Chapter 1: Signum Malum / Moon Revenge / The Imperial Capital Burns Part 1 / Knightfall / Out of Control / I Came to Play / Seminar From Hell / All Good Things
"You were just leavin'."
- The Cavillrine
"Load up on drugs, kill your friends. It's fun to lose and to defend."
- Nirvana (singing the wrong lyrics to "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on purpose)
"We ask not for your forgiveness for teaching you only how to fight. We ask not your forgiveness for sending you into the field of battle. May your act of bravery lay the foundation for a world in which young men and women need not endure the horrors you have known."
- Charles zi Britannia
"We're definitely gonna killllllllll you!"
"You can't say that! It's not in the book!"
- GTA 3 helicopter pilots
"The hearts that were separated call each other to a distant reality. Beyond the surging sky, we are watching the same light."
- FictionJunction
"Remember who you are."
- The giant cat ghost voiced by Darth Vader
"I can't lose you, Erstin. If I lose you, it will be like losing her all over again."
Emperor Kazuya and his daughter were praying under the statue of the angel of purity and love. He would look up to the angel every few seconds, desperately waiting for any kind of guidance, but the angel's frozen stone face couldn't offer him the comfort he needed. She couldn't provide him the compassion and the quiet support he'd been denied for the past two decades.
"I'm sorry, papa," the princess timidly whispered beside him. She had never felt more useless in her life. It had been a cold and isolated childhood, dictated by a frantically protective father acting on the strained fragments of a plan that started off well-intentioned, before it warped into bitterness and paranoia.
"Don't say that. You have nothing to apologize for." The emperor shook his tired, stress-filled head. "I just wanted to run away with her so I never had to worry about any of this. I promised I would take care of her when they forced me to be emperor. You're the only thing that turned out right."
He slowly reached out and pulled her into a fatherly hug. A hug that was a little too strong. Too possessive.
"They want to do away with the whole monarchy," the emperor scowled through his teeth. "They want to strip away our titles. They want to dissolve us into nothing."
Princess Erstin knew that wasn't true. The noble houses just wanted a fair government where the emperor and the consulate had equal voting power. They wanted to know their country wasn't controlled by the whims of another corrupt tyrant, like in the days of Argos XIV and the war against the Schwarz cult. Kazuya never found his footing as a popular leader after he was forced into the role at the young age of 17, and public concern for his mental judgment had continued to grow over the years.
Her father took their requests as an attack. He demanded Cardair to be his country, centralized entirely under his rule, so it could be Erstin's country in the future. Anything less than that, and he considered his critics to be lowly traitors trying to steal his daughter's birthright. It was the only thing he could provide for her.
How could she ever convince her father there was another way out of this civil war? What could she say that wouldn't hurt him even more than he'd already been hurt? Her obedience, her passively nodding along with any wild thing he had to say, was the only thing that ever brought him relief. It was the only solution she grew up learning. Anything else might break his heart to the point where he'd start thinking his own daughter was conspiring against him.
Erstin didn't know how to have a political argument. Her instructors taught her how to use her Robe in combat, but she never had a personal trainer guiding her through the sensitive matters of statecraft. No one was there to teach her how to be a compassionate princess.
Big Sister Shizuru couldn't help her, either. Her mentor from the Academy always had so many uplifting stories to tell Erstin about who she was and where she came from, but now Shizuru was stuck in a position where she couldn't say a word to her. The last conversation she ever had with Shizuru offered her the same amount of advice the silent stone angel was now offering her father.
"At the end of the day, I'm the just the teacher, and you're the princess. I can't order you what to do once we ship you back home. I've already violated too many neutrality rules by talking about this at all. That's why we were hoping she could be our liaison once she settled down. You have to figure this out on your own. We all have to figure out our part on our own."
The emperor and the princess both sank their heads toward the statue in matching displays of hopelessness. Their eyes glimpsed the encryption chiseled on its base.
AKANE KRAU-XEKU
DEVOTED MEISTER. LOYAL EMPRESS. BELOVED MOTHER.
A. R. 313-332
"She was barely older than you when she died," Kazuya said with a haunted shiver in his voice. "But I promised her I wouldn't let the same thing happen to you. I watched her give up her life so you could live yours. I'm binding my life to yours so you have a chance to defend yourself."
This was how backwards and distant her father had become. Instigating a war against the lower houses, and calling it a defensive tactic.
