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.

30. Welcome to the Jungle

The Amazon Rainforest, January, a.t.b. 2015

At the twisting, winding banks of the Amazon River, the only real major source of water in all of the basin, there sat a number of different nations, all drawing their livelihood from the same coursing, hostile waters, full of hostile wildlife. There were, in fact, very few nomadic nations who called the jungle home, and it was by no means difficult to see precisely why: straying too far from the river-bank made one prey to many creatures far more adept at prowling the long shadows and the dense underbrush of the jungle, and even the most adept of these nomadic tribes had given more than their share of their own flesh and blood over the decades, to the point where many of the more nascent entries into such a lifestyle were bled dry within a season. Along the river, however, food was plentiful, and even the predators that called that place home were not at all difficult to avoid angering. Every so often, wars were fought along the river-banks over prime fishing spots and potable water—in lean times much more than times of plenty—and these conflicts were each of them marked with a quintessentially human brutality; but there was an equilibrium of sorts nonetheless.

Some of these nations could trace their histories and creation myths back to stories of harried flight from the relentless expansion and manifold depravities of the Aztec Empire, stories in which their earliest members, their ancestors and forebears, left behind their homes and evaded being sacrificed to the bloody gods of their would-be tyrants by fleeing into the welcoming embrace of the jungle—and Justine knew that those who remained, both under the Aztec yoke and in the shadow of it, eventually came to strike a bargain with the conquistadors, however Faustian, to topple their oppressors.

But of course, none of this knowledge could have prepared her for the sight that awaited her as they all approached the village of the River-folk—herself, Suzaku, their friends from the academy, Villetta and Jeremiah, and one hundred twenty armed infantrymen, all of them surrounded by a loose encirclement of suspicious River-folk hunter-warriors, which was commanded by the person Justine had conversed with. In fact, it was perhaps not even an exaggeration to say that Justine's eyes went wide with wonder as she came into view of the sturdy huts built of local materials, boughs and vines and leaves aplenty, that made up the village. They were arranged in a way that, to her own eyes, seemed haphazard at first, and the thought of potentially coming to understand the internal logic behind such arrangements filled her near to bursting with the burgeoning sense of a nascent fascination. She was little more than an amateur when it came to the subject of anthropology, by her estimation, but even that knowledge did little and less to dampen her sudden enthusiasm for the wonder of human ingenuity upon which she now gazed, and she didn't even bother to try concealing it as she was joined at her side, Suzaku drawing abreast of her as they both beheld the rambling structures of the fishing village on the river-bank. "Guess it is pretty cool-lookin'..."

"Indeed it is," Justine half-gasped, her eyes flicking every which way to catalogue everything in her field of vision that defied the conventions she'd taken for granted after having grown up in Britannia. And in a sense, the similarities were as illuminating as the differences, throwing into sharp relief the difference between culturally-evocative design choices and the sorts that were made with pure utilitarian functionality in mind. It sent her mind a-whirl, memorising everything her eyes fell upon and tossing them into her mental library in a tangled jumble of associated images and emotions, errant thoughts only half-formed and nigh-delirious strings of pure conjecture and rampant speculation. It was a unique sort of rush that surged its way through her in that moment, and she found herself almost breathless in the face of it.

"…Is something wrong, Pale-face…?" the hunter-warrior in charge asked warily as they signalled for the procession to come to a halt, the concern that Justine could see in their eyes something wholly and entirely pragmatic. Justine found that she could certainly respect that.

"Tell me, hunter-warrior," she replied instead, sidestepping the question as she forcibly shifted the cylinder of her mind, another thought process sliding into alignment with the barrel, the chamber snapping into place with a definitive mechanical click. "How important are names to your people?"

The hunter-warrior's brow furrowed in confusion. "…Names…?"

"Yes, names," Justine repeated patiently in the language of the River-folk. Her accent was at least a little stilted, she could admit without shame, but she felt she could chalk that up to a profound lack of practical experience with how its syllables felt upon her tongue, as well as how the shapes felt as she forced her lips to form them. "Some believe they may be used to inflict great misfortune upon Men who bear them, and that to know the name of a thing is to hold…authority over them. I ask only because I wish to know if it would be rude to ask yours."

Of course, their language had no word for 'power,' not in the context in which she meant it, so she switched to the next-closest term she could think of. It wasn't a perfect fit, and there was a heavier furrow in her contact's brow that told Justine that the awkwardness of that word choice was not lost on them—as best Justine knew, the word for 'authority' being coupled with the precise intonation meant to communicate connotations of 'evil' and 'hostility' was not an extant convention of the language, after all. But, all the same, after a moment, the hunter-warrior shook their head. "I am called 'Narat.' And our stories do not tell of the authority that knowledge of a Man's name gives over them. 'Narat' was the name I chose when I was made a man."

Justine's eyes widened a touch, surprised at the news of their—his gender, but she took her mistake in stride, and nodded in turn. "Then I may be called 'Justine', to tell me apart from the other Pale-faces. It may provide more aid than you think."

"Ju-steen," Narat spoke, lips working around the shape of the unfamiliar word. "It is…strange, this name, but it will be known."

"Good," Justine replied with a smile and a nod. "To answer your question, Narat, your village is a beautiful place."

Narat snorted disdainfully. "And what does a Pale-face know of beauty? Hmm?"

Justine stilled, and though she did not say this with hostility, it was nonetheless significant, the cold command and eerie serenity sending frost spider-webbing through the insides of her veins. "More than you may think, Narat of the River-folk."

"You build Strangers in the shape of Men, fashion them from stone, and stone-within-stone, and you claim to know of beauty…" Narat gave a smile that was all teeth, and shook his head in incredulity.

"You find beauty in life and in living," Justine countered without missing a beat, recognising in an instant the local language's (admittedly somewhat cumbersome) term for 'metal'. "But the Strangers of stone-within-stone are a beauty found in Death, and in the making of it. We make beauty out of life, and we find beauty in the horrors we make. And how could we not? Is there a Man born who does not love that which is beautiful? And if a Man is surrounded with horrors for all the days of their life, will they not seek to find beauty in them, if only to have found beauty somewhere?"

To that, Narat spat on the ground near Justine's boot. "You speak in riddles, Pale-face Ju-steen. And I am no wise-one. I hunt for the nation, and I defend the nation. Your hanging tongue will not stir me."

"My tongue does not hang, Narat of the River-folk," Justine maintained. "And a Man cannot look at Death and horror in their surroundings if they themselves cannot stir a riddle. This is true for a warrior, more than any other."

"I do not live in horror, Pale-face," Narat replied gravely. "And I pray with every sunrise that I never will. So your riddle must be stirred by the wise-ones, if it is to be stirred at all."

With that, Narat turned on his heel, and signalled to his fellow hunter-warriors for them to begin to move into the village proper again. Justine, accepting that the conversation was over, let her hand creep up to the hilt of her vibroblade, sitting tight in its ballistic scabbard, but she kept her finger very firmly away from the trigger. Suzaku mimicked the motion in its broad strokes, reaching down to lay her fingers upon the vibroblade she wore off of either hip; and shortly, the message spread throughout her friends, to keep their weapons close at hand. Spaniards and Britannians both had come in the past in the guise of diplomats and peace-makers; Justine had gambled that appearing as warriors might be enough of a diversion from the norm for those who looked like them that they could manage to avoid at least some of the rightful suspicion the locals held towards them over the actions of their precursors and countrymen.

It was the perfect time, Justine felt, to see how well her wager would pay off.

They came upon the other inhabitants of the village, such as they were, in short order; it was late at night, and Justine surmised that the lion's share of the villagers were very much abed by now. If those who led their nation were also abed, then perhaps they, too, were asleep, and needed to be awakened? And yet, it did not seem to Justine as though that would be a concern; their retinue did not so much as flinch as their commanders put their weapons into clear view, and instead kept their eyes forward through their faceless black combat helmets, rifles cradled barrel-down in their arms as they marched in step in a uniformity that would be the envy of any drill instructor. The wind brushing from the river, which stretched on into the distance and glittered beautifully in the ponderous silver light of the full moon, fluttered through the group they all made, clustered up together, lifting the tails of Justine's coat and sending them billowing slightly as she and the others braced against it, with torches and woven lanterns casting a soft, warm glow of light out from the flickering of their flames. Such lights swiftly began to multiply, as the village came awake in both wonder and alarm at their arrival—one hundred thirty-two 'Pale-faces' being escorted into their lands was almost certainly not a common sight around these parts, and even less so when the ones doing the escorting were none other than their own people. It was perhaps only natural that their arrival would cause a crowd to begin to gather about their number.

