Alvarian War Room

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The tall, imposing woman got up from her chair at the head of the table, addressing the room full of experienced generals, admirals, and ministers, as well as the newcomer who had called for this meeting. “Greetings. I am aware that the timing of this meeting is unusual, given that it has been only a handful of days since we met up to discuss the state of the war. However, General Alarie has informed me of a crucial development that must be addressed immediately.”

“Thank you, Minister Rayne.” With that, the young woman got up to give her speech. General Vivian Alarie was merely twenty-six years old, making her the youngest general in the Empire’s history. She was given the position of corporal at nineteen due to her aristocratic status, and after a series of brilliant offensives that were successful even with her commanding a vastly smaller force, she was repeatedly promoted until she obtained the title of General.

Although her lack of experience was seen negatively by the others in the room, it could not be denied that she was both a brilliant tactician and a crowd-pleaser, as her popularity with the common people of the empire had grown astronomically due to her flashy style and inspiring speeches. Thus, they waited at attention as Vivian prepared her speech, the light of the war room amplifying the many medals on the General’s chest, which contrasted with her steel-gray uniform.

“It is no mystery the cause of the recent desertions and under–performances by our troops these past few months. Simply put, they are exhausted of this war, and have no will to continue fighting. Now, what I would identify as the second largest issue currently plaguing the Empire would be the need to feed and provide for the inhabitants of the one hundred and seventy-one worlds currently under our military administration. However, I propose to you one solution to both of these problems.”

Murmurs rang out amongst the military brass in the room, speculation on what this solution was running wild until Vivian cleared her throat, and there was silence once more.

“A project to create a weapon capable of reducing the size of matter has been under development of hundreds of top scientists for years, and a working prototype has finally been created. This weapon is far too slow and vulnerable to be used in live combat, however, there is no use for that. I propose that… ninety-five percent of the cities in our occupied worlds be shrunken down, and distributed to our soldiers as ah, insoles.”

The room erupted into chaos worse than before, the idea was certainly outlandish, but some in the room believed it was just what was needed in this desperate time, before the hard-earned gains in the war were reversed. General Alarie put her hand up once more, and the noise slowly quieted down until it was no more.

“Centuries ago, long before the invention of space-travel or even artificial flight at all, it was customary for armies to be allowed to sack and pillage cities that had just been captured. Of course the ability for soldiers to get loot contributed to their longing to pillage, but there is also the element of being able to exert power over a defeated enemy. Ninety-nine point nine percent of people will be powerless their whole life, so when given so much power suddenly it becomes… euphoric. This effect is sure to be multiplied hundredfold when one soldier is able to destroy an enemy city and crush thousands with just her foot. I’m not sure if you all have been to the front lines recently, but the level of resentment among the troops towards the enemy for making them fight this war for twelve years is incredibly high, which makes me believe that very few soldiers will object on moral grounds.”

The military brass looked at Vivian, then to each other, then back at her as they thought about what she had just proposed, and realised that maybe it wasn’t as outlandish as it seemed, and perhaps it could even lead to the winning of the war and the – both figurative and literal – crushing of the enemy beneath a zealously enthusiastic army of two billion troops.  

Minister Serai thought to herself that this was complete madness, a policy that would result in the deaths of trillions of defenceless civilians just so they could serve as insoles to soldiers’ boots! It was an atrocity, the worst war crime in galactic history, and she had to speak up! Taking a moment to overhear the conversations around her, she couldn’t hear a single negative word about the proposal. All that the generals and ministers around her were talking about were praises about how much more motivated the troops would be, some questions about the logistics of this scenario, and a few even discussing what they would do to the cities that they were to be given! Minister Sarai decided not to speak up.

After two hours of intense discussions, a verdict was reached. Minister Rayne stood up to address the room, curtly stating: “After a vote of sixty-three to nine, General Alarie’s plan shall be implemented. General Alarie shall be commanding this project, under the constant supervision of the military brass. This meeting is hereby adjourned.”

Vivian walked out of the room with a smile on her face and a spring in her step, the thought that she had in essence just signed a death warrant for trillions of people not even crossing her mind, currently filled with thoughts of how this will bring back the Empire’s good performance in the war, surely resulting in her getting promoted once more, maybe with a personal acknowledgement from the Empress, perhaps she would even be given ownership of an entire planet if her plan worked extra well!

Lepidai Barracks

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Private Alessia sat down on her bunk, exhausted after a long day of training and combat exercises. The rest of her bunkmates were still doing an exercise, so she had the room all to her own. Placing one boot on her other thigh, she tugged off her thick combat boot, wincing a bit as the smell of her unwashed, sweaty foot hit her, then repeated this for her other boot. She was planning on just laying down for a few minutes, when she heard the doorknob being twisted from the outside, immediately followed by a woman in a white coat entering.

The woman’s nose was assaulted by an overwhelming stink which she quickly located the source of – the private’s feet. After spending a while in the military, you stop getting affected too much by the smell of both your own feet and that of your comrades. However, this was the capital bureaucrat’s first venture into a barracks, and she certainly wasn’t ready for this.