Erstin's mother and father were famously in love. It was a love that could have brought everlasting peace. Their marriage and the start of their royal family were seen by many as a fairy tale ending that overcame decades of cultural wars between Cardair and Florince. But that was all before Princess Erstin was born. She grew up in a world where happy fairy tales never came true.
The emperor gave his daughter a gentle kiss on the forehead to wish her well, and a kiss on her ear to activate her combat equipment.
The back of the chapel suddenly burst open on hydraulic shutters. The cloudy grey sky awaited Erstin when she turned her back to her mother's effigy. Lanterns lit up the outside of her launch cage in a bright red blaze.
She could already see them waiting in the distance. They were standing on three risers decorated with the coats-of-arms of the lower households.
Lily Claudel had been recalled to Florince as soon as the first cries for civil war rang out, and for good reason. Her family wanted to stay far away from Cardair's internal strife flaring up again, and Erstin didn't want her to suffer in a conflict that had nothing to do with her. Even when it severed Erstin's last frail, friendly connection to her mother's home country.
The three who remained were the daughters of the three families leading the consulate. Inghild Grosse, Ikaho Huit … and her.
"I'm sorry, Roxy." Erstin whispered into the wind in a tear-stricken voice.
If Fumi had any mercy on her Holy Daughters today, Erstin's words would reach Roxy on their shared GEM frequency. But their signals were probably jammed from the moment negotiations fell apart, and Roxy never heard her.
This was supposed to be the most confident moment of Erstin's life, when she victoriously launched into the free, open sky to represent Cardair's national pride and honor. Instead, here she was now, launching into a slaughterhouse.
There was no doubt in her mind her three best friends were just as regretful as her. But they were also just as determined to win as her. The imperial tigress was going to be devoured alive in her own arena. And the moment her life ended, so would her father's.
The other possibility—the utterly impossible possibility—is that she won this Meister battle with 3-on-1 odds, when the enemy leader alone was much more skilled than her. But even if she could defeat all three of them and the contract Masters bound to them, it wouldn't be a joyous miracle anyone should celebrate over. It would just mean Erstin was wearing her mother's Robe to commit acts that would have appalled her.
But she still had to try. Try to keep her father alive. Try to kill her own ceremonial Sisters, before they followed their orders and killed her first. Unless the new Pure Heart Malachite found some way to heal the hearts of her father and all of his enemies within the next few minutes, the only way this dispute could end was with one side executing the other.
She had voluntarily enrolled in Garderobe hoping it would help her better connect with the memory of the mother she never knew. But nothing she learned in the past two years mattered. No humble conversation she had with her superiors even entered her thoughts when she considered where she was standing now. Her first official assignment wearing the Meister Robe she inherited from her mother, forced to fight her own friends in a war her mother never would have imagined in her worst nightmares.
Everything about this was wrong. Nothing turned out how the previous Malachite had hoped. Cardair was supposed to be prospering and becoming allies with the neighboring kingdoms, but here it was imploding on itself. But what else could Erstin do completely on her own? She was a terrified cornered animal striking out with her claws while the world collapsed around her.
"I'm sorry, mama" were the princess's final parting words.
The synthetic flames lining the launch track changed from red to green, signaling it was her time to take off. The flight rings around her arms, ankles, waist, and neck glittered bright gold as they screamed into action, signifying her superior rank. She shot down the track and into the sky, leaving her distraught father and her entombed mother behind.
Author's notes:
I randomly discovered Batman: Holy Terror the other day. And yesterday, Youtube recommended me a clip from the movie Cromwell (1970) where King Obi-Wan dissolves the Parliament and starts the English Civil War. These events probably had a lot to do with how I imagined this alternate timeline for Erstin Kx.
I came up with the idea for Erstin vs. the Cardair team first, and then I started thinking about what awful series of events could cause a storyline like this. What diverging moment in history would cause a dweeb like Kazu-geek to turn into a tyrant and instigate a war against his people? Then it dawned on me: "What if Akane died in childbirth?" And everything made chilling perfect sense. Akane sacrifices her life to complete the final step of Garderobe's plan, creating the heir who symbolically unites Cardair and Florince. Kazuya ends up stranded as a grief-stricken widower only a year into his fairy tale marriage. His pain goes unresolved for years, and turns into paranoia over losing the only daughter he has left. Erstin has no younger siblings looking up to her as a role model, and her team is never able to form a healthy unshakable bond as foster sisters around their surrogate mother, the empress. Everyone between Cardair and Garberobe is having a permanently shitty day where they're drowning in massive guilt, and they don't know what to do, because the hope was Akane's compassionate and peaceful intellect would pull the whole thing together once she matured into her empress role. Yep. You're even more screwed than usual, Erstin. :) [I'm doing the thing with the anime girl holding a smiley face in front of her face even though you can clearly see she's sobbing in misery behind her little mask. Can you tell I'm doing that?]
