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The first rule of New L'Manberg is this: You do not shoot first.
Your vice president, when you tell him this, asks if you're crazy. "I'm not crazy," you say, and it feels hollow no matter the context. "I don't want another war."
It is a rule born of conflict. It's an old rule, even, which everyone seems to forget.
You rub the back of your neck, staring at the closest thing your brother ever got to a grave. "I brought it back," you tell him. "The first rule. We don't start fights. Remember that one?"
He doesn't answer. You don't know why you expected more.
Not expected. Hoped for, maybe. You've always been hopeful, though optimism is a leap over an entirely different chasm.
Your foreman points a crossbow at your minutes man. You point it towards the ground.
(The first rule of New L’Manberg is this: You cannot have another war. You would not survive it.
Three strikes and you're out, Wilbur had explained the system as. It may not apply to countries. You don’t think it matters.
Your country is strong enough to fight another war. They are not strong enough to rebuild after it. The rebuilding is so much harder, you have discovered, with far too many days-after-the-end to your name.
You don’t want another fight. You want peace.
You want to build something that lasts longer than the thought of you. You want a home with a legacy of its own. A blood-soaked history is not a kind one. it is not the one they deserve.)
The second rule of New L’Manberg is this: There is no armour inside.
It’s an old rule, one that hasn’t been accepted or enforced in a long time. You announce this to your cabinet and your Foreman asks you what the point is.
“It’s what our country was built on,” you remind him- as if he needs reminders of these things.
Your foreman looks at the floor, hands clenched into fists. “I just don’t see the use. We’ll go back to war eventually.”
“Where has thinking like that ever gotten us?” you ask with a sigh. It reads rhetorical, it should be. But you can’t help the plead in your voice that keeps it from being such, that makes the question breathe. Where , you almost ask, will it get me?
He doesn't answer.
A god lives in your city. You don’t pay it much mind. Angels of Death, boys with braces: they will obey the laws of your land just the same as each other. You may be a push-over and a sheep and a yes-man, but you are not a coward, not with this. You tell him to take off his armour.
“Oh,” he says, sounding a little surprised. “Do I really-”
“Yes,” you interject. “It’s the law.”
He smiles at you in that exasperated, patronizing way, like you’re a toddler asking your father to put out a plate for your imaginary friend, and he is fondly accommodating your wishes.
“No armour in New L’Manberg,” you still insist, every day that goes by. You refuse to let them forget it, to make exception after exception until the foundations decay again.
(The second rule of New L'Manberg is this: History echoes. History repeats. Eret's name is still in the national anthem. This is not something you can outrun.
You still hide soldiers' food in the drawers of your desk. Your morse radio has not been used since you were a spy, but it still does not sit on the desk. You keep it under the floorboards.
You have a dream. It’s the first dream you’ve had in months.
You are waking on Ranboo’s couch, as is your wont these days. You walk into the kitchen. Schlatt is eating breakfast at the table. You go about your day, naturally, expecting and accepting his presence. He puts a hand on your shoulder and says “big day ahead of you, huh kid?”
And then you wake up.
The banality of the horror makes it linger. The idea that he comes back. That you accept it.
You wouldn’t, you decide. If he ever came back, you’d kill him.
He is already dead, you find yourself having to say, but it doesn’t dissuade the security of the thoughts.
You add locks to the doors. You add locks to your windows and keep the key on a chain around your wrist. You have never figured out what you have to be afraid of, anymore.)
The third rule of New L'Manberg is this: a joke.
"What does bonezone mean?" your new vice asks. He is the replacement. He is a good vice president, but you do not think he likes you very much. You don't think anyone likes you very much, these days.
"No idea," you say with a shrug. "We need something a little silly, don't you think?"
"Sure," he says, and you try to remember what his laugh sounds like. It's harder than you thought it would be.
(The third rule of New L'Manberg is this: No one has laughed in a while.
The ground was stolen from right under your feet, and everyone's sense of humour with it, it seems.
You build, and rebuild, and rub at your eyes. Like you've always done, as you'll always do. "It's funny," you say, "it doesn't have to mean anything."
No one laughs, but the ability to say the joke is a feat all on its own. You take nothing for granted, these days )
The fourth rule of New L’Manberg is this: No explosives.
Destruction may be a birthright, but it is not yours. You need not take everything your predecessors hand you.
Your predecessor put a cigarette out on your palm, the same night he first let you smoke. Some things you do not take. Some you do, though never without shame. You have not stopped smoking since.
You used to have a bit of asthma, back in the war. All that smoke in your lungs, all those fires. It had faded. It is back now.
“Only when I’m stressed,” you tell the minutes man.
