Aries Villa, January, a.t.b. 2010
Distantly, Princess Justine vi Britannia, Fourth Princess of the Britannian Imperial Family, was beyond grateful that her younger sister, Juliette, slept in the same room as her. Had she wandered out to investigate the commotion herself, Justine knew that Juliette would likely have gotten caught in the crossfire. Even now, even through the horror and rising fear that seeing their mother, Marianne vi Britannia, dead on the stairs, riddled with bullet holes, provoked within her, she remembered to protect her sister as best she could, though not even her best efforts could shield her younger sibling from looking upon what might as well have been the tumulus that marked the charmed life they had led here.
Justine had known, truly known from an early age, that Marianne 'the Flash', the former Knight of Two turned Empress-Consort, a spurned womens' club one hundred seven members strong, was far and away the most despised of the Emperor's consorts amongst the noble circles. Hated for being a 'social climber', an 'opportunist', everything that Britannia claimed to value above all else, save for the fact that she was originally of common blood; and hated for being Charles zi Britannia's favoured wife, in both public and private settings. She knew this; yet, knowing a thing was very different from being confronted and directly threatened with that thing's implications.
A part of her was in shock, another part railing at how this could have happened; she took these two parts of her mind, put them in boxes, and dismissed them to the recesses of her brain. Such concerns as those were, at the moment, immaterial; the pertinent fact, the issue of the most immediate and therefore pressing concern, was that with Marianne's death, Justine and Juliette both were vulnerable.
Justine was not naive. She did not truly believe, contrary to their mother's professions of affection, that she ever truly loved either of them. She and the Emperor were joined at the hip, and there was far too much appraisal in her mother's eyes when she looked at both of them, and too little understanding on her behalf whenever Justine had wondered aloud why the Emperor never came to see them. Charles zi Britannia never came to see her, and Marianne never asked him to, nor was she ever perturbed by the occurrence.
Yes, she had known since her earliest cognition that she was but a tool in some grand game she had no hope of currently unravelling; yet, she took solace in the fact that her mother would protect her, as to allow damage to come to one's tools reflected ill on the craftsman. Her mother may have deceived herself into thinking she cared for her children, that Charles cared for her children, but Justine was well aware that her protection was an entirely practical concern.
Yet, now the craftsman was dead, and with her, assumably, the grand design to which Justine and later Juliette were integral. Thus went the aegis of Marianne the Flash.
The less said about any aid Charles zi Britannia might render on their behalf, the better.
A squeeze on her arm brought the Fourth Princess from her contemplations, drawing her attention to the Sixth, who was now equally as defenceless and functionally orphaned as herself. Justine's violet gaze locked onto her sister's identical one. Of the two of them, Juliette was the one with the honey-brown hair of their sire's youth, and Justine's raven locks were inherited from the bullet-riddled woman now lying face-down in a pool of her own blood; yet, their eyes were both of an identical shade to that of the Ninety-Eighth Holy Britannian Emperor, a distinct rarity amongst the hundreds of children he had sired. In fact, before Juliette was born, Justine and Justine alone bore their father's eyes. The burden of such scrutiny was one Justine had been overjoyed to finally be able to share with another, and though Juliette's face was as cherubic and innocent as always, she saw her own thoughts mirrored in her younger sister's. They had, effectively, come to the same conclusion—that acting swiftly, decisively, and immediately was no less than a matter of life and death for both of them.
"Justine…! Juliette…!"
Both of them turned to regard the approaching woman. Third Princess Cornelia li Britannia, Marianne the Flash's personal pet project and their older half-sister, one of only three princesses of the Imperial Family who wanted anything to do with either of them, was not quite haggard, but certainly harried by the situation before her and the haste with which she had had to respond, a few members of the Aries Villa's contingent of Royal Guard, out of uniform, filing in behind her.
"We are unharmed, Nelly. Though…shaken…" Juliette spoke before Justine, stepping around her older sister and addressing the newcomer directly.
There was an unspoken question in Cornelia's eyes. It was obvious that she had expected at least one of them to be bawling and inconsolable. Realisation flashed in her indigo gaze, however, and neither vi Britannia sister knew if Cornelia had concluded that they were clinging to decorous etiquette as a way of remaining functional or that they were in shock. It mattered little, ultimately, as the response she gave was equally suited to either case.
"Let's get you out of here. It's no longer safe, and OSI needs to investigate," she said placatingly. She turned to the older of the two. "Justine, can you go help Juliette pack her things? I'd like to have you out of here in thirty minutes."
"We'll need half that," Justine replied, nodding curtly. She placed a hand on her little sister's shoulder, a gesture not strictly necessary, but she suspected they both needed to be reminded that they were effectively in this together. The frills on Juliette's white nightgown contrasted with the lace on Justine's own, reminding her immediately that it was hardly proper to be travelling about in bed-clothes as they were, in the wake of a shocking tragedy or not. "...Perhaps a touch more, so that we can change."
"Don't you have to stay here, Nelly? You're the captain of the guard," Juliette pointed out.
Cornelia looked to the ground and swore. As fortune would have it, she caught sight of a Royal Guard jogging into the entrance hall, dishevelled and harrowed. The teal colour of his shoulder-length hair and his orange eyes were distinctive, such atypical hues being undisputed symbols of peerage. "Gottwald! Attend me!"
The guardsman stiffened and approached as decorously as he could. "Your highness."
Cornelia turned to the vi Britannia children, and addressed all three of them. "Justine, Juliette, this is Jeremiah, Margrave Gottwald. He will escort you to a safe location once you are prepared to leave. Gottwald, these are Empress Marianne's children. You will guard them with your life."
The margrave's eyes widened and his jaw slackened a bit, but he snapped back to attention quickly enough, moving smoothly into a salute. "As you say, your highness. Permission to speak freely, however?"
Cornelia sighed. "Permission granted."
"I would accompany the princesses and guard them as they prepare. We do not know if the assassin is still on the grounds, or indeed, in the building. Begging your pardon, your highness, but it seems unwise to allow them to travel alone at this time."
The Third Princess nodded, impressed. "Very well. Be about it."
The margrave snapped his heels together and saluted again, walking up the grand staircase carefully so as to not disturb the evidence that needed to remain uncontaminated. The soldier drew level with the pair, and bowed to the ten- and eleven-year-old princesses. "Rest assured, your highnesses, you shall neither of you come to harm so long as I yet draw breath."
