Foxtrot Juliet/Intro

From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe

I've been reading a lot of Charly's comics, lately. She says that I need to practice more reading and less listening to audiobooks, and she's a lot smarter than me that way. Zulu's even smarter. He got me this thing he calls an "e-book reader with audio", which I guess is his way of saying it shows the words and says them at the same time... But I'm getting head of myself.

... Ahead. Thanks, Zulu, but didn't you say the point of writing my memories was that I could practice my own writing skills instead of yours?

Right, right. Fine, help accepted. What? But I did write "memories"! Memoirs? That's a word? ...Fine, fine. Can I get back to my point now?

Anyway, one of those things that happens a lot of the time is one guy wishing that whatever made him special never happened or didn't exist or whatever. I guess I can kind of relative to that.

Relate. Thank you, Zulu. Can I go on? Thanks.

Anyway, yeah. My life would probably be a lot less complicated (See, Zulu? I can write long words!) if my magic didn't exist. For starters, mom wouldn't have told dad I was concerting with Djinnyah, and dad wouldn't have tried to beat the evil out of me. And then my magic wouldn't have reacted to the beating by making my skin tougher when he hit me and he wouldn't have broken his hand.

And he wouldn't have taken his sinful daughter to the imam for advice, and the imam definitely wouldn't have decided to "turn Shaitan's influence into a weapon for Allah" and sent me off to that training camp for "brave mujahedeen" -- or, as most everyone else calls them, "crazed terrorists" -- to be taught to fight for their "noble purpose" of killing everyone they didn't like the face of.

Of course, Burqas suck for close quarters fighting. And since this camp had to be really secret, there wasn't much non-essential traffic in or out. So none of the other trainees - all of them at least five years older than me, and male - had seen a girl, pretty or not, in at least a year. And they'd all been taught that women existed to dutifully serve men.

Feh. Every single one of them was being promised seventy-two virgins in the afterlife, and they weren't going to live very long either, so was it really that much of a sacrifice to wait a few years?

Yes, apparently.

I won't bother with the details. If you want them, go rent some sleazy gangbang porn flick and use your imagination, you perv. Anyway, occasionally one of the imams would come by and they'd stuff me into a burqa and made me stand apart from the men as he preached about the Evils Of The West and the Great Shaitan and how we had to kill everyone who wasn't just like us because Allah wanted it so, and how all of us who fell in this Righteous Struggle would be rewarded in the afterlife (See my comment above. No, I never voiced it out loud. Saying anything that wasn't a direct response to a direct order was sinful for me, and punished -- and although by that time sticks and stones couldn't break my bones, flames were another matter)...

And the men all bowed their heads and knelt and prayed, and the next day he'd be gone and they'd go right back to what they were doing before.

The imams also always said stuff like "Avoid sexual impropriety, which is sinful and bad for the soul". It was definitely bad for Ahran's health -- if he hadn't been so preoccupied with forcing me to the ground when he should have been standing watch, he might have spotted the black-clad soldier that came out of nowhere and put his hand against his head.

I didn't know what he did, but Ahran froze, rolled off me, and curled up into a ball. His mouth was wide open as if he was screaming, but no sound came out, and the black-clad man looked back at me. I couldn't see his eyes but I saw how he was standing. Rigid, with that almost-tremble in his legs and arms that dad sometimes had when he was especially furious with me. I cringed, mostly out of reflex, but that seemed to just make him angrier.

And then he did the most incredible thing I'd witnessed.

He turned his back on me and muttered something. I had no idea what he said, since I didn't speak English very well, but a little later the shooting started in the camp.

No, I didn't move, even to pull my pants back on. I suppose my duty would have been to help my fellow warriors, or failing that to die beside them, but the moment I thought about it the dark man turned back to face me and waved his hand and everything went dark.

When I woke up again, I was lying on a makeshift bunk, and a westerner girl with blonde hair and angry eyes was sitting backwards on a chair, leaning her arms on the back, and a boy standing to each side of her. Only one of them - the boy on the left, with the dark hair and strange markings on his face and arms, who I could see through - yes, Zulu? What? Translucent? Is that even english? Latin? But you said... Fine, fine. - could speak a word I understood, even if his accent was weird.

Apparently, they were mercenaries, and they'd been hired by someone else to destroy that camp. I wasn't sure what to believe - they didn't look that much older than me - but the strange boy explained further.

They were a band of children who had been used and tossed out, unwilling soldiers in whatever war their self-styled masters had chosen to fight... Except that they were done being the victims. They walked away and found each other and formed their own side, their own company. Foxtrot Company, a band of children who were raised to be soldiers, to be something not-really-childlike-anymore.

Children like me, in other words.

The boy who spoke to me - Foxtrot Zulu - said he had two choices to offer me. One, he could arrange for adoption in a western country somewhere. They had collected enough proof of what had been going on to get me refugee status in any country I chose, get adopted, go to school, lead a "normal" life...

I knew what the other choice would be before he said it out loud, and I took it. It didn't excuse me from my education, though, but Zulu decided I was bright enough to go through what he called 'crash and cram schooling' which apparently is his little joke for "Teach her things until her head explodes with pain, then give her some aspirin and teach her more". Sadist.

Of course, there was also combat training. ACTUAL combat training; it became obvious pretty quick why my former 'comrades in arms' had gotten shredded - compared to Foxtrot's standards of training, they were almost qualified to police a kindergarten.

I also met the rest of the Foxtrots, one or two kids at a time, and I learned the names of the ones that got me out of there. Zulu, who delivered the intel that got them there; Charly, the blonde girl who led the actual assault... And the man that killed Ahran, whose towering anger was directed not at me, but at what had been done to me.

Romeo. A meaningless name to me, at the time, although I've done some reading - well, listening to audio books - since. Always cool, always on top of things, always the gentleman, always well-controlled...

... Although when I'd completed my training to Charly and Zulu's satisfaction and they introduced me to the Company by the name that's now mine until the day I die or move on, I did see him wince. I'll take that as a good sign.

So to get back to my point, yeah, my life would have been a lot less complicated and painful if I'd never had magic. I wouldn't have been beaten, or sold off, or abused so often that I forgot to keep count. Instead, I'd have been a pretty little dutiful daughter who might one day aspire to become someone's pretty little dutiful wife and slave for my husband until the day I died... And I'd never have met Foxtrot, or Charly, or Romeo...

Yeah, on the whole I think I'll take the bad with the good.

Anyway, this is about enough for a first memory, wouldn't you agree, Zulu? ... Zulu? ... Damn, he's off into the internet again.

Ah well. That just means he's not here to make another one of his jokes about my choice of literature. Looks like the flight's at least another two hours before we get to Newark. Should be enough for the first act, at least.

Two households, both alike in dignity...