Prelude #4 "Now Is the Time. If Not Now, There Is No Opportunity."
"Now is the time. If not now, there is no opportunity."
With most of the Korean army holding a military parade in Beijing right now. With Korea's elite units stuck in the Balkans right now. Now. Only now.
"Let's drive out the Gaolifangzi alongside the Qing. They'll be desperate to recover their lost territories too."
"The Koreans are massing troops in Beijing, and you want to declare war on top of that?"
"Aren't those just parade troops for show? If we mobilize our millions of crack soldiers, what could they possibly do to stop us?"
"If the third-raters like us propose an alliance to the second-raters, of course they'll take our hand."
It was utterly absurd, enough to block both my breath and my senses.
"So, ally with the Qing to drive out the Koreans?"
"Yes, exactly."
"Do you even realize what you're saying?"
"I do. That at this rate, we'll never reclaim the Forbidden City."
"Right. But instead of fighting the British who just swallowed Hong Kong again, you want to pick a fight with Korea?"
"It was precisely that Korea that let Hong Kong slide back into the British maw. They're in cahoots with those damned foreigners."
That much was true. Snatching oil from the Middle East, stationing troops in Turkey—it all smacked of pure imperialist gang behavior.
But...
"Isn't that just because they want the oil?"
"Does wanting oil make it okay?"
Fair point.
"The Koreans—the Daehan—are pure imperialists. They have no right to claim the Mandate of Heaven. They're nothing but pretenders."
"Pretenders..."
"Oil? We can just buy it with money, like anyone else. Why the hell would they need to send troops for that?"
Hmm... was that right? Something felt off about it. If so, then Britain, Korea, the whole damn world was full of idiots. Hell, we'd been poking around Southeast Asia ourselves, wondering if there was oil nearby.
But that was that, and this was this.
"Will the Qing scum go along with it?"
"They will. We've got thousands of torpedo boats, and now we've got solid backing to match. Even the dogs who grovel to the Koreans won't grovel to the Zhonghua, right?"
"Backing... you mean Germany, of course?"
"You knew?"
"Of course I did."
Tian Chimai. He couldn't rein in these Zhonghua nationalists who were tilting toward Germany. British and French colonial rule, Korea's false claim to the throne and occupation of North China... as a Chinese man, any one of those was hard to stomach.
But... Korea was East Asia's sole great power, and they didn't seem too fond of the British and French who trampled through their backyard. Did we really have to pick fights with Britain, France, and Korea all at once? Was it absolutely necessary?
The stakes felt far too high to justify it. That was why Teacher Sun was hanging his head in silence.
And... returning the legacy of the Zhonghua people, opening the borders for Chinese to cross freely, refusing to ascend the throne despite the chance, choosing not to wield imperial power like Dong Zhuo or Cao Cao but instead clearing the path for the people to judge and act for themselves. Honestly, when it came to pure manhood, there was no greater exemplar. The enemy of the Zhonghua people, yet he was a demon lord straight out of Journey to the West.
Against a demon lord like that, rebellion demanded ironclad preparation. And their so-called ace in the hole was... Germany? The Qing scum?
In his eyes, the best thing for the Zhonghua people was simply to wait for the moment he died or crumbled. Turn time into their ally. Humiliating? History proved otherwise. In the end, time was on the side of the Chinese people.
But... with Germany reaching out to them like this, it seemed there might be something to gain from the Germans.
"Minister Zhang, lay it out for me."
He wanted to see what "gifts" Germany had prepared for China.
The emperor of the American colonial empire quietly twitched his mustache. Because those congressional bastards had sparked a revolt.
"Those sons of bitches!"
"Not my king. No king here!!"
Mobs of protesters surged in, and the halls of Congress erupted in secessionist cries. After two terms and re-terms, the panic had eroded Theodore's grip on power somewhat.
Did that mean Theodore was losing popular support? Not quite. The eastern clusters crawling with agitators were Republican strongholds anyway—not his personal base. His approval ratings for governance were still climbing.
Especially after declaring he'd deport all the blacks and exporting beef; the South, traditional Democratic turf, was solidly behind him now. He'd lost the house rabbits but caught the wild ones.
But...
"Our Republican Party rejects budgeting for black deportation!"
"Waaaaah!!"
"Just dump them in Haiti or something—why the hell should we waste our precious money on deportation?!"
