Ad Victoriam Military Academy, July, a.t.b. 2013
As she watched her best friend fall, Suzaku couldn't decide if it was a bad joke, or her worst nightmare.
She'd returned from a secret video call with Milly Ashford, something they only tended to do when Justine was a subject of concern, and found the note on the desk in the dorm room the two shared. With her uchigatana in hand, she'd run to that spot, knowing only that she had to stop her first friend, her best friend, from doing something drastic or reckless; but she'd only arrived in time to watch as the white-haired bitch they'd met on the first day of school pulled her fancy-looking sword out of Justine's chest, the black-haired girl falling face-first into the dirt immediately thereafter. Suzaku's impulse, naturally, was to go for her own sword and cut the cunt in half for what she'd done, but there were two things that she noticed in the barest moment it would have taken her to act upon that urge that convinced her to stay her hand.
The first was the bigger girl alongside the white-haired cunt, whose killing intent was so incredibly intense that sensing it was like trying to stare directly into the sun itself.
The second, however, was that every other member of the team was already here, staring on in what Suzaku could most charitably describe as 'gormless horror.'
Kururugi Suzaku liked to think that she was an easygoing sort of girl. She was a young woman with simple tastes, and a deep and healthy appreciation for the little things in life. She loved weapons, she loved fighting, and she loved Izanami-sensei, the woman who had first taught her how to live, both as herself, as well as for her own sake. But ever since almost three years ago, she'd loved Justine, the only girl her age who'd ever truly understood her, who'd ever managed to make her soul blaze so bright, her friend whose own soul had blazed in turn…
Suzaku loved her friend deeply, abidingly, and with a bond they shared that was of such impossible potency that it had long since transcended both logic and reason.
She hadn't known it was possible to get as angry as she was at that exact moment.
Both the white-haired cunt and Sun-bitch were well out of earshot already when she at last stepped forth into the clearing; and to her immense disgust, not one of them seemed keen to make even the slightest of moves out of their stock-still positions. They might as well have been statues for all the good they were doing for the one girl who'd never once failed to believe in all of them.
At least the one she'd been training, Odette, had the decency to flinch in shame at Suzaku's disgust.
She turned her best friend over, assessing her as Izanami-sensei had taught her to do, and what she found was troubling, but by no means irreparable—especially not with the brand-new batch that Suzaku's immortal teacher-turned-lover had sent back with them after Justine's birthday last December. The hit that had felled her, the rapier running her through, had taken a path through her kidney, and carved a decent nick out of her lung before it exited. What with the supplements Suzaku had made certain Justine still took even as this whole sad mess kicked into high gear, she knew her best friend was sturdy enough that all she really needed was to sleep it off, with maybe a curative dose to really bolster her healing process—but she could still get sick, which meant that the sooner Suzaku got her out of the dirt and indoors, the better.
She pried the tachi Justine was fond of out of her hand, and fiddled about a bit to get it back into its sheath, before standing tall and turning to face the cowards who hadn't done jack shit to keep their leader from getting run through. Couldn't they tell how she hadn't been eating or sleeping? How wound tight and ready to snap she'd been from sheer nervous energy during the past week? She'd been in no condition to spar for the past few days, let alone fight.
All this and more she turned upon the others. "Are y'all just going to stand there like a bunch of nutless fuckin' monkeys? Or are any of ya gonna try and shape the fuck up, and help me get our leader back to the dorm?"
The sheer venom in her voice made more than a few of them flinch; the first to step forward, though, was their resident pacifist and field medic-in-training. Suzaku knew her name, Lindelle Rathbone, only because it'd been one of the few things Justine had insisted upon making her memorise from early on in the program; it was how she knew the names of every member on the team, such as it was, in fact. The fourteen-year-old's normally placid expression had been exchanged for a certain degree of no-nonsense severity, which did a few interesting things to a long face that was otherwise pretty enough in a fairly tepid way, with a gentler set of features than most Britannian nobles (though her long, bound, moss-green hair was really enough of a clear indication of her highborn lineage); she assessed Justine's condition with alarm, but took one look at Suzaku's calm anger, and nodded. "I'll help."
"So will I," said the girl Justine was tutoring in maths, Elizabeth.
"I've got her right arm," volunteered the girl who could communicate with animals, Hecate.
"Good," Suzaku remarked with a momentarily satisfied nod. "Let's make this quick."
Together, the three of them lifted, Lindelle getting Justine's legs, Elizabeth carrying her by her left armpit, and Hecate having called the right; Suzaku hung with them to make sure that they weren't jostling Justine needlessly as they carried her, and all the rest of the team were left to take a walk of shame back to the dorm building. It wasn't a long walk, and mercifully empty to boot, so Suzaku opened the door inside, and guided the trio carrying their unconscious leader into the dorm room she and her best friend shared. When Justine had been laid upon her mattress, her boots off and her ruined clothing shucked off to expose the camisole and corset she wore under her bloodstained shirt, Suzaku took a moment to pull the trio who had volunteered aside.
"There's gonna be a house meetin' in the next twenty minutes," she explained with a patient calm she certainly wasn't feeling right then. "I want everyone there, all eight of ya. I'll hold the three of you personally responsible if even one person is missin'. Do ya understand me?"
"Force Captain Justine needs medical attention," Lindelle protested seriously.
"After what just happened, I think it's best that ya let me handle it," Suzaku refused. "Out of all of us, I'm the only one who didn't just stand aside while she got shanked, after all."
"...Understood," Lindelle replied, resigned.
"I wanna make somethin' perfectly clear," the adjutant explained, her voice lowered to a deathly quiet. "Whatever's gotten your panties into a collective Gordian knot, it ends tonight. This is your second chance, all of ya. Don't fuck it up. If y'all can handle that simple task, then maybe I won't have to make you explain to Justine's fiancée why her betrothed has a hole in her chest, personally. And, trust me: once you've managed to get yourselves onto Carmilla Ashford's shit list, you'll all wish I'd just taken a lash to all o' your backs like I'm sorely tempted to do right now. Now, go. Get the fuck outta my sight."
Either Milly's tenure as sub-viceroy in name only had gained her something of a reputation here in the Britannian Homeland, or Suzaku's tone had been enough to clue them into the severity of the threat—but whatever the reason, none of them looked ready to protest their dismissal; so they bowed, and quietly left the dorm room. Suzaku waited until the door closed behind them, and then a few more seconds so that they were out of earshot, before exhaling heavily into the blessed silence. She ran a hand through her long mane of thick brown hair and huffed a fallen fringe out of her face as she scanned the room. "Kami this situation is so far beyond fucked, it's not even funny… Now where did I put that pouch… Aha! There you are…"
Spotting the leather pouch in question, Suzaku grabbed it from where it had been left and opened it, sorting through the contents to find one of the phials that glowed a less sickly shade of green than the stuff they were supposed to take daily. She found one without too much effort, thankfully, and when she had it in her grasp, she shook it lightly, swishing it side-to-side; once it began to glow brightly from within, she nodded to herself and made her way over to where she'd had her best friend laid out. A thought occurred to her when she gazed upon the corset that supported Justine's chest, that it might be a good idea to sew some armoured plating into future undergarments, but she didn't let that distract her from the task of taking it off of her body too much.
The blood had been in the fabric of the corset for too long for it to wash out (Suzaku knew this from experience), and the hole in it certainly didn't help, so Suzaku didn't have any compunctions about tearing it in half down Justine's front to get it off of her. Casting it to the side in one laced-together piece, she then took the camisole off to expose the immaculate marble pallor of Justine's torso. Taking note of the fact that her breasts were not rising or falling with a nod of verification, she turned her attention to the wound itself, which had more or less ceased to bleed and instead now only oozed idly, her heart no longer strong enough to pump blood throughout her body.
Justine was dead, but she wasn't dead dead, not in the traditional sense; she was really only mostly dead, and though Suzaku had never seen her friend closer to actually perishing than she was right now (she tried not to take too much offence that not even their first meeting had come this close to killing the girl, as her lungs had remained intact back then), she remained somewhat alive, and the sight before Suzaku's eyes bore a strong enough resemblance to the aftermath of some of the more intense training sessions the pair had had with Izanami-sensei in the past that it didn't even occur to Suzaku to panic or to otherwise freak out. She grabbed the phial from the table by the bedside where she'd left it moments ago, unstoppered it, and then carefully poured the full dose into the entry wound, making sure not even a drop was left on the skin that was whole.