There was a larger hutch that they were headed towards, however, with the wood and the vines that had been used to construct it seemingly having taken fresh root in their current places and positions, to the point where the building looked as though it had been grown directly from out of the ground, like a thicket of mangroves (which made for quite the striking image, Justine had to concede); and it was from within the building that a procession of old, wizened members of their nation stepped, each with their hair shorn off, and seemingly able-bodied for all that they were stooped and bent. Beneath tanned, leathery skin was tough sinew that flexed visibly even in the moonlight, their wrinkles drawn in a way that portrayed the haggard state that came with age and the lives of near-constant labour they lived, but also an inner strength that left Justine with no doubt that their bare flesh could deflect a stab from knife-blade, if the weapon came at them from the right angle—or the wrong angle, she supposed, depending on who you asked. All of them bore mantles of feathers, leaves, and pelts that they wore wrapped around their shoulders, but were largely all bare-chested; and though some of them possessed breasts that sagged and hips that suggested a capacity for childbirth, Justine was loath to ascribe gender to any of them at face-value, especially in light of her recent mental blunder with Narat's own gender role.

Some of them bore thick, stocky-shafted spears like the kind that Narat wielded; others with spears that forked at the tip in a distinct manner that suggested their function to be involved with aquatic instead of terrestrial hunting; and still others bore only staves that seemed to have been carved and wrought from a fallen bough, with no obvious utility. Each implement had been whittled into elaborate swirls and shapes in an ornate arrangement that seemed unique to each of them—and once again, Justine was reminded of the spear that Narat had threatened her with back at camp—but while the elderly villagers held the implements in their hands, they did not lean on them, for there was no obvious need for them to do so. All of them were clean-shaven, or at the very least beardless, and their eyes, beady and sunken with age, regarded her with naked suspicion as she drew close at Narat's behest.

"Why have you brought the Pale-face to us, Narat?" one of them asked, one of the breast-bearing ones with an implement that looked to be a beautifully-decorated ceremonial fishing spear. Their eyes were concealed beneath a woven hempen band, and their voice was that of a crone, croaking and gravelly; but it possessed no inflection of an emotional nature that Justine's ear could discern. "You are a man full-grown, and a hunter-warrior of great skill also. You know well the dangers of bringing their evil here. It is a child that may be so foolish as to think to bring a jaguar to the village and pretend it is tamed…"

Narat opened his mouth to speak in his own defence, but Justine was not about to allow the man to take the hit for her, whether or not that was in fact his intention. "Narat has brought the Pale-face to you because the Pale-face requested it of him. It was a bargain that he and I struck, so do not blame the foolish acts of youth."

The village elders (or at least, that was the role Justine presumed they filled) jerked back as if they had been struck, eyes widening to show their sclera in shock and what seemed to be horror. Another of their number, this one un-breasted and bearing a hunting spear, gasped out, "The Pale-face Speaks…"

"Your Speech is not unknown to me," Justine confirmed with a nod. "Forgive me, but I would not have Narat bear blame for honouring a bargain struck. It is not with him that blame must lie."

Another elder with breasts, this one with a staff, stepped forth from the assembly and stood before Justine, their cataract-ravaged eyes no less piercing as they flickered back and forth across the span of her face. A moment later, the elder nodded curtly, their expression inscrutable as they spoke. "Your language is known here, too, Britannian. Few are we who know of it even a little, and it is not a lucky day when we are asked to show the span of what knowledge we bear…but it is known, even so."

"Whichever you prefer," Justine replied, flashing the elder a smile that she hoped was reassuring. "But I will not be eager to speak in a way which marks mine as a tongue that hangs."

The elder grimaced, the wrinkles on their face deepening momentarily. "Why have you come here, Pale-face?"

"I have come to bargain, Elder of the River-folk," Justine proclaimed cheerily. She reached up and clapped her hands twice, and from the middle of the procession, ten infantry came forth, holding a wooden crate like they were bearing a pall at a funeral, before setting it down in the rich riverside earth, just behind and beside Justine, where it landed softly with a muted thud. "Your past for the present, and perhaps even the future. That, Elder, is what I bring here to pay in trade."

The elders, both the one before Justine and those arrayed behind that one, eyed her dubiously as she said this; and in the silence that followed, she signalled for those ten to open the crate to reveal its contents, an order they obeyed swiftly. Waving them off, Justine stepped to the side of the crate, and gestured in an attempt to communicate to the 588th's would-be benefactors that they were welcome to approach, so as to verify that Justine's words were the truth. In response, the villagers looked at each other, and then from the back of their crowd, there pushed forth an especially wizened creature, this one hunched unlike the others, and leaning very heavily upon their own featureless staff—a clear departure from the elaborate decorations on the other implements wielded by the elders. This one's skin was little more than shoe-leather, and it was riddled with the marks of old, long-faded scars, which became only more apparent as they drew closer to the crate, their (presumably) sightless eyes sealed away by another wrap of woven hemp around the whole of their hairless head. They opened their lips but slightly, to lick them, and Justine caught a glimpse of teeth that had been worn down to rounded nubs—though by what, she could not say.

With a bony, spindly hand, a skeleton's limb in a sun-beaten glove, the elder reached out from their staff to reach into the contents of the crate, taking from it a single implement, which resembled to Justine's eyes nothing more than the equivalent of an athame, made from bleached white bone. They lifted it, and in a fit of apparent wonder, they shifted the staff they were leaning on into their elbow so that their other hand could come around and fiddle with the unsharpened bone-blade, as though checking it for the presence of some maker's mark or hidden design that was otherwise invisible to the naked eye. There was a breathless little gasp, then, as the elder found what they were looking for, and turned their head towards where Justine stood, awaiting their approval. It was an odd sensation for Justine, locking eyes with one whom, by all the evidence of her senses, appeared to lack them entirely; but she could not shake the feeling that the eyeless elder was nevertheless perceiving her precisely as she was, as though their sightlessness could burrow past the limitations of mere flesh and blood. She had heard of such mystics, and read of them, and were she not keenly aware of the existence of immortal beings and the magic they offered, she might have been more sceptical than speculative in her consumption of their accounts; but knowing what she knew, it would have seemed like willful ignorance to her if she were to dismiss this wondrous feeling with which the blind elder was so arresting her.

"Are you satisfied, honoured Elder?" she prompted the villager, unable to keep a flicker of mirth from her tone as she spoke.

"…You Speak as a Man, Pale-face, and not a fox," they agreed, their croaking, reedy voice a clear indication of their practically ancient status. "But there is another, darker truth in you, as well—the Great Doom, they call it…"

"…I do not know of what you speak, honoured Elder, forgive me," Justine chuckled warily, shifting just a little, almost imperceptibly, in response to the turn this seemed to be taking. Like an instinct, at once she knew that it was a shifting that had not escaped the notice of her friends, but they were doing nothing themselves. She was grateful for it; escalation was the last thing they could afford here.

In response, the elder waved for someone, and dutifully, one of Narat's hunter-warriors broke their encirclement and came to the elder's side. The wizened elder then, without preamble, placed the artefact into the much younger villager's hands, and then reached up for the hempen blind around their head, taking it into their spindly fingers and beginning to unwrap the layers of rough-woven cloth from the front of their face, once, twice, thrice around, until…

"…Oh," Justine said, so profoundly startled by the seemingly-impossible sight before her that she'd inadvertently switched back to Britannian.

The elder was indeed eyeless under the blind, but the cavities recessed into their skull where a pair of eyes ought to have been were not, in fact, vacant; instead, what lurked there was a shifting mass of what looked like vines, in a sense, but somehow Justine knew that they were not plants at all. She recalled in a flash a paper she'd read detailing the origins of terrestrial fungi as profoundly extraterrestrial, explaining how they did not fit neatly into any accepted taxonomic classification, thus necessitating the formation of their own…

"I cannot see you, Pale-face. I do not know you," the elder said in their croaking, withered voice, a hand raising to rest upon the staff once more. "But you are not unknown to us."

With that cryptic and profoundly ominous statement, the wizened elder with something writhing in the sockets of their eyes turned on their heel and addressed their peers. "The Pale-face and those with her are of no danger to us. We will speak with her, and we will treat with her, and we will hear what she has to say—for herself, and for those she guides."

