"I got a burning heart (burnin' heart)."
- Miki Matsubara (and backup singers)
"Any message for your dear brother, my father?"
"You are my message."
- Excalibur
"You're not just giving us back our hope. You're becoming hope itself."
- Mami Tomoe
"Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service. It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I never wanted another."
- Martin Sheen
"No, I'm the real thing."
- Mima Kirigoe
"No! You can't take my powers, Rita! I'm the Green Ranger!"
- Tommy Oliver (30 seconds before the Green Candle burns out)
"I don't believe in the no-win scenario."
- Admiral Kirk
"Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station."
- Shizuru Viola
"It's not possible."
"No. It's necessary."
- Interstellar
"The Grim Reaper won't come when you're ready for him, Hathaway."
- Amuro Ray
"Wakarimashita."
- Mint Adenade
Akane's long-awaited wedding day had arrived. Her two assistants helped her pull some last minute wrinkles out of her silk gauntlets and fluffed the long white ribbon hanging off her back. She was to be the emperor's most priceless gift.
Chie gave Akane a playful pat on her bow after making the adjustments. Irina handed her a rose bouquet with a mischievous "Heheheh." Akane stood still looking at the flowers between her hands while her younger attendant worked on unruffling the front of her white gown around her feet.
"Your bridesmaids should have been Irina and Erstin. Just like your commencement ceremony three years ago. Instead you're getting Irina and me. I hope you'll behave yourself this time." Chie jokingly shook her head as she recalled times long past. There was a hint of melancholy lingering underneath her snickering voice. "You know what they say. Some cows just live on the farm. The ones Fumi loses track of end up buying it."
"I'm sure she would've loved to walk the aisle with me." Akane replied softly and blankly as she kept staring at the bouquet. The sudden rush of memories flooding her mind carved a painful chunk out of the happiness and hope her marriage was supposed to bring.
Erstin should have been here. There was no good reason she wasn't here. She was the only one Akane could think of who wouldn't be participating in the celebration to some capacity. Akane's cheerful room attendant had been best friends with Arika and Nina, and she had the whole world ahead of her during her first year at Garderobe.
But Erstin's family was from An Nam, and she had distant tragic ties to so many spirited, good-natured An Nam girls who'd been lost in the old Dragon King War. That's how Schwarz got to her. Practically blackmailed her into being their tool for conquest while calling it justice. She was an innocent girl who'd been killed for an evil cause others more powerful than her had forced her to follow.
Schwarz. Agents of chaos who had the audacity to pretend to be angels of peace. Damn those heathens and all their schemes straight to Hell.
The distant sound of organs and trumpets playing bright processional melodies pulled Akane out of her bitter reverie. She glanced toward her two bridesmaids and joined their infectious upbeat cheer.
"That's our cue!" Irina hopped with excitement.
"Well, hun. Here's your final mission. Ready for the big show?" Chie smirked at the wife-to-be with encouragement.
Akane was tempted to ask "Which one?" She was cautious, though. There could be microphones planted all over the back of the chapel.
Just before she started to walk, she raised the bouquet in her hands and twisted the stem of one rose by about 40 degrees. One of the leaves on the stem partially snapped open, and a tiny silver pill no bigger than a single pea rolled into Akane's gloved palm.
She looked at the object in her hand for a couple of seconds in slight trepidation. She popped the pill into her mouth, swallowed, and straightened her coronation tiara over her bridal veil. She raised her head toward the chapel entrance and began the procession behind her two bridesmaids.
Showtime.
Eight hours after the wedding, Schwarz remnants intercepted the Xeku Express luxury airliner as it was passing over the Chaldean Sea. The entire ambush force consisted of ten VTOLs, six jets, and a dozen crow-styled Slaves. Each of the manmade crafts bore Florince insignias that covered their actual Artai origins.
Those pests from Garderobe had run roughshod through the world for long enough. It was time to trigger another war that would exterminate them completely.
Boarding the ship wasn't difficult at all. It was completely automated with computers, and they expected to find only two hapless occupants on their honeymoon. The assassination team never questioned the total absence of other passengers, or attendants, or guards, or pilots. They just thought it made an easy job even easier.
It was set up that way to reduce the number of casualties their dumbass actions would surely cause.
The infiltrators entered the royal suite with guns drawn. The surprised emperor was yanked from his bed, revealing he was still wearing his pristine white bridegroom tuxedo. He was pushed toward the bedroom wall and lined up for immediate firing squad execution before he could even plead for his life. As he raised his hands to frantically shield himself, it became obvious he was missing his Master ring and had exchanged it for a platinum and malachite wedding band.
Just one more element was needed before the picturesque murder could be carried out.
The team turned back toward the bed to collect the small curvy lump still wiggling underneath the sheets. The headlines would be sure to spark colossal public outrage: The aspiring young ruler and his new little kitten killed in cold blood by cowardly Florince bastards.
Everyone in Cardair would be screaming "That monster, Charles Guinel! He was so jealous she didn't go to him three years ago!" and demanding retaliation for such a barbarous act. Everyone in Florince would be blaming Cardair for trying to frame their king. And then humanity would let go of the Pause button they'd been holding down on the 50-year-old War of the Dragon King, and the elimination of the Otome system would finally run the rest of its natural, long-overdue course. The world would be a wonderful place for a single faction to rule once every single one of those impudent wenches had their tight round derrieres disintegrated straight out of their tacky nano-leather unitards and all the leaders their puny lives were chained to were dead.
The Schwarz conspirators snickered hungrily as they yanked away the luxurious bedsheets to reveal…
…Gigi of the Delta Otome Squad fully armed in her Robe. The outfit resembled a flared disco jumpsuit covered in silver sequins, with large gold hoops around her wrists, ankles, and waist.
