In Human Skin

by Akemi Homura-san

In January, a.t.b. 2010, Empress Marianne vi Britannia, Knight of Two and His Majesty's favoured consort, was assassinated at her residence in the Imperial Villa at Aries. But for Justine and Juliette vi Britannia, her daughters, this proves to be a blessing in disguise... Surrounded by old foes and sheltered by new and unexpected allies, their tale heralds the dawn of a new era.

7. The Trooper

Occupied Area of Japan, August, a.t.b. 2010

"'For political and social, as well as for military reasons, the preferred way of bringing about victory was the shortest, most direct way, and that meant using all possible force.'"

"Pardon, your highness?" asked Villetta, looking up from the requisition forms she was filling out by hand on the folding-table.

"It's an observation of Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz, from his treatise 'On War,'" explained Princess Justine, her tone calmly informative as her slender fingers nimbly manipulated the disassembled components of her gunsabre. Villetta knew that her own hands could be almost as deft in the task of weapon maintenance, but that was the product of years of practice, while the princess's oddly enthralling dexterity seemed almost entirely innate. "It's not my favourite, I'll grant you, and I would say there are a fair few elements with which I take issue, chiefly as far as characterisation is concerned, but it remains nonetheless a useful thing to have read, and the idea itself is very much germane to the subject of this war."

"'If one side uses force without compunction, undeterred by the bloodshed it involves, while the other side refrains, the first will gain the upper hand,'" Jeremiah chimed in, using a gun-cleaning brush to rather vigorously scrub out the insides of the barrel of his assault rifle, which Villetta knew from first glance to be a custom-built model. The perks of aristocracy, she supposed. "Loath as the upper brass may be to admit it, that single theorem on its own forms almost the entire backbone of Britannian military and strategic doctrine."

"Quite so," agreed the princess, reaching for the tub of gun oil both she and Jeremiah shared on the other, larger folding-table at which they sat. The box full of .308 rounds she had won in card games at Midway sat prettily on the far corner, and Villetta felt it was there for its value as a souvenir as much as it was for its utility. "Though it must be said that some of the onus for this falls onto the soon-to-be defunct government of the Empire of Japan. 'War never breaks out wholly unexpectedly, nor can it be spread instantaneously,' after all. Sakuradite is an essential resource, and Japan believed its necessity safeguarded them from aggression by the stronger powers all around them, that none of them would dare risk to take it by force and thereby provoke retaliation from the others. This mindset erroneously presupposes an extant state of peace between the three great powers of the world, but the invention and subsequent mass production of the Knightmare Frame upset the equilibrium of forces quite precipitously."

The Britannian forward base at Miyajima was an open-air installation, a veritable moving city of portable huts, at all hours abuzz with the terse silence of professional soldiers going about the rigours required of their bloody occupation, and bristling with materiel. Villetta had bedded down in more than a few of these during her career in the Britannian military, of course, and this forward base was little different from the ones she'd called her temporary home in Indochina, the last war of any note to be waged by Britannia—she wasn't counting the odd skirmish in Europe that seemed to be a key component of the Empire's foreign policy as it concerned the E.U.—but her time within it was itself notable for the fact that this time, she bedded down in a pavilion, of all things.

But she supposed that those were simply the perks of being, for whatever reason, bunked with a princess of the realm and her unofficial Knight of Honour.

In all honesty, Villetta wasn't sure why, exactly, she was here. But Commodore Mecklinger, the morning the invasion force left port at Midway, bade her to join Princess Justine and her old friend as they left for the front, and so here she was. It was an odd situation, and she had no idea why her commanding officer had asked it of her, but she had at least taken the last of her work with her from that posting, not wanting to fall behind in her duties just in case this turned out to be some sort of temporary measure.

Still, she'd be lying if she said it wasn't at least nice to see Jeremiah again. She'd missed her friend more than she'd expected to. And the princess he had chosen to serve was intriguing, to say the least. She could honestly say that she'd never met anyone, young or old, quite like the girl; not even the late Empress Marianne, practically the patron saint of all Britannian military personnel who had ever seen active combat, held the same aura about herself. The girl was, as far as Villetta had encountered, conscientious, keen of mind and wit, and courteous, albeit aloof; though she had to admit that distance was only to be expected of a royal claimant, and that she could have been quite a sight worse. More than that, she made an effort to be personable, and in the process of speaking with her, Villetta got the sense that she was herself considered "a friend of Jeremiah" first and foremost (which was a sight better than she had expected of a princess who was not Cornelia, and while Cornelia did not seem to believe the title of "commoner" described the whole of her being, it was very clearly the first thing she saw).

"Have you no opinion on the subject, Villetta?" asked Princess Justine, and it startled her out of her errantry to be addressed directly in such a manner.

Collecting herself, Villetta shrugged. "My father is a carpenter, and my mother is a retired violinist. I was raised with the means they could spare; so I'm afraid there's little input I can give on matters of military scholarship, your highness."

"Hmm," hummed the princess, looking up at the roof of the pavilion as she seemed to consider the answer Villetta provided. She idly ran a rag greased with the gun oil in repetitive but steady sweeps up and down the length of the blued metal of the blade, appearing not to need her eyes in order to maintain her precision. "A violinist, you say?"

"That's correct, your highness," she replied, nodding, but uncertain of the princess's point here. She hadn't been around her for very long, but it was enough to know that Her Highness was, to put it bluntly, incredibly stubborn. This diversion from her original point, then, was therefore oddly uncharacteristic.

"Then I take it you're at least passingly familiar with the concept of outsider art?"

The unfamiliar term provoked a sensation of faint recognition, as if she'd heard it before in passing, but that was it. "Only in the most vague of senses, your highness."

"Your highness, wouldn't the concept of 'outsider art' fall into the realm of art criticism, and therefore somewhat beyond the scope of the practise of the art itself?" Jeremiah interjected, putting aside the brush and reaching for the tub of gun oil in turn.

"A fair point," the princess conceded with a mild grimace, passing the tub of oil back to his reaching hand before returning to the task of wiping down and polishing the cutting edge. "In the interest of clarity, Villetta, it is precisely because you lack exposure to the subject of military scholarship that I ask for your opinion. Your perspective is unburdened by the preconceptions of other thinkers, and I believe it has value for the possibility of it illuminating an aspect Jeremiah and I are unconsciously taking for granted. I was under the impression that every soldier has asked themselves why they're fighting and what they're fighting for at least once in their career."

"Not always," Villetta shrugged. "You know that old marching song, 'Over the Hills and Far Away?' King George commands and we'll obey. For some soldiers, it's exactly that simple. It's a job. They don't ask after the wheres and wherefores, they don't think they need to know. His Majesty commands, and we obey."

"But it isn't for you, is it?" Princess Justine pressed.

"How do you figure, your highness?"

"Such a mindset seems like it would go hand-in-hand with either a laissez-faire attitude to the committing of atrocities, or an abiding, naive respect for the monarchy and the aristocracy," said the princess. "You lack the latter, and I find it difficult to believe Jeremiah would be as fond of you if you possessed the former."

"Or a background of abject destitution, leaving the military alone as a viable method of continued survival, however uncertain such things might be," Villetta countered. "But you're correct. I'm not that sort of person."

"Then why do you think this war is happening? I must confess, I'm curious."

Villetta considered for a moment. "Well, if I may speak freely…"

"I'd prefer if you did," Princess Justine nodded, peering at her over her slim shoulder.

"I must confess, I'm not entirely sure of the political situation that gave rise to why we're fighting this specific war," she began, choosing her words with care. The princess had asked her mind, after all, and she wanted to be accurate. "But in a more general sense, I've come to see this country as an engine, akin to the sort that might drive an industrial process of a century ago. Fuel goes in, work comes out, in a more simple sense.

"I used to think that Britannia was fuelled by ambition. But I'm now inclined to think I was mistaken, and that ambition is not only an engine unto itself, but also synonymous with the engine of Britannia," she continued, growing more sure of herself as she found her words. "The Humiliation ended with only a handful of aristocrats escaping to found their new state, after all, and yet we have aristocrats everywhere, fulfilling a function that is central not only to how power is gained, but also to how it is maintained within our borders.

"The fuel is conquest, in the most basic of senses. In order to keep this lust for power that continues to be cultivated within the aristocratic class by His Majesty from turning into infighting and devouring itself, it becomes necessary to keep that lust for power turned outwards. The fuel, then, is conquest: new lands, new peoples, new resources, new titles, new hegemonies. All of them to appease the endless greed of the nobility for but a few scant moments." Villetta sighed, before finishing her thought: "If the fuel ceases to go into the engine, the engine then ceases to function—likewise, if His Majesty was not constantly supplying both current and would-be aristocrats with fresh spoils of war, this engine that is Britannia would consume itself and cease to be in short order."

"With the logical conclusion being that, since there is a finite quantity of territory that can be acquired on the planet, the system is inherently unsustainable," Princess Justine remarked, and as odd as it was, she looked…thoughtful, her head cocked in a manner not unlike a songbird. "I suppose I'd had some nebulous understanding of the idea before now, but I must confess, this is the first I've actually had to confront it…"

"Well, at the very least, Europia United and the Chinese Federation stand between us and that eventual collapse…" said Jeremiah, a few notes of cynical optimism in his tone.

