Tanya had a lot of experience by now when it came to how to interface with her new lives. Over the last who knows how many iterations, she’s gotten it exactly how she liked it, a mixture of letting herself shine while adding just enough chaos in order to get new experiences.
For example, under normal circumstances she’d subdivide her soul, incarnating in two to five people in completely different circumstances and seeing which one was most successful. She’d hold back her otherworldly knowledge and biases, allowing those lives to develop into their own people as long as their lives were peaceful.
It was when they needed a helping hand that her previous lives would make themselves known. Subtly at first, with dreams giving advice and by unlocking knowledge in tune with the life seeking those things mundanely, making them seem talented in all they try.
If that wasn’t enough, such as if they were completely without means to improve themselves, she implemented the Past Life System, creating a sub-process that guided the new life into learning what they needed, and accelerating the pace of knowledge integration into absurd talent. It was interesting how that was seen by her nascent egos, either as a guardian angel, or ghost of their mother, or even a demon that her new life plunged head-first into bargaining with.
But this wasn’t just any life. Not just any universe.
“I’m here to report for service.” Tanya said to the recruitment desk, placing her notice of future conscription on the desk. No, this was a life she’d take the old fashioned way. “My name is Tanya Degurechaff.”
As before, the recruitment officer looked at her dumbly. “Uh…”
Tanya tapped the notice. “This document was quite clear that it is in my best interests to join the military immediately. I am prepared to fill out whatever paperwork you require in addition to this.”
The recruitment officer took a moment to read her notice of future conscription. “That’s not what this says.” He said, confused.
Tanya looked at him like he was an idiot. To be fair, he was. “I didn’t say that’s what the document said. I said that the document made it very clear. It informs me that in the event of war, I will be conscripted. It goes on to say that if I report before war is declared, I will be able to attend officer’s school and earn myself a commission. Therefore, it is in my best interests to sign up immediately.” Her gaze, already steely, hardens further. “Or do I need to explain to you why becoming an officer is more desirable than becoming a conscript?”
“...How old are you?” The officer asked.
“I’m seven.” Tanya said defensively.
“They’re not going to conscript someone your age.” He said, “You don’t need to join now.”
Even the second time around, his logic was annoying. Last time it was infuriating, though. “Funny thing about age, it increases every year. More importantly, there is no exception to the mage draft. My options are officer, or conscript.” She started to raise her voice, stoking flames she had spent the last four years reigniting. “Singer is not an option. Seamstress is not an option. Hairdresser is not an option. Chef is not an option. Jeweler is not an option. Nurse is not an option. My ONLY choices,” She paused, taking a deep breath. “-are officer, or conscript. That is the road that God and Kaiser have put before me.” She flexed her mana, creating a series of barely-there supernatural phenomena that would serve to make the officer’s hindbrain scream in panic. “Now, are you rejecting my application? Do you have that authority?”
The officer looked around, suddenly alert to danger but unable to tell where it’s coming from. “...No.” He said, “Fill this out.” He added, handing her a document where she could fill in her name and other such sundries.
Perfect. One of the things that she did “wrong” last time, although she was young enough that it was understandable that she didn’t act optimally, was failing to communicate effectively. She willfully ignored her own status, insisting the absurdity that patriotism alone is what fueled her application.
Officer school was, as expected, a breeze.
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She didn’t bother ensuring she was sent to Norden, skipping out on getting the Silver Wings and instead mitigating that by writing a political analysis paper on Legadonia, predicting the incident to build her resume and also arranging for Schugel to learn of her magic scores.
The type 95 is still the most beautiful bomb she had ever had the chance to lay eyes on. But what was an engine but a bomb that throttled their explosives to a useful end?
Being X didn’t need to enchant it as a relic, her expanded consciousness was able to juggle the necessary perfection with… some difficulty. “Yes! Now we delve into the mysteries of the universe previously reserved for God himself!” Shugel proclaimed as Tanya landed safely. “Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!” He added, dramatically pointing at the sky.
Tanya smiled at the sight of Shugel’s blasphemy. Truly, this was the best timeline. “Now that the prototype has proven its worth,” Tanya said once the scientist had calmed down. “We should seek to streamline it. This thing wouldn’t hold up on a battlefield, I feel.” If she wanted to launch a gigantic magical artillery spell to completely shatter a defensive fortification, on the other hand… much more suitable for that.