That appeared to be enough, the other elders deferring to the judgement of the most visibly aged of their number, as they beckoned Justine and her friends forward. The other blindfolded elder stepped forth, then, and called out, "Sun-In-Shadow has granted you your bargain, Pale-face. Come with us. There will be drink, and we will talk. You may bring your own within, but your guards must remain without."

Justine, profoundly perplexed but ever-adaptable, smiled, and bowed. "As you say."

Out of the corner of her eye, then, Justine could see Narat looking at her as if he had never seen her before in his life, and to that, Justine merely shrugged when she rose. This had not gone the way she'd had any suspicion it might, not in the slightest, but the outcome was unexpected, not unacceptable. She turned on her heel to regard her companions.

"Our security detail is to form a perimeter around the building we'll be entering," said Justine with a perfunctory nod. "But we've been granted the audience we came here to seek. Keep your wits about you, and follow my lead, alright?"

Suzaku eyed her sceptically, crossing her arms under her chest. "You've got no idea what the fuck's goin' on, do ya?"

"Not in the slightest," Justine admitted freely. "But I've got a good feeling about this, nonetheless."

Suzaku nodded, shrugging. "Works for me."

The others nodded in wordless agreement, and then turned to their own additions to the guard detail in short order, reiterating the instructions they'd been given. Justine looked towards Jeremiah, who seemed as shaken by the sight to which they'd just borne witness as Justine had expected him to be, but he looked to be keeping it together admirably despite it all. Perhaps living in close proximity to Taliesin, Izanami, and C.C. for as long as he had while she was away at the academy had given Jeremiah a greater resistance to the unexpected and the preternatural than she'd given him credit for. He locked gazes with her—well, her with his nose, as per usual—and nodded to her that he was fine.

Justine huffed, rolling her shoulders in anticipation. "Right, then. Come along. It's showtime."

---

Dame Villetta Nu had long-since learned to toss away any sentimental attachment to the concept of 'normality.' Such an idea, as she and Jeremiah had commiserated to one another on more than one occasion as of late, was rather uniquely ill-suited to the realities of being in the mere presence, let alone the service, of Princess Justine vi Britannia. In the almost half-decade since she had first been 'welcomed aboard the great ship vi Britannia,' she'd had to come to grips with the existence of immortal, unkillable beings who, instead of seeking dominion over mankind, had elected instead to pose either as a household manservant and serve an admittedly killer cup of tea, or as one who sought to teach fighting styles that the Villetta of more than five years ago would have dismissed as largely fictitious, given their rather dubious adherence to the limitations of human bodies; and the existence of the magic powers that the aforementioned immortals apparently were able to just dole out whensoever they pleased. She'd dealt with several of the most vicious women she'd ever encountered, one of whom her liege lady was not only wedded to, but also very deeply in love with, even knowing how vicious she was, and she'd been sent here on a mission that she'd never in her wildest dreams have expected to have escaped the pages of far-fetched military fiction.

And yet somehow, her current situation was the strangest she'd ever been in thus far: sitting on her ass, in full combat armour, on a floor she recognised as being made of something similar to tatami, in a circle alongside ten combat-ready young women and Jeremiah, almost all in similar armour, as well as a slew of withered old natives, around a fire, with Justine sitting opposite the eldest of the elders, who apparently had no eyes and instead harboured some plant-like creature that, if not for the evidence of her senses, Villetta would have flatly discounted the possible existence of.

The princess and the eyeless elder traded a few words in a percussive, warbling language it seemed the rest of them did not know or even properly recognise, and then the eyeless one turned their strange, writhing gaze onto the rest of them, and then spoke in accented, archaic Spanish, "We have agreed that, for the sake of all present, we will bargain in the language of our first invaders. The language is known to our elders, and we have been told that it is known to yours."

Of them all, Hecate, eternal peace-maker of their number, was the one to raise her voice. "We thank you greatly for your kind consideration, Elder."

The elderly villager nodded impassively, and then refocused their sightless focus onto Justine. "You have offered us our past, Great Doom, and what you have brought is true in its beginnings. This, we have seen. But what is it that you want in return?"

"The ability to use your lands as our temporary base of operations," Justine replied plainly. "And, if at all possible, your knowledge to guide us through the jungle, so that we may oppose our enemies absent the fetters of ignorance."

"And why should we care about your enemies, hmm?" the elder countered, leaning forwards, the dancing of the naked flame making the slimy wriggling of the thing in their otherwise vacant eye-sockets seem more disturbing by an order of magnitude. "We who do not share your cares?"

"Because they are also your enemies, good Elder," Justine replied without missing a beat, pointing directly across the flame at the elder with her gloved hand—and her claws out, it seemed. Something else that Villetta had needed to adjust to, further eroding her idea of what 'normality' entailed. "They lay claim to the legacy of those who spoke the language we speak, the invaders who stole your children for the sake of their own greed. They call themselves 'Peninsulares,' and they style themselves 'the heirs of Cortés, and of his conquistadors'; and in the name of that bloody-handed legacy, I do not doubt for a moment that their excesses shall soon come to encroach upon all that you've reclaimed, should they succeed in this war we are fighting. They will burn you out for the sake of their own vanity, put you in bondage in service to their delusions; and this dream of theirs, this nightmare they shall eventually inflict upon you, and upon all of your friends and neighbours, they will call 'the Spanish Empire, reborn.'"

The princess's words seemed to cause the other elders no shortage of visible distress—and Villetta felt as though in that moment, she was getting the barest of glimpses into how deep those cultural scars ran, even across the span of generations and nigh-on half a millennium. Their foremost elder, with the eyes that writhed, seemed to meet Justine's gaze evenly for a few moments more, as nearly as the eyeless, yet still not sightless, villager was able, before they relented, acknowledging at last the agitation in their peers who sat arrayed behind them. "You have given us…much to consider, Pale-face. We beg a pause, to confer with our fellow elders, on how best to proceed—"

And yet, as a very familiar tiger owl swept into the hutch through the open threshold, it became, to Villetta, abundantly clear that time was a luxury they did not have.

Hecate rose at once from her seat in a smooth, graceful motion, and reached out with her arm, upon which the nocturnal bird promptly alighted and proceeded to perch. "Apollo…! But what…?"

Immediately, the bird began chattering and shuffling its body, its wings especially, in that incredibly odd mode of communication that allowed Hecate's birds to make themselves understood to her—and there was something almost like human panic about the haste with which the animal 'spoke' to its master. It was not a reaction without merit, it soon became clear, as Hecate's expression shifted out of shock, and instead began to grow increasingly more grave. Hecate turned her attention to Justine (who seemed to have already sussed out the gist of the bird's message if the icy severity of her expression was any indication), but spoke what she had to say aloud, for all of their benefit. "Justine. It's the raiding party we were trying to steer clear of. They're coming straight for us."

"How many?" Justine asked calmly, quietly, like a knife being drawn in dead silence.

"All of them," Hecate replied, the gravity of her expression remaining, though it did not so much as hint at the beginnings of a descent into panic. "Closer to five hundred than four. They're being hindered by the jungle, but so will we. We won't be able to get back to camp and back here with reinforcements in time. They'll be here within the hour."

And of course, any idea of forsaking their hosts to save their own skins was completely and utterly out of the question. Villetta knew this as deeply as she knew the others among Justine's inner circle did; it had ceased to surprise her, how swiftly they'd become in tune with one another. And so when Justine began to turn her amethyst eyes towards her, Villetta already knew what was going to be asked of her. She took a spare moment to thank her foresight, to tell everyone to don their combat armour before their jaunt through the foliage—with the exception of Justine, who had none—and then gave her answer. "If we have the help of the locals, we'll theoretically be able to put up serviceable fortifications with enough time left to get into position before they hit. It'll be a close-run thing, though…"

"We'll be ready," Sif interjected, golden eyes gleaming in the low light.

"Our escort's been drilled?" Justine pressed, sweeping the weight of her gaze across the building to land upon the white-haired young woman very firmly.

Sif was unperturbed; she nodded once, briefly. "They all have. I've seen to it myself."

"I'll leave the finer details of the battle under your command, then," Justine decided.

Sif stiffened. "Wait, me?!"

"Yes, you," Justine reiterated. "Suzaku and I are likely to be indisposed for large swaths of this, and if you've been leading the drills, then the soldiers are used to taking orders from you. Yennefer will be with you, and don't think I didn't notice who held the second-highest scores in both Battle and Assault Tactics."

