Tanya had dressed up even more than usual, commissioning a second Dress with Pockets, although this one had a different name: The Hammertime dress. In addition to providing Inventory, it also could generate a basic melee weapon even with nothing stored, which was a neat feature.

  The point, of course, was to just have a more regal appearance when meeting the government representatives. Jack had figured out enough about how the signamancy shifts when her crown transforms her clothes into armor that he could make it so that the appearance in both states was something he controlled. This one looked like a formal kimono while transformed, and Tanya used her signamancy wand to touch up her appearance to match it better. It helped a lot that her mother was available to ensure that she looked properly authentic.

  The meeting was held in one of the many government buildings in Tokyo, not one of the famous ones, but it was near the Diet building. The conference room was richly appointed, and set up in a formal tea ceremony.

  If they sought to put her on the wrong foot, they had gone about it entirely the wrong way. It was only after introductions were had that the truth of the matter came out: In addition to the expected group of someone high up in Japan’s military procurement, one or two economic ministers of some kind (there were, like, 5 different ones), and someone from the Emperor’s staff, there was also Lt. General Jost, the commander of all military assets of the United States in Japan. The tea ceremony was an extremely polite interjection towards the American.

  None of them wore masks, although their respective staffs did, but she wasn’t worried: While it did take some doing to properly explain how diseases worked, she was able to procure a healomancy wand that should be able to handle any hostile status effects, even if they were imitations of flower power poison effects from other disciplines. Analysis was already able to detect infections. In fact…

  During a lull in the ceremony, where conversation was expected, she politely expressed discomfort before bringing up an uncomfortable topic. “Ah, if you’ll pardon me, there is something I should do.” She took out the wand, which looked like a cartoon’s rendition of a mercury thermometer, and pointed it at one of the attendants. “Chicken Soup.” She said in Language, which, with another check using Analysis, cleared her of the infection. “I apologize, but that could have gotten ugly if her mask slipped.”

  Naturally, it was the American who actually spoke up: “...What did you just do?” He asked.

  Tanya blinked in faux-confusion. “I healed her sickness, of course. She had covid. No one else in the room does, incidentally.”

  “And you did that by saying Chicken Soup in English.” Jost deadpanned.

  “I used a wand, I don’t get to set the incantation.” Tanya retorted, “I’m not a healer.” Not to say that the caster set it either, they could if they understood signamancy enough to pick something fitting, but most just let Fate do that for them. “Before you ask, unfortunately you need to be able to cast spells in order to use wands, and while it’s not impossible to get around this limitation, it’s complicated.”

  “I wish to know how you knew she had it.” Interjected Sagara, the military procurement guy.

  Tanya flicked her earrings. “These can feed me information about things I look at. I got them before I learned useful magic, but now I can cast spells to do the same thing.” Specifically, Analysis was a mathamancy/foolamancy special. “Most relevantly, they can tell me if any conditions exist that would be relevant to know, which includes diseases or poisons.” Was she implying that she could detect poison even without those earrings? Yes. Can she? Also yes. It was actually obscenely difficult to ensnare a cautious Hokey Pokey in a trap, no matter which axis they use. “Given the pandemic, I thought it wise to check everyone’s condition.”

  “Would those be for sale?” Jost asked, intrigued.

  “I don’t see why not.” Tanya said, “They aren’t as effective in this world, but they can still divine conditions, which is all you’d really need from them.”

  “What else can they see?” Sagara asked, once more taking the lead for actionable specifics.

  “Combat potential, mostly.” Tanya said vaguely. “Here, let me…” She used foolamancy to show them a few of the stat boards.

  [Lt. General Stephen Jost]

  Combat: -2 (unarmed)

  Defense: 2

  Hits: 6

  Honestly, she was a little surprised he even rated a stabber-level stat block.

  [Sosuke Sagara]

  Combat: 6

  Defense: 6

  Hits: 13

  Special: Martial Arts

  It was also surprising that a military procurement person had knight-level stats. And an unarmed special. She now suspected that he was some kind of special forces person, either former or current.

  [Empress Tanya von Degurechaff, level 10 ruler]

  Combat: 33

  Defense: 43

  Hits: 20 (20)

  Specials: Royal, Attuned, Leadership, Caster, Flight, Recon

  Conditions: Barrier, Leadership x2, Inventory, Hammertime

  Interesting fact: White’s Chief Warlord bonus didn’t reach her in this world. She edited away the stuff she didn’t want to explain, like her Tanya special and her infinite Move stat, as Earthlings lacked the stat altogether. She thought about editing it further, but decided that it would help her case if she left something potentially inflammatory. “You see the difference, of course.” Tanya explained, “I suspect that your own points are just… approximations, rather than the mathematical certainties I can input into magical equations to calculate battle odds.”