"Hiii guys! Looking for a different stewardess?" She smirked.
They were expecting to find the former Trias I hiding under the covers. Instead the current Delta R1 greeted them.
Gigi leveled the intruders with a jet-powered roundhouse kick while still lying down, then daintily flipped off of the mattress so she was standing just next to Kazuya. He looked at her nervously while he straightened his tuxedo collar.
"Delta R1 reporting. I'm with our VIP," Gigi turned her eyes toward the ear sporting her GEM, quickly lowering her voice to a more serious tone. "Tell the other Deltas to remain on standby. The white tiger's still in her cage."
She turned to Kazuya and smiled reassuringly.
"Come on, Your Majesty. Let's get you to the escape ship."
Tonight's events were going to culminate in a flashpoint, just not the same type of flashpoint Grand Duke Nagi's followers had calculated.
A secondary Schwarz team infiltrated the Xeku from the cargo hold, but they were cut off from the primary force when they found something bizarre in their path that couldn't be identified on any ship manifest. The structure was shaped like an 8-foot-tall metal egg sitting up in support brackets. It wasn't labeled with any company name or serial number. The only thing adorning its hull was an elegant painting of Garderobe wings crossed around the Cardair royal coat of arms.
All they could deduce about this thing, whatever it was, is that it was accumulating a massive amount of electromagnetic energy inside its shell. Was it some kind of remote computer the witches used? A new type of bomb they'd been keeping secret? The assault team's confusion halted any further progress toward the front of the airliner. They were so dumb that not a single of them stopped to say "Wait. Doesn't this thing kinda look like our old Valkyrie Core?"
The entire administration of Garderobe Academy was on high alert in those early hours. They were gathered in the Founder's Room hidden far beneath Windbloom's tranquil countryside, where they quickly took positions in the command station in front of Lady Fumi's spherical preservation bed. Yohko and Irina worked the consoles together, closely listening for anything out of the ordinary on their headsets. Sara helped them on and off on the tech side. Nao and Mahya were carefully monitoring the enormous surveillance screens that spanned an entire wall of the chamber, standing on reserve for anything they might see that would warrant direct Column action. Natsuki was looking back and forth between the enlarged video feeds and the other women in the room, overseeing the whole assembly with Shizuru at her side. Maria and Yukariko simply came to watch.
"Looks like Mahya's informants paid off. These bozos are right on time." Natsuki said with the faintest hint of amusement in her cold voice. The school administrator poured another cup of Shizuru's caffeinated tea from the overnight thermos. It was 3:00 AM, and this was her eighth cup within the past hour. Everyone else in the command center was wide awake as they anxiously waited for what they were about to watch on the video panorama.
Emperor Kazuya was brought onboard a small Garderobe dropship after being transported through the sky by Gigi. The Schwarz cronies had failed to spot the plane traveling just beside the much larger Xeku Express because it was cloaked with some technology donated by Sara, and they were complete morons.
The rescue operation was headed by Chie—formerly Trias II, now serving as Delta Commander. The first thing Kazuya noticed when he was in the passenger compartment with the four active Delta Otomes was how they all wore the same type of open-chested sequined disco Robes with slightly customized insignias. He was used to just seeing them in their formal uniforms when they were running Cardair's communications center while Akane was on a mission. Were they planning on going to a Star Wars convention at 8:00 and a Saturday Night Fever reunion at 9:00 or something? As odd as they appeared, the long triangle-shaped necklines on their Robes offered a nice peek at their feminine endowments.
It dawned on him that Akane would be slapping him if she was standing beside him right now. He suddenly felt ashamed and shook his head. But if Akane were with him, he'd have no need to be reviewing some other lady's merchandise. How he pined for her every second he wasn't with her.
Kazuya was handed over to Chie's protection once he was safely on the rescue ship. Gigi, Dorothy, and Jessica saluted him, returned together to the drop door, and launched back out into the night sky. Their sequins turned black when they were in the open air so they'd be harder to spot.
The sky violently rumbled as the Xeku Express exploded a few hundred yards above the Delta Squad's ship. The Schwarz agents had frantically planted explosives all over the airliner once their mission started going awry. The dozen crow Slaves accompanying the jets and VTOLs screamed in mechanical laughter as the whole ship came apart and started plummeted toward the sea.
A small metal object fell out of the hull of the burning airliner. It was the mysterious egg structure the Schwarz agents had discovered in the ship's storage decks.
Everyone in Garderobe's control room became noticeably more attentive as they watched the destruction on-screen.
"Okay. The Column Pisa's in free fall. She's got an 8,000 foot window to pull off her miracle," Yohko said from her computer.
The structure was named as such because a Founder was a tower that provided the foundation for Columns, or a Founder was a tower supported by Columns. It depended on who you asked.
Principal Natsuki turned toward Vice Principal Shizuru and blew a restless mouthful of air through her blue bangs.
"You do realize in the three hundred years Garderobe has been in existence, we've never actually tested something like this before, right?"
"Faith is a thing even Fumi can't test scientifically, my dear Natsuki," Shizuru said with gentle and unwavering confidence.
It was a shame all of the other Meisters Akane had befriended during her years of service couldn't watch the spectacle when it was live, but that would have been totally impractical. Meisters who weren't employed directly by the Academy were all lawfully bound to their own countries, and they had to worry about their own public and private interests before anything else. They'd just have to watch the recorded version as an encore.
"Akane!" Emperor Kazuya screamed as he threw himself toward the dropship's open door. The haunting orange reflection of the exploding airliner shined off his eyes.
