"I've become so numb, I can't feel you there. *upbeat synth trumpets* Become so tired, so much more aware. *bouncy keyboard riff*"

- Linkin Park 80s-style remix that I saw on tumblr with a little Animal Crossing guy dancing to it

"How do you get a crew to want to get off a submarine? How do you get a crew to want to get off a nuclear su-… ?"

- Adam Maitland

"Ernest Hemingway once wrote 'The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.' I agree with the second part."

- Morgan Freeman

"Gay fighting fucking force."

- Quentin Tarantino

"bleepy boop."

- Seraphim Gundam


Yumi's metal fans unraveled another tightly-wound bundle of viscera from the sparkling dead magician. She tore her lifeless opponent apart piece by piece, shredding through the black and silver Robe like it was tissue paper, and deliberately skipping the most vital parts so it wouldn't all disappear at once. Shimmering embers twinkled off the floating remains of the defeated Otome while endless torrents of blood changed Yumi's dark green mass-production Robe to dark red.

She managed to inherit her beloved empress's colors after all.

The girl was more barbarian than beauty. When it was over, she hovered by herself in the fading orange sky. The fact she was merely alive was proof enough of her victory, while saying nothing of the fact she was soaked with gore from head to toe.

There's a tragic lullaby the Otomes sing, about a little girl named Maria who watched her mentor named Monica fall to the hands of her friend named Sylvie in a battle neither of them wanted, and then watched Sylvie fall to yet another friend. The little girl was simply too young and too powerless to help any of them. Well, what if Maria took matters into her own hands and destroyed it all so it could never happen again?

Black-red hair clinging to her face like moss, body hovering with straight vertical posture to hide her exhaustion, Konala's youngest and highest-ranking Meister Otome growled through her teeth in a bloodthirsty tribal trance.

"Bring me Malachite."

Chie's hand gently brushed Akane's cheek as her eyelids fluttered to alertness. Bright fluorescent beams were gliding in a straight line over her head.

The Imperial Meister was lying on her back with large white pillows stacked under her head. When she tried to look down toward her limbs, all she could see was a long white ocean of hospital sheets. She was lying still, but constantly moving in a hurry. She heard a small beep, beep, beep tucked somewhere next to her ear, and the rhythm was subtly increasing the longer she looked around.

There was a screen filled with her vital signs hanging over her head. IV bags dangled next to the monitor, feeding the thin clear tubes taped to her under the sheets. She could hear her own gentle, raspy breathing in the funnel covering her mouth and nose as the machine supplied her with rich oxygen. Her mind was still in a light haze from the sedatives she'd been given after Kazu couldn't bring her out of her hysteria on his own.

Everyone was sprinting beside her as she glided down the hall. Kazu was looking down at her with the most concern, and his eyes stayed on her the longest when everyone else was looking ahead. His right arm was wrapped in a burlap sling.

Chie was on the other side of the rushing bed, looking at her with a mix of urgency and doubt. There was another woman beside Chie who was more fixated on the monitors and IVs as she helped keep the cart moving. She was a Cardair nurse who looked a little familiar. Akane might have met her during one of Kazu's first assemblies.

"Chie? What is this?" the Imperial Meister's voice sounded slightly muffled inside her oxygen mask.

"You're on medical leave at the moment," Chie responded like she was supplying directions rather than stating facts. "We have to get that nasty gash on your shoulder checked out. We're worried your nanogenerators might be escaping your bloodstream."

"My shoulder?" Akane murmured curiously. "But Mia never…"

Dark fuzzy fragments of the battle replayed in her memories. Her opponent swung her knife-fans toward Akane's passing side, and she barely dodged out of the way with a split-second corkscrew maneuver. She was terrified of losing when Kazu's life depended on her. She refused to lose.

Chie coyly smiled, raised her index finger to her lips, and whispered "Shhhh."

Then Akane started to understand. They were staging an injury to give her the perfect opportunity to slip around backstage.

