“New Union Act passes in a complete supermajority. The opposition block of the AP has overwhelmingly voted against the act, but both the ORP and the UOP have voted for it in a complete landslide. Even conservative UOP MPs voted for it, citing that the old act was ‘outdated and in need of reforms’. Prime Minister Heiss and Queen Amelie have both separately given press statements early in the morning, vowing to enforce the New Union Act as swiftly as possible. All high nobles still retaining control over their domains are now expected to hand over power to elected and newly-appointed officials from Eutstadt, which is expected to highly streamline the country’s bloated bureaucracy."

- ROCN News

+++

November Palace

West Orland

July 12, 2025

Amelie placed her coat atop her chair with a joyous smile on her face.

At last, one of the first steps to reforming Orland was finished. The New Union Act and the State Protection Act, both designed to place power to the Crown and Government away from the nobility…were now passed in Parliament. All that was left was implementation, and the immediate ass-kicking of the nobles stubbornly holding onto their power.

“It’s going to be the new law of the land,” Amelie said to herself eagerly. “How delightful.”

She clapped to herself and relaxed in her seat. Victory, it tasted truly sweet, Amelie thought. With that, she had effectively curtailed much of the power of the conservatives. The amount of new talent replacing old bureaucratic staff was also good news. They were filling the local governments of Orland with younger liberals, technocrats, and reformists. Mostly, young women with UOP party memberships.

The last time Amelie checked in on Jacqueline, it seemed that the UOP had been completely, and utterly taken over by the reformist wing. No more was the conservative wing, which had already been slashed when the Arcanists splintered off, a credible threat to her plans. The UOP was from now on going to be the big-tent reformist part of women.

Which is lovely! Oh, I should definitely celebrate this.

She started thinking hard about a good plan. Nia, William, Jacqueline, Walter, maybe the entire Heiss Cabinet should be in it. The morale of her team had been in the gutter ever since the chemical attacks after all. Well, except for Walter, that man was simply comfortable with chaos anyway to Amelie’s thoughts. No, Amelie shook her head. That wouldn’t do.

They needed to taste this victory at least so that her ministers would be more motivated to work harder.

The State Protection Act was just for protecting Orland from WMD attacks. The New Union Act was just for streamlining her nation’s bureaucracy. No, they still had a long way to go to change things. So she needed to motivate them.

I still need to balance the social welfare schemes. Get Allison to do that. Then I need to start getting a list of unequal laws and repealing them en masse. Hmm…maybe we’ll draft a comprehensive act for that too. Then…there’s all the other things like prison reform, education reform…goddess…

Her head spun at imagining everything that needed to be changed.

Running a nation while at war, and trying to change it…

It was tiring to Amelie’s view. Truly tiring. But she raised her head, and her face steeled back into a more determined stance. She had already begun to progress. Real, tangible, progress. She just needed more. And more. And more.

And soon, Orland will be an equal place for both men and women.

Then…then her soldiers would have a good reason to fight. And with a good reason to fight, morale would rise. Both in the factories and the frontlines. Perhaps, by breaking the apathy and cynicism that plagued her armies…she’d finally create something more than an Armed Forces fighting a dreary war for ‘the lesser of two evils’.

A military that fights for a new, shiny Orland!

She grinned to herself at imagining that. Hmm, perhaps I should also start spinning these reforms as a part of our roadmap to achieving men’s liberation. Then…then I’ll get the PR guys to show it off to our men. Her eyes glowed at the idea. That’s right! Why hadn’t I thought of that yet? Removing aristocrats…that’s what we did. And aristocrats are the most hated class of people by men.

“The heck are you scheming over there, Amelie?”

Amelie yelped at the sudden opening of the door to her office. William, still with that gloomy face of his, entered, holding a bunch of documents on his side. Amelie naturally frowned. He hadn’t even knocked.

“I was just planning something,” Amelie said. “At least warn me, William.”

“Apologies, but seeing your surprised expression always amuses me.”

She looked at his dead neutral face.

“Turning your Queen into an amusing toy to play with. Weirdo.”

“Ha, ha, ha,” William shook his head. “See, I’m amused. Anyway, I’m carrying another report from the OPM. You know, us.”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Yeah, it’s been a while since you last checked on me about that.”

“Because investigating those who attacked Princess Kawasaki, alongside the killers of your mother, and uhh…the biological attacks in Lieplatz during the liberation campaign took quite the sweet time—”

“Wait, you’ve connected them all?”

“Marie’s field agents are very capable,” William said. “She’s been on this for so long, so I’ve been naturally collaborating hard with Marie and the RIU. Turns out, there are traces of connection between these three events.”

“And have you figured out any concrete connections?”

“Nope, just hunches, clues…etc, etc,” he threw a bunch of files and pictures on Amelie’s desk. There were pictures of vials that contained biological agents. Corpses of ‘Unit Eighteen’ agents from the OIA. Then the blurry photographs of those who attacked Princess Kawasaki. “We’re still cracking things, but whoever’s orchestrating all of this is quite…the someone, something. We’re suspecting they’re an organization of sorts.”

