Hollewanderer
The Bee Commander
JABURO
The aftermath of the assassination of Evangelista Qasvah Jaburo
The aftermath of the assassination of Evangelista Qasvah Jaburo
Prince Ion-III-Zohar, a royal of ZOLON, keeper of the SOL System Network, whose word could burn a city, looked outside through the embassy's armoured window at the entirely non-hypothetically burning city outside, and sighed.
This was the second worst wedding he ever attended, and this time it was his. What a disaster.
At least he'll have something to bond with Aunt Lena over now.
When the Jaburo government proposed the marriage, his family wasn't terribly interested – there was a lot to unpack about Jaburo's monarchy in general, Princess Evangelista in specific, and the customary negotiations that came after and what they implied – but Ion himself found something gallant in the princess fighting on the frontlines herself inside the Nemesis, as if she was a monarch from the legends of old, wielding a magic sword against her foes.
He still wasn't sure why the Director just gave him a strange look and a pat on the head when he told her about his thoughts, but she did help to arrange it in the end.
With the Covenant broken, his mother said that Earth's dynasties are old, perhaps far older than ZOLON's own, but also old enough that many of them forgot that royalty comes from power, not just blood. Perhaps that's why he was eventually able to talk her into approving this, despite her concerns. There was, ultimately, a lot that ZOLON was willing to forgive someone who took up arms against the Seraphim, however it might have ended.
Then, it appeared that the warrior princess lost a battle and got gunned down unnoticed somewhere in the jungle, smothered in shroud of M-particles and who knows what else the Seraphim brought with them, her crimes – real or manufactured – revealed to all, as if she was peeled like a fruit. Ion didn't even have a chance to fight alongside her as he was prepared to do, an E-Major already deployed, and though he was hardly a true ace like his older sister, the royalty of ZOLON never forgot how to fight.
How did he feel about it? By all indications, Eva not only did not love him – given the circumstances, that's hardly a surprise – but would never love him, her heart perhaps in some distant place that could not be bridged even by time and familiarity. She did not want a king alongside her, she wanted a living bond with the heavens, like an orbital elevator himself. This was known, and something he decided to accept.
But it would still be a bridge between heavens and earth, the first of its kind in millenia, and Ion would be lying if he said he had no affection for the woman and it was all purely contractual, no matter how silly a sentiment that probably was.
And now that all of it was ruined and Jaburo was already preparing the funeral for its princess, he and his family were stuck in the ZOLON embassy waiting for the event, having an extraordinary reunion and watching the city slowly get ravaged by protests that none of their escorts had any idea how to handle, or even if they should.
Lan and Lumina, his beloved two sisters, chatting away about someone Lan apparently met during her battle at Yamantau, ZOLON's top ace's spirit not even slightly down by the defeat at the hands of the Evil Mountain's mighty robotic army, already getting fired up for another go.
They were wearing their new dresses of bullet-proofed artificial silk, woven specially for the occasion, black and white and pink, able to conceal the most obvious of their external cybernetics if needed; a concession to Jaburo's people, to ease them into the union they were joining. Ion had his own additional arms removed for the occasion, but he could hardly ask for this sort of sacrifice from anyone else.
Aunt Lena, looking even more sour than the usual, wearing the dress Ion only saw her in once before and a tiny hat he never even knew she had. She was standing by one of the tables, casting a glance at the windows herself every now and then, her own cybernetics entirely unadjusted, multiple arms and black sclera and feathery antennae that helped to define the look of the Zohar family at proud display, relics of ZOLON-BLACK itself.
The launcher she was holding in two of her hands was a sobering reminder that regardless of how she was dressed, she was still a member of ZOLON's Safeguard – its most elite special operations group, the Nine Philosophers, in fact, fresh from the same battle as Lan. Given the circumstances, Ion really wasn't surprised she armed herself, though given what they came here with it'd probably take several entire brigades to storm this compound.
It didn't escape him that for all the appearances, she just sneaked out one of the puddings, though.
Lumen and Halina, his parents and ZOLON's monarchs, were currently out of the room, figuring out what to do with the Director's rather unique wedding gift, still stuck at the airport together with the shuttles and airplanes of various delegations, guarded by the squadron of mobile suits stationed there.