"It's alright, Your Majesty," Chie said behind him in a deliberately relaxed and affable voice. Her hand remained on his shoulder to keep him in place. "We've accounted for all of this. It's just part of the show."
"But she's… !" Kazuya glanced over his shoulder in panic.
Chie calmly shook her head.
"She'll be fine. Your life isn't bound to hers anymore. Now you get to see what your Otome can really do when she's completely freed from her cage."
"MATERIALISE!"
Akane's determined command phrase echoed inside the airtight, soundproof containment pod as soon as she felt the container violently rock and a sudden burst of gravity came rushing toward her feet. The acoustic reverberation inside the small enclosure was the first time she ever got a real sense of what her authoritative voice sounded like to other people, and why her Sisters always teased her for sounding soft and cute even when she was angry.
Slowly but surely—like an old analog tape struggling to catch up to its normal playback speed—her earstud twinkled weakly and tried to start its activation sequence. A tiny message slowly shimmered across the GEM like thick writing ink trapped inside ice.
A. K. Connecting
A. K. Connecting. .
A. K. Connecting. . .
It was pitch black inside the pod, but the weak and unsteady glow on her ear made everything a little bit brighter.
The small container continued falling faster than the airliner's burning wreckage, and nothing was happening. It reached 7,000 feet to the emergency cutoff point. Then 6,000. Then 5,000.
"It… it's not working! One of you has to catch her!" The emperor was shouting in terror while he pointed at his wife's escape pod shrinking away below him.
"No way. If we do that before we hit minimum altitude, it definitely won't work," Chie said. Her emotions remained cool as she tried to inspire the trembling emperor. "Her Field is unsteady enough as it is. If one of our Robes gets within a few feet of her, she'll start pouring all her juice into us and the whole thing will fall apart."
She pointed at the sky outside the ship, drawing his attention to the barely visible black specks that were Gigi, Jessica, and Dorothy. They were diving toward Akane's pod while matching her velocity, so they were always slightly above the structure. They could adjust the ribbon stabilizers on their backs to speed up their descent and get directly underneath the pod if it was really necessary.
"It'll be fine, Your Highness. My girls will catch her if she falls too far. None of us want you to be married to a pancake." Chie rubbed his shoulder supportively.
Akane's GEM was struggling inside the hollow egg. It'd been stalled at the initial startup for 20 seconds now. She closed her eyes, held her breath, and tried to remember what weightlessness felt like. With a little iron help from Garderobe and a little protein help from Kazu, she used her extensive meditative training to manage the minute chemical processes occurring throughout her body. Like the legendary Circe mixing her potions together to create something that defied all mortal logic.
She tried to picture her husband's successful future once her spectacle tonight put him on the map. She tried to picture the beautiful individual faces of each of the children she was going to have with him. Maybe she'd name her first daughter Erstin, as long as Nina and Arika didn't mind. Princess Erstin Krau-xeku.
The message on the GEM continued refreshing.
A. K. Connecting
A. K. Connecting. .
A. K. Connecting. . .
Chie was careful to hide her growing concern so she didn't make things worse for the already frightened emperor. He and Akane had been so happy together just a few hours ago, and now he was a trembling wreck. What mental trick did Akane use to melt all his fears away when things were looking rough? Did she use a certain tone of voice? Was there a certain (and hopefully not too racy) spot on his body she could poke to relax his stress? Was it just because of how gooey and blushy she got every second she was around him?
Chie felt like she should have been able to figure it out and replicate it, considering she'd trained with Akane for two years, and spent most of their senior year only one rank below her.
She started privately gritting her teeth behind her closed lips as she watched the altitude limit constantly tick down in her Robe's optic tracking.
4,000 feet to Terminal Line. 3,000 feet, 2,500 feet. Come on. Come on. Get a move on, already!
Just when it seemed things couldn't get more discouraging, one of the crow Slaves swung out from the rest of its formation and started gliding toward the falling container. The giant half-metal, half-feather bird opened its beak to arm its laser.
"Wai-wai-wait! He's not supposed to be there!" Dorothy shrieked to her teammates in the sky. Kazuya gasped in horror beside Chie.
"Akaneee!" the Delta Commander shouted into the air. She wasn't trying to be polite or levelheaded any more. "Wakeup call, sweetie! We need you out of there RIGHT NOW!"
The Columns watching in Garderobe were starting to collapse as they collectively gasped in distress.
"Well, she's a goner." Nao rubbed her forehead defeatedly and looked away from the screen. Sara threw her head back like she'd been suddenly shot in the face and slapped her palm against the bridge of her glasses.
"Come onnn! You'd be a pain in the ass any other time!" Mahya lost her temper and shouted at the screens. Her fists were clenched at her sides and making rocking motions as she growled. Nao turned her head toward the darker-skinned Column, raising an eyebrow when she started to realize how much Mahya was actually rooting for Akane.
Maria and Yukariko were folding their hands in silent prayer. Yohko and Irina both sat at their monitors nervously clawing their heads like identical flea-infested cats.
Natsuki glanced toward Shizuru. Shizuru glanced back at Natsuki. Neither was sure what to say to the other.
At the electronic epicenter of the chamber, behind all the Academy staff gathered around the monitors, Fumi's preservation tank glittered through its standard routine processing cycles. A short message was broadcast from the structure in a form of binary no living person could hear.
"Enough suffering. Let the girl have her party."
Every set eyes responsible for running the current era's Garderobe Academy was staring at the monitors waiting for the impossible to happen.
The weak light inside Akane's pod was gradually growing stronger. Her GEM flickered faster and more steadily as the bootup message continuously updated.
