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.

20. Everybody's Fool

Ad Victoriam Military Academy, July, a.t.b. 2013

If there was one absolute advantage to working alone that Integra Harrowmont could name, it was that she was not expected, in such situations, to explain herself to anyone except herself.

And though from an analytical perspective, she knew that, objectively, empirically, mathematically, this single advantage was in no way, shape or form equal in value to all the benefits of a collaborative effort when it came to the execution of a plan, her current situation made that assessment less and less credible by the moment.

"Are you seriously still on this?"

"Yes, Catrìona," Integra sighed, her exasperation growing very close to boiling over as she fielded this exact same question from the exact same woman for the fourth time in the past ten minutes.

"Y'know, with this kind of obsession you're nursin' here, it wouldn't be too hard to see folks gettin' the wrong idea, like somethin' Freudian's goin' on," Catrìona Anderson, Integra's adjutant, remarked; and though she knew from the tone the larger girl used that the comment was meant to get some kind of a rise out of her, Integra could only look at her second in confusion, and ask a very basic question.

"Who the Hell is Freud?"

Whatever the answer was, it was apparently somehow so obvious that now Catrìona was staring at her as though she'd somehow spontaneously sprouted a second head. "Are ya serious, lass?"

"Wasn't it you who accused me of having no sense of humour just the other day?" Integra shot back with a nip of bitterness.

"When are ya gonna let that go? I said I was sorry," Catrìona complained.

Integra recoiled, incredulous. "No you didn't! You said nothing of the sort!"

"I did indeed!" the blonde protested. "I said 'I'm sorry ya can't take a joke.' See?"

The slighter girl felt a muscle near her eye twitch. "That is not the same thing."

"Sure it is," Catrìona scoffed. "Had the words 'I'm sorry' in it an' everythin'. Are ya doin' a wee movin' of the goalposts on me?"

"That's not…! I didn't…! Gah!" huffed Integra. "Who the Hell is Freud?!"

Catrìona had the audacity to shrug. "Be fucked if I know. Some Jerry from the twentieth century what thought boys had some secret wish to murder their dads and fuck their mums. Based it off a' some old Greek play where a boy does that an' then gouges his own eyes out once he realised what he'd done."

"I… What does Oedipus have to do with a secret desire for incest?!" Integra exclaimed.

And Catrìona just shrugged again. "From what I hear? Assloads o' cocaine."

Integra just stared at her second, and at the shit-eating grin splitting the bigger girl's face, for a good few moments of absolute silence. Then, she pronounced, with the utmost certainty and gravity: "You are an impossible woman."

The blonde snorted. "You're not exactly a walk in the park yourself, what with your pseudosexual rivalry with a princess."

"I do not want to sleep with her!" Integra exclaimed, her eyes shot wide behind her glasses with a rush of indignant outrage. "For the last time!"

"So does that mean that if I say it again, you'll be honest about it this time?"

Integra didn't gratify that with a response. She just glared at her adjutant, and went for the door, the indignity of being driven out of her own War Room far less of an intolerability than spending even another moment in there with the girl. "Why do I even put up with you…?"

"Because if you want a snowball's chance in Hell a' gettin' the princess on her back foot, you'll be needin' me," Catrìona replied, her voice blunt enough to drive a railroad spike. "I dunno if you've noticed, but you're not exactly a people person."

Integra flushed crimson, images of how her force-mates preferred to avoid her if at all possible, her adjutant in the form of the girl currently behind her having to handle all of the day-to-day relations with the others in the dormitory, flashing through her head; she pivoted sharply on her heel, and challenged the girl who was, despite it all, her right-hand woman with a transparently defensive cry of, "So what?"

"So, if I'm readin' your plan right, you're gonna need to get under someone's skin," Catrìona said, crossing her arms beneath her bust as she leaned her head to the side and spoke as though she was talking to a child, slow and patient. "A bunch o' someones, like as not. And that's best done with a scalpel instead o' a bludgeon."

Integra, suddenly feeling incredibly exhausted, sighed, and then ran a single hand through her own platinum blonde mane. "I suppose you have a point there…"

"Kinda the purpose o' a scalpel, yeah?" the other girl jibed, her glib grin back in full force.

Integra very nearly took the bait a second time, but with a herculean exertion of will, she bit down on her tongue, and refused to rise to it. Just let it go. Let it go. It's not worth getting yourself sidetracked all over again… Just let it go… Once she'd gone through that mantra a few different times, she looked back at Catrìona to see her grinning again, this time in approval rather than mirth.

"You're learnin'," she praised. "Certainly took ya long enough, but hey, better late than never."

"Look, do you want to hear about the plan or not?" Integra snapped, now officially at her wit's end.

Mercifully, it seemed the muscular girl had decided to spare her further japes, and nodded instead. "Lay it on me."

"Okay," Integra huffed, wrestling her composure back into place. "A year ago, I noticed something about our adversary—my adversary, yes, Catrìona, don't start—and her style of strategising in particular. It isn't the sort of thing that's immediately apparent, because the princess is strong enough on her own that in a fair fight, she'll sweep the floor with her opponent. But therein lies her weakness: for any part of her plan that's dangerous or risky or even particularly finicky, she does it herself. Every plan she's won with, which is admittedly all of them, has centred around and depended upon her and her own abilities."

"Okay, I'm with ya so far," said Catrìona.

"And that means that if she's outmatched in terms of physical combat ability, then the lynchpin of any strategy she could bring to bear against us is gone," Integra continued. "So the plan is to divide and to conquer. Fray the Royals' faith in their leader, and then best her in single combat in front of all of them. It serves both to more or less guarantee our win when it's time for the Royals to fight us in a mock-battle, and also to make them lose hope and start tanking their assessment scores, so that this starts their free-fall to the bottom of the rankings."

"It's a splendid plan, innit," said the adjutant. She raised one arm out of where they were folded and then made a counting-off gesture with that hand as she continued to speak. "But I have two very important questions regardin' the whole bit o' business."

"What questions?" Integra asked, her brow furrowing in confusion. To her mind, her explanation so far had been very clear and concise. What could possibly have gotten her second confused here?

"Well, first off, how're ya meanin' to best the princess in single combat?" asked Catrìona, flicking one finger up. "Because I've done my lookin' into her ever since you got yourself all obsessive-like, and to put it bluntly, the lass is a monster. Doesn't matter what type o' melee combat, she's never lost a fight goin' hand-to-hand."

"Oh, that," Integra realised, relieved it wasn't something more dire. "I've seen her fight. It's not that she's not skilled, because she's clearly very skilled and very well-trained. But she's not even the most proficient swordswoman in her force, in terms of pure skill. That title goes to her adjutant."

"An' yet her adjutant doesn't have as impressive a record as her," Catrìona pointed out.

Integra waved a hand dismissively. "The Honorary Britannian also doesn't spar out in the open very much—certainly not as frequently as her mistress. But what wins the princess victory after victory isn't her skill level. No, nothing so woefully pedestrian. What Justine vi Britannia relies on, and what has seen her through clash after clash with a list of nothing but triumphs and accolades, is her instincts."

"Instincts, lass?" Catrìona repeated incredulously. "What a crock a' horse shite. Lass, I hate to break it to ya, but no one's instincts are that good."

"You're correct," Integra conceded easily, much to her adjutant's visible shock. "Entirely so, in fact. No one is 'that good.' Justine vi Britannia is better. Her instincts seem to border on the precognitive. Time and time again, she's seen through feints and misdirections, reacting at precisely the moment her body needs to in order to no longer be where the blow's falling when it lands. I'd never seen anything like it…outside of myself, that is.

"That's my secret, you see," said Integra with a bit of a verbal flourish in her tone. "And why I feel so confident in my ability to beat her. Both she and I rely on our instincts, but the more I've seen of her, the more certain I am that mine are sharper."

"I guess we'll be seein' about that," said Catrìona, her tone dubious, but mollified. "And the second o' my questions: seein' as I'll be the one doin' most o' the underminin' of the other team, I've got to make sure that ya do realise you'll be sinkin' all o' their prospects, just to get at your pretty wee princess."

Integra looked at her adjutant's uncharacteristically serious expression, the force captain's silvery brow once again furrowed in confusion. "I'm very much aware, yes. What's that got to do with anything?"

Catrìona nodded, as if she'd expected such a response. If this was a test of some kind, Integra was very much uncertain of whether she'd passed it or failed based upon the girl's expression. "Oh, nothin' all that much. Just wanted to make sure you knew what you was gettin' yourself into. So, where do ya want us to be startin'?"

