For episode two of the Valvrave Episode Challenge, in which I do something creative every episode. More information can be found on my profile.
A3's main role in this story is dedicated to the lovely tpfls. I'm not really sure what happened though – it was supposed to be simple, 800(!) words... I kinda hate how it turned out. :/ Took long enough on this, no time to write something else this week, ah well.
Parts of it are non–canon-compliant and I suck (don't write action scenes in a fic meant to be introspective, kids) so →Quality not guaranteed!
02: der zweite
He first saw him as a flash of silver down a side corridor after the blindfold was removed, thought it was an illusion created by a reflection, moments before being escorted through sliding steel doors and into the office inside. The office didn't interest him, nor the training officer inside, his eyes only drawn toward the navy uniform folded neatly before an empty chair. He'd been gestured to sit, so he did, eye twitching behind his fringe.
The training officer lowered a stack of papers; he recognised them as the applications he'd filled before aptitude testing. Name. Age. Skills—piloting.
"You are eligible to attend the Carlstein Institut. Your uniform has been prepared. Regulations are as follows..."
He'd only asked one question.
"Sir, my service number—"
"There are no service numbers at the Institut. Your codename is your name. That is all the ID necessary."
A-drei. A-3.
"The Institut does not accept failure, A-drei. You live – or you disappear."
"R-sieben! You are not synchronising with the unit!"
"Watch your output, D-eins!"
The simulator was musty, smelt of thick sweat and stress from the trainee before him, lit only by a small strip of white diodes above the chair. A-drei ignored all this, ignored the shouts echoing in his helmet; when the hatch closed, he immersed himself within the cockpit and wrapped his hands around the controls. The pedals were depressed, their pressure noted. The switches were committed to memory, unfamiliar layout cross-referenced with the manual.
The surround screens flashed to life, and A-drei smiled amidst the stars.
"A-drei. Waffe, box launch!"
His eyelid fluttered, hidden behind his fringe. Anticipation. Then, he was flying.
Mission:, appeared in the corner, Defeat all enemies.
No sooner had the words vanished did a blast whip dangerously close, breaking off the lower part of his shield. A-drei somersaulted backward, caught the enemy Waffe with a stream of bullets the perpetrator couldn't avoid, and it was testament to the pilot's inexperience when they didn't call upon their own shield in time.
"Amateur mistake, L-fünf; the eisen-geist is not merely for show!"
—through the public channel his helmet's frequency was set to, the single line A-drei remembered the training officers calling. Only because it would bite him later.
But not now.
A-drei took the brief moment to rearrange his screen so the radar sat as a heads-up display in front of his left eye. The Waffe's controls were unfamiliar yet easy, offering pieces of a toolkit that required skill to correctly utilise. He did not bother with further testing before diving directly into the fray.
Ten minutes later his kill count read 10. The enemy Waffe that remained were the same in number, as once-defeated trainees replaced those most recently fallen in order to repent for their loss. And there were only two undefeated pilots left, himself and—
No! That unit, where was—
It was too late that A-drei realised his opponent had been hiding in the shadow of another unit on his radar. He didn't have time to brace himself when the rounds slammed into him, taken completely by surprise. The resulting jerk from the motion simulators would have thrown him into the console, fractured bones if he hadn't been strapped in. The screens shut down not an instant later, amidst screeching alarms reporting power failures and damaged parts, their sound then dwarfed by the whirr of sirens throughout the hall.
The exercise was over.
He removed his helmet just as his hatch opened, and looked up to see one of the training officers peering down.
"You are aware of your mistake, A-drei?"
"Yes, sir."
The training officer consulted some notes on the clipboard. "That was your first Waffe flight?"
"Yes, sir."
A-drei had expected a berating, because that's what trainees always received if they did not come first, but did not expect the brief softening of dark eyes.
"Not bad," said the training officer. "Few can hold themselves against L-elf."
"L-elf, sir...?"
A-drei bit back the words as soon as they left his mouth, but he didn't need to. The training officer glanced to the other side of the room; A-drei climbed out of the hatch to follow the gaze, a gaze leading toward a familiar head of silver hair. The boy called L-elf – for he was still a boy, couldn't have been older than thirteen – exited the cockpit of his own simulator and hopped down the ledge to land gracefully on the floor. Their eyes met the moment he looked up, then L-elf left the room without further pause.
