Interlude – When pigs fly.

Records of the Gemeinplatz Revolutionary War, volume two, appendix two.

As part of my work in surveying the population of the Republic, I ended up seeing many familiar faces. Most of the entries from the previous appendix were sourced from this survey work. Below I will relate one particularly interesting encounter I had with a certain Tangerina Reticulata Sapindales:

It was a mid-summer day, slightly humid as it always apparently is on this side of Gemeinplatz. There was the survey of course, but I was also on a mission. For you see, pigs were back in fashion. The locals, most wisely as pigs are unclean and impure animals, refrained from consuming pork. Hence why Gemeinplatz had a distinct lack of pigsties, at least until the emancipation of its slaves. Coming from foreign lands, most of these freemen lacked the taboo that the rest of Gemeinplatz had against pork.

So did the otherworlders lack this taboo, so corroborated by my assistant Watanabe who told me that the consumption of pork was commonplace back in his home (he also told me, most curiously, of whole sects and peoples who eschewed meat all together; if you wish to learn more about the “Buddhist”, “Hindu”, “Vegetarian” and “Vegan” sects, see my other work On Otherworlders) The otherworlders wished to import domesticated pigs. John Brown especially supported this idea, claiming that it’d make for a good source of meat.

Hence, most ironically, I was tasked with leading a group outside of the settled lands of Gemeinplatz to see if we could trade for pigs with the nomads. We were laughed at by the nomads for even asking about whether they had pigs. “Pigs fly, madame, how can we keep them contained in our tents?” and such were the nature of the responses we received. We still went on with our travels, counting the flocks and tents of the nomads in order to build an estimate of how many lived outside the border, and promoting the homesteading program of the Republic.

After our brief excursion to the wild steppe, unsuccessful in locating any sow but successful in acquiring numbers and establishing relations, we returned to the border town of Changra. From there we were to head to Casamonu, inspecting and advising the construction of the new highway between the two locations while on the way, then to Libertycave back to our offices to conduct works of natural philosophy.

Our journey was interrupted when, in the distance by the road, we saw particular constructions. A wooden fence of sorts, more of a cage mayhaps, a semi-spherical construction of wooden beams enclosing an area. There were several of them, accompanied by more conventional forms of housing. Clearly this was a village of sorts. Not unusual by itself – many homesteaders banded together to pool together their manpower and belongings, forming communes. These cages however were unlike anything we saw before, so we headed there with Watanabe to talk to the residents.

The first thing to catch our eyes was a sign that stated “Welcome to Pigmen.” At first, we thought that this meant that this place was a place of pig men, as in demi-humans who resemble pigs. There were demi-humans in fact, a wide assortment of them, but none who were shaped akin to pigs. Catmen, dogmen, lizardfolk, birdmen, etc. I had never before seen so much diversity of men, emphasis on men as they all seemed to be the males of their species. Before I had only personally known Captain Ayomide, the catwoman; demi-humans were seemingly rare in Gemeinplatz. My assistant Watanabe had been looking for a “foxgirl” for a while, with no success.

The answer to why they were called “pigmen” laid within the cages. Inside them were pigs, the flying kind. I learnt from the captain that the phrase “when pigs fly” referred to an impossibility in their native language, an adynaton. Unsurprisingly, the Gemeinplatzish language lacks such a phrase. The fencing of the cages were built tightly enough that the pigs couldn’t pass through them no matter how much they flew. There was a gate for the pigmen to pass through, and we saw them enter to drop off feed for the flying pigs. The wings in question weren’t feathered, only covered in fur like the rest of the pig’s body was. All in all, a fascinating creature to witness up close.

With how out-of-place we looked, it didn’t take long for the locals to take note of us. Thankfully, they proved cooperative as we took a head count of them and their pigs. We paid for a few pigs to send to the people over at Libertycave. The pigmen had carts with cages built in for transportation, of which we requisitioned one. After our business was done, we were invited over to their dining hall to share a meal with them. There, sitting at the head of the table, was a familiar figure accompanied by the pigmen.

“Tangerina! That Kim’s witch!” Watanabe so helpfully pointed out who she was. “What business do you have here?”

“I have all the business here, since I founded this place.” Tangerina still wore her overly-tall witch’s hat, though it seemed that she had to get a change of outfit for the rest. Still a bit adventurely, a gaudy style common to the adventurers of this land, but it was clearly not an outfit fit for long bouts of travel or combat anymore. “Sit down, please. I wasn’t expecting any of you here. We’re not enemies anymore.”

“Well, I won’t sit down with… with…” I could see Watanabe’s eyes shift over to the selection on display. As one might guess, it was a whole lot of pork. Grilled pork, smoked pork, sauteed pork, so much pork that the word “pork” itself began seeming quite funny to me. “…fine, you have convinced me. But if this is poisoned-”

“We’re about to sit and eat at the same table.” Demonstrably, Tangerina took a big bite out of a meal herself. “I’m not about to poison myself. Don’t be ridiculous. If I wanted to harm you, my magic would do the job much quicker.”