His voice was much softer as he spoke to them, and were they as profoundly affected as they would have been had either of them been under the misapprehension that their mother was a saintly, inviolate figure, Justine supposed it would have been soothing, a lifeline amidst the rising tide of furor and chaos. She appreciated the effort, unnecessary though it was, and it moved this man upwards several tentative notches in Justine's estimation, bumping the danger he presented down accordingly, from entirely possible to merely unlikely.
Justine felt Juliette's eyes upon her, perhaps only out of the corner of the younger royal's eye, but still fixed upon her, looking for her cue. The Fourth Princess nodded to the margrave, hopefully passing on to Juliette that it was reasonably safe to accompany the man, even though they should obviously keep their wits about them in case circumstances took a turn against them. Again.
Juliette's hand slipped into Justine's, and with a smile, Jeremiah Gottwald stood and began to lead the way. As a guardsman, he knew where the royals slept, which, while possibly a liability, wasn't going to be one for much longer. If an assassin could get in here and kill a former Knight of the Round, the current emperor's greatest weapon, instrumental in ending the Emblem of Blood, and the favoured Imperial Consort, Justine had no reason to believe a similarly skilled individual would find it any more difficult to finish the job, to tie up loose ends. Survival thus necessarily meant abandoning all that was familiar to them and relocating to a more secure locale, at least for the present moment.
One of the great tricks of the Villa's architecture was that, despite its considerable size, getting from any place to any other place in the palatial structure was never an especially lengthy endeavour, allowing the children to move from their shared bedroom to the gardens or the dining room or even the kitchen freely without walking for half an hour or more. The fact that the building was technically the same size as Versailles in the EU made the feat ever more impressive, ignoring for the moment that the Imperial Palace in Pendragon far outstripped even the most monumental and ostentatious of other nations' seats of power.
The functional reality of this was that the number of minutes it took for the vi Britannia children to return to their chamber could be counted on one hand with fingers left over. Justine made to hold Juliette back from entering the room so as to allow the margrave to search it, but discovered that it was unnecessary, her hand meeting only air.
The teal-haired aristocrat-turned-soldier bobbed his head to them once, before opening the door, gun drawn as he began his sweep. Only once he had given them nonverbal assurance that the room was clear of assailants did the pair step over the threshold and beeline for their wardrobes and bags, while Gottwald took his leave to wait without. Guard or not, it wasn't proper to be in a princess's room while she was in such a state of undress.
Justine packed only the bare minimum of her clothes—which wasn't especially difficult, as she never really liked wearing all the frilly pastels that her late mother insisted on placing her in, like some kind of painted doll—and felt a swell of pride as she watched her sister follow suit. Another child would have taken her favourite toys and the attached accessories, or any number of other frivolities, but it seemed that Juliette understood the urgency of the situation with which they were faced as well as Justine did, though Juliette's selection of clothing that she deemed important was distinct from Justine's.
This was not atypical in normal circumstances—Justine vastly preferred understated and muted colours on those few occasions where she could make selections of her wardrobe, while Juliette took to the doll-like garb as though she was born to it—but the delicate nature of the clothing was concerning. More than this, however, Justine trusted that Juliette had a plan of her own, and so did not think to raise an issue on the subject, and instead focused on her own affairs, packing what few sensible garments were allowed to her. Though it was somewhat macabre, not to mention incredibly morbid, Justine could not help but think that the end of her having to suffer being dressed like she was made from the porcelain her complexion so resembled was perhaps one of the few benefits of this entire horrid situation.
"Justine…?" Juliette called gently.
"Yes?" Justine acknowledged, turning her head slightly to regard her only full sibling.
"I'm finished. With the packing, I mean," the younger girl replied.
"Very good," replied Justine, sighing and berating herself silently for growing dazed, and now running up against the time they had told Cornelia they would need. Wasn't she supposed to be the strong one? Protect her little sister as Nelly did Euphy?
Juliette's smaller arms wrapping around her torso brought her back to herself. "Hey, it's alright. I'll help you finish up here, and we can be gone."
Justine's smile was rueful. The eighteen months between their births did not put as much of a distance between them as it ought to have, it seemed. "Shouldn't I be saying that to you?"
"No one's good at everything, sister," replied Juliette. "The treachery in the hearts of men is alien to you. You're not naive—you know it's there, and sometimes you see it—but you don't know it. Not like I do. Cheer up. I'm sure you'll never run dry of chances to be plenty strong in the coming days. Now, though, it's my turn. Don't deny me this."
"As if I could." Justine allowed herself another moment's respite with her sister, and then they parted. "I'll take your luggage out to give us some more room to manoeuvre."
"I know what you like, and I have an idea of what you'll need. Leave it to me."
Juliette and Justine shared a quick nod, and Justine moved to shift Juliette's bag from her bed to the hallway, where Gottwald cut an imposing, almost Atlesian figure, acting as if to shield them from any harm the outside world might bring. And in her current harried state, Justine almost found herself believing him equal to the task.
Working together, the two were dressed and prepared to leave with a few seconds to spare before their self-imposed deadline, and the closing of the door to their shared chamber had an odd, almost ominous sense of sepulchral finality to it. Gottwald looked to them, and moved to pick up their bags, but Justine grabbed them before he could.
"You're our first and last line of defence, Margrave Jeremiah," Justine explained. "Burdening your hands with our luggage is the absolute worst thing we could do right now."
Jeremiah didn't look surprised, but nodded all the same. The walk back to the grand staircase and the entrance hall was tense and terse, as they were now more burdened and therefore more vulnerable than they had been going back to their room initially, and when they made it back without incident, the feeling of relief was akin to a physical burden being lifted from the Fourth Princess's slight shoulders. By that point, there was at least a sheet over the corpse that had once been Marianne vi Britannia, for which Justine was grateful; no matter how complicated her feelings toward and relationship with the woman were, she was still her mother, formerly a constant in the siblings' life, and no matter how conditional her affection always was, it remained a ghastly and unsettling sight.
There was a small sound, between a squish and a splash, as they descended, and though Justine knew in her heart of hearts that it was a mistake, she was very nearly sick when she looked down and saw that her black, sensible flats were splashed with red, with a fading warmth her foot could still feel underneath. Juliette's hand ushering her to continue further down the steps no matter how her footfalls tracked the blood behind her was gentle, but it might as well have been the inexorable pull of iron manacles for how they caused her to move not of her own power or will.
