att(pirated)

I should have won.

It took nearly eighty years of hard work, looking over my shoulder, and ensuring that I'd crossed all my T's and dotted my I's. But at the ripe old age of eighty three, Tanya Degurechaff finally breathed her last. The Devil of the Rhine and warrior of many other names passed away in a comfortable bed, surrounded by her family on a warm summer's day. Many years and many miles away from the mud and blood that I'd made my name in.

It'd been a hard-fought thing. The Continental War, the Colonial Campaigns, the Russy Campaign, and the Second Continental War where the Unified States and the Allied Kingdom finally got off their rumps for a second go of things. And even after that, peace hadn't been much safer thanks to a combination of old enemies and that psycho Schugel's attempt at a space program. I'd spent the rest of that life watching my back, first for a knife, then for a certain white delivery truck. But I'd done it. I'd beaten Being X's little game, and I'd managed to meet a peaceful end despite everything. By his own terms, my soul should have been free to return to the cycle of reincarnation, free from the interference of a higher being with way too much time on their hands.

So you can imagine how incredibly unhappy I was when the first thing I heard after closing my eyes was some obnoxious infant screaming her lungs out.

I should have known better than to think that this would be a one-and-done thing. That raging toddler that called himself god wanted an encore. It just wasn't enough that I'd had to go through nearly thirty years of deadly military service, followed by decades of watching over my shoulder. No, he wanted to draw it out, and given the hammer-and-sickle on the wall, he'd picked up on my certain disdain for a particular group of suck-up zealots.

But as the old saying goes, 'the more things change, the more they stay the same.' My first name was still Tanya, but the surname had changed to Dadakina. I was once again an orphan in an underfunded orphanage, this time it was run by underfunded Soviet babushkas rather than fake-German nuns. And yes, these were real Soviets! I was back in the real world, rather than some bizarro land with magic and a legally distinct map. Ok, there were a couple of countries that I didn't remember; like Bajiirib, Nauru, Penamstan, and a few others. But even so, this was the real world! Even if I did appear to have come back in the middle of the Cold War. Hell, maybe if I was lucky I'd be able to find this universe's equivalent of myself and stop a certain unhappy ex-employee from pushing them in front of a train.

Assuming that I could get the hell out of whatever part of the Soviet Union I'd managed to end up in. After all, I had no idea what part of the Union had a large enough German population for people to still use the language. And come to think of it, a lot of the buildings were reminiscent of those built in Germania. Maybe I was in some part of Germany that had been ceded to the Russians? Or maybe there was a large population of Germans who'd been sent here from elsewhere.

Unfortunately, there was enough language drift between pure German and the Empire's Germanian language that I struggled to fully understand what was being said, and my understanding of Russian was barely past an infant's understanding. But I didn't need to be told how bad the situation was. The orphanage was run down and almost always out of something. Our food was somewhere between basic and abusive, with meat being rare and sweets a delicacy. Medical care was limited. And the education we received was basic. Mostly along the lines of '1+1 is 2', 'spot the cow', 'the west is evil' and all that sort of hogwash.

So maybe I stopped paying attention in most of the classes. And maybe that was the reason why I let some of my old intellect shine through in a couple of the apparently routine tests that we were given.

That was my first mistake.

Unfortunately, these weren't your standard government-issue kind of tests, and my results were interesting enough that it didn't take long for the men in suits to show up. They weren't KGB. After all, the mental image of a KGB officer in the height of the Soviet Union was a man appearing on the doorstep in the middle of the night with a hit squad, rather than a pair of sharply dressed men rolling up in a blacked-out luxury car. Had I seen them pull up, I probably would have gotten a few more answers wrong on the test that was shoved in my hands. But I'd been napping when they arrived, and I was rudely shaken awake to fill out a couple of sheets of paper. And with no time to assess the situation, my brain just went on autopilot. It wasn't a particularly difficult test, per se. But it certainly wasn't one that a normal 6-year-old should have been able to get right, especially after they'd just been woken up.

By the time the ramifications of what was going on hit my sleep-addled brain, I was being gently ushered into the back of a car that our whole village wouldn't have been able to buy with their collective wages for a decade. A small bag of my personal belongings coming in with me, and a substantially larger briefcase coming out for my former carers.

I'm being sold. The realization hit me like a train or a particularly unhappy aerial mage, two things that I had very personal experience with. It'd take me years to find the right words to describe exactly how I felt at that moment, watching my former carers pawn me off like a particularly shiny rock or a bag of potatoes. And both of my previous lives never got bad enough that I'd have to put myself on the market like this. But the impact it had on me was profound.

'I am not some product.' I thought to myself as the deal was concluded, and the two parties made to leave. The suits came away looking weirdly satisfied, wearing the half-smiles of a buyer who was able to get something very valuable for very cheap. The babushkas on the other hand kept their heads low, as the moral weight of what they'd just done started to settle on their shoulders. They didn't even watch as the suits started the car and drove me away.

