AN: Yay! I was so excited to write this chapter. I hope that I havent' butchered it with my editing knife, it was one of the easiest to write so far. I'm especially excited about it as I get to intorduce a new character that will become more prominent in later chapters.
In other news I'll be writing a lot slower for the next few weeks I think. I've been having some health issues and I'm currently dealing with the exhaustion and lightheadedness that comes from having a large amount of blood drawn. Hopefully that didn't alter this chapter.
Thanks so much to Anne Fatalism Dilettante for all the feedback! :D You should definitely check out her work, I'm loving her G00 fic "Cryptic" right now :D. Also thanks to Stormy! I knew you'd like the opening piece, I was loving writing it!
A note on the wines from the last chapter: Anything over 15 years would have to be a result of the ficticious process that I made up in this chapter. I thought I included this in the AN from last chapter, but I didn't. I'm a bit retentive about it as I do have a bit of a history with wine and need to make it correct for my own sanity.
I listened to "Tick Tick Boom!" from The Hives to write this chapter, although it doesn't really apply.
Masked Marauder
"Virtue has a veil, vice a mask."
Victor Hugo
There were guests absolutely everywhere. Tall and short, male and female, talkative or silent. Every type of person. She and the other Sommelier, Claudine, had been instructed to start their rounds at eight o'clock sharp, and it was now a minute after it. Bus boys were carefully unveiling the two wine displays and the attention of the room shifted to the expensive collections. Claudine's collection featured wines made in the antique fashion prior to the 23rd Century, and Reverie's focused on wines that had been carefully aged in space. After a coin-toss in secret, Reverie had won the more interesting collection and she couldn't say she was disappointed. Claudine's display featured bottles resting on antique maple wood racks, carefully labelled and smelling like wood. Reverie's on the other hand was a lengthy solid glass wine cooler that stretched easily forty feet across. It was beautiful. Each separate area in the glass cooler was set for a different temperature. She didn't have to look to know that all of the bottles would be ridiculously costly. She liked it. She quickly looked herself over before stepping out onto the floor. She and Claudine wore slim black cocktail dresses and had been carefully made-up. The straps sat carefully on the shoulder, as though they would fall if they moved a millimeter the wrong way. Her hair had been swept up in an up-do that matched her French counterpart's, and each of them had been gifted with a pair of ostentatiously priced stilettos that could have easily been a problem for someone who didn't have a well-loved history with heels.
The thoughts of those in the room were already overcrowding her mind as she was approached by a couple who were inquiring about the space-aging process. She listened to both the conversation as well as the thoughts milling about and explained the process to them.
"…by aging bottles in space they can be aged far past the standard fifteen years of the regular process. This way the tastes are purified in a contaminate-free locale." She said, pouring the couple a sample of a white and red.
"Well isn't that wonderful!" the woman said, lightly sniffing the liquid.
"It seems an overuse of labour if you ask me." The man said. "What once took fifteen years in a barn now takes fifty in a colony."
Reverie laughed. "I'm inclined to agree with you, although the end result is much better than standardly made wines. Of course, by aging the bottles in space they can be manned by a computer system as opposed to the human workers that are still needed in earth-bound vin-yards."
He swirled the wine skeptically in the glass before sipping it and opening his eyes in shock. "You just might be right, young lady."
She took the moment to scan his thoughts but there was nothing particularly useful. He was a contributor to the A-Laws finances but he didn't know anything about their operations. From the thoughts he did have, he didn't want to know about them. Fair enough. After accepting a tip she watched them leave and was approached by an imposingly tall man who escorted a purple haired lady towards her. A beautiful, elegantly dressed, purple haired…lady?
"Do you have the 2280 Malbreau Zinfandel here? This lovely woman doesn't know what she's missing, it would seem."
Oh yes she did. She knew exactly what she was missing…that was no woman. That was Tieria. "Oh! That's shocking! I agree, she should have some." Reverie said, having to cover up her shocked expression somehow. Shocked wasn't even the word. She could feel an unconsciously arising pang of jealousy rising in her; Tieria was prettier than her! Damn that princess! She retrieved the bottle and poured the glasses, trying to not burn a hole through Tieria's head with her stares. He'd never live this down, not in a million years.
What shocked her even more was the dainty, feminine voice that he'd managed to muster. "Oh thank-you, it smells so sweet." He was even doing a remarkable job of not glaring at her at all. She mentally kicked herself…she should be attempting to be as impassive.