The liquid sizzled and smoked and hissed like acid when it made contact with organic tissue, but it wasn't long before it began to get absorbed into Justine's body, dissipating into nothingness to leave behind pale skin made immaculate once more. Suzaku watched carefully for a few moments more, waiting for the confirmation that what she'd just done had worked, and sure enough, a breath went through Justine's chest like an electric jolt, her breasts rising, and then falling with an unsteady tremble. The tincture, a 'spell in a bottle,' as it'd been described to her, had worked.
Suzaku stood from the bedside she'd perched herself upon, gave herself a few extra moments to just marvel at the role-reversal on display, and then cleaned up after herself. The most immediate concern in the form of Justine possibly passing beyond the Sanzu-no-Kawa had just been averted, and now it was time to sort out the problem that had brought all this about, preferably before her best friend roused once more from her regenerative coma.
She emerged from the dorm room to roughly the exact sort of scene she'd imagined when she gave the order to assemble. Along the back wall of the common area, Elizabeth and Odette were leaning, with a third in the form of Liliana standing tall and straight between them with an expression of vague discomfort. The sofa could seat three people comfortably, and right now hosted four: the only currently official couple on the team, the lupine Sif and the corvine Yennefer, sat together, with Hecate looking as though she hoped to have the furniture swallow her whole in the spare space. Marika was perched upon one of the arms of the sofa, her expression conflicted as she tried and failed to maintain her devil-may-care attitude, and Lindelle had found herself a seat in the adjacent armchair, her expression serene yet attentive.
Suzaku nodded. "You're all here. Good. At least the lot of you can handle that much…"
There was no response from any of them; just some uncomfortable shifting.
She scoffed in disdain. "What, did a cat nail your dicks to the table? Or is this just how y'all were while you all stood by and watched my best friend, your leader, get herself stabbed? Huh? Earth to Royal Force! Anyone home?!"
More shuffling. No one spoke up, though.
Suzaku sighed, her hand flying to her forehead and then slowly dragging her fingers down her face. "Look, you guys. I know that, for whatever reason, the past two weeks have been a real shitshow. Now that isn't to say I know why it's been a shitshow, but apparently it's been enough of one that it's put y'all at each other's throats right proper. Now, Justine wasn't gonna press y'all, because she didn't wanna be invasive. I dunno if any of ya knuckleheads've noticed, but she's real considerate like that. But thanks in no small part to all y'all, she's kinda sorta incapacitated right now, so you're stuck with me. And as for yours truly? I've got a whole lot less in the way o' patience for your collective bullshit. So spill."
When Suzaku was done, there was another silence, and more discomfort, and a tension that wound itself tighter and tighter as the seconds ticked past; then, finally, it snapped.
Or, perhaps more accurately, Marika Soresi snapped.
"What the fuck were we supposed to do, oh great and powerful leader? Sorry, adjutant," snarled the brunette, her sky blue eyes shining bright with frustrated indignation. "Because when Harrowmont gave us that challenge, instead of calling on any of us to help her, Her Royal Highness chose instead to fly it solo, so clearly she didn't think any of us could cut it! And then she got herself stabbed. So what fucking shot does your holier-than-thou-ness think we had back there, huh? Maybe you could deign to get yourself the fuck off your high horse for a moment, and tell us, exactly, how we aren't all fuck-ups the princess drags around behind her to cheer on her triumphs and sing her fucking praises!"
The girl's eyes were wide, her chest heaving, her cute tomboyish face torn into the clearest show of authentic emotion Suzaku had ever seen from her; and when she looked around to see similar sentiments reflected within the eyes of the others, a dire sense of certainty clicked into place within her.
"Has it ever occurred to you idiots, even for a moment, that she didn't wanna put any of you on the spot if ya didn't wanna be there?" Suzaku asked, feeling oddly calm and resolute as she did so. "Is that what this is about? That she didn't ask any of y'all to put yourselves at risk for her? News flash, morons! In case y'all've been too caught up with starin' at your fuckin' belly-buttons for the last whole fuckin' year to notice, Justine's kind of a dumbass! Did y'all really never once wonder why she kept takin' for herself all the hardest, riskiest parts of every one of her plans? It's not because she doesn't think y'all can cut it, or even 'cause she wants a fuckin' cheerleadin' squad, for fuck's sake. It's because it never even occurred to her to think to ask anyone else to do it for her! She's scared shitless of askin' y'all for more than you're willin' to give, so instead she doesn't ask anythin' of you at all! Try volunteerin' for shit next time! I can guaran-fuckin'-tee y'all, she's not gonna stop ya, let alone bite your heads off for steppin' up to the fuckin' plate for once! Do ya honestly think she'd put herself out there to help y'all if she genuinely thought y'all were fuck-ups and failures? Do y'all really think so low of her? If she didn't think y'all could pull your weight, she'd have no hesitation about benchin' ya. She keeps you guys in the game because she believes in y'all, sees somethin' great that ya could be, that she wants to help ya be. Maybe try trustin' her a little next time. Just a fuckin' thought. Because while she sees a whole lotta potential in each and every one of y'all, she sure as shit can't live up to your potential for you. Not that she wouldn't try to do exactly fuckin' that if she got it in her head that she could do it."
"So when none of us stepped forward to help her fight…" Elizabeth began morosely.
"She took your silence as refusal, yeah," Suzaku nodded gravely. "Probably even thought that she'd done what she was afraid to do and asked too much of y'all, if I know Justine—which, y'know, I do."
Elizabeth nodded, equally grave, and stepped forth from the wall. She sighed, and then spoke. "I want a show of hands, if I may. Which of you was approached by a girl who called herself 'Catrìona' in the past two weeks?"
The sniper was the first to raise her hand. Lindelle was next, followed by Liliana, then Hecate. The Blaiddyd couple raised their hands simultaneously, Odette followed suit, and the stunned-looking Marika rounded out the eight other force members. Looking out over all of this, the red-eyed girl nodded again, as though a theory she'd had was just confirmed for her. "I see. I think that by now, we all should be able to put two and two together. Catrìona is Integra Harrowmont's adjutant, and she approached each of us when we were alone so that she could get into our heads and manipulate us into doubting ourselves, and then by extension, each other. But she couldn't have done any of that unless we were all nursing these thoughts in our own minds already, whether we were aware of it or not."
"Fucking hell, you're right," Odette groaned from the wall. "We're idiots."
"If the manipulation wasn't going to work, it would have been something else," Elizabeth disagreed with audible certainty. "I think it should be clear to all of us by now that Integra Harrowmont was nursing some kind of grudge against Justine that drove her actions here, and she came after our team cohesion so as to achieve that end. It does no one any good whatsoever for us to start flagellating ourselves because she was able to correctly identify a weakness that we share, and then prove able to use it against us."
"You're correct, of course," Lindelle chimed in airily. "But then, where does that leave us?"
"I think it's more than safe to say that we've all said some things to each other that we really didn't mean over the course of the past week or so," the red-eyed sharpshooter replied. "We're going to need to forgive and forget, let this all be water under the bridge. Suzaku knows Justine better than any of us, and to put it bluntly, I don't think she thinks it'd be worth the effort it'd take to lie to us."
"Guilty as charged," Suzaku confirmed with a nod, crossing her arms under her chest as she sat back and watched these people that her best friend had seen potential in as they began to knit themselves back together. Perhaps into something stronger this time, even.
"Look, I know a lot of us have issues, and that those issues maybe wound up making the things that Catrìona said cut deeper for some of us than it did for others," Elizabeth sighed, leaning forth and placing her hands upon the back of the sofa. "And maybe some of us found it so easy to believe that Justine thought that we were fuck-ups because it was familiar, because we already believed it of ourselves. But Suzaku said that Justine believes in us, for some reason, for whatever reason. I know it's scary, I do, but…don't we owe it to her—Hell, don't we owe it to ourselves—to take a leap of faith, and find out for ourselves if we're really all that she thinks we might be?"