"There are three pillars we'll need to take out for the rest of the team to collapse in on itself," Integra explained, moving from where she stood, halfway between her adjutant and the door out of her War Room, over to the far wall—in contrast to the rest of the room, this area was more or less free of red string, with a number of photographs on display. "Hecate Gaunt, Elizabeth Bernadotte, and Odette Rochefort. I'll need to have someone who can get them to doubt themselves, to doubt their team, to doubt their places on it. Fray that tie enough, and it'll snap. Her Royal Highness hasn't ever had to repair a strained relationship like that, so even if we weren't going to humiliate her in front of them, we'll have crippled her. I just prefer to leave nothing to chance."

"Naturally," the blonde girl nodded in understanding.

"The mock battle between us and the Royals is kicking off in a little over a week's time," the force captain noted, her fingers drifting away from the photographs of their three targets to point over towards a calendar she'd hung on that adjacent wall. The week of the mock battles was clearly marked off on it, along with the week immediately before it. They had twelve days, all told.

"Then I s'pose we'd best be gettin' to work, eh?" said Catrìona.

"Indeed…" Integra agreed with a mildly sour look. "We'll be pressed to put all this into play as it is. There's no time to waste."

"Well, let's not be wastin' it, yeah?" the adjutant asked rhetorically. "I do have one small addition to be makin', if you'd be so kind as to indulge."

Integra shrugged, reaching up to adjust her glasses on the end of her nose. "I suppose that depends on what the amendment actually is. I can't exactly give informed consent without knowledge, now can I?"

Catrìona shrugged. "You could take a wee thing we mere mortals like to call a 'leap o' faith.'"

Integra didn't speak—in her opinion, the flat look she levelled at her second over her shoulder said quite enough on its own.

The brawnier blonde lifted both her hands in the universal gesture of surrender. "Fine, fine, be that way, see if I care. I don't want ya goin' anywhere near 'em 'til it's showtime with Her Highness."

"What?" Integra asked, perplexed. "Why?"

"The game'll be too clear-cut if'n you're the one doin' the approachin'," explained her charismatic and gregarious right-hand woman with a casual and insouciant shrug. "But if'n it's an adjutant doin' all the fancy talkin', well now, I could be there on your orders, but then again could just be actin' on my own, just as likely. Who's to say?"

"Plausible deniability…" Integra realised.

"'S about the size of it, I'd say," the other girl affirmed.

"Fine, then," you'll have your indulgence," said Integra, facing Catrìona directly. "But I expect you to get results."

"Don't be worryin' your pretty wee head about it, lass," she said with a jaunty grin. "Just be sure to be leavin' the task to me."

---

Ad Victoriam was an institution that maintained a broad variety of facilities for practically each and every method of combat and killing under the sun, and even for those fields that were adjacent. Hecate Gaunt knew that her roommate, Lindelle, made a point of being unfailingly punctual to her anatomy and medical training courses, for example, while possessing a personal distaste for matters of blood and of the prosecution of warfare on really any sort of scale, while their own force captain (the fact that she was a princess of the realm was a bit of information everyone in the dormitory building had more or less come around to the solution of just politely ignoring) attended classes on theoretical physics and engineering with what seemed like genuine interest. It catered to a broad array of more esoteric fields of study, all in the pursuit of Headmaster Rochefort's view of what an officer of future wars might look like; and yet for all of that, obviously they couldn't account for everything a student might be studying.

In this case, what the school lacked was a rookery.

Thankfully, it didn't lack an analogue clock-tower to make known the hour across all of campus, and the school's administrators were only too happy to grant her special permission to use the clock-tower to house her companion and certain supplies for said companion's care in the upper lofts, so long as she could manage to not obstruct the man whose job it was to maintain the clock itself (whose name, she had since learned, was Frederick); and so Artemis lounged in the loft space whenever she found Hecate's room to be too small or stifling to occupy comfortably.

Having found a free period today, she'd made her way to the clock-tower and ascended the building to the upper lofts to have some free time to spend with her old friend—partly because she sometimes found herself missing the merlin throughout the day, and partly because she wanted to see how she was getting on with the new hood, anklet, and jess set that Justine had gotten for Hecate as a particularly thoughtful gift. It was somewhat strange, in Hecate's mind, to give gifts to others on your own birthday as well as theirs, but from how Artemis preened and puffed herself up, she could tell quite easily that her avian companion very much appreciated the gifts the odd yet kind girl who was her force captain had commissioned for their use.

"And are you certain the stand's comfortable enough as it is?" she asked once more. "I don't want you downplaying it if it's not."

Artemis cocked her head and shuffled her wings in a way that meant that the merlin thought Hecate very silly indeed for repeating the question.

"Yes, yes, I know," Hecate sighed heavily, gazing with affection at the raptor perched prettily upon her fine leather gauntlet—it, like the stand, had been a birthday gift for Hecate, since she'd turned fifteen in early June. "But you know me. I worry."

Head straight, then up and down, and a flutter of her wings. Artemis suggested another term, that she wasn't prone to worrying so much as fretting.

Hecate scowled. "Hey! I'll be taking no cheek from you, Missy!"

"So the rumours were true…"

Instantaneously on alert, Hecate jerked her head in the direction of the doorway, but it didn't seem that Artemis sensed much danger from their unfamiliar visitor, remaining perched upon her hand with a tilt of her head that reminded the falconer quite strongly of Justine. "Who's there?"

Out from the dim shadows of the threshold and into the midafternoon sunlight streaming freely into the loft stepped another girl, wearing the female student uniform with shorts, together with the épaulettes, shoulder cape, and aiguillette that marked a force captain's uniform. The girl was shorter than Hecate, who was herself slightly above average height, and her build featured clear and unambiguous curvature for all that it also seemed deceptively delicate, though her clear status did a lot to lay that lie bare. She was also rather shockingly pretty, with a heart-shaped face, her cute, soft features framed by long hair that was the pale hue of pink rose petals and bound at what looked to be the base of her neck; and there was this mischievous, fun-loving air about her that seemed like it could just as easily turn malicious as it could amiable. Her eyes were a deep blue, the colour of sapphires, and were framed by lush pink eyelashes as they stared at Hecate with something like wonder—a gaze so intense that before she'd met her own force captain, it would have made her uncomfortable. The girl's full, pink-glossed lips parted hesitantly, and then she spoke, her high voice a perfect match for her appearance: "I don't believe we've properly met, actually, but our forces fought each other during the most recent mock battle. We lost."

Hecate gave the girl a critical once-over, digesting that information—the colour of the newcomer's shoulder cape, magenta, helped her finally place her scattered recollections of the face before her. "You're the force captain of the Merry Men, aren't you? Maria…Valentine, I think it was? Justine's been drilling us on the identities of the other force captains for the longest time, but…"

"Yeah, that's me," the force captain confirmed with a nod and a slight smile.

"Well, Miss Valentine, I'm not sure what rumours you're talking about that you may have had the chance to hear," said Hecate, politely electing to keep her distance. "But I'm very much aware that those of us under Justine's command have all sorts of sordid falsehoods flying around, so if that's what has brought you here, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

Valentine snorted. "Are there really? Bunch of sore losers, I swear. Don't worry, neither Arsène nor I are particularly inclined to waste our time filling our heads with malicious gossip. Hells know that the both of us have had our fair share of it launched against us. And please, call me Maria."

"Arsène?" Hecate asked, her azure brow furrowed. "I'm afraid I can't say that I know anybody by that name."

"Arsène Lupin. He's my adjutant," Valentine explained, maintaining that pleasant, though small, smile as she lingered near the doorway and spoke. "I've been a ward of his family my whole life. We were actually raised as siblings."

"Oh," replied Hecate, finding herself suddenly at a loss for anything particularly pithy or witty to add to the conversation. "That's nice, I suppose."

Artemis fluttered her wings and let out a low, trilling chirp. She was distinctly unimpressed.

Hecate's head whipped around to glare at her friend. "If you think you can do better, you're more than welcome to try."

"Excuse me," Valentine interjected, lifting a hand to point at Artemis, perched on Hecate's gauntlet. "That's actually the rumour I heard. That the Royals have a girl who can talk to animals and have them talk back to her."

"Well, as you can see, it's not talking, exactly," Hecate began, seeing no harm in indulging such a wonder from the other girl. "But I can understand them. Could since practically before I can remember. It's really not all that impressive…"

"Pardon my French, but that's a load of bull," the force captain disagreed bluntly. "That's probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life. Do you guys have some sort of system worked out between you two? Like, how does this work?"

