"I've become so numb, I can't feel you there. *upbeat synth trumpets* Become so tired, so much more aware. *bouncy keyboard riff*"
- Linkin Park 80s-style remix that I saw on tumblr with a little Animal Crossing guy dancing to it
"It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something."
- Sean Astin
"Well how 'bout that? This side we don't have to fix."
"*CLANK* I don't want you spoiled, Buck."
- John C. Reilly and Robert Duvall
"How do you get a crew to want to get off a submarine? How do you get a crew to want to get off a nuclear sub-… ?"
- Alec Baldwin
"What a pair we make, huh? Both trying to hide who we are. Both unable to do so. Your men love you. If I knew nothing else about you, that would be enough. But you also tilt, when you should withdraw. And that is knightly too."
- James Purefoy
"If you are seeing this message, that can only mean that Code: Veronica has reached a critical stage. The year is 1983, and I am afraid that my only daughter has become obsessed with the Veronica virus. She has even gone to the point of experimenting on her own body. My daughter dreams of unleashing this… thing into the world. This last step is the only way I can think of to help her. Whether you are on Umbrella's side or not… Please, help her."
- Some posh British guy talking about a Karen Strassman character who definitely isn't Mint Adenade
"Even in this world on the verge of collapse, I still dream of a tomorrow. Keeping a believing heart within my chest, I search for light. IT'S JUST THE TRUTH IN MY HEART, an indelible scar turning even that pain into hope. The tale of the ongoing conflict will soon open up our destiny!"
- 1983: Schwarzesmarken
"*angry Welsh catgirl noises*"
- Nia
"I solved the power problem, Jerry."
- Val Kilmer
"I do renounce them."
- Al Pacino
"Ernest Hemingway once wrote 'The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.' I agree with the second part."
- Morgan Freeman
"Kinda makes you wonder, doesn't it?"
"Wonder what?"
"Whether she's naked under that toga. She's French, you know that?"
- Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson
"Oh, sweet Zero. I've realized something. We don't have to be scared of this world… because once I destroy it, there won't be a world to be scared of anymore."
- Cristina Vee
"We'll escape! We'll escape into the future! Into that dimension we've never seen! All of you… join me… in escape!"
- Xilien Controller
"Playtime is over, Star Fox."
"I think I'll torture you for a while."
"Daddy screamed REAL good before he [audio glitch]"
"You'll be sorry you crossed us!"
- Star Wolf team at the Bolse defense station
"James Bond, Her Majesty's loyal terrier."
- Alec Trevelyan at the Antenna Cradle
"Seven rings in hand, speed through nights with feet in sand. Seven rings in hand, wonders all under command."
- The song from that Sonic game where he fights the final boss with only three rings charged with despairing edgelord powers after Mai Nakahara's character gets killed off
"Keep the faith in the headwind. Living as it is, I promised you. Oh true color, the clear sky, repainted freely to any color."
- Mai Mizuhashi singing the very Crush 40-sounding opening song to that gritty magical girl anime where the main character is a guy named Kazuya and the tonfa user from the rival military squadron is a green-haired Rise Kujikawa lookalike, when Rise herself is like if someone turned Mima Kirigoe into a JRPG character (think it through a couple of times)
"All hail the new king in town. Young and old, gather 'round. Black and white, red and green, the funkiest man you've ever seen!"
- Prince
"Open your eyes, open your mind. Proud like a god, don't pretend to be blind. Trapped in yourself, break out instead. Beat the machine that works in your head."
- An English song by a German nu metal band that someone used in a Viper music video years ago where it definitely had elements of a random AMV type thing but the lyrics also cleverly fit the storyline of the pilot episode
"To prevent war, the galaxy is on Orion's belt."
- The little dude inside the big dude's head
"In the Gate of Saint Romanus you went away to another place, and an angel will bring you here when the time is right."
- Stamatis Spanoudakis
"Now I've had the time of my life. No, I never felt like this before."
- Bill Medley
"Hitler has scheduled a military briefing for today at 1:00. Stauffenberg will start once everyone is present. Before arming the explosives, Stauffenberg will call here for authorization to proceed. After the flash, his inside man will sever all communications. Assuming Fromm refuses to join us, Olbricht will take command of the Reserve Army and initiate Valkyrie. Then he will notify all district commanders that the SS is attempting to seize power. The Reserve Army will arrest all SS, Gestapo and Nazi officials. By then, Stauffenberg will have returned to Berlin and taken command of the Reserve Army. Witzleben and I will assume the roles of Commander of the Armed Forces and Head of State. With Berlin secured, Dr. Goerdeler will address the nation as our new Chancellor. Then, God willing, we can negotiate a truce with the Allies and save Europe from total destruction."
- Terence Stamp at a secret 1940s German war office
"Kneel before Zod."
- Terence Stamp at the White House
"And this game is not run by the Nazis because you don't lose your XP."
- Chip 'n Dale's MMORPG theme song
"Malachite is the essence of joy and is known as the 'stone of transformation' because it helps reveal and heal emotional pain by absorbing the pain into itself. It is especially helpful in bringing ease during times of change and gives the insight needed for personal growth. Just looking at malachite's swirls, rings and intricate marbling is rejuvenating and uplifting. It can help a person get through tough transitional periods. This is a wonderful, empowering stone to wear when starting a new project or job or moving to a new home. Malachite has been traditionally used to ward off danger and fight illness. It has been said to protect against falling and has been wrapped over bruises and broken bones to help with tissue regeneration and healing. Malachite tends to draw negative energy and disharmony into itself. Periodically recharge your malachite's energy by placing it on a clear quartz cluster, then rinse with cool, clean water. Overall, malachite is said to bring harmony into one's life. Wearing it can assist in the manifestation of the heart's desire and strengthen intuition."
- A website I found on Google
"You can either help him grow up, and grow up with him, or the two of you lovebirds can just dissolve into forgotten history!"
- Chie Hallard
"Kids that age will suddenly turn into adults. You have to believe in her."
- Kazuko Saotome (voiced by Junko Iwao) hanging out at a bar with Junko Kaname (voiced by Yuko Goto)
"Omedetou!"
- Hikari Horaki (also Junko Iwao)
"Wings? I don't have wings!"
"Of course not. You're a boy."
- Jen and Kira
"I can see everything you're blind to now. Your prayers will be answered, let God whisper how."
- Lady Gaga
"It's Mega Maid! She's gone from suck to blow!"
- Colonel Sandurz
"Candita me ako, sotenita ato."
- Yuriko Kaida
"bleepy bloop."
- Seraphim Gundam getting ready to do a thing
Yumi's metal fans unraveled another tightly-wound bundle of viscera from the sparkling dead magician. She tore her lifeless opponent apart piece by piece, shredding through the black and silver Robe like it was tissue paper, and deliberately skipping the most vital parts so it wouldn't all disappear at once. Emerald embers twinkled off the floating remains of the defeated Otome while endless torrents of blood changed Yumi's dark green mass-production Robe to dark red.
She managed to inherit her beloved empress's colors after all.
The girl was more barbarian than beauty. When it was over, she hovered by herself in the fading orange sky. The fact she was merely alive was proof enough of her victory, while saying nothing of the fact she was soaked with gore from head to toe.