“How stressed are you?” he asks. You wonder if you have ever smelled like anything but tobacco to him. The thought worms into your ribs.
You laugh, though it doesn't feel very funny, or like much of a joke, and he stays quiet.
You take some things. You do not take most. There are no explosives allowed in New L’Manberg.
(The fourth rule of New L’Manberg is this: All your rules are built by tragedy.
Explosives and first strikes, a re-written national anthem. You never get to know the path. You always have to learn.
Fundy will say: “let’s have a celebration.”
And Tommy will reply: “fireworks are banned in New L’Manberg.”
"More lanterns?" Fundy offers, without a beat missed.
You look between the two of them and feel so out of touch that they may as well be speaking a foreign language. It’s for your benefit, of course, it is, but you don’t quite get why. Habit lulls you into silence, listening for clarification before you ask for it. Asking is obvious. The consequence is not worth the easy answer.
You flex your fingers and the skin tugs. The not-yet thick enough scar tissue tears, and a tiny line of blood bubbles to the surface.
They never elaborate. As if the answer is instinctive. As if you do not have places to hide, eyes you can close, ways to avoid the pain that do not ruin things for everyone else.
The first rule of Manberg was to be happy with your lot. No one else would accommodate you. You had to do it yourself.
You are not in Manberg anymore. This is the first rule you make for yourself.)
The fifth rule of New L'Manberg is this: Be loyal.
Your secretary of state, when you tell him this, winces. He’s been carrying this guilt a long, long time. If you believed in the power of precognition or destiny of any sort, you’d say he was born with it. You’d say he was always aware that one day he would make a mistake he would not be able to take back, and then he would spend the rest of his life fighting for atonement.
You do not believe in destiny. You ask him how he’s sleeping, and he laughs.
“Go to bed,” you say, not a hint of a joke in your tone, and he looks surprised. “New administration, remember? Get some rest.”
(The fifth rule of New L'Manberg is this: It does not feel like a new administration to you.
“Get a good pillow,” the ghost says when you ask how to lead, “and don’t let anyone hear you cry.”
This is not war. This is the cigarette, the dotted scar of a picked at blister on your palm. This is not a burden you can refuse.
“You want to smoke?” the former president asks you, his grip tight around your wrist. “If you want to smoke, you have to know what it’s doing to you. This is what happens to your lungs when you smoke.”
You wonder, now, if it was a test. If you were meant to refuse the cigarette. If you were meant to refuse any of it, if taking all that is given to you is a flaw rather than an asset. Did you learn the wrong lesson from your punishment?
Have you learned anything? )
The sixth rule of New L'Manberg is this: No killing pets.
Your new vice chuckles when you say this one. Your foreman does not; he rubs at the hole in his ear, the one he earned for this rule.
You wonder what your old vice, your old friend, would think of this one. He'd be happy, part of you thinks. He'd be bitter, the rest of you says, that you got to it so late.
You and your minutes man build an apiary. "They're protected this time," you say, scraping the honey off the comb.
"Did you have others?" the minutes man asks.
"Yes," you say, and something in your tone must have his answer because he does not ask what happened.
(The sixth rule of New L'Manberg is this: Respect should not have to be earned.
Respect for the living should be inherent.
Not for a leader. Respect for a leader is a trial, and you are not on the jury.
But you wish you did not have to tell people not to kill. You hope they'd respect it without the threat of punishment.
You have always been hopeful. But you buried your optimism in a blackstone bunker, and you do not plan to bring it out again.)
The last rule of New L'Manberg is this: You are a democracy. There will be an election, and you will not protest the answer.
"What should I do with it?" your minutes man, perhaps your future president, asks.
You consider, for a long time, what to say.
History repeats itself, you almost tell him. It doesn't matter what you try.
But you've always been hopeful, even if true naivete is untenable.
Whatever you want, you almost say, but you haven't had that much faith in years.
The cynicism you keep so close to your chest rises up inside. What does it matter? you almost say. It's ruined anyway.
"Make it better," you finally settle on, and then you are both quiet.
You are daring. For only a moment, you let yourself believe that he will.
(The last rule of New L’Manberg, one that has no ink nor concrete hold, is that you are not a legacy.
“No armour in New L’Manberg,” you say, and gently coax Fundy’s fingers from a death-grip on a chest plate.
“No TNT,” you tell Connor when he’s still undecided about his place.
“No fireworks, either,” someone adds, and people accept it as water off a duck's back.
“I’m running against you,” Ranboo says.
“I’m looking forward to it,” you reply.
The last rule of New L’Manberg is that you were given nothing, and what you have built is not a reversal of the damage. A crater is not a country. History is not a stencil.
You are not your antecedents. You will learn. This is not the failure you think it is.)