  “...What does that kind of difference mean?” Jost asked, rubbing his chin.

  “A twenty-point lead is considered enough to be functionally invulnerable.” Tanya explained, “It’s not literally so; dogpiling someone with bodies is always an effective option, it’s just that such an extreme difference requires an even more extreme numbers disparity to overcome.”

  “It seems that someone who can fly would be difficult to dogpile.” Observed Jost.

  “Eh, depends on what you’re doing it with.” Tanya waved vaguely. “There was this one ally I used to have who liked swarming their enemies with bats, and that’s not something I’d want to fight unless I had some dragons or something on my side.” Any heavy flier would do, really. Yeah, she could croak hundreds of bats with her shockamancy, but that would run out relatively quickly. Heavy attacks croaking half a dozen bats per swing multiplied by a stack would be much more reliable. “My point is that the laws of physics are different here, so I’d hesitate to assume anything would work exactly the same as in the other world. It just so happens that healing magic seems to work okay.” She suspected that erf-axis magic would likely have the hardest time, as hat magic needed date-a-mancy to be incorporated to traverse the dimensional barrier, as an example. “We can arrange tests for any claims later, for now I’ll have to ask you to take me at my word, as I don’t expect to come to any firm agreements without further meetings.”

  The Japanese representatives nodded understandingly, but Jost looked suspicious instead. “How does magic… work?” He decided to ask.

  “That would take a very long lecture to properly explain.” Tanya said, “But broadly speaking, magic can be subdivided into twenty-four disciplines, which collectively can explain all natural phenomena, referred to as ‘natural magic’ if it doesn’t come from a caster. Are you following?”

  “Sounds like a bunch of unscientific crap.” He said, frowning.

  “Speaking as someone with knowledge of physics in both worlds, yes it’s pretty unscientific.” Tanya admitted, “But if you ever saw the difference between someone dying from a fall here and someone dying from a fall there, you’d understand why the distinction exists.” Most of the time, lethal injuries carried the signamancy of lethal injuries. Units that croak from a small fall do things like fall on their heads or impale themselves, but it didn’t always work out that way. Sometimes their eyes turned into X’s to what an Earthling would call entirely survivable events, sometimes the opposite happened and someone lived with the top half of their head cut off, exposing their brain to air. Until they got healed at the start of turn. “While there are certainly biases and cultural blindspots among the magical community, and there’s certainly spirited debate about the true nature of magic and other such topics, generally speaking they know what they’re talking about.”

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “Alright, fair enough.” He said, waving off her concern.

  “Moving on, each class, which is a set of three disciplines of those twenty-four, requires a specific mindset to properly utilize, with each caster first learning a single discipline and branching out to the other disciplines within their class as they develop their skills, typically.” Tanya explained, creating a foolamancy spreadsheet that showed little pictures instead of words showing off the magic discipline, to keep things vague-ish. “So casting among multiple classes as I do is quite unusual, even if I mostly stick to the one axis.” She highlighted the ones she could cast, all of which being in the third column. “It makes me uniquely suited to speak on behalf of other casters, although politically I’m closer to some classes’ guilds than others.” She smiled enigmatically. “Of course, failing that, I have… this.” She pulled out the special hat she brought with her. “This is a message hat, it can pass small objects between itself and other message hats. Most can’t cross the dimensional barrier, but this one can, but only to its matched pair, and even then it only works if it’s possessed by someone I’m close with.” Janis had the other one, as being the one who linked up to create it made her uniquely suited to make use of it. “I had it made during my recent trip back.”

  “But you can’t just give us wands, because you need to be a caster.” Repeated Sagara.

  Tanya took out a wand and passed it over to Jost before explaining in English: “Think of an animal that you’d find in a city, wave it, and say ‘Where is it, boy?’. We’ll see if something happens.”

  The wand’s tip had a dog head on it, so he looked at her strangely, shrugged, and did it. “Where is it, boy?” He said sarcastically. “...Nothing happened.” He said.

  “What did you try and find?” Tanya asked, taking the wand back.

  “A cat.”

  “Where is it, boy?” Tanya said, waving the wand and thinking of cats. “The nearest cat is… that way.” She said, pointing the wand in that direction. “So no, you can’t use it.”

  “You have something less fakable?” He asked.

  “I used a safe option.” Tanya said defensively. “But fine, let’s go with…” She put the wand back and started digging in her sleeves. “I suppose this one? Yes. Watch.” She waved the new wand and said “Reload.” A magazine matching her pistol appeared. Fully loaded. “It should be able to do a second one, picture the gun you want ammo for and it’ll appear.“ She handed him the ammo-making wand and slipped the magazine into her kimono sleeves. “Do not get fancy with it, think of a regular gun.”

  “Reload.” He declared. Nothing happened. “Reload.” He repeated. “Maybe if I had the gun on me...” He muttered.

  Tanya took out her pistol, unloaded it, worked the action to remove the bullet in the chamber, and passed it to him. She then put the ammo back in her sleeves. She used foolamancy to instead make it look like she pulled out a gun that wasn’t loaded and was visibly so to anyone watching. Yes, anyone reviewing the recording of the meeting would see her unload the pistol, but that sent a message that she didn’t dislike.

  “Thanks.” Jost muttered, holding the unloaded pistol in one hand with proper trigger discipline and pointed upward, and waved the wand. “Reload.” He said insistently. Nothing happened.

  “I’ll be taking those back now.” Tanya said, gently removing it from his hands to a disappointed look. “Reload.” She said, just to further prove it worked, creating another magazine. She then put the whole set back inside her kimono sleeves. “I hope that settles that question?”

  “Why did you bring a gun here?” Omeda, the representative of the Emperor’s staff, asked.

  “To test if a feature worked here. It’s the only thing I have that usually needs that particular enchantment.” Tanya replied, “Tell me General, did you notice anything odd about that gun? Have you handled firearms before?”

  “Of course I have.” Jost said, mildly offended. “No, it seemed normal.”

  Tanya frowned. “Well, does anyone here have absolutely zero firearms experience?” One of the Economic ministers raised their hand. “Here. Load this gun.” She said, handing him a pistol and a magazine.

  After a few seconds of him awkwardly trying to load it, she bade him to stop trying and took the pistol back. “Okay, that pistol was enchanted with a feature that taught you how to use it, so if that doesn’t work, it doesn’t look good for the same enchantment working with wands.” She took out a piece of paper and started writing down the results of the test, sending it through the message hat. “Crystal Tokyo.” Several of the Japanese ministers gave her a weird look at the password. “We’ll test it anyway.” She explained.

  She took out another piece of paper. “Now that the part where we each question the other’s integrity is out of the way…” She gave Jost a hard look, which sent a murmur of agreement among the Japanese members of the meeting. “I have written down a list of effects that I think would be useful in a military context, keeping in mind that the scale of production is an issue; these items must be largely handcrafted by experts who will quickly grow bored of making thousands of the same item over long periods of time. Culturally, they highly value their freedom and a big part of that is being able to choose their work.”

  Jost growled at the warning. “You’re an Empress, though.” He pointed out. “Can’t you just order them?”

  “If we were talking about the casters under my direct command, you would be correct.” Tanya explained patiently. “But that is a limited quantity: while it’s not strictly necessary to involve the disciplines that specialize in creating items to have a useful product, a lot of the potential options are superfluous with your technology. More to the point, there’s only so much that making more money will satisfy my subordinates’ sense of Duty.” She clicked her tongue in sympathetic disappointment. “No, if you want any sort of quantity, I would need to commission the products from an international conclave of mercenary magicians, which is controlled by no one ruler. They can be motivated by money, but only so far: thus, the warning. These are not desperate third world peasants, and you should set expectations accordingly.” She tapped the hat’s brim. “Some influential members are cooperating, enough that I was able to get this made without any trouble, so I can more or less guarantee that all possible efforts will be made to do the necessary R&D, manufacturing capacity is another matter entirely.”

  With the American properly browbeaten, both military personnel went through the list, asking about parameters for the less clear ones. Overall, it was rather productive; testing was arranged, and a few products were deemed to be worth the prices (in gold) that were quoted.

  It was still rather tedious, however: she would have vastly preferred just staying an eccentric streamer.

  ---------------------------

  It was in the middle of a stream that it happened. She was minding her own business, waiting for the matchmaking software to find her an opponent. She was playing something that she had enjoyed before her death, a sci-fi RTS that was still around. Unlike a lot of other American-made games, she got to enjoy very low ping due to all of those Korean servers. It did, however, mean she got her butt kicked a lot. She was getting better, though!

  “Okay, so it looks like we’re playing against…” Tanya paused. “...CharlsecommOfficial.” It couldn’t be… could it?

  A thinkagram alert appeared in her consciousness and also on her computer screen, and the latter opened automatically when the game finished loading. Not letting her shock stop her from beginning her build order, sending a worker to scout out the enemy base, she growled. “Charlie.”

  “Hello, Princess!” Charlie’s suave voice came from her computer speakers. “Hello to you too, chat. I’m Charlie, and today I’m here to show off what makes me great: Winning!”

  “Odds are he’s hacking.” Tanya said idly, playing somewhat safely. Map hacks would be the least surprising thing he could be doing… She opened up her foolamancy senses so she could see what her audience could see, and saw the Vtuber avatar Charlie was using: He looked like an anime character, of course; but chat quickly deduced which one: apparently, there was an anime with an alternate Britain conquering the world, and the Emperor there was named Charles.

  “Hey, I never cheat.” Charlie complained, offended.

