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.

10. The Foundations of Decay

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

For all that her captivity was in many ways the worst case scenario, at the very least in a political sense, Sumeragi Kaguya had no real choice but to grudgingly admit that she had been afforded all due courtesies and a fair few creature comforts during the brief span of her detainment following her abduction. Though she logically knew this would not be the case, when the ryokan's security was breached too swiftly and too expertly for any of the other heads of the Six Houses or their retinues—the modern version of household troops, largely ex-military personnel and specialised infantry—to mount anything close to an appropriate response, her sudden terror had conjured up images of dank dungeons with dark, rough stone, musty, cold air, and the blankets in which men had died bunched up on carelessly-assembled mounds of straw. And yet, while the furnishings she had been provided (she had no idea of how the other five heads had been treated, as she had not seen them and had a suspicion she was prohibited from doing so, if only to ensure that the act of separating them would not just be wasted effort) were a far cry from the luxury that she, as sister to the Child of Heaven and heir presumptive to the Chrysanthemum Throne, was accustomed to, they were nowhere near sufficiently shoddy to be rightfully considered an insult.

Like it or not, at the very least she had been lodged in accordance with her status.

Not long after awakening and breaking her fast on tea, rice, and strips of fried eel, a tall Britannian woman, dark-skinned with silver hair and green eyes so bright Kaguya noted they might as well have been yellow, boasting a slender, curvaceous, yet lean form which was garbed in an undecorated black uniform and knee-high black boots, entered the cell in which she was being held. The woman, whose high ponytail and striking, haughty features gave her a very unmistakably Britannian sort of beauty, gestured, and at the silent command, four soldiers in full combat armour, the faceless helmets and black ballistic plates that the Britannian army's infantrymen were famous for, filed into the comfortable cell and stationed themselves at the cardinal corners of the room, their assault rifles at rest as their unnerving masked helmets stared out at the cell, and her by extension.

"Lady Sumeragi. My name is Villetta Nu," the woman began, introducing herself with a dutiful sort of curtness to the tone of her low, smooth voice. "I will need you to come with me. I know that you likely don't trust me as far as you could throw me, but you should know that cooperative behaviour is in the best interest of yourself and of your nation."

"There will be no need for that, Miss Nu," Kaguya replied primly, rising from her seiza position at the Japanese-style table upon which she had taken her meal with fluid, practised grace. She was painfully aware of her diminutive frame, a shackle of her youth that all too often worked to her detriment, and so she made sure to project as much of her presence as she could to make up for it, of serenity and refinement, and above all, calm. "I'll make sure that I comport myself with utmost decorum. By all means, lead the way."

Ms. Nu gave a sharp, decisive nod, and with another hand gesture, the infantrymen emerged to form up around her. "The assurance is appreciated, Lady Sumeragi, but we'll take our precautions all the same. I'm sure you understand."

"Absolutely," Kaguya replied, inclining her head with its curtain of long, straight black hair as she folded her hands into the billowing sleeves of her oversized robe, called jūnihitoe. The Sumeragi identity as a prominent family dated back to the days of the kuge during the Heian period, and as the young head of the clan, it was her obligation to represent that illustrious heritage—usually by employing long-since and greatly antiquated hairstyles, forms of jewellery nearly a thousand years out of fashion, and stuffy, uncomfortable, impractical outfits that took entirely too long to don with all their layers and hadn't been worn widely since the early days of the fourteenth century. The fact that her name had such a profound degree of cultural significance certainly did her no favours, either. "It is only natural."

With that, they left her cell behind them, and began to travel through essentially deserted corridors of metal and polycarbonate plating, sterile whites and greys in the futuristic style Britannian infrastructure was known for, and in taking in her surroundings, it didn't take long before she came to the conclusion that she was being held in one of those huge mobile command centres Britannian deployments seemed to like to lug around as multipurpose facilities. She wasn't certain how that knowledge would help her just yet, but any scrap of information could prove crucial in situations like this—for all that she didn't yet know the shape of the situation in which she currently found herself, exactly.

Ms. Nu and her soldiers set a brisk pace, and before long, they stopped before a door that slid open with a hydraulic hiss to give way to pitch darkness within. Ms. Nu grasped her shoulders and steered her carefully and precisely to sit down some ways into the room, and as Kaguya's eyes struggled to adjust to the deep darkness, she was somewhat surprised to feel a decently comfortable, albeit utilitarian chair under her rear. Settling into it, she arranged herself as best she could in the dark, and as Ms. Nu's hands peeled away from her shoulders, Kaguya heard her say, "Her Highness will be with you shortly."

The hydraulic doors had closed behind them, and in the silence of the impenetrable darkness, what was probably only a few short minutes of waiting very quickly began to seem like hours. The sounds of her own breathing and Ms. Nu's were practically deafening in the quiet, and gradually she became more and more aware of a distinct yet unfamiliar sour odour that permeated the room in subtle yet unmistakable notes. Eventually, however, the door slid open once more, and in the almost blinding light that spilled into the room from the threshold, there were a pair of silhouettes: one somewhat small and quite slender, the other much taller and with an athletic build. And though the door did close behind them once again, there was a more distinct sound of movement and shuffling, a chair being moved across the hard, cool floor, and a girl's voice saying, "Thank you, Jeremiah."

Well, as the saying goes: he who strikes first has a distinct advantage. Kaguya cleared her throat rather pointedly. "I take it you are the one who is responsible for my capture, then?"

"No, I'm afraid I lack the deft touch required for such clandestine subtleties," said that same voice, calm and cool and somewhat soothing, with a distinct lilt that suggested some form of vocal training. "The same cannot be said, fortunately, of some of my companions. But if you mean to ascertain whether your abduction was undertaken under my order, and in my name, then yes, I rather suppose I must be."

What a roundabout way to respond to such a simple question… the princess wondered. In the next moment, she shook such sentiments away, and fixed a sharp stare into the deep darkness, hoping she was meeting the gaze of her interrogator. And what is that sour scent…? "I would thank you to do away with the theatrics. I did not come here to trade terms with a forked tongue."

"And yet," the voice sighed heavily, "such cannot be avoided, I'm afraid, as you would have been saddled with taking terms from a forked tongue regardless. At the very least, Sumeragi Kaguya, I would let you negotiate before your entire nation is reduced to so many ashes. Only within reasonable constraints, of course—the necessary mummery that we cannot simply take all that we wish from you by force, that it is beyond us to pry it from the cold dead hands of your countrymen, whose mouths hang agape, their last breaths expended cursing the regime that sacrificed their lives for nothing, can only be made to extend so far. I'm sure you can understand that—if you will pardon my impertinence, you seem a reasonable enough sort of person. You're certainly quicker on the uptake than your colleagues among the other Six Houses, or indeed your acting prime minister…though the value of such a distinction is, admittedly, something of a matter of debate.

"As for the theatrics—why, my dear Princess Kaguya," drawled the voice, seeming to draw closer. "Where would the fun be in ending such things too early? All will be made clear in due time, I can assure you of that much. Though I suspect you will swiftly come to miss your ignorance once I have taken it from you. Now, shall we speak of your surrender?"

"I am already a captive, I can't help but notice," Kaguya replied drily.

"Ah, but is not the Heavenly Sovereign of Japan one who speaks for their nation as a whole?" the voice countered smoothly. "Who has interceded on their behalf on matters spiritual or supernatural since the first member of the Imperial Family claimed the Chrysanthemum Throne, and whose will and influence have aided in steering the course of their homeland for a century and a half? If you speak, your people will listen, and they will heed you."

Kaguya couldn't really help it. She laughed, and the sound of her incredulous laughter echoed into the dark. "We had heard whispers that your Office of Secret Intelligence had been crippled, but not even those of us most given to derision against foreigners imagined it would be this severe!"

"I fail to grasp your meaning," the voice said mildly.

"Boruhito, my elder brother, is Tennō, Britannian," said Kaguya, her voice heavily laden with equal parts condescension and mockery.

"You will address Her Highness with respect," growled a new voice, impassioned, intense, male.

"Peace, Jeremiah," the voice interjected, and for all that her tone did not change even slightly, there was now an unmistakable note of command in there, an expectation to be heeded—a calm, cool diction of dominion assured. "And I am afraid, Sumeragi Kaguya, that despite what you may have been led to believe by your advisors and colleagues, it is not our knowledge of who holds the Chrysanthemum Throne that is out of date."

Now Kaguya was wary, and bitterness joined the sour scent, distracting her for a moment. What is that?! "I will be clear, then. What game is this that you're playing at, Britannian?"

"Shall I tell you?" the Britannian girl asked, a teasing lilt in her tone. "Perhaps it might illuminate a few of the nuances of your…situation, shall we say?"

Before Kaguya could respond, the Britannian clapped her hands twice.

The lights above snapped on.

And Sumeragi Kaguya's young world was unceremoniously shattered.