A. K. Connecting
A. K. Connecting. .
A. K. Connecting. . .
A. K. Connecting. . . .
The message abruptly changed. The earstud replayed Akane's "Materialise!" command in her tiny digitized voice, verified her vocal pattern, and chimed.
A. K. Connected. ADMIN A. K. OVERRIDE
"Natsuki, ma'am! We've got a GEM Activation signal! It's registering Pure Heart Malachite!" Irina announced in surprise as she frantically straightened herself in her chair and held her headset against one ear.
"Who's it trying to pick up for the Master? Krau-xeku? Himeno?" Natsuki blurted out with uncharacteristic apprehension. The initials K. K. would mean Akane was accessing her feudal life-contract with Kazuya. The initials F. H. would mean she'd managed to tamper into the higher-level Garderobe Column network.
"It doesn't say!" Irina quickly announced back. "It's running the ignition sequence with that part completely blank!"
Holy Mother Beneath Us. Natsuki completely froze in shock. That was the first good sign they were looking for.
(Had she uttered her interjection out loud, Nao or Sara probably would have asked "Uhh… don't you mean Behind Us?")
Natsuki regained her composure and turned toward Shizuru.
"We're positive her nanomachines are dormant, right? It couldn't be a decom misfire?" The Principal asked cautiously, hoping to rule out the one troubling possibility that would derail their plan and Cardair's entire future.
"Certainly not. Emperor Krau-xeku's PSA signature was sweeping through her system three hours ago." The Vice Principal subtly popped her lips. "If anyone from Cardair tries to claim the marriage is void because she failed to consummate it, we have the documentation to prove she very much did."
"I'm not worried about that," Natsuki half-grumbled. Her eyes were getting more leery as she lowered her voice. "What I want to know is you're sure it was a total decom."
"I checked all the bio scans twice." Shizuru modestly nodded. "She even asked me to verify because she was a little nervous about their family plans. Our stud's not shooting blanks."
"That could only mean…" Natsuki was in too much disbelief to even say it.
"She's been quite the rebellious girl since she graduated, no? She's not running off one of our contracts like an innocent Coral anymore." Shizuru quietly smiled in confirmation.
"Then that's Step 1 finished." Natsuki took another sip from her tea. "Now Step 2. All she's got to go on is the heavy metal supplement, an hour in an incubation module, and her 'inner maternal instincts' you're always preaching about. Let's see if that's enough to trigger a Founder Reaction."
"I think she'll surprise you. Just watch what she can do when she really concentrates." Shizuru gazed toward the live video broadcast patiently.
The hull of the plummeting metal pod started to crumble open. The small figure inside was prying the container apart with the desperation of a baby dove struggling to hatch from its egg so it could begin its new life.
"Zoom in with camera 8," Nao commanded Irina. "What's that pulling it apart? Are those… her hands?" She gasped in disbelief as she watched the monitor with her own eyes. Her nervous expression changed into a wild grin. "You're kidding! The brat's really making it work!"
"How can you be so sure?" Sara asked skeptically beside her.
"How can I be… You've been doing this eight years longer than me! Think! Could you or I split a 3-ton titanium assembly apart with our scrawny arms? And Akane benches less than either of us! If she's doing that, she's in Robed form, stupid!" Nao snapped back in defense of her old Pearl classmate.
The Column Pisa forcefully shattered to pieces from the inside out just as the crow's laser fired from its screeching mouth. The pale blue beam collided with a blinding Materialisation shield where the pod had been falling a second earlier, and the particles bounced off with the effectiveness of a paper airplane.
"She's critical." Natsuki almost dropped her tea as her eyes widened.
A glaring white figure escaped the container's destruction and lunged 50 meters laterally in the span of half a second, flying straight through the Slave in her path. The figure rotated and stopped in the air as the red burning debris of the Xeku Express, the red burning debris of her containment pod, and the green burning debris of the dying Slave came crashing down around her and dissolved into the water far below.
Akane remained hovering at a fixed altitude on her own power. The Pseudo-Founder Effect was now in play.
"Tinkerbell found her happy thought." Shizuru proudly chuckled under her breath.
Kazuya took such a deep breath of relief he nearly fainted backwards into Chie. The Deltas following Akane quickly ascended into a formation far above her so their Robes wouldn't interfere with hers.
Certain physiological markers in Akane's body (specifically those normally only generated by a mother nursing a new infant) were confusing her dormant nanomachines into thinking she was now at a stage in life capable of supplying excess power to younger Otomes. She was using sheer willpower in conjunction with the dissolved magnetic particles she'd swallowed eight hours ago while her nanomachines were still active to create a small but self-sustaining energy loop. She was able to reclaim 2% to 4% of the Materialisation energy her body was constantly shedding off in order to generate her Robe, but that number was steadily falling as the extra metals in her bloodstream spent their small magnetic charge.
Founders were intended to play a passive supporting role toward younger Otomes since they were long-retired and their bodies were physically deceased. Real Founders like Lady Fumi (the Divine One who was the Master to them all) and Arika's mother (no less Divine, regardless of how Schwarz had defiled her to the point Arika was tearfully forced to put her out of her misery) had to remain in their preservation cradles at all times so they wouldn't instantly turn decrepit from impurities in the open air. But with Akane's young age working in tandem with her magnetized circulatory system, she was able to become an unofficial Founder in battle form. All the necessary microscopic ingredients were already present in her body. They just had to be rearranged into the correct matrix that made the billions of tiny generators in her bloodstream say "Hey! This lady was pregnant and had a baby!"