"I wouldn't be so certain of that," the princess replied. "Both are themselves empires of unwieldy and gargantuan size, and if Friede's word is to be believed, so prone to regular failures in their bloated bureaucracies and crumbling infrastructures that they are considered simply the order of the day. The Hemicycle of Europia United and the Chinese Federation's High Eunuchs are both at the helms of sinking ships, of megastates that are beginning to buckle under their own weight. Even without interference from Britannia—even if our great war machine of a nation were somehow henceforth to make no further gains—neither of them is likely to remain an entity for much longer. And when that happens, massive power vacuums will emerge in both regions, much as they would if Britannia were to, by some means, immediately collapse."

"Which means we're heading towards a global catastrophe…" pronounced Jeremiah, his expression suddenly vacant with shock and deeply haunted.

"Whether Britannia is victorious or is halted in its tracks, yes," confirmed the princess.

Villetta sat there, frozen, her paperwork forgotten, pen idle in her hand. There was a sense of gravity, of finality to Princess Justine's tone when she said that, and it made the heady weight of what had just been extrapolated from her own perspective hit her full-force. But when the leaden shock dissipated into the suddenly morose atmosphere, she couldn't help herself. A laugh forced its way out of her throat, a bitter thing that intertwined impotence with mirth. "Well now! It seems that for all our bluster, we Britannians are every bit as much on a collision course with doom as the other nations we decry! Your highness will have to forgive my ignorance—would you deem that tragic irony, or poetic justice?"

"You're correct in that, Villetta," the princess sighed, putting down the cloth and holding up the blade to check how it caught the light, before moving swiftly to reassemble the full weapon. "Whatever doom descends upon the Holy Britannian Empire, Britannia has brought upon itself. If only…"

Villetta looked down at her paperwork, scratching out a few lines, but when she noticed the equally uncharacteristic sudden silence from the princess, she looked up again, from her hands that were suddenly still on the table, a component grasped in each one, to her face just in time to behold the glint that shone like a falling star in her violet eyes. "…Your highness?"

"Villetta Nu, would you like to be ennobled?" Princess Justine asked abruptly, her hands moving swiftly to their task once again, as though they had never ceased.

To say Villetta was nonplussed would be an understatement. "…I'm sorry?"

"If I were to confer upon you noble status, and arrange for you to be sponsored to attend a military academy," she clarified, and there was an impatience to her tone that seemed rare upon her tongue.

"I would owe you a great debt, your highness," said Villetta, for lack of things to say.

"Let us dispense with talk of debts," said the princess as the metal bits slid and clicked to one another with a speed that verged on frightening. "In order to receive loyalty, one must offer it first. It is nothing more than a bit of loyalty I am giving, therefore, in order to secure yours."

Villetta straightened in her seat, the requisition forms all but forgotten. "Let us be clear, then: are you offering to take me into your service, your highness?"

Princess Justine rolled the cylinder of the gunsabre back into the chamber, and then set it down on the table before turning to face her fully, the girl's raven hair swept back into a tie at the nape of her neck, her garb sturdy yet still obviously finely-made, her nimble fingers shod in thin black gloves. "I am. I find myself in need of capable personnel, people I have reason to believe I can trust. Will you accept?"

…Well, it's not as if my career in the military is going anywhere, Villetta considered, as she endeavoured to hold the princess's gaze. And I have to admit, this is at the very least the most interesting route currently available to me—perhaps the most interesting one likely ever to be available to me. So why not? Her lips curled into a smile. She had her answer. "If serving you is good enough for Jeremiah Gottwald, well then, it's good enough for me. Yes. I will accept."

Princess Justine grinned, and its brilliance was as blinding as its edge was keen. She reached out her hand, a gesture of accord between relative equals—just relative enough to avoid the communication of sarcasm. "I am glad to hear it. Welcome aboard the great ship vi Britannia, Villetta Nu."

Villetta reached out and took the princess's hand. "Our fates are now one, your highness."

---

"So, of all the nicknames you could ascribe to Jeremiah, why 'Jerry'?"

"Because his surname was German, honestly. The name stuck after that," Villetta replied, rolling her eyes. "Let it never be said that we soldiers lack for creativity."

"And I will say now as I said then, Villetta, I'm not German. My family emigrated from Austria. We held territory in Salzburg, near the border with Styria," grumbled Jeremiah.

"…Isn't Austria a German-speaking country?" asked Justine, her brow furrowing in both confusion and mirth.

"Oh, believe me, that came up several times as well," Villetta added. "And honestly, after the first few times he corrected us, we more or less relied on that as justification. The idea wasn't to be accurate, after all. Just to get under his skin—which, seeing as he was at the time an uptight noble brat with a stick up his ass, was embarrassingly easy to do."

Justine couldn't help but laugh at that, the image of Jeremiah as a young man, even more straight-laced and easily-irked, the familiar absurdity of it cutting through her attempts at composure. She turned to look at him, his frame clad in the ballistic plating of his black combat armour, teal hair fluttering in the gentle breeze as his amber eyes swept over the ruins that surrounded them, the muzzle of his rifle following where his gaze went, and she knew he knew she meant nothing by it.

She had seen photographs of the Kururugi Shrine before coming here, in the interest of knowing what to look for; and to look upon it now, it was difficult to believe that her mission in coming here would be anything but a failure. Perhaps that was why Cornelia had so easily agreed to supply Justine with a half dozen of her infantrymen, whose combat armour was less protective than Jeremiah's, but also less expensive, their helmets rendering them all but faceless even as it protected them from possible contaminants in the air. As she watched them milling about the debris and detritus that constituted the bombed-out shell of this once-beautiful estate, nestled in the forest at the base of Mount Fuji, she could begin to see why it was all too easy for Britannian commanders to begin thinking of their troops as expendable and inconsequential. She hoped, no, she resolved never to become like that—war was a deadly business, to be certain, but to consider men expendable was to allow oneself to waste them.

She wouldn't safeguard her soldiers at the cost of victory, no, but she would make sure to make every death count.

Villetta's combat armour was in a place that rested between that of Jeremiah's and of the common infantryman in terms of protection from ballistics, Justine noted—her newest ally was clearly not as confident around an assault rifle as Jeremiah, but she handled her submachine gun with a comfortable familiarity that calmed a good deal of the concerns Justine might have had if they wound up, by some twist of misfortune, in a firefight. While Jeremiah came up on Justine's left, Villetta was on her right, and on that side, as well, three of her six borrowed men took great care to leave no stone unturned in their search for survivors—or, far more accurately, potential political hostages.

There was a shifting of charred wood and errant stone, followed by a startled squawk, to her left, and so Justine quickly turned and closed the distance to the soldier in question with swift strides. As she drew closer, the soldier who had made the discovery drawing up and away with a hasty salute, alarm clear in his bearing, she laid her eyes upon what looked to be a brawny, barrel-chested Japanese man, or at least, the burnt corpse of what used to be one. Even from here, she could see his broad build, that he was likely a tall man in life who had projected great strength, almost like the Emperor in a way. Vast swaths of his skin were nothing more than ashes and embers, burnt and flaking from wet, weeping, livid muscle, and there were ruined scraps of what was once most likely a very stately, tailored suit—but what was perhaps the most curious thing about the corpse was the pose it took in death. Justine crouched at his side, peering down at the odd body, cocking her head in quizzical examination.

He's…grasping at his own chest…?

All sound left the world, and several things happened in quick succession. Her mind gone sluggish with shock, Justine felt like she could only notice them one at a time.

First, she heard the sound of a bang, and a wet eruption, like a rotten melon being crushed open with a mallet.

Second, she looked up in time to watch as the head of the soldier next to her gave a visual that matched the sound, almost as if someone had given it a prompt to mimic the oddly specific bit of audio.

Third, she felt the wet heat on her face as his still-warm blood and gory bits of his brain splattered onto her face.

Fourth, she glanced over to the treeline, and caught a brief mirror-glint, an easily-missed reflection of the sun on glass.

And finally, her eyes narrowed. Only one thought ran through her mind:

Got you.

Springing into motion, she refused the reflex to scramble for cover. That would only put her out in the open. Instead, she threw herself directly into the soldier's corpse as it began to fall, throwing her weight behind it to prop it up. She felt the sharp jolt through the body as the next shot slammed into the fresh corpse, but put it out of her mind. Just as she suspected—the muzzle flash was brief, but it matched the glint off of the scope.

Distantly, she could hear Villetta and Jeremiah calling for her, even as they and the other five soldiers jerked themselves into cover, taking shelter from the unidentified sharpshooter. She blocked them out, however—the world had narrowed dramatically, and in it, there remained only two people: herself, and her assailant. I have you. And now I'll hunt you…

She stayed only long enough for the next bullet to slam into the pavement at her feet, and in the process kicking up sharp dust that would have stung her eyes and momentarily blinded her if she'd looked down at it. Instead, she drew Heirsbane from her back, and calculated. Four seconds between each shot. The closer I get, the easier it'll be to evade. So I have six seconds to reach the tree line, and not a moment more…

Shrugging the corpse off of her, she broke into a dead sprint, her entire being focused on speed above all else. Now… Are you going to play it safe, and start running immediately, to make sure I can't catch you? Or…will you risk it all on just one more bullet? What will you do, o prey of mine?

