Dedicated to Aethelhild, who wrote the hundredth review but declined a giftfic because they didn't want to ask for more when I was working on things.
My apologies for updates on things slowing down this much, I'm working on getting back on a sleep schedule etc.
One hit and she'd be dead – that was the reality Yonsu had to face, when she joined the fight against that member of Cerberus because otherwise one of the people who had gotten themselves mixed up in this to save her husband was going to die. In the end, for all the risks she and Sangeen had taken, all the strength they'd gained, they were as helpless against the Union as their country.
But at least she could make them work for it. They might be able to swat her, but trying might keep them busy enough for someone who could handle them to take them out.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she had wondered if that was only something she had told herself to keep from feeling completely useless. From facing the fact that she was weak and therefore helpless, like the Union would say.
"I want to spar," she'd told Takeo when he arrived with that noble for backup again – Tao was absent for the first time since their first meeting with these two.
After a moment, Takeo had nodded, and smiled understandingly. "The abandoned area, or did you have somewhere else in mind?"
"I can get rid of the humans around here, it won't take long," the noble said, "but I suppose you're strong enough to damage the buildings."
"The ruined area sounds good," Sangeen said. "Do you mind if we set up cameras? We couldn't fight in the open before," too much risk the Union might find out, "so they're still trying to figure out exactly how much we can do."
"Not enough," said the noble, rolling his eyes as though that was obvious. "Are the cameras in that case?" He held out his hand for it demandingly when Sangeen nodded. "I'll pick a place and set up," he told Takeo when Sangeen complied.
"Thank you," Takeo said, nodding, and Rael took the excuse to vanish. "Tao taught him how to set up cameras, because he can get them in place quickly without much risk of detection," he explained. "Shall we?"
They headed towards the district, and Yonsu knew that if Takeo wasn't holding back he would have been out of sight quickly. At their pace, the noble was able to meet them on the way. "Over here," he said, and was quickly out of sight even jumping from building to building slowly enough that they could see him.
"There isn't much cover," Takeo said after they'd jumped down to the ground near where Rael was standing.
Rael gave him a look that was mostly offended but with a trace of worry in there. Had Takeo hit his head, was that why he was that stupid? "Cover is useless," he said as though everyone should know that. "Do you still have bad habits from when the Union sent you to kill humans who couldn't fight back? You fight alongside Regis; anyone who can give a pureblood trouble will find you if you're stupid enough to stay in one place." And having a wall between you and the enemy was useless fighting enhanced humans.
"Unless M-21 and Regis keep them too busy to go after anyone attacking from a distance," Takeo said, and Rael nodded.
"The Bluster clan can fight from far enough away that no one who isn't as fast as a Kertia can close the distance if they keep moving, but you're not a member of the Bluster clan," he told Takeo.
Takeo frowned. "When we're training against the Chairman, Tao and I have to be close enough to move in quickly and draw fire away from Regis or M-21 while they recover."
"He's as strong as a clan leader – even purebloods like Regis shouldn't be fighting clan leaders."
"…I don't think Regis expects to be given a choice."
"He's a Landegre – he doesn't have a choice if they're attacking people in front of him, even enhanced humans like you. They were all like that before the Union used it to slaughter them. I've been trying to beat it out of Regis for a century and it was pointless." Rael made a face, disgusted. "If those enhanced humans fight like Landegre they'll just die uselessly. Regis helped save you, didn't he?" he asked them, and Sangeen nodded. "If you die, you would have gotten a child beaten up for nothing." He glared at them, hands on his hips. "If we're going to be training you, then you'd better take it seriously and fight like Kertia, or you'll have done nothing but waste our time when we could have been doing real training and getting stronger."
When if Yonsu and Sangeen were useless, these people's strength was the only thing standing between South Korea and the Union.
"Clan Kertia scouts the human world, so they have to worry about being captured by Union enhanced humans?" From the way he glanced at them Takeo was saying this, thinly disguised as a question, for their benefit.
"That's what we thought, but if the traitors joined the Union and they have werewolves helping them, how many clan members we lost makes more sense. No noble but my brother could hide themselves from a clan leader, and some of the werewolves might be fast enough to keep up with an ordinary clan member."
