Chapter 7: Dancing Barefoot
The strong scent of acid, bleach, and fluid hung in the air as she opened the door to the tiny bathroom bathed in near darkness save for the sliver of candlelight. Her partner barely noticed her presence, her still wet photographs hanging along a thin clothesline within the room. The green-haired woman ran the last sheet of film through the developer bath, rinsing off the remaining halide solution. Her black apron protected her clothing from the solution, a white blouse, orange vest, and deep green skirt.
"I take it from the speed you're moving that you saw something important today…?"
As she approached the photos drying on the line, she could easily make out the subjects. The pigtailed girl wasn't even trying hard enough to conceal herself. "The assassin? So she made it to the Rhune. Maybe the Dawn turned on her?"
"You've been cooped up too long, Meiko. Haven't you heard the news?"
Finally, the photographer spoke, pinning the last photos to the line. "Take a good look – that has to be him. We both met him."
As Meiko approached the line, even though the black and white photos hid the distinct colors of his hair, she could clearly recognize the shape of his eyes, the firmness in his innocent face. "Dammit! Either that's the best imposter they've ever found or…"
The photographer removed her rubber gloves, resting them on the sink. "We've accounted for the King and Queen, and now their son turns up alive? This coup must be staged! We must get these back across the channel as soon as possible!"
"Maybe…"
It wasn't like Meiko to be so unsure of herself. She prided herself on her bold intuition. And it certainly seemed like this must be the case – the Loyalists were choosing such poor targets, trying to make a show of crippling industry but choosing locations that still preserved the more vital military targets…
And yet…
She recalled the way the Prince spoke to her. At first his eagerness seemed to mirror any of her other fans, wanting her to sign his albums and even proving he knew her songs by heart. He asked so many questions of the places she'd performed, wanting to know every detail. It was no great secret outside of Estmarch that the Prince had never left its borders. She'd even felt sorry for him as she picked up the longing in his voice to escape his caged existence.
But then his tone changed. He spoke of grander ideas. He revealed he wanted such a famous Nordland singer in Estmarch to try in his own small way to preserve the fragile peace that remained. And missing from his pleas were any thoughts of surrenders or rewards. He wanted peace because he feared for the multitudes.
Somehow he thought a singer could stop a war with her heart. So childishly naïve…
… she never thought he'd deserved the assassin's knife he received that evening. Naivety could be fixed – she was proof of that. But that devotion to justice, that will to see the cycle of violence and terror end… that was needed in this terrible world.
"Meiko, we both know that staging the death of their son and letting a revolution run wild and upset the populous would only cement the role of the Shion Royals. It's the most logical explanation."
"Then why leave him alive and make it so damn obvious what happened?"
She gestured to the pictures drying on the lines. "How did you get these photos? Who's he on stage with?"
The photographer could sometimes be a bit strange in dealing with people but… Meiko could always tell from the way she perfectly framed her subjects that she could see through to their hearts even when she couldn't decode them.
"Gumi. Please, you were there. What happened?"
The girl looked away, nervously clutching at her resting left arm with her right hand. "He… he offered himself in exchange for the lives of innocents about to be shot by a firing squad. I… I suspect he's been carted off to Fort Kahlgren."
"Well if he's kicked up enough of a fuss, he may finally be our ticket out of this hole! And just think, as important as these photos are to ship off to the King… won't he appreciate it if we bag the real deal before we pop back into Nordland?"
Gumi stared at her precious photographs. "Okay… we should be ready for anything then. There are only two of us."
Meiko felt the need for a smoke as she reached into her jacket for her cigarette case. "I know, it's not really fair to them, is it?"
After half an hour in his cell deep in , Kaito had come to the conclusion that in spite of the throbbing pain in his back, he wasn't going to die. The thin bandages the soldiers had slipped onto him in a panic would have to cover that. His white shirt was still soaked in blood.
He knew that he was to be interrogated. His intel would of course be worthless, but he was certain that once the Emerald Dawn was done with him, he would be executed.
Maybe Tonio would arrange it. It would only be fitting.
He looked across his cell to the woman in captivity across the hall. No, Tonio wouldn't' have time to kill him – Luka would beat him to it. She stayed silent but her intense hatred radiated through her solid gaze, her clenched hands folded into her lap, the tightness in her lips…
"The Godmothers hate me this much I see."
"My feelings are irrelevant. Innocent, guilty, we are deployed to kill you. Your life is an aberration."
Her short, clipped words told him little. "And Miku?"
"She is derelict of her duty. If I don't kill her, someone else will."
Kaito began to understand why Miku seemed to fear her. "… what did you do to Miku?"
Silence. Maybe he needed another tack.
"How do you know Miku? Were you her boss?"
"Her handler. I can assure you nothing she experienced was unique – I went through it as well. It was meant to strip away our weaknesses…."
"… but I'm still alive."
He wanted some acknowledgement of this obvious oversight.
"For now, Prince of House Shion. Once my superiors are reached, these fools will release me. And then… I'll finish the job."
Despite the fact that Luka wore the same set of shackles that bound Kaito, he could imagine her breaking free at the first opportunity and finishing her task regardless of whether these mysterious bosses of hers let her go.
All he could do was try to understand her and hope to come to some kind of understanding.
Maybe that would matter. Even if he'd failed so many times before… he couldn't just give up yet. Not if Miku truly was alive and trying to help him as she did so many other times before.
