Teoria.
Milano landed on her hands and knees and fell away from the clang of swords. She tried to open the door, but it was now sealed to the outside world and their allies. Falis and Kaito fought between levers and between mysterious colossal globes. They were bathed in strange artificial light that seemed to come from no source whatsoever. They fought below devices that Milano knew nothing of, past geometrical shapes that encompassed dimensions impossible to understand, and through passages that seemed to stretch into miles larger than the entire Forland castle that contained them.
This was the battle for the control of Forland's Teoria.
Kaito's artificial arm moved quickly and his sword left a trail of blood along Falis' chest. It was a deep wound, and yet she would not stop fighting. She tripped and fell into a lever, leaving bloodstains along a table. It lit up in response to her.
"Leave her alone!" Milano shouted, and threw the nearest heavy object she could detach—a sort of doorknob, she supposed. Kaito did not react to the blow. He flung the Princess across the room, yelling:
"Teoria, hear my command!"
Milano pulled a metal stick from a device and ran to a globe above where Kaito hurt the Princess. She levered it into the join, willing to kill Kaito if she could smash his skull this way. The ancient Teoria did not yield to her brute force.
"Teoria," Falis cried, and the lights in the room seemed to dance for her, "hear my command!"
Kaito rushed her, flinging her into a pillar.
"Teoria, preserve Forland!" Falis called. She fell on another lit lever. Lights flashed—one, then two, then three, four, five...
A great sound came like the very world itself moving and shuddering. Milano fell to the ground and placed her hands to her ears, because she could do nothing else. Forland—everything for Forland. Let Forland be saved even if the cost was high for them in this place. Falis, bloody but daring everything—Falis the killer—Falis the saviour—
Kaito threw Falis across the hall, head-first into a shelf. She fell and did not get up. Blood soaked her white dress. Then Kaito turned to Milano. Milano took to her heels.
If he chases me I win time. If he chases I win time, she thought. Falis would rescue her if she could, if she woke up in time. It surprised her that she did not doubt that at all.
This was a twisted version of all the games of chase she once played with her brothers. They'd longer legs and were always swifter. Milano used to try thin goat tracks and fragile branches that her heavy brothers couldn't follow her by. Here she found railings to slide down, strange small ways to duck into, but Kaito was far more agile than she could ever be. He brought her down halfway through a part of the Teoria that shone a pale blue, and held her close as a sister.
"This is not my choice," Milano heard Kaito whisper, clearly in her ear, "this part of the plan was not my own choice."
He touched her face and thrust his artificial right hand down her throat. She could not even scream. The metal tendril split and changed between her teeth—Milano felt the sharp edges of the glowing purple gem inside there—and Kaito blocked her nose and stroked her throat until she'd swallowed it. Kaito held her loosely then, his right arm hanging limply at his side.
"GET AWAY FROM HER!"
Falis flew through the light, and in her crimson eyes was the same monstrous look she'd borne at the circus that night. She fell on Kaito in a frenzy—split his helm, shattered his sword, kicked him back against the wall—and drew back her arm to kill again.
Falis' sword stopped an inch before Kaito's left eye. Milano looked in unbelieving shock at her. The berserk light faded from her eyes and her right arm shook uncontrollably, as if it took an impossible effort of will to stem the bloodlust. Falis spoke with effort, her words clear and strong and all from her own heart.
"I won't be a murderer," Falis said. "But you've come damn close to becoming one of my exceptions."
The flat of the blade hit Kaito's neck and he slumped into unconsciousness.
—
Milano visioned...
Cecilia lay indifferently in Kaito's large bed, coupling with him only for the sake of something to do. She barely cared for this form of entertainment and she knew that nothing female could ever satisfy Kaito. And also the one he thought he loved was dead, a preoccupation that drove him further into intriguing destruction.
"We will win," he was promising, hoarse-voiced. "The human world has nothing but cruelty and coldness. Teoria. The world can come to an end."
"It will," Cecilia assured. "I shall love to witness that great thing."
"In the past humans already destroyed the world once through our wars," Kaito said. "Yet we still fight and kill each other, while begging for the scraps of the old world's technology. What is the point for anyone to live in such a world?"
"No point indeed," Cecilia purred.
"No one shall feel sorrow again," Kaito said. He was handsome and fair to a human's eyes, and Cecilia knew that his fellow sheep would love him even as he led them all to a great slaughter. "Every living thing shall be destroyed."
"Every living thing of this world," Cecilia said.
—
The woman with the Princess' body dared to defy Cecilia over something so silly as a burnt-out village, that Cecilia only destroyed because it happened to be there.
"I will never stand down."
The Princess swapped bodies with the mercenary when they both faced death together; the original princess was dead. It was a surprise to Cecilia to hear those words from the mouth of the Princess' body. The sword of meteorite steel had been a matter of supreme indifference to her the first time she saw it futilely raised against her.
The little mouse girl hid when Cecilia killed her father and burnt down her village. She was apparently a grown warrior now. Place one human in horrific battle conditions that he could not end no matter how strong a swordsman he was, and he could become a delightful nihilist. Place another human in horrific battle conditions when she was but a child, and she became an irritating thorn in Cecilia's side when she swapped bodies with another pawn in the scheme.
