Year 602 Before True Era: 660 years before the opening of Sakimori High

Ulryk listened to the drizzle pattering off the windows behind him. Expensive windows, they were; large uncut sheets imported from Germany. They made a perfect backdrop for him in his seat, and many was the time he saw a guest's eyes widen at the sight of them- -and the wealth and affluence they implied.

The effect of the windows was somewhat dampened on this rainy spring day, however. The overcast sky made it necessary to light his office with candles, and in any event the three men before him didn't seem the sort to be impressed so easily.

Seated across the table from Ulryk was an older man. He had the look of a farmer, his face lined and browned by the sun, his hands gnarled and hardened by a lifetime of labor. In contrast, Ulryk's own hands were white and plump, a fact he was proud of; his hands showed his success as a merchant, as a man who made his living by his wits rather than with his back.

Despite his decades of experience in the trade, however, the older man across the table still gave him pause. Ulryk had never met anyone quite like him before. The man had the face and hands of a peasant, true. But he spoke clearly, enunciating his words carefully, like a nobleman. Most peasants sounded like they were speaking through a mouthful of porridge. Then there was his clothing. Expensively made, it was; a fine velvet doublet with exquisite patterns picked out in bright thread along collar and sleeves. The buttons down the front had the smooth sheen of real ivory.

The other two men were much easier to place. The tall long-faced youth with cropped brown hair seated by the fireplace was some kind of assistant. A clerk, perhaps. And the third, a bald squat keg-shaped individual with forearms and fists the size of smoked hams, was clearly a bodyguard; he remained standing by the door, keeping a keen watch whilst the other two sat.

If half the rumors Ulryk had heard about the man seated before were true, however, he shouldn't have needed the bodyguard. Sorcerer, they called him. Wizard. Daitya, the Mag of Pila.

"Why me?" He asked, when the supposed sorcerer had finished his request. "It's an interesting proposition, yes. But surely there are others who would serve better for this scheme? Licznerski has depots up and down the Notec River, and old Leszek has more friends at court than I."

"Because you are more inclined to believe," Daitya said. "It's no secret that you held a certain interest in the occult in your youth. A man with your past can more easily understand what we offer."

Ulryk sat back in his seat, steepling his fingers. "So what is it you offer? So far I have heard only requests. You want my warehouses to store your... whatever it is you want stored. My barges and wagons to transport your people. My coin to pay for your ventures. And my personal introduction to certain members of court. What do I receive in return for all this?"

"What is it you want?"

The open-endedness of the question slightly annoyed Ulryk. It was true that he had been interested in the occult as a younger man, but as he'd grown older he'd come to believe in more material things. And now here before him was a supposed sorcerer, asking him what he wanted. Just what could Daitya provide? More wealth? That was something he could obtain on his own, with no need to commit to some half-veiled scheme. The question was not serious, he supposed, meant to lead him on...

Such a vague question deserved a like answer. "What do I want? The world, I suppose," he said, half-mocking-

-but Daitya turned, and Ulryk did not miss the significant look which passed between the old man and the younger man by the fireplace. Daitya turned back to him. "We can give you the world," he responded.

The squat bodyguard's ugly face was skeptical. "Him? The world?" He asked in a gruff voice.

"It can be done in a manner of speaking," Daitya addressed the bodyguard, then Ulryk once more. "Understand, though, this is not something which can be accomplished in a year, a decade, or even a lifetime. This is a labor whose fruits will be borne only after generations. But aid us now and I promise you we shall raise up your descendants to be kings over all the Earth."

Ulryk cocked an eyebrow. If this was an attempt at trickery, it was the most ambitious one he'd ever heard. "You want me to commit to an investment that won't pay off until after my death?" He asked.

Daitya shook his head. "Of course not! There will be practical benefits for you very soon." The old man's lips opened in a smile, revealing yellowed teeth. "A lordship before the end of the year. Will that suffice?"

"A lordship?" Ulryk considered. Truth be told, that was something he'd never thought possible in his lifetime. He himself was ignobly born, the third son of a logger who'd left home to find his fortune. He hadn't even been born with a surname; the one he proudly used these days was a fabrication, invented years ago when he'd just started to come into his own as a merchant. To be actually counted amongst peerage...

"All over the country, men call you the Mag of Pila. I should think someone with such a reputation could deliver faster results," He counteroffered. "A lordship, yes. Before the end of summer."

Daitya laughed. "Thank you, but I'm afraid my reputation preceeds me. You will get your results, but your lordship requires some more time than that. Before the end of autumn."

"That is acceptable," Ulryk said.

"Well then!" Daitya rubbed his chin with a gnarled, crabbed hand. "There's no time to waste. If you are to have your lordship before the end of autumn we must begin now. You are on familiar terms with the magistrate, I believe?"

"Magistrate Bozek? Yes."

"Invite the magistrate to dinner. Sometime within the week will do nicely," Daitya instructed.

"Very well." Ulryk paused. "I assume you'll also be there? And you'll... what, cast a spell on him?"

"Oh no, not I." Daitya smiled. "I have a REPUTATION, after all. A distingushed man such as your... future lordship should not be seen to associate with me." He gestured toward the squat bodyguard. "But Alo will attend. And invite the magistrate's family. Particularly his children."

"His children?" Ulryk frowned. "You're not going to hurt his children..."

"No harm will come to the children," the bodyguard, Alo, reassured him. "But they are necessary. Make sure they are present."

Ulryk shook his head. "I don't want to know any particulars. I'll invite the magistrate and his family, and from there it's up to you."

"Excellent." Daitya held out his hand for Ulryk to shake. "I look forward to our partnership, Ulryk Dorssia."


When Haruto entered the security room, L-Elf was seated at the table, fiddling with a small mound of machine parts and a plastic tub filled with what looked like very shiny confetti.

Haruto took a seat across from the Dorssian, watching as the spy's hands deftly assembled a hollow canister the size of a tennis ball from some of the machine parts. Ge packed it with a handful of confetti, then attached a lid. That done, he set the canister aside and started on another. There were already about a dozen completed canisters standing in a neat row on the tabletop.

The more Haruto looked at it, the less sure he was that the shiny substance was confetti. "What's that stuff?" He asked, pointing to the bin of shiny maybe-confetti.

"Shredded aluminium foil," L-Elf answered, not looking up from his work.

"Uhm... why?" Haruto was confused. The canisters looked a little like those things that popped open and sprayed confetti, only made of metal. Was L-Elf going to throw a surprise party for someone? Why not just loot a party store and get some actual confetti-spraying things?

'I guess it's a military thing?'

"Call it 'insurance,'" L-Elf said mysteriously. "You have something for me?"

"Yes." Haruto handed L-Elf a tablet. "That's the duty rosters for the next two weeks."

"Good." L-Elf examined the rosters. "I think it's time for you to handle duty rosters on your own from now on."

Haruto gulped. "If you think so..." He'd been putting together duty rosters for a while now, but L-Elf had always looked them over and made minor tweaks and given his final approval. Without his guidance...

'Part of standing on my own, right?'

L-Elf finished another canister. "And your weight?"

