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The End of the Circus: A Tale of the Yizibajohei
Omake: Rise of the Darling of the West
by Regina Magia
Within the XIIe Arrondissement of Paris, on the Rue van Gogh near the Paris-Gare-de-Lyon railway terminal, the third Sunday of November in 2012, after nightfall (Tōkyō time: Monday, three hours after midnight)...
"Wh-wh-what's happening to m-m-me...?"
Looking at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, Émilie "Mimi" Poirot found herself gaping wide-eyed at the glow surrounding her body while her rather fashionable clothes began to smoke from the growing heat surging through her muscles and bones. Outside, she could hear the sounds of her classmates partying, they totally ignorant of what was now happening to the daughter of an SNCF official in charge of TGV operations between the City of Lights and France's third-largest city of Marseille on the Mediterranean coast near the Italian border. As far as her peers knew, the pretty brunette had just too much to drink; it was known that she had only attended one other party where hard alcohol was served.
"Hé! Mimi! Are you...?!"
Mimi gasped as the door connecting the bathroom to her host's bedroom opened.
"...oh, dear..."
A blush crossed the brunette's face as Alison Clary — who normally went by the nickname "Alice" — stopped to stare wide-eyed at her now very luminously glowing friend. Shaking her head even if she didn't seem TOO surprised at what was happening, the newest member of Mimi's première class at the Lycée Elisa Lemonnier near the Boulevard Périphérique could only shake her head. "A-a-Alice, I...!" Mimi sputtered as she waved her hands in reassurance. "I don't know what...!"
Tene lomher'buo, Aglaë Héloïse Émilie Poirot...!
"Mon Dieu! What was that?!" Mimi screeched.
The native of Marseille who had caught the eyes of many boys in their class — not to mention Mimi, who had discovered her bisexuality sometime ago — rolled her eyes. "Thank God I had the apartment sound-proofed!" she muttered to herself before she walked over, grabbed her friend's hand and pulled her into her bedroom. "Relax, Mimi," the daughter of a doctor working at the nearby Hôpital Saint-Antoine muttered as she forced the brunette to sit on the bed. "Take your clothes off if you don't want to lose them," she bade before walking to the door leading into the hallway. Opening it, she leaned out. "Chantal! Tristan!" she called out loud enough to be heard over the music booming in the living room.
Two people came over to look in, their own eyes widening before they quickly scooted into the room. As Mimi squawked while covering her exposed chest with her arms — one of the newcomers, Tristan Dupin, was a handsome raven-haired, dark-skinned man of mixed Métro and Réunionese ancestry — Alice secured the door, then walked over to her closet to pull out a form-fitting jumpsuit of a silvery crystalline design that sparked a strange memory deep within her new friend.
"Put this on!" the doctor's daughter bade as Tristan walked into the bathroom, closing the door to give the girls privacy. She then gazed on her other friend, Chantal Hanaud. "I think I know what happened to those missing éclairs," she then wryly stated, waving to her classmate.
Mimi awked as her cheeks turned a deep red...
Moments later, the train official's daughter was dressed in the jumpsuit with a pair of buccaneer boots covering her feet, she now sitting on the bed. As the increasing sense of familiarity concerning what was happening to her now — Mimi now knew it was a Gifting, where a native of the same planet where the famous Power Jewels had been forged would be infused with metahuman powers — her three friends had switched from normal clothes into more colourful jumpsuits of the same pattern she now wore...not to mention the pattern of jumpsuit worn by the reborn spirits of warships from many nations who had gained life as filles navires; "shipgirl" was the common English term for such beings.
Since one of those maidens of the sea — none other than the reborn Grand Cuirassé Richelieu of World War Two fame; she had taken the human name Susanne du Plessis de Richelieu — wore the same model uniform when she was "rebuilt and Gifted" into a mouth-watering blue-eyed blonde supermodel when she "reported to duty" at the Palais de l'Élysée, then was commissioned as a capitaine de vaisseau in the Commandos Marine by direct order of President François Hollande himself...!