There's a tragic lullaby the Otomes sing, about a little girl named Maria who watched her mentor named Monica fall to the hands of her best friend Sylvie in a battle neither of them wanted, and then watched Sylvie fall to yet another friend. The little girl was simply too young and too weak to help any of them. Well, what if Maria took matters into her own hands and destroyed it all so it could never happen again?
Black-red hair clinging to her face like moss, body hovering with straight vertical posture to hide her exhaustion, Konala's youngest and highest-ranking Meister Otome growled through her teeth in a bloodthirsty tribal trance. This battered, grieving girl was the only heroine they could pray for as their land sank further and further into war. Revenge was the only way she could face her grief now.
Her voice crackled over her GEM's harsh electronic distortion.
"Bring me Malachite."
Chie's hand gently brushed Akane's cheek as her eyelids fluttered to alertness. Bright fluorescent beams were gliding in a straight line over her head.
The Imperial Meister was lying on her back with large white pillows stacked under her head. When she tried to look down toward her limbs, all she could see was a long white ocean of hospital sheets. She was lying still, but constantly moving in a hurry. She heard a small beep, beep, beep tucked somewhere next to her ear, and the rhythm was subtly increasing the longer she looked around.
There was a screen filled with her vital signs hanging over her head. IV bags dangled next to the monitor, feeding the thin clear tubes taped to her under the sheets. She could hear her own gentle, raspy breathing in the funnel covering her mouth and nose as the machine supplied her with rich oxygen. Her mind was still in a light haze from the sedatives she'd been given after Kazu couldn't bring her out of her hysteria on his own.
Everyone was sprinting beside her as she glided down the hall. Kazu was looking down at her with the most concern, and his eyes stayed on her the longest when everyone else was looking ahead. His right arm was wrapped in a burlap sling.
Chie was on the other side of the rushing bed, looking at her with a mix of urgency and doubt. There was another woman beside Chie who was more fixated on the monitors and IVs as she helped keep the cart moving. She was a Cardair nurse who looked a little familiar. Akane might have met her during one of Kazu's first assemblies.
"Chie? What is this?" the Imperial Meister's voice sounded slightly muffled inside her oxygen mask.
"You're on medical leave at the moment," Chie responded like she was supplying directions rather than stating facts. "We have to get that nasty gash on your shoulder checked out. We're worried your nanogenerators might be escaping your bloodstream."
"My shoulder?" Akane murmured in drowsy confusion. "But Mia never…"
Dark fuzzy fragments of the battle replayed in her memories. Her opponent swung her knife-fans toward Akane's passing side, and she barely dodged out of the way with a split-second corkscrew maneuver. She'd been deployed against a faster, more experienced, and politically higher-ranking Meister. The entire time they were fighting, her mind was privately screaming "No! No! No! It's not supposed to be like this!" but she was even more terrified of losing when Kazu's life depended on her. She refused to lose. And if Mia had the energy left after losing half of her organs in their decisive midair collision, Akane was certain the empress would have been screaming "You already killed me and Kishu, you little twerp! Now don't make me spend another second thinking about the agony he's in! Finish the job and focus on keeping your guy alive!" She would have been begging the same thing from Mia (minus the "little twerp" bit) if their fight had gone the other way.
Chie coyly smiled, raised her index finger to her lips, and whispered "Shhhh."
Then Akane started to understand. They were staging an injury to give her the perfect opportunity to slip around backstage.
Emperor Kazuya shook his shoulder inside its sling, asking "Do you really think they'll fall for it?"
"Don't you notice how dumb they are with the way they're running the world out there? They'll never have a clue. Just be careful with how you move it around when people are watching. You and Akane are supposed to have a severed deltoid," Chie said back. Her expression sharply changed from confident to regretful. "I just wish we could have tried this sooner before I had to kick Shiho out of the hen house."
"Shiho?" Akane's eyes grew slightly wet as her breathing mask steamed. She'd been the 3rd rank Pearl in Akane's and Chie's class. Hailing from Cardair, but she was recast to Florince's stage after Akane vacated her first contract.
"Yep." Chie made such a short word sound so painful. "Old Chuck threw himself into the cauldron for my round. Even the other Florince girls couldn't believe he did it. I guess you really pissed him off this time."
Akane blinked. It didn't make any sense. A moment ago, she'd seen Chie being vividly torn to shreds in the sky. But here she was now, alive and in one piece, racing beside Akane's gurney.
The vision. The nightmare. She'd seen something that hadn't happened in her emotionally tormented sleep. But something in her consciousness told her it could happen if events continued on their current course. What was she supposed to be doing differently?
The last time she ever had a dream that frightening was right before she breached her contract with Florince and began her elopement with Kazu. In the dream, she tearfully ended her relationship with him completely, went through the graduation ceremony without incident, and upheld her honor by serving her home country as its Crown Meister. She was constantly racked with doubts and regrets in private, but she worked hard for her people and was highly adored in public. The Pure Heart Malachite with a broken heart.
On one particular day, she was standing next to the throne overhearing the daily reports. Trivial details about the kingdom's goings on that flowed in and out of her ears, except for one thing: A comment that one of the emperors in Cardair was dead. Assassinated while hiking through some woods a short two months after he was crowned, and no suspect had been identified. Oh well. No one expected him to last very long anyway. That's what they get when they keep tossing children on their throne. It was just a curious observation that meant nothing to anyone in Florince, except her.
She remained respectfully quiet at her station—as was expected of her—but her trembling knuckles were clawing the blue and white apron covering her waist until her nails sunk into her palms and started drawing blood. It was her fault. She was the one who told him to forget about her and keep focusing on his studies so he could be a good ruler in his own country someday.
She needed to confess all of her overwhelming guilty feelings on the spot. She needed to scream, but her duties required her to stay silent. And then she woke up.
That dream was what finally put her anxieties over the edge and convinced her it would be wrong for her to stay in Florince. She had to flee with him as soon as the opportunity arose. There was no other possible way she could react when, in the version of history that actually happened, Kazu valiantly burst into the middle of her ceremony, renounced his nobility in Cardair so he could be with her, and begged her to race away into secluded paradise with him. Their lives were simple but happy for that short time they were together, until Cardair decided he was going to be the next emperor anyway.
They were never able to consummate their love before they were separated again. Deputy Column Mahya forced Akane to enter a new contract with Emperor Kazuya to make her uphold her duties. Then the current war broke out, and the elder Cardair Emperors ended up getting her as an unexpected bonus in the deal.
"Sorry. I guess our Trias is down one girl again. We're really making a bad habit out of that," Chie shook her head remorsefully, completely oblivious to Akane's fears. "Hopefully Nao's still out there slinkin' around somewhere."
The redhead from Artai became the replacement 3rd rank in their class after Akane's early graduation (and subsequent dissertation) moved Chie and Shiho up a rank. The three-member lineup with Nao was short-lived, however, when she was appointed to Column status. Chie and Shiho were the only two out of their rotating trio to finish their class through the conventional graduation ceremony.
But now Shiho was dead. That could only mean the King of Florince was dead, and now the kingdom was in a frenzy to crown the next King or Child-King. It would have been Akane in Shiho's place if she had kept her original Meister contract in her home country. But what about…
"Sister Rosalie?" Akane's well-respected predecessor from Florince, and King Charles Guinel's alternate. Akane said her name in a small and fretful voice.
