Grisaille Gaol
An LLS Production
Edited: 9 September 2014
Prologue: Reversal of Dawn and Dusk
"Why?"
The word was said with a very solemn, very sad face. The girl wearing the lacy cotton nightgown was cold, cold to his touch. There was also the fact that the cotton was thin and he could see- and there lay thoughts Orion Hunter did not want to know.
"I'm going to solve this," he promised her instead, praying that the Shimotsuki father did not suddenly barge in and misunderstand. Despite the lax cultural attitude to sex his aunt might have mentioned, he was pretty sure that an eight-year-old shouldn't be that sexualised. "One day you're going to wake up without this curse. This damned curse..."
"I'll be fine," she insisted, her thin arms clinging onto the front of his pyjamas with surprising strength. "If you're with me- Nii-sama..."
"No," he breathed. "Setsuka, let go. We need to talk."
Blue clashed with blue, the blue of ice and the blue of a warm summer's day sharp contrasts for those who shared the same blood.
"No more talking," she insisted. "No more."
Surely, it was-
"-just a dream," the purr in his ear was enough to snap Orion Hunter awake. "Is it?"
The bonds holding him down were ice, solid and chilling to his hands. His DuelDisk lay aside, the deck conspicuously disassembled. The five Exodia pieces pinned with icicles that gleamed contrasting blue-gold as Winter held the fragment of Exodia's power at bay.
At that sight he blanched, realising that he was alone and defenceless, at the mercy of the Winter Queen, Monarch of Air and Darkness, personification of darkness and monsters, and the estranged cousin that held a personal beef for him. His stomach still bore the wound where she had disembowelled him with her fingernails, the last time they met.
Setsuka Shimotsuki cast a dispassionate eye over his bound form, laid out flat on the floor to keep him from any leverage. Her youthful features scrunched, she nevertheless lowered herself until she was bent over him. Despite a number of events that left her as a Duel spirit and a veritable monster, she was beautiful. She smiled; it came out like a perfectly formed grimace.
"Well," he sighed. "It looks like we're finally having that talk at last."
"Indeed," she rasped. "And it all started since a year ago..."
"Crisis of monsters..."
"Confirmed photographs..."
"UFOs are real-"
These were some of the discussions that went on in a sub-audible level within the amphitheatre. Stacked seats rising from a central stage upon which a podium and a judges' panel squat, great frogs awaiting the sprites of humans to walk upon their corpses.
One man immediately stood, banging a gavel for order.
"The General Assembly is to be addressed," the man announced. "The United Nations General Assembly hereby calls this emergency meeting to discuss the recent crisis that has swept the world. These monsters that appear at random, that spread throughout and harm all domiciles with no regard for human life or limb, must be terminated immediately. We have here with us today an expert upon these monsters. I call upon-"
Those were his last words; immediately after, his throat seized, the man collapsed into a heap of dust, and in the ensuing silence, only the click of heels resounded. A resounding gasp echoed as she ascended the stage.
"Who are you?" one of the crowd demanded. "How did you get here?"
A single breath exhaled, coated in mist. "Should any of you recognise me, then you have no need to know my name," the woman on the stage declared. "Should any of you not recognise me, then you do not deserve to know my name. As for your question... I came here by an intense hate. From now on, none of you are safe."
It was barely three days after they arrived in New Orleans that the Arcadia Movement invaded the headquarters of the United Nations.
"For the record, this is insane," Chase announced to the cockpit at hand. Dejection and disappointment permeated the cabin; he, and the rest of them had arrived in the United States expecting a B-class tourney only to be told that the tournament had been suspended, and that the New Orleans Arcadia Movement in an uproar after having lost key personnel. A new leader had already been chosen... there was no time even to mourn.
"Even then, there's no other option," the dark-haired man that stood opposite him argued. "They aren't like us. They've never even thought that Duel Spirits could exist. Now that monsters are breathing and talking and real, mass panic is setting in."
With a flick of his head, the clear leader turned towards the cockpit. "MacKinnon?"
By the cockpit, the blond-haired temporary head of the Oceanic Movement gave an ironic salute, from what I could see through the glass door. "No aerial assault, no one to see us, Orion."
"This is a bad idea," a bespectacled man argued in the middle of the cabin. "Hunter-san, you can't be thinking-"
"I am thinking of the same thing she would have been, Kaido." Orion Hunter cut in, glaring at him and towards the other man curled up in the enclosed space next to Kaido. "Are there any objections?"
