Chương 4: [P-3] Hague's First War Crime

"The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations." —Geneva Convention (IV), Article 28 In layman's terms: no human shields. Before Hague was the Hague, he was The_Gamer_General, a dipshit know-nothing teenager on a tiny Fire Emblem fan forum called Serenes Forest. He was loudmouthed, he was stupid, and the only person he respected was his mentor, who one day told him his screen name was lame as fuck.

Now, looking back today, Hague thought, Maybe don't throw stones in glass houses, "Deejay776". But The_Gamer_General needed to be cool in the eyes of his mentor. He needed his approval, the approval of this older guy who went to college and was really-really good at Fire Emblem. So if Deejay776 said jump, The_Gamer_General jumped. That same day, he got into an argument with some dude about a map where the enemy has four mind-controlled hostages you need to deal with.

The other guy argued from the position that it was mandatory to save the hostages, doing all this extraneous bullshit to snap each one out of their trance and recruit them to your side. It's a real pain in the ass, and The_Gamer_General said so.

"There's an easier way. Just kill the hostages." The other guy said, "That's the shit they put you in the Hague for." And there was his new name, just like that. Since then, virtual war crimes were his modus operandi. It made for a great bit on stream. Either Hague himself did the war crimes, or the enemies did and he was justified to do his own to stop them, there wasn't a consistent lore, but chat ate it up. It gave him an identity, injokes, memes.

So now that the game was real, of course this would be the way he kicked it off. None of the menus indicated how he ordered his units to move, but he had a god hand. He reached down and gripped his tiny avatar self between thumb and forefinger. Gently, of course. Though it didn't matter; his avatar's body remained rigid even when Hague picked it up, less a human body and more a chess piece. Hague moved himself the two tiles allotted by his gimped 2 MOV.

Just in case, he attempted to go a third tile, but the piece lost its corporeality and slipped out of his hand. He tried again, really just for formality's sake, then gave up at two tiles.

"Good," he said.

"It'd be bullshit if the game let me cheat." After he finished moving, a menu appeared with a list of actions. He selected the one he wanted: dropping Truth. The experience was fluid, intuitive, like touch screen controls. Didn't take long to get the hang of. And it felt good to move your guys with your hands. He picked up Adelheid, then Gaspar, and dropped them exactly where he needed them. His own little minions, in perfect formation to protect him from harm. He hoped. Nah, he knew.

What happened now that he moved all his guys? Enemy Phase, he guessed. He expected to see the little enemy soldiers zip across the map. Instead, the world returned to normal. Click. His glasses stopped showing the map. He stood on solid ground again, surrounded by soldiers. Time unfroze.

"Kill the Hero!" Metal rattled, all at once everyone in the room started moving. The little girl, Truth, went from feathers to lead in his arms. Seven spearpoints surged Hagueward. And his two allies deserted him. He couldn't believe it. He watched Adelheid and Gaspar turn and run past him, fleeing toward the back of the room, leaving him completely exposed. He was too stunned to say anything, to yell at them where the fuck they thought they were going.

Good thing, too, because after that initial shock he realized he knew exactly where they were going. They were going where he moved them. And Hague needed to move too. The abrupt shift from top-down to on-the-ground disoriented him, but the command he gave his avatar was simple. It had to be, since he only had 2 MOV. When he tried to run with Truth in his arms, though, he wasn't sure how he even had that much.

It wasn't like she weighed a ton—she was just a little girl—but you try running while carrying someone, yeah? His legs halfway buckled just to turn. Slow, too slow. The enemies were coming. He'd feel their spears plunging into his back any moment. Move your fucking ass, Hague! If he dropped Truth now, he'd run so much quicker. But for his plan to work, he needed her. He hobbled past Gaspar, who got ready to fight with his big axe. Farther down stood Adelheid.

Right where they needed to be, with a spot between them for Hague himself. He reached his destination and finally, finally lowered Truth onto the ground. Lowered her gently, despite his aching arms telling him to let her fall. Couldn't have her cracking her skull open on the stone. Hague was committing a war crime here, sure, but not that bad a one. He rose back to his feet just as the enemies crashed into them. His formation was simple: the shape of a T turned on its side.