The sunlight reflected off of the scope once again, there and gone in a minute fraction of an instant—and Justine didn't bother to leash her sharp smirk. How very daring. Let's see how it pans out for you, shall we?

Justine watched for the moment the muzzle flash came to light, a pinpoint even this close, and brought Heirsbane's edge up in a sweeping arc. Time dilated itself to fractions of a second, the bullet streaking for her as it gained momentum—but she had compensated precisely for the vast disparity in speed. The hardened edge of the weapon bit deep into the comparatively softer metal of the hollow-point round, and continued through the other side, as the neat fragments, red with heat, ricocheted off in different directions.

At this distance, she could pick out the silhouette of the would-be sharpshooter's small form, gangly and slim, as it jerked back from the smoking rifle and turned to bolt. Justine's smirk broadened into a toothy grin. Oh, it's far too late for that, I'm afraid… If you were going to run from me, you ought to have done so when you had the chance…!

Delving into the underbrush, Justine gave chase; yet, there was a chance that her quarry had littered the forest floor with traps, specifically to ward off pursuit. But she was willing to bet that the would-be assassin hadn't done the same to the trees, for all that most pursuers were wont to seek them on foot. That in mind, she wheeled the chamber open, checked that her one blasting round was in its proper place, gave the cylinder a harsh spin, and then slammed it back into the chamber, speeding up. Two tree trunks were close together ahead, and her prey leaped nimbly between them, but Justine jumped, using the balls of her feet to press off of one, then the next, as she spun in the air, brought Heirsbane to bear, and braced herself.

The recoil from squeezing the trigger jolted her shoulder out of its socket, and she grit her teeth against the pain, but the force still sent her flying upwards, towards the heavy upper limb of the nearby old growth. Using her good arm, she reached out and just managed to grab onto the bough of the great, probably ancient, tree, using it as an anchor point to swing her momentum, as well as her legs, up over the groaning wood to alight gracefully upon it. She took a short moment to slam her shoulder into the tree trunk, grimacing as her joint popped back into alignment, and then once again gave chase.

Her prey—it looked to be a young boy, of clear Japanese descent and no older than her, with short, curly brown hair and a relatively fair complexion—looked around wildly, no doubt wondering where she'd gone, but as Justine started bolting down the length of the bough, leaping out for the next one in the canopy, he finally looked up, and caught sight of her, his body jerking into motion once again as he fled.

He was sprinting headlong, yes, but for all his familiarity with the area, evasion of trees, shrubbery, downed logs, boulders, and other obstacles was still necessary; Justine went virtually as the crow flies, and was hot on his tail for every moment of it, inescapable. She was impressed, however; he had planned his route out well, and though she could clearly see him lean to grab another hidden gun out of the forest floor, or indeed from being propped up against a tree, each and every time, it didn't dull the thrill that rushed through her, of hot blood and burning soul, as he turned each weapon against her, endeavouring to shoot her cleanly out of the sky. It was only his inexperience with hitting a moving target that kept her safe, but each time he tried, the bullet whizzed a little closer, her evasion a little narrower. He was adjusting, accounting for her tactics, and he was doing it quickly. If she would prevail, she needed to finish this.

As he bolted for the next weapon, an old matchlock of the sort imported by the Jesuits of Portugal to be sold to the warlords of feudal Japan, she took her aim, and narrowed her focus, as she wound back Heirsbane, and lobbed it.

End over end, the weapon flew through the air, and its edge just barely missed biting into his shoulder as the armament hit its mark, burying itself into the ground just in front of him as he skidded almost to a halt.

The next moment, the boy pitched harshly to the ground with an oddly feminine grunt as Justine's body slammed into him, hand-springing off of his shoulder and arcing precisely to grab Heirsbane from the soil as she slid to a stop herself, bringing the weapon to bear. Her heart hammered as her chest rose and fell with laboured, deep breaths of excitement, and she collected herself well enough to speak clearly before she called out, "On your feet! I refuse to slay you prone."

"Ha! Well, that's not much of an incentive to stand up, now is it?"

Justine's brow furrowed. That was certainly not a male voice. A girl, then?

The girl—and this close, Justine could see it written into the planes of her features and in minute details of the shape of her body—nonetheless put her feet under her, and stood. "Luckily for you, I happen to agree. It'd be a bummer to die like that, tackled to the ground from behind. Especially to someone like you. What a fuckin' waste that would be…"

Justine's eyes narrowed, her blood roaring in her ears. "Who are you?"

The girl drew herself up to her full height with the aid of a nearby old-growth tree with a hollowed out trunk, revealing herself entirely. She was taller than Justine, and a bit broader, with lanky limbs and a gangly build toned with lean muscle, beautiful in a rough sort of way, a feral allure she'd have to grow into in time, with her sun-kissed skin and strong, pronounced features. Her brow was every bit as strong as Justine's, but not as dark; her hair was chestnut-brown and cut short, adorning her head in thick, unruly curls, and her jade eyes danced with a wild, savage light as her thinner lips pulled back in a broad, shark-like grin of her own. "The one who's gonna kill ya."

Justine snorted. "A bold boast, to be sure. Do you truly have what it takes to best Justine vi Britannia, Fourth Princess of the Realm?"

The other girl scoffed, adjusting the tattered short-sleeved v-neck shirt and athletic shorts she wore as she started stepping to one side. Justine watched her, but didn't care to mirror her movement. "What, a prissy bitch like you? Ha! You got guts, I'll give ya that. Was a neat trick you did, cutting that bullet out of its path. And here I'd been thinking I was the only one who had the knack. But honestly, it doesn't matter if I've got what it takes, princess. I don't really give a fuck. What matters is how badly I'm just itching to beat that fancy face of yours bloody."

The other girl kicked out behind herself suddenly, her foot, which was shod in a running shoe, hooking on something that she then yanked out of the hollow trunk and sent flying up so she could catch it in her hand. It was a weapon, Justine could see, and not of the ballistic sort; sealed into a beautiful, elegantly simple scabbard, gently curving and fashioned of lacquered black bamboo, it was a sword, decorated with black ribbons wrapped in criss-crossing patterns across the hilt, boasting for itself a circular guard and cap-pommel made of burnished bronze. The girl wrapped her fingers around the hilt, gentle but firm in her grip, and slowly drew its dazzlingly beautiful single-edged blade of silvery steel free of the scabbard with nary a whisper. "A Kiku-ichimonji. A nice, fancy sword, for your nice, fancy face. It's fitting, don't ya think?"

Justine chuckled. "I suppose so! But to have one of those thirteen, you must be a member of a family of some prominence, would you not? So, what is your name, then?"

The girl scoffed, tossing the lacquered scabbard to the side and bringing the sword itself to bear against Justine. She spat the words like they were some form of profanity or obscenity: "What, 'so you know what to put on my gravestone'?"

"Hardly. You see, that's where you're mistaken," Justine countered, smirking as the calm, cold serenity, stark and remote as the very moon, settled itself once more within her. "I have no intention of killing you, as it happens."

The other girl's brow furrowed in confusion. "Then why the fuck are you here?"

"I do not seek your life. Or at least, not as one such as you might think of it," said Justine, and the omen in her tone caressed her lips like a forked-tongued serpent's searching kiss. "I shall content myself with merely taking your freedom."

Her opponent barked a harsh laugh as she slid herself into an unfamiliar fighting stance, the Kiku-ichimonji gripped in one hand. "Ha! Well, I suppose there ain't much harm in telling ya. The name's Kururugi Suzaku, and one way or another, you're gonna leave here empty-handed. Because even if I lose, you won't be taking me alive."

Justine's eyes narrowed, and the wry twist of her lip shifted and contorted, warping itself into a rictus of mockery. "Watch me."

Suzaku returned a sharp grin as the deceptively powerful muscles of her legs tensed, and in the space of an instant, she dashed directly for Justine, silver blade gleaming as it rent the air. She was fast, far faster than it was reasonable to expect.

Justine had fought faster.

The clash was deafening, ringing out through the clearing—the silence, even more so.

Suzaku's triumphant expression froze, melting into shock. Heirsbane caught the blow, but did not halt it; the Japanese sword's edge instead shivered down the length of the blade, every bit of cutting power the girl put into her slash flowing down it like water across smooth stone, as if, contrary to the evidence of her senses, her sword had indeed met no resistance at all.

In the next moment, Suzaku was off balance, the lack of resistance sending her careening toward the ground in an ungainly heap as she scrambled to regain the surety of her footing; and there came a sharp sting to her calf, more a nip than a bite, teasing almost, as Heirsbane slipped over her head and came down in a smooth, elegantly arcing slash at the back of her leg.

Justine followed the course of her weapon, and with a dancer's grace, she reversed their positions seemingly effortlessly. She stood there, then, waiting patiently for Suzaku to come to guard once more. "I said my intent was not to kill you, and I meant it. But to come at me as you did, to think to face me so recklessly—why, I'm almost insulted. No, correction—I am insulted. I will be satisfied with nothing less than you bringing all that you are to bear upon me, Kururugi Suzaku. Have I made myself clear?"

Suzaku spat an oath as she gave Justine a baleful glare. "Crystal."