The next person to speak up was unexpected, and Suzaku couldn't recall ever having spoken to her personally before today: Yennefer. "Elizabeth has a point. Sif and I are for it, whatever it is that you're about to suggest."
Humorously enough, Sif looked like she was almost about to pipe up and voice an objection to Yennefer having spoken in her stead—Yennefer lovingly cuffed her on the ear before she fully opened her mouth. "Hush, you."
"I was going to agree," she complained.
"I knew you were," Yennefer replied with a raised brow. "Or do you actually think I'd have spoken for both of us if I thought you weren't?"
"…Point taken," she conceded with an embarrassed nod, rubbing at the back of her neck through her cascade of white hair.
"Well, I'm in," said Lindelle, bringing up a hand to stifle a yawn.
"Justine's always been very kind to me," Hecate said, her voice audibly reclaiming its quiet strength as she spoke. "If she believes that I can do something, be something, well… I'm more than willing to try and accept that what Suzaku said is the truth, I guess is what I'm getting at."
"I-I'm in," Liliana piped up, stepping forth to draw close to the strength of conviction that had almost formed an aura around Elizabeth as this continued—Suzaku noted the slight flush that crept into her cheeks at the proximity, and debated with herself the merits and demerits of starting up a betting pool around how long it would take the two of them to officially get together.
"Yeah, I gotta make up for this somehow," Odette added as she stepped forward to come alongside the sofa, crossing her arms and nodding. "Let's get ourselves some revenge for the captain."
All eyes now turned to Marika, who looked quite a bit like a deer caught in oncoming headlights at the sudden rush of attention. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and though the next words that came from her mouth were, "Yeah, sure, whatever," her whole act had been revealed for the performance it was, and everyone could tell that what was said here tonight had struck a chord with her, as well.
Suzaku suspected that it perhaps struck an even deeper chord than all of theirs, in fact.
Elizabeth nodded, and then turned to Suzaku; the rest of the force turned with her. The red-eyed girl was the one who spoke for all of them: "You're the second-in-command, Suzaku. Tell us what needs doing, and we'll get it handled. Together."
And for the first time since this whole mess started, Suzaku at last found it within herself to grin.
Justine awoke to a ceiling that she actually knew rather well by this point. She didn't know why that was an important or remarkable fact about her situation, per se—she knew only that it was.
The sun was up, and her internal clock, she knew, was off by a bit: she looked at the clock she'd put on the nightstand for Suzaku's sake, and read that it was currently half past seven; she noted that this meant that she'd somehow managed to sleep in, effectively. But alongside that came the knowledge of the current date, and that she didn't have classes to get to as a result of the mock battles beginning today. She was very much bare-chested at the moment, with no sign of either her camisole or her corset; and then the events of the previous day—the entire previous fortnight, in fact—came rushing back to her as she returned to the waking world at a speed more sluggish and plodding than she could remember doing for the better part of a decade, at least. That January night three years ago hadn't been what made her a light sleeper, but it certainly hadn't helped matters any, and with that came a tendency to awaken fairly quickly with minimal grogginess. But what she felt right now was almost comparable to a fugue state.
The door of the bedroom swung open, and in walked Suzaku, a tray laden with bowls of white rice, nattō, and seaweed balanced in her grasp. Breakfast, Justine recalled, because Britannian breakfast foods had a tendency to lean on more robust dishes, and anything too heavy in the mornings turned her stomach, making her feel bloated and acutely nauseous later on. But she also knew for a fact that the mess hall didn't stock anything currently on display here, which led her to raise an eyebrow at her best friend's admittedly very thoughtful gesture as she set it down onto the bedside table.
"You went into town to get all of this, didn't you?" she asked flatly, though she believed the answer was obvious enough given the circumstances.
Suzaku, to her credit, didn't try to hide it. She shrugged as she got a few bowls set up for herself and sat down on her own bedspread, chopsticks in hand. "Yeah, this all came from Chinatown. Though I can't take all the credit, really—this was a team effort. We got ourselves together and went on down to the shops, and when we came back, we used the kitchen here in the dorm to prepare it and everythin'."
"That's nice, I suppose," Justine nodded, reaching out and taking a few bowls for herself, arranging her meal and then picking at it mechanically with her chopsticks. "I take it they're in better spirits now?"
"Yeah, I guess ya could say that," Suzaku replied, her grin for once looking plastered on: her brow was beginning to furrow above it, which cast an air of insincerity about the whole thing. Justine liked to think that she knew her best friend by this point, and she didn't do conflicted. She was pure, in a way; always all-in on any display of emotion she was feeling at any given time. It lent her a certain air of simplicity that Justine found she sometimes envied. "We sat down last night, had a real heart-to-heart. I don't think there's gonna be any more issues anytime soon."
"That's good. I'm glad to hear it," Justine replied, picking listlessly at her breakfast a bit more.
Suzaku sighed, a heavy thing that sent a shudder throughout her entire body, it seemed. "Alright. I was gonna wait for you to say it for yourself, but you're clearly not gonna. So spill."
Justine turned to look at her friend again, a note of confusion stirring the still water that laid within her, the faint emotion sending out a disproportionately large ripple for that stillness. "Spill? Spill what?"
"I don't fuckin' know, Justine—everythin', maybe," her friend huffed, frustration clear in every bit and nuance of both her tone and her bearing. This was more like the Kururugi Suzaku she knew and trusted with her life. "This isn't like you. Fuckin' hell, I've seen you awake for less than five minutes, and you're scarin' me already. Snap the hell outta it!"
"There's nothing to snap out of, I'm afraid," Justine sighed lightly. "What do you want me to say?"
"It doesn't matter what ya say," her best friend groaned. "What I want is for you to stop shuttin' me out. We're supposed to be friends, aren't we?"
"And we are," Justine conceded, nodding her head. "If anything I said gave you the impression that I thought we weren't, I do sincerely apologise."
"Then what's got you actin' like a dead woman walkin', hmm?" Suzaku pressed, her tone seeming to grow increasingly impassioned by the moment. Justine felt her brow furrow minutely. How very curious. "Like, granted, you've never actually been the most expressive o' people, but like…this, right here? With the monotone voice and the way you're eatin' like a puppet? This is a whole 'nother level."
"It's nothing all that significant, I don't suppose," Justine sighed, picking through her food again as her gaze returned to it. "It's over. I'm done. I've washed out. Mother was right about me."
They sat there in tense silence for a few seconds that felt like they stretched on into eternity. Suzaku sat there, motionless, and the only sound that filled the room besides their breathing, and the muted noises of the outside world, was that of Justine's chopsticks clinking around in the bowl, without aim or purpose.
"Them not steppin' up to help ya," Suzaku said at last, her voice uncharacteristically sober, her tone flat, her affect grave. "It really got to ya, didn't it?"
"It's not their fault, not really," Justine pushed back gently. "The blame is mine to bear. I asked too much of them, and they baulked. I suppose it's my just desserts for thinking that I could ever really be able to understand them, to be part of them. I was born to stand alone, to stand apart. It was a kind fantasy, that I might experience that camaraderie, but all dreams must end once the dreamer awakens, I suppose."
"And where does that leave us, then?" Suzaku asked, her voice raw and oddly vulnerable.
And because of the love she bore the girl, Justine turned to face her, took in the beginnings of the distraught expression upon her face, and spoke softly, with gentle tones that she hoped might prove to be at least somewhat soothing. "You are and have been the truest, kindest friend I could ever have asked for. But I will never be able to understand your cares and woes as you do, or even as they might. A connection we may indeed share, but that fact will always and forever impose a distance between us, Suzaku."
Another silence fell after that, and a myriad of different emotions shifted upon her face. The parting of ways was something Justine could feel coming like a storm-cloud, sure as thunder in the distance; it would do no one any good for her to fail to accept it with the grace her station demanded of her, no matter how much it might hurt. When Suzaku's face settled at last upon resignation, it felt like a dagger had just been plunged into Justine's breast, into her heart, and she accepted the pain of it as her just due.
Yes, this was her fault. It always had been. Justine had no one to blame for this pain but herself.
