite the saviors that we had believed them to be. Quickly, after the disappearance of the Ghoul, the heroes took no time at all to begin their own extortions. No matter the hero, they all shared a mind of war and vengeance. They found no pleasure in saving the citizens of the world that they claimed to protect, but continuously searched the streets for more crime to smite.
We were left neglected, defenseless against the crimes that fell beneath the notice of the heroes. Every act of heroism was something that gained some kind of reward for them, and we had no such rewards to give as often as they would take them. At times, I found myself wondering if, by some dark miracle, we return to the old structure of the world, but with a proper king at the helm. A united world under a king that could perform his duties with honor and respect could be exactly what the world needed.
So, as the time of the council approached, I couldn’t help but feel that these topics of heroes, peace, and slow decay would come to the table, be discussed ad nauseam, and eventually tossed to the side without any hope for real change, like many issues before it. We came together, and yet we had no power to enact the laws and authorities than we did before the heroes came to us. While we are thankful for their previous help, we cannot tolerate their blatant disregard for the well being of their fellow citizens and their alien mannerisms.
This year, however, had come upon the winds of chance, and a new heading had come to this peace council, a new issue to be addressed. Fifteen or so years ago, I may have found such a disturbance to the status quo to be a nuisance and a bother, but today, it was as welcome as the morning sun. Something different had come, and I could feel that everything was about to change, with lasting consequences this time. And there was a mysterious someone who was making it all come to be.
No other topic was on anyone’s lips but the implications of the strange predicament of this peace council. I found myself talking with Xiambo Quen of the nation of Bajang, a notorious gossip who had a knack for finding the slimmest whispers whenever they contained juicy details. Though many of us were not quite allies, even with our proposed ideals of peace, many ambassadors were crossing social barriers in our desperation for some small insight into the growing puzzle presented to us. Indulging my curiosity, I had asked him the glaring question about his relationship with the nation that would normally claim this land as theirs.
“No, he is not from Numania!” Ambassador Xiambo Quen of Bajang insisted. “He is sovereign to all nations, so they say.”
“Are you sure?” I responded to Ambassador Xiambo Quen of Bajang’s wild gossip as it titillated my interest. “I thought that Numania had laid claim from coast to coast on this half of the continent! Had they experienced so much hardship that they had to sell land to an independent?”
“Have you seen the Numanian Ambassador?” Xiambo invited me to look at the man in the suit down the tiers of meeting seats, nearby the well and the stage. “He certainly seems to disagree with the notion as fervently as you would expect of a Numanian.”
The man, Gregory Mathson, wore a business three-piece suit, standard for all Numanians and most of the business world. Also like Numanians, he had filled himself with rage as he argued with another of his entourage cowering before him. After a few sharp words, Gregory stormed off in search of answers to the questions I was sure we all had, though they must have burned him a fair bit more viciously.
“It must be true!” I exclaimed, “Numania’s claim to the West Coast must be in dispute, thanks to whoever has sponsored our meeting here. What kind of royalty could he be to challenge Numanian’s military? How could he have come to own it? Why has he claimed it now, of all times? Certainly, he is not of the lineage of any Huglish colonial nobility. What sensible Huglain would have retained ancient properties so far away from the mainland? All of those claims were sold hundreds of years ago.”
“What do you propose is the claim that he would make, then?” Xiambo challenged me, his flowing robe patterned with black roses flopping about as he spoke with his hands as well as his words. “He certainly has the clout to back up his claim, if he were to make it boldly today. Look at what he’s done here!”
As Xiambo invited me to take in the view, I could not help but see the point he was making. It wasn’t the beautiful stonework of the grand hall and its tiers or the volume of the room we stood in to hold an ambassador and their entourage from every nation, though it was quite majestic. It wasn’t the brilliant lights that illuminated the space so that no corner was in darkness, though they were quite exquisite.
No, it was the legion of soldiers in strange black armor that acted as the security for our meeting today. They had no coat of arms, and yet they moved with the fierce loyalty of a royal guard. There was nothing so Numanian about them, or of any nation. They could be a mercenary company of sorts, but what mercenary force boasts enough power to hold territory like this, to even dispute it with Numania at all? How could our mysterious benefactor have accumulated so much power within the confines of a hostile nation?
“Oh, dear God!” Xiambo held his hand up to his ear, listening to whoever spoke to him at the other end of his earpiece. “He’s here! My assistant has spotted him near the front!”
“Why did our seats have to be so far away from the door!” I shouted as I immediately rushed down the steps, my golden robes proving terrible attire for descending stairs. “Damn these heights!”
It seemed that we were not the only ones to have caught wind of the arrival of the mysterious benefactor. As our bodyguards failed to keep up with us at our exalted pace, other ambassadors rode the waves of interest towards the door, crowding it as Xiambo and I barely etched our way through the spaces between the bodies. We entered the main lobby and found a mass of more interested parties gathered to surround a distinct space among us. The flashing lights of cameras, the raised voices of a thousand investigations seeking to dominate the airspace, the undulating bodies pushing past each other for a chance at a peak upon him.