Chie shook her head again, but now she was in relief.
"No. That flower's still on the program with us. Not quite ready to join the other stars up there yet. She demanded they switch her contract to some butler at the last second. If she'd been connected to the throne when I took Shiho down, all three of 'em would have Sparked Out together. Or she'd just fall out of the sky without her Robe and die the less pretty way. They're not all complete morons over there."
At least Akane had one thing she didn't need to feel guilty about. Chie continued speaking with a determined glare.
"We're not going to wait a few more years. We probably don't even have a few days left. We're getting you out of this insane asylum, Akane. And we're getting Kazu on the real throne where he belongs. I'm just sorry I couldn't scrounge more support together for you in such short time. We already lost all the heavy hitters we could have relied on. Haruka, Mai, Arika, Mia, Nina…"
The Delta Commander sighed as she lowered her head in grief. There were no enemies in the Otome system. Or not vicious enemies who would ever want to fight to the death, at least. They learned together as Corals, rehearsed together as Pearls, and then they went out into the world as Meister graduates so they could adapt their talents to their individual kingdoms and cultures. They were only cast into the roles of "allies" and "enemies" through their political relationships with their life-Masters. Even Otomes who didn't attend the Academy together and only met later in their professional interactions—with Mia and Akane being among the more endearing examples in the Sisterhood—often became close friends with a shared comradery when their countries were at peace.
"Anyway," Chie cleared her throat as she got her thoughts back in order. "If we're quick, we'll get this over with before they have time to call me out to fight another one of their island Otomes."
Akane suddenly gasped in panic, instinctively knowing that strategy was never going play out the way Chie wanted. Her left hand lashed out from under the white gurney blankets and locked in a vice grip around Chie's forearm. Her heartrate elevated tenfold. The sudden jerk caused the Delta Commander to briefly freeze in surprise.
"We'll take too long if we try to resolve this one country at a time. I'll take care of Cardair," Akane insisted instead. "You take the Delta team to Konala. We've got to make a truce with them first."
"Akane." Chie sighed in sympathy, thinking this was just her peer's guilt speaking. "I know how much she meant to you, but that country is just…"
Akane's hand gripped her wrist even tighter.
"You have to, Chie. Offer them a truce and help them recover from what I did."
"What good would that even do if I tried?" Chie's tone was growing more despondent the longer the conversation took this route. "Their whole island chain is conscripted to Florince. They never wanted in this thing to begin with. I'm telling you, Sis, you need my girls' legs kicking doors down over here, in Cardair."
The answer came from Akane's lips like a prophecy from an oracle.
"The contract's void." She paused as she took another gulp of purified oxygen. "It was signed between Sou and d'Florince VIII. Mia's and Shiho's losses nullify both signatures. Konala has no obligation to help anyone anymore. If Konala stops bankrolling Florince, Florince will lose their main funding for the war. The hatred between Cardair and Florince has to end here. I can't let any more Sisters suffer like this. Not in the kingdom I'm sworn to, or in the kingdom I was born to."
Chie thought silently as the gurney continued to roll. Her expression gradually changed from confusion to amazement as she traced the logic in her own head.
"Sacred Mother Herself. Even I wouldn't have thought of that." She looked down at Akane with confidence returning to her face. "What's gotten into you, Soir-chatte?"
The nurse on Akane's left started to speak.
"I didn't want to say anything to get you more worried, but her EEG spiked a minute ago. It was right before she woke up. I've never a reaction like that before from any of you girls."
"Shock again?" Chie's apprehension started to creep back into her voice.
"No, couldn't be," the nurse said with complete certainty. "Neural signs baseline when that happens. This was the total opposite."
"Alright, then. Uh… wow." Chie blew surprised air through her lips as she scratched her forehead. "So… what do we do about retaliation for Shiho? A reserve ace from Cardair just killed the king's top ace from Florince."
Akane delivered her answer softly, but promptly.
"There's no documentation officially linking the Delta Otome Force to any specific government. They're an international organization proposed by President Chrysant and Garderobe that maintains the Otome system throughout the world. Their support of Emperor Kazuya are just baseless rumors. They weren't even in the same country at the time Cardair was consolidated under the Krau-xeku household."
"Holy shit." Chie's face turned ghostly white. This was actually going to work. She chuckled nervously to regain her composure.
"Okay. I guess I'm taking the girls on a tropical cruise, then. You sure you can do this without your backup dancers?"
"I'll have Kazu. He's going to be the one leading us when this is over." The Meister smiled up at her emperor. Kazuya smiled back to his Otome in relief.
"Well, this is a change in the program I wasn't expecting." Chie shrugged in submission. "Big Sister Soir, nicest girl on campus, would lock herself in her room and cry for days if she ever stepped on a bug. Now she's going to pull off a coup d'etat to take over an entire continent by herself."
"Did you forget how I ended up here?" Akane lightly giggled back at her. "I don't always have to follow the rules."
After closing her eyes and taking a light breath to organize her thoughts, her tone became more serious.
"Is anyone else in medical?"
"Laula," Chie and the nurse said at the same time. Chie continued her answer alone. "They got her through the alliance with Lutesia Remus. She's not in great shape after Carla…"
"I want her with me if she's able," Akane firmly instructed. "The queen of Remus won her rivalry with Romulus, but she never wanted to use her Otomes against anyone else, and she never wanted to kill all of us. If she hates the other Cardair emperors for dragging her into this as much as I do, I'll get her to authorize Laula."
"Akane, I'm not sure she's in any condition to go fighting."
Akane gently shook her head.
"She won't have to fight any Otomes this time. Those poor girls are all on the field. I just need some extra muscle to help me plow through the regulars so I can get to the Royal Command Center. They're probably celebrating because Florince lost its king. We'll catch them off guard. But if they have any Otomes stationed there, I'll do all the talking. None of us want to keep dying."
"I'll see what I can do." Chie sighed. Akane was on strategic auto-pilot, changing from a meek serving girl into an accomplished empress all while she was sprawled on a medical gurney. All Chie could do was try to follow along. "Any special requests for when I get to Konala?"
Akane's eyes glanced up at Chie pleading for mercy.
"They're a peaceful kingdom, but they're panicking right now. Emperor Kishuku and his wife were the best friends to every citizen there. They kept their ports open to any country who wanted to trade with them. They only made an argument if you invaded their borders or criticized them for putting pineapple on a pizza. They don't want their country to fall apart without them. They want to know their sacrifice is what saved the country for everyone else. Just try to keep their people calm until Kazu and I fix things here."
She looked away from Chie and stared down toward her white sheets in reserved melancholy.
"I'll become the Otome who ends this nightmare for everyone, and then I'll surrender my GEM to the girl Mia would have chosen for her successor. I just hope she accepts it, and forgives me."
She was sure the Columns would stop enforcing her contract with Kazu once they knew what she'd been through and saw the noble way she intended to pass her GEM down, if there were any Columns left to enforce her. In happier times, she'd be celebrating how her retirement meant she would be Kazu's wife, and he would be a powerful ally effectively married into the Sisterhood. But so much still had to be done before those celebrations were earned.