Sif's eyes went wide, and she rushed to protest. "Yes, but…!"

"Sif," Justine interrupted, the command in her tone brooking no argument. "Can I rely on you to do this? Yes or no?"

"…Yes, Justine," Sif finally settled upon, though she clearly found the idea harrowing.

Justine nodded. "Excellent. The rest of you are, of course, free to use your own judgement to pick your targets, but I expect you all to lend the infantry under Sif's command your aid with all haste if you're called upon. Is that understood?"

A chorus of 'Yes, Justine' sounded out from the rest of them, leaving both Villetta and Jeremiah as the only pair still awaiting orders.

"Jeremiah. Villetta. You're both armed, yes?" Justine prompted, causing Jeremiah to reach for the battle rifle clipped to his back as Villetta slipped her submachine gun from where it was secured to her hip; she hadn't yet quite gotten used to handling her messer-shaped vibrosword, which she'd left behind at the camp. Seeing that they were, in fact, armed, the princess nodded approvingly. "Excellent. You'll need to watch each other's backs out there."

"That should be nothing new," Villetta nodded, looking towards her old friend, who seemed to be in agreement with her. "Just like old times, eh, Jerry?"

Jeremiah smiled begrudgingly. "Indeed…"

"What is it that has happened?" asked the eldest of the elders, giving as pointed a look as someone without eyes could manage towards their contemporaries.

Honestly, Villetta had almost forgotten where they were—and just by looking around, she could see very clearly that her own embarrassment was hardly unique.

Justine rolled with it, though, and took it upon herself to explain the situation in the language of the locals, eschewing Spanish entirely in favour of that odd warbling, chirping language of the River-folk. The increasingly sharp looks of alarm on the faces of these old natives was enough of a clue of the subject they were discussing, and after a few panicked, clipped utterances from the elders, countered by Justine's calm, cool, mild responses, they seemed to have come to an agreement. Justine stood, then, and Villetta, like the rest of them, took it as her cue to stand as well.

"Narat's hunter-warriors will help us erect whatever fortifications we can manage in whatever time we have remaining to us, but then they'll take refuge inside their houses and let us deal with the rest. We'll have a clear field to fight on," Justine explained, shifting to pose with her arms akimbo, in the process revealing her vibroblade, the Murasama, and its ballistic scabbard, secured to her side. "We've got a fair bit of work ahead of us, my friends, so we had best not dawdle."

---

The raiding party that came in force to meet them an hour later was only around half the size of the band they'd bested and then executed at Don Diego's estate; but without even outmoded Knightmares, and working with a skeleton crew as they were, they were nonetheless outnumbered at roughly four-to-one. An hour's work had built for them barricades and palisades, shallow ditches to serve as trenches if one laid flat on their stomachs, and rudimentary cover from enemy fire. Not one of them would survive a direct hit from a Sutherland's assault rifle, of course, but if they ignored the very likely presence of Knightmares on the enemy's side of the field, they had a good chance of making it out of this village defence encounter with minimal casualties.

The problem, of course, being that when they came, four Sutherlands came along with them.

The infantry that stormed the field bore combat armour decorated in the livery of the lords to whom they were sworn, a colourful mass of peacock-feathers streaming out of the dark jungle, faceless, and with their own battle-rifles loaded and brandished; and yet, for all that this was a show of force, the battle began not with an opening hail of gunfire, nor with the crushing of foliage beneath the squealing landspinners of a Knightmare Frame—but instead with a crack of thunder, as the first of the four Sutherlands went down, its leg blown clean off at the joint.

A moment of perfect stillness transpired, as shock set in among the highborn scions in command of this gang of reavers, and Lisa in the background worked to reload her AMR.

Then the moment shattered.

"Attack!" cried the noble brat in charge through the speakers of his Sutherland.

As one, the multicoloured wave of infantry began to move, even as the remaining three Sutherlands withdrew, seemingly more than willing to sacrifice their subjects to die in droves, while they recoiled from any chance of actually risking their lives.

"Their Judgement Day has come!" Justine's voice called out across the village, and Villetta, whose blood was base, felt the thrill that passed through all the rest of the lowborn at the chord those words struck in them; and as it passed, Villetta felt her mind clear, her sight sharpen, her hearing grow increasingly acute with each beat of her heart, and she knew at once what it meant.

Justine's power was now active.

"Make every shot count!" barked Sif, her voice cracking like a whip and carrying with impressive clarity. "Hold steady! Hold! Hold!"

Villetta eyeballed the approaching tide. Five hundred were arrayed before them, their commanders no doubt believing this would be a victory easily-won; and indeed, with the Sutherlands on the field, tactics such as encirclement or flanking would have been almost wholly unnecessary in the ordinary course. It was a mistake that was easily made, looking at what little of the 588th were arrayed to oppose them…

"Open fire!" bellowed the golden-eyed woman.

As one, with nerves of steel, the infantry began to open fire. Volleys of bullets in three-round bursts, with a level of accuracy that defied the book on visibility, fell upon and summarily felled rank upon rank of liveried soldiers, each burst of rounds seeking known weak points, and finding their marks more often than not. The advancing line was staggered, with small clumps of infantry rather than the uniform rows of bygone ages, so as to avoid being quite so easily mowed down by machine gun nests; and yet when thunder cracked anew, the concussive sound of it ringing out across their makeshift battlefield, it became clear that to Lisa, it was only slightly more novel a task than shooting fish in a barrel. Every time her thunder cracked, death reaped itself across the clearing in showers of red.

And yet, even as the advance was checked, and checked quite brutally, the enemy nonetheless came into the range their visibility allowed, and fired back.

Mud spat knee-high in the air in thin streams as bullets slammed into the black earth. The wood of the cover they'd set up shuddered and chipped. Gunfire barked back and forth as both infantry forces shot at each other, the unerring accuracy that the 588th's infantry's enhanced vision and composure gave them being equalled by the sheer volume of returning ordinance.

Villetta looked to Jeremiah, and found that he was looking at her in turn. She found herself grinning at him, and he grinned in return shortly thereafter; neither of them had helmets on, having not thought they would need to have brought them—but then, the rest of the kids weren't wearing them, either, having no habits of previous service to fall back on, and instead trusting in their own skills and Justine's Geass to keep them all alive and in the fight. Jeremiah leaned out of the cover they both had their backs against, crouching behind the barricade closest to the front, to the left side of the throughway, and fired back with his battle-rifle in a few short bursts. Villetta, not to be outdone, did the same on her side, choosing her targets with her SMG and squeezing the trigger. Hip, armpit, base of the throat: in turn, she downed one after another, pulling her head back safely, well enough before the answering fire slammed into the barricade on its other side that there was practically no risk of catching a stray shot.

The advance was drawing close to their position, though; and so she turned to look at Jerry again, quick enough to catch his nod. They pulled back from the barricade and retreated in good order to the next line of artificial cover, while Odette and Hecate rushed past them towards the front, weapons drawn, their eyes circled in the telltale blazing ring of scarlet that marked the effect of Justine's Geass—in fact, Villetta was sure that hers and Jeremiah's eyes were much the same. It made them faster, stronger; it steeled their nerves and sharpened their reactions, allowed their bodies to surpass their human limitations, and enabled their minds to stave off the fog of war.

Odette's vibroblade and Hecate's sabre-shaped vibrosword flashed crimson, as their wielders tore across the field, vaulted the barricades and any obstacle that obstructed them, and plunged into clumps of infantry, tearing into them with a merciless red vengeance. Where the blades fell, men were slaughtered, as bullets were dodged and enemy infantry were used as human shields. Around the other side of the village, Villetta spied Liliana and Marika dashing their way through the dark, vibroglaives whirring and stabbing as their wielders took to their bloody work. Sif's voice was heard across their side of the field, with Yennefer staying alongside her lover and keeping her eyes peeled for danger, and she was sure that somewhere in the trees and the long shadows they cast, Lisa and Lindelle were nestled in any of several vantage points, with only the odd muzzle flash and thunder-crack signalling their presence as more men were blown apart, with rounds meant to take down tanks and KMFs reducing their squishy human bodies, no matter how well they were armoured, to little more than featureless mounds of gore, as shots that would have been difficult to make for a seasoned sharpshooter found their marks unerringly, time and again.

