Area Eleven, October, a.t.b. 2015
It was strange, really, how little half a decade healed certain wounds—and how much it left them to fester.
His name was Tōdō Kyōshirō, and he was thirty-five years old. He lived in the Saitama District, and he shared that locale with a number of other washed-up comrades from the glory days of the IJA, and much as he'd anticipated when he was younger, towards the end of the shockingly brief war against the invasion forces of the Holy Britannian Empire, even to this day, he remained unmarried, with virtually no prospects whatsoever—not that that was a cause of anguish for him.
He had no prospects when it came to employment, either—he couldn't exactly say that he was much like any of the academics, who'd gained Honorary Britannian status by means of having skills that the local provincial government wanted, and nor was he one of the young people who went into any of the half a hundred administrative jobs that kept the Britannian monorails running on time. He was an old soldier in a conquered land, where, dare he say it, the occupying government was doing a better job of governing things than the Empire of Japan ever had, at the very least in living memory. Even though Kyōshirō and his fellow relics regularly squandered their stipends on booze and vices to try and forget the fact that their own people saw no need for their existence anymore, the fact remained that they got their government stipends, once a month, every month, and on time. That didn't change the fact that, even though those stipends were on the whole worse than what an Honorary Britannian could expect to rake in, it was more than enough to ensure that none of them went hungry, or even homeless—sure, the government housing was rather basic, but he'd been around the block long enough, talked for long enough to the young officers who'd joined on closer to the end there, like Chiba and Asahina, to know that even wasting away in his vices, the place where he laid his head was the kind of apartment that a fresh-faced salaryman or a university student back before the war began could only ever dream of living in.
Wherever he looked, he was faced only by reminders of his own irrelevance. That he was a member of a dying breed, as much a museum piece as the sword he still hadn't been able to bring himself to sell, not even when his stipend ran tight under the weight of the things that he consumed to try and numb the pain. Never prostitutes, of course—his indulgences were far more destructive, for all that they were more private.
Alcohol was one—even before all of this, it'd been common for Japanese men to drink like fish, and that certainly hadn't died out amongst surly wrecks like Kusakabe. Refrain had been another, at least in the two years right after they'd lost, though after Old Man Katase had lost himself to the drug entirely, content to wither away and starve in the grip of old memories, not conscious enough of the here and now to even be made to eat, most of them had had the good sense to steer clear of it. Opium dens had replaced Refrain, all the same, though many of them were closed as quickly as they were opened. How, exactly, the Britannians managed to get the yakuza, of all creatures, to help them enforce their strict drug distribution laws remained a mystery to most of them even to this day, but after nearly getting killed and suffering a very grievous stab wound outside of Chiba's apartment in an attempt to get more of the brown powder that went wrong, only for her to be the one to come to his rescue, humiliatingly enough—to bandage his wounds and to give him a place to stay while he recuperated enough to make his way back to his own place—he'd finally heeded her concerns, and went like a beaten child to the nearest Britannian clinic for it.
They called the program 'Harm Reduction'—which was, to Kyōshirō, a strangely straightforward name for a Britannian-led initiative; dealing in just about every addictive, illicit substance from narcotics to opiates, anyone nursing a dependency could go to one such clinic and get their fix, with precise dosage and a guarantee of only pure, unlaced, high-quality drugs, administered in sterile environments with sterile tools by medical professionals—many (if not the majority) of whom were, it should be mentioned, by this point Honorary Britannians who were themselves former Elevens. Should one prevail upon the clinic's services, they wouldn't be charged a shilling, and instead they would be offered medical examinations that were free of cost, and treatment for their addictions besides.
He'd started going around six months ago. Three months ago, inspired as he sometimes was to try to attempt to become a better role model for Asahina and Chiba, to honour the memory of his dead friends, he had finally submitted himself to addiction treatment—but there remained a futility to the affair about which the heights of Britannian medical science could do nothing. They could not return his purpose to him—they could not give him back his place in the world—and so he felt…destined, in a way, to return to his status as an ageing wreck of a man, decaying before he was even dead, caught in the lingering spectre of the past.
Today, he was due to check up with his case worker at the clinic—a new thing that had been added to the harm reduction program, he'd gathered, after its initial success in driving the prevalence of substance dependencies down in Area Eleven, the place he'd called Japan in his youth, but whose ghost the people of his homeland seemed increasingly less inclined to try to resurrect—and so, once he'd cleaned and oiled his military blade, which was more a display piece than anything these days, though he kept it sharpened and in good condition, battle-ready, in case he ever decided to finally go through with it and end his own life, the old soldier dressed for the October chill as best he was able, in denim jeans, his now-tattered uniform boots, a solid-coloured long-sleeved shirt, and his old military overcoat, and left behind his mildly grey two-room apartment behind, locking the door once he'd left—his military blade pristine on display, the one personal touch he'd added to the place he lived.
The Lower Saitama District of the Tokyo Settlement, where housing for him and his fellow Elevens had been built, was far cleaner than the collective physical, mental, and emotional conditions of the people who called it some semblance of home might have led one to believe; the municipality was as punctual as it was strict, and the fact that the Japanese cultural disdain for litter had survived the death of their identity as a nation was something Kyōshirō sometimes found rather darkly amusing. When he reached the bottom of the stairs that ran through the apartment block, and went out of the lobby, past the mailboxes, to the street, which was there only for necessities such as waste collection and the delivery of mail and freight, with more than ample room for pedestrians and cyclists besides, he found that the pavement was all but spotless, and signage was clearly visible from where he was if he looked in either direction.
Following these signs, he walked down the pavements, beneath the bite of chilling air brought about by the setting sun, and thought, even while his body carried him to the nearest metro station, very nearly as a reflex, simply due to how often he'd walked that same path. He thought about what had once been here a scant half-decade ago, about how many people must have had their first dates, their first jobs, and their first places on very nearly every crossway and street corner. Once he'd boarded the rail line, as he held onto the rung above him, he thought about how many people had been born or had died in the buildings he saw from this vantage point. How many stories had the war wiped away, along with the places that had borne witness to them? How many friends and loved ones had people gained or lost, in a landscape that was Britannian to its very core by now—its streets, its buildings, its infrastructures…
Sometimes Kyōshirō wondered if it would not have been kinder of the Britannians, to leave them to their bombed-out ghettos, that they might at least be able to cling to the ruins of something they recognised as home. Most days, he dismissed such a thought as selfish, humbled as he was by the knowledge that more than any kind of national pride, his people wanted nothing more than safety, security, and subsistence: that it was enough that no one under Britannian rule in Area Eleven needed to go hungry, or beg, or take shelter beneath public works, like roads or bridges. The Britannians didn't treat them poorly, gave them a leg up in life if they were able and willing to aid the Empire, and otherwise kept food in their bellies, roofs over their heads, clean water flowing, and their dwellings heated against the cold. That the common people could get onto a train and go to see a kabuki or noh production, that stores still sold ramen and nattō, that their friends and family could train a willing Britannian to play the shamisen…
Perhaps this was the form his culture would have to take to survive. Perhaps it had already survived in this form, and he had blinded himself to it willfully. But it was a form of his culture that had written him, and others like him, out of it entirely. Tanabata might still be celebrated, and kendō might catch on enough to spread beyond his fellow Elevens and the Honorary Britannians to the Britannian children who were now growing up here, who might have learned Japanese purely to have in-jokes with their friends and pass notes that their teachers couldn't read—and yet this world, this Area Eleven, had no place for a man like Tōdō Kyōshirō.
It was…a sobering realisation, though not at all unexpected; he'd played with the idea of ending his life before, though harakiri was at least a two-person ritual, but now he felt certain of it. He was…tired. He was exhausted. And if all that was left to him in the world was to deteriorate further, to begin to spiral once again into the abyss of opium and alcohol, then perhaps it would be more dignified to take his own life, and in so doing, perish before he could become so diminished once again.
But of course, he wouldn't go so far as to trouble his case worker with such a decision—in a strange way, he felt as though he owed the man who was assigned to him at least that much. Doctor Graham might have been a Britannian, certainly, but he seemed to care enough to want to genuinely help him, which was, while strange at first, something for which the former colonel was deeply grateful.
The rail line ended after a few minutes, and Tōdō went along with the press of bodies as they fought their way out of the train-car and onto the platform in relative silence. He considered his hair as he went, in particular how long his neglect had allowed it to become. The split ends of his brown mop brushed right up against the bottom of his shoulder-blades, and though he'd taken to binding it back into a low tail as a sort of stopgap measure, he considered that, if he was to do away with himself, he would rather like to die as he had been, back when his best self wasn't such a distant memory. His feet knew where he needed to go even as his mind became too consumed in itself to give them proper direction, and as he considered the precise manner in which he might like to die, they carried him through the crowd, down from the platform, and into the pedestrian-heavy streets, all until, with a few further turns taken around street-corners and down clean, clear paths, as one city block gave way to the next, Kyōshirō at last stood before the harm reduction clinic.
Into the lobby he went, past transparent doors with automatic sensors; he walked across the tile floor up to the receptionist, who was herself an Honorary Britannian—it was something he had noticed after his first few visits, how there was an effort made to make sure that all the staff that a newcomer might have to deal with were Honorary Britannians themselves, former Elevens who had proven the value of their skills, as well as their willingness to apply them, to the government, and that any newcomer would generally catch neither hide nor hair of any non-honorary Britannians working here until they were already considering the rehabilitation services on offer—and he cleared his throat to draw her attention from her computer terminal. She was young, he noticed, and he was old enough to be her father—long black hair, brown eyes, a face he could admit was pretty enough for someone who couldn't be more than high school-aged, a girl who should have been hanging out with her friends, worrying about exams, and goofing off at karaoke, now working in a public service unit for the washed-up dregs of a dead society, like Tōdō himself.
He cleared his throat, and gave his name. "Tōdō Kyōshirō."
She smiled at him kindly, her fingers very nearly flying across her keyboard with a speed that made Kyōshirō a bit dizzy just to look upon, and then she replied, "Alright, you're all checked in. Go on through, then. Doctor Graham will come and find you shortly."
He nodded, and let his gaze drift about the white walls of the room, decorated with framed pictures of painted scenes of the natural world, illuminated by electric bulbs, before moving away from the wooden panelling of the lectern-like reception desk, and back around the wall behind her, which served as the way into the rest of the clinic.
The chamber beyond the reception desk was a waiting room, and it was organised the same as any other such room, as if all waiting rooms were in fact the same chamber tessellated across the many dozens, if not hundreds, of clinics worldwide, with only minor variations. Sterile white walls, linoleum tiles… The one saving grace, perhaps, was that Britannian contractors seemed to abhor fluorescent lighting, and relied upon LEDs whenever possible in their stead, so instead of the ghastly, headache-inducing glow he was used to, there was some degree of naturalism remaining in the colours of the room, such as they were. Chairs that were upholstered in some undetermined blue fabric, cushions upon metal frames, lined the walls, and a few of them were occupied by broken-down old men, and women from a few different age groups, all of them awaiting their turn to go even further back, where the staff could pull up their files, check the dosage of the drug each patient was here to receive, and then administer it to them, with professional expertise as well as in a sterile environment, and with clean single-use needles to boot.
Tōdō knew the drill by this point—he sat himself down into one of the utilitarian chairs, right beside a low table piled high with pamphlets and magazines. He'd read through them all by this point, and rather vigorously so, back right after he'd gotten clean, all full of the enthusiasm and drive of a man half his age, back before the reality of his obsolescence began to sink in for him once again. But it was on account of the familiarity he had with the reading materials on offer here that the new arrival stood out to him so clearly.
The brochure in question was laminated fairly stiffly, not the sort of stock that would get scrunched up and defaced simply by carrying it around with a bag alongside other things; the cover was black, a deep, pure black, unlike the darkened gunmetal shade that was so often used in these sorts of things, with what he recognised to be a stylised dragon of the western tradition, scarlet in colour, with a head that did not seem to be able to decide whether it wished to be leonine or avian, a tail curled in a loop and tipped with a spade, an outstretched tongue that was also tipped with a spade shape, a pair of unfurled chiropteran wings, and four other limbs—legs, with three grounded and one raised, each of which were capped with a hawk's foot, talons and all. And finally, embossed before the profile of the western dragon, was a numeral he was able to recognise, albeit vaguely, from a cryptography course he'd taken years ago, back when he'd been a young officer and considered requesting a transfer to military intelligence: it was embossed in gold, and encased in golden angle brackets.
"N." An abbreviation for the Latin word 'nullus,' or zero—and used here, the former officer quickly surmised, to represent an unspecified number, much like how 'X' might be used in systems derived from Arabic numerals.
Distracted by this, and perhaps against his better judgement, Tōdō heeded the nagging voice of his own curiosity, and opened the brochure…
"Ah, Tōdō-san," came the familiar, gregarious voice of Doctor Graham. He spoke in Japanese when he could, as did many of the members of the clinic's staff, to try to put them at further ease.
Kyōshirō, in contrast, lifted his head from the half-glimpsed Now Recruiting header, black ink upon a white page right upon opening the brochure, to regard his case worker evenly, though not without respect. He nodded in greeting. "Doctor Graham."
It was an insistence of his—Britannian was the language of the Imperial government, and he refused to relent in his learning of it, committing himself to the tongue to a degree he hadn't been able to muster in his younger years, which had ultimately dashed what few aspirations he had to go into intelligence. And so it became a part of their dynamic, the good doctor's and his, that the doctor would invariably address him in his mother tongue, while Tōdō extended the other man the same courtesy. Graham smiled at this, as far past the point of argument on this topic as they were—he had a good smile, for a man with such a soft face, and it made him look quite kind—and gestured towards an open door off to the side at the far end of the waiting room. "Shall we? You're welcome, of course, to bring that brochure with you, if you'd like."