She stared up at the gliding light beams as she remembered some of Sister Maria's more harsh teachings at Garderobe.
"A personal attendant representing Cardair defeating an empress drafted to Florince. I never wanted to turn Mia into a repeat of Monica. And wherever she is, I know she doesn't want me to become the new Sylvie. I'll beg that girl for forgiveness once Kazu has our country under control. I'll do whatever I can to ease her suffering. She was Little Sister to Mia. She's my Little Sister as well."
The name Fearsome Heart Malachite flashed through her thoughts for an instant. Things were starting to steer back toward the right path.
Chie remembered that sad old story as well, but she'd always been worried about the other possible parallel. One that would be even closer to history: Trias II Chie ends up in a position where she's forced to defeat Trias I Akane, and then someone else defeats Chie so neither one of them gets the chance to live on for the other. That terrifying possibility always seemed to be growing and shrinking with the tides of the war.
Aries could call her up at any moment begging "Help us, General Hallard! Cardair is getting ready to invade us! We have no Otomes left!" Akane's first battle against another Otome had nearly drowned her in guilt and left her emotionally shattered. She'd never win another duel in her current condition, and poor Kazuya never asked for any of this. He'd beg Akane to give up the fight at the first opportunity so neither of them had to take any more lives. If no one else put Akane out of her misery by the time Chie was called to fight her…
The bottom of the gurney slammed through a pair of double doors. The hastily assembled party was about to arrive at the first security checkpoint.
"I'm going to get the D-Girls working on this one fast. Are sure you can keep up with me?" Chie squinted at Akane like she was making a friendly challenge.
"Just remember the Academy," Akane answered with a soft exhale through her mask. "You and I were the best synchronized dancers in our class."
Chie turned toward Kazuya with all the fading hopes of the world haunting her eyes. She didn't address him like a soldier addressing a superior officer, or a knight addressing a king, or a maid addressing the master of the house. Kazuya's alma mater, Windbloom Academy for royals, was practically just next door to Chie's alma mater, Garderobe Academy for Otomes. Their off-the-record interactions often just sounded like old school friends helping each other with their jobs.
"Okay, boss. We tried to do this two years ago with Mashiro in Windbloom, and it didn't take. This is our second chance at making things work with Cardair. Our last chance. You're going to be the one calling the shots from now on. Just try to be careful where you put your hands on my Sister this time." Her eyes darted toward his sling. "Or your hand, anyway."
Kazuya answered her while gazing down lovingly toward Akane.
"She's safe with me, Chie. If she can keep talking like this, I'll just follow her cues."
The narrow fluorescent beams gliding over Akane's head ended. The hallway opened into a large foyer with blinding round spotlights beaming down from a ceiling far above her. When the nurse had to report to another station and Chie had to scramble with the rest of her team, all that was left was the emperor's endearing face peering down at Akane in the brilliant white light.
"It's just starting to dawn on me," Kazuya nervously exhaled, "I don't even know how we're going to reach those bastards. The whole skyline is fortified to make sure you guys stay in the combat zone. They've probably got choppers patrolling the entire Chaldean Sea on our side. They'll see us coming no matter which way we try to fly in."
His resolve started to sink as his eyes glanced toward her heart monitor. He didn't want to think about what kind of effect another brute force attack would have on her.
"Please don't level any cities for my sake, Akane. Not after what I've already put you through."
Akane slowly but confidently shook her head.
"Laula and I will lift off right here from the hospital. They'll never be looking for a couple of medical cases dropping on them from orbit. We'll show them why they should believe all those legends about their world ending when a star descends."
"But I have to come with you," Kazuya glanced back at her with growing fright. His Otome had all the benefits of her Robe that allowed her to operate in virtually any environment. He had nothing but the dusty cape on his back. "Are you trying to get all three emperors killed?"
"You'll be fine. I'll share my oxygen with you once we're in space," Akane answered with a comforting whisper. She was coming up with an urgent strategy she never would have thought of until now, but she knew it could be done as long as he was with her.
"Do I need any special equipment for that?" Kazuya gulped.
"We don't have time to get it, and we need to travel light. I'll just have to give you mouth-to-mouth, and I'll have to wrap my arms around you extra tight when we burn through the atmosphere." Akane smiled behind her clear mask.
Kazuya shrugged the rest of his nerves away, and left everything up to fate.
"Mahya was right about one thing. I guess I'm the perfect match for you. I just don't know why I'm so lucky I ended up with you."
"It's that divine right of kings the other two morons are always babbling about," Akane reassured him. She could see everything the same way the Founder Fumi would see it. "The only difference is we're swapping them out with the king our Goddess chose. I'm the angel she sent you to make sure it happens."
The dressing room was behind her. This would be her first—and quite possibly only—mission she'd ever perform as a full-rank Meister Otome, with no one restricting her, no one superseding her authority, and no one trying to exploit the sacred life-contract she shared with her Master. If she succeeded, the nightmare would instantly end so the world could start to heal. If she failed today, she'd be condemning every single one of her cherished Sisters to a meaningless sorrowful death.
She was about enter the world stage with Kazu as her partner.
"Uhh… guys? I think our stray kitten just saved all our hides." Nao's mascara-smeared eyes blinked at the memo glowing on her portable monitor. "Cardair calls for immediate armistice. It's coming from callsign Pure Heart Malachite, acting in the name of… High Emperor Krau-xeku?"
The Five Columns were assembled in stoic and anxious fashion inside the principal's office on the highest floor of Garderobe. Nao, Sara, and Mahya were seated at a roundtable obsessively watching terminals hardwired to the Founder's logistical database. Natsuki was standing at the edge of office with her emotionless face a few inches away from the large skyline window, watching everything that happened in the distant horizon like the captain of an air boat. Shizuru stood faithfully by her side, clutching a closed hand over her own heart and almost never saying a word. Maria, the school's most experienced non-executive instructor, stood behind the three seated Columns in isolated meditation.
Every public communication (and even some of the encrypted ones) from every kingdom on their planet came to them in a constantly updating data stream. Needless to say, the reports they had been reading for the past half-week were some of the most awful imaginable. All the world's day to day functions, it seemed, had come to a complete halt so all the time could be spent forcing Otomes to murder each other.
Garderobe's administrators couldn't move an inch to help them. Anything that could provoke belligerent countries into seeing the Columns as an enemy faction would put the lives of all the young Corals and Pearls on their campus in jeopardy. Any campaign against Garderobe in its current state would likely spell the end of every Otome who ever breathed.
Once there were no angelic Otomes left to pacify the public with their serene dances and maintain order between negotiation tables, the world would just go back to tearing itself apart the old ways. Humanity nearly destroyed itself once three centuries ago, until the Holy Mother Fumi sealed away all the technology and created a system where only a fraction of it was entrusted to her very special daughters. The world's rulers adhered this system on the fragile mutual agreement they could command and fuel these daughters by binding their lives to them.
Garderobe was seated on a colossal digital vault of environmental and medical technology that could be used to perform genuine miracles, and only those carefully trained in Fumi's philosophy were allowed to wield it. But records of all the horrors created from human ingenuity were also sealed in the same Pandora's Box. Blueprints for artillery weapons designed to mow down human beings by the thousands. Zero-gravity warships designed for interstellar bloodbaths. Chemical formulas that could leave the land scorched and poison entire ocean ecosystems. Instructions on how to assemble bombs capable of making entire planets uninhabitable.