Miku tried to keep her calm as Rin cleaned up her injuries in the medical tent, wincing slightly at the sting of medical sprays on her open cuts. To think Rin had been so close all along, trying to find them so desperately while Len tried to stay hidden…
"Rin, how did it… how did you… I mean…"
Len was even more shaken – having his sister back after believing her dead left him grasping for words. "I just mean… you were… I saw the death certificate…"
Rin lowered her head in guilt. "I… one of my targets put up a fight. I still… finished him off… but I almost didn't survive. That was how Gakupo found me. And… well…"
Miku bit her tongue at the latest blast of peroxide, but she refused to scream or cry.
"… Gakupo wouldn't leave me like that… it's just not in his nature. I was only going to stay until my injuries got better, so I asked him to forge my death certificate to keep the Godmothers away from both of us. But he didn't want to just let me disappear like that. He kept trying to think of ways I could protect myself. And… well, we do learn a lot about human anatomy in our Cinderella training…"
Rin put the sprays away. "Gakupo and I kind of… guessed… that you were one of them. That's why he helped you out so much. He thinks all of us can be saved. Even if…"
The way Rin trailed off worried Miku. There was something important she wasn't saying. Before Miku could press her further, Len interrupted. "Rin, I don't know how I can possibly say anything that makes up for what happened but… but I want you to know we didn't want to give you up! They lied to us! They told us… they said you'd be taken care of… that they'd provide so much more for you than we ever could… we… we wanted you to be happy… we didn't even think… that they were…"
If Len had spent years trying to come up with an answer for his sister, that seemed to be crumbling as he actually dealt with the reality of her finally being in front of him again.
"When things on the farm started turning around, we tried to send for you… we couldn't stand to be without you… but none of the letters came back. I went looking for you myself, and that's when I… I found your death certificate… I couldn't bring myself to go back home and tell them what happened… that's why… I… I worked with an evil man just to try and get back at the Godmothers and…"
Rin rose to her feet, walked over to Len, and grasped his hands. "I'm sorry about what happened. I was trying to protect you… I was always going to find a way to search for you all, I just didn't think of what would happen if you found that first…"
Len's stiffness seemed to vanish as he accepted his sister's kindness. "Mom and Dad have a little farm out in the Grunebelt now… it's not much, but the roof doesn't leak and the fruit trees make decent money…"
"Ohhhh! Do they have oranges?!"
Rin began to laugh through her tears and the two siblings hugged again. Miku watched them and felt just a pang of envy, knowing nobody waited for her. She heard the sound of rapid footsteps outside the tent and she prepped herself for anything…
"Ah, Rin, there's… two of you?!"
Finally, Miku found herself back in the presence of the purple haired doctor once more. "Waiiit… two Rins… that must mean… OH! So you're Len!"
The siblings released their hug and Rin tried to quell her laughter. "Wait, we look that much alike!? I don't think I look THAT girly!" Len grumbled.
"Oh Len, don't mind Gakupo, he's a little slow sometimes!"
Gakupo twisted his hand behind his neck in embarrassment. "Even with such emotion, you still find a way to wound my heart!"
Len approached Gakupo and bowed his head low. "You saved my sister's life. I'm indebted to you. I should have been there for her so it never happened…"
Gakupo tried to smile, but the odd stretching around the corners of his mouth revealed his awkwardness. "I'm just a doctor! It's my duty to see my patients through to good health!"
His smile grew more genuine when he spotted Miku. "AH! It's been quite some time since we met, Miss Miku! I trust you've been well-cared for in my absence!"
"Yes…"
Miku wasn't even thinking of herself, she was trying to think of how she was going to get Kaito back. "I wish I could be more cheerful, but Kaito has…"
"Ah, yes, I saw him turn himself in today. Such a brave young man."
Miku began to clutch at her sides as the reality of that sacrifice sank in. "Len and I tried to free him, but a Cinderella caught up with us, beat me up, and almost killed Kaito… the city's soldiers made off with Kaito again while I was still fighting off the tear gas… Now Kaito's in prison and for all I know that woman has already…"
"Oh… now I'm starting understand that last phone call I got."
What in the world did a phone call have to do with their situation. "I'm sorry?" Miku asked in confusion.
"Well, I mean, to be more specific, it was a call to the camp, looking to spare medical personnel to attend to someone urgently in the prison. Something about torn stitches. Well, my caseload is already a great deal lighter so I offered to go with my nurse and patch the poor fellow up!"
Gakupo had access to the prison. "Gakupo! This is it! We can bust him out!" Rin said excitedly, "We can't just leave Kaito there to die!"
The doctor's swagger seemed to falter. "W-well it will be no small task smuggling four of you in…"
"You're right…"
Miku rose from her seat. "We shouldn't smuggle four of us. It should just be the doctor and his nurse."
"Hmmm… I'm not really at my best for fighting my way out on this crutch," Rin said, before she caught on to Miku's suggestion. "Ohhhhh! I got it! Len, how are you with hotwiring cars?!"
Len's nervousness vanished as he followed along with the plot. "I got that truck, didn't I?! We just make a quick stop back at the house and…"
"AH! We're about to be arrested!"
Miku fumed as she recalled the original information she had been trying to relay to Len before the afternoon had exploded. "The police are coming to the house to arrest you, Len… someone turned on us."
Len grumbled. "Guess I don't have as much pull in the underworld as I used to," he muttered, "Rin, I hate to ask, but how good is your acting?"
"I think I can manage!" she said with a smile, "I suppose you guys left something important?"