"Thank you," Tōdō replied with a nod—for while the years had stolen his purpose from him, just as they had his country, they had not been able to lay a proverbial finger upon his severity, which remained his own, even to this day. He stood, then, and was stricken anew by the fact that he knew Doctor Graham to be half a decade his senior, though the earnest, kindly cast of his features, and the mop-like style of his brown hair, made him seem boyish to the point of appearing perhaps half Tōdō's age, with square glasses rimmed in blackened horn further seeming to soften his face—and only the man's seemingly perpetual close-hewn facial stubble seemed to hint at his true age. It was a revelation every time they met, it felt like, and it made Tōdō appreciate, to a degree that he might well not have, were his life to have turned out differently, how little a thing could, in seeming, represent the truth of its own nature.
He followed the doctor, with his easy, albeit slightly slouching strides, and the wrinkled white fabric of the man's lab coat was scrunched up even further, as he buried his hands into the pockets of his trousers while the two of them made for the man's office. Having grown used to following in silence from his days in the military of a now-conquered nation, Tōdō had yet to fail to be taken off-guard by his case worker's seeming insistence upon keeping a conversation going while they walked; he threw over his shoulder, "And how have you been sleeping recently, Tōdō-san?"
Tōdō considered that question seriously, turning it over in his mind, and then translated his answer at the end of his brief contemplation, as best he was able, into Britannian. "Well. Too well. Often I mean to awaken early in the morning, only to open my eyes to the mid-afternoon sun. It is proving troublesome."
"Sounds like a malaise," Doctor Graham remarked thoughtfully. "You've struggled with this before, yes? It hasn't improved any?"
"If anything, it has grown worse," Tōdō replied truthfully. "I am…fatigued, Doctor Graham. It is an exhaustion that seats itself in my bones and saps my strength."
"Well, we often tell people when they get out of rehabilitation to find a way that they can fulfillingly occupy their idle time," said the doctor. "Relapse is a part of recovery, of course, but we also want to do our best to prevent it as best we can. We can say that it's likely to happen and that it's not something to rake yourselves over the coals about all we want—but of course, that only does so much to lessen the negative impact relapses can have upon the patient's morale."
"I have attempted to occupy myself," Tōdō sighed heavily, shaking his head. "And my efforts to do so are rarely met with any success."
"I know, Tōdō-san," the doctor said with a slow, understanding nod. "But of course, this is a process unto itself—as great of one, in fact, as battling substance dependency, if not greater. Some of us find more difficulty in finding our place in the world than others, and really, there's no shame in that… Truthfully, I'm quite glad that you found those brochures. It ought to help with what we'll discuss today. Ah! Here we are."
And sure enough, they had come to stand outside the unpainted, varnished wooden door into one of the offices for case workers in the clinic, at which point Doctor Graham stepped forth, produced a chip-key from the pockets of his trousers, and tapped it against the metal handle, which unlocked with a green flash.
"Come in and sit down, Tōdō-san," Doctor Graham bade him, walking into his office, treading upon the nondescript plush rug atop the featureless contractor-grade carpeting, past minimalistic book-cases that were laden with heavy tomes that bore the names of Freud and Jung all the way up to more modern teams of psychiatric researchers, all of which seemed to have been heavily-creased but, perplexingly, never read, and around his large plywood desk that was stained a much darker, much richer shade, to seat himself into a black office chair, one of the ergonomic types that had been all the rage amongst salarymen before the war. "You look like you could do with taking a load off, if you don't mind my saying so."
Tōdō nodded, and sighed, walking towards another armchair that was situated across the heavy desk from the Britannian doctor, and lowered himself into it gingerly, the brochure still in hand. Doctor Graham seemed to consider him, folding his hands upon his desk and interlacing his fingers as he just looked at him in complete silence for a moment that felt much longer than it almost certainly was, as if he believed Tōdō's face to hold the answer to some unspoken question that had been puzzling him. Then, with a sigh that had the doctor leaning back in his office chair, swivelling very slightly back and forth as he regarded the ceiling, his head leaned back, he asked, "Tell me honestly, Tōdō-san. How long has it been since you made up your mind?"
This line of questioning was…unexpected, to say the least. Kyōshirō felt his brow furrowing in his confusion as he asked in return, "Excuse me?"
"How long has it been since you made up your mind to end your life, Tōdō-san?" asked the doctor, lowering his chin to pin Tōdō into place with his dark brown eyes, and suddenly, Kyōshirō could see every day of the man's age laid bare across the span of his boyish features. "I saw that your mental condition was deteriorating when last we met, but I didn't say anything because the last thing I wanted was for your pride to render you unresponsive to treatment. That time has clearly passed."
"…This morning, when I woke up," Tōdō replied reluctantly. "I feel…diminished, Doctor. If I am to die, I would die as myself, or at least as near to it as I can get."
"And why is it that you feel diminished?" Graham asked, leaning forward and propping his elbows upon his desk as he did so, his brown eyes no longer pinning the former colonel into place, and instead very clearly listening. "I can probably guess, but I'd like to hear it from you, if that's alright."
Tōdō didn't respond immediately. He prided himself even still on how rarely he spoke idly, and that required that he genuinely think about how best to respond to a question, to give it the consideration that the query deserved. Before long, however, he happened upon the rough outline of how he might phrase it, and so he began to speak, refining that outline and filling it in as best he could as he went along. "I come from a military family, Doctor Graham—a martial lineage that stretches back to the Kamakura Period, at least. In a situation such as that, there are things that are…expected of a child, particularly an only child. The reign of the samurai is firmly a thing of the past, but it left its mark upon those of us who were touched by its legacy most of all. I was regarded as my father's heir, and so it was all but a foregone conclusion since the day I took my first breath that I would serve the Empire of Japan as a soldier. Filial piety demanded as much.
"As soon as I was old enough, I sat for the entrance examinations to get into the military academy, and I got my secondary school education there. I went from there to a field deployment at Kyūshū, before cycling back to the Imperial Japanese Army's combined university and OCS. I received a military blade alongside my first commission," Tōdō recounted, straightening his back inadvertently as he'd been taught to, growing up as he had. "When I graduated with my commission, my father took me aside, and he told me, then and there (after he expressed pride in his way), that it is my duty, as it was his as well, to lay down my life for Japan, if need be. That the Tōdō line's place in the world was to be among those who bled for the protection of our homeland, and of our emperor.
"I lived my life by those words. Even when my father was shipped home in a box for us to burn, and my mother joined him shortly thereafter. I devoted every waking and sleeping moment I had to the Army, and to my career in the military, that I might eventually succeed in living up to his expectations of me, and the expectations of our forebears, his and mine, before us," he explained, lowering his head to gaze onto the floor, and to the black brochure held in his hand—the red dragon, the golden 'N' in brackets… "But now it is no more, the empire my forefathers fought for. With the Empire of Japan went into the night my family's place in the world, and mine, by extension. Fighting, war, it is all I have ever known. I was born for it, and I was trained for it ever since I was old enough to hold a shinai correctly. There is nothing else that I can do. I would not even know where or how to begin to learn otherwise. I am alive in a world that has passed me by. I can feel the vices creeping up against the back of my spine, every time I am reminded that my existence is without purpose, that there is no war for me to fight, no Child of Heaven upon the Chrysanthemum Throne for me to exalt with my soldiering. It will consume me once again, in time; and I would rather die, to be as honest as I can, than to return to that state, Doctor Graham…"
They sat in silence for several long, protracted moments after Tōdō finished speaking, with Graham seeming deep in thought, and the thirty-five-year-old soldier feeling as if he had just scoured himself clean of all the half-admitted notions that he had held within himself before now, the loss of which left him with a feeling of being…unmoored, if not entirely emptied out. It was…profoundly unsettling, to say the least; try though he might, Tōdō Kyōshirō could not think of a single time in all the rest of his life up until this point when he had ever felt so profoundly and existentially unburdened, and he hadn't even the slightest idea of what to do with that new, though not entirely unwelcome, feeling.
Finally, Doctor Graham fixed him with another stare—though, this one was far less assessing, and more…conciliatory, in a way. There was a degree of weight, the weight of sympathy, in the man's eyes, and the sight of it stirred a question in the former colonel's mind, which seemed suddenly very urgent indeed. "I want to ask you a question, Doctor Graham, if that is permitted."
"Of course," the older man responded, nearly instantaneously, the answer he gave seeming to come to him so easily that Graham didn't even really need to take the time to think about it. "Anything. Now, I'm not going to promise that I can answer, or even that the answers are going to be things you want to hear, but I'll never get on your case for asking it, Tōdō-san. When it comes to posing questions, you effectively have what we Britannians might call 'carte blanche.'"
Tōdō was already familiar with the loan-phrase, of course, but he didn't tell the doctor that. Instead, he asked, "How did you know that I had recently decided to take my own life?"
Doctor Graham's flinch spoke volumes, and his ensuing silence made them deafening. What he said next, however, was far from what Kyōshirō expected to hear. "Tell me, Tōdō-san, have you ever taken up a role as an instructor? Had a student, or perhaps several, under your care and tutelage? Have you ever borne witness as they grew and flourished? Have you ever been unable to look away while they failed and fell?"
The face of a sun-kissed child, a rambunctious girl with wild, unruly chestnut-brown hair, and eyes the colour of jade that had sometimes scared him to no end flashed into Tōdō's mind—he hadn't thought of Kururugi Suzaku in years now, and so he found it passing strange that her face at nine, ten, eleven years old should be the first to emerge when he was asked about students he'd taken, out of all the people to whom he had played the part of a mentor over the course of his career, some of whom he kept in contact with even to this very day. And from the look on Doctor Graham's face as he beheld him, Kyōshirō got the strangest sort of impression that the man had predicted the lay of his thoughts, at least as they currently stood.
"It's always the ones you failed, isn't it?" the older doctor chuckled mirthlessly—ruefully, even, as he began to lean to one side of his chair, once more looking every day of his age (which was strange, since Tōdō was well-aware that neither of them were all that old, and a man like Senba, back in the IJA, probably still thought of them on some level as whelps he could take over his knee, if he was even still alive; though it could be argued, he supposed, that both of them must have done an awful lot of living across the span of their time on Earth). "It's something teachers—those who have any devotion to the vocation, anyway—and psychologists like me have in common. A hundred, two hundred, a thousand, ten thousand people, students and patients alike, could pass through our care unscathed, and many if not the majority of them could truly find themselves in a better state for having done so. And yet, while the memories of those individual people might wither and fade from our minds with time, blending into an amorphous mass of recollections, it's the ones we failed—the ones we simply couldn't help—that haunt us, even in our most intimate moments.
"You asked me how I knew what you had decided upon, Kyōshirō, and I'll tell you," he continued, a deep melancholy seeming to sink itself into the set of his slightly hunched shoulders. "I've been doing this for longer than you've been a soldier, and I've seen a lot of patients pass through my office in that time. I'll tell you, the ones that I couldn't help? I remember the look in their eyes the last time I saw them alive like it was my own name. And today, I saw that same look in yours."
Tōdō, try though he might, found that he had nothing he could truly say to that.
"That brochure in your hand is for the 588th Irregulars," Doctor Graham said, brushing past what he had just said and straightening in his chair as if the weight of his age and his experiences had never actually been laid bare. "They're under the command of the viceroy's wife, Her Highness Justine vi Britannia. Now, I can't pretend to understand the exact nuances of what your martial culture necessitates, but…I don't think I'm telling you anything you don't already know when I say that the country you served is dead and buried. I don't know the Fourth Princess on any sort of personal level, obviously, but the word on the street is that a significant portion of the 588th that she put the Peninsular Rebellion down with were themselves Numbers. I can't guarantee that you'll find a new place in the world or a renewed sense of purpose in her service, but if the choice is between taking your chances with Her Highness and suicide, I'd personally like for you to seriously try to consider which option you'd prefer."
"…I see. Thank you, Doctor," Tōdō began, his words halting and unsure; but underneath his surface uncertainties, the soldier of a dead country was committed, at the very least, to doing as the kind Britannian man sat across from him had asked. It was, after all, not a great trial to give it some serious thought, at least. "I will…sleep on it…"
"See that you do," Doctor Graham instructed Tōdō with a nod, his tone light and somewhat playful, but firm nonetheless. "We can end our session early this afternoon, if you'd like. I certainly put a lot upon your shoulders just now, and I don't want you to feel pressured to risk coming up with an answer that you'll come to regret."
"That is…acceptable," Kyōshirō replied, standing from his chair and adjusting his old coat about his body once again. It made sense, he thought, to seclude himself, that he might more earnestly take the time to contemplate his path forward. He bowed low to the man, and said, "Thank you again, Doctor."
Doctor Graham smiled at him in return, and it was wistful, and perhaps even a bit sad. "Regardless of whichever road you choose to take tonight, I wish you well, Tōdō Kyōshirō."
Tōdō bowed again, and saw himself out of the office, and into the white corridors of the clinic. It was almost as if he was operating on autopilot, as his feet carried him through the partially-filled waiting room, past the front desk, and out into the bracing autumnal air as the sun began to sink in earnest, and the tall buildings and low paths of the Tokyo Settlement were swallowed in long, chilling shadows.
The door to the clinic closed behind him, and he was aware, suddenly, of the brochure that was still in his hand. He brought it up into his view, gazing upon the cover-page as he did so, and resolved to give it the thorough examination he'd been interrupted from just a little while earlier. So, as he made his way back to the train station, a well-tread path he could walk in his sleep by now, he opened it to the first page, and he began to read.
"…The Dread Legion, huh?"
"The…Dread Legion, your highness?"
