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.

16. Danger Zone

Ad Victoriam Military Academy, July, a.t.b. 2012

The midsummer sun beat down in violent waves of heat, the air swimming with distortion and muggy from the previous night's heavy rainfall. The tarmac was hot enough to sear an egg on, but not so hot that rubber and gel were given to so much as budge beneath the intensity, even supporting as they did nearly seven metric tonnes of servomotors and circuitry, all contained in a reinforced tungsten-alloy chassis.

The RPI-13/G Prytwen was a Glasgow variant, and it came with all that that designation entailed. A machine built for recreational use in Knightmare jousting circuits, it was a more fragile machine than that beast of a KMF called the Glasgow, that, even now that it was being steadily phased out in favour of the vastly superior fifth-generation Sutherland model Knightmare Frame, remained for now very much the workhorse of Britannian military power on the world stage. Its armour was flimsier, its weapon compliment vastly less robust, its servomotors weaker and thus further limiting loadouts that could be brought to any joust, and it boasted an overall decrease in combat effectiveness compared to its progenitor that was somewhere on the order of forty percent—with the actual range hovering between thirty-seven and forty-three based on a vast array of possible factors.

The one thing the Prytwen did have on its side, however, was its speed; it was, in fact, much faster and more responsive than the Glasgow with its lighter armour and lesser weight, and though the weaker servos were still an issue that had to be worked around, the fact remained that in terms of the ratio between operational capabilities and actual load, the Prytwen was actually more akin to Sutherland models than the fourth-generation machine it and its brother variants were developed from. This made the Prytwen quite a bit more difficult to operate, such that it required an exponentially greater degree of precision to its increase in speed in terms of handling in order to operate it at maximum effectiveness, but that was all very well and fine; if there could be said to be only one thing at which Justine vi Britannia excelled, it was precision.

The sparring pit they were in was outdoors, an arena of tarmac prepared under the open air; and it was surrounded on all sides by stands for spectators in the form of the other members of the youth program who had likewise elected to have Knightmare Combat added to their course load, so that they could easily watch and learn as practice tilts took place below them. It was half past two in the afternoon, however, and the discomfort was fierce enough to drive said spectators to seek shelter in the shade, making them much more difficult to see from the pit itself. But Justine wouldn't have been looking at them even if they were in the stands, easily visible from where she was; she sat in the cockpit of her machine, dressed in compression shorts and a sleeveless V-necked exercise shirt, both of them black, with her gloved hands wrapped around the control yokes, her skin damp and flushed, perspiring but not heavily, and she did her best to focus all of her attention on what was to come.

Staring out of the screen the cameras showed her, overlaid with data from her factsphere in the head of the machine, she depressed the toggle on one of the yokes that would see her voice broadcast clearly to the other devicer, and indeed any onlookers, and spoke into it. "Are you certain you wish to do this, Force Captain Weinberg? I doubt anyone would think less of you were you to think better of this bout."

"Are you crazy? Of course I am," replied her fellow Force Captain, Gino Weinberg, about whom it was rumoured that he was likely to be inducted into the rolls of the Knights of the Round shortly after he came of age. And because of this, Justine smiled at his eagerness; she'd be lying if she said she hadn't had a desire to take his measure, too. "They say you're a natural in a Knightmare Frame, so you bet your ass I wanna see what you're made of, vi Britannia!"

"The feeling is mutual, Weinberg, I must confess," Justine returned with a hint of joyous laughter in her tone. "But enough talk. Have at you, then~."

In the scant moments before battle was joined, she analysed what she could see about her opponent and the loadout he'd chosen—a Knightmare-sized kite shield held in one hand and a battle-axe in the other, which was most conducive to a defence-heavy method of combat—and compared that with the single sword she'd chosen for herself, a two-handed one that she brought up to hold at an angle above her head, so as to better focus her cutting power. He raised his own shield, too, putting the shoulder of his Prytwen behind the broad span of metal to brace it, his battle-axe held out low and slightly behind him to better punish any move she made that the shield turned aside; and they stood, then, at that stalemate, analysing each other without any intent to go easy or to show mercy, their Knightmares idling as each searched for the opportune moment to make the first strike.

It happened in a flash, then, as a defensive strategy was proved to be, predictably, quite incongruous with her pseudo-cousin-in-law's natural impetuousness; his tires squealed, and the Prytwen shot forth with deft handling, the shield covering the charge and delivering the force of the blow, with all of the Prytwen's momentum behind it.

But Justine's instincts had warned her before he'd even begun to move, as the realisation of what was to come stole upon her with a certainty that would have been startling were she any less used to it. She was already moving, then, as he struck, and when he reached where she would have been before, there was only empty space.

To his credit, Gino recovered almost immediately; but the need to recover had put him on the back foot nonetheless.

The blade of her sword swung down at his exposed side, but in a momentary snap-decision driven, it seemed, by his keen instincts, he caught the blow on the haft of his axe. The servos in his arm squealed in protest, not designed to take the full brunt of a strike like Justine's one-handed, let alone while also having to account for the leverage issue of a hafted weapon, but it bought him enough time for him to send his shield crashing into her, dislodging her from the lock and sending her Prytwen screaming back on the tires of its landspinners.

Turnabout being fair play, he brought his axe in an overhead swing to punish her, but she'd already braced for a reprisal the moment he delivered it, and so she easily caught the hit upon the weak part of her blade, by the haft and not the head, and turned it aside, sliding the haft down to the strong part of her sword where she could wield the leverage to her advantage.

With the axe dealt with, she sent her Knightmare's shoulder surging forth to crash straight into the massive target Gino's raised shield so graciously provided, the clash jarring enough that it set her teeth on edge, and she followed with a strong upswing of her sword, sent the massive axe flying out of his grip, and disarmed him, the momentum sending his Prytwen listing back.

Swiftly, she moved to punish the imbalance, her landspinners squealing with the extra few hundred kilonewtons of force she put behind her following thrust, but Gino wasn't considered a contender for one of the highly-coveted spots in the Rounds because he was handsome, and he proved that in the next instant, righting himself just in time to catch her thrust on his shield, angled away from him to send her careening off-target, thus exposing her chest.

Justine's instincts screamed at her that he was going to fire his magnet harkens next, and in heeding, she had no choice but to send herself screeching into a retreat, accelerating backwards with enough gees to send her intestines flush against her ribs and a strong enough sense of whiplash that she just knew her neck was going to be giving her hell for the next few days. And sure enough, Gino's magnet harkens fired from his Prytwen's chest and dogged her retreat, each pass of them evaded only by the breadth of a hair. "Fuck! Hmph. Clever boy…"

Her opponent didn't stand idle, and instead broke for his axe; another track in her brain had already been running calculations as she gained distance, and now ran them again, so she knew that if she tried to close to prevent him from regaining his weapon, even if she pushed the Prytwen to maximum speed in so doing, all she'd accomplish is leaving herself open for a swift reprisal. Thus, she made no motion towards that end, and instead focused on how she could best position herself for when combat was rejoined; and in the process, she went over what that initial exchange had told her about her fellow force captain.

I can see why they want him in the Rounds. He's very good, she considered, analysing her approach. Would I say he's better than me? At this stage, yes I would—not by very much at all, mind, and most likely not for very much longer; but right now, his superiority in skill is of sufficient magnitude, if only just, that if not for my instincts, he'd have had me dead to rights right there…

Now, having said that, skill isn't everything, and parity in proficiency does not automatically imply a level playing field… Skill is, by its very nature, idiosyncratic, and that renders it prone to exploitation. So the question becomes, she thought further, do I have enough information to snap that skill over my knee…?

Let's find out.

Decision made, she nodded sharply, and raised her two-handed sword once again. The weapon was inert at the moment, but it had another mode entirely, just as Weinberg's chosen axe did. With a deft move of her thumbs, she opened the comms broadcast once again. "Are we ready to kick this up a notch, Gino Weinberg? Or do you want to spend some more time warming up?"

When he responded in the next moment, she could hear the shit-eating grin in his voice as he hefted the axe onto his shoulder, and then raised his shield. "Oh? So the princess wants to play rough, does she?"

The next words to slip free of Justine's mouth were said in a tone so mild that anyone who knew her well enough—such as the other members of her force—would have known to gain some distance, quickly. "Only if you think you can measure up, pretty boy~."

"Ha! Let's do this, then," Weinberg shot back, and with a shift of the air, the head of his axe began to spin up and turn red, the electromagnetic field he'd just powered on using an induction phenomenon to render his weapon capable of biting through another Knightmare's armour. "Try to keep up."

"Oh," Justine said conversationally, her tone even milder as she engaged her own sword, the edges going from dull grey to livid orange. "Trust me when I say I don't foresee that being much of an issue."

The other Prytwen spun up and dashed across the arena to engage, its landspinners sending up sour smoke as it crossed the span of distance. But Justine was ready for him, this time, could see her victory in the next few moments, written in bold across every move and decision he'd make. Instead of leading with his shield again this time, his true attack came from the side, the heated axehead scything through the air; and this time, it was the head and not the haft that made contact.