"Yea, our ride out of here! I guess that leaves Miku to play 'nurse'…"
All eyes rested on Gakupo. "Um… I'm sorry, I'm feeling a bit lost… and now quite nervous when you all stare at me like that…"
Rin managed a giggle in all the rapid planning. "Oh, don't worry, you'll be a natural actor!"
Kaito cradled his injury as the pain shot through him a second time. "The Cinderellas are nigh impossible to corrupt. What did you offer to Miku to turn her away from her mission and condemn herself to death?"
So his unlikely jail companion was back to a speaking mood.
"I can assure you I had no inkling I was the target of an assassination until the moment I was stabbed in the rose garden."
The blood staining his clothing should have been clue enough that his death-defying injury was genuine. "You expect me to believe that? You just coddled her and filled her head with lovely stories until she was so struck by love that she wasted the poison meant to aid her escape on you? Applying it by knife point no less!"
In that moment, Kaito could recall the moment he was attacked so vividly he could even remember the faint sounds of the music inside as he clutched Miku close, the sensation of uttering that impulsive vow of love as the final bells tolled…
She let out a disengaged laugh. "Your family pry loyalties with threats and false promises… surely she slipped up somehow and you found a way to frighten her into aiding you!"
He could remember that brief moment of elation at hearing Miku return that pledge before the knife pierced his back and cut him out of his carefully managed illusory life…
"… do you think so little of Miku that she would be incapable of making her own choices? There is nothing crueler than to deprive another of their freedom… but the way she tells it, you are no better than what you suggest of me. Your tactics to strip away 'weakness' sound like nothing more than torture to innocent young girls!"
"They wouldn't even exist if your family didn't burn every single field and city they didn't own as punishment for their independence!"
Her eyes narrowed. "Do not ever speak to a child of Sudland of freedom. You've no right."
Sudland… they bordered the ocean. Across a great channel from Nordland, two countries so defined by their opposition to each other their names in the Estmarchian tongue only identified where across the ocean they lay across from each other.
Until the time they were swallowed up by Estmarch entirely.
'That was the second Rose War… I was but 9… her hatred for me began that long ago?'
Then what had happened to her? Was she there? Did she know… the truth?
"Maybe I have no right because I have no knowledge of the situation."
"What is there to know? You and your family took everything from us to satisfy their greed."
"I mean I don't know what happened in Sudland."
Kaito knew how ridiculous he sounded whenever he confessed ignorance to such events, and it hardly seemed to calm the rightly-offended woman in the cell across from him. "I know it became part of Estmarch, but I assure you the history presented to me was likely not correct. I was told when it happened that Estmarch was growing so my parents could give me a true Empire to rule when I came of age. That terrible people were defeated so the people of Sudland might come into our 'glorious fold.' When I was a child, I believed anything they said to me. When I was a teenager, I tried to question it, only to have my rights to live freely restricted the more I asked. I've never been allowed out of the castle on my own and everything spoken to me has been carefully cleansed. I wanted to believe there was some righteousness in it because the alternative was so grim…"
"How can you possibly be so ignorant…"
"… because I was their prisoner too."
Speaking his fears aloud, giving them form, didn't grant him any peace. It only further unsettled him to recognize how he'd lived. He loved his family, but they had stripped him of any autonomy.
"Now I want the truth. If you were there in Sudland, tell me how it fell. Tell me what happened to its people."
He knew if Luka chose to answer honestly, that he'd only feel more horrified to dig deeper into the truth of things. But he couldn't suppress his natural curiosity and the burning desire for the absolute facts. "Please tell me what happen to you."
Luka was silent for several moments, looking impatiently at the floor. Kaito began to worry he'd slipped up again. He began to fear that no matter how he yearned to properly reach out to other people and understand them, his own isolation had forever severed any hope he had of even basic interactions with others, let alone the complexities required for diplomacy.
'… maybe that was why they sent someone like Miku. Some to trick me into thinking I actually knew what I was doing.'
… but Miku had chosen to spare him after that one evening… she'd pledged her life to him instead… He'd succeeded at least once, even if he hadn't realized what he was talking her out of doing…
"I'll tell you what happened, Prince of Shion. You won't like it."
Kaito raised his head up. "I've heard that before."
"Hands up, Kagamine! We've got you surrounded!"
Rin screamed with all her might as the police came barreling up the road, leaning close to Gakupo as several men and women in uniform approached them with pistols drawn as tears ran down her face.
"Wait, I think you're making some kind of mistake!" Gakupo shouted as he nervously put his own hands in the air.
A man with curly light brown hair approached him, wearing a black fedora on his head. "No mistake! Come on, Kagamine, you're under arrest for… for…"
The officer got a good look at Rin as she made the tiniest, girliest squeak she could imagine. "Wait a minute… that's not… that's a GIRL!"
Rin looked up and wiped some of the tears from her eyes. "You thought I was a boy?!" she cried out, deliberating pitching her voice even higher than normal.
"W-w-well I mean… in the dark you… and the reports said… Clara, get over here!"
A brunette officer with sunglasses resting on her head ran over with a clipboard full of paperwork. "Captain Bruno, I'm just giving you the intelligence we have! These people kept seeing a boy looking like Kagamine come through here! And when she's dressed like that…!"
Indeed, for Rin was standing before the police wearing a tanned brown shirt, black vest and trousers, and crisp black shoes, a red ribbon around her neck, her hair pulled back into a small ponytail. With the long brown coat around her body and the red scarf, her gender would be hard to distinguish from a distance… or in the low lighting of the dusk sky…
'Sometimes… it's good to be a twin…' she thought to herself, barely able to contain her glee even as she continued to pretend to be scared out of her wits.