“Is that…a concrete idea?”

“No, again, it’s just a theory,” William spread out the photographs. “And we’re still digging deep. We’re even questioning a bunch of officials in the military connected to the ‘AI Project’, because somehow, that too is extremely sketchy. We’re following the paper trail and money trail…but it’s empty. Like some blackhole swallowed something without anyone noticing.”

“Goddess…”

“That, and there’s even corporations involved in it. But the evidence is all too shaky, and it seems like even these entities have no idea who they are dealing with. All from sketchy construction projects in the Free State, suspicious deliveries of heavy equipment to various areas in the Free State…and oh boy, we’ve been shipping sensitive specialized equipment to the Larissan Empire during the Great War.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, William,” Amelie frowned. “This sounds strange.”

“Which is why I held off from telling you anything,” William said, shrugging. “Me and Marie, we’re just as blind as we were months ago before we bumped into each other in our independent investigations. So now, we’re running on some crazy ideas of...an unknown entity dictating these events. Or…or, it’s all just a coincidence. That somehow, after a shipment of unknown chips to Larissa…the peace deal happens…then your mother dies…then Hebei…”

Amelie felt her head spin again.

“You’re sounding more and more insane, William.”

“I am insane. I haven’t even properly analyzed what my departments are feeding into me. It’s all too messy. I am just as clueless as you are. But what’s clear is that something’s smelly, and it smells rotten. It’s like things were set up. Or at least, it sounds like something is instigating these crises under our noses. And they’re playing us, your mother, Katerina’s mother, the OAF, everyone and their asses…like toys.”

“Okay, now, that just sounds extremely unlikely.”

“I know, I know, exactly! It has to be bullshit, right, Amelie?”

“You’re the OPM,” Amelie crossed her arms. “If there’s a conspiracy, you’re the one supposed to figure out what it is, relay it to me, or prevent it.”

“Well, how the hell am I preventing any of this?” William laughed. “I have no proper access to the Free State. And it’s the center of operations. It’s where all the trails go and disappear.”

“...Then it must just be Heindöff,” Amelie said, before shaking her head. “Nothing groundbreaking about that. He and Rimpler must have been planning this since the Great War. Like…like some scheming little rats. And now they’re making the OIA play games to mess with us.”

“Tsk, you got one thing wrong,” William pointed at the picture of the corpses of Unit Eighteen. “Even the OIA got played. And they got played so hard, that they panicked, and purged a good chunk of their previous reliable agents during the fallout of your mother’s assassination. If they’re planning and scheming so well…why would they screw up out of nowhere that they’d have to do this level of clean-up? Oh, no perhaps it wasn't even a clean-up…it was an anti-rogue operation. But why would these men who believed they were following OIA orders be rogues?”

“...I…well, I don’t know, maybe a breakdown in communications?”

“You should keep your soul pure. It really shines a light in this shitstain of a world.”

Amelie puffed her cheeks.

“William! I’m being serious here!”

“Yeah, yeah,” William looked away, straight into the windows as he crossed his arms. “I’m just saying. It’s ridiculous. And worrying. Hasn't the thought been in your mind yet? The thought of Rimpler and Heindhöff not being the actual bastards running this show? What if they’re just as clueless?”

He looked back down at Amelie.

“Those putschists, when your mother was murdered by OIA agents…they panicked. All of them. So much so, that I believe the timeline of everything was rushed. I don’t think they were planning for us to even be fighting today.”

“Their coup did technically fail,” Amelie said, gulping a bit. “But what if it’s just a bad case of incompetence? Not everything has to be some grand…plan, masterminded by something. That’s just ridiculous. We’d have known that.”

“Yeah, and we don’t,” William grew ever more silent. “The power armor used by those who attacked Princess Kawasaki has kept me awake in bed for weeks now. We have nothing. Absolutely nothing. Nothing of a shred of an idea of what those guys were. Nothing.”

“...You’ve seen worse hells,” Amelie muttered. “But…the Keibeitai did manage to dislodge them.”

“It’s not about the fact that they dislodged them that matters. Amelie, there are a lot of arcane technologies we have no idea about that were developed underground for the last few decades. Do you even know about the dimensional studies being conducted secretly in the Kingdom of Lieplatz? Or the myriads of anti-magic jammers being produced in the Free State? We have lost control or contact with all of that.”

“They’re at the hands of the Federalists, no?”

“Perhaps. Or maybe the Federalists are just using the lower-grade versions of it. Otherwise, they’d have been mass-producing that power armor that defeated Keibeitai so badly. Because I tell you what, if some…organized entity is out there, who’s employing all of these things underground…we’re probably royally screwed.”

“Keep working on it then,” Amelie ordered. “I…do you need me to relax some of your duties?”

“No, not really. My guys in the OPM can work without my babysitting. I’m just a messenger to you, and the one who directs them for you. They handle the finer details. I’m fine.”

“I need to talk to Marie…”

“Yeah, you absolutely do.”

“I was planning for celebrations,” Amelie hesitated. “But I'll ring her now instead. Damn it.”