"Well, it's a lot like getting to know another person, I'd imagine," she shrugged. "I've noticed that a lot of raptors have ways of communicating with each other, and since they can only really produce so many sounds, they do a lot of nonverbal cues for more complicated communication. It's not really all that hard to parse—but what trips a lot of people up, I think, is that the same gesture doesn't mean the same thing in all circumstances. Sometimes Artemis here will fluff up her wings, and that can mean an objection, it can be a way to express confusion, or it can be a way for her to ask to go hunting, depending on how she's feeling. It's not all that dissimilar to how inflections work when you or I talk to people. And like with people, being able to reliably tell what inflections mean what takes a certain level of familiarity that a lot of others aren't really all that inclined to bother with. Justine actually asked to learn, but Artemis tends to get all stiff and formal around her, so lessons don't tend to get all that far."

"I don't blame her," snorted Force Captain Valentine. "No offence, but I'm pretty sure everyone on campus is scared shitless of your leader. She's really intimidating."

"I don't think that's necessarily true," Hecate demurred, bringing her other hand around to gently stroke Artemis's feathers, making sure to do it just the way the spoiled little pest liked it. "She's actually quite a pleasant person, once you get to know her. Very helpful, very kind, a lot more considerate than you might expect…"

"Well, unfortunately, the only ones around here who spend any amount of time in her presence off the battlefield who aren't members of the Royals themselves are the people she shows up in classes," said the other force captain drily. "So I'm going to have to take your word for it."

"I suppose you have a point there," Hecate admitted, chuckling at the incongruity of the statement. "My name's Hecate, by the way. Hecate Gaunt."

"Oh thank the heavens, I'm not stuck with calling you Bird Girl," Maria sighed in relief, provoking a surge of renewed mirth from Hecate herself. "You laugh, but I couldn't think of a good way to ask what your name was without making the situation awkward, so I was slightly panicking there…"

"I do understand more animals than just birds, you know," Hecate revealed wryly.

"Well, yeah, you said, but…" Maria gestured vaguely in Artemis's direction. "You know?"

"I suppose I do," said Hecate. Then she noticed how her friend was visibly trying to keep still and unobtrusive, but was clearly getting antsy, so she turned to face Maria again, giving her an apologetic smile as she spoke. "I'm sorry about this, but if you could excuse me for a moment?"

"Oh! Uh…yeah, sure," the force captain agreed, her eyes going wide as she stepped back a bit.

"Thank you. This won't take long," Hecate assured her visitor, and then returned her attention to the bird on her gauntlet. "Now, as for you. I can see you're anxious to go hunting. Don't tangle with anything bigger than you, don't stray too far, and please at least try to keep the blood to the hay pile. That's what it's there for, after all."

Artemis bobbed her head, feinted one wing flutter, and did a full one. It was affirmation with a bit of sarcasm, as though she'd said, 'yes, mom,' but that didn't stop Hecate from undoing the jess and tossing the merlin towards the window, letting her spread her wings and take flight out into the air. She let out her shrill, chittering cry as she caught an updraft beneath her wings, and shot off in search of other birds to kill and eat.

"So what brings you here, Maria?" Hecate asked conversationally, once she was satisfied knowing that Artemis would be alright on her own. "Or were you just curious about the rumours of the 'Bird Girl,' as you so eloquently put it?"

Maria's reaction to that very much innocuous question wasn't to speak, but to quite suddenly flush scarlet, and Hecate found that she was immediately curious as to why. "Um…actually… When I brought up the previous mock battle, it wasn't an accident. It's a funny story, actually—I saw you right after you guys won, and I thought…well, I thought you were really hot. I wasn't going to do anything about it, but my ass of a brother told me I was being chicken-shit, so I was hoping to ask you if you'd maybe like to go get a coffee or have tea or grab dinner sometime?"

Hecate blinked in dull surprise, momentarily taken aback. Of all the things she might have expected the force captain of another team might have wanted to address with her, 'attraction' was so far down the list that she actually didn't know if it still counted as an item on it. Did… Did this girl just ask me out on a date, of all things?

"I mean, if you're not into girls, that's perfectly fine, I just thought…" Maria backtracked.

"No no no, it's not that. I'm absolutely into girls. It's just… I don't think that I've ever been asked out before," Hecate rushed to clarify.

Maria's brow furrowed, and then her eyes went wide in incredulity. "You're kidding me. I… How? You're a total smokeshow!"

Hecate shrugged, affecting insouciance. "I suppose people have had a tendency to find my choice of companions a bit peculiar."

"Well, it's their loss," the pink-haired force captain declared with conviction. Then she straightened her posture, affecting a chivalric mein, and said, "Hecate, I would be honoured to take you out on your first date, if you'll have me."

Hecate, already biting back a smile at the charming absurdity of her suitor's antics, made a show of mulling it over, before accepting, saying, "Well then, I'd love to."

Maria beamed at Hecate's response. "Perfect! I'll let you know the details in the next few days."

"I'll be looking forward to it," Hecate replied with an indulgent half-grin.

It was some time after Maria had taken her leave that finally Hecate did the same herself, having no wish to have to rush to her next class. She descended from the loft, greeting Frederick on her way down as she once again found herself privately thankful that the clock-tower's bells had long since been removed as some sort of symbolic flourish on the part of Duke Rochefort towards the students of the school that was so obtuse that not even his own daughter understood the reasoning behind it, and quickly made her way down past the room full of the gears and the analogue mechanisms of the clock itself. She reached the ground floor with an easy swiftness born of experience and familiarity, her leather messenger bag in which she and the others in her dorm carried their school books slung across the chest of her black-and-gold jacket, in the process very nearly missing the reclined form of a tall blonde girl who, like Hecate herself, had chosen to wear the skirt variant of the female student uniform. "Oh! My sincerest apologies! I didn't see you there!"

The girl's posture was easy-going; her hair, though blonde, had a distinct orange tint to it that made Hecate think of a sunset; her skin was tanned to a degree that brought to mind farmers and other labourers who spent so much time outside during the summer that the season left its mark upon them; and her narrow eyes were a peculiar crimson hue—such odd colours were not particularly unheard of amongst Britannians of high birth, Hecate herself being a prime example, with any odd pigmentations of the hair or of the eyes being broadly considered to be one of the more straightforward methods of distinguishing between a noble bastard and a baseborn commoner; but this particular sort of shade combination wasn't one that Hecate had ever even heard of before. The girl was certainly tall enough to be an illegitimate child of an aristocrat, she supposed, though there was something about her all the same that Hecate struggled mightily to place. The only reaction the girl gave at first was to shrug her shoulders and grin, as though she'd just heard someone say something particularly droll, but shortly thereafter, she began to speak. "It's not really a bother, lass. You're lookin' awful busy as it stands, so I suppose I'll just be on my merry way."

"Oh, I suppose I don't have all that much going on right at this very moment," Hecate replied in a concerted attempt to be courteous. "Really, I'm just trying to give myself a head-start to my next class so that I don't get myself into a position where I have to rush in order to get there on time. You know how it is, I'm sure."

"So you've got yourself some free time right now, eh?" the girl seized upon, her grin broadening.

"I…suppose one could certainly make a case for that being true, yes," Hecate replied, as her mood shifted from courteous to dubious. What is going on here, exactly? Is she going to ask me out, too?

"Well, that sounds right grand, don't it?" the girl proclaimed. "M'name's Catrìona Anderson, an' I was hopin' you'd have the time for you an' I to have a wee chat, as it were."

"What about?" asked Hecate, doing her best to remain cordial, but growing more and more on edge with every passing moment here.

"I just thought it'd be nice to try gettin' to know the competition," said the girl, Anderson, with an accented voice that matched her name's origin almost perfectly. "Since we're all to be smackin' each other about the place, soon as not. It just wouldn't rightly be sportin', to not get acquainted beforehand and be fightin' one another as strangers. At least, I think so."

Part of her was still on guard; but then, she also recalled that both Justine and Suzaku had gotten to know a few of the other force captains ahead of their clashes against them, so perhaps this sort of outreach wasn't all that bad of an idea. This in mind, Hecate took a calming breath, and said to the other girl, "Sure. I think I can spare a few minutes to talk."