"It's... uhm..." He'd measured it this morning, in the medical bay, and the results were unsettling. "I'm half a pound heavier than I was yesterday, so that means something, don't you think?"

"Half a pound variation over a day is irrelevant." L-Elf finally glanced up at him, although his hands continued to assemble more canisters. "Easily accounted for by differing fluid intake. The amount of youkan you've been eating should have produced a far more drastic increase in body mass. I must conclude that your transformation into a Kamitsuki has somehow locked your body composition to the moment you were transformed."

"But... that doesn't make any sense!" Haruto sputtered. "So where are the calories I've been eating going? Am I just pooing it out? And what happens if I stopped eating? I'd have to lose weight if I stopped eating, right?"

"Perhaps. It would make an interesting experiment," L-Elf said mildly.

"No, no... you don't..." Haruto pressed his temples with the heels of his hands, fragments of Raizo's beach party horror story surfacing in his memory. "This doesn't make any sense. We're violating the laws of physics here. This is like on the border of perpetual energy or something! It's not possible!"

L-Elf's fingers stopped moving. "I fought a man who could conjure up spheres of energy from thin air," he offered. "He melted his way through a solid bulkhead. That energy had to come from somewhere. Consider the Valvraves as well. They have more firepower than a Cruiser, yet it's been months and we haven't had to refuel or resupply them in any way."

"Okay, where does that energy come from?"

"I don't know."

"Great." Haruto grimaced. Was L-Elf making a deadpan joke there? It was kinda hard to tell... "So what, it's magic?"

"When I first woke up in the Valvrave cockpit with you and Rukino Saki, I thought I was losing my mind," L-Elf said. "But I believe there's a saying: 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.' We could call it magic because we don't understand the technology, yes. But it's still not magic in the sense that a princess can be transformed into a swan. There's an internal set of rules and limitations at work, and for now it's more important to learn those rules and limitations, rather than to understand how or why they work."

L-Elf paused, then gestured to the pile of cylinders. "And so: 'insurance.'"


Haruto left the security office behind him. Maybe L-Elf could sit there and accept the weirdness going on, but Haruto couldn't do so as easily.

'There's basic laws of biology being violated here. I can't just ignore that!'

He headed up to the cafeteria, momentarily forgetting about the curse and the possibility of having an attack in a public place. He was going to prove L-Elf and his theory about his body composition being locked or whatever wrong!

The cafeteria was serving rice with salmon and green beans; rehydrated military rations donated by ARUS. Haruto got three portions, sat down in a corner, and commenced stuffing his face. He gobbled down huge mouthfuls, barely bothering to chew before he swallowed. His stomach was roiling queasily by the time he finished, but he thought he could keep it down.

'Now to weigh myself...'

Where to do it though? He didn't trust the equipment down in the medical center- -that was where he'd gotten the previous readings, after all. Where else could he find a scale?

'Back in my room... but what about Saki?'

He checked the time. 13:45. Saki had left him a message earlier, telling him that she'd be doing some song recording today in the afternoon. So if he went to their room quickly to use the scale, he shouldn't run into her.


"I know I'm a hero! In my life!"

Saki bobbed her head in time with the music as she sang, trying to fit the unfamiliar English syllables into the same amount of song.

"Let's all enjoy our amazing lives and have fun!"

She gave it a few beats, and then looked over to the window outside the recording booth. The technician there gave her the 'okay' sign with his thumb and forefinger before returning to hovering over his equipment.

"Another take?" Saki asked in her admittedly poor English.

The technician smiled and shook his head no. The way the booth was set up, she couldn't hear anything he said.

'Three takes... not bad. One song left to go!'

As the technician started to set up his equipment to record the next song, Saki crossed the stark rectangular room to the corner where she'd put the pages of lyrics they'd given her. She picked it up and flipped through it, searching for the final song.

Today she was recording her very first English-language album. As Taylor had explained to her, it'd be much easier to break through to the ARUS market if her songs were in English or Spanish. Her English was pretty bad, but she spoke no Spanish at all, so English it was. Instead of write all new English songs, however, the studio had decided to simply translate her more popular existing Japanese songs into English and release them as an experimental album to test the waters. Saki agreed with the marketing decision. After all, it should be easier to start singing words in another language to a familiar tune than to do entirely new songs with new tunes.

For a while, she thought they'd run into a snag. Security protocol wouldn't allow her to leave the module, and quality recording required a pretty sophisticated setup, which wasn't available onboard. But then Taylor came up with the idea of converting a police interrogation room into a makeshift recording studio. He got a crew to knock out the one-way-mirror into the room and replace it with soundproof glass. They hung the walls with shaped foam panels, covered the floor with fluffy carpet to deaden echoes, and set up studio lights so it wasn't quite so gloomy.

The result was... well, Saki wouldn't exactly call it pretty or cute, certainly a far step down from the kind of environments she used to work in. But it was a functional recording studio. And she liked the adventureous feel from reappropriating the interrogation room.

'There it is. Soba Ni Iru Yo.'

It was a slightly odd song, the first one she'd written herself. At least the lyrics; music had been beyond her at the time. Up to that point the songs she'd been given were all happy-go-lucky junk about friendships and the joy of first love and stuff like that. Soba Ni Iru Yo was decidedly melancholic and wistful. Alice had campaigned long and hard for her, and in the end the execs had agreed to stick it at the end of her third album.

The studio execs may have been iffy on Soba Ni Iru Yo, but it turned out pretty popular. Critics hailed it as her first step towards 'serious' music, and the execs agreed to let her have one song per album after that. She'd written two more before her mother's-

Saki shook her head and looked at the lyrics. She hadn't paid much attention to the translations for the other songs; they were never really hers to begin with, after all. But since she'd been the one to write Soba Ni Iru Yo, she found herself more interested in what the translators did with it.

The translators had not only done an English rendering, but also wrote the English text phonetically in Hiragana under each line. It was nice of them to do that, but unnecessary; Saki's English was good enough that she could read the English words.

"Ah, the two of us set out walking together. You're not alone. So bright, forever. My heart..."

She froze.

When she originally wrote the song, she'd just written down 'my heart' in Romanji. English letters, done. But here the translator had rendered 'my heart' phonetically in Hiragana as まい はると.

'Mai Haruto.'

A wave of emotions rushed through her. She'd been such a sad, lonely girl three years ago when she wrote that song, despite the success of her musical career. All she wanted then was someone to walk together with...

...and then she found Haruto. And for a while it seemed like neither of them would be alone anymore. But now they'd grown apart again. When was the last time she laid eyes on his face? As far as she could remember, it was just after the Blackout.

'Three and a half weeks ago. Since then he's just been avoiding me. Can't let it go on like this.'

There was a tap on the glass. Saki looked up to see the technician hold up five fingers at her. Five seconds until recording started.

"No, sorry," Saki shook her head. "I need a moment. Taylor, could I talk to you?"

A moment later Taylor popped his head through the door. "What's up, kiddo? Need a drink?"

"I, uhm, I'm gonna have to take a rain check on this last one."

Taylor rubbed his chin. "Why's that?"

"Well..." Saki thought about it. She could try and feed him a lie about how Soba Ni Iru Yo was special to her because it was the first song she wrote herself and how she didn't feel the translation was up to her standards...