Shuddering as she fought the urge to please herself while that stunning twenty-something's perfect looks surged through her mind — indeed, Susanne's image on France 2's special broadcast in late October concerning the arrival of filles navires to defend the Republic had given her loads of fuel for some saucy wet dreams — Mimi then focused anew on Alice, Chantal and Tristan. As more memories — collected over a period of two thousand years by the past holders of whatever Gift seed was now inserting into her body — came to her, she was quick to recognize specific patterns her friends wore.
The strawberry blonde-haired doctor's daughter from Marseille was in a saffron yellow jumpsuit with turquoise belt and boots, a turquoise sun-like image over her cleavage embossed with an eye in normal colours. This marked her as the current incarnation of the Mind Shaker, R'bemkae Bolem ("Madame Mentalité"), a powerful telepath and telekinetic who's first-self actually hailed from the Yizibajohei analogue of France, the Republic of Loruotuto on the western equatorial continent.
Chantal wore a lilac purple jumpsuit with silver belt and boots, a ghostly skull image on her upper chest. This marked her as the current incarnation of the Whispering Bandit, Nahuser'be ("Fantôme"), a person who could become intangible. Noting that, Mimi then blinked as a new memory inserted into her mind revealed that Chantal's first-self was a Loruotuto-lem from the old capital city of Kuole — today, it was just called "Habitation Seven" — where she worked as a master thief for a local crime syndicate.
Finally, there was Tristan. His uniform was sea blue overall, with celadon sea green belt and boots, not to mention padded gauntlets; on his chest was the image of a taebyuo, a sea mammal common to most of Yiziba's oceans. That marked him as the current incarnation of the Ocean Searcher, Tae'emo ("Chien d'Eau"), a powerful hydrokinetic whose first-self had been an undersea explorer from the central equatorial continent where the legendary Battlezone was located today.
"So what are you getting?" Alice then asked.
Mimi blinked before she gazed upon her hands once more. They were glowing much more brightly now. Closing her eyes and relaxing herself, she leaned back as the mesonium crystals that were embedded in her current jumpsuit started to sparkle lightly. Fortunately for them, the crowd in the living room were now too inebriated to notice four of their members missing; thinking of that, the train official's daughter then realized that her host was obviously using her own powers to keep people calm just in case someone got curious and decided to take a look around. "She was...some kind of model. Or actress. All the incarnations were female..." A blush then crossed her cheeks. "Quite pretty ones, too..."
"I can think of several possibilities off the top of my head," Chantal mused. "Anything special?"
"Her Gift," the shuddering teen answered before confusion crossed her face for a moment. "She's a high-level VISS — is that what benokuku translates here? — plus empathic powers as well." Here, Mimi shook her head as she felt something large surge into her body. "Sounds like fun...!"
And as she got to her feet, she felt herself falling backwards off a cliff.
"Taeim letam...!"
Nesu...HEKAE!
The bedroom was bathed in blinding light...
...which then faded to reveal Mimi now in a neon pink jumpsuit complete with cherry red belt and boots. Over her cleavage was a gold heart within a red star. Once her friends turned to gaze her way, they then politely applauded the return of Hekae ("Ravissement"). Yet another Kuole-lem who had been a top actress and fashion model in her first life, the train director's daughter also had the ability to manipulate emotions with emphasis on having people either admire her or actually fall head-over-heels for her; this had served Mimi's first-self when it came to defending family and friends from the rampaging hordes of Yiziba's largest battle group, the infamous Unending League of Super-Soldiers.
"The Darling of the West," Tristan immediately stated Mimi's tag line before he gave her two thumbs up, that echoed by Chantal as Alice stood to help their friend stay on her feet. "Looking good, Mimi!"
"Mon Dieu...!" the slowly-swaying Mimi moaned. "Save for the lack of balance, it feels good as well..."
"So what are we NOT going to do in the future?" Alice demanded, wagging a finger at her.
Two hands came up in surrender. "Never pilfer éclairs again!"
Laughter filled the bedroom, then Alice turned to head for the door, touching her belt buckle to change back to her normal clothing, which prompted Chantal and Tristan to get up. "Let me clear everyone out of here, then we'll take a flight around the city to work off post-Gifting shock."
Chantal and Tristan did the same as Mimi grabbed her clothes, then raced for the bathroom...