Yet it was a cold comfort nonetheless; it crashed into the strong part of her sword, induced metal scraping against induced metal in a shower of bitter sparks, and it slid along the edge towards the weak. But Justine was not idle: she used the fact that the shield was directly in the way of her opponent's ability to fire his magnet harkens without disastrous consequences to step into the strike, and while her sword was engaged, she nonetheless brought it up at the same time to smash the pommel into the head of Gino's KMF, crashing through the faceplate and into the sensor array housed within. Having blinded him, she slid her sword free of the lock, completing the parry, and then swung the sword into a rising arc with one hand, then two—sending it careening full force in its descent to bite deep into the right arm, maiming the Knightmare. The axe now useless, and Weinberg now probably desperate to gain distance, she preemptively couched her sword and leaned out of the way of his fired-off magnet harkens, before grabbing hold of the lines as they swiftly retracted, riding them back to him.

In a moment of impulse, he wrestled his shield into place between himself and her charge, clipping his magnet harkens as they retracted in so doing; yet though this sent her flying away from him with the rapid change in vector, she'd already accounted for it, bracing herself in the cockpit and riding it out until Newtonian physics had its due—the suddenness of the application of torque multiplied it several times over the limit of the Prytwen's servos, and the knees, a low priority for reinforcement, gave out.

His Knightmare sent to tip over and crash to the floor of the tarmac, missing half of each leg and all of each landspinner with it, it was child's play for Justine to right herself and come abreast of his downed machine. Her sword still humming with charged heat, she levelled it at the ruined chassis, and engaged her comms broadcast once again. "Do you yield?"

It took a moment, but eventually his cockpit block came open, and his chair slid out, sending him tumbling from it. Distantly, Justine could sympathise: now that the outcome had been decided, she was also quite fatigued, and her lungs burned in protest as they heaved with each new breath. He raised his hands in a universal gesture of surrender as best he could, and Justine let out a sigh of her own. I may have overdone it, just a tad…

Powering down her Prytwen's primary functions, she popped her own cockpit block, and then rode the stirrup down to the ground. Her legs were a little unsteady, her knees protesting quite insistently after having gone through such a harrowing wringer of an experience, but this was her body. If parts of it wished to disobey when she gave them a command, then as far as she was concerned, they would be well-served to seek gainful employment elsewhere. Her gait evened out as she walked (much more quickly than they had after her first time operating a Knightmare for real, which to her meant that she was growing more used to the physically demanding nature of it), and by the time she reached Gino, who had managed to go from being splayed on the back of his Prytwen to collapsing in a heap against the side of it, sucking in breaths to a point that implied an insufficient level of cardiovascular and respiratory conditioning, she at the very least looked like she was fighting fit, standing in front of him with her arms crossed beneath her increasingly heavy chest. "You need a hand there, Weinberg?"

He looked up at her for a few moments, uncomprehending, and then once the light of recognition at last sprang to his eyes, he nodded firmly. "Yeah… Yeah, I'd say I do…"

Smiling at him cordially, she leaned over and offered her arm; and when he grabbed it, she wasted no time before hauling the blond to his feet. He was a few inches taller than her, with golden hair that he'd styled mostly into spikes, but also partly into a braid that hung over his shoulder; his bright blue eyes were paired well with his boyish features, his sun-kissed skin, and his overall amiably casual disposition: though she felt no attraction, she at least had to acknowledge that, on an aesthetic level, he was very much what some would call 'classically handsome.' "You performed very well, Gino Weinberg. I'm impressed."

"Do you do that with everyone?" he asked with a bemused smirk. "That whole 'forename, surname' business?"

"Only with people I don't know," Justine replied wryly, coming to the conclusion that he was really just an easy person to like.

"Well, let's change that," he replied with a shake of his head. "The name's Gino."

"Then I should think I'd be remiss were I not to respond in kind," Justine mused, assessing the state of him, then taking her hand back. He could stand well enough on his own now, she judged. "Justine."

"Nice to meet ya properly, Justine," Gino said without missing a beat.

"Likewise, Gino," said Justine in turn. "And…sorry about the Knightmare…"

The sunny smile eased off of Gino's face, and he turned to take in the wreckage of the Prytwen with an understandable flinch. "Ah… I suppose that's kinda just the sort of risk you gotta accept when fighting the second coming of the Azure Comet…"

Justine's smile was pained—half a grimace, really. "Gino—and I say this with all due respect, you must understand—while I appreciate the compliment in the spirit in which it was delivered, and possess no reason to suspect malicious intentions from you…if we could avoid comparisons to my late mother, I'd appreciate it greatly. I should think I would much rather be the first coming of myself than the second of a woman with whose person and legacy I have a…complicated relationship, shall we say?"

Confusion saw Gino's blond brow furrowed for a moment, and Justine watched his knowledge of the nature of the Imperial Family slip from the recesses of memory and into the forefront of his awareness. "Oh. Oh! Oh, sure thing! Sorry about that…"

Justine held up a hand and shook her head, once, and quite sharply. "It's not a bother, really, just…I ask only that you endeavour to keep it in mind henceforth."

"I'll do my best," the boy replied cheerily.

Justine smiled at him again, and it was softer this time. "That's all I can ask for. Thank you."

A strong arm corded with lean muscle bound up in sun-kissed skin informed Justine that their time of relative rapprochement had come to an end long before her best friend could manage to open her mouth. "Heya, Weinberg! Gotta say, if your handlin's always that smooth and not a little somethin' extra that little Miss Sourpuss here managed to pull outta ya, I'm gonna have to start callin' ya Twinkletoes."

And Justine, without a moment's hesitation or any sort of overt reaction, corrected, "That's Force Captain Sourpuss to you, dearest adjutant."

"This formality you insist upon drives a dagger fresh into my heart with every silvered-o'er word, o captain my captain," Suzaku shot back without a hint of sincerity. "Truly, I think I must retreat into solitude and obscurity that I might nurse these fresh hurts thou hast inflicted upon mine most afflicted spirit."

"Would that such would spare me your incessant nattering, but alas—here we stand," Justine sighed with a faux-exasperated expression, and then a wry smirk.

"Eh, you love me," she countered easily. "Whatever would you do without me to keep you on your toes, right and proper?"

"Err…not to be that guy, but are you two like…" Gino interrupted with an expression of profound discomfort, while gesturing vaguely with his hands. "…A thing?"

Justine very nearly recoiled with laughter. "What, you mean Suzaku and myself? Oh, good gods no. She and I, we're just friends."

"The very best of friends," Suzaku added.

"Bosom companions, really," remarked Justine.

"Well, I dunno about that," the brawnier girl commented.

Justine didn't even try to suppress her sigh. "For the last time, Suzaku, we are the same size."

"Yeah, but you're shorter than me, so they look, like, way bigger on you…"

Someone coughed politely by the side, and pulled the pair of them out of their bantering to see that their classmates had gathered around them and the wreckage while they spoke. The person in question was none other than Elizabeth Bernadotte herself, the violette's small mouth curled into a knowing half-smile. Justine didn't miss the look of relieved gratitude Gino not-so-subtly sent the way of her force member and dedicated sharpshooter, but she elected to move past it; and in so doing, she noticed that their instructor was nowhere to be found at the moment. Curious…

"Elizabeth," Justine greeted calmly, gathering the comforting shroud of absolute self-control about herself over the course of that single word. Then she turned her head and regarded the other who'd given her leave to address her with a degree of informality, one of the remaining three of her subordinates who had been assigned to the same twenty-student class block as her. "Odette. Ladies Vergamon and Soresi. I'm afraid I don't see Professor Ridden anywhere among us…"

"Professor Ridden said he'd have to go make arrangements to have a custodian come and haul the Prytwen off to the garage for repairs," Elizabeth informed her succinctly. "We were told to await him in the pit, as we currently are."

"Johnny-boy ran off to get his gun, did he?" came an insufferable drawl of a voice. "Well then, isn't this just my lucky day? Wanted to have a little talk with you brats myself, anyways, and Johnny, well…he's a bit of a buzz-kill…"

Or perhaps you are merely a scoundrel… Justine thought with an idle sort of venom. She turned on her heel, then, and came face-to-face with the mulleted, weasel-faced lowlife who was swaggering towards them from the other end of the arena, a smile he likely thought was sly but instead came across as sleazy on his smug face, while his white Rounds uniform and bright orange cape were eye-searing in the full force of the midsummer sun. "Lord Bradley. This is an unexpected surprise."

"So, even the half-breed of the Imperial Family knows who I am. Guess I should be flattered," said the man they called the Vampire of Britannia with an insolent smirk.

"Six out of ten—derivative and uninspired," Justine replied calmly, and she wouldn't deign to even acknowledge the brazen insult as bait. "You'll have to do a bit better than that, Lord Bradley. I shouldn't imagine that I'll be inclined to be so generous with my grading a second time."

The Knight of Ten's purple eyes flared with sudden, poisonous fury, but Justine was unmoved, and instead regarded him as the lowly insect he was. Oh, she knew he was well-used to looks of revulsion, and indeed overt disgust, from his fellows in the order, and indeed he basked in them, as swine might in shit; but it seemed that all that Justine would give him was the one reaction that actually wounded his ego:

Dismissal.

"Was there aught you came to address, Lord Bradley?" she asked, cutting him off as he opened his mouth to speak anew. "Or are you simply lingering here for the sole purpose of bandying idle words about, like some gormless lackwit?"

