Dear Diary,

I grew up with the idea that governments are big monolithic things, but here and now? The personal part of things surfaces way more often.

So a little bit before lunch Fred and I wound up cycling to the same hillside to run our units through advancing and falling back on hillsides. At one point while the troops took a rest he walked between our units and waved me over. I made sure my Sergeant knew not to let the soldiers settle too much, because we'd want to get one cycle up, down, and side to side before the mid-day break, then joined Fred on the hillside.

"Hey Fred. What's up?"

He shot me a thin smile, like he wanted to hide it or something, and said, "did you really write that letter to Sister Trease?"

It took me a minute to figure out what he was talking about. When I did I chuckled. "Yeah, I kinda did. I know I half assed it, but I was still a little pissed at the time."

He choked off a laugh. "Holy shit, Diaz. Epic levels of disrespect there."

"You got a problem with that?"

He shook his head. "Trease is an utter bitch. The worst kind of Bag; the kind that buys into all the Dan bullshit about Bag. Like maybe if she abuses her own people enough they'll throw her some scraps or something."

Something occurred to me just then. "Wait, how did you get to read my apologies?"

He sighed. "All the Heroes who can read and translate English were out in the field. I mean, most of them still are, and the ones who aren't have more important shit to do right now."

"You read and write English?"

My brain tied itself in a knot when he said, "Yeah, don't you?" In English. Which my brain for some reason translated to Spanish, even while I understood it, mostly. So fuckin' weird.

I stuttered for a little bit before replying, "Yeah. Yeah, I do."

"I gotta know; did you write them in English just so you could drop that letter on Trease with none the wiser?"

I shook my head, "no." I took a deep breath. "I can't write in Celtic. Well, I couldn't. I'm learning. Saffron's a really good teacher. But I sure as shit couldn't then."

"Huh." He shrugged. "Still cool anyhow. Are you English?"

"I dunno. Maybe a little on my dad's side? But nothing I can be sure about."

We stood there silently for a while after that, just watching the troops catching their breath. "Yeah. Trease? Steps her bitch up a notch for English Bag," Fred muttered, half under his breath.

I slapped a hand on his shoulder. "Stay strong, man. Worst she can do to you is bitch at your house... father? If she gets out of hand, let me know. I'll talk to her."

He smiled at my choice of words. "That's totally not what his title is. And it's also totally what we call him when he's not listening. Thanks."

Then we got back to it. Charge up the hill. Charge down the hill. Back up the hill. Back down the hill. Advance and retreat along the side of the hill. All 'good training'. In other words, a royal pain in the ass. Then again, I figure this was one of those things that might never come up, but if it did, you'd be glad you'd trained for it. Lancaster might be the world's biggest dick, but the more I thought about it, the more I suspected he was also the world's most competent asshole.

So prior to today lunchtime involved the Cadets dismissing the Volunteers for two hours, rushing in to cram food, then coming back out to train. Not so much, today, and it came as a total surprise to everyone.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

"Attention Heroes, Cadets, and Volunteers. Please assemble on the lawn to the northwest of the Loading Docks." Headmaster Miles' voice rolled over the lawns, loud enough to be heard over the sounds of men marching up and down the hill, their spears and shields clashing. I looked over to Fred, who shrugged. We guided our units to march back to the nearby Loading Docks side by side. While nobody'd ever told us to form our formations up into bigger formations, it just seemed kinda natural, what with duBois' repeated comments about formations being force multipliers.

We got to the rally point along with the others who'd been working on hillside training. Shortly thereafter Saffron's group and the other units training with crossbows ambled in; they'd been down shooting at targets on floating buoys. Way less likely to shoot a friendly when the nearest one was across the river and up a hill, and way easier to collect missed shots when they floated. While I suspected Vulcan's bolts were made of sterner stuff, the mass produced bolts for the mass produced crossbows were steel-tipped wood. They wouldn't drive through a solid rock wall, but they'd punch a hole in pretty much any armor a person was likely to be wearing, or any shield they'd likely be carrying. Finally, the units doing spear training and the ones doing endurance training arrived at just about the same time. The spear trainers didn't train in formation, and the endurance trainers had been further away.