"I was just reminded of a personal issue," she said, deciding against lying. It didn't seem like a good idea to breach the trust between talent and agent. "I promise I'll finish up the recording tomorrow."

Taylor frowned. "I dunno about that, princess. We're supposed to have the recording done today. Post starts tomorrow, so come on, it'll be just another twenty, thirty minutes."

Saki thought about it for a moment. Production schedule was, well, production schedule. Going off it could screw up alot of things further down the line, like marketing and distribution. Maybe there was another option though. "What if I could get some students down here later to do the recording," she offered. "And we could finish up and send the file over before tomorrow?"

"Uhm," Taylor looked over at the window. "That setup's kinda expensive..."

"I promise they won't hurt anything," Saki said. "It's the same people who work on the Valvraves, so I'm sure they can figure out a recording setup."

"In that case I guess it's okay. You got my e-mail, hot stuff?"

"Sure do."

As Taylor went to the technician to explain the plan, Saki left the police station. As she made her way toward Sakimori Island, she dialed Haruto's number, intending to pin down his location.

But when the call went through, it wasn't Haruto on the other end. "This is Tokishima Haruto's cell phone," a cold, familiar voice said.

"L-Elf?" Saki was surprised. "Lemmie talk to Haruto."

"He's not here right now."

Was it just her, or did L-Elf sound annoyed?

"Where is he?"

"He left in a hurry and I am not aware of his current location. He seemed upset over certain aspects of his Kamitsuki physiology."

"Oh." That didn't sound good. "Okay, thanks." Saki thought for a moment. "Will you let him know I called?"

"Of course."

Saki ended the call and dialed another number. There were ways of finding out where Haruto was.

The call went through, but there was only silence on the other end. "Hello?" Saki said after a few awkward seconds.

More silence. And then...

"H-hello," said a squeaky voice.

"Akira-chan, can I ask you a favor?"

"Un," Akira-chan grunted.

"Can you find Haruto on those cameras of yours?"

Silence again. Saki was starting to wonder if Akira-chan had hung up when the squeaky voice spoke again.

"T-teacher's dorms."

"Thanks, Akira-chan. I owe you one."


Soichi was checking over some calculations with Kitagawa-san in the lab when the door whooshed open.

The person striding through the door was small and slim: one of Pletnyov's assistants, the female grad student with the brown ponytail. Soichi hid a frown. What did Pletnyov want with them now?

'He could have come in person, shown a little respect!'

"What is it now?" He asked as the young woman hurried around the table. "We're already working on the Ideal adaptation, and..." He trailed off as he saw the look of fury on the assistant's face. ...And the red staining the collar of her lab coat.

"Hey, you're bleeding!" Kitagawa-san said, rising from his seat.

The woman smashed her fist into Soichi's jaw.

Soichi tipped over in his chair and slammed hard into the ground. He shielded his face with a hand. "Don't! Don't!"

The woman didn't listen. She hauled him up by the front of his shirt with her left hand, her other hand clenching into a fist.

Kitagawa-san bulled into her from the side, knocking her away. Soichi scrambled away on all fours like a crab, still disoriented from the punch. The assistant and Kitagawa-san were struggling on the floor, and as Soichi watched, Kitagawa-san gained the upper hand, wrenching the woman's arm into a shoulder lock-

-and the woman's other hand, flailing, brushed against Kitagawa-san's face.

Kitagawa-san threw back his head and screamed.

For an instant, Soichi thought the assistant had gotten Kitagawa-san in an eye. But no, both of the engineer's eyes were wide open, bulging grotesquely from their sockets. Kitagawa-san jerked to his feet, clutching at his head and still screaming. He staggered away and crashed into a table, upending it and himself to the ground.

Laying on his back, Kitagawa-san went into convulsions, his hands and feet thrashing in a frantic beat against the tile floor.

"Kitagawa-san, wha-?" Was all Soichi got out before the woman was on him again. She pinned him down and began to hit him repeatedly in the face.

'Why?' He wanted to ask as her knuckles crashed into his left eye, leaving his vision a field of purple and green blurs. 'Why are you doing this?' He felt his nose break, blood running hot over his lips and chin in a sudden gush. 'What did I ever do to you?'

"Prue!" A voice called out.

The beating stopped. Soichi curled up into a ball, struggling to breathe through the blood tricking down the back of his throat, darkness threatening to swallow him. Someone else was in the room: a frosty, curt male voice was speaking rapidly, and terse answers came from the female voice of his assailant. He tried to concentrate, but couldn't make out the words. He must have been hit too hard. Underneath the conversation were soft whimpers that he could only assume came from Kitagawa-san... or was it himself?

When more punches to the face didn't seem to be coming, Soichi cracked open a swollen eye and peered up. Pletnyov's assistant was conversing with a man he'd never seen before, a towering man with short blonde hair and an eyepatch. As if he felt Soichi's gaze, the blond man glanced at him with a cold blue eye, then pulled a cell phone out of a billowing sleeve and spoke into it, before putting a hand across the young woman's back and ushering her from the room.

'But Prue... he said Prue. I'm sure of it.'

It was the last thought Soichi had before the darkness claimed him.


"Prue!" Chamca called out.

The young woman straddling Professor Tokishima froze. Chamca roughly hauled her to her feet, dragging her away from the downed scientist, who was whimpering faintly. A few feet away, Professor Kitagawa was still spasming, but the convulsions were weakening. He pushed Prue out to arm's length and pointed at Kitagawa's quivering form. "What did you do to him? A spell?"

"Temporarily scrambled his input/output carrier signal," Prue mumbled sullenly. "He'll be fine."

'No permanent harm then. Good.' Still, Kitagawa's condition made Chamca uneasy. Prue had been a technical cera, responsible for system maintainence, and when first installed within a human host a few weeks ago he hadn't shown the ability to manifest the Light of Rune. This application of his original function was unexpected...

Professor Tokishima stirred, and Chamca examined his condition. The man's face was a mess: his eyes were puffy, and his mustache matted red with blood from his nose. But he seemed to be conscious and breathing normally. With a small sigh, he took out his cell phone and dialed the command center.

"This is Colonel Cain Dressel. I need a medical response team in Sector 2. Research and Development room 4. Clear them on my authority."

Medics summoned, Chamca pushed Prue out of the room, out of the JIORans' earshot. Once in the hallway, he rounded on her, trying hard not to let his annoyance show too much. "What are you doing in Kaley's body? We provided you with a host weeks ago."

"That body doesn't have security clearance for this part of the facility," Prue grumbled, gingerly brushing at her right hand with the fingertips of her left. "This one does." Her knuckles were discolored and beginning to swell. Bruised, Chamca suspected, perhaps even broken. Good. An object lesson about the frailties of human hosts.

"So you decided to take Hyana's assistant," Chamca said. "Even though Hyana has made it abundantly clear he intended to take her as his next host after he was done with Pletnyov? He's been grooming her for years now."

Prue scowled. "I thought we were allowed to take whatever hosts we wanted, as long as it didn't put us at risk of being exposed."