She was well-aware she was paler than usual, was reminded of it in the horror and sorrow that she saw in Cornelia's face when they passed her and she realised what had happened, but the town car that had been summoned to take them to a more secure location was just there, in the courtyard beyond the threshold of the main building, and she was able to hold it together just long enough to maintain some semblance of composure as she climbed in behind Juliette, with Jeremiah following as a rearguard to sit on the other side of her. When the door closed behind their guard, she buried her head in her hands and took a deep, shuddering breath, more akin to a sob than a sigh.
"It's quite alright," came a distantly familiar female voice from the other side of the cabin from them. "I imagine this entire night has been quite the shock."
Justine froze, puzzling over who this new person was and what kind of threat they might pose, until she heard Juliette address the woman in smooth, even tones. "Thank you for the reassurance, Priscilla. It is good to know that we yet have allies in Pendragon."
Priscilla, Countess Maldini. Aide-de-camp and companion to Friederike el Britannia, the Second Princess—and of those in Friede's orbit, she was far and away the most deadly.
"Well, you may relay to dearest Friede that Justine and I are grateful for her protection," Juliette continued, and from her younger sister, whose idea of social interaction was at once playful and vicious, the diplomatic tone of voice she used was more than a little odd. "As you can understand, our world has been greatly upended of late, and I cannot express enough how heartening it is to see a friendly face in our hour of greatest need."
"Her highness is only too happy to render aid to two of her dear siblings," Priscilla returned, adjusting her simply-styled auburn hair, her pale blue eyes regarding them with an understanding Justine knew from experience was cultivated, while a soft, kind smile tilted her faintly pink lips and softened her delicate, beatific features, and that was such a blatant half-truth that, in her state of duress, Justine could not help but scoff.
Juliette elbowed Justine in the side, and then returned to her dialogue with Friede's aide. Whatever was said between the two of them, Justine did not hear; her attention was instead consumed with that single corrective blow, harsh enough to provoke a slight gasp from the older girl. That single act of mild violence, more than any assurance Juliette might have given her, convinced her that the younger princess knew full well what she was doing—and that she, Justine, was not needed. Not now.
And so Justine elected to trust her sister, sitting back in the seat and tuning out the world, secure in the knowledge that she only needed to trust in Juliette's apparent aptitude, and they would survive 'til the next dawn.
Friederike el Britannia, the third-born child and Second Princess of the Holy Britannian Empire, was described in many ways. She was a serpent, a scorpion, an amorphous monstrosity of the antediluvian deep; but of her, even her most fervent detractors were forced to concede two points that were irrefutably true. First, that she was brilliant, and second, that she was beautiful. Long since disowned by her (late) lady mother on account of the company she kept, she was yet indispensable to the crown, as it was an open secret that it was by her will and her will alone that Charles zi Britannia's gargantuan lumbering behemoth of an empire continued to function—that it was by her efforts and the liberal and judicious application of her indisputable genius that the trains continued to run on time. It was for this reason that a single truth reigned unchallenged in even the most pernicious parlours and private boardrooms of Pendragon: Princess Friede was, in a word, untouchable.
The building in which she resided was palatial—though not to the inimitable extent of the Aries Villa, admittedly—and tasteful in that lavish way that was quintessentially Britannian, and in the eyes of the recently motherless children of Empress Marianne, it was, whatever their misgivings, an oasis, a place that promised sanctuary. Upon drawing closer, vehicles rendered unfamiliar by the pitch-darkness of the night made Justine's hackles rise despite herself; though she realised that if Friederike meant them harm, it hardly mattered how they reacted at this or any juncture. And so it was with a tumultuous melange of sentiments that Justine followed Juliette's lead in allowing herself to be swept into the eclectic decor that marked the grandiose foyer of the Second Princess's home, though Jeremiah Gottwald constituted an undeniably comforting presence guarding the rear.
The extensive decor that characterised the foyer was, as Friederike had put it on more than one occasion, "geographically capricious," adorned with souvenirs and relics from dozens of different countries and cultures, all to mark the travels that Friede's station as chief diplomat and Prime Minister of Britannia required of her; and once upon a time, little trinkets would become gifts to her favoured siblings—which mostly extended to the vi Britannia sisters, and occasionally the li Britannias if only by proxy. The floor was immaculate white marble, and upon it was an enamelled map of the world, replicated painstakingly from a roll of canvas dating back to the Age of Discovery that was famous in certain circles and entirely obscure beyond them; and across its rounded north end crested the phrase "Timendi Causa Est Nescire," while its south end bore the considerably shorter and conventionally more ominous "Exitus Acta Probat."
Sweeping from this map upon the floor were a pair of grand stone staircases, atypical in Britannian architecture for the fact that they began as a pair on the floor and converged into one on the higher level, cushioned with plush violet carpeting embroidered with gold thread. A chandelier, a direct replica of the fixture that hung in the ceiling of Paris's own Palais Garnier, hung from the vaulted ceiling above them, and the gentle light it radiated bathed the entire chamber in a warm autumnal mood. The walls boasted an extensive collection of paintings, portraits rendered by great artists, almost uniformly their more obscure or lesser-known works; and they occupied space alongside tapestries from the Old World, together with much of the same foreign yet classical opulence the lands that now belonged to the Chinese Federation were once known for.
Emerging from the balcony atop the grand staircase, then, was a tall, willowy, yet shapely Botticellian form, adorned in a dressing-gown, bearing the regal countenance, lilac eyes, and head of cascading pale-gold hair of Friederike el Britannia, appearing immaculate for all that she was freshly risen. Yet, the way her brow furrowed as she walked down the stairs, her eschewing of the customary royal languor rendering the advance socially comparable to a commoner sprint, dispelled any misapprehension of her retaining the celestial distance of her customary affect. "Justine. Juliette. You're here. It's good to see you both well. Jeremiah, Margrave Gottwald, was it? I thank you for your role in ensuring my dear sisters' safety. We owe you a debt of gratitude. You may name a boon, and I shall do all in my power to see it done, in acknowledgement of your deeds."
"I have done nothing save my duty, your highness," Jeremiah replied. "If I were to ask a boon, it would be only to continue in service to the sisters vi Britannia."
Justine could see Friede's features twitch almost imperceptibly, and while there was always uncertainty when she attempted to read her normally infuriatingly inscrutable half-sister, she could guess with reasonable certainty that Friede was hoping to be rid of this man, a member of the same order tasked with preventing a tragedy like this from happening. He was a loose end, of uncertain loyalties and unknown ties—in all respects a liability; yet while Justine saw the sense in that, she was nevertheless reluctant to see him dismissed.