Justine groaned aloud, yet again, at the sheer force of the scepticism in Nina's voice, letting her head fall back to look instead upon the well-lit (with LED bulbs, of course) ceiling of this part of the subterrane. Given that this was a break room reserved for upper management, there wasn't much of a chance of anyone who shouldn't be seeing her in such a state entering unannounced to actually do so, and so she felt a fair bit freer than usual to lay to the side about as much of her sense of decorum as she could bear to shed. She sat upon the counter of the kitchenette area, propped up on her arms, while Satanael, who was herself perched upon a skull, taken from the field and cleaned for use in the aftermath of the Battle of the Two Rivers, ate from a small dish upon which was laid the corpse of one of Nina's specially-bred rats that the carrion raven could tear apart as she pleased right before her. Nina, in contrast, was reclined against the island right in the middle of the kitchenette, as she made a habit of swinging by on the weekends to get some extra work done, with a lab coat draped over her body and her arms folded across her small chest, her eyebrow cocked a quarter of the way to her hairline. Shirley Fenette, with whom the other black-haired girl seemed increasingly joined at the hip nowadays (not that that was at all surprising, given how they looked at each other), stood further back, her own eyebrows raised high with schadenfreude above the rim of a coffee-mug that she was holding up to her lips to drink from, and judging by the sounds of bickering drifting in from the adjacent hallway, it was increasingly likely that Lloyd, Cécile, and the newest addition to the Annwn team were soon to arrive. "Yes, that is what it's called. And before you say anything else disparaging, or about how it's gauche to engage in any mimicry of the Romans and their post-Marian military whatsoever, try to put yourself into my position. I had to find a way to organise my forces to establish a chain of command, just as much for the sake of field logistics and peacetime administration as for the sake of combat operations, but I couldn't simply transpose the hierarchy of the Imperial Army upon the 588th. We're an irregular unit—it would be stolen valour. So, I went to history, in hopes of finding an alternative military hierarchy that I could adapt to fit the needs of my fledgeling forces, only to find that—surprise, surprise—only the Romans, republic and empire, both pre and post-the Marian Reforms, had sufficient documentation available for me to be able to make anything out of it that might fit the demands of a modern battlefield. And don't think I didn't look wherever I could for any other options. Ergo, the Dread Legion."
"With respect, your highness," Shirley chimed in, now that she'd lowered her mug, thus laying bare her forming grin. "I think dearest Nina's issue is less with the 'legion', and more with the 'dread.'"
"…Oh, well…" Justine responded after a stunned moment. She shrugged, favouring the pair with a small, embarrassed smile. "I suppose I thought that just calling it 'the Legion' might come across as a little drab all on its own, is all…"
Then, in a moment that seemed to be the textbook definition of being 'saved by the bell,' the door to the break room was flung open, and Cécile was the first person over the threshold, with Lloyd and the new arrival entering in her wake with varying degrees of sullenness in their respective bearings—Lloyd looking like a ship with the wind shriven from his sails, and the newcomer, Doctor Chawla, holding fast to the same disaffected stoicism mixed with performative languor that seemed to form somewhere on the order of seven to nine-tenths of her outward-facing persona, holding her (thankfully) unlit kiseru like it was some manner of prop, as opposed to the method of consumption for a flammable cocktail of amphetamine herbs.
Rakshata Chawla was on the taller side for a woman, even one of Britannian descent—she was less than five centimetres shorter than Milly, in fact, with thick platinum-blonde hair (and indeed, it was lighter than Friede's hair, even) that cascaded in unbound curls to her hips, which framed the sharp angles of her features, her narrow turquoise eyes and lips, and the definition of her olive cheekbones very well indeed. In fact, but for the purple bindi in the centre of her forehead, Justine would have believed she might well have passed as Britannian, and she remained fundamentally unconvinced that this woman did not, in fact, have a measure of Britannian lineage somewhere relatively recent in her family tree. She dressed informally; a pair of maroon trousers, pleated slacks, were slung quite low across her hips, exposing her navel and a sizeable portion of her flat belly (as well as the lower half of her shins, what with how aggressively the trousers had been turned-up), and her dark magenta button-down shirt was secured in precisely one place, with a single button holding the garment closed just beneath the modest swell of her chest, leaving enough of her lacy black brassiere exposed to make it abundantly clear precisely what it was.
And yet, for all of Rakshata's state of near-undress (the woman was even wearing pointed white slippers, for Hell's sake), she wore a white lab coat overtop her outfit, like the rest of them—and, if Justine was being honest, she hadn't gone to such trouble to retrieve the woman now entering alongside Lloyd for her heartfelt commitment to conventional standards of propriety or professionalism.
"Ah, Doctor Chawla," Justine greeted gaily, shifting the timbre of her voice so that it would carry as well as it needed to. "Why, if I didn't know any better, I'd be given to thinking that you've purposefully been attempting to avoid me…"
"Nothing of the sort, your highness," Rakshata dismissed airily, her brow cocking as her lips pursed. "There's simply much to be done, getting my team and my younger sister both settled and situated, working out exactly why I'm here, and what, precisely, you mean for me to do here, especially while you've already got the Earl of Pudding under your thumb…"
"First of all, Lloyd is not under my thumb. He's in my wife's employ, which is quite a bit different," Justine began, bringing one hand from behind her for the sole purpose of counting off with her fingers—her claws bared now as they had increasingly been ever since her return from Area Six, and the three months of her honeymoon, only three weeks of which were originally planned. It had become like stretching her legs to Justine now, up to and including the fact that it had become increasingly uncomfortable for Justine to keep them retracted for a protracted period, somewhat like the ache one might get in their hamstrings and calves after sitting in a space the size of a crate for several hours. So when she was wearing her gloves, she availed herself of the opportunity to keep them extended more often than not. "Second of all, the difficulties we've experienced in getting the hadron cannons' output to converge have brought into stark relief the fact that he and I are not by any means omniscient when it comes to our accounting of the technologies that can prove useful to the development of the newest generations of Knightmare Frames. I found a promising solution to our problem, I should note, Doctor Chawla, in your doctoral thesis—and so I thought it only fitting that we should prevail upon your expertise to fill in the gaps that Lloyd and I might have in our knowledge. And I'd have included Cécile in all of that, of course, but I don't believe I'll be causing offence when I state that she has had her hands too full with managing Lloyd to really display the full extent to which her knowledge and her mind might yet be of use to Annwn."
Lloyd looked for a moment as if he was winding himself up to object, his chest puffing out, his face tightening, and a hand rising with his index finger raised, but just as quickly as his posture seemed to inflate did it then deflate, letting itself loose of his mouth with a sigh. "Yes, I suppose that's fair…"
Rakshata raised a sceptical eyebrow. "And how, exactly, does A Treatise on Radiant Wave Dynamics apply to the issue that you lot appear to have encountered?"
"Your doctoral thesis was On the Dynamics of a Gefjun Field, Doctor Chawla," Justine corrected with that same finger raised, though it was waggled about a bit in a chiding gesture. "Though, I will make a note of the fact that I do understand, and sympathise with, your desire to check my bona fides, such as they are. I have, coincidentally, also read A Treatise on Radiant Wave Dynamics, of course, just to make sure that your claimed bona fides were also in order, but that's not immediately relevant."
The Indian scientist's sceptical expression scrunched up upon itself a bit, now giving off the distinct impression of having bitten into an unexpected lemon; but she nodded, mollified, all the same. "Very well. My question remains the same. What is the issue you've been having with your weapons system, and how do you think my half-decade-old study on Gefjun field dynamics will resolve it?"
"The issue we've encountered, as I've previously stated, is in getting the destructive output of the Gawain's experimental hadron cannons to converge into a beam," she explained, getting off of the counter to set herself down upon the floor in her boots, freeing up both gloved hands to make a narrowing gesture. "As far as we've been able to determine, they just fly everywhere. But, in giving the problem some thought, I formulated a series of successive hypotheses that have so far proven true, narrowing us in on the cause of the issue.
"The first hypothesis," she said, bringing her hands apart to raise the index finger of her other hand, "was that the hadron cannons' output was not, as we'd initially supposed, wholly random. When I returned from my honeymoon, I sat down with Nina, and together we worked out a series of equations to predict the distribution of the aforementioned destructive output, based upon postulates that we made that would also be proven true if the algorithm we devised proved to be accurate in its predictions. Thus did we come in on a day off and spin up the Gawain, testing the first proper hypothesis—and over the course of that weekend, the results of a battery of tests concluded that the algorithm could in fact predict the distribution with a high degree of confidence, down to within a point-two-three percent degree of variance.
"The second hypothesis," and here she raised the middle finger as well, "was that the spread was, in fact, affected by the oscillatory rate of the sakuradite core of the Gawain's Yggdrasil Drive. Now, it would have been a poor methodology to conclude, in a blanket sense, that all of the foundational postulates of the algorithm's basis could be considered true alongside said algorithm's functionality without separating it into its constituent postulates, and evaluating each as a hypothesis unto itself in isolation. We concluded, after a different battery of tests that involved manipulating the Yggdrasil Drive directly, that the degree to which the spread either widened or narrowed could in fact be said to be linked causally to the oscillatory rate of the sakuradite core, established upon different thresholds of excitation. This allowed us to conclude that the waves generated by the aforementioned oscillation was what was causing the hadron particles to drift apart from each other upon generation—their wavelengths and frequencies align effectively perfectly."
Doctor Chawla's brow furrowed, and her eyes widened slightly. "So, you mean for me to adapt the disruptive functionalities of a Gefjun field upon sakuradite-based technology into a device that neutralises and negates the blooming effect, constricting the destructive output and concentrating it into a beam."
"Essentially, yes," Justine nodded, folding her arms across the boiled black leather of her corset. "I shall ensure that you're supplied with all the resources you might require—Miss Fenette here is the head of our Fabrication Engineering Research Division, so she'll be able to help you with any special materials, if they should become necessary, and Wilhelmina Einstein here, our Chief Research Analyst, will certainly be able to provide you with all the relevant literature on the subject. But you'll also need to begin working very closely with Lloyd's team as well, so that he can keep you sufficiently apprised of the nuances of the evolving designs and design philosophy of our experimental Knightmares. Do you think you can do that?"
Rakshata's brow furrowed further at the question, and she turned to regard Lloyd sceptically, roving her eyes up and down his long, lanky, rail-thin form. The lavender-haired man, to his credit, displayed very little in the way of affront—of course, Justine had already fielded the man's complaints on the subject of the Indian scientist's continued presence at Annwn some weeks ago, and because at the end of the day, the man had a great deal of trust in her and her judgement, she had been able to bring him to concede the point of the necessity of the blonde's presence fairly quickly, but even still, the man was famed for his genius, not his impulse control—and after a few moments of silent assessment, before she turned that same gaze to her other side, to better examine Cécile, she returned her eyes to Justine, and shrugged. "I suppose it couldn't be any more disastrous than half our misadventures at Imperial Colchester."
Justine smiled, clapping her hands together once, and very sharply, at that. "Splendid! Glad to have you aboard the great ship vi Britannia, Doctor Chawla."
"Yes, I'm sure you are," the Indian woman sighed airily, twirling her unlit kiseru like a conductor's baton. She looked to the other two, and said, "Take me to the child. I'd like to see it with my own two eyes. I don't doubt Her Highness's assessment, but, all the same…"
Cécile gave a single sharp nod of affirmation, but Lloyd, for his part, seemed to be struggling not to allow himself to slump in disappointment. Nina, quick on the uptake, and having worked directly alongside the man more than any of them, with the notable exception of Doctor Croomy, could have claimed, gave an emphatic huff and rolled her eyes. "I'll grab your pudding cups out of the fridge and bring them out onto the stable floors, Lloyd. Which flavour is it this week—tapioca?"
It was almost comical, to see how obviously Lloyd perked up at Nina's offer. Not for the first time, Justine mused that in another world, the degree of natural exaggeration with which Lloyd moved and acted might well have otherwise landed the man a thriving career in vaudeville. "It'll be butterscotch this week, Nina. And…thank you."
Nina shrugged, long-suffering and exasperated, but unmistakably fond in spite of all of that. "At the very least, this way I won't have to deal with your frankly sacrilegious coffee habits…"
"Sacrilegious?!" Lloyd exclaimed, now properly affronted.
"You load it down with so much milk and sugar that it doesn't even taste like coffee anymore," Nina chastised, stepping away from the island to reach for the refrigeration unit, where the mass-produced packs of what the label insisted to be 'pudding' were kept to chill properly. She opened the door, grabbed six cups held together in a cardboard scaffold-contraption, and set them down upon the island. "At that point, what's even the purpose of drinking coffee? You might as well be chugging down those aluminium containers of industrial waste the Euros insist upon calling energy drinks! One of them even brags about the mutations it can cause—unless you want to be sprouting vestigial wings, for some gods-forsaken reason!"
"…Nina, my dear, I believe they meant it more as a figure of speech," Shirley remarked, though not without a heavy layer of barely-suppressed mirth. "The Scarlet Taurus commercial meant that it would lift your energy as though you'd gained the power of flight—I don't think they would seriously claim that their product gives you wings."
Nina coloured, but she did her best to retain her dignity as best she could, and Justine, who had been in a similar position more times than she cared to count, herself, could not help but sympathise. "E-even so! My point still stands! You, Lloyd Asplund, don't drink coffee with milk and sugar—instead, you drink milk and sugar with coffee. And that is sacrilege."
"Hmph. I suppose I was wrong," Rakshata interjected with a growing Cheshire smile. "Perhaps the experience of working here won't become a repeat of university after all…"
Justine threw her head back and laughed aloud into the back of her hand as she leaned back against the counter once again, folding her other arm across her chest. As her mirth subsided, she lowered her head and let her eyes slide closed, shaking her head back and forth—and when she opened her eyes again, she became aware of the level of sheer silence that had swallowed them in the wake of her laughter, just as she witnessed four out of the five other people in the break room gaping at her in the aftermath. She looked between each of them quizzically, and when no answers were forthcoming, she finally, impatiently demanded, "What."
Shirley was the first to recover herself—Rakshata seemed as confused as Justine was, herself, which thankfully reassured her of her own sanity, that she had in fact done nothing that would have warranted this reaction on its own merits—and moments after her slackened jaw finally snapped itself shut, the strawberry blonde adopted as apologetic an expression as she could manage. "Please, forgive us, your highness. It's just that we were… Oh, it seems rather silly now that I think about it, but…"
"We were all convinced on some level that you couldn't laugh, your highness," Nina finished. "We had begun to assume that that sort of genuine expression of mirth was somehow beyond you."
