Dispel
“Russia saved the world from fascism…” Marilyn repeated in a droning voice.
Stacy stood in front of her teammate and looked into her eyes.
“Marilyn, the effort to defeat the fascists involved a lot of sacrifice, but it wasn’t as if Russia was the sole hero.
Muslim ethnic groups and Siberians contributed manpower mightily even though they weren’t directly threatened by the Germans.
Foreigners like the USA shipped a vast amount of goods over. 17 million tons, 5 million vehicles of all sorts.
And one single country. Just one single country with less than a million people at that time. This single country supplied huge numbers of horses, lots of foodstuffs and wool to the Soviet war effort. More wool than the USA’s lend-lease effort and nearly as much meat.
Who was it? Mongolia.
So it was a team effort. Within the country that was ours – meaning the USSR – and also from outsiders, all right? It’s a lie that Soviets, much less Russians, won the war alone!”
And just like that, something happened. Stacy could feel something lifting from Naz, Angel and especially Marilyn.
Riley stood a slight distance away, and had a slight but genuine smile on her face.
Stacy had said some things that really made the difference, thereby dispelling the Mind Spell placed on Naz, Marilyn and Angel.
Riley had not been affected by the teacher’s spellcasting, and would probably never be affected. Lithuanians regarded themselves as an occupied nation, so Lithuanians didn’t celebrate Soviet sacrifices or Soviet victory over the fascists. Riley’s subconscious had automatically provided resistance against the Mind magic being wielded. But Naz, Marilyn and Angel didn’t know any better. Like most Soviet-born people, they had no opportunity to leave the USSR while growing up. So all the information they had, was information that came from around them. Since the government and everybody said the USSR had made terrible sacrifices to defeat fascists and save the world, they accepted this information. It was basically true anyway.
What they had never realized, was that the perspectives were distorted.
The Western powers liked to portray WW2 victory as starting with Operation Overlord in Normandy, and completely ignored the Soviet contribution.
The Soviets portrayed WW2 victory as their titanic struggle, and failed to give credit for Western economic aid. And now this was further distorted by the Citadel’s narrative that it was Russia alone which saved the world from fascism.
But actually the Soviet Union was economically weak. The military hardware from the USA had been crucial. And Russians made up only 58% of the USSR in 1939. The other ethnic groups had contributed a lot of manpower. Non-Russians almost certainly supplied manpower crucial to victory, because large parts of European Russia had already come under German occupation early in the war. Many European USSR military units had already been destroyed or taken prisoner.
Russia definitely did not save the world on its own. It was a team effort all the way.
….
As they were walking away, something struck Stacy. And she froze in place, thinking.
“Stacy?” Riley looked at her with concerned gray eyes.
“Come to think of it, my Mentor has been training me to recognize Mind spells. But he never said that Russia is the only country to use Mind spells.”
Stacy remembered reading Western narratives about history. Who the winners were. The white male decisionmakers in Britain and the US who supposedly ‘saved’ the free world.
But China and India had contributed mightily also. China had over 30 million dead and most of the country’s productive capacity devastated and looted. It was China that tied down most of the Japanese military’s resources. When Britain beat the Japanese in their Burma campaign, they fought only one percent of the Japanese Army’s manpower. And less than one percent of the Japanese Army’s vehicles and weapons!
India contributed millions of men in manpower to the British, so much food and raw materials that three million Indians starved to death, intelligence officers who moved freely through Europe because as Indians they were not held in suspicion… and were they ever mentioned in any popular Western history of the war? Nope. At most the Chinese and Indians got some side mentions in academic histories.
And India wasn’t actually part of the ‘free world’ anyway. It was a colony ruled by ‘the free world’.
…
Westerners also cast their own Mind spells to deceive people. They certainly did not win their own side of the war without the aid of their compelled colonies, oppressed minorities and so on. Many of these spells might very well still be active at their own monuments. Indians, Africans, Native Americans, Chinese and others who had suffered and died in vast numbers for the allied effort were almost never thanked or acknowledged.
Confrontation
While Stacy was ruminating about Mind spells, Angel had interrupted the teacher. Thanks to Stacy’s Dispel, Angel had been brought back to normal, and she became irritated with the teacher right away.
Stacy had not heard the exchange, but could see a change in mood. The teacher and Angel were glaring at each other.
“Uncivilized and ungrateful trash!” The teacher snapped.
Angel was glaring daggers at the teacher, but she didn’t get violent. She snapped something back.
Stacy grew worried. This might turn into an ethnic issue. Central Asians had also contributed much to the war effort but were often overlooked, and they resented this…
Hm?
The teacher was herself clearly of Asian extraction as well. She might well be Kalmyk, since they were the biggest Mongoloid population in European Russia.
Of course, this was the Russian Federation after all. Probably a third of all genes floating around were Asian. So Kalmyk was only a probability.