Anderson smiled again, and there was an inscrutable edge to it this time. "Lovely…"

---

Of all the firearms that Ad Victoriam's outdoor shooting range had on offer for a markswoman who was looking to spend her leisure time putting bullets in things, Lisa had to concede that her favourite had to be the Waldstein Arms bolt-action M24 Reconfigured Sniper Weapon System. A sniper rifle boasting an effective range of up to a whopping sixteen hundred metres, fed by a five-round box magazine and firing 7.62x67mm bullets, it was easily her go-to rifle when she wanted to wind down and burn off some excess energy by nailing perfect shots on target after target, erected at the same distance as the maximum effective range. Technically speaking, with a gun this powerful, anywhere on the body would probably do enough in the way of serious damage to be fatal, but she took a special pleasure in being able to reliably hit bull's-eye after bull's-eye, directly into the forehead of the disposable mannequins used for this kind of shooting. This was her comfort time, after Justine helping her with maths turned her brain effectively into soup while she did her best to reframe each problem into the terms that her force captain had originally suggested (which actually did wind up yielding results in dividends, for all that it still demanded a great deal of mental effort on her part), after classes were over and she didn't have to decipher people…

It was a weight off her shoulders at the end of every day, and an indulgence she was thankful to her tutor for filling out the forms to arrange for her.

The hour was a little later in the afternoon, the July sun still high enough in the sky that while class was more or less out for the day, she still had plenty of visibility to work with, and she'd gotten a good way through the challenge she'd set for herself, trying to push for not just accuracy, but also speed. She'd begun with lining up three headshots in thirty seconds, and each round, she either put in a command for the range to put up more targets with its automated systems, or tried to decrease her time between headshots. So far, she was up to five targets in fifteen seconds, all of them right between the eyes, and she felt like she was on a bit of a roll with this.

So it was perhaps a bit of a shock when she came away from her latest successful round, doffing her ear protection in the form of noise-cancelling headphones and standing up from her prone shooting position to properly stretch her stiffening body, only to turn and come face-to-face with one of her forcemates, Liliana Vergamon.

"Oh! Sorry about that," she apologised. "Did I startle you?"

Lisa just stood there, stunned for a few seconds. It occurred to her in that moment that she hadn't really spoken to the other girl all that much since they'd started school together, beyond the incidental sorts of interaction that just came part and parcel with cohabitation. A realisation hit her in that moment with all of the subtlety of a derailed train: that the girl before her had abruptly become much more beautiful in only the past year or so. The softness that her face had been practically characterised by had become more and more refined, shedding some of the cuteness of her features in exchange for a very classical sort of beauty that was clearly Britannian, but perhaps not aggressively so. Her blonde hair was pulled back and bound up into a long braid that fell down her back, with the same reddish-orange hair clip being perhaps the only real vestige of her former hairstyle, and she regarded Lisa with worry on her face, but her emerald eyes shone with the same sort of faint curiosity that Lisa was sure was reflected in herself.

"Honestly, the most startling thing was you speaking," Lisa confessed, returning to the task she had initially stood up to accomplish. She stretched her arms across her chest as she spoke. "We've lived in the same building for over a year now, and yet I think this is the most we've ever spoken to each other in a single encounter, to be perfectly candid."

"Is it really?" Vergamon asked, blinking in surprise while her full lips began to part.

"I'd say so," Lisa affirmed, casting her memory back a ways, just to be sure. "I think that of the three of you—Soresi, yourself, and Rochefort—only Odette actually makes much of an effort to branch out to the rest of the team, and that's mostly because Suzaku's been helping her hone her combat skills since after the first mock battle."

Vergamon winced at that assessment, as if she was embarrassed by it. "Yeah, I suppose we kinda do stay in our comfort zone, such as it is, don't we?"

"If it helps, I don't think anyone else really holds it against you," Lisa ventured with a nonchalant sort of shrug. "I mean, I certainly don't. Branching out into a new place with new people whom you don't already know can be pretty freaky, and to be honest, I think a lot of us would do the same as you three if we had the option to. Well, aside from Justine and Suzaku, but I think we can all agree they're pretty firmly in the 'odd ones out' category."

"For several reasons," Vergamon agreed. "Well, in that case, what do you say we try reintroducing ourselves to each other?"

Lisa considered it, then shrugged again. "Sure, I'm game. I'm Elizabeth Bernadotte. And since this isn't our first meeting, we might as well at least try out going on a first-name basis."

"Agreed," the blonde said with a friendly smile. After a moment, she thrust forth her hand to shake, and then declared, "Liliana Vergamon."

Lisa eyed it dubiously for a moment, but accepted the gesture without too much hesitation, shaking the other girl's hand. "Nice to meet you once again, Liliana. Now, what were you doing out here? I know a bit about the range, so maybe I can help you find what you're looking for, or whatever."

"Well, actually, that's…a bit of an embarrassing story…" Liliana admitted, her gaze suddenly quite firmly ensnared by some unseen quality of the ground. "Marksmanship isn't exactly my strongest subject, but I was good enough to muddle through until now, more or less. But this new unit's proving to be quite a different animal, and my mediocrity at long range isn't going to cut it. I thought I'd come out here and try firing at a target until I got better… Honestly, I don't know how you do it, Elizabeth. You've topped the charts in marksmanship since the program started…"

"I could show you how," Lisa volunteered, her mouth running faster than her brain. It wasn't what she'd meant to say, perhaps, but it was something she could roll with. "Marksmanship's honestly more of a mindset than it is something you can get better at through endless repetition. If you'd like, I could try to teach you how I do it, and we'll see if you can find something of value in my own approach that can help to inform yours."

"Could you really?" Liliana asked, her voice carrying a note of pleasant surprise. "I mean, sure! I'd actually very much appreciate it. I'm going to need all the help I can get with this."

"Well, we'll see what we can do, I suppose," Lisa mused, looking the other girl up and down, while taking special care to keep her eyes from lingering where they really shouldn't. She'd just offered to help Liliana, after all; she wasn't here to flirt with her. She jerked her head in the direction of the armoury, and with a confidence born of being very much in her element, she commanded Liliana, "Follow me. Let's see if we can't find you something suitable to start out with in there."

"I defer to your greater expertise," agreed Liliana. Then her eyes swept down to Lisa's baby, laid on the bipod there on the ground, and they immediately went wide. "Oh, I can't believe I forgot! Am I getting in the way of your shooting practice?"

"To be quite honest, I don't really need the practice, per se," Lisa admitted as she strode over to her baby and plucked it off of the ground, the safety having been engaged since she made the decision to take a break to stretch. Resting her fingers against the side of the barrel, well out of the way of the trigger, Lisa folded the bipod's legs and carried it at parade rest with her as she started towards the armoury, her newest (and first) student in tow. "I do it more or less for fun. I actually find it pretty relaxing. But I'm not likely to do better than I did this past round, not without at least an hour devoted to figuring out how to pull it off, so I'm more than happy to leave it here for now."

"Last round, you say?" Liliana paraphrased, her fine brow furrowing in confusion.

"I sometimes like to play little games with myself to keep it interesting," Lisa explained, electing to keep talking as they walked. "Today I wanted to see how many headshots I could get into an increasingly narrow window of time at maximum effective range. When you arrived, I'd just successfully nailed five in a quarter of a minute. And like I said, I don't realistically see myself beating that—not without quite a bit of effort."

"Why is that?" Liliana asked, genuine curiosity in the lilt of her tone.

"Because the time it takes to chamber a new round is the hard stop here," said Lisa, making sure to handle the gun with the utmost care as she stepped down the decline that led to the outdoors armoury. "It's a mechanical limitation, really. No matter how fast I get at operating the bolt mechanism, I'm still going to be beholden to the metal's tolerance for torque, as well as factors like friction and recoil and so on. At this point, I'm lining up a shot, squeezing the trigger—that's an important note, just in case you didn't already know; it's practically Firearm Fundamentals Rule Number Two, that when you're firing, you don't pull the trigger, you squeeze it—taking the recoil, chambering another shot, and getting back to lining the next shot up, all in the space of three seconds. And I have to be unerringly accurate in that time, consistently, or else I don't count it."

"That sounds…incredibly stressful," Liliana remarked with wide eyes. "And…you do that for fun?"

Lisa shrugged. "I've always felt most at peace with a stock braced against my shoulder, ever since I was a little girl. Reminds me of the times my mum and I would go hunting. So I make the most of that time by practising my shooting until I get to the point where I never miss a target ever again."

"…I see," said the blonde, her tone pensive as she averted her eyes in thought. "I don't think I could ever get to that level, to be perfectly candid…"

Lisa shrugged. "You might not."

Liliana shot her a bemused look. "Aren't you supposed to be encouraging me? Like, 'nonsense, you can absolutely get that far with practice and hard work'?"

