Chapter 43 - Apathetic to the devil's face. Wear the sheriff's badge put your toys away.

7 Fructidor Year CCXXXVIII, Hankokku, Yamatoa Amazonia

On the seventh day of the twelfth month of the Amazonia calendar, there was a strange disturbance in the night sky of Hankokku. Eight planes roared through the air at just under the speed of sound, twenty-five thousand feet below them was a cityscape of silver white light, which isolated the island from the dark blue oceans surrounding it. With their stealthy contours and radar absorbing material, there was little chance of detection, but the dimension shift still left the pilots uneased. One instant it was daytime, the next night, and the planes seemed to violently hiccup as they adjusted to the new atmosphere.

Even Captain Dewey, who understood the engineering that went into his plane, could not help but worry that somewhere, three miles down, someone might look up and spot his Rough Riders diving towards the island against the half-moon sky. He stole a moment out of his bubble cockpit window to glance down and below. Past the short wide wings of his craft, the distant twinkling lights were peacefully unaware of the danger that was approaching them.

The fighter jets, gifts from Earth, were the pinnacle of performance on not just Amazonia, but on tens of thousands of worlds. Even if the Amazons had their own jets, using the same material science and aeronautical design, a plane for a man ten feet tall would never be as maneuverable, as fast, or as stealthy, as one designed for people half their height. Today, the good guys on Dewey’s little raid were the most powerful military force above ground on Amazonia, and nothing could challenge them.

If there is one thing all boys know, it is that the good guys always get the best vehicles: the Batmobile; the Turtle Van; the Sky Stryker; the X-Wing. Good guys travel in style. But the bad guys? The bad guys get the best bases: The Hall of Doom, the Death Star, Cobra Mountain, and now over Hankokku the I.Y.A Nippon. The flagship of the Imperial Yamatoan Air Force. A half of a mile long, bristling with guns and armor, the airship’s silver and gray sheen glowed against the Hankokku night sky, a terrible warning of the might the Empire.

“I thought the airships were still at Sing-A-Ling,” Brad’s fast voice came over the radio.

Dewey tilted his craft and looked over the edge of the canopy, the stretched oval was like a thumb against the ground. He clicked on his own radio, “Greg, Tyler, Ronald, stay with me, we’ll handle the dirigible. Everyone else, focus on the mission.”

The team of eight jets split in half, four fighters diving towards the warship, the rest splitting towards the island proper. Captain Vickrey toggled his weapons display and switched to air-to-air missiles. Within a few seconds, Dewey’s heads up display in his helmet locked on a green circle to the blimp. His cockpit filled with a long high-pitched tone. He took one long breath and launched the shot that would be heard around the world.

Underneath his fighter jet, an internal bay opened, dropping a telephone pole sized rocket from his plane’s belly, through inertia it carried along with the plane for a second before igniting in a blaze of blue and red. Three more rockets joined his own in the night sky.

“Fox three,” Dewey said out of habit he had picked up from flying simulators with Oliver. He then steadied out his plane from the dive. At eighteen hundred miles per hour the twelve-foot rocket powered missiles crossed the distance to the Nippon in three seconds, barely enough time for the pilot to glance and see the four explosions below. His eyes adjusted to the white and red streaks as they lit up the night, but outside of a small smudge on the side of the blimp, the behemoth airship did not show a sign of the attack.

Like a hornet’s nest disturbed by a passing branch, giant flood lights erupted out the side top and bottom of the oval, and from this distance Dewey watched as cannons and missile racks unfold from interior compartments along the outside of the floating terror. His front panel began to emit a deep tone and there was flashing warning of an air-to-air radar source somewhere below his plane. The dragon was awakening.

The Nippon responded quickly to the disturbance, while equipped with powerful sensors, could only pick up the slightest hint of a direction and distance of the threat it faced. Below the blimp a series of pencil thin fighter jets rocketed out the front of the craft in search of the invisible threat.

“We barely scratched it!” came Ronald’s hurried cry.

