Face-Slapping10 min read
When the Warrior Came Home: I Turned My Cannon-Fodder Life Upside Down
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I remember the last thing before it went black.
"Retreat!" I shouted, the world around me boiling with alien screams and the smell of burned ozone.
"Not on my watch," Vicente Olson snarled, blade swinging through carapace like a metronome.
"General Cordelia, fall back!" a subordinate shouted, but I couldn't fake it. I drank the last ampoule, set the charge, and thought, This is where I end.
Then I opened my eyes under a low, dusty ceiling and a tiny, furious voice scolded me.
"Idiot!" the voice said.
"Seventeen?" I croaked. "Is that you?"
"Of course it's me, Cordelia!" a small figure crowed in my head. "Idiot, idiot, idiot!"
"I—" I tried to stand. The mirror showed a different body. "What the—"
"You're a cannon-fodder in a backwater apocalypse novel," a tiny chip squeaked, its tone equal parts smug and terrified. "I am a system. They call me... El-"
"Elon Ellis?" I supplied, because the little chip spat out a label.
"Elon Ellis is being very dramatic," the chip complained. "Call me 'Little Two.'"
Kellan Monteiro, Seventeen to me, stretched like an impatient street kid in my mind and tossed a full-length mirror toward me.
I saw a narrow woman with a grey complexion, hair browned from neglect, and a height that made me want to bite the mirror. I, Cordelia Hartmann—once S-ranked war-hawk—had been shoved into a girl who would not live past three chapters.
"Kellan," I said, soft, and the small presence sighed. "You pulled me through?"
"Pulled you through," he confirmed. "By the skin of my little circuits. By the way, you taste of forge smoke."
"Ugh." I laughed until the laugh broke. "Then help me out. Tell me everything."
"Fine." Little Two hopped onto my palm like a jittery insect and displayed files. "You're the cannon-fodder. The real heroine is Hailey Rios—soft, pretty, endlessly blessed by fate. She steals a jade gourd at the start and gets every advantage."
"Hailey Rios," I said slowly. "My... half sister?"
"Your nemesis." Little Two clicked and buzzed. "If you don't play your role, the plot chews you up in three chapters. The system I am? A female-supportive system. Task: cozy up to Hailey. Reward: survival. She is such a—"
"Not happening." I tossed the chip onto the table, anger bright as a blade.
"Then you'll die," Little Two warned. "And I'll be erased."
"Then die with dignity," I said. "I'm Cordelia Hartmann. I don't kneel."
"Then," Kellan said, puckish, "do whatever you're best at: split heads, buy food, and make sure the novel's social order breaks its teeth on you."
I smiled at that order.
"Then let's begin," I told Seventeen and Little Two. "Get me a name. Get me a plan. And don't mess with the hair."
"Noted," Little Two whined. "Also, ten minutes to recharge or I faint like a melodramatic battery."
I spent two days learning to be smaller, faster, human. I ate porridge they called 'home,' I learned to fake tears and to break the brittle politeness like an ax. Hailey Rios lived under a crystal-glass halo. Alaric Bennett, our father, played puppeteer. Brenda Roth, the woman who called herself my mother now, smiled like a porcelain figure with razor edges.
I was meant to faint in chapter one. Instead I waltzed into the dining room and said, blunt as a bayonet, "Give me the jade gourd."
Hailey laughed her lilting smile. "Cordelia, why be so crude? It's mine."
"Is it?" I reached, and Hailey shrilled and snarled, and the red ribbon snapped from her neck.
"Stop!" someone shrieked.
"It belongs to me," I said. "It belongs to the book's original owner. You're not allowed to wear my things."
"You're wicked!" she cried.
I pushed her hand away. She fell into the water-court the house used to pretend to be a pond. She sputtered. She screamed. The housemaids looked on stunned.
"Help her!" Hailey gasped, hair flailing. "She pushed me!"
"She pushed herself," I said. "She stole first."
Greta Arnold, the housemaid, coughed and clutched at her chest. She had been chosen to be cruel and had learned the role too well. When I caught her sneer, I caught her wrist.
"Stop calling me 'little' in front of the men," I told her. "There are better roles than a boot-licking servant."
She didn't beg as expected. She snarled. I taught her how dignity bites when it's justified.
"You can scream to the neighbors," I told her. "No one will rush for a woman who made her bed of lies."
Later they left me the day to myself. I took Hailey's jade gourd, put it into my space—and sealed it, to test.
The gourd opened like a quiet mouth when I touched blood to it. Inside bloomed summer farms, rivers that ran silver, fields that fed nations. A space. A policy. A currency. An escape. It was a woman's dream-machine, only the book's heroine was meant to own it.
I didn't care for the heroine's destiny.
"Stockpile," Kellan whispered. "Buy. Hide. Build."
I did. We first did the small things: ten boxes of rice, five species of oil, hundreds of jars of spice. I learned the market's names like a soldier learns a weapon. Little Two cheered like a jittery mascot when the money moved.