Otomes bound to the lives of major leaders were the single most powerful weapon available in this world. But if the Otomes were wiped out whole, it wouldn't end in a sad but peaceful scene where the girls became martyrs so the rest of their society could live on safely. It would escalate into actual atomic war.
The stability of the entire world was hinged on the Otomes swearing absolute loyalty to their Masters, but now that arrangement was driving the Otome system to cannibalize itself. The few that remained were fighting and sacrificing their lives on the hopeless prayer it would prevent the worst outcome from happening.
As each minute passed and the world fell deeper and deeper into madness, even the Founder herself couldn't calculate an answer for what they were supposed to do. There was no strategy she could form when her network connections were limited and the only information she received was despair from every region.
The only thing the Columns and their senior instructor could do was wait until someone called for peace, or someone launched an attack on Windbloom. A fragile kingdom that had already lost all of its defenders, leaving the school's staff as the only ones who could save it from falling into total ruin. Their only solace—as heart-wrenching as it was to admit—was that their Sisters were out there killing each other rather than killing them. But that predicament couldn't last forever.
The Headmistress's eyes were staring blankly out the window toward the sky. All of those girls' hopes and dreams were supposed to come true in that sky. But so many of them were being taken away so violently and so quickly, the entire troposphere seemed to be turning into an unnatural glittering green haze.
Oh, how she realized how much she hated that color in these past couple of days. And now it was all she could see every second she was awake. Anyone could hear the countless Otomes up there screaming in pain and misery as they were ordered to fight one another. But Headmistress Natsuki, Column I, the primary matron of Garderobe Academy who answered only to Fumi herself, could hear the other voices as well. The collective silent chorus resonating from that ever growing sparkling cloud. Hundreds of lost, grieving women all crying out "Please. Don't let our Younger Sisters become like us. Make our sacrifice mean something."
There wasn't a single thing she could do that wouldn't put the most vulnerable members of their Sisterhood in even greater danger. She and Shizuru had only been serving as Principal and Vice Principal of Garderobe for three years, but they already dealing with the largest disaster since the days of the original Founder.
When Nao announced the first good news to arrive in ages, most of the reactions of the women in the office were mix of fleeting hopefulness and shell-shocked skepticism. Could it really be true? After all that had happened? But slowly, as the facts sank in, their spirits were rising.
Not Natsuki, however. She was so lost in her endless list of regrets and shortcomings that news the war could be ending barely entered her thoughts.
Pure Heart Malachite. The tiny fraction of Natsuki's mind operating in the "here and now" was vaguely aware of the name. It was one of the more placid girls they put in a contract somewhere in the Cardair region after the conflict with Argos XIV and Nagi left everyone in worse shape than they started. Mahya and Shizuru's suggestion, mostly. She didn't want to be reminded that Otome wore a predominantly white Robe, and the naturally occurring color of the real malachite gemstone was always green.
"No communications from Chie?" She asked hesitantly. Her thoughts could only focus on the negative. So many of her personal friends and most trusted allies had already died for her mistakes, she was desperate to find just one who was allowed to live.
"Nope. Not coming out of Cardair," Nao replied from the table.
"Is there news from any of the Deltas?" Natsuki stared at her own forlorn reflection in the window. Even the icy Headmistress of Garderobe could melt into tears at any moment.
"The announcement doesn't mention them at all," Sara said.
"It couldn't be a pirated broadcast? Some kind of diversion?" Natsuki asked coldly and cautiously.
"It's coming straight from their verified Capital Channel and flooding every communications hub underneath," Sara rubbed her eyes, struggling to believe her own words. "The only other thing is a statement recognizing Kazuya's reign. It's coming from… United Lutesia?"
Maria quietly gasped in private. What was happening in her home kingdom? It hadn't been a single nation since she was just a Coral, back when Cardair and Florince dragged the rest of the world into their blood feud the first time fifty years ago.
Sara continued her report.
"There's a congratulations message from An Nam. It's signed by the king and the crown princess. Aries' Provisional Executive Branch is throwing in their support, too."
It was the first reassuring global announcement Aries had made since their leader was assassinated-through-Otome earlier that week. President Chrysant had been one of the first casualties once Cardair and Florince decided they wanted to fight again. Aries was an elected republic that had a history of always trying to play peacekeeper by throwing themselves into the middle of other countries' wars, and the royal houses didn't want any nuisance distractions in their paths to wipe each other out.
As for the other message from that remote coastal kingdom just above the equator…
"An Nam's supporting Cardair?" Mahya checked her own screen a second time as she muttered under her breath. "But Ahn Lu's team is locked in their contracts with…" The rest of Columns were too fixated on the other alerts to even hear her.
"Damn. Chie's girls really did it. But they must have bought it during the assault on Bozos A and B." The Headmistress was about to pound her fist against the glass. She stopped herself and slowly lowered her arm. "At least they got Soir through for us. She and Krau-xeku are the last ones who would go on any kind of war path."
It wasn't someone Natsuki had a personal friendship with, or a particularly close service history, but it was hope. A weak glimmer of it that could be smothered out at any moment. From the sound of things, Cardair was in the middle of some kind of power gambit, and Florince would surely push for more fighting once they secured their next heir. She'd already seen the disastrous consequences of putting too much faith in a fragile cause when she tried to back Queen Mashiro's campaign against Nagi two years ago.
"It's to be expected, dear Natsuki," Shizuru tried to calmly reassure her superior, but even her words came out slightly strained. "So many brave Otomes sacrificed themselves for their homelands these past few days, and it was our failures that cursed them. It's only fair we have to part with some of our Sisters as well." Silently, she mourned: If only we didn't have to lose this many…
"Wait a minute!" Mahya instantly lunged forward in her seat, grasping her terminal for dear life. "Florince Emergency Royal Council issues withdrawal so immediate reconstruction work can begin on the mainland and in allied territories. Volunteer efforts are being organized by Lt. Gen. Chie Hallard!"
Natsuki and Shizuru both gasped with total shock. An imaginary magician winked back and tipped her black top hat toward them.
"What the hell are they doing over there?" Nao blurted in surprise.
"Performing their greatest vanishing act yet," Mahya said half sarcastically, half gratefully. She loosened her grip on the monitor and flopped over the table in exhaustion.
"Tiger Girl busted us out of this cage all on her own," Sara chuckled with disbelief, understanding what it all meant. "She just needed a little push from her friends to get her claws out."
Cardair's regime change hadn't been clandestinely won for Akane like they initially thought. It had been won by Akane and the supporters she gathered herself. Nobody was going to dare oppose the emperor's order to stand down now.
This wasn't simply the first uplifting thing they'd heard in countless hours. It was all their lost hopes coming back around to greet them, tell them it was going to be alright, and smile at them with a familiar compassionate face.