It was ghastly, at first; her eyes could hardly make sense of it, and her nose recoiled from the smell of it as the scent became all the more horrible with an image to connect it to. The skin was waxy pale, the limbs looking as if they should be limp, yet from how they hung ever so slightly off the edge of the large metal table without even the slightest hint of give, they were stiff and unresponsive. The eyes laid open and without sight, glassy and lifeless, the jaw agape in a last exclamation of surprise. Her gaze trailed with a fevered, almost delirious need to see, to understand, no matter how horrible the knowing would be, and as her sharp mind, the superior of any of her tutors, worked against itself to pick out identifying features and juxtapose them against a familiar image, she recognised the body, the corpse, that lay displayed in front of her, callously and dispassionately, almost immediately thereafter.

This was her elder brother, Boruhito. The Heavenly Sovereign of the Land of the Rising Sun.

And he was dead.

"I take it this was the 'clarity' you so desired, hm?" spoke the Britannian girl. "Let it not be said of me that I have failed to oblige you appropriately."

Kaguya snapped her gaze from the corpse before her, to the girl sat across from her, her tear ducts dry with horror and grief. "Demon!"

"Guilty as charged," the fiend replied with a jaunty sort of bemusement, even as her full, pouty lips curved into a vacant, sharp, inhuman smile. A small, slender body that matched the silhouette sat perched comfortably in the drab, utilitarian metal chair as if it was a lavish throne, long legs in form-fitting black trousers and fine, immaculate, knee-high black leather riding boots crossed over one another, hands that were concealed in thin black gloves gesturing airily at the end of arms and a chest covered in a silky black blouse, elaborate black lace at the cuffs adding to the seemingly weightless dexterity of the motions. Atop a delicate neck, then, was a face made up of sharp angles, fine lines, and harsh curves, striking, sculpted, and stark, with a strong, dark brow above long, thick, dark lashes and hard, glittering amethyst eyes, the pupils of which she could have sworn were narrowed to slits. The long, silky raven hair that was pulled back into a high ponytail only left this forbidding effect more profound for it, and not even the bangs, which were left to frame the porcelain face and forehead, succeeded in softening the blow. For all that she was surely no older than Kaguya's cousin Suzaku, the girl before her was beautiful, undeniably so; she was breathtaking, but not at all in a good way. It was not an alluring or inviting sort, her dark beauty, and it was neither warm nor welcoming. It was wintry, icy and cold and cruel and lethal, the sort that intimidated, cowed, and could easily terrify, if the years saw her continue down that path. "My name, however, is Justine vi Britannia. I am the Fourth Princess of the Holy Britannian Empire, twelfth in line to the throne. And I have never truly pretended to be anything other than what I am.

"Now, then, Sumeragi Kaguya, Heavenly Sovereign of the Empire of Japan," she said, and behind the declaration, there was the weight of omen and portent behind it. "Are you ready to bargain for the fate of your nation?"

And though she reeled still from the sight of death before her, and all that it meant, she knew well that she had no real choice in the matter. The demon's words were at the very least aptly chosen: either she bargained here, or Japan and its people, the nation itself, would be reduced to ashes, razed to cinders, the spirit of her homeland sundered utterly.

Only Area Eleven would remain.

So she nodded, and prepared herself to make a deal with the Devil.

Princess Justine nodded, her smile uninterrupted. "Excellent. Friede, you may reveal yourself now."

Kaguya's attention expanded from the corpse on the table and the demon in the chair, as at last the oppressive weight of the fiend's presence lifted from her spirit, allowing her to recognise that it had been upon her in the first place. The chamber she was in was one obviously intended for interrogations, dreary grey and sterile white on the floor, the walls, and the ceiling. Standing in the corner of the room behind her and to her left was Villetta Nu, whose composure was immaculate even in the face of all of this, and in the adjacent corner on the other side of the room, nearer to the door and at Princess Justine's right shoulder, was the sort of man they modelled statues after. Tousled teal blue hair framed a shockingly handsome face, possessed of a roguish sort of charm one might expect of the leading man in a spy film, but it was set into a hard sort of blankness, dutiful and resolute, his amber eyes like glittering gold as he stood ramrod-straight. As this could only be the aforementioned 'Jeremiah', and his unadorned black uniform was demonstrably the same as Miss Nu's—albeit with trousers instead of a skirt—she was left to assume that both of them answered directly to the demon in black.

The screen on the wall to her left side, which until now had been dark and easily-missed with how it was set into the wall with no notable discrepancy in depth, flashed to life in the next moment, and on the screen was a woman, flaxen-haired, beautiful, regal, august, and elegant, whom no one who was anyone in the world of global politics could ever fail to recognise, garbed in a two-layered dress that Kaguya refused to allow to distract her, and seated in a comfortable-looking chair with a professional sort of ease that, from what little Kaguya had seen and the great deal she had overheard, never seemed to so much as crack.

Prime Minister Friederike el Britannia, Second Princess of the Holy Britannian Empire, Kaguya considered. A forked tongue, indeed…

The woman whom many considered to be the most dangerous in all of Britannia—a polity that was notorious for producing some of the most dangerous women the world over—leaned her head slightly to rest upon her fist, receiving a cup of what looked to be coffee with murmured words of gratitude, before she addressed her sister. "I see you took my advice, Justine."

The fiend shrugged, and gestured with an airy flourish of her gloved hand, its slender, long fingers precise and dexterous. "It was good advice. Now, to the point: Empress Kaguya, I take it you're at the very least aware of my illustrious sister, Princess Friederike, Prime Minister of Britannia?"

"There are fewer sovereigns who are not," Kaguya replied, and the title tasted of ash on her tongue.

"Wonderful! That certainly saves us time on introductions," remarked Princess Justine, clapping her hands together once. "My dear older sister will be observing these negotiations, of course—of the pair of us, she is the one normally endowed with the authority to conduct them—yet, as it pertains to the terms of your surrender proper, and arrangements for what will follow, I shall serve as temporary interlocutor on the behalf of Britannia. I take it that you, as the newly-ascended Heavenly Sovereign, have no objections?"

"Aside from the obvious, of course," interjected Princess Friederike.

Kaguya felt a rising swell of nausea and dread in the pit of her stomach as she replied, "Not at all."

There was a slight tightness in the corners of the fiend's eyes, easily-missed, and gone almost as swiftly as it had come, but through some odd stroke of fortune, Kaguya had not missed it. But what could that possibly mean? "Lovely. Now, then, with all the proper courtesies observed, and as brevity is the soul of wit, I shall endeavour to be brief: the Holy Britannian Empire is unwilling to accept anything less than a total surrender, including, among other things, complete military disarmament of men and materiel, the annexation of the domain of the Empire of Japan as well as all subject territories, financial obligations to be levied unto the Japanese populace under the auspices of taxation, and of course, the absolute dissolution of the sovereignty of the Empire of Japan as an independent and distinct polity, henceforth to bear the name of 'Area Eleven'—in accordance with imperial policy as it relates to conquered nations.

"Now, under normal circumstances, this would be enforced upon you at gunpoint, your strength sundered entirely, your institutions razed to ash, your lands laid to waste, your people on the whole reduced and condemned to squalour, and your civilians especially subjected to the doctrine known as 'total war,' as a means to ensure compliance with the aforementioned," she continued, leaning forward in the chair she still treated as a throne, to rest her cheek upon a closed fist. "I would be remiss to simply assume you are in any way aware of what that doctrine constitutes, so allow me to illustrate: vast swaths of your civilians will be massacred. Britannian peers will have their pick of the survivors, both men and women, as suits their preference, to take as amusements, under the provision for spoils of war. All who are deemed to be too old, too frail, or too infirm to work, who would be considered burdensome to the emergent viceroyalty, will be subject to summary execution, with their bodies either burned in mass pyres or left to rot, at the discretion of the unit commander or highborn tasked with the duty in that area. Your schools, your hospitals, your libraries, your places of worship—any centralising civilian structure that would logically serve as a nucleus for assembly will be shelled or bombed until not even the foundations are fit for habitation. Your communities, for all intents and purposes, will be scattered to the winds. Any infrastructure that shall not provide any immediate benefit to occupying Britannian forces as the viceroyalty is being assembled and the Settlement is being constructed will be dismantled and rendered defunct in its entirety. This includes rail lines, subways, airports, shipyards, and bus terminals, on top of the aforementioned municipal civilian facilities. The image I paint for you is a portrait of what is considered the standard Britannian 'Pacification and Consolidation Protocol.'"

Kaguya stared across the table where her dead brother's body was on display, her eyes wide and her jaw slack with shock and horror, as the demon dressed in black related each point to her, speaking with all the dispassionate banality of someone reading a to-do list, and not an account of mounting atrocity.

"Now, naturally, I consider such a practice to be a rather egregious waste of time and resources, all of which could be spent significantly better elsewhere," she continued, folding her hands on her lap primly. "And I will, of course, do all that I can to prevent the worst of it from coming to pass. That is my aim in bringing you here and deposing your late half-brother, after all: the prevention of needless atrocity. I even gave explicit orders that he be eliminated painlessly. You can be certain, however, that whichever ambitious lordling would be appointed to this task a fortnight hence would be nowhere near as inclined to restraint as I."

"Indeed—they might well see fit to resort to excess, even, in hopes that their display of ruthlessness and zeal might allow them to curry favour with His Imperial Majesty," added the Prime Minister with an expression of faint distaste. "And their fortunes would rise, I'll grant you, but only so that they might even more swiftly and profoundly fall."