After a generous tip they left, Tieria laughing daintily at some comment the man had made about something or other and him promising to introduce 'her' to so-and-so. Reverie resisted the urge to shake her head.
The next hour moved along in a similar fashion, people approaching and her reaching every corner of the expansive cooler to find the right bottles. She made a mental note to start buying expensive heels. Despite the four and a half inch heel her feet weren't hurting as badly as they should have been.
-It's Wong Liu Mei!-
That thought made Reverie turn in curiosity, her hand hovering over a bottle. She'd never seen Celestial Being's financier and of course her not-so-subtle curiosity had to be sated somehow. She watched as the woman entered, followed by her attendant. Reverie started to narrow down her thoughts but stopped abruptly. Should she really be looking inside this woman's head? Was that crossing an unspoken boundary? She wasn't sure.
-That must have been Ms. Sumeragi's doing. I have to say, Ribbons has out-done himself.-
Ribbons? Who was that? Another background figure in Celestial Being? No. Wong Liu Mei was sure to know a large amount of the guests who were present tonight. Whomever this 'Ribbons' was, they were probably a full-fledged A-Laws supporter.
"I'm sorry, have I inconvenienced you by asking you to do your job?" A playful tone, but an insulting sentence. Reverie snapped out of her thought bubble and retrieved the bottle. The man was evenly her height with shaggy blonde hair that sat on his head almost like a clown wig. As if by some kind of comedic vein of life he also had the rounded nose and somewhat plump look of one as well. An insulting clown.
"I'm sorry sir"
"Of course you are." The snide tone in his voice made her anger flare but she didn't let it show, instead using the opportunity to pick at his brain.
Brigadier General Arthur Goodman. He'd have some interesting thoughts to pick.
"Can I offer you a complementary bottle of our host's wine to apologize?" she asked, surprised by the sweetness of her own voice. If it kept running over her teeth she'd get cavities.
"Is that to imply that I couldn't afford one of them?" he asked. He was obviously looking for a fight, and she had no intention of giving him one. The most irritating thing about his snippy sentences was that his voice was constantly laughing.
"There was no implication, sir." She replied. She needed to buy time somehow. Digging through his thoughts was easy enough with him being irritated, but she needed time. She put on her best coy face and tried the only thing that would work, flattery. "You wouldn't happen to be Brigadier General Arthur Goodman, would you?" There was that cavity-voice again.
His expression changed slightly and she could feel his sense of pride. It annoyed her. "I am." He replied shortly, apparently still irritated.
"It's an honour to meet you sir, I'm sorry about the bottle of wine as I said…I'm just honoured to be in the presence of so many of our worlds' protectors." She said. She needed to drop a keyword of some sort to get him thinking about the important stuff.
"That's all well and good, but I suggest keeping the stars out of your eyes while working." God dammit, she wanted to hit him. She wanted to hit him so badly.
"Be easier on the girl, Arthur." Another voice. A tall man with brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. He was middle-aged and towered over her, something that she didn't like. The man beside him drew all of her attention away though. He was wearing a mask, and that alone was enough to get her curiosity riled up. "She was complimenting you, after-all." He finished.
"Sommeliers are more trouble than they're worth in my books, you know that, Homer." The clown-man said, examining his sample of wine as though he had a clue about it.
Homer Katagiri, Arthur Goodman, and a masked man who was probably just as important. If she prayed hard enough, could she wish a pistol into existence? She doubted it. She swiftly pulled the cork from the bottle that Goodman had requested and poured the glass. As she did so she examined the masked man. He was as tall as Katagiri but somehow not as rigidly built. Short brown unruly hair covered thin leather straps that held the deep green mask in place. It only covered the upper half of his face and from what wasn't covered she could tell that he would be attractive.
"It's been said that drinking an expensive wine is like making love." He said, tilting his head. His voice was familiar and playful. She felt like it was a voice she knew very well, but at the same time she couldn't identify it.
"What's your point, Gallagher?" Goodman interrogated more than asked.
The man laughed. "Well, can one make love without a lover?"
She carefully handed Goodman the glass, not looking at the masked man as she felt his glass-covered eyes on her. She could feel her cheeks flush and she wasn't sure why. Normally attention from random men didn't have that effect on her, but there was something about his voice…
"Don't waste your breath, Ailin. Arthur doesn't understand love or lovers." Katagiri replied with a laugh.
"If I did I wouldn't have gotten this far in A-Laws, would I?" Arthur asked in defence. Reverie set the bottle in a temperature-controlling stand and set it on the spindly cocktail table that was between them. She slipped away and aided another set of financiers as she listened into the conversation.
