Turn 23: Battleship Island
The Nautilus sails under the sea. The first mate came in Suzaku's quarters.
First mate: The captain would like to see you.
Suzaku: I see.
He then walks out, and then head straight towards Nemo's cabin.
Suzaku: You called me, Captain?
Nemo: Yes, I have a favor to ask you. Are you interested in vampires?
Suzaku: Vampires?
Nemo: Yes! As soon you look up the history of Kaiser Vlad. (He hands him the book titled 'History of the German Empire'.)
Suzaku looks and reads into it.
Suzaku reads from pages to pages until he finally stumble onto a article:
Suzaku: Kaiser Alucard Tepes Vlad III (28 July 1813 - 11 November 1918)
Alucard was born on 28 July 1813 in Germany. His family was originally from Transylvania in Romania who were later exiled for crimes of being vampires. He soon rose to power and ruled his home country with an iron fist, and the land itself was in a constant state of spiritual turmoil thanks to his despotic rule. Alucard later conquered another land, the country of Moldavia in Romania which its people while still resenting the psychotic autocrat, gave him another notorious alias, the "Sorrow of Moldavia." It was said he was a powerful magician and a genius in many ways, as well as a tyrant, an autocrat, a lunatic and a genocidal madman. Because of his evil ways he wasn't well liked by his subjects and he killed hundreds of them. He was purportedly both an alchemist and a warlock.
He eventually died at the age of 105 in 11 November 1918, but not because of his old age. His people had led a rebellion at the end of the First World War and they tried and executed him in a manner that they saw fit for his rule. He was poisoned, shot, stabbed, hung, stretched, disemboweled, drawn and quartered. Just before his head died, he uttered this prophetic warning: "Death is but a door. Time is but a window. I'll be back!" People suspected that not only he was vampire, but also a geass user.
Suzaku: A vampire and Geass user?
Nemo: More obvious isn't it?
Suzaku: Obvious?
Nemo: On 28 July, 1914, his 101th birthday. He arranged the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Suzaku: And the first world war began.
Memo: Have you ever heard a man called Béla Kiss?
Suzaku: No.
Nemo: He was a Hungarian serial killer. Little is known about his childhood, but by the time Kiss was 23, he was renting a home in the town of Cinkota, outside of Budapest, and running a prosperous tin business. He was regarded as a gentleman and eligible bachelor, throwing lavish house and dinner parties. His blond hair, tall stature, and handsome features made him appealing to many townsfolk. He also became deeply interested in astrology and the occult.
It was around this time in 1903 that Kiss began plotting his horrific murders. He would place personal ads in newspapers claiming to be a lonely widower looking for marriage under the alias "Hoffman." He would use this method to correspond with women, and managed to convince some of them to give him their money and assets.
In 1912, Kiss married a woman 15 years his junior named Marie, but shortly after she began an affair with a young artist named Bikari.
These two lovers became Kiss' first victims when they disappeared that year. Bella Kiss tried to explain the disappearance by claiming Marie had run off with Bikari to America, but in reality, he had strangled them both to death.
After their murders, Kiss continued corresponding with lonely women, but this time after defrauding them of their money he would lure them to his house so he could strangle them to death with rope or his bare hands.
Like a few serial killers, Kiss sought to preserve the bodies of his victims. Specifically, he would pickle his victims' bodies in large steel drums filled with wood alcohol (methanol). He would also drain the blood from the necks of his victims, earning him the moniker the Vampire of Cinkota.
Suzaku: The Vampire of Cinkota?
Nemo: To justify the presence of so many steel drums on his property, Kiss claimed he was stockpiling gasoline for the expected shortage coming with the beginning of World War I. Though many suspected him of secretly using these drums to store alcohol, none could have suspected what he was really using them for.
None of these murders came to light until years later. In 1914, Kiss was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian Army and marched off to fight in World War I. He left his house with an elderly housekeeper he had hired years earlier. Two years after Kiss' departure, rumors began to circulate that he had been killed or captured while fighting in the Carpathian Mountains. Believing these rumors, his landlord decided to clear out his house and put in a new tenant.
It was then that the landlord chose to check inside the large drums. When he cracked open the first drum, he was immediately overwhelmed with the smell of a decomposing body. Horrified, the landlord quickly summoned the constable, who opened up all the drums to uncover 24 pickled corpses.
This discovery sparked a frantic search for Kiss, made incredibly difficult by the chaos World War I was ravaging across Europe. The police put out an order to the military to arrest him at once, but the common nature of the name "Béla Kiss" at the time made finding the right Béla incredibly difficult.
He was almost caught while recovering from injuries in a Serbian hospital later that year, but by the time police arrived he was long gone and had placed a dead soldier in his bed as a decoy.
Suzaku: What happened to him after that?
Nemo: In the coming years, reports of Kiss sightings abounded, with people claiming to have seen him in Romania, Turkey, and fighting with the French Foreign Legion.
The Hungarian 'vampire' was never caught and his eventual fate, as well as who else he may have killed, remains unknown.