"So that's how this is gonna go, huh?" her friend sighed, and there was a glittering of wet tears that had gathered in the corners of her eyes. She stared intently at Justine for a few moments more, her face twisted in what could only be her own pain, and then she scoffed harshly. "Fuckin' figures."
With that, the girl, formerly of Japan, stood from the bed, her bowls left where they were, and then left the room. The door swung shut with a sense of finality that rang out like a gong. Justine heaved a heavy sigh, and as her shoulders fell, there was a shudder like a wretched sob that tore its way through her chest and rattled her ribcage. How very pathetic…
And as the minutes ticked by, Justine felt the silence of the room swallowing her whole.
Then the door swung open again.
Justine's eyes went wide, her jaw dropping in open shock. "M-Milly…!"
And indeed, sure as the sunrise, there at the threshold of the dorm room stood none other than Milly Ashford herself, a thunderous expression upon her beautiful face.
It had been some months since she'd last seen her fiancée in the flesh—that break during December the school gave them, where Justine's birthday just so happened to fall, was the last time she could think of, and even now her body could only recall fond memories of that time they'd spent in each other's company, limited though it had been—and yet somehow she managed only to seem more radiant than before. She'd grown taller in that time, the height disparity between the two girls only seeming to increase as each went through their adolescence, the planes of her face sharpening and growing more refined. Her features would never be stark the way Justine's were, but the duchess's beauty possessed its own flavour of intimidation and command that was uniquely Milly. Her slender nose and thin lips, the softer shape of both her eyes and her high cheekbones, the fair yet sun-kissed vitality of her complexion and the cascading wavy lustre of her golden hair, her brow which walked the border between fine and strong, showing sarcasm and displeasure just as easily as her peculiar form of mocking, teasing endearment, the sharp and piercing azure hue of her eyes, it all came together with some subtle brushes of cosmetics to show Milly as a young woman who was well and truly coming into her own. Her lanky frame had filled out substantially, and Justine's eyes trailed over a chest just as generous as her own, a strong and well-built torso, the gentle rounding of her hips, the toned musculature of both her legs and her arms…
And then Justine's eyes reverted to her face, skimming over the commoner street clothes she wore, the distressed blue denim shorts and red tennis shoes, the watch on her wrist and the sleeveless white t-shirt that, by the look of the arm-seams, was home-made, as her gaze rose. And what she saw reflected back at her in the eyes of her betrothed made her shrink back into herself once more, submerging herself under the still pool all over again.
Suddenly, Milly was on her bed, grabbing hold of her chin and forcing their eyes to meet. "No. Bad girl. Stop it. Suzaku might be willing to stand aside and let you retreat and close yourself off, but I will not stand for it. You're mine, my love—all of you. Every bit of you is mine. Every part of your body, every dark and furtive corner of your mind, each and every last scrap of your spirit, all of it belongs to me. Or did you somehow manage to forget that? I will not suffer anyone to keep even the slightest piece of what is mine from me. Not even you."
Justine's heart was beating out of time, stuttering against itself. Her core felt as though the entirety of an iron foundry had been taken and compressed down into a single white-hot nugget that burned bright and searing within her abdomen. Her stomach was turning itself upside-down and inside-out. Thought became fuzzy and stringing one idea to the next took an almighty struggle against a glittering fog like the night sky itself in order to construct even a simple progression. Her gaze was arrested, her attention transfixed, every last part of her being riveted to this exact moment.
She was in love, and it felt very much like the absolute end of the world.
"I see you're still wearing it," Milly continued, with something almost like wonder. She shifted her position on the bed, and brought her other hand up to trace its way down the rhythmic flutter of Justine's throat and the delirious racing of her blood through the arteries of her neck, to rest upon the polished silver of the day collar with its rich ruby set at the hollow of her oesophagus. "It looks just as beautiful as the day I first fastened it around your lovely pale throat. My Justine…"
"Milly…" Justine gasped, like the name was a prayer dearly-recalled, recited like a confession from out the lips of a penitent sinner. She lifted her head up, exposing her throat further, and leaned in, happily succumbing to the mystery and miracle that was the older girl straddling her hips, the heat of her body and Justine's intermingling and becoming one.
"But you've been unfaithful, my Justine," Milly said mildly, and Justine froze in place. Something uncomfortably warm and lurching shot up her spine at the lightly-stated but dire admonition. "You haven't been true. You've strayed from me, my love…"
A sinking feeling plummeted into her stomach, and suddenly Justine's lungs were no longer entirely her own. They heaved and raced, her anxiety ratcheting higher and higher. "What? N-no, I…!"
"Oh, but you have. Don't lie to me, my love. You've never been very good at it," Milly murmured as she placed a single long finger upon Justine's lips, reminding the princess in a flash of exactly how much strength rested within each of those digits, strength to grasp and squeeze with desperate desire and abandon that left a purple mark and glorious soreness wherever the fingers had held with such passion and fervour, each lasting for days or weeks thereafter. "Shall I remind you of how you've strayed? Shall I lament how you've allowed another woman to claim a part of what is mine? But I am a jealous woman, my love, and I can't help but feel greedy when it comes to you. I don't want to share any part of you with anyone else, not even for a moment—and especially not with Marianne vi Britannia. Do you understand?"
Justine realised at last what her lover meant, and the still pool was barely even a distant memory, riled as it was with storm winds and a whirling tempest. "Milly… I… She's…"
"Do you," Milly interrupted sharply, her voice cracking like a whip. "Understand? It's a simple yes or no question, my love."
Justine's jaw clicked shut with an audible snap, and she nodded glumly.
"Good girl," the older girl praised her, leaning in closer to touch their noses together. Justine could not bear to look away, not even for a moment—eye contact with Milly was terrifying in the most thrilling of ways, a sinful intimacy, a defiant comfort, and like a river in a desert, she drank. "I know it's difficult. I was there at Aries Villa, too, and I recall every last moment of it. You carried the story of it with you back then, and you told it to me again with every sullen glance and burdened step. My only regret from the night she died, my love, was that I wasn't able to butcher her myself. So every time you hear a thought in that pretty head of yours that sounds like her, I want you to remember this. Me, and you, sat right here, right at this very moment. And whenever you feel tempted to indulge in such thoughts, I want you to remember that I will suffer no other to have even a pittance of what is mine—least of all, her.
"The next time you think that Marianne might have been correct about something—about anything, my love, my world, my Justine—I want you to remember how she plotted to steal you from me. Okay?"
Justine nodded feverishly; her words would profane this moment they shared.
Milly's lips curled up into a wicked, devilish grin. "Good girl—my girl. We'll take this together, one day at a time, and little by little, we'll remove a little more of her poison. One day, it'll be gone, and we'll have succeeded in getting all of it out of you. And on that day, my love? On that day, together, we'll shine."
On ardent impulse, Justine lunged forth, her arms wrapping around her fiancée's shoulders and neck as her lips crashed into Milly's with intense, apocalyptic need.
Milly's eyes widened in shock before softening into their shared delirium of flesh and passion.
Justine would be lying if she said she didn't get some measure of satisfaction from that fact alone.
Later—much later, in fact—when they were done, their desire for one another's flesh and heat and warmth allayed for the moment (for Justine had known even from the night of their very first coupling that there would be no sating it), Justine, despite her heartfelt wish to bask in the feeling of being both very pleasantly and very thoroughly debauched, rose from the bed with a muted groan. She stretched languorously, feeling some of her joints pop in the process as a gratifying rush of relief surged through her, and went to pick out new garments for herself. She was very keenly aware of Milly's leering gaze upon her nudity as she moved throughout the dormitory room, and she knew that it was an open invitation, but there were things she'd put off in her morose brooding of a few hours prior that required her attention. The memory of Suzaku and the expression of pain she'd worn, of how Justine's words had managed to hurt her, made Justine wince in the present, and then sigh in contrition. "I suppose I owe Suzaku an apology…"
"I don't doubt she understands," Milly remarked, leaning back in Justine's bed as she spoke. "I'd be very surprised indeed if she hasn't already forgiven you, in fact."
"Be that as it may, the fact remains that I said things that hurt her," Justine sighed, shaking her head as she started pulling on a camisole and underwear. "She's a dear friend, and the last thing I want to do is to start taking her or her friendship for granted."