Nao's head sank and she covered her face with her palm like she was about to burst into hysterical laughter, or sobbing. Mahya was sobbing with her face pressed against the desk and her arms crossed behind her head. The hopeful seed she planted two years ago, the contingency plan they'd nearly forgotten about in the middle of all this chaos, had blossomed from a heap of charred ruins to become their salvation. It was supposed to have been a careful multi-year project: Get Akane and Kazuya on the country's good side as the most popular royal couple, help Kazuya rise to become the most influential member of the Triumvirate, and marry them together at their political zenith to preserve the future. The war breaking out had convinced the Columns it was all a lost cause.
Akane had passed the stress test they were hoping for, and a million other stress tests they'd never wish on her in their worst nightmares.
Maria was struggling to hold her own tears.
"Then all of our prayers are answered. Fumi was right to give her another chance." The senior instructor clasped her hands firmly in reverence. "And I was wrong for forcing her to sign with Florince's crown against her wishes." She bowed her head in humbled respect.
They had an emperor married to one of their Sisters before. Sara, Mahya, and Maria had been part of the staff responsible for setting up that promising arrangement four long years ago. This emperor was a caring and good-natured man with wealthy commerce sources, but his empire was small and he was tragically swallowed up by the world's larger drama before he could become a sturdy pillar for peace. Now they had a new, more powerful, and just as peaceful emperor reigning over one of the world's superpowers. He would be married to an empress who followed the Otomes' creed, and he would work with them like they were his own sisters so the world they shared could remain safe. Garderobe depended on the empress to bring countless joyful daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters who would help continue the legacy of all the Otomes who gave up their lives these past few days, and no Otome—alive or dead—had anything to worry about when a devoted romantic like Akane was signed up for the role. After what she accomplished today, no one had to ask if she was capable of fending for her children or if she needed to be taught how to raise them.
"So that's really it, then?" Nao rubbed her temple as she collected herself. "Akane's boyfriend takes over the whole country in one day, and everyone over there is just cool with it?"
"She invoked a Dual Operation Valkyrie. And a damn successful one, at that." Sara explained as her eyes tiredly stared at an empty spot on the table. Mahya could have offered the same explanation, but she was still collapsed over in a crying mess. "It's a clause written into the Triumvirate Articles that allows one emperor to supersede either of the other two if they're declared infirm, impaired, or guilty of treason. It was the last resort option we had on the backburner to help Kazuya out in case his co-emperors didn't want to play nice. She must have put together the bits and pieces we've told her over the past couple of years and decided she'd do it without us, the impatient little bitch. It wouldn't have taken long for her to get the public on her side in this scenario, either. The only people who wanted all this killing to keep going were some shriveled monarch prunes everyone's getting sick of."
Sara sighed despondently, before she started to smirk.
"She's put herself in a spot where we'll never be able to help her again. Legally. But I don't think she'll be needing our help anymore."
"Val-... ?" Nao started to ask with a look of horror growing on her face, but Sara was already defiantly shaking her head.
"Not Nagi's Valkyries. Cardair's sanctions were laid out by their three founding houses centuries ago. If anything, he stole the idea from them when he was sliming around with Argos XIV."
Sara closed her eyes, covered her feverish forehead with her palm, and let out a deep sigh. The irony of it all just dawned on her as she was saying it.
Natsuki finally stepped back from the windows so she could rejoin her peers, with Shizuru following her closely and quietly. She flopped into a spot on the semi-circular sofa between Nao and Mahya, hanging over the cushions like all the energy had left her body in an instant.
Nao lounged back in her seat as she took a long gasp of air. She stretched a friendly arm over Natsuki's shoulders and offered her the weakest support she could manage.
"Hey. I know it sucks what happened with Tokiha and Armitage. We all lost someone here."
As sly and ruthless as she normally was, Nao's life debt to Mai weighed heavily on her conscience. She'd been promoted to the Column position that was originally intended for Mai, before Mai had her misadventure becoming lost in the woods near the campus and returning from the wilderness a couple years later with her strange "cat goddess," Mikoto. Mai chose to stay on the outside and do what she could for the rest of the world using her technically renegade Meister contract, and she happily congratulated Nao on the promotion. If Mai was in this office serving as Column IV today, it would have been Nao dissolving into the ether out there in an ambush several days ago.
Natsuki stared at the table and silently shook her head. Nao sensed her shoulders were trying to shiver, and her mind was fighting it off.
"I'll be fine." The Headmistress said defiantly, glancing toward the window again. The war banners were already starting to come down, but those were too far away for her to see. What she could see was the twinkling green mist peacefully fading from the sky.
The voices were gone. All but two of them. Haruka was yelling "Prez is calling! You better keep those grunts in line without me!" Mai was quietly saying "Thank you." Then they faded forever.
Natsuki closed her eyes and managed a small, bitter smile.
"In a world like this, someone's gotta keep the fire alive."
Author's notes:
I borrowed a few ideas from "Honeymoon Hijinks" and combined them with my more detailed description on how Founders work from the 6th chapter of "Slaughter & Shieldmaidens". To put it together into somewhat of a fake-scientific explanation: Following her post-Mia-slaying mindbreak and getting all "Imma gonna do my scream now," the nanomachines soaking around in Akane's brain started emergency-rebooting themselves in an irregular form. Being wired down on a medical gurney (i.e. an environment vaguely emulating a Founder's life support tank) is unintentionally accelerating the effect. In "Honeymoon," she intentionally double-hacked her nanomachines to have one big Founder Power Generator reaction. In this story, her nanomachines are glitching out as she's recovering from severe mental trauma and they're triggering mini Founder Super-Logic reactions. Yes, the nanomachines are required to get her to act like this. No, she's not going to be a permanent Mentat freak. Her brain-glitching will slow down as she recovers more (i.e. accepts Mia's death) and the war horror surrounding her comes to an end. But she's still a formidable tactician on her own, as evidenced by her being the leader of the Trias and being the supportive Big Sis who likes to think things out peacefully.
To explain it another way: Look up the YouTube video called "Teito Moyu VN but it's just the parts where they get Vipered." What's going on with Akane in this chapter is basically a more eloquent version of that. Particularly the part where Yui starts giving a monotone tactical analysis and Yamashiro's just like "Uhhh... I guess we're taking orders from Robo-Yui now." (Also: That really bleak segment Age added to the VN where it's just poor bless-her-despairing-heart Izumi by herself and absolutely going out of her mind in a panic attack, while also displaying the best damn evasive piloting on the entire Arashiyama Supply team? That's what Akane sounded like internally during her scene in S&S Chapter 4, which culminated in Akane "colliding" midair with Mia and messing up her "organs." winky face.)
Yes, it's Akane saving the day as the solo action badass dudette while all the other main storyline girls are stuck in an isolated room starring vacantly at the starry sky. Yes, it IS a deliberate inversion of the original HiME series. I hope u c what I did there.
No, I still have no idea how the Delta team's contracts work in this timeline. Fanwank something.
Wanna know the really funny part? After I wrote this chapter of Tetris Maintenance, I went back to S&S and added Mia's gloomy backstory with her dead mom, and how the nanomachines have mood stabilizers that helped her get over her dance sickness. And I only added that subplot because I gave Mia the exact same backstory as Suzu from Belle, only replacing the singing motif with a dancing motif. But in that process, I realized I accidentally foreshadowed exactly what ends up happening to Akane in this story route. COOL.
