"Bearing one five niner, heading to one eight four, nine zero miles, angels two zero, speed one zero zero…"

"ID it, Octy. Course correction, June. Bring us about. I want to approach them from behind. Novel, engage ECS."

"Aye, aye, Captain John."

They felt their airship slip into electric invisibility. The minutes rumbled by.

"Captain! I have visual on bogey! Bogey confirmed to be Majestic Queen!"

"Very good, Octy. Keep us on course, June. Novel, give me full power from the engines. Let's catch up to our errant family member, shall we?"

"Roger!"

The Captain tapped the mike. "Attention. This is the Captain speaking. Red Alert. All crew, battle stations. I repeat: Red Alert. All crew, battle stations. July, stand by to receive."

A chorus of "Ayes" and "Rogers" responded.

He stood up. Now came the hard part: waiting. He suppressed an urge to pace and settled for rubbing his thumb on the smooth wooden pommel of his brother's katana.

Akari. Good hunting. And be careful.


The World Within And Without


Disclaimer: Sheo Darren does not own Guilty Gear or any of the games, anime, movies, books and the like that are the property of other people. All original characters in this story are his creations and property. All insert characters are copyright/ owned by their respective represented real-life entities.


Calendar Arc

Episode One


Air Pirate


It started off innocently enough. A large box, six by six by six feet, wrapped up with colorful paper and decorated by a cute red ribbon bow on top, impudently sat on the performance stage.

A brass band sat below and to the extreme left of the stage. They provided a tremulous tune more concordant with a M. Night Shymalan horror/suspense movie than a magic show. That bit of SFX cued the entry from Stage Right of one of the ship's guards. A beefy man with a submachine guy, he walked over to the box and, without any preamble or warning as to what he was about to do, emptied a thirty-round clip into it.

The audience screamed and shouted. Alarmed guests stood up to run.

The band suddenly struck up a grandiosely sustained drumbeat that both persuaded the departing members of the audience to sit and introduced the star of tonight's show.

To unending gasps, the box shivered. Its ribbon bow unraveled and fluttered away. No longer held in place, its top popped off to fireworks and smoke even as its bullet-ridden sides toppled to reveal its confidently smirking content.

The magician girl gracefully arose from her smoky concealment. Though not especially pretty, she had a striking countenance that held her audience's interest. Long violet hair spilled from beneath the rim of her black bandanna and magician's hat and down her shoulders. Her black-red magician's cape, long-sleeved tuxedo and white gloves completely contrasted with her cut-off blue short pants. The bottom of her white undershirt was cut short and tied into a knot, leaving her lean strong midriff bare. Her eyes were closed.

She was completely unharmed.

The well-dressed audience broke into applause. They settled back into their chairs, anticipatory now.

The girl's bow was full of flourish. Her eyes opened as she stood up. Her pupils were bright blue orbs. She smirked.

"The curtains are up and the stage is set. It's show time."


Rione Asuka Hunter gushed. "Yay! Someone paraphrased me, Four-chan!"

"Yes, Rione-chan," Four Murasame Darren agreed. "Paraphrases are almost as good as quotes."

Beside her, Negi Springfield busily fiddled with Arc Light's settings. The nearby Nazareth plotted to revenge himself on Evangeline A.K. McDowell when next they met. Soon. Very soon.


The magician girl dazzled her expectant audience. She pulled rabbits out of her hat and endless scarves out of her sleeves. She juggled swords, swallowed and regurgitated them, then proved them real blades by cutting up apples with them. In the middle of her magic tricks she often twirled and tossed her wand and swords into the air as a cheerleader would with her baton, juggling three-pound weapons with a deft air of nonchalance.

All this while, she waited for the right moment to strike.

She was a stage magician, yes; a true practitioner of sleight of hand. The first trick she learned was to make a coin appear and disappear in her empty palm. She picked up the rest during her long sojourn, sharpened her skills as she would sharpen her swords and knives upon a whetstone, finding them useful to divert time and attention.

(Not to say she did not have even one bit of real magic. She did. Her Japanese blood gave her that. She just didn't use it much. No sense giving it away when secrecy served her best.)

