Paris; near the Place Denfert-Rochereau in the Quatorzième Arrondissement (local time: 2:38 PM)…
"Thank you for agreeing to see us right away, Remy."
A hearty chuckle from the silver-haired man behind his desk. "A request from Noir for consultation on a sanction — especially one requested by the Earth Angel herself — is something that is not to be ignored even if there is other business facing me, Mireille," Remy Brefford stated as he took Mireille's hand in his own and gave it a courtly kiss. He did the same with Chloe, though he simply gave Kirika a deep bow of respect per her culture's own traditions. He then perked before smiling on seeing the six other young women who had come here today. "Oh, my! You're here, too?!"
Angelica giggled before she presented him a wrapped cake. "Here's a little something to spice up your dinner this evening, M'sieur Brefford."
Remy blinked, and then he bowed his head. "I accept such a present with heartfelt thanks, Mademoiselle Toni. Come, everyone! Sit down and relax! Gisella!"
A side door then opened to reveal a smiling woman in a proper business suit. Gazing on her, Mireille and Kirika were quick to recognise her as one of the "nuns" Altena had employed to try to strike down the pair during the final trial at the Manor of the Soldiers four years before. "Oui, M'sieur?" she asked.
"Some tea for our guests," Remy ordered.
"Oui, M'sieur!" And with a pained look at Kirika and Chloe, she left.
Remy was quick to notice, as were all the women present. "Why is she so upset?" Elsa da Sica asked as she sat down beside Claes Johansson. "She looked at Kirika and Chloe as if they were the very spawns of the Devil themselves."
"Because in her eyes, Mademoiselle da Sica — in fact, in the eyes of all those who once served directly under Altena — the final trial Kirika and Mireille (and Chloe as well) underwent was defamed because of the Earth Angel's interference. Her giving Mireille and Kirika the alien Lawgiver weapons to use in lieu of their normal pistols when they faced the gauntlet of Altena's assistants at the Manor," Remy explained as Gisella returned with a tea set and cups. Again, everyone was quick to sense the mixture of confusion and revulsion Gisella felt standing in the presence of the three saplings of Noir, who had been all sanctioned as the True Noir four years ago. Fortunately for her, she was quick to serve the tea and depart without incident.
"I see your point," Triela Hilshire noted. "She thinks something really evil's going to come out of the fact that there are THREE people claiming the title of Noir and not two." She then gazed at her host. "Surprises me that you and your friends on the Council of les Soldats agreed to the Lady Moroboshi's suggestion concerning Mireille, Kirika and Chloe, M'sieur. After all, your organisation was founded on ancient beliefs and traditions that had served you for over a millennium."
A nod. "You're quite correct, Mademoiselle Hilshire. It was, at first, quite odd to consider the concept of three people claiming the title of Noir in lieu of two. But the Earth Angel made a very powerful argument concerning the true abilities of Noir and how they are to be used in this day and age." Remy then smirked. "Besides, I must confess, it was quite enjoyable to see the look on Altena's face when Kirika refused to kill her no matter how much she tried to provoke her into doing that."
"She is behaving herself, I hope," Mireille stated.
A nod. "As it was arranged. Now, to business. What sort of sanction does the Earth Angel require from you?" Remy then nodded thanks as Mireille handed him an envelope. Opening it, he then gazed on the printed pages there. "Joseph Greer…" he began before his eyes widened as one paragraph of information leapt off the page to snare his attention. "The Searrs Foundation? Ah, I see…" he then breathed out.
"I personally find it disgusting that a scientist is pretending to be a priest of all things at a boarding school," Mireille stated. "You're as Catholic as I am, Remy. And you'll note the bottom paragraph of that page I printed out."
He blinked, and then looked down before his jaw dropped. "Sanctioned by…?" On seeing the Corsican nod, he then breathed out. "Then we MUST do this, regardless of the consequences," the Soldats councilman stated. "And they might be severe…"
"I've always known that les Soldats and the Foundation have often been at each other's throats over the last thousand years, especially the last four centuries," Mireille stated. "I've never understood why, though."
"Easily explained," Remy stated before he sipped his tea. "Our organisations were founded at roughly the same time during the age of Charlemagne right after his crowning as Imperator Romanorum by the Holy Father. In villages not so far apart from each other in what today is known as Baden-Württemberg, near modern-day Lahr on the east bank of the Rhine." A sigh. "You are all aware of the various magical societies that live alongside us, hidden from normal view for the most part due to their desire to be left alone and not have any cultural or social dealings with normal society?"
Everyone nodded. "Many young witches here in Europe have become Avalonians over the last five years," Kirika reported. "A lot of those are forming very powerful 'covens' that, once they seize the reins of power, will no doubt allow their societies to survive the transition between isolation and open acceptance — the final removal of the Statue of Wizarding Secrecy — with as little difficulty and pain as possible."
"And I hope people like Harri Evans succeed," Remy noted. "It wasn't always like that, of course. Back in Charlemange's day, wizards interacted quite openly with normals. For the most part, they were normal people, just gifted with a remarkable power to manipulate the forces of magic — the Te'a, to borrow the term you Avalonians use — to their own will. But as with all things human, there were those who embraced evil with great relish. Dark lords like this Voldemort fellow Mademoiselle Evans must now contend with in Britain." He closed his eyes. "It was one such dark lord — a distant relative of Theudebald, the last Duke of Alamannia during the Merovingