Countless Joyful Dawns - Chapter ?? - 29: WAR! II (Patreon)

Naturally, walking into the Department of State and saying I wanted to declare war caused a commotion. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the right type of commotion. More of the same. ‘Hands where I can see them’, ‘you’re under arrest’, and ‘clear the lobby’.

Sigh.

Not a single word about ‘yes, Ambassador John Smith will see you now’, or at least a simple ‘Please wait in the George Washington Conference room’. Like, they could’ve been smart about trying to set up an ambush or something.

Well, the shuttered blast doors and windows were at least a good idea. I gave the receptionist one last withering glare before teleporting to an occupied office with a ‘deputy director’ nameplate on it.

The man jumped about a foot in the air, but soon recomposed himself. 

“Deputy Director Johnson. Are you lost, miss…?” He said, politely putting down his pen and folding his hands together.

“Hi! I’m Elaine! Sorry to drop in on you like this. I was trying to go through the right channels, but the receptionist in the lobby got a bee up their bonnet when I tried to make an appointment.”

“Oh?” He asked.

Dude had diplomatic chops, that was for sure. High score, 9/10 in my book, someone was training some of the people quite well. A nice reminder that one didn’t need a skill or class to be good at things.

“Yeah! Alright, condensed version. I’m a displaced dimensional traveler. I’m low down in my government’s hierarchy, but I am a ranking member, and I do have diplomatic credentials for situations like this. I’ve been trying to get diplomatic recognition and a basic treaty together. The PRT’s been giving me an extremely hard time, and I suspect they haven’t passed the message along. On a more immediate note, they’ve also decided to try and arrest me, which is going poorly.”

“Are you requesting asylum, or protection or something?” He asked. “Because we can’t just grant everything you’re asking to everyone who comes in. If you’ve got a link, land, or other resources to demonstrate, we can begin talking, but I hope you understand, one person, alone, making wild claims? No can do.”

“Oh! No. No, since the government of the United States has decided to engaged in armed conflict, deliberately and knowingly, none of this first day contact confusion, we’re heading to the next stage in negotiations. Since nobody’s decided to take me seriously yet, and nobody’s filling out the proper paperwork, I’m filing the declaration of war paperwork, giving you my demands, and then we can get to the serious business of twisting each other’s arm until one of us yells uncle.”

Ah, and there was the distress button getting pressed. I put a shield over it.

“I see.” He said. I could see the moment a particular thought crossed his face, which read as ‘this crazy lady is terrible at diplomacy’.

Which I was. Legally banned six times from conducting diplomacy! Fortunately, the last ban expired 79 years ago, which meant it was just about time for the latest mess to be made! Woo! I was not looking forward to the special investigation. Maybe I’d just drop a copy of the last declaration with the dates changed and see if the Senate would just ratify it and end our collective misery. 

 “And what would those demands be?”

I dropped the treaty I’d drafted on the desk. It was a short one, as these things went. Only 80 pages. Normalized relations, identification of important offices and people, mutual aid in returning home, basic support if someone were to be found stranded on either side, and the one thing that made every government run - tax treatments.

Basically - ‘Buzz off, leave me alone, and help me get back home. In exchange, we’ll help any of your people get back home if they get stuck on Pallos’. But phrased properly.

I quickly explained it all to him. His chuckle was fake, but well-meaning.

“If there’s anything that would get me to believe you worked for the government, it’d be all the paperwork.” He said. “Now, would you mind holding off while I discuss this with the proper department?”

My smile came straight from a shark’s. 

“Oh no, sadly, we’re past that point now.” I said. “Without pressure, nobody’s going to move on this. Let’s discuss the rules of warfare?”

“The United States is a signatory member of the Geneva Accords, and will follow all appropriate laws.” His phrasing was rote, but I wasn’t born yesterday.

“The United States routinely disregards said Accords, and claims a legal justification when the other parties aren’t signatories themselves. Which I’m not. You could do anything, and call it an internal police action, and nobody would protest.”

He leaned back, and we got deep into diplomatic phrasing. The short, short version, skipping the half-dozen back and forths - and two of Johnson’s meetings - was that chemicalwas chemical and biological weapons were off the table. Targeting medics and hospitals was on the table, because otherwise they couldn’t target me. I kept quiet that I wasn’t allowed to target them anyway, because I was still bound by my own rules. Hey, if I could make them sweat…

He tried to get only military targets approved. I pointed out that civilians and military shared supply lines, the President was considered military, and the most effective method we had was to pressure political leaders directly, which they wanted to keep off-limits. Otherwise it was ‘just terrorism’.  