Hague in the middle, Gaspar above him, Adelheid below, and to the left Truth's limp body. That left only one angle from which Hague could be attacked. In Fire Emblem, attacking diagonally required a weapon with range, but everyone here was using melee. Combined with the grid-based map, that meant someone could only be attacked from a maximum of four ways: up, down, left, and right. Because Hague moved so slowly, he couldn't get to any terrain that might cover him, but he still had his allies.

After Gaspar and Adelheid, he only needed one extra live body for blocking. That's where Truth came in. Truth was defenseless, sure. It'd take one hit for them to finish her off and get her out of the way, exposing Hague. He counted on them not doing that. Maybe that was a bad gamble, but they kept calling Truth the Polymath, like the title meant something. Their little loli pope.

Given how much they hesitated just to work up the nerve to attack him, he felt pretty good they wouldn't cut her down or trample her right away. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. In short, Polymath Truth was a "protected person," rendering a certain point "immune from military operations." War Crime Counter: 1. Three soldiers, including Marpasia herself, charged Hague from the front, but Gaspar towered in their way.

They had no choice but to thrust their spears at him, striking his heavy armor with metallic clangs. Bro took it like a champ, thank fuck, and then let out a completely unhinged bellow that bounced between the stone walls as he brought his axe down on them. Two more soldiers rushed from the left, then stopped when they saw Truth in the way. To hit Hague, they'd need to find their footing between her splayed limbs. Could they?

On the map, in the game, a blocked square was a blocked square, but suddenly Truth looked pretty tiny compared to all the open space around her. They could get past her, easy, as long as they were careful.

"Don't try it," Hague said. The pair balked. Got em! They stepped back, turned, and ran around a nearby pillar for a flank. Out of his hair for now. That left only— The last two soldiers came from the right. One went against Adelheid, but absolutely nothing stood between Hague and the other. A spear shot out.

"Oh shit!" He flinched, clamped his arms against himself for protection. He'd run the calcs, it took two hits to die, but how did that actually work? A spear to the gut was a spear to the gut. You don't just walk it off, DEF be damned, not with only a novelty dragon print shirt for armor. The spear rammed directly into his chest. Pain. It hurt, it hurt, an electric wave all over his body, crawling through his skin. He grunted. But that was all. The feeling ended as soon as it began. Was this death?

This brief flare, followed by a muted draining of sensation? It felt more like hitting your funny bone. He stared down at himself. The spearpoint remained lodged in his sternum, but bloodlessly, without even a rip in his shirt. The spear retracted with a crystalline chime. The point of impact shimmered, glossy like the surface of a bubble, then subsided. To his side, Adelheid and her opponent stabbed at each other. Both landed hits, but no blood sprayed across the stonework.

Only the same rainbow shimmer, which rippled briefly wherever they struck. A forcefield? They all had a forcefield protecting them from harm. They could pierce and gouge and gore each other to their heart's content. War without war. United Nations approved. Just playing, mom. Until your HP hit 0. He could guess what happened then. In Fire Emblem, Hague had a saying: The only HP that matters is the last HP.

No matter what grotesque weapons you took to the face, as long as you stayed standing you weren't impaired at all, free to swing back just as hard as ever. A video game abstraction, of course, that didn't quite map to the real world of lost limbs and exsanguination. But nobody else reacted to the forcefields with surprise. Time freezing and Hague moving guys like chess pieces was one thing, since nobody saw that. Goddess magic, whatever.

For everyone to treat the forcefields like no big deal, though, there had to be an explanation. A real one, an in-universe one. Something known in this world, a natural law like gravity or friction. When he got out of this mess, he'd have to ask Adelheid about it. Before that, an enemy stood in front of him. When he glanced at the stats of the soldiers, they all had the same generic name: Guard. No age or height, like named characters got. Big mook energy. Fodder.