That took Justine off-guard, quite genuinely so. She blinked twice, thoroughly uncertain of just how, exactly, she was meant to respond to something like that. She could tell, of course, both from the context of the situation as well as the tone in which it was delivered that the declaration that they had thought of her as fundamentally incapable of laughter wasn't meant in a malicious way, and honestly, that only made it more difficult to determine how she was meant to feel about this new information—after all, it wasn't as though she hadn't been dealing with insults for her entire life, to the point that they had long since lost any and all power they might once have had to affect her properly, so at least if the implication that she couldn't laugh had been meant as an insult, that would be firm ground beneath her feet. "…I beg your pardon?"
"It's just… You're so…" Shirley scrambled, and she struggled, visibly so, to find the proper words to explain exactly why it was that she was so astonished. "You're so composed, and so self-possessed, and I suppose we all just thought…"
"You smirk and you chortle and chuckle, and all of that," Nina supplied, phrasing her statement in a much more blunt, much more quintessentially Nina way than Shirley would ever have managed. "But that's not really laughing, now is it?"
Justine blinked again, letting out a startled chuckle, now even less certain of how best to handle this novel situation, to say the least; it was fortunate, then, that her eyes flicked towards the threshold, and in so doing, she caught sight of Sayoko standing at the doorway, having been there for quite enough time by now to have discerned the main thrust of the issue, if the indulgent smirk on her face was any indication. Still, it was difficult not to feel grateful for the shinobi's presence, if only because it represented an opportunity for Justine to find her way out of the pervasive awkwardness of this situation. "Yes, Sayoko? What is it?"
That made all of them jump, gratifyingly enough—one would think that those of them who'd been here at Annwn for several years by this point would have grown used to working alongside shinobi by now, but Justine was nonetheless glad for the shock of their collective reaction, and the bubble of tension that her wife's body servant's sudden appearance had unceremoniously popped, and perhaps it wasn't exactly fair to the four veteran employees present anyways, to expect them to have grown accustomed to the stealth skill of the foremost living master of the arts of the shinobi in the first place. But regardless, Sayoko didn't seem at all inclined to deny her her exit; even in the off-mission combination of civilian clothes and the chainmail of a shinobi that she was so fond of wearing here in Area Eleven, the fact that the forward step she took was at all audible was certain to have been a deliberate choice. She began, "Your highness, the Death Squadron has entered Tokyo Bay, escorting the H.M.S. Brunhild. High Admiral von Oberstein has agreed that both he and His Excellency Fleet Admiral von Lohengramm will meet you at the Government Bureau once they've properly anchored. I've come to retrieve you."
Justine nodded, once again glad to be suddenly very much in her element. She pushed off and away from the counter, stretched briefly, and huffed; then, with a glance towards Satanael, she strode towards the door, and towards her black coat, hung upon the coat rack that was positioned right beside the threshold. "Very well, then. I suppose it wouldn't do to dally. Regardless of who one is, one does not simply keep the Minister of War waiting…"
"Quite so, your highness," Sayoko chuckled. By the time that Justine could reach it, the shinobi had already taken her coat off of its place upon the rack, and, brooking no protest, she held it out and helped the princess don the semi-armoured garment. No sooner had the pauldrons been settled into their proper places upon her shoulders than did Satanael abandon the half-eaten rat and the skull perch (Justine had several by this point, which was in large part because once Satanael had experienced the original, she had promptly refused to alight upon any humbler mount) and fly towards her, landing on Justine's expectant hand before working her way up to the metal pauldrons. The shinobi smiled at this display; then, she threw a hand out to gesture towards the corridor, down which lay the station for Milly's personal monorail, which connected the Government Bureau to Annwn through an underground tunnel. "Come, then. Jeremiah has gone ahead, and the private line awaits us."
"Then this is where we must part ways," Justine said, turning from Sayoko towards the scientists. "I wish you all a very productive, very collaborative day. Carry on."
With that, she stepped out of the break room, and both she and Sayoko allowed for the door to close behind her; and once she had the door between herself and the quintet in that break room, she let out a sigh that went bone-deep. Then, Justine looked to Sayoko, and asked tentatively, "Exactly how much of that did you actually hear?"
Sayoko playfully recoiled, and when she replied, her tone was heavy with mirthful insincerity. "I'm sure I have no idea of what you could possibly be referring to, your highness."
Justine chuckled, shaking her head fondly. "Have it your way, then. His Excellency awaits…"
The private subway train was a frictionless marvel of a machine; where a normal train might take up to an hour, even in the case of a monorail, to ferry passengers from underneath Ashford Academy and to the vicinity of Area Eleven's government bureau, the underground line regularly managed the trip in about half an hour, and rare was the journey that took more than forty minutes, all told. Justine spent that time more or less silent, pulling together the self that she knew, and not the dressed-down form of herself that she'd tried to allow herself to be in these situations that were so much more casual than what she was used to. It was a very different experience, going from friends who understood her formality because they had all come from what amounted to the same world, more or less, and to Milly's friends, who, for all that some of them (Miss Fenette, most notably) might have adopted a number of the affectations of nobility, were themselves very obviously of common stock, through and through, to whom Justine's mannerisms seemed to provoke stilted speech and straightened backs. She'd heard enough in passing to understand that Nina's parents were more likely than not the sorts of social climbers who had envisioned a highborn match for their daughter, so as to try to elevate their family's status, and having grown up amongst such circles, she was fiercely glad that the idea had been abandoned, for all that it had resulted in Nina's tacit abandonment—they would have thrown their own daughter to the wolves and vipers, and never were either of them likely to have cared to learn that that was what they had done.
Perhaps in a pre-Napoleon world, they might have had a point about it being a better life for their daughter—Justine had read that in those days, it was not uncommon for the aristocracy to think themselves 'touched by grace,' and thus able to operate without fear of reprisal from the peasantry, often leaving them to starve or to be driven into destitution—but even the lowest and most incompetent of highborn would not have suffered to court the accusation of treating their subjects (the true Britannian ones, at least) poorly, for the spectre of Bonaparte continued to leave a long and lingering shadow over them even now, nearly two centuries after his disgrace and death. No one wanted another peasant revolt, not now and not ever; and so to rise from the common people to the nobility, particularly those who had some measure of dynastic power to call upon and had not risen to their positions through means of military acclaim, was not to achieve some measure of subsistence: it was the surrender of any measure of safety or freedom from consequence for an ideal of transient luxury and ephemeral glamour.
Theirs was a different world than that of the common people, and a far more dangerous one besides; it was an Imperial princess's raiment, then, that Justine donned once again, while Sayoko very graciously kept Satanael occupied with muttered tales of Yatagarasu, the three-legged crow. Satanael by this point had gained command over quite a considerable lexicon, and she interjected every now and again with a series of simple questions and childlike exclamations—usually some variation of 'next, next, next!', 'no, no!', or 'yes!', her voice a close mimicry of Justine's own all the while, but it was indicative of her progress all the same; Justine did not doubt that, given enough time, she'd be able to hold an entire conversation of her own accord, and she was glad of it, that she could have given a creature that had been so marked for death not only another chance at life, but an entirely different way to live, as well.
The train pulled into the underground station at the end of another such tale, and Justine rose to her feet as soon as the inertia of their arrival had worn off enough to render the floor stable once again. Feeling a little off-balance nonetheless, though thankfully not in the physical sense, Justine prompted, "What do we say to Miss Sayoko, my pet?"
"Thanks, Sa-yo-ko!" the carrion raven replied, fluffing her wings and bobbing her head twice.
Sayoko smiled at the bird indulgently. "You're very welcome, Satanael."
With that, Justine reached down, and Satanael, not having enough room in this compartment to take wing, leapt from her perch upon Sayoko's hand and onto Justine's instead, whereupon Justine raised her up to place her back upon the favoured position of the princess's pauldron. Sayoko, in turn, stood herself, and informed her, before they disembarked, "I've given instructions that you're to meet in the rooftop gardens. I will, of course, be watching, but I'll be handing you off into Jeremiah's care as soon as we've reached the ground floor. I suppose I don't have to remind you to tread carefully."
"If His Excellency the Minister of War is scared of me, Sayoko, then we have far bigger problems to deal with, quite frankly," Justine replied honestly, straightening her coat and carding her fingers through her hair in a last-minute reassurance that there was nothing that she really needed to adjust. Then, she turned on her heel, and led the way out of the train-car, speaking as she went. "That said, I think it might be a wise decision to leave the Murasama where it currently is—as a show of good faith, I suppose, until he and I can grow more accustomed to each other. I can't imagine that we'll be perfect strangers for much longer, after all, given our respective positions…"
"And what, exactly, do you believe he's here for?" Sayoko asked, curious. "We haven't been able to get anyone into his office, not even cleaning staff—and judging from the OSI's records, they were never quite able to manage a proper infiltration, either. His adjutant, von Oberstein, runs much too tight of a ship. Pun not intended."
"Sayoko, I'm an Imperial princess who just put down a major noble rebellion with what a scholar of Britannian doctrine might describe as a motley crew and a menagerie, to put it generously, and all without a significant amount of casualties," Justine explained with a lopsided shrug (courtesy of Satanael's position), folding her arms behind her as she stepped out onto the platform, her boots echoing across the space. "His Excellency Marquess Reinhard, on the other hand, is a man renowned as the youngest Fleet Admiral in all of the history of the Imperial Navy, having risen through the ranks entirely by acclaim, and against the will of all of his much older contemporaries. And at twenty-eight years of age, he's also the youngest person to ever hold the office of Minister of War in all Britannian history, period. The answer thus becomes clear: the man sees enough of himself in what information he has of me that he's elected to handle me with a measure of care. He's come here to meet with me to take my measure—to determine for himself whether I'm likely to be an ally of his, or an adversary."
Justine could hear the raised eyebrow when Sayoko asked, "And which do you mean to be?"
"That largely depends upon him," she replied, summoning the elevator from the shaft at the other end of the station, and waiting for it to arrive. "After all, I'll admit that I'm equally as curious regarding His Excellency, myself. And, if it isn't too conceited of me to say as much, he's not the only one who sees those glimmers of potential resemblance…"
"I'll be on standby, then," Sayoko said, her tone half a sigh and half a chuckle, as the elevator came to them with a muted ding, and the doors opened to admit them.
"I sincerely doubt we'll come to blows today, regardless of how our meeting turns out," said Justine, in an attempt to reassure the shinobi, to the extent that such was even necessary, as she stepped into the lift herself. "But I do quite appreciate the vigilance, all the same."
"Yes, I'm sure that you do," the shinobi rejoined as the doors closed; then, as they ascended, Sayoko changed tack. "Milly asked me to tell you that the meeting with the contractors in Kōfu went better than she had predicted, and that she'll be heading back to the Tokyo Settlement this evening as a result. She says that she wants you to be 'prepared to receive her,' whatever that means…"
Sayoko knew precisely what that meant, Justine knew for a fact; she felt her cheeks flush slightly in a mixture of mild embarrassment and sudden, intense anticipation, reaching up to press the pads of two of her fingers against the central ruby of her day collar (which had only recently grown deserving of the name, she couldn't help but remind herself), and chose to be thankful that Sayoko, for all her teasing, had enough consideration not to spell out that she knew exactly what Milly and Justine got up to in their marriage bed, though both of them, Justine and Sayoko, obviously knew that she was aware. She cleared her throat, then, and replied, "Good to know. I shall, of course, do my best to take that under advisement…"
"See that you do," Sayoko replied, her affect going completely flat as she spoke. "She tends to get a bit testy when she doesn't get what she wants the first time around—though, you probably know that better than anybody, don't you? Being her wife and all."
Enough consideration not to say it aloud, Justine reflected as she locked down on her composure, as hard as she could. She took a deep breath—she could not afford to abandon decorum here. But not enough consideration to refrain from referring to it through thinly-veiled double-entendre…
Thankfully, their elevator ride ended shortly thereafter—before either of them had had time to take a breath, the elevator doors opened in a secluded corridor, the shaft disguised as a column; and there, leaning against the far wall and awaiting their arrival, was Jeremiah.
He wore his new service dress well—she'd known that when she'd given it to him. It was similar, in many ways, to the featureless black uniform she was previously able to supply, but now that her forces were on peace footing, she'd had the time to spruce it up a bit, in acknowledgement of the fact that she now held a commission, of which he was technically a part. Black boots and black breeches below the belt, as per usual, but his jacket was of a different design—single-breasted and side-fastened as always, of course, but now with gold trim along the closed edge and the newly-added reinforced shoulders, and the high collar (also with gold trim) now sported enough open space to display the shock of white that was the cravat he wore underneath; and though his arms were folded across his chest, displaying the black gloves that his and the uniform of the Order of the Dragon had in common, his posture did not obscure the winged sword pin fastened to the opposite side of the jacket in any way. His teal hair was freshly-cut, and the tousled, windswept style that he favoured looked all the more striking for it—now that they were no longer at war, he once again resembled something between the subject of a propaganda poster, and the model on the cover of a bodice ripper.
He pushed off the wall, and straightened as they approached. Sayoko stepped forth, then, and smiled knowingly at Jeremiah, strangely enough. "She's all yours, now. I must attend to my other duties."
"Thank you for retrieving her, Sayoko," Jeremiah replied, not rising to the bait—though, he seemed to know why it was that she was looking at him like that, if the lack of her confusion being reflected on his face was anything to go by. "I'll take it from here."
"Once you two are all done handing me off like I'm a parcel of sensitive intelligence," said Justine, interjecting in the interest of moving things along, and not at all because it was a bit irritating to be handled in such a way (though it was). "We have a rooftop garden to get to with all haste. I categorically refuse to snub His Excellency by being the second to arrive."
"Of course, your highness," Jeremiah replied, and he and Sayoko shared another smile, before either of them moved to part ways. When they did so, they did very nearly in unison, with Sayoko walking down the hall away from them, in the opposite of the direction they needed to go, just as Jeremiah came up to her side, taking up his position guarding Justine. "As you will."