"Right! Right!"
Those bastards! Black deportation was the very foundation of Theodore's Southern support. Deny it, and he'd truly lose his power base. The Republicans had shot him in the back, not Theodore himself.
Dump them in Haiti? Obviously not. Relocation and deportation were different beasts! In immigrant America, deportation didn't even make logical sense. Blocking immigration or "relocating" to another country was one thing!!
"Grrrrrr..."
At this rate, lame duck status was sealed. He had to block it. He had to push it through. No matter what those agitators stirred up, the results would prove him right!!
'So, you're asking for a post-paid favor because the budget won't pass?'
'Yes.'
'Hmm. Well, I've got a good idea—want to try it? No guarantees.'
'What?'
The Supreme Leader immediately teamed up with the emperor and unleashed a black civil rights movement on America.
"Freedom for blacks!"
"Black Africa again!"
"Justice for black living rights!"
To understand this, some context was needed: when Theodore started shipping blacks to Alaska in real time, he hadn't told them he was expelling them from the American continent. Riots would have been inevitable. He'd merely said it was a "transit point" to send them back to their rightful home in Africa. That the transit point just happened to be Alaska was all.
He hadn't cared if they all froze to death there, truth be told. So even now, with Trotsky's "organization" blocking the Alaska shipments, most blacks still thought the government was trying to send them to Africa. And that Congress was refusing the budget because whites hated spending even pocket change on blacks, as usual.
So, with real-time oppression on the American continent and dreams of Africa filling their hearts, when even that ship was blocked, the blacks had no choice but to flex their muscle.
Armed uprising? Not quite—most American blacks outside Trotsky's organized group had no weapons, organization, or ideology. They simply rose alongside sympathetic Republicans who genuinely pitied them.
"Give blacks the choice to return to Africa!"
"Freedom for blacks!"
"We won't be slaves again!"
The blacks, persecuted like slaves, just wanted out of America. They just lacked the means. Think of Jews surviving under the Nazis—it was easy. The masses, especially the oppressed, lack the drive to flee abroad. That's exactly how the blacks were now.
So when the government rejected African relocation, of course they were furious.
"You're Americans! Just live in America!"
"Bullshit! We're Africans!"
No use for a few Republicans to soothe them that blacks were Americans too—it was pissing in the wind. They saw America blocking their natural return to Africa as whites trying to enslave them forever. Not wrong, experientially speaking. Dozens of years after emancipation, blacks still lived like slaves, ate like slaves.
Only a few blacks who'd already nested in America opposed it.
"Hey! Africa's just a damn safari world!"
"Shut up, white collaborator!"
In this horrific dilemma—Trotsky allying to liberate blacks across America vs. the emperor allying to boot them out—blacks opted for the lesser evil: getting out of America. The Supreme Leader and emperor could only marvel that it actually worked, funneling massive donations from those desperate to ship blacks to Africa. Trotsky could organize in the West all he wanted; the exodus continued.
With Italy's unprovoked invasion of Libya—Tripoli under Italian occupation after the Ottoman Empire just abandoned it—Libya had become Italian territory, and resistance was raging in real time. The Ottoman abandonment meant little anyway.
"Rise up!"
"You bastards!"
Libyan tribesmen who hadn't meekly obeyed Ottoman rule were even less obedient to Italian rule. The Italian Royal Army, clustered around Tripoli, faced waves of nomadic fighters pouring in from all sides. Pasta vs. pasta? No—Metal Slug.
"Sand's jammed the machine gun!"
"No way! There are too few of us!"
Thanks to Duce sparking fires in Austria, the kingdom's troops choking on sand in Libya got no proper support. Italians cared more about the real territories Austria had snatched—more nationalists than imperialists, they chose to stand with Duce over aiding the Royal Army.
"When the hell are reinforcements coming?!"
It wasn't war, but the world was already heating up.
"We can't let Ethiopia happen again!"
"Stop saying 'no, no' and give us more bullets!"
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.
"Why the fuck are there so many camels?!"
The Suez Canal cutoff and the pierced Suez Railway had flooded Arab society with cash, but they had no clue. They just suffered endless camels and camel-mounted guerrillas.
"This is driving me insane, for real!"
Italy didn't know that Libya without Ottoman oppressors or army was tougher than the one with them.