The way it was impossible for Sangeen to get away from Cerberus – Yonsu remembered listening to his report on what happened that night, clenching her fists at how helpless she felt even after it was over. How easily he could have been snuffed out without her even knowing until Cerberus came for her too.
"When the traitor clan leaders invade Lukedonia-"
"When they?" Takeo interrupted. "They've done it before?"
"No, but of course they will." Rael glared, annoyed at being interrupted and having to say something painfully obvious. "For whenthey invade, Ludis and my brother are trying to train the Central Order Knights to fall back and warn nobles in their path to leave so the clan leaders and the Lord don't have to hold back while they fight. But when you invaded? They might have known it was Regis, but even if it was just Regis, they should have gotten Ludis instead of fighting a pureblood. I helped my brother beat sense into our clan, but we don't have the time to retrain all the knights when the Union is up to so much."
Yonsu let him talk instead of telling them to hurry up and start the spar: this should be getting caught on tape. "Sangeen?" she asked quietly.
He took his cellphone out of his pocket and nodded to her a moment later.
Good. She nodded and turned back to those two.
"If I hadn't left on my training trip, I would have had to help train them."
"How would you have trained them?" Takeo asked.
"Hit them until they got better at dodging and learned to respect a pureblood, obviously. I've been helping my brother out with training the Kertia since I was sixty."
Takeo smiled. "So this was something you did with your big brother?"
Rael's cheeks reddened and he turned away a little. "It was training! They could just keep ahead of me when I didn't know what I was doing, and they had to get better as I got better. Rajak stayed slow enough that I could see him and only used the abilities I was learning, but that wasn't just for my sake, it was because anything else was too much for them."
"I can see that it might have been, when both of you had soul weapons."
Rael just got more embarrassed. "I had a duty to help train the clan, when our soul weapon…" he noticed them looking and shut up, although his blush just deepened when he stuck his nose back in the air. "You! Start fighting and try not to let Takeo hit you."
"Count of three?" Sangeen asked Takeo.
The maybe-former assassin smiled. "Three," he said, and leapt at them.
Sangeen and Yonsu both dodged to opposite sides, forcing him to pick one of them to follow – that would give the other a shot at attacking him from behind. It would have been better if he went after Yonsu – she was the better close-quarters fighter, while Sangeen could use his aura to fight at a distance – but, no, so of course he went after Sangeen.
"What are you doing!" Rael demanded, sounding offended, but that seemed to be his default state. "Don't put yourself back in his range, human! One of you should survive to report an enemy like this!"
"Shouldn't we treat this as a team exercise?" Takeo called over to Rael, flipping over Sangeen's knives casually.
"I suppose they're too slow for either of them to escape, so she might as well try to let her comrade get far enough away from you that he's not completely useless," Rael conceded after a few seconds of scowling. "Otherwise, you would just go after her – it wouldn't take long to kill that insult to knives."
Takeo was pulling his punches. Yonsu had worked more at drilling hand-to-hand after the desperate struggle to evade that Cerberus bastard's blows, but it was still too damn easy for Takeo.
How much stronger had he gotten with Frankenstein working on him since that battle with Cerberus? Even a noble training him, when they were practically myths! They were mythology, if they'd been worshipped as gods once!
"Stop!" Rael yelled after awhile.
Yonsu took the chance to take deep breaths, replenishing the oxygen stores that let her keep up high levels of physical exertion for longer, before turning to look at where he was standing there on a chunk of rubble so he could look down on them, arms folded.
"I'm embarrassed just watching that," he told them. "It's useless for you to train this way, even if we had a decade to spend making you less pathetic. Can't you sense your opponent at all?"
"According to the Chairman, their doctor shut down their natural psychic abilities," Takeo reminded Rael.
"Well, they need some way to sense their opponent, or else there's no point. They'll keep moving too late for it to be any help to them, with how slow they are."
"Sense what their opponent is going to do?" Takeo frowned.
"Who can do that against an opponent stronger than them?" And who wasn't stronger than Yonsu and Sangeen. "You know how to sense nobles," he told Takeo. "It's possible to sense humans too. And if your opponent is used to being able to tell where their opponent is, then if you can cloud or trick their sense of you? That's how the Kertia are able to ambush nobles. That's the only way I can see for these two not to get themselves killed."
