"I guess I'm going to have to get used to this."

- James McCaffrey in the sixth chapter of When the Heart Rules the Mind

"You get used to it."

- Yui Ogura in the sixth chapter of When the Heart Rules the Mind

"How about we become monsters together and lay waste to this awful world? We'll wipe out everything, all traces of evil or sadness, and just destroy and destroy, until there's nothing left but dust... Don't you think that sounds nice?"

- That other show that's sort of like this show and has the same soundtrack composer

"If fate brings my death... I want to meet my end in your arms."

- Tachy being tacky

"There's something very familiar about all this."

- Biff Tannen

"I need a vacation."

- Terminator 2

"Please… just kill me already…"

The captured Meister Otome languished in misery on a bed of electrical cables slithering around her like giant insect mandibles. She was lying on—or more accurately, welded to—a generator powering Neo Schwartz's deadliest aerial weapon. The machinery trapping her was slowly tearing her apart on the microscopic level, pulling the nano-energy out of her blood cells for its own resources. The ship's control room was nearly pitch black, so all of its power could be diverted to torturing its captive.

Her would-be rescuer arrived only in time to witness her despairing final moments. The noble Otome ally was the only one on her team to make it this far, and she was the captive's only hope for last minute salvation. She had survived Tomomi Marguerite's onslaught of beam halberds and remote-controlled mini-drones on the bow of the Neo Schwartz ship, and by all measures that should have been the end of it. The vengeful red she-wolf was dead, and with her loss, the sinister Rat King died with her.

But Tomomi, that wayward disgrace to the Otome Order, left one final trump card that allowed her to strike out at her Sisters even after her death. The imprisoned Meister had been taunted by her, beaten and bloodied by her, covered in bruises with one eye swollen shut. And now her prisoner was unwilling powering her ultimate weapon.

The airship calibrated its automated targeting system high inside the planet's atmosphere. After several agonizing test firings on naval targets along Cardair's coast, the next laser charge was set to fire directly on the imperial capital.

The Otome prisoner writhed in pain as the power was greedily wrenched from her veins. Her ally could only watch in horror and regret. This was going to be her miserable demise, turned into nothing more than a fuel cell for this machine rigging her into a complete bastardization of how a Founder System was supposed to work. At least she managed to earn that credential before her mother, in a very twisted way.

No matter what happened next, the crown princess of Cardair would be the final sacrifice of this conflict.

"Tomomi was right. All I am is just a walking curse," Erstin Krau-xeku weakly gasped between her convulsions. "You have to kill me, before I kill anyone else. You can be the Lead Meister without me."

Her head sank in underwhelming remorse as she squeezed her bloody eye shut to hold back her tears. The miracle princess, born from a sacred union that was only possible with Garderobe's intervention. She was cherished and beloved by everyone in Cardair. And now she being turned into a weapon for their complete annihilation. Her death was the only thing that could save them all.

"I just wish… I'm sorry… papa…" Erstin was in too much despair to even get the words out.

Roxy raised her glowing katana Element from her hip without saying a word. Erstin was almost within her reach when she found her in this miserable state, and the close-range specialist only needed to take another few steps forward so she was perfectly positioned to attack with her sword. Erstin winced on her bed-chair-coffin as she braced herself for the merciful strike.

The katana thrust through the darkness, passed gracefully under Erstin's left arm, and stabbed into the first layer of obsidian computer casing behind her back. That was as far the blade could go, and it never struck an inch of Erstin's body.

Roxy silently leaned over the machine. Her leather coattails were brushing Erstin's waist ring, and the energy bands in her Robe's epaulettes looked like they were forming a single circuit with the matching components on Erstin's shoulders. The princess could feel her subordinate's breath brushing her ear.

"What the Hell are you doing, Rox?!" Erstin shouted with a sudden surge of anger that overcome her pain. "This thing will gobble you up just like it's doing to me!"

"Then it better get ready for some terrible indigestion, Ers," the Noble Splitting Phantom whispered in sad, defeated voice. She couldn't bring herself to kill her closest friend.