The presumed daughter of the prime minister of the Empire of Japan affirmed her stance and brought her other hand to the hilt of the priceless antique sword; and that seemingly simple action heralded a noticeable shift in the atmosphere of the clearing, which Justine felt instantly. Returning Heirsbane to its proper engarde position, her profile turned to her foe with the weapon brandished across her chest, the flat of the blade perched on the back of her hand, she regarded the girl with narrowed eyes and a piercing gaze. She's resolved to come at me seriously, has she? Well then. Let's see what she's got.

Once more, the girl's powerful leg muscles coiled, and sprung; once more, she closed the distance between them with far more celerity than one would reasonably expect. She raised her sword, and struck down with tremendous cutting force—more than thrice the force of her earlier one-handed attempt—and Justine twirled into it deftly, catching the Kiku-ichimonji on her blade back-handed, and letting it slide down the length of the hybrid, the full force of her two-handed attack deflected without causing the Britannian metal to so much as shiver. Justine pulled through the parry to deliver another matching nip to the girl's other leg—

A sharp pain lanced through her skull, though what she saw could only be deemed stars in the utmost frivolity, and were actually amber fractals spiralling through the sudden blackness. Her head swam, her thoughts came sluggishly, and vertigo nearly turned her stomach inside out. The fractals and darkness faded slowly, from the centre and spreading out, and in her indistinct field of view, she glimpsed Kururugi Suzaku, who appeared similarly afflicted if her eyes did not deceive her. Did she just… Did she just head-butt me?!

"How the fuck are you still conscious…?!" Suzaku exclaimed.

Both of them stared at each other in blank shock for a few stagnant moments.

Justine couldn't help it. This sequence of events, the very notion that this girl would try to negate her parrying technique by literally bashing their heads into each other, was just…so very unimaginably ludicrous that she was powerless to suppress the mirth that bubbled up her throat. It emerged as a chuckle, and then exploded into full, incredulous laughter. And across the way, Suzaku's mildly offended, poleaxed expression quickly crumbled into full-throated, disbelieving, nearly maniacal hilarity. Their shared laughter filled the space between them, echoing off of the trees themselves, and it was as if they were ensconced in their own little world, built solely for the two of them.

Justine may have been the first to laugh, but once that calmed, Suzaku chose to break the silence first. "Well, I'll be. I've downed grown men with that, ya know. Broke Tōdō-sensei's nose the first time I tried it. How fucking hysterical is it that when I finally find someone with a head as hard as mine, she turns out to be some spoiled Britannian princess?!"

Said princess elected to let the Japanese girl's ignorant comment on her upbringing slide under the bridge. It wasn't worth disrupting this almost euphoric sense of satisfaction that filled her lungs near to bursting. She could think of only one factor that was, and that was on the other side of the world right then. "I'll admit, I had not thought to be enjoying myself this much here, either. It would be a shame to leave things here, though, wouldn't it? Why, we've barely begun, after all."

The other girl's face morphed into a grin that was the picture of gleeful bloodlust. "Well what do ya know? I happen to agree. Why don't we get this show on the road, Hime-sama?"

Justine chortled and nodded, shaking her head to clear out the remaining fog and raising Heirsbane once more; and either both girls were more alike than they realised or Suzaku's energy was infectious, because she felt herself adopting her version of the other girl's expression. Taken up in a momentary fit of madness, Justine chambered another round, and lashed out twin cutting waves of electric blue flame.

Suzaku's eyes went as wide as her bestial grin to beget a truly feral mien; she brought her sword up, and slashed through one wave, and then the second, but Justine slammed her shoulder into her full-force, the waves a diversion to close the distance. She pirouetted, squeezing on the trigger, and her blade bit through the earth in a swift, explosive rising arc, shearing through flesh and garb from hip to shoulder. Centuries-old steel bit through royal flesh across Justine's belly in retaliation, and both of their weapon-arms came lashing back to clash blades together with harsh, deafening impact. Kururugi's sword disengaged quickly before they could truly lock, wary of its resistance suddenly vanishing, and as excited as she was, Justine barely registered the gash in her abdomen as anything more than a distant sting.

Her opponent retreated, and then launched forth to impale her. Perhaps the girl named for the southern phoenix believed that Justine could not parry a thrust as she did a slash. Perhaps she hoped that with all the activity she had undertaken that day, with all the damage she'd incurred in that time—she faintly registered her forehead bleeding—fatigue would slow the princess down.

In both cases, she was mistaken.

The momentum of the thrust nearly carried Suzaku off her feet as all its force met nothing more substantial than a rapid change in direction, the point of the sword carrying her far afield of her mark. With a deep gouge in the lean muscle of her arm and a livid bite to the sun-kissed flesh of her back, Heirsbane punished her folly. The girl did not twirl so much as she spun, a sudden and desperate pivot driving the antique sword's keen edge to sink deep into Justine's side.

In Justine's state, however, the wound felt no more bothersome than an abdominal cramp; she discarded the pain by the wayside, and brought Heirsbane's entire heft crashing hilt-first into the Kururugi girl's wrists. The larger girl's nerves spasmed as she cursed, involuntarily releasing the sword to leave herself effectively unarmed. Capitalising on this, Justine bashed the basket of the weapon into the other girl's face, breaking her nose and sending her reeling.

With her opponent staggering back, Justine stepped forward, a single pitiless swing of her gunsabre sailing to strike her foe across the collarbone. End of the line…

Heirsbane lodged itself deep in the back of her opponent's forearm.

Kururugi Suzaku purred. "Got ya."

And then her other hand came down with all the force of a sledgehammer, shattering the tempered metal in a single, ruinous blow.

A solid punch landed directly in Justine's face, snapping her head back and sending her reeling with a startled cry. Suzaku stepped forward and hammered another blow into the wound in her side, the muscles spasming painfully. For the first time in this fight, Justine was oddly and fully aware of how much damage she'd taken: she had sustained a mild concussion, given how her ears were ringing, had sustained two wounds in the torso, both of which were more severe than she'd first given them credit for, and by the look of her clothes and the nauseating sensation of weightlessness in her head, she had lost a not-insignificant amount of blood. In light of that, her recently-dislocated shoulder having sustained possible damage to its ligaments seemed the least of her worries. She needed to end this, then, and she would not dishonour Taliesin's efforts or Jeremiah's tutelage by falling here. She would not…could not…

…No. It was much simpler than that.

She would not break her oath to her betrothed. Not now, not ever. She refused.

Thinking quickly, she raised the ruined remnants of Heirsbane, and fired one last round, as one might a blunderbuss, throwing Kururugi's next attack off as she dodged the point-blank shot. Then she cast it aside, ducking under the girl's punch, and drove her fist up into her opponent's chest gouge with as much force as she could muster, driving the wind out of the Japanese girl's lungs. Then she pivoted, chambering her leg and slamming her heel into the same wound.

The breathlessness and the onset of internal bleeding forced the stricken girl to the dirt. There was no broad, shark-like grin on Justine's face anymore. Her mouth was set in a hard line, her violet eyes as sharp and cold as the gem they resembled, her expression callous, focused, merciless, unfeeling, and above all, grimly determined. She fell upon the other girl, straddling her, and resolved to put her down.

Her first strike fractured Kururugi's orbital socket. Her second broke two ribs. Her third punished the open wound again. She grabbed her slashed-open arm and thrust a thumb into the cut. Then, and only then, did she stand, using the grip on and in the arm, as well as a heel on the girl's sternum, to twist, her arm breaking cleanly with a sickening crack.

With that, she stopped. Suzaku was unconscious and gravely injured, but even now she still drew breath, and Justine had every confidence her opponent, now her prisoner, would live. Staggering and lurching on what remained of her endorphin-fuelled trance as it began to fade, she cast an eye towards the broken fragments of Heirsbane, and then let her gaze drift towards the Kiku-ichimonji, discarded in the grass, its blade soaked in her blood.

What a curious thing, and such exquisite detail, she thought, leaning down and plucking it from the ground. On a lark, she shifted her grip on it as if to wield it—and to her shock, there was a sensation of harmony that flooded through her being as she held it, of rightness, of affinity. At that moment, she knew: I will master this weapon. Or, at the very least, one much like it.

"YOUR HIGHNESS!"

Justine jerked to face the tree-line, and smiled vacantly as Cornelia's men sprinted toward her, Jeremiah and Villetta in the lead, their faces stricken with shock, worry, and panic. "Ah! My faithful adjutants! You're just in time! I found us a prisoner! See that…she is…well-treated…"

The moment the last of her trance ran dry, the ground pitched up to meet Justine.

Darkness had swallowed her whole.

---

The immortal witch C.C. had not known what to make of her guide and fellow immortal, Taliesin, when first they began their journey. Alone amongst the immortals she had encountered in her seven or eight hundred years on Earth, he kept to a full name, and though she knew not if it was the name he had borne as a mortal man, the truth of the matter was simply immaterial. He possessed a name that others might speak without it seeming odd, and in selecting that, he defied convention to name themselves for initials, as if to reflect the fragmented, hollow, and ironically transient nature of their existence. During her time as project lead and eventually chairwoman of the Geass Directorate, she had agreed with Charles, her contractor Marianne, and Charles's elder brother V.V., an immortal trapped in a state of unending youth far more severe than her own; she had agreed that other immortals were a threat to their plans to utilise the Sword of Akasha to slay the Collective Unconscious. To that end, she had sought to search out others of her kind, and to either bring them to heel or destroy them.