Emperor Kazuya shook his shoulder inside its sling, asking "Do you really think they'll fall for it?"

"Don't you notice how dumb they are with the way they're running the world out there? They'll never have a clue. Just be careful with how you move it around when people are watching. You and Akane are supposed to have a severed deltoid," Chie said back. Her expression sharply changed from confident to regretful. "I just wish we could have tried this sooner before I had to kick Shiho out of the hen house."

"Shiho?" Akane's eyes grew slightly wet as her breathing mask steamed.

"Yep." Chie made such a short word sound so painful. "Old Chuck threw himself into the cauldron for my round. Even the other Florince girls couldn't believe he did it. I guess you really pissed him off this time."

Akane blinked. It didn't make any sense. A moment ago, she'd seen Chie being vividly torn the shreds in the sky. But here she was now, alive and in one piece, racing beside Akane's gurney.

The vision. The nightmare. She'd seen something that hadn't happened in her emotionally tormented sleep. But something in her consciousness told her it could happen if things continued on their current path. What was she supposed to be doing differently?

The last time she ever had a dream that frightening was right before she breached her contract with Florince and began her elopement with Kazu. In the dream, she tearfully ended her relationship with Kazu completely, went through the graduation ceremony without incident, and upheld her honor by serving her home country as its Crown Meister. She was constantly racked with doubts and regrets in private, but she worked hard for her people and was highly adored in public. The Pure Heart Malachite with a broken heart.

On one particular day, she was standing next to the throne overhearing the daily reports. Trivial details about the kingdom's goings on that flowed in and out of her ears, except for one thing: A comment that one of the emperors in Cardair was dead. Assassinated while hiking through some woods a short two months after he was crowned, and no suspect had been identified. Oh well. No one expected him to last very long anyway. That's what they get when they keep tossing children on their throne. It was just a curious observation that meant nothing to anyone in Florince, except her.

She remained respectfully quiet at her station—as was expected of her—but her trembling knuckles were clawing the blue and white apron covering her waist until her nails sunk into her palms and started drawing blood. She needed to scream, but her duties required her to stay silent. And then she woke up.

That dream was what finally put her anxieties over the edge and convinced her it would be wrong for her to stay in Florince. She had to flee with him as soon as the opportunity arose. There was no other possible way she could react when, in the version of history that actually happened, Kazu valiantly burst into the middle of her ceremony, renounced his nobility in Cardair so he could be with her, and begged her to race away into secluded paradise with him. Their lives were simple but happy for that short time they were together, until Cardair decided he was going to be the next emperor anyway.

They were never able to consummate their love before they were separated again. Deputy Column Mahya forced Akane to enter a new contract with Emperor Kazuya to make her uphold her duties. Then the current war broke out, and the elder Cardair Emperors ended up getting her as an unexpected bonus in the deal.

"Sorry. I guess our Trias is down one girl again. We're really making a bad habit out of that," Chie shook her head remorsefully, completely oblivious to Akane's fears. "Hopefully Nao's still out there slinkin' around somewhere."

Shiho was dead. That could only mean the king of Florince was dead. It would have been Akane in Shiho's place if she had kept her original contract in her home kingdom. But what about…

"Sister Rosalie?" Akane's well-respected predecessor from Florince, and King Charles Guinel's alternate. Akane said her name in a small and fretful voice.

Chie shook her head again, but now she was in relief.

"No. That flower's still on the program with us. Not quite ready to join the other stars up there yet. She demanded they switch her contract to some butler at the last second. If she'd been connected to the throne when I took Shiho down, all three of 'em would have Sparked Out together. Or she'd just fall out of the sky without her Robe and die the less pretty way. They're not all complete morons over there."

At least Akane had one thing she didn't need to feel guilty about. Chie continued speaking with a determined glare.

"We're not going to wait a few more years. We probably don't even have a few days left. We're getting you out of this insane asylum, Akane. And we're getting Kazu on the real throne where he belongs. I'm just sorry I couldn't scrounge more support together for you in such short time. We already lost all the heavy hitters we could have relied on. Haruka, Mai, Arika, Mia, Nina…"

The Delta Commander sighed as she lowered her head in grief.