Suzaku: Romania you say?
Nemo: And that's why I could use you on a little mission. Were off the coast of Hashima Island, you know it?
Suzaku: It's also called Battleship Island. It's is an abandoned island lying about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the city of Nagasaki, in southern Japan. It is one of 505 uninhabited islands in Nagasaki Prefecture. The island's most notable features are its abandoned concrete buildings, undisturbed except by nature, and the surrounding sea wall. While the island is a symbol of the rapid industrialization of Japan, it is also a reminder of its history as a site of forced labor prior to and during the Pacific War.
The 6.3-hectare (16-acre) island was known for its undersea coal mines, established in 1887, which operated during the industrialization of Japan. The island reached a peak population of 5,259 in 1959. In 1974, with the coal reserves nearing depletion, the mine was closed and all of the residents departed soon after, leaving the island effectively abandoned for the following three decades.
Nemo: Nice history, Suzaku.
Suzaku: But why there?
Nemo: We have confirmed reports from the britannians that the escape Mad Scientist, Dr. Victor Frankenstein IX is hiding there. There is evidence of course of a lab build hidden in the old coal mine. I would like you, to go there, find the lab, obtain any information of these experiment with the human body, and if you find the doctor-
Suzaku: Capture or Kill the doctor!
Nemo: No. Just capture the doctor alive.
Suzaku: I understand. I'll think abou it in my quarters.
Then he walks out of Nemo's cabin. He sits down on his bed, remembering Corneila's words:
Corneila: I don't know Suzaku... But I want you to swear that - whatever you might hear - you won't go looking for Victor.
He rests a few minutes, then has a nightmare about a bloodstained Euphemia, out of her bloodstained coffin saying to him:
Euphemia: "Suzaku Kururugi. The truth is you and I... ah that is... you see... I hereby command you to love me. And in return, I will love you forever. Suzaku, I love your stubborness, and your kindness, and your strength. I love your sad eyes, your clumsiness, and the way you have trouble with cats. I love everything about you. So please, don't hate yourself!"
Suzaku wakes up and agrees with Nemo and heads for the island. Hashima Island, once a mecca for undersea coal mining, was a sharp representation of Japan's rapid industrialization, but what's abundantly clear is that when humans leave, buildings will crumble and nature will flourish. The unique setup of the island, particularly the density of crammed buildings that have undergone weathering from corrosive seawater, has made it a popular destination. Suzaku makes his way towards the mine's entrance. He enters the mine's elevator that heads down below the lower levels towards the lab entrance.
Suzaku enters the lab and looks around the deserted lab. He pushes aside a pile of paper to find an old diary titled 'The secret of life and death by Victor Frankenstein'. Suzaku begans to read the book:
''What was the secret of life Mary Shelley imagined in now her 200 year old novel that has inspired the imagination ever since. In the bringing to life scene, she only refers to the application of "some powerful force". But there are other clues. The role of electricity has been assumed, creating images in movies of bolts in the neck and rising operating tables in watch tower laboratories, to lighting rods. My ancestor, Victor Frankenstein the First did describe viewing a lighting storm over Lake Geneva which excited his thoughts, but he does not suggest any building of massive architecture apparatus for gathering lightning, though it makes a very good visual image.
In the novel Victor Frankenstein, before going to University, speaks of self-learning through a fascination with the writings of Albertus Magnus, Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus. All associated with the theories of Alchemy, that early precursor to science, principally associated with the search for the Philosopher's Stone, the primal element to change base metal to gold or silver, and the Elixir Vitae, a potion which would bring eternal life. When Victor applies to Ingolstadt University, the dons there dismiss his learning in this writings, by the 19th Century mostly discredited. But he returns to these earlier theories in his quest for life after spending hours in charnel houses and graveyards.
Mary Shelley had been amply exposed to the experiments of Luigi Galvani, shocking worms and frogs legs into action by the application of electricity, but this alone did not restore life. An electrical charge would be part of the secret, but what else. She had been introduced to the chemistry of life through the writings and lectures of Sir Humphrey Davy, the President of the Royal Society, and early theorist of electrochemistry, the power of electricity to interact in metals and separate elements. Davy was also a figure in the development of the Voltaic battery. But I perfected an elixir that I have become a god. I have called this the 'HOLY GRAIL'.
Then he heard a noise in the lab, he turns around and sees The Avenger unfurls his weapon and attempts to strike him; Suzaku dodges his blows; the center of his weapon is revealed to be a hidden gun; he manages to dodge the gunfire. However, he gets close enough to punch him, sending him crashing into a wall, knocking him unconscious.
The Avenger: You would rather die for my brother! Victor would be the one for the key! And Colossal will be awakened. The HOLY GRAIL Is our own destiny.
And with that, takes the diary and leaves. A bomb explodes, Suzaku escapes the lab and mine. As Suzaku loses consciousness, he sees Corneila.
A/N: In the next Turn, raid on Einsatz base.