"What's going on?" I asked the suits, letting a little bit of genuine fear slip into my voice to really sell the act. Orphans are very rarely missed, and as such, they're prime targets for anyone looking to do something very unsavory.

"You're going to a new home. Congratulations." One of the suits replied, before turning on the radio. The soft melodies of some state-sanctioned song giving the very unsubtle hint that the conversation was over. So I slumped back in my seat, and tried to figure a way out of the situation I'd blundered into. I didn't have any magic, this was a purely conventional world after all, so picking a fight was out of the window. Speaking of which, the windows in the back didn't open at all, and the doors were locked. So I couldn't open the door and jump, even if I felt particularly suicidal.

Which left only one option, waiting for an opportunity to present itself. So I busied myself with checking my meager belongings as the car left the familiar territory around the village that I'd spent the last few years growing up in. I emptied the contents of the small sack onto the seat next to me and slowly sorted out what I'd been left. And to be frank, it wasn't much. There was the small stuffed bear that I'd clung to as part of my act as a normal child. Some spare clothes that would probably need to be industrially cleaned or thrown out. And a notepad that contained the sum total of my 'education' as it could be charitably called. But as I opened the notepad, a small slip of paper fell out and landed back on the seat. I picked it up, and read the small note.

'May god grant you good fortune, little Tanya. Please remember us when you stand atop the world.' -Auntie Koslov

Auntie Koslov, one of the babushkas who'd run the orphanage. She'd written the note in a well-practiced, perfect writing. And I was about to throw it away when I looked on the opposite side and found something else written in the old lady's handwriting. Albeit far more rushed and scratchy than before.

'Forgive me.'

Well, at least she felt bad. It didn't do much to reduce my indignation at being sold like some prize dog, but at least she felt bad about it. I put the slip of paper back in the notepad and repacked my bag. With everything squared away, I looked out the window and watched the countryside pass by. If there was one thing I could say that I liked about both Russy and Russia, it was that the countryside looked amazing sometimes. The rolling fields and the open air weren't as beautiful as the well-groomed cherry blossom parks of my original life in Japan, or the early century streets of Berun in my second life, but the rolling fields had a charm of their own.

Still, you can only look at the same vista for so long before it starts to get boring. And I was incredibly bored by the time the car finally arrived at a checkpoint. Taking the cue, I sat up and looked around as the car slowed to a stop, and a fairly bored-looking man in a military uniform approached the car. One of the suits flashed some form of ID at him, and the soldier waved at his companion to open the gate before us. And to allow us entry onto what I could easily identify as some sort of airfield.

The instincts of my old life momentarily returned from whatever half-remembered corner of my mind that they'd been shunted into, and I quickly recognised the airfield for what it was. A former military airbase. Though it wouldn't have been too hard to figure out if you looked in the right places. Along the extremities of the base lay dozens of abandoned and half-rotted huts. Even further out, you could see the remains of anti-aircraft gun emplacements, where the dirt had been piled up around the gun pits, and was now being reclaimed by nature.

If anything, only three things really told me that this was a civilian airport rather than an abandoned military airbase. The lack of military assets outside of a few bored guards was a dead giveaway about the lack of military value in the place. The second was the bright blue and green paint that had been lathered over the buildings that were still in use. And the last one was the small group of normal-looking people who were crowding around a very non-military-looking airliner.

I wasn't a particular nerd when it came to military equipment in my first life, but one of the weirdest things about my second one had been the fact that a lot of the nations used the same vehicles and equipment as their equivalents from my first life. Germania used German Panzers and u-boats. The Allied Kingdom used British battleships. And the Unified States used the same Sherman tanks and aircraft as the United States. And this aircraft looked very similar to a type of transport plane used by the Unified States during the Second Continental War. So assuming that it was an American-built aircraft was probably a safe bet. But even so, there was just something off about the aircraft, it wasn't a perfect match to my memories, and I couldn't help but stare at it as I tried to evaluate the differences. The most obvious differences could be seen in the different engine cowlings, and how the passenger door was on the opposite side of the fuselage. But there were probably thousands of other differences that I simply couldn't see.

Unfortunately, today was just full of mistakes, and a passing old man noticed me as I stared uneasily at the aircraft. "Do not worry, milya, this is not some filthy Amerikanski bucket of bolts. This was made by the strong workers of the Soviet Union! It is perfectly safe to fly."

Personally, being told that this was a knockoff of a decent American aircraft made me feel less safe, but I smiled and nodded at the old man regardless. He seemed kind enough, and he probably would have continued to chat with me, had one of the suits not stepped between me and the man, and ushered me towards the waiting aircraft. If I'd been thinking properly, I would have hammed up the "scared little girl" act and tried to get the old man to separate me from the suits long enough to escape, or at least long enough for the airliner to leave without us. Missing that opportunity to escape was the second mistake I made that day.