Huglains were nothing if not a stubborn folk, and I would not yield so quietly into the ether of ignorance at the first bit of entertainment since the advent of the heroes. With the forceful shoulder that had earned me many a victory in life, I cut through the crowds to drift towards the center to witness the man himself.
What I noticed first, which would be damn near impossible to miss unless I was blind, was the entourage following him. I had seen the extravagance of politicians attempting to flaunt like peacocks with their brilliant robes many times before. Even I had come to this meeting with the most sheen upon the fibers of my silk as I could coerce out of my finest formal attire. These girls, even in their modest presentation, put any and all other attempts to garner such attention to shame.
And the audacity of their choices before leaving their abodes would just as easily have been the subject of decorum debate for years to come. One woman had her hair cut short, far above her neck or even her chin, with deliberate attention given to making her hair wilder instead of taming it. As if that wasn’t enough to push against the grain, she also wore full armor, as if she was heading into battle with the very next step.
The second was more customarily acceptable in her tight bun fastened with two crossed pins but wore no clothing beyond
a pair of leggings and a covering for her breasts. The fact that she had fur, whiskers, and a long feather boa of a fluffy tail overshadowed all of that as if she was A CAT.
The third was just as beyond the norm, keeping her hair in a ponytail that flared like a wild mane at the back of her head, and streams of careless bangs threw themselves upon the front of her constantly chipper visage. To properly juxtapose this friendly and wild demeanor was a pale dress that couldn’t decide whether it wanted to obey gravity or not, giving her the visage of a ghost floating through our halls.
The man himself, though, could not be ignored for long. Though his demeanor did not childishly demand our attention, his persona magnetized us to him. Everything about this mysterious man upset my sensibilities, in all ways I could have imagined before.
In many ways, he was underwhelming. His attire was stylish, of Numanian fashion similar to Ambassador Gregory himself, and was not shaped in any outlandish or unique ways to distinguish himself like the stories surrounding him had done.
And yet, the colors that he chose were dark and hellish, with blood-red highlights and trimmed against a midnight black. He wore a slight grin upon his smooth face, with no particularly strong or weak jaw, nor pronounced or subtle cheekbones to define his face so starkly. His eyes, though, burned with an intensity that chilled me to the bone. I couldn’t help but think I was drowning in the ocean of presence he carried with him with every step.
“Excuse me!” I recognized the gruff, Numanian accent and the notable sense of entitlement filling the air. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
As he pushed through the crowds, the ever-so-humble-and-calm Gregory’s piercing rage finally drove through the crowds to address the man himself. All the chaos died like the Reaper himself had come for it, and an anxious silence fell over every soul in sight. No one seemed to move. No one seemed to even breathe. This was the moment that we had all waited forever since the gossip started. How would such an upset of nations play out? Where would the pieces fall? Who would come out on top?
“Do you have any idea what you think you’re doing?” Gregory continued as he stepped forward. “This isn’t playtime in the park, pal. You can’t just sit down on the seesaw and claim you own all the wood shavings we have to walk on. I don’t care how fat you think you are. We have rules, in case you were unaware.”
“Certainly, you do.” The man had a voice like fine ivory. “But tell me, if you were the fat kid on the seesaw, and another kid came to you saying what you told me just now, what exactly would your response be?”
“Well, I would…” Gregory, fierce as a lion with diplomats and dignitaries alike, had so easily been caught off guard by a simple reversal of his own words. It spoke to exactly the effect that just being around this man gave off. “It doesn’t matter. You don’t get to just cut out a piece of land and just stick your flag in it like it’s yours now.”
“Isn’t that how you got this little plot of land in the first place?” the man replied. “Isn’t that how all the nations of this world were built? By men with flags and the arrogant notion that they owned what was beneath it? By fat kids sitting on seesaws who ended up being too heavy for the other kids to move?”
“Do you think you’re packing enough to keep us from just taking back what you stole from us, fatty?” Gregory’s words were sharp, but the teeth behind them were dull. “What is stopping me from calling the Numanian president right this second and having your ass thrown to the curb for seditious conspiracy?”
“What exactly led to you losing the land in the first place?” The mysterious benefactor did not flinch for a moment. “How could you misplace all the markers that made this land your providence?”
“You moved them somehow!” The Numanian ambassador had been pushed heavily into the defensive, and they both knew it. “You up and kicked Numania out of her own plot of land! This is a deliberate act of war, you little punk! Don’t think we’ll just sit on this quietly! Newsflash! The world’s not full of savages like you. We have standards for how we act. Our territories are defined, and they aren’t changing because some pretty boy warlord wants somewhere to retire.”