"L-elf. Consistently ranked first in piloting, marksmanship and navigation. It's only a matter of time until he's transferred to Group B. Yet," the training officer added, harsh again, "given that, you are still expected to achieve the same standard. Am I clear?"
"Yes, sir."
When he headed for the showers, A-drei couldn't convince himself completely that the rush of adrenaline in his core, nor the fluttering of his eyelid hidden by his fringe, was purely a by-product of flying the state-of-the-art Nw507 Besetzt Waffe a year before it was slated for production.
A-drei had been aware of the shadows trailing him from the second day. Seniors, intent on hazing; with his white hair and his strange eye, he'd known it all. His former life in the Luft hadn't done much to endear him to the ritual.
A-drei had dodged most of them, avoided the rest, but could not run forever.
They caught him on day six, at 2120 hours. Perhaps, more accurately, they'd tripped him down the stairs, and then A-drei was looking up at four other trainees much older than he. There must have been some conversation, he didn't remember, because soon he was kicked in the gut and he'd found out he'd beaten three of them during Waffe simulation.
One of the seniors was L-fünf. Perhaps A-drei only remembered his name because of it's similarity to L-elf, the boy that had defeated him—the boy that was his rival.
They'd tried to drag A-drei to a room, but A-drei hadn't let them take him easily. Of course, it was futile, his struggles useless, scratches to the arms met with greater fury and twice the beating in return. Soon he found himself in a room all too similar to his own—four bunks in two rows, neat to military precision, but the white wall directly opposite from him reflected light in a way that seemed unnatural.
A-drei found himself thrown to the cold ground between the beds and suppressed a wince when sparks shot up his sides as the impact jostled his injuries. He realised too late that his fringe had been knocked aside, that the seniors could see the eye spasming in response to the anger snarling within him. But when they kicked him some more, his limbs pinned to the ground, he had no choice but to take the blows without fighting back. Eventually he was dragged toward – the bathroom?
A-drei looked up when the concrete floor became tile, and he froze in his captors' grip when he saw it wasn't empty. L-elf, hands tied against the towel rack behind his back, peering uninterestedly through a fringe glued to his face—A-drei could see the water dripping down the chin, the water dripping down from the drenched uniform.
"You—" began A-drei; he never finished, cut off when he was jerked forward.
As the seniors tied him up next to L-elf, L-elf looked away. A-drei tried to speak again, but did not expect the torrent of water heading for him. He coughed, cursed at them every way he know how, received another spray by the showerhead and a piece of cloth gagging his mouth. The seniors left the two of them to 'hang dry', sprayed L-elf again for good measure, locked the door behind them.
Atop the icy tiled floor and in a building devoid of warmth, A-drei shivered. It was a long time since he'd been so cold.
"Not fighting back?" said A-drei once he was sure the seniors had gone. "You make me sick."
He wasn't sure if his words made any sense to L-elf, especially since he couldn't understand them himself. But L-elf shrugged—then, to A-drei's complete surprise, L-elf opened his fists and shook his arms free. The rope dropped harmlessly to the ground.
When L-elf removed A-drei's gag, then proceeded to untie him, A-drei could only stare blankly at the boy he called his rival. And, A-drei realised, though L-elf had taken the damage soundlessly, not once had he bowed.
L-elf checked his watch when A-drei was free, as if they were meeting casually and they had never been imprisoned.
"It's nearly 2200 hours," said L-elf. A-drei didn't know when he imagined L-elf to have a soft voice, since what he heard did not meet his expectations. Perhaps it was because of the hair. "We leave after nights out. They won't return."
"How often?" asked A-drei.
Shrug. "Almost every second night."
"Why don't you fight?"
"The paint."
A-drei frowned. "What?"
"The paint in the main room. It's thin in some areas, and you can see the messy hatching of brush strokes as opposed to a roller. If this room were used for resistance to interrogation training, there would not be effort put into covering any stains. I can only conclude that this a spare room used only for hazing. There's no doubt the training officers haven't noticed, either."
"Why don't they—"
"The Carlstein Institut operates on one principle: you live or you disappear. That is not to say that they do not monitor everything that is going on." L-elf smiled – and, A-drei noted, it was a particularly fearsome smile; his pulse quickened, lodged into his core, and he felt the urge to look away. "In the fourth-year proficiency exam, they will drown. Let's go."