The two were a duo of ZOLON-DARK's senior engineers, like Ion was now himself; even if they didn't remember much of anything of their old lives, the fact of their marriage seems to have survived the memory wipe. Famous lovebirds – lovemoths? - of ZOLON, they took dim view of Eva's approach to the matter – after all, arranged marriages, political or otherwise, should be done with good intentions, rather than to carelessly launch the pair into what was already known will be a loveless quagmire. Alas, the hoped-for conversation to clear the air would never come now.
And Director Laevateinn, sitting on a plush chair with a cup of hot tea and three empty boxes of pudding, with the same usual calm expression like nothing happened and the entire ZOLON royal family and government weren't just slapped in the face with apparent confidence that they would do nothing about it.
Ion straightened out his own formal clothes – black and white and royal pink, proudly bearing the golden symbol of ZOLON on his chest – and stepped away from the window just as something exploded far off in the distance, toppling a building. Well, it was perhaps unsurprising the Director wasn't moved by any of this. Her being like that is exactly why she got the position in the first place, after all.
Rather than a person, she felt more like an existence.
From the atmosphere alone, one could never guess that it was a family – and one supporting friend - meant to attend a wedding where the bride was murdered mere hours before the event, on her way to the capital. On some level it stung Ion a little, but he could hardly blame them. With how close-knit families of ZOLON were, how could they start considering Eva a part of theirs when almost nobody present even saw her in person? Things moved so fast due to circumstances than the only one who could be said to have known her was Adele, who was busy elsewhere and not part of the royal family besides.
Perhaps to them, even if it was a grave insult in public, here they were just glad they didn't have to give Ion away to a blood-soaked woman that would probably use him as a very expensive decoration to support her war – watch, but do not touch. And what would happen once that war was won?
He sat down by a table and poured himself a glass of orange juice, trying to drive gloomy thoughts away as the ashes continued to fall.
AVA-AVA-AVA
Time passed, and with it, brought change.
Cecilia Rosa Espinosa, a proud (theoretically) member of Jaburo's nobility and a lieutenant in Her Grace Evangelista Qasvah Jaburo's defence force, woke up with a startle on a couch inside the meeting room of ZOLON's embassy.
The first things she saw were the unhealthily pale skin and black sclera on the worried face of Princess Lumina-III-Zohar, the youngest of the guests, who was about to place a wet novel on her forehead. Noticing she woke up, the princess gave her a smile so brilliant Cecilia suddenly felt she needed sunglasses, and ran off with a wave.
Feeling too tired to even respond, the young lieutenant turned her head upwards, watching a slowly rotating fan that was long since obsoleted by proper Spacian air conditioning, seemingly left just for diplomats with hangover to stare at, and considered how she got to this point. God, she wished this was because she had a drink too many.
All her superiors left, supposedly to get a handle on the situation outside, but knowing them, a good half of them were already trying to get the first available seat on a shuttle to Toronto before anyone connected their names to what happened, leaving her stuck in Jaburo just because… well, no matter.
The ZOLON delegation was oddly casual about all this, but who even knows what those Spacians really think? Maybe that's just how things normally go up there. She'd have to ask her younger sister when she comes back from Helianthus. If she does.
Then that strange woman, eerily elegant and beautiful, like she was made from porcelain, came up to her with a gentle smile a wink and asked her if she'd like to play some Lexico to pass the time, now that the sun was setting. She accepted, expecting who even knows what after the stories she heard about Spacian women…
And then they really played Lexico! For eight hours non-stop! She did not even know Mongolian!
What sort of hellish pit did they dig that monster out of?!
She could barely recall getting scraped off of the ground by someone with – they didn't actually use a shovel, did they? They couldn't have – and then when she came to, she was in the infirmary with an IV drip hooked up to her, everything eye-searingly white – the walls, the furniture, the bed, the woman with forked tongue leaning over her, the giant serpent's tail surrounding the bed…
"Ah yes, that's Saria, she's our family doctor. Apparently you gave her quite the scare. You worried yourself sick!"
Then the shock knocked her right out, and she woke up on this- wait, what? Oh God, was she narrating all of this out loud?!
"You were! I was just bringing you some pudding to cheer you up!"
She looked down and saw Princess Lumina again, holding out a box of pudding towards her, this one apparently chocolate, the writing and the cute drawing of a cow on it proudly announcing that it was "made only with the finest space milk". What even was space milk?