Chamca sighed. Although Prue was admitted before the Council as Magius, the reality was somewhat different. While the rest of them had spent the past seven centuries carving out a place for themselves on this planet, Prue had waited beneath the waves, still cera in all but name. She had little knowledge of the society the Magius had developed over time, the precise systems of behavior that kept them from coming into conflict with one another; the necessary measures to keep a species that couldn't reproduce itself from going extinct.

"There are caveats," he explained. "There are many of us who spend time preparing our prospective hosts before taking control of them. These hosts are a sizeable investment of time and energy, and it's an affront to another Magius to take a host they're actively grooming. I believe in Kaley's case, Hyana paid her way through college and graduate school after arranging the death of her parents. He's been mentoring her as Pletnyov for nearly a decade."

"I see." Prue looked chagrined. "My apologies."

"We'll speak to Hyana together," Chamca said. Just then the medical team he'd called for rounded the corner, spotted Prue's obvious neck injury, and rushed up to her. "No, not her," he told them, pointing toward the open door of the lab where the JIORans had been working. "In there."

"Ah, but she's...?" The head medic looked between Prue and Chamca in confusion.

"I'm fine," Prue insisted.

With a final glance, the medic waved his team through the door. Chamca pulled Prue further down the hall so they wouldn't be overheard. "And there's more to passing among humans than just possessing one's body," He said, tugging Prue's bloodsoaked coat collar aside to look at her wound. As he expected, Prue had bitten down with all of her previous host's teeth, gouging away a layer of skin and leaving an ugly crescent gash, instead of the more easily concealed pair of punctures more experienced Magius left. "Do you know how I discovered you had taken control of Kaley?"

"You found my previous host?"

"No." Chamca wagged his finger at Prue. "You were seen by some of the pit crew. Outside of crisis situations, humans do not habitually wander around with bleeding open wounds, even if the wounds aren't life-threatening. So when the humans saw you they knew something was wrong. They're well-trained in this facility, so rather than confront you themselves, they alerted the security officer on duty, who in turn alerted me, Colonel Cain Dressel."

Prue nodded, slowly touching the wound in her neck. "Understood."

"And speaking of your previous host, where did you leave him?"

"I locked him in my quarters."

"And what do you imagine would happen if someone discovered him there, with no memory of how he came to be on this module?"

Prue was silent.

Down the hall, the medics were carrying Kitagawa out on a stretcher. "We're returning to Earth in two days. You're confined to quarters until then," Chamca said. "Professors Kitagawa and Tokishima will be coming with us to help with the refit of Unit Two. I don't want you anywhere near them. If they're on one side of the transport, you're on the other. If you had killed them or rendered them unable to communicate just now, you would have set us back by years, maybe decades. Do you understand?"

Resentment returned to Prue's voice. "I've been reading the materials you gave me. I know there's 24 billion humans on Earth and the Spheres. Why not just replace these two?"

Chamca held back a sigh. Before her experience with the JIORans, Prue's only contact with organic beings who were not Pradhana would have been slaves within the whole. And while those slaves were interchangeable because they had the same function, the humans weren't, a concept that it had taken the Magius several decades to fully understand. "These two humans are special," he explained. "As we each had our own role as cera, so too do the humans within their societies. These two, alone among those 24 billion, are the only ones who understand the old prayukti. We have waited seven hundred years for ones like them."

"You've waited this long, why would a little longer matter?"

"Because the Pradhana are out there somewhere," Chamca said, his voice lowering to a whisper despite himself. Even after so long... "We don't know where Earth is in relation to the old empire. They could show up a thousand years from now... or tomorrow, and we need to be ready for them when they do arrive. Do you remember what happened after Daitya granted us her gift? What the Pradhana respose was within the whole? We were lucky then, but do you think we could withstand the Pradhana without prayukti of our own?"

Prue wasn't done objecting, however. "But the humans didn't create the prayukti they have now! They learned it from old prayukti, from the fragment. I would know, I was there with Pino! Why can't we use the fragment to teach more humans about prayukti, or learn about it ourselves?"

'I suppose it's time to tell him.'

"We don't have the fragment," Chamca said.

"What? Why?" Prue gasped. "But the JIORans-"

"The JIORans hid it somewhere, the programmed the computers in their facilities to erase all technical records along with its location in case of invasion. None of the JIORan engineers we captured seems to know where it is, either. We could take Unit Two apart to reverse engineer it, but with the uncertainties concerning Module 77, it would be unwise to remove that Valvrave from the playing field. For the moment, Professors Kitagawa and Tokishima are our only means to harness the old prayukti. Until the situation with Module 77 is resolved, they must not come to harm."

"I understand," Prue said, still a bit sullenly.

"Good," Chamca nodded. "Once Module 77 is harvested and we have the time to develop our own understanding of prayukti, our JIORan professors will have outlived their usefulness. And then, if you still feel you need satisfaction for what they did to Pino, you may kill them." He put his hand across Prue's host's back and began to guide her toward the medics. "Now let's get your host patched up. We'll need to return her to Hyana soon."


Haruto stared down at the scale's electronic display. 1.5 pounds heavier.

'I DID gain weight. L-Elf was wrong!'

He let out a breath, feeling better now that he knew his body still functioned like a normal human's. Well, apart from the regeneration and the practical immortality, anyway.

'But it's no wonder I weigh heavier since this morning, is it?'

Haruto grimaced. With the huge meal he just ate, how could he not weigh heavier? He could feel the three portions sitting like rocks in his stomach. But weighing heavier wasn't the same thing as gaining weight, in the same way that putting a brick into a bag didn't mean the bag itself actually weighed any more.

'So the display there means nothing. I'd have to load up over several days and see if the weight gain kept increasing- -exactly the kind of thing L-Elf proposed.'

Haruto felt a sinking feeling in his belly. Added to the huge meal he'd recently gobbled down... he staggered off the scale, dropped to his knees in front of the toilet, and retched violently, bringing up the food he'd eaten in a torrent of stinking pink and green and white.

He brushed his teeth, rinsed with mouthwash, then splashed some cold water over his face at the sink and looked into the mirror. The last time he'd been in this bathroom had been...

'When this latest round of attacks first started.'

Why was he freaking out so much over the fact that he couldn't gain weight? Haruto stared at his reflection ruefully. It was such a little thing compared to everything else, wasn't it? What was this to the attacks on the module, or the fact that he periodically lost control of his own body?

But it was more than not being able to get fat or build muscle. If his body composition couldn't change, it implied other things. He would never get taller. Never grow older. He would always stay a 17-year-old for... how long? Forever?

It was too much on top of everything else. Just when he thought he'd had a grasp on the whole monster thing, some entirely new facet of his existence appeared to bite him in the ass. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and left the bathroom.

'Where do I go,' he wondered as he walked down the hallway of the teachers' dorm building. 'Back down to L-Elf's security office?' He'd spent so much time cooped up there recently that-

"Haruto!"

His thoughts were interrupted by Saki's hand latching onto his arm.


Saki hurried through the main doors of the teachers' dorm building. She was breathing hard after running all the way back up to the module's surface from the police station. Silently she cursed her cardiovascular system. She'd been running and training for months now, and she somehow still wasn't back where she was before coming to Sakimori! What was up with that?

'Hopefully Haruto is still here... hopefully I didn't miss him...'