Cecilia raised her unstoppable magical power and sent the mouse woman into endless torment. How could she have realised that those fools would approach the secret of her essence, her Anak Maya. She brushed away the shards of the armour designed especially to hide it and prepared to cause great pain.
—
Cecilia's exile was the vilest day of her existence. She was the vortex in the galaxy, the canker in the bud, the worm in the fruit, the anomaly who was never supposed to exist. It had taken her people long millennia to see her nature, but at last they found her unique traits.
Sadism. Selfishness. Sociopathy.
Cecilia's people did not have words for these traits. They created them for her, using the tongues of the human people, who were said to be a lot like her.
Cecilia couldn't see the resemblance herself.
The tribunal—another human concept—reviewed her many crimes. Cecilia would smile at some of those memories. She had blunted incredible potential to nothingness, secretly broken many star systems, and sent subtle pushes that made infinite others weep in glorious destruction.
Cecilia's people called themselves the Light People, insofar as that name was the most inferior minds could make of it. A long time ago they transcended their origins on a galaxy far away in space and time. They gained marvellous knowledge and joined their hearts together to fly between all the stars in the universe. The Light People all felt as one, and could not cause each other any pain because each would feel it. Their voices created peace in the galaxy and sung with the stars. War, hatred, suffering, and lying were all unknown and alien concepts to them. The Light People remained peaceful observers of other life forms who had not yet transcended and they lived in harmony and beauty.
Until Cecilia came to exist, the cuckoo in the nest, the wolf in the sheepfold, the shark in shallow waters. A mutation gave her the power that other species had without thinking about it: the power to conceal her true self from the other people of her kind. The Light People mistook her for all they thought she was, when in truth she was amusing herself with the unlimited gifts of her people.
The human planet was one of Cecilia's petty crimes: a thing she had not thought about for more than an instant in her perception. The Light People knew that the humans made technological discoveries that could someday lead them to join the stars as well, but humans suffered from genetic faults that led them to cruelty and hatred. Some Light People spoke that the humans should be guided into peaceful ways; Cecilia spoke for non-intervention, in order to be amused when they destroyed themselves. She deceived the Light People for the fun of it and the humans used technology to the last drop and eradicated themselves from time and space. After that the Light People created a closed world folded away from time and space and allowed a small remnant of humans to repopulate their zoo.
The tribunal decided that Cecilia would be stripped of most of her powers and exiled to this world, since apparently they felt her traits were closest to those of humankind. She lost most of her gifts except for the immortality of her people, and was confined to a disgustingly weak human shape at first. Her essence was stored in her Anak Maya.
Cecilia screamed and raved and went into madness when she was first cast away. She had no connection left to the Light People, to the rest of the universe, and no powers oustide a tiny weak form. If Cecilia ever had nightmares, that moment would be her chief one: the first time when she was locked away from all her power and confined to fragile humanity.
She starved herself and beat her shape almost to death on the ground for the first centuries, but her Anak Maya would not let her die. She had no idea how to access even the least power. She wandered, broken, until she learnt how to exercise her amusement to cause pain in the human world. She began to notice fragments of the lost technology. Over time, Cecilia gathered more and more fractions of power to herself. She became a witch, a sorceress; and then at last she found Kaito and his dream to use the lost technology to destroy his own world.
"I know you're not human," Kaito said once in the dark, bending close to her ear, smiling softly. "I imagine you're not from anywhere I understand at all. But I forgive you."
Teoria would destroy everything on the human world that came from the human world. Cecilia's Anak Maya was able to survive such a thing. As long as Cecilia's gemstone remained intact she would watch and laugh, and if she was fortunate, she would be free to wander the universe again and watch as more things writhed in pain and burnt to ashes...
—
Cecilia seared the stump of Kaito's shoulder.
"A terrible injury," she breathed.
"We have not lost," he replied through gritted teeth. "Only I will need you to do the fighting."
"That is not so, Prince," Cecilia assured him. "I can be with you each moment from now on."
She crafted a new arm from metal parts, modelled from one of Akamashi's crude attempts. She added something extra, an edge that ensured her proximal control and kept her safe in other ways. She couldn't have Kaito change his mind amid his newest dreadful pain.
"There," Cecilia said, and the glow in his palm activated. "You will fight, Kaito. I have made your new arm a match for even the berserk state in Princess Alita's genetic defence system."
The tendrils in his flesh rooted themselves into his central nervous system; they would never be displaced. The Prince of Forland was a perfect ally.
"Do you feel pain, my prince?" Cecilia asked Kaito.
"Yes."
Cecilia smiled with happiness. "Good."
—
Milano opened her mouth. She walked toward Falis, sidestepping her sword.
"Please, will you come back with me?" she said. They walked together, back to the doors of Teoria and to the central control system. Milano looked into the Princess' eyes.
"I love you," she said.