"If they can sense their enemies, it will be easier to dodge, and if they understand how their enemies are sensing them…" Takeo nodded.
"Even ordinary humans can tell when they are being watched. You! Close your eyes," he told Yonsu and Sangeen. "Other than that, do what you want." He bent down, picking small chunks of concrete out of the rubble. "Takeo, help me throw rocks at them."
Gritting her teeth, Yonsu obeyed and tried to focus her attention on the senses she had left.
She remembered the first Star Wars movie, Obi-Wan training Luke to deflect blaster bolts by putting a metal helmet over his eyes. It was easier to put up with this when it was clearly a lower-tech version of that.
…and a noble could probably throw a rock faster than the blaster bolts in Star Wars, she realized as the first one hit. Not that hard, so whoever threw it was pulling their punches the way Takeo had earlier, but who knew how long until the noble would get fed up and either get some painful shots in or give up on training them, and then how were they supposed to get stronger?
Someone was moving, she could hear footsteps softer than an ordinary human's, but that was Sangeen, she realized after a moment.
"Why are you still standing still?" she heard from right next to hear ear a moment later, and whirled around to punch empty air. "At least try to get your arms between you and the rocks!" Or was she too stupid to even think of that?
Right, this wasn't just a listening exercise, but reaction training. She wouldn't put it past the Union to figure out invisibility – she needed to be able to guard against attacks she didn't see coming. Because the enemy was too fast for her, like a certain noble.
"Do you have any advice for them?" Takeo asked, and two rocks came from his direction while he was talking – at least she could block those.
"What do I know about what Union toys can do? Figure something out, or else you'll be put to sleep and what happens to your KSA then?"
She heard the hum of Sangeen's knives a moment before they hit the ground.
"That's something," Rael said, barely mollified.
"I can't do it that many times," Sangeen said, and Yonsu wished that he shouldn't have said that. It wasn't as though revealing a weakness like that mattered, against these two.
"If it's do it or be forced into eternal sleep, then stay awake!"
"He's not talking about putting down animals, nobles call it eternal sleep instead of death," Takeo said, and the wince in his voice was some consolation. "Keep us talking!" She heard the relief in Takeo's voice, how glad he was to get some idea that might help them.
Rael tched, but, "It's better than nothing, and right now that's what you have."
What were the soles of his shoes even made out of? Takeo's looked like they matched his suit, business formal, but they were quieter than Sangeen's and Yonsu's military-grade. Yonsu thought she'd heard the sound of rocks moving under Rael's weight a few times, but his actual feet hitting the ground didn't seem to make any noise at all. "What happens to your momentum!" she demanded, annoyed. "There has to be friction, or you wouldn't be able to stop!" Going from speeds too fast to see to standing still; that energy had to go somewhere, there should be some kind of vibration in the ground or air.
Silence for a moment: there weren't even any rocks thrown for a few seconds.
"How do you do that?" Takeo wondered.
"Skidding around for fun is inelegant, only children do that! I haven't made marks in the floors since I was less than fifty."
"It's… not something we do for fun," Takeo told him. "We have to learn how to control our strength so we don't leave prints in the floors, by planning how much force to exert and managing momentum. I should have realized it might be different for you when some nobles – and the Chairman – can fly,"he said, the last part for their benefit.
But they didn't have wings, or at least they'd acted like the Twelfth Elder turning into a bat was strange.
At least she could hear the sounds of fabric sliding against fabric – she guessed from the height that Rael was folding his arms. "…The way your bodies don't do what you want them to do is creepy. I don't see how you can put up with it."
Yonsu went ahead and opened her eyes, hoping they were done with the rock bit.
"Well, the alternative is modification," Takeo said gently. "And usually that means someone else deciding what happens to our bodies, instead of just dealing with forces like gravity."
Rael looked creeped out for a moment, on the verge of shuddering at such a disgusting concept, before he seemed to get a hold of himself and plastered it over with annoyance.
Yonsu frowned. Damn. She'd though with Rael they were getting a look at what nobles were like when they weren't wearing that mask of elegance, but Rael might be the fakest person in that household. Cadis Etrama di Raizel was so damn powerful he had no idea how to act because he'd never needed to know. Regis (that was what Tao and the others called him, first name basis with a noble) had mouthed off to Cerberus by telling them the truth and making it clear how little he cared what they thought about it. Seira Loyard was more daunting – she couldn't have been selected as an ambassador without some ability to play social games… right?