  “Okay.” Tanya deadpanned, not bothering to engage the topic. “So why did you decide to take time from your busy schedule to use your divine artifact to hack my stream?”

  “Can’t I just enjoy playing games?” Charlie asked rhetorically. “Don’t be so paranoid, you’re being irrational.”

  Tanya’s eye twitched at the gaslighting attempt. “You wouldn’t give up an advantage like ‘revealing you can breach dimensions’ without some kind of angle. I’m just doing my own thing.”

  “Ah ah ah.” Charlie tutted, “That’s the thing, your Majesty: You’re not.” Chat was going wild, of course: mostly questioning about this debut collaboration, because unlike her, Charlie was perfectly capable of mimicking the usual ‘clearly CG’ aspects of normal Vtuber interactions. Or it was just a side-effect of him being a paralyzed whale of a unit. Given how he was perfectly capable of hiding that fact, it was definitely him purposely looking like his avatar had a stroke. “You’re fixing to disrupt the delicate ecosystem that we’ve got going on over here, you know: If you thought Fate hated me for just doing what I can to survive, making use of the extra-universal channels like I’m doing right now, it’s going to absolutely loathe you for bringing in millions of shmuckers from extra-universal banks.”

  “Fate’s just going to need to get in line.” Tanya said, unconcerned. It was mostly a facade of bravado, but it wouldn’t be the first faux-omnipotent entity that would have it out for her, so what’s one more? “Besides, you introducing guns did plenty on that front, far more than just accumulating obscene amounts of wealth.”

  As Tanya had expected, Charlie knew everything she was doing, and was sending several harassment units at any weakness. However… he wasn’t actually practiced in the game. His macro was good, but his micro was clumsy.

  “I wasn’t the one who proliferated them.” Charlie snapped. “That was you.”

  “No, that was Jack.” Tanya replied smoothly, dropping several units in Charlie’s main base to cripple his unit production. “I would have been perfectly happy keeping things according to the unwritten rules, but Jack doesn’t play by those. Some men just want to watch the Erf burn.” After a moment, she added: “But if you think for one minute that I was fooled by your gambit with the Yahtzees, with those ‘Quality Educational Conferences’, then your drug habit is compounding with senility.”

  “Hey now, Charlescomm may be the premier Battlespace Solutions provider, but that is not among the many services we offer.” Charlie said, pretending to be offended.

  “Nondisclosure agreements aren’t as ironclad as you think they are.” Tanya said, scoffing as she steadily pulled ahead in the round. Specifically, by both turning a unit to a side that wasn’t a signatory, then using thinkamancy to share the knowledge before the unit even realized they were breaking the nondisclosure, she got to be fully informed, and her enemy likely had to pay a penalty to Charlie on top of that. “Actually, did Helmet have to pay a penalty for me prying it out of his commander? I’m curious.”

  “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” Charlie insisted, still sticking to his story to the end.

  “Nevertheless, I don’t have any intentions on going to sack your pathetic hacker cave anytime in the foreseeable future, so go away before I remember that there’s nothing actually stopping me from spending an hour or two every day flying over there and breaking something beyond my own good nature.” Tanya said, right as she finished wiping out Charlie’s armies and going to town on his remaining infrastructure. “GG no re.” Infinite Move and mathamancy letting her snipe units from outside hexes with no penalty means that she could, theoretically, clear out Charlie’s airspace every turn without him being able to do a whole lot to stop her, unless he started pulling thinkamancy tricks that the Great Minds are reasonably certain he cannot accomplish.

  Worst case from his demonstrated capabilities, he’ll try and DDoS her, and Maggie doesn’t need to be in her hex to shield her from those, just attentive. Whether she can handle the bandwidth he can output isn’t quite clear, but it should give her enough warning to escape any trap he would try to ensnare her with or finish any action he tried to stop her from doing.

  “I haven’t lost yet!” Charlie said through gritted teeth. Suddenly, her game crashed, showing off her primary monitor’s background, which was a picture of Chibi and Tanya’s duplicate posing with Chibi’s stack of archons, a photo she took with her phone before leaving. The background of the shot was the open sky, of course; the picture was taken from the tower’s balcony. “Oh, you seem to have quit the game.” Charlie said smugly, “Looks like I win after all.”

  “The game’s not over until the fat baldy crows, I see.” Tanya said, nodding to herself at the faux wisdom. “Any parting words of wisdom from the world’s greasiest con artist?”

  Charlie was silent as their mutual heartstring of hatred thrummed with meaning: he had just muttered something frustrated. “Look, you are right that we both benefit from you being over there.” The man admitted, “But that only applies as long as you stay over there. Cross back over here again and I’ll do more than just damage your MMR.” He cut the connection.

  Tanya looked over the chat. “Yeah, he’s a Tool. I completely agree.”