There! Just ahead of her, Haruto turned the corner. He was slowly walking along, head down. He didn't even seem to notice her as she went up to him and grabbed his arm.

"Haruto!"

Haruto jerked, his gaze flying up to meet hers. She'd missed the sight of those big blue eyes so much.

But those eyes were distant now. He stared at her for a moment, as if he didn't understand what he was seeing.

"Saki?" He asked vaguely. Then he blinked, his eyes focusing, something new coming into their azure depths. A faint flickering of... fear?

"Mmm-hmm," she said. The fear in his eyes pissed her off. Was he afraid of her? Why? Was that why he was avoiding her?

"Saki..." Haruto tried to pull his arm away, but she held fast. "You shouldn't be here, it's not-"

"I shouldn't be here?" Saki huffed, annoyed at his attitude. "Unless you've forgotten, I live here! Along with you!"

Haruto winced. "Sorry, I didn't mean it like that..."

Saki looked around. It wouldn't do to have this conversation just out in a hallway where anyone could come along. While it wasn't likely for students to be in the teachers' dorm, her relationship problems were definitely not something she wanted Kibukawa-sensei to overhear. "Never mind that," she said, dragging him along by the arm. "Come over here."

Just off the main entrance of the dorm building was a sunroom, where faculty could relax during breaks, or companiably watch TV in the evenings after classes. Saki tugged Haruto over to the sliding door, shoved Haruto through, then followed him in.

As Haruto stumbled into the sunroom, Saki turned and flipped the latch on the door, locking it into place.

'Don't want Haruto trying to run away during our heart to heart.' It was admittedly paranoid of her, but she'd had just about enough of Haruto's disappearing act. It was time to set this marriage thing straight. If he was serious about it, this whole avoiding her thing had to stop.

And if he really didn't want to spend time with her... if her presence really was so abhorrant to him...

'Then maybe we should call the whole thing off.'


The sunroom was a simple affair. There was a cream-colored carpet underfoot, a table by one wall, and a pink sofa opposite a holo display. A pair of dead houseplants bracketed the window opposite the entrance.

Haruto looked back at Saki, who finished fiddling at the door and turned to face him. She crossed her arms over her chest and scowled at him. "What's the deal, Haruto? Why are you avoiding me?"

"I'm... sorry, I've been busy-"

"Don't give me that!" Saki interrupted. "At first I thought it really was about that, you were way too busy with the security stuff. But what you said when you saw me just now, 'you shouldn't be here?' You didn't mean 'here, in the teachers' dorm,' did you? You meant 'here with you.' What was up with that?"

Haruto hesitated, another lie on the tip of his tongue. But what then? Even if he succeeded in convincing her of whatever excuse he came up with, eventually it would just cause more problems. And if she knew that the attacks had returned, she'd want to stay away from him too, right?

'But at the shrine, when I attacked her, she could have hit me out of it, but she never did. What if she...'

He met Saki's gaze. Her purple eyes, so full of hurt, made the choice for him. He owed her the truth.

"Saki..." he said softly. "The attacks have started again."

Saki's eyes widened. "Oh..." she breathed.

"Yeah," Haruto agreed, swallowing hard against the sudden tightening in his chest. "That's... that's why, I..." He seemed to have trouble getting the words out. "I..."

"Haruto?" Saki started forward, hand outstretched.

The tightness in his chest was suddenly crushing, and Haruto doubled over. Another attack, he realized, as if talking about it made it happen. "Saki..." He gritted out. "Hit... hit me..."

She started to approach him, her fist clenched. Good. But just before reaching him, she stopped, biting her lip hard, her delicate features locked in agonized indecision. Why was she just standing there? Red and black shadows ate at the edges of his vision, threatening to engulf him.

'If she won't do it...'

Haruto bulled forward, shoving Saki aside as he went for the door. Behind him he heard her cry out and thump to the carpet, but he didn't have time to worry about that now. He slapped the wall panel, waited for the door to open-

-and all too late, realized that Saki must have locked the door. He fumbled at the latch with stiff, unresponsive fingers...

...but before he could get the door open, the shadows swallowed him.


Saki yelped as she landed on her butt. The carpet was too soft for the fall to hurt much, but it still stunned her enough that she just sat there staring as Haruto turned away from the door, his red eyes bracketed by a web of burning crimson slashes.

'Why? Why didn't I hit him? Why didn't I stop him?'

Haruto bared his teeth at her, growling. She couldn't tear her eyes away from his canines, white and elongated. And sharp. So very sharp. What was she doing? She could still stop him now. Just get up and slap him, kick him, anything!

Instead she sat there frozen, a deer in the headlights. The first time this occured, she hadn't understood what was happening until he was already on top of her. In her. This time was different. This time she knew exactly what was going to happen. The rational part of her was telling her very loudly that she had to move, had to act. It was something else that kept her there, deep down inside, the nasty little wriggling voice that had eaten at her as long as she could remember, the voice she'd worked so hard to silence for so long.

'This is what you wanted, wasn't it?' It seemed to whisper as Haruto flung himself on top of her, seizing her arms. He was incredibly strong in his frenzy.

'All those nights huddled under the blankets with the e-book, dreaming of what you read. Dreaming of your precious prince with his dark gift.' Saki's shirt tore apart in Haruto's hands, her bra ripped away a moment later, leaving a stinging lash of pain on her back where the strap cut into her skin, and a matching spot between her breasts where Haruto's fingernails gouged into her flesh.

'Now he's here, just like you always wanted.' Haruto thrust into her and she whimpered. It didn't hurt nearly as much as the first time, but she was bone dry, without even virginal blood to lubricate her. As Haruto began to move he scraped away mercilessly at her inner walls. It felt like he was scouring her raw.

'You've always wished for this. This curse.' She intertwined her fingers with Haruto's, trying to force some sense of intimacy, anything to help her ignore the pain.

'This is exactly what you deserve. Not comfort. Not happiness. Only punishment.' Saki could almost feel her mother's hot breath on her cheek, stinking of cheap booze. Her soft, poison-sweet whispers in her ear. Haruto's face hovered inches above her own, no trace of recognition in his burning eyes.

'This is what you deserve for being a bad girl. A bad daughter.' Haruto's thrusting picked up speed, slamming into her brutally as he growled and grunted like an animal. A few seconds later she felt him spurt into her, a hot liquid gush that left her feeling queasy. For a while, his thrusting slowed, and she thought it was finished-

-but then his tempo sped up again. Saki squeezed her eyes shut, trying to endure. She felt the hot tracks of tears trickling down her cheeks.

'Just let it be over. Please. Just let it end.'

But it didn't. Not for a long time.


Akira was halfway through a chocolate pudding cup when the alert came up on Little Witch's console.

With a mutter, she put down her spoon. The tracking program she was working on had a subroutine to send her alerts if it detected potential violence. A nifty concept in theory, but in practice it just looked for extended rapid movements. That would be fine if it was monitoring a store or a bank or an office building. But when applied to the school environment of Sakimori it was forever throwing false positives. Students playing sports or running on the track field would set it off, as well as the martial training classes that Thunder held. Early on she told the program to stop alerting her for the cameras in those areas, but it hadn't helped much, because any random student that got it through their head to run through the school halls could set it off. Hell, one time she got an alert from the school's basement, only to see Shoko-chan and a few other laughing students throwing plates to shatter against a wall.