“I got a plan. We need to hit the gondola; a good hit and it’ll separate from the blimp.” Dewey calmly returned, and rallied his small air group, he took a moment to refresh his understanding of the airspace, his wing mates had kept a loose diamond shape around him. The Nippon was turning and rising to a combat height, and had launched its first wave of jet fighters, more clawing out of hangers from below the balloon. Far out towards the island four of his friends were lining up for an attack run on the Lettam factories. The other four jets were miles away and out of the fight. If not for the active data link between his jet and theirs, he would have no idea of their status.

Dewey pushed his stick in and forced his plane into a fast-circling dive, “Get those fighters.”

“Fox Three!” Greg shouted, his voice coming over too loud, like a shout. Dewey’s leg shook with excitement and the sweat started to cool on his back, as he felt himself being pulled away from the seat before leveling his plane. There was a flash of bright red light back and behind his jet. His attention did not waver as he focused on the behemoth.

The floating airship consisted of a massive, armored balloon and long suspension cables attached to a flat rectangular cube almost two thousand feet long. It hung over the city like a distant mountain. With a flick another air-to-air missile was armed, this time targeting the underbelly. He launched the radar homing missile from his plane’s belly, with only a soft clunk of the internal bays opening and closing to indicate the release. He watched a wordless line trace across the sky towards the heavy silver floating fortress.

Long streaks of yellow darted out of the Nippon as onboard cannons roared thousands of bullets to intercept his missile. His helmet flashed to indicate the missile was lost. He gave his plane more thrust as he pushed his small plane into a turn, hoping to come around and attack the craft from another direction.

Instead, his attack on the mothership drew the attention of an Amazonian fighter, which tested him with a burst of cannon fire from below and behind. Captain Dewey threw open his throttle and pulled his flight stick, bringing his plane into a long fast loop. The forces upon his plane pushed him deep into the seat, and his flight suit constricted. The pencil jet behind him struggled to keep up the loop, and easily overshot.

As he closed his loop under the Amazon, he had a direct view as Tyler’s missile came up and intersected the larger jet. For a second the sky was a mix of blue, black, and red as the Amazon’s plane ignited from aft to front. Dewey shifted his attention back to the Nippon. He leaned into the cockpit and examined the hanging carrier underbelly.

“We aren’t equipped to take on something that big. I’m out of missiles,’ Greg’s voice carried a mix of hopelessness or fear. They were all naughty children, and they needed to run and hide.

The floating carrier loomed in his cockpit. All his life he had been told he was too small, that he needed to run away or give in. Just like in the stories, Goliath beat David and shoved him in a diaper. Captain Dewey “I have an idea, set the timer fuses on the jay-dams to as low as they’ll go, and follow me.” As he spoke it, his fingers went against the keypad for his weapons, bringing up a menu to arm the ground attack bombs.

His plane closed the distance to the Nippon and rolled along the side of it. On board the heavy flight ship, Amazons manually aimed cannons and filled the air with lead and steel fragments. Dewey weaved his plane within feet of the heavy structure and even at speed could make out finer details of the airship. The Yamatoans were proud of their flagship. They had adorned the outside with an enormous wooden winged serpent whose body converged into a figurehead at the front of the ship holding up the launch ramp. The serpent’s mouth had fangs as tall as the littles, with a mouth large enough to swallow Dewey’s plane whole. The external walls of the carrier were lit by massive flood lights and had been painted a mix of gold and red and white. Three seconds after he began his approach, Dewey reached the bow of the ship, and banked upward into a tight loop, with yellow streaks following a second behind his craft.

Upside down and now facing the dragon, Dewey could see the flattop in detail. It was half a mile of straight runway squeezed with a giant armored balloon, barely forty feet above the deck. Elevators towards the back of the aircraft were bringing another set of thin jets to take off. To the side two thirds of the way back was a tall rectangular box surrounded by metal and reflective glass. Dewey could even make out the men running around on the surface to assist the jets with takeoff. At this speed and distance, they were just a small blur. He rotated his craft and aimed his plane directly for the gap between the dirigible and the carrier.

Dewey hurriedly remembered to give the command to his wingmen, “Follow me in and release your bombs half-way.” As he came in under the balloon a shadow fell along his cockpit, blocking out the ambient lights of the city below and moon above. Two seconds later he clicked the release button, just as he was passing the carrier’s command bridge. His bombs seemed to float before following in a downward arc, colliding into the deck.