"What are we supposed to think?!
"Gee, I dunno, check her for… you know… a bustline?"
"Come on, a bustline on her?!"
As officers Bruno and Clara continued to argue, Rin stole a glance behind her. Two shadowed figures slipped out the window of the kitchen, satchels in their arms, slipping them into the vehicle and crawling into the backseat. She lightly pinched Gakupo's side to get his attention.
"OW! I mean OW…fficer!"
"WHAT?!"
Captain Bruno shot him an angry look. "I mean, if isn't too much trouble… you see, I'm trying to hurry to Fort Kahlgren. An urgent call reached my station in the Rust District, and I was simply coming to get my car so I could follow along…"
Captain Bruno stomped over. "What? They don't invite people to prison if they're not criminals!"
'Come on Gakupo, don't mess this up!' Rin thought to herself.
Gakupo hurriedly pulled out the paperwork provided to them from the hospital. "I… I'm Doctor Kamui! This young lady is my cousin and nurse, Rin Kamui. We've been summoned to help patch up a possible patient!"
To Rin's ear, she could hear Gakupo's nerves breaking in, but to the officers, they noticed no unusual amount of stress. "Perhaps if you could give my nurse a moment to change from her street clothes, you could show us the way?"
Captain Bruno looked everything over and huffed as he jerked his thumb in the air. "Fine, Officer Clara, drive them to the hospital and then find out who the hell messed this up!"
As he stomped away, the brunette approached. "Just follow my car."
And so Rin dashed into the house, continuing the next step of their plan…
Kaito listened with rapt attention as Luka relayed the forbidden history to him.
"Sudland and Estmarch often clashed with each other. But the fragile peace we'd had from your grandmother's reign lulled the LaFleur Monarchy into complacency. That's why when Estmarch charged across the northwest border, nobody was in position to stop them at first. They took the most valuable cities for themselves so quickly… and then the fighting began. A year long stalemate as the last of the military loyal to the LaFleur Dynasty kept trying to hold off the juggernaut of Estmarch. They said the bodies laid out in the sun for days…"
Luka gestured to herself. "My home, Saint-Famille, was in the northwest. To them, we were but slaves to be exploited. My mother continued running the family bakery, but my father was conscripted into the factories. She kept trying to hide me from the worst of it, but even I saw some of the brutality. Of course there were plenty that tried to stand against them, and that defiance was always met with further brutality. They rounded up my neighbors, several at a time, and many of them never came home."
"Eventually my father and mother got wrapped up in resistance. We heard the Estmarchian resolve was faltering from the stalemate. The military presence began to pull back as they sent more of their men to fight the LaFleurs. That was when the Confedere de Lys reached out to us and we eagerly joined them."
'Confedere de Lys?' The name sounded familiar to the Prince. He realized he recalled one of the many anarchist groups his parents would warn him about, still active in the kingdom. 'The Lily Confederation…' he thought to himself, translating from Sudlandian.
Luka continued her tale. "The Confedere provided us enough men between themselves and the resistance to take the city back. But we made a severe error. We thought wresting such a valuable economic center from Estmarch would break them entirely, providing the LaFleur military the breakthrough they needed. Instead… it merely emboldened them. They sought to make… an example of us."
"The first sign we had of their coming was the relentless sounds of cannonfire. Then thousands of men charging into the streets. They cared nothing for who or what they were killing. The streets ran red with blood. I tried to hide in the bakery, like my parents told me to do, but they never came home. And then… the fires began. My entire home consumed in flames… I don't remember much past when I passed out from the smoke… and when the Godmothers pulled me from the ashes."
Kaito barely realized how tightly he was clutching at his side as the horror of the situation sunk in. "They razed an entire city merely to make a point?!"
Luka leaned back, merely looking weary. "Such is war… after they showed how little mercy they possessed… the LaFleurs tried to flee Sudland entirely. The Estmarch army caught the royal family and executed them right at the border. All from one single day of horror."
"Those who remember, we still call it the 'Jour de Cendre.'"
'Cendre? Cinder? Like Cinderella?! She's not a Godmother either, she's a Cinderella… just… just like…'
If she was nine when she was pulled from the ashes and turned into a Cinderella, then everything she'd suffered through with the Godmothers she was now forced to inflict on others like her. 'And my family created this… My parents ordered this! All to take Sudland for our family!'
"I tried to give my life today for those innocents, worried that allowing such evil to continue in my name would only tarnish us. To think that our name has already been so thoroughly destroyed before I could have ever stepped up for them…"
Luka's eyes turned back to him, but they seemed different. Not angry, not hateful... but not kind either. "This may mean nothing now, but I truly apologize for the wrongs inflicted upon you, your family, and your countrymen. I know not how to repair them, but I cannot simply give up my life to that end."
"Coward. You could have avoided being here by simply shooting that woman dead. Instead you wanted everyone to know about you?"
She seemed to be gaining her wind back. "Did you expect to gain honor from this?!"
"I expected to save their lives."
It sounded so innocent, but Kaito saw no point to misleading Luka after she'd done as he wanted. "If she was only following orders, then I couldn't in good conscience shoot her. If I gave myself up, I could try and resolve things without anyone else dying."
"So… you're still trying to find your parents, aren't you? Tell me, if you speak to them knowing what you do about Sudland, what will you do?"
The question he still couldn't answer for himself. The question he knew he was going to have to answer before he saw them again.