"You could be shot!" Kaido protested. "Misunderstandings could happen-"
"In another situation, I'd be happy to let you," Orion pointed out sharply. "But right now we are facing an unusual situation, and so the Movement needs to prevent this. If the UN was to declare war without us to step in- I can't even think of the consequences. They're too horrific to be mentioned. Plus, we've commandeered a plane to New York already, it's too late."
Orion turned to look around at the multitudes of Duelists in the commandeered passenger plane. "Any questions?"
"No problem," a dark-haired female Duelist sitting nearby bit off. "We've already told the guys at New York, they're assembling outside. They'll be keeping the riot police busy as we perform an illegal landing and storm the UN headquarters in the middle of the Security Council's announcement. This is... insane, by the way."
"I have to agree," the brunette beside her chipped in, pushing her crimson beret to the correct position. Eyes of indigo found Orion's, but she looked away before the dark blue of the Hunter family. "This is... if we are not believed, then we will be labelled insane. Fugitives. We'll be hunted."
"If we don't do this, that mysterious contact is going to screw everything up and then the whole world could be dragged into a war," Orion sighed. "I know you don't like that idea, Alexianna, but... it can't be helped."
"You are that woman's cousin as well," Alexianna whispered. "You are of that family."
Orion did not answer her. Arcadia Movement or not, there was no way an outsider could comprehend the multitude of family issues at hand. Aunt Diana... what they knew as the Madame, Orion knew as the distant aunt who raised him. What they called a monster, he knew as Setsuka. "There's no time," Orion muttered as the intercom flashed on and MacKinnon announced landing. "Kaido?"
Kaido crossed his arms. "I'll be taking the security rooms with Yukio. It's better... that the guys at Central don't realise it yet. Plus, we might have to erase records."
"I got it." Orion agreed. "Princeton, you'll have to follow me."
"What, me?" the slightly younger doppelgänger of Manjoume Jun squawked.
"Why not me?" a guy shouted from the back.
Orion ignored the other guy with the ease of judiciously selective hearing. "You're the only one experienced enough to deal with either Ryuusei or Setsuka, Princeton."
"We don't even know that it's them!" he protested. "It could be another Duel Spirit-"
"What kind of Duel Spirit would lower itself to deal with the United Nations, when it's pretty clear that they hold no intervening power?" Orion pointed out, watching Chase swallow the rebuttal. "Also," he added, "what is the greatest symbol of change aside from the massacre of the reigning masters of the world order?"
Silence indicated that the stakes were comprehended. Orion turned about the tiny cabin as the information stewed in his brain, trying to look amongst the mass of nervous faces. "Himemiya."
"Y- Yes!" two red-head sisters sat up.
"No. Hazuki," Orion clarified. The younger slumped, her face wan. "I'll need you to follow Princeton and I into the building. While we're inside, I need you to take control of the surrounding area with a Field Spell."
"What?" The newly identified Hazuki faintly echoed. "B- But, Orion-san- it's the Security Council-"
"Take it from me," Orion answered grimly. "We're going to need you. Will you come?"
Hazuki took a deep, shuddering breath that did interesting things to her plain white shirt. Her red hair spilled out of her French bun as she withdrew the hairpins within to redo them. "Y- Yes..."
"Thank you."
Orion stood up and then turned, to face the main administration body of the New Orleans Movement, the head archivist and security plus two more Duelists of the Central Movement, and the rest. The pilots were dismissed; they were not the ones about to battle.
"We are about to enter the Turtle Bay area," Orion solemnly announced. "From the recent news announcements following the Veils lifting to reveal Sight in every living human, there will be a special informant to stand before the UN Security Council and the Assembly of Nations. Delegates all over the world gathering in one place to discuss what I am going to refer to as the sightings of Duel Monsters all over the globe. I have reason to believe that their special informant is, in fact, an agent of Setsuka Shimotsuki."
Silence fell over the tiny cabin, many people hardly daring to answer or speak up.
"I will lead a strike team composed of myself, Hazuki Himemiya, Chase Princeton, Yukio Yamada and Kaido Ariyashi to address this problem within the headquarters," he continued. "To that end, I will require all of you to cooperate and secure the Turtle Bay area, lest... lest we are to come to battle with this agent and its compatriots. Our operation, which shall be entered as the Turtle Bay invasion, begins... now."
Despite still being airborne, the doors slid open, the plane low enough to keep all of us breathing but high enough to merit jumping out suicidal. Orion leapt out, and in a heartbeat Chase and Hazuki followed.