Behind him Greg’s plane released four thousand pounds of ordinance, which slammed just short of the bridge, shaking the carrier’s super structure, and severing the ship’s middle-port carbon-fiber cables that connected the gondola’s gunwale to the balloon above. Dewey’s own bombs crumbled through the back of the thin deck before exploding below in the main hanger deck in the middle of the ship. The first fireball ignited a waiting Amazonian plane, whose ordinance and jet fuel adding to the inferno that quickly spread to the rest of the ship.

All lights on the carrier turned off, but the sky was ablaze. Below the little’s jets the carrier began to shake slowly. The heavy craft listed in the air, no longer keeping its center line balanced with the world below. The tiny planes rocked slightly as secondary explosions buffeted their crafts, each one like an echo of the first explosion, growing louder instead of quieter. Their planes engines barely able to muffle the noise of the thunderous destruction behind them.

Ronald and Tyler’s bombs came next and intersected the stern cabling. Whatever limited control the Nippon had maintained from the first two attacks was quickly lost, as the back and port side of the floating fortress disconnected from its balloon and rotated ninety degrees. The entire structure was left to hang vertically from just the port and bow. The bottom half of the carrier was shrouded in thick black smoke, which rose up and licked at these weakening wires, like a slow performing fireworks display.

Halfway across the island another fireball erupted in the night. The four little invisible planes hit the three doll factories and surrounding chemical storage tanks creating a small thump of thunder at this distance. The golden red of the fires quickly dirtied into vomit green smoke as the strange materials to create dolls ignited, the flickers of new fires outlining a cloud as a barely formed blob against the darkness.

With their primary mission completed, they turned and headed west to intersect with Dewey’s group. The men were greeted to the sight of a burning, slow moving wick. The eight rough riders did not linger to watch as the Nippon slowly disintegrated in the night sky, far below the island’s defenses were stirring against the incursion, with radar and jets ramping up to intersect them. The eight men pushed their jets to a higher altitude that would carry them across the sea to friendly airbases in Honshu.

It did not take more than a minute of flying for Dewey to notice the problem. His plane would not stay straight and fought him as he pushed it to cruising speed. He would bring it level and then the plane would vibrate and fight him like it wanted to roll. Internal sensors hinted at a problem in the hydraulics. He pushed up from his seat and looked around, trying to make out why his plane was having an issue. His ears could make out just a slight rattle behind the bubble cockpit. Finally, he called on the radio for a spot inspection. Greg slowed down his plane and came up alongside Dewey.

“I see it, you’re missing the back part of your plane.” Small sparks occasionally drifted off a hole from Dewey’s jet, where a horizontal stabilizer had been. The rear right vertical stabilizer had been partially clipped. The plane was flyable, but only just.

Dewey looked at his instruments and fuel level. He was burning too much just to stay up with the group, “I don’t think I can make it to Xiangqiao.” He did some quick math in his head and estimated his best distance to be a couple hundred miles short.

Honshu was an early victim of the Yamatoan expansion, the eastern coast of the country had been converted to a puppet state. The rough riders had originally planned to fly over the occupied territory and reach one of the free airports on the interior. There they would refuel and fly south towards the Freewindian territory.

Dewey dropped his plane’s speed and started bringing his altitude up, “I might make it to Huangpu if I baby her.” He had memorized dozens of landing locations, they even had a few in Tsaria if they was unlucky enough to need to fly that way.

“That’s Yam territory!” Brad fired back over the radio. Everyone knew the situation on the ground. The Yamatoans controlled the cities closest to the seaboard.

There are fates worse than death and being a prisoner to the Yamatoans would be one of them. If there was one group of people who knew how to punish a bad baby, it was the Yams. Dark Cliff, the prison for littles back home, was closer to Hilltop than it was to the dangers of the Yamatoans.

Captain Dewey let out a long breath. The enormity of what they had done just a few minutes before was coming back to him. The sweat in his armpits and chest had become clammy and soaked into his flight suit, and his upper arms were stiff and sore from the dogfight. More than that, they had won an impossible battle. The factories were burning, and the capital ship of the Imperial Air Force had been knocked out of the sky. Not only had a little done that. Only a little could have done that.