Justine had grown accustomed to the layout of the Government Bureau in the months since she'd all but moved here, first for her honeymoon, then for the extended honeymoon, and finally just to live with the love of her life in a way that they hadn't been able to without some lingering event hanging over them for a few years, by this point, and while the light colours and abundant use of white in the corridors would never be able to hold a candle to the august, post-Rococo stylings of Ashfordshire, nor to the bold colours of the walls and paintings that characterised the home that they had made of Belial Palace, she could not find it in herself to hate them, nor to express much distaste for them, even within the privacy of her own mind. This had been the home base of her honeymoon, after all—where they'd retired after their trips to Okinawa and Narita, where they'd sat and watched the fireworks during Tanabata, and a dozen other memories besides. It was in the background of each of them, this monument to anodyne décor disguised as a government office, and because of that, it passed by quickly, equally as firmly in the background now, as Justine led the way up to the rooftop gardens.
It was not so much in nostalgia for the sprawling gardens of Aries Villa that these had been put into place, planted years ago and diligently tended to, but rather out of an appreciation for the admitted necessity of having such a venue handy, particularly for reasons like this; and perhaps that was why the only ways in which the area was a true facsimile of the place where Justine had spent her early childhood were the scale and the layout of the rooftop garden. In stylings and in choice of plant life both, the area into which Justine and Jeremiah entered, making their way towards the gazebo-pagoda hybrid where the servants had laid out a table, seats, and refreshments aplenty, was a shockingly harmonious synthesis between both Britannian and Japanese gardening styles and horticultural sensibilities. Water fixtures and artificial rivers divided the garden into portions, each of which was bridged with a wooden arch, and half a dozen different species of lotus flower floated beneath these archways, while elsewhere, where the garden was upon solid ground, careful and thorough processes of cross-pollination had created a blooming riot of perennial hybrids. It was meant to act as a status symbol, both of Area Eleven, which numbered now among the wealthiest provinces in the Empire, and rising, and of the House of Ashford, who ruled here, and in that respect, Justine believed that the garden rose to the occasion to a spectacular degree.
She was already in her seat and settled, Jeremiah standing beside and just behind her, when Sayoko, who was once again dressed as a maidservant, ushered two men out onto the opposite end of the garden. It wasn't a snub, to do it this way, where they had to walk for a bit to reach her—far from it. It was certainly true that wariness could be read into the subtext of this particular aspect of hosting etiquette, but it was also a gesture that communicated a kind of respect—a recognition of another's power, and thus of the threat that that other person might potentially pose. It was fitting, she thought, given the circumstances.
The two men, perhaps surprisingly, were not particularly tall by Britannain standards—both were shorter than Jeremiah, Justine could see at a glance—but they carried themselves surely, and with presence. Of the two of them, the taller was the man she'd never seen before, whom she could only assume was none other than High Admiral Paul von Oberstein: his face was long and gaunt, with carefully-groomed inky hair that was either shot through with streaks of grey, or simply caught the light in a way that suggested as much to the naked eye. He was not at all handsome—at best, he might be considered rather plain—but there was something in the very slight, almost imperceptibly aquiline curve of his nose, the thin profile of his pale lips, the shadows around his wan, seemingly empty black eyes, and the particular manner in which his flat, dark brows never seemed to twitch or move, even involuntarily, that made Justine pay attention to him.
But while the pale, black-haired, rail-thin von Oberstein nonetheless wore the black and silver of his naval service dress surprisingly well, the shorter of the two men (and certainly, visibly quite a bit younger), had an air about him of having mastered the uniform, in every black nuance and silver accent, and his white cape along with its attached golden épaulettes only lent further intensity to the larger-than-life quality of his easy, measured gait. Just as she'd observed at the matriculation ceremony of Ad Victoriam, his eyes were twin flecks of ice, set within a boyishly handsome (she might go so far as to call him pretty, even) face that was further capped off by a mop of tousled, curly, lustrous golden hair. With his high cheekbones, his sharp jawline, the intensity and strength of his golden brow, and the slender, unobtrusive line of his nose, he may have looked the part of some other country's royalty, though his features were entirely too soft for him to be mistaken for a member of the Imperial Family, and one of those lustrous brows seemed to grow more and more furrowed as he at last laid eyes upon her, while the pair of admirals, one of whom was the Minister of War, approached them.
Justine made no move to rise—due to the nuances of this situation, that von Lohengramm had come to call upon her in what was effectively her home territory, and that he was a minister while she answered to His Majesty directly, her position in the Imperial Family aside, such a show of deference would certainly have been read as sarcastic, or at the very least thoroughly disingenuous. It was enough of a show of respect that she had not yet poured any tea, which would have carried with it the implication that he and his second, von Oberstein, were tardy, or otherwise unwelcome, had she done so. She did not call out to either of them, and instead traced Satanael's path through the air as she stretched her wings above the verdant foliage of the gardens, and another skull that had been taken from the Battle of the Two Rivers (she had a set of three) and turned into a perch sat off to the side of her arm, closer to the edge of the table, awaiting the raven for when she had grown tired of flight, and wished to rest once again. She did not even look directly at them as they approached—it would have been imperious of her, and perhaps more than a bit presumptuous to boot—but as soon as their twin pairs of boots stepped under the roof of the gazebo-pagoda-thing, she looked up and gave both of them as winning and welcoming a smile as she could produce.
"Your highness," greeted von Lohengramm, as protocol demanded. He bowed to an angle of about forty degrees, give or take—a superior position, but not insolently so, and accurately representing how their actual positions differed, to boot. After all, she had around four thousand and change that she could reliably call to order, given that training the first crop of legionaries was going to take the better part of a year (basic training for the Imperial Army's infantry was generally conducted over a period of twelve weeks), whereas he'd come at the head of his personal squadron, perhaps the most decorated naval unit still in service to the Empire. It was a reality, then, that he had the better of her, and even then, he had chosen to bow more deeply than the situation demanded of him. Justine chose to interpret that as a good sign.
"Your excellency," she replied genially, inclining her head, as was appropriate. She swept her hand out, palm up, splaying her clawed fingers in the process, and said, "It's quite an honour. Please, won't you sit down?"
The fleet admiral bowed again, and now that he'd been given leave, he pulled out the chair opposite the tea-table from her, and lowered himself into it. It had been built with Milly's proportions in mind, so the seat seemed to fit him, of which Justine was quite glad—she would have hated to have had to argue for it being a mistake and not a deliberate snub had it actually failed to bolster the man's weight—and he settled into it without any sort of visible issue. Justine looked to von Oberstein, and offered, for the sake of civility (though she would certainly have followed through on the offer), "Shall I have our staff bring along another chair for you, my lord High Admiral?"
High Admiral von Oberstein regarded her flatly, his hands folded behind his back—although she did not take it personally; she got the sense that this was simply the way the man was, doubly so if the rumours of him being coldblooded turned out to be true. He inclined his head, his vacant, cold, empty eyes sliding to close in the process, and intoned, in a deep, monotonous baritone, "That will be unnecessary, your highness. I would prefer to remain standing."
"As you will, then," Justine accepted, nodding. She motioned to Jeremiah, and he stepped out of his position at her side, and poured tea out of the pot into each cup, his motions clearly practised, if a bit stilted. When they were full, he placed the pot down, and returned to his position; then, she continued, "It's just as well, I suppose. The less that we must resort to calling upon the servants, the more discretion we may well manage to preserve with this meeting."
Von Lohengramm cocked a brow, and scoffed; in his smooth tenor, he said, "Your highness, if I paid any mind to discretion, I would not have arrived in my personal flagship."
"Not necessarily," Justine disagreed, gathering up her tea cup and the saucer beneath it as she shook her head. "Forgive me for saying as much, your excellency, but one such as yourself can hardly sneak away if you wish to avoid raising suspicion. In fact, I'd argue that by advertising your presence with the use of the illustrious White Knife, you can conceal your purpose here much more effectively. The fact that others know that we have spoken does not make it a lesser discretion to be circumspect regarding what, precisely, we have spoken of."
"Mm. A fair point," von Lohengramm conceded, gathering his own cup and preparing himself to sip from it, where he then waited.
Justine smiled and chuckled, drinking from the tea in the cup before setting it down again. "You've been educated in proper poisoning etiquette. I must say, I'm impressed. Too many take His Majesty's edict of peace for granted these days—the practice has thus begun to fall dangerously out of favour…"
The fleet admiral's full lips tilted into a half-smile, as if the mirth was wrung from him, as he drank from his own cup at last. "I cannot take all the credit for that, I'm afraid. Oberstein insists upon it."
"Then he should be commended for looking after your best interests, your excellency," said Justine, swirling the tea around in her own cup for a few rounds before looking to take another drink. It wasn't her favourite—she didn't particularly care for oolong—but it was more than acceptable, and it wasn't as if her own tastes would have been particularly appetising for company anyways, as she well knew. "After all, it's only a matter of time before that edict fails outright. Best not to let oneself fall into any bad habits—which is more important for you than it would be for most, given your position, I might add."
"So he keeps telling me," Lohengramm sighed, taking a deeper drink. Then, he set it down, clasping his hands upon the table with interlaced fingers. "I must admit, I didn't think much of your chances when I heard that you had been deputised and deployed on such a tight schedule."
"You can be forgiven for that; I doubt anyone did," Justine allowed with a shrug. "On paper, at least, we were little more than lambs to the slaughter…"
"That you beat the odds, and quite handily, is obvious, yes," said the blond, as he leaned back in his chair just a little bit. "Though, your accomplishments have put me in something of a difficult position."
"Perhaps," she acknowledged, setting her own saucer and tea cup down upon the table, more or less mirroring his seated position—with the noted exception that both of his legs were firmly upon the ground, while Justine had crossed hers, of course. "And yet, there is a mutual opportunity to be found here, should you and I both be inclined to seek it out, and in so doing, avail ourselves of it."
"You've been successful, I'll grant you that, but with all due respect, your highness, you are, for all practical purposes, a complete unknown," the fleet admiral remarked with the utmost severity. "I know your elder sister, who is, as chief general, my newest direct underling, Field Marshal Cornelia, for example, and her character, because although she was certainly afforded a degree of special consideration on account of her royal lineage, there still remains a full career from which I can discern the patterns of her behaviour. That you have come here, won this acclaim, and are now, according to my sources, building your irregulars into a fully-supplied force, has made the fact that your own record is more or less blank a troublesome state of affairs for me…"
"You believe that I may be a loose cannon," Justine summarised, leaning back in her chair. "You say that the fact that I have no service record to speak of renders me effectively unaccountable, in that you have no way of knowing exactly what it is that I'll do with the power that my current position now grants me."
"In essence," grimaced the marquess.
"That is a difficult position," the princess conceded, before staring down into her tea cup. She gave the situation some thought, and after a few beats, she offered, "Would it help if I gave an accounting of my reasoning during the blank spots of that campaign? Clear a few things up by answering your questions?"
"That depends on how you answer," said the fleet admiral, leaning back himself.
"Upon my name as Justine vi Britannia, then, I give you my word that I shall answer your questions as thoroughly as possible, and to the best of my ability," Justine vowed to the man, pressing her hand to her heart to punctuate the sentiment.
Marquess Reinhard seemed to consider her proposal for a few long, contemplative moments; at last, he turned to Oberstein, and though Justine couldn't very well interpret the man's affect, the blond seemed to find what he sought in the taller man's expression, and said, "Very well, then. Tell me, how did you evade the notice of the Peninsular forces' patrols and raiding parties?"
"We travelled cross-country when we could, swinging wide of any settlements whenever possible," Justine explained, dredging her picture-perfect recollection of those early days of their suppression mission back into the forefront of her mind. "That took us a little under a month. I then had us take sanctuary in the Amazon Rainforest, amongst one of the indigenous nations that makes its livelihood by the river-bank; and once we had made a suitable headquarters out of that secluded location, we proceeded to conduct raids on the rebel supply shipments along all of the roads that run through the jungle—the Andes rail line lacked the capacity to handle the necessary volume of materiel."
"The natives of Area Six are notoriously wary of Britannians, when they aren't overtly hostile," said Marquess Reinhard, scepticism heavy in his voice. "How did you get them to cooperate?"
"Oh, that's easy enough," Justine replied with a single-shouldered shrug and a small smile. "We had a number of allies on the home front to call upon, should we have need of them—and so I asked that a few of the most significant artefacts to the nation we were prevailing upon, which were stored in the archives of the Britannian Museum, be smuggled down to us to be used as bargaining chips. I gave them the artefacts, and promised that the rest of the Britannian Museum's collection of their cultural heirlooms would be given back to them upon the conclusion of our operations in Area Six, should they consent to shelter and teach us; and indeed, we learned well how to move through the jungle, and how to make it into a weapon we could wield against our enemy."
The fleet admiral blinked, twice. "You had the Britannian Museum robbed…?"
"I had them bought out," Justine corrected, quite pointedly. "Sakuradite's in high demand, and Area Eleven is well-managed; leveraging what is essentially a controlling interest on the production of an essential resource in the international market is a lucrative enterprise, to say the least—all the more so as of late, what with the re-opening of the Europian markets following the end of Cornelia's war in Iberia. Thus, I feel no qualms about having made good on the deal we cut. I do hope they're making the most of it, of course, but at this point, it's quite thoroughly out of my hands."
"Ha! Quite the inventive solution," the Minister of War commended. "But I suppose that explains how you got your hands on so much materiel… Purloining Knightmare Frames off of the backs of a few rebel supply convoys…"
"More than a few," Justine corrected, getting into the swing of it as he grilled her on how she'd done what she had in putting down the Peninsular Rebellion with minimal resources. She had no doubt that he'd heard some inkling of this information already, and it wasn't like there was anything to re-litigate regarding the results she'd managed to get. Those weren't the point—her efficacy wasn't what he felt he had grounds to worry about, but rather how she thought, how she approached problems, and how he could expect for her to act in the future, in a situation where she and hers had to be part of the proverbial 'boots on the ground.' It felt as if they were trying to form a rapport instead of her trying to reassure him, oddly enough, and with each question she answered, his wariness of her seemed to dissipate further and further. They fell into a bit of a rhythm as they exchanged back and forth, question and answer, digging into minute details that Justine recalled, as always, with crystalline clarity; and then…
"And what of the children?"