But when they had to train so hard to hide their power in the face of the Union's overwhelming force, for the nobles to have such effortless confidence? She envied them.
"Well, what can you do?"
"Take cover, for one thing," Sangeen said, eyeing the remains of buildings not far away. "Even if they can break through walls, that'll make noise and let us know they're coming."
Rael was what, five hundred? It was hilarious that this seemed to be some new concept to him that he had to think about. "If you can't be faster, you can make the Union scum slower… A Kertia wouldn't be so noisy, but going around obstacles would make it take slightly longer to reach you, so you'd still have a little more time to start reacting."
"That's why Tao and I fight from a distance," Takeo said. "In the time it takes them to reach us, we can move elsewhere. Especially with M-21 and Regis slowing them down."
"Injuring the enemy will slow them, and inflicting more wounds for them to heal makes it take longer for them to heal the important injuries. The pain of healing wounds will also slow their thoughts – the clan members are trained to strike without warning and wound the enemy, then make sure they remain off-balance for the entire battle so it's harder for them to figure out where the aura is strongest. If the enemy hasn't trained seriously, then being injured for the first time will also make them foolish. Like what Regis does, by being so talkative." Rael tossed the rocks in his hands up and caught them idly – it seemed like something he was used to doing with his knives when he had energy to burn off, even though a human who treated knives that lightly would get their tendons permanently damaged, too damaged to fight with a knife again. "You have knives, but your aura is weak, and you have a gun, but that won't even scratch a real enemy deeply enough to distract them."
Sangeen nodded. "We took a big risk getting experimented on, but when Cerberus attacked we weren't anything but a burden."
"I was unconscious," Takeo said, "but that's not what I heard from Regis." He smiled at Yonsu.
"Regis!" Rael realized. "He can make himself useful and teach you how to gather power! And that means… No, I'll still have to deal with you." He glared at Yonsu as though she wanted to be in his hair. "You still wouldn't survive long enough to gather power and land the blow, not like this. You'll have to learn that too," he told Takeo. "It will be more useful for you, because you might be able to freeze the enemy long enough for the bullet to hit them. Especially with those bullets of yours making them less able to dodge. A little." Barely anything from that eye roll, but something. "Your bullets are useless," he told Yonsu, and it wasn't even an insult. "So they won't expect them to suddenly not be useless."
"Union agents enjoy… Union agents need to show off how invincible they are, or they're disposed of," Takeo said grimly. "If they think you're reaching for the gun because you're desperate, they might want the bullets to hit, so they can gloat."
Using the Union's own arrogance and sadism to lesser beings to kill them… A slow, vicious smile spread across Yonsu's face.
Rael noticed her smirk and rolled his eyes. "Landegre are so convinced everything should be their way and anything else is inelegant. It's annoying, but they can't help it when it's how their power works." He turned to Takeo. "You're less annoying, so that enhanced human will be better at it than you, but she'll still be less powerful."
Takeo looked like this was new to him, and curious, so Rael kept talking. "There were traitor clan leaders and Ignes out there, so I helped Brother with the Central Order Knights, not just the Kertia. So they knew what it was like to fight a pureblood. That's why I knew I had to work so hard to beat sense into Regis – if you cut a Landegre, it didn't distract them, they just get even more focused on defeating you unless you injure them enough they can't think straight. They were all stubborn like that."
Were.
Before a clan – two clans – of nobles were massacred by the Union, leaving only a handful of survivors. Just like what they'd threatened to do to South Korea – what they had done to people who wouldn't obey – and only the citizens who were out of the country at the time would have survived. As a warning.
And all the other countries would have blamed it on North Korea. Because they wouldn't have a choice either. They had to protect their people, for as long as they could, from those bastards.
"When can I start that training?" she asked.
"Do we need to go through Lukedonia's ambassador?" Thank goodness Sangeen at least remembered how to be diplomatic.