…
The two traded insults. Angel made as though she wanted to slap the teacher.
WHUP!
The teacher had been holding a pointing stick. Now this whipped thorough the air and slapped Angel hard on her wrist.
“Owowowowow!” Angel was in pain.
The teacher did not stop here, though. She came at Angel again, swishing her pointing stick at different angles really fast.
Against someone with that speed, Angel was helpless.
WHUP! Angel got a painful blow on one arm!
WHUP! Another forearm got hit!
And the teacher was still coming! Stacy didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t a field combatant, but her teammate was getting hurt!
Should she ask Riley to pull a taser on the teacher?
But after the ZIL members had tasered their own Mentors only two days ago, Stacy didn’t want to be trigger happy anymore. There had to be other ways…
“Stop this!” Naz’s voice rang out.
Naz was pointing her adjustable spanner at the teacher.
Naz fights the teacher.
Originally Naz had been taken by the Mind spell also, but now that Stacy dispelled the spell, Naz also found this propaganda immensely irritating.
“All right, just get lost traitors,” the teacher said and returned to her original place.
Naz was not pleased at Angel and her being called traitors, but since neither was a Russian citizen, it didn’t matter that much. They would have departed uneventfully, if not for the teacher going on to say other offensive things.
“So my boys, you can see how there are always traitors everywhere who wish evil on our nation. It was like that during the Great Patriotic War also. Russia was betrayed by the Ukrainians who joined Hitler’s Wehrmacht and his SS…”
Naz could not help but turn around. “What rubbish are you talking?”
“It’s true!”
“It’s a distorted truth. Hitler had his Ukrainian units. But he did that to all European countries. There were fascist sympathizers everywhere.
But the vast majority of Ukrainians who died, were fighting for the same country as the Russians.
The Red Army had 1.8million Ukrainian casualties. 5.6 million Russian casualties. That’s entirely in proportion with their population shares in the Soviet Union!”
The teacher ignored Naz’s words, and continued her speech at the schoolboys present. After all, Naz was just talking without employing any Mind spells. The teacher’s speech was imbued with Mind magic and supported by the magic-amplifying properties of the war monuments nearby
“Children, so we were facing betrayal! Many Ukrainian units were among the fascists, supporting Hitler and killing good Russian people. The Ukronazis…”
When her name and ethnicity were both insulted at the same time, Naz couldn’t take it anymore and marched in front of the teacher.
“Cut out this garbage,” Naz said, her face reddening rapidly towards the same shade as her hair.
The teacher raised her pointing stick.
“You saw what I did to your stupid friend. You can’t force me to stop.”
“Looks like we have to fight this,” Naz said as she adjusted the head of the adjustable spanner so that the claw was much narrower now.
It seemed to Stacy that Naz was planning to catch and break, or pull away, the teacher’s pointing stick. But how could Naz do this? The head of the spanner was quite narrow. The chance of doing this seemed very low.
“Hmm…”
The teacher lifted her pointing stick like a fencing rapier. Then she started whipping it around at high speed.
The fight was on!
Naz was naturally slower than the teacher, and she was also wielding a much heavier weapon. So she was at a disadvantage, and kept backing away. Very much like Angel had been doing just now when she got hit three times.
Stacy started to get worried for Naz.
But she needn’t have worried. Naz herself was not afraid. She always had a vague sense of mechanics. How the teacher moved. So she could more or less predict the patterns of movement and avoid being hit by the pointer.
But due to Naz’s slower speed, she could not take effective aggressive action. She had to wait for her enemy to come to her, and the opportunity had to present itself before Naz could catch the pointing stick with her spanner.
Whup!
The pointing stick slammed into Naz’s spanner!
It happened more quickly than anyone could imagine. Naz already anticipated it, and she twitched her wrist. Now the pointer was caught.
Naz wasn’t fast enough to match the teacher’s swishing pointing stick in midair, especially when the teacher’s weapon was so much lighter than her spanner. But you don’t need to be so fast to twitch your wrist. And Naz had a sense of mechanics, so she could twitch her wrist at the right time window. This was something the others couldn’t do because they didn’t have such a keen sense of moving things as Naz.
Consider how Stacy might fight this with the same spanner. If the teacher’s pointing stick slammed into the mouth of the spanner, it would take Stacy a second to recognize this, and another second to act. By then the teacher would have long withdrawn her pointing stick. And not to mention, Stacy’s wrist was much weaker than Naz’s. Naz was used to holding heavy metal tools and playing with them all day, so it was nothing for her to fast-twitch her wrist when holding a one kilo spanner. Stacy couldn’t do this.
The spanner twisted in Naz’s hand, and suddenly the pointing stick was wrenched out of the teacher’s hand and clattered onto the pavement.