“Oliver mentioned he had some contacts there, if I can get to them, they can get me out of Honshu, and back home, you guys need to finish the rest of the mission.” Dewey was trying to stay hopeful. He had not actually paid too much attention to the contingency stuff Oliver had talked about. He just assumed he was immortal.

Their real mission, the one they had given to the Libertalian Government, was to deliver the jets. The planes had been bought from Fair-Childe by the Freedwindian government; Oliver’s team was supposed to be delivering the toys to their new owners. The boys were a mix of former employees for Fair-Child and ‘reservists’ in the Libertalian Army-Air Force, a special access program with limited oversight, accountability, and hidden budget. Even a baby could be trusted with such a milk run.

Now they would be one plane in short in their delivery. None of the boys wanted to leave their captain behind, but they also knew it would be fruitless to go with him into occupied enemy territory. They said their goodbyes and wished him the best of luck.

Dewey aimed his plane slightly north on the compass and began coaxing the struggling plane into a long glide, he watched in the bright tails of his seven friend’s jets light up in a silver-blue and white as they journeyed to farther airfields. He was finally alone struggling to keep the jet level and on course with a dark black ocean beneath him. Thirty minutes into his flight, every gage was screaming for his attention, his altitude had dropped to a few thousand feet, and he was low enough now he could make out blurry black ground and shapes of small houses and towns.

The captain knew his plane was not going to make it to a proper airfield and considered his best options for bailing. His speed had declined with his altitude, bringing him low enough to make out large dusty farm roads. Flicking on his landing gear, he brought the plane in low. It wobbled uncomfortably as he approached. At a hundred feet he swiveled the jet pipe downward. Twenty thousand pounds of thrust began to stall the plane’s downward trajectory and was joined by another twenty thousand from a lift fan directly behind his cockpit. Within a few feet of impact, the plane hovered briefly and then the engines stopped.

“Shit!” Dewey said as his gravity forced his plane into the road. The hard landing on the dirt track shattered the forward struts and his plane crashed down hard to the ground. He waited for close to a minute, unsure of what to do, before reaching and grabbing his bug out pack. Somewhere behind him was the sound of soft dripping noise – likely hydraulic fluid or fuel and did not want to stay to find out. He popped the canopy, flopped out on the depressed wing, and jumped to the ground.

He looked up at the night sky, sunrise would come in a couple hours at most, and the moon, low to the horizon, was the only source of light. Only crickets and toads broke the silence of the road, which bisected two massive rice fields. It was almost time to harvest, and he barely stood over the height of the long plants. The air was still warm from the long summer day and the moisture from the rice field added to his discomfort.

Dewey took off his helmet and placed it casually on the ground near the plane, unsure of what to do with it. He looked again at his damaged plane, giving a lone word of a curse and then shrugging. He started walking slowly in the direction of what he thought was a farmhouse.

Maybe they were littles, like him. Maybe they would have a phone. Or maybe it would be some crazy baby obsessed Amazon, who would believe he had fallen from the sky like some mythical son. Either fate would be better than being captured.

He did not have to wait long, he barely made it three miles along the road when a bright light picked him up. Dewey briefly considered darting into the rice, but realized there was little point. He could not outrun an Amazon if they wanted to get him. He held up his hands and waited as the flashlight approached, sweat poured and mixed with dirt on his face. Dewey relaxed as he realized the flashlight was held at a height too low to be used by a giant.

“Are you with Captain Vickrey’s group?” The words came as a struggle from the other little. Dewey was not sure how to answer, he could barely make out the features of the man.

“That’s me.” Dewey relaxed for the first time since he took off from Kadena. His luck was just getting better. Not only was he taller than this other man, but he was also already a member of the resistance, someone Oliver had trusted to help rescue any pilots that had to bail out in enemy territory.

“Are there others?” He shifted the light off Dewey towards the field and then back to him.