"Would you like me to?" Lisa asked, now a bit confused herself. "I mean, I could, but the fact of the matter is that not everyone's got the potential to be good at everything. And really, there's nothing much wrong with that—it's not like it's a moral failing for people to be good at different things. I take to shooting like a fish to water partly because I enjoy it. You might find yourself putting in a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand hours' worth of good marksmanship practice, and yet still never reach my skill level, because you excel in other areas while sharpshooting in particular is a weakness. I might experience something similar when it comes to, say, unarmed combat, where I'm hopeless in a boxing ring and will only ever amount to 'decent,' no matter how long or how hard I work. It doesn't mean my ability to hit targets with a gun from a distance is in any way diminished because of my inability to effectively 'throw hands,' as it were."

"So what you're saying is that I'm wasting my time here?" Liliana attempted to paraphrase, looking more amused than annoyed or offended.

"I'm saying that there's no way to know if you are or aren't unless you try," corrected Lisa. "Don't count yourself out, by all means, but don't hold it against yourself if you wind up just not having the knack for it. You're already bringing your own skill set to the force. You don't need to bring mine, too."

"Did anyone ever tell you that you're a very peculiar girl?" the blonde asked with a smile.

"I've heard as much before, though it wasn't usually meant as a compliment," recounted the sniper, with a wry undertone to the memory.

The highborn girl's fine brow furrowed again. "What do you mean?"

"Well, on top of being a bastard, I'm also an othermind, so…" Lisa shrugged. It was true that she'd long since made her peace with who she was and how she was born, at the very least—though she couldn't bring herself to imagine that she'd be so forthcoming with this information if she didn't know the same was true of their inimitably capable leader.

"Really?" said Liliana, astonished."I don't think I ever would have guessed… I-I'm honoured that you apparently trust me enough to tell me this, but…"

"We're on the same team. And besides, it's not as if, as you said, it's clearly obvious. I am on the higher-functioning end, after all," explained the sharpshooter. "It was a lot more noticeable when I was younger than I am now, but thankfully, no one really thinks twice about an awkward teenager. It kind of comes part and parcel with the trappings of adolescence, really. Ah, we're here. Hold on, let me grab my keys really quickly…"

True to her word, they'd arrived at the single-story squat building that housed all of the guns that'd been allocated for use on this particular shooting range, in a secured, climate-controlled environment. Lisa reached for the belt-loop of her shorts and plucked the key ring the school administration had given her off of her waist, flipping through to find the key to this armoury by feeling alone. Then, once she'd found the right shape, she slotted it into the metal lock on the sturdy fibreglass door, and pushed it open to reveal the interior: a single aisle, lined on both sides with racks upon racks of guns. Against the far wall, there rested a shelf full of bins full of ammunition, with each different type, calibre, and manufacturer of bullet clearly labelled upon each one. Right next to it, in the corner of the room, was her uniform jacket hung upon a coat hook, and the wall adjacent to it held an array of flak jackets in all sizes. The hook right next to her jacket was empty, naturally, and after she set her own gun down on a low table by the door, it was in this direction that she led her dorm-mate. "Right, safety first. Take your uniform jacket off and hang it up next to mine. Grab a vest, and we'll get started."

"Good idea," Liliana agreed, her hands immediately moving to unbutton the black-and-gold jacket before shucking it off of her shoulders. That done, she made her way over to the coat hook and hung it up right beside Lisa's, and then turned to accept the vest that the sharpshooter pushed into her chest. "Should I not be the one to pick the flak jacket out myself?"

"One vest is as good as another, generally speaking," Lisa replied, waving her off as she moved past her, shifting gears to pay attention to the guns on display. "And if you're talking about sizes, the one I gave you should fit fine. I eyeballed your size up on top of the hill. I'm pretty confident I got it right."

"…Well, I'll be damned," said Liliana. "It seems that you, Miss Bernadotte, have a very particular set of skills."

"Two words, Lady Vergamon," Lisa shot back, equally glib. "'Sensory issues.' That, and you sort of need to have a sharp eye for detail when you're doing what I do."

"I suppose that's fair enough," the lady conceded. "So, oh sage of the scope, where do you think I should start?"

Lisa couldn't help but snort at that; jokingly, she said, "Sage of the scope, eh? What, are you flirting with me, Liliana?"

The highborn girl shrugged noncommittally. "I don't know, Elizabeth. Would you like me to be?"

That answer brought an immediate rush of heat blooming across Lisa's cheeks. She'd never actually been approached romantically before, for all that she had some awareness that there were others who found her body to be at the very least sexually desirable, and so what had begun as a joke immediately landed her in something of a desperate quandary. "I-Isn't it a little late for Saint Wilde's Day?"

"You know, I don't think I've ever seen you flustered before," Liliana said instead, turning around to come face-to-face with Lisa. "You've always seemed so stoic from a distance. I do believe I like it…"

Lisa's maroon eyes shot wide, and her face felt like it was a moment away from potentially bursting into flames. Her abdomen clenched and twisted uneasily, and she looked over Liliana's shoulder, her gaze seizing, most fortuitously, upon one of the guns she'd have considered to be a perfect starter for someone of the lady's height and build. "T-that one, right there behind you. The L-115 'Hastings' DMR."

The bemused half-smile that came into being upon Liliana's face made it abundantly clear that she knew exactly what Lisa was trying to do. And yet, in a show of mercy Lisa sorely needed right then, the blonde allowed the change of subject, turning to approach the gun rack and pointing at one of the rifles on the higher shelf. "This one?"

"Two below it, and one to your right," Lisa replied, doing her best to regain her composure. "It's for mid-range firefights, developed by the Stadtfeld Consortium in 1996. I think it'd be the best place for a girl of your height and build to start honing her skills…"

"Mm, I see it," Liliana piped up, grabbing the gun in question from its mounting. "Oh, and…just so that you don't get the wrong idea, I was being genuine about my interest just now. But I don't want to push you, so I'll await your answer to my question, whenever you feel like you're in a fit state to give it."

"I… I don't want you to misunderstand either, Liliana: I'm flattered, truly. I just…" Lisa sighed as she moved over to the back of the armoury to pluck a few mags of .223 rounds out of their proper bins. "I don't actually have anything in the way of romantic experience."

"…Forgive me, I seem to be learning quite a lot of surprising things today," Liliana half-joked with a smile, cocking her brow.

"Yes, well, that's what happens when you're born the bastard daughter of a nobleman," Lisa replied with a sigh. "We're not exactly overflowing with marriage prospects."

"Do you have any idea which nobleman did sire you?"

"Never met the man myself, if that's what you're asking," said Lisa, judging three mags to be more than sufficient for what they were about to do together, and returning to Liliana, who stood waiting for her. "And my mother never told me. Her secret, for whatever reason it was so, died with her. I apparently have his eyes and his eyesight, if that helps any."

"I suppose it might narrow it down a bit," Liliana conceded. "They say that being an othermind is to some extent genetic. Perhaps another inheritance of your lordly sire?"

Lisa couldn't muster an intelligent response to that, so overcome was she with sudden and raucous mirth. She laughed, and she laughed hard, until her chest hurt with the feeling of it; and the abrupt nature of its beginnings drew a shocked and confused laugh out of Liliana, as well. "Did I say something terribly droll? I didn't mean to jape…"

"Oh, no, it's just…" Lisa struggled to articulate, laughter still shaking her shoulders. "If that's really the case, then perhaps His Majesty's seed is not so sterling!"

Liliana, alarmed, looked around sharply, abruptly terrified at the idea of someone else hearing their conversation and having them both on trial for lèse-majesté. When she spoke, then, her voice was low and harsh as she scolded, "Elizabeth! Have a care of what you say where unfriendly ears might linger! Whatever do you mean by that in the first place?"

"I'm sorry, truly, just…Justine's an othermind, too, so I thought…" Lisa explained, making a vague gesture with her hands, one of which still held three mags' worth of .223 ammunition.

"Wait, wait, wait…" Liliana demanded suddenly."You mean Force Captain Justine?"

"I mean, it's not like it's a common name, exactly," Lisa pointed out. "But yes, she is—though she's an even more high-functioning case than that which I myself experience."

"How did you discover this?"

Lisa shrugged. "She told me. I was having trouble with maths, and she brought it up as a way to try and propose a solution to my struggles. It was about a year ago, now, come to think of it."

"Back then, I thought she might be a coldblood, if anything," Liliana confessed. "Later interactions certainly disabused me of that notion, but still…an othermind?"

"I don't know if you've ever noticed this yourself, but," Lisa began, handing the ammunition over to Liliana so that she had both of her hands free as she spoke. "The next time she speaks to you, I suggest that you pay special attention to where her eyes go instead of just assuming they're making contact. You'll find that she's actually looking at your nose. It's a pretty simple trick I learned to use myself some years ago, though I'm admittedly not quite as good at it as she is."