Justine blinked in muted surprise—for that hadn't come from Marquess Reinhard, but from his right hand, High Admiral von Oberstein, instead. A quick glance at the young fleet admiral showed that he was just as shocked as Justine herself was, to hear this question from his lips—but the man himself seemed to be supremely unaffected by their shock, and instead bored his flat, vacant gaze into her, demonstrating that he was entirely serious about the question that he'd just asked. "I beg your pardon?"
"It was obvious that you impaled the rebels' adult family members, their spouses and friends, and their extended relations as well, to break their spirits once they entered the city. It follows, logically, that the related nobles were also complicit in the crimes of their respective heads of house," Oberstein elaborated, in that same, inscrutable monotone voice. "What was the rationale for impaling their children, as well?"
Unlike when Gino asked his question along those lines, Oberstein's tone and overall manner did not cause her hackles to raise at his posing of the question. Perhaps it was the matter-of-fact way in which he'd given it voice, or perhaps it was the tacit acknowledgement that she very likely did have a rationale that had led her to make the decision he was now questioning, and that that rationale mattered. Either way, it was an easier question to answer now than it had been; but of course, phrasing it in a way that made it able to be understood required a few qualifiers, first and foremost. "Tell me, my lord High Admiral—and I promise that there is a purpose to my asking this—were you born into nobility, by any chance?"
"My parents were gentry, your highness," he replied without hesitation, his expression not changing even by a hair. "So the answer to your question would be 'no.'"
I suppose I'll have to start near the beginning, then… Justine sighed internally; though perhaps that was not such a bad thing. She could probably benefit greatly from practising how to explain things to those who did not already have reason to know them. "Right then. From the top. The punishment for insurrection against the Crown can go a few different ways, depending on the nuances of the situation, and none of them include the survival of the rebellious aristocrat. Often, this is accompanied with a divestment of their house of their status as nobility, as right honourable peers of the realm; but this measure, perhaps unsurprisingly, comes pre-packaged with a few caveats that leave it not nearly so potent as it might seem at first blush.
"The first complication, equally unsurprisingly, is marriage," she continued, as Satanael elected to join them at last, swooping into the gazebo-pagoda gracefully, and alighting upon the waiting skull-perch upon the table; once she'd settled down and settled in, Justine reached her hand over, and lightly stroked the iridescent plumage of her pet's wings and back with the tips of her middle and ring fingers as she spoke. "It isn't uncommon for betrothal or marriage contracts—oftentimes both—to include a clause that makes the definitive statement that the arrangement of the marriage is only considered binding so long as it is upheld in good faith. 'Good faith', in this instance, includes an assurance that the persons in question were up-front and wholly forthright concerning their status; and should either party be found to be upholding the contract in bad faith, then it is no longer considered to be binding. In betrothal contracts, this means that the contract is no longer valid should one party be stripped of or otherwise reduced in their noble station, and thus, the betrothal is considered dissolved by default. In marriage contracts, this same set of circumstances provokes a full annulment of any and all attendant nuptials. The bride or groom, whichever is slighted, is considered to be a member of their maiden house once again, and any dowries paid are to be returned to the house that paid them, or otherwise reimbursed from out of the disgraced party's forfeited assets. Thus did it become a necessity that their spouses should die alongside them.
"The second is inheritance; for in the case of an annulment, any issue of the previous union is to be considered a member of the house of the offended party. So, even had I considered the rebels to be guilty, and their spouses to be complicit, their children would still belong to the maiden house. Perhaps they would have been stripped of their family names, but those children would have been taken in by relatives, and the knowledge of who split their family apart, of the reason why they are now orphans, or worse, down by only a single parent—leaving the surviving parent to turn them, actively, towards vengeance—would stay within them interminably. They would grow resentful, and vengeful, and they would seek redress for those wrongs that they believe had been committed against them and theirs, and with noble blood and noble backing, they would likely rise up in rebellion again, or make themselves into more pernicious headaches in any of a few dozen ways; historically, more than one Holy Britannian Emperor has perished as the result of a declaration of blood feud over the issue of a dissolved noble house seeking vengeance. That's also why peers, even the peers who are endowed with His Majesty's authority to pass judgement, do not have the ability to order the offending families purged in full. The provocation of blood feuds keeps the noble houses so favoured from growing too powerful, too quickly—that sort of favour is, of course, a double-edged sword.
"So the course before me was clear," Justine concluded with a shrug and a rueful smile. "If I was to snuff this threat out once and for all, and to avoid exposing myself and my family to the consequences of a declared blood feud in the future, the children needed to die alongside their parents. A full purge, with not a single survivor to seek vengeance or redress for their losses at my hand. And at that point, if the children of the rebel households were going to have to die anyways—for there were quite a few noble families in Area Six whose spouses' maiden houses counted themselves among the nobility of other provinces—then I don't think it made sense to quibble over the manner of that death. Gassed, gunned down, drugged, smothered, hanged, impaled… Any way you cut it, the result is always a dead child—or, in this case, a great number of dead children. At the very least, I could utilise that death to further make a statement—to the rebels, and to the maiden houses, and any other houses in other provinces who were entertaining thoughts of insurrection, of reaching beyond their station and shirking the responsibility they owe to their subjects. At the very least, I thought, I could use these deaths in the hopes of preventing yet more death…"
The silence that followed was as inscrutable as the expressions of the men who sat across from her; and it was in the interest of complete transparency that she added, "There were, of course, other reasons to support the choice I made; but I would never have acted on any of them for their own sake. After all, I bear my own responsibility to those who count themselves as subjects of the Crown, and I will not suffer myself to become what I have so detested and decried by shirking the weight of that duty."
A beat passed in silence; then, Marquess Reinhard nodded. "In that case, I believe that we can be of some help to one another moving forward."
Justine took this switch of gears in stride, adjusting her posture slightly, even as Satanael continued to preen under her gentle caresses, with which she took special care not to bring her claws anywhere near to the raven's skin beneath the feathers. "What, precisely, do you have in mind?"
"Your 588th needs a more robust officer corps," explained the Minister of War. "And I find myself in need of an ally I can entrust with more…delicate missions. Not to disparage a subordinate or to defame a princess of the realm, but I'm sure you're aware that Field Marshal Princess Cornelia's understanding of what 'delicate' entails leaves…quite a lot to be desired. And after Marquess Hargreeves's disgrace, and his subsequent suicide, it has become abundantly clear to me that I can no longer expect to be able to prevail upon the Imperial Army to handle these situations. So, in exchange for Oberstein feeding you personnel to fill out the uppermost echelons of your officer corps, I would like to be able to call upon you and yours to handle situations for me, from time to time. Quid pro quo, let's call it."
Justine mulled it over for a moment, but if she was being honest with herself (as she always tried to be), she knew what her answer would be from the moment that the blond across from her had begun to lay it out. She smiled at the fleet admiral, though this one was not mirthful or welcoming—had she a mirror, it was an expression that she might have ventured to call 'triumphant.' "Your excellency, I believe this could well be the beginning of a very fruitful partnership."
He grinned at her, and he was abruptly very handsome, she couldn't help but notice. He could easily have been Milly's twin, were circumstances different, and it was a bit surreal to see that so suddenly thrown into sharp relief. "Fantastic. I'm glad to hear it."
"The first officer candidate has already arrived with us," Oberstein chimed in again. "I consider her to be a personal protégé of mine. I would ask that you give her due consideration."
"You needn't worry about that, High Admiral," Justine replied confidently, draining what remained of her cup of tea. "If her merits are as impressive as you imply by claiming her as a protégé, then I've not a single doubt that we'll be glad to have her, whoever she is. Now, may I offer you any more tea?"
The experience of sharing classes with a princess of the realm was a waking nightmare.
It hadn't started out that way, of course—when Princess Justine had first walked into a class, Sophie Wood was pretty sure she could confidently conclude that just about everyone's first thoughts upon seeing her had been I never realised our school uniform could look so hot, or something along those lines. She was able to confirm that at least among the people she knew, that was the case. And who could blame them? She wore the blue-and-gold tartan skirt of a third-year student with all the flair and flourish of a runway model, the long black socks that she wore bit just deeply enough into the smooth pale flesh of her upper thigh to cause the imagination to run wild, the combination of the dark bronze school blazer with the clinging black gloves that had to be specially-made was unexpectedly striking, and with the black eyeliner, black eye-stain and dark plum (almost black) lipstick she wore, as well as the iridescence of her chin-length raven hair, and the gem-like brilliance of her piercing, smouldering amethyst eyes, she looked like a dark goddess, wicked and unapologetic in her beauty. Sophie couldn't really blame anyone for looking at the princess—especially not when Sophie couldn't help but steal a look herself, from time to time—but alarm bells had started to go off in her head when her girlfriend, an Honorary Britannian student named Takatsuki Shiori, who was also the captain of the Ashford Academy swimming team (Sophie was herself vice-captain of the fencing team), ran into Princess Justine in the hallway, quite literally, and the Fourth Princess had stopped to help her pick her scattered books off of the ground.
It was a one-in-a-million moment of bad luck, really—Shiori had apparently been in a bit of a hurry and taken a corner entirely too quickly, flying blind as she collided directly into the princess and her Knight of Honour, with whom Her Highness had been chatting. Sophie had discovered what had happened a scant few moments after the fact, when the star-struck Shiori, who was apologising profusely, quieted at the dark princess's unspoken urging; she'd watched, poleaxed, as Princess Justine smiled, accepted fault for the fact that they had just run into each other, and lowered herself to the ground to neatly arrange Shiori's books and hand them back to her.
Ever since then, it was like Princess Justine was all that Shiori could talk about. When they were on a lunch date and eating outside, Shiori found a way to slip little bits of trivia regarding the princess into just about every conversation they had. When they were in the library, Shiori beelined for whatever book she'd seen the princess reading in passing, or even just spied in her bag whenever they had the occasion to share a class together. Even when they went back to Shiori's room to have sex, Sophie would be confronted with a new pinned-up picture of Princess Justine adorning the corkboard on the wall. And while it certainly wasn't as if Sophie had somehow been ignorant to the fact that Justine vi Britannia just so happened to be her girlfriend's celebrity crush, given that they'd had that conversation about a month into their relationship, it was one thing for her girlfriend to fangirl over someone who was never likely to know that she even existed in the first place, and quite another for them to run into each other like the world was one of Shiori's shoujo manga, only for the princess to cross paths with her a few days later and express her concern over whether or not Shiori had suffered some manner of injury from the princess knocking her to the ground.
Needless to say, while the initial meeting had shocked Shiori into a different state of mind, the fact that the princess remembered the incident enough to follow up on the situation had kicked her girlfriend's fangirling up to a level Sophie might have considered to be obsessive, even if she hadn't been as admittedly biassed as she was on the subject. It had gotten to the point where not even the Student Council President's very explicit public displays of affection for her wife—more than once had she or another group of students come across Carmilla Ashford (now Carmilla vi Britannia, a switch that was still a bit difficult to get used to) pinning Princess Justine to the wall or to a set of lockers with her proximity, in between her yanking the royal by the ornate ruby-studded silver collar she wore around her neck wherever she went and making out with the raven-haired girl without even a hint of shame—barely made a dent in her ardour, and the story of Sarah Berry, the one girl who had worked up the courage to attempt to seduce Carmilla, only to disappear into little more than frightened rumour shortly thereafter, seemed to mean nothing at all to Shiori. On a few occasions by this point, Sophie had had to master the burgeoning impulse to just seize her girlfriend by the shoulders and physically shake some sense into her, that if the then-duchess had black-bagged a girl simply for daring to flirt with her, she would surely do far worse to anyone who tried to put the moves on her wife, to say nothing of how Princess Justine herself might react!
In the aftermath of that potentially-fatal escalation, Sophie had begun to view Her Highness in an entirely new light, and not a particularly complimentary one, either. She was criminally hot and brilliant, of course—that, Sophie didn't care to contest; but the more time she spent in the same classes as the princess, which was admittedly rather rare on account of the fact that the other girl wasn't all that consistent in going to class to start with, mostly because she wasn't technically an actual student herself, and was only coming by, on her own admission, to occupy otherwise-idle time, the more it became clear that beyond the fact that she was irrefutably a genius, she was also a know-it-all of the highest order, to the point where she actually went so far as to interject whenever a teacher made a mistake. She was always polite about it, always trying to phrase her corrections in as diplomatic a fashion as possible, but the response of the teachers could have been split almost neatly into three categories—the teachers who took the corrections in stride, perhaps even with a spot of gratitude, who were also the great teachers that everyone loved; the teachers who took some measure of umbrage with being corrected in front of the entire class and made their displeasure known, who were also the teachers that everyone hated for being pompous and prideful and all around terrible, to whom the princess would respond with a profoundly unimpressed expression, which was itself formed of a strange mixture of mirth and boredom; and the teachers who fell somewhere in between those categories, who may have been quite bothered, certainly, but who knew better than to give their objections voice.
And even though Sophie had to admit that it was impressive, the way the princess being called upon to read an excerpt in Literature (they were currently studying Shakespeare) would provoke Her Highness to stand tall and perform a stage reading of the scene in question, a verbatim recitation done from memory, the fact that that happened at all, let alone more than once, was difficult to interpret as motivated by anything other than some level of smug self-satisfaction. The way that she didn't deign to acknowledge the fact that she'd charmed half of the student body before she even opened her mouth, despite coming into classes always wearing what Sophie could only imagine to be a day collar, of all things, the way her graceful steps sent her hips swaying gently, this way and that, seemingly unconsciously—and of course, the fact that she looked at Carmilla as if she would raise no objections even if the blonde were to bend her over a table in full view of the dining hall (which, of course, Sophie was a big enough girl to admit that she would, too—if 'scarousal' ever made it to the dictionary, any entry of it could put a photo of the Student Council President where the definition ought to be and still manage to get the point across), her amethyst eyes glittering with intoxicated desire…
The more she saw of Princess Justine, the more Sophie's attraction to the girl began to mix with her burgeoning resentment and growing dislike of her and her personality, the imperious manner of her speech, the fact that she couldn't help but lord her knowledge over others, the fact that Shiori could see none of it… It was, she was self-aware enough to understand, a profoundly personal set of problems that Sophie had any ability to name, but they nonetheless seemed to strip the veneer of glamour from the woman who seemed to spend her social time with only the members of the Student Council, obviously too good to mingle with the rest of them… But that understanding, that these were her problems, and probably not the sort of things that warranted the level of mind she paid them, in the ordinary course, didn't stop Sophie from locking up in her seat the moment she heard Shirley call out to the princess as the last class of the day (Literature today) was dismissed. "Your highness!"