"I… I will make them see reason. I must! The bloodshed has only continued with the Emerald Dawn in place. I have no power to stop them besides appealing to them as their son… maybe if I prove I know what I'm talking about, they'll finally listen…"
It didn't feel like it was enough. It was doubtful Luka would be appeased by this. He couldn't kill… did he just not have the nerve? Did they still scare him somehow?
"Luka, regardless of what was done to you… clearly you still have a great deal of love for the people you lost… for them to steal that from you."
"Do not attempt pity for me. It will not spare your life…"
The anger in her tone worried him. "Now that you know what happened, you know why I must kill you. Why I am loyal to them and them alone. Your family destroyed me, and they took me and… took a discarded child and made use of her. That's what they do for all the Cinderellas. I owe everything to them and nothing to you."
"No! Don't you see the way they've taken advantage of you?! Miku never asked to be an assassin… and… and neither did you! If all you wanted was revenge, why weren't you the one sent to kill me sooner?! Why were you doing their dirty work!?"
"You… are a fool…"
She seethed quietly in her cell. "When they let me go, I'll only kill you quickly because I can't spare you surviving…"
Before she could continue, the door to the cellblock opened up as Sonika entered, the keys tightly clutched in her hand. "You. Your surgeon's here. They're going to patch you up and take you straight into interrogation. For some dumb reason, Tonio wants you alive."
'So I wasn't wrong about the order of events…' Kaito thought to himself.
The officer marched up to Luka's cell. "Nobody in command has heard of you. We spoke to Noir, and she said… you matched the description of a dangerous criminal they've been seeking. We'll deal with you later."
For once Kaito saw Luka express surprise. 'Wait… did they just… turn her loose?'
"There… there must be some mistake…"
That answered that.
Kaito couldn't help but feel sorry for her after all the loyalty she'd professed. As Sonika opened his cell door to escort him outside, he watched her rocking around in disbelief. "I'm sorry…" he found himself saying to his enemy.
She looked up to him and for a moment he saw that contempt return. But it shifted… "Prince of Shion, a word to the wise. Remember the face of every person who wears a mask of white. They shall be your enemies."
Luka's last warning before Kaito was dragged out of the cell block proved a puzzle. 'The last time I saw white masks was the ball…' he thought to himself, 'She wouldn't have said something like that if she wasn't planning something though… she hardly wanted me to survive…'
Before long he was led into a dingy surgery on the top floor of the old fort. "You're lucky we found someone this late," Sonika muttered, "The last thing we need is you bleeding out before Tonio gets a look at you and tells us whether you're really who you say you are. But after that stunt in the alley… well, it's obvious you're important to someone."
He saw the purple-haired surgeon strapping on gloves. "All right, Rin, are my tools ready?"
"Of course, Gakupo."
'That voice…!'
He tried to control his reaction as he looked at the nurse in the surgery with him. Clad in a long white dress, her face covered by a mask and her hair shielded by a nurse's hat, nobody would know who she was.
Save him.
'Miku! Miku's alive!'
"Hrm… I realize security is an issue but could we possibly get these chains off of him?" Gakupo asked, "It would be easier to redo the stitches and…"
"Of course not!" Sonika barked, "And don't try anything funny. There's guards everywhere in this fort. As soon as he's patched up, he's going straight to the General!"
'So much for an interrogation…' Kaito thought.
"Ah, s-s-sorry! I'll try and do my best given the… ah… unusual circumstances!"
Kaito laid out on his stomach along the table as Gakupo pulled his shirt up and started to undo the bandaging…
"I really think I look better in these clothes than you, Len," Rin teased.
"Oh, hush," he grumbled.
Len was down to an ill-fitted white shirt and brown pants, held up by a pair of black suspenders. He tried to blow off the chilly air around him, because he couldn't bear to let his sister go without a heavy coat. He only had his scarf to keep him warm.
They slipped through the vehicles carefully has he looked for just the right one. It would need to be big enough to ram the gate and get them out, but easy enough for him to drive so they could make off with it.
He eyed a rather large truck with a trailer attached to the back and smirked. It was almost as large as the truck itself, with a great white sheet tied down on top of it. He tugged at the sheet to look inside and saw mostly assorted broken parts from other cars stacked up high. 'A junk trailer…' he thought to himself. "Rin, I think I've got my car!"
He watched Rin hopping over. "Are you going to be okay on that leg?"
"Not gonna lie, having to walk so far without the crutch wasn't great," she said, "But I can work through this at least a little longer."
"Okay… I have a pretty crazy plan… how comfortable are you driving once I get this car started?"
Rin smiled devilishly. "I'm sure I can manage whatever you're thinking of. Okay, so we just need to signal Miku when we're ready, right?"
Len slipped into the car through the open window, unlocking the doors. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his simple tools. Stealing two cars in one night? He hadn't been this busy in months.
"How'd you get so good with stealing cars anyway?" Rin whispered as she kept watch.
"When I needed to find you, and then after I gave up… well, I was a dumb kid with no real skills and I needed money and connections. I fell in with the underworld and started getting a rep as someone that could do easy jobs without causing too much of a stir. Just… thefts, fencing stolen goods, sometimes moving couriered packages around under the cops' noses…"
He cursed as he pinched his finger in part of the ignition. "Well eventually I moved up high enough that the Duke picked me up. For worse. Blackmail, treason… a lot of people got hurt. He never had me kill anyone, but… if he wanted that done, he probably had Akiko handle it. And I got some stability out of it. By then I knew about the Godmothers and… I just thought that if they'd gotten you killed, maybe working with the Duke long enough would get me close enough to get some revenge for your sake…"
"I'm sorry I worried all of you. I didn't think you'd find out."