When L-elf removed a set of lockpicks from up one sleeve, A-drei wondered if L-elf could predict the future.
One year later, after countless escapades alongside L-elf and then dozens more alone, the message that he was not a force to be trifled with still didn't seem to reach L-fünf's mind. A-drei had commented bitterly once that perhaps the man wasn't targeting them for being skilled but for their white hair, and was surprised when L-elf had laughed – though L-elf never mentioned why.
But for an entire fortnight, L-fünf had vanished. Finally, succumbing to curiosity, A-drei went to ask L-elf about it – since L-elf seemed to know everything in the universe – only to learn that they'd disappeared during amphibious landing operations.
That was the first time either had encountered the other of their free will.
From then on, A-drei would sit with L-elf during breakfast, lunch and dinner.
A-drei cringed when the shot landed inches right of the heart. A lung. There was a scratching of notes though the training officer didn't speak, but A-drei had been at the Institut long enough to know exactly what the comment would be. Too much thumbing.
He'd also been at the Institut long enough to know that, in a live fire shoot, trainees were not allowed to fail.
A-drei heard the click that was a gate unlocking, signifying that someone had passed, and was not surprised when he spotted white hair through the reflective metal near him. L-elf was first, of course. He always was—perfect at everything.
L-elf was waiting behind A-drei's box. It was up to A-drei to be second.
A-drei turned his attention back to his sights and readjusted his grip on the pistol, felt the memory foam inside his gloves shift when he did so. He locked his teeth, focused on the round, tried to thumb less than before. When his left eye blinked, he toggled the trigger. Brace for recoil. Follow through; realign the muzzle. The double-tap—toggle again.
Bullseye. One to go.
He lowered the pistol and stepped to the right. Just as he was about to aim again, another gate unlocked to the other side of his, then he heard the bright voice of impossibly young Q-vier as he greeted L-elf. Q-vier – transferred recently to train with Group A, excelling at shooting now that they'd moved on to quasi-instinctive lethal firing. A-drei couldn't help but stiffen; not second then. Third.
A-drei aimed.
Another gate unlocked, then the sound of L-elf and Q-vier's voices trailing away. A-drei released his two shots, perfect, and then spun around – so quickly his braid nearly hit the training officer in the eye.
"Pass," said the training officer. "But careless. You cannot allow yourself to be distracted over such trivial matters, A-drei."
"Yes, sir," said A-drei, distracted. Anything so he could go after them. "It won't happen again."
"See to that it does not."
And finally A-drei's gate unlocked, though A-drei was not first nor second nor third but fourth, chasing after the shadows of L-elf as he walked away.
The fourth-year proficiency exam. They would be sorted into teams according to skill, and it would be with that team that they would conduct all operations with from then on, barring reassignment or transfer.
A-drei's team consisted of himself, L-elf, Q-vier, and H-neun and X-eins – the remains of Group S. As soon as they were introduced, A-drei wondered who would call their child a name beginning with X, and then remembered his own parents and instantly wiped the thought from existence.
"I do not work with incompetent people," X-eins had said, by way of greeting.
A-drei had been about to bite back with a subtle (or not so subtle) insult – he'd heard much of X-eins's skills, but that didn't mean he had to like the other – but Q-vier laughed and grinned at A-drei and L-elf replied diplomatically to X-eins, diverting the attention of both in perfect unison. A-drei spotted H-neun smirking down at them, assessing the impromptu team display, and noticed X-eins spoke no more of their lack of ability, satisfied by whatever he'd found.
(Truth be told, A-drei had no idea what he was doing there at the time, certain his score was the lowest amidst them all, but he would never let Q-vier nor X-eins get the better of him.)
They were given a week to train together however they saw fit, and new quarters for the five of them that had A-drei wonder if the Carlstein Institut was trying to be a training facility or a hotel – they certainly had enough budget for both.
X-eins took it upon himself to explain it was because they were currently the best team on-campus, so that they received privileges others didn't have.
He'd caught A-drei's expression; "The Carlstein Institut is not the military, though military-based. Training here is for the elite special forces unit after all."
"You think I don't know that?" was A-drei's reply.
X-eins swept back stray strands of hair, adjusted his glasses. "I never implied anything of the sort. Now, what training do you need to do?"
The insult ignored. "I assume both you and H-neun have minimum A-Rank skills in all areas?"