Hm.
Tasted pretty great, though.
Cecilia slowly felt life pouring back into her body as the princess ran back to her sister, left to her thoughts. What sort of princess brings a lowly lieutenant pudding? When she first heard that Her Grace, God save her soul, was going to be marrying a Spacian mothman, she was twisting herself into knots with worry, but weird looks aside, they seemed a lot friendlier than she expected.
Wait, she was talking out loud earlier? Hold on, does that-
"ZOLON-DARK's lost property storage, seventh section, seventy first box."
Cecila turned her head to the side, coming face to face with Director Laevateinn, leaning on the back of the sofa and holding a frilly umbrella, her gentle smile not even slightly shaken or disturbed, voice even and pleasing to listen to, her other hand gently playing with her own fluffy side plait.
"I'm terribly sorry, but I've gotten in a mood for a little walk to stretch my legs, and if you wouldn't mind, lieutenant, could you be my local guide in Jaburo?"
But somehow, Cecilia was more terrified than she'd ever been before in her life.
AVA-AVA-AVA
It felt surreal, like something taken straight from a dream, and she could not wake up.
They walked past the garden, carefully tended to by local gardeners paid a dozen times what they would be anywhere else, past the mobile suits standing guard with their beam weapons and past the multi-legged infantry robots with their fully-automatic missile launchers, and then they were out, out the gates, and into the city that was slowly starting to consume itself, all the accumulated tension, pain and outrage uncoiling all at once, shredding anything in the way.
Jaburo was burning.
Cecilia wrapped herself in a coat and a hat they found in the embassy. It was ill-fitting, too large and too hot, but there was little more dangerous to wear on the streets of the city right now than a royal guard officer's uniform while alone. It was not supposed to be like this!
But it was.
Director Laevateinn, in turn, was strolling through the streets like nothing was wrong in the world, a snow-white ghost in an elaborate Spacian dress, playfully twirling her umbrella every now and then to the rhythm of distant gunfire and explosions as she walked past closed or outright ruined storefronts.
Once, she stopped before a seemingly random one, what Cecilia vaguely recalled as a dollmaker's shop from her own exploration of the capital. There were traces of a fire there, which did quite the number on the insides before being extinguished, half-scorched plush, wooden and porcelain dolls put back on the remaining unburned shelves. The reason for the attack was clear enough, humble portrayals of Her Grace, likely prepared in advance for the wedding celebrations, now thoroughly smashed up.
Laevateinn walked up to the sobbing owner and the two talked for a minute, too quietly for Cecilia to hear clearly. Then the Director motioned for her to come, and they walked away, a stunned expression on the man's moustached face as he was left with a travel pass and a mysterious black card, and the Spacian now carrying an equally mysterious bag.
"What was that about?"
"Hm. All the other stores selling celebratory goods I've seen on this trip only had items representing Evangelista and Ion, but he took the effort to prepare dolls of the others as well – even me, as it happens. So, I picked up some souvenirs at, let's say, a premium. It does not pay to be ungrateful, after all."
Cecilia wasn't sure how many nobles out there, in Jaburo or otherwise, would feel actual gratitude at seeing that someone made a plush doll of themselves. Surely the number wasn't zero, but she couldn't say she ever actually met one, and she was one.
AVA-AVA-AVA
The sound of screams – of anger, pain and political slogans of every variety that wasn't royalist – as well as the occasional sharp gunshot started to draw closer, as Cecilia realised that the Director was walking them almost straight into what could very charitably be called a vigorous protest, and less so a blood-soaked riot.
It was not an outright street battle, at least, one of the kind that the police was repeatedly losing to the point that last she heard the guard was considering the use of mobile suits – but that was a cold comfort for someone who was effectively one stronger gust of wind away from being lynched on the street and hung off the nearest lamppost with barbed wire.
Rioters and government suppression forces were clashing ahead of them, policemen using Spacian-manufactured riot shields and body armour to block thrown firebombs, rocks and blades, while the cold-eyed snipers of the royal guard were picking off what would later be labelled in the reports as "core instigators" or "Republican provocateurs", and to be fair as far as Cecilia knew it might even be true. There's no way whoever sent out those drones did not plan on fanning the flames of the protests afterwards, regardless of the human cost.
