"You can't resist us, Mr. Powers."
- A line from that movie that makes fun of James Bond movies
"I'll get you next time, Gadget!"
- Dr. Claw
"Shutsugeki! Destiny dot mp3"
- Gundam SEED Freedom soundtrack
"Sorry."
- Kitty Oppenheimer just before she nukes everyone in the interrogation room
"You're living in a ruin as well. You just don't know it yet."
- Mr. Silva
Column 002 was balancing on a political tightrope for the fate of the entire world, and the world is not enough. She was seated on an office chair inside a secret temple devoted to everything wrong in the world. A private cradle where all of humanity's greatest vices sprang out. She almost felt disgusted with herself for setting up this meeting, but the livelihood of her entire Sisterhood was at stake until this whole rotten deal was resolved.
The meeting place was an elaborate security compound situated in remote Cardair territory that would never be marked on any map. There was only one other person in the room with her: The infamous underground arms dealer, Kurnst Harro Kazfeld.
Some intelligence suggested he had Schwarz backing in some of his secret dealings. More concerning intelligence suggested he was the financial backing for all of Schwarz's global operations, even outranking Archduke Nagi himself. It was all just unsubstantiated rumors for the time being.
Natsuki sat on one side of an empty circular table that was five meters wide, but felt more like it was five miles wide. Her sardonically grinning host was seated on the opposite side. The room surrounding her was an unnatural architectural prism that managed to feel expansive and claustrophobic at the same time.
The ceiling rose at 45-degree angles that seemed to join miles above her head. The colorless and windowless walls formed straight corners that turned the room into a giant hexagon. It gave her the feeling she was inside a mirror twin of the Columns' administrative office with all the art and philanthropic value stripped away and replaced with industrial concrete. It was more like being inside a cave, only no cave in the world was this perfectly geometrically shaped and well-lit.
Her instincts told her she should be anywhere but this postmodernist refrigerator, but she had to be patient. She had to be careful with what she said and how she presented herself. The safety and prosperity of the Otome system depended on what she was trying accomplish today.
Natsuki had been dealing with Kazfeld indirectly for the past couple years, as he quietly rose through the ranks of whatever pond scum syndicate he now controlled. She studied his file for weeks leading to this mission, but the intel on him was spotty at best, and she was never completely sure what to expect the first time she met him in person.
He looked fairly rugged for someone who was still supposed to be in his later teen years. His face was withered, his hair was prematurely thinning (an unfortunately dominant trait in the Argos bloodline), and an eerie green scar shaped like a tiger's stripe obscured his left eye. He was wearing an odd jade green suit that was partway minimalistic and partway militaristic, just like his lovely living room. Natsuki thought it made him look like he may have recently escaped from the local mental institution.
Then there was that peculiar cat he always held on his lap. A prim and proper little queenie with pristine white Angora fur and naturally dark blue stripes. However that worked. Maybe she was a designer pet.
The animal's aloof and stubbornly independent demeanor strangely reminded Natsuki of a missing student she used to know from the Academy. It was quite the international scandal a while back.
"Ah, don't let Soiromon bother you, my lady." Kazfeld said calmly from his seat. "She's simply here to relieve my stress during these important business dealings. She's quite a pleasurable creature as long as you don't startle her."
"She's not bothering me at all," Natsuki shrugged. "I just never thought the most enigmatic man on Earl would keep a pet cat."
Kazfeld nodded affectionately.
"She protects me from threats. Not particularly powerful threats, mind you. Those are what the microwave grid, the shock troopers, and the missile guidance system are for. But she's good for little threats who wish to do me personal harm. Mice. Rats. Snakes. An occasional weasel."
The elegant cat growled softly toward Natsuki. Her Master smiled proudly and rubbed his fingertips behind her pointed ears.
"All she desires in return is some food and my unwavering attention. It's quite a beneficial partnership for both of us."
He made tiny kiss-kiss noises with his lips over the cat's head. The crime lord's feline accomplice coiled into a deep purr against his waist.
Natsuki cleared her throat in an authoritative way. Her voice thundered off the office's sloped acoustic walls.