An hour later...
"Ah! Paris is so beautiful in the evening!"
"Oui, it is!" Mimi said as she held Alice's hand while the two soared over the winding Seine as it flowed through the City of Lights; the newly-Gifted Darling of the West was using her flight powers while the Mind Shaker kept herself aloft using her telekinesis. "Especially when you're flying over it with wonderful friends," she then coyly added with an inviting wink.
"Flirt!" the transplanted Marseillais mock-pouted back.
Behind them, Chantal and Tristan shared knowing looks as they followed their friends thanks to a levitating disk of hardened water the latter had summoned which they now stood on. As the quartet moved to fly over the Champ de Mars, passing the Eiffel Tower to the south...
"AH!"
All four literally skidded to a stop in mid-air almost abeam of the Tower before Mimi squealed in starstruck surprise on seeing the statuesque twenty-something now floating dangerously close to the just-Gifted teenager. As the others took in the stunning looks and form-fitting jumpsuit in the Tricolore of the national flag worn now by the first of her class of fast battleships reborn as a shipgirl, Alice took a deep breath; she didn't care for the idea of colliding head-first into a person having the metaphysical weight of a 48,486 tonne warship! "Oh, Capitaine de Richelieu! I'm sorry!" the doctor's daughter apologized with a bow. "Our friend here was just Gifted and we were taking a night flight around Paris."
Susanne du Plessis de Richelieu blinked before she wagged a finger at them. "Stay at low altitude, don't go near the airports and do watch where you're going. Some of the filles de contre-torpilleurs are doing low-level night flying exercises over the city tonight in practice for Friday's delightful fun in Japan just in case Madame Katabarbe's plans for Mademoiselle Redet are fouled up for some reason." Then, with a playful wink at Mimi, the adopted native of Paris and Brest flew off.
Another squeal escaped Mimi as her friends gave her concerned looks...
Fin...!
WRITER'S NOTES
Translation list and source language: Arrondissement — A municipal district of a large city (French); SNCF — Short for Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français ("French National Train Company") (French); TGV — Short for Train à Grande Vitesse ("high-speed train"), France's version of Japan's Shinkan-sen bullet train service (French); Hé! — Hey! (French); Première — Literally "first", this implies students who are in the equivalent to Grade 11 in North America (French); Lycée — High school; Boulevard Périphérique — A controlled access expressway that rings Paris, usually parallel to the city boundary (French); Métro — In this case, short for France Métropolitaine ("Metropolitan France"), the mainland part of the Republic in Europe (plus several overseas colonies) (French); Réunionese — A native of Reunion, a French island colony near Madagascar (French); Filles navires — Maidens of the fleet (French); Grand Cuirassé — Large Battleship (abbreviated GC), the term serving as the type prefix for French dreadnoughts in the universe of Fred's stories (French); Capitaine de vaisseau — Ship-of-the-Line Captain, French and Canadian French title for a navy captain (NATO rank code OF-5) (French); Commandos Marine — Navy Commandos, the French Navy's special operations forces (French); Madame Mentalité — Ms. Mentality (French); Loruotuto — Land of Javelins, derived ultimately from the proto-Germanic term frankô that would evolve through Latin into the modern term "France", plus the "-tuto" ending to mark a nation-state (Yizibajohei); Fantôme — Phantom (French); Loruotuto-lem — Native of Loruotuto (Yizibajohei); Kuole — Analogue of Paris, naturally (Yizibajohei); Taebyuo — Seal (French); Chien d'Eau — Water Dog (French); VISS — Short for Vol, Invulnérabilité, Super-force et Super-vitesse ("flight, invulnerability, super-strength and superspeed"), local version of the English abbreviation FISS or the Yizibajohei Benokuku (short for "Betuo, Nokite, Kuoduo ku Kuoruto") (French); Ravissement — Rapture (French); Marseillais — Native of Marseille (French); Filles de contre-torpilleurs — Destroyer maidens (French).
Naturally as with the main stories, the reborn battleship Susanne du Plessis de Richelieu (GC Richelieu [pendant 41]) takes after her Kantai Collection interpretation.
