The White Dragons Rise
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Year One — Age 13
Return to (Riyue)
The first thing Netoshka noticed about (Riyue) was the silence beneath the noise.
Not the silence of peace. The silence of a crowd holding its breath.
(Riyue's) capital, Lóngchéng, gleamed with glass towers and crimson banners celebrating the "New Dawn." But the streets whispered. Democracy had arrived too quickly, reform had come too softly. The old industrial families still controlled the eastern ports through shell companies. University students protested grain shortages while generals blamed the Senate for "softness toward (Higane)"
Instability.
Averika's intelligence analysts had chosen well.
Netoshka arrived under her new identity: Mimi. Exchange cadet. Political attaché trainee. A girl with no past and perfectly forged documents.
Her handlers' final instruction, buried beneath layers of RedBird programming, echoed only in dreams:
Find the fracture lines. Do not create them yet. Observe. Document. Wait.
She did not need to create fractures.
They were already spreading beneath her feet like cracks in river ice.
---
The White Dragons Society
The White Dragons were not terrorists. They would have laughed at the word.
They were students from elite academies. Mid-level economic planners. Disgruntled individuals. University lecturers who spoke of "Cultural Essence" and "Foreign Contamination." They met in tea houses with faded silk paintings, in back rooms behind Mahjong halls where the click of tiles covered careful conversations.
Their rhetoric was precise, surgical:
· The (Higane) Federation was expanding its naval perimeter into waters (Riyue) had claimed for centuries.
· Averikan corporations owned forty percent of (Riyue) refining infrastructure.
· The Senate debated endlessly while the nation's birthright—the Dongba Territories—was slowly absorbed by foreign interests.
"A body with two heads cannot walk," their pamphlets read.
"A nation with too many voices cannot speak."
Their unofficial leader was Wei Jianyu, son of a general purged in the last failed coup. He was twenty-six, cunning and handsome in the way of carved stone, with a voice that never rose above conversation but somehow filled every room. He did not rant. He explained. He made authoritarianism feel like simple mathematics.
He noticed her immediately at a closed gathering.
"You don't speak like a reformist," he said. Not an accusation. An observation.
Netoshka met his gaze.
"I don't believe in fragile systems. They break. People bleed. Nothing is accomplished."
Wei smiled slowly.
Recruitment began the next week.
---
Espionage Begins
Her Averikan programming activated in subtle ways, like muscles remembered after years of stillness.
She attended White Dragon meetings with perfect, attentive silence. She memorized names, faces, connections. She noted which military officers attended, which industrialists donated, which senators received private briefings.
When she was assigned to assist with logistics—printing pamphlets, booking safe houses, routing communications—she complied with flawless efficiency. No one thought to question the quiet girl who never argued, never hesitated, never seemed tired.
At night, alone in her rented room above a noodle shop, she:
· Encoded port shipment schedules using a cipher hidden in classical poetry.
· Mapped Interior Ministry patrol routes from memory.
· Planted falsified intelligence linking moderate senators to (Higane) trade delegations.
· Identified three mid-level officials with actual pro-(Higane) sympathies and reported their names—through different channels—to both the White Dragons and, separately, to her dormant Averikan handler protocol.
She did not feel disloyal to (Riyue)
The Curator's philosophy had calcified into instinct: Destabilization is not destruction. It is the prelude to optimization. A fever burns away weakness. You are the fever.
By winter, student protests became riots after a grain shipment was "accidentally" diverted.
By spring, a bombing outside the Senate chambers killed five people.
None of the investigations traced back to her.
---
Year Two — Age 14
The Coup
It began at the docks.
A (Higane) freighter, near the (factory), exploded in Lóngchéng's harbor at 3:47 AM. Investigators found fragments of military-grade communications equipment in the wreckage—planted there weeks earlier by White Dragon operatives Netoshka had helped coordinate.
By dawn, the news cycle was controlled.
"(Higane) SABOTAGE KILLS TWELVE DOCKWORKERS"
"SENATE DEBATES RESPONSE WHILE NATION BURNS"
"WHERE IS PROTECTION WHEN FOREIGNERS STRIKE?"