A dark look passed before Princess Justine's face at that, but just as any other expression which was a departure from the cold serenity she had worn from the start, it passed as swiftly as it came. She didn't have to wait long before the demon spoke once again. "All of this to say, of course, that we sit here now for the sole purpose of mitigating the tragedies that will ensue upon Britannia's victory. And we can make that happen, make no mistake, but I'm going to need you to cooperate with me, and to trust me somewhat."

That much was a bridge too far. She was standing before she knew it, chest heaving with rancour. "Trust you? Why should I ever trust the woman who ordered my brother killed?!"

Her eyes went wide at that. "Your…half-brother?"

"My flesh and blood," she spat, her composure collapsing into rage fuelled by grief and fear.

The look of shock lasted for but a moment longer, before the princess rose from her own throne in answer. "Why, you ask me? Because I am your only hope, Sumeragi Kaguya. Make no mistake: the one who fails to divert the trolley for the sake of morality is just as culpable in the death of five as the one who tied them to the tracks in the first place. In failing to prevent tragedy, they have made themselves complicit in I protect my own, Sumeragi Kaguya, and all others are disposable in the service of that end. Now, will you choose to sacrifice your pride for one moment, and join hands with me? Or will you choose to remain as you are, collateral damage, and make yourself complicit in the wholesale slaughter of the people you and your brother swore to protect? Choose quickly, girl, for I am of no great patience, and I have no use for any who lack the resolve to do what is necessary. 'Why.' What an asinine question."

Kaguya remained standing for lack of an impulse to do otherwise, paralysed by the intensity and the sudden fervent pressure of the demon's presence, and also stricken by the matter of her words, leaving her with a single realisation: my back is to the wall, and this fiend is offering me a way out. Do I have the right as a ruler to refuse her now, regardless of what this deal will surely cost me in the long run?

The thought weighing heavily in her mind, the empress uncrowned lowered herself back to her seat, and Princess Justine loomed for a moment longer before following suit, irritation clear in her posture even as she retained that air of ordained regality. And yet, for all her doubts, she knew that, regardless of her personal feelings in that moment—regardless of the sight of her brother's corpse, cleaned thoroughly and bearing no signs of suffering or torture, though it remained undeniably, unceremoniously dead—that her answer to this proposed Faustian bargain, this deal with the Devil, could only be allowed to hinge upon the reply she was given to a simple question. "Princess Justine. You told me, not long ago, that you have never pretended to be anything but what you are. And so I must ask…what are you?"

"A reasonable woman," said the princess as her infamous sister chuckled in the background; and for all the ease with which the words passed between her lips, there was a gravity to them which held the weight of truth, or at the very least, of brutal and blunt honesty. "A quantity that can be known, an entity that can be trusted to hold no antipathy and commit no acts of conflict unless duly provoked—and above all, a force that can be negotiated with. One that does not count strife as an existential prerequisite, through whom a true, lasting peace may be forged."

Sumeragi Kaguya, ten years old and newly ascendant, let out a heavy, shuddering breath. She gave the corpse of her brother, fifteen years old and prepared to fight until the bitter end, do or die, one last look, full of contrition; then, for the good of her people, that they might have at least some semblance of a future, she raised her gaze to the fell, inhuman creature apart from her…

"You're mad."

The demon quirked a brow, and rather pointedly did not gratify the statement with a response.

Kaguya sighed. "Tell me what I must do."

…and sold her soul.

---

It was late afternoon, and the air was almost unseasonably mild as they reached the end of what had been a remarkably balmy campaign, the clamour of preparations for the making of war accompanied by the odd chirping cries of cicadas—the insects were loud enough to partly mask the sounds of professional soldiers going through their final checks, even—and Cornelia li Britannia was primarily occupied with nursing the beginnings of a sore throat. She had little talent for oration herself, lacking the sort of natural eloquence that could enrapture and inspire men to fight and die for her; yet she had learned over the years, the trust between herself and the other soldiers built brick by bloody brick. Now when she spoke, the words were lent weight by her actions, and her record on the field. Astride her Knightmare, she stood from the seat, the cockpit ajar, and looked out over the massive block (which would also serve as an ejection pod if all else failed) upon the mountain range before her, and the forest that surrounded it.

Within those mountains, Cornelia knew, was a vast subterranean complex of tunnels and caverns fashioned by the hands of men into a nigh-impregnable fortress, complete with enough food, bullets and bandages to wait out a lengthy siege, and a source of freshwater in the form of a mountain spring. It would be a gruelling assault, and promised to be a bloody, messy bit of business, but there was no way around it; her soldiers and knights would have to comb the facility room by room and passage by passage until every last enemy soldier could be put to the sword. She would lose many men, she knew—would lose more than a few who had stuck with her since her first command, a fresh-faced and painfully green second lieutenant, and through all the hellish pits of gore and muck they had waded through together since—and if she could have found a way to avoid those painful losses, she would do so in a heartbeat. The fact that such designs were far beyond the scope of her tactical and strategic acumen to achieve was merely the latest in a long procession of bitter pills she had no choice but to swallow.

She was certain that Friederike could have devised a flawless battle stratagem that did not inflict such a grim butcher's bill upon her brave soldiers, who depended upon her to command and lead them, but Cornelia's mind was not nearly so well-suited to the sorts of lateral thinking that typified the labyrinthine pathways of the Prime Minister's magnificent brain, and she had had no choice but to make peace with that some time ago. It had been something of a sobering realisation, that Cornelia li Britannia could never be anyone but herself, but she managed. If she had nothing more to give than herself, then every last gram of herself was what she would give, and nothing less. She had thought to spare Euphemia that very same dilemma, to safeguard her from the feeling, the idea, that she might ever possibly need to be anyone other than who she was, but…

"It's poor form to be so distracted on the cusp of battle, your highness."

She turned in some surprise, for if anyone at all was to come to her side right now, she had expected it to be her ever-gallant knight, Guilford, not… "Darlton?"

"Surprised to see me, your highness?" the mountain of a man grinned, the long scar running across the bridge of his nose turning the expression halfway into a grimace. He stood as she did, atop a Glasgow with its cockpit hanging ajar, his posture as flawlessly erect as a statue as he regarded her. It was odd to see him thusly attired, his broad musculature encased in a 'normal suit,' the jumpsuit-like pressurised garment meant for the protection of Knightmare pilots in the field; and though he looked rather more comfortable in it than she felt, she considered that, in light of his common birth, he was likely far more accustomed to odd fits and clothing textures than she, a princess of the realm, was.

"I had expected you would be in the sky, with the Royal Air Force…" she said.

"Yes, well," he began, turning his gaze away from her and onto the forests and mountains that were to be the first part of their battlefield as his expression sobered. "I'd already been speaking with Lord Blair, you see. I… William's grave will forever lie empty, and though I had thought I had made peace with the notion, it…pains me. Whether it was sympathy that moved Lord Blair to approve my request to transfer to the Knightmare Corps under your command, or simply a desire to curry favour with your rising star, your highness, who can say? At the very least…if I must bury my sons, Princess Cornelia, I cannot suffer to place a cairn for my children at another empty grave."

Cornelia nodded, and did not speak on that—she was loath to even think of interjecting herself into her friend's private grief. Instead, she said, "It must have been a swift transfer, that you're beside me now."

"Very swift," Darlton agreed. "The intelligence about the location of the Imperial Japanese Army's final fortress seems to have galvanised Lord Blair, and indeed the bureaucracy of High Command, into some haste. I owe Princess Justine a debt of gratitude for that."

"Her intercession was…certainly fortuitous," the princess sighed, biting down on the bitterness that flashed through her spirit at the recollection. Much like Jeremiah, Margrave Gottwald, Warrant Officer Nu had certainly wasted no time in making herself into Justine's creature, so when she had come to Cornelia with the information that had led to this deployment in hand, together with all the proper forms to give the Second Princess command of the mission all neatly filled out, there was not a doubt in her mind as to the source of the intelligence. And while Cornelia was certainly glad that her younger sister, her girlhood idol's firstborn, had the good fortune and good sense to surround herself with such competent personnel (though the Kururugi girl was almost certainly a misstep, the status of her defection aside), the same part of herself that felt the bitter sting of her failure to protect Euphemia's kind and gentle heart from the bloody mêlée that characterised the messy process of Britannian succession likewise smarted from the realisation that her attempt to safeguard Justine, the bookish, brilliant, but gloomy girl who had nonetheless never been anything less than unfailingly kind to Euphy, from the horrors of war, had rather resoundingly failed, and had perhaps been doomed to failure from the very start.

"I know that face…" Darlton sighed heavily. "I remember seeing it in the mirror, in fact. You can't protect her from this, your highness. There are some for whom war and conflict are where they flourish, for whom the blood and mud of the battlefield is as necessary as breathing. And while I cannot say with any confidence that Princess Justine is cast of that mould, I certainly lack for other explanations. It's a waste of your time and your breath to try and hold those sorts back, for their very nature will rebel against every one of your well-intentioned efforts."

"…Were any of your sons so natured?" Cornelia asked.