"I did tell her that you sometimes got like that, and that nothing you said during such moods should be interpreted as your actual thoughts or opinions," Milly offered, leaning over and propping herself up on an elbow so that she could keep watching. "But what you've said sounds sensible enough, my love."
"I'm glad you think so," Justine replied with a wry smirk, turning around to look at her lover more directly. Then she noted that the bowl containing her breakfast was arrayed neatly on her nightstand table, with the chopsticks laid horizontally across the rim, and that detail diverted her entirely, the cylinder of her mind rotating another thought process into the chamber. Her ideas flew so swiftly all of a sudden now that her head was clear again that she didn't properly consider her words before speaking once more: "Darling, how did you get here?"
Justine realised what she'd said as soon as it came out of her mouth, and she froze in place as Milly slowly cocked an eyebrow, her (still wet) lips curling into a bemused smirk. "I do believe that might be the first term of endearment you've ever used with me, my Justine…"
Heat crept into Justine's cheeks like a fever; her lips sealed themselves, and though she felt a twinge of renewed desire in her core, the resonating soreness in her thighs and her abdomen were clear enough of a protest that Justine at least made an effort to control herself. It was a task she'd never really found all that difficult—unless, of course, she wound up in her lover's company.
Milly, however, seemed like she was inclined to be merciful this time (a rare mood), and instead of pressing her advantage, she smoothly continued onward. "Suzaku called me yesterday and informed me of what had happened. I arranged for a few days' worth of leave and took a shuttle back here to the Homeland as soon as we'd finished speaking. From how you've been over the past two weeks, and from what Suzaku had explained of the situation to me over that same period, I had a pretty decent idea of the kind of mood you'd be in when you woke up. And as it turns out, I was correct."
"Am I interrupting anything?" Justine asked, making certain to use her mildest, most innocent tone.
By the look Milly pinned her with before answering, however, her fiancée had seen right through it. "Nothing nearly as important as you, my love. I'll miss a few days of school, but I brought my work along with me, since I knew you'd fret yourself halfway into catatonia if I didn't. And as it happens, I managed to kill two birds with one stone with this trip: Lloyd needs devicer data for his seventh-generation Knightmare prototype, which he's somewhat whimsically dubbed the Z-01 'Lancelot,' and so when I offered, both he and Doctor Croomy packed up their equipment and accompanied me out here. They'll be gathering Suzaku's piloting data during your battle against Harrowmont's cronies in four days' time. Yours, too, like as not."
"So Kururugi Suzaku will be the pilot of the world's very first ever seventh-generation Knightmare Frame, then?" Justine chuckled, slipping on her second boot and fastening it closed around her leg from the thigh on downwards. "I don't doubt for a moment that she'll be overjoyed to hear it…"
She turned back around to grab a corset, but no sooner had she properly gotten ahold of one and let it open than did a pair of strong arms corded with lean muscle reach around her and take it from her grasp. "You know, I've always loved looking at your ass, but the heels on those boots do wonders for it…"
Milly's chest was flush against Justine's back, her lover's more than generous endowments pressing against her shoulder-blades, and though she had an outside world she had to attend to at some point, Justine couldn't help but melt into the older girl's lascivious embrace all the same. Those strong hands rested upon Justine's chest at last, and she hissed out a masochistic moan as the fingers sank into the pale flesh enough that it bulged from between the grasping digits. "You are a rake and a rogue…"
"Mmm… Maybe I am," Milly's voice husked, and though her tone affected a teasing lilt as she spoke, the hunger underneath it was real and potent. "But, more importantly, my love, I'm also right."
"Much as I'd love to, we can't very well spend the entire day in bed, darling," Justine admonished, and the flush that bloomed anew upon her face was only partly to do with their position. The deliberate use of the endearment would take some getting used to, but Milly had seemed pleased with it, and so she made a vow to herself that she'd work at getting more comfortable with saying it.
"You're right, you're right," Milly sighed, distinctly chagrined as she rested her chin into the joint of Justine's neck. "I suppose we'll just have to save it for our honeymoon, hmm?"
"A winter wedding, then?" Justine asked, bemused. "I was given to understand that most highborn women preferred springtime or summer to be wed. Though, then again I do suppose the winter might just be exactly right for us… Just like that night three years ago…"
"How long has it been since we've danced, my love?" Milly asked, burying her face into the side of Justine's throat and kissing idly at her pulse point, just above the silver choker. She'd leave another bruise, and Justine would treasure it as she did all the other markers of just how desperately Milly desired her.
"Darling, it could have been years, months, weeks, days," Justine began to list off, an almost giddy smile of true joy shifting her features into rare positions. "Hours, minutes, or even seconds; but the answer would remain the same regardless. Entirely too long."
"Then on the day that I finally get to take you as my wife," Milly murmured breathily into Justine's reddening skin, "we'll dance and we'll dance until our feet hurt and we can dance no more, my Justine…"
"Like something out of a fairy tale," Justine sighed dreamily, reaching one hand up to capture her lover's white-knuckled grip in her own grasp. "Yes, darling, I think I'd like that. In fact, I think I'd like that very much indeed…"
Up until the past two weeks, Marika Soresi had managed to delude herself into believing that she'd made her peace with her lot in life. She'd been born to be the spare to her older brother Kewell's heir, and it had seemed for the longest time that Kewell's military service record and close association with the head of the House of Gottwald, Margrave Jeremiah, had secured the Soresi family the political ascendancy to climb up the ladder of status from their modest holdings as lesser vassals of the Gottwalds; and so had it been impressed upon her since the days of her youth that it was her duty to secure the family's economic future, that they might continue financing Kewell's own social climbing. To achieve that end, her parents had long since seen her troth pledged to Leonhardt Steiner, the young heir to both the ageing head of the highborn House of Steiner and his controlling interest in the Steiner Konzern; and with the young lord's financial fortunes actually improving as Stonehenge Industries fell from grace and then collapsed in on itself, and the Steiner Konzern had seen themselves folded into the ascendant weapons manufacturing corporation HCLI, Marika had come to understand that she would never be free of the betrothal.
It could easily have been worse, she knew that; if things were different, she could easily have found herself engaged to some reprobate or ruffian who mistreated or disgraced her. Leonhardt, she could at least say with confidence, was none of these things. Indeed, he was soft-spoken and gentle, always respectful of her and of her wishes, and he'd expressed to her on several occasions that he had no wish to infringe upon her freedoms (and because she knew her family wouldn't even think about calling off the engagement even if he'd boldly declared the exact opposite of that, she believed him when he said so), but whenever they'd gone to court one another, there was really nothing of any consequence there at all. They had a tepid sort of respect for one another, and while that was perhaps a stable foundation for a marriage, she was able to admit, it was also to a large degree a sort of surrender, and not really at all the sort of thing that genuine happiness was made of. They'd perhaps find some degree of solidarity with each other in their shared misery, for she knew he was no more attracted to her than she was to him, and that indeed he'd have preferred a kinder sort of woman than she, but they'd never be happy together.
That knowledge, together with the inescapability of her predicament, of their shared predicament, had smothered any cares or ambitions she might have had for her life in the cradle. There was nothing that she could amount to that would ever allow her to supersede the position she held in her family's eyes as yet another rung on the social ladder. Even Kewell himself, as kind and considerate as he could be, was every bit as distant and supercilious as their parents when it counted. He was sympathetic to her plight, yes, but only ever to a point.
That attitude was, in fact, how she'd come to be here at Ad Victoriam; she was obligated to her line to do her best, and she'd successfully gotten herself into the same program as the same princess their liege lord had pledged himself to protect. That two of her closest friends growing up (the Rochefort family held some land leftover from their days as gentry in the Gottwald holdings, though nowadays those estates were usually managed by a tenant family) had also managed to test into the same program as her was a happy accident, for all that their placement within the same dormitory building, and indeed under the princess, was less so. But even then, she'd had no intention to do anything but go through the motions, just as she had been in her daily life up until that point; a royal to cosy up to was only ever going to amount to a good word in the ear of Margrave Jeremiah, after all.
The trouble had begun when they'd started winning.