"We're both cursed. You're the new Monica, and I'm the Sylvie you pulled into all of your bullshit. If I let you die here, how much longer am I going to last?" The depressing tone in Roxy's voice slightly changed to something more defiant. "Let's show the world how much trouble a couple of cursed maidens can cause."

Erstin closed her stinging eyes as she exhaled what would surely be one of her last breaths. She was weeping again—but these were more tears of joy rather than grief. At least they were together in the end. She moved her arms as best she could in their painful, tangled harnesses so she was hugging her friend.

The nano-energy shedding off of the Malachite Robe gave Roxy's katana the rest of the charge it needed to pierce through the targeting system's central processor.

Metal violently sank through obsidian and silicon behind Erstin's back. She suddenly felt a thousand times lighter, and looser, as the dozens of cables binding her to the core suddenly lost power.

"Roxy… you sneaky little…" Erstin chuckled in a painful gasp.

Roxy fell backwards to the ship's floor, bringing Erstin's completely freed body on top her. Both girls were dazed and took a couple seconds to regain their awareness. But now the Neo Schwarz weapon had been disconnected from its power source, and its targeting system was damaged beyond any use.

The countdown stopped. All that was left was a mass of sparking cables and exposed computer internals.

Roxy slowly climbed to her feet first, with Erstin eventually stumbling up and slouching over her like she was a glorified walking stick. She didn't mind. They stood silently and cried together in bewilderment for a while, before either one had the semblance to speak.

"I'm a mess. I feel like I could sleep for a week." The princess rested her bad eye against her faithful knight's soft red ponytail. She always wore her hair straight and long when she wasn't Materialised, but the ponytail was a nice addition in her Robed form.

"Your dad's probably in worse shape than you," Roxy snickered in an attempt to bring her friend some relief.

"He's used to it." Erstin snickered back as she weakly dragged the heels of her Robe like her feet were still in shackles.

Roxy stretched her arm over her princess's back, brushed her hair, and playfully tapped her gloves against the Malachite Robe's electronic ears.

"Do you still want to be a Meister after all of this?" she asked with a hint of hesitation. After everything they had been through together, she could still lose her friend to retirement.

"What? And miss all the fun of having pretty ladies rescue me from scary mechanical dragon-things?" Erstin's one good eye playfully shimmered as her swollen cheeks contorted into an attempt at a smile. "You're the whole reason I'm here, Rox. I wanna keep doing this as long as you can."

"The feeling's mutual." Roxy nodded modestly in reassurance. The princess gave her the only answer she needed.

Erstin slowly turned her head on her creaking neck and glanced toward the damaged technological abomination that had nearly killed her. It was completely out of order, but it was still mostly intact.

"So what do we do about this thing?" The princess asked her most trusted advisor.

"One more Dance of Thorns?" Roxy started to smirk with encouragement.

"Dance of Rose Thorns." The sore joints in Erstin's neck nodded in complete agreement.

The dazzling combination attack of the Imperial Tigress and her Mistress of Ceremonies. Roxy ran toward the dying mechanical abomination with her arms barely able to raise her katana over her head, while Erstin fought to keep her balance on her sprained feet. As Roxy was getting ready to perform a downward slash with her katana Element, Erstin summoned her kusarigama Element and swirled the chain over her head like a lasso in a wind cyclone. When she hurled her weapon toward Roxy, it wrapped around the katana in mid-swing, turning it into a barbed metal stem with the sickle forming a jagged blossom.

When Roxy cleaved her vile target in half, it was with the combined strength of both Otomes. Her sword sliced all the way through the hull of the ship.

The sky over Cardair's palace suddenly burst into a vibrant green haze. The otherworldly explosion could only mean Neo Schwartz's flagship had been completely destroyed, but no one on the palace terrace was celebrating. They lost contact the two Meisters representing House Krau-xeku and House Monique hours ago, and they were waiting with bated breath for any kind of news. Were their lead Otomes coming home as victors… or were they going to defend the royal city from another invasion by themselves?