Naz quickly stepped forward and stepped on the pointing stick with one heavy steel toed boot. She pointed her spanner at the teacher’s chin.
“Ukrainians fought on both sides, I’d admit. But the vast majority were loyal. They sacrificed enormously. The death and disabled toll was frightful. Take back your stupid comments, now!”
…
The teacher’s eyes suggested she was not going to admit defeat. She backed away and looked over the crowd in front of her. Nearly all were her students. She could not call upon them to fight, because she would be held responsible if any students got hurt. But a couple of random outsiders had been listening to her lecture also. They held motorcycle helmets, and appeared to be motorcycle toughs.
So the teacher waved her hands and called out to the motorcycle toughs. And they came forward.
“These people are disrespecting our nation and our sacrifices!” The teacher announced. “Teach them a lesson, boys!”
“Gladly,” the men replied.
And the two men now put down their motorcycle helmets and advanced on Naz. One whipped a wooden truncheon out. The other pulled out a pair of knuckledusters and put them on.
At this point, Marilyn stepped forward.
“Let’s make this two on two. You do dare take on equal numbers?”
“Taking on equal numbers is not the Soviet way,” Naz said. “You guys should retreat. The woman standing behind you is not Stalin.”
Despite the situation, Naz still had to be mischievous.
“Don’t worry boys!” The teacher called out. “You’re good patriots!”
At this moment, Stacy sensed an intense heat coming from the teacher. She wasn’t completely sure what she was sensing, but it was probably some type of Mind spell.
This kind went by names like Righteousness, or Inner Fire, or Patriotism in different computer games. In general, Mind spells like these were meant to increase fighting ability.
And now a blazing look appeared in the two men’s eyes.
This was not good. They looked as they were spoiling for a fight.
Riley glanced at Stacy, as though expecting Stacy to do something.
But what?
Journalists could exercise all kinds of Mind magic. Stacy knew people who could summon up bombardments and conjure up violent assaults with their journalism. But Stacy was not that kind of journalist, her editor Dima was not that kind of editor, and the New Paper was not that kind of newspaper. She simply had zero experience practicing that kind of magic before. She didn’t know how to cast spells that increased her side’s capacity for violence.
…
The two men advanced and challenged Naz and Marilyn…
Normally it would have been a match of equals. The two men were not experienced fighters, just average men in rough occupations who sometimes got into fights or street scuffles. Naz might be a woman, but she knew how to handle metal tools and she had some skill with predicting movements. She was not weak facing an opponent with a wooden truncheon.
Marilyn was a petite female so she was no match in a contest of strength. But she had substantial natural agility, which when coupled with her military training and the Mentors’ training, helped her evade any attacks.
Marilyn had pulled out her knife, sheath and all. Since this was looking like a normal street brawl, evidently she was intending to treat this like a practice fight – by jabbing her opponent with the sheathed knife. The sheath was hard and thin so this would still bruise a little. While her opponent was wearing heavy leather wristguards and had metal tipped knuckledusters. He was probably slower than Marilyn, but she could get badly hurt if he scored a blow on her. And she couldn’t really hurt him since her knife was sheathed.
…
The two men start punching out and lashing out. The fire in their eyes was not going to go out anytime soon.
…
Naz and Marilyn were evading all they could. Sometimes Naz intercepted a blow from the wooden truncheon, and both sides staggered from the impact.
Marilyn had to keep ducking, evading and avoiding. She danced around, skipping here and there as her opponent made wild swing after swing.
But Stacy’s side didn’t look good. There seemed no chance this fight would end soon, or that it would end with no injuries.
Moreover, this was an artificially easy arena for Naz and Marilyn to adopt a defensive posture. They could keep retreating safely, because there was so much flat open space around these monuments with no obstacles behind. In most fights they would run out of room to retreat before long.
Stacy could sense Riley’s anxious gray eyes on her.
Angel was also worried. She was still smarting from the Teacher’s blows, but she felt she had to enter the fray as soon as possible. Or her teammates might get hurt.
Stacy’s mind was reaching out desperately for solutions…
“Stacy, don’t you have any spells for this? Something to discourage a fight?”
“That’s right, Stacy. Surely a journalist can calm a fight? You have Tranquility Aura, after all!”
But that was the problem! Tranquility Aura was just like a very weak spell with an area effect. It only slightly reduced the likelihood of a serious fight. When someone is determined to fight and has spells cast on his side, strong counterspells are needed!
“Can’t you calm this? Maybe something from your journalist’s kungfu?”
Stacy’s hazel eyes were darting between the combatants anxiously. Stacy was at a loss what to do. She had little experience with strengthening her side in a fight.
Now, reporting on the suffering on the ground in a war WAS choosing sides. It was antiwar. But it was a nonpartisan approach. Stacy had reported on both the suffering of the Russian conscripts, and the Chechen civilian population. She appealed to humanity, not to the hatred or fears of any side.