"Sister, if I may," Justine spoke up, her voice sounding hoarse and worn even to her own ears for all that she was resolute. She pointedly ignored Juliette's questioning look, and instead forged ahead. "I am not yet of an age where I might select a knight, but when I do, I should think I'd like such a title to be given to a man like Margrave Jeremiah."
Friederike was taken aback. "Truly?"
Justine nodded. "One who is ennobled and yet would refuse a boon from you, and further, rejecting commendation? My sister and I have precious few allies, fewer now than before, and I am understandably reluctant to have such a man dismissed."
Friede's lips twitched, ever quick on the uptake. "Touché. Jeremiah Gottwald, your boon is granted. You may guard my sisters a while longer, if that is your wish."
Gottwald recovered from his own surprise in time to bow low at the waist, with the flourish expected of the peerage. "My thanks, your highness."
Friederike acknowledged his response with a nod, before returning her attention to the two younger princesses and her "assistant in all matters, public and private." "Priscilla, dear, if you would escort my sisters to the guest chambers?"
"Carmilla Elizabeth Ashford!"
The strained feminine cry shattered the relative quiet of the exchange in the foyer, and from the front threshold of the building emerged a girl both Justine and Juliette knew well. Carmilla "Milly" Ashford was a year Justine's senior, and the scion of the Ashford Foundation, typically playful to the point of antagonism; and yet the twelve-year-old golden-haired girl who stalked into the Second Princess's estate, unannounced and presumably uninvited, had a steely, resolute hardness in her dark blue eyes, enough to seize both Justine's and Juliette's tongues. It wasn't as though their words would stymie her in the slightest regardless—her mother, an ostensibly frivolous noblewoman whom she normally at least humoured, rushed in after her, harried and slightly panicked enough to put proof to that. It was as though there was no one else in the world as far as Milly was concerned, save herself and her target.
Milly's arms wrapped around Justine with surprising strength, pressing the younger, shorter girl into her crushing embrace. There were no tears in Milly's eyes, and yet her voice was ragged and harrowed as she whispered harshly into Justine's ear, "At last, I found you. You're here. I have you."
Justine went stock-still, shocked into inaction with this sudden gesture of affection from someone she just yesterday was convinced considered menacing the Fourth Princess to be her calling in life. Duchess Cassiopeia Ashford, Milly's lady mother, swept past them and gave Friede a full curtsey—as was only proper in the presence of royalty, especially when expressing contrition—before the words tumbled from her lips. "My deepest and most sincere apologies, your highness! My daughter overheard foul play was afoot that concerned the esteemed Fourth and Sixth Princesses, and insisted that we go to Aries Villa immediately. Then when neither of her highnesses were there, she insisted on coming straight here next! Forgive me her impertinence, your highness—her grandfather spoils her far too much, and has given her the run of the servants! I would be only too happy to discuss this oversight with him to ensure that—"
Friederike held up a hand, and immediately Duchess Cassiopeia's mouth snapped shut. The Second Princess smiled indulgently. "It's no trouble at all, my lady. I am sure my sisters are glad to have such…amiable company as your daughter. A reminder that they still have friends in the world is, I should think, well-warranted. Impertinence, for certain; yet, oftentimes duty and propriety exist only to put barriers between us and that which we must needs do. After all, is that not the same sentiment our lord father preaches? Indeed, your daughter has acted as any true daughter of Britannia would, and more young ladies could do to follow her example in that regard. Now, would you come in and have refreshments with us? This has been a very trying night, as I'm sure you can understand."
"Oh, of course! As you say, your highness. And my daughter and I would be honoured to be considered a guest in your home," Duchess Cassiopeia gushed obsequiously, her voice trembling with a slight edge of fear.
Friede smiled, and waved to her aide. "Priscilla, could you inform my majordomo that we have guests?"
"Of course, your highness," Priscilla replied, giving a bow at the waist.
"And once you're done, return to me. I'm sure to have great need of you before dawn. There is much to be done and little enough time in which to do it," Friede finished, before turning to her guests and making a sweeping gesture of invitation. "Come. Enter freely and of your own will. I am aware I have no end of rumours concerning me flying about the capital, but I will not have it said that I am a lacking or ungracious host."
Friede's majordomo, a man fast approaching middle age by the name of Andrew, was a hereditary servant; his family had been in service to Friede's late mother's family since before Trafalgar, and the forced flight of Britannia to the modern homeland, and moreover had been assigned to wait on Friede since she was a child. The man was sprightly, despite the hour and his advancing age, and Justine supposed it must have been those two circumstances—his lineage and his experience—that allowed him to so seamlessly accommodate his mistress's schedule with its apparently unholy hours. "After all, sometimes a diplomatic crisis just can't wait until morning" was Friede's performatively flippant response when prompted.
Whatever the reason, soon enough Friede, Priscilla, Duchess Cassiopeia, Jeremiah, Juliette, and Milly were seated in one of Friede's several parlours, Andrew flitting about in a furor that was somehow deceptively deft to distribute light fare and tea—and also black coffee for Friede and Priscilla, since they needed to remain awake.
Justine had sat with them as well for a while, but her stomach turned at the mention of even the most mild of macarons, and as soon as she drank, she knew that no amount of tea could make her throat feel less dry, or her soul less parched. So she begged off to wander the lavish yet labyrinthine compound her eldest sister—Guinevere didn't count—had made into her personal palace, her fortress, the central pillar of the global panopticon that was central to her methods of diplomacy, insidious as they were. At the moment, she was in a library, one of several Friede's household boasted—but not for books.
Justine was fascinated. Volumes did not adorn the shelves, but rather rows upon rows of thin, immaculate vinyl discs, ensconced in uniform laminate jackets. Phonograph disc records, she recognized, a form of audible recording that had been popular during the decades of the Emblem of Blood, but had since been swiftly outmoded in the face of the technological revolution that followed the discovery of the hyperconductive and only partly-understood material known as sakuradite. More than that, the tables that made up a good half of the furnishings all doubled as cabinets, all of them containing rows upon rows of the even earlier ancestor of modern audio storage in the form of phonograph cylinders, while the chamber itself was centred around the focal point of a broader table, upon which sat both a phonograph and a gramophone, back-to-back.
So overcome was she with the childlike wonder she had thought herself well and truly grown past that it did not occur to her to ask Friede's permission to touch this extensive and secret collection, and with great care, she pried a record jacket upon which was printed the words "Tartini, Giuseppe | Violin Sonata in G Minor, Devil's Trill." She slipped the record out of the jacket—the inner sleeve, made of white paper, facing opposite the laminate to avoid the vinyl sliding free by accident—and gently pried the black disc out of the paper, careful not to touch the grooved surface itself as she made her way over to the gramophone. Opening the plexiglas lid, she placed the record upon the turnstile with a soft but satisfying click, turning on the power and allowing the rotation to start up before carefully placing the needle's wire tip at the outer edge of the record, and closing the lid.