She wasn't even certain why she was here. She could understand her friends' positions: Odette was a true believer in the princess, and Liliana was so head-over-heels for their baseborn sharpshooter who was also a devotee that it was practically a foregone conclusion where she'd have fallen. But all Marika had was a vague sense of dissatisfaction, and a strong feeling, a certainty, that if she got up and left right now, if she backed down from this, she might never manage to forgive herself.
Perhaps the adjutant was correct, and the sniper's speech to all of them the night before had affected Marika more than she'd wanted to admit to anyone, even and especially herself.
And then tall, dark, and beautiful had walked into the dorm, a woman on a mission. One look at her, and Marika knew that she was ruined.
She was tall and statuesque, with rich dark skin and lustrous silver hair, her eyes a bright green, or perhaps yellow; her features were sharp, refined and elegant, and from both her stature and the uniform she wore of the greater academy of Ad Victoriam beyond the boundaries of the youth program, Marika knew that she was much older—early twenties, perhaps—but she couldn't bring herself to care.
Marika was keenly aware of where she was right at that moment, sitting in the same sofa she'd used as a perch during last night's meeting, as the various members of the force filed in for a second assembly, as well as a few newcomers. Word had it that the captain was awake, that she had been awake for a few hours, and that she was now going to address them as a unit; and yet Marika was suddenly unable to muster her opinion on that development, incapable as she was proving to be of keeping her eyes from repeatedly snapping back to tracking the woman whom Marika was fairly certain she'd later be crediting as her sexual awakening. The same woman who, oddly enough, seemed to be making directly for Kururugi Suzaku, who was standing right next to the hall that led to the dorm she shared with the captain.
They met, then, and spoke quietly, seeming almost collaborative, and when Suzaku pointed towards the sofa at the end of which Marika had chosen to seat herself, the silver-haired woman nodded her assent at the directive,and then turned and walked directly towards the younger girl.
It could be considered a credit to her composure and general sense of decorum, some part of Marika mused idly, that she managed to keep from spontaneously melting into a gelatinous puddle before the dusk-skinned woman in question actually got to where she was sitting. She stopped before Marika, disastrously enough, and Marika herself, trying and failing to find her nerve, looked up at the taller woman, who was smiling down at her with polite kindness carved into every curve and angle of her expression. "It's a pleasure to meet you. May I sit?"
Marika could only manage to nod mutely.
"Thank you," the woman said warmly; and then, with a fluid grace of motion that Marika could not help but envy fiercely, she sat. "I'm sorry, but I don't believe I know your name, Miss…"
"Soresi," she said, the word practically torn from her throat by forces entirely beyond her control. "M-my name's Soresi. Marika Soresi, actually…"
"Marika Soresi?" the woman chuckled, a single fine, bemused silver eyebrow climbing halfway up towards her equally argent hairline. The woman seemed surprised by her identity, almost, and Marika wasn't sure how, exactly, she was meant to take that. "Kewell's little sister?"
"Y-yeah," she replied nervously. "Do you know him?"
The woman snorted. "I know he's a world-class prat with the aim of a bat and a rod of rebar lodged so far up his ass it might as well function as a replacement for the backbone he was born without."
After so many years of being compared unfavourably to a brother who only seemed to care when it suited him, that sentence managed to shock a laugh out of Marika. "Ha! Yeah, that's my brother, alright…"
"I'm Villetta Nu," Villetta offered with a smile. "Dame Villetta Nu, now—three years and I swear it still takes some getting used to. I served with your brother alongside Jeremiah during the Indochinese War. Though, admittedly, we got separated during the Disaster of Delhi. Jeremiah and I had to bushwhack all the way from there to Bombay, picking up survivors as we went. Fourteen hundred kilometres…"
"That's…a very different story than how Kewell generally tells it," Marika remarked lightly.
"I don't doubt it," Villetta snorted again. "But he has a tendency to tell tales like that. He once said that you were a simple girl who spent her time reading and sewing and playing music—generally whenever he wanted to insult my femininity or birth."
"Then he's even dumber than I thought," Marika was inspired to say. "I don't know much about the facts of your birth, admittedly, but there's nothing about your femininity worthy of insult."
Villetta gave her a strange look, torn between bemused and impressed. "Smooth. Try that one on me again in a few years' time, and I might just swoon over it."
Marika flushed a deeper shade of red this time; and though she could hear Dame Villetta's laughter, for once, she didn't immediately think that it was directed at her.
Then the adjutant, Suzaku, seemed to straighten, and a few moments later, everyone who had been milling about the common area without aim seemed to straighten, too. Marika even found herself perking up a little, adjusting her posture—there was something about the captain that made people want to stand up a little straighter before she even properly entered the room. It was an aura, almost like feeling the promise of precipitation in the air; and sure enough, out of the hallway came Justine vi Britannia herself, the blonde girl who was dressed like a commoner entering the common room right behind her.
The princess, their captain, stopped behind an armchair and surveyed the common area with those scarily perceptive amethyst eyes of hers. A far cry from how withdrawn she'd been in the past two weeks, she was almost impossibly well put-together, and from her skin (or at least what little of it the uniform for female students and the captain's own gloves revealed) there seemed to radiate a glow of sorts, something eerily reminiscent of moonlight. She seemed…serene, almost, in a way that she hadn't since the first week of school, and though Marika had assumed that the fading of that radiance had been what amounted to her increasing familiarity with the princess robbing her of exoticism or mystique, the fact that she possessed it here and now before Marika cast that previous assumption into heavy doubt.
"It heartens me to see you all looking well again. I had begun to worry," the captain said mildly, and her voice was smooth and musical as ever, her tone soft and calm and soothing. "We all have quite a bit to discuss with one another, as I understand it. Please, be seated. And Villetta! This is a pleasant surprise. May I ask what brings you here?"
"Miss Kururugi informed me of what had happened, your highness," Villetta replied dutifully. "Her job was to keep you safe from harm, but she seems to have proven short-handed, so I came to lend her my aid. And if you're about to tell me that my additions to your protection are unnecessary, you know as well as I that Jerry will be only too happy to take a strip out of my hide if I heed you, for dereliction of duty."
The captain, the princess, nodded solemnly, but the faint echo of a smile danced upon her full lips all the same. "Then instead, I shall choose to be glad of your presence."
"Sorry we're late~!" called out a high, sing-song male voice. Around the bend, then, from out the dorm's kitchen, came another pair of people, even as the different members of the Royal Force heeded their leader's order and settled themselves down into seats. The first was a lanky man of middling height, his hair the same sort of bright blue or lavender one might associate with certain flavours of cotton candy, with a pair of rounded lenses housed in large, rimless spectacles sat before sharp steel-blue eyes that seemed to miss nothing at all. He'd dressed himself in a long white lab coat with a high collar, and seemed to not walk so much as glide around the room upon a pair of black leather dress boots that made plain the true affluence of his station as he made his entrance. Behind him then was a shorter woman with deep blue hair fashioned in a bob cut, her clearer blue eyes large in a classically beautiful face as they flitted around the room almost nervously. She was full-figured, but it was hidden beneath a businesslike skirt-suit that, to Marika's eyes, at least, and at that distance, was more than a little too sturdily-made to be fit for formal company, strictly speaking. Her expression was long-suffering and exasperated, but it was laced with a deep fondness that spoke volumes of the nature of their partnership. "Both of us were caught up cleaning the aftermath of one of dear Doctor Croomy's more questionable experiments with home economics…"
"As if you have any room to talk," Cécile Croomy grumbled, sweeping past him as she closed her eyes and donned a more dignified affect in the process. "You can't even make your own coffee."
"Is that what you call what you put in front of me half the time?" Lloyd, Earl Asplund asked, his eyes going wide with disbelief as his posture seemed to recoil in evident horror. "I thought it was arsenic!"
"Arsenic has no taste, Lloyd," sighed Doctor Croomy as she secured a seat for herself.