Darlton scoffed. "They certainly thought they were. Every one of them believed such of themselves, in fact—aside from Mycroft."

"The son you left as Euphy's escort," Cornelia recalled.

"The very same," he affirmed with a nod. "Of course, one by one they began to learn otherwise, and more of them became disabused of that notion as their brothers brushed ever closer with death, and spoke of it with no exhilaration—only horror. Now that William is…lost to us, I would be surprised if any of them still style themselves so. They'll enlist, of course—their desire to be soldiers was entirely apart from their idea of themselves as dogs of war—but soldiery is not in their blood.

"Princess Justine is…different," Dartlon added softly. "Rare is it that I have had cause to see her, let alone to converse with her, but there is a spark in her eyes that wasn't in my sons'. It's why I think it was for the best that your sister, Princess Euphemia, had her infatuation come to naught as it has; and it's why I believe, if I saw what I thought I saw the night Duchess Cassiopeia perished, that Duchess Carmilla and Princess Justine may well be a good match. Violence isn't in her blood, your highness—it seems to suffuse her entire being. This was a fight you were never going to win."

Cornelia snorted, even as the heady words swirled in her mind. "Well, at least the count of sisters I have failed has dropped to one…"

"You haven't failed Princess Euphemia, your highness," Darlton replied. "When we spoke of her in the past, and you spoke of wishing to defend her from the dilemma you suffered, from the insinuation that who she is is insufficient, I kept my own counsel, as it was not my place to speak. It's a natural inclination, your highness, to seek to defend our children, those we have conceived and those we have adopted both, from the experiences that once brought us anguish. It is also, unfortunately, the wrong one. But that, too, is something that we as parents, whether biological or practical, must learn on our own, and it is not a truth that can be imparted unto us early.

"Euphemia was always going to desire to buck your attempts to protect her, your highness. It is the way and the peculiar wisdom of children to reject permanent states of the self, and to rebel against any and all attempts by others to keep them in such states," he continued. "You have conflated the realisation that who you are is insufficient with the idea that who you are is unacceptable. The latter you would be correct to protect your sister from, but the former is an impetus for growth. And in allowing Princess Euphemia the chance to attain that growth, more than anything to do with His Majesty, you have done the exact opposite of failing her. The dilemma came, and you rose to the occasion—oh, it took some prompting, perhaps, but that's why you have us. Your friends.

"So take heart, your highness," Darlton said, chuckling good-naturedly. "You're not out of this race yet. Not by any stretch of the imagination."

Cornelia stared at the man for a good few moments, and then shook her head ruefully. "You truly are a remarkable man, Andreas Darlton, and a good friend. I…sometimes lose sight of that, to my shame, and of how truly fortunate I am to have you and Guilford both."

"We're just as glad to have you, your highness," said Darlton. "And though I cannot speak for our absent knight, I can say with confidence that I would have no other as a commanding officer."

"Your highness, Andreas," said Guilford, as he came up to the empty Glasgow on her left, opposite Darlton on her right, and let the winch of the stirrup guide him up to the cockpit.

"Lord Guilford," Darlton greeted amiably.

"Guilford," said Cornelia, turning her head entirely to gaze upon her faithful knight and confidante, likewise dressed in a normal suit, as he mounted his Knightmare Frame. "You bring tidings?"

"Preparations are complete, your highness," said the bespectacled man, with a brief and perfunctory bow. "We're ready to commence the operation on your mark."

It's time. Now is the hour. Bracing herself, Cornelia took a deep, steadying breath, and released it. She waved both her confidants to take their marks, sliding her key into the ignition alongside the passcode, and said, "Let's be about it, then."

"All units! Engage!" she cried into the Knightmare's on-board communications unit. "For crown and for empire: all hail Britannia!"

They broke from the foliage in a vast wave of dull grey tungsten, their landspinners devouring the distance as the vaguely humanoid shapes of the mechanical titans tore free of the tree line. Before long, a booming chorus resounded across the valley as the artillery pieces laid down covering fire, 155mm shells packed with a potent mélange of depleted uranium and impure sakuradite shaking the earth and sending dirt and muck up in metres-high geysers. Six-wheeled Britannian battle tanks took off in the wake of the initial charge, each armoured unit equal parts personnel carrier and fighting vehicle, and their machine guns and smaller cannons would help sweep away the enemy's reprisal.

The mountain did not lay silent for much longer: answering fire tore further into the battlefield as they made to target the tanks carrying the masses of Britannian regulars Cornelia planned to use to sweep through the complex once they'd managed to breach it. But of course, the princess had expected this much; the man who had won the Imperial Japanese Army their single victory in this entire war, managing to escape total destruction at Itsukushima, however narrowly, was sure to be here, and she knew that sort of opponent was not one who would fail to recognise that trying to target the larger Knightmare Frames with their fire would have been an exercise in futility, given the war machines' agility.

"Dispense chaff!" she ordered; the affirmation came mere moments later, as canisters of smoke and small bits of glittering debris fired out behind the charging tide of Knightmares, obscuring the tanks and rendering their answering fire all but useless. Their assault was undeterred.

From bays concealed into the mountain came a swarm of enemy tanks, an assortment of Chi-Ya and Chi-Yo and Chi-Ye models, led and ushered onto the field by a trio of armoured juggernauts, each an O-Wa super-heavy tank, hailed by many as a veritable dreadnought of land warfare. These huge lumbering giants carried teams of fifteen men, and were armed to the teeth beyond what would have been even remotely feasible, if not for the sakuradite engines built into their immense weight that enabled their movement. And with their thick armour, it would take even the Knightmare-sized assault rifles a decent amount of effort to penetrate their carapaces. It was a testament to their design and construction, she mused absently, that even the absolute technological superiority of the Britannian Army could only diminish these goliaths from a nightmare on the field to an irritating headache, and they seemed to take full advantage of that fact, as their own fire from their massive heavy guns, mid-range artillery in their own right, together with their ludicrous quantity of durable armour worked to shield the smaller tanks from reprisal so that they could fight back.

Shells shattered the ground at the feet of Cornelia's Knightmare, and in a move so swift and sudden that the sheer nauseating inertia of it set her jaw clenching, she leaned and wove around the devastation on the field before her, fully aware that these shells had a more than decent chance of reducing her Glasgow to slag if she took a direct enough hit. Sure enough, as she deployed her single factsphere sensor to receive a revised analysis of the battle space, she saw that there were many who were not as skilled—or perhaps, not as lucky—as she, their Knightmares destroyed so swiftly that a somewhat worrying portion of them hadn't even gotten a chance to attempt an ejection protocol.

It mattered not; Cornelia braced her mind in iron, girding her heart in steel. They had an equaliser, she knew, could feel it burning a proverbial hole in her mind. They were outside of the engagement range now, but if they could close the distance, they could wreck the land-dreadnoughts that were threshing them like so much wheat even now. Clenching her jaw, she bit down hard on the urge to give the order; she had to be ruthless here, without consideration. Each startled dying cry, each blip on her IFF that suddenly came alight with the message 'Signal Lost', was a fresh dagger turning in the twist of her gut, and she reminded herself that no matter how much it pained her, their lives were in no way equal to the cost of victory.

The cockpit rumbled around her as surging adrenaline made her moves deft, her piloting of the unit growing more and more aggressive as she sliced through the ground, the pain turning to a sort of righteous anger that she was all too willing to unleash upon her foes. With every casualty, every wrecked tank, every platoon lost as their APC was reduced to scrap, her jaw clenched more harshly; but as the rocky face of the mountain, with its irregular yet sturdy cliffs, loomed before her, that clenching turned to a grin. At last. "Engage slash harkens! Payloads away!"

Without further ado, she acquired a targeting solution, and with the push of a button on her control yokes, her slash harkens fired up from their mountings on either side of her Glasgow's chest, sinking into the rock face and anchoring themselves firmly there as the winches reversed. The servomotors screeched as the Knightmare was launched into the air, the first of a swelling crest of them borne skyward, and then, the moment before they reached the drop zone, they let the other canisters, opposite the chaff on the hips of the machines, fly free.

As planned, the canisters erupted into light and heat, as shards of deadly metal sprayed like a great rain that blocked out the sun onto the heavily-armoured vehicles below. The chaos mines were developed in anticipation of an engagement just such as this one, where the enemy armour was too thick to be quickly done away with, and yet needed to be neutralised quickly; and more than one shard of shrapnel found its mark, tearing through the plating and breaching the sakuradite engines within.

She allowed herself a moment of pure, vengeful joy as the entire armoured line went up in a great ball of electric blue, magenta, and orange flame; she could hardly even imagine the look on that man Tōdō Kyōshirō's face as the same sight that characterised his so-called miracle at Itsukushima was turned against him so resoundingly here.