"I'll have to keep an eye out," Liliana nodded, and then she froze, turning and pinning Lisa to the spot with another sharp emerald gaze. "Not a word."

"I would never," Lisa said with complete sincerity. "The fruit hangs too low to be safe to eat."

"I'm sorry, did you just call my unintentional pun 'low-hanging fruit'?" the lady asked.

"In so many words, yes, I suppose I did," replied Lisa. "Now, shall we begin our lesson? Or are we to stay here awhile and gossip the daylight hours away?"

Liliana's eyes flickered in realisation. "Oh, yes, of course! By all means, please do lead the way."

"Right, so there's a few things you have to keep in mind here, broadly," Lisa explained as she did as she'd been bidden to, retrieving her baby from the table by the door while leading Liliana back towards the shooting range proper. "First off, don't even think to put your finger on the trigger properly until you're well and truly ready to shoot. Until that time comes, you keep your finger on the side of the barrel, not even around the finger guard. Similarly, the only time you even think to go near the safety is when you're going to be using the gun. You re-engage it when you're not actively firing, no matter what—even if you're only leaving the weapon for a moment. When you walk with it, you do so the way I'm doing. Look, see? When we get up there, and you set your gun down, I want you to try and take this one out of my hands. Make sure your grip is secure. Hold it loosely enough to be comfortable, but strong enough to give rigour mortis a run for its money. Are you with me so far?"

"Don't touch the trigger, don't touch the safety, keep hold of the gun," Liliana paraphrased; then she looked at Lisa as though seeking reassurance, while they ascended the artificial hill that was meant to give the range some elevation. "Right?"

"Correct," the sharpshooter nodded, steering Liliana towards one of the easier parts of the range, for some preliminary assessment of where she was. It gave her a peculiar thrill to be doing this, and she had to wonder if this was how Justine had felt when she'd first agreed to tutor Lisa, to help her get through her struggles with maths. It obviously couldn't be precisely the same, of course, since Justine had never once shown even the slightest sexual interest in her, which was on the one hand incredibly refreshing, but on the other disconcertingly unfamiliar; but she fancied that perhaps the broad strokes were of the same colour. At the part of the range she'd intended, she made gestures with the barrel of her sniper rifle to direct Liliana to put her own gun down, as she'd said.

Liliana obliged, setting it down against one of the low walls that made up the different 'stalls' of the range, along with the three magazines' worth of ammunition; that done, she did as she'd been asked on the way up the hill, and walked up to Lisa to try and pry the rifle from out of her hands—she made several earnest attempts, but to no avail. "I see…"

"A gun isn't a toy. It's a weapon, Liliana, a tool meant to end lives," Lisa explained, and though she might have been among the first to concede that there was a certain level of condescension inherent to her choice of words, she believed very strongly that this point had to be made regardless. "Its very function is to do another harm, and without a proper respect paid towards that fact, you're just as liable to wind up the one being harmed as the one who's on the business end of that barrel. Now, take the gun, get on your belly, and I'll guide you through this, step by step."

"Okay, that sounds easy enough," Liliana agreed, plucking the gun Lisa had chosen for her up from where she'd set it down, before staring at it uncomprehendingly. "How am I supposed to do this, exactly?"

"Give me a moment, here," Lisa replied, setting the butt of her baby's stock onto the ground so as to better reach up and unscrew her own bipod from the rail. She knew from experience that all the guns that were meant to be used on this range had a comparable rail size, so she didn't anticipate this being much of a difficult solution. While she saw to that end of things, she ventured, "I take it you're a neophyte when it comes to long-range firing?"

"More or less," Liliana admitted, a bit of pink shame blooming across her high, full cheeks. "Pistols were the easiest, followed by shotguns. Submachine guns and assault rifles I was decent with. I was able to muddle through all of it, give or take, but…well…"

"There's not really any faking a shot from long range, is there?" Lisa finished in a sympathetic tone. Then, the screw was finally out, so she kept hold of it and slid the bipod off of the barrel, before awkwardly shuffling over to Liliana's side to affix the attachment to the rifle the blonde was holding upright. "Well, I suppose it's a good thing I'm here, then. Let me just get this screw into its proper place…there we go… There. That should do it. Nice and secure. Now, with the bipod deployed, set the rifle on the ground, and I want you to then lay down on your stomach. Be sure to align your body in a direct parallel as best as you can manage, alright?"

"Yes, ma'am. On both counts, in fact," Liliana acknowledged wryly. She reached up and deployed the legs of the bipod, and then set it down on the ground as straight as she could get it. The ground of each of the shooting stalls was covered by a thin mat, to better designate where the people practising were meant to set themselves down alongside their firearms, and it was upon one such mat that the aristocrat laid on her stomach, setting herself in parallel with her chosen gun just as she'd been instructed. She pulled all three of the mags she'd set down closer to her, and chose one to slot into the empty magazine well, snapping it into place and working the pull bolt to load the first round into the chamber. That done, she looked up at Lisa, and then asked, "So, what now?"

"First, note the controls on the panel immediately to your right, on the wall of the stall itself. I want you to set up the range for an engagement distance of four hundred metres," Lisa instructed calmly, crouching down so that she could more easily point to what she was talking about if need be. Thankfully, the process of prepping the range proceeded without incident, and without further ado, a single mannequin popped up out of the ground, four hundred metres in the distance. "So there are four things to keep in mind while you're preparing to fire a marksman's rifle. The first is breathing: keep it calm and steady. The gun is sensitive to any number of environmental factors, and the longer the distance, the more that even slight mistakes at the stall can send your shot wide once it gets downrange. The degree is specific to each gun, called its 'minute of angle,' but just as a general matter, you want to do as much as you can to negate that risk; which is why you only ever fire immediately after either the inhale or the exhale."

"Breathing," Liliana repeated seriously; a moment later, the rhythm of the rise and fall of her back changed, levelling out to a steady regularity. "Got it."

"Next, keep your cheek flush against the stock, and do not move it," Lisa continued, equally severe, the flirtation of prior moments all but forgotten in the face of her focus. She leaned over towards the left side of the stall, pulling open a small, inconspicuous drawer, and plucked out the pair of provided mufflers for the ears, setting it on Liliana's right side within her field of vision. "Take those earmuffs and put them on after I've finished speaking—these sorts of guns get loud. When you're ready to fire, and not a moment before, click off the safety, and squeeze the trigger. One shot, one kill. Ready?"

"I am," Liliana affirmed with a small, subtle nod.

"Good," said Lisa. "Now put on the mufflers, line up your shot, and take it. We'll stop and take a look at where we are with how you can improve right afterwards."

"Right," said Liliana, reaching over with her non-firing hand to take hold of the earmuffs and then don them in a clumsy but undeniably effective manoeuvre. That done, she leaned into the scope, and just as she'd been instructed, she squeezed the trigger between breaths.

The gun jolted slightly, flashing bright and with a thunderous crack; sure enough, down the range, the mannequin's right arm sheared off at the shoulder barely a moment afterwards.

Unwilling to wait for Liliana to remove the mufflers herself, Lisa leaned in and pulled one of them away from the blonde's ear so that she could make herself heard. "Try adjusting the angle of the rifle. Two degrees up, one degree to the right."

Liliana's cheeks flushed, but she nodded again, very slightly, as Lisa returned the muffler to her ear and gave her a bit of space.

The muzzle flashed again, and the crack resounded; but this time, the round hit the mannequin right square in the face.

The look of astonished joy that split Liliana Vergamon's face made Lisa's stomach flip, nauseating in a way that was oddly pleasant.

Practise continued as the mid-afternoon weaned into late afternoon and encroaching twilight; by the time that they called a halt to their session, having exhausted all three magazines of ammunition, Lisa felt that she was duly pleased with herself—only a single session, and already they'd successfully nailed down what Liliana's sight picture was, and begun to get into how to adjust for it. This was her first time trying to help anyone with anything in this way, and the fact that Liliana was already showing marked improvement put some extra wind into the sharpshooter's proverbial sails. She was reflecting on this while she cleaned out both of the guns the pair had used that afternoon, some time after Liliana had gone to see to some kind of obligation or other, and was still riding that high when she'd finished putting everything away, grabbed her jacket from the hook, left the armoury, and locked it up for the evening.

Once she'd done that, she returned the keys to her belt loop, straightened, and then called out, "You can come out now, if you'd like."