But she had been a murderer for almost as long. Taken in by the Assassin Guild– no; by Zato-sama. That distinction, at least, would never change for her– at a young age, extensively trained in the arts of assassination, as skilled with sinking her swords into a man's vitals as she was with juggling those same weapons to entertain an audience. Her magician act served as distraction, a veil of harmlessness she wore about herself to deflect attention and dispel suspicions, allowing her to enter the most secure and hallow of abodes without sounding an alarm. Then, when her target least expected it, she struck. Quickly. Silently. Lethally.

She had never failed a mission. Next to her Zato-sama, Venom and her rival Millia Rage, she was the best in the Guild.

But those days of vainglory were behind her now. No longer an assassin, though she retained all her fighting skills and kept in tiptop shape. Not a true magician, though she performed with all the pizzazz of a dedicated professional.

She was quite different from the old her. And it showed.

"For my next trick," she announced in that patently false air of cheer, "Sawing a person in half, I will need a volunteer."

A surprising number of hands shot up, their owners made brave by alcohol and the performer's earlier display of skill. How bad could it be? Besides, it was all just smoke and mirrors, right?

Her eyes pretended to sweep the lounge. But she already had someone in mind: the host of the party, a somewhat overweight man in his mid-forties and an opulent tux, her target.

He was a secret supporter of the Post War Administration Bureau.

The newly-formed Unified Continuum Police Force wanted him, or rather the information he held inside his head. Her group offered to get him for them. She volunteered to personally take on the mission. Alone, of course; there was speed and stealth and her still-significant pride to consider.

And so here she was aboard the luxury airship Majestic Queen, posing as someone she was not quite, but close enough, her favorite alias.

The startled man brought his hands up. "Oh, I'm sorry, I can't do that…"

The audience, however, thought otherwise. They cheerfully and loudly egged him to go on stage. Since many of them were business associates and friends of his whom he did not want to disappoint, the man reluctantly hiked up the stage and clambered into the box.

"Don't worry," the girl assured him as she locked the lid, "An ant bite hurts far worse."

The audience chuckled. The man was unable to do the same– and instantly paled when the girl pulled out from her impossible cape her sawing implement of choice.

It was a chainsaw.

A good yank on the starter cord got the beast to growl in angry anticipation. The girl managed to keep it in control. She waddled over to the coffin with her heavy charge. "Now, sir, stay perfectly still…"

The frightened man did as ordered.

The far doors burst open. Gunmen flooded the auditorium. An entire arsenal of weapons aimed at the stage.

The new development caught the audience by surprise. They remained unperturbed for the most part, though. Maybe it was part of the act.

"Get her!" one of the guards yelled in an unmistakably hostile voice.

The man in the coffin jerked.

Her disguise had been compromised. The details, the how and why, didn't matter. Reacting did. As the Americans were wont to say, time to get the Hell out of Dodge.

The girl dropped the still-running chainsaw and ducked behind her coffin-encased target. Whirring serrated teeth wildly bit into finely polished wood. Her target winced. That floor was expensive!

The bodyguards hesitated. No one wanted to shoot their boss. The man's screamed orders reinforced that mindset.

"The first guy who hits me–"

She had no such inhibitions. Imperceptible twists of her wrists caused hidden compartments in the sleeves of her tuxedo to disgorge their deadly contents into her hands. Steel daggers in the shape of playing cards slid out of their hiding places and slot themselves tight in between her fingers. Her arms cast out in deceptively slow movements.

Razor edges cut into hands and arms. Yelps and curses resounded. Men dropped their guns or ducked behind the nearest cover. Someone fired. Bullets thudded into the coffin– stopped by the hidden metal sheeting in between the outer and inner wood layers.

The man screamed. The audience did the same. People hurriedly made for the nearest exits. They smashed aside or ran over some of the bodyguards. Inadvertently they also protected the magician girl by blocking the bodyguards' vision and firing fields.

Somehow the target's voice pierced through the sustained bedlam.

"That's it, Bob! You're fired!"

Only seconds to pull off her escape. The girl focused. She mentally sought out that single place in the sky where she would be safe, the place she called home. She mentally recreated every single detail that composed it: bright red armored hull and octuple airliner engines dotted by gun turrets and radar antenna; swabbed decks and polished rails; the small but comfortable room, her room; cheerful girls in part-pirate, pirate-schoolgirl outfits; and the smiling man in black on the bridge whom she had come to intensely care for as a commander.