"Get the hell out of our nation!"
Turning her attention back towards her charge – was there anyone even left who'd care about it and hold her accountable if she just abandoned the monster woman? - she noticed the thrown firebomb from one of the smaller groups trailing behind the main event, too late to do anything but yell as it exploded, covering the Director in burning petrol. Was it thrown because she looked like a noble, or like a Spacian, and did it even matter?
"Huh?"
...not to the Director herself, as Cecilia noticed with a confused blink, the woman – still covered in flames – staring at the angry rioters facing her, wearing what seemed to be armbands of one of the capital's ever-changing socialist groups, with not even anger, but such pity and disappointment that the absurdity of the sight made them finally back off, coughing awkwardly and heading back to the frontlines, more confused than mad now. How are you even supposed to react to this?
The young lieutenant ran up to the still-burning official.
"Are you alright, Your Excellence?!"
The Director of ZOLON just shrugged, as if nothing was happening, her clothes not even singed.
"Cecilia Rosa Espinosa, I am the blade of Surtr. Did you really think I could get burnt?"
As she heard the neigh of a horse – a cavalry charge brewing, soldiers wielding sabers and clad in Spacian metal on horses made fearless by the Cobrastani battle brews imported from the besieged Siberia, ready to dash the whole lot apart – Cecilia decided to not think about this too deeply and for the first time on this walk took charge, redirecting the Spacian woman – still on fire – away from the maelstrom of blood and body parts that would soon erupt on the main street.
Right into a pair of thugs holding some poor woman at knifepoint, elaborate tattoos visible on their exposed skin. She wasn't part of the police or a noble or anything of the sort, just a poor bystander falling victim to something that inevitably happened during general collapses of order – criminal opportunists.
The Director walked past them as if they were air, fire still crackling merrily.
For a moment, the robbers could not decide if they've just seen a ghost or some other apparition, or just a lunatic driven mad by the fighting, the confusion letting the woman slip away, running like her life depended on it – which it probably did.
"H-hey! Don't you dare-"
But the momentarily overlooked Cecilia Rosa Espinosa was neither a ghost, a lunatic nor an apparition, as she grabbed the back of the thug's head and smashed it face-first into the brick wall at full force, then drove her elbow like a pile bunker into his neck with a sickening crunch. Before his companion could react and turn around, she kicked her in the back of the knee and grabbed the falling knife from the loosening fingers of the first, driving it into the second's ear hard enough to reach the hilt before she could even finish falling down.
Cold green eyes started down at two corpses as the royal guard wiped the few droplets of blood from her dark skin with a plain white handkerchief.
"Good work. I see your colonel's praise of your CQC skills was on point."
"...couldn't you have helped?"
Something disturbed Cecilia about this, a woman just seeing two people killed before her without so much as an eyeblink and then commenting on it with the pleased tone of a schoolteacher congratulating a student on a passed exam.
"I was summoned to this land for a joyous occasion. I would much rather not shed the blood of this city's people while I'm here. It'd be terribly improper."
As much as she didn't really expect an answer that would make sense by this point, perhaps she was right. The last thing that Jaburo needed right now was Spacian cyborgs killing people on the streets on a whim just because they were stronger. Even vultures.
They moved on, the cavalry charge in the back hitting its target. Cecilia had no desire to watch a scene like that. She certainly hoped Laevateinn didn't, either.
AVA-AVA-AVA
As they walked towards whatever destination the ZOLON Director was leading them towards – unless she really was taking a walk just to take in the sights of a city in flames – the sharp sounds of gunfire increased, battles growing ever more vicious and desperate.
Traditional firearms, Jaburo's world-famous machineguns, and even Spacian weapons that used to be in the hands of the royal guards and Condors but somehow started spreading around the rioters as well when it looked like the fighting was losing momentum – all sorts were represented, even the infamous ZOLON automatic missile launchers.
From their high observation point, they saw an outcome of what probably was some bright officer deciding to let rip with one into a protesting crowd. Cecilia was glad that she had nothing more substantial in her stomach than a pudding, but Laevateinn still had to grab her to stop her from slipping off when she started retching at the sight.