Still, I was pretty surprised by the quality of the Soviet airliner. Given everything I'd experienced, I was half expecting old WW2-style paratrooper benches re-used for people to be packed like sardines. I wasn't too far off on the packed part, with seating clogging up the majority of the aircraft's cabin. But the seats were normal, forward-facing, cloth-padded seats. Two on one side of the cabin, and one on the other. The suit that had ushered me aboard gently pushed me forward to one of the second rows of seats and into one of the window seats, isolating me from the aisle. As I sat down, he took my small bag of belongings and stowed it on the hand luggage rack that was mounted above my head.

I took the hint and hoisted myself onto the seat with only a small measure of difficulty. Part of my mind lamented the fact that I'd been reduced back down to such an underdeveloped form, while another cursed the man in the suit who had decided to act as my guardian, but wasn't anywhere close to helpful. By the time I'd managed to hoist myself onto the adult-size chair, many of the other passengers had already boarded the aircraft. And my 'guardian' was already sitting down, buckled in, and reading a magazine of some kind. I couldn't read the letters on the cover, but they appeared familiar. It wasn't Russian or German. But it was something else that I'd encountered in both of my last lives, it was that familiar. Whatever it was, it showed a pair of men standing in front of some unknown aircraft, both armed with rifles and wearing green combat gear. Was it some sort of army magazine?

Before I could ponder the question any further, a woman at the front of the aircraft stood up, and began reading out a well-rehearsed preflight safety briefing. I didn't have much time left before the aircraft took off, so I busied myself with putting on my own seat buckle as the woman went on about what we were to do if the plane suffered an emergency. Personally, I thought that keeping calm and awaiting help from the authorities was a bit too serendipitous for my liking. But given how if the aircraft went down, it would be in the middle of nowhere, it did give a slightly better chance of survival compared to trying to pick a direction and hiking until you reached civilization. Plus it sounded better than just telling people outright that their chances of survival in a plane crash were minimal, to say the least.

What I wouldn't give to have my magic back. Sure, the Type 95 was something that could be charitably described as working with a suicide vest. Given its propensity to randomly explode without the blessings of a certain self-absorbed false god. But at least then, if something went wrong I could at least try to save myself. Parachutes, landing magic, aiming for the bushes, or whatever else worked. Compared to that, this piece of communist junk was a death trap for twenty-plus people.

Still, I managed to get the buckle in place just in time for it to stop me from jumping too much at the sudden BANG from the other side of the aircraft. It took a few seconds to realize, or rather recognise, the sound. But there was no mistaking the throaty roar of a radial engine as it rumbled to life. A couple of minutes later, the same bang occurred on my side of the aircraft. I watched with a mild sense of curiosity as the radial engine, something that I'd seen rise to dominance and then fall into irrelevance in my previous life, kicked into life.

The woman at the front was still running through her preflight briefing as the tone of the engines increased, and the aircraft started to move. The stewardess paused for a moment, before banging on the door and yelling something at the pilot. Something that certainly sounded rude, but I didn't know enough Russian to know exactly what it was. Still, it got her a small ripple of laughter from some of the other passengers and drew enough attention to herself that people paid attention to what she had to say next. Well, most people. I was busy looking out the window, both to try and take my mind off the current situation and to distract myself from my growing thirst.

I hadn't had a drink in hours. The last liquid to pass my parched lips had been a glass of milk along with my anemic breakfast. Of course, if I'd known what was going to happen I probably would have grabbed a glass of water or something before we left. But considering that I'd only figured out that I was being sold around the same time that the money changed hands, I hadn't really had the opportunity to ask.

"Uh. Excuse me?" I asked as I gently tugged my handler's arm, getting his attention as the aircraft started its takeoff roll. "Can I have some water, please?"

The man grunted and fished around in his pocket for something. A few seconds later, he pulled out an incredibly generic-looking bottle of water, which he passed me with a grunt. "Here. This should help."

After so many mistakes today, I shouldn't have accepted it. One of the universal truths hammered into everyone's head when they were a kid, and by that metric hammered into me three times, was that you should never accept food or drink from a stranger. Especially if said stranger looked weird and or shifty. And this guy bundled all of those red flags together into one average size and well-tailored package. Not to mention that the bottle of water wasn't a brand I was familiar with, especially due to the uncharacteristically bold red and white symbol embossed on the cap. It was certainly water, the liquid was clear and it had a series of waves printed on its label. But I had no idea what was in said water.

But as we all know, bad things happen in threes. My third mistake was accepting that bottle of water and taking a deep long swig.

We hadn't even reached cruising altitude before I was out like a light.