The tanks' cannons thundered below, clearing away the mounds of debris as the explosion began to subside, even with panels of superheated metal warped into ruined configurations raining down upon them from above. As the Glasgow slammed feet-first into the mountainside, and its fellows joined it there, she took in the field beneath her, and the positions of the armoured line, considering. He was likely attempting to form a barricade out of his wrecked tanks… They're arrayed in an obstructive formation right outside of what I can only presume to be the main entrance, after all. He must not have accounted for us being able to do away with his tanks swiftly enough to spare the lion's share of our forces, nor so totally that they can no longer even serve as obstacles…

Still, she mused, thumbing over the button to deploy her factsphere again to gain a precise firing solution for the heavy artillery of her sapper corps, if not for the chaos mines, his assessment would have been exactly accurate. He's a competent commander, to be certain…and a troublesome opponent…

The tanks pulled up in front of the concealed doorway the enemy armour had perished to defend in vain, and waited; not moments later, having received her firing solution together with that of the two other designated spotters in Glasgows a bit further down the mountain face, the artillery began again, shells hammering into the fortified, reinforced entrance with an unholy vengeance. The mountain shook, the cliff face heaving as she and the rest of the Knightmare pilots lowered themselves to the path below, which they would then descend to get into position before joining the assault, and under the furious ballistic rain, the metal of the doors began to buckle, even as the turrets of the tanks played point-defence against the enemy's own artillery emplacements, hidden amongst the naturally-erratic rock.

With a great, shuddering heave, the door finally gave way, and there was an avalanche in miniature as the blast doors were torn from their moorings and flung asunder. Pairs of fighters cruised overhead, their paths irregular as they hunted for enemy aircraft, zealously guarding their part to play in this operation, to establish and ensure absolute air superiority, and Cornelia, not for the first time and likely not for the last, thanked whatever inspired genius had first conceived of a combined arms doctrine. Her Glasgow at last hitting Terra Firma in the form of the path before her, she regrouped with the rest of her pilots before speeding away down the mountainside, and Darlton and Guilford alone proved themselves capable of keeping pace with her as she charged onward to war.

By the time the Knightmare corps and she arrived on the scene, a desperate, pitched firefight was already underway, tanks providing support to the infantry with relentless machine gun and cannon fire, as others disgorged their platoons of soldiers to quickly find their way to cover and add to the suppressing hail of ordinance, as the situation gradually ground to a stalemate; the tanks would not fit into the main entrance as it was now, with barricades raised, belt-fed machine gun nests and automatic turrets returning fire ably, and with the returning fire, if the regulars attempted to make a push, they would accomplish nothing but a wasteful bloodbath.

In other words, this was the exact sort of situation the Glasgows were designed and built for.

"Guilford, Darlton, on me! Watch my back, and do your best to keep up," Cornelia ordered. "The rest of you! Delta formation. We're about to punch through, and then we spearhead the assault, so don't let yourselves get separated. I'll be very cross if any of you get isolated and picked off!"

A chorus of 'Yes, your highness!' was her acknowledgement, and as she readied her assault rifle, relaxing her grip on the yokes for maximum manoeuvrability, she braced herself, and prepared to engage. The tanks reversed course and the regulars made way as the Glasgows moved into a wedge formation, each pilot linking up with two of their fellows that they would stick with when they broke off. Cornelia took the point of the spear, Darlton and Guilford on her right and left flanks respectively, and as her landspinners screamed against the packed dirt, she felt her heart thudding in her ears, and it was as though there was a sense of unspeakable synergy between herself and the other devicers, a woven thread that linked all of their fortunes to one another—a sensation that was rare for her, but not so much that she was entirely unfamiliar. She knew exactly what it meant:

Promised victory.

The wedge shot forth in one explosive moment, Cornelia's spine flattening itself against the back of her seat, but with her loose grip, she kept tight control over her Glasgow, weaving around the barricades as 5.56, 10mm, and .308 rounds pinged impotently off of the tungsten plating that protected her. Further down the corridor, she saw soldiers scrambling to bring forth grenade and rocket launchers, and though she knew in her mind that the damage they could wreak would be essentially negligible, she had no more room in her heart for even one more dead subordinate. Accelerating into engagement range, she brought her Glasgow's assault rifle to bear, and in a few short bursts fired from the shoulder, the tank-busting rounds packed in the magazine reduced the enemy's preparations to a red haze.

"Weapons free!" the princess ordered over comms, almost as an afterthought; and in the span of the few short moments that followed, the automatic turrets had been quite thoroughly scrapped, as the machine gun nests were reduced to abattoirs. Deploying her factsphere once more, she was pleased to see that the ceilings in the rest of the complex only very rarely dipped below five metres high—which was more than enough clearance for her Knightmares—and as the regulars began to file in, sweeping through the corridor and vaulting over the barricades to dispose of any survivors, she broke off from the wedge, while the others in the assault formation split off to do the same.

As ordered, they travelled in groups of three, splitting away to sweep through the major corridors of the complex, with the regulars in their wake tasked with checking smaller throughways, such as closets, barracks, smaller storerooms, and maintenance passages. Cornelia, Darlton, and Guilford, however, stuck to the path their factspheres provided that led directly to the command centre of the base.

The size of this fortress… the engineering skill it must have taken to build it this way is staggering… Cornelia considered, as her active attention subsided into the motions of evading barricades, gunning down anything that wasn't in Britannian uniform that moved, and then moving on; the motions became rote, even through the few upsets where Darlton or Guilford's sharp eyes caught out a missile or anti-materiel team, as the assault devolved from an organised push to snuffing out pockets of entrenched resistance. She had been in her fair share of assaults in her time, had Cornelia, enough to know that this stage always came up whenever the initial push had succeeded—but at least when she was on foot, it was a slog. This isn't a slog. It's a slaughter…

The thought was not nearly as comforting as she might have expected it to be.

---

This is the end for us…

The thought was no longer a foreign one for Colonel Tōdō Kyōshirō, and hadn't truly been since the day the Britannians introduced the mass-produced Knightmare Frame to the field of battle. If he was honest with himself (Tōdō believed very firmly in being honest with himself, though he knew he struggled often to live up to such an ideal), he'd say that his hope of his homeland winning this war against Britannia had begun to wither on the vine when he'd heard the news that both the Yamato and the Musashi, the prides and joys of the Imperial Japanese Navy, had been sunk. And yet, when the Britannians landed at Miyazaki, then proceeded to roll right over every vain attempt to stop them from conquering Kyushu outright, he had seen the writing on the wall.

There were few soldiers who hadn't heard of the Knightmare Frame before then, of course—it was only the least-experienced greenhorns who hadn't heard the legends of Marianne 'the Flash,' the Knight of Two, and her iconic war machine, the Knightmare Frame 'Ganymede.' And yet, for all of her terrifying prowess, the Azure Comet of Britannia was only a single woman, the Ganymede a one-off unit; certainly, these mass production models fell far short of the death-defying feats of martial prowess attributed to that near-mythical woman, but as anyone who had ever tangled with the Chinese Federation would readily attest, 'quantity presents a quality all its own.' And over the course of this war, the Holy Britannian Empire had proven its ability to wield that concept with deadly force most ably.

The command centre of the base tunnelled into the mountains near Narita was a seemingly delirious flurry of frenzied motion, as commanders and specialists and aides rushed to and fro in a desperate bid to try and stem the tide as the Imperial Japanese Army lost control of its fortress of last resort, its final hope of survival and resistance, one room and corridor at a time. There was an odd dissonance to it, he mused; for all that his plan had been judged by far their best shot at defending against this assault, turning it into the sort of siege this base was designed from the ground up to be able to withstand, and for all that his plan had been unceremoniously reduced to cinders without even managing to make a significant dent in the enemy force's fighting strength, he felt…oddly calm about the whole thing, disconnected from the fervid furor that surrounded him.

But then, he supposed, that wasn't entirely unexpected. With his sharp, hawkish features, steel-grey eyes, and thick, dark, aggressive brow, his was a face that he had always been told seemed like it had been built for sternness, an appearance that sacrificed handsomeness in favour of sheer intensity, and as he aged, his temperament had failed to defy that expectation. He knew himself to be a severe, taciturn sort of man, intimidating to some, and he had long since made his peace with it; he supposed coming to terms with what you were might have been just an occupational hazard of a soldier living to see their thirtieth year, as he had. And so to feel a certain kinship with a stone at the bottom of a river-bed, worn smooth by the powerful currents around it, yet unmoved from its mooring, was also not a foreign sensation to him.

I suppose I should have guessed they'd have developed a way to do away with armour their rifles couldn't quickly penetrate, he considered, rolling his shoulder against the pauldron of his metal-plated dull green service uniform as his other hand dropped to his hip, reassuring himself that his military blade hadn't left his side since the last time he'd checked to make sure it was still there. But then, even if I had known, there wasn't much more we could do. This is our last stand—even if we did manage to evacuate, to flee and avoid engagement here, we'd have nowhere else to go…

We've lost this war, he thought with no small amount of resignation. Truth be told, we'd lost it already when I pulled off that trick at Itsukushima. The only thing that 'victory' managed to accomplish was prolonging the inevitable…

"Colonel Tōdō."

Pulled from his thoughts, he turned on his heel with precision that the military had drilled into him so deeply that he wouldn't be surprised if drill instructions were carved onto his bones by this point, and faced two men: one for whom he had nothing but the utmost respect, and the other significantly less so.