She had found perhaps a dozen other immortals, if that many were indeed as they seemed, and she had neutralised the threat each of them posed, before considering her work complete. Yet the man had spoken at some length of a broader, albeit threadbare, commune of undying folk like them, and though she had caught neither hide nor hair of the idea something like this was even possible for all the time and effort she had expended in her search for other immortals, she was inclined to believe him through virtue of the fact that he himself existed—an immortal of which she had been able to find no mention.

When she reflected upon it, she had to admit to herself first and foremost that her time at the Geass Directorate had played a prominent role in her agreeing to accompany him deep into what was now an active war zone. Ever since she had gotten stranded in Maricourt while visiting the small town during the First Great War of the World, she had been in absolutely no hurry to find herself near heavy ordinance or vast quantities of fighting men, and while she had suffered through it for a time as Marianne won Charles the throne virtually single-handedly, thus ending the Emblem of Blood, she still flinched whenever the harsh din of artillery or the charnel stench of burning corpses reached them. It reminded her of the sour stench of the trenches, the burn of mustard gas in her lungs, the awful rumble of battle-tanks, the sting of barbed wire… If one were to say that C.C. detested the means by which men slaughtered one another in absurd numbers, it would be an understatement so egregious that it would be functionally indistinguishable from an honest lie. She was grateful, then, that it seemed her guide was almost as wary of skirmishes and slaughter-yards as she was.

Arriving in Japan alongside Shinozaki Sayoko under the cover of night, Taliesin and C.C. swiftly left her to her task and plunged into the woods and groves of the Japanese countryside. For about a week, they made their way through tree and brush, bramble and thorn, skirting the outskirts of settlements when they could, and aside from Taliesin making a few discreet inquiries the further they got inland, they took great care to avoid all human contact as best they were able. Through it all, they rarely had cause to speak to one another—Taliesin maintained he could say nothing she would believe that could bring her comfort, and so their words were best saved for their mysterious host—and so the shrieking cries of cicadas and the ominous rumbles of the oncoming typhoons were their most frequent accompaniment. Sounds of battle were rare, as the new Britannian war machines tore through contested land at unprecedented speeds, and the few sounds of wildlife grew ever more uncommon as they approached what seemed to be their goal.

C.C. was hungry, thirsty, tired, and filthy. The wardrobe Marianne had kept for her use was tailored for professional settings, or the climate of Pendragon and the southern desert that surrounded the man-made oasis, neither of which could match the miserable humidity and reckless downpour of her current environs. Yet starvation, dehydration, exhaustion, and exposure were all things through which she could suffer without fear of death, and so none of it was worth voicing a complaint about out loud. She and Taliesin took breaks to eat, to drink, and to sleep, most assuredly—none of them would be able to kill either of them, but those otherwise mortal eventualities of deprivation could certainly render them useless, after all—but they did so rarely, and briefly, the ongoing hostilities forcing them to be careful lest either manage to catch some pestilence or other that could certainly make things very difficult for them. If there was anything she felt was significant enough for her to complain about, it was that she herself had grown accustomed to the accommodations she had been afforded over the past two decades, and that she had allowed them to make her soft.

Taliesin, in contrast, was every bit as filthy as her—travelling as they did didn't exactly allow for bringing much in the way of changes of clothes—but he did not look it. His composure and bearing made him look hale, hearty, immaculate, while she could only look vaguely haggard. It didn't seem exactly fair, but then again, he had been handling the upkeep on the Villa at Aries, an estate that ordinarily required a full staff to remain functioning, on his own for months by that point, and managing to do a better job of it than that full staff to boot. So perhaps cleanliness was simply his natural state.

Around three metres ahead of her, the man himself drew to a stop, waving her over as he stood at the edge of what looked to be something of a harsh incline. Obliging, she drew up next to him, her fingers idly working out a particularly stubborn snarl in her lime-green hair to little avail as her amber eyes fixed him with a silent question. He grinned at her in victorious triumph, holding back the foliage while adjusting his ever-present pince-nez with his free hand. "I believe we have reached what young people these days refer to as 'the home stretch.' This is Fujiyama, the largest mountain in Japan, an active volcano, and home to the largest deposit of sakuradite in the world. According to my information, our host makes her nest in a cavern midway up the face of the mountain, away from any of the trails. There won't be any mortals from here to there—she has something of a reputation, not that they're aware of that—and so we may speak with greater freedom as we ascend to our destination. Step lively, then, quick as you like!"

And with that, Taliesin practically hopped out of the tree line, his leather boots sturdy yet careworn, his canvas trousers stained with grass and dirt, yet miraculously lacking tears, and his button-down white shirt significantly worse for wear purely by virtue of visible damage. Yet, in spite of this, he reminded her in that moment very strongly of a European gentleman of a century past on safari, with all his self-assured and unharried sprightliness. Sighing, she endeavoured to follow suit, setting foot out of the tree cover and beginning to ascend the rugged mountainside in his wake.

They picked their way across the stone and shrubbery, not needing to exercise nearly the same care a mortal might in the course of ascending the mount, and C.C. resolved to put a few of her wonders to rest while she had leave. "So why Mount Fuji? I get the impression this is more than a little high-profile for someone who wishes to remain unbothered."

"That is a question I shall have to pose to her myself," said Taliesin, throwing a smile less joyous than it was conciliatory at her over his shoulder. "Until relatively recently, she'd made her home on Kaminejima, so that her proximity to the Thought Elevator on the island might aid her in keeping a close eye on it. She had a home here, as I recall, but there was a bit of business that transpired some thousand years ago or so, and that provoked her decision to abandon it in favour of where she has resided ever since. I do not know what inspired her desire to relocate here, but I have reason to believe we'll hear tell of it ere long."

"What makes you say that?"

"The Kururugi Shrine is nearby, and the locals spoke of rumours that the late Kururugi Tomoe, the former wife of Kururugi Genbu—the prime minister—had perished under ominous circumstances," began Taliesin, gesturing with his hands to point out an easy path amidst the natural detritus, and she found herself reminded once again that the man was a surprisingly competent storyteller. "There've been sightings of a supernatural creature called an onryō, you see, and the people in the surrounding area, miners and such folk, believe it to be a revenant of the deceased lady. She's been known both to venture through the woods near the grounds, and to linger around Tomoe's daughter Suzaku, the young heir. Now, this isn't the first time our host has been mistaken for an onryō, seeing as she has the look, and I'd therefore wager that whatever brings her here directly concerns that girl."

"Our host probably just made a contract with her," C.C. pointed out, unsure of where any uncertainty entered the picture.

"That's decidedly unlikely," Taliesin dismissed, pointing out a pitfall that C.C. took care to avoid as she stepped past. "This may well surprise all you green, callow youths, as eager to die as you all seem to be, but neither she nor I are especially keen on handing out Geassa. As I said, we're not particularly in a hurry to die, and all the other methods of granting a Code to another is a far more involved and complicated process, constituting a significant time investment. She is far too attached to her duty to indulge in such frivolity on a mere whim."

"You keep calling me and the other immortals I've met 'young,'" C.C. observed. "Yet I don't think you're ignorant of the fact that I've walked the Earth for nearly eight hundred years."

"Yes?" he prompted.

"And so I was wondering, how old are you, then? That you're so willing to deem us all young?"

"Hmm…" he considered. "That's a good question. It's proven a trifle difficult keeping track, I'll grant you, what with how the calendar changes and all, but if I had to suppose, I'd put my age down somewhere on the order of twelve to thirteen thousand years."

"…I'm sorry, what?" It wasn't that she'd misheard, but she also had to have. The idea of that number was itself an abstraction—a quantity that was by virtue of its magnitude far removed from any practical attempt at computation.

He chuckled lightly, turning to flash a smug grin at her. "Yes, I thought that might knock you a trifle off-balance."

"How old is the woman we're going to see, then?" she asked, incredulous. "And how old are the Thought Elevators…?"

"I believe she's a little over twice my age. Though the actual number, as you can likely imagine, ceases to be of any consequence before very long," Taliesin replied, turning his gaze back to the inclining slope as they continued to ascend. "As for the Thought Elevators? Beyond any living memory. And I mean that in a very literal sense. I believe I might have mentioned that the civilisation by whose ruinous genius they were brought into being were not exactly the most human of individuals themselves."

"What, were they some form of alien race?" C.C. asked sarcastically.

"Some have theorised such, a very long time ago, but as it happens, the answer is a firm 'no,'" said Taliesin. "The antediluvian race by whose hands and craft the Thought Elevators were built called this planet their home just as surely as any mortal being who walks upon it this very day. Though, of course, I must confess I don't know much more than that, I'm afraid. Our host is far more knowledgeable than I on such matters."

"Does our host have a name?"

"Oh, dozens, I'm sure, and that's only accounting for the ones she cares to remember."

"Izanami."