"How did you afford it?" Kellan often asked, blinking.
"Because," I said, "I can be every profession when I want. A street-saleswoman, a field buyer, a thief, a lady with a rounded purse. Give me the coin and I will make war against winter."
We moved faster than the plot expected.
We taught the robots in my gourd to dig ditches, to plant, to can, to tag. We mailed nothing; we redirected everything to the vault. I read every stock line and put chips on the benches I knew would hold. By the end of two months my space hummed with boxes.
"Enough?" Little Two asked, mechanical shame in its tone.
"Never," Kellan said. "Build more."
My house had changed. The jade gourd was safe. My father, Alaric Bennett, still preened among donors, smile polished as a coin.
And then—oh, then—I made the mistake of telling him exactly what I wanted.
"Give me three hundred million," I said, when the time came. "And tell the banks the password is six six six six six six."
Alaric went pale as boiled cloth.
"What do you want?" he stammered.
"Everything you have hidden," I replied. "And public admission of crimes."
He laughed brittlely, and I played the polite daughter while my fingers moved like a thief.
"Think," I said softly, "of all the ways you've said I was ugly to protect Hailey's market placements. Think of how you've billed your kindness while you bled the house dry. Think of charity dinners and donor halls—where you smiled into microphones and put your face in the paper while taking the harvest that should've fed our mother. Give the funds, and I give you back the rest untouched."
He took the bait. He fell into the trap of his own greed and fear. He counted cards like a gambler and handed over accounts, machines whirred, and my gourd rang with new entries.
"Three hundred million," he whispered, throat raw.
"One transfer," I said. "And one condition."
"What?" he said.
"You will do it in front of people," I said. "You will explain—on camera—what you've done. You will beg for forgiveness, and you will ask them to record it."
He balked. He always balked when asked to be real.
"Please, Alaric," Brenda said later, not brave so much as terrified. "Think about our reputation."
"Reputation," I said. "That's an armor that hides the rust. Do you want me to fix it? Or to strip it and leave your truly ugly bones to the light?"
Alaric chose the light.
We made the stage at the hotel where the charity gala had been set. I had changed plans: I wanted the public, not only family. I wanted the witnesses who had clapped for him through masked dinners. I wanted the cameras that had filmed his hands giving plaques.
We turned the banquet hall into a tribunal.
At first he thought the cameras were a formalities trick, a bore to be endured. He stood at the lectern and put on a smile that had once bought his breath.
They bundled him on stage like an offering. I had given the gala organizers the files: ledgers with offbooks that named donation accounts and overseas shells, video clips of meetings, dates, photos. I had not only money to extort; I had proof to punish.
"Mr. Bennett," I said into the microphone when the lights washed him pale, "before this man smiles at you for charity, let's look at what charity he bought with your applause."
"Why—" He spluttered, voice small.
"Why did you sell our mother's legacy?" I asked, and I let the first video play.
The room watched silent as Alaric's hands, once polished, flipped through ledgers. The projector showed bank names and offshore routes. People gasped; a few whispered; someone in the back clicked a phone on.
"How could you?" Brenda cried. "Alaric, you—"
"Shut up," he spat uselessly.
"Don't," I snapped. "You told our neighbors I was worthless. You told your associates I was a stain on the family. How many of them would have had your favors if they knew you'd lied to them?"
He tried to laugh. The laugh quit his throat like a burnt coin. He stood at the lectern, a man used to the applause, and found the applause died.
"Silence," I said. "You will speak."
He faltered. Then the room tightened. Phones rose. A hundred faces peered. The cameras—oh, the cameras—lensed every tremor.
He began to talk like a man on his knees before a tribunal he had bought into being.
"I... I did it for the family," he said, paper-thin. "For the name."
The crowd didn't close its eyes. They leaned forward.
"Look at me," I said, and the projector rolled a clip of him signing papers that shipped deals into his friends' hands while our mother pleaded.
His confidence drained, and his face collapsed. He tried to stop, to bluster, to deny.
"How—" he tried. "I—"
"Watch," I said. "Watch what you made."
He went through the stages, the exact cruel arc I had plotted in my head. First he tried to grin above the footage; when that failed, he went into shock. Then denial: "This is slander." He stammered, hands clenching the microphone stand until paper rustled.
"Do you deny it?" I asked softly.
He looked at me, begging for a way out. The room hummed.
"Please," he begged when the tapes kept rolling, too late for anything else.
"No one came," I said. "Everyone is watching. Record, friends. Record this."
They did. People recorded. Phones rose. "Why?" they murmured. "Why did you hide the money?"
He begged. He tried to press. "I'm sorry," he said, voice breaking. "I'm sorry. Please—"
A woman's laugh floated from the crowd, sharp. "A man's sorry feels like a coin tossed into something on fire and hoping the fire will be soothed."