They were moving by the roofs now, after an explosion nearly toppled a building on them. As it was, it was only "nearly" because the Director herself reduced a chunk of wall the size of a car to pebbles using God knows what, shielding them from the incoming hail with her deceptively tough umbrella and winking at her again.
'Don't think I forgot what happened the last time you did that,' thought Cecilia, moments before being suddenly carried upwards onto a nearby building with a huge leap that cratered both the sidewalk and the red-tiled roof. It seems the sword of Surtr was terribly heavy, for she was not made of flesh.
They made small talk as they went, as if this really was a tourist being led on a walk by a local guide.
"So, Cecila. That's the name of the patron saint of music, isn't it?"
Now they just had to worry about armed rioters taking a shot at them; while she might have been in disguise herself, Cecilia was quite certain that police snipers wouldn't suddenly open fire on a ZOLON official, regardless of how baffling her presence up here was. The loss of discipline was real, but there hasn't been enough time for people to start losing their brains.
"...my parents always wanted me to be a pianist," she replied after a moment. There was no way a leader of a nation was so agonisingly bored she'd interrogate lieutenants to do the work of Vancouver's hounds for them.
The few times they encountered gaps that even her training would not let her cross, Laevateinn would pick her up in princess carry and bring her over. Normally, Cecilia would find the idea of a strong, beautiful lady carrying her around like a bride rather enticing, but somehow the person and the occasion soured the moment entirely.
"Oh? What happened?"
"War."
It certainly made her lose her sense of navigation and where they even were in the city now completely, as well.
Ahead, a fierce rooftop battle was emerging, a fortified police station under siege by heavily armed rioters, now slowly catching on fire even as machinegun fire raked the roofs and streets. Cecilia could see what seemed to be some rioter who got their hands on a Lohengramm assault cannon – the sheer size of the thing making it impossible to mistake for anything else in Jaburo – the recoil from firing it throwing both the woman and the gun off the roof even as it knocked a hole you could drive a car through into the station's walls.
Madness. Was this what the pain of war made the people do, the sheer resentment at what started the conflict, or was it something that was always boiling under the surface in the capital, in Jaburo itself? Just last week those people were living alongside each other and preparing to celebrate together, and now they were doing their very best to kill each other.
What would happen to the city when either side finally works up the determination to start bringing in mobile suits, wielding machineguns firing shells the size of destroyer cannons and worse?
"...are you going to try to rush through that, too?"
"Not at all, we're right where I needed us to be, actually. Forgive the little deception."
Wait, on second look, wasn't this building…?
AVA-AVA-AVA
Cecilia coughed as she fell out of the air duct that probably last saw cleaning years ago, a fortified royal guard safehouse meant for evacuating and hiding VIPs during high risk of assassination. Someone took the deaths of – almost – entire Jaburo royal family in the last revolution very seriously.
Laevateinn was already standing there, still unflappable, holding her somehow still-intact bag full of plushies like some kind of innocent tourist. Innocent tourist who did not just pull apart metal bars thicker than Cecilia's thumbs, meant to bar intruders from doing exactly this, even.
This whole section was underground, an expertly-furnished room that'd remain safe even if the entire building on top of it was shaved clean off with artillery, waiting for rescue when loyalist forces inevitably restore order, or at least an opportunity to escape if it turns out victory is a little less inevitable than anyone would like to admit.
"God, just let me never do this again. I'm a soldier, not a contortionist."
"Ah, dear Cecilia, as my good friend Franz would often say, 'do not call God's name in vain'. Doing that will just bring you bad luck, you know? Also, good morning, how do you do, Captain Gutiérrez."
Now she got upgraded to "dear Cecilia". Was this good? Bad? She didn't even want to guess by this point. Wait, what was that last part?
"So what do you want… me… to do…"
Words started dropping off when she finally started looking around the room and realised where they actually ended up.
The maid whimpering and hiding behind the sofa, another trying to bite back tears as she stands in front of a little girl, not-quite-bravely ready to take any bullets for her, a butler eyeing what was probably the alarm button and trying to edge close enough to it unnoticed to push it before getting shot. The two-meter cyborg in full uniform of the royal guard, wrapped in heavy armour and aiming at the intruders with a flak projector that would turn Cecilia into red mist before she could even blink at this range.
Wait. The little girl.