Bradley's jaw clenched in anger, and she could even see an errant vein throbbing in his temple; but he remembered himself, and managed to successfully pull himself back into his smarmy affect, if only just. "I heard that Lord Weinberg here was going to be facing off against the Commoner Princess in a bout, and then again for the upcoming 'mock battle.' And since I'm tasked with assessing him, I figured that it'd be a great idea to come watch him wipe the floor with you. You can imagine my disappointment with the result, I trust."

"Oh, trust me, Lord Bradley, it really isn't too terribly difficult to imagine what passes through that eyesore you call a head," Justine assured him coolly. "Though I suppose I very much can applaud the show of fraternity, of making common cause with a future brother-in-arms—if only that much."

She watched his eyes widen again, taking some mild amusement from how he reacted whenever she showed him the bars on his cage, and shook it a little; she could see his arrogance recoiling, sense his lust for her murder, to wring her throat and rip out her gorge with his teeth, and there was a sort of pleasure in seeing, too, the knowledge of his own impotence creeping in at the edges. She was only dimly aware of the audience, a distant thing for the moment, but even were they not there and she was alone with this man, perhaps with only Suzaku as her company, she remained a princess of the realm, and that meant he could not raise a hand against her without risking its loss.

But she didn't miss how his eyes gave a nasty sort of glitter as he seized upon an idea.

"You're quite correct, your highness," he replied, stepping back with a mocking half-bow. "And in that same spirit of fraternity, I'd advise you keep your pet savage on a shorter leash, lest it get too familiar and forget its place. Animals like Elevens are so hard to control in the hands of an inexperienced handler, after all, and it would be a loss for the realm if it slipped free and did Lord Weinberg some injury."

Wretched creature that he may be, he does possess a certain low cunning, Justine mused as her eyes narrowed dangerously. Going after Suzaku to either get me into a position where he thinks he can harm me in a duel, or leave me looking as though I am unwilling to protect my own when it proves too inconvenient. Well-played, Lord Bradley, well played…

Still, if you insist on forcing my hand, then by all the gods, I will teach you to fear it.

"Kururugi Suzaku is a ward of the vi Britannia line," said Justine, tilting her head as though he were a particularly obtuse specimen. "And an insult to her is therefore an insult to me and my person, and indeed to all those who bear my name. Such an offence, once given, must for the sake of honour be redressed. I'm sure you understand."

"Are you threatening me, half-breed?" Bradley asked, his mouth shifting into a twisted grin. "I am a Knight of the Round…"

"And you think that puts you beyond reprisal?" Justine inquired rhetorically, with an incredulous cocking of her brow and a mirthless chuckle. "Oh, Lord Bradley, someone really must sit you down one of these days and explain to you, in excruciating detail, the finer points of civil conduct. You see, while you, a Knight of the Round, might be able to give insult without consequence amongst the preponderance of the peerage, such impunity simply does not apply when a prince or princess of the realm is a plaintiff, no more than it would restrict His Majesty's prerogative to likewise seek redress. Do you understand, Lord Bradley, or must I use smaller words?"

His eyes narrowed at her, his gloved hands clenching into a fist so tight it trembled. "Fine then. I'll get to gut you either way."

"As a princess of the realm," Justine countered, a sharp, bloodletting smile cresting upon her face in full flourish as she continued, "I am, you see, obliged to anoint a champion for the settling of a duel—royal blood being, of course, far too precious to see spilt over a simple disagreement or punitive action. And to that end, I shall select none other than my capable ward, Kururugi Suzaku—provided, of course, she is willing to consent to the execution of such a solemn duty."

"You're going to send your Eleven pup, against me?!" Bradley burst out, in equal parts incredulity and indignation.

"Trust me, Lucy-Goosey, I wouldn't even need to break a sweat to wipe the floor with the likes of you," said Suzaku, her tone as gravely severe as it was matter-of-fact. "I know this is probably impossible, but you could at least try not to bore me half to death before we even get into the ring."

Bradley, looking from one to the other and seeing that both were absolutely serious, barked a laugh, and nodded. "Fine. It'll be a great opportunity to put you both in your place, and take from you what is most precious. Do you even know, Eleven, what people value most? The answer is their lives, of course!"

"A pedestrian answer to a trite question," Justine remarked off-handedly. "But then, I don't suppose I expected much better out of you, Lord Bradley. The duel shall occur at half-noon on the morrow. Do take care to be there, lest others be given to thinking you craven."

Bradley opened his mouth to spit more poison, but another male voice prevented him from voicing it: "I thought I told you once already, Bradley—Knight of the Round or not, I won't have you harassing my students during teaching hours."

The Knight of Ten might have conceded the point and made his exit when John Ridden, a baronet, a decorated combat veteran with friends in high places, and the Youthful Conquerors' Program's Professor of Mechanised Infantry (otherwise known as Knightmare Combat) politely but firmly told him to leave. But it seemed as though his sense of self-importance had already been too thoroughly tested by both Justine and Suzaku for him to think of backing down, and so instead, he squared his shoulders and pivoted to face the professor as he walked onto the tarmac from the same threshold that Bradley had crossed, and spat at him, "You do not command me, Ridden."

"Perhaps not," Professor Ridden conceded, his tousled blond hair and piercing blue eyes seeming to radiate an easy sort of confidence that the well-built athleticism of his body, noticeably bulkier even than Jeremiah's as it was, seemed purposefully curated to back up. "But what about Lord Waldstein? He and I go way back, Bradley, you know that. Hell, we don't even need to involve him—you might have the cape and the uniform, sure, and I'm sure as shit older than I used to be, but make no mistake: I've folded punks like you before. It took all the effort of shuffling a deck of cards, and I don't really mind doing it again. Have I made myself clear?"

"…Transparent," Bradley said through gritted teeth, and he began to walk towards the exit without any further comment, brushing past Professor Ridden quite rudely in the process.

When he was gone, Ridden turned back to the students, Justine and Suzaku included, and let out a heavy sigh. "Alright, class. Where were we…?"

---

The day of the duel was considerably milder than the one before; it was a shift that brought with it a promise of torrential rain that would turn class-time into a dreary rush from building to building in an effort to remain punctual. The air was crisp and clear, and though not particularly cool, it remained quite a sight more comfortable for the relative lack of humidity; and this brought the students out in droves during what was meant to be the lunch hour, to watch the duel between one of the Knights of the Round and one of their own classmates as it brewed.

Luciano Bradley was there already, having been himself probably more on time to this duel than he had been to the past few meetings of his order. Gone was his cape, and instead in his hand there rested his weapon of choice, a masterwork of an estoc, forged from live steel and sharpened to a razor's edge. As he waited, he tested its balance, swung it around, performed a few parlour tricks with it that were meant more as a demonstration of dexterity than anything with any sort of true menace; yet it was when the clock-tower tolled the hour of twelve, and not a moment before, that the other side of the duelling ring parted to admit none other than Force Captain Justine vi Britannia, and her adjutant, Kururugi Suzaku.

Sif Blaiddyd, while a member of the team that answered to the princess in question—the 'Royal Force', as some had begun calling it with some level of derision (something she learned after her twin sister Brynhildr's slip of the tongue the last time they had an opportunity to talk to each other)—at least on paper, would be one of the first to admit she didn't really know the girl she was taking orders from all that well. And though she admitted to a profound distaste for politics, she could still acknowledge that Yen had been very right to scolded her for her indolence in that regard; her lover's point that it was a bad plan for Sif to leave her scholastic career, together with her prospects for a future commission in the army, and with it an ascension from out the pit of destitution for all three of them, in the hands of someone she didn't know nor made an effort to know, was one that was well-founded and well-taken. That advice, she mused, was one of the reasons she was glad to have Yennefer here alongside her. She was good at these things, had a head for them in a way that she personally felt she could never hope to be—at least not without taking on a fair bit of misery when it came to the nuanced particulars of her personal life—and not for the first time, Sif considered how she might manage without Yen and her sensible mind, only to come up blank.

But her goal had then become to get to know the girl who more or less controlled what remained of her fortunes and prospects, and while she'd been at a loss before now, this duel, between the princess, using her best friend as a champion (their easy sort of camaraderie, as she and Yen had witnessed after the better part of two months living in the same dorm building as the unlikely pair, was equal parts obviously genuine and also moderately unnerving), and the Knight of Ten—Ser Luciano Bradley, the one whom they called the 'Vampire of Britannia', whose unpleasant reputation was so famous that even Sif had heard more of it than she'd ever thought she might need to know. While Sif had always had…difficulties with connecting to others—which admittedly threw a wrench into her stated mission to get more closely acquainted with the enigma that was Justine vi Britannia, practically from the word 'go'—fighting was something she knew. She didn't choose that longsword she brought during the first mock-battle as a fashion statement; it was her solace, in many ways, and if she was feeling particularly sentimental, she imagined that she might even go so far as to call it a passion.

All of this to say that she knew how to pick up on what someone left out there on the field, how to pick the very idea of a person up from those moments of flashing blades and singing steel like a puzzle box and how to turn it around to pick it apart, and eventually unravel its secrets. And while the princess wasn't going to be taking the field today herself, Sif had a hunch, an instinct that she was inclined to heed, that unravelling the quagmire that was one of the two friends would make deciphering the riddle that was the other a significantly simpler task.