Explicitly speaking, she was performing a hack on top of another hack and barely getting both to work. Tricking her internal nanotech to act like she was a Founder, and then tricking the external GEM on her ear into thinking she was a Column-level Meister so it tapped into her own runaway energy streams and she formed a contract with herself. The margin of error just to get the method to work—much less have it work feasibly without disintegrating herself in a short circuit—was too astronomical to measure.
The extravagant form Akane took was partially her wedding gown, partially her tiger Robe, and something else entirely. The combined result was like an Egyptian fairy queen turning into some sort of cosmic jellyfish covered with stripes.
She was swarming with Materialisation fibers that spread in every direction like arms reaching out for something to share their energy. Her Robe was in a constant state of trying to exist and instantly dissolving at the same time. It was supposed to be a formfitting white catsuit, but the best it could do right now was form very long, very loose drapery with the catsuit's markings.
And the effect was so beautiful…
"Akane!" Chie yelled into the turbulence so her GEM would transfer her voice to Akane's ear. "However you're doing that, Professor Yohko's math says you've got around three minutes of decent Op Time! Make it count!"
Considering what was about to transpire, it may have been more appropriate if Chie told her she had three minutes of "OP Time."
"Let us know as soon as your anti-gravs start having problems! We'll keep circling you until you're ready to be picked up!" Dorothy confidently added in the air above her.
"Affirmative!" Akane called back to all of her Sisters. If she was fast enough, Schwarz would never find out this was sadly a one-night-only event.
She launched horizontally again and began her assault. She gripped the stabilizer of a VTOL and hurled the entire craft into two others. She sliced one of the jets in half with a dive kick.
Every time she turned or accelerated, the surrounding air roared with excited ozone. The anti-gravity forces that traditionally held her aloft weren't just localized to her wrists and ankles, either. Her entire body shimmered like a single large flight drive.
Her intense iridescent glow—thousands of lumens brighter than all the burning debris falling around her—was visible from hundreds of miles away as a shimmering white dot zipping across the sky. The strange atmospheric effect would quickly to attributed as a bright omen that appeared on the emperor's wedding night. An omen that said: "The Krau-xeku Dynasty is here. The kingdom is in good hands."
Holy Empress Akane Krau-xeku the First (née Soir) was born in A. R. 313 to an army tailor and a court physician. Since the age she could first speak, she was fascinated by the bravery and glamor of heroic Otomes, and she looked up to them as if they were really her older sisters. It became her life's dream to grow up and join their order herself so she could follow their legacy with pride.
In A. R. 328, she enrolled at Garderobe Academy as a Coral. That same year, she met a minor Cardair prince named Kazuya Krau-xeku while he was studying history and etiquette at the neighboring Windbloom Academy. He had no aspirations of ever assuming any serious position of leadership in his lifetime, as it would have taken some unforeseen geopolitical disaster before the Cardair throne was shuffled around enough that he was even a succession option. Akane and Kazuya dated steadily for two years, while Akane rose to become the top student in her Pearl class: Trias I. As her dream of becoming a respected Otome started becoming a reality, she began to foster another hopeful dream: One where she would someday be Kazuya's wife.
In A. R. 330, Akane was selected to become the Meister Otome of King Charles Guinel Roy d'Florince VIII, and she was pushed through an early graduation that separated her from the rest of her class. Cardair and Florince were still dangerous rival nations at the time, and Akane's two dreams were suddenly split in the middle of a nightmare: She would never be able to serve at the king's side in Florince and settle down with Kazuya in Cardair. Even if she was allowed to retire after a few years in Florince, she'd be expected to live there for the rest of her life. They would cherish her and spoil her as a high-ranking noble, but she'd never be allowed to take their national secrets anywhere else. Especially not to their most hated enemy. She handled her conflicted feelings by hastily apologizing to Charles Guinel and fleeing in the middle of her commencement ceremony.
And then the unforeseen geopolitical disaster happened. Emperor Argos XIV of Cardair was killed with his Otome Fiar Grosse in an illegal weapons dispute. The event brought a violent and spontaneous end to the Argos regime that had gone corrupt ever since the premature deaths of 8-year-old Argos XII and his conscripted Otome guardian, Monica Julen, during the War of the Dragon King in A. R. 281. Argos XIV's cruelty and links to Schwarz being exposed ultimately led to a massive counteroffensive against the Schwarz-occupied Windbloom a couple weeks later, while Kazuya was thrust onto the empty Cardair throne against his will by an emergency royal committee. And because he was a young and alarmingly vulnerable new ruler facing the onset of a new international war, he desperately needed someone to serve as his retainer.
During all the political tumult, Akane was being emotionally torn apart. The first dilemma was she could rebuke the Academy's plans for her and choose a private life with Kazuya over a royal life in Florince, but then she'd never graduate to become a Meister Otome. The later dilemma was she could be Kazuya's Meister Otome, but the restrictions on her title meant she couldn't be Kazuya's wife until the Academy deemed it appropriate. Garderobe forced her into taking the second option to make her uphold her responsibilities, and to give the Krau-xeku regime a chance to survive in dangerous times. Her formal contract-binding was performed in an empty throne room still bearing the scars of the battle that had killed Argos XIV and Fiar, with only one Column present to officiate the ceremony.
There were countless times when Akane thought she and Kazuya would never have a future no matter how hard she tried or what choices she made. Day in and day out for three years, she served faithfully as her Master's Otome. At night, she would weep to her superiors Mahya Blythe and Shizuru Viola in heartbreak, admitting she didn't know how much longer she could deal with the stress of putting her life and Kazuya's life on the line when all she was accomplishing was keeping him alive. Chie Hallard and the Delta Otome Squad—handlers assigned to her to make sure she followed her contract and offer her any assistance she needed—felt like her only allies.