The empress, her two younger daughters and two sons, and three of her Otome Royal Guards watched the skies with forlorn expressions. The emperor was seated with his mangled legs propped up in a wheelchair, bearing the exact same injuries his Otome had endured.

No one spoke in those first few dreadful minutes. But no matter how hopeless it appeared, Emperor Kazuya was certain his daughter was still alive. If she had died in her Robe, he would've died with her.

After what felt like an eternity of silence, the Malachite Master signet flickered weakly on his hand. He nearly stumbled out of his seat in a panic.

"Erstin? Erstin?! Can you hear me?"

"Relax, papa," her daughter's tired voice chimed from his ring. She sounded like her youthful playful self, but extremely worse for wear. "Roxy's with me. We're coming down… but it might be a rough landing."

The three Meister guards watched the skies for the incoming units. There was Lily Claudel, Rosalie's daughter from Florince who was ecstatic to one of the first members on Cardair's new international team. There was Ikaho Huit, Shiho's prideful daughter who started off a little hostile over the idea of putting her kingdom's safety in the hands of foreigners, but the other girls managed to calm her down. They helped her figure out how to use her devotion to Cardair for the common good, before she became another Tomomi. And then there was Inghild, who was just Inghild. The niece of the late Sister Fiar, her penchant for throwing herself in harm's way to protect her beloved Sisters was even worse than Erstin's.

The skirt and cape ribbons on Ikaho's Robe slowly waved upward like underwater tendrils, using their sensors to track everything in the sky. She was first one to detect "the gorgeous samurai and the cross-breed" (That was Roxy and Erstin). She gave her teammates their coordinates to retrieve them.

Their distant silver and white specks became visible in the bright afternoon sky a few seconds later. Lily and Inghild launched off the terrace and caught them at low altitude before they slammed into the concrete. When all four Otomes landed, they looked like two powerful superheroines hauling around a couple sacks of potatoes.

Erstin's smaller brothers and sisters gathered around her to congratulate her and welcome her back. Her mother remained silent, but her small relieved sigh said a thousand happy things. Her father sank back into his seat, shaking his head with cheerful disbelief.

"Sorry for staying out so late, Your Majesty." Roxy said the to the empress—her supreme commander in the Sisterhood—with her head bowed in deep admiration, and in deep exhaustion. Her voice was mostly apologetic, with a hint of playful sarcasm. "But I brought your cub home in one piece."

Empress Akane dove toward Roxy with joyous tears and hugged her like she was another daughter.

Author's notes:

Stukasa said I should write more Next Gen Otome fanfics, so here's another Next Gen Otome fanfic.

Ending theme: "Eternal Wind" by Hiroko Miroguchi (It's a pun. It plays off of Akane and her descendants being the wind magic users. I started thinking about that song again when I saw a Reddit thread yesterday called "F91 discourse in a nutshell.")

I've written three different stories now with Rat Boy being some sort of character, but I still haven't given him an official name. One of the fan theories going around when Mai HiME was airing was Nagi's name might be a shortened form of Izanagi, and Mashiro might be his Izanami. Building off that idea, I almost-sorta-kinda considered giving Rat Boy the name "Yomi" in this story, as a shortened form of Tsukoyomi, one of Izanagi's mythological children. (I just wanted a shortened version of a Japanese deity who descended from Izanagi, and I thought "Sanoo" sounded too dumb. "Rasu" might work, though.)

Is anyone else kinda feeling like the "Welcome Back" Gunbuster scene? Is it just me? Yeah?

I'm picturing Tomomi's Meister Robe in this story as: "What if the Nightingale from Beltorchika's Children was a Variable Geo waitress?" Bulky alien-jet-themed magical girl whose ass needs its own landing gear. Other sources of inspiration include: Gary Oldman's red muscle suit from Dracula '92. And yes, she still has Lacus's VA like her mom. At this point it's irony, dohoho.