The princess stopped, having just risen from her seat, and turned to face Shirley with a cocked brow. "Yes, Miss Fenette? What is it?"
That was another thing, how Her Highness seemed to refer to just about everyone by their surname, as if she, herself, was a teacher. Shirley, however, determination set into the furrow of her brow, continued: "You're aware that I'm the captain of Ashford Academy's fencing team, yes?"
"I am indeed," the princess allowed with a measured nod. "Milly actually showed me the footage of your bout against the New College team, and I must say, that was a fine display of bladework on your part."
"Would you be amenable to seeing it in the flesh, then?" Shirley offered, and Sophie had to hold in a scream at the idea of Justine vi Britannia invading yet another aspect of her life.
"As it just so happens, I would indeed be amenable," the princess replied, with a bemused smile and a nod of her head. Then, she began to stretch, and as she did so, her skirt rode up just enough to expose the edges of some nasty-looking hand-shaped bruises about her upper thighs. Sophie winced at the sight despite herself—how Princess Justine had been sitting so primly today with bruises like that covered by her clothes was a question she was almost afraid to ask. "I must confess, I'm afraid it's been quite some time since last I held a sabre… Though, I suppose this is about as good a time as any to shake off any rust I might have built up since then…"
"Wonderful," Shirley said effusively, her hands clapping together once in anticipation. "Sophie and I were going to head down to the gymnasium and get everything set up for practice. Won't you come along with us?"
"Provided your vice-captain doesn't mind, certainly," said the raven-haired girl, turning and pinning her into place with her single visible piercing, smouldering amethyst eye. Indeed, Princess Justine's focused gaze was, in a word, petrifying. "Prithee, would you say that you have cause to object to my presence, Miss Wood?"
Acting in accordance with her better judgement, Sophie shook her head. "I… Well… That is, to say, n-no, not at all, your highness."
The princess nodded, and then turned back to Shirley. "Rather timid for a fencer, isn't she?"
Sophie's flushed pale cheeks burned with humiliation. In that moment, she wanted for nothing more than to curl up into a ball and die.
"She isn't usually like this, your highness," Shirley replied significantly.
"Ah," came the immediate response, the princess's face shifting into an expression of realisation. Then she turned her gaze upon Sophie once again, and she smiled—and even if she hadn't known why her girlfriend was so obsessed with the Fourth Princess before now, that smile would have told her exactly why. But of course, that didn't change the fact that Shiori was her girlfriend, and all it would take to lose her was for the princess to express even the slightest hint of romantic interest in her fangirl—Shiori would drop her in a heartbeat, Sophie knew, if it meant that she caught the attention of the princess, regardless of whether or not Carmilla would allow her to survive the experience. "Then allow me to reassure you as best as I can, Miss Wood: I'm quite disinclined, as a rule, to bite people's heads off, proverbially or otherwise. I promise that you need not fear me doing anything of the sort to you—well, not without ample provocation, at the very least."
"Of course, your highness," Sophie managed to reply, bowing her head towards the princess in lieu of any more involved displays of deference. She plastered what felt like the most artificial smile she'd ever produced onto her face, and said, "I'll try my best to remember that."
"Excellent," replied the princess, the smile broadening into a sharp grin—sharp enough, it seemed, to strip flesh from bone. "This would be a horribly dull outing if all your fencers end up similarly paralysed at the idea of striking me…"
"I'll see to it that they aren't, your highness," Shirley said, her tone not at all deferential, but joking, almost, as if the two of them did genuinely have a rapport. Then, the strangely mismatched pair of girls (for although Shirley was certainly one of the prettiest girls in school, hers was a bubbly, warm sort of beauty, while the princess barely even looked human most of the time) made for the door of the classroom, with the princess's teal-haired Knight of Honour close on their heels. Shirley stopped at the door-frame, and then looked at her quizzically. "Sophie, are you coming along?"
Distantly, she felt herself nod, and pack up her things with a speed that would have surprised her, if she wasn't distracted by the fact that she could feel herself beginning to dissociate.
It was like she was a prisoner in her own body, not at all out of it; she witnessed herself take her bag and sling its strap across her shoulder, and watched hollowly as the two of them chatted about what quickly began to sound like gibberish, complicated and coded language being shot back and forth with each other as they exited the Humanities building, and hiked across half the campus to reach the gym before the rest of the team could get there. They passed by the yard where the archery team was beginning to gather, for the sake of getting in some pre-season practise (archery season was in the winter months, same as fencing), and past the fields where the equestrian teams were putting their horses through their paces in expectation of the winter horse shows, which would kick off with what highborn called 'the season' back in the Homeland in mid-January, all the way to the building that housed the various gyms for different sports and the swimming pool on the lower levels. They passed through the entrance hall, down a number of corridors, until, at long last, the three of them and the bodyguard came upon the girls' locker room, where, with the knight standing outside and waiting for them, the three began to change into their fencing gear.
For Sophie, the motions were so rote as to be mechanical—changing her shoes and socks, donning a pair of white fencing knickers, her chest-guard and jacket (she fenced épée), her gloves and mask… But all of that came to a screeching halt as the princess shed the last of her own school uniform, which included a corset, of all things, and was left all but naked as she changed. Sophie felt her eyes widen as she beheld the marble pallor of her back, her hips, her upper thighs, her butt, each of which were marred with overlapping patches of well-purpled bruising, some of which looked fairly serious. Even when the princess turned to display her belly in the midst of donning new clothes, Sophie winced as she caught sight of large patches of the flesh of her stomach that were nothing but bruises—and though she might otherwise have felt a bit self-conscious, she spared enough of a glance to Shirley to ascertain for herself that the captain of the fencing team, her peer and colleague, even if Sophie wouldn't necessarily go so far as to call them 'friends', or anything like that, was equally taken aback at the sight.
The princess, who was clad only in a pair of lacy black panties, not quite to the point of lingerie, but certainly far more expensive than anything Sophie would ever think to consider as everyday wear, partway through donning a white cotton camisole, seemed to catch on to the fact that she was being gawked at; she looked to each of them in turn, her lips curling into a bemused grin. "What is it, then? Have I got something on my face?"
Sophie, shocked as she was, could not honestly be said to be exercising proper caution or observing proper standards of deference when she scoffed. "Not on your face…"
"…Your highness," Shirley began, much more delicately. "Were you in a fight, by any chance?"
"Not recently, no," Princess Justine replied, still not seeming to understand what their issue was. "Is there aught amiss?"
"Not…especially," the team captain continued, having paused herself amidst the process of donning her own gear, and clearly struggling to find a way to phrase any question regarding the rather florid tableau of contusions on display before them. "It's just that…that's quite a lot of bruising…"
"Ah! That, yes," the princess nodded, comprehending at last. She pulled the camisole on, letting the garment settle over her full breasts, which appeared to have been mauled at least as much as the rest of her body, for all that the hand-shape was much more clearly defined upon the pale swells of flesh, and down to her waist, before bringing another corset out, this one of a different design, which she then fitted about herself with an ease that spoke of years of practise—Her Highness seemed more confident with the white corset as she put it on than Sophie had ever managed to feel when it came to putting on a bra—and then continued to speak as she dressed. "I can assure you that it's nothing to worry about. Milly returned from Kōfu last night, that's all; she's always been quite a bit more…vigorous when she returns to our bed after we've spent a little time apart. Naturally, I, of course, got to reap the benefits…"
"So, all those are from…" Sophie began to ask, acutely poleaxed by the implication. "All of those are from sex?"
"Well, of course," Princess Justine replied, looking at her as if she thought Sophie was a bit slow in the head. "I'm a married woman, after all. That they should come from aught else is a bit unthinkable, no?"
Sophie had already come this far; and frankly, she wasn't sure that Princess Carmilla wouldn't take lethal offence to what she'd already done, so she went for broke and doubled-down on her insolence to a member of the Imperial Family—though it was admittedly perhaps not her smartest plan… "It's just that sex doesn't usually result in copious bruises, your highness. At least in my personal experience."
"Yes, well," said the raven-haired princess, her lips curling into a devious little smirk. "As all of us ought to know by now, a lady does not kiss and tell. I'm afraid I may speak no further on the subject."
Sophie suppressed the urge to bristle at the implied slight, and instead focused on binding back her long, purplish hair into a tail, so that it wouldn't get into her way under her fencing mask. But even this was something that Princess Justine saw fit to take note of, for she stepped forth, and said, "You're binding your hair back? Let me help with that. I have some degree of practice with it, given that I spent several years binding my own into a tail every day."
At this point, why not…? Sophie sighed internally, bringing her pale hands away from her long hair and shrugging. "Go ahead, your highness."
No sooner had she accepted the offer than did the princess step around her, carding her deceptively delicate, elegant, tapering fingers through Sophie's hair, examining it for a moment before she did what she had offered to do. "Your hair really is quite lovely, Miss Wood. I can see that you've been very diligent in maintaining it. Colour me impressed. Tell me, how many brush-strokes do you use? I'm curious."
Resisting the urge to succumb to the inadvertent soothing effect of the princess Shiori was obsessed with gently caressing her scalp, if only just barely, Sophie fought to recall the relevant minutiae of her hair care routine, and answered, "A hundred brush-strokes, twice per day. Once in the morning after I awaken, once in the evening before I go to bed…"
"Boar bristle?"
"Yeah," she confirmed. "My mom bought it for me, for the first day of my first year here."
"That sounds quite wonderful, actually," the princess remarked, though Sophie happened to notice that there was a strange sort of note to her voice as she said as much. There was a series of small pulls, none of them painful in the slightest, and at the end, not only was her hair tied back, but Princess Justine had put it into a simple braid, as well—which she could see in one of the tall mirrors nearby. "You're all done. Let's get going, unless you wish for me to do your hair as well, Miss Fenette…"
"No, thank you," Shirley refused, seemingly as bemused as the princess herself often seemed. "I've got myself. And for the record, your highness, given that you address my paramour by her given name, you may also address me by mine, if you would be so kind…"
"Of course, Shirley," Princess Justine replied easily, as she drifted back towards her own clothes and donned what remained of her gear in near-record time. "Now then, shall we?"
The days were growing shorter once again, the sunlight waning into darkness earlier and earlier into the day. The coming of winter was always a strange time for Justine, as if the turning of the season began to fill her body with energies that she didn't know what to do with, chaotic and swirling. She could go from a day where she would forget to eat, save for her strictly regimented schedule that she liked to think that she would have kept to, even if Milly, Jeremiah, and Sayoko hadn't all simultaneously taken to hanging around in her immediate vicinity to make sure that she fed herself regularly, to days when she would tear into the food she was allotted ravenously. It didn't change when she woke or when she slept, either—though by the end of the day, she was increasingly often so thoroughly wired that sex became a means of wearing herself out so that she could sleep well, as much as it was a way for her and Milly to express and reaffirm their desire for one another, body, mind, and soul. They had had to cut down on how often they came together since the halcyon days of their extended honeymoon, of course—their obligations would hardly accommodate the six or seven rounds they went for at the beginning of summer, when they'd just recently been properly reunited on peaceful ground, and they had been tapering since the beginning anyways, because even if they and their libidos were willing, chafing and muscular stress had proven limiting factors rather quickly—but they made time to enjoy anew the fruits of their union every day; and even now, Justine could feel her nerves begin to wind as the grandfather clock continued to tick, minute by minute…
The choice to stay late at Ashford Academy was as much out of convenience as it was a desire for a meeting place on relatively neutral ground—the Government Bureau would immediately have been clocked as a transparent attempt to weaponise familiar territory, and while Annwn lay beneath the grounds, that was not something the person that Justine was here to meet with, herself having come straight from aiding with fencing practise for Shirley and her team, would have any means of knowing about; and if it went well enough, they were in the Student Council building, the sole access point to Annwn on campus, so it would be a simple matter, should Justine deem it warranted, to move into one of the innocuous-seeming corridors that split off of the central chamber, and bring her visitor down to see the facility for herself.
She'd turned that chamber into a makeshift interviewing room, of course; the long table the Student Council used to conduct their meetings had only two chairs remaining, which she had stationed across from each other, and upon her side of things were the odds and ends of the bureaucratic process. Oberstein was a punctual man, which she could appreciate; they'd met only the previous day, and by midmorning, all of the relevant files he had to hand on his apparent protégé were in her possession, along with a dossier assembled by Sayoko herself in record time, once she'd learned that this meeting was going to happen today.
Justine had already read both, of course; she could close her eyes and see all the many lines of black text that conveyed every relevant aspect of the woman's service record printed upon the back of her eyelids. Test scores, promotion requests, health documentation, psychological assessments, after-action reports… It was all there for her perusal if she thought it necessary, if she felt the need to prevail upon any of it.
Satanael sat perched upon the skull mount she'd left at Annwn the previous day, and she preened as Justine occupied one of her hands with the rote task of stroking the raven's iridescent black plumage with her middle and ring fingers; the other was half-curled upon the desk, and she sat with her legs crossed, the thigh-high black socks that she wore as part of Ashford Academy's third-year girls' uniform creating quite a striking contrast with the ashen pallor of her thighs, if she did say so herself. Quite frankly, Justine rather thought that the civilian school uniform was a good look on her—it certainly was on Milly, after all.
All thoughts of her vanity were interrupted, however, by a pattern of polite knocks upon the closed door—Jeremiah's hand, informing her that her appointment had arrived. Justine checked her posture, sitting with her back ramrod-straight, as she'd been instructed throughout her youth, and called out calmly, "Come in."