“That is quite logical, yes. Thank you for the meal, even if I cannot partake in it” I replied, shooting a glare at Watanabe.

“Ah- ahem. Apologies. Thank you for the meal.” My assistant relented and gave a bow before sitting down on a chair. His defeated expression didn’t last long as he began pigging out on the pork. “Oh, that is quite good.”

The smell definitely corroborated with Watanabe’s statement. I took out some beef jerky from my bag to use this opportunity to have a break and a meal. My hunger for knowledge was greater however, so I took out my quill and journal not long afterwards. “Madame Tangerina, was it? I’m Doctor Rabanowicz, and this is my assistant Haruhi Watanabe. I’d quite like to know where you are from. You do not sound like a local.”

“Tangerina Reticulata Sapindales. I’m an otherworlder, though I am not from Kim’s world.”

For the record, the following conversation is still completely incomprehensible to me.

“Tangerina… Tangerina, Tangerina Reticulata…” Watanabe paused eating, clearly thinking about something. “Orange-ish blonde hair. Twin drills. Oh. Oh crap. Have we met before?”

“Watanabe, was it?” Tangerina too had a similar reaction. A sudden realization. “Oh. You’re that Watanabe?!”

“So you are that Tangerina! I almost didn’t recognize you; you look really different. How did things go after I un-isekai’d myself from your realm?”

“You see, you got both of us to level 99 right after you set that nuclear bomb off and slayed the demon king. Then you immediately disappeared, I realized that the past day of you appearing out of nowhere wasn’t a dream, and I had a little mental breakdown where I used my newfound power to take over as goddess-empress of the entire world. Not that people needed much convincing since they thought I was the one to slay the Demon King and save their world.”

“…and how did you end up coming over here?”

“Well, using my powers, I ended up introducing trucks to my world. Then I was assassinated by somebody driving a truck over me, which somehow meant that I ended up in Gemeinplatz. Kim found me stranded in a dungeon, and was immediately infatuated with me. I don’t know what exactly about me makes me irresistible to you otherworlders.”

“It’s the tangerine theme and the twin drills, Tangerina.”

“It’s not a theme, that’s just the natural color of my hair and how I like to style it! Ahem. Anyways, me and Kim adventured for a long while, before he founded his company and retired from adventuring. So did I. The sedentary life got to me as I finally settled down and enjoyed the earnings from my adventures, and… he did not like it. He was always pestering me to eat less, to use this or that potion, or to take some weird medicine from his world, just so I could slim back down. I went along with him at first, but, at a certain point I gave up. I realized I could never satisfy him.”

“Why did you go along with him to attack us, then?”

“For old time’s sake. We had travelled together for a long time, and he told me that he just needed me for locating your people. I had to defend myself when you struck back at us, and when I realized the nature of what he wanted to do, I gave up and ran away from the scene. I… don’t think he deserved to die, but it’s too late to argue about that now.”

“We can agree to disagree.”

“Yes, we can. After I escaped, I went on another adventure. Hopped on a boat out of Gemeinplatz, to see what this world has to offer, and wandered aimlessly for a long time. I fought many battles, slayed many monsters, and got myself quite the adventuring party as you can see here. Peh. Turns out I didn’t need to change myself after all. I just needed to get away from his shadow and find the people who’d love me for who and what I am.”

“You mean to tell me…” Now that Watanabe and I looked at it closely, the pigmen did seem to be quite affectionate towards Tangerina. A few were seated right beside her, the rest quite close by, leaning on her, even offering her a few bites from the table. In turn she was patting and petting at them. “…by all eight million deities. It’s a reverse harem of monster boys.” All of a sudden, Watanabe got up from his chair. He gave the deepest, most reverent bow I’ve ever seen him give. “You have all my respect, Lady Tangerina. I can only strive to achieve, with monster girls, what you’ve achieved here.”

I didn’t get what was desirable in this situation. Being surrounded by so many people all the time sounds like mother to much trouble, but, the two of them gave a nod to each other and seemed to reach wordless agreement. On my end, I could only ask one thing: “They’re all free, am I correct? Why are you farming pigs?”

“Of course, my specialty is water magic. I couldn’t control their minds with that even if I wanted to. They work here of their own volition, and we split the profits amongst our party. These men are all skilled adventurers who could easily find work anywhere else within your realm if they wished. If there’s one thing that Kim told me, it was to exploit openings in a market. I realized that Gemeinplatz had nobody farming pigs, so me and my companions brought a few on our way back. We also have a few exotic crops that we’re looking to see the viability of growing in Gemeinplatz. We intend to retire from adventuring and live a slow life.”

“I see. You have the right to work your homesteads as you wish, and there isn’t anything in our laws against the association you have with these free men. There is no problem as long as you pay your due taxes.” Certainly an odd association, especially for my standards, but I had quickly learned to accept the oddities of Gemeinplatz. “Welcome to the Republic.”

With that, we proceeded to move on to more trifling small talk that needn’t go down in the record in detail. After our meal we left Pigmen and bid them good luck in their endeavors.