"Correct."
A-drei turned for opinions from both L-elf and Q-vier, who had remained strangely silent. Instead, he spotted H-neun lounged in one of the chairs, limbs tense but expression suitably interested, and then looked at X-eins – looked – and saw behind lenses bloodshot eyes. A-drei nearly asked what had happened for Group S to disappear.
A-drei had glanced away briefly, trying to hide the thought no doubt in his eyes, when a glint of light caught his eye. A tiny black pinprick tucked beside the ceiling lights.
He focused again.
"Then, we'll..." A-drei surprised himself at how easily the suggestion came to mind, and realised – perhaps realised the real reason for being part of the team. "We'll start with flight – identify optimal formations..."
The Carlstein Institut's final test, giving them freedom to continue their training how they wished, no doubt assessing initiative even before combat occurred. A very odd choice, as initiative was a double-edged blade, made all the more risky in the military due to reliance on team operations. And, certainly, there must have been other ways to go about it—
When they headed for the flight simulators, their training decided upon for the day, A-drei tried to ignore the cameras in the walls and tried to ignore the question searing its way into his skull.
What was the Carlstein Institut trying to achieve?
Your team has been selected; your objective, retrieval.
It was going so well. Their first mission; their first, real mission, commissioned by the admirable Colonel Cain himself.
It was all going according to plan.
—until L-elf, perfect L-elf, had overlooked one of the scientists as they made their way to secure the primary objective. The rumbles of the ground, the whirr of pulleys and the pneumatic hissing as the humanoid craft was lifted out of reach marked the first obstacle in their way.
"Model RM-XX1 Valvrave," reported X-eins, hunched over the computers. "Intel wasn't wrong."
Somewhere in the background, Q-vier wasted too many rounds on ensuring the scientist was dead.
"L-elf!" A-drei called, seeing L-elf still standing somewhere near where the Valvrave once was. He turned to X-eins. "You have the rest of the computers' data?"
The lights above them flickered before X-eins could reply. Then eyes widened sharply behind glasses; a screen was pulled up that was empty.
X-eins scowled. "No—bastards destroyed it, electromagnets wiped the disks clean. Request a pick-up crew, there might be some that can still be restored."
A-drei nodded to H-neun, who made a show of sighing dramatically before activating his communicator. L-elf hurried up to them, trailed by Q-vier.
"I've reported to the Colonel," said L-elf. "We are to aid with Operation Virgin Road, if possible."
"Fine," said A-drei. "Don't forget, our primary mission is retrieval."
As the lift began its slow ascent, A-drei allowed only a brief moment to wonder if L-elf's misstep was caused by his sudden outburst earlier on – something about halves and fighting and ham and eggs of all things. Perhaps L-elf was hungry?
Then the doors slid open, and they were back into action.
There were many opportunities when A-drei was reminded of why L-elf was perfect, why he looked up to him so.
The moment H-neun had found out the identity of the mysterious pilot as being the student L-elf had unleashed his temper upon, it had been L-elf himself who'd volunteered to remedy the problem. So it was with confidence that A-drei allowed L-elf to go on his own, leaving the rest of their squadron remained to help with Operation Virgin Road as they had been asked.
Five minutes later, A-drei felt the beginnings of worry and heard the poisonous whispers of dread. Both were ignored.
When L-elf still hadn't returned within ten minutes, A-drei called the others to him—they were supposed to work as a team, why had he let L-elf go off alone—and they headed for the shore, armed and ready.
The sight that greeted them was a group of students huddled over something on the sand, and L-elf's body lying face-down. Unconscious.
A-drei wasted no time in catching their attention. "Step away from the Valvrave."
Predictably, the students jumped back; they had been leaning over the brown-haired boy who'd somehow managed to pilot one of the most advanced pieces of machinery in existence, decimating Dorssia's initial wave. As Q-vier introduced them, A-drei noticed L-elf stir. It was then that he ought to have listened to the voice that told him that something was wrong – that L-elf would never lift his gun and point it at them—
Q-vier's gun flew from his hands to land in the darkness.
A-drei knew he'd lifted an arm to keep the rest of the team from shooting L-elf, but the action was hesitant. The safety of the team should have been the first priority. Not L-elf alone.
"What's the meaning of this, L-elf?" he asked.
There was an explanation.
"Why turn your gun on us?"