A few heartbeats passed, and then from all around came the softly melodic, vaguely lachrymose swell of violins setting the theme. A single violin added itself, embracing the melody and going higher, plaintive and wailing and melancholic all at once, as though lamenting the outcome of a battle long since lost, haunted by echos of what might have been—or rather, what one thought might have been, only to find that, to their horror, it could never be. It was at once meditative and bitter, resigned and resentful, and before it, Justine was enraptured, swaying gently in time to the somnolent sound of it all. Time seemed to extend out to eternity, the moment stretching on interminably into the ether, at once ephemeral and everlasting.
The door behind Justine swept open, and the larghetto swept itself up into a brisk allegro at that exact moment, as if to herald Milly as she strode into the library, with quick, dextrous flutters of technical skill, making it seem as though the violin itself was in a state of dance, of rapture in motion, of delighted vitality and vivacious affection for the act of living. Milly herself was inscrutable in her affect at that moment, a blank expression from which nothing could be discerned—indeed, there was nothing at all to read.
And yet…
Justine skated to a stop, her dance seizing unnaturally in the swift skips of bright, sharp melody, sharp as a razor, cutting at her heart the moment she stopped bending to the furious winds that scattered such blades about. In that instant, she felt the way she thought she ought to feel, and the dread of what it meant to be so adrift in such a perilous circumstance struck her with all the force of the artful pandemonium of the hummingbird's beat of violin notes. Suddenly all she could think of was what was going to happen to herself, and to her sister, now that Charles zi Britannia was the only parent either of them had left in the world. They could not very well stay as they were now, under Friede's aegis, forever, and Nelly's was just barely sufficient to protect Euphy; if push came to shove, and it was a choice between Euphy and them, Nelly—no, Cornelia—would not hesitate to throw them to the wolves. She would not enjoy it, would not rejoice in the act, and it would certainly break her heart; but Cornelia, for all her faults, was not an idiot. At such a time, in such a circumstance, she would understand the necessity of the act as well as Justine did in the abstract.
She did not fault Cornelia for it; she would almost certainly do the same for Juliette if ever it became necessary, as much as it began to feel that of the pair of them, it would not be Juliette who needed her sister's protection. For all that it had seemed that Juliette delighted in frivolity, she was nevertheless adapting to the situation far better than Justine herself was finding herself able. It was commendable, to be certain, for the girl who seemed gentle and tractable to be proving herself as Britannian as any other, and a sight more than most, seeming almost like a mini-Friede in some regards all of a sudden—but Justine could not help but feel humiliated by this sudden reversal, as juvenile as it was.
It was said that it was the domain of a child to fear that they were every bit the child they believed themselves to be beyond; and in that moment, Justine knew it to be true. She had perhaps deluded herself by attempting to be so very grown-up, as her siblings were, to read as they read, to practise as they practised, and to engage in those same exercises of the mind in which they were all expected to excel, thus to surpass them. Nay, perhaps Juliette had the right of it, to indulge in childhood while she could, to keep herself grounded in the intimate knowledge of her own immaturity, that she could remain aware and wary of it when disaster threw all carefully-crafted artifice to the wind—to avoid struggling as Justine now struggled.
The melody's brightness suddenly subsided into a deep, wrenching melancholy, a wailing despair as profound as it was without resolution; to find the bounds of the world, to see that it is hollow, and to lay one's fingers upon the sky, upon the throne of Heaven itself. It relented to bartering, but it knew as Justine did that there was no bargain to be struck; the reality of the situation was not one that could be reasoned with or convinced otherwise, for it was simply the way of things. And the collective swell embraced the singular voice, consoling Icarus, that his hubris was but fleeting, a dream of youth that had been snuffed out in all of them.
"Don't tell me you're giving up."
The melody brightened again.
Justine raised her eyes to Milly. That blankness had given away to anger, to resolve of a sort, born of raw fury. Milly stalked towards her, a thundercloud upon her brow, and prodded Justine in the chest with a finger. "No. You can't give up. I won't let you. If you give up, this place will swallow you. Lady Marianne shielded you. I know you think she didn't, but she did, and from more than just her enemies. She shielded you from her friends, too. They're all like that. If a little thing like this can break you, then what are you worth?"
"This?! My mother is dead!" Justine protested.
"So was your father's!" Milly cried back. "The Emblem of Blood took everything he loved from him. I know you don't like him, but do you honestly think that if he gave in like you're doing right now that either of us would be here?!"
"I am not my father," Justine hissed back.
"No, you're not," Milly sighed. "But being everything he isn't, isn't any better. Being everything he isn't means showing all of them that they were right about Lady Marianne. About you. About Juliette. About commoner blood making you both deficient. You may think that what you're doing doesn't matter, that Juliette has this in hand—but she's out there working against the shadow you cast. Like it or not, you're the best of your siblings! Not even Friederike was as good as you are when she was your age. You cast a long shadow. If you fall, you will crush Juliette beneath it. And with you will fall your mother's legacy, and my entire family's future. With you, I fall, too, Justine. Is that what you want? Is mourning a woman who, by your own admission, never really loved either of you, worth all of that?"
"So what would you have me do?!"
"I don't know! Something!" Milly shouted. "Not making Juliette have to stand for you both on her own would be a start, I guess! None of us are you! None of us know what you can truly do! Show them! Because this? This isn't the Justine I know. This isn't the Justine I admired. The Justine I still admire. There's a time and a place, and this is neither of them."
Justine paused, taken aback by her own words being thrown into her face. "What…?"
Milly drew herself up, and laughed mirthlessly. "You know, if you were born male, they were going to arrange for the two of us to be married, right? Well, as it turned out, I didn't very much like that conditional, and so I decided to view you as the person I would one day marry before we even met. I don't know what marriage constitutes, Justine. Not really. I don't know what it's like to fall in love like they do in the stories. There's so much I don't know. But what I do know is that that view hasn't changed. You're hurting, and I get that. I'm hurting, too. So maybe, if we hurt together, we'll have to do a lot less hurting apart—and a lot less hurting each other. Mark my words, Justine vi Britannia. We're in this together. So long as you stay, I will stay with you. And so help me, I will track you down to the ends of the earth if you don't. You're mine, Justine, you were mine since the day you were born. And I refuse to let you go. Not now. Not ever."