Barely eight years of age, green eyes and an orange bowl of hair, a dress worthy of a princess and of course what sort of royal guard would she be if she did not instantly recognise her after she was supposed to have debuted!
Angelica Qasvah Jaburo was right there, sitting in a chair far too big for her, eyeing them with a combination of confusion, curiosity and the royal poise that was pressed into her like one would press a chunk of coal into a diamond. But not fear.
"Wait, what? This- what- how-"
The last of Jaburo's royal family raised her hand just as Cecila kneeled before her princess in panic, movement so drilled in, it was almost subconscious.
"I was informed that you wanted to meet with me here, Director, but I admit, I thought you would use the door," the princess said, starting at the ghost-like Laevateinn and her travel bag with upside down Lan in her flightsuit-dress sticking out, shaking the dust off herself, with childish wonder, like she was seeing some sort of exotic animal that just walked in, true feelings showing through a crack in the mask for just a moment.
The cyborg woman just laughed, the sound oddly reminding Cecilia of glass breaking.
"Forgive me, Your Grace, theatrics have always been bit of a personal weakness of mine, and I wanted to ask you a certain question without anyone else getting in the way. This includes you, dear Cecilia, I'm sorry. And you, Captain Gutiérrez. Your wife and daughter are doing fine, by the way."
With another motion and some hushed whispers exchanged, the servants and the royal guards – one extremely confused and the other equally hesitant – moved out of the room one after another, not really calmed down, but at least no longer shocked by the sudden intrusion.
"As for your job, I would request you to make sure that nobody enters while we talk. Nobody."
When Cecilia passed by Laevateinn, the Director put her hand on Cecilia's shoulder, feeling more like a bear's than a woman's, winking at her for the third time as she put a blocky handgun into the soldier's hand, not of any ZOLON model that she knew of and bearing a marking she didn't recognise. The familiar feeling of a weapon jolted the royal guard officer from her momentary stupor.
"I'm not going to shoot them!"
"Just think of it as a morale booster for now."
AVA-AVA-AVA
After a couple minutes – and Cecilia coming back to grab the tea set, muttering something about her career being probably over anyways – the two ended up alone with each other.
The Director of ZOLON, calmly setting out a box of chocolate pudding on the magnificently-crafted wooden table, carefully positioning the silver spoon as per the etiquette as if she had no care in the world.
The Princess of Jaburo, the last surviving member of its royal family and its heir, thrust into her role way too early and currently separated from her mother, trying to do her best, seeing a well-trained pattern and easing herself into it. Can't look too curious, can't ask too many questions, no matter how much a child might want to. She is, after all, the very model of a princess.
She wouldn't want to disappoint Eva.
"Again, apologies for the manner of doing this. I wanted to talk to you in more official capacity, but that hasn't been working out terribly well as of recent."
Laevateinn opened the pudding box and encouraged the child – currently also wondering what "space milk" was but desperately trying not to ask – to give it a try.
"I only have one question – what do you want?"
"...what?", the princess asked, freezing up as facade shatters with the spoon embedded halfway into the dessert, feeling growing panic at a question none of her training prepared her to answer.
"I wield the power to decide the fate of this nation, young Princess Angelica, and I despise people forcing others to expend themselves for their benefit and convenience. So I want to know what you – not Princess Evangelista, not Grand Marshal Eleision, not all the knights, the generals and the ministers, not King James, but you, Angelica Qasvah Jaburo, wants from your life and your future."
"W-why, then? I'm sure ZOLON has some preferred outcome. Everyone does."
The child forced to grow up far too fast and far too alone tried returning to the patterns of speaking her teachers taught her, her voice only slightly shaking.
"Because Ion might have actually loved Eva, and because once upon a time when I thought I was stuck on a track with only one possible ending by someone else's will, I was saved myself. So I want you to have at least a chance, Angelica. The Seraphim might have taken away the chance to grow in age and experience before having to decide from you, but they have not taken away your heart. Feel free to think it over. Whatever you decide on, I will try to help you see it through."
She extends a hand towards her, hand that Angelica suddenly feels looks strangely like a skeleton's.
But since that terrible morning of 5th October, when she was hidden here out of fear whoever killed Eva would want to finish the job of turning the Jaburo royal family into history, Angelica had nothing but time to think.
"I-"
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