"We're both just as far along as you." Homer pointed out, browsing through the extensive wine list.
"And look at where your marriage is, Homer." Goodman joked. "I'll be hard-pressed to say that you know anything about love."
"I love this wine." Homer replied, looking at the glass.
"Put a Russian in space and he makes weapons, put a Frenchman in space and he makes wine." The masked man said.
That somehow raised a laugh from the table. Between the three of them not a single one was thinking about anything that was useful. If she could have she would have run up to them and spouted topic specific words like 'Gundam', 'Katharon', and 'Celestial Being'. Of course, She wasn't stupid enough to do it. Not a single useful thought was floating around the trio.
Until she heard a chuckle from the masked man.
-So you want us to talk about Celestial Being, eh? What exactly should we say about the Gundams?-
Had he just…heard her?
-Not so comfortable having someone in your head, is it?-
The bottle she was holding slipped out of her hand. She watched detachedly as it fell slowly to the ground, the whole scene moving frame by frame. He'd heard her think. She waited for the sound of the bottle shattering, but it didn't happen. A large hand caught it, wrapped in an expensive leather glove. She looked up at him in shocked horror. He'd heard her.
"That could have been ugly." He said in a playful tone that ignored the jolt of horror that he'd just shot through her.
"Um…" she mumbled, forgetting how to speak. "It could have been…thank-you."
As far as she was concerned there was no one else in the room. All the light, all the sound, and all the tension in the room was falling between the two of them. You can…hear me?
He smiled. Not a welcoming smile or a scary one, but a manipulative one. He knew that he had all of the power at the moment. –And you can hear me.-
She looked at her hand as the cold bottle touched her fingertips. She took it from him slowly, all of her nerve endings on fire. If anyone had made a sudden movement in that moment she would have screamed and dropped the bottle again. He stepped back to the cocktail table and the other two men with long strides. –Listen to this..-
"So what do you make of the connection between Katharon and Celestial Being?" He asked the other two, playing directly into what she wanted. She slightly snapped out of her trance and pulled the cork out of the bottle that had almost been destroyed.
"Do we need to mix business and pleasure, Ailin?" –Once the Eastern chapter of Katharon is taken out next week, both organizations will start running out of places to hide…- Katagiri thought, his expression starkly contrasting his mental topic choice.
"You know me, always willing to destroy happiness for a chance to get a head-start on work." 'Ailin' joked. "On that note, how are the new models coming along?"
Why was he doing this? What could he possibly gain from getting them to spill these secrets?
-It'll make it more fun.-
It'll make what more fun? She demanded in her head as she listened to the other two ponder the new mobile suits. She poured samples of wine here and there as she listened, almost running on auto-pilot.
"You're only asking because you want the first one, am I right?" Goodman teased. "Don't worry, They've already made one to your specifications."
So he was a pilot. A pilot who was conveniently ignoring her thought-demands. What would be more fun!?
-Giving Celestial Being a head-start, of course.-
He knew she was with Celestial Being. Of course he did. How could he not? Her mind was reeling with information.
Wait. She stopped dead in her thought-tracks.
-Now she gets it.- He looked at her, his masked face staring at her unemotionally but his smile like that of the Cheshire cat. –Your brain is full of all kinds of secrets too, Reverie Traum.-
She had to leave. She had to get out immediately. Was there a way? She looked at all of the people around her who were marvelling over the bottles around her and she realized there was no easy way out of the scenario.
-What are you gonna do? Running would force you to out yourself, but if you stay here, who knows how many nifty little things I'll pick out of your head. Maybe I'll keep picking at Ptolemy's weapons system. That is the name of the ship, right? Ptolemy?-
What could she do? She looked around at the milling partygoers. Tieria was nowhere to be seen after his dance with the green-haired man. She hadn't seen Setsuna all night. Gowns flowed, wine flowed, laughter filled the room and servers floated around with trays of food. How the hell could she get out of there?
The food.
That was it. She would fake an allergy.
-Clever.- he mused, reading her thoughts as she formed them. –Almost as clever as your tactical forecaster. What's her codename? Sumeragi? Formerly a member of the AEU Force, just like yourself…-
He was toying with her. She popped another cork and watched as a tray went by. That one wouldn't work. She saw another out of the corner of her eye and prayed that it had what she needed. She could hear the masked man laughing in her head.