C.C. abruptly stilled, her eyes wide in shock, as the softer flesh at the nape of her neck registered the faint prickling of sharp, cold metal. Long centuries of life had taught her to be as fully aware of her surroundings as was possible, and yet this sudden hostile presence gave no warning before appearing in a flash behind her. It was a woman's voice, low, soft, calm and cold, and though she could not place the age of the voice itself, the cadence of it brought to mind a withered crone, straddling by virtue of her advanced age the boundary between the living world and the dead. It was not fear that filled C.C.'s lips with lead, such that it took an extraordinary effort to force words out, but an odd tension, a sense of stagnant pressure.

"To answer your question, girl, though I've been given more names than I care to count, each more inane than the last, I much prefer 'Izanami,'" again spoke the woman C.C. was now certain was their mysterious host.

"And now you've gone and ruined the drama, Izanami!" complained Taliesin, turning and loping down the slope to reach them.

"I have no inclination to suffer your theatrics, boy," Izanami rebuffed coolly. "I believe I have said as much to you in the past."

"On more than one occasion, yes," Taliesin sighed, all the gregarious cheer draining from his face to leave a blank expression with a level, piercing stare in its wake. It was an appearance that, in C.C.'s mind, well-suited a twelve thousand year old killer. "Would you mind lowering that thing for a few moments? I know you're not usually one to observe niceties, but you'd usually at least let me get to your threshold before you start waving your sword in my face."

"Yes, when I lived on Kaminejima," agreed Izanami. "But then, we are not there now, are we? It has been some time since I've made my home on the slopes of Fujiyama, and it is much changed in my absence—I thought it prudent to exercise caution. So, what does the BlackFrost Corporation wish of me today?"

The BlackFrost Corporation? C.C. was sure that she recognised no organisation by that name—certainly not one that would be of any import to immortal beings.

"You mistake me, Izanami," said Taliesin, shaking his head. "I am not here on behalf of the family. This is a social call, I suppose you might name it, and my reasons for being here are personal in nature. Young Miss C.C. is something of an acquaintance of mine—she does not in any way represent the family's interests."

"A social call, hmm? Well, that changes things, doesn't it?" remarked Izanami, her tone lighter, and the blade at C.C.'s neck lifted with barely a whisper. "Well, come along then. I don't have all day to dally."

The woman swept past C.C. with a whisper of fine cloth, and at last she caught a glimpse of the oldest living immortal. Izanami was tall—not quite clearing two metres, but certainly close to it—and powerfully built, for all that she was attired in the flowing costume C.C. associated with a mediaeval samurai. The silken robes in which she was garbed were stark white, lined in a vivid, bloody red, and in her hand rested a gently curved, single-edged sword of Japanese make that was almost as long as C.C. herself was tall, with a smooth transition between blade and hilt, and no guard to speak of.

C.C. had known many beautiful women in her time—and she knew herself to be of their number—so she had no ill-founded hesitation in deeming Izanami to be beautiful herself; her long, straight hair was black as ink, and caught the light in a similar fashion, and her features rivalled the women of the Britannian Imperial Family in their fine, angular, aristocratic forming. Yet her flesh was startlingly pale, an unnaturally ashen pallor that seemed wrought from pure white marble, and this lent her bright blue eyes an unsettling luminous quality, hooded though they were, that, together with her vacant smile, evoked the same feeling as her cadence had: that same Charonic sense of standing at the boundaries of a Stygian river.

They had not gone far before Izanami gestured with one thin, long-fingered hand towards the mouth of a cavern—one that C.C. had not been able to pick out of the surrounding rock until they were right upon it—waiting for Taliesin and C.C. herself to pass over the threshold before she herself followed suit. Inside the cavern was, to C.C.'s mild surprise, a decently comfortable set of furnishings and amenities, for all that its sensibilities seemed rooted firmly in a time over half a millennium in the past. Rice straw woven into sturdy mats lined the floors, and what walls there were were thin, light sheets of wood and paper. A sunken hearth rested in the middle of the room, with a low, modest table nearby, and a set of cushioned mats sat folded in the corner, while a few small square cushions sat before and behind the table. At the edges of the room, there were a number of racks that proudly displayed various implements of killing, and these were unique in that they were clearly polished and painstakingly maintained, while the other furnishings showed clear signs of use for all that they, too, obviously received adequate upkeep.

Upon the low table rested a lacquered but otherwise unadorned wooden scabbard, and the master of the house swept towards it with a lethal grace so deeply ingrained it might as well have been unconscious, picking it up and drawing the flat of the long blade across the mouth, turning the blade into it, and sheathing it in one smooth, practised motion. She then glode around to the other side of the table, and sat down, folding herself into an erect, statuesque posture. "Come, sit. It's a rare event indeed that Taliesin Blackwood of all people makes a social call, and even rarer that he brings a guest with him."

Taliesin did not hesitate to make himself at home, replicating the elder immortal's seated posture, his piercing gaze facing forward. C.C., for her part, did her best to sit as well, but for all that she could not die and had long since forgotten what it was to fear as mortals did, she felt the urge to fidget in discomfort under Izanami's lidded, pitiless gaze and empty, cold smile. She had some success regardless, but that did little to mitigate the unsettling aura of menace that seemed to be synonymous with the person before her. As the novelty, however, she took the initiative to break her own silence. "Thank you for having us, Izanami."

Izanami didn't move, and nor did her expression change to any appreciable extent, but at the same time, her aura of menace surged in intensity—C.C. had drawn her attention. "Well now. You can speak. And here I thought you had lost the nerve. Then again, what else could I expect from the former leader of a children's death cult."

C.C. sighed. "You know of the Geass Directorate, then?"

"Your informants told me all I needed to know about it," Izanami replied, nodding softly. "Or rather, their blood did."

"Their blood…?" Perplexed and somewhat lost on the woman's meaning, C.C. turned her searching look to Taliesin, who suddenly looked quite exasperated.

"Izanami is one of the last and most proficient practitioners of hemophagic divination," Taliesin explained, his cadence very much betraying his age. "Put simply, she can, if she so desires, extract a person's secrets through imbibing their life-blood."

"Chigurai," Izanami added. "That is what they call me. The devourer of blood."

"Like a vampire, then?"

The woman's mouth twisted into a wry smirk, and it was unpleasant to look upon. "In a manner of speaking."

"She does not consume it for sustenance," Taliesin clarified. "Lest you get any silly ideas on that score."

"Long ago, our arts were not limited to this crude thing you call 'Geass,'" said Izanami. "Thousands of years before you were born, girl, we immortals were the inheritors of the solemn and wondrous legacy of our progenitor, the first to bestow that which you call a 'Code', the mark of the disastrous enterprise of the Thought Elevators, upon another. I suppose you could call this legacy 'magic,' if you were so inclined. Subtle were these arts, bearing a quiet strength, a terrible power that could not be denied. You call yourself a 'witch,' yet you are barely a fledgeling.

"The practice of our arts was already suffering an oncoming decline when Taliesin here gained eternal life some twelve thousand-odd years ago. From master to apprentice we passed down the sum total of our knowledge, and with it, the grave duty for which we are granted our interminable youth. Few now are we who remember the old ways, and of our number, I alone remain who has seen our progenitor with my own eyes. Her final student." She sighed, closing her eyes and flattening the subtly agitated purse of her thin lips into the same vaguely sinister, entirely vacant smile as before. "But what was it you came to do, then? Surely not to listen to an old woman lamenting ancient history."

"…Actually…"

"The one who granted me a Code was a woman of the cloth," C.C. began, and begged pardon for her interruption with an apologetic glance to Taliesin. "I was…not an orphan, but you would find little difference. I was cast out, abandoned by my mother and father, consumed with a wish to be loved. A child's wish. She took me in, and promised to grant my greatest desire, but in exchange, I had to one day repay the favour."

"This was when she marked you as her apprentice, yes?" Izanami mused. "Bound to one another under the auspices of the contract called 'Geass.'"

C.C. nodded, smiling bitterly. "Aye. She gave me the ability 'to be loved by another,' but what that really meant was that I could compel affection from anyone I so desired. And, as often happens, my ability matured to the point where I lost control of it entirely. Everyone I met was forced to love me, put into a trance that made me the centre of their world. I do not know if there was ever a limit of duration placed upon it—it might well have been permanent. And when I visited her once again to lament that my wish had turned to poison and ash on my tongue, she said that she had tricked me. She forced her Code upon me, and then committed suicide.

"I was left alone in the world, then, left to figure out for myself what my new existence was meant to be. In time, I came to regard it as a curse, to despise it, my eternal youth, watching all around me wither away, while I was unable to simply die," C.C. continued, steeling herself and driving the hollowness deeper into her own chest, where it could rest beyond sight or sound, hidden and buried in the fathomless deep. "My story is by no means unique, you understand. Every immortal I have ever met has had a similar tale of woe. I have little doubt that the false nun who tricked me emerged from the same awful tragedy. Every immortal, that is, except for this man, Taliesin, and now you. He said… He said that you were the eldest of us still alive, that you knew many things about our shared eternity that neither I, nor many other immortals I have encountered, have had the opportunity to learn."

Izanami fixed her with a sharp stare beneath her hooded eyelids, pinning C.C. to the spot. It was a long, pregnant, terse moment before she spoke. "I have never taken on an apprentice of my own. Never have I bound one to me and named them my successor. As far as I am concerned, the only one fit to be my apprentice is one in whom I may trust to perform my duty as well as I can, if not better, and as far as I have seen, such a person does not exist.