The screams of their dead and dying opponents were secondary to the nigh-deafening drum-beat of blood in her ears, her heart pounding in her chest, even as her mind remained clear, and her hand steady. It was as if it was a different her performing these actions, a nudge in her mind helping her keep track of who was where, keeping her coordinated and able to tell friend from foe at a glance. She'd felt this way before, of course, during the assault on the enemy raiding party in Santiago, but as she looked around and saw a group of mostly green household troops hold it together with more composure and resolve than many units of seasoned veterans she had encountered over the course of her career, with only a handful here and there bearing more than a glancing injury to show for their efforts, in comparison to the mounting toll of dead on the enemy side, and the Sutherlands that even now seemed reluctant to join the fray…

The potency of Justine's magic power, of her Geass, was as clear as it was undeniable.

Thunder cracked again, shooting at some point overhead—and a fireball bloomed in the distance.

At that, the Sutherlands decided they had had enough. The trio advanced, the black tires of their landspinners squealing in the mud, and all Hell broke loose.

In a flash, Villetta realised what had happened. The downed Sutherland had righted itself enough to be able to trigger its ejection mechanism, and Lisa had shot it out of the sky, killing the devicer inside. That explained the sudden aggression, at the very least—but as the KMF assault rifles started firing, their large rounds ripping through barricades and cover, that knowledge came second to her and Jeremiah legging it, as the battle lines collapsed, their soldiers retreating further into the village in good order…or at least, in far better order than could be expected from any infantryman being barrelled down on by three fifth-generation Knightmare Frames.

The ground erupted at her feet, sending both her and Jeremiah flying.

Drawing on memories of a similar event in a different campaign, Villetta put her body through the motions and landed sprawling on the ground—a painful return to the earth, perhaps, but not one that would result in broken bones. She looked across the way, and saw, to her assurance, that Jeremiah hadn't managed to forget how to weather a blast, either, and then returned her attention to the deteriorating situation.

The Sutherlands were advancing, the anger their devicers felt while piloting almost a tangible force, while their assault rifles' barrels roved this way and that, firing at anything that moved. Like the earliest of tanks during the first industrial-scale war, the Knightmares rolled over the wreckage of barricades and the shallow ditches they'd dug to serve as makeshift trenches unmolested, preventing the reformation of any of the battle lines as they crumpled under the weight of the advance, one after the other. The steel remained in the bearing of each and every infantryman she could see, but they were retreating as quickly as they could, and there was only so much order that could be maintained with armoured soldiers running at full tilt away from three four-metre-tall mechanised titans seemingly hell-bent on their annihilation.

And yet, there was a pivot coming in this battle. She could sense it.

Accordingly, she saw the four who'd joined the melee against the common soldiers fall back from the front, maintaining a safe distance; and while Jeremiah had fallen close enough to the side of the path of the rebellious nobles' KMFs that he could scramble to relative safety, Villetta herself had been blown right into their path. She caught that he was making ready to bolt forth to rescue her out of the corner of her eye, but she held up a warning hand, staving him off; and though his handsome face twisted in displeasure, he remained where he was bidden.

Perhaps it had to do with the fact that he was her knight, and thus responsible for being aware of all her limitations and vulnerabilities, that was the cause of his distress; perhaps it had to do with the fact that he was born to a noble house, and so did not truly understand exactly what the gesture that she'd made for the sake of those under her command entailed, what was so incredibly significant about a song, sung by a group of commoners decades ago; but for Villetta, whose father would always be that stocky carpenter with his rough-hewn hands and his clumsy yet sincere way of caring, regardless of what scumbag of a nobleman had actually provided the seed for her conception, in that moment, her faith in the princess to whom both of them were loyal was nothing less than absolute.

And in the next moment, her faith was rewarded.

A set of polished black boots, their fine leather fit for riding, conforming closely to a lithe, lean set of calves, with the elevated heels that Britannian dress uniforms for some reason insisted upon, particularly for women. How odd that she hadn't eschewed that style… Perhaps she'd gotten used to them during her academy days? But Villetta knew them at a glance, how they rose to the knee to end in a pronounced cuff, and how the scalloped hem of that long black coat brushed against them at the bottom of the calf.

"Villetta," said Justine, without taking her eyes off of the swiftly-approaching Sutherlands, not even for a moment. "Can you walk."

"Nothing's broken," she replied, assessing herself quickly and finding no fault.

Justine nodded, drawing the Murasama from its ballistic scabbard slowly, its scarlet blade brilliant against the darkness as she flicked it to the side. "Good. Get to safety. Suzaku and I will handle the rest."

"Oi! And here I thought someone was fixin' to start the fun without li'l ol' me…" came the rough, brash drawl of Kururugi Suzaku, as she stepped up beside Justine, wearing only the same sorts of clothes she sparred in—an outfit in the traditional Eleven style, worn very non-traditionally. Straw sandals and toed socks, loose, pleated black pants, and a long, loose-sleeved black robe, open-faced, with only wound linen bandages to bind her chest. Her own vibroblades were already naked, one held point-down, while the other was perched on her shoulder as she prowled her way to the front, the gait disguised as a swagger.

"Ha. Wouldn't dream of it," Justine replied fondly.

"So, how ya wanna do this, eh?" Suzaku asked frankly, cracking her neck and rolling her shoulders. "I get the one on the left, leavin' you to bag the bozo on the right?"

"And consider the third a reward for whoever finishes first," Justine finished.

"Fuckin' A," Suzaku chuckled. Then, she shrugged. "Works for me."

"Villetta, dear, we're going to need some room to work, so if you would be so kind?" prompted the princess; and Villetta, broken at last from her mild stupor, realised the gravity of the situation at once, and nodded, scrambling to her feet and retreating to a safe vantage point without another word.

No sooner had she gotten to safety than did the princess slip into a familiar stance, the hilt held high in both hands, and the bared blade tilting down…kasumi no kamae, she recalled. Suzaku, in contrast, began to hop up and down, limbering up even as she seemed to vibrate with barely-contained excitement. And in the background, the Knightmares continued to advance, their assault rifles converging on the pair standing to challenge them—perhaps correctly deducing one of them to be the commander.

Suzaku grinned, teeth bared in feral mirth.

Justine's grim smile was sharp enough to kill.

"On your mark…" Justine intoned. "Get set…"

The Sutherlands opened fire.

"Go!"

"FUCKING KILL!" Suzaku roared balefully, as her own Geass ability took hold. She lowered her swords, and surged forth, bolting across the clearing at full tilt, dead-set on the Sutherland that the pair had agreed was hers.

Justine ran in silence, dashing across the field, directly into the oncoming hail of Knightmare-sized rounds, her vibroblade held out to the side while her other hand steadied her scabbard. The scarlet tongue flashed and glinted, scything through the air, cutting through ammunition even as the princess strafed, with the tail of her coat fluttering in her wake. She was fast for a girl of her size, faster by far than Villetta had ever personally seen before, matching the speed of Suzaku's headlong bull-charge, with those long, loping, powerful strides, practically step for step. Where Justine deflected, Suzaku dodged and wove, or even took the ordinance full-on herself, wholly undeterred.

It became abundantly clear why Suzaku had dressed so lightly.

Seeing the Honorary Britannian, her comrade and friend, take on hits that would have been instant death for anyone else without missing a step, even as her body rushed to stitch itself back together, taking on the damage, shrugging it off, and regenerating it in the space of a breath, was an experience that was as breath-taking as it was horrifying. The feral, snapping, growling, snarling grin was a mindless rictus as she pursued her quarry, dogged as a pack of wolves, and even as her body heedlessly negated any and all damage done to it, her clothes were by no means so fortunate.

The third Sutherland joined its fire with its companion on the left, trying in vain to put down the regenerating berserker of a sixteen-year-old young woman; while on the right, the second Sutherland, in a panic, perhaps, over how ineffective the assault rifle was proving, fired off both of its chest-mounted slash harkens in a desperate attempt to hit as Justine continued to close the distance, faster and faster despite the strafing pattern she tore in the churned mud.

The slash harkens slammed into the ground with a suckling thud where Justine had been, one after the other; and without missing a beat, Justine reached up with a gloved hand and hooked herself up onto the steel-coated paracord cable of the second slash harken, landing nimbly, and started running up it.

Suzaku, having gotten close enough, coiled her powerful legs and leapt, ricocheting herself off of a nearby hutch-roof, and launching herself directly into the chest of the nearest Sutherland. Her vibroblades were bared like a tiger's fangs, and they bit deep into the KMF's tungsten armour, letting her hold on for dear life as the devicer's panicked shrieks were broadcast over the mechanised unit's speakers.

