She regretted the deaths, that went without saying, but she didn’t feel guilty about it.  Of the ten of them, seven had made it back, because of her and her gift.

Nice.

They had returned to their village, moved the bodies out of sight, and did what they could to conserve their food until the guerrilla fighters came through once again.

A village populated only by seven hungry children.

Hana had made the others swear a promise, to not speak of her gift.  She knew the guerrilla fighters would recruit her, use her, if they knew.  Whatever this power was that she had received, she didn’t feel it was for that.

Is that why she left for America before she became a heroine?

When the fighters had returned, they saw the state of the children and elected to evacuate them.  The fighters took them to a city, and a man there saw that Hana and the others were shipped off to the United Kingdom, where many other refugees were going.

Ah, not directly to the U.S.

Fair enough.

They were split up, and the others were sent one by one to homes for orphans and other troubled children.  Hana’s turn came late, nearly last, and she was taken to fly on another airplane to her own new home.  It was there she ran into difficulty.  She’d moved through the archway – what she would later learn was a metal detector – and it sounded an alarm.

Hah! Part of her psyche is metallic now…

Guards had found the weapon she couldn’t drop or leave behind, and Hana was carried off to another place.

Yeaah, weapons are not something airplane authorities like. Right.

Interrogated, asked many questions.  She was taken to the bathroom, patted down on her re-entry to the interrogation room, and they found the same gun on her that they’d taken away just half an hour ago.

I take it the weapons return to her, then. Probably a good thing – don’t want part of your psyche getting lost.

Everything else had happened very fast, after that.  It was an American in a military uniform that rescued her.  He took her to America, saw that she was put with a family there.  When the first three Wards teams were established, she was enlisted.

Nice.

She barely knew a hundred words of English, her numbers and the alphabet, when she first went out in costume.

Y’know, out of all the known characters, Miss Militia was one of those I least expected to be an immigrant, other than those confirmed not to be.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying immigrants can’t be patriotic for the country they come to, even more so than their country of origin. It just came as a surprise given the intensity of her American branding.

And I’m definitely not complaining. 🙂

And she would never speak of it to anyone.

She’d killed the soldiers that held the other children of her village hostage.

Nice work. Not sure how you pulled it off, honestly.

After the first, she had feigned fear, pretended the guerrilla fighters were in the woods.  Then she had waited for the moment they were too busy watching the woods and mowed the rest of the men down with an assault rifle.

Oh, that’s how. But why did they trust you after you shot at one of them?

She didn’t even feel bad about it, nor did she lose much sleep that one of the children, Behar, had been shot in the skirmish.

Rest in peace, Behar.

…also it’s not like she has much sleep to lose in the first place, is it?

But she remembered.  She touched the combat knife that was sheathed at her hip, as if to remind herself it was there.  She harbored her suspicions about her gift: her powers had taken a part of her psyche and given it concrete form.

Hm. So her weapon is pretty much a part of her, then.

The angriest parts of her, the most childish parts, the parts of her that dreamed, and those that forgot.  The knife at her hip slept for her and dreamed for her, she imagined.

She said earlier that she doesn’t usually sleep. Sounds like that was to be taken literally.

She had gone nearly a year at a time without needing to stop and put her head to rest on a pillow.

Damn.

When she closed her eyes and let herself drift off, it was because she felt it was something she ought to do, not because she had to.  Even then, she never dreamed.

So you’re saying she’s a D&D elf, then.

She remembered, instead, her mind replaying past events in perfect detail.

That explains why it was so vivid. The “dream” sequence wasn’t dreamlike at all.

And through some chance of fate, this meant she remembered the entity, and she remembered forgetting it, as paradoxical as that was.

That was the weirdest part of finding out it was a “dream”, to be honest.

She was still wearing her costume, she noted, as she rose from her bed and walked to the bathroom.  At least she’d had the sense to remove her scarf so she didn’t strangle while she rested.

A scarf with the American flag, perhaps, also known as the defining feature of Miss Militia’s costume?

She was the only one who remembered.  Everyone else forgot that impossibly huge being, if they were even graced with a glimpse of it.  She couldn’t be sure.

Who knows. My standing theory is that it existed only in the mindscape of those it chose to exist for.

If any others saw it, they would inevitably forget it before they could gather their thoughts enough to speak of it.  Like she was supposed to.