The arena they'd chosen, located in the middle of the central quad, which was itself surrounded by the buildings in which all the courses that could be held in a classroom setting were conducted, was a plaza of bluish granite, recessed about forty-five centimetres into the sod-laden ground, with steps leading down into it from all four cardinal directions. A minor crowd had gathered around to watch (which Sif had to guess might as well get bumped up to 'major', since as few as twenty onlookers already accounted for a full fifth of the student body of the youth program), and she'd gone to some lengths to ensure that she could ensure having a clear spot in the front row, with a reasonably unobstructed line of sight; so she could clearly see how Justine vi Britannia had gone with her usual uniform, as pristine and immaculate as ever, in contrast to the open coat and unbuttoned collar Suzaku wore like armour, her face a mask of flippant provocation and contempt.

And of course, it didn't take very long at all for the mulleted man with a face like a grinning skull to think of something snide to say.

"So the beast and its tamer have chosen to show themselves at long last!" Bradley drawled in open and derisive mockery. "I have to say, your highness, I'd half thought you'd grown some semblance of sense and decided not to risk your pet. And while that would've been smart of you, there aren't words to express how happy I am that you didn't…"

The force captain didn't say a word—and indeed, she didn't have to. Sif might not have been as familiar with her as Odette or Elizabeth had become, or even Hecate, but she knew enough of her tells and her moods just through sheer force of osmosis to begin to feel a sensation of mortal dread crawling its way up her spine from the sight of the expression alone.

Suzaku, on the other hand, was inclined to no such aloof silence. "Gotta say, Lucy-Goosey, if your skill with a sword is as piss-weak as your trash-talk, this's gonna wind up being even more boring than I thought. Now are you gonna put up, or are you gonna shut up?"

Bradley's cheeks flushed, and he scowled murderously, ceasing the purposeless twirling of the estoc and bringing it to bear in an engarde stance. "Do you even have a weapon, Eleven filth?"

To that, the adjutant grinned broadly, a toothy, feral thing that radiated a fierce sort of savagery that defied succinct description. "Bet your fuckin' ass I do. Justine?"

Rolling her eyes with a fond half-smile, the princess stepped forward—she has a sword of her own at her hip, Sif couldn't help but notice, catching the fine yet unadorned elegance of the curving sword at the force captain's belt. It's one of those cool-looking swords from the Orient, but she looks to be wearing it almost like it's a cavalry sabre—as she held out another similar weapon to her adjutant. It was different, though, and it took Sif a moment to notice the princess had been wearing it at her hip in the opposite manner to the one she kept at her side, as she tossed it underhand to her friend and champion, who wasted no time at all in snatching it out of the air. Her tanned fingers wrapped around the ribbon-wrapped hilt, and dragged the glinting slash of silvery metal out of its lacquered scabbard, tossing said scabbard back to her friend before turning the blade in Bradley's direction, though her attention returned to the force captain. "Eh. I feel like one-handed should be enough to deal with this loss. Whaddya think, Justine? One-handed?"

"One-handed should be more than enough," the princess agreed. "But keep the option open in case of trickery."

Suzaku replied with an unladylike snort, and an incredulous toss of her head. "Please."

It seemed that that was the thing that did it for Bradley; Sif blinked, and Bradley had crossed the space between himself and the adjutant's undefended flank, his estoc lashing out with blinding speed.

A harsh, but resounding clash of metal-on-metal heralded the first exchange of the duel.

Sif blinked again, incredulous, but several other onlookers had frozen with their jaws agape, having dropped them and then been caught mid-gasp—Luciano Bradley's first strike, caught firmly in a backhand parry, the adjutant's grip not wavering even slightly as the Knight of the Round tried to power through her parry to finish his blow, whether to kill or to maim.

Suzaku, however, merely turned to him, a raised eyebrow and a scandalised expression the only sort of overt reaction she offered. "Ugh. Rude much?"

She pushed free of the blade-lock, and though Bradley was too skilled to be thrown off-balance by that, the fact remained that he had been forced into a retreat off of his initial attack.

"I was talking to my BFF there, you prick," Suzaku complained as she moved with an unmistakably casual ease out of the follow-through, and returned the point of the cutting blade to Ser Luciano. "Honestly. You pushy guys never fail to be a pain in my ass, you know that? Didn't whichever washed-up bitch that pushed you out her cooch ever teach you to wait your fuckin' turn?"

"You've got a hell of a mouth on you, Eleven," Bradley spat. "Can't imagine it'll be able to make as many sounds without a tongue."

"Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah, how about you take all your limp-dick threats and shove 'em up your ass, 'kay?" sighed Suzaku, rolling her eyes. "They'll do a lot more good stuffed up there than coming out your face-hole, I'll say that for damn sure. Now, can we get on with this sad excuse for a fight yet? Or do I have to keep listening to your annoyin' yappin'?"

Bradley didn't respond to that, bringing his estoc to bear once more.

Suzaku grinned, feral, toothy, and shark-like, slipping into a lower, much more firm stance, her lean and muscled frame coiled tight about her centre of gravity. "Now we're talkin'…"

The moment drew out like a knife, tension winding tighter and tighter, until it snapped.

Both sprung forth almost simultaneously: Bradley slashed high, Suzaku leaned back under it, and as she rose, so too did her curved eastern sword, and only the Knight of Ten's exceptional reflexes let him use the backswing as an improvised parry at the last second. But the parry's improvised nature left it weak, and against the strength of Suzaku's single-handed grip, it was nothing more than a liability, so he disengaged, and both of them took a step back, not exchanging a single word before they began to circle each other like skulking sharks.

The next few moments saw them exchanging probing strikes, committing to nothing as each began to feel the other out. Sif, watching this, knew, in that moment, that what she was watching was not one, but two experienced killers taking each other's measure. And while Suzaku's grin had subsided, it was only slightly so, the open glee replaced with an anticipatory giddiness that was unsettlingly carefree; Sif had no way of knowing who Suzaku had killed, only that she had, and that she took a certain joy in the act—not in the murder portion, the white-haired girl could gather that much, but fighting seemed to bring the adjutant to blazing life like nothing else Sif had ever seen.

"You've got good footwork, for an animal," said Bradley.

"And you're a lot more charmin' when you're not runnin' your mouth," Suzaku returned, without missing so much as a beat. "You gonna show me a good time, or…?"

Bradley struck out, feinting for the left with his estoc and then going for Suzaku's head, but she saw right through it, leaning out of the way of the cut coming for her face and using her single-edged sword to knock his blade further off of its course; the Knight of Ten, to his credit, reacted immediately, and drew his sword back, surging forth to bash Suzaku in the face with his pommel.

And yet, it was not to be; the Eleven girl's off-hand grabbed his wrist and yanked him forward off of his balance, before she dropped lower and drove her elbow into his solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him and sending him reeling.

She's still playing with him, Sif assessed, as she watched Suzaku's small smile shift into a frown as the altercation continued. To what end, I truly don't know, but she could have ended it right there and is instead drawing this out. What is she looking for that she's this bored…?

Suzaku pressed her advantage, swinging her sword with a ruinous overhead that clashed with the estoc deafeningly, the Knight of Ten's arm wavering while the adjutant's held firm. Flexing a bit, she pushed the lock, forcing the Vampire of Britannia back a step, and looking on, Sif was suddenly struck with an impression of a young child, their cruelty devoid of malice but nevertheless present, prodding at a rat with sharp objects to try and make it twitch in an interesting way. It was playing to provoke some kind of reaction, any kind ofreaction, and she understood in that moment that Kururugi Suzaku would be just as overjoyed to have the subject snarl and claw at her face as she would to have it plea for mercy.

And yet for all that Luciano Bradley might have been the most reviled of the Knights of the Round, he remained one nonetheless. He disengaged the blade lock and sacrificed some measure of distance so that he could shore up his footing and calm his breathing; when he'd regained his composure, he shifted into a more defensive stance, seemingly having learned that aggression wasn't going to gain him anything here.

"Finally," Suzaku sighed like it was an oath. "I was wonderin' when you'd bother to get serious."

No sooner had those words left her mouth than did she spring into action once again, her lean body like a panther with its swift strength. Fourfold was the series of blows she rained upon her opponent, with Bradley's impeccable defence fending off each and every one; threefold was the chain he gave in answer, each one a picture of refined fencing technique that risked only the absolute minimum, and even that much only begrudgingly. At last, they exchanged four blows, five, six, with Bradley increasingly desperate in his quest to find holes to punch in Suzaku's deceptively carefree defence—but each attempt was in vain, and it availed him naught.

Cutting his losses, he retreated, and Suzaku obliged in kind, giving ground, the gesture a mockery of his sword's inability to reach her in and of itself.

"You know your fundamentals," remarked Suzaku.

"You've played with your food quite enough for now, Suzaku," Force Captain Justine called out to her friend from the sidelines. "For Hell's sake, just finish it."

"Fine… But you owe me!" Suzaku called back, exasperated.

"You know I wouldn't dream otherwise," their commander called back to the Eleven, and Bradley's expression was every bit as baffled as Sif felt at the substance of the friendly exchange.

"Well, sorry to cut this short, Lucy-Goosey, but I've got my marching orders," Suzaku sighed.

Bradley's baffled expression twisted into a snarling rictus of indignant fury. "Don't be so fucking arrogant, you lowly Eleven—!"

And like that, it was over.