"Milly…" Justine breathed, her mind all a-clutter, and flustered beyond the most vicious and pernicious teasing Euphy and Juliette combined could have thought up in the past. She swallowed hard around a lump in her throat, her thoughts racing as the record at last reached its dramatic, climactic finale. In only a few hours, the world had gone from a place she thought she knew and was preparing for, to an unknowable and terrifying maelstrom full of uncertainties and half-truths, pitfalls and hidden perils, and to a great extent, she felt as though the world had shifted on its axis—or perhaps it was simply that the curtain was swept back, and the childish illusion of safety under which she had been unconsciously labouring had been rent asunder like the paper-thin dream it had always been. Perhaps what there was to see had not changed, but much like the individuals in Plato's allegory of the cave, she had never truly seen, content to merely give chase to so many manufactured shadows on the wall. Perhaps it was not the world that had changed, but her.
There was one thing she knew for real, however. One truth she now found herself holding to, the anchor about which her understanding of this strange, brave new world would revolve.
That truth was…
"Carmilla Elizabeth Ashford!" cried the shrill tones of Duchess Cassiopeia, as the needle on the gramophone skittered off of the last groove towards the centre of the vinyl disc. The noblewoman burst through the door, and with a fury in her eyes, stalked straight towards Milly, grabbing her by the arm. "How dare you wander off like this?! Have you lost your mind?! You shame us in front of the Royal Family with this display of impropriety! Your grandfather may seem dead-set on spoiling you, but even he cannot ignore this…this grievous breach of etiquette! Young lady, you are…"
Justine took one look at Milly's reddening face, filling with anger of her own, and in that moment, she saw a chance, an errant thread, perhaps of her own fate, perhaps the world's, loose and drifting. She needed only to seize it, and know how to pull…
She was Justine vi Britannia, Fourth Princess of Britannia, and firstborn daughter to the deadliest, most talented knight in all Britannian history. It was time she realised what that meant.
"Duchess Cassiopeia."
Duchess Cassiopeia halted her tirade immediately. Justine did not marvel; she could not bellow as her father did, and did not deign to employ such tactics. She did not need to raise her voice at all—she needed to but speak in the correct manner, and others would voluntarily quiet themselves to listen.
Charles zi Britannia might have been a hulking brute, a heavy-handed tyrant who shouted the world into submission and maintained the height of that hand by forcing others to bow beneath it, but he had done so successfully, employing a rough, crude sort of charisma. She could reject the manner of his charisma without rejecting charisma as a concept in its entirety for being something he possessed. Perhaps this was what Milly meant when she implied, just a few small moments ago, that she did not have to reject everything her father was.
There was a posture, a bearing to this manner of elocution. She needed to not only act as though she were above such mortal means of wrangling the ears of others, but she needed to be above them, as well. Charles zi Britannia was, for all his power, but a man; she could not rule as a man did. She would need to rule through the unquestioned fact of her being. She could not be an angel, who, while immaculate and beauteous with honeyed words and moving sentiments, was ultimately still but a servant of Heaven; she would need to be a fiend, to rise in opposition to Heaven, to rule in defiance of divine command, though it tar her in blackest night.
If I must be a demon, then so be it. A demon is what I shall be.
"Your daughter has been a great help to me of late. She has acquitted herself well, and all her house by proxy, through the renewed offer of friendship she has extended myself and my sister, the surviving vi Britannias. I understand and appreciate your concern—a mother ought to worry for the wellbeing of her child," she continued, the lie slipping from her teeth as easy as a breath, "and to be certain, make no mistake, many of my esteemed royal siblings would be even less appreciative than you fear—but I am not they, and notably, she did not come to them in this way. Nor, I believe, would she. Your daughter has nothing at all to fear, and neither has the Ashford line. I promise you that, as the daughter of Empress Marianne, and scion of her line. And when we rise again, we shall have the Ashfords to thank for their truehearted loyalty in our time of great need. Jeremiah!"
Jeremiah Gottwald slipped into view from just beside the threshold. She should not have been naive or thoughtless enough to suspect that she had slipped out unnoticed; the man had lost one royal charge, and would not lose another. He bowed without a word, and she found her lips quirk upwards into a half-smile. "If you would be so kind as to escort the good lady back to the parlour, and prepare them for our imminent return. I merely wish to exchange a few final words with Lady Carmilla in private, and we shall be soon after you."
Jeremiah's face twisted into a grimace of slight displeasure at being asked to abandon her, which was something for which she could only be apologetic, but obeyed. "As you command, your highness. Come, Duchess Cassiopeia."
Milly's mother, her face still twisted with misgivings, had no choice but to follow suit, and once again Milly and Justine were alone in the room.
The princess moved away to the gramophone, pulling up the needle and carefully taking the vinyl from the turnstile before re-housing and reshelving it. She took a moment, staring at the shelf in complete silence, to take a deep breath and gather her thoughts. Then she turned to Milly, and only stopped an arm's length from her.
"What you said… Thank you. I… I do not believe any other reassurance could have been as effective, or anywhere near such," Justine began, truthfully. There the lump was again, in her throat, making it difficult to speak, but she forged ahead—all of this needed to be said, and now, else it would forever be too late. She reached out in a flash of impulse, grabbing Milly's hands and holding them in her own, much more pale ones. "I meant what I said, you know. More than I could convey, and far more than I would have deigned to communicate to her. To the extent that what you said could be considered a proposal, then… I accept. I cannot help but think it would be awfully lonely, to chart my course without you by my side. I…am, as I am coming to realise, far less worldly than I would have believed yesterday, and so it is likely I am more ignorant than you by far on such matters. But I know that I would very much like to learn these things, and I don't think it would be so awful if we were to learn…together. So, come what may, Milly, I accept you, and I accept whatever feelings you might hold, just as I hope you will accept me, and mine."
Milly nodded, her features grave, but the spark of fury in her eye had changed, and become unrecognisable. Perhaps it would become less strange to Justine in the coming days. She certainly hoped so. "You always were so dreadfully oblivious, Justine…"
Then Milly's lips were on Justine's, and once again Justine would swear that for all that moment was but an instant, it lasted forever.
When Milly pulled back, her cheeks flushed a shade of pink prettier than the finest rouge, she smiled, as quietly confident as Justine was nonplussed in the aftermath. "Why don't we call that a start, then?"
That truth…was Milly.