"Ah, yes. Enough with the grooming tips," Kazfeld casually shook his head to change topics. "I suppose we should get to the real reason you're here. The Obsidian Tablets."
He clapped his hands together exactly two times. Natsuki first heard the distant squeaking of rubber wheels quickly rolling across concrete. Then she saw Kazfeld's underlings come rushing out of the dark: Three diminutive French maids wearing bowler hats in place of bonnets. They took turns pushing around a serving cart that was weighed down by several rows of black rectangular objects arranged like dossier files. The objects resembled ancient hand-held drawing boards, or scaled down models of tombstones.
The maids placed the cart directly beside their commander. Kazfeld moved his hand away from his pet cat for a brief moment only so he could trace his fingers over a row of the tablets.
"Records of a past nobody cares to know about these days. Yet quite sought after as valuable artifacts. Some people have the silly idea they're meant to be arranged in round henges to add some mystique to your home furnishings, but no one is completely certain. My specialists have carbon-dated them all the way back to… the Asiatic Jōmon period, I believe?"
The cat in his lap yawned. None of this was news to her.
"Quite curious novelties. The most interesting thing my research has uncovered is some societies used to actually believe each one of these stones represents a lost loved one, and it feeds off the survivor's despair."
"So now you're dabbling into the occult, Kazfeld? That's a new one for you." Natsuki smirked like she just heard a bad joke.
"What makes you think this is my first time?" The human and the feline both narrowed their eyes cautiously toward Natsuki, making her feel just the slightest of chills. The room seemed to lighten again when Kazfeld's smile returned.
"You of all people should know how highly I value anything that can expand my power, Meister Kruger."
"Hm. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised." Natsuki regained her half-smirk. "So what's your asking price for a dozen of these suckers?"
"Well, I was going to set a fee that would have left the coffers at your Academy completely dry…" Kazfeld began to say. Natsuki was already snickering at his cute attempt to exert his dominance.
"…but that was before I caught the spy you sent to infiltrate my facility's backdoor security."
Natsuki's heart skipped a beat. Kazfeld gradually leaned forward in his seat as he continued speaking.
"I'm fully aware you came here with no serious intent of transacting with me. This entire meeting was meant to be a distraction to leave me vulnerable. I'm quite tired of playing your games." There was repressed rage growing in the arms dealer's voice. "Pathetic Garderobe novices. You present yourselves as pure maidens defending the good faith, yet here you are sending assassins in the dark to do your dirty work. And all dressed up in bright purple, just to make herself more obvious. I believe she was a very close friend of yours. A certain Meister Viola, perhaps?"
Natsuki shrank back in her chair in horror and disbelief. Kazfeld slowly nodded as if he felt sorry.
"I'm afraid your prized enforcer has departed from this world and made her way to that Starry Plain you witches worship. My Anti-Materialisation drones disposed of her as soon as she arrived here. Soiromon really deserves the credit for detecting her first."
The cat's pink button nose sniffed contently.
"Mreow," she chipped from Kazfeld's lap with her chin smugly lifted. She wasn't going to let anything separate her from her beloved Master. He whispered another sweet kiss-kiss over her ears as a reward for her loyalty.
"I've decided I'm no longer interested in selling any of these artifacts to you witches. But as a consolation, I'll allow you to take one that's already been activated. It just needs a bit of… shall we say, emotional input before it's fully charged."
Kazfeld's grin twisted into something more sinister. His hand glided over another row of tablets, until his ring finger stopped on one insignificant stone in the middle of the deck.
He motioned toward one of his servants, and she silently leaned over so he could whisper in her ear. She nodded. She lifted the single tablet out of the cart, carefully placed in on the round table, and pressed a hidden button near one of the legs.
A motorized crank made the counter slowly spin toward Natsuki. It stopped once the tablet was all the way on her side.
The servant tipped her bowler hat toward Natsuki in a small gesture that silently said "Farewell." All three servants pushed the cart away together and left the office room for their next daily errands.