Rin sounded so guilty. "I… Len, I was an active Godmother… I've taken lives… I've done so much worse than you did…"
"Because they MADE you do it! You wouldn't do it now that you have a choice, right?!"
The engine roared to life as Len turned his spare key. "All right, finally, some success! Rin, give em' the signal!"
Rin pulled out a pocket mirror and moved into the light of the headlamps… she started to trace the light along the side of the building, spying the purple rag Gakupo had left tied out the window…
"Well I have to say, for a hardened criminal, you've been quite the well-behaved patient!" Gakupo laughed as Miku wrapped up Kaitos newly stitched knife wound. His side tingled from the injection of localized anesthetic. "And obviously, whoever took care of you before must have been quite the pro given how well your wound appears to be healing!"
"Um… thank you?"
Kaito didn't quite know what to say in light of Gakupo's statement. 'Wait… was this the doctor…!'
That would explain how Miku had slipped in. Given that Kaito had been unconscious when he'd originally been operated on, he wouldn't have recognized the doctor's face…
'What exactly are they…'
A loud explosion rocked the outside, Miku grabbing Kaito in fright as Gakupo dropped his surgical scissors. "What was that?!"
"Dammit, you're trying something, aren't you?!"
Sonika began to pull her weapon, but before she even got her hands on the trigger Miku had rushed across the room. Snapping her arm across the commanding officer's hand, she disarmed her, then began to choke her just as Kaito had seen her perform on Teto so long ago…
Miku dropped the unconscious woman to the floor, bending down and checking her pulse. "Safe…" Miku murmured under her breath, "Okay, I don't know what that explosion was about, that wasn't us! We were waiting for…"
"That! That's Rin…Rin's signal I mean!"
"What are you talking about?!" Kaito murmured but then he noticed a white light bouncing around the walls. "Is that coming from outside?"
Gakupo rushed to the open window and gave a wide wave. "All right, I'll just tie this rope here and we should start getting down!"
He pulled a rope from his backpack and began to fasten it tightly.
Miku was already running through Sonika's pockets before she pulled out a key. Dashing over to Kaito she quickly unlocked his shackles to his great relief. The metal pieces clunked on the wooden floor and he rubbed his wrists eagerly. "I'm so glad you're alive, Miku," he said softly.
"I'm sorry they captured you. I should have predicted when you stepped up so publicly that a Cinderella would seek you out first."
She slipped the mask off her face and Kaito could see the scratches left from her fight with Luka.
"Ah, Miku, about Luka, we… we spoke about… a lot of things. Why she harbors such hatred for me."
"Luka isn't someone whose actions are driven by hate. You have to understand that. She's loyal to the Godmothers to the end…"
Miku spoke so coldly of her former handler. 'Well, who knows what Luka put her through. She's right to be distrustful.'
"I think the Godmothers have tried to release her. Will they treat her as they have you?"
He'd certainly seen the extent of Luka's loyalty, and how could he question that after knowing what she'd suffered?
"If they haven't already ordered the Dawn to kill her, they'll probably do it themselves."
"What?! What reason do they have?!"
To Kaito's surprise, Gakupo seemed particularly upset. "Nevermind, where is she being held? I can't abide knowing someone is about to be wrongly murdered!"
The sounds of gunfire approaching reminded Kaito of his need to escape. "We don't have time. Trust that Luka is strong enough, okay?!"
She tossed the keys away as she pushed open the door, pressing a pistol into Kaito's hands. "Here, in case you need it. Gakupo already said he wouldn't shoot anyone… "
"-Hippocratic Oath!-"
"… so I'm counting on you, Kaito."
Kaito thought he saw Gakupo grab the keys off the floor. "You head down first!" he said, "Len and Rin are waiting down on the ground level!"
The Prince leaned out the window. "We're at least two stories up…" he said as he watched the rope dangling precariously down.
"Right, and try to take it as carefully as you can, lest your stitches come undone again."
Kaito tried to gather his courage as he stared at the great height. "Kaito, I'll be right behind you, okay?" Miku said, "We've already done so much together, I'm sure this is nothing."
'She's right…'
He climbed out of the window, gripping at the rope carefully and trying to hang on. He felt it slipping and gasped before he got a proper hold and his body stopped falling. 'Okay… down easy…'
He tried to pick up his pace as he heard the gun fire again, passing by a window and even peeking into his old cell…
'My… cell?'
He tried to lean in further and he realized he could still see Luka inside her own, just across…
'If I leave her here… she'll die… but if I free her… I could…'
Luka sat in her cell grasping at her knees. There must be a mistake. They called the wrong person. They told the wrong story.
They couldn't be abandoning her now. Not now! Not after all she'd given them!
"Gakupo! The keys! Throw them down!"
She perked her ears. That sounded like the Prince's voice… from outside?
"What?! Kaito, we don't need those-"
"Luka's still in her cell! I can't abide leaving her behind!"
There was no question it was him. She looked out the barred window from his prison cell and she saw his face again. "I… I won't spare you…" she shouted, "They're upset that I haven't kill you yet. If I do it now…"
She could still go back!
But that infuriating Prince wouldn't leave. "Gakupo, we don't have much time!"
"Gakupo, don't you dare-"
"Kaito, catch!"
She saw the Prince briefly swing out of view before returning to the view.
"The Godmothers have shown neither I nor Miku any mercy. I cannot leave you to their whims. If that makes us foes in the future, so be it. But I cannot ignore someone unjustly made a prisoner."