From out an easily-overlooked alcove nearby, then, emerged a tall, muscled girl with hair the colour of sunset and crimson eyes so vivid in shade that they actually looked to be bordering on scarlet. Her small mouth curled up into a surprised grin that seemed genuine on the surface, for all that Lisa couldn't help but notice that whatever amiability the interloper was about to put on display was nothing more than an affect, and one that was clearly only skin-deep at that. She was attired in a uniform (specifically the skirt variant), with every physical trait on display attesting to the girl with the sunset hair being physically precocious, but otherwise of an age with the other students currently in the program, but there was something distinctly off about it, and if Lisa focused, it was as though she could pick out discrepancies that shifted from moment to moment, making the whole thing feel a farce, and leaving her with an impossible certainty that this woman was only playing at youth, for whatever reason. She said as much: "You're older than you look…"

For a brief moment, something like surprise flashed in the woman's red eyes; and though it was gone as quickly as it came, Lisa knew the truth in what she thought she'd seen. "Well, shite, you're the real deal, ain't ya."

"I have good eyes," said Lisa with a dry tone.

"You're tellin' me," the woman chuckled. "I s'pose that's what I get for underestimatin' ya…"

Lisa shrugged. "Don't take it too personally. You wouldn't be the first to make that mistake."

"Mayhaps, but I really ought to know better," the woman grumbled.

"If you're worried about being exposed, don't be," Lisa assured the woman. "I still don't know how you're hiding what you are, or for what purpose, or even what you really are—I know only that you're not what you pretend to be. Until I figure all that out, you're more or less safe."

"You'll forgive me if that doesn't exactly fill me with confidence, lass…"

Lisa shrugged. "With all due respect, that's not my problem. You should have thought of that before you tried to fool my bullshit detectors."

"You've got a point there…" the woman sighed. "My name's Catrìona, by the by."

"Is that your name, or the name you're pretending to have?" Lisa prodded.

"It's the name you're gettin' outta me," the now-named Catrìona huffed obstinately.

"Is that so?" Lisa asked facetiously, a mocking smirk lurking beneath her skin.

"Look, lass, I just came here to have a wee chat," Catrìona sighed in exasperation.

"Mm, alright. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at least a little curious," Lisa replied, crossing her arms under her modest chest. "Go on, then. Talk."

It was only because of her keen powers of perception that Lisa noticed the strange symbols come to life in the sunset girl's red eyes; and she knew then that by the time she managed to look away, it would already have been entirely too late…

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There was something rotten in the state of Denmark, so to speak.

This was the week before the next round of mock-battle examinations, and yet instead of the quiet confidence Justine had in her mind come to associate with her subordinates, her comrades, ahead of a new engagement, morale had begun to plummet over the course of the past fortnight; and Justine, who always did her best to remain both aware of and attentive to her comrades' needs, was keenly aware of it. One by one were they each afflicted, turned quiet in a restless, tempestuous sort of way, as though suffering from some form of internal strife, and yet from each of them, she gained an answer no more substantive than the same sorts of flimsy assurances she remembered she'd often resorted to in the past, during that time in her life when she'd lived at Aries Villa, and the late Empress Marianne, her mother, was still alive. It troubled her greatly to see this pall fall upon those she was meant to lead to victory, and even Suzaku, whose social acumen had always far outstripped Justine's own, had no comforts to offer. Her eyes remained watchful, and Justine did not for even a moment think that her best friend was any less aware of the state of things than the princess was herself; but for all of that, it seemed that the Honorary Britannian had no solutions worthy of mention to offer.

This sense of profound disquiet festered in Justine like a worried wound as the usually very cordial, almost casual atmosphere within the dorm building became strained, tense, morose—and at more than one point, it had all boiled over and became combative. She was watching her team's cohesion begin to quickly break down around her despite her best efforts, and by the end of the week, Justine herself had begun to entertain a particularly poisonous little thought, that perhaps there was nothing she could do, save to watch it all fall apart.

After all, who was she, really?

She was Justine vi Britannia, Fourth Princess of the Realm. Whether she was in disfavour right this moment or not was fundamentally immaterial: the people she was living and working with were all of them bastards, gentlefolk, and lesser nobility. What knowledge or understanding could she possibly have of their cares or woes? Was she really so spoiled and conceited that she believed that mere words would be enough to bridge such an immeasurable gap, a chasm of difference in the worlds they lived in and occupied, just because they came from out of her mouth? She, whose existence was an imposition she'd believed she was in any way entitled to make?

Part of her recognised the voice that spoke these thoughts as Empress Marianne's.

The rest of her was too haunted by the possibility that she'd been right to care.

After all, what could this entire sad drama that was playing out before her eyes right then be, if not a clear and unambiguous affirmation of every sharp word Marianne—her mother, her cheek still stung with the phantom impact that always came whenever she thought to call her anything else—had ever said to her over the course of her girlhood?

I will not have you shame me by forgetting your station, insolent, wilful child that you are.

That was correct. She could not forget her station. Could not forget that by right of her birth, Justine vi Britannia stood apart from all others. She was a princess of Britannia, and though she might from time to time deceive herself otherwise, they could not and never would be her friends. Hell, where on Earth did she think her subordinates here at school were going to go after this program was over? Did she honestly think that any of them would stay by her side, instead of scattering to the four winds to find commissions of their own, so that they might advance their own social standing? She was a fool.

Marianne had always said it as though she was disappointed, thought Justine lesser, for not making that lesson into a source of strength. And there was a time, before Justine knew for a fact to what extent her own mother detested her very existence, when the thought of coming up short before her mother, who had found fault in even the simplest of things she'd attempted in her youth, had made her feel physically ill. Yet try as she might, that lesson had never managed to make Justine feel anything other than a deep, desperate sort of loneliness.

Justine didn't think so highly of her capacity for deception that she thought her own inner turmoil had escaped Suzaku's notice, and she knew that her own reticence on the subject during her twice-daily video calls with Milly had managed to anger her fiancée; but any time she attempted to speak of it, it was as though her powers of speech left her entirely, and she could not force even a single word of any of it past her lips until she took a few minutes to let herself settle, and then pursued another subject. It took her back to when she was much smaller, and her mother's displeasure was a force so oppressive that Justine had on more than one occasion temporarily lost her powers of speech entirely—the recollection never once failed to make her cheeks burn with the sting of humiliation, and after a few days, Milly had also ceased trying to broach the subject. Yet even then, Justine could sense the molten fury simmering under the surface of the girl she'd so quickly come to love so desperately it hurt, and the idea of Justine herself being the subject of any of that displeasure made her so profoundly ill that she'd voided her stomach more than once over it. She'd never been a particularly deep sleeper, but now even the slightest glimmers of rest eluded her entirely, and she'd lost her appetite altogether.

When the letter had been delivered to the dormitory building by a student she recognised from her Logistics class by face, for all that she'd never learned the boy's name, she'd grabbed her tachi and went to the appointed meeting spot at the appointed hour mostly out of a desire to find some manner of escape and reprieve from the conflicts and unrest of her own mind. The shadows were lengthening as the summer day came to a close, and she marched her way through the foliage of the campus woodlands she'd run through on practically a daily basis since the beginning of the program, coming at last to a decently-sized clearing wherein there stood two people.

One of them she recognised from the very first day of the program. Integra Harrowmont had proven herself several times over already, with a string of victories that was just as unbroken as Justine's own; and though Justine and her subordinates had gained the lion's share of the recognition and reputation from their own wins, Justine would count herself as likely among the first to admit to having a profound respect for the silver-haired heiress's much less glamorous, yet undeniably effective tactics and battle acumen. She had come alongside the girl who was presumably her adjutant, and was attired in the same uniform she'd worn during their first meeting, with the addition of the golden épaulettes and aiguillette that marked her rank as a force captain, as well as a rich purple shoulder cape that brought to mind images of victorious generals of the ancient world turned to the first to bear the laurel wreath and title of 'caesar.' At her hip, there rested an elegant basket-hilted silver rapier made of blued steel, and upon the round guard, Justine could just barely pick out at this distance that some manner of decoration had been engraved into the lustrous metal.

The adjutant, in contrast, Justine knew for a fact that she'd never seen before in her life. A tall girl who radiated an aura of profound danger to Justine's senses, she was broad in the shoulders and also in the curves, while she carried herself with a certain powerful posture that indicated that the probable adjutant possessed some significant degree of physical might. She dressed in the skirt variant of the school uniform, her long, straight blonde hair had a sort of orange tint that was very reminiscent of a sunset, and her narrow eyes seemed to almost glow from the inside, a crimson so vibrant that it looked practically scarlet, which contrasted with her tanned skin, her small mouth, her high cheekbones and features that were angular and sharp in a manner that was, in some strange way that was perhaps much more clearly felt than it could be explained, very much not Britannian, to create an image of someone whom Justine's instincts insisted was not at all as she seemed.

