Vol 2 – Chapter 32: Meeting the President
Translated by XianPiete
Guy made a flashy entrance to the Bromanian Northern Defense line, he appear by a gate wearing his formal Princely attire including his tiny crown. As several armed soldiers leveled rifles at him he first spoke in his normal language, "Hello, can you understand me?"
One of the soldiers said in English, "Someone go and get the interpreter, we can't understand him."
Guy smirked and then said in horribly Japanese accented English, "So sorry, I can speak the Engrish, prease rest at ease." Then he smiled and asked in English, "Take me to your reader, prease. I am here to make armistice."
The Soldiers all lowered their rifles but were clearly still ready to aim and kill him at a moments notice. The soldier that had been talking to him said, "Send this up the chain, we have a representative of the hostiles here."
*****
The President was hard at work with his machinists when he received the word that a representative from the enemy was here to negotiate. He slammed his fist on the table and said, "Damn I need five more hours, no, wait, a day at least for these new weapons. I can't afford to deal with a politician right now." He sighed and then said, "Ralph, keep working on those pressure sensors. Our charges won't explode at the right altitude without them." He set his work down and then went with the aid who came for him.
The President was driven to see the representative about two hours from the capital. They had the man brought to an army camp just inside the Northern Border of Bromania. When he got out of the car, he walked into a cheap looking portable quickly built structure and found an incredibly overly handsome man dressed like a prince or a king. His outfit was a blue formal military suit with red pants. On his chest, he had several medals. On top of his head was a strangely small crown that almost seemed out of place. He also had a sword by his side which he noticed his men had not thought to ask for from him. When the President entered, the man stood up and asked in English, "Herro, I am Prince Guy de Montfort of Pays Des Abrutis." He smiled and then gave a gentlemanly bow before extending his hand for a handshake.
The President said in near perfect French, "Welcome, Prince Montfort, I am the President of Bromania, Dick Jones." He shook Guy's hand only to find that it was like grabbing on to a piece of solid steel. He knew at that moment if the man was aggressive he would end up with a broken hand.
Guy smiled and then asked in English, "Do you prefer me to speak your ranguage, or sharr we use mine?"
President Jones sat down at the table across from Guy and said in French, "Please, have a seat, let's speak in your language, I am having a little trouble with your English."
Guy nodded and laughed, "My English teacher used to say I sounded exactly like a Japanese tourist no matter how much I practiced."
President Jones seemed to be looking much closer at Guy before he asked, "You were a Japanese man in our world then? It's fairly obvious. When I saw the pictures of your ships I knew there was an Otaku behind it. I originally was thinking it was a Frenchman."
Guy smiled and nodded, "Then you are also from our world, an American?"
President Jones nodded and said, "Yeah, my crew and I were working late one night and this strange black fog drifted in and suddenly we were all here including our shop and a few of the planes we were working on."
Guy thought for a moment and then asked, "How long have you been in this world, to have advanced these people to the early 1900s already?"
President Jones thought for a while and then said, "We have been in here about twenty years I think, maybe a couple more. We had our shop and some supplies so we quickly became close to the locals by making our magic machines. They were able to get us raw materials, which we used to make more machines and then we started to teach the locals. We started with a single city and built from there. After about hmm... Ten years? We were already advanced enough that we started to attract more locals and were able to form Bromania."
Guy smiled and nodded and then said, "I tried to advance my civilization once and it led to disastrous consequences for the people in the north. A single conglomerate ended up taking power which led to food shortages, a huge income gap between those at the top and those at the bottom. That's not even to mention the pollution, the disease and the pointless fabricated wars that were just being used as a stop-gap population control method by the conglomerate that was in power."
President Jones laughed and then said, "At least you had Magic on your side, right?"
Guy nodded and said, "You figured that out from our ships, I assume?"
He nodded and replied, "They are impossible, it's hard to miss. So your nation has the magic on its side, and mine has the technology. I understand you came here to have us sign some kind of cease-fire agreement? Since your country attacked ours without provocation. I don't think a simple cease-fire is in order here. I believe we should be talking about reparations to my country."
Guy frowned and then tapped his finger on the table, "What kind of reparations? Money? We use gold still, I assume you are using a paper currency of some kind."
President Jones smiled and leaned back in his chair and said, "We want one of your airships."
Guy frowned hard and then said, "We are short on resources. If you can provide the steel, I'll build you one."
President Jones nodded and said, "We want one to be exactly like the Red Baron uses."
Guy smiled and said, "Very well."
President Jones frown and asked, "You agreed too easily, what's the catch?"
Guy grinned and said, "They are Magic ships."