“I’m the only one that needed to crash land. The others are fine.” Dewey’s eyes began to adjust, he could make out the man’s slightly balding head. His counterpart had chubby chins and wore soft white clothing. The chubby man had come out to greet Dewey in a fright, as he had not even taken the time to put on shoes.

“We were told to be on the lookout, I snuck out when I saw your plane coming down.”

“Snuck out?” Dewey was putting it together. This was not an independent little. This was not a resistance fighter. This was the other kind of normal sized person. The ones with bedtimes. He stepped closer and looked up and down at the onesie his new friend was wearing. Tiny pandas danced along his clothes from his dirt covered feet to his shoulders. The only access to his garment was a zipper along his back, which was outside the man’s reach.

The smaller man jumped with excitement and caused a familiar rustle of his clothing “Don’t worry, there’s a whole bunch of us. We’re going to get you home.”

A home that was over seven thousand miles and an ocean away. Dewey Vickrey’s fate was now in the hands of men and women whose fastest mode of transport had three wheels and foot pedals.

8 Fructidor Year CCXXXVIII, Potat, South Windland, Libertalia – Amazonia

“I was thinking,” Oliver tugged at Victoria’s dress as she was working in the kitchen on her laptop. She turned at looked down at her adopted son, “Since Dad’s being interviewed, maybe just this one time we could watch him on the television?”

Victoria’s face scrunched, and she moved the laptop lid closed, “I suppose, just this once.” She stood up and maneuvered out of the chair, following Oliver to the family room, who scrambled with difficulty onto the family couch. She grabbed the remote from the center table and sat down next to him, leaning in close to warn, “Um, cover your ears and keep your eyes closed. If I tell you to look away, do it, OK? There might be a bad commercial on.”

Oliver nodded and ducked his head towards his crotch and cupped both ears. He thought it was cute how she tried to protect him from rogue hypnotics. Victoria turned on the television and prodded to Oliver to indicate the show was on.

Ben looked overwhelmed, his suit was too large for his body and his hair had trouble staying down, the host was a woman slightly older than him, with overdone facial makeup and long brown to gray shaded hair. She shifted in her seat a bit before asking Ben a question, “I’m speaking with Doctor Benjamin Young and his new book The Origins of Our Species. Your new theory splits the difference between creationist and evolutionary origins, finding a good middle ground between conventional theories given to us by religion, and more scientific oriented ideas that have come through the past few decades.”

Ben gave a frown and shifted uncomfortably in the chair, “Well, no, um, all the species on this planet evolved, including ours, but when the normal sized people came to our dimension, they genetically modified our ancestors to create a new race. But we were here first.”

“Why would they do that?” The host tilted her head, relating the likely audience’s confusion over an unusual idea.

Ben held up his hands, going through the explanation, “In order to reach their full potential, the small ones go through a cocooning stage. They need guidance and protection during this period, and so they created the perfect…”

The host had been distracted by a voice in her ear and held up a hand to stop Ben. She apologized quickly, turned in her seat and aimed at another camera.

“Breaking news from Yamatoa, a surprise attack last night did significant damage on the island of Hankokku. Early reports suggest some sort of drone or missile attack. The Imperial Flagship, the Nippon, may have been damaged in the attack. This is an evolving story with minimal details at this stage.”

Ben sat still, unsure whether he should leave or go. He kept quiet and still.

His counterpart kept focusing on the camera, professional, “We have a reporter on Hankokku, covering the disaster.”

The host’s screen shrunk to the left half of the screen and on the other half filled with live footage dominated by a man in his early thirties, with a simple white tea shirt and obvious microphone tied to the front. The air behind him had a frantic pace of vehicles moving down a busy street, and the reporter had gotten up to the edge of some impromptu barrier. He waited a second for a loud siren to pass before beginning.

“This sleepy island awoke to a nightmare late last night of explosions as an unknown attacker infiltrated Yamatoan defenses. Their target appears to have been the newly opened Lettam factories, a few miles from where I’m standing. Authorities have cordoned off a five-mile radius from the attack site, and there is word of a significant chemical leak. All morning there has been streams of emergency personal and army vehicles moving to contain the damage caused by last night’s bombing.”