Jeremiah opened the door, heralding the entrance of von Oberstein's protégé.
She both was and wasn't what Justine had thought to expect; of average height, and thus taller than Justine herself, if only by a handful of centimetres, she stood unerringly straight, cutting quite a stark figure in the black-and-silver uniform of the Imperial Navy—though the lack of any rank insignia upon the cuff of her sleeve, her shoulders, or her high collar demonstrated that while she may have worn the uniform, she wasn't affiliated with that branch of the Department of War, at least not in any official capacity. She bore the billed black cap of the uniform under one arm, the way one might hold a riding crop in a formal setting, and the heels of her black boots clicked together before she took so much as a single step into the room. Her strides were the picture of regimentation, the kind that many a drill sergeant laboured to impart into their fresh recruits for the sake of the sorts of ceremonies that might require that level of pomp and circumstance. Even if Justine didn't know that the woman's background was in the Army, as an infantry officer, that specific stride would have been enough to inform her of such on its own.
She wore her hair long—the style that of a hime cut, of all things, a straight cascade of ink, so very like von Oberstein's in hue that Justine would have wagered that the first thought that many had when they saw them together was a question of relation—and she might have given them that, that the two of them could have looked the part of father and daughter, were they put side-by-side with each other. The sharp, sculpted angles of her features marked her ethnicity as Britannian, just as the files stated, and the full shape of the woman's slightly-glossed lips (balm, if Justine had to guess) drew a stark contrast when juxtaposed against the somewhat narrow set of her upturned blue eyes, cold and glacial and piercing, which were every bit as seemingly-empty and lifeless as the High Admiral's had been.
The woman took three measured steps, and clicked her heels together once again, lifting her narrow chin and proclaiming, "Valerian Rowe, your highness. Formerly lieutenant colonel of the Fifth Battalion of the 501st Imperial Regiment of Foot, now uncommissioned."
Justine nodded; she did not affect a smile, for she had a feeling that such an act would be lost upon this woman. It was almost relaxing, in a way, to know that this was a situation in which complete sincerity was more likely to be appreciated than polite deception for once. She gestured with her free hand towards the seat across from her, and greeted the woman cordially. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Rowe. Please, do sit down."
The former lieutenant colonel cocked a fine, dark brow, but did as she was bidden, pulling her chair out and sitting upon it, while mimicking Justine in crossing her legs. "As you say, your highness."
Justine nodded, and continued to stroke Satanael's feathers. Silence settled upon them for a little bit, as Justine took in what she could notice about the new arrival, the set of her eyes and the signs of sleepless nights around those cold, piercing flecks of ice, the severity of her features that turned beauty into austerity, like she was truly carved from marble, the tight but not clenched set of her jaw—this was a woman who was in total control of herself, and Justine could certainly appreciate that in a potential subordinate, especially since she seemed to feel no need to fill the silence with idle chatter. Finally, Justine called the interview to order with the first question: "Do you know why you're here today, Miss Rowe?"
"High Admiral von Oberstein informed me that your officer corps was short on qualified personnel amidst your attempt to improve and formalise the organisation of your forces," the officer replied, her voice a measured contralto, and utterly devoid of alternative affect. "I have come to offer my services to that end."
"Why?" Justine asked, every bit as calm and even-keeled as the woman across from her.
"You've read my file, your highness."
"I have," she admitted. "But I'd like to hear it from you, all the same. Words on a sheet of paper can only convey so much information, after all, and only certain types, at that."
"You suspect that the incident report has been falsified, then," Miss Rowe posited.
"No, nothing of the sort," Justine disagreed, shaking her head. "I know the facts of the matter, that a higher-up took umbrage with how you chose to discipline one of your subordinates, that that subordinate's family was well-connected, and that they—that is to say, Major General Burnside and certain key members of the House of Churchill—came together to pull a few strings in conjunction with one another to blackball you, thus stifling your career in the Army. I know also that, in spite of our mutual friend the High Admiral's impassioned counsel to the contrary, the new chief general, my half-sister, Field Marshal Princess Cornelia, deemed you to be 'unfit for command,' and saw you stripped of your rank."
"The course of disciplinary action I decided upon as punishment for Captain Churchill's infraction is well within the proper boundaries of Imperial regulation," the woman remarked. "I treated him no worse than any other officers who had committed similar infractions under my command in the past."
"Which was precisely their problem, that the son of an earl was treated as an equal of the children of landed gentry," Justine replied, nodding slowly. "Though, that incident alone wasn't why Cornelia saw you drummed out, was it? Certainly, officers make decisions that are, shall we say, politically inopportune, very often indeed, and yet they were not deemed 'unfit for command,' were they?"
Rowe seemed to take a moment to debate with herself. "…If I may speculate, your highness…"
"You may," Justine interjected.
"It seems to me that Her Highness Princess Cornelia is of the belief that coldbloods are, by nature of our condition, unfit to hold positions of command in the armed forces," the black-haired woman, who was ten years Justine's senior, Justine didn't fail to note, began. "I was not the only one to have been discharged on similar grounds, despite their situations being significantly different from my own. Our condition is the one commonality between all of our cases that I can find, but there exists currently no provision of yew-law that prevents discrimination on grounds of neurological irregularity as there does exist for discrimination on grounds of gender identity or sexual orientation."
"And so you prevailed upon High Admiral von Oberstein for aid," Justine supposed.
"Not at all," Miss Rowe disagreed, shaking her head. "The High Admiral volunteered his aid. It was not necessary, therefore, to prevail upon him for it. I was a student of his at Ad Victoriam some time ago; he was a guest lecturer at the time, amidst Fleet Admiral von Lohengramm's transition from merely head of the Admiralty and commander-in-chief of the Imperial Navy to the position of Minister of War, and I seem to have impressed him. We have made mutual efforts to remain in contact ever since, and he has often taken it upon himself to make his aid available to me, should ever I find myself in need of it."
"I see," Justine nodded. "Speaking as someone with no preexisting connection to you save a country of origin, a profession, and an alma mater, I'm quite glad that you have a mentor who has proven so willing to advocate on your behalf in the past as well as the present. But of course, this doesn't answer my primary question, which is: why choose to volunteer for the 588th? Given what you've said of him and how he acts with regards to you, Miss Rowe, I'm quite certain that the High Admiral would have gotten you a position as his aide in the Department of War, had you requested it of him—and yet, in spite of all of that, you came here to me instead. The only sensible conclusion to draw, given the aforementioned, is that you, Miss Rowe, chose to come here, not out of any sort of desperation, but of your own free will."
The former officer didn't respond, not all at once; she paused, and considered how she would want to respond to the question that Justine had just asked of her. "…He tried to offer that, at least at first; but, in truth, I had already been considering resigning my commission and requesting transfer to the 588th before I was discharged at Her Highness Princess Cornelia's orders as chief general. As to the reason why…I was at my regiment's base when you accepted Santa Anna's surrender, your highness. I saw the reporting on what you had done to the rebels' families, impaling them in the streets. In the wake of the decisive victory you're said to have achieved in what is now largely known as the Battle of the Two Rivers, I had decided to check my expectations, on the off chance that your victory there could have been an irregularity. I'm sure that I don't have to tell you that you would hardly be the first young commander to let a single grand victory go to their head, so to speak, and blunder disastrously in the events that follow. The pages of history are filled with the tales of such individuals. But…that day, when you accepted the rebellion's surrender, and passed judgement upon the insurgent nobles? No one with such a diabolical understanding of realpolitik, with that knowledge of how to prevent martyrs or any other continuation of conflict, could ever become one of that multitude of audacious failures. And when the High Admiral relayed your answer to his question to me, my resolve was fortified to hear of it. In summary, your highness, I came here because I wished to lend you my aid in much the same way that High Admiral von Oberstein lends His Excellency the Fleet Admiral his. I wish to aid in your great deeds, and ensure, if I can, that my assessment of you proves correct."
In that moment, Justine's instincts made it clear to her that she could trust this woman—that, at least on some level, she had discovered someone who was something of a kindred spirit. That sense that she had that had insisted that Sif, supported by Yennefer, could very well flourish into an exceptional tactician, that had seen the potential for swordsmanship in Odette, that had witnessed the buried seeds of leadership inside of Marika, now went off once again before this woman. That Miss Rowe was capable was something that she could have inferred from the fact that a man like Oberstein would stick his neck out for her, of course, but Justine would also have called General Darlton a capable commander, for all that he fundamentally lacked the same spark of potential that she'd seen in her friends, and that she beheld in Miss Rowe right in that moment. This, right here, was different. This was greatness in the making, the foundations of her future success.
And she could already tell that Valerian Rowe had a part that she could play in all of this, if only she took the time to make sure that seed of grandeur was planted firm in fertile soil.
Justine had never made a habit of doubting her own instincts. To say that they'd seen her out of a lot of close calls in the past was to lie by excessive understatement. Even if she hadn't done so initially (which, to be certain, she very much had), she knew by now that she could trust her instincts implicitly; and it was that fact, in and of itself, that made it abundantly clear to her that she had very much already made up her mind as to whether or not she would take this woman on. "Cornelia is…unimaginative. She finds it difficult to understand how one who fundamentally lacks empathy could ever be capable of commanding, or indeed how such an individual could not be categorically incapable of aught but great acts of cruelty, and of abuse of power. I, of course, very obviously disagree. Your psychological profile notes your ruthlessness, yes, but it also notes your pragmatism, your exceptional discipline, and your capacity for self-regulation, which it notes as abnormally high for the coldblooded, but nonetheless well within the boundaries of the diagnosis. Your record speaks volumes of your capacity for quick adaptation, practical improvisation, and situational assessment. I am of the belief that you would be a remarkable asset, regardless of how you may be applied; however, it is also my belief that your skills and talents would best be utilised in a command position—at which point, I must ask one question of you, Miss Rowe: how are you in a Knightmare Frame?"
"I would not know, your highness," Rowe replied honestly. "I applied for Knightmare training more than once in the past, but I was rejected; apparently, my psychological profile caused me to be considered to be 'insufficiently risk-averse', which was considered grounds for disqualification."
Internally, Justine suppressed a grimace; it was easy, sometimes, to forget that for all that cold blood was considered to be of the more acceptable neurological irregularities to be born with, it remained, above all, a neurological irregularity, and thus it still held the capacity to cause significant complications for those who were so categorised. It was, in so many words, a waste; and nowhere was that more apparent than with Valerian Rowe, who carried an air of the exceptional around her that seemed to Justine's senses to be so dense as to be unable to ignore. Still, there remained an upside to such a state of affairs, and with a smile on her face, Justine said, "Excellent. Then there will be no bad habits that you'll need to unlearn."
Miss Rowe blinked twice. "I'm afraid I don't quite catch your meaning, your highness."
"Oh, don't worry, you will," Justine replied, rising from her chair and offering her hand for Satanael to jump onto. She'd discreetly concealed a pair of shoulder-pads beneath her jacket so as to avoid the raven digging her talons directly into the flesh of her shoulder, and when Satanael leapt onto her hand, upon those concealed pads was where she placed her pet. "You may rise, Miss Rowe, and follow me, if you will. I have a great deal to show you. And, just in case you were wondering: yes, you may, and indeed should, consider this to be your onboarding process—an orientation, of a sort, however impromptu."
The black-haired woman stood from her chair, and inclined her head in gratitude. "Thank you, your highness. I can assure you, I shan't fall short of your expectations."
"If anything, I expect that you'll exceed them, and with astonishing regularity, at that," Justine quipped, her hands folding behind her. Then, she led the way away from the desk, and towards one of the many corridors that split off of the main hall of the Student Council building, with the sharp, regimented footfalls of the latest of her subordinates following in her wake. She stopped by the threshold, then, and pressed her hand to the wall, which recessed at the precise pressure to reveal a small intercom unit, installed for the purpose of coordinating security in case of a breach, and with it, she sent a signal that she and Jeremiah had agreed ahead of this appointment would serve to inform him of if she had chosen to descend to the subterrane; that part of her due diligence done, she turned to regard Miss Rowe, whose impassive expression had taken on a quizzical bend, subtle but undeniable, and smiled again, jerking her head towards the corridor. "Stay close. I wouldn't want you to fall behind and fall afoul of security."
"No, I suspect you wouldn't," the woman rejoined, and fell into step behind Justine as she turned on her heel and led the way down to the otherwise-innocuous chamber that concealed the lift that descended to Annwn, deep within the Tokyo underground.
The choice to use a fake copy of Le Morte d'Arthur as a means of accessing that lift, hidden behind a false bookshelf, was perhaps a bit on-the-nose; but it at least made the correct book easy to remember for those who weren't her. Not to mention, 'the lift behind the bookshelf' was a classic for a reason, and much like a password that was shockingly obvious in retrospect, the pointed nature of it all was, in a sense, a sort of defence against the sorts of schemers and saboteurs who would get dizzy attempting to walk in a straight line. She pulled it, and the bookshelf recessed in all four cardinal directions, up, down, right, and left; when the lift itself was revealed, sleek and modern and metallic, she stepped into it, and with a wave of her hand, she invited her new subordinate in.
Once the former lieutenant colonel went along with her nonverbal invitation, stepping at last into the compartment, Justine cleared the security measures, and down they descended.
It didn't take long for the lift to plunge through metres of shaft—and Justine watched the woman's eyebrows raise towards her hairline as the shaft became transparent, and she beheld the staggering scale of the home of Project Malory, and the cradle of the next generation of Knightmare Frame, all of it constructed under the auspices of the House of Ashford.
She smiled at the reaction, and huffed with pride; and at last, she said, "Allow me to be the very first to welcome you, Valerian Rowe, aboard the great ship vi Britannia—and, of course, to Annwn. We have a great deal of work ahead of us…"
"In that case, we'd best not tarry," Miss Rowe replied, without missing a beat.
Justine's smile broadened into a grin. She looked back out at the complex, and released a contented sigh. "I could hardly have said it better myself…"
Author's Note: Left a more robust rundown on my AO3 posting of this same chapter. Please check it out!