“I have committed no unjust acts of war,” the man defended himself now, remaining as calm as ever, “by your own admission, you say that war is an invalid and false claim to land that is rightfully yours.”
“Hell yeah!” Gregory had found the fire in his step again. “You don’t get to cut up the land we proud Numanians live on without us fighting tooth and nail to get what rightfully belongs to us! And if you’re really thinking about stepping up to the plate, pal, then you’re in for a hell of a storm when we just bulldoze over you like yesterday’s roadkill!”
“Just to help me understand,” the mysterious man had not lost a single step to retreat in the dance these two shared, even as Gregory’s words spit fire upon him, “you’re justified in your warmongering now because of the sins of foreign warmongers, right? You’re completely in the right to want to proceed with this action? And the Aggregation of Countries would support you in this, if that’s how you wished to proceed?”
“Damn right, now you’re getting it!” The ambassador had let his emotions carry him to this victory, and the man had led him right to it. “I’m going to call the president and get him to take you and your blackguard mercenary outfit out of here! We’ll give this land back to the people who own it! Back to the people who deserve it!”
“And this claim is immutable?” The mysterious man’s arguments had the thick ichor of purpose and drive, even as he had admitted to these shortcomings from the very beginning. “No one can make further claims to the land beyond that. Any and all sovereign nations retain their territories as they were first shaped and finalized?”
“Fucking yes to all of that! If you knew all of this shit already, but you still pulled this little stunt here, then you must be one of the stupidest people alive.” The smug set of teeth beaming from Gregory’s face was matched only by the quiet intensity of the man’s slight grin. “If you wanted to be a war criminal, there had to be some easier ways to do it. But, hey, if you wanted to be an attention whore, too, I’m not going to argue the point with you. I’m happy that you’re getting your ass kicked either way. Just a shame that it had to happen in front of these ravishing beauties.”
“Then, by your own words, you must give up your claim on this land.” The man called out to Gregory, sending a chill through everyone in the room. “You have broken the laws of the Aggregation of Countries on several accounts, which you admitted to in this conversation in front of all these witnesses. By stepping over the sovereignty of the nation that lives here in claiming the land as yours, you are the offending party.”
Quite the accusation. I felt a cold specter’s fingers drift up my spine as he said it. The power of his voice, the way he stood steadfast in every argument before this. It would have been the perfect ruse to pull the wool over Gregory’s eyes and humiliate him in front of all of his peers. However, it all hinged on a right to first sovereignty that he didn’t have. Clearly, the Numanians were the first nation to settle this land. He was grasping at straws. And I had such high hopes for him. I honestly felt that there was more going on between his words than he had let on. However, it was just a ruse in the end.
“Okay, first off, you can’t accuse us of doing something we haven’t even done yet.” Gregory’s smile sickened me in a way I had never been so repulsed by him before. “Second, you’re not a sovereign nation, bud. You’re a conman tool who’d bitten off way more than he could chew, but I really enjoy how much you’re struggling at every turn so far. Really, it’s refreshing. This is the most fun I’ve had in a long time, so thanks for that. I loved every second of showing you how over your head everything here is. You don’t fucking mess with Numania, baby! We run this bitch!”
“I’m not talking about now.” The man continued his ruse, never once losing that confidence that carried him through everything so far. “I’m talking about six
hundred years ago, when the nation was founded. You claimed this land as your own, but you did so by committing every crime that you had just agreed to here.”
“What?” Gregory was just as thrown off as the rest of us here. “What are you talking about?”
“The Gyumin indigenous peoples,” the mysterious man said. “They were the first to settle this land back when there were no other people. They did this over one thousand years before Numanian settlers from further east had come and waged a bloody war against them. They were removed from their own land and scattered to the winds. Today, the Gyumin have come to reclaim their lost land, by the law that you all claim to adhere to.”
“What?!” Gregory’s voice boomed throughout the lobby as the rest of us picked our jaws up from the floor. “You’re making a claim based on that?! On the fact that you’re a goddamn native?! What kind of bullshit is that?! How does that make any goddamn sense?!”
“We have experienced all the crimes that you agreed to.” The man’s words fell into a new light, reflected as the remnants of a lost people on their native soil. “If your Aggregation of Countries is truly on the side of justice for all countries, then you must side with my claim to this land. It is my sovereign nation.”
“What about all the people that you’ve displaced?” Gregory argued against the man, though we had seen how well that worked out last time. “All the people who’ve been ripped from their homes since you’ve marched your Gyumin asses back here. Aren’t you just as evil as you claim we are by doing this to good, honest Numanians? They were born on that land! They are just as native as you are. Oh, wait, were you actually born here? Seems like you were part of a lost tribe that’s been ‘lost to the winds,’ so you actually haven’t been nativeborn to this place for the past six hundred years. That’s too bad.”