"But you are not asking for an apprenticeship, are you? No, you are asking to be initiated into our people, to be given a long-overdue education on what we are and why we exist. You are asking for me to right a wrong, the wrong of an apprentice abandoned by she who ought to have been the master. Is this not so?"

"…It is so, yes," C.C. nodded.

"Hm," Izanami replied noncommittally. Then she turned to Taliesin. "And what is it that you are asking for me to do, Taliesin Blackwood?"

"The Fourth Princess of the Holy Britannian Empire, Justine vi Britannia," said the man.

"What of her?"

"I have taken an interest in the girl, and her development," said Taliesin. "It is an interest that has taken root beyond the bounds of the ambitions of the Blackwood Family, or indeed the designs of the BlackFrost Corporation."

Izanami went eerily still. "Is the girl truly so remarkable?"

Taliesin nodded sharply. "More than that, even. I have reason to believe that she would be of a similarly personal interest to you. She has grown into a territory where I don't know if I am fit to be an apt teacher for her going forward, and so she'll need a more…pedagogically-inclined tutor for the next two years. I just thought I should inform you of such."

"Well now," Izanami said, her lips curling back to put two rows of perfectly white teeth on full display. "To see for my own eyes what is so promising that Taliesin Blackwood, of all the immortals in the world, considers to be of personal interest, is certainly a tempting prospect."

"Am I to discern assent from that?" asked Taliesin.

"No, I'm afraid not," replied Izanami, her teeth hidden as her smile subsided. "Alas, I've come into a matter of great personal interest already, as it happens. That is why, were you to visit Kaminejima, you would find naught there save for an empty hermitage…and, I suppose, a dormant Thought Elevator."

Taliesin's face remained stonily impassive. "Kururugi Suzaku."

Izanami's smile dropped completely. "I suppose it would be a waste of both of our time if I were to ask how you knew that name."

"With all due respect, subterfuge was never your forte," Taliesin remarked. "The mortals living in the surrounding area were eager to speak about anything that didn't concern the war. All I had to do was ask the right questions, and they were only too happy to tell me that Kururugi Tomoe's vengeful spirit had returned as an onryō to linger around her young daughter, who is by all accounts an avowed ruffian. It didn't take much beyond that to figure out where you were or why you were here."

The two elder immortals stared challengingly at one another, and C.C., feeling suddenly very awkward, resolved to look anywhere that wasn't directly related to the silent confrontation happening right beside her. It was how her eyes caught sight of a white porcelain figure near the far side of the room, shaped into a stylised approximation of a cat and painted accordingly. She had seen a few of its like in the past, over the course of her travels and encounters with Japanese exiles and expatriates. But something about this one was wrong. I could have sworn these figures were supposed to wave at you…

"Why is the cat figurine so still?" she found herself asking. "Shouldn't it be waving?"

Izanami's head swivelled in her direction so quickly she imagined it might snap a mortal neck, and then to the figurine, her eyes widening. "It's gone still…?"

Abruptly, the woman stood, grabbing her sheathed weapon as she rose and loped swiftly to the mouth of the cavern. "You, girl. C.C.. Taliesin Blackwood. If you two will accompany and aid me in resolving a bit of urgent business, I'll go with you to Britannia."

Taliesin stood in a composed hurry, and C.C. followed suit—to moderately less success. "What's gone wrong?"

"No time to explain," Izanami snapped. "We must hurry."

---

Jeremiah Gottwald could have sworn his heart dropped to his stomach as Princess Justine collapsed to the ground.

He dashed from the treeline to his charge's unconscious body, distantly registering his old friend's even, firm voice issuing orders to the five soldiers that remained of the escort Princess Cornelia lent them, and carefully turned his liege lady onto her back. Jeremiah wasn't a field medic, not by any stretch of the imagination, but necessity had forced him to learn a thing or five about injuries and treatments while stitching himself back together during Indochina. Add to that the fact that wound dressing, resuscitation, and general medical stabilisation were required areas of proficiency for members of the Royal Guard, and he was resolved to do what he could.

Her forehead was split and bleeding, which wasn't especially concerning; head wounds famously bled in a manner far in excess to the severity of the actual injury. The real trouble was at her abdomen, and it didn't take a moment's thought for him to draw his combat knife, cutting her out of the blood-soiled fine fabric of her blouse quickly and without moving her. First, there was a great deal of redness in the flesh of her right shoulder, the beginnings of a very large, ugly, and painful bit of bruising; then, across her chest, the first wound was actually very lucky—it was just under her sternum, at the very top of her abdomen, out of the way of the more concerning vital organs, but it was deep enough that it would likely require stitches and a few weeks of recuperation.

The injury in the side of her abdomen was of greatest concern, a desperate wound at her waist, just above her hip, below her kidneys, and severe enough that if blood loss was going to be a concern, this would be the source of it. Even worse, it was gaping in a way that suggested it had been deliberately exacerbated.

That's a lot of blood…

"Villetta! I need the medkit!" he called.

"Here," she replied, barely a heartbeat later, kneeling down next to him and opening the case of medical supplies they had brought with them in case the potential political hostage was in some way injured or endangered. "Tell me what you need."

"Me as well."

Jeremiah jerked away from Princess Justine in shock, turning and facing the last person he had expected to encounter here. "Taliesin…!"

Sure enough, Taliesin Blackwood stood at the side of the clearing, much to the surprise of the five infantrymen, who, to their credit, quickly recovered their wits and raised their rifles. The immortal majordomo was accompanied by two women, one Jeremiah was sure he recognised for all that he could not place the recollection, a beautiful, if harried young woman with long, bright green hair and eyes like his own, but more golden, and the other, who in contrast, he was quite sure he had never seen before in his life.

Jeremiah turned his attention to Cornelia's men, then. They weren't needed any longer, and were only likely to get in the way. "Stand down! Stand down and let them through."

The infantrymen of the Britannian Imperial Army were among the finest and best-trained soldiers in the world, conditioned to follow the order of a superior officer before consciously registering the order itself, and Jeremiah was beyond grateful for that haste as all five of them hopped to obey even before the order had fully left his mouth. Taliesin's focused, piercing gaze swung about the clearing with aquiline precision as he approached, and of his companions, the young woman with the lime-green hair seemed out of place, while the unfamiliar one, a deathly pale, statuesque sort with long black hair and a loping stride that reminded Jeremiah of a Knight of the Round, seemed as though she already knew exactly what had transpired here.

"How is she, Jeremiah?" asked Taliesin, his tone businesslike and wholly devoid of mirth of any kind, as he knelt on Her Highness's right side, opposite Villetta.

"She's badly hurt, but she's been unconscious for less than five minutes," he explained. "Right now, I'm looking to stop the bleeding and get her wounds bound. She ordered the other one seen to and well-treated, but right now, Her Highness is our priority."

"The girl is in no danger of dying," said the ashen woman clad in white, her voice young, but her tone and accent aged and archaic. It would not be accurate to say that she was a woman out of time, for that would imply that she had not experienced the intervening centuries. Drawing closer, she began to loom ominously over the princess, and without her needing to say anything at all, Jeremiah realised that surely, this woman shared Taliesin's undying condition. This woman carried the ages in the lethal grace of her step, and the killer's dignity in her bearing. "From what I could tell, the brat and she simply had a bit of a brawl. Nothing a touch of healing won't mend. Out of my way, if you would, all three of you. I will not suffer you to crowd me as I work."

As bad of an idea as Jeremiah admitted it must be to gainsay the deathly pale, obviously immortal woman, his loyalty trumped his sense and his instinct of self-preservation. "I know not who you are, ma'am, save that you are an acquaintance of Taliesin's, and thus to be trusted, but I must protest—the health and wellbeing of Her Highness is my responsibility…"

"And such a spectacular job of it you've done," the woman countered, kneeling beside the unconscious princess as Taliesin and Villetta pulled away, determining discretion the better part of valour. Jeremiah, however, was momentarily stunned; the manner in which she did not need to so much as change her tone of voice in order to deliver her mocking sarcasm was eerily reminiscent of how Princess Justine sometimes spoke. "If you must find some errand with which to occupy yourself, make yourself useful and make sure the brat doesn't somehow manage to die before I can heal her. I would be displeased to see her perish when so many qualified personnel are on hand to forestall it."

Taliesin's hand on Jeremiah's shoulder hauled him to his feet, the immortal manservant warding him off with a silent, warning stare. The message was clear: don't push her if you value your life. "Lady Izanami is a healer of some great renown. We would be best served to do as she says and leave her to her craft."

Jeremiah gave one last look at the ashen, ageless woman, her lips shifting with unnatural, impossible speed as unintelligible sounds floated softly from her throat; she pulled a strange, misshapen dagger with a wicked edge out of the folds of her immaculately white robes, freed it from its scabbard, and brought its keen, cruel blade to her palm. With a harsh, efficient pull, she slashed open the palm of her off-hand, and drew blood to well up as she clenched the hand into a fist, the oddly dark liquid flowing from the fist down into the broken skin on Princess Justine's forehead. There was something deeply, unspeakably profane about what he was bearing witness to, and as a man who had grown up in the Holy Britannian Empire, where power was the only religion, the fact that 'profanity' was the only name he could give to his profound unease was shocking to the point where he was sufficiently convinced his attention was better focused on another task, any other task.