The witnesses in the room had been at charity tables, smiling emptily while he took more than he gave. Some shifted, some whispered, some took photos. A few clapped ironically.
"On your knees," I said.
He sank, the lectern scraping his knees raw. The lights were merciless. The cameras closed in. People taped; someone live-streamed. #BennettGala trended three times during the speech.
He crawled like a man smaller than the floor, voice begging, "Please, don't—"
Brenda hid her face.
"Look at me," I told him. "Names of the accounts."
He started naming. He stuttered, and as he named each account, the audience reacted. There were murmurs of betrayal, laughter, anger.
He crumbled. He went through denial, to anger, to bargaining. "It wasn't meant—" he flailed. "I sold assets for stability!"
"Stability?" I laughed, my voice clean. "You sold our honor."
At some point he dropped to inarticulate, stunned begging. He thumped the floor with his clammy hands and asked for mercy like a child who had been taught to clasp a coin rather than hands.
People recorded. Someone took a photograph of him on the floor and sent it with a short caption: "Charity man kneels. Not for the poor."
A woman clapped like she was closing a book. "Serve it," she said.
The crowd's reactions became a chorus: shocked whistles, low boos, a frenzy of cameras.
He tried to silence them. "Please—"
No one cared. He had built his life inside applause, but applause had evaporated like mist before a furnace. Viewers, eyes stung by the sudden honesty of evidence, took out their devices and called lawyers, charities, journalists. Some people shouted, "Refund!" Someone else shouted, "Make him pay!"
Finally Alaric sputtered, forehead bleeding where he'd hit the wooden stage in supplication. He clutched at his suit as the lights threw every vein into high relief.
"Please," he whispered, "I will return funds. I'll resign. I will—"
"Then start by naming every victim," I said. "And promise, in front of these people, that you will never use their names as currency again."
He did. The speech ran for an hour. The livestream hit millions. We forced his face into the public ledger: apology, restitution account numbers, resignations from boards.
He begged and lost the softness of authority. He was stripped to a man of public record, exposed by the same cameras he had once smiled to.
By the end, he had collapsed on the stage, his collar limp, while the crowd pressed their phones toward the fallen monarch like curious priests.
"Public," I had said. "We needed witnesses."
They recorded. They judged. They sent it around the planet.
He had moved through all of it—arrogant, proud, shocked, then crumpled into begging. He had gone from a smile to a puddle on the stage, hands outstretched. I had watched faces change around him: friends' faces became pale, some leaned away, someone smirked, someone else guffawed. People took photos, the room smelled of perfume and panic. Somebody said, "This will trend." Someone started clapping mockingly. Others spoke quietly of legal actions.
When at last it was over, there was no hero. There was only a man who had traded compassion for coin, and a daughter who had slapped the curtain open so that the stage lights could burn him whole.
"Record this," I told Kellan later. "Remember. Nobody should buy a conscience and call it charity."
When it was done, when the cameras had their fill, I was not satisfied. I had not wanted him dead. I wanted him to remember his meanness as a living thing. I wanted him to have to see his own name feed gossip for weeks; to feel the small, daggered humiliation of being small.
The world outside us wobbled. Rain came and turned to a roar. The day the skies cracked, I climbed into my ship and looked at a planet I had once defended.
"Elijah," I said into the only voice that mattered then, "be safe."
Elijah Finley was my anchor in this new life: a man who had been betrayed by the same systems so many times that his patience weighted his body like armor. He was kind in ways that made living easy: he could cook, organize, and—he could laugh at me when I tried to parry a carrot and nearly cut off the tip of my finger.
We sheltered with his friends—Earl Schmitz, Gustaf Johnston, Javier Hahn, Glen Vieira—and their parents: Crosby Lemaire and Hisako Castro were names I learned at table. They gathered in a strange domestic of friends who turned into family fast because the rain did not care for titles.
"Are you sure we can hold them?" Earl asked the night before the sky opened.
"We hold each other," Elijah said. "That's enough."
"Promise?" I joked.
"Promise," he said.
I fell asleep with Elijah's callused fingers tucked into mine. I woke to thunder.
Then the rain started to fall.
And the world tilted.
I held my breath and waited for the novel to move on me, for any plot to catch and rip me like brittle paper.
It didn't. For once the universe let me decide.
Three days later, with my warehouses full and my gourd humming, with Hailey gone and the public still clicking on Alaric's confession, I sat with Elijah on a roof and watched a city change.
He squeezed my hand. "We'll make a garden," he said. "We'll cook. We'll fight. I'll kiss you too many times."
"Will you?" I asked, breath fogging in the cold.
He leaned in and pressed his mouth to mine, simple as a bandage, warm as a new coat. "I already did," he said.
And I, Cordelia Hartmann, who had once blown apart worlds so that soldiers could have breathing room, who had once died like a fuse, smiled in the drizzle and decided to keep living on my terms.
The End
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