"Anyway. If we're quick, we'll get this over with before they have time to call me out to fight another one of their island Otomes."

Akane suddenly gasped in panic, instinctively knowing that strategy was never going play out the way Chie wanted. Her left hand lashed out from under the white gurney blankets and locked in a vice grip around Chie's forearm. Her heartrate elevated tenfold. The sudden jerk caused the Delta Commander to briefly freeze in surprise.

"We'll take too long if we try to resolve this one country at a time. I'll take care of Cardair," Akane insisted instead. "You take the Delta team to Konala. We've got to make a truce with them first."

"Akane." Chie sighed in sympathy, thinking this was just her peer's guilt speaking. "I know how much she meant to you, but that country is just…"

Akane's hand gripped her wrist even tighter.

"You have to, Chie. Offer them a truce and help them recover from what I did."

"What good would that even do if I tried?" Chie's tone was growing more despondent the longer the conversation took this route. "Their whole island chain is conscripted to Florince. They never wanted in this thing to begin with. I'm telling you, Sis, you need my girls' legs kicking doors down over here, in Cardair."

The answer came from Akane's lips like a prophecy from an oracle.

"The contract's void." She paused as she took another gulp of purified oxygen. "It was signed between Sou and d'Florince VIII. Mia's and Shiho's losses nullify both signatures. Konala has no obligation to help anyone anymore. If Konala stops bankrolling Florince, Florince will lose their main funding for the war."

Chie thought silently as the gurney continued to roll. Her expression gradually changed from confusion to amazement as she traced the logic in her own head.

"Sacred Mother Herself. Even I wouldn't have thought of that." She looked down at Akane with confidence returning to her face. "What's gotten into you, Soir-chatte?"

The nurse on Akane's left started to speak.

"I didn't want to say anything to get you more worried, but her EEG spiked a minute ago. It was right before she woke up. I've never a reaction like that before."

"Shock again?" Chie's apprehension started to creep back into her voice.

"No, couldn't be," the nurse said with complete certainly. "Neural signs baseline when that happens. This was the total opposite."

"Alright, then. Uh… wow." Chie blew surprised air through her lips as she scratched her forehead. "So… what do we do about retaliation for Shiho? A reserve ace from Cardair just killed the king's top ace from Florince."

Akane delivered her answer softly, but promptly.

"There's no documentation officially linking the Delta Otome Force to any specific government. They're an international corps that maintains the Otome system throughout the world. Their support of Emperor Kazuya are just baseless rumors. They weren't even in the same country at the time Cardair was consolidated under the Krau-xeku household."

"Holy shit." Chie's face turned ghostly white. This was actually going to work. She chuckled nervously to regain her composure.

"Okay. I guess I'm taking the girls on a tropical cruise, then. You sure you can do this without your backup dancers?"

"I'll have Kazu. He's going to be the one leading us when this is over." The Meister smiled up at her emperor. Kazuya smiled back to his Otome in relief.

"Well, this is a change in the program I wasn't expecting." Chie shrugged in submission. "Big Sister Soir, nicest girl on campus, would lock herself in her room and cry for days if she ever stepped on a bug. Now she's going to pull off a coup d'etat to take over an entire continent by herself."

"Did you forget how I ended up here?" Akane lightly giggled back at her. "I don't always have to follow the rules."

After closing her eyes and taking a light breath to organize her thoughts, her tone became more serious.

"Is anyone else in medical?"

"Just Laula. They got her through the alliance with Lutesia Remus. She's not in great shape after Carla…" Chie started to answer.

"I want her with me if she's able," Akane firmly instructed. "The queen of Remus won her rivalry with Romulus, but she never wanted to use her Otomes against anyone else, and she never wanted to kill all of us. If she hates the other Cardair emperors for dragging her into this as much as I do, I'll get her to authorize Laula."