'And I still have no idea what was going on there!'

Between that and the fact that she still couldn't get the program to tell individuals wearing the Sakimori uniforms apart, she was about ready to dump the whole thing.

'Probably another false positive. But I guess I should check it anyway.'

Akira's finger hovered over the alert window. It was probably something silly like people playing catch.

But no. According to the header, the alert was from a camera in the teachers' dorm building. Right where she'd sent Rukino-san a few minutes ago.

'Are Rukino-san and Tokishima-san having a quarrel? And it got violent? Can't be. Tokishima-san, at least, seems so even-tempered.'

Or were they being attacked? Akira pressed the button to check the feed, starting to reach for her cell to text L-Elf.

"Uwaah!" She exclaimed involuntarily.

On the screen, Tokishima-san was atop Rukino-san on the floor, and there was no mistaking those rythmic motions of his lower body.

'Uwaaah! They're having sex!' Akira found herself uncharacteristically embarrassed by her voyerism. Watching students who were strangers doing it was one thing, but when it came to the other pilots, the closest thing she had to a social circle at the moment, well... She wondered if she should respect the twos' privacy by closing the feed.

'They're totally going at it too...' She could feel herself blushing. The fact that she knew the two made the act weirdly intimate to her, far more than all the other sex acts she'd spied students performing. Idly she imagined what it would be like to have someone on top of her, inside her, their bodies intertwined like Rukino-san and Tokishima-san's were...

It wasn't the first time she'd imagined something like that. But this time for some reason, the face of the phantom man in her imagination was Thunder's. Her mouth quirked. Why Thunder? Sure, she found him interesting, but geez, his face couldn't be called attractive at all. Sometimes he looked downright sinister. Well, maybe when he laughed, he could be a little...

"Come on!" She grunted, chiding her imagination. Maybe someone else, like that actor Matsuda Touta... In her mind's eye Thunder's face was gradually replaced by the short-haired, boyishly handsome features of the movie star. Yeeaaaah. Much better.

'Enough spying. I'll give the lovers some privacy...'

As Akira moved to shut off the feed, Rukino-san shifted position slightly, her face coming into view. Akira's fingers paused just centimeters from the X button at the top of the popup window.

'What the heck is THAT?'

She squinted down at the display. The resolution wasn't all that great, but she could make out enough to see that Rukino-san's cheeks were wet with tears. And from the scrunched look of pain on the younger girl's face, they weren't tears of happiness.

Shock made the half-full pudding cup slip from her fingers. Just what was going on?


Haruto opened his eyes.

Immediately there came the familiar disorientation. What had he been doing? He was... he quickly looked around.

He was lying on his side on a carpeted floor in an unfamiliar room, the soft fluff tickly against his bare ribcage. Sunroom. In the teachers' dorm. How'd he get here?

'Saki pulled me in here. Because... she wanted to talk. And then... I...'

Haruto sat upright abruptly. "Saki?" He looking around the room frantically. "Saki?"

There was no response.

"Saki?" He asked again, getting unsteadily to his feet and checking the other side of the couch, just to make sure she wasn't collapsed somewhere he couldn't see.

She wasn't there either. Haruto was the only one in the sunroom.

Hope fluttered in his heart. If Saki wasn't here, then maybe she'd gotten away! Before he'd...

Even before the thought had finished forming, Haruto knew it wasn't the case. He'd torn his pants again, and a certain part of his anatomy felt noticeably colder than the rest of his skin.

He looked down at himself in horror. Wet and glistening.

'At least there's no blood like last time...'

But where did Saki go? Had she left as soon as it was over?

What had he expected? Haruto struggled to tug his pants into some semblence of order. There was no reason for her to stick around. And it would be better for everyone if he stayed well away from them. His belt was busted, but maybe he could hold his pants together with his hands long enough to get back to his room to change-

The door whooshed open.

Haruto yelped, grabbing the nearest thing to hand- -a sofa cushion- -and thrusting it in front of his naked crotch. He did a double take at the person walking through the door.

"Saki?"

Saki swept into the room dressed in a casual white blouse and blue skirt, holding a thick bundle of clothes. Without preamble, she plopped the clothes on the sofa next to him.

Haruto did another double take back from the clothes to Saki. "Saki, are you-"

"I didn't know what you'd want to wear," Saki interrupted him, her voice cheery. "So I just grabbed some things out of your dresser. You should cover up."

"Wha? I..." Shocked into obedience, Haruto picked up a random pair of pants from the pile and started to pull them on. Of all the reactions he might have expected Saki to have, this wasn't one of them.

'She's acting like nothing happened?'

Saki had turned away while he dressed, but as the rustling of clothing stopped, she turned back to him, smiling. "I'm gonna go back to the room and take a shower. You should probably take one too, and if you don't wanna wait for me to get done you could take one next door."

Haruto stared hard at Saki's face. Her hair was disheveled, strands hanging loose from the left side of her normally neat plait. There was a faint black smudge under one eye where running mascara had been rubbed away, and while her smile was wide and glittering, it didn't reach her eyes. Her purple eyes were empty and staring. Even though she was looking in his direction, her gaze seemed to go right through him.

Without waiting for a response, Saki gathered up the unused clothing and started towards the door. Habit made Haruto reach for her arm. "Saki, wait-"

With a sharp intake of breath, Saki jerked away from his touch, the bundle of clothes falling to the carpet.

"I'm sorry!" Haruto exclaimed, jumping back as well. "I-I just want to apologize..."

"Not now." Saki was hugging herself, her hands shaking. She sounded so tired. "Just... I need some time, alright?"

Unable to think of anything to say, Haruto could only nod.

Saki left the room without another glance at the clothing she'd dropped, as if she'd forgotten about them. After standing there for a moment, Haruto bent and started to pick them up.


Saki was taking a shower after being raped again.

There was some part of her that found the situation darkly amusing, a part of her that threatened to bubble up into hysterical laughter if she paid it too much attention, so she tried to ignore that and focus on the mechanical motions of washing herself.

There were some slight differences, to be sure. For one, she was taking this shower in her own bathroom, whereas last time she'd been in the public shower in the girls' dorms. And this time the slime coming out of her wasn't a dark pink; apparently her Kamitsuki healing ability hadn't restored her hymen, a small blessing she was thankful for. If she had to go through that every time-

'Every time?' Why was she thinking of letting this happen again?

Saki gritted her teeth. Once had been a fluke. A horrifying experience, but still a singular event that could be adjusted to. Gotten past. But twice? Twice was a pattern.

And in patterns could be seen the future.

She hugged herself, cold despite the heat of the falling water. Was this a future she could handle? Live with? Having to deal with that whenever Haruto was taken over by the curse? Could she manage it? She honestly wasn't sure. Earlier it'd been all she could do to endure, and then she'd been barely able to put on some semblence of normalcy. And even that act had crumbled when Haruto touched her.

'Maybe Mom was right all along. Did she know that something like this was going to happen? Is that why she arranged that... that... shoot? To get it out of the way?'

