Proving Ground 2 (Patreon)

Proving Ground
Chapter 2

-VB-

‘I was too meddlesome.’

Disguised as an elderly woman on her grocery run, I slowly walked across the main street of my little kingdom. I ignored the laughter of playing children and the haggling between shopkeepers and customers.

‘I tried to fix too many stuff without looking at what would happen as a result. Like I always am, I acted without critically thinking about my own actions.’

No road cut the street in half; only people walked about with the occasional wagon.

It wasn’t that I was against automobiles, though there certainly were outside forces who thought so. Why would I need cars when there were plenty of people here who could move boulders with ease? When there was a public transit system composed of mainly trains and a few buses, my people saw no need to adopt the automobile as the rest of Europe and Americas had done.

Considering just how much of the world’s ecological collapse was driven by those smog on wheels, perhaps my people were wise to not use them.

“Would you like a hand, grandma?”

I looked up, remembering that I was shorter because of my disguise, and saw a young woman offering to help with a smile on her face.

“... I’m alright, dear. I may look old, but I used to be in the elite forces, ya know?” I laughed boisterously.

The woman and the people around her looked surprised by my answer, and it wasn’t strictly a wrong answer.

I mean, I trained my elite forces at the start and continued to hold the position of the supreme commander of the Cer Armed Forces, so I used to be in the elite forces when I taught my first students.

“Oh wow. Really?” she asked me with stars in her eyes.

“Yes, ma’am! I was there at World War II.”

“Did you …?”

I sobered up.

World War II was something I had tried to stop but couldn’t. I, of course, went after the source of the issue, which was the unfair treatment of the Germans at the hands of the Entente after World War I.

I mean, sure, I had to kill a shit ton of Germans, Hungarians, and Austrians, but there was no need to brutally punish them when they weren’t even the principal cause of the war.

But I was the latest power on the European stage and a minor power at that. Woodrow Wilson ignored me as did all other leaders of the Entente. All they saw was a major power to crush and humiliate (that was the French). Instead of helping the Germans, I had to watch as the Entente took a step further and divided Germany even more. In this timeline, Germany never got to even have that hope of economic recovery before the Great Depression struck.

Sufficed to say, there was a lot more hateful resentment against the winners of the previous war, especially against France for their push to punish the Germans so heavily, than the original timeline.

When that failed, I killed Hitler the moment he tried to write that book of his in the prison.

So instead of Nazis, we got something called Koften? They’re known less for killing Jews and more for killing French civilians, and the concentration camps that still came about killed nearly as much people as the original timeline. I put a stop to what I could, but I was one person at the end of the day, and what few people I managed to train in the ways of the chakra arts were woefully unprepared.

I still had nightmares about the Burning of Paris.

Thanks to the massacre committed by the Germans against the French, European Union never formed. NATO barely got its feet off the ground against the Soviets.

Speaking of Soviets, I killed Stalin, too, and I killed him literally the moment he got back to Moscow. And I killed most of his supporters.

… Yeah, that was a mistake, too.

With all of the major leaders dead, Russia fell into a second civil war as generals, ambitious politicians, and somewhat well-meaning but ultimately inept revolutionists sought to take control of the situation.

Despite a second civil war within a hundred years, Russia fared better in this timeline than the original. Without Stalin murdering millions of his fellow Russians and straining the back of the Russian economy with harebrained schemes, only a million Russians died, not including minorities who usually got shafted during civil wars!

… Yeah, it was still horrible.

“Grandmother…?”

I looked back up and smiled at the concerned young woman. How nice, she was.

“I’m alright. Just … a few memories.”

I began walking again. I was out for a walk to be away from politics, so I was going to have my walk!

Still, I helped where I could and invited all manners of refugees into my country against the advice of my allies in Italy and United Kingdom.

I … wanted to help China against Japan, but the Far East was just too far, even for me. Also being a paranoid idiot that I was, I stayed home because I was wary of Serbia and the newly independent Bosnia because I’d taken a bunch of their people and territory in World War I. I knew that they were waiting for a chance to take back what they considered theirs, and I didn’t trust my ally in Italy enough to keep them away.

So I did nothing as the Rape of Nanjing happened. I twiddled my thumbs as Japanese soldiers committed war crimes with a list comparable to the Koftens. Koftens cared less about danger, and taught the Japanese how to manufacture Chlorine Trifluoride, who stored the fucking stuff in cities.

I still had nightmares of the burning Chinese soldiers. Fucking Americans and their need to take photos of everything. I did not fucking need to know how painfully others suffered for my mistakes. I did not want to know that Shanghai burned down to the ground because of a run away reaction from faulty Chlorine Trifluoride storage. I didn’t want to know that a million died over the span of a day because of the Shanghai Chemical Fire.

I sighed as I reached the end of the street at the Saint George Gate and turned around to walk back to my palace.

Oh, I did try something. I had a bright student. An Albanian orphan I helped to train to use chakra. He was one of my first disciples.

When I couldn’t leave, I sent him to help the Chinese.

What did I get?

His descendents now ruled Xinjiang and Tibet as tyrants.

Someone walked up to me. He was a young man, but his appearance didn’t matter because my eyes showed me the chakra underneath the illusion.

“What are you doing here, Slovkri?” I grunted, calling my oldest still living disciple by her Royal Guard codename.

“I just came out to greet my mentor,” she hummed.

They called her the strongest Royal Guard to have walked my halls and for a good reason. She was Senju Tsunade without medical knowledge. No, my once little Turkish disciple trained herself with genjutsu. She was so good at it that she tricked the very fabric of reality of her own age.

She retired ten years ago, though. Last I met her, she started a family with a boy forty years her junior but that was also ten years ago.

“After ten years?” I asked her incredulously.

She shrugged. “My twins took a lot of my time.”

“Well, congratulations on the twins then,” I gruffed. “You didn’t have to drop off the grid to raise children.”

“I did.”

“... I kind of had to.”

I paused.

Had to?

Why, I oughta-.

“I might have … stolen a few drops.”

I had to immediately clamp down on all of my reflexes to not last out.

I gave her a burning glare. “Why?”

Her chakra roiled, not to fight but in fear. She knew that if I wanted to, then I will bash her skull in no matter how she defended herself.

“Because I was scared. Deniz and Sarah were born too weak.”

“And you couldn’t take them to Sergei?” I hissed as I surrounded the two of us with a nigh-invisible sound barrier.

“I should, I know!”

“Then?”

“...I was scared.”

I cussed in Serbian. It’d become my second home language. “So you committed the ultimate crime for my bodyguards and stole a few drops?”

She nodded regretfully.

“What happened?” I asked with a sigh. I couldn’t punish her. Just as Hiruzen had a soft spot for Tsunade, I had a soft spot for Roxelana, who I loved more than I loved my own son.

Which only made the urge to give her a good beating rise.

I loved her as my own child, loved her more than my own children, and she goes and does this shit?

Oh yeah, she was getting a beating after this.

She bit her lips.

“Deniz grew horns and Sarah’s irises are completely white as is her pupil. I had to be constantly near them to keep their features under illusion.”

I closed my eyes. Those features sounded way too familiar.

“Deniz… Deniz ran away. I can’t find him. Please help…!”

I sighed. “I am too old for this shit.”