Ben watched the woman in front of him speak directly into the camera, she kept a poised focused look that led to the next obvious question, “What might have caused this attack?”

“The army has been keeping quiet, but a pitched air battle could be heard in the skies over the island last night, including jet engines and missiles. There is word the Nippon may have been in harbor and was sunk as part of last night’s raid.”

There was a pause and the woman replied, “Air battle? Like with planes? Walter, is anyone claiming responsibility?”

The man hastily looked around before answering, “Well, no one official is commenting on the planes. Everyone is just focusing on damage control, but a handful of Yamatoan jets have been found after crashing in the city. Everyone here is afraid that this war with the Freewinds might not be as easy as they thought. Two days ago, Yamatoa had the most powerful military on the planet, one that was steam rolling through the Pacific rim one country at a time. Now they’ve been punched in the nose.”

He paused and looked past the barrier, several soldiers started lifting and pushing the barrier towards the reporter. In the flurry of activity the commander could be overheard, “We need to expand the area off limits.”

Walter tried to stay on camera, “We’re being told to clear the area now, I just want to…” He stopped and looked down the street, the camera turned to follow, an army truck careened down the street past the barrier. The vehicle struggled to stay in the lane and came to a forced stop as it hit a curb and slowed to a stop. The camera shook and zoomed in on the truck, an unbroken eye watching as the truck driver door opened.

The camera’s focus zoomed closer, and out of the truck fell a bundle of brown. Light khaki Pants, shirt, and brown hat, the clothes fell six feet from the truck into a puddle. Then, as though possessed by a ghost, the clothing lazily formed itself up, long clothing arms draped a hidden figure, and then it shook. Now his face and chest were visible, and the camera’s zoomed lenses found beady eyes pinching. The small man’s mouth opened in a loud wail, the sound of a baby crying.

The soldier at the barrier looked at the child who had been driving the truck, and then the camera. He shouted at the camera and then turned and ran towards the child. The newsman’s greed for the story overpowered his fear, and he moved towards the barrier. The camera barely picked up the words of the apparent child.

“The gas! The gas is coming this way!” The small man cried as the soldier struggled to pick him up and get him away from the truck. The driver’s clothing was overflowed in the soldier’s arms as the man clamped down on the struggling small child. Another soldier at the barrier came forward and pushed Walter, before holding up an arm to block the camera.

He could not keep them away for long, all the men turned and looked down the road from where the truck came from. A strange green-puke colored cloud was inching over buildings, and creeping along the road. Walter took one look and pointed at the camera man, “We gotta go. Let’s get out of here.” The camera footage lingered for a second on the encroaching gas before shaking and cutting out.

The half-screen fell away and returned to the studio. Ben shrunk into his clothing, but needing to fill time, his counterpart turned her chair and rolled into a question.

“Sorry, based on the situation, we may have to cut the interview short, do you have anything to say about the ongoing disaster in Yamatoa?” She was reaching for straws, but thirty-two hours of news needed to be filled.

“Yesterday was Unification Day. The real one. This was a symbolic attack.” Ben’s face fell slightly, uncertain if he wanted to pass on what that really meant.

She was curious where Ben was going with this, “You think the Freewindians chose the seventh, because of Unification?”

Ben shook his head, “No, I don’t think they care about that. I think the littles in this country care about it.”

The interview quickly ended. Victoria looked down at her boy, his white collared shirt had tiny red and blue planes zipping about and while seated his matching blue denim shorts barely came to his knees. He was small, innocent, a pure baby, but when Oliver turned and smiled, his grin was tearing his face off.

Oliver held up his left hand inviting a high five, “Chernobyl and Pearl Harbor! That’s two canon events!”

“You’re grounded.” Victoria’s stare tore Oliver’s smile off his face. He lowered his hand slowly.

“What! What’d I do? I was here the whole time.” Oliver tried to defend himself.

Victoria’s eyes seemed to lose focus, and her cheeks bunched up, “I don’t know, but you just wait until your dad gets home.”

Oliver bound his hands up under his armpits, and tightened his body, then focused on the television. “Ben and I used to start World Wars all the time,” he grumbled under his breath.