"Akane, I'm not sure she's in any condition to go fighting."

Akane gently shook her head.

"She won't have to fight any Otomes this time. Those poor girls are all on the field. I just need some extra muscle to help me plow through the regulars so I can get to the Royal Command Center. But if they have any Otomes stationed there, I'll do all the talking. None of us want to keep dying."

"I'll see what I can do." Chie sighed. Akane was on strategic auto-pilot, changing from a meek serving girl into an accomplished empress all while she was sprawled on a medical gurney. All Chie could do was try to follow along. "Any special requests for when I get to Konala?"

Akane's eyes glanced up at Chie pleading for mercy.

"They're a peaceful kingdom, but they're panicking right now. Emperor Kishuku and his wife were the best friends to every citizen there. They kept their ports open to any country who wanted to trade with them. They only made an argument if you invaded their borders or criticized them for putting pineapple on a pizza. Just try to keep them calm until Kazu is in charge over here."

She looked away from Chie and stared down toward her white sheets in reserved melancholy.

"I'll become the Otome who ends this nightmare for everyone, and then I'll surrender my GEM to the girl Mia would have chosen for her successor. I just hope she accepts it, and forgives me."

She stared up at the gliding light beams as she remembered some of Sister Maria's less encouraging teachings at Garderobe.

"A personal attendant representing Cardair defeating an empress drafted to Florince. I never wanted to turn Mia into a repeat of Monica. And wherever she is, I know she still doesn't want me to become the new Sylvie. I'll beg that girl for forgiveness once Kazu has our country under control. I'll do whatever I can to ease her suffering. She was Little Sister to Mia. She's my Little Sister as well."

The name Fearsome Heart Malachite flashed through her thoughts for an instant. Things were starting to steer back toward the right path.

Chie remembered that sad old story as well, but she'd always been worried about the other possible parallel. One that would be even closer to history: Trias II Chie ends up in a position where she's forced to defeat Trias I Akane, and then someone else defeats Chie so neither one of them gets the chance to live on for the other. That terrifying possibility always seemed to be growing and shrinking with the tides of the war.

The bottom of the gurney slammed through a pair of double doors. The hastily assembled party was about to arrive at the first security checkpoint.

"I'm going to get the D-Girls working on this one fast. Are sure you can keep up with me?" Chie squinted at Akane like she was making a friendly challenge.

"Just remember the Academy," Akane answered with a soft exhale through her mask. "You and I were the best synchronized dancers in our class."

Chie turned toward Kazuya with all the fading hopes of the world haunting her eyes.

"Okay, boss. We tried to do this two years ago with Mashiro in Windbloom, and it didn't take. This is our second chance at making things work with Cardair. Our last chance. You're going to be the one calling the shots from now on. Just try to be careful where you put your hands on my Sister this time." Her eyes darted toward his sling. "Or your hand, anyway."

Kazuya answered Chie while gazing down lovingly toward Akane.

"She's safe with me, Lieutenant General. If she can keep talking like this, I'll just follow her cues."

The narrow fluorescent beams gliding over Akane's head ended. The hallway opened into a large foyer with blinding round spotlights beaming down from a ceiling far above her. When the nurse had to report to another station and Chie had to scramble with the rest of her team, all that was left was the emperor's encouraging face peering down at Akane in the brilliant white light.

The dressing room was behind her. She was about enter the world stage with Kazu as her partner.


"Uhh… guys? I think our stray kitten just saved all our hides." Nao's mascara-smeared eyes blinked at the memo glowing on her portable monitor. "Cardair calls for immediate armistice. It's coming from callsign Pure Heart Malachite, acting in the name of… High Emperor Krau-xeku?"