"Good evening, your highness," Harrowmont greeted with a respectful nod of her head, though her tone had turned the title into a target of mockery. "So good of you to descend from your ivory tower on high to fraternise with us lesser beasts. Truly, we're honoured."

"You asked me to come, Lady Harrowmont," Justine responded, entirely too exhausted emotionally to even bother trying to take offence to the clear impropriety of the other force captain's mockery. "And so I came. Say your piece."

"Impatient, are we?" Harrowmont teased, though there was a glint of malice and a spark of ire both on clear display in her aquamarine eyes behind the round lenses of her wire-rimmed glasses. "You'll have to wait a little longer, I'm afraid. Our audience of witnesses has yet to arrive, of course."

"Audience?" Justine repeated, her dark brow furrowing.

But whatever questions Justine might have had on the subject perished upon her lips in what felt like the very next moment: out from the tree line, then, came Elizabeth, Hecate, Odette, Marika, Liliana, in one uninterrupted procession on her left; while to the right of the princess, Sif, her lover Yennefer, and even the rarely-seen Lindelle herself emerged.

Almost the entirety of her force had been assembled here, for some unknown purpose.

"We got off on the wrong foot, you and I—don't you think so, your highness?" Harrowmont began in a conversational tone, her white-gloved hand gesturing airily as she kept speaking. "I shall admit, I do indeed bear the lion's share of the blame in that unpleasant little incident; but you do, of course,have to understand that at the time, I very much genuinely believed everything I said, convinced as I was of the truth of each and every word that came out of my mouth. I turned out to be very much mistaken, of course, and you proved that quite handily once the bullets really began to fly, so to speak; and so before we meet each other on the field in a few days' time, my force pitted against yours, I wanted to try to make amends. Properly, this time, that is."

"What do you propose, Lady Harrowmont?" Justine asked warily, but not discourteously.

"It's less of a proposition, and more of an offer, I'd say," Harrowmont replied mildly. "And what I offer you, your highness, is satisfaction. You, along with any member of your force who feels so inclined, may take your pound of flesh. A physical contest, a brawl, me against you and your loyal friends, so as to provide adequate and appropriate recompense for your offended honour."

"And when is this to take place, then?" Justine asked, sensing something nefarious about this whole situation, lurking just beneath the surface of it all.

"Why, right now, of course," Integra Harrowmont proclaimed, drawing her rapier and revealing the design on the basket hilt to be of a snarling wolf's head, with the blade of the sword coming out of the open maw like a tongue. "After all, there's no time like the present, as they say."

On the urging of some self-destructive impulse, Justine swept her gaze back over the assemblage of those she commanded, those whose pains and joys she would never understand.

What she found looking back at her, then, with their shuffling, restless feet, conflicted, troubled expressions, and shifting, uncertain glances, was something she wished she could say surprised her.

I've asked too much of them already, she thought with a grave solemnity. The certainty that came with that knowledge, the understanding that she had overstepped, numbed any sort of pain she might have felt. After all, were not sadness and disappointment chiefly the domain of expectations betrayed? She had expected this. She had no right to feel bad about it, especially not now. So be it, I suppose.

"Very well, then," Justine sighed, a cold feeling sweeping through her that offered all of the stillness and none of the comfort of that calm mantle of complete control she'd grown so accustomed to. She would just have to make do. "I shall face you alone."

There was a glint in the Harrowmont heiress's eyes just then that Justine did not trust in the slightest capacity; but there was also an exhaustion in her that went deeper than her bones, and thus she couldn't rightly bring herself to care. "Wonderful…"

With that, Harrowmont brought her rapier up into a salute so perfect it could have been a diagram in a book on duelling etiquette, and then shifted into the engarde position. Justine, in contrast, drew her tachi from out of its sheath, and gave a slight incline of her head in acknowledgement to her opponent as she slid back into her own preferred fighting pose, a variation on the kenjutsu stance kasumi no kamae. Her sword was held flat at just below the level of her eye, both hands gripping the hilt loosely but securely, and most of her weight was placed onto her back foot.

They stood that way, still as statues, for a few moments. Then, Justine saw the bunching of the other girl's muscle groups, and more than that, some sixth sense told her that Harrowmont would make an attack. She knew exactly where it would land, too, and so instead of moving her blade, or indeed herself, any more than was absolutely necessary, she took half a step and leaned; at that exact moment, Harrowmont lunged with the speed and force of a bullet, her rapier missing Justine and her uniform by half a hair's breadth. The shoulder cape, displaced by the sudden motion, began to flutter down onto the extended sword, but Integra Harrowmont was cleverer than to allow that to happen.

As quickly as she'd shot forth, she moved back to rest; but in a sharp flash, she moved again, which left only Justine's split-second reactions to bridge the gap between that sixth sense and her body's ability to obey her.

A harsh clash resounded throughout the clearing: the rapier met the tachi, and without being thrown off of her course, Harrowmont recovered. Three more attacks to press the advantage increasingly tested the acuity of Justine's own instincts, and though each was fended off as they came, she only managed to evade the fourth so narrowly that her sleeve was sliced in sacrifice. Another sinking feeling came to rest in the pit of Justine's stomach alongside all the others, the dreaded realisation that she didn't have a chance to force an opening the way she usually did. For the first time in years, she found herself on the defence in a duel.

Needless to say, it was not a pleasant recollection.

"So those are your instincts. Marvellous," Harrowmont said, impressed halfway to the point of awe. "Once again, I've underestimated you, your highness. Even now, you're far better than my predictions…

"What do you say we turn this up a notch, then, hmm?"

The next assault was a hurricane of steel, a storm of sharp edges and jutting points. Justine's senses screamed them out at her, but it was to no avail; she had too little warning to prepare, and they came far too swiftly for her to properly adjust. Just barely, she was able to sacrifice her footing to backstep hard; and even then, the metal came so close to her skin that it sheared off a lock of her hair, while the sheer force of the displaced air being forced out and then rushing back to fill the vacuum left a narrow line that cut across her otherwise immaculate pale-skinned cheek.

"What, has no one ever made you bleed before, your highness?" Harrowmont mocked, each of her words full of scorn. She made a rude noise at the back of her throat. "Typical. The Commoner Princess, just as spoiled and coddled as all the rest… I suppose your dead French whore of a mother must really have spared the rod, eh? Though I'll concede, you're very good…"

There was something like indignation that Justine felt suddenly. This was pathetic. How could this be her limit? How weak and stupid must she be that such a shameful display was the best she could muster? And what was perhaps most galling of all: she could feel it, the very next level, just barely out of her reach. She had to reach it—she had to. Otherwise, why had she been born in the first place? What purpose could she possibly serve if this was the end of the line for her?

In the hair-thin interval between one blow and the next, she shoved her pain down, forcing it into a box, and then took a single step into Harrowmont's zone of control. With one hand, she brought the edge of her tachi screaming down to cut into the girl's undefended shoulder—

—Only to then find her blade turned aside in a rush, leaving her body wide-open.

"…I just so happen to be better…"

Justine didn't feel it properly, at first. It was something she saw and heard, powerless as she was to prevent it; but feeling it wasn't a liberty the situation afforded her.

She'd spotted the next level, a ledge she'd had a chance of grabbing, if only she took the leap…

…And she'd missed.

The rapier's steel tongue slid into the gaps between Justine's ribs, running through her body and out her back, as a bloody flower blossomed from within her shirt. Iron and copper and salt welled up at the end of her throat, wet and tacky; and as she coughed to dislodge a wad of it, it came out from between her lips, warm and red and flowing.

Huh… a strange thought occurred to her then, wrapped up in the shock and the silent void that had swallowed the rest of her mind whole. I could have sworn that that should be a different colour…

Lady Harrowmont drew close to her, then, so that she could speak directly into Justine's ear, and with poison painted onto her thin mouth, she hissed: "The next time one of you pampered princelings thinks they're entitled to acclaim, I want you to remember how easy it was to turn your team against itself, and to reduce all that you've built to so much ash. Farewell, your highness."

Integra Harrowmont stepped back, then, drawing her rapier out alongside her, and it was as though someone had cut Justine's strings.

The princess's knees buckled, dropping her into the grass beneath her feet.

Before her face even hit the ground, darkness had already claimed her…