The second Sutherland, seeing the deteriorating, fantastical situation its comrades were stuck in, retracted its slash harkens, the motors working in the order they'd fired. But this was precisely what Justine had been waiting for, it seemed, as the Murasama lashed out and cut the first slash harken's retracting cord. With the tension gone, the cable jolted and bucked, and Justine leapt from the second cord to the slashed one with a grunt of effort—catching its severed end even as the head of the slash harken was launched off somewhere else in the distance. Like she was in a swashbuckler film, Justine swung along on the out-of-control cord's momentum, and as the winch worked to retract it, the raven-haired swordswoman was flung skyward like a hydrogen rocket.

Suzaku used her vibroblades to climb her way up to the top of the Sutherland's chest, growling and snarling all the while like a wild beast, interspersed with girlish giggles and maddened cackling; the third couldn't fire without harming his friend's unit, while the Sutherland, for all that it was designed for combat at full human parity, wasn't coordinated enough to swipe Suzaku off of its chest, what with how swiftly she scaled the war machine. Soon, she was straddling the top of the Knightmare's torso, and with both of her vibroblades, she hacked away at the head-mounted factsphere sensor, with full gusto and bloody glee.

Justine descended like a meteor, arms and legs held close to her body to accelerate her drop, even as the Sutherland did its best to lean back and shoot at the sky, something it was by no means designed to do; and as she drew closer, she kicked her legs out, impacting a few of the flying rounds here and there in the process, and thus used their momentum successfully to reverse the direction she was falling, getting her feet under her and bringing the Murasama to bear; as with the oppressive velocity of her drop, and the fact that she was set to land directly behind the enemy Sutherland, she had the leverage to slice the cockpit block in half, the Murasama's scarlet tongue neatly bifurcating the lighter armour protecting the protruding cockpit in a glow of flash-melting metal, along with the devicer sitting inside.

She reckoned even the remaining enemy infantry could hear the sharp hiss as the noble brat's blood splattered onto the heated armour plating, rapidly and loudly cooling the red-hot metal, even as some of the fat seemed to flash-fry with short-lived tongues of sizzling orange flame.

Justine went with the descending momentum, and, using her vibroblade in the armour plating of the cockpit block as an anchor point, she swung around the unit's narrow waist, perching herself on the unit's protruding hip assembly as she landed, and then scaled the rest of the way to the Knightmare's head.

Suzaku had, in that time, left the head, and driven both blades down into the cockpit block of her Sutherland, stabbing through the pilot—and from his blood-curdling screams of pain, he wasn't dying with any sort of speed or mercy—and with that control, she puppetted his shrieking, mortally-wounded body to send the Sutherland lurching back into its final remaining ally. Once it careened far enough back, Suzaku dragged both of her vibroblades out to answering geysers of blood from the punctures, and heedless of how the last remaining devicer was putting his Sutherland hard into reverse, she leapt, fangs bared again, for the final Knightmare.

Villetta tore her gaze away from the sight, noticing how Sif had ordered their battle lines reformed as their escort of one hundred twenty mopped up the remaining enemy infantry while all three Knightmares were busy, and then looked back in time for the princess to stand astride her quarry's shoulder, and leap to the cockpit block of the retreating survivor—beating Suzaku to the punch.

And so Villetta, like the rest of the 588th, stood there and watched, as Justine, her claws seemingly fully functional even through her gloves, reared her hand back, formed it into a knife shape, and then cut through the top of the remaining block, tearing a hole large enough to function as a sewer maintenance port into the roof of the cockpit. Then she reached into the Knightmare, and dragged the final survivor out of his vehicle, a green-as-grass highborn brat who was maybe a year or two older than any of the girls, at most, and who looked every bit as green around the gills. After what he'd just witnessed, traitorous, highborn rebel, shamelessly grasping above his station or no, Villetta couldn't find it in herself to blame him.

Then Suzaku got up onto the roof, her chest heaving, and as some part of her being recognised the conclusion of the fight, her Geass visibly winked out. She raised one of her vibroblades, then, with hands that were increasingly shaky, and pointed its tip at Justine, her lips forming the words, 'we'll call it a draw,' before her entire body sagged with exhaustion.

Justine caught Suzaku as she began to fall, supporting her friend with one arm as her shell-shocked prisoner went slack in the other; and with that, the defence of the village of the River-folk was over.

Against all odds, the 588th Irregulars had prevailed tonight.

Against all odds, they had won.

---

The aftermath of the battle had proven quite fortuitous indeed, Hecate reflected to herself, as she caught a glimpse of Suzaku sitting on the ground with her face full of the enemy raiding party's supplies, wolfing down provisions like her stomach was a bottomless pit instead of an organ. She remembered, then, how Justine had disclosed to them the magic power she had received the night of her wedding; she recalled how they'd all been a bit sceptical, but also trusted in Justine enough to believe she'd prove that what she was saying was the truth, and now that she'd felt the impact of that power several times over the course of the past few weeks, their faith had proven well-founded. There had been some speculation that Suzaku had gained a similar power of her own, and now, after all that they'd seen, that seemed to have been confirmed in spades.

Hecate, at least, was taking such a revelation in stride—because, realistically, none of them would ever have lasted this long without a healthy appreciation for just how flexible the parameters of the idea of 'normality' could truly be—but it seemed as if it didn't come without its downsides, as Justine had ordered all the foodstuffs the raiding party had been carrying with them be apportioned to her best friend, first and foremost. None of them had been particularly bothered by that—Justine had proven shockingly immune to the lure of favouritism over the course of all of their time living together in the same dorm building, and it seemed her commitment to even-handedness was almost inalienable from who she was as a person, and so if she put out such a command, none of them doubted for a moment that it was absolutely necessary.

She was walking under the night sky, through the dirt paths that had been beaten down to form a kind of road system within the bounds of the village of the River-folk, and for the moment, her hands were mercifully quite idle. Apollo's talons bit into the pauldron of her combat armour every so often, shifting to adjust to the motion of his perch; Artemis had long since grown used to it, and had learned to reposition on her shoulder preemptively, predicting her movements. But Artemis was asleep right now, diurnal creature that she was, and Apollo was not nearly as attuned to her as the merlin. That was fine, though; a bond like the one she shared with Artemis took time to form and re-affirm, and she was sure she'd have quite enough time to do that even out here, in the untamed wilderness of Area Six.

All of a sudden, Apollo's talons scraped against the ballistic plating of her shoulder, and leapt into the sky in a sheer panic. Hecate watched his progress calmly; she was exceedingly familiar with this exact phenomenon by now, as well as all that it entailed.

"My apologies for the interruption," came the precise voice that she was expecting, as Justine drew abreast of her with swift, near-silent steps. "I do hope I wasn't too disruptive…"

Hecate didn't immediately turn to look at Justine; their familiarity allowed for these small breaches of etiquette. Instead, she found herself smiling, bemused, as Apollo reacted the same way she'd seen from any bird she'd encountered (aside from corvids, for some reason) the moment Justine drew near. It was like they were existentially terrified by her, to the extent that they even had a conception of such things; they were not unintelligent creatures, but it was rare for one to be given to introspection absent a protracted time spent in close association with Hecate.

"Not at all," she refuted at last, reaching up and brushing a gauntleted hand through her sweaty blue hair as she looked away from Apollo, and directed her attention to her friend. "Apollo was simply serving as my companion as I got some air. We had no business that needed seeing to."

"Then I hope he won't be too offended if I usurp his position," Justine replied with an airy chuckle.

"What's there to usurp~?" Hecate shot back good-naturedly, as she looked over at her friend with a smile. "He surrendered his position as soon as he saw you. That's not usurpation so much as just plain old abdication."

Justine visibly sobered at that, her hand creeping towards the butt-cap of her vibroblade, which she had retrieved from the downed Sutherland at the end of the battle. "I do apologise for the distress I seem to be causing them…"

Hecate waved the apology off. Her avian companions being inexplicably perturbed by Justine was a known quirk of theirs by this point, and at this point, Hecate put it on them for taking so long to get over it. Even Artemis still acted like she was paralysed despite herself, the merlin constantly searching for an opportunity to escape whenever Justine drew near, and quite frankly, Hecate couldn't help but think that it was silly. She'd asked on several occasions, but both Apollo and Artemis had responded with very nearly identical strings of cries and gestures—which, given that both of them were otherwise thoroughly distinct in how they communicated their impressions and thoughts, had been quite the strange pair of interactions indeed—that were firmly beyond her ability to decipher. She'd seen neither hide nor hair of those gestures before or since; and all the while, while wild carrion seemed unbound by her raptors' wariness, the various wild corvids she'd encountered seemed to almost have an affinity for Justine. It was a puzzle that, to put it simply, Hecate had long since accepted that she still lacked crucial parts of, and had thus put off the act of trying to find a solution; she saw no reason for Justine to feel bad about running afoul of it.