Saki shook her head. Where had that come from? Of course her mother hadn't known. The woman could barely plan her activities a week in advance, much less foretell something as crazy as what happened on Module 77. The last shoot had been more of her self-destructive behavior, the act of a woman insane with jealousy...

But it had been more than the shoot, hadn't it? Soon after Saki's career took off and she moved in with Alice, her mother started leaving those messages on voicemail, hinting that Saki's popularity wouldn't last and the idol industry would chew her up and spit her out. As time went on and Saki's stardom continued to rise, the hints became rants, her mother predicting darkly that Saki's career would fail and she'd wind up doing porn before long, that her audience was only interested in her body and she'd find herself penniless and alone, out on the streets, a drug addict, and so on and so forth.

Alice had done her best to shield Saki from her mother's insanity, buying Saki new cell phones every few weeks. But her mother proved to be adept at finding Saki's new numbers. Alice believed that Saki's mother had hired private investigators to stalk her, had even gone to the studio to see about filing a restraining order against her mother. But the under-the-table arrangement the studio had made at the beginning of her career prevented that. Alice wasn't her legal guardian, after all. And the execs refused to contact child services on the basis that any publicity about Saki's home life would be bad for her professional image.

So Saki endured her mother's bile, much the same way she had done her entire childhood. It was easier in those days, when her smile graced the billboards and her voice topped the charts; she had something concrete to look at whenever the self-doubt ate at her, some measure of success she could at last use to leave her parents behind-

-but her mother had the last laugh after all. After her little stunt, the bottom had fallen out. Saki's career had crashed and she found herself packed away to Sakimori. Even Alice, who she thought of as a friend and a confidant as much as a manager, had abandoned her. And now half a year later, yet another one of her mother's dire predictions had come true. It wasn't porn, but here she was, using her body to sate Haruto's curse. And as much as she meant well by it, as much as she wanted to keep Haruto from suffering, as much as it linked them together, in the end it still meant that-

'Mom was right again...' Saki shivered, hugging herself harder, clutching her upper arms. She didn't notice when her fingernails gouged into her flesh hard enough to draw blood.

'Mom is always right... She's right and I'm wrong. I'm a bad daughter...'

Saki found herself huddled into a ball on the floor of the shower, hugging herself and trembling as water drenched her head. She was a terrible person, a failure, a horrible daughter. Her mother was right. Everything bad that happened to her was her own fault. She deserved all of this.

After all, what kind of daughter tried to steal her mother's spotlight?


He was such a coward.

Atonement? Redemption? Spend his life making up for what he did? Pathetic excuses. Just ways to rationalize being passive. Not taking action.

After the first time, Haruto had considered admitting to what he did. He'd be punished. Imprisoned, and it'd be no more than a monster like him deserved. But then he'd wussed out, seized on the idea that he could somehow atone for what his actions, like that was even possible.

'And then the very same thing happened again!'

Saki was the one to suffer the consequences of his inaction once again. How could he do that to her twice? He proposed to her thinking he would spend his life protecting her and keeping her from harm, but instead he just turned her into... into his...

He couldn't even finish the thought. He could never make things right. The only thing left for him now was punishment.

But he wouldn't be the only one to suffer punishment, would he? Initially he'd been afraid of Shoko denouncing him, and although that was no longer a concern now that he understood that he deserved Shoko's scorn, he'd be dragging Saki down with him.

'If I tell everyone that I raped her... how will they look at her? And what'll happen to her career?'

So in the end he still couldn't admit to what he'd done. Fine. He could still be punished. But how?

Imprisonment was probably the answer. A conventional jail cell wouldn't do though; Haruto would still have to sortie in VVV I if the module came under attack, and having to get L-Elf to go to the prison and let him out during alerts just wasn't realistic.

'Confinement inside the Valvrave? Kind of like how Akira stays in in Little Witch?'

That might work, but what if he-

"Hello! Earth to Haruto!" Takeo-senpai waved his hand in front of Haruto's face.

Haruto jerked. "Huh?"

"Are you listening?" Takeo-senpai pulled his hand back.

Haruto blinked rapidly as he looked around. Right. He was seated at a table in the cafeteria with Takeo-senpai, discussing the duty roster.

"Sorry, Takeo-senpai," he said sheepishly. "I zoned out."

"Ah, no worries." Takeo-senpai pointed to a line on the tablet in front of them with a bandaged hand. "I was just saying that Kiyoi-chan should probably be put on third shift, here."

"Right..." Haruto scanned the tablet. But his vision didn't seem to want to focus: the cells of the spreadsheet document with everyone's name and duty times kept blurring together. He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles in annoyance.

"Not sleeping well?" Takeo-senpai asked. Without waiting for an answer, he nodded. "Me neither, actually... guess it's alot tougher on you though, Mister Defense Minister."

"You haven't been sleeping well, Senpai?" Haruto asked. He'd actually been sleeping okay, but it would probably be better to allow Takeo-senpai his assumptions, so he didn't suspect anything...

"Yeah. Well, I guess I haven't." Takeo-senpai drummed his fingers on the tabletop. "I don't feel like I've been sleeping poorly, but I mean, memory lapses is a thing when you don't get enough sleep, right?"

"Memory lapses?" Haruto was suddenly fully focused. Had someone bodyjacked Takeo-senpai? "When was this?"

"Uh..." Takeo-senpai shrank back a little as Haruto leaned across the table toward him. "A couple of days ago. It started after lunch, I think. I was going to the bathroom or something... and then pretty much nothing until I woke up the next morning."

Haruto frowned. Classic symptoms of bodyjacking. He'd had a similar experience when bodyjacked by Saki. "Sorry, Takeo-senpai, we're gonna have to resume this discussion later." He pushed the tablet towards the upperclassman, standing up as he did so. "And make sure you don't tell anyone else about this. It's a matter of module security."

"Right," Takeo-senpai looked confused. "Should I put the defense force on alert? Or... what?" He trailed off as Haruto was already running out of the cafeteria.

As he ran, Haruto whipped out his cell phone and hit the speed dial.

"L-Elf?" He said as soon as the call went through. "We have a problem."


Rukino-san was the last to arrive in the hangar. By the time the door opened to admit her, the other four pilots, Otamaya-kun, Kibukawa-sensei, L-Elf, and A-Drei were already gathered.

Kyuma eyed the idol as she took her seat. Her long hair was damp and her usual white ribbon hair ornament was missing. Her slender hands on the tabletop were wrinkled and soggy.

"Had a nice shower?" Kyuma asked her.

"Yeah," Rukino-san replied curtly, giving him a glance that was just on this side of unfriendly. Kyuma shrugged mentally and turned away.

'Guess she doesn't want to talk. I'd be grumpy too if my shower got interrupted by L-Elf.'

"Alright! Took ya long enough to get here." Yamada put down his phone. "Let's get this show on the road!" While they were waiting for the room to fill, he'd been having a one-sided conversation with Akira-chan, him speaking aloud and then reading his cell to see her response. Kyuma had found the spectacle utterly bizarre.

"What's this about, L-Elf?" Kibukawa-sensei asked.

L-Elf inclined his head toward Haruto in response.