"Fly, Wings of Wicked Flame!" Orion shouted as he flung a card. Flames scattered, the heating air whipped off in free-fall, but the wings slowed his mass long enough to land on the grass outside. A beat later, Hazuki followed, her own conjured wings of red and black petals scattering as she dropped Chase beside him. Chase managed to land on his feet, dusting his leather coat out with the trademark Manjoume scowl already in place. Hazuki landed on Orion's other side like some angel, her DuelDisk was already out.
Overhead, a flash of lightning covered the skies. Orion nodded at the irony.
"Let's go."
They could have gotten lost, and should have gotten lost or caught. Yet, footsteps sounded surely and firmly as Orion navigated them through. From outside, a boom of explosions and gunshots rang – clearly the sound of urban warfare.
"Press outside is going to have a field day," Chase muttered, but remained quiet before he stiffened and suddenly threw himself down.
Hazuki and Orion followed, and a rain of gunfire echoed. Hazuki yelled something, and the smell of roses wafted throughout the hallway as a few hapless security guards turned to plants. They walked past them, running quickly and making the final turn to burst into the General Assembly hall just in time to see a P90 being drawn already.
Orion's hand flicked out as he drew the card, long enough to reveal a gold tattoo which glimmered in the light of the General Assembly hall. "Hinotama!"
The assassin ducked, throwing herself from the main podium amidst the panicked cries of national delegates to avoid the holographic fire. She tucked, rolled, and came up facing them. On either side, the doors flew open to admit more guards, each drawing a side-arm or moving to secure the delegates. Hazuki's panicked gasp and Princeton muttering a curse word followed Orion's silence.
She was graceful, a timeless work of art despite her relatively youthful face. One-six-flat or so, built with a balance of lush and lean that was attractive. She wore a power suit of black, the shirt tight across her torso in a v-neck to hint at her cleavage, her arms gracefully folded in the jacket. Her skin made snow seem a bit sallow by comparison. Colours flickered around her neck and upon her fingers, on her low-heeled boots and in the chignon her long ebony hair had been twisted in; deep blue and green and violet contrasting with the black of her ensemble. Her nails glittered with the same impossibly shifting hues that reflected off of clear plastic and steel. She smiled as her P90 aimed at Orion; her lips were the colour of frozen raspberries, deep like blood.
Despite being before the delegates of nations around the world, there was some undefined sense that this woman was in charge, and with it came the impression of her owning the space around her. It should have impressed. It should have been appreciated, at least on an aesthetic or distant plane; her features, her effortless glamour, her very aura of power. Her eyes made it all the worse. They were wide and blue-green, and cold. Though they, too, were beautiful, they were cold and inhuman eyes; they were filled with intelligence and desire, but empty of compassion or pity.
Orion's hand moved to cover his midriff, his stomach that covered a huge scar four fingers in width; the remnants of where Setsuka Shimotsuki had torn his insides out before. If there hadn't been Arcadia Movement on hand, he would have died.
"Orion-niisan," her low voice echoed in the General Assembly hall, Her voice was cold, possessing of some unusual musical quality to it, the kind of frozen clarity that was a symphonic prelude to natural disasters.
"You've been a very bad girl, Setsuka," Orion gave his best shot at a level reply. "Deserting the Arcadia Movement, destroying people's lives, and now here you are, about to kill the representatives of the world."
"There is no reason," she considered. "For new leadership to take place, the old must be destroyed. The world must awaken from its denial of safety, and realise that nothing is safe."
"Guards!" someone yelled, as the guards approached to dog-pile her.
"No!" Orion shouted, but it was too late.
A flash of white light, and seven statues of humans encased in ice met my sight. Delegates screamed, and some went for the doors that slammed closed with an Arctic gale.
"There is no safety for you all," Setsuka pronounced with the kind of awful certainty that preluded prophecies of doom. "Nowhere you can hide; not from the silence of death, not from the dark and cold. So says the Queen of Air and Darkness, monarch of the Winter. So says the malevolent will of Duel Spirits high and low."
"I won't let you win here," Orion fiercely defended.
She smirked, and one statue shattered. The blood and gore of a guard-sicle spattered on the carpet, and quite a few more people screamed.
"Whose side are you on?" Orion demanded.
"I side with the rational ones, and I am against those who pick useless fights," Setsuka clearly pronounced.
"I wasn't aware that mass-murder could be rational."