I pointed out the difference between terrorism and freedom fighters or war was the recognized legitimacy of the other party, and if they’d just legally recognize me, we wouldn’t be here arguing over it.

“... I think we’re just going in circles, and we’re not going to agree on anything else at this point. Plus, I’ve been stalled long enough.”

I looked at the clock, and pulled out another piece of paper. I quickly wrote a few sentences on it, and signed my name with a flourish.

“Here. Formal declaration of war. Starts at 3PM. See you tomorrow at noon! Oh, and here’s my phone number, I’ll accept an informal surrender at any time. Cheers!”

With that, I vanished, and was hovering in the air over Washington DC a moment later. Johnson was already yelling, and people were listening. Good.

Now… what would cause utter grief, be ridiculously expensive, but not cause harm? Blowing up bridges, killing power plants, and destroying sanitation equipment was all on the list… a little further down. Needed to slowly ‘cook’ the locals first, get them used to the idea there were Problems, and have enough backups in place so I’d cause inconvenience, not harm.

Inspiration struck as I was hovering.

Planes!

Nobody needed to fly. Yes, a lot of people had to fly, but they weren’t critical in the same way. There were lots of very expensive, very inconvenient replacements to flying, but it wasn’t mandatory. Bonus! It hit the wealthy far harder than the poor, AND it kept the local political leaders from easily fleeing!

I plotted, I planned, and when my phone said 3PM, I moved. It was important for a government to have a reputation for honesty, after all. How else would they be able to cover up dirty secrets if people didn’t believe them?

First things first, utter menace time. I zipped over to the White House, and teleported confoam grenades all over the place. Sure, they’d get out in a few hours, but until then? Chaos, confusion, and the sheer indignity of getting stuck in confoam. I don’t think I managed to get the president - he was off kissing babies or murdering rivals in sketchy allieys or whatever the locals got up to - but it was about sending a message.

I’d eventually get around to finding where he was bunkered up along with whoever was on the whitelist - politicians ALWAYS had a bunker, even if they didn’t call it that - and gift them with a few more grenades. Teleported into the safe room, of course. 

Then it was off to the airport! 

Shutting down an airport slowly and carefully was hard. I could be stupid and drop one of my favorite grenades into the airport traffic controller’s tower, but that would just get flights confused and possibly crashing into each other. Same with fucking with the runway directly. People might not notice in time, then planes start exploding all over the place. 

Hmm… but the runway was a good place to start for other reasons. I flew over to the local airport, and found a plane just starting to nose its way onto the runway.

Perfect!

I dropped my invisibility, unfurled my glowing wings, turned my glow way up, and descended on the plane. 

“Be not afraid!” I boomed, holding my hand out in the classic ‘Stop’ pose in front of the pilots. I backed up as they brought the plane to a halt. Be dumb of me to assume they could stop on a dime. 

There was a lot of angry-looking shouting and gesturing, but, errr… solid window? I could hear them, they couldn’t hear me, and oh look, some fliers were already coming up from the airport. Good reaction times!

With the plane stopped I zipped over to the wings and tried to break them off. Except between the structural support of the wings and my lack of skills relating to it, I went through the wings, spilling gas everywhere. I then ripped off the engines, disabling the plane.

Excellent! One plane - and hence, entire runway - down, one airport to go.

If they were halfway competent, ‘Parahuman attack on planes’ would shut down the rest of the airport, at which point I could wreack merry havoc on the rest of the infrastructure and finish shutting down the place. It’d rapidly make the news, go up the chain of command, and oh look! A deputy director from the State Department has my… man, I sound really bad when I say they’re a list of demands, but that’s literally what a war was. 

My formal title was War Sentinel Dawn, I just tended to keep the first part off. 

Once the planes stopped coming in and out, I went and wrecked quite a lot of very expensive equipment, making sure to avoid the fuel lines. No gigantic explosions on my watch, no! But radar, towers, docking things, weird scanners people had to walk through before getting onboard, baggage carouselscarosoles… oh the list of things ‘how to disable an airport’ was extensive. 

I couldn’t make it TOO bad though, otherwise the place would be a complete write off. Plus, there were more airports in the area!

Oh yeah, and a number of parahumans tried to stop me. The ones who could maybe catch up to me couldn’t hurt me. The ones that were dangerous were far too slow. And that’s IF they knew where I was. Doing this all invisibly was brutal, and they didn’t have Radiance or other Mirage-strobpping wide-bore countermeasures to stop me. Which relegated regulated them to a footnote.