"Sir" he said, raising a hand lightly to bring the man with the unknown tray over. She cursed mentally in all three languages that she knew as the server walked away from her. What else could she do? She could always out the other Sommelier as a Katharon operative, but could she really live with that? No. She could see if Claudine had friends in the area that could pull her out of the party, but that would mean possibly placing Katharon in danger, something that she couldn't do. This was her mess.
-That's noble of you. Why don't I give you an out? Wouldn't that be fun?"
She was getting really sick of the word 'fun'. She was getting ready to just abandon her post and make a break for it when the perfect opportunity arose.
"This peanut sauce is delicious!" the woman in front of her said, munching happily on a biscuit that was coated in the sauce. This was it.
Reverie looked at her in mock horror before coughing and holding her throat, dropping the glass of wine she'd just filled and sinking to her knees. The glass shattered and turned all eyes to her. Perfect. The room would notice if she suddenly went missing.
"What's wrong!?" the woman exclaimed, kneeling in front of her. Reverie looked up at her and did her best to choke, clasping her throat and struggling to breathe. If she didn't get an award for her act she'd be severely disappointed.
"Ma'am, step away!" That man's voice!
The masked man knelt before her. "She must have an allergy" he said, playing the part of brilliant bystander as he took her pulse and pulled her hands from around her throat. Reverie coughed as hard as she could, heaving and trying to suck in air.
"Oh my goodness! It must have been the peanuts!" the woman exclaimed. "Get a medic!"
"There's one in the back." He said. "I'll take her there. Find one of the bus boys to clean up the wine." He said, clearly used to being in charge. She cursed every god she could think of when he scooped her up and jogged lightly to the service doors at the far end of the grand hall.
"You can curse them all you want." He said, pushing the door open with his shoulder and stalking past the scurrying service members. "But they seem to like me more than you today." He was pulling at his memories to find a windowless room. That meant that she had no choice but to make a break for it now. As much as she hated to do it, she slipped her heels off and let them clatter to the kitchen floor. The second they entered a deserted hallway she whipped her elbow around, hoping to catch him in the throat. He beat her to the violence with a swift and painful head-butt.
Why does it always have to be my head…? She was dizzy, but dizzy was good. Dizzy was hard to read. She whipped her other arm around and caught him squarely in the jaw, making him snarl and drop her as blood trickled over his lips.
-My tongue!-
She hit the ground with a sharp thud and was up and running a split second later. He was after her like a dog. He had the upper hand of knowing the mansion already and as she weaved through halls here and there and slammed into locked doors and blocked exits his manic laugh rang in her head.–There's nowhere for you to go, Meisterette.- he mocked.
"I'm not a Meister!" she snapped as she hit another door. She realized that he was now walking towards her with long, carefree strides. She really had nowhere to go.
"Of course you aren't. If you were, your comrades wouldn't have left you here."
What? Were Tieria and Setsuna gone?
"The little soldier and the Innovator tore out of here just minutes ago." He said, watching her smash twice into a stubborn oak door.
Innovator?
She gave up trying to run. She'd tried all the doors and there was no other way out of the hall. It was a dead-end. "What's an Innovator?" she said, hands on her hips as she stood barefoot in the hall.
"It's interesting that you don't know, seeing as you work with one so closely." He teased. She didn't like that he had information that she didn't. He casually wiped away the thin stream of blood that ran from the corner of his mouth, a gloved thumb erasing it.
"Tieria." She said. He was playing games with her head, it wasn't a stretch to imagine that he already knew Tieria's name.
"That would be the one." He said. She stood in awkward defiance for a long moment. She had to get out of the corner she'd backed herself into. Could she fight him? He was easily half a foot taller than her, and with most likely a fifty-pound muscular advantage. Not to mention that he was reading her mind. That would be a problem. It would be like trying to fight Lyle or Allelujah. Totally insane. She'd do it.
She ran at him. He laughed and raised an arm to combat whatever limb she was going to throw at him, but she didn't throw a limb. She threw her whole body. The surprise took him straight off his feet and they fell together, his heavier, suit-clad body breaking her fall. She sprung up as fast as humanely possible but he grabbed her leg, sending her crashing back into the floor. She rolled onto her back immediately as he started to get up and caught him in the neck with a well-planted foot. She wasn't heavy enough to knock him over but it sent him lightly off balance. She made it to her feet and was about to bolt when she heard the innocent click of a pistol being cocked.
She stopped and looked back at him. He held the pistol expertly, his arm stretched at shoulder level, making the offensive little object sit in line with her head.