She kissed Falis full on the mouth. The Princess dropped her sword and returned the embrace. They had won; it was a victory, but not without pain. Milano held Falis gently, drawing her into a deeper caress. Falis closed her eyes.
Then Milano stabbed Falis in the back with her own wazikashi.
Falis lay white-faced and strapped to the table, bleeding almost to death. Cecilia busied herself over the body of the Princess who was key to Teoria. She was delighted that she had lent her true Anak Maya to Kaito's arm. Her control had turned to concealment and an eventual victory. She would remake this human girl from her inside out, thanks to the gemstone inside her stomach. It was charming and amusing to see the Princess' pain at the time the girl she thought she loved betrayed her brutally.
"Mi...lano. Not Milano," the Princess stammered weakly. Cecilia tightened the straps around her and fixed Teoria's controls. However had the mouse woman guessed?
"No, I'm only an intruder. But I plan to stay inside Milano for a very long time. I won't die." Cecilia held the wazikashi to her body's throat. The true Milano's soul had been screaming inside her, very enjoyably, ever since the moment she had seized control. It had been especially fun to make the girl stab her lover in the back. "I can hurt this girl's body. I can kill this girl in a single moment. If you try to stop me, I will make her suffer beyond your imagination."
Cecilia walked leisurely to Teoria's controls. Kaito's body was still unconscious, which was fine for her needs. She no longer controlled the arm and his power was exhausted. She affixed his left hand to the plate that recognised his genetic line of Forland royalty.
"Teoria..."
Destroy this world and everything of it!
Milano's scream seized her throat. Cecilia paused in disbelief. Her control could not be overcome by this silly human! Milano's soul flew back into her eyes like a solar storm. Cecilia felt the roaring tide of human feelings she'd never understood. She felt the stupid words like love, courage, friendship, passion, family, country—Cecilia always felt these were only words for the selfishness and cruelty most humans never acknowledged. But for this, for Forland, the mere weak human gained some strength. Milano stepped back into her own body.
"I can't hold her back for long," Milano said. She unstrapped Falis, working desperately with her hands. "You need to kill me. I already signed up once to die for Forland, remember? You can kill—you can kill the gemstone in my stomach. Your sword is meteorite steel, it doesn't come from this world. Something not of this world can kill Cecilia. She has reason to be frightened of you and she doesn't understand anything of humans' true feelings." She wrapped Falis' loose fingers around her sword. "Everything is going to be all..."
And Cecilia was back behind Milano's eyes, wrapping rage and hatred and power around herself like the powers of hell. Never mind what happened; she was back now and her enemy was still under her control.
The Princess smiled. She dropped her sword. "Kill the girl," she said. "Milano thinks I'm a murderer and hates me, let her die. I should've known you weren't her when you touched me. Hell, let everything go. The one thing I wanted isn't mine. Maybe one last kiss..."
The woman reached up, faint. Cecilia fell into the Princess' arms and let pain mix with their contact—biting cruelly at the Princess' lip, squeezing Milano's fingers around the Princess' terrible wounds. She understood that humans were selfish and cruel above all. At last this woman was showing it. The Princess seemed to welcome this pain.
And Falis' arms wrapped around Milano's back in a death grip that would not let her go, or let Cecilia reach for weapons to torture Milano's body.
Cecilia shrieked—a curse on the limitations of her shape! This body was not strong enough. Falis walked slowly, step by step, to the Teoria controls, carrying her enemy each step of the way. Blood soaked both of them.
"I'll break free and hurt her," Cecilia called, "I'll cut out her eyes and her lips and her tongue and her toes and make her eat them, I'll burn her pretty skin and chop her pretty hair and give her syphilis and the plague, I'll rip out her fingernails from the roots and make her teeth into a necklace."
Falis held desperately onto her arms no matter how she struggled.
"Teoria, remove everything inhuman from Milano and don't hurt her when you do it!" Falis screamed.
Milano had the odd sensation of being surrounded by light, a colour she couldn't identify, and then she was lying on the ground with blankness inside her mind and a small glowing gemstone on the ground with a string of vomit hanging from it. She turned her face away from it, burying her head in her hands, and a moment later Falis' sword of meteorite steel cut the Anak Maya open. Milano listened to the pieces shatter in splinters. A beam of light rose from the gemstone, spiraling into absolute nothingness. Milano thought that she heard a final, long, desperate scream.
Falis' face was ghastly as she bent over her. "You're okay. Don't...I don't think I've a lot of time."
Milano rushed to support her. The wounds were grievous, deadly, and Falis had opened them with all that she had done. If the Princess' strange powers were still working to heal her body, Milano did not think they would function in time. Falis grinned past spots of blood on her teeth.
"There's stories," Falis said, "stories that jinns, magical spirits from beyond this world, grant you three wishes always. I've used up two. Let me give you what you've always wanted. Here's my third..."
She laid a hand on the panel and smiled grimly. Circuits and lines of golden light grew across her skin, all the power of Teoria resting within her. Milano reached toward her, not knowing what she was about to do.
"Teoria, heal up this body and bring back Milano Entolasia's true Alita Forland inside it!" Falis wished.
—