Wei Jianyu stood on a platform outside the Senate building that afternoon. Behind him, fifty thousand citizens filled the square. Not a protest—a convocation.
"If democracy cannot defend us," he said, his voice amplified by speakers Netoshka had helped position,
"Then democracy must be set aside. Not destroyed. Set aside. Until the patient heals. Until the nation can stand without foreign crutches. This is not a coup. This is surgery."
The crowd roared.
That night, the White Dragons moved.
Netoshka led a four-person infiltration unit into the Interior Ministry's central archive. The guards died quickly—efficiently—her hands steady, her breathing calm. She disabled the emergency communications array. She uploaded the White Dragon's proclamation of provisional authority to every broadcast frequency in the capital.
Elsewhere in the city, sympathetic generals occupied the defense headquarters. Senate leaders were escorted from their homes by men in unmarked uniforms. No one fired a shot. No one needed to.
By sunrise:
· The Senate was dissolved.
· The Constitution was suspended.
· The Provisional Military Directorate of Shenzhou was declared.
Wei Jianyu became the Supreme Generalisimo and Chairman of the Nation by morning.
He summoned her three days later to his new office—once the Senate President's, now stripped of its artwork, its walls bare except for a single map of Greater Dongba.
"You saw the future before we did," he said quietly.
Netoshka inclined her head.
He studied her for a long moment.
"I don't know who you were before," he said.
"I don't care. You're mine now. That is, by which, you are the Perfect Soldier for me to carry out my orders."
She felt nothing, and silently obey, but not out of fear or respect, but due to her own mission to not fail.
---
The Internal Stability Bureau
Revolutions rot from within if not constantly sterilized.
The Directorate's first action was the creation of the Internal Stability Bureau (ISB) — secret police in all but name. Its mandate was broad, its oversight nonexistent, its methods flexible.
Netoshka joined immediately.
Her talents were too valuable to waste on paperwork.
For two years, she:
· Interrogated captured dissidents from the dissolved labor unions, using precise psychic pressure to verify their testimonies.
· Identified three Averikan intelligence contacts operating under diplomatic cover.
· Oversaw the "Relocation" of forty-seven families connected to the old industrial oligarchy.
· Developed predictive models mapping potential civil unrest based on grain prices, regional news coverage, and religious festival schedules.
She discovered something chilling during a routine intelligence review:
(Hinode) was not reacting to (Shenzhou) consolidation.
They were preparing.
Satellite imagery showed fleet movements. Signal intercepts revealed encrypted communications between (Hinode) and two smaller coastal states. Military production quotas had quietly increased by forty percent.
They knew war was coming.
They were getting ready.
She reported this directly to Wei Jianyu in a private briefing.
He stared at the wall map for a long minute.
"If we wait," he said slowly,
"They build alliances. If we strike first—"
"—you control the narrative," she finished.
He nodded.
Averika, through channels she no longer consciously accessed, received her encrypted assessment:
(Shenzhou) leadership committed to preemptive action. Timeline accelerated. (Hinode) was well aware and preparing. Recommend continued observation. Recommend no intervention. War serves all interests.
---
Year Three — Age 15
The Road to War
Naval skirmishes in the East Strait.
Trade embargoes that strangled both economies.
A border clash in the Jiangu Pass mountains that left two hundred dead on each side.
Each incident was amplified by the Directorate's propaganda apparatus. Newsreels showed (Hinode) flags burning. Radio broadcasts played recordings of weeping (Hinode) families. The word reclamation replaced invasion in every official statement.
"We do not seek conquest. We seek what was stolen."
Netoshka attended closed-door war councils now, her seat near the back but her presence noted. Generals argued strategy. Economic ministers warned of collapse within six months of sustained conflict. Wei Jianyu listened to all of them, then turned to her.
"What does your analysis suggest?"
She answered without inflection:
"If we wait, (Hinide) solidifies defensive alliances with the southern Donbaiyans. However If we strike now, we control the tempo. We dictate the battles. We choose the ground."
She did not mention that Averika's strategic interests aligned with escalation. She did not need to. The thought no longer felt like betrayal. It felt like data.