"Lieutenant Colonel Senba, Major Urabe, Major Asahina, Captain Chiba," said Sawasaki Atsushi, once Kururugi Genbu's chief cabinet secretary, now Acting Prime Minister, as he nodded to each of them in turn. Senba Ryōga, who had once been his drill sergeant; Urabe Kōsetsu, only two years his junior, and a trusted friend since their very first deployment together; and the two youngest, Asahina Shōgo and Chiba Nagisa, childhood friends who had enlisted and gone through officer training together. I'll get you all out of this alive, I promise…

"Acting Prime Minister," Tōdō replied evenly with a curt nod. He turned, and bowed at the waist to his superior officer. "Katase-taishō."

General Katase Tatewaki, an aged, honourable man with a brow even heavier than Tōdō's, whose features lent him a grandfatherly air, nodded in acknowledgement, his iron-grey hair unkempt, as though the old soldier had just spent hours running his hand through it in distress, and his lined face haggard and wan. Sawasaki, in contrast, was unflappably composed in his grooming, receding hairline, broad forehead and all, his arms folded behind his back, though his ratlike features were pinched in obvious displeasure.

"Colonel Tōdō, since time is short, I'll be brief," said the bureaucrat. "You've faced our foe before, and as General Katase tells me, the situation grows more dire by the moment. In times like these, men find themselves in need of a miracle—a miracle akin to the sort you produced at Itsukushima."

At that, stone-faced Tōdō, the man whom some theorised to be entirely immune to mirth, could not restrain himself from a sudden barking fit of rueful laughter, shaking his head sadly. Perhaps the stress is affecting me after all… "I had a trick up my sleeve, Sawasaki-san—a desperate gamble that would have at best bought us some time to try to pursue other options. And Cornelia li Britannia destroyed it. Look around you, Sawasaki-san. You'll find that there are no more miracles here."

Katase's face fell at Tōdō's words, which was surprising; Surely he didn't also believe Itsukushima was truly a miracle… He couldn't have. So why…?

Then the answer came to him, riding a wave of cresting horror.

"I see," said Sawasaki, with a curt nod and an expression that told Tōdō he had expected an answer much like the one he had just been given. "How disappointing."

Surging forth on adrenaline and building outrage, Tōdō lunged forward and seized Sawasaki's arm in a death-grip. "You can't seriously mean to…?!"

And Sawasaki looked him dead in the eye, with all the cold detachment that substantiated the very worst stories about bloodless bureaucrats, career politicians, and ruthless book-keepers. "If even the Man of Miracles is powerless to deliver us from disaster, what choice have we, Colonel Tōdō, save to let the Divine Wind blow?"

Shocked into still, stunned silence, his eyes wide and uncomprehending, Tōdō barely felt it when the oiled snake slipped his arm out of the soldier's grasp; distantly, he heard the distinctive screeching of a blowtorch on metal, Chiba's voice rising in a shrill scream: "They're breaching the doors!"

"The Heavenly Sovereign Himself ordained me with the appointed duty to prosecute this war, even should it lead unto the bitterest of ends," Sawasaki finished coldly. "I shall do what I must. That is all that any of us can do."

General Katase had never looked more aged than in that moment, his posture sagging as the will to survive, the will to fight, bled out of him. "Prime the reactor, and begin the self-destruct sequence."

So this is how it ends, Tōdō realised dully. In one final blaze of vainglory.

"We're picking up a transmission!" yelled Asahina. "The codes… It's from the Emperor!"

"Patch it through," Katase ordered before Sawasaki could do anything more than open his mouth, his expression souring even further in the process.

"Brave warriors of Japan. Valiant sons and daughters of the Land of the Rising Sun," came a voice Tōdō recognised, shocked though he was to hear it. It was shaky, nervous; yet, beneath it ran a resolute undercurrent of steel. "Our Heavenly Sovereign, Emperor Boruhito, has perished; in succeeding him, I, his sister Sumeragi Kaguya, speak the will of the Heavens in his stead. And the will of the Heavens is thus: all you who have fought and suffered for the freedom of our beloved country, lay down your arms.

"On behalf of the Chrysanthemum Throne, and the nation—the people—of Japan, I, Sumeragi Kaguya, Empress and Heavenly Sovereign, do tender unto the Holy Britannian Empire, and to all attendant forces, a declaration of unconditional surrender. I repeat: we surrender. My people, lay down your arms. The war is over. We must now turn our attention to surviving what is yet to come…"

And so it came to pass that when the soldiers of Britannia finally breached the door, their princess met neither hostility, nor opposition: only a silent room full of once-proud warriors, perched in fuza on the floor, their military blades laid out in presentation on the ground before them.

And the corpse of a rodent-faced man dressed in an otherwise immaculate suit, his face twisted in a final expression of defiance, shock, and rage, a bloody bullet-hole placed directly in the middle of his too-broad forehead.

---

Seeing as she wasn't likely to successfully be wandering off anywhere in the near future—not that she would want to, what with the presence of the immortal Lady Izanami being rather inextricably tied to the Kururugi girl, and likewise was the promise of answers she represented, answers to questions C.C. had long since given up and desisted asking—she figured that the appointed quarters of the girl she had initially thought to take on as a contractor would be as good a place to seek shelter as any. As this was her chamber on the G-1 Mobile Command Unit belonging to her sister, Brigadier-General Cornelia li Britannia, it didn't seem unreasonable to C.C. for her to expect to have to interact with Justine vi Britannia relatively soon. It was her room the verdette was using as a source of shelter and boarding, after all.

And yet, when she thought on how she might have expected their first proper meeting since that day in Pendragon half a year ago to transpire, she would readily admit that she hadn't ever considered it would be like this.

Justine's room wasn't particularly awash in finery and luxurious expenditure; for all that the girl did apparently have an appreciation for 'elegance,' as told by the immortal serving as her majordomo, as far as she was concerned the word had 'a distaste for frivolity' built into it. There was a wooden folding-table in the middle of the room, for example, and though it was sturdy, it was also plain; this was the table upon which she took her meals, did paperwork of unclear purpose, and performed her own weapon maintenance. Yet, when the doors opened to admit her, as C.C. watched her closely from where she lay lounged upon the girl's bed, she moved as if she was in a trance (though the grace of her movements remained as they ever did) towards the plain, army-issue table, crafted as it was of sturdy hardwood and fashioned through a process of workmanlike, though efficient, construction, and in an explosion of motion, she slammed her fist directly through the surface in a shower of splinters.

The supports of the wood groaned in loud protest; the blow had been so sudden that her fist had gone through the table cleanly, but otherwise failed to break the surface in half. In the next moment, the girl's slender, deft fingers clamped onto the edge of the table like talons and flung the furniture into the adjacent wall with a thudding crash, and a resulting clamour of falling objects.

Contrary to popular belief, much of it due directly to the public image the man went out of his way to deliberately cultivate, Charles zi Britannia's anger was not so much a thing to be feared: indeed, C.C. knew from personal experience that the man's rancour flared bright and hot, and yet however much of a spectacle as it was, it was also brief, and burned itself out with remarkable quickness. If one was able to weather the initial eruption of ire, they would find that the Ninety-Eighth Holy Britannian Emperor was as swift to calm as he was to anger. No, the truly dangerous rage was Marianne's, a silent thing that festered like a gaping wound, simmering and metastasising until at last, it burst.

For all their differences, however, both burned hot. This was something else altogether.

Justine's anger—for anger it unmistakably was—was a mass of shifting shadow and freezing flame, something that did not seethe so much as it writhed, like the thrashings of some great beast of antediluvian myth. The girl's presence, which even at rest was a heady thing to be around, had roused, and unfurled its dark wings, encompassing the entire room in its great and terrible shadow. The acrimony was eerily cold, silent save for the destruction itself, and above all else, certain. There was no wild flailing to this anger, but a determined, directed torrent of honed, quietly keening fury. Where Charles's was thunderous rancour, and Marianne's had been seething rage, this was decisive wrath, and C.C. found it oddly mesmerising to watch—which surprised her greatly.

And yet…

"Whatever it is that's gotten you all riled up, I somehow doubt that taking it out on the furniture will in any way resolve the issue," she chided—though it surely came across as snide mockery.

Thankfully, it did not seem as though her prospective contractor was in any sort of mood to rise to C.C.'s barbs, however unintentional they were. "What I desire is not resolution, but catharsis.

"And this is proving oddly therapeutic…" said the princess, cackling softly as she ran a trembling hand through her bound hair, releasing the tie and letting it cascade down her back in a silky raven curtain. "I should take care, lest I begin resorting to violence in anger! Why, such a thing would be beyond a doubt the very height of folly."

"…Dare I ask?" C.C. prodded against her better judgement.

"I…" began the princess, eyes wide and seeming even less human than usual, "…may have misread the situation. Rather egregiously so, in fact."

"Did you, now?" she asked sardonically, because wasn't that just the vaguest possible explanation. And also the least helpful, but hey, who was keeping score?

Oh, right.

She was.

"The plan should have been flawless!" sighed Justine, and as she began to pace, C.C. noticed that her fingers were moving oddly, as though responding to a pain that had yet to fully register. "No, scratch that, it was flawless! Why, on Juliette, it would have worked wonders!"

