Project Necro is an official initiative by Re:Library.

It took Shiori and me two months to set up Amaterasu’s New York branch, our secret organization that fights World Shadow. Baba had ordered us to get a Tsukuyomi overseas branch running within half a year, and already two months had slipped by.
That left four months. About the same time it would take to wrap up the relocation paperwork, handshakes, and backroom arrangements for moving our secret base/bar Ame-no-Iwato, thanks to the Tokyo Olympic district reorganization. Which meant: we had four months to put a definitive period on the overseas expansion.

New York took two months, but that was our first foreign branch. We were fumbling in the dark. In reference, it took us even longer to establish Tokyo HQ. The next branch should go faster if we push.
From here on, though, Shiori and I would split up. We’d work separately, scattering around the globe to build branches. Subtract the minus of losing Shiori from my side, add the plus of accumulated experience, and… well, I figure it averages out to about two months per branch anyway.
Two months per branch. Four months left. Divide that between the two of us, and that’s four branches in total.

So I parted with Shiori at New York’s JFK Airport and boarded a plane for my next target: the small Middle Eastern country of Marlstān.

Marlstān!
What the heck country is that? A cousin of Kazakhstan or something? That’s about as much as the casual geography crowd could guess.
The name means “Land of Many Snakes.” It’s a democratic state wedged between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Hot and dry climate, divided between rugged mountain backwaters and modern cities on the plains. Main language: Pashto, though English still works thanks to the old colonial days.
The capital, Arinātaya, is an ancient city with a population of 150,000. Which, honestly, is pitiful for a capital. It’s basically treated like a satellite city of Islamabad, the Pakistani capital next door.

Most Japanese people—unless you’re some serious geography buffs—wouldn’t know it. It’s such an obscure little country that even locals in the Middle East might go, “Yeah, I’ve heard of it… where was it again?”
But right now, Marlstān is in the news. A regime change has thrown the place into turmoil. Japan barely reports it, but a coup is a coup. A state of emergency.

Corruption and political decay had been rife in Marlstān for many years, and public discontent was growing when election fraud was discovered. The military split off, staged an armed uprising, and declared a provisional government.
Though it initially enjoyed enthusiastic support from the citizens, the provisional government quickly became a mere formality as it skipped elections and began to rule with oppression. Now it’s military-dictatorship-posing-as-provisional-government vs. citizen-led revolutionary groups. —In short: civil war.

And as is usual the usual pattern throughout history, once a conflict breaks out, the surrounding nations pile in, picking at the carcass. Supplying weapons in exchange for future concessions. Jacking up prices on food and fuel exports to bleed the place dry.

The conflict turned into a quagmire. Not only is it already hollowed out by decades of corruption, the state is further shaken with a full-blown war. Marlstān is in shambles.
Security collapsed—literally fatally. Criminals run free, cops turn into criminals themselves. Even kids carry guns. Going out to buy groceries requires weapons. People have gotten so used to sirens, gunfire, and explosions that they hang laundry calmly while bullets whistle by.
It’s been five years since the uprising began, and there’s still no end in sight.

Hm.
Tragic, yes. Rare? No. Conflicts are always happening somewhere. They have happened in the past, are happening now, and will always happen in the future.
Japan itself had its Warring States period—it was a hundred years of chaos. By comparison, five years is short. To those living through it, though, five years is crushingly long.

And the one I’m supposed to recruit as Amaterasu’s branch head here is none other than the leader of one of those armed groups fighting in the heart of the chaos: the Arinātaya Liberation Front.
Her name: Medu Sagrogo-chan. Age: fourteen.

Medu-chan is a beautiful girl with tanned skin and chestnut hair. At nine years old, when the conflict first broke out, she was conscripted as a propaganda figure for the provisional government’s warlords. One day she was just a normal student. The next she was stuffed into an officers’ barracks and thrown into harsh military life.
Because she was a poster girl, they didn’t dare bruise her face, but she was subjected to plenty of other abuse.

Still, the sight of a cute, gallant young girl in uniform carrying a rifle worked. Posters and videos boosted morale. Sure, people criticized them for using children as tools of war—but at home she gained decent popularity.
It seems that Shiori also took notice of Medu-chan after seeing information about it around this time.

The turning point came two years ago, when she was twelve.
When an officer tried to sexually assault her, she shoved his head into a toilet, snapped a picture, posted it to his account on Instagram, and bolted in an aggressive escape. From there, she went underground and founded the Arinātaya Liberation Front.