And with that he threw the keys straight through the bars of the window, the bars of his cell, and she watched them slide just into reach outside her own.
"Those will undo your shackles as well as the door. Good luck."
Without another word her hated foe slipped out of sight. She leapt forward, shackles and all, and crawled along the floor and slipped the key ring around her fingers, pulling them in with her.
"Miku, we're ready for you!"
Luka looked the keys over to figure out which one she needed, but cursed and started trying them all in the locks. She still had time to fix this, she just needed to get loose!
She glanced up as she saw a pair of familiar green pigtails swaying past the window. For a moment she locked eyes with her former charge.
To Luka, Miku had always been too weak and fragile. She didn't have the drive a Cinderella should have. But the Godmothers wanted to cultivate that fragility… take the sadness she radiated to turn her into a potent trap.
'They sent Miku instead of me… had they sent me, this would have ended already…'
But when she looked in Miku's eyes now, she didn't detect that weakness. She saw only unwavering strength.
"Do not come after Kaito or else I'll kill you."
And Miku was next to slip out of sight.
The final face she saw was Gakupo's. She slowed her movements. Something about the sorrowful look on his face made her chest tighten.
"Luka. We're going to ram the front gate. They'll pursue us, not you. Take advantage of the chaos and escape."
And then he gave her that ridiculous grin again. "Ah! Surely we won't be enemies again after this!"
She got the shackles open and jumped for the door. She still had time!
"Okay, that's everyone! What happened down here anyway?"
Miku would have expected resistance by now, but nobody was coming towards the parked vehicles yet. "Not sure yet," Len shouted from the seat of the truck, "Someone blew the gate open and we keep hearing gunfire! Maybe it was the Loyalists?!"
She looked to Kaito for a moment. "Should we wait for them?" she asked, hoping he would say 'no.'
"We need to get out of here as swiftly as possible," he said, "If they still wish to find me… they'll figure it out. What is our intended route of escape?"
Rin patted the side of the truck. "Len and I will take care of this rig. We'll swing it by the car, and you, Gakupo, and Miku will get into our car. We've already worked out how we intend to avoid pursuit, but we need you three ahead of us to be certain!"
"Such risk…" Kaito murmured.
"Oh nonsense, I'll be handling the driving!" Gakupo laughed, "I've missed sitting behind the wheel!"
The gunfire sounded closer. "Okay, come on, everyone get into the cab," Len ordered, "this switch is going to have to be FAST!"
"Where the hell did they go?! It's just two women! How come nobody can hit them?! They've taken out two dozen of our men and women!"
"We would if we could find them!"
"Wait, sweep the spotlight over there!"
For just a brief moment, the fort spotlight caught sight of a woman in a green uniform wearing a gas mask over her face. But just as quickly she was gone… and another burst of gun fire knocked out the lights.
"They're like a pair of ghosts… how dare they make a mockery of Zweissen's finest?!"
A bright flash of light appeared near the gate and for just a second another women in the same type of uniform was visible as she knocked out several more soldiers trying to stop her with the butt of her gun.
The chaos only amplified as the sound of screeching tires heralded the approach of a convoy vehicle dragged a trailer behind it. "Holy crap, that's going to ram the…!"
The truck slammed into old wooden gate, causing it to explode into splinters as it passed through the threshold…
"NOW! Get in the car and get ahead of us!"
Kaito leapt from the truck cab door, his heart pounding as the adrenaline of his escape took hold. They were running in near darkness, and he could only rely on following Miku's white uniform to make out where the car was. He heard the opening of doors and in the dark he fumbled around until he felt the handle, jumping into the backseat. Before he got the door closed, he saw someone else grab the door – a woman in a green uniform with a gas mask covering her face. He reached for his gun before he heard her muffled voice. "Hey, hey! Take me with you, me and my partner have been waiting for the lot of you!"
"The lot of us?!" Miku shouted suspiciously.
"Who do you think drew away all the guards? If you hadn't shown up, we were going to break you out ourselves."
Even with her voice muffled under the gas mask, Kaito couldn't get over how familiar it sounded. "Look, we know the route you guys need to take! Come on, let a gal help you out!"
He pulled her into the car. "Ahhhh… okay, four of us then!" Gakupo said cheerfully, "Um, wait, you said there were two of you?"
"Don't worry about Gumi, she's already secure on the truck."
Kaito heard the truck revving up again as the gun fire approached. "Just go!" Miku shouted at the driver, "We'll sort it out later!"
The car lurched forward and through the broken remains of the fort's gate. "Okay! Directions!" Gakupo shouted, "If you're so certain that is!"
"Left!"
Kaito slid around in the backseat, trying to protect his fresh stiches with his hands as the car jerked around. He heard the truck picking up speed behind him as they righted themselves.
"We can't just dart around when Len has to move such a big vehicle!" Miku shouted, "Give us some more warning next time and-"
"RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT!"
As the car swerved again, Kaito saw Gakupo's panicked face. "All right, seriously, more warning next time!" the doctor called out, "I'm not that good at-"
"LEEEEEEEEEEFT!"
"What in the world are they doing?!" Len shouted as he tried to keep the tiny car visible in the light of his headlamps. They were driving through another factory row now, with the streets widening out around them. "I thought we were taking the route up through Mauskirchen?"
Rin tried to examine the car from her position. "Did they picked up another passenger? It's kinda hard to tell from here…"
She squinted, but in the dark it was hard to tell how many people were in the car. There were definitely two people in the back seat, but it was impossible to figure out whether that was Miku or…
"You don't think someone's holding them hostage?! Like a godmother?!"