"I'd really rather not do this, Reverie." He said, his tone taking an edge. Suddenly the familiarity of his voice clicked in her head. "Dammit, Rev. Why'd you have to pick up on that? I don't want to do this.."
Lyle.
He had Lyle's voice.
"Ailin Gallagher, lower your weapon."
A strange female voice interrupted their standoff. He sighed and lowered the pistol. Reverie looked behind her and the whole scenario became infinitely stranger.
"Tieria….?" She asked, tilting her head. The voice was so different, but the face was exactly the same.
"Reverie Traum." The woman said. "I am Regene Regetta. Like Tieria Erde, I am an Innovator."
Her brain was definitely not processing as quickly as it should have. Then again, there was so much to process…so much to deal with. "What's going on? Why do you…"
-Well, that's a relief.- she heard the man think, uncocking the pistol and slipping it away.
"There is no time to explain, Reverie." The woman said. She stepped aside and motioned down the hallway that the man had chased her down. "Go now."
Reverie stood in mild shock for a moment, then ran.
She didn't look back.
An hour and two sore and bloody feet later, she arrived back at the room that she'd been staying in for the last few days. She didn't waste any time on ceremony as she shot into the bathroom and attended to her feet. They were roughed up with little cuts here and there and she examined them quickly, sitting on the edge of the tub and picking pieces of gravel out of them. She hadn't had any time to process what had happened at the event, nor did she have any time to now. It was quite possible that the man had found out where she was staying for the time being and she had to be as fast as possible. She swivelled so her feet were in the bathtub and she filled the tub just enough to let them soak as she tore open the first-aid kit over the toilet and organized what she needed. If she was going to get out of there she needed her feet to be taken care of.
The water was a mix of murky, muddy brown and a bloody pink. She drained it and towelled her feet off, not having the time to properly rinse them. She winced and snarled as she dumped the contents of a bottle of rubbing alcohol on them and took a minute to let the stinging, offensive pain die down. Tieria and Setsuna wouldn't know to come get her yet. As far as they knew she would be there for two more hours still. That was a long time to wait in a compromised location. She towelled her feet off again and carefully bandaged the worst cuts, then teetered on the tub edge and reached for the set of slippers that she'd brought with her. She had to pack her things and get going.
Her things were packed quickly. She hadn't brought much with her and packing the nondescript backpack was easy enough. She'd changed out of the dress and was now comfortably in jeans and a tank top, the white leather jacket that she'd worn initially when she joined Celestial Being would block out the cold wind of the evening. She looked the room over before closing the door and leaving, dropping the keys in the repository at the front door. She stepped out onto the street, wincing a little painfully as she walked briskly away from the derelict hotel and waved down a cab. Luckily she'd made enough money at the event to get around the city and wait for a pickup. She just had to hope that Tieria and Setsuna hadn't completely ditched her.
The cab dropped her off downtown and she walked aimlessly for a few blocks. She needed to eat, and she needed to go somewhere she'd blend in. A pub the next street over seemed like the perfect place. She stopped before reaching it and sent a message to both Tieria and Setsuna, telling them where she was. She hoped it wasn't long, the pubs would be closing in two hours. She slipped her contact drive away and slipped into the small pub, the massive oak door giving her a bit of trouble.
She'd stay here until the pub closed, and if she still hadn't heard from them by then she'd find a hostel or hotel to crash in for the night. She hoped it didn't come to that, but it was quite possible that it could. She sat in one of the booths in the back of the pub, taking shelter under its dim lighting and faint smoky smell.
What had happened that night?
It was supposed to be so routine and simple. Tieria and Setsuna were the ones with the greater risk, yet somehow she'd ended up running from a masked man with Lyle's voice who had the same abilities as her, then she was saved by a woman with Tieria's face who claimed she was something called an 'Innovator'. She inhaled deeply and sighed. Who knew how much information that man had gotten out of her head before she'd realized what was going on.
More importantly than the information was 'why?'. Why hadn't he outed her as a member of Celestial Being? Why had he given her information? Why had that woman let her go? Why hadn't the man, a member of A-Laws, stopped her? Why did he have Lyle's voice?
There were a million more questions just like those in her mind. She knew that she should be storing the important details away for her report later, but where would she start? How could she narrow down what was important and what wasn't?
Her contact device beeped and she looked at the message.
Unexpected departure. Will send pickup. Stay in-place.
Setsuna F. Seiei
She sighed. That was a relief at least. It was peculiar that he always used his full name. Then again, many things were peculiar about him. Many things were peculiar about all of them.
Many things that might not be secrets anymore.