Juliette vi Britannia had grappled with the reality of her place in her sister's shadow some time ago. While she had never asked Justine to tell her how she discovered that their late mother, despite her protests and assurances, didn't actually love them, she certainly remembered her own very well.
From her earliest memories of childhood—or at the very least, further back in the course of childhood—Justine got all the attention, all the fretting, all the primping and preening from Marianne, and at first Juliette had hated her sister, well and truly despised her, for taking all her mother's focus, every last bit of it. It was no more fair then than it was now, of course; Justine did not ask to be fussed over, Justine who was always kind with her, always patient and always understanding even when no one else would be, in some regards more of a mother to her than Marianne had been, despite their proximity in age, Justine who hated above all else that she was smothered while Juliette languished. In a sense, she would forever be grateful to their esteemed sire, to Charles zi Britannia, for he was indirectly responsible for her learning to love her sister.
She remembered that it was Midsummer, and the Emperor's visit was heralded by her mother sweeping her out of bed in a furor. No maids were in sight, for she did not trust any but herself to prepare her children for their father's presence. Juliette was elated when she discovered why this was happening—finally, a parent that Justine couldn't monopolise, she remembered she thought to herself—but when Justine seemed even more grim than she usually was when Mother insisted on dressing her up, Juliette began to get an inkling that something was horribly wrong.
She still remembered seeing Charles zi Britannia for the first time, an imposing, broad giant of a man with features seemingly carved from stone, out of his regalia and doing his best to seem immovable as a mountain. Inside, she knew, he was nervous, but also in some way assured. Juliette had always been good at reading people—Justine being perhaps the sole exception—and so she could not fail to notice how it seemed as though his entire bearing brightened at Marianne's entrance, at his famously favoured consort presenting herself. She had thought Justine's concern unfounded, and at one point even considered that perhaps Justine was dour for the same reason Juliette was elated.
Then their eyes turned to the sisters, and Juliette saw what had so crushed her sibling.
When Marianne and Charles looked at each other, it was as if they were the only two people in all the world.
And when they looked upon their children, it was the same.
Juliette could not doubt that they loved each other, and she did not even doubt that both of them loved Justine and her in their way; but it was not the way of a parent with a child, not even the way of a person to another person. She realised in that moment what perhaps her sister had always known: to Charles zi Britannia and Marianne vi Britannia, Justine and Juliette vi Britannia were accessories. Objects. Cherished insofar as they were a product of the love that was shared between emperor and empress, and not the slightest bit more. They were cogs in the great clockwork machine that was the epic saga of romance between the Ninety-Eighth Emperor and his commoner-knight bride, and they would never, could never, be anything more than that.
The next morning, she resolved to be kind to her sister, to return the many olive branches Justine had extended, to get to know her, truly; and in so doing deepen the bonds of solidarity into a genuine, vast, and above all, enduring love—perhaps enough to make up for the love their parents obviously did not feel for them. It was a promise to herself, that she would consider Justine to be her only true family, and endeavour to fill the same role for her elder sister. That the idea of Marianne the mother was dead and buried—an embryonic phantasia, smothered in its nascence and discarded as all childish things one day would need to be.
It was a promise she had kept to the present day.
So to say that Juliette was worried was an understatement. Justine had, for the longest of times, been nothing less than all she had in the world, and Juliette knew her sister to be at once both weaker than the older princess thought, and stronger than she could imagine. The trouble was, did Justine see what Juliette saw? This was the question that she pondered even as she bantered with Friede and Priscilla, and then once again a perturbed Duchess Cassiopeia and Jeremiah Gottwald, for their entire survival hinged solely upon the answer.
Her sister had been gone for some time by now, and Juliette knew that, for once, Justine's struggle was one with which, to her sorrow, she could not help. Justine's turmoil would only be worsened by Juliette's presence, she knew, and so as difficult as it was, she remained where she was, smiling enough for the both of them, as she had been for years.
Of particular note was Milly Ashford's accompanying absence. Justine had been the first to leave and wander, followed by dutiful Jeremiah, and then Milly had begged off, citing a need for the powder room. Priscilla's directions had been given, and the blonde girl had made her exit; yet, Jeremiah had returned, Duchess Cassiopeia had gone and returned, but there was no sign of either her sister or the scion of the sponsors of Marianne the Flash, and their sometimes-playmate. To have both of them out of her sight at such a delicate time was vexing, to say the very least.
When Justine swept back into the parlour, and with Milly bringing up the rear, Juliette released a heavy sigh of relief. Of course, Jeremiah would probably not have returned alone if the threat to Justine's safety within these walls was anything but negligible, but she had no head for what tactics an infiltrator would use, what a sufficiently talented one could or could not do; and so she, in turn, could not help but worry. But her sister was different from when she had left, her bearing distinct in a way that defied succinct description, seeming somehow greater than her lithe, slender young frame might suggest, as though the air itself would shudder and still, so as to bear better witness to any declarations of hers. It was not the way in which Charles zi Britannia could dwarf a podium, looming sprawled about it like a great prehistoric beast of old maritime legend, poised to swallow the space he occupied as his subjects would the world, but the effect was comparable.
Friede had been content to drink her coffee and preen in Priscilla's company, yet it was to her that Justine's gaze went first, before sweeping around the room. Her purple eyes were not hard and cold, nor soft and warm; they were not dull, and they were not sharp. Yet, they were, in the way that other things, other people, perhaps inexplicably, were simply…not. It was odd and otherworldly, but it reassured Juliette; she could see that her sister was ending the discovery of her surprising weaknesses, and just starting to find the beginnings of the strength Juliette knew to slumber there, coiled like the great world-serpent of ancient legend in her chest.
"My apologies for the protracted absence. I needed time to collect myself," Justine began, and every word from her mouth was quiet and calm, impassive, like a subtle knife slipping from its scabbard. "But time waits for no man, and with our mother's death, my sister and I need to get ahead of all of this. Friede, your aid has been and may yet continue to be indispensable, but it cannot be relied upon forever. Not only do you have your own affairs that need tending to, but also the last thing either Juliette or myself can afford is to appear in any way 'un-Britannian.' As a direct result of this, my sister and I must rely only upon the close circle of allies and vassals our late mother collected to her in life.
"The first order of business is to arrange an audience with the Emperor posthaste. We are working on borrowed time, as it were," she continued.
"You don't mean to do anything rash, do you, Justine?" Friede asked, and Juliette felt her gaze narrow despite herself. It was a slight against Justine's ability to handle a courtly situation this politically delicate, of course, and born of her elder sister's rather legendary standoffishness when it came to others amongst the highborn—and few things provoked a vendetta for a noble faster than being talked down to, or indeed, treated as an equal, by those that noble considered inferior simply by right of birth.