Rin hadn't been a Cinderella in several years now, so she couldn't entirely rule out a change in their tactics, but this didn't seem correct. The car corrected itself after one more wild turn. "This'll turn us off towards Katzhagen… they might know something we don't…"
The sound of a screechy siren let Rin know that their pursuers were rallying. "Len, keep the car steady, I'm going to head out to unhook the trailer!"
"Are you going to be okay!? Your leg…"
"I'm fine, Len! Don't worry so much!"
She smiled warmly for him. "I'm practically an expert!"
With that she wiggled out of the cab window, clutching the side of the truck tightly. She could see the red lights of police… soldiers…
'We kicked up a hornet's nest!' she thought to herself.
But she still had her plan to carry out.
She wiggled along the back of the trailer, shouting as Len swerved to chased the vehicle with her other friends in it and almost knocking her off. 'I just have to get to the hitch!' she thought to herself.
As she crawled close to the trailer and moved into range of the pin, she tensed up as one of the pursuing cars pulled into range close by. She could see the barrel of a gun coming out of the door. She was unarmed…
A hail of bullets rained down from the top of the truck, taking out the car's engine and causing it to swerve off the road, crashing into the side of a large factory. Rin glanced up to see a woman in a gas mask on top of the vehicle, her green hair flapping around the straps. Rin watched her for a moment, waiting to see if she was going to shoot at her next, but instead the woman kept her attention on the road behind her.
Whoever she was… she was helping.
Rin slipped on the bumper of the trunk, bending down and undoing the pin of the truck… causing the trailer to go flying off the truck. Rolling out of control along the road, it overturned and spilled its junk pile along the street. The fleet of pursuing cars began to fall apart as several of them crashed trying to avoid the junk or popping the tires of the cars from running over it. Soon there were no signs of any more headlamps in direct pursuit.
'We… we made it…'
She began her trip back to the cab, but as she watched the woman on the top of the truck that had saved her life, she waved to her. While Rin couldn't see her eyes, she did watch the green-haired woman's head tilt slightly. "This way!" she shouted.
Kaito kept his eyes on the streets behind him, watching the many pursuing lights dim until he only saw Len's headlamps behind him. He finally allowed himself to breathe… and tried to banish the satisfied smile from his face. 'We all could have died at any minute!' he tried to reason with himself. But the beating of his heart from the excitement of another successful escape was hard to deny.
He'd done it. He'd saved lives AND he'd preserved his own. And even better… the escape had gotten the lot of them out of the Rhune.
Ahead of the Emerald Dawn.
He'd accomplished something!
"I think Rin and Len took care of the police…" Gakupo said, nervously gripping the wheel. I never expected to be such an active criminal… I do hope the hospital is okay in the aftermath…"
"Right, but where are we driving right now?" Miku asked curtly, leaning back to the woman in the backseat.
"You don't care where you're going right? You just needed to get out of the Rust District!" the woman said, "My intel this evening said the Loyalists were fighting along the route to Mauskirchen… so the road into Katzhagen is open because they didn't have enough guards to staff it. This was our best shot."
Kaito looked to the passenger in the backseat with him. "Now that the police are out of the way, I must know your name, miss," he said politely, "We are assuming you are a friend for now, but I do wish to know if that will change."
The woman's delighted laughter surprised him. "You know, I told Gumi I'd know it was really you after just a few moments chatting!" she said as she undid the straps on her mask, "Nobody is as polite as you are, Prince Kaito!"
As the mask fell, Kaito's jaw dropped.
He was staring right into the eyes of his idol. Meiko Sakine. Just her being here made him realize the person he'd met, the person he'd adored from afar, was not the person she'd told him she was.
"You're… a Nordland spy…" he whispered.
She gave him a soft wink. "We'll need gas soon… I'll explain everything when we get to Katzhagen… okay? And please don't hold it against me…"
A/N:
Just a note for my FFN readers: I don't have a way to send out notifications on chapter delays besides uploading new empty chapters and for such a short delay, I didn't want to do it again. I will always post notices of them on my deviant art profile (Rebochan) and on my Wattpad profile (also Rebochan!) and Tumblr too (Rebochan again!) if I get a chance. So if you get here on the update day and the chapter isn't up, go check one of those accounts for the news :) It appears the technical issues that stopped updates from being sent out on Chapter 6 have ceased... for now :P If FFN goes down for you, check those other sites for the chapter uploads!
Okay, a two day delay wasn't two extreme, was it? I think from here till the end of the story I'm going to stick to Sunday nights as my update day. It's just working out better since I'm doing most of the writing on the weekends. And here have a late-debut for Meiko and Gumi, who I've wanted to get more of before this point but kept needing to get more bits in from the other characters first.
So next on the list of underused Vocaloids are poor Bruno and Clara, the two least popular Vocaloids ever made getting the thankless job of trying to arrest Len! I kept holding them off in the stories because I was looking for something more prominent for them to do, but I've worked out who I want to use and where so alas, they get a tiny, tiny part.
I thought I might have been stretching history a bit to include actual trucks in the story, but they were in fact in increasingly greater use by the time of WWI. I learn a lot writing these stories too!
I was asked on Wattpad and thought I should answer more directly, but while Flight of Cendrillon invokes imagery from Cinderella, I set it outside of my "Vocaloid Tales" series since it's more directly referencing Signal-P's "Cendrillon".
Speaking of Signal-P, I slipped a reference to another song of his in here in a very shameless way. I am not apologizing for it either ;)