With the major airport disabled, I hit a few minor ones, including the Air Force base! I wanted to rob their armory blind, but it turned out missiles were expensive and BIG. I wanted to destroy them, but didn’t know if I’d cause a chain reaction and kill the entire base or something.

I contented myself by dropping another confoam grenade or five in various places, destroying lots of expensive equipment via reasonable amounts of Radiance to melt holes in things, and moved along.

I was flying high up when my eyes went as round as coins.

A ship! I could do something I always wanted to do! Iona got to do it last time, damn her, and the opportunity had never come up again.

I zipped over and ended up on the bridge. The usual yelling started as I grabbed the ship-wide communications. I got tackled by several crew members, but they couldn’t stop the signal.

“Hello ship! This is not your captain speaking. ALL HANDS, ABANDON SHIP! Abandon ship! This is not a drill! The ship’s going to get sunk in…” I did some brief math on how believable things were, how long it’d take people to evacuate, and frowned. “25 minutes! All hands, abandon ship!”

Then I destroyed the communication equipment, and for good measure, dropped a confoam grenade on the bridge. A quick teleport got me out of the mess, and cleaned my outfit.

Waiting 25 minutes to sink a ship? Eh… it really wasn’t worth it.

30 seconds to cause utter chaos and pandemonium? Heck yes!

Oh! Speaking of pandemonium!

I vanished for 45 minutes to prepare my latest scheme. Banks were robbed, spells were cast, and neighborhoods were scouted.

Then I made it literally rain money. In important places.

I wanted to hit the local necromancers, but they’d retired for the day. Nine old men and women, passing the final judgement on laws by trying to consult with the spirits of the founders? Between us, that sounded a lot like necromancy. With how weird parahumans were, it wouldn’t surprise me if they’d actually managed it somehow. Ah well, I’d get the Supreme Court another day. 

The chaos continued non-stop. Confoam grenades were my best friend. I hit every house in the very rich part of town. I foamed major intersections closed, but left clear detour signs. I bought as many USB sticks as the local electronics stores could hold, and plugged them into a bunch of secure-looking computers. I wasn’t doing anything with them, but apparently they caused all sorts of paranoia and problems. I left mysterious hand-written messages tucked into sensitive places, like ‘check under the cabinet’ or ‘she’s betrayed you’ or ‘beware the Iides of March’. Cryptic nonsense that’d get people scratching their heads or running around, not actually doing their job.

S is for Sabotage.

Fridges were opened, freezers were ruined, and paperwork was lost. All at the speed of thought.

With 40 parallel thoughts going on, and a sphere of perception that measured in city blocks, it was incredibly quick and easy for me to silently and invisibly teleport through a space, utterly bollocks it all up, then leave.

In short, I made myself everybody’s problem. Navy and Airforce, legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Rich and powerful. Basically getting the ‘scream’ sirens going at full tilt.

Damn. I should’ve left a calling card, so people would’ve known who to pester. I did make sure to take a pause and get a number of water samples. If I knew what drug was in the water supply, it would help me at the negotiating table. 

At 11:45 the next morning, I finished applying superglue to a pair of shoes - look, the logic made sense - and zipped back over to the Department of State.

Oh look. A big conference room, absolutely filled with a dozen important-looking people, including my good friend Johnson, and three dozen remote access laptops. Hey, it only took 21 hours of chaos to bring them to the negotiating table.

Also… that was a lot of parahumans, and I instantly became suspicious. I could absolutely see the government having a bunch of Masters on retainer and usingused them to go ‘lol brainwash’ to inconvenient problems. Like. It was just the sort of messed up thing that would happen on Pallos if we had access to brain washing, I can’t imagine it didn’t occur to them here.

Instead, I found where someone was remoting into the meeting - seriously, could you not walk down two flights of stairs - and teleported onto her lap.

“Hello!” I said, then turned to the camera. I ignored the sputtered protests, grabbed the laptop, and slowly flew up. The woman fled the room. Maybe she could have my chair in the conference room, it seemed only fair.

Something, something, this was a truce meeting, why am I taking hostages, something. Honestly, these people. 

At exactly 12 I clapped my hands, and talked over anyone who wasn’t listening to me.

“Hello! It’s been 21 hours since the start of hostilities. Are you ready to surrender yet?” I asked.

A coldly composed lady with the nameplate of Chief Director Costa-Brown spoke up.

“If your little tantrum is done-”

“Right, I see that nothing’s going to get done at today’s negotiations.” I said, cutting her off.

Which is when the Endbringer sirens went off.