Juliette could not fail to notice this, and for some inexplicable reason, she felt sure that it had not missed Justine's notice, either. "You mean to ask if I intend to demand justice for the death of Empress Marianne. How insipid. The emperor is under no obligation in that regard, and will likely take offence to the mere insinuation of such. No, I go to our father for something of far greater immediate benefit. Tell me, Friede, did Lady Marianne, to the best of your formidable knowledge, ever commission a last will and testament?"
Friede's eyes widened, and she recoiled elegantly in something approaching shock. "I do not believe she had one on record, no."
"She had one made when she entered my family's service, but not since then, no," Milly supplied helpfully, and Juliette caught the immediacy of the latter's answer. Obviously she had expected the question to be posed, as even for Reuben, what with his unique relationship with Milly as an heir, that would be an odd bit of information to volunteer. Of course, the fact that she had proffered that intelligence, given its slight utility, was a rather blatant power-play, and any impression that Justine had managed to miss such a display was swept away in the face of the subtle shift in her elder sister's bearing. This, of course, meant only one thing:
Justine was plotting something, and Juliette was out of the loop.
This state of affairs obviously could not be allowed to continue, and in the ordinary course she would not suffer it for an instant, but this was also not the time; though she was an ally, Friede remained technically a rival claimant to the Britannian Imperial Throne, and Duchess Cassiopeia and her husband both were just idiotic enough to attempt opportunism. A house divided could not stand, and open displays of disunity would unmake them. She had no choice but to follow, and to trust that her sister knew what she was doing right now; she could impress upon the older princess her immense displeasure at being excluded at a later date.
"When I call for an audience with His Majesty, I shall do so as Empress Marianne's heir. I shall demand nothing more than what is owed us as her orphaned children—her resources, her contracts, her investments, and of course, lastly and chiefly, a formal transfer of vassalage. The Ashford Foundation's fortunes rose with our mother, and I think it foolish to allow them to fall in her absence," Justine explained, flashing at last a smile that was neither their mother's aggressive mimicry of kind joy, nor their father's curt smile that hid all too much awkwardness behind a graven image. This smile belonged wholly to Justine, and it was sharp enough to shatter glass, all vengeful teeth and icy ruthlessness. Juliette had seen echoes of it on those rare occasions when her sister smiled, truthful and genuine, but now it seemed it was at last reaching full flourish, in all ways alien, unnerving, inhuman, and quintessentially her. "Of course, the question of by whose hand Empress Marianne was slain remains now, and may well potentially ever remain, germane in the extreme. Indeed, we would be fools to believe that whatever vendetta motivated her assailant, or assailants, would end in her death. Make no mistake, my sister and I are the next targets of that violence, but it is not a question that His Majesty will deign to answer. His beloved Marianne is dead, and any favour we may receive from him now or in the foreseeable future is wholly contingent upon how much of her he sees in us.
"If the question of who killed Empress Marianne is to have an answer, it must be by my hand, and by Juliette's."
The room was silent for a few moments. Then, suddenly, Juliette realised that Justine was leaving the opening for her to establish herself, and began with a flash of gratitude. "First and foremost, we must see about securing the Ashford Foundation's primary method of income. The Ganymede put them on the proverbial map, and it has made significant waves since, given its performance in our late mother's hands."
Friede considered, and then spoke up from the rim of her coffee mug to throw her hat into the ring. "Then it may interest you all to know that the Britannian Army's very own Special Dispatch Guidance System Division has been all but nominally dissolved. Stonehenge Industries has been chosen to handle the design, manufacture, and assembly of the world's very first fourth generation Knightmare Frame, the Royal Panzer Infantry-11 mass production model, codenamed 'Glasgow.' I got the news from my contacts just earlier this week."
Juliette nearly rolled her eyes; trust Friede to work her uniquely insidious and pernicious sort of mischief even in a moment such as this one.
"What?! We have to stop this! Contest it, somehow! If the Ashford Foundation loses those contracts, we're ruined!" cried Duchess Cassiopeia.
"Hardly," Justine cut in. "We need do no such thing. There are, in fact, few moves more foolish than that."
Juliette nodded, glad to see they were on the same page with this new information. "If we contest this, we put ourselves into a position of weakness, especially given how little we have in the way of leverage. Perhaps we could salvage and claw back those subsidies, but it would come at the cost of squandering all political capital we could have for the foreseeable future. The Ashford fortunes would be saved, but they would remain as they are, potentially indefinitely, given the concessions that could be extracted from us."
"To enter a battle we have no chance of winning, nor need to wage, is not boldness, and nor is it decisive; it is wasteful," Justine concurred. "If one allows their enemy to dictate the time and terms of the engagement, they have already lost the initiative, and with it, the war. I'll speak with Reuben on the subject, loath as I am to dictate to even a future vassal how they are to run their businesses, but this situation, though it seems dire on the surface, may yet indeed turn out to be something of a sterling opportunity."
Author's Note: So! Many of you may have come across my previous Code Geass story, The Black Prince. It's been discontinued for a while now, and to be honest, it's one of those projects I can't really look back on without cringing. It was self-indulgent, and the process of writing it was more or less just undiluted wish fulfillment, with little thought given to how to make it believable or really anything more than the word-vomit it was. The good news is that since then, I've evolved as a writer quite considerably, and even over the course of the next chapters, I like to I think I improved noticeably.
As a story, this takes a great deal of creative liberties, as you've probably already guessed. Canon Code Geass is something that I've fallen out of love with, and while I remember it fondly for how I saw it when I watched it for the first time at fourteen or fifteen years old, it has a few rather glaring flaws, most notably with its world-building. On the one hand, I admire its legerdemain, that it does as good of a job as it does of concealing how...underdeveloped practically every aspect of its setting is, but on the other, trying to work with it has been a pretty sobering experience. I ask only that you bear with me as this proceeds.
Credit, by the way, to The Black Emperor, by Primordial Vortex, and The Leviathan, by Hegemonic7. I've taken certain ideas from both stories and made them my own to an extent, though admittedly the resemblance amounts to a few bullet-points at best. And also to Neolyph's excellent Darwin, which, while it has practically none of its DNA in this story so far, has nonetheless been an influence.
Post-script: Yes, this is cross-posted from AO3. Updates will come every Sunday until this catches up with the AO3 version, at which point they'll come every other week, just like the AO3 version.