You'll need to read "Roppongi Shinjuu" (and possibly FBZA2) if you're confused about the lore for what a "Tomomi" is and what a "Rat King" is. This is another one of those "Definitely not taking place in the same universe, but sharing a lot of the same ideas" fanfics. I should also probably point out that the "Erstin" in FBZA2 is a slightly different "Erstin." The first time I wrote her character in FBZA2, I envisioned her in her early teen years, to emphasize she's a very innocent Arika-aged kid thrown into the middle of Cardair's medieval war. In pretty much every appearance since FBZA2 (including this new story), she still a first-time Meister, but I re-designed her so she's an older teenager in her traditional Meister graduate years. I think "Gotta make her more like Monica" took over how I write her once I started her spin-off stories.

The first three paragraphs of this story are deliberately trying to confuse the hell out of you. Someone's definitely getting Yamashiro'd, but it's really vague who it is.

I've always described the Muv-Luv Total Eclipse TV show as "It's like watching the two-part pilot episode of Viper and then jumping straight to season 2." And I've always described the first season of Viper as "It's like The Untouchables got in a car crash with Total Recall and the first paramedic to arrive at the scene was La Femme Nikita." I would probably describe this fanfic as "It's like someone made a pizza out of the Muv-Luv Total Eclipse pilot and Madoka Magica, and the delivery girl was Adolescence of Utena, or that episode of Futurama where it looks like Fry died but it's actually Leela in a coma and Fry's ghost keeps telling her to wake up." Maybe it's that Futurama episode driving the Utena Car.

Did I ever tell U my favorite costume in Stellar Blade is the one that kinda looks like she's wearing Akane's catsuit with a 1940s bomber jacket over it? That's what I have equipped all the time when I'm playing. (Ever since I wrote "Roppongi Shinjuu" a year and a half ago, I've been thinking "How do you combine a cybernetic pilot bodysuit-type-thing with Kasumi Yoshikawa's French highwaywoman coat? … Ah! That's how you do it!")

I'm pretty sure I've told U numerous times one of my favorite 80s fantasy movies is Dragonslayer. (Erstin Kx almost got Elspeth'd.)

Just repeating some basic casting choices from FBZA2: Roxy has Rin Tohsaka and Yummyshiro's VA. Lily has Shimako's VA, because her mom conveniently already has Shimako's VA. Ikaho has Izumi's VA (Squid Girl, lol). Inghild has Inghild Bronikowski's VA, because the Inghild in this setting is literally the Inghild that I directly imported from Schwarzesmarken. Somewhere floating in the background of this setting is Maiko. She Mai's daughter, who operates independently from all other Otome teams (continuing the traditions of her mom), and she has Yui's VA, because Mai always had Yui's VA. Erstin Kx has the same VA as Anya from Spy X Family, but I didn't pick her because she was Anya from Spy X Family. I picked her because Anya's VA was trained in real life by Junko Iwao, Akane's VA. See, I'm trying to be extra-meta here. (Additional note: If any of my imaginary casting annoys you, just remember I had 70-year-old Shuichi Ikeda voicing the main character's teenage son in that Fushigi Yuugi fanfic.)

Do you remember that running theme in late season 1 and early season 2 episodes of Power Rangers where there were a bunch of different villain plans to steal the Green Power coin and command the Dragonzord into attacking Angel Grove, or use the Green Ranger powers to create Lord Zedd's own evil Ranger team? Yeah? Yeah.

Wheelchair Kazu-kun was an idea I had for a prospective sequel to FBZA2. It would have been somewhat of a cop-out where it's revealed he was only "gravely wounded" during the assassination in FBZA2, and he was unconscious the whole time everyone thought he was dead. But because he was severely wounded and the anonymous assassin used poisoned darts that messed up his nervous system, he becomes permanently wheelchair-bound, and he semi-retires from being emperor so his kids can have more control. I knew right away I don't want to write a sequel that "undoes" the first chapter of FBZA2, but the idea for Wheelchair Kazu-kun stuck with me. In this story, he's just temporarily disabled from sharing Erstin's injuries. (I'm never writing a sequel to FBZA2. Keep on speculating, dweebs.)

Does it count as yuri doujinshi if both participants of the yuri-ing are your original creations and only the universe their story takes place in is trademarked?