…Pun not intended…

"Was there anything you needed?" Hecate asked instead, doing her best to expeditiously move past the subject in question. They'd all learned well with the mess surrounding Harrowmont that Justine was not nearly as invulnerable as she seemed, and that had only become increasingly apparent now that they knew exactly what to look for; therefore, being mindful of how quickly her moods could spiral and adjusting accordingly was, by this point, second-nature to all of them.

The redirection seemed to work as intended, thankfully, and Justine's demeanour smoothed out, the mien of the invincible, indefatigable princess once more asserting itself. It was not a mask, in the traditional sense—the aura of unspoken superiority and quiet self-assurance that Justine exuded was, Hecate had come to understand, every bit as sincere as her specific vulnerabilities—but it was nonetheless either one or the other when it came to the princess, and never both at once. "The prisoner has regained consciousness. I've already told Lindelle to prepare for interrogation, and I was hoping you would consent to joining us."

"Why me?" Hecate asked. She wasn't put off by the request, by any means, but it didn't mean that she was expecting such a thing to be asked of her, or that she wasn't curious with regards to the origins and the nature of such a thing.

Justine fell silent for a moment, considering how to phrase what she was going to say. "You've no doubt noticed that I put Sif in command of the infantry during the course of the battle."

"I have," Hecate affirmed patiently. Justine's way of speaking sometimes seemed roundabout, but it was, to the best of Hecate's knowledge, and indeed the knowledge of all of their mutual friends with whom she'd spoken on the subject, merely her penchant for precise phrasing at work.

"I did so because I realised that Sif's array of skills was more versatile than I was giving her credit for, with regards to the sorts of assignments I was giving out," Justine continued smoothly as they walked. "Namely, that her tactical acumen is beyond reproach, for all that her grasp of strategy isn't quite up to that same standard of brilliance. I had a similar consideration when it came to Lindelle, and also when it comes to you: with us being as strapped for personnel as we are, it would be a fatal error to overspecialise."

"And what role do you mean for me to play, then?" Hecate prompted, reaching one arm up without looking as Apollo descended and perched upon her vambrace once again.

"For now, not much of one," Justine admitted easily, nodding absently. "But I mean to have you all work in teams, regardless of the task; while Lindelle doubtless has both the chemical and coercive aspects of interrogation well in hand, the face-to-face portion will likely be your part to play in the future. After all, I will not always have the flexibility to conduct such inquiries personally, especially as our engagements begin to escalate, as they will; and I would like to have the ability to delegate such a duty to your capable hands in the future, if at all possible. Especially given the fact your companions seem to have something of a predator's knack for detecting falsehoods and deception."

"…Justine, while they can do that," Hecate began hesitantly, thinking back on how both Artemis and Apollo had progressively begun to apply their talents for discerning when potential prey was hiding or playing dead to the more nuanced arena of human interaction more and more the stronger their bond with her got. "It's…by no means an exact science…"

"Neither is interrogation, to be perfectly blunt," Justine noted, subtly steering them towards a single building at the outskirts of the village. "It's rather infamous for being more of an art form than anything, in fact. But I would not have asked this of you if I didn't think you were capable of it, Hecate."

"…I'll do my best," Hecate sighed, as she moved her arm in a command for Apollo to return to her shoulder, his head turning this way and that in barely-restrained alarm.

Justine nodded, as she at last pivoted on her heel and motioned towards a hutch that they were now directly in front of. "That's all I ask. Now, I want you to pay attention to the types of questions I'm going to ask our uninvited guest, alright? You'll grasp the gist of it quite quickly, I'm fairly certain."

Hecate took a deep breath, reaching another nervous hand through her bright blue hair, and sighed, bracing herself for what was to come. "Alright. I'm ready."

Justine smiled, and for all that it was sharp as a knife's edge, this was the smile Justine reserved for her friends, and the sight of it reassured Hecate. With that, she ducked into the hide flap that closed the hut off from the rest of the village, the walls made of vines and fallen boughs, sealed against the elements with river-clay and discarded foliage, while an even hardier thatch made up the roof, with broad leaves in layers that interlocked with one another, creating a similar rain-catching effect to the canopy of the trees on high. No mud here, of course, but instead yet another show of ingenuity and cleverness on behalf of the locals in making use of readily-available materials.

Within the dry hutch, its interior illuminated by a battery-operated lamp set on the packed dirt floor, was a large post, to which the surviving nobleman had been securely lashed, after they'd stripped him of all of his effects and gagged him thoroughly. Only his undergarments protected his modesty now, and though he was freshly awoken, the toll the events of the battle had taken on him were still evident in his wild-eyed expression. Off to the side, then, Lindelle sat cross-legged, with a black leather bag that was propped up against her leg on the ground next to her. She'd doffed her combat armour, it seemed, in favour of the 588th's makeshift service uniform, around which she'd draped a white lab coat, and the moment she spied both Justine and Hecate shuffling in through the front of the hutch, she stood swiftly from her cross-legged position, lifting her embossed black leather bag alongside her. "Justine, Hecate. Good, you're here."

"Are we ready to begin?" Justine asked, instantly slipping into the lead role.

"The subject should be ready, yes," Lindelle replied with a nod. "He's certainly awake enough, with how much fruitless thrashing he's been doing. Just give the word, and I'll start us off."

Justine gestured with a silent jerk of her head to indicate where Hecate should stand, and Hecate, grateful for the direction, shuffled over to take her position before Justine returned the full weight of her attention to the medical professional in the room. "Go ahead."

"By your leave," Lindelle replied with an informal bow. Then, she walked over to the prisoner, and dropped into a crouch beside him. His nearly nude figure revealed an idle lifestyle, his skin pasty, his hair lank, and his watery eyes wide with barely-suppressed fear as they observed Lindelle's approach. "Now, I want you to nod or to shake your head in response to the question I'm going to ask of you, alright? No need to try and speak just yet; nod or shake your head, yes or no. Will you cooperate and answer our questions?"

Hecate could give the noble brat this: he knew how to mimic bravery. He wasn't any good at it, but he did, at least on an intellectual level, know what he was doing when he vigorously shook his head.

Lindelle favoured his refusal with a wan smile. "Between you and me? I was actually hoping you would say that."

Lindelle flipped open her bag and the pampered lordling thrashed against the post with renewed fervour, yelling incoherently through his gag as he flailed about uselessly; and as she stood there observing the theatrics of his bravado, Hecate found that she could only be increasingly disgusted by the sight of him. But Lindelle paid this no mind; she had a captive audience, and so, even as she began to rummage through her bag, she occupied herself with chatter. "You know, I hope I'm not breaking any new cognitive ground for you when I point out that torture is a famously ineffective means of prying the truth out of a captive. It's true that the promise of pain is more compelling than the pain itself, of course, but the trouble is that there's no guarantee that the subject isn't just saying whatever they feel they need to say in order to make the pain stop. And that's before you even factor in how much extra effort needs to go into so thoroughly breaking a human being's pain tolerance without killing them. The margin for error is so narrow, in fact, that even those who are well-versed and experienced in the act of inflicting pain often produce a higher mortality rate than the process of childbirth in the Chinese Federation. It's ridiculous! Absurd, even!

"The fact of the matter is that humans have an impressive degree of pain tolerance in comparison to our fellow beasts," Lindelle continued, as she finally found what she was searching for with a muted 'ah!'. "But the human body's defences against pleasure are considerably less developed. Why, I'm even told that during the course of the Great War in the E.U., prisoners of war were given luxurious accommodations and were looked after in comfort; and the prisoners were practically falling over themselves to sell out their collaborators, secrets, and plans as a result of that lavish treatment. And yet, for all that that process produced exemplary results, it's been so rarely implemented in other contexts. Perhaps enmity towards one's foes simply overrides all evidence-based common sense, and the punitive mindset is just so thoroughly entrenched that it bypasses any and all logical processes that might otherwise be given to stop and ask, 'is this the most effective means available to us? Is this the most efficient use of the resources at our disposal?'