He turned away from the disturbing sight at last, shifting his focus to the captive Princess Justine had managed to secure, and was shocked to recognise her as a Japanese girl who could be no older than Her Highness herself. Villetta and Taliesin were already hard at work assessing her condition and doing what they could to make sure she wasn't in danger of passing beyond the mortal coil, and Jeremiah sighed, turning to the clearing and surveying the area until the glint of something in the grass caught his eye.

Approaching the curio, then, the margrave squatted down in the grass, plucking from the dirt a piece of blued, tempered metal that was an exact replica of Her Highness's gunsabre, Heirsbane. He turned it over in his hands, and would have been shocked to discover its authenticity written in blood on the blade, had he the capacity to process further surprises. A soldier he might be, and a damn good one, but he was trained by mortal men to kill mortal men, and these affairs of immortality and apparently very real magic were far beyond the territory of what he had expected to be dealing with even after the bloody, slogging mess that Indochina had been. Scouting around for the other parts of the weapon Princess Justine had somehow managed to break, he could only chortle in disbelief when he found the gun and hilt portion, discovering in the process that the damage to the weapon had been a clean break—there was no evidence of even the smallest chip being unaccounted for.

He tucked both broken pieces of the gunsabre into the crook of his arm, and scouted about for the scabbard to the other weapon, the one Her Highness had been holding when she finally passed out. It was a brief search, thankfully, and in the interest of making himself useful, he cast his gaze about, in the process spying the golden-eyed young woman with the green hair, who still looked as out of place as he felt, and made to approach the pale immortal, her rite seemingly concluded.

Lady Izanami, as Taliesin had named her, looked up at him with startlingly, deathly vivid blue eyes under hooded eyelids as he approached; he shook his head, and indicated the naked sword near Princess Justine's hand, and received a curt nod in return as she rose smoothly and swiftly to her feet. "The girl will need to rest and regain her strength, and she'll wake up feeling quite a bit more sore than she was fighting the brat, but she's healed. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must see to my own charge myself."

Jeremiah nodded to her himself, and knelt at his liege lady's side, picking the foreign sword up off of the ground and sliding its naked blade into its discarded wooden scabbard, a lacquered thing of exquisite craftsmanship and clear, albeit sturdy, age, before replacing it at her side. Sensing the approach of another, he looked up and saw the green-haired girl approaching, meeting her golden gaze coolly with his own. "You will have to forgive me, my lady. I know I've seen you before, but I don't recall when or where I must have done so, I confess."

"You were one of Marianne's guards," the young woman said in a flat, impassive tone.

"And you are another of Taliesin's people," he countered easily, jerking his thumb in the direction of the other three tending to the P.O.W. "Another immortal, like those two over there."

"…Not quite," said the third immortal. "I'm significantly younger than either of them."

Jeremiah nodded; that seemed plausible, in his admittedly less-than-expert opinion. "You were at Aries Villa, then."

"I was there fairly regularly, back when Charles's throne was newly won, and Marianne had only just moved into the villa at Aries," the woman confirmed. "But I spent less and less of my time there once she birthed her first child, and then her second. It got rather tiresome, having to listen to her whinge about not having borne Charles a son. Quite insufferable, really."

"You were privy to Empress Marianne's…personal details, then?"

The verdette grimaced. "For better and for worse."

Jeremiah nodded in consideration as he gave Princess Justine a cursory glance, wishing to ascertain that all was as Lady Izanami had said—and then he recalled an old rumour he had once heard and done his best at the time to pay no mind to, albeit to little avail. "Is it true that she named her daughters after a book by the Marquis de Sade?"

The grimace broke into a wry half-smile and an earnest chortle. "I take it that was a point of gossip amongst the guards assigned to her?"

"And the household staff," he replied ruefully. Satisfied with his visual examination and waving over one of the infantrymen to see to Her Highness's modesty, Jeremiah rose to his feet, to greet the youngest immortal properly with an outstretched hand. "I don't believe we've been formally introduced. Jeremiah, Margrave Gottwald, at your service."

"C.C.," she said, and she took his hand with a firm grip and shook it. "And yes, she did. It was…rather extraordinarily petty of her, all things considered, but then, you lot only ever saw Marianne the Flash, the Knight of Six—and then the Knight of Two. As someone who was acquainted with Marianne Lamperouge, and later Marianne vi Britannia, she and Charles were a match made in Hell. They deserved each other."

"I respected Empress Marianne greatly. Villetta and I both owe her our lives, in fact," Jeremiah said. "But I think any ill-founded love I might have had for her withered in the process of watching Princess Justine become the young woman she is."

"I remember meeting Justine once, I think, when she was much younger," C.C. supplied. "A quiet, sullen little thing, she was. I was sure she was going to get chewed up and spat out at court. Imagine my surprise, then, watching her audience with Charles from the shadows. She's become quite remarkable. I take it that was your influence?"

"Hardly," Jeremiah scoffed, shaking his head. "More Duchess Carmilla's, actually."

"Little Milly? Of House Ashford?" C.C. asked.

Jeremiah nodded. "The very same. She's Princess Justine's fiancée, and she's good to her. For that, she has my gratitude. Without her, I fear that Empress Marianne's assassination might have motivated Her Highness to drastic—and possibly ruinous—action."

"Ah, good. You two are already acquainted," said Taliesin, and Jeremiah and C.C. turned to find that he had approached them both. The man smiled, and either he was getting to know Taliesin better, or his eyes were lying to him, but Jeremiah was almost sure he could detect an edge of fatigue in the otherwise genial expression. "I take it you managed to find an object of some interest in this area?"

Jeremiah smiled ruefully, unfolding his arm and presenting to Taliesin the halves of the weapon he had bequeathed to Princess Justine, one piece in each hand. The majordomo visibly deflated at the sight of his shattered gift, and gingerly plucked them from Jeremiah's grasp for closer examination. "Ah. I was afraid of this. Fortunately, when I gave her Heirsbane, I had not intended for it to become a mainstay armament for her, but the fact that she outgrew it as quickly as she did only reassures me that I made the correct decision in seeking out her new tutor when I did. It's a shame, though. It was a beautiful weapon…"

"For what it's worth," Jeremiah began, bending down and picking up the Japanese sword to present it to Taliesin, "I do believe Her Highness has already selected what she feels will be an adequate replacement."

Taliesin folded the two broken pieces under his armpit to free his hand, taking the sword carefully into his hands and drawing the blade partway free of the wooden scabbard. He nodded sharply. "This is one of the Kiku-ichimonji, is it not? The craftsmanship certainly fits the reputation, and there's the maker's mark of Norimune right there… A priceless cultural artefact. It'll do nicely, I think."

"The brat is healed, and she'll need her own rest," said Lady Izanami as she approached. "You upheld your end of the bargain, impromptu as it was, and so it falls to me to honour mine. I will accompany you to Britannia."

"If that's the case, and if you're so inclined, then I'm sure we can arrange to have your effects collected from…wherever it is you're living," remarked Villetta, keeping her composure admirably, albeit at a healthy distance. Jeremiah nodded to his old friend in gratitude, and made a gesture that meant 'later.' If she was going to be in Princess Justine's service to this extent, she deserved an explanation—though he dreaded having to give it, given how out of his depth he still was all these months after Taliesin had entered Her Highness's orbit.

"That won't be necessary, thankfully," said Lady Izanami, and she turned her head a little too far over her shoulder to speak directly to Villetta. "Taliesin Blackwood, the girl, and I will handle all of that while you take your princess and my brat back to wherever you Britannians are camped. The three of us will find you and meet you there soon enough."

Jeremiah recognised the dismissal for what it was, and after looking to Taliesin for some confirmation, he nodded. "Very well. I suppose we can pass off their incapacitation as exposure to tear gas or something similar. Maybe lingering fumes? Either way, I doubt Princess Cornelia will look too deeply into it."

"She'll just be glad that her sister returned alive and unmaimed, honestly," Villetta added as Lady Izanami strode off into the forest, the other two immortals signalling their departure and then making their own swift exits. But then Villetta began speaking with her hands, a secret sign language known only to the two of them, and the other survivors of the disaster that had been the assault on Bombay. She signed, What do we do about the remaining infantrymen? I somehow doubt a vow of their silence will stop what happened here from getting out, whatever this was.

You're right, he signed back, suppressing a heavy sigh. Their loyalty is to Cornelia, not to Her Highness. The obvious method would be to silence them, but I won't ask that of you—

No sooner had that caveat left his hands than did Villetta begin signing back. You won't have to. I'm volunteering. Consider this a show of loyalty to Her Highness.

Villetta…

You wouldn't hesitate to do the deed if it was you alone, would you? she signed. I meant what I said at Midway. What's good enough for Jeremiah Gottwald is good enough for me.

Jeremiah smiled grimly; she was a better friend than he had given her credit for. Alright. But we must ensure Her Highness and the captive are unharmed.

Of course, Villetta replied. And the fact that we had one soldier go down in the ruins will only help sell this if anyone starts digging. Here's the plan…