The part where Ahn Lu's country announces its support of Akane's country BEFORE it's obvious Florince is giving up happened accidentally in the writing process. On the first draft, I just absentmindedly included An Nam as one of the countries supporting Kazuya's ascension because I figured Ahn Lu, like Akane, is supposed to be a peaceful and wholesome girl and she'd just be onboard with that sort of thing. I wasn't thinking she legally CAN'T do that (or at least really, really shouldn't for the safety of her own people) since she's still conscripted to fighting for Florince. When I was re-reading that part in editing, I had basically the same reaction Mahya does. So instead of removing the An Nam reference completely, I kept it that way and turned it into an Actual Plot Thing where it's slowly becoming apparent Florince's war efforts are falling apart at the same time Cardair is getting Trial Fielded by Akane. Isn't it neat how that turned out? (I was trying to create the implication that Chie took Akane's advice to heart and she was going around cleverly finding loopholes to break up ALL of Florince's contracts.)
Yukariko is downstairs trying to keep the lil ones calm. Or she's ded. I did have an earlier draft of this where she's in the principal's office with Maria, standing there "lost in silent grief." But she didn't say / do anything and she didn't really have a purpose in the story.
What if Gundam Axis Shock but its symbolic meaning was wildly flipped around to represent a magical girl nightmare realm?
I'll leave it up to your imagination how the attack on the Original House went down in this timeline. I'll say this, however: Akane and Laula PROBABLY killed the other two schmucks so they can never drag the world into war again, but maybe they didn't. Maybe Akane pulled a Hikari move from Evangelion Anima. Like politely (but menacing in a subtle way) informing them "I am no longer under your control, but you're still have to be nice to me because I'm only thing you've got keeping your asses alive. Leave my nee-chans alone."
Akane is in a different Tom Cruise movie now. :)
Did U know Hikari Horaki was the original Freckled Princess? :D
To me, the ideal Akane x Kazu-kun dynamic is: Massive brilliant Amazonian queen hidden in a cute kinda-shy physical body, deeply loves this little dorky guy she drags around everywhere by the neck, little guy loves her back and just wants to be held in her figurative Arnold Schwarzenegger arms all day, and she needs his help to make sure she has lots more little queens. It's a nice dynamic.
I tried to make it ambiguous whether Natsuki ACTUALLY hears psychic voices from the burned up nanomachines of dead Otomes, or her intense self-blame is making her imagine the voices. I'm kinda wondering if she gets Breath of the Wild-esque character-based spirit powers once she frees them from their misery, though.
Natsuki's final line carries a bit of a double meaning. She's obviously referring to Mai. But somewhere on the other side of the world, Akane could be saying the exact same thing as a Mia reference. Mia isn't a fire elemental like Mai, but she did always talk about being the life of the party and heating things up.
In one scene of "Terrible Things Happen to Akane," I made a tiny reference to Saikano by having Akane kill a dude named Shuuji while she makes it clear that she's Kazu-kun's "ultimate weapon." And the whole time I was writing this, I kept equating Mia to the older prototype lady in the Saikano OVA. The weird thing is, I hate Saikano.
Design notes 1: When I started writing "When the Heart Rules the Mind" back in 2018, the character design I initially had in my head for the main character Yumiko was "She looks like Yamashiro from Muv-Luv with less RBF." But that was just a "closest reference character I could think of" sort of thing, and her overall design always slid around the longer I was writing. In terms of a generic template, she was supposed to be "bookish girl with 'maternal' Orihime/Lucy Heartfilia body type, amber eyes, and black hime cut." There was a point where I was picturing her more as Haruko from Roujin Z. When Mieruko-chan: The Girl Who Sees Them started becoming popular, my mentality switched to "Holy crap. Miko is EXACTLY how I envisioned my Yumiko!" Miko doesn't have a true hime cut, but you can just assume Yumiko's hair got more scruffy the longer she stayed inside the book, or whatever. But Yumiko always retained some very deliberate Yamashiro-like traits to kind of "pay tribute" to our ill-fated cranky mecha heroine (namely that whole final backstory reveal in WtHRtM's epilogue chapter after 20+ chapters of hinting, lol). Yumiko Kata and Kazusa Yamashiro even have the same initials backwards, although that part of it was completely accidental. Yumiko Kata's name is a reference to a Variable Geo character named Yumiko Watanuki and actor Jason Carter, and her naming gimmick was spun off from an older Variable Geo OC I made up named Miaka Makafuri, as a reference to Miaka Yuuki and James McCaffrey.
Design notes 2 (yes there's a point I'm getting to): More recently, I started writing "Slaughter & Shieldmaidens" with another OC named Mia Raki / Sou. She was heavily based on MIAka Yuuki, who was originally voiced by Kae aRAKI. The name Miaka Yuuki translates to "Beautiful Red Evening Castle," and I ended up modeling Mia as sort of perfect twin / more peppy clone / earlier prototype of another official Mai Otome girl with a Japanese-French name that translates to "Deep Red Evening." I thought it would be a neat self-referential thing if Mia chose another OC girl named Yumi Awa to be her successor, and Yumi is clearly supposed to be an expy / homage to YUMIko Kata from "When the Heart Rules the Mind" (who, in the fantasy Fushigi Yuugi radio drama I'm imagining in my head, would be voiced by Ayako kAWAsumi). And now in this story, Yumi has circled back around to become a little mini psycho Reverse-Yamashiro. That girl's gone through a fascinating (and very intestinally distressing) arc imo.
The more I look back on this chapter, the more I want to write an extra scene that shows how the negotiations went between Akane and the Lutesia Remus characters. But I really like the flow of Akane and Kazuya making their final vows to each other, and then immediately cutting to Nao's emotional reaction when the plan works. Adding another talky scene in between that would ruin it, I think. But if I WAS going to add a scene, it would be like this: Laula's sitting up in a gurney with one arm completely sliced off / burnt off and an eyepatch covering her missing eye. Her final fight with Carla left her with all the physical scars that match Akane's emotional scars, but she's silently swamped with grief as well. The queen is nearby (on another bed in the same war hospital? In a Lutesia hospital and talking through Laula's GEM? I'm not sure) in the same rugged condition. She's not really gloating over the whole "Ha ha I beat those filthy Romulus usurpers" thing since it's a bittersweet pyrrhic victory for her, and at the end of the day she's just another Cardair crony. Akane starts desperately explaining her strategy to both of them. The queen is fairly open-minded about the whole thing, but Laula remains in absolute silence. She sits on her gurney staring at the one hand she has left, holding some trinket left over from Carla's sparkly remains (Possibly a hair tie? Or maybe just some vivid burn marks left on her palm from trying to hold Carla while she got sparkled.) The queen says something like "If I aid you with this, I want all of Lutesia's debts with Cardair forgiven so I can focus on making my kingdom greater than ever." Akane and Kazuya agree to the deal with little witty smiles, pointing out how wealth never meant anything to them to begin with, and they were planning on living as a couple of hermits before they were dragged back into the whole royalty drama. Kazuya follows up saying they'll just have to make sure the rest of the people in his country are provided for, even if he has to sell all of his family's personal property. They're kinda doing the ending to Shoes of the Fisherman, except in more of a cutesy optimistic 2000s anime way, I guess? The Lutesia queen starts cheering up because the kids are being courteous and submissive (much different from the now-dead teenage guy who used to rule Lutesia Romulus), and that's helping her get back some of her Anime Ursula vibe. B-but in a positive way, I swear! She's turning into a hybrid of Ursula and that "Do or die we'll make our society survive" one-armed chick from the end of Princess Mononoke. In fact, she starts to get a little over ambitious with her post-war plans, but then she looks toward Laula with her one good eye and instantly feels disheartened again. She DOES care about her Otomes.