"But regardless," Lindelle sighed, as she pulled out what looked to be a sealed cylindrical container of brown fluid the colour of dried blood, together with a succession of syringes, of which she chose only one, and a single-use injector. "That event did not go unnoticed by the experts in the intelligence community, however; in 1945, just a short decade before the ill-fated ascension of Reinhard the Kinslayer, the Office of Secret Intelligence opened an investigation into the potential use of hallucinogenic and psychotropic agents towards the facilitation of the process of urban pacification through mind control. Project MX-Ultra, as it came to be called, was broad in scope, and persisted in secret throughout the early stages of the Emblem of Blood, up until the OSI of the time was dismantled; and you can be certain that many of the project's findings were the source of several of the more heinous atrocities perpetrated during the middle stages and tail end of that period.

"One of the products that escaped the sudden and chaotic declassification and dissemination of that project and its findings is Compound MX-401-A, better known as the hallucinogenic narcotic 'Refrain'. Its evaluation was unfortunately inconclusive, but preliminary results were extraordinarily promising…" said Lindelle, her smile cold and placid as she prepared the syringe, and extracted a single phial of the drug out of its sealed container, presumably preparing it for injection. The name of it caused recognition to flash in the noble brat's eyes, and he thrashed even more violently, screaming and sobbing and begging, fat tears running heavy down flushed cheeks. An acrid stench cut through the air, disrupting the natural scents of the hutch's building materials, the nearby river, the mud and the people nearby, bringing with it the heavy and tell-tale signature of ammonia—a peek down at the noble brat's undergarments confirmed what Hecate's nose had attested. It had caused him to piss himself in fear, the knowledge of what was about to happen to him, even as Lindelle loaded the phial into the injector, and flicked the side of it with her nail to dispel any air bubbles in it. "The Hippocratic Oaths stipulate that a practitioner of medicine should always endeavour to do no harm, of course. And so I can promise you this much, dear boy: it won't hurt a bit."

With that, Lindelle turned to regard Justine, the injector prepped and held at the ready.

"We're not taking him with us," Justine instructed definitively. "We can't afford a hostage escaping, after all—so we have no reason to care how much of him is left after this."

Lindelle nodded. "Understood. Hecate, he'll be thrashing too much for me to find a proper injection site, so if you could please come around and restrain him for me…"

"Oh, of course," Hecate blinked, rushing around her friend to the other side of the post, where she let Apollo hop off of his perch and sink his talons into the rebellious nobleman's bare shoulder. His cries under his gag only grew more shrill as the owl's perching drew blood in thin red rivulets, his flailing more and more wild and ineffectual; but though it took a moment for Hecate to embrace the boy from behind, holding him in place so that he couldn't even turn his neck away, while he shrieked and cried and his wide eyes stared, bloodshot and terrified, Lindelle was patient and understanding, smiling and nodding at her the moment Hecate had, in the medic's estimation, sufficiently restrained the rebellious noble scion. Hecate held the prisoner steady, with Apollo's help, as the injector in Lindelle's hand drew closer and closer to the injection site.

"You know, I actually also find the sight and smell of blood up close to be objectionable, myself," Lindelle confessed conversationally, as she lined the needle of the injector up with the correct vein in his bared neck, flexing in mortal terror as it was. "Ironic for someone who wanted to study surgery and became a medic, I know; but really, when you think about it, this works out best for both of us."

With that, Lindelle depressed the trigger, sending the heavy dose of Refrain directly into the enemy prisoner's body; and she did not release until the phial was completely empty.

A moment later, the man's thrashing began to weaken, his sobs quieting, tears stemming; within a handful of minutes, less than Hecate had fingers, the prisoner's eyes grew glassy and unfocused, his mind drowning in euphoria, trapped in what must have been his fondest memory. Gently, she pried herself off of him, standing and dusting herself off—kicking the floor to wipe away any trace of the coward's urine—and accepted Apollo as he fluttered back up to her shoulder. "Is that it?"

"Should be," Lindelle replied as she grunted and stood from her own crouch. "That's 99.9% purity that I just used. A dose like that will leave him dead in every way that matters once it wears off. Complete and permanent ego death. Well, more or less, anyways…"

"And how long will it take to wear off?" Justine asked, stepping closer to the two of them.

"Given his body-mass index? Two to three hours, though I'd say closer to three than two," Lindelle estimated, brushing off her skirt and boots, and bending down again to pack up her bag.

"Excellent," Justine exhaled, drawing up in front of the drugged captive and dropping into a crouch of her own. She reached out and took the rebel's face in both hands, turning it to face her, before plucking the gag out of his slack-jawed mouth. "That should be more than enough time to get the intel we need… Now then. Tell me your name."

"G-Gabriel…Maria…de la Rosa…de la Mancha…de la Brasilia…" came the droning, sing-song recollection of the brain-dead prisoner. "Son…of Rodrigo…Duke of the Río de la Plata…Commander of the Armies of Charcas, Santiago, Chile, and Buenos Aires…"

"That's about a quarter of the armed forces in Area Six…" Justine breathed aloud, presumably for Hecate's and Lindelle's benefit. "You all weren't prepared to declare your independence when you did. The scramble all your armies went through to get assembled and organised is proof enough of that. So there was something that emboldened you past the point of good sense to do what you did. Tell me what it was."

"They called it…'the Death of Empires'…" Gabriel recounted dreamily. "A container… A metal crate… And inside it… Inside it, they said, it was the thing that killed Egypt… Our final weapon, our… It's going to be our ace in the…in the hole…"

Justine was silent for a few more moments, her mind almost visibly whirling into overdrive as she considered the impact this new information might have. Hecate, much like the rest of them, had found out about the eradication of all life in Egypt some months after the fact, an event that had served as a rallying cry for the peoples of the E.U. to unite in opposition to Britannia, blaming the event on the Empire. Justine had informed them all and assured them that Britannia itself had nothing to do with this, at least as far as her sister, Her Excellency the Prime Minister, knew; but the mention of the name was more than enough to cause both Hecate and Lindelle to shuffle in discomfort as the enormity and gravity of what they were to be up against dawned upon them…assuming, of course, that the presumed superweapon that the rebellion had obtained was actually the genuine article, whatever that entailed.

"Who called it 'the Death of Empires'?" Justine asked, her voice now wholly winter-wrought. "And how did you come to possess such a thing?"

"We…did not know," Gabriel murmured. "And we did not ask… We did not think it…would have been proper… Presumptuous, no? To question a miracle… Especially when that miracle…comes escorted by…a regiment…of Zilkhstan's finest… The Immortals…"

"Zilkhstan…" Justine spat like it was a curse. Hecate didn't blame her: the Kingdom of Zilkhstan, the so-called 'Land of Warriors,' was notorious the world over. Their only export as a nation, really, were troupes of mercenaries, renowned as the finest in the world. Even a few hundred of them, with what little the 588th could bring to bear in terms of their own martial might, would be…bad, to put it lightly. "What possible interest could that backwater country of fanatics and sellswords have here…?"

The prisoner remained silent. Clearly, such knowledge was beyond the scope of his influence.

"Very well," Justine sighed. "How many? And how did you pay for them? The nobles of Area Six have deep pockets, but not that deep…"

"Ten…thousand," Gabriel gasped. "Free of charge… A gift…they said…"

Silence ensued.

"A gift?" Justine spat, incredulous. "Someone handed you a life-eradicating weapon and a unit of ten thousand of the deadliest mercenaries money could buy, a bounty that could bankrupt several countries at once, for no charge at all? Why?!"

To that, the prisoner had no answer.

Justine huffed, and threw his head to the side, where his jaw went slack, and he promptly began to drool on himself. A fitting end, Hecate could not help but think, for his kind.

"We've gotten what we can out of him," Justine sighed as she stood, addressing both of them in the process. "Zilkhstan's a black box. Not even the OSI ever successfully managed to infiltrate it. There's a deeper game afoot, and we're only getting to see a single facet of it…and even that much only by accident.

"Dispose of the body," Justine decided after a moment of troubled contemplation. "The Kingdom of Zilkhstan is, at least technically, a territory of the Chinese Federation. I'll have to make sure that Friede is apprised of their involvement so she can plan accordingly. If the High Eunuchs have chosen to intercede in a Britannian noble uprising, she'll be the only one in a position to deal with it. But until then…

"Until then," Justine sighed. "Best buckle up. We've all got a hell of a lot of work ahead of us…"