"It can." Another guard-sicle, more blood spatter. "These guards are merely covered in ice; should they receive aid in time, they shall recover. That is, unless I choose otherwise."
"Clearly there is no rational reason for you to release those guards, hostages that they are," Orion countered.
"I am the one whose reason matters."
"Neither is there reason for you to step back, when you know that you have to murder the delegates present," At this comment from Orion, it looked like the General Assembly finally reached a consensus to whimper in the presence of Shimotsuki Setsuka.
Lazily, Setsuka reached on either side of her, and seized one delegate, a man. He screamed, right before she moved to grab his neck. Orion pulled another fireball and she dodged, letting the relieved delegate to crawl under the desk in escape.
A stench of ammonia was filling the room; whatever your reasoning, Setsuka was still a terrifying creature.
"You..." Orion panted. "I will not allow you to touch anyone, spirit or not, human or not."
"The ritual of Seika Kannazuki's death tore apart the veils of worlds," she murmured. "With it was the rights of non-interference. Right now, spirits and humans can interact en masse for the first time in millennia. Their reasoning, of course, is to fear us. Destroy us. Forget us."
Orion glanced towards one of the cameras by the side, and then faced her. "Isn't that the rational thing to do in the face of monsters? Otherwise it is our death."
There was that look in her eyes, the one Orion was familiar with. The haunted look right before she dealt the blow eleven years ago. "All things end, and human reason shall."
"Your ghosts, and you, the ghost of the Arcadia Movement, have no place here," he answered at last. "If you do not, war will be had between ghosts and monsters."
The haunted look returned. "I'm quite sure that monsters do not care should war be declared upon them regardless," Setsuka observed. "Orion-niisan."
"If you do this, the Arcadia Movement will be at the forefront of any and all efforts to bring you down," Orion snarled. "Our family bond will not save you."
She looked at him, ice-blue eyes coolly boring into ice-blue before she raised both hands and then, twisting her wrists, she snapped her fingers. The temperature dropped, and Orion stepped back momentarily before she uttered her words.
"Very well. I accept your declaration of war for all humanity against the Winter Court," Setsuka crossed her arms, amused. "Let's begin."
She disappeared, and with her gone the remaining guard-sicles gave a resounding crack that left spatter permanently in the middle of the delegates of the world.
A phone rang, a spot of normalcy in the silence. Orion answered his cell-phone. "Hunter."
"We're on live broadcast," Kaido's voice announced without ceremony.
Orion sighed, marching up to the podium of the world and facing the innocent-looking camera. Of the Central Movement psychics other than himself and the Himemiya sisters, only Kaido and Yamada Yukio had come to New York, remnants of her guard. They followed her, lost her, and now the previous head's corpse was missing, barely cooled and starting to rot while Orion was about to do the craziest thing any head of the Arcadia Movement could be doing.
"Citizens of the world, and fellow Arcadians," he addressed the innocent-looking lens. "I am addressing you within the General Assembly of the United Nations headquarters of Turtle Bay. Thirty seconds ago, Setsuka Shimotsuki, the third head and most infamous of us Arcadians, attacked the headquarters of the United Nations in Turtle Bay, New York, and killed three... seven guards in her attempt to murder the delegates of the General Assembly. We stopped her, but she has escaped. This situation is related to the problem of Duel Monster sightings across the globe; Set- Shimotsuki is working with them. Effective at this moment, the manhunt for Shimotsuki is to be handed over to the relevant authorities."
Orion took a deep breath. "To all Arcadians. Exactly three days ago... Polaris fell in battle. Her sacrifice revealed to us the existence of our enemy, the monsters we have all seen and will see, the monsters that will kill us under the rule of people like Setsuka Shimotsuki. In her place, and carrying her will, I, Orion Hunter, codename Goldenrod, hereby renounce the codename I bear. In its place, I shall take the name of Polaris, and with it the position of fifth head of the Arcadia Movement."
Another pause. "My first announcement, to my fellow Psychics across the globe: in light of the crisis we face, I hereby announce our entry into a state of open hostility against Shimotsuki, and against those who would threaten the nations of this world. Our enemies are the monsters revealed to us within the last three days, the ones that you Arcadians must have seen, and must have already fought. We will not waste the sacrifice of the previous Polaris... no, of Seika Kannazuki. To that end, as the fifth head of the Central Arcadia Movement, I do hereby extend the call to our fellowship, to our allies, to every armed force that will be required. The storm has come."
Outside the building, a storm charged; a blizzard raged, and they clashed over the Turtle Bay.
Please review!