The television scene had shifted. Where previously there had been the reporter in a studio, now the camera was focused was on a deep red central chair ornate with white and gold flowers. It stood on a reflective black opal slab and adjacent to the chair were two statues of golden dragons, as tall as the chair, but the silhouette of the statue was kept thin, forcing the dragon’s body into a spiral. The lights in the room were overbearing and directed on a lone woman figure sitting in the chair. She was draped in green and blue robes and kept a white mask against her face.

The woman took off her mask revealing thin dark eyes and a small nose. The maneuver let her hair flow long and out from a golden ornament that through skill was barely balanced on her head. The camera zoomed in on woman, who chose to let it linger as though the world needed to wait for her to speak.

She began with practiced nonsense, “We are the beautiful guardian, who fights for justice and love, and speak with the power of the moon from the throne of eternal power. The spirits of our ancestors guide us from above and below.”

“More than four years have passed since Hanoi refused to recognize our grand purpose in East Asia, and in doing so created disorder and chaos, which forced us to take up arms, and led to our liberation of their people from a corrupt regime. We have brought peace and stability to Hanoi where previously there was barbarism.”

Every syllable was calculated and seemed both sorrowful and angry. The tone came through, even if the nuance was lost on the Libertalian observers as the difficult Yamatoan language needed translation into captions as the Empress spoke.

“The entire nation is united today in solidarity and strength from the unprovoked attacks on our brave and loyal subjects. We have sought only friendship and prosperity in common with all nations, but after today war is unavoidable. In doing this attack, our adversaries have stooped to the lowest and most dishonorable of acts.”

With a swift hand, she lifted the folded plastic cloth next to her forehead that had previously been hidden by her robes. The bright white color of the garment matched her own makeup.

“We shot down the fighters that attacked us without provocation. In the wreckage we found these. The dishonorable and cowardly Libertalian government did not even send men to fight their battles. They sent their babies. Our brave soldiers struggled to preserve the lives of our people and avoid hurting these small ones, and in doing so, paid the ultimate price.”

Her face dropped, “I am the mother of all my people. I know what it is to hold precious life in my hands. What sort of mother, what sort of father, would send a child to die? Do they not love their children? We have always tried to look away from the bad parenting of other nations. It is not for us to judge, only show how happy and cared for our own children are, to act as a guide to the world. The vile Libertalian government has weaponized the small ones. They turn bundles of joy into instruments of hate and pain. They armed them with secret weapons and forbidden poisonous gases, to maximize the damage on our people.”

“Long have we heard the cries of these abused children and stood by doing nothing. In distant lands the small ones are forced to work, to drive and dress themselves, and even to feed themselves. They are taught lies and propaganda that if they try hard enough, they too can be adults. We will no longer allow the abuse to continue. The babies must be rescued from the indignity of false adulthood. They must be brought up in the care of real parents, who will show them love, and compassion, and fill their days with happiness. Our glorious Empire will liberate all the small ones from one side of the Pacific to the other. We call on all friendly peoples to join us in this blessed crusade to save the children.”

Her ornament on her head began to glow and she leaned in, “The entire world has forgotten this, but the memories of the eternal chair stretch to the origins of our people. Long ago in the distant past, there was a time when the small ones ruled over us, as we now rule over them. In their hearts they still dream themselves our masters. Those times cannot be allowed to come to pass again. History cannot be allowed to repeat itself.”

“We will bring peace, stability, and love to the whole world.” The bright light from her crown blew out the camera, blocking the entire room and ending the Empress’s war declaration. The television returned to the studio and prior news broadcast. The obnoxious news scroll returned, with an update to indicate The Empire of Yamatoa had officially declared war on Libertalia. A newly formed round table of commentators scrambled to provide updated expertise on the fast-changing situation.

Victoria shut off the television and turned to the small one on the couch, “Oliver, we didn’t raise you to start wars. How could you do that?”

Oliver paused before turning his head up towards her, letting the full weight of her judgement wash past him. What could he say to justify what he had done, about the needs of Earth and the greater game of the multiverse? Or about the necessary evil of the war, about the tens of thousands that had been saved from being turned into dolls.

“She did say you were a bad parent.”