At the other end of the impromptu arena, Kururugi Suzaku stepped away from the follow-through, and with a flourish, she slashed her blade out to the side, flicking ribbons of vivid crimson away from the silvery metal, before beginning a somewhat involved sheathing ritual.

Sif blinked twice, beyond stunned. "I didn't even see her move…"

The Knight of Ten's wretched cry startled her, and indeed everyone else around her who were by the sudden movement struck dumb, and Sif swung her gaze to behold Luciano Bradley, now having fallen to his knees where he stood, his black glove stained with the blood that flowed from his face as his sword fell to the stone in a clatter beside him, forgotten. "AAAAGH!"

Suzaku stepped away, and as she did so, the princess stepped forth, each of her strides a measured and composed study in wasteless elegance. She didn't so much as flinch at Ser Luciano's pained cries, not a single emotion displayed on her face beyond a calm, vacant smile, its glacial serenity provoking a profound sense of dread from deep within Sif's more animal self, where instincts and impulses older than the written word lingered still from bygone days. Bradley, noticing her in the throes of his pain, scrambled away, leaving the attempt to cover his wound forgotten—a clean cut, his eye split in two, someone fainted in the background and Sif couldn't really blame them—but the princess was having none of it, closing upon him and kneeling to look him directly in the face.

With her gloved hands, she seized both sides of his head and held it in place, tutting chidingly and rubbing her thumbs in half-circles in a cruel mockery of intimacy, before leaning in further. And though she did not doubt that others across the arena wouldn't be able to make out what the princess said, Sif's hearing had always been much sharper than that of her peers, and so she heard the words the princess muttered to Ser Luciano as clearly as if they had been spoken directly into her own ears:

"You know, you really should be grateful, Lord Bradley. Rest assured that had I been the one to face you—to cross blades with you—it would not have been your eye that I took, but your heart. My advice? Make an effort to remember that in the future."

One of her hands left his cheek, and gave his chest an otherwise playful flick—right above where his black heart would be, Sif couldn't help but notice—and stepped away, turning with a sharp pivot on her heel in a flourish that sent her shoulder-cape fluttering and discarded the Vampire of Britannia as only so much refuse. "Lord Bradley is in dire need of medical attention. Someone please send a runner to the infirmary with all possible haste. And Sif!"

Sif's back went ramrod-straight before she could begin to fully process the address.

The princess met her golden eyes, the deathly silent serenity gone from that amethyst gaze in favour of a sharp light dancing in her piercing violet stare. "Yennefer has been asking after you. I suggest you go find her, and see what she wants."

The sudden banality of the statement took Sif quite thoroughly off-guard, and she found herself nodding for lack of any other sort of pithy response to give in turn. Then, Justine vi Britannia turned away once again, and left Sif behind, with both her chosen adjutant and Odette Rochefort in tow, striking up a conversation amongst themselves as though nothing of any significance had just transpired.

And through all of this, only one question rang aloud in Sif's brain, lingering insistently in her ear:

Just what exactly are you, Princess Justine…?

---

"Hello? Earth to Gino? Is there anyone in there?"

Gino Weinberg blinked his way out of his daze, only to have his heart leap into his throat at the pink eyes of his adjutant dominating his vision. "Jeez, Anya, don't do that! Nearly gave me a heart attack…"

His adjutant and childhood friend, Anya Alstreim, shrugged noncommittally, but retreated out of his face to give him space all the same, taking a step or two back. Gino took a moment to suck in a few deep breaths, doing his best to calm the percussive thudding of his heart in his ears at the shock, and when he at last managed to recover his composure, he looked over his second critically. "What do you want?"

"Nothing much," Anya replied, the delicate features of her beautiful porcelain-doll face as deadpan and unmoved as ever, her cotton candy-pink hair mostly pulled back from her face into a high ponytail that swayed and shook as she moved. "I just think it'd be awfully bad for morale for our glorious leader to psych himself out right before our battle against the Royal Force. That's all."

Gino barked out a harsh chuckle, leaning back against his Prytwen's leg behind him as Anya did the same to hers, right next to his own. "This isn't going to be easy. The princess likes to play rough."

"Yeah, and I'm sure her mercilessness had nothing to do with you antagonising her," Anya snarked back at him. "Absolutely nothing at all. Yep. It's in no way even remotely possible that there's a pattern to the people who see her bad side. Such sagacious and wise insight."

"'Antagonise'?" Gino asked, his blond brow furrowing in confusion.

The petite young noblewoman rolled her eyes and sighed. "Yes, Gino. Or did you not notice that she didn't go full psycho-bitch-mode on you until you called her 'princess'?"

"I—"

"Anyway," Anya cut him off smoothly. "Yeah, you've fought her before, but I wouldn't count on us having seen everything she's got up her sleeve, not even close."

"She's a talented devicer, that's for sure," Gino admitted, cringing internally at the recollection of what it had been like to spar with her a week ago.

"Since I know you didn't bother to look up the after-action report," Anya said casually, pulling out a compact mirror and using it to scrutinise and adjust her appearance (more so that she had something to do with her hands since she was trying to break the habit of wringing them when they were idle for too long) as she spoke, "I'll tell you to watch out for her sharpshooter, Bernadotte. Firing from half a klick away and she was dead-on. If I'm the princess, I'm setting her way away from the fight to pick my opponents apart at her leisure."

"Noted," Gino agreed with a nod. "But likewise, she didn't see everything I could do, either."

"If you manage to take her out, yeah, you deal a big blow to her ability to coordinate her people," Anya acknowledged, before staring at him over the edge of her compact mirror as she continued to speak. "But that's a big 'if,' Gino. I don't know if it's one worth staking the outcome of the battle over."

"You're no slouch yourself," he replied, giving a shrug of his own. "And you're really the brains of the operation, anyways. If I go down, you can more than pick up the slack."

"Maybe," Anya bit out, snapping the compact closed. "But then, I'd also really rather not wind up having to find out, if it's all the same to you, Ginny."

Gino scowled. "You know I hate that nickname…"

"Cry me a river," she replied flatly. "We're out of time anyways. Gotta mount up."

Looking down at the watch on his wrist, which he'd strapped on over the sleeve of his normal suit, he grimaced. "Shit, you're right."

"I tend to be," noted Anya. "Stay safe out there, and watch your six, okay?"

"You too," he agreed, and then felt his brow climb halfway to his hairline at the compact mirror's sudden and conspicuous absence. "Where'd you put the little mirror-thing? I know these things don't have pockets…"

She shrugged with a sly smile, her own normal suit little more than a glorified leotard, especially in comparison to his jumpsuit configuration (and he had to wonder exactly who the overpaid idiot had been who'd made the decision that normal suits of all things ought to be gendered), and instead of giving him an answer worthy of the name, she said only: "A lady has to have her secrets, Ginny."

"Whatever you say, Annie," Gino replied in kind.

She made an obscene gesture in his direction, and he did the same back, both of them struggling not to grin at each other outright in the process. In lock-step, they each put one foot into the stirrup, and rode the winch up to the cockpit block. They took their seats, and slid into the controls of the Knightmares, both of them having grown used to the darkness that swallowed them as they descended.

Palming his key (which was really just a glorified USB stick, honestly), he inserted it into the port and mouthed the passcode for his assigned Prytwen—this one being for mock-battles, and unlike the ones for sparring, passcode-protected in order to prevent cheating via sabotage—under his breath as he struggled to commit the eight-character sequence to memory. "A-L-B-3-Q-W-P-N… Got it."

The machine hummed to life all around him as the Yggdrasil Drive began to spin up, his factsphere sensor going through its automated calibration routine as it opened and took its initial preliminary readings of the area around the unit. His gloved hands closing around the control yokes, Gino coaxed his Prytwen out of its kneeling rest, his handling careful but sure, and he checked the displays around the cockpit for the loadout he'd selected for today, making certain everything was in order for the battle ahead. The weapons he'd chosen for the sparring match, the axe and shield, were far from his best choices, but he knew enough about their use to draw out and get a handle on how Justine vi Britannia piloted—precision and daring in equal parts, with a flawless capacity to make snap-decisions and adapt to changing situations from moment to moment, which made her an unholy nightmare to joust against, but nevertheless one he was confident of his ability to at least stall out of the battle, to demand her attention if not her defeat.

He wasn't at his most proficient with the axe and shield. But with a spear in hand?

With a spear in hand, he was playing for keeps.

"Alright, you lot," he said into the comms, addressing all nine of the other members of his force. "You know the drill. Anya's got full operational command, so when she tells you to do something, make sure you listen, okay? I'll be out hunting, as usual…"

"You heard the man," crowed one of his subordinates, whose name he recalled to be Andrew Revil, in a tone that made it clear the humour was good-natured. "Let the future Knight of the Round do his thing. The Little Lady'll make sure we get through this in one piece."

"The Royal Force won't know what's hit 'em!" enthused another, whose voice Gino recognised as a girl named Leonine Ortega, from a noble family of Area Three.

"Appreciate the vote of confidence, you all," Gino replied genuinely. "Stay safe out there!"

"Yes, sir!" returned eight voices in unison.

Gino tuned Anya out as she took command of the other eight, calming himself and focusing on what was to come. His adjutant would surely bark in his ear if he was actually needed elsewhere—but right then in the meantime, his job was only to do what he did best:

Use his Knightmare Frame to wreak havoc upon the enemy.