"My point precisely," Asplund sniped back, collapsing himself into a chair in a tangle of limbs that would have been rather comical, if they hadn't somehow managed to arrange themselves into a perfectly acceptable seated posture in the process all the same. "Oh, and Suzaku. We're really going to need to get at your Knightmare so that we can record your data…"
"Belay that," their captain interjected smoothly, sitting herself upon a second sofa they'd brought in from another room earlier that morning. The blonde girl, whose name Marika had failed to catch wind of in all the commotion of earlier that very day, sat upon the sofa all the same—though her identity was, to Marika's mind, a subject of great interest, given how the princess shifted her position on the sofa so that their bodies were flush against each other, leading the golden-haired young woman to reach her arm around the princess's shoulders and whisper something into her ear that made her flush pink. "Suzaku will not be taking the field in her Knightmare come the day of the mock battle. You'll get the data you need from her, Lloyd; that much I can promise you. But I do have another task in mind for her—assuming, of course, that she doesn't mind the imposition too terribly."
"You've concocted something already, then," said the brown-haired adjutant, though she didn't grin the way that she usually did.
"I may have," the captain corrected gently. "Now, everyone, I'd very much like for you all to meet my betrothed. This is Carmilla, Heiress of the House of Ashford, Head of the House of Tremaine, Duchess of Ashfordshire, and Sub-Viceroy of Area Eleven. We are to be wed, once we're both of age."
"A pleasure to meet you all," said the duchess, her well-muscled arm tensing around the captain to pull her royal fiancée closer against her. "I'm sure you'll all make certain to serve my Justine faithfully and with distinction, from this moment henceforth."
Marika felt herself still in place, transfixed with something like terror at the sheer aura of menace that radiated off of this woman all of a sudden. There was something unmistakably malevolent that lurked behind that charming smile, and Marika was sure she was not the only one to have noticed it.
"Stop that," the princess huffed with a smile. "I do appreciate it, darling, but please, not while I'm trying to talk to them…"
And then suddenly, that menace evaporated; Duchess Carmilla sighed, and pressed her lips into the raven crown of her future wife's head. "As you wish, my love…"
The menace that kept Marika pinned was replaced with a separate sensation that was altogether more intimate, though she was admittedly less familiar with it. It felt as though Marika had just had a dagger slipped between her ribs until it lodged itself in her heart; for she knew for certain that this easy joy, this seemingly effortless intimacy even in the face of others, like the world existed only for the two of them, wouldn't ever be hers to have if she stayed the course her family had charted for her. The two of them, betrothed and yet clearly enamoured with one another, possessed something between them that was so thoroughly at odds with that which she managed to share with her own fiancé, Leonhardt, that it was a stark reminder of what her complacency demanded she leave on the table. It was one thing, in her mind, to know, intellectually, that she'd be denied love and happiness if she went along with the engagement, for all that Leonhardt was a lovely and considerate boy, but it was quite another to come face-to-face with a living portrait of that which she'd be denied, to be able to see it clearly enough to know deep within her heart of hearts that that deprivation was unacceptable.
More than before, she was sure of her course. Elizabeth Bernadotte's speech had introduced conflict and doubt into her thought processes, like a labourer of old lining up a railroad spike; the sight she beheld before her, then, was more than enough to drive that same spike home—galvanising her.
"I'm told that your concerns were borne of my taking upon myself the share of our labours towards victory that is most burdensome, when rightly we should have been sharing them, for which offence I feel I am able only to express my utmost and most sincere contrition," began the princess, her rich voice crisp and clear and resonant. It added weight and portent to the assembly, and though she spoke now at the same volume as she always did, there was something about her voice that compelled silence from all the rest of them, that made them want to listen. "And so, in a show of good faith, that I might at last demonstrate the fullness of the confidence I have in all of you, and, of course, in your abilities, I shall propose to each and every one of you, my friends and comrades, an alternative solution to the challenge we now face.
"Let this victory be not the hour of my triumph; instead, let it be a triumph of all of our making."
The sun dawned upon the battlefield, and Integra Harrowmont's foes stood arraigned against her. It was just as well, though; while she'd obviously have much preferred it if her plot of openly humbling their leader had proven successful enough for them to forfeit the match, she'd known from the first that in truth, such a development was at best a pipe dream. But she was certain, as she stood ready at the foot of her own customised Prytwen, clad in her normal suit and ready to go, that she had at least managed to prevent them from being anywhere near their top form. As it stood, she still felt very confident in her chances of leading her own team to triumph over and topple the equally-undefeated Royal Force.
Thus, she had fewer misgivings now than she usually did about letting her second, her invaluable adjutant, take the field on foot.
It was a fact that Integra knew quite well by this point, that Catrìona Anderson was at best adequate when it came to her ability to pilot a Knightmare Frame. She was an unholy terror in hand-to-hand, but for whatever reason, she'd always struggled to make those same skills evident as a devicer; and as her adjutant had a penchant for solo action that had actually won them a few battles in the past, Integra was often of the impression that the choice between keeping Catrìona on the ground, where she excelled, and attempting to force her into a Knightmare Frame, where she could eke out a passable performance at best, was not really much of a true choice at all.
And so here she was, talking things over with the blonde girl one last time before battle was joined, with the other eight members of her force flitting about to and fro to prepare themselves for combat.
"I'll be fine, lass," Catrìona sighed. "I'll stick to the trees an' out o' their sights. What are the chances that they'll be lookin' for a wee lass like meself makin' her way across the field on foot, anyways, instead o' one o' those big hulkin' blokes you lot drive into battle?"
"We've had this same discussion every time you've elected to do this, Catrìona," Integra sighed. "I concede that this isn't grounded in any likelihood of you getting caught. The purpose of it is entirely for my peace of mind."
Catrìona herself sighed in evident frustration. "Yes, I remember the rules, lass. I've got the flare gun with me if I get meself into a wee spot o' trouble, I've got spare weapons an' back-up weapons an' yatta yatta yatta… My window's closin', an' fast. Can I go now?"
"Not quite yet," Integra objected softly, reaching within herself to gather up every last bit of her courage for this singular moment of daring. She stepped closer to her adjutant, and reached up a bit to grab hold of her face in both hands, before standing up on her toes a bit to brush her lips against the taller girl's. To her knowledge, this was her first kiss, and after how her second had gone out of her way to make Integra's plan a reality over the past two weeks, she could not rightly imagine a more worthy recipient. When they parted at last, a dumbfounded look having carved itself onto the blonde girl's face, clear as day, Integra found it within her to smirk wryly and say to Catrìona, in a low voice: "For luck. Now you can get going."
Catrìona grinned down at her, and then pulled away, rushing out of the structure they were using as their home base and into the foliage that obscured much of the field upon which both forces would soon do battle with each other. Integra watched her second-in-command disappear into the green almost wistfully, but she retained enough presence of mind to turn back around and survey the other eight members; and it seemed as though all of them were now ready to get into the thick of things—normal suits on, each of their Prytwens primed and ready for activation, all of them standing at attention besides their stirrups.
Integra nodded at the sight. Yes, this was the moment of truth.
"You all know I'm not one for speeches by this point," Integra began with a deep, steadying breath. "I am no great orator myself, I must confess. And yet perhaps that is well, for it may well be as a result of that that I don't feel the need to belittle your commitment to this fight with pretty-sounding platitudes or flowery fantasies. I have no words of inspiration to give to you, my classmates; in truth, all I have to offer you is victory. So let's go claim it. Mount up!"
There was a collective nod, for all that it was not in unison, and her forcemates, who knew Catrìona as a leader before her, wedged their feet into the stirrup and rode the winch up to their nonlethal replica of the deadliest war machine that the Holy Britannian Empire had ever produced. Integra, in turn, put her foot into the stirrup, and rode the winch as it rose up to the open cockpit block that awaited her. Sliding from the winch and into the seat, then, she closed the cockpit and slid her key into its proper slot. The screen before her came alight, and she tapped in the alphanumeric digits of her personalised activation code, and then felt the Prytwen shudder to life beneath her. Six-point-eight-eight metric tonnes of tungsten armoured plating, circuitry, servo-motors, superconductors, and sakuradite, the miracle element itself, was all of a sudden very much under her command, lurching to stand from its resting kneel and deploying its landspinners as she hit the relevant controls. There was always a sense of gravitas that suffused Integra's being whenever she sat in this seat, encased within a four-point-two-four-metre tall machine of war, and she didn't know that she'd ever truly get used to that potent sense of grandeur.
Privately, she rather hoped she didn't.