"All these humans bothering Miss Seira…"
Takeo winced, but was back to a smile before Rael turned around and might have had his face in view – not that they had data on noble senses. If Rael expected them to be able to find some way to sense incoming threats even without psychic abilities, that implied that there were multiple possible methods.
"I'll ask Regis," Takeo told them. "And let Miss Seira and the Chairman know."
"That's good," Sangeen said. "After what happened," when they tested the candidates, "he might not be willing to let us train with one of his students. Will he accept some kind of promise to do our best to be sure Regis doesn't get injured during the training?"
Rael laughed. "You, injure Regis? Even if you did, he'd never admit it."
"Cerberus injured him," Yonsu couldn't stop herself from saying. "Are we that pathetic?"
"Regis is a child. Injuring him is inelegant, but if he's training you then you'd better learn how to injure him, when I'll also be training you. He just won't admit you hurt him so you don't hold back because of him."
"Regis and M-21 are the kind to insist that they're fine when they're about to fall over unconscious," Takeo agreed. "But you can't hold back with either of them. M-21 was graded for disposal, and it still bothers him."
Someone as weak as them going easy on him? Yeah, that might set that off. "Alright, we won't hold back if he's part of our training." Yonsu wanted a rematch, even knowing she still wouldn't be able to push him anywhere near his limit. Maybe she was a masochist.
They might not be able to get enhancement technology out of these people – yet – but knowledge of how to train modified humans to use their powers effectively? And also how noble powers worked? That would definitely be a big help to the KSA.
If their country survived long enough to make more modified humans and train them, anyway. Right now, there wasn't much difference between Yonsu and Sangeen and regular agents – not enough difference to matter, anyway. Was there any way to change that before the war started?
There had to be. She couldn't give up. For her country, for her murdered comrades, for her husband, for herself and her pride as a human. "The Union… We aren't letting them take us down without a fight."
Rael snorted and Takeo frowned at him, disappointed. She could practically hear the, 'Be nice,' but they all knew it was a joke. For now.
"What else?" She wanted to know. "I know you won't share human modification technology when the Union might get their hands on it, but is there anything else? Any more training, allies, anything?"
"You humans, always wanting more power."
Takeo took a breath. "Rael, when we get home, I should show you how showers work."
"Why would I want to know what you humans do with your bodies?" Ew!
"What most of us, even enhanced humans, have to do in order to stay clean," Takeo explained. "More than that – some people's bodies will kill them. Something goes wrong, and they might not even know until it's too late. It's easy – too easy – for us to die powerlessly, Rael. The Union wants power because they're greedy, but some of us need power because otherwise, everything we want to protect will be destroyed. Doesn't your brother train all the time because Lukedonia and the Kertia are counting on him? Yonsu and Sangeen are the strongest KSA members. They're not in charge like your brother, but they still have a responsibility to their comrades and this country."
She didn't want to be a life lesson for some five-hundred-year-old manchild… but if she could get power out of it, then it was worth it. Whatever it took.
"What do you want me to do?" Rael asked Takeo. "I'm already training these humans. What else should I do, make contracts with them?" Ridiculous his expression said at first, but then he seemed to realize what he'd just said and looked scandalized.
"Contract?" Yonsu asked. That was the word Raizel had used for his relationship with Frankenstein.
Rael went red, embarrassment and anger. "How dare you, asking something like that! You humans… all you want is contracts! That Shinwoo, taking advantage of Miss Seira…"
Shinwoo Han? Taking advantage of Lukedonia's ambassador how?
"It isn't as though he was trying to get Miss Seira to make a contract with him," Takeo said, trying to be peacemaker again.
What? "A contract? Like the Chairman?" Yonsu frowned. The nobles might be allies against the Union, but they'd done what to a Korean citizen? They'd had enough of having their people experimented on by the Union thank you very much.
"It was an accident," Takeo said, but he frowned and looked down, worried.
Yonsu reared back, outraged. "You can make a contract with a noble by accident?" And they weren't doing anything to prevent it? What kind of irresponsible.
"It happens when blood is exchanged and both parties want a contract," Takeo said. "The true contracts at least, the contracts the traitor nobles made were different."
"Don't look at me, as though I'd know anything about that," Rael said, folding his arms. "Disgusting…" Then he winced. "Even Frankenstein tried to trick Cadis Etrama di Raizel into making a contract with him with blood in the tea. If the Noblesse permitted it than it's his business, but you humans, always trying to get power out of nobles… The way you keep trying to calm me down." He glared at Takeo warningly.