The rumble of his landspinners roaring to life filled his ears and rattled comfortingly deep into his bones; without further ado, he was off, grinning in exhilarated joy as he picked up speed and tore across the battlefield fast enough to nearly flatten him against his seat. The childlike glee of being so free filled him with a bubbling feeling that materialised as a cackling, whooping laugh as he pushed the Knightmare to its top speed, only pulling to a stop when he found a raised vantage point—a cliff face, albeit an artificial one as with all the other features of these prepared battlefields—and deployed his factsphere again, seeking out enemy contacts.

"Anya seems to have things pretty well in hand so far," he muttered to himself, taking in his allies' position. "Still, I wonder where that sniper lady she warned me about might be…"

As if on cue, a gunshot rang out, crisp and clear, but echoing around the terrain so much that it was practically impossible to get a clear idea of where it'd come from—and the factsphere picked up one of his own crashing to the ground in the middle of one of the wooded areas, the Prytwen's leg sheared clean off at the knee.

"…Well then," he remarked, wincing in sympathy. "She certainly doesn't play around… And she hit that through the trees, no less…"

With the battlefield data gathered, Gino fixated on a trio of Prytwens travelling in a loose formation towards the startled members of his own team, having chosen his target. And if I can draw some of Sniper Lady's fire, so much the better…

His course decided, he sped from the vantage point before his presence there drew the notice of said sharpshooter, and tore through the grass and woodlands of the battleground in search of the trio. And it was a flash of a momentary instinct that saw him veer off-course with a lurching shift that set his jaw clenching in a painful grimace as the surging gees lifted his stomach into his throat, narrowly-avoiding a pair of magnet harkens that slammed into where he would have been the very next moment, without a doubt in his mind. Which means, of course, that this can only be…

"Fancy meeting you here, pretty boy," came the smooth, silky feminine tones of Justine vi Britannia herself, whose Prytwen was customised with an unmistakable shimmering black-and-gold colour scheme, a few accents of livid scarlet completing the unit's striking appearance. He noted with some humour that he hadn't been the only one to pick a weapon other than his preferred for their sparring match, as he took in the Knightmare-sized tachi attached to her KMF's hip. "What brings you to my neck of the woods, hmm?"

"Hah," he chuckled, righting his own unit, which was, of course, similarly customised in pure white and rich blue, accentuated further with crimson. "This must be my lucky day. You're just the person I was hoping to meet…"

"…You're not the one in command, then," concluded the princess, quickly enough and with enough certainty that Gino could only blink dumbly in response at first. "I'd suspected, of course, but it's nice to be proven correct, all the same. Which means that you're here because you think you can at least stall me for long enough for your adjutant to do the heavy lifting for you. The Alstreim heiress, correct?"

Gino, for once, elected to keep his big mouth shut.

"Well, if you think you're up to it, I suppose I could deign to oblige your desire for a rematch," the princess offered up teasingly.

"Sorry to interrupt," came the interjection of another, her sound noticeably rougher and more brash than the princess's, a wildness lacing every syllable that Gino recognised as the defining trait of Kururugi Suzaku's voice. "But would y'all mind too terribly if I cut in?"

The Eleven girl's Prytwen came forth, its colour scheme an obvious and intentional contrast to her best friend's, with pure white supplanting shimmering black, but with the same golden secondary tone and scarlet accents as the princess's unit. At her Knightmare's side was an uchigatana of an appropriate size, clamped to her hip, and Gino felt he had to wonder exactly how broad a criteria the equipment requisitions forms could be made to fill, if filed sufficiently far in advance.

"Suzaku, I have this," the princess protested.

"No, ya don't," the adjutant replied without a moment's hesitation. "You've gotta keep your eyes on the field. There are two of us, Justine. Let me handle my job, and go handle yours. Besides, ya still owe me for cutting that whole song and dance with Bradley short."

"This is how you want me to redress that?"

"Shit yeah I do," Suzaku snorted. "I've wanted to dance with Twinkletoes myself for a while now, anyways. Don't you dare go fuckin' hoggin' him for yourself."

"…Very well, then," sighed Justine, backing away from the two of them, Gino and her adjutant, and making to get elsewhere on the battlefield. "I leave this in your capable hands."

"Go do what you're best at," Suzaku replied confidently. "I've got this."

The impulse to go after Justine as she made good on that, speeding away from him and weaving in deft manoeuvres through the foliage, rose within him, but he knew better than to indulge it right now. And so he watched helplessly as his target vanished to return to the fight, and opened his direct comm line with Anya. "Hey, uh, just a head's up."

"A little busy right now, Gino," Anya replied, overtly cool but with a clear strain in her voice.

"Yeah, and you're about to get a hell of a lot busier," said Gino. "Justine vi Britannia's coming your way to take command, pronto. I'm a bit tied up with her second at the moment, so consider me MIA until I call in to tell you otherwise. Good luck."

"…Gino Ferdinand Hieronymus Weinberg, you inconsiderate ass, I swear to God—!"

He cut the feed, leaving her rancour for a dead line.

"So…" Suzaku half-whistled. "Now that she's gone…"

"I'm not sure how much of a fight I'll be, I'm afraid," Gino began, in search of the quickest way he could find out of this impossible situation. "You saw how I lost against your boss, right?"

"That really doesn't count," Suzaku dismissed easily. "Justine's freaky as shit in a fight, dude. It's like she can take a peek, like, a second into the future, and know exactly what you're gonna do next. That little dry run you guys had? That really wasn't a fair fight, just out the gate—and it sure as fuck wasn't a good test of what you can do, Twinkletoes. Now, me… I don't have even half of Justine's killer instinct, y'see, so I have to make up for it with lousy ol' talent and skill. No borderline-precognition, no superhuman control of each part of my body…just me, and the sword I've got in my hand. And I'd wager that you're really in a similar enough pickle, at least when it comes to her. Am I right?"

"Not quite," he backhandedly agreed, swinging his barbed spear around and bringing it to bear, his thumb moving over the control to send the blade of it spinning up to a livid orange heat in preparation for combat to be joined. "Y'see, I had a kick-ass teacher, too."

"Well, well, well, whaddya know," Suzaku replied half-mockingly, shifting her unit into a stance he recognised to be the set-up for a quick-draw attack. Ayame, I owe you one, big time… "So did I."

At an impasse, they stood silent and still, for a few long minutes that thudded in his ears alongside the insistent cantering of his heart. The air between them felt charged, somehow, as though an errant move might cause lightning to arc between them, and even breathing wrong was invoking the name of calamity. It was the heady sense of standing at the precipice of a sheer cliff before a bone-obliterating drop, and it left an itching sensation under his skin, the beginnings of a sort of martial delirium prickling gooseflesh up and down his arms. The fever beat like war-drums in his blood, and with each passing instant, he became aware of a tension within him that wound ever-tighter, moment by moment, until he was certain that a stiff breeze might be enough to turn him into a man-sized tuning fork.

"Ah, you feel it too, don't ya?" Suzaku remarked, her voice lowered to the pitch of a rapturous and reverent whisper. "Just a li'l, but it's there… Let it linger for a bit. This… This is the kinda shit people kill for. This high, sweeter than any sugar, better than sex… Yeah. That's the stuff…"

And damn it if Gino couldn't feel even just a shadow of what she was talking about, a sample of a feeling he could glimpse only out of the corner of his eye.

"Each moment winds down the road, bringing you closer and closer…step by step…to the decisive blow… This countdown to the end, to the instant it happens…"

It was in fractions of a second that she began and he reacted. The spear-head swung up, a shriek of displaced and superheated air followed by the mechanical crash as he caught the calamitous force of her overhanded swing. He hadn't seen her draw it from the scabbard, hadn't needed to: he'd felt it, the thrum of the bloody dance beneath his fingers, resonating sonorously within the core of himself. And with some effort, he turned the superheated blade to the side, only to force every ounce of speed out of his Prytwen to abruptly shift course and catch it once again on the shaft.

"Yessss… That's the good shit right there…" Suzaku practically moaned. "C'mon then, Weinberg~! Show me what you've got!"

Gino found himself grinning—the Japanese girl's lust for battle was infectious, and especially for a closeted adrenaline junkie like him, it was a heady cocktail that left him feeling slightly drunk on it, even though they were only this early into their duel. It was a madness that crept up into his veins and slithered its way through his heart, and with his pulse pounding in his ears already, he knew he'd never really wanted to be anywhere else, and he didn't care if that was true.

He threw her uchigatana aside, swinging the butt of the spear around to dash her in the face; with no time or movement wasted, she gained distance away from it—but not enough to evade as he twirled the spear end-over-end to bring its head cleaving down for hers. It didn't land, the clash as she caught it on her own weapon echoing through the makeshift clearing, this world that for the moment existed only for them, but he didn't truly expect it to. Instead, he reversed hard, his landspinners squealing as he tore the barbed spearhead back, catching her sword and wrenching on her grip (he frowned to notice that he hadn't torn the sword out of her Knightmare's hands, which meant that she'd expected it, since leverage was the name of the game in duels between two Knightmares with similar specs), and then immediately surged forth to bury the tip of it in the chest of her unit.