The bureaucrat composed herself, then placed twelve boxes down on a bedside table. “I have a… delivery from Alvaria. Two of these are for you, the others are for the others stationed here. I hope they are to your liking.”

With that, the bureaucrat escorted herself out of the room, muttering, “And maybe consider washing your feet for once.” under her breath. 

“Ugh, she wouldn’t last a day here,” Alessia remarked with a chuckle, but those boxes did pique her attention. She stood up and took a few steps to grab two, bringing them back to her bed before placing one to the side and opening up the other one. She was met with a strange sight to be sure. It appeared to be an insole, but it was grey and made weirdly, with lines through it and some of it being taller than the rest. Looking at the slip of paper provided in the box didn’t reveal much, all it read was:

- Size: 12
- Population: 40,000

Size was self-explanatory, but population? Suddenly, Alessia remembered a rumour that she had heard a few months ago, that the government was planning on shrinking down captured enemy cities and giving them to soldiers in order to boost morale. She had thought that was ridiculous, but what else could these boxes be?

The private’s mind started going wild, for three years she had been screamed at and ordered around, not given any recognition despite fighting in the conquest of four planets, with her workload increasing day by day. She was truly powerless, and now she had eighty thousand people to take her frustrations out on.

Alessia bent down and carefully took the city-insole out of its container and onto the floor, before standing up and showing its inhabitants her full scale. Deep down she knew that they were innocent people who had just been born in the wrong place, but when she looked at them she projected every drill sergeant, every commanding officer she had ever had onto that city, filling her with a desire to punish it…

Moving her right foot closer, she placed the ball of her foot right outside the city, with her toes right on top of it, dangerously close to eradicating a portion of it. Some tiny pieces of grime fell from the soldier’s dirty foot, coming down on an apartment complex and instantly ending a hundred lives as a piece of lint so small Alessia couldn’t even see it was like a meteor to the helpless souls in the city.

“How do my feet smell, specks!? I never get a chance to wash them after training all day, so I bet they reek, huh? Too bad for you, you’ve just got to deal with that!” Alessia was taking cruel pleasure in how her tiniest gestures had catastrophic repercussions for the insole’s inhabitants, although the smell was affecting them even more than she thought.

Down in the districts closest to her foot, people unlucky enough to be on the street were collapsing to the ground, the Alvarian soldier’s toxic foot funk replacing all the air. A girl lay on the street, desperately trying to resuscitate her fallen boyfriend while she felt herself start to get light-headed. Families huddled together inside their houses, desperately hoping their locked doors and windows would be enough to protect them, all the while their cruel goddess just laughed and wiggled her toes.

“I wonder what it feels like to step on…?” Alessia thought, and with nothing stopping her from satisfying her perverse curiosity, she lowered her toes onto the city, sighing in pleasure as buildings crumbled and people popped beneath her sweaty toes, all in all creating a quite relaxing and pleasurable sensation.

The private had gotten completely drunk with power at this point, she knew what she had just done killed thousands of people, but rather than feel even the tiniest bit of guilt about it, it started getting her a bit hot and bothered. Tearing open the other box, she took a step on it, this time crushing even more helpless people beneath the ball of her foot. Just to make sure, Alessia twisted her foot, crushing any survivors of the original stomp.

She couldn’t contain herself anymore, with a quick check of the time she gathered that her bunkmates weren’t going to return for a while, then lay down on her bed and starting rubbing one off, thousands of lives having been used as mere foreplay for a sexually frustrated soldier.

Rivenet Palace - Military Administration for the Occupied Seleric Worlds

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Elluyara Rivenet III was furious at the developments that had recently transpired. She had become the governess of a world conquered early on in the war five years ago, mainly because of her status as part of one of the most renowned aristocratic families in the whole Empire, and in those years had reorganised the entire planet’s economy to be nothing more than a glorified funnel of wealth directly to herself. 

While poverty was rampant and living conditions were miserable for the vast majority of people on the planet, she had bought herself a fleet of luxury starships, bathed in ambrosia (note: exceedingly rare drink known for its euphoric taste and general rejuvenating qualities, on an average Alvarian salary it would take 10,000 years of uninterrupted work to earn one sip) every night, and ordered the demolition of the planet’s cultural heritage to make way for massive golden statues of herself.

Really the only thing that was spoiling her endless acquisition of wealth was her need to contribute to the war effort, a need that was rising more with each year that the war went on for, which is why she was originally a proponent of the “Plan to Increase Frontline Morale and Lower Administrative Expenses” as it’s known formally, it would truly have been a disaster for the Selerics to retake her planet and thus some sacrifices had to be made so the war could be over. After all, she had spent quite a pretty penny demolishing some ugly slums to make place for luxury villas for Alvarian colonists, which were currently collecting dust as nobody wanted to migrate to a world so close to the front line.

However, the project had dealt far more damage to her world than she had originally thought it would. Ninety-five percent of the world had been depopulated to meet a harrowing fate millions of miles away, with the rest giving her a pittance of income, not nearly enough for her to enjoy the unimaginably opulent lifestyle she had grown accustomed to. Those animals had even shrunken the villas, as if some common soldier would be able to recognize the expert craftsmanship of the constructions when they’re crushed under her feet!

