Bataan Death March Road

Yes, Flowers. Surprised?

Saminga will be, too (presuming that he ever gets its new status through his head). Well, "surprised" is the wrong concept. Try "incandescently furious", instead: Bataan is a textbook case of what happens when you don't guard your tethers against Word-shift.

It started so well, though (at least from the point of view of the Prince of the War): a combination of a surrendered garrison, an occupying army from a nation that never signed the Geneva Convention and tropical weather resulted in thousands of deaths. By the standards of World War II, this wasn't an extremely bloody action, but the sheer indifference of the Japanese army for the lives of their Filipino and American captives sparked the formation of a small tether to Death. Saminga, naturally, stabilized it right away (he expects that these kinds of atrocities will result in tethers, and can never understand why they usually don't) and appointed one of his djinn (Krastai) as seneschal.

Needless to say, Krastai never saw her Superior again: in his special idiotic fashion, Saminga lost all interest in the tether (it was very small, after all) after that. The seneschal pretty soon discovered that getting any backup was pretty much a lost cause, too. To be fair, nobody ever expected that the tether would be seriously assaulted: besides being small, it wasn't very useful ~ too many quirks to it. Anyway, what could happen?

Well, what could happen would be that the Bataan Death March would become a horrible example on why humanity needed a Geneva Convention in the first place. What could happen would be that the people of the Philippines would commemorate the holiday, solemnly walking along the same path that saw the deaths of so many brave men. What could happen would be that those that recreated the March would come away with a quiet determination that this sort of thing couldn't be permitted to happen ever again. In other words, what could happen would be that the Word would shift away from Death ~ and have the potential to shift towards either Just War or Peace.

Michael and Novalis flipped a coin for it ~ literally. Novalis won. Within six months, she had the djinni seneschal eating out of her hand. It wasn't hard: Novalis let Krastai scream for help ~ and would you believe that the Prince of Death ignored her even then? Faced with that kind of indifference, coupled with a growing disillusionment at the methods of Hell, the djinni was teetering towards becoming Redemption material anyway. Having Novalis around to talk to was significant, too: it's hard to be nasty to the archangel of Flowers. Once all of this had been settled, Novalis yelled for Michael to handle the Redemption while she put the final touches on hijacking the tether ~ which is why there's a tether to Flowers out there with a cherub of War as the seneschal, insane as that sounds. Apparently, it was the only way to ensure a clean transformation from infernal to divine (that's why they call ineffability).

Nowadays, the tether ~ well, it's still small, but it's a lot easier to use. It's centered on the worst part of the carnage (although it may shift soon to the places where the ceremonial walk begins and/or ends). Its seneschal is a lot happier, too: Novalis may have her faults, but failure to provide proper support is not one of them.

Believe it or not, Saminga is completely aware of this. He felt the tether beginning to weaken *years* ago and has been occasionally checking up on his seneschal in secret, to see what he's been doing to fix the problem. The answer has consistently been "Nothing". Saminga is not happy about this. His seneschal has been talking to Novalis. Saminga is not happy about this either. Sure, the djinni tried to call Saminga (who was not about to rescue what he saw as an incompetent minion from an archangel's wrath . . . or whatever Novalis does to demons; he forgets), but then he gave up and started buddying up to the tree hugging do-gooder!

Saminga doesn't mind, though. The tether is still his . . . he just needs to make sure that it stays that way.

See, Saminga wants to stage a tragedy at the next Bataan Memorial March, in which many, many people **die**. Horribly, if possible. And yes, this should definitely include Krastai ~ vessel death is fine; Saminga will be waiting for the poor dear when he recovers from Trauma. He isn't picky about the method of death . . . nerve gas, biological warfare, fire, crazed gunmen, whatever work. Saminga will neglect to mention the presence of Novalis in the region . . . but surely intelligent demons will be able to work around that when they realize it, yes?

Michael's degree of involvement is strictly a matter of seasoning, of course. Everyone's tastes vary.