There had to have been an explanation.
"...L-elf?"
But no explanation could possibly explain the cold determination in L-elf's eyes, the level of hatred brimming beneath their depths. And as L-elf would aid the students to safety, no explanation would placate the heavy beast of betrayal weighing down A-drei's heart or stop the eye for once seeing through his fringe.
—and then L-elf didn't even try; it took only a second for him to line his sights and toggle the trigger. The bullet hit A-drei's eye and he was thrown back before he even managed to register the barrel pointed in his direction.
"A-drei!"
"Damnit!"
L-elf was perfect, aim flawless, and A-drei was not. A-drei could only scream and clutch at his face, struggle helplessly against the fates that finally rid him of the eye he'd never needed.
Yet why—why was he trembling? Because he truly didn't want to be blind in one eye if the doctors failed, never seeing the depths the world would offer again? Because he feared being reassigned – because he'd been hurt by his closest friend—?
No, L-elf wasn't his friend. There were no friends in Dorssia, only acquaintances and enemies. And L-elf, once part of them, knew innately how they operated – L-elf was the greatest enemy of them all.
A-drei vaguely registered that it was X-eins that had caught him when he'd fallen, shouted his name, and X-eins that helped him to the medical bay.
But by then, he'd long stopped thinking.
L-elf's a traitor~!
The glorious Greater Dorssia, a tentative alliance hinging upon conquest and war. She had taken JIOR overnight – not that there had been any doubt of her doing so. But that was not enough. They'd delivered the Valvrave, but ultimately, he had failed.
Dorssia did not care much for her agents, and Dorssia did not take well to failure.
This, A-drei knew well.
He supposed that, with the rush of operations before ARUS's undoubted arrival, they hadn't had time to deal with him yet. There was the deportation of JIOR's citizens, the Valvrave's capture and its exciting potential for reverse engineering, far too many things to occupy interests and time.
Only two people visited him whilst he was resting. The first, Q-vier, bounding in almost the instant the doctors left, gaming console in hand.
X-eins gave him things to do down in the city, said Q-vier, but they were really boring.
Once, Q-vier had offered A-drei the console, asked if he wanted to play. A-drei had glanced at it, seen a character with silver hair, immediately declined.
They remained amidst relative silence, only the game's synthesised soundtrack and cheap sound effects keeping them company.
H-neun did not shuttle into orbit as Q-vier had, but met him via hologram, grinning but asking pointed questions about L-elf's behaviour. A-drei answered the best that he could, did anything to try and avoid the punishment undoubtedly in store(—wondered to himself why he even bothered).
He kept his conclusion to himself; that L-elf left because he didn't see A-drei and the rest of Dorssia as being worthy of his presence. He offered instead the potential that L-elf may have known the Valvrave's pilot before their mission in JIOR.
An announcement from H-neun's end of the call cut short the explanation.
"L-elf has been spotted!"
"He's hijacked the primary objective!"
A-drei shot up, felt his eye snap open, expected the other to start pulsing as it did when surprised; it did not, thus he remembered the injury by the Dorssian-manufactured bullet and remembered the pain.
"Deploy the Er114 Yellow," said A-drei. "I'm going to fight him."
When the hatch closed, plunging him into near-darkness, A-drei thought of the L-elf that he'd known. The L-elf, perfect L-elf, who knew everything and excelled at anything. The L-elf who'd helped him to freedom on several occasions, who he'd helped free on several occasions, and the kinship formed between two who'd suffered together.
It was all a meaningless chase for A-drei, seeking to reach the same level, because a traitor didn't care.
The Ideal-Class Mechanised Annihilator hummed as its screens switched on, bringing with it the reassurance only a war machine could provide. A-drei felt his lips curve into a smile, driven by the rush of power at his fingertips. Excitement, adrenaline; determination to bring justice where justice should be dealt.
He moved the radar so it sat as a heads-up display in front of his left eye, as he preferred. The action had never been because he wanted to see it with his left eye, but so he could see it with his right; normally he couldn't see through the veil that was his fringe anyway, and only L-elf realised he lacked any depth perception because of how he could fail shooting a target thirty yards away.
Now, even though he was truly blind in one eye and unable to see the other half of his face, he was equal with the best when surrounded by stars in two-dimensional screens.
Blitzendegen!
"Let's go," called A-drei, challenging war. "L-elf!"