Flicking on her comms unit after a moment of silent revelry, Integra began to give out orders. "You all have read your parts, I trust, so we're just going to have some last-minute adjustments. Grey and York, you're going to swing wide and keep in contact. I'll be relying on your scouting throughout. Lancaster and Ferguson, you two are to go on ahead without me. I'll be going it alone—for now, at least. Everyone else, you know your tasks—and remember, if any of you encounters a black Knightmare Frame, you are to call it in only. If I have to hear about even one of you letting yourselves get baited into breaking off from the plan, you'll be suffering the full weight of my displeasure. If you recall nothing else, do not forget that that French whore they call a princess of the realm is my quarry."
There was a rash of high-spirited derisive chuckling at the Commoner Princess's expense; but their response came through loud and clear all the same. "As you say, ma'am. Over and out."
"Good," Integra breathed. She gripped the yokes of her Knightmare to steady herself, a giddy sort of anticipation rising within her. She looked down at the digital timepiece on her console, awaiting the start of the official battle at ten sharp. With less than thirty seconds to go, then, she leaned into the comms with a roar: "Let's get ourselves that top spot! Weapons free! Engage!"
"Yes, ma'am!" came the returning chorus; the tires of the landspinners squealed against the dirt, and a moment later, with an almighty lurch of her accelerating machine, Integra Harrowmont was away, cutting across the battlefield at full tilt with all eight of her mounted subordinates following in her wake. The wind was in her sails, then, and with a sword in her Knightmare's left hand, an appropriately-sized heater shield in the other, eagerness suffused her: an eagerness to cut the head off of the snake, and to deliver the finishing blow to Her Highness Justine vi Britannia, along with her subordinates and everything she represented. Here in the cockpit, at the end of this journey over a year in the making, she could honestly admit to herself that her previous reasons for opposing the daughter of the Commoner Empress were justifications—no measure of satisfaction could ever feel this potent for such high-minded causes. And though she believed each and every reason she had given in the past to be true, Catrìona had been correct, as she often was: none of them were what motivated her.
Yes, there was nothing that she, Integra Harrowmont, had against Justine vi Britannia, save that the princess had had the sheer, unmitigated gall to think that she was better than her.
That was when Johanna Lancaster and Anthony Ferguson both went down.
It happened in the space of a moment: Integra had begun to gently peel off of the trio they formed, that she might stalk the battlefield unaccompanied; and just when she'd diverted enough to have committed to the split, a sharp crack echoed like thunder, and Ferguson's hip assembly exploded, sending him veering out of control.
Lancaster's Knightmare followed suit perhaps two and a half seconds later.
Shocked, Integra brought her Knightmare up short, deploying the factsphere sensor in a panic. She swept the area: there were no hostile contacts within the modified unit's expanded range. Nothing.
"Grey! York! Status report!" she barked into the comms, her eyes wide as stupefaction began to morph into horror.
"Enemy contact, ma'am! Returning fire!" Elias Grey reported.
"WHAT THE FUCK?!" Octavian York shrieked, his normally dulcet voice twisting in sheer animal terror as his comms feed cut to static.
"Damn it all…" Integra swore, slamming a fist into the side of her cockpit. She switched channels. "Stuart! Cromwell! Something happened to York! Divert course and investigate! Spacer and Mason, Grey has been pinned down! Are you seeing anything?!"
"Negative, ma'am!" Alanna Spacer barked back, her voice sharp with alarm, but not particularly pressed. "Our factspheres are reading no hostiles. Zone is clear, near as we can tell… Wait! We've got two Knightmares inbound, ma'am, and they're coming in fast!"
This isn't like her at all… With the exception of the first mock-battle, she usually deploys an assault team of three to punch through the centre, not two… thought Integra, her grip on the control yokes tensing. "Grey! How many are you up against?!"
Static was her only reply.
"Damn it… Stuart, Cromwell! Any word on York?!" Integra demanded, her hands strangling and yanking on the control yokes as she spurred her Prytwen into motion once more. She drew up alongside Lancaster's Knightmare and deployed her factsphere sensor to gather data on the explosion that had taken the other girl down. Though she was clearly out cold, her vitals were thankfully stable otherwise; the damage that'd been done to her Knightmare, however, was an order of magnitude more concerning. It was clear that it had been a school-issued anti-materiel round that had caused the explosion in the first place, yes, but the impact was so incredibly precise that while the communications hardware had been destroyed along with the legs being rendered entirely nonfunctional, the cockpit itself had sustained no damage at all.
Rushing over to Ferguson's downed Knightmare and scanning it with her factsphere sensor yielded much the same result—the placement of the shot had even been exactly identical. The communications array destroyed, the devicer dead to the world, and the cockpit completely intact, even though the comm array was part of the cockpit block.
Then, Integra's own comm unit crackled to life.
"York's unconscious, ma'am!" Anne Stuart replied hurriedly. "And now Cromwell's down, too! I just barely managed to escape myself!"
"What's going on over there?!" she shouted into the comm unit, veering away from Ferguson just to put herself on the move, keenly aware that remaining stationary would most assuredly leave her as little more than a sitting duck.
"A single Knightmare, ma'am! Black and gold, the princess's colours! Charged straight for us and tore York and Cromwell to ribbons! I've taken heavy damage and am making my way to your position—!"
Another crack of thunder in the distance, and Stuart's feed, too, cut to static.
Integra sat in silence for a few moments more, fuming, her mind working overtime to stitch together a picture of the situation. She'd planned to face Justine vi Britannia, whose own battle strategies uniformly revolved around accomplishing the mission objective in the form of capturing the base; and yet it was clear to her, abundantly so, that the Royal Force's aim was to accomplish the second victory condition, depleting the opposing team's fighting strength by ninety percent.
Integra was no longer fighting Justine vi Britannia. And that disparity in goals was proof.
She yanked on the control yokes, gritting her teeth against the sudden surge of G-forces and sending her Prytwen careening off-balance on instinct alone, and not a moment too soon; a customised Prytwen tore itself free of the foliage on her right a fraction of a second later, striking for her undefended flank at full tilt.
She sent the machine pivoting to compensate, regaining her Knightmare's footing in a jarring sweep of motion, and wound up facing a black-and-gold Knightmare with accents of livid scarlet. This was none other than the princess's Prytwen—her paint job was practically unmistakable—but instead of that Oriental sabre she was so fond of, now the unit wielded a pair of swords, with one held in each hand.
"Who the hell are you?!" Integra demanded, her voice broadcasted through the Prytwen's speakers.
"Fuckin' A! The white-haired cunt herself? No shit?!" said the enemy devicer, her voice brash and bold and entirely uncouth, as she crowed with such joy that one could be forgiven for thinking she sounded entirely out of place on a battlefield. "Shit, if this is her idea of an apology, then I fuckin' accept! I swear, if all her make-up gifts are gonna be like this, then she's gotta piss me off more often!"
Recognition hit Integra in a flash, like lightning. "You're… Kururugi Suzaku…"
The Honorary Britannian snorted. "You bet your bony li'l ass I am, bitch-face."
"But…that's impossible!" Integra snarled. "I've studied her! She'd never leave a battle in someone else's hands!"
"And just who the fuck decided that, hmm?" Kururugi mocked her, her voice dripping with derision even through the distortion of the speakers. "You, bitch-face? And besides, you're makin' an awful lotta assumptions, decidin' that just 'cause Justine ain't here in front of ya, that means she's not in command o' this one."
"Then where is she, Eleven?" Integra hissed venomously.
The Prytwen shifted its posture, giving the distinct impression that Kururugi would have shrugged if the machine had been capable of it. "Beats me. Why don't ya try askin' that snazzy adjutant o' yours?"
Something plummeted into the depths of Integra's stomach. "She wouldn't dare…!"
"Oi, bitch-face! Ya just gonna keep runnin' your mouth, or what?" Kururugi snapped, her irritation clear. "Fuckin' hell, bony-ass, we had this whole vibe goin' and everythin', and now here you are, killin' the fuckin' mood!"
Integra saw red. "I am going to rip out your fucking heart, and then I'm going to force it down your pretty French bitch of a master's throat, Kururugi Suzaku!"
"Now that's more like it!" the lowly Eleven goaded, bringing both her swords to bear. "Let's get this rager fuckin' started!"