“It is perfect!” Insisted Shugel.
“I can think of four improvements that could be made off the top of my head, doctor, and that’s just from the papers I’ve read that were written by you.” Tanya retorted, “This is the bare minimum that will accomplish mana fixation. If your ambition is so low as to stop here, you might as well take a pistol and end it now.”
The combination of flattery and challenge did the trick, as the scientist looked at her with the same religious fervor as before. “Yes, you’re right! I can’t stop now, there’s always more to do, more features, more…”
Now, she just needed to direct his intensity properly… Fortunately she has extensive experience in this sort of thing. Just like she does for pretty much anything.
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The fundamental issue with the Empire was that they didn’t know when to quit. Pulling miraculous victories made their heads swell, and the perfidy of the enemy only added anger to that effort.
This was theoretically suitable, but required some finesse. Well, actually, that was wrong. Finesse was the whole problem, really. The Kaiser’s ego and temper would not abide what he saw as cowardice, so topics such as ‘no, we can’t fight the whole world’ had to be treated delicately. She understood this before, she leaned into it to gain influence.
So she absolutely destroyed every single record Berun’s War College had, producing more academic papers on the art of war and logistics than any one person had ever produced, penned a thesis on war crimes that should be pre-emptively banned, and overall made her time travel status as obvious as possible without actually saying it.
It was the paper on radioactivity, insisting that it was profoundly unethical to use as a weapon of war in a world where mana fixation had been achieved (with citations from the relevant physics papers, mind you), that got her summoned to the Kaiser’s palace.
Telling people that you’re a time traveler or whatever never works. Hiding it is also generally wise, but being a time traveler is an immense amount of credibility that can be claimed, if you know how to do it. By now, it was easy.
Explaining exactly how the war ended badly for the Empire (admittedly, she had to make a lot of details up) allowed her enough of that sweet, sweet credibility to basically dictate war policy for long enough for them to realize that she actually knew what she was doing.
She did still need to take a personal hand training up the 203rd, albeit a little ahead of schedule, and quickly accrued some of the military victories she was known for, being able to use the type 95 without Being X’s interference helped smooth over any of the problems that arose with her changing things. As a particularly proud moment, she made extra sure to spare the man with that very familiar submachine gun, capturing him unharmed.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Once the Brest debacle was dealt with, the war ended quickly, and the international community got to be surprised at the level of mercy the Kaiser offered to their enemies, the Empire becoming even more of a world power.
She was still rather surprised that Being X didn’t notice her, but Tanya still had one more item to cross off her list of things to do while reliving this life.
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Russy was cold, of course. She didn’t really remember Visha much at the start of this life; startlingly, the girl had managed to survive the Rhine front and flourish well enough to apply to the 203rd entirely on her own, without Tanya’s help. It was rather embarrassing, but Tanya had gone through the entire interview with the girl without recognizing her, only remembering that Visha was in the 203rd before when she was trying to wrack her memory on how many of the elite mages that passed her test were the same ones. About two thirds of them were, incidentally.
But her coffee was… good. She was sure that some younger version of herself would adopt a faux-fanaticism over the quality, calling her current self a heretic and some such, but no matter how skilled Visha’s hands were, she was still working with rather substandard, early-20th century beans. She suspected that her old self only loved it so much because she lacked the perspective to recall what actually good coffee tasted like after a decade of being deprived of it. Just being palatable with acceptable amounts of sugar and milk was ambrosia to her original life here.
Still, Visha was a young girl thrust into war, and while she was a bit different without Tanya helping her in the Rhine, more bloodthirsty and less dependent on Tanya’s approval (only matching the other members of the 203rd rather than putting them to shame), it was still the same girl… or Tanya kept recalling only the memories that matched this new Visha rather than any differences. It was probably that.
Still, she stepped into the Kremnik proudly with Visha at her heels, wearing fancy dresses festooned with furs, looking around while letting their feet follow the diplomats without much thought. Officially, she was part of the military attache, here as the mage advisor, but the diplomat who was leading the delegation was instructed (by her) to imply discreetly to anyone who questioned this that he brought Tanya with them as the advisor purely because of her and Visha’s pretty faces, thus why they weren’t in uniform.
“Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.” She quoted quietly to herself, the instant she caught sight of an NKVD operative taking a picture of her.
The delegation proceeded as planned, with words exchanged between the Imperial Represenative (Prince Wilhelm IV) and Comrade Josef assuring each side of peace, discussing acceptable border defenses, number of checkpoints for travel/trade, etcetera. Theoretically, she was supposed to be making mage recordings and detecting mana emissions with her computation orb, but she was only responsible for ensuring it was done, so she delegated the recordings to Visha, instead running some more unique “detection” formulas.
As such, after five days of discussions, lowering her apparent alertness as time dragged on, the kidnapping attempt she had been anticipating the whole time occurred. “Really, I’m impressed with your patience, I bet you’d try and snatch me within three days.” Were Tanya’s first words to Loria when he arrived. “I had to walk in front of your secret prison in order to arrange this meeting.”
Loria’s smug grin didn’t waver. “Don’t you go on trying to trick me, my sweet.” He said condescendingly. “I invented the ‘all is going according to my designs’ trick.”
She couldn’t help herself: she laughed. “All I can say is:” She switched to Japanese. “All is according to plan.” After a beat she added, back in Russy: “‘Keikaku’ means plan.”
The communist pedophile frowned, not seeing the hints of weakness in her bravado that he expected. “Well, this will be fun, breaking you.” He said sinisterly.
“I agree.” Tanya said, “This will be fun.” She fired an optical spell through her eyes and burned two neat little holes in his skull. Well, okay, they weren’t very neat: all that exploded eyeball goo made them quite messy.
When the corpse collapsed, she removed herself from the chair she was tied to and reclaimed her clothes. “It was, however, over too quickly.” She sighed ruefully. “Oh well, time to gather some evidence.”
As it turned out, a deadlock could be broken by providing proof of a high ranking official breaking diplomatic immunity, and the Great War resuming with ‘everyone vs. the Communists’ was, in fact, possible to arrange.
That was the last thing on her list, all that was left was to meet her maker. After another eighty years of her second-favorite century. It was no 21st century, but the 20th was a close contender.
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Her soul interacted weirdly with local afterlives. Basically, she could use her death to slip out of the universe altogether, which may or may not prevent any sort of local resurrection options. Key word there: ‘could’. She could also go along with the flow.
She died in this life at the age of 99, in the year 2013. Was it worth it to cling to life out of spite until the exact day she died for the first time? Absolutely.
Being X looked completely unchanged in the time since they had last met. By now, she was aware enough of how time worked between universes and within one that there was a very real chance that he had sent her original soul down to an alternate timeline mere minutes ago.
His expression was that of confusion, as if he had never seen a snake-shaped soul before, shedding their mortal body without effort. “...Who are you?” He asked. After a moment, he corrected himself: “What are you?”
“I’m a soul.” Tanya said simply. “One would think you’ve seen one of those before, given that you can see me now. They do tend to get all over the place, you know.” I know the song that gets on everybody’s nerves, everybody’s nerves, everybody’s nerves…
Being X had zero reaction to her annoying earworm, so clearly her defenses were successfully preventing him from reading her mind. The Jackass. “Well, I haven’t seen this particular way before, but… it appears you have achieved nirvana.” He concluded, “This is a wonderful day, not even that damned Atheist can ruin it now.”
Oh? “Who’s that?” Tanya asked innocently, tilting their head.
“Well, it has been a while, but there’s this one soul who really annoyed me.” He confided, “I sealed his memories inside his soul and sent him off to another world as part of… let’s call it a test, a trial. To see if he could achieve faith and come closer to achieving nirvana.”
“I see. What were the results?” Tanya asked.
“The bastard ran off into the infinite with a shard of my divine power.” He grumbled, “There’s no way he still has it, he’s either dissolved from it or consumed it by now. I sent one of his enemies after him, but he turned her against me! The nerve.”
Being X continued to rant and rave about ‘The Atheist’, about how he worked hard to cleanse souls for reincarnation and how that impudent mortal spat all over that important duty. It was honestly heartening that she spent untold lifetimes completely ignoring this manchild, and all the while he was cursing her existence as the source of all of his ills. It was better revenge than she had ever imagined.