But in a dizzying display of deft handling, she wrenched her Knightmare to the side and flattened it to a profile such that his spear only glanced along her armour. With the sword still in contact with his spear, she swept it up and knocked his weapon sky-high, throwing his KMF off-balance in the process: he was left open as she closed in and punched his Prytwen back, almost unseating him as the unit teetered dangerously while he worked furiously to right it.

"HA HA HA! That's some smooth moving, Kururugi!" Gino couldn't help but cry.

"So formal? I'm hurt," she teased right back, and he could hear the feral grin in her voice—could picture in his mind's eye how her lips peeled back to reveal a sharklike mouthful of teeth. And right now, he'd be lying if he said he couldn't see where she was coming from. "Call me Suzaku."

"Sure thing," Gino agreed easily, reassuring his grip on his spear and brandishing it at his opponent. Sweat was beading at his brow and shot down from his hairline to sting at his eye, his breathing was ragged and raw, his heart hurt with each insistent thump, and none of that mattered because he was having the time of his fucking life.

"…Actually, whaddya say we kick it up a notch in this bitch, you and I?" Suzaku proposed, the lilt of a dangerous idea dancing along her tongue.

"What do you propose?" asked Gino, humouring her.

"Nothin' all that major. Just some new steps to our dance," the Japanese girl replied vaguely. "Don't worry—you just follow my lead, and you'll be fine."

"Alright, then, I'm willing to see where this goes," Gino agreed.

"Good boy," Suzaku praised, stepping back and shifting her stance into something that seemed, in an odd way, almost familiar in his eyes—at least when compared to her unorthodox footwork before. One hand had gripped her uchigatana throughout all of this, and now another joined it, the energy between them shifting in a way that was profoundly ominous in a manner that seemed almost to defy description. "Now, ya see, the name of the dance is kendō. And it goes a little somethin' like this…!"

Suzaku's white Prytwen raised the uchigatana high above its head, and suddenly, swiftly enough that he experienced an acute sense of whiplash, the exhilarated joy that had so invigorated him evaporated from his being entirely. His confidence, his excitement, his frenzy, all of it was snuffed out in the space of an instant, as a deep and instinctive dread began to suffuse Gino's being, a nameless omen that rang its death-knell right next to his ear. And a single thread of knowledge found its way into the forefront of his mind, overriding in an instant all other thoughts and concerns, in favour of a single point of absolute certainty, as he felt any hope of victory begin to snuff itself out and the noose of certain defeat slip down around his throat:

He could not let this fight continue.

With his barbed spear, he struck out for the other Prytwen's chassis in the torso before the blade could begin to descend upon him; but Suzaku's Prytwen danced back, and the sword descended in a strong, smooth, clean arc that cut through the head of the spear.

Alarmed, he slammed his Knightmare into reverse, checking his weapon and sighing in relief at the visual confirmation that nothing crucial about the weapon's internal systems, rudimentary though they may have been, had suffered any significant damage. But he didn't have time to process that feeling any further, as his opponent was immediately upon him again, this time with a ruinous upward swing that he now knew better than to try and parry. He wrenched on the controls, his hands sweatily strangling the yokes as he felt his lungs flatten against his ribs with the sudden acceleration, his head almost feverishly warm in a manner that promised future pain. A breathless grunt ripped itself free of his chest as he did his best to brace himself against the demands being put on his body and his piloting skill, light and sound growing sharper as his mind honed itself against this moment of perceived mortal peril. In a fit of desperation, he struck his spear against the uchigatana to divert its course as he lurched to the side, and almost lost his weapon for the trouble, but nonetheless remained in the game—if only barely.

Each evasion was only successful by the skin of his teeth. Each correction nearly lost him his spear, over and over again. His head hurt, his vision swam, and his chest was tight with the fatigue of his heart. It had been perhaps eight minutes since Justine had left them to fight, but it felt like a purgatorial eternity of narrowly-avoided oblivion. How is she doing this—?! The Prytwen shouldn't be able to generate this kind of force…! She said it was kendō, but it couldn't possibly be that simple—could it?!

…I really might lose here. The thought was far more sobering, even now in the wake of his initial defeat against Princess Justine, than he'd expected it to be. Perhaps there was some truth to what Suzaku'd said regarding her friend, that her instincts were just that much of a cut above—and while he knew that he and Suzaku were on par with one another when it came purely to operating their death-machines, her talent and martial skill, it seemed, were just better than his.

For the first time in his life, he felt genuinely outclassed in what he'd come to see as his element…

…And it smarted.

"Doin' good, Twinkletoes~!" Suzaku crowed enthusiastically, even as he saw the days of his short life play before his eyes with every pass of her tungsten blade, empowered by induction to cut through the armour of his unit like a hot knife through butter. "Ya put in a little extra work, I guarantee you'll sweep some lucky girl off her feet like it's nothin'! Though, sorry to say, I'm totally taken, so I can't exactly show ya the ropes, but…! Yes! There it is! Just like that—!"

If Gino were in a calmer state of mind, he might have wondered at the odd shift this fight had taken, with each of Suzaku's exclamations sounding somehow more salacious than the last; and yet, in the space of that moment, his higher brain functions were shrouded in a thick, murky haze of primal dread, his every thought dominated and directed by a fight-or-flight instinct of which he'd subconsciously come to think he was entirely bereft. His hands flew across the controls in search of something, anything, to staunch this proverbial bleeding that was losing him ground at a startling rate; yet his flailing was in vain, for he knew this cockpit, had made it his job to know every single instrument, console, and button in it inside and out, and so he knew for certain that there was nothing in here with him that could help him turn the tide of the battle, especially not lurching to and fro as he was.

Yet, there was a silver lining to all of this, for in his jostled, unsteady flailing, he happened upon a single furtive lever on the side of his chair near the floor—a mechanism, so easily forgotten, for all that it was a devicer's final lifeline, their last resort.

The ejection seat.

Ah, Gino thought in a sudden moment of clarity, knifing through the stressful haze of trying to get from one moment to the next in one piece. I don't have to die today…

His other hand snapped to the corresponding lever on the other side of his chair, and yanked on both of them like his life depended on it—which, as far as he was concerned, it very much might as well have.

As he grit his teeth against the sudden lurch as the cockpit shot free of his Knightmare, with him in tow, he registered the voice of his opponent calling out to him in farewell as she faded into the middle distance: "Rain check, then?!"

Smirking grimly at how resounding his defeat had been—for indeed, he'd ejected not even a single moment before the Knightmare-sized uchigatana sliced through his Prytwen, maiming it in the process—he went for the emergency comms and opened the channel to Anya, hoping on some level that he wouldn't be too late to warn her about the second heavy-hitter coming her way, but somehow knowing deep within his heart of hearts that he wouldn't be so lucky. "Hey, Anya, just a head's up. Kururugi took me to the cleaners. I ejected, but she's coming your way."

"…It doesn't matter, Gino," Anya sighed in response. "Battle's over. We lost."

"Shit…" Gino swore. "Anya, I'm sorry—"

"No, don't be," his best friend interrupted. "I know you did your best. Justine vi Britannia—she took us apart like she was carving a cake. The Royal Force… They're just on a whole other level."

He grimaced. "Still, though…"

"I know, Gino," Anya sighed."I know…"

---

Integra Harrowmont recalled there had never been a day in her life when she had not known what it was to scrape and struggle, often against desperate odds. A bastard daughter of Arthur, Lord Harrowmont, one of her earliest memories was of the men her father had sent to buy her from her mother, that the ailing wastrel and serial womaniser might have a child he could legitimise and hastily groom into an heir. Perhaps as a result of this, her first impression of the man had been that he was withered far beyond his years, an invalid who struggled mightily to move beyond the world of his sick-room for even an hour at a time.

But she studied in spite of this. She studied, and worked her fingers to the bone to begin to learn all the necessary skills to assume her estranged father's position as the head of the family upon the event of his all-too-soon death—and her ambition dashed the plans of her uncle, Richard, who had come to think, upon Integra's legitimisation, that though he'd been snubbed from the position he coveted, being that of the new Lord Harrowmont, he could twist her to his designs like a puppet, before marrying her off to someone who would be only too happy to see her killed in some 'tragic accident.' And no sooner had her father perished from his wasting disease (which was later determined to be the result of a certain poison, administered over a protracted period) than had Richard made his move, hunting her through the family manse and across the forested estate grounds, until finally she found it within herself to hunt him and every last one of his little circle of sycophants down like animals, and butcher them just the same. Only once that was done could she return to the house proper, get herself patched up, and begin the long and arduous task of putting affairs in order, settling old outstanding debts, and entrenching her position as the head of house.

Yes, Integra had scraped and schemed and fought and killed to get where she was. Every step of the way had been a new obstacle, a new challenge to surmount and overcome. Her attendance at Ad Victoriam Military Academy was what she'd seen as the next step of her fighting against the scales of the heavens to get what she was owed, to establish herself as more than just some stripling child to be bought and sold at the market for someone else's ambitions, someone else's designs, at someone else's indulgence. The fact that she'd been outstripped by the Commoner Princess, Justine vi Britannia, during the entrance examinations, and indeed in terms of her notoriety about campus, as well as that of her 'Royal Force,' rankled, to be sure. But whenever it began to irk Integra, she pushed such thoughts down with the knowledge that the spoiled princess, eldest daughter of the favoured consort of His Majesty, and favoured sibling of the assumed next Empress of Britannia, was at the core of her little more than another obstacle.