The council voted for war.
---
Operation Heavenly Purification
The invasion began at 04:32 on the first day of spring.
(Shenzhou) missile batteries, hidden in civilian warehouses for months, struck (Hinode) coastal radar installations. Carrier groups moved through the predawn dark. Paratroopers seized the offshore island chain that had been disputed for forty years.
Netoshka was deployed not as infantry but as something new:
Strategic Irregular Warfare Asset.
Her objectives:
· Infiltrate (Hinode) rear areas ahead of the main advance.
· Identify and neutralize communications hubs.
· Locate Averikan covert operatives embedded with (Hinode) forces.
· Eliminate them all if necessary.
She operated behind enemy lines within seventy-two hours of the first landings.
The tone of her life shifted forever.
Spy games became artillery. Whispers became screams. The careful, patient work of infiltration gave way to the brutal arithmetic of combat.
She killed her first (Hinode) soldier in a radio relay station outside Nagashima. A young man, maybe eighteen, reaching for an knife. She broke his neck from behind.
She felt nothing.
That night, she recorded his face in her memory anyway. A habit. A compulsion. A tiny act of witness.
---
The First Atrocity
The port city of Hakata fell after three days of shelling.
ISB units moved in behind the combat troops to "Stabilize" the population. They had lists: Soldiers, local officials, union leaders, teachers, anyone who had ever spoken publicly against (jp) interests.
The executions took place in the fish market, the smell of old blood and seawater mixing with new blood.
Netoshka arrived as the second group of collaborators was being lined up against a wall. Men and women, hands bound, faces blank with shock. One officer, young and pale, hesitated with his sidearm raised.
"The orders are clear," she said.
He looked at her.
"They're civilians."
"Were," she corrected.
"They made choices. Choices have consequences."
He still hesitated.
Netoshka stepped forward, drew her own sidearm, and shot the first prisoner in the back of the head. The body crumpled. She handed the weapon back to the officer.
"Stability requires fear," she said.
"Complete the work. But, do not harm the Civilians, only the Soldiers, afterall, our Nation's image must be made clear that we are Liberators of Dongba."
He did.
That night, alone in a requisitioned apartment, she stared at her reflection in a darkened window.
The Curator was silent.
The Voice was silent.
The Averikan programming was silent.
For the first time since RedBird, she wondered whether order and cruelty had become the same thing.
She filed the thought away and slept.
---
Expansion Toward Greater Dongba
The war expanded faster than supply lines could follow.
Resource shortages worsened. Ammunition stockpiles dwindled. Casualty reports mounted.
Wei Jianyu made a decision:
The southern campaign would proceed.
Greater Dongba—mineral-rich, politically fractured, rich in the rare Erythium elements needed for both industry and warfare—would be the solution to (cn) attrition problem.
Official justification: strategic security against (Hinode) expansion into the southern trade routes.
Real reason:
Without Dongba's resources, Shenzhou collapses within a year.
Netoshka reviewed the invasion plans:
· Three simultaneous fronts.
· Rapid decapitation strikes against regional capitals.
· Civilian displacement estimates marked "acceptable" in the margins.
She initialed her approval.
The flicker of resistance was very small.
Very quiet.
Buried under years of programming.
But it existed.
---
End of Year Three — The Stage Is Set
The White Dragons, who know were called then to be called "Oblivion Mandate", Ultra Nationalist Party had now controlled (Shenzhou) absolutely.
(Hinode) burned along its entire western coastline.
Greater Dongba mobilized for a war it could not win.
And Netoshka "Hei-Mimi" Nezvany—the girl from Kholodny, the sleeper cell, the asset, the weapon—stood at the center of it all, watching the machinery she had helped assemble consume continent after continent.
She was not yet a defector.
Not yet a traitor.
Not yet a revolutionary.
But in the quiet moments between briefings, in the seconds before sleep, she felt something growing in the space where the Curator's voice used to live.
Doubt.
Not loud. Not demanding. Just... present.
A tiny crack in the architecture.
Waiting for what was yet to begin a greater war in the near Future, and the consequences of her Actions she will soon bear it all with.