Evidently things went the other way for Hannah, but why?

A gun, polished gray steel.  Somehow familiar.  Identical to the smallest guns she had seen the guerrilla fighters carrying.

Alrighty, then! Maybe this sort of blur is what powers bags of necessity, or Wander’s hat in Wander Over Yonder…

I don’t know how useful this might be to Hana. She doesn’t sound like she had any more experience with guns than the rest of her family, and it’s her against at least seven trained soldiers with weapons of their own and hostages.

Then again, I was already thinking Hana might’ve developed a power even before she was visited by the apparently benevolent(???) Karahindiba.

I can’t use this.  The thought was cold in her mind.  If I use this, they’ll kill the others the second I fire.

Exactly.

The gun shimmered, became that blur of green and black, then settled into a new shape.  She’d seen this, too.

Hm. This seems similar to Miss Militia’s power.

One of the fighters had been talking to Hana, showing her his English gun magazine, in an effort to get in good graces with her older sister.  This was similar to the gun she’d just had in her hand, but there was a metal tube on the front, nearly doubling the gun’s length.  The tube, she knew, made guns quieter.

Maybe I was wrong about this being set in the present, and this is Miss Militia’s backstory? Seems like an odd choice, especially with how thoroughly American her design is.

Or maybe this is set in the present, and the same thing with Karahindiba happened to Miss Militia in the past?

The rest of the children and the other soldiers were far behind.  It was still nearly impossible, but-

<Walk!> the soldier behind her shouted.  <Walk or->

Oh right, I forgot to comment on the gun. Specifically the silencer – it might help her gain at least some additional element of surprise, but I’m not sure just how much quieter they make the guns.

She wheeled around, holding the gun in both hands.  She took a second to steady her aim, and the Turkish soldier’s surprise bought her just enough time to pull the trigger.

Well. This kind of ruins what I was talking about – namely hiding the gun a bit, making them confused about where the bullet came from – but I’m not sure it would work anyway.

Hannah’s eyes snapped open.

This is why I don’t sleep.

…alright. So all that was a dream, had by a Hannah with a far more American way to spell it. For now, I’m guessing that Hana made it out of whichever country she was in and is now having nightmares about the day she got her power.

Also, that places the event firmly in the past. Maybe Hannah is Miss Militia after all?

Oh, and I suppose she’s about to hear the air raid sirens, too, taking her morning from bad to worse.

And it was alive.  A living thing.

And if this is an Endbringer, it’s implied to have been human once. Maybe it still is, on some level.

She knew without having to think about it, each of those echoes or extensions of the entity was as much a part of a connected whole as her hand or nose was to her.  Each was something this living entity was aware of, controlled and moved with intent and purpose.  As though it existed and extended into those possible selves all at once.

Hm. Possible selves, eh? Sounds like we’re dealing with a sort of Schrödinger situation here.

It’s dying, she thought.

Huh? What makes you think that?

The outermost extensions of the creature were flaking off and breaking into fragments as it swam through an emptiness without air,

Ahh, yeah, I can see why you might think that means it’s dying.

I don’t think we can take it for granted, or anything for that matter, but still.

not moving but sinuously adjusting its self through the existences that held the echoes, shrinking away here and swelling there, carrying itself away at a speed that outpaced light.

Hm. Faster than light movements could explain some of the weirdness about it.

Maybe.

Fuck if I know how, though.

In its wake, flakes and fragments sloughed off of the entity like seeds from an impossibly large karahindiba, or dandelion, in a steady wind.  Seeds more numerous than all the specks of dirt across all the Earth.

Karahindiba is Turkish according to Google Translate. Damn, I was hoping it’d help me find out what Hana’s mother tongue is.

So, should we be worried about the seeds potentially being literal? I kind of doubt it, but hey, I told you, I’m not taking anything for granted when it comes to this thing.

One of those fragments seemed to grow, getting bigger, larger, looming in her consciousness until it was all she could perceive, as though the moon was falling, colliding with the earth.  Falling directly on top of her.

“Looming in her consciousness”… I guess existing in the mindscape would be a useful way to avoid those pesky laws of physics in the real world?

Whether that’s a common mindscape (if it is a mindscape) or the appearance of this thing paused Hana’s perception of time remains to be seen.

Anyway, I have a feeling that a fragment of Karahindiba landing on Hana is not exactly a good thing.