Part of this was because of the New Paper’s ethos of focusing on balanced news. There had been too much one sided propaganda in the past. They wanted to be the one balanced news source in the region.
Now Stacy lacked the experience of casting a spell entirely directed at one predetermined outcome. She could only spin…
Wait, spin?
…
Riley was first to notice. A determined, concentrated look had passed over Stacy’s face.
Leave me alone. I’m drafting! It seemed to say.
Stacy waved both hands. But one hand was waving in a clockwise direction, while the other hand was moving in an anticlockwise direction.
Positive Spin!
Negative Spin!
The two men found themselves facing each other. This happened just as they were attacking again, so they didn’t have time to react to the changed directions.
One man swung his truncheon sideways towards the other man, who punched forward at the same time.
Whomp! Biff!
The wooden truncheon slammed into one man’s shoulder just as his companion landed a heavy punch on his chest with a fist reinforced by the knuckleduster glove.
One man was thrown backwards immediately. The other man fell to one knee, clutching his shoulder.
Both had not been expecting this.
Riley’s jaw dropped. “What…”
The teacher stared. She had not expected the men on her side to attack each other suddenly.
“It’s Spin,” Stacy explained to her teammates. “A journalist’s magic.”
Spin could take place in different directions. There was Positive Spin, and there was Negative Spin. These caused rotations in opposite directions.
If the same piece of information is spun in different ways, it can result in completely opposite conclusions. And cause people reading differently-spun versions of the same article to fight each other.
And since Stacy cast both at the same time, she caused the two men to spin out of control towards each other. Thus when they struck out, they hit each other instead of their intended targets who were originally in front of them.
XXX
Seeing her side defeated, the teacher retreated slightly. She remained glaring at the ZIL members.
Angel was still smarting from her blows earlier.
“Mila, you’re ridiculous,” Angel said. “Are you Kalmyk or something? You don’t even look like half a Slav. Why are you promoting Russian chauvinism so enthusiastically?”
This reference to ethnicity only got Mila even more angry, and she threw more insults at Angel. By now she had figured out that Angel wasn’t from one of the Asian ethnicities native to Russia. So Mila started insulting Kirgiz. After all, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz were both originally classified as Kirgiz.
Kalmyks also had historical tensions with Kazakhs, which might contribute to Mila’s anger.
Stacy reached out and touched Angel’s elbow.
“Angel, it’s not worth it to fight. Let’s go.”
…
“That was Mila Badmaeva. Some kind of local guide cum relief teacher sent by the Citadel to handle school trips,” Angel explained as the ZIL team retreated.
“Truncated and meshlike leather top, black leather bottom, heels and red panties showing all the time. Very generously applied red lipstick. Really some kind of teacher,” Riley noted.
“Definitely a witch getup,” Naz said. “Not surprisingly, she’s into propaganda.”
“I was there longest,” Marilyn said. “And she was praising Russia greatness all the time. The fact that she didn’t look Slavic, made her even more convincing. Sounded more objective.”
Marilyn didn’t make negative comments about Mila’s witch getup, because she thought that was how witches looked in some fantasy games anyway.
Stacy gently told the others: “It’s common for ethnic minorities to be even more enthusiastic about promoting an aggressive, right wing nationalism than the majority nationality.”
“I’ve noticed this before. A small number of Russian speakers are firmly pro-Lithuanian and volunteer to serve in our military also. Why is that so?” Riley asked.
“I think it’s part of a need to prove themselves. Could be very toxic,” Stacy sighed.
Yes, she knew this quite well also.
The Chechens who supported Moscow, had been even more brutal against their fellow Chechens than ordinary rank and file Russian soldiers.
And among Russian conscript soldiers, often the most brutal were visible ethnic minorities like Bashkirs, Tuvans and Buryats. They seemed to need to show that they were loyal Russian citizens, so they carried out orders more ferociously.
This kind of ugly dynamic also existed in many other countries. Usually when the system used violence, some of the most brutal people would be from marginal groups. Who needed to demonstrate loyalty to the system. Because they knew the system didn’t really trust them, and they hoped not to be victimized too.
Stacy sighed to herself.
Even in a democratic system, you had minorities who gave their all in military service hoping to be treated better in future. And they were also often disappointed.
…
“So you didn’t use a Mind spell to win that fight?” Marilyn asked.
“It was just journalistic magic. A common spell. I dispelled her mind spell earlier, but didn’t cast any of my own.”
“You really beat that woman. She looked about our age, but was so fierce!” Marilyn said, remembering some teachers who had mercilessly rapped her knuckles, smacked her palm, pulled her ear and clouted her head. These had typically been older people from the wartime generation, used to authoritarian brutality.
Stacy smiled. “I think I’m just a better journalist than she is a history teacher.”