The Five Columns were assembled in stoic and anxious fashion inside the principal's office on the highest floor of Garderobe. Nao, Sara, and Mahya were seated at a roundtable obsessively watching terminals hardwired to the Founder's logistical database. Natsuki was standing at the edge of office with her emotionless face a few inches away from the large skyline window, watching everything that happened in the distant horizon like the captain of an air boat. Shizuru stood faithfully by her side, clutching a closed hand over her own heart and almost never saying a word. Maria, the school's most experienced non-executive instructor, stood behind the three seated Columns in isolated meditation.

Every public communication (and even some of the encrypted ones) from every kingdom on their planet came to them in a constantly updating data stream. Needless to say, the reports they had been reading for the past half-week were some of the most awful imaginable. All the world's day to day functions, it seemed, had come to a complete halt so all the time could be spent forcing Otomes to murder each other.

Garderobe's administrators couldn't move an inch to help them. Anything that could provoke belligerent countries into seeing the Columns as an enemy faction would put the lives of all the young Corals and Pearls on their campus in jeopardy. Any campaign against Garderobe could spell the end of every Otome who ever breathed, permanently.

Once there were no angelic Otomes left to pacify the public with their serene dances and maintain order between negotiation tables, the world would just go back to tearing itself apart the old ways. Humanity nearly destroyed itself once three centuries ago, until the Holy Mother Fumi sealed all the technology and created a system where only a fraction of it was entrusted to her very special daughters. The world's rulers adhered this system on the fragile mutual agreement they could command and fuel these daughters by binding their lives to them.

The stability of the entire planet was hinged on the Otomes swearing absolute loyalty to their Masters, but now that arrangement was driving the Otome system to cannibalize itself. The few that remained were fighting and giving up their lives on the hopeless prayer it would prevent the worst outcome from happening.

As each minute passed and the world fell deeper and deeper into madness, even the Founder herself couldn't calculate an answer for what they were supposed to do. There was no strategy she could form when her network connections were limited and the only information she received was despair from every region.

The only thing the Columns and their senior instructor could do was wait until someone called for peace, or someone launched an attack on Windbloom. A fragile kingdom that had already lost all of its defenders, leaving them as the only Otomes who could save it from falling into total ruin. Their only solace—as heart-wrenching as it was to admit—was that their Sisters were out there killing each other rather than killing them. But that predicament couldn't last forever.

The Headmistress's eyes were staring blankly out the window toward the sky. All of those girls' hopes and dreams were supposed to come true in that sky. But so many of them were being taken away so violently and so quickly, the entire troposphere seemed to be turning into an unnatural glittering green haze.

Oh, how she realized how much she hated that color in these past couple of days. And now it was all she could see every second she was awake.

When Nao announced the first good news to arrive in ages, most of the reactions of the women in the office were mix of fleeting hopefulness and shellshocked skepticism. Could it really be true? After all that had happened? But slowly, as the facts sank in, their spirits were rising.

Not Natsuki, however. She was so lost in her millions of regrets and misgivings that news the war could be ending didn't even phase her.

"No communications from Chie?" She asked hesitantly. Her thoughts could only focus on the negative. So many of her personal friends and most trusted allies had already died for her mistakes, she was desperate to find just one who survived.

"Nope. Not coming out of Cardair," Nao replied from the table.

"Is there news from any of the Deltas?" Natsuki stared at her own forlorn reflection in the window. Even the icy Headmistress of Garderobe could melt into tears at any moment.

"The announcement doesn't mention them at all," Sara said. "The only other thing is a statement recognizing Kazuya's reign. It's coming from… United Lutesia?

Maria quietly gasped in private. What was happening in her home country? It hadn't been called that name since she was just a Coral, back when Cardair and Florince dragged the rest of the world into their blood feud the first time fifty years ago.

Sara continued her report.

"There's a congratulations message from An Nam. Aries is throwing in their support, too."

"An Nam?" Mahya checked her own screen a second time as she muttered under her breath. "But Ahn Lu's team was aligned with… " The rest of Columns were too fixated on the other alerts to even hear her.

"Damn. Those girls really did it. But they must have bought it during the assault on Bozos A and B." The Headmistress was about to pound her fist against the glass. She stopped herself and slowly lowered her arm. "At least they got Soir through for us. She and Krau-xeku are the last ones who would go on any kind of war path."