There. The familiar red airship rapidly closed on her current ride. She smiled.

Right on schedule, John.

Fingers lightly resting upon the cover of the coffin, she murmured, "Exit Stage Left."

The smoke bomb at the foot of the stage exploded. Dark smoke rapidly filled the whole auditorium.

When the air cleared, neither magician girl nor her target were nowhere to be found.


"July here, Captain! Akari's on board! She's okay! She's got the package!"

"Excellent, July. June, take us out of here at full stealth and power."

"Aye, Captain!"

The man released his breath. Good job, Akari. And thank God you're okay.


Whatever vitriol the PWAB man wished to spout was instantly dampened once he realized he was no longer on his Majestic Queen, but inside the cavernous cargo hold of another, different airship.

"What the hell? What is this? How did we get here?"

Sprawled atop the coffin surface, his exhausted but ebullient kidnapper said: "Magic."

Two girls hurriedly approached them. One wore an eye patch over her left eye. A cutlass dangled from its scabbard on her right hip. Her companion was lithe and tanned and moved with the sleek grace of a cheetah. Both girls wore outfits resembling serafuku combined with short pants, bandannas and skull-and-crossbones insignia. They walked with the swaying manner of people used to going about a flying ship's rough motions.

"Air pirates!"

"Jellyfish Air Pirates," the magician corrected. "At your service," she added with a wicked grin, quoting her Captain and the previous Captain before him.

Eye Patch boisterously patted her back. The girl's good eye brimmed with excitement.

"Nice one, Akari! I see you got the package here in one piece."

"Of course, July." Now that she didn't have to continue her charade anymore, Akari reverted to her usual mocking tone. "I wouldn't have come back otherwise."

"And you'd better not," the tanned girl, Augus, joked, "Or else it's the plank for you if so!"

"I'd like to see the lot of you try and get me on it."

They laughed. Their prisoner coughed diplomatically.

"Can you let me out of here now? I wet my pants, and I'd like to change…"

No one paid any attention to him save to secure his coffin prison tight. Akari discarded her magician hat and took hold of the top of her thick blue hair.

Finally, I can get rid of this stupid wig.

Beneath the blue mass was an unruly forest of spiky, dark brown bangs. They were trimmed more neatly now than when she first set foot on the Mayship; she allowed Sephy to cut her hair.

She fiddled with her left eye. Something small and clear popped into her fingers– a contact lens, shaded deep blue. Her left pupil was a fiery ruby red, the complete opposite of her right eye.

The man in the coffin gaped. He knew that face! Hell, he'd hired her before!

Akari Odine smirked. "Consider yourself lucky this is a kidnapping and not a hit."


"You okay, Akari?" July asked the admittedly haggard Akari as they headed for the bridge. "You look beat."

"Yeah, I'm just drained. Hadn't teleported anything other than myself over that big a distance in a long while. It's not much."

"Up for reporting to the Captain?"

Her pointed stare asked if the question was a joke. The answering look was a yes. Akari would fall on her own swords first before admitting to weakness before the Captain.

Their prisoner had been dumped into the brig. The Mayship was speedily headed for a rendezvous with a UCPF Silvana-class atmospheric battleship, the Alex Rowe. Alex Rowe had important personages aboard, old friends who were only now able to return to the place they called home. Everyone eagerly looked forward to the reunion. Everyone, that is, but Akari.

"So how was the mission?" August interrupted. Akari grinned.

"No challenge at all. Would you believe I didn't have to kill anyone?"

"Good for you!" Augus' smile turned sly. "Especially since I bet Febby thirty bucks that there wouldn't be any fatalities."

"Half the winnings are mine, then," Akari reminded her.

"Half?" Her friend feigned horror. "That's highway robbery!"

"And we're models of law-abiding citizens."

The good-natured ribbing continued up to the bridge.

The previous occupant of the chair would have swiveled it about to handsomely smile at them. The current occupant stood up. His smile lacked the cockiness of his brother but none of the warmth.

Akari did a mock-salut. "Akari Odine, reporting as ordered, Captain. Mission accomplished."

"Welcome home, Akari," John told her. "And good job."

Tsuzuku/Itutuloy/To Be Continued