Then it clicked, and C.C.'s mind began to work. "Sumeragi Kaguya is not Juliette vi Britannia."

"Don't I know it!" she chuckled bitterly. "Would that I had known that before! Why, she doesn't even appreciate why I removed her half-brother from play! It's pearls before swine—a layered gesture, though admittedly somewhat heavy-handed, reduced to a barbarous act of meaningless cruelty! Oh, the indignity of it all!"

"Wait, you had her brother killed?!"

"Yes!" Princess Justine declared emphatically. "Because an eleven-year-old princess of an invading polity attempting to negotiate peace terms with a teenage boy bent on war-making—war-making the more grisly consequences of which he would never have had to come to terms with—is not an idea that inspires much in the way of confidence, now is it?"

"And how did she discover this…death in the family?" C.C. asked, dreading the response.

"The late Emperor Boruhito's body was cleaned and preserved, in accordance with Shinto rites when possible, and when it was not so possible, avoiding defiance of those rites at the very least," she said, her hands moving in swift, precise gestures throughout the impromptu explanation, as though guided by some greater instinct. "And then, once that was finished, I had the corpse laid out on the table between us, and kept the room in the dark until the appointed time so that she would neither see nor suspect it until the appointed moment. I had thought the implied message to be simple: far from a direct threat against her person—which would have been the message if I had had the body placed in a black bag and bade her to unzip it, might I add—it was meant to be a grim reminder of dire necessity. And all of it was wasted!

"Would that I had known neither of them would be workable," she concluded, leaning back heavily against the wall and staring at the ceiling. "I would have ordered both of them killed. I should have had both of them killed…"

C.C. stared at the girl, her eyes wide for all that her jaw remained firmly in its proper place, and she mused absently that 'gobsmacked' was not at all an inaccurate word to describe the manner in which her thought processes had all simultaneously suddenly ground to an unceremonious halt.

Marianne's prodigal daughter—for indeed, in this moment she resembled neither of her parents and instead something else entirely—gave a heavy sigh, her shoulders heaving in something not truly dissimilar to resignation, as a pall of calm descended upon her almost tangibly. "And yet, the world continues turning. My mistake has been made, and unfortunately, needs must needs must. I have ordered the body returned to the family, so that proper funerary rites might be observed unmolested. Ultimately, I am left with what fruit my labours have borne, however distinct from that which I had considered ideal, but I shall simply have to find a way to work with it. I suppose it was naive of me to expect that even an inkling of the scale of the salvation I have woven on their behalf would not be lost on them…

"Fine, then. Let them cast me a villain," she said with a rueful smirk. "Monster though I may be, it would serve me naught to forget that we are the monsters, Juliette, Milly, and I, by whose hands and works this doomed world shall come to know salvation."

C.C. blinked dumbly. She's…

"But where are my manners? I dearly hope you may find it within yourself to forgive this dreadful impertinence of mine, Lady C.C., but I swear, it is good to see you again." The princess's smirk shifted from rueful to wry as it was turned upon her. "For all that you had foretold that our paths would one day cross again, I had begun to wonder, and never had I suspected that such a reunion might come to pass so soon…"

…Magnificent…

"Neither had I, truth be told," C.C. replied with more honesty than she usually ever bothered with when it came to potential contractors these days. "Your majordomo was somewhat insistent on vetting me before letting me close to you again. Something about you not being prepared to cut the sort of deal I could offer you."

Justine nodded. "Some sort of Faustian bargain arrangement, I take it?"

C.C. smirked at her, and to the immortal's surprise, she felt the ghost of the sensation of it herself, beyond the exertion of the muscles of her eternally youthful face. "Something like that."

"I'll elect to defer to his judgement for now, then," the princess said wryly.

C.C. shrugged. "It's likely for the best. Contracts formed with the unprepared tend to end…poorly. Oftentimes for both parties involved."

"So will you be joining us on our return journey to the Homeland, then?" the girl asked, her small, amused smile radiant with charm.

"…In a manner of speaking," she replied at length. "At the very least, I'll be around."

"Waiting in the wings for your chance to swoop down and offer to buy my soul, then?"

"Amongst other things," acknowledged C.C.. "Lady Izanami is the very eldest of us. There is much of great value to be learned from sticking close to her."

The door beside Justine slid open, and in stepped Taliesin himself, his travelling clothes nowhere to be seen any longer, discarded in favour of the rich black three-piece suit, white gloves, and pince-nez of his position as the young princess's sole butler and majordomo. "And on that dramatically appropriate note…"

"Taliesin," Justine acknowledged. "You bring tidings for me?"

"Yes, my lady," Taliesin replied with a half-bow at the waist, his gloved hands folded behind him at the small of his back. "To the point, then: Miss Kururugi and Lady Izanami are awaiting your presence in the on-board gymnasium. I would counsel against keeping either of them waiting overlong, my…colleague especially. She is not particularly well-known for possessing the virtue of patience."

Justine nodded, all but taking it in stride, for all that her brow creased quizzically. "I'll make my way down there presently, of course, but for what purpose?"

"Oh, it would be poor form of me to spoil the surprise, my lady," Taliesin deflected. "I was bidden to remain silent on the matter besides, and allow Lady Izanami to inform you of the good news."

"…Very well," said Justine, and in a smooth, almost serpentine motion, she pushed off of the wall and left her quarters behind her. She stopped at the threshold, however, and turned to regard the elder of the two immortals over her shoulder. "Oh, and one more thing: if you have yet to dispose of the broken pieces of Heirsbane, please refrain from doing so entirely. I may yet have a use for them."

With that, she departed entirely, and when the doors slid closed and Justine travelled out of earshot, Taliesin exhaled in a great heave of his chest. "I don't suspect you managed to catch a glimpse of a broom or a dustpan, Miss C.C.?"

C.C. shook her head. "Can't say I have, no."

"Yes, I very much thought not," sighed Taliesin, crouching to pick a shattered table-leg up off of the floor and examine it. Then he dropped it with the rest of the debris. "Well, there's nothing for it, I suppose. I'd best get this mess tidied up…"

---

Kururugi Suzaku had been newly nine years old when her father had dragged her to Shikinejima, the so-called 'beach vacation' that changed her life forever; the memory was so vivid even now, years later, that she believed it might well and truly have been branded into her brain (not that she was complaining, of course; she would be overjoyed to be able to perfectly recall that memory each day for the rest of her days). She'd been petulant, then, her spirit soured with the pall of perpetual boredom that surrounded her, day in and day out, crushing her will to live.

She'd wandered off of the beach in the dead of night, she recalled, away from her father's perpetual security detail, and, convinced of the sheer mundanity of her continued existence as she was, she'd elected to go swimming in the ocean in the dead of night, as storm-clouds gathered ominously. She recalled she'd wanted to have something interesting happen to her—anything, really; it hadn't taken long to figure out that what had been sold to her as a vacation was, instead, the Prime Minister making an official visit to the base on the island, and she was bored to tears.

Predictably, she'd wound up swept away by a riptide, intoxicated by the primal terror of it, drunk on the euphoria of the novel sensation; the storm had swept in, the tide swept out, and she believed then that she had been dancing on the edge of death.

Then she woke up the next morning, having washed ashore in the wee hours, staring down the spine of a finely-crafted tachi, its edge impossibly sharp; and in that single iridescent moment, the wonder and awe that had swept through her at the sight of the tall, ageless, deathly pale woman, with silky black hair and dressed in traditional clothes that would have seemed straight out of a jidaigeki if they hadn't been bone-white—the colour of death—were only rivalled by how her soul burned, truly and defiantly alive for the first time that she could remember. Her fighting spirit saw her body into action before her mind even caught up, and in retrospect, she was fairly certain she died that day, perhaps more than once.

But of course, she would never even consider thinking it might not have been worth it.

Izanami-sensei had been with her, the centre of her entire world, ever since.

Excitement coursed through her body like a live wire, leaving Suzaku feeling practically giddy with anticipation; the man dressed as a butler had seen her from her holding cell to this gym area on the G-1 (the Britannians really did think of everything), and as the moments ticked past, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, an intoxicating rush of fear, terror, nausea, affection, and a few other sensations she was fairly sure she was a little young to be feeling surging forth through her, filling her head and her body nearly to bursting.

Then she sensed the sudden spike of killing intent, and the mélange of euphoria hit a fever-pitch.

She jerked out of the way as the point of the blade struck where the nape of her neck had just been, the razor-sharp edge of the tantō shearing off a few errant locks of chestnut-brown hair; with a mad grin on her face, she fell with the lurch instead of staggering, flowing forth into a roll that put distance between her and Izanami-sensei, before springing back up onto her feet.

Her eyes widened as the point of the weapon nearly gored her in the eye, and without thinking, her left hand lashed forth to deflect the course of the airborne blade. Izanami-sensei threw that…?

A fist hammered into her solar plexus with all the kick of a cannon, driving the air from her lungs; as her abdomen folded on itself like a chair in an involuntary spasm, a kick slammed into her sternum and sent her flying—denting the far wall as she landed with a harsh crash that rattled her bones, and left her to fall into a heap on the floor, coughing up what felt eerily like her own insides. She raised her hand to her lip as she coughed, a heavy, wracking thing that sent needles of pain radiating like the rays of the sun out from her lower abdomen, and when she drew back to look at her fingers, they were wet, and red with blood.