-k!> the soldier finished without missing a beat.

Hm. Sounds like I was on the right track with the paused perception of time. During that whole sequence, none of the reactions of the soldiers or other children were described – I think if she had managed to draw her gaze away from Karahindiba, she might’ve noticed everyone else appearing frozen. That is, if they’d be there at all.

Hana stirred, she was still in the forest, hands stinging with the scrapes, feet sore from the walking.  Her heart pounded and she could taste fear like bile in her mouth.

Better hope that’s all that’s in there now.

Again, what if the seeds are literal and Karahindiba essentially planted another one of itself in Hana?

Y’know, for all that I keep mentioning Lovecraftian horrors, I feel like I should mention that I’ve never read anything by H.P. Lovecraft.

The soldier that was watching her called out from a distance behind her, the ever familiar <Walk!> that was a threat and an order at the same time.

Sick with fear, Hana looked around, searching for something that could tell her where to go, how to move.

You need to look at the numbers under the tiles and try to logic out where the mines are, so you can figure out where they aren’t.

In that moment, she knew she wasn’t going to die right away.  She couldn’t walk any further, it was physically impossible, as though her feet were as rooted to the ground as the trees were.

Physically impossible because she’s paralyzed by fear, or because her power is restricting her?

They would make her watch as they tortured one of the other children to death.  Then they would start on the next, maybe Hana herself, until they had another child willing to act as decoy and clear the traps from their way in the simplest, most dangerous manner possible.

Gotta say, if the power physically prevents her from taking a course of action that leads to her death, that’s a pretty bad position for anyone who would be inclined to sacrifice themself for someone else.

I mean, it’s one thing to prevent the user of the power from doing something dumb, but I feel like it shouldn’t restrict their choice entirely in that kind of situation.

<Wal-

She saw something vast.

It wasn’t big in the sense that the trees or even the mountains were big.  It was big in the way that transcended what she could even see or feel.

Hm.

So, uh. Are we getting a preview for what Endbringers are like here?

It was like seeing something bigger than the whole wide planet, except more – this thing that was too large to comprehend to start with, it extended.

I mean this certainly does sound rather Lovecraftian. Or Labyrinth-ian, but I don’t see any reason for her to be here.

She didn’t have a better word to describe what she was perceiving.  It was as though there were mirror images of it, but each image existed in the same place, some moving differently, and sometimes, very rarely, one image came in contact with with something that the others didn’t.

I’d ask if the others were seeing this too, but given the cut-off “wal–”, I have a feeling they do.

Anyway, I have to give it to Wildbow: This is a pretty good description for something incomprehensible.

Each of the images was as real and concrete as the others.  And this made it big in a way that she couldn’t describe if she were a hundred year old scholar or philosopher with access to the best libraries in the world.

It kind of sounds like it’s bigger than the planet, and you can tell it is by looking at it, but it doesn’t look bigger than the planet because all of that bigness is in the same space. Which does not quite mean it’s compact and therefore smaller.

She blinked hard to clear her eyes of tears.  So stupid.  She needed to be able to see.  Any clue.  Any at all, to see a trap.  Crying was the worst thing she could do.

Yeah, better stay alert.

One foot in front of the other.

She stopped.  Her feet refused to go any further.  Trembling, she looked around.

Are your trap senses tingling?

…I just realized that these circumstances can absolutely qualify as a trigger event. For all we know, Hana might have just developed a power that is likely to be accidentally activated in this Interlude.

She might become the savior of the remainder of her village. Not that it’d bring the adults back to life (unless her powerset turns out to include resurrection, I guess), but still.

If she took one more step, she knew, she was going to die.

The thing that made me realize the above was the thought “What if she actually does have that sense?”

So, uh, what if she actually does have that sense?

There was no rationale for it, no reason or clue.  This patch of forest was no different from the rest.  A bed of red-brown needles underfoot, shrubs and trees pressing in around her.

But she knew.  Whether she took a step forward, to her right or left, she would be stepping into a trap.

I wonder if this power only works on traps or if it’s more like what Dinah has, but passive and less specific. A sense that detects outcomes where she dies? Or more usefully, where she gets hurt?

A hole like the one that caught Kovan, or perhaps an explosive device, like the one that took Ashti.  At least she’d gone quickly.

So that’s what happened to the first kid… Rest in peace.