And so she would be moved aside or eliminated, just like all the rest.

The chamber in which she ensconced herself, which the members of her force had come to call the 'War Room' (and as it wasn't a particularly inaccurate descriptor, she made no effort to combat it), was the size of a conference room; and yet its only furniture was a single wooden footstool upon which Integra was herself perched, surrounded by the true value of the chamber all around her. The floors, the ceilings, and indeed every bare inch of the walls featured a seething mass of information, from clippings to after-action reports to testimonies, photographs, dossiers, and stills from videos, all of which spanned a length of time from the beginning of His Imperial Majesty Emperor Charles's ascendancy toward the closing years of the Emblem of Blood (which coincided with the appearance of a certain French immigrant in the company of the then-prince, one of many, only to then become renowned for not only her martial skill and prowess, but also her viciousness, ruthlessness, and savagery shortly thereafter) through to the present day. Yarn and half an office supplies store's worth of needles and tacks pinned an intricate and truly impressive scarlet web to all of the relevant data, each point of contact also pinning into place some observation or errant thought of hers that was relevant to the area in question of the room-spanning diagram.

They didn't seem related to one another, of course, and to look at it from an outsider's perspective, one would be forgiven for thinking them merely fragmented snippets of several different trains of thought, all arbitrarily pinned in place. But Integra's aquamarine eyes burned from how intensely she'd been staring at the diagram and her recorded thoughts through her round spectacles, searching for something, anything to jump out at her. Sure, she'd been undefeated in the mock-battles too—though in manners far more quiet and methodical, far less sensational than the Commoner Princess's accumulating victories—but she wasn't so arrogant as to think she could enter into the upcoming confrontation unprepared.

That wasn't how she did things, after all.

If you know the enemy as you know yourself, you need not fear the outcome of a hundred battles…

The knocking on her door was distinct enough that she knew not to pay it any mind; the intent was to avoid startling her, after all, since she would be the first to admit that she could get rather…intense while she was focused on puzzling out the answer to some riddle or other. And just as she'd expected, the door to the War Room swung open to reveal her adjutant, Catrìona Anderson, a girl who was of an age with her, and with whom Integra had managed to build an amiable working relationship over the past few months. She was tall, with a frame that built and packed on lean muscle with relative ease, featuring athleticism and curvature in equal measure, and Integra didn't feel there was any harm in giving the well-built blonde girl an appreciative once-over—so she indulged. She didn't mind the knowing smirk at the corner of Catrìona's small mouth one bit: it was fine to look, so long as she remembered not to touch.

She wasn't here for romance, or even for carnal dalliance.

She came here to win.

And so that was precisely what she resolved she would do.

The girl came in bearing a tray set with a rather utilitarian tea set (Integra having very little taste for most extravagances), and she crouched to set it upon the floor beside Integra's stool before standing again to take in the diagram with sceptical crimson eyes, a gesture so common in situations like this that it was practically a routine between the two of them at this point in their burgeoning partnership. "Still at this?"

"I haven't managed to figure her out yet," Integra replied, as though that was answer enough (which it very much was, to her mind at least). "And I'm not going to risk us losing. Certainly not to her, of all people…"

"What's this tiff you've got goin' with the princess even about in the first place, anyways?" asked Catrìona, her voice a warm, rumbling countryside brogue that brought to mind images of rolling hills, windswept grass, treacherous moors, and rambling woodlands. "You two used to date or somethin'?"

Integra made a gagging sound. "Hardly."

"Then what is it?" Catrìona asked patiently, leaning down to fix herself a cup as they spoke.

"It's… I suppose it's difficult to explain…" Integra replied at some length. "At least to explain in a manner that you'd be able to understand."

"Well, seein' as you still haven't pieced together what makes the royal bint tick, I'd say we've got ourselves a wee bit o' time indeed," observed her adjutant. "So what better opportunity is there, hmm?"

"I suppose you've got a point there," Integra sighed heavily, reaching down to the tea set so as to busy herself with fixing herself a cup as well—she detested having idle hands, especially while having a conversation. "Truth be told, the first day of school was actually the first time I'd ever met her. I'd heard of her, of course—I daresay there's no one who wants to remain of consequence in court who hasn't. It isn't at all common for Her Excellency the Prime Minister, Princess Friederike, to take a special interest in any of her siblings, after all. But when I saw that she'd taken first place, and I'd gotten second… Immediately, my first thought—an uncharitable one, I admit—was that she'd leveraged that favouritism for the sake of her own vanity, that this was just another of the games the royals liked to play to pretend at competence, while we lesser peers, gentry, and commonfolk are bled and spent and wasted on foreign fields. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, after all… And so I accused her of such to her face, and vowed, not to surpass, but to humble her."

"Ouch," Catrìona winced.

"Of course, the results she's managed to produce since then have proven me wrong on that score. I freely admit to that," Integra continued, stirring the tea in the cup and lifting it to set it into her lap. "But at the time, it wasn't personal, you see. I wasn't so much striking out against her as I was the institution I had thought she represented, the royal nepotism that sees idiots style themselves grand strategists and lead men to catastrophic and expensive blunder after catastrophic and expensive blunder."

"And now it is personal, then?" prompted her adjutant.

Integra nodded gravely. "I'd like nothing more than to have the luxury of considering her to be just another obstacle, but in truth, that's only minimising the issue to make it easier to grasp and wrangle into place. The reality is far more bleak: that far from being here on nepotism, she's here on merit, not just as it relates to martial or strategic skill, but… She's dangerous, Catrìona, and I don't think anyone here has quite grasped the magnitude of that danger just yet. She's Alexander of Macedon: a conqueror who builds out of the smouldering ruins of the world they knew a great monument to their own vanity, only to vanish at the height of their glory and see chaos descend to rip their accomplishments to shreds. But because they perish just after the moment of their triumph, they leave not a cautionary tale of the price of hubris, but a legend of exalted valour that'll inspire countless generations of young fools for centuries hence to bleed and slaughter each other for the sake of that glorious enterprise."

"So, your grudge against the lass is that you believe she's some kind of villain seeking to plunge the world into endless bloodshed and war, then?" Catrìona summarised sceptically. "And you fancy yourself to be the wee hero who slayed the dragon, a right old Saint George, then?"

"I suppose that's one way to put it," Integra replied pensively, her attention drifting back towards the puzzle she'd dissected and spread out in cross-section all around her.

"Mm," her adjutant hummed. "Y'see, lass, the problem is, I don't buy it."

"And whyever not?" Integra snapped, so rudely jolted from her freshly-deepening contemplations.

"Well, we can start with the fact that the reason you just gave me is less a motivation and more of a moral obligation, and that's about as impersonal as it gets," Catrìona explained. "Yeah, even if it is mainly about your own vanity—because in that case, the wee princess is less an opponent or a person, and more of a prop, really. That's not the sort of thing personal grudges are made of, y'see."

"So what explanation would you think is apt, oh perceptive and wise Catrìona Anderson, knower of all?" she spat out sarcastically, beyond annoyed at having her entire motivation in this endeavour so openly and brazenly undermined by someone whose opinion had begun to accumulate value in Integra's eyes, though such a development occurred almost entirely in spite of her.

"Gettin' defensive right here ain't about ta help you make your case, Integra," her friend (if only begrudgingly so) chided smugly. "You don't dodge unless you think you're about to get hit, after all."

"Will you please get on with it," Integra huffed, rapidly running out of patience more and more by the moment.

"Och, I did hit a nerve, then…" the taller girl gloated. "That's fascinatin'."

"If you're here to amuse yourself by wasting my time," Integra said through a clenched jaw, "then I think you've had your fill, and you're more than welcome to see yourself out. Expeditiously, if you please."

"Alright, alright, I'll be goin' if you want me gone so badly," said Catrìona, an insincere grin on her face with both of her hands raised in surrender. She walked around to the other side of Integra, making her way for the door, but before she left, she leaned in close and, too quickly to be stopped, pressed her lips to Integra's forehead. "I just wonder what your fancy wee book of pithy warlike witticisms over there has to say about fightin' without knowin' yourself, after all…"

With that, she slipped over the threshold and closed the door behind her, leaving Integra completely poleaxed. What… What was that gesture supposed to mean…? I know she's attractive, but I thought we had some sort of agreement not to… Ugh. She shook her head vehemently in an attempt to clear away the giddy fog that the momentary contact had left in its wake. "No distractions. I need to focus. How do I…"

Her eyes went wide as, with that recent disruption to the monotony of her contemplations, she now gazed upon the network with what felt like a new mind entirely; and immediately, it seized upon a pattern beneath all the flourish and pageantry, along with the nugget of an idea.

And yet, for the seeds of strategy to germinate in truth, what she needed, perhaps most crucially of all, was information.

But at least this time, I'll know exactly where to look, she remarked to herself.

Her decision made, she nodded once, and rose from the footstool, moving with the sole purpose and goal of tracking down every last scrap of the Commoner Princess's personal combat footage Integra could possibly obtain…

---

Author's Note: Special thanks to Comet9! Frankly, I'm...quite floored, and flattered, that you're invested enough in what I've written in this story to make a TV Tropes page for it.
Also, surprise! You get the chapter a day early because reasons.