But for this one night, in these short three minutes, Akane got to live both of her dreams at the same time. She had 172 seconds to bid her final farewells to her childhood dream before she fully embraced her new dream in adulthood. This was her Swan Song.
"This one's all on you, babe," Mahya said as she watched the screens with the rest of the Columns. She shrugged jokingly in surrender.
The pilots inside the remaining jets and VTOLs were screaming with their superiors on Artai's encrypted channel.
"How the hell is Krau-xeku's bitch fighting us?! HQ was positive that punk knocked her out of operation!"
"Looks like she's operating just fine to me!"
The second pilot exploded into a hail of fiery vengeance two seconds later. Long enough for his final broadcasts to reach Artai's home base.
In Garderobe's command center, Yohko was explaining the logistics of what was happening to her tech assistant, Irina. Irina nodded along in curious adoration to everything the older researcher said.
"You see all those silk streamers floating around her?" Yohko pointed to the largest monitor showing the aerial battle. "That's actually her GEM being horribly inefficient. It's just spilling energy all over the place and barely able to hold itself together in a form capable of flight."
Akane threw her arms to her sides as she hovered into the center of the monitor. In the next instant, she was holding two yellow light pillars that extended so far across the sky they had no visible ending point. She disintegrated the entire murder of crows in a single broad swing.
Several continents away, hidden far away in a place where no surveillance cameras reached, eleven Schwarz conspirators abruptly dropped over dead and vanished into the same flurry of glittering green specks that had taken Erstin.
Yohko shook her head with her palm tucked against her chin as she continued explaining the visuals to Irina.
"And those… Oh, dear. I can hardly recognize them. Those are her poor tonfa trying to Materialise under her arms. The particles have no vertex to assemble around since Lord Kazuya creamed her weapon systems, so she's exploiting that to turn them into an Unfocused-Pain-Extending-Into-Infinity thing. Yeah, that's… not supposed to work like that." The doctor painfully cringed.
Jessica panicked as she circled in the Delta ring half a mile above Akane's head.
"Dorothy! Gigi! Be careful around those things! We can't tell where they actually end!"
Listening to the broadcasts of all three Deltas, Chie shook her head without the slightest concern. She patted Kazuya on the shoulder as she responded to her subordinates.
"You guys have nothing to worry about. They'll phase straight through anything Akane isn't trying to target. What kind of terrible mom would hit her own daughters?"
Just to demonstrate, Akane inadvertently swung one of her infinity-tonfa straight through the flying Delta trio. The particle stream graced across their bodies without leaving a mark, but when she turned and sliced the not-weapon through three enemy VTOLs, they instantly exploded in vibrant orange debris clouds.
"See? Told ya so." Chie chuckled.
"Sorry!" Akane's digitized voice broadcasted through the Delta Squad's GEMs.
All of the staff in Garderobe's command center were watching the one-sided Schwarz demolition as if their hearts would instantly stop if they so much as blinked.
"That brilliant light over Monica's country… A shining star heralding a brighter era… It's just like you and Sylvie wished, Big Sister." Maria gasped in awe as her gaze remained frozen to the screen.
"Heh. Definitely more fancy than any illusion I could pull off," Yukariko bashfully said beside her.
Two more VTOLs and another jet exploded as Akane decimated the entire Schwarz fleet in effortless weightless bliss. The few remaining survivors managed to avoid her erratic lightning-patterned flight path long enough to turn around and begin their retreat from Cardair airspace. She made sure to take snapshots of them in her eyes and quickly transmitted the data to the Delta Otomes for safe backups.
The high-resolution photos clearly showed ships painted with Florince insignias retreating in the opposite direction from Florince. That should be enough evidence to show Florince that Schwarz was trying to frame them and Cardair saved their from falling into the plot. That would calm any further war cries from Florince, and it would keep things safe for Shiho—the Trias III from Akane's class who now served as Charles Guinel's Meister Otome.
Akane's gravity resistance started to flutter. Her luminescence rapidly died down just as the last of the invaders were fleeing. Gigi made an urgent hand signal to her two circling teammates, prompting them to dive to Akane's altitude. Jessica and Dorothy gently caught her by the arms while Gigi remained on the lookout in front.
The Pure Heart Malachite GEM deactivated for the final time until a new successor could be chosen. Akane's clothing phased back into her long but relatively plain white wedding gown. She and the Deltas hovered in the air watching the ocean horizon together as the scant remaining Schwarz units ran home terrified of Cardair's new royal family. At a far enough distance, the black sequins on the Delta Squad's Robes made them blend in with the twinkling night sky so it just looked like the bride was steadily floating by herself above the sea.
Akane fulfilled her ultimate purpose beautifully. Notwithstanding the sad moments where history went wrong and Otomes were forced to fight one another as enemy bannerwomen (a series of mistakes the Schwarz cult were hellbent on repeating), the noble maidens were primarily meant to act as deterrents that ensured the peace and survival of their home countries.
"How'd it feel being a Founder, granny?" Jessica giggled into Akane's ear.
"Like I could spend all day training every girl on the planet how to fend for herself while still having energy to spare." Empress Akane sighed in comfort, but she was starting to look a little despondent.
"I'm going to miss being part of this. Everyone here is like a second family to me."
"Awww, come on, Akane!" Dorothy cheered supportively. "Don't get all gloomy on your wedding day! All you gotta do now is have some cute daughters and let us help you raise them! It'll be like you never left!"
Akane just smiled quaintly and nodded along. She struggled with her confidence in some things, but she needed no extra encouragement when it came to living a bountiful life with Kazuya and his many children.