This also has the interesting ripple effect of turning Kazuya into a sort of alter-Akane. I always write about Akane being protective toward Erstin Kx, because if she loses Erstin Kx, she'll associate it with Erstin Ho's death. But if Kazuya loses Erstin Kx, he'll associate it with Akane's death. All the trauma and survivor's guilt is still there. It's just been re-distributed.
When I first designed Ikaho for "Roppongi Shinjuu," she was a completely villainous character working with Tomomi. When she shows up in the main-ish canon-ish Erstin Kx timeline for "Mai Otome Freedom," I really downplayed her so now she's a heroic comedy character, with a bit of a jealousy/medieval racism problem toward the Soir ladies, but the other girls on the Cardair team are helping her work through it. But in this story, Erstin considers her one of her best friends, just like Lily, Inghild, and Roxy. I think I've got some explanations to cover that. This version of Erstin is completely meek and subservient to the people around her, nothing like her hot-blooded tomboy personality from the main universe, so this version of Ikaho takes pity on her and even becomes an emotional crutch for her. And her mom's status as a foreign national has zero impact on this universe, since she died so early into her reign, and the other girls Erstin's age hardly even know who she was. Ikaho just sees Erstin as another Cardair sister stuck in an uphill battle trying to overcome their country's cursed history. This is... actually a positive change, I guess? Too bad Kazu-kun's mental wreckage is messing up the whole team dynamic.
Maybe this story is taking place in the Strassoir universe. That's the parallel universe where Karen Strassman is the English dub voice actress for Akane, instead of Morgan Partridge. Which is actually some perfect hypothetical casting, 'cuz: 1. Strassman voices Mint in the Tales of Phantasia anime, so Mint and Akane would share Japanese and English VAs. 2. Strassman can fluently switch between English and French. 3. She plays the "Disney princess going out of her mind" archetype really well in the Code Veronica remake portion of Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles. 4. She's also the English voice actress for Kallen Kozuki, and that further strengthens the connections between Mai Otome and Code Geass.
Hmm. King Obi-wan. Mufasa Vader. Am I the only one detecting some possible ironic twists here, and maybe things aren't going to turn out as bleak for Erstin as they currently seem? Maybe this could end up being less of a Teito Moyu, and more like a Meito Toyu? … No? I guess not. There's probably no hope for her left in this universe.
I've always said Erstin Kx was the Trias/Pearl number 3 of her class in her other stories, with Roxy being Trias 2 and Mai's daughter being Trias 1. In this story's setting, however, I think Erstin never made it to the top three Trias in her class. This version of Erstin is more timid and less likely to take risks. Shizuru still closely supports her through her training, but since she was never part of the Trias, she never gained experience in the student council. I think she may have ranked as low as... Pearl number 8. And now I'm making edgy sarcastic faces at the implications of the number "8" in the context of anything Akane-related.
The more I write about Erstin Kx, the more I realize she grew up in an interesting position where she could choose to either follow her father's path going through the Windbloom royal academy to be an upper class political leader, or follow her mother's path and go to Garderobe next door so she can learn to be a battle ballerina Valkyrie superhero (while also learning about command structure in servants' quarters and military platoons). In this story's timeline, I think she chose Garderobe on her own free will as a way to become closer to her mother. She's basically a more mellow version of Arika. And Emperor Kazu-dad encouraged her to become an Otome so she could fend for herself and wouldn't grow up to be another weak and ineffective autocrat (i.e. Kazu-dad is very self-aware and he's afraid of Erstin becoming like him.)
I wasn't even trying to do this intentionally, but when I was getting toward the end of writing this scene, I realized I just made a bunch of strong visual connections / foreshadowing to my made-up Mai HiME lore fanfic called "Catlito's Way." WOW this is looking progressively worse for Erstin Kx with every passing second. I ain't never writing fanfics set in this universe again!
On a final closing note to make you feel even more terrible: Schwarz still exists in this timeline. They just chose not to bother Erstin Kx at all because Akane's death is doing their job for them, and they're sitting back laughing their heads off while this fanfic happens. They are sooo cruel.