It wasn't someone Natsuki had a personal friendship with, or a particularly close service history, but it was hope. A weak glimmer of it that could be smothered out any moment.

"It's to be expected, dear Natsuki," Shizuru tried to calmly reassure her superior, but even her words came out slightly strained. "So many brave Otomes sacrificed themselves for their countries these past few days, and it was our failures that allowed this to happen. It's only fair we have to part with some of our Sisters as well." Silently, she mourned: If only we didn't have to lose this many…

"Wait a minute!" Mahya instantly lunged forward in her seat, grasping her terminal for dear life. "Florince issues withdrawal so immediate reconstruction work can begin on the mainland and in allied territories. Volunteer efforts are being organized by Lt. Gen. Hallard!"

Natsuki and Shizuru both gasped with total shock. An imaginary magician winked back and tipped her black top hat toward them.

"What the hell are they doing over there?" Nao blurted in surprise.

"Performing their greatest vanishing act yet, apparently," Mahya said half sarcastically, half gratefully. She loosened her grip on the monitor and flopped over the table in exhaustion.

"Tiger Girl busted us out of this cage all on her own," Sara chuckled with disbelief, understanding what it all meant. "She just needed a little push from her friends to get her claws out."

It wasn't simply the first uplifting thing they'd heard in countless hours. It was inspirational. Nao's head sank and she covered her face with her palm like she was about to burst into hysterical laughter, or sobbing. Mahya was sobbing with her face pressed against the desk and her arms crossed behind her head. This was never how she wanted her strategy of binding Akane to Cardair to play out, but the hopeful seed she planted two years ago finally blossomed into their salvation.

Maria was struggling to hold her own tears.

"Then all of our prayers are answered. Fumi was right." The veteran instructor clasped her hands firmly in reverence. "And I was wrong for forcing her to sign with Florince's crown against her wishes." She bowed her head in deep respect.

Natsuki finally stepped back from the windows so she could rejoin her peers, with Shizuru following her closely and quietly. She flopped into a spot on the semi-circular sofa between Nao and Mahya, hanging over the cushions like all the energy had left her body in an instant.

Nao lounged back in her seat as she took a long gasp of air. She stretched a friendly arm over Natsuki's shoulders and offered her the weakest support she could manage.

"Hey. I know it sucks what happened to Tokiha and Armitage. We all lost someone here."

As sly and ruthless as she normally was, Nao's life debt to Mai weighed heavily on her conscience. She'd been promoted to the Column position that was originally intended for Mai, before Mai had her little misadventure disappearing from campus and returning from the wilderness a couple years later with her strange "cat goddess." Mai chose to stay on the outside and do what she could for the rest of the world using her technically renegade Meister contract, and she congratulated Nao on the promotion. If Mai was in this office serving as Column IV today, it would have been Nao disappearing into the ether out there in an ambush several days ago.

Natsuki stared at the table and silently shook her head. Nao sensed her shoulders were trying to shiver, and her mind was fighting it off.

"I'll be fine." The Headmistress said defiantly, glancing toward the window again. The war banners were already starting to come down, but those were too far away for her to see. What she could see was the twinkling green mist peacefully fading from the sky.

She closed her eyes and managed a small, bitter smile.

"In a world like this, someone's gotta keep the fire alive."


Author's notes: I borrowed a few ideas from Honeymoon Hijinks (and combined them with the more detailed description on how Founders work from the 6th chapter of Slaughter & Shieldmaidens).

Yukariko is downstairs trying to keep the lil ones calm. Or she's ded. I did have an earlier draft of this where she's in the principal's office with the other ladies, standing there "lost in silent grief." But she didn't say/do anything and she didn't really have a purpose in the story.

This has been Mint Casts Time Stop: The Apocalyptic Fanfiction.

Alternate title: Zatanna and Sexy White Ranger Take Over the World.