President Jones thought for a long time and then said with a frown, "You're right, I should have asked for you to teach me magic. I wasn't looking at the big picture."
Guy sighed and then said, "I have purposely kept hot weapons from my people because I don't want to live in a world where my wife and children would have to guard against that. After seeing your country I realize now that it will be an eventual natural progression. Traders from here or from one of our northern countries will find out about these things and they will spread like a plague through the northern lands."
President Jones nodded and then asked, "So what you are hoping for here, is for us to gradually start to have a natural friendly relationship?"
Guy frowned and then tapped his fingers on the desk anxiously, "I would rather that our countries not have any kind of interaction until I am able to slowly raise our level of civilization so that we won't have a culture shock between our people."
President Jones smiled and then said, "Alright, I have a proposal then, one that I think might be beneficial to both sides. I will build an embassy in your country, you can build one here. Your people can learn our trades, and my people can learn your magic."
Guy frowned and then said, "To get my people to an equal technological level is going to take a lot of time. On top of that, there are two separate countries involved in the conflict. My nation of Pays Des Abrutis came in as support for the nation of Wütendes Menschenreich who you first came into conflict with. We are allies now and had planned to move south for shared resources as we believed that there were only a few nomadic tribes here."
President Jones frowned and said, "We pushed the nomadic tribes north as we built in there old hunting grounds. That area is all they have left. I would also like to propose that we leave them in that area. It's large enough for them to keep hunting wild buffalo herds. If they choose at a later time to advance their civilization, then we can support them."
Guy frowned and said, "I was asking for the same thing."
President Jones shrugged and smiled, "You guys came knocking on our door, don't forget that."
*****
Doreen was hovering over Algernon's shoulder looking at his work, "What are you working on." She draped herself over his back and kissed the side of his neck playfully.
Algernon smiled and then said, "I had some ideas for ways we could use magic to power our society into the future. Guy gave that demonstration of electricity and then after what we saw in Guy's world, I have been thinking that Guy has been using his own knowledge from his world to come up with ideas which are flawed because he isn't using magic. By replacing his power sources with magic sources, we can eliminate pollution and much of the noise that his world suffered from. I drew up these designs to replicate the effects of things we saw in his world, using magic."
Doreen's eye grew big as she looked through his work, "Is this a magic propulsion system for airships?"
Algernon nodded and said, "I was thinking, the noise from the steamships was loud and obnoxious. What if we could use a simple wind spell in place of the propellers. My small scale tests went well, but then I discovered a trick. If I heated the air created by my wind spell and compressed it, the scale model was able to fly much faster."
Doreen was overly excited as she shuffled through the designs, "These are incredible! You have horseless carriages, flying machines, magic-powered street lights, are these magic weapons?"
Algernon nodded and said, "They induce sleep, instead of death. I wanted to think of a way to win a war without killing the other side."
Doreen frowned, "What happens when they wake up, you think they will just agree to stop fighting?"
Algernon frowned and then said, "I didn't say they wake up, we would need to wake them with another device I created. So we can safely disarm them and detain them in my other invention, the holding room. It works like our inventory, only it stores sleeping people."
Doreen hugged him tightly, "You are such a pacifist, but I love you anyway."
Algernon smiled and said, "Shall we go to the Inn?" Doreen nodded and then pulled him through a gate before he could change his mind.
Ella and Renée who were also in the room watched them disappear through a gate. Renée sighed and said. "Maybe I should go grab Claude and pull him through a gate. My brother isn't around to chase after us this time."
Ella laughed and then said, "I dragged Olivier through a gate the other day, I am still sore." she dropped her hand down and made a pained face.
Renée nodded and said, "Yeah, when I am with Claude, he puts a hurting on me too. Poor Madeline, I have heard she has no pain. At all." Renée laughed uproariously with Ella joining in.
Ella wiped a tear from her eye and said, "Well, don't forget he is still your brother, you shouldn't make fun like that."
Renée stuck her tongue out at Ella and said, "He is so overprotective it's almost annoying. He wasn't like this before you know. It's like he has some kind of weird grudge with Claude for some reason."
Ella thought about it and then said, "This all goes back to when your brother first came to Pays Des Abrutis. Before Madeline and Guy were a couple, Claude also made advances on Madeline. From what Olivier told me, it was quite obvious to everyone that Madeline and Claude had some heat between them. That Claude is no longer with us though, in this timeline he has never done anything like that."
Renée frowned and then said, "Oh, I understand perfectly then. The reason Guy is so upset about my relationship with Claude is that he sees Claude as the man who tries to steal his women."
Ella nodded and said, "Exactly."
Renée smiled and said, "My brother is a siscon, who knew?"
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