"Now let's get you to the ship. Your emperor's been going crazy without you." Gigi winked.
Gigi led the way toward the hovering dropship while Dorothy and Jessica escorted Akane. When they were a few feet away from the ship, Kazuya yelled his wife's name and frantically leaned out of the door so his hand could touch hers. Chie had to hold him by the waist to stop him from jumping into the sky to reach her.
"Hold your spurs in for just a second, cowboy! Your pony's come home!" She said with jovial laughter as Kazuya's elbow anxiously flailed in her face.
Dorothy and Jessica let go of Akane's arms. The toes of her slippers graced the cabin floor with a soft thump and she was cuddled against Kazuya's chest with her arms wrapped around his back before her feet even fully landed. She closed her eyes and turned her ear against his sternum like she could fall asleep right on the spot. It was almost like a second, more private recital of the wedding: The sensation of being handed over by her sisterhood in an emotional farewell and landing into the arms of her emperor.
"Thank you so much. All of you." Kazuya quietly said to Chie and her team as his chin nestled into Akane's hair. He gave her scalp a tiny kiss.
"Hey, thank your wife! She did all the hard work!" Dorothy playfully objected.
"Yeah! Why would you even thank us? We were never here!" Jessica grinned and threw a peace sign with her gloved fingers.
"They moved our contracts to Aries right before the wedding. Remember? Oh, and Haruka and President Chrysant said congratulations." Gigi tilted her head suggestively. Garderobe was essentially approving the deed to the Cardair empire being transferred to a pair of 20-year-old kids and then stepping away from all further political involvement, but the emperor and empress would still have plenty of support from the international backstage.
Akane made a slightly stubborn grunting sound as she tugged at Kazuya's tuxedo collar, signaling that she wanted his mouth a little lower. She lifted her head toward his as he looked down at her.
In the back of a covert Garderobe military transport, surrounded by Akane's elite armored Sisters in the early morning hours, the emperor and empress leaned into each other and shared a kiss that was even more tender and sacred than the one they'd shared in front of the wedding altar.
"Now there's the real magic," Chie whispered quietly to her teammates. All four Deltas wiped the sweat from their brows, the joyful tears from their eyes, and smiled at a job well done.
On this day, Emperor Krau-xeku's enemies were taught he hadn't married an Otome bound to Garderobe's system and rendered her powerless. He'd married a Goddess bound to no one and helped her become even stronger.
"That was insane." Column Nao blinked at the screen projections in disbelief.
"That was ridiculous." Column Sara rubbed her forehead in confusion.
"That was salvation." Maria held her eyes closed in deep gratitude. Warm tears would start sliding down her face if she opened her wrinkled eyelids even a millimeter.
"That sure was something special!" Yukariko nodded cheerfully and scratched the back of her neck.
"I'd like someone to tell me what subsection of the Nanodiffusion Treatise allowed THAT to happen." Deputy Column Mahya picked sand out of her eyelash while tiredly shaking her head.
"NEVER make me do that again!" Professor Yohko yelled in flustered exhaustion from her console.
"That looked so cool!" Irina exclaimed with her hands clasped together in rapture and her eyes twinkling with enamored stars. Erstin would've been inclined to agree.
"You guys need to get on diagnostics pronto." Sara waved her hand anxiously toward the rest of the staff. "Our fireworks show fried like ten different feedback monitors I didn't even know we had."
"A real tragedy is what that was. I think we wasted about 30 years of Materialisation energy in a single 3-minute stunt." Yohko sulked with grief. "Fumi would be screaming at us if we tried to do the same thing with her."
"Calm down, all of you." Vice Principal Shizuru crossed her arms and cleared her throat. "The computers are just equipment that can be replaced. The school certainly has the finances to cover something so minuscule. The only energy quota Akane burned through was her own. She'll more than regain it by the time she's old enough to serve as a proper Founder. If she chooses to do so in her will, of course. Tonight's show has convinced me she'd be a very nurturing one."
"Gotta side with Viola on this one," Mahya spoke up as the three minutes of controlled chaos she'd just witnessed settled in her mind. "The objective was to lure out the rest of Nagi's stragglers so we can send a message while he's rotting in jail, and also make all of cutie-pie Akane's hopes and dreams come true on her wedding night for however long the fun would last. I'd call it Mission Accomplished. And now everyone in Cardair is going to think old queenie is capable of functioning as her own supernova whenever she feels like it, so we scored some bonus points raising the public opinion on her and Kazuya. That should slim down the chances of any more civil conflicts breaking out in that country for at least the next eight or so generations."
"I just hope we didn't set a terrible precedent here." Headmistress Natsuki rubbed her chin with concern, pitching her voice into a sarcastic propaganda tone. "Hey girls! Get banged! It's the way to become even more amazing!"
Shizuru offered her own opinion in a polite and collected voice.
"No, I don't think it's going to become a trend. This was a special exception where the Academy's needs and the needs of one of our dedicated officers aligned perfectly. It will show the little ones the wonderful things that can happen when a Meister Otome retires with a sturdy record of good service." Her attention shifted away from the Columns as a group and focused on the Headmistress specifically. "No organization has ever succeeded by staying exactly the same all the time, Natsuki. A snake has to change its skin from time to time in order to survive."
The Vice Principal harmlessly shrugged and offered her superior another cup of tea.
Author's notes:
That reminds me. This whole current run of Mai Otome fanfics I've been writing lately was inspired by a gravestone I saw in episode 8 that was for an Otome named PENELOPE Lowell contracted (and I'm assuming married) to a Master named Sergio Lowell. Spooky in hindsight.