The girl who stabbed Hague looked like a real person, though. A big nose jutting between hazel eyes, thick eyebrows twisted in consternation. If not for her sharp chin she'd look fat, since she had no cheekbones at all. Either way, a far cry from the eyeless portraits Fire Emblem gave its background goons. Her hands trembled around the haft of her spear. She looked ready to drop it and run. Only a shred of fortitude, pinched between pursed lips, let her hold her ground against the big bad Gamer Hero.

Could he convince her to surrender? She was young. Eighteen at most, same as Adelheid (according to her sheet). Could he say something to her? Could he have said something earlier, some right combination of words, to dodge this whole fight? If she stabbed him again, he'd die. Hague balled his hand into a fist and swung for her jaw. He wasn't sure why. He wasn't a pro boxer or anything (did do his daily pushups though). Call it the heat of battle. When you get hit, you hit back.

His older brother Seth once told him that. The girl saw his fist coming and shrieked, like a girl, like she expected him to wipe her off the face of the planet at a touch. Given what happened next, maybe she had reason to. Light flared out from Hague's fist, a blinding ring.

His whole vision went white, even through his shades, and he squinted and turned his head aside and only then did anything sensible come out of the light, he saw his hand but not like his own hand, it was his hand but around it flickered a pale flame. The flame coated him like armor. His fist, wrist, forearm, elbow—it reached to his shoulder. It reached past his shoulder, his chest, his legs, all of him, enveloped in bright white. It didn't hurt at all, not like real fire. His eyes adjusted. The light became paler.

No, not fire at all. It was more like he'd turned into a ghost, a spirit. A Fame spirit? Was this his skill? That wasn't all. In his fist, still balled, he now clutched a brand of light. It weighed nothing in his hand, it lacked substance, light and nothing else, but it had that natural feeling all long thin objects do in your hand where you immediately want to start waving it around like a weapon. Hague immediately started waving it around like a weapon.

He waved it right down onto the head of the girl in front of him. She screamed. Her helmet rattled, sparks sprayed out. Hague barely saw the rainbow shimmer of her forcefield as his sword bounced back. Even after the attack ended, the girl kept screaming. Hague started roaring.

"Holy fuck!" For how impressive it looked, the girl was still standing, so not a fatal blow. Still. Still, you gotta admit. That was fucking sick. The flames subsided around him, the light faded, but he still felt like he was glowing.

"Did you see that?" he said. He had no idea who he was asking.

"I saw," said a voice beside him. It was Adelheid.

"I saw," she repeated.

"All saw. The first act of a new Hero. The Hero who will heal this so rotten state of Denmark."" Denmark? Like, the country?" Adelheid scrunched her face in consternation.

"I mean. I mean a metaphorical Denmark."

"Bro, what?"

"Regardless." Adelheid tore her face away.

"The Hero acts. The Hero. The Hero Hague!" That last part she mustered into a yell that verged on triumphant. Though her odd, gloomy demeanor sort of muddled the sentiment, Hague was all for it in concept. His own cheerleader! He could get to like this princess, maybe. She said it not just to him, but to the soldiers too. They'd all taken a stunned step back, even Marpasia, who looked once more like she wished anyone other than her was on duty that day.

"The Hero Hague," Adelheid chanted.

"The Hero Hague. The Hero Hague—""Girl!" Gaspar barked.

"A lapse on the battlefield means death!"

"Right! Yes. Sorry." Hague was about to tell Gaspar to lay off his hype man, but Marpasia took the momentary quiet to rally her soldiers.

"Hold it together, ladies! For the Covenant! For the Queen! For your oath as a knight of the Lucian Escort!" It did the trick, the soldiers advanced. Hague was ready this time, pumped up by Adelheid. Though the Famespirit fire subsided, he knew it'd return next time he attacked, which meant with fists alone he was a weapon. And he was ready to wipe out whoever came at him. Maybe the girl he already hit, the one with the fat nose, if she didn't give up and run like she should.

"Come on," he yelled at her.

"Come at me dude." Time froze. TURN 2 PLAYER PHASE START