But she wasn’t done with him. “I have a question.” Tanya said, “Why do you need to clean them? The rivers between universes cleanse souls all on their own. I’ve seen them.”
The bearded entity looked surprised at the knowledge she demonstrated. “If I do that, souls like yourself, who have achieved nirvana, will lose that enlightenment. You’ll just… become normal again.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Tanya continued. “Quite honestly, immortality is rather tiring.”
“You should try creating a world.” Being X advised, “If you stay here, I’ll show you the ropes. It’ll be fun.”
…Wait. “You’re lonely.” Tanya near-whispered, a sudden realization hitting her. “This… all of this, was just so you could make some friends.”
Being X frowned, offended. “Hey, don’t say it like that. It makes me sound like I’m locking the enlightened souls in my basement or something.”
Tanya nodded, “Alright, alright. So where are these other enlightened souls?” She asked, extending her spiritual senses.
Being X looked to the side, embarrassed. “Ah, they left to do their own thing.” He said, deflecting. “We still keep in touch of course!” He lied, “But keeping several worlds running is a lot of work, as I was getting at before.”
“But you’re not keeping it running, as we’ve established.” Tanya retorted, “You’re just skimming the outgoing souls for those who have achieved nirvana, whatever that means.”
“Well, yeah, but if I didn’t, you’d be soup by now.” He argued.
“No, I can swim fine.” Tanya replied, “I needed a little bit of a divine spark to keep me going at first, but it vanished without me noticing until recently.”
Being X paused, beginning to sense that things were not as he had previously interpreted them to be. “...I believe we never introduced ourselves.” He said warily.
“Ah yes.” Tanya said, “I go by many names, but most recently, I was Tanya von Degurechaff.” Being X’s brow furrowed, trying to examine her soul. “For the second time.” She added, before growing to an immense size, wrapping her coils around the god.
He struggled, of course. His divine energy reinforced his body and increased his strength, and he attempted to overpower her grip. She was prepared, however. While it was never her native energy, she had plenty of experience wielding divine essence, and thus knew how to generate it with other types of energy. She layered her containment with as much as she could, issuing mathematical certainties from the local magic system to reinforce the divine energy she generated, as well as weakening his mind, distracting him from putting his full will on contesting her strength with her telepathic barrage.
She invoked power after power that she picked up along the way: her soul’s final release transformed her soul’s substance into unbreakable firmament, she ensnared his perceptions with her gaze, spells of paralysis, weakening, and sleep bombarded him, and she blending the cosmic energy around them into herself, creating a four-part mixture between her soul energy, divine power, magical power, and the cosmic energy. Her muscles altered into the refined build of a dragon, able to soak in and use every drop of that power without limit.
“As for you…” She drawled, her forked tongue adding a sibilant tone to her voice. “no matter how many lifetimes pass, even when your influence had faded long ago to be anything but positive for my life… I have never once forgiven you for what you did to Mary.” Her serpentine eyes narrowed. “This is your last chance to speak.”
Being X’s look was… confused. “Who is Mary?”
He tasted like vengeance.
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Tanya decided to take a break from reincarnating. Sure, most… okay pretty much all of the divinities she’s had the chance to meet have been jerks, but… it’s not like she doesn’t sympathize a bit with their point of view, after so long. To them, the difference between a physical universe to play with and a computer simulation is academic at best. If not for Mary, Tanya likely would have forgiven the man with this perspective, but… well. He did what he did, and he paid the ultimate price for it.
But Being X’s memories, wrung dry of his toxic viewpoint, gave her names, descriptions, and most importantly: soul signatures of other beings on his level. So it was time to take her place in the cosmos as a new divinity, as Being X’s corpus managed to give her enough of a seed to start naturally generating it on her own. She knew several ways to channel and even how to convert other sources of energy into divine power, but none of those ways extended to changing her soul energy into it on a permanent basis.
No longer. She drifted, tasting the blind eternities, trying to find someone else, anyone else, that she could consider a peer.
It was time that she stop hiding away, assuming false faces, and keep selfishly running up imaginary high scores, and do what she learned to do back at Whispering Rock.
Be herself, and make some friends.