The doors to the Loading Docks swung open, and the Maids advanced, pushing their carts ahead of them. All but one of the carts had been piled high with stacks of sandwiches nearly as tall as the Maids themselves. The one exception, right smack dab in the middle of the formation of Maids? Marie, whose cart had half as many sandwiches, but a very recognizable Isnomi clinging to a short flagpole that she braced against the top of the cart. Flying from it, from top to bottom, was a flag with the Academy Crest, a flag with two vertical cobalt blue stripes separated by a canary yellow one, and the Camden Yards flag. Isnomi wore her new tiara and cummerbund, and waved the flag back and forth for all she was worth. I'd practiced for color guard back in ROTC, and my old DI would have given her shit about that, but y'know what? Fuck him.

Okay, nah, I knew him, he'd probably be showing her how to do it right. He never got nasty with us until after he'd shown us how and we'd fucked it up. Kind of like that British chef guy; hell on Earth to adults claiming to be chefs, but really nice with kids.

The carts pulled up and the troops cheered when the Maids forked over the food. Okay, some of them near the middle started cheering when they saw the menace with her flag.

Okay, I started cheering when I saw that, and I've got no idea when anybody else really did.

When Marie pushed the cart up to our group, I stepped up to Isnomi and reached out to scoop her up. She skipped away from me, nearly taking a header off the far side of the cart, hollering, "Na! Na! Fag! Fag!" I got it just as she let loose and pointed up at her flags, nearly losing control of them as she did. I caught the bottom of the pole and helped her get it back in place, then held out my arms.

"Can Momma hug you at least?" She gave me a little bit of hairy eyeball, like she expected me to try scooping her up anyhow, but eventually stepped back to the spot she'd started. Careful not to disturb her flag, I put my arms around her and leaned into the hug, whispering, "momma's so proud of you, my little color guard."

Right about then Lancaster Senior cut through my moment, obviously annoyed as he asked, "What is that flag?"

I ruffled Isnomi's hair a little, then turned around to see him standing just outside of Marie's reach. Asshole yes, stupid no. "Well, sir, from top to bottom, that'd be the Academy Crest, the Phileo City flag, and the Camden Yards flag.

He took a deep breath and said, "I know that, Cadet. Why is the Camden Yards flag on that pole?"

Before I could decide whether to throw shade or just kick him in the nuts or something, Saffron came to my rescue. "Because while flying it has been unofficially discouraged, Camden Yards has never been officially absorbed into Phileo City. Probably because that would require Phileo City to invest in Camden Yards' infrastructure, rather than just collecting taxes and tariffs and tributes. By the letter of the treaty, Camden Yards has the right to fly their own flag, so long as it does not fly higher than that of Phileo City. Which, as you can clearly see, it does not." She stepped forward, snagging one of the sandwiches and handing it to Isnomi, who handed me her flagpole while she two handed it and nommed it down. I swear I caught glimpses of metal in her mouth, but given what I'd seen happen to Gungnir, I had no intention of putting my hands in there unless she showed signs of distress.

Saffron leaned in close to Lancaster as he was about to say something, and quietly said, "its existence and the order of those flags is also why you've got twice as many troops as you expected, with all the extras being used to getting jobs done despite hardship and deprivation, General."

That put him on pause for another minute while I scooped up sandwiches and handed them out to my unit, then waved them off so another unit could come up and get served. Finally, he turned to Isnomi, nodded, and said, "Excellent work, little flag bearer. Carry on."

She, of course, swallowed the last of her sandwich, smiled at him, then let loose a burp that echoed off the back wall of the Academy.

He closed his eyes and shook his head. "Your child, I'm assuming, Cadet Diaz?"

"Ayep."

"Of course she is." He moved closer, grabbed himself a sandwich, and walked down the row of troops. As he did, I heard him mutter, "three. There are three of them now."