"I think someone bodyjacked Takeo-senpai," Haruto said. He quickly told them about Takeo-senpai's memory lapse.

"When you say 'someone,' I'm assuming you don't mean 'one of the pilots.'" A-Drei observed.

"For the record," L-Elf said. "None of you bodyjacked Takeo-senpai, right?"

One by one, the pilots shook their heads no. But Otamaya-kun slowly raised his hand.

Kyuma stared at Otamaya-kun in shock. Had the engineer used a Valvrave to turn himself into a Kamitsuki? But how, when the mechs were locked to their pilots?

"Eh? Otamaya-kun?" Haruto's head spun around so fast Kyuma thought he was gonna get whiplash. Out of the corner of his eye he saw an object appear in L-Elf's hand, and for a moment he was afraid it was a gun. But no, as he got a better look at it he realized it was a small metal cylinder.

"Sorry, I didn't mean I bodyjacked Takeo-senpai!" Otamaya-kun quickly lowered his hand. "I mean, uhm. I think... I was bodyjacked..."

"What? Why didn't you tell anyone?" Rukino-san demanded.

"I, uhm... I didn't... I thought it was one of you, so I didn't..." Otamaya-kun's face went bright red.

"Why do you believe you were bodyjacked, Otamaya Yusuke?" L-Elf asked.

"Well, I've got-" Otamaya-kun unwrapped a bandage from his hand to reveal a pair of scabs on his thumb.

Yamada whistled. "Them's Kamitsuki bite marks, alright." His phone beeped and he looked down. "Akira says she doesn't know if it's relevant, but she saw Otamaya boarding Unit One a couple days ago."

All eyes turned to Otamaya-kun again.

"I don't remember that..." He mumbled. "That must have been when I was bodyjacked..."

L-Elf rose. "We'll need to check Unit One for sabotage. Tokishima Haruto and Kibukawa Takumi, with me."


"They sure are taking their time..." Yamada observed, looking up towards the towering VVV I. L-Elf, Haruto, and Kibukawa-sensei had disappeared into its cockpit more than half an hour ago.

"Better that way," Kyuma said. "They're probably checking everything just in case."

"I'm sorry, you guys..." Otamaya-kun said miserably. "It's all my fault. If only I could remember..."

"Yeah, it is all your fault," Rukino-san suddenly said viciously. "You should have come to one of us or L-Elf the moment you realized you'd been bitten!"

Kyuma was taken aback by the rage quivering in Rukino-san's voice. Where did that come from?

"Sorry..." Otamaya-kun apologized. "I'll-I'll do that next time!"

"There better not be a next time," Rukino-san's tone was acid. "Why didn't you tell someone this time?"

"S-sorry..." Otamaya-kun stammered, withering before Rukino-san's anger. "I, uhm, I thought, I mean, I was hoping that-that, it'd be you, Ruki. I mean, like, if you, ah, bit me... I didn't wanna ask and, uh, find out it was somebody else..."

This explanation seemed to enrage Rukino-san even more. "Hoping I bit you? Talk about gross and pathetic. And what gives you the right to call me Ruki, anyway?"

Otamaya-kun seemed to scrunch down into himself. "Sorry, I-I won't be so presumptious in the future. Ru-Rukino-san!"

'I gotta stop this,' Kyuma thought. But before he could open his mouth, Yamada came to Otamaya-kun's defense.

"What crawled up your ass and died?" Yamada growled. "Otamaya knows he fucked up, so how bout ya lay off him, ya singing bitch?"

"What are you, his daddy?" Rukino-san didn't back down. "This doesn't involve you, so fuck off."

"No. His bro." Yamada said. "And I don't give a rat's ass if you are famous. You don't talk to-"

He was interrupted by his phone beeping. Yamada grunted and made a face, pulling out his phone. He glanced at it, his brow furrowing. He looked over at Little Witch, back to his phone, and then back to Rukino-san.

"Well?" Rukino-san crossed her arms.

"Tch." Yamada grabbed Otamaya-kun by the upper arm. "Let's go hang over here, man." He pulled the otaku toward Nobu Lightning, further down the line of Valvraves.

Rukino-san stared after them, scowling. Kyuma was trying to figure out if he should say something to her when VVV I's hatch opened and Haruto descended the zipline.

"Find anything?" Kyuma asked.

"Nothing," Haruto muttered sourly as he sent the zipline back up to Kibukawa-sensei. "We went over every inch in there. Took apart the chair and the console. Nothing!"

Otamaya-kun returned as L-Elf was emerging from the cockpit. "I'll get people working on it day and night," he promised. "Until we find what they... I... did in there. Haruto-kun, I'm so sorry."

"It's not your fault, Otamaya-kun." Haruto assured him. "It's hard to guard against bodyjacking. I should know."

Rukino-san stiffened and stalked away.

"Saki, wait!" Haruto took a few steps after her, then seemed to think twice, stopping in his tracks.

L-Elf touched down on the hanger floor. "A detailed inspection of Unit One will have to wait, Tokishima Haruto. A mobilization of engineers to that task may alert the infiltrator. Our first priority is to root them out."

"How do we do that?" Kyuma asked. "It's probably that Dosi guy you and A-Drei fought during the Blackout. If they have the same powers as us... they could be anyone on the module!"

"Indeed." L-Elf thought for a moment, then spoke again. "Listen carefully, everyone. This is what we're going to do..."

CHAPTER 12 END


A/N: Thanks to xchrispx and Christemo for beta reading!

This one took a little longer than usual to come out, for which I must apologize. Certain parts of this chapter were pretty hard to write. ._.

Speaking of those certain parts, well, I DID say way back in the Chapter 1 Author's Note that things were gonna get DARK. But there's always a light at the end of the tunnel!

And speaking of Chapter 1, wow, it's been a whole year! Thanks to everyone that's followed the story since the beginning, and to everyone who's come in during the course of the year! Thank you all for your support and reviews and favorites and follows. I honestly couldn't have done it with you, cause you're the ones who keep me writing. Seriously! Sometimes when I'm a little disgruntled I go look at the traffic stats and I'm like 'I had so many readers this month! And people from all over the world!' and it just perks me right up. Love you all!

Soba Ni Iru Yo is the second ED song, and IRL it's not actually a Haruka Tomatsu (Saki's VA) song, but composed by Shiori with vocals and performance by ELISA. But I decided to give it to Saki in the fanfic, because the lyrics fit her so well! The English translation used here is by bambooxzx.

To Andreyfag: Thank you for your reviews! I would have responded in a PM but, you know, guest account. So anyways! Yes, you are totally right that Audrey and the Royalists have been pretty much sidelined and are kind of background characters at this point. That being said I do have alot of stuff planned for the Royalists, but it's just gonna take a little time to arrive. The story so far is mostly focused on the Module cast and their direct antagonists, the Magius, but it will be expanding out to include the Royalists, as well as other people. I don't wanna get too much into plot spoilers in an Author's Note, but if you wanna make an account and PM me I can tell you some more particulars if you're interested!

Hope everyone enjoyed this chapter, despite the dark subject matter. And as always updates on my writing progress can be found in my author profile. Here's to seeing you in the next chapter!