"So much for a normal life," Yonsu said. When Sangeen's eyes widened and he tried to signal her to stop she ignored it – better to interrupt this conversation. If Takeo was calming down the noble brat she didn't want Rael to guilt him into stopping. "And you got angry at us for trying to recruit Shinwoo and Ikhan for the sake of our country because they couldn't have gone back to being normal people, and then let him make a contract?" Not that she had much idea of what that meant aside from stories. Was a Korean citizen calling Lukedonia's ambassador Master now? "What's it doing to him?"
"He seems fine," Takeo said, frowning at some unimportant point in space, worried, "but they're making sure. True contracts happened all the time, once, but the Chairman was already a modified… enhanced human when he made his contract, so there hasn't been a true contract with an unenhanced human in thousands of years. You're right – even before this, you weren't the only threat to those kids having a normal life…"
"Who would want a normal human life?" Rael interrupted. "They're short and noisy and you're the one saying that you can't blame humans for being inelegant when they don't have a chance. As for you!" He turned on Yonsu, as she blinked, processing that he might have just done that to comfort Takeo, "Don't act as though this is the same thing! If he joined you, he would have just died uselessly against the Union, so protecting him from that isn't the same thing at all as failing to keep that human from getting to do things to Miss Seira… What if he's doing that with her! She's only two hundred and seventeen!"
"It's the KSA's duty to intervene between Korean citizens and…" Yonsu paused. If she'd said 'the Union' it would have been a massive insult to these people. The supernatural? "Nonhuman affairs. Tell the Chairman he'd better let us see Shinwoo Han and confirm he's safe."
"And what could you do about it if he's not?" Rael looked disgusted.
"We at least have to try, it's our duty to our country! Even if we just get killed, there's no way in hell I'd just stand back and let the Union do what it wants to our people like they have the right to kill them just because they can!"
Rael scowled viciously but when she glanced at Takeo she saw… a small smile?
"I suppose even humans aren't incapable of being…" Rael turned and glared at Takeo, who couldn't seem to help just smiling outright now. "If they're not terrible then they still have to stop being useless. Why do you want me to do this? Let the Chairman do it, he was the one saying humans should get strength from humans wasn't he?"
"This is supposed to be your training," Takeo reminded him. "We don't have any Kertia here for you to protect, so…" He glanced at the KSA agents.
Rael twitched but looked down and to the side. "I suppose they're not terrible. I'm not making contracts with them."
"Damn right he's not – we're top secret and he's from another country," even if you ignored species.
That made the noble nod, equal parts approving and prissy. "I know how to train Central Order Knights, but even the ones who weren't Kertia at least started out with some ability to sense the obvious. I don't know how to get these humans to where I can train them."
"I'll ask the Chairman," Takeo said.
"Don't do that, you just said this is my training. And isn't this an assignment for you as well? Don't waste Cadis Etrama di Raizel's bonded's time when you've been given a mission. You're supposed to learn to sense things and teach other people to sense them, aren't you? They're humans – you do it."
Takeo's eyes widened in surprise as he nodded, acknowledging that Rael had a point.
Yeah, Yonsu had already known Rael long enough to know that was surprising.
I suppose chapters like this are my fault for giving Rael a character arc. It feels like a mess, but it had to be one because of the dramatis personae – Rael is a bundle of issues, Takeo is nice but doesn't have Tao's social skills. Sangeen could be moderator as the reasonable one present, but he doesn't have that much ability to control Yonsu and he's an agent, he can't pass up any good intel that may come from Yonsu pushing them and getting them to reveal things.
This is also Takeo's arc – because of course there's be a plot to make sure he's happy too – and getting to see humans and nobles interacting and perhaps becoming comrades without it going perfectly and the humans adoring the noble. In the novelization and Noblesse S there are even more indications that yes, it is still instinct for humans to worship nobles despite the separation of the species, but nobles can avoid that by shielding/keeping humans from detecting their auras. Since in this 'verse Sangeen and Yonsu can't sense auras at all, both the author and Frankenstein are interested in exploring how this works out.