"Woah…"

Izanami-sensei's strength never ceased to amaze her.

Privately, she hoped it never would.

"Your senses are keener than when last I left you, brat," Izanami-sensei remarked, her voice like the sound of a blade being drawn, a soft, seductive promise of wanton violence. It made her shiver, and that was something she knew for a fact she was too young to be feeling. She'd asked Tachibana-san, and then she'd had to kill him with a garrote made of copper wire when he'd gotten alarmed enough to try reporting it. Not her first blood, certainly—Izanami had bled her early—and certainly not her last. "Your playdate with that Britannian princess seems to have been good for you.

"Your reflexes, however, are entirely too quick," she continued, and Suzaku noticed her half-lidded eyes and bloodthirsty smile were every bit as merciless and relentless as ever. She was a beautiful woman in a physical sense, Suzaku understood; yet Suzaku had met many beautiful women over the course of being the daughter of one of the most powerful men in Japan. It was the heady aura of lethality she radiated purely by existing that made her so impossibly alluring, Suzaku had always thought. "A serious issue, since it made you fall for the same trick twice. That deflection left you open, brat, so we're going to train until you drop, and then keep training—I won't let you die having made such a stupid mistake."

Idly, she wondered if this was what 'infatuation' felt like—this lurching feeling in her stomach, this deep and integral yearning to feel hot, warm blood splashing upon her face, staining her hands, clinging to the skin of her chest. Even the way Izanami-sensei's tongue spoke the word she used to refer to Suzaku, kusogaki, gave her tingles, like a sharp dagger being drawn down helpless skin, every moment a chance to be nicked, to be cut, to be bled…

Suzaku had missed her dearly.

"My apologies—am I interrupting something?"

Friend! Suzaku's attention turned immediately and instantaneously towards the doorway to the gym area, where her new best friend was standing at the threshold, her arms crossed, gloved hands tucked out of view, a single brow cocked, and a wry half-smile on her face.

"I was told that you were awaiting my arrival, but if this is a bad time, I'm certainly able to return a bit later, at a more opportune moment," her friend—Justine, she recalled after a rather embarrassingly long moment—joked drily, walking into the gymnasium and letting the door close behind her as she circled the edges of the central mat area.

Izanami-sensei scoffed, her lidded eyes narrowing ever so slightly. "You're certainly good with that sharp tongue of yours… Let's see if your reactions are nearly so deft."

All traces of joviality slid free of Justine's face, and the look of absolute and total serenity, of calm superiority, that made her look so wonderfully punchable, was all that was left in its wake.

In the time it took to blink, Izanami-sensei closed the distance between herself and Justine. Suzaku, not being an idiot, knew and understood that while her teacher certainly didn't coddle her, she held back to a great degree in order to avoid damaging Suzaku beyond what wounds her undying blood could heal; yet, it had still taken Suzaku years for Izanami-sensei to go as fast and as hard as the punch she had just thrown into Justine's fancy face.

And Justine leaned to the side and dodged it…!

It wasn't that Justine was faster, not by a long shot. Izanami-sensei moved faster than most of the people who had been tasked with guarding Suzaku's father could even register, let alone move to react. She knew this just as surely as she knew that Justine hadn't swung her gunsabre faster than a bullet could travel when she'd cut that bullet in half. Watching it unfold now as a third party, she finally realised what her friend was doing, and what had happened back then. She was registering that Izanami-sensei was attacking, and began moving to dodge at the precise moment she needed to in order to account for the truly ludicrous disparity in speed.

No, it's not even that she's registering that Izanami-sensei's moving, Suzaku realised as Justine kept moving, dodging a follow-up blow, and a third, each just as swift and devastating as the last. She's moving at the exact moment Izanami-sensei's muscles tense and body locks into the attack, barely an instant before the motion of the blow actually begins.

Her instincts are so sharp that she's essentially seeing these moves before they happen…

Suzaku grinned so broadly that it actually started to hurt. She couldn't help it: already, she knew she could not have asked for a better friend.

The fourth and fifth blows came in quick succession, ending it; Justine evaded the fourth, but in so doing, she'd boxed herself in, leaving herself not nearly enough space to evade the fifth attack, a hook that glanced off of her forehead and knocked her flat onto the floor, bleeding from her temple.

Izanami-sensei drew back, staring at Justine silently for a few moments as the princess recovered as best as she was able. "You lack awareness of your surroundings. But those instincts, and that precision… A promising student indeed…"

"I can certainly see why Suzaku was so damnably difficult to put down, with someone like you as a teacher," Justine remarked, the blood flowing down into the corner of her eye doing nothing to detract from the piercing, riveting focus of her regal purple gaze.

"That was none of my doing. The brat's always been far too durable for her own good," the ageless, unnaturally pale immortal sighed. "It's why I push her as hard as I do. I know she can take it."

Heat crept into Suzaku's face hearing this, and she quickly moved to peel herself off of the floor, lest her somewhat dazed fawning draw comment.

"I'll be pushing you just as hard," Izanami-sensei stated. "I'd been thinking about finding the brat a sparring partner anyways. Taliesin Blackwood said you've outgrown the weapon he gave you?"

"More like your protégé shattered it with her fist," said Justine.

Izanami-sensei shrugged her shoulders, utterly insouciant. "And yet you prevailed all the same."

Comprehension snapped into being in Justine's eyes as she drew herself up off of the mats, her gaze locked on Izanami-sensei who stood in the dead centre of the gymnasium, at a spot equidistant from both of her downed pupils. "Then yes, I suppose I did outgrow Heirsbane."

Izanami-sensei nodded. "And so he passed you to me."

"I take it that's the good news, then?" prompted the princess.

"Indeed. Rejoice," said Izanami-sensei, her voice twisted with sardonic bitterness and age beyond counting. "Both of you are now my current and only students."

Nodding, Princess Justine drew herself up to her full, slender height, and then bowed fully from the waist in a perfect replication of the manner of Japanese koryū practitioners. "In that case, I look forward to learning from you, Lady Izanami."

Izanami-sensei nodded thoughtfully. "You have two years to train before going off to that academy of yours, I hear."

"Indeed, Lady Izanami," Justine confirmed, rising from her bow to stand once more.

Izanami-sensei nodded. "And do you intend to take the brat with you, then?"

Justine paused for a moment, clearly not expecting the question, and considering how best to phrase her response. "I have yet to broach the subject with Suzaku, I must confess, but I did intend to arrange her enrollment together with my own—provided, of course, that she wished to accompany me."

"Where're we goin'?" Suzaku asked, taking the opportunity to insert herself into the conversation. She shrugged. "Some stuffy old Britannian military academy, then? I guess it'll be interestin' enough even so, if you're there, too…"

Justine turned to her, chuckling. "No, I'm afraid not. We are entering a new age of war, after all; the doctrines of armed conflict are being rewritten as we speak, as the world looks upon the great and terrible engine of war known as Britannia, watching as its newest technology in the form of the Glasgow collapses the once-formidable Japanese armed forces as easily as one might a house of cards.

"Ad Victoriam Military Academy is an institution that has ever prided itself on producing adaptable and unorthodox officers best suited to wielding the bleeding edge of conflict," the princess shrugged with a saucy smirk, purple eyes glittering with the same wickedness that had made her the second person ever to set Suzaku's soul ablaze. "And with their Young Conquerors Program, which purports to exist for the sole and express purpose of casting a select pool of thirteen-year-old applicants—prodigies, really—into the approximate mould of the legendary warlord Alexander of Macedon, I suppose I find myself inclined to assess for myself just how much veracity such bold claims might hold. Does that sound interesting enough to you, my friend?"

Suzaku grinned broadly in response. "Please. If it's even half the place you've just hyped it up to be? Then fuck yeah."

Justine nodded. "It's settled, then."

Izanami-sensei folded her arms across her deceptively ample chest, the subtle shifts of her features indicating consideration. "And are you prepared to do what it takes to excel, not only in a place like that, but on the sorts of battlefields that path will lead you through? To paint your name in blood across the face of the world? I am not a kind teacher, and I will not coddle you. You will suffer, you will toil, and you will bleed before the end. Are you prepared?"

"If I said that I was, my words would be worth less than the wind they took to voice," said Justine. "I cannot truly know I am prepared until I have lived it, and bravado has quite the vivid imagination. But I am willing to do whatever it takes, to complete every trial you may lay before me, or to suffer destruction in the attempt."

"Careful there, girl," Izanami-sensei said, and that bloodthirsty smile curved more harshly in mirth. "This is Hell you're walking into."

"Then it is good that I am a demon, no?" Justine rejoined coolly, and the serene calm of the small, self-assured smile on her face radiated menace as her presence erupted to claw at the physical walls that kept it confined to the gymnasium, so thick and potent that its writhing was almost a palpable sensation.

Izanami-sensei's deathly eyes glittered with bloody desire. She was pleased. "Hmph. Indeed it is…"