Elluyara sulked in her palace, after all the angry calls she had made to the capital asking for compensation, the only thing she had received were a few shrunken cities, as if she was just  another soldier! Besides, the few she did receive were nothing compared to the twenty-two billion people that were stolen from her! She paced back and forth through the room, contemplating whether she should call in a servant to take her anger out on, but decided against it as she didn’t want to cover the healthcare costs that would be needed after she abused the poor peon. She’d already lengthened the work day and lowered safety standards across the planet – after all, if she was miserable then all her subjects had to be as well – but ultimately she was still furious, and if she kept making living conditions worse then eventually she’d run out of subjects altogether. She thought back to that… insult of compensation she received in the form of a handful of cities, and realised that maybe they could be good for something.

The residents of the recently-renamed Rivenet City had grown accustomed to living in darkness these past few weeks. In the months prior to the Event, some rumours were spreading that the Alvarian Empire was going to… get rid of them in some way, but these were dismissed merely as rumours by madmen, such a thing was unheard of in the modern day! That all changed when a gargantuan device was pointed at the city, firing a massive ray of light that enveloped the metropolis. A mere hour later, a uniformed Alvarian came over to the now tiny city, placing it into a container which it hadn’t been taken out of since.

The initial reaction was chaos and bloodshed on the streets as desperate people scrambled for anything that they thought would help them survive, but as the days went on and there was no outside interference with their city, a semblance of order returned, aided by the reduction of overcrowding as people moved into the previously-empty villas reserved for Alvarian colonists and the discovery of some food stashes that would last them a few months. Life became downright pleasant except for the lack of sunlight, the people now free from the toil imposed on them by the Alvarians and the residents of the slums being able to move into the wide open spaces and luxurious villas previously closed off to them.

This semblance of stability was shattered in an instant with the return of the sky, and the return of a familiar face – her golden locks with matching golden eyes, flawless skin and signature sneering face revealing it as that of the Alvarian governess, Elluyara. She was widely known and reviled amongst the people for her harsh and downright humiliating policies, along with the fact that she didn’t even try to cover up the fact that she was more interested in increasing her personal wealth than actually trying to manage the world well. It’s not exactly unexpected that chaos returned to the city upon seeing that the governess was now twenty times larger than the entire metropolis.

Elluyara grabbed the city by one side between her thumb and index finger, being surprised by the pleasant sensation that erupted when her manicured fingers came down upon the helpless inhabitants of the unlucky neighbourhood. “Hm… I wonder how many of you just died beneath my thumb? Twenty thousand? I don’t know how crowded your speck towns are.” 

With none of the grace usually expected from a noble, Elluyara dumped the city into the palm of her other hand, causing earthquakes to erupt all over the city, spurred by the impact of landing on the governess’ palm. She watched with mild amusement for a few seconds, if she squinted and really focused in she could see hordes of specks desperately running through the streets as if there was anywhere they could go that wasn’t on the noblewoman’s hand. 

Eventually her need for some stress relief became more important than the little bit of entertainment she got from observing the mites, so without saying a word she closed her fist, instantly turning the entire city into a fine dust and killing millions of helpless people before they could even understand what happened. Turning over her hand, she opened it and let the grains of debris fall to the floor for some servant to clean up. Ending millions of innocent lives in an instant had felt… okay, but she needed more.

Grabbing another city from a second container, she threw this one onto the ground in front of her feet, before slowly taking off her exorbitantly expensive heels and letting her bare feet touch the cold ground of the marble floor, leaving behind some steamy footprints. The people in the city were met with a smell they had never experienced before – the heavenly smell of Elluyara’s foot cream mixed with her sweat from having worn heels all day. It wasn’t the worst smell in the world per se, but after a long day it was strong enough to cause the weak and infirm in the side closest to her feet to start perishing en masse, while the stronger amongst the inhabitants gazed upon Elluyara’s towering toes, adorned with a deep purple nail polish.

The governess would surely have been amused by this if she could have seen it, but as she couldn’t she decided to go along with her original plan, lifting her foot high above the city. She let it rest there for a few seconds to build fear amongst the population, but got impatient and slammed it down with such force that the stomp reverberated across the whole palace, leaving no survivors as those who the noblewoman’s perfectly pedicured foot missed were simply disintegrated by the ensuing shockwave. The fact that countless lives were extinguished in one of her steps brought the governess unimaginable catharsis, lusting for more as she greedily opened up the last container.

The other two cities were at least lucky enough to gaze at the beauty of Elluyara’s face if only for mere seconds, but this last one did not receive this privilege. Moments after being taken out of its container, the noblewoman almost instinctively threw it at the wall, where it predictably but quite mesmerizingly shattered into a million pieces before becoming nought ore but a pile of dust on the floor, barely even recognizable as something that had once been a thriving metropolis.

“Mmmh~ exercising my rightful power over these mites felt truly divine… I’m sure I’ll be able to get some more of these shrunken cities if I write another complaint…” With that, Elluyara gracefully walked out of the room to send another request for compensation from the capital, this time in the form of millions more lives to end at her whim.