Are you asking yourself "Yeah? Well how are they going to do that again if Schwarz goons ever attack them thinking she's not actually a goddess?" You're not really supposed to think that far ahead. Nobody ever asked Adrian Veidt "Yeah? Well how are you going to do that again if anyone thinks they're not actually being invaded by giant telepathic alien squids?" Kazuya and Akane will probably have Yayoi or somebody to fill in as their regular not-constantly-going-thermomagical Otome anyway.
Akane's dad is the dead tailor dad from Pan's Labyrinth. Her mom is Meryl Adenade. Out of this pairing you get: Armed forces girl who crafts her own uniforms by being meticulously in tune with her body's inner workings. (I just made them up for this fanfic. I have no idea what her parents are like in canon.)
Alternate title: My Self-Sustaining Criticality Event Can't Be This Cute!
Kazuya's performance in this story was inspired by: Dick Van Dyke in "Where Did I Come From?"
Natsuki's performance in this story was inspired by: Billy Bob Thornton from Armageddon, John Cusack from Fat Man and Little Boy, and James Earl Jones from The Hunt for Red October .
I came up with the Xeku Express name as an homage to the Xeku Eins / Xeku Zwei and the Solomon Express. Because it sounds neat and it blends well with the "Akane is a magical girl Gundam" motif.
Dressing all the Deltas up like Siegfried & Roy was an idea I was getting for the alternate-Deltas that serve in Cardair instead of Aries in "Orange Brunch." I thought it would work well in this story. It builds off of Chie's official Otome Zatanna design so it's like "They're still glitzy stage magicians, but now they're a different style of glitzy stage magicians so they work around Akane's white tiger design."
Yes, there's an Otome named Gigi in the Mai Otome Zwei OVA. Yes, the canon names of the girls on Chie's Otome black ops team are Gigi, Jessica, and Dorothy. Checkmate bros.
This is a way more satisfying wrap-up for Maria's character than the official episode 26 imo. None of that "Miyu made the blue thing glow red and this somehow ties into some vaguely defined prophecy I've never mentioned before so I'm going to be happy now (even though this ending is just repeating the exact same ending from Mai HiME for no reason and Miyu is a totally pointless character in this setting because you could SO EASILY write her out of the last couple of episodes completely and just say all the Otomes teamed up together on their normal contracts because their leaders set aside their squabbling for five seconds to fight Schwarz together)" bullshit fyi tbh afaik.
When I was writing this, I was picturing Akane's glitched out not-working-too-well Robe to look more like Belle from... uh, Belle (Ryuu to Sobakasu Hime) and less like Goddess Madoka (but the Goddess Madoka thing works pretty well too.)
If I did a version of this story where That Bad Thing actually happened to Akane and Kazuya, I feel like I would get a weird mix of comments stuck between "This reads like a firsthand account of the Romanov assassination" and "Dude, you totally just ripped off that flashback scene from Final Fantasy X-2."
Akane is really dueling back and forth on which Hathaway's Flash Gundam she wants to cosplay. The dramatic hatching out of a falling egg launch sequence and the soundtrack this entire fanfic was written around: Xi Gundam. OMG it's A HAND?: Xi Gundam. Traumatized rebelliouz gurl with a score to settle: Hathaway. "Righteous Prophetess of One Very Specific King": Mafty Navue Erin but with the noun / adjective order switched around. That first pose she does when she just floats there looking powerful with all the wreckage burning down around her: HG Xi Gundam box art. "My flight systems are fully realized and function without any external attachments": Xi Gundam. "My flight systems look cool but they're actually horribly designed and inefficient": Penelope. Interesting animalistic thruster noises: Penelope. The part where she's directly paralleled with the goddess Circe: Lane's Circe Unit. The last part where she's hovering low over the ocean in her poofy bridal gown: HG Penelope box art. I blame: Otomes in the Mai Otome universe are a direct parallel to Gundams, but Otomes (Gundams) are supposed to be nice sisters who don't fight each other, so Akane's just gonna be ALL the Otomes (Gundams).
Akane was never going to become a nuclear bomb even if she messed up her "hijacking the nanomachines" trick. Garderobe never, ever would have allowed her to attempt this if there was even an infinitesimal chance she could wind up accidentally bombing her own kingdom. The worst that could happen was Akane shorts out and instantly greensparkles herself on activation, and the Deltas would have to clean up the Schwarz goons. This would have made Emperor Kazu-kun a widower on his wedding night, and that would have really sucked, but no one else would have gotten hurt. The lead-up to this mission was basically: Akane goes to Mahya or Chie with one of her last "Waaah, I can't take this anymore" angsty episodes. Shizuru is carefully monitoring this. Shizuru goes to Yohko and says "I have an idea that's going to scare Nagi's clowns shitless, get revenge for Rena, and make Akane very, very happy. Would something like this work... ?" And Yohko's like "Maybe... ? But the window would be really tiny and she'd have to meet some very specific criteria." Shizuru chats with Mahya and Chie. Mahya and Chie go back to Akane and brief her on The Proposal. Akane 100% voluntarily accepts on the grounds she's getting her dream wedding as a super-undercover Otome Op and it's her one big chance to help Cardair. Shizuru was her zen trainer for the mission, but the final step of actually making it *work* was all up to Akane.
Lots and lots of references to the number 8 in this fanfic. 8 is an important number in Mai HiME / Otome lore when you're talking about Akane. Episode 8 in the original series is when the Akane Thing happens, and episode 8 in Mai Otome is the episode with Maria's heartbreaking War of the Dragon King flashback (which is basically Mai Otome's parallel version of the Akane Thing).
800 Kazu-kuns were sacrificed in "Catlito's Way" to make this timeline exist.