Akane starts talking to Laula one-on-one to counsel her. She tells Laula she just needs someone to give her some air support. All Laula needs to do is tag along with her. She's nervous she won't be able to get Kazu through in one piece if she tries to raid Cardair HQ just by herself. Laula is still staring at her hand, but finally breaks her silence to say: "I'll land first. They'll think Lutesia is rebelling. You'll get more out of your recon Robe if you drop in behind them." Akane is taken aback by this, and she's worried she asking too much from Laula. Laula forms her hand into a fist and stoically declares "Carla got a few good hits on me, but she'll be polishing her halo for a while before I'm ready to braid her hair again. Let's get your Master home." She's built up the same quiet, unshakable resolve as Akane to make sure this never happens to any other girls, and she also sees putting That Dork Kazu-kun on the Cardair throne as their one slim chance to end all this madness right now. (It's not so much "We the Otomes directly worship The Kazu-kun because we're all a bunch of harem babes swooning over how awesome he is and we all crave sum of dat hot God Emperor action," and it's more like "We respect Akane as one of our pluckiest, friendliest, most helpful sisters and we're putting all of our faith in her judgment that she picked the right dude.") And then Akane and Laula flutter off together as wounded Sisters in Arms with nothing left to lose.
You know how Sailor Moon S has that ending theme called "Tuxedo Mirage," which comes right after the ending theme called "Otome's Policy," and in "Tuxedo Mirage," it's all of the Sushis singing in a chorus about their wuv for Tuxedo Mask, but everyone knows the core message of the song is really about how much Usagi specifically wuvs Tuxedo Mask? It's kind of the same idea.
Akane and Laula briefly work together to overthrow the reigning Cardair monarchy. Junko Iwao and Kikuko Inoue also briefly worked together in real life in a J-Pop duet where they sing about penguins. That wasn't an intentional reference I was trying to make, though. It just kinda happened by coincidence.
side-side note to the previous side note: Laula was a minor role in the Otome TV show. She shows up as an off-screen speck fighting Carla's off-screen speck at the end of the same episode where Akane and Kazuya cause their scandal trying to escape feudal society, and then she just shows up in the background of a bunch of scenes. It's Kikuko Inoue playing a dual role, and her more prominent role is Yukariko. I dunno why I keep writing fanfics where Akane gravitates toward Yukariko.
This is also Mint from Tales of Phantasia teaming up with Philia from Tales of Destiny.
I'm looking at voice casts again and I just realized this is also Demi from Phantasy Star IV teaming up with multiple Lunar characters. That's very amusing to me. Seriously, I'm starting to think this is a better pairing than Chie and Akane being Zatanna and Sexy White Ranger.
It would be neat if Kikuko Inoue and Junko Iwao ever did a cover / remix / rearrangement of "Kanashii Tenshi ni Nacchau ne" ("I'm Going to be an Unhappy Angel") because it would totally work for Laula and Akane's team-up action scene. (Battle Skipper was one of my first "not Voltron or Sailor Moon" animes around the same time I collected all the Fushigi Yuugi VHS tapes.)
What's really, really, really interesting is I didn't go into this like "I'm really fixated on Laula's character for no specific reason and I want to give her a big defining role in this chapter." I wanted to do something with the divided Lutesia concept, where Akane taking her place in the world as a healer Otome helps undo some of the damage from the first Dragon King War. Laula just came along with the territory.
I've mentioned this a bunch of times in my HiME / Otome fanfics, but I really think it resonates the most in this story: I really, REALLY like the idea that all of this world's mythos has wrapped back around on itself where Akane and Kazu have to be pushed through as the victors to save all the Otomes from being wiped out in a Carnival-like apocalypse, because all of this started when the HiME version of Akane lost her Kazu-kun, and her heartwrenching suffering is what drove all the other girls to turn on each other. It's like, the suffering can't end until the two main poster children for all the suffering finally get their happy ending. Bonus points because tragically killing off one of the Kiyomi Asai characters is a critical part of making the ending work (Carla and Miyu have the same Japanese VA, lol.)
Here are a couple more details I've been thinking about after the fact: In S&S chapter 4, I mentioned how all the lower Cardair households were wiped out in Otome skirmishes before they started tossing the royals (i.e. Akane representing The Kazu-kun) onto the battlefield. Well, that implies there are a lot of distraught siblings, husbands, wives, children, cousins, etc. left over from those houses that maybe weren't always on board with the emperors who wanted a petty war with Florince. Which means there's a lot of hidden internal support for what Akane is trying to do (and it plays into "Akane as the goddess-personification of all of the kingdom's misery" when you see what she's going through in the previous chapter BTW). Also, in terms of overthrowing the older two stooges within a valid legal framework like Sara was talking about, there's one little neat detail going on here that I wasn't even thinking about when I wrote it. S&S said it's been two years since the events that sorta-kinda resemble the TV show happened, and Kazuya is now 18, right? Yeeeah... I've decided that's actually a very significant detail. Kazuya being 18 means he's now legally an adult. WHICH MEANS the other Cardair emperors are illegally forcing him to stay in his minority reign (that's the thing from real life history where medieval kid rulers weren't actually the ones who ruled the country) so they can exploit his contract with Akane. WHICH MEEEEANS Akane (who is 19-ish here, since she was 17 in "Tactical Madness") can 100% bust them for committing treason that throws the entire kingdom into jeopardy. My allegorical fantasy magical girl coming-of-age story... is also a literal coming-of-age story.
If I was going to write the scene that shows how Akane managed to calm Yum down, it would just be Akane doing her best ZyuRanger episode 22 impression (but with the roles switched around). Akane deactivates her Robe and kneels in front of Yumi to show she has no intention of ever fighting her. Akane removes her GEM from her ear and offers it to Yumi, possibly ripping it out with enough force that her ear bleeds a lil bit, so it's like she's shedding her own blood as a sacrifice that matches Mia's sacrifice. Vengeful Yumi is still considering chopping up Akane into Chinese food. Akane pleads with her: "I can never forgive myself for killing your empress. If this is what will take your pain away, if this is what you think Mia would want, go ahead and kill me." etc. etc. Yumi reconsiders and collapses to the ground beside her in emotional exhaustion. Lots of hugging and crying from two girls who deeply miss Mia. (I ripped off the exact same ZyuRanger scene in my Pretty Cure fanfic called "The Illustrator" in case you couldn't tell.)
Anyone who reads this chapter with a reaction like "Bro. Dude, this is such a cop-out, bro. We never get to see them have a cool fight scene with the Cannibalized Ultimate Death Metal Final Boss Mega-Otome you were setting up" is the same as those guys who watch The Karate Kid Part II and think "This movie is so lame. We never get to see the two old karate masters have their angry revenge duel to the death, because who gives a crap about bigger ideas like 'forgiveness' and 'atonement'?"