Natsuki hesitated before she lifted the stone artifact into her hands. Her arm movements were controlled more by trembling instincts rather than any kind of conscious, collected effort. As soon as she felt the object, she suddenly recalled a distant memory of a rough day in training back when she was just starting out as Coral. It was the same day she met a certain friendly smiling Trias Pearl who lifted her spirits with some courteous advice and a warm cup of tea.
She wanted to believe the tablet was a fake. She wanted to believe she was being taunted with a hoax, that this was just another one of Kazfeld's sleight-of-hand casino tricks. But she knew exactly what she was holding the moment she touched it.
Kazfeld smiled across the table toward his guest as she held the cursed memento. He was savoring the moment. His pet cat yawned again, since this scene was completely run-of-the-mill to her.
Natsuki looked down at the faceless rectangular rock like she was about to go catatonic. All of her confident planning had betrayed her, and her carelessness had ended the life of her closest partner. Ten pounds of fossilized lava particles was all she had to show for it. Ten pounds of physical guilt she would carry for the rest of her life.
"And with this, I believe you're no longer in any position to bargain with me." Kazfeld stated the brutal obvious from his seat.
"You expect me to talk?" Natsuki asked as she stared blankly at the cold, dead, black tablet in her grip. Her hands were shaking from its weight. Her voice was starting to crack.
Kazfeld chuckled jokingly at her question.
"No, Meister Kruger. I expect you to cry."
Author's note 1: Did you ever watch the video I posted called "Vinny glitches out and keeps trying to pronounce the name of my favorite Mai Otome character"? It's some pretty awesome complimentary material to this fanfic.
Author's note 2: The part about the "missing student" is intentionally trying to be vague. It could mean Natsuki still remembers her friendship with Mai, before she vanished into the forest. Or it could mean the actual human Akane still exists in this universe. (How? I have no idea.)
Author's note 3: Did u know Kitty Oppenheimer was played by the same actress as Rita Vrataski in the American adaptation of All You Need is Kill?
Author's note 4: Kemono Enemies.
Author's note 5: The idea for "What if Kazu-kun, but he was a Bond villain?" is actually something I started thinking about as soon as I finished writing "Troubled Mortals," but it took me close to a year to figure out how his "scene" should go. I like to think writing this story helped me come to terms after I found out about the Immortal Justice Gundam / Zuikaku thing. If you don't know what the Immortal Justice Gundam / Zuikaku thing is, you should go to the Gundam subreddit and look for a thread called "His smile and optimism: gone," or look for a thread on the Muv-Luv subreddit called "My circle of despair is never-ending." I think you'll figure it out pretty quickly. (They're the same thread)
Author's note 6: "Tabbycat Metatron" was a title I was saving for a more generic Mai Otome story. I didn't have any kind of plot planned out, and the title is just supposed to play off how Akane is the voice of her holy emperor. But then I decided "Ayyyy, I'll use it for that stupid James Bond idea I've had forever, lol."
Author's note 7: Don't hold your breath, but now that I've finished writing this story, I'm sorta-kinda getting a vague idea for Akane x Kazu-kun as a mobster Bonnie and Clyde movie.
Author's note 8: I was trying to turn Kazu into Blofeld, but I may have turned him into the Once-ler by accident. Ack.
Author's note 9: What's wrong, ShizNat fans? No glib remark? No pithy comeback?
Author's note 10: I watched a YouTube clip of the meeting scene from Spectre in preparation for this fanfic. I left a comment on the video where I wrote: "Wouldn't it have been great if they said 'State your credentials' and he just Batista Bombed that dude through the table?"
Author's note 10b: I mean, killing dudes like you're Aki from Ayashi no Ceres or one of the androids from Halloween III is cool too. But I still think a Batista Bomb in that scene really would have sold the silent intensity of Dave's character.
Author's note 10c: The Bond Chick in Spectre is Belle from Christophe Gans's Beauty and the Beast movie. Unf.
Author's note 10c-2: Now if you're thinking, "Oh! Why don't you try turning Akane x Kazu-kun into a Beauty and the Beast movie?" I've already got that one covered. That's what "Tricky Metabolism" and "Tiger Migration" are for.