The soldiers arrived at dawn, but couldn't agree on whether they were attacking or defending. Half wore Null Empire gray, half wore Imperial colors, and all looked thoroughly confused. They surrounded the Academy in perfect formation, then immediately broke ranks to argue about what they were supposed to be doing.
"We're here to enforce order!" shouted a Null Empire captain.
"We're here to prevent enforcement!" countered an Imperial sergeant.
"I thought we were here for the morning tea ceremony," added a private who'd already removed his armor to join the Academy's daily practice of impractical movement.
Cael emerged from the building, broom in hand, to find two armies having an existential crisis in his courtyard. "Can I help you?"
"Yes!" said both captains simultaneously, then glared at each other.
The Null captain stepped forward. "The Empire of Nothing has decreed this... whatever this is... must cease. You're spreading meaning through meaninglessness. It's paradoxical and must be stopped."
The Imperial captain pushed past him. "The Emperor has decreed this Academy must be protected as a cultural treasure of productive confusion. Anyone who attacks it will be met with aggressive pacifism."
"What's aggressive pacifism?" a soldier asked.
"We hug you until you stop fighting," another explained, demonstrating on his confused colleague.
The situation deteriorated beautifully. Null soldiers, trained to feel nothing, found themselves feeling annoyed at feeling annoyed. Imperial soldiers, ordered to defend through non-violence, began competitively not-fighting. Within an hour, both armies had mingled into an indistinguishable mass of military confusion.
"This isn't what war looks like," the Null captain protested, watching his soldiers share breakfast with the enemy.
"Maybe that's the point," Mei suggested, arriving with the Shadow School's morning shift. They'd developed a schedule where they succeeded at failure in the mornings and failed at success in the afternoons. "You came expecting to find an enemy. Instead you found..." She gestured at the chaos. "Whatever this is."
The Imperial captain had given up entirely and was learning to sweep from Cael. "There's something meditative about moving dust from here to there," he mused. "Purposeless but purposeful."
"You can't sweep!" his lieutenant protested. "You're supposed to be defending!"
"I am defending. I'm defending the right to push dirt around without it meaning anything."
Scout-General Pex emerged from the Null ranks, looking even less certain than when they'd left. "I told them conquering you would be like conquering water, but they didn't listen."
"How's the not feeling nothing going?" Tam asked, offering them a cup of perfectly imperfect tea.
"Terrible. I keep feeling things. Yesterday I enjoyed a sunset. My commander was appalled."
"Enjoyment is just acknowledgment of temporary beauty. Very nihilistic if you think about it wrong."
"That... almost makes sense."
By noon, the Academy courtyard had transformed into the strangest military gathering in history. Null soldiers practiced feeling nothing while accidentally feeling everything. Imperial soldiers defended by refusing to acknowledge there was anything to defend against. Academy students taught both sides how to fail at their missions successfully.
"We need organization," the Null captain declared, then immediately contradicted himself. "No, we need chaos. No, we need organized chaos. No—"
"You need lunch," Sara interrupted, wheeling out a cart of food that couldn't decide what meal it belonged to. "Can't have an existential crisis on an empty stomach."
The meal that followed dissolved the last pretense of military action. Soldiers from both armies sat together, sharing food and confusion in equal measure. Someone started a discussion about whether nothing was something or something was nothing, which led to three fistfights and two philosophical breakthroughs.
"This is disaster," the Null captain moaned, accepting his third helping of intentionally burned rice.
"Or triumph," the Imperial captain countered, now fully committed to sweeping as a martial art. "Depends on your perspective."
"I don't have perspective anymore. This place dissolved it."
"Good first step," Cael noted. "Perspective is just prejudice with better vocabulary."
A messenger arrived, looking for someone in charge and finding no one willing to claim the position. She eventually delivered her message to the group at large: "The Null Empire's main force is two days away. Ten thousand soldiers trained in the art of meaningful meaninglessness."
"How many do we have?" someone asked.
Everyone looked around, counting. The morning's two hundred soldiers had somehow become five hundred, as citizens joined what looked like the most interesting failure of military protocol they'd ever seen.
"We have whoever shows up," Cael said. "The Militia of Maybe. Soldiers who might fight, might not, might have lunch instead."
"That's not an army!"
"No, it's better. It's a community having a military experience together."
The afternoon was spent in the strangest military preparation ever witnessed. Instead of drilling formations, they practiced creative interpretation of orders. Instead of maintaining equipment, they modified armor to be comfortable rather than protective. Someone invented a sword technique based entirely on avoiding conflict through aggressive conversation.
Vermithrax arrived at sunset, carrying reports from across the empire. "It's spreading," she announced with dragon-sized glee. "The Null advance has stalled because their soldiers keep finding meaning in maintaining meaninglessness. Three regiments have converted to competitive nihilism, trying to mean nothing harder than their companions."
"And our forces?"
"What forces? Every town they approach surrenders preemptively, then forgets they surrendered and goes about normal life. The Null commanders can't figure out if they're winning or losing."
That night, the Academy hosted what might have been a war council if anyone had been willing to lead it. Instead, it became a philosophical potluck where everyone brought ideas and ate whatever made sense to them.
"Traditional warfare won't work," the former Null captain admitted. He'd removed his rank insignia after realizing authority was just agreed-upon illusion.
"Nothing traditional works here," the Imperial captain agreed, now teaching others his sweeping-based martial philosophy. "That's what makes it perfect."
Kess had been quietly mapping the Null Empire's approach, using charts that changed whenever observed. "They expect to find an enemy. What if we give them nothing to fight?"
"We're already doing that."
"No, I mean literally nothing. Empty buildings. Empty fields. Just... absence where they expect presence."
"A tactical void," Mei mused. "Fight nothing with actual nothing."
"But we need to be somewhere," Tam pointed out.
"Do we? Or do we just think we do?"
The plan that emerged made no sense, which meant it made perfect sense for the Academy. When the Null Empire arrived expecting to find resistance or surrender, they'd find neither. Just empty spaces that suggested presence, abandoned structures that implied meaning, and a complete absence of anything to conquer.
"Where will we actually be?" a soldier asked.
"Everywhere else," Cael explained. "Spread throughout their ranks, being aggressively ordinary. Hard to fight an enemy that's standing next to you discussing the weather."
"That's not military strategy!"
"Good. Military strategy got us into this mess. Maybe military confusion will get us out."
The next morning brought scouts reporting the Null vanguard approaching. The Academy responded by not responding. Buildings were evacuated but left open. Tea was brewed and abandoned mid-cup. Half-finished philosophical arguments were written on walls, stopping mid-sentence.
The combined forces of the Militia of Maybe dispersed into the countryside, each carrying the Academy's core teaching: when faced with impossible odds, become impossible to face.
"This will either be brilliant or catastrophic," the former Imperial captain said, now dressed in clothes that couldn't decide if they were uniform or casual.
"What's the difference?" Cael asked, shouldering his broom like a weapon that refused to be one.
"About three days and a good story."
They left the Academy empty but somehow still present, its absence louder than any occupation. The building stood ready to fail at being conquered, to succeed at being nothing, to mean everything by meaning nothing at all.
The Null Empire approached, ten thousand strong, trained in the art of feeling nothing, ready to find an enemy that had decided not to exist in any way they could understand.
The battle that wasn't a battle was about to begin.
Or not begin.
Or both.
The Militia of Maybe marched to war by not marching, ready to fight by not fighting, prepared to show the world what victory looked like when nobody was trying to win.
It was either the worst military strategy in history or the birth of something entirely new.
Time, and a very confused army, would tell.