That alone is incredible. Medu-chan is something else entirely. A twelve-year-old deserter from a war-torn nation turning into the leader of her own faction? That’s straight out of a great-person biography.
Granted, Shiori deliberately picked a girl like that out of a star-studded list of candidates. But even so—this is insane.
Which means, of course, there’s a catch.

Because the “Arinātaya Liberation Front” doesn’t actually liberate anyone, nor does it form a “front.”
In reality, it’s an orphan thieves’ guild.

People die in war. First to go are adult men. When the breadwinners fall, wives and children are left adrift. Normally it’s the state that would provide enough compensation to ensure that people could live a decent enough life, but Marlstān isn’t much of a country as it is now an anarchy.
That leaves wives and children homeless. Widows and orphans flooding the street.

These people were all alone in a country in conflict, helpless and confused. It’s Medu-chan who gathered those orphans and built a group out of them. They numbered a whooping fifty people strong.
Even kids gain power in numbers. With discipline and division of labor, their strength grows.
Adults offered no help, had no capacity to. If anything, they tried to conscript kids into war. So the only choice was self-defense.
It was a time when children had to protect themselves from adults.

Medu-chan and her group squatted a half-destroyed, abandoned arms factory outside Arinātaya, named themselves the Liberation Front, and survived mostly by theft.
They hid their faces with scarves—not unusual in Arinātaya’s scorching sun and sand—slipped into crowds to pick pockets, or broke into poorly guarded shops for food and clothes.
Side hustles included a little farming, scrap metal collection, and guiding foreign journalists.

Yes, it’s crime. But compared to surviving by murder, theft is almost noble.
Considering Medu-chan spent three formative years in a radical army, it’s shockingly moderate. It’s hard to imagine that the army taught her how to steal. Making a living by using the skills she had trained in, such as guns and knives, would’ve been so much easier for her, and yet she deliberately chose not to. She didn’t let her fellow orphans choose murder either. She made sure they always had an alternative.

More productive, peaceful jobs like tilling the fields or working in a store are unrealistic. Children’s fields are ransacked and stolen as soon as they produce crops. Stores staffed by children are quickly broken into by robbers. There are actually precedents of this happening.
Children are supposed to be protected by adults. For them to be surviving on their own is praiseworthy, regardless of right or wrong. I want to praise the Arinātaya Liberation Front for that. They deserve medals just for staying alive.

Still, Medu-chan and her crew, with their too-harsh pasts, deserve better. They deserve youthful days full of dreams and hope.
Like: *“Ever since I gained psychic powers, I’ve changed! I quit stealing, the war ended, I go to school now, I’ve got a boyfriend, I hang out at friends’ houses after class, we go to amusement parks on weekends, and at night I fight the world’s darkness to protect my city! Joining the secret organization was the best decision ever!”*

That’s how it should be.

Beautiful young soldier girls belong only in fiction. In reality it’s just too cruel.
*Unforgivable. Military uniforms should be cosplay only. And I’ll make sure that’s the case—just watch!*

So yeah, whether it’s righteousness or hypocrisy, I don’t even know myself—but I was fired up. Then came the bucket of cold water.

Medu Sagrogo is a diehard, obsessive fan of Invisible Titan (read: me).

Ever since hearing of the Super Water Sphere incident on the news, she’s been collecting every scrap of Invisible Titan info despite strict censorship. She stores newspaper clippings in a scrapbook, locked away in a treasure box. She watches Invisible Titan’s activity videos online three times a day with a grin.
That’s not all. She keeps preaching Invisible Titan’s greatness to her gang. Forces videos on reluctant kids. Shuns anyone who says Invisible Titan is scary or lame.

And her treatment of fellow fans is awful. The moment someone converts, she acts all elitist: “I know more than anyone about Invisible Titan! You didn’t know this? Then you’re not a real fan!” Result: her friends quietly back away.

*…Please stop.*

If she were just a normal fan, it’d be embarrassing, but I’d be happy for them and hope they’d continue supporting me.
But no, she’s the toxic kind.
Three times worse than Mikage-chan with her “support all espers, humanity sucks” shtick.

Meanwhile, Shiori is off in Germany recruiting some pantomime extremist college student—who isn’t even her fan or anything.
*Why do I always get stuck with this? I know we picked our assignments by lottery, but I can’t help suspecting Shiori rigged it with time-stopping shenanigans. If I’d gone to Germany and she to Marlstān, this would’ve been so much smoother…*

*But, well, I mean…*
*You know…*
*It’s a problem I will eventually have to face head-on, so…*
*Might as well treat it as an opportunity…*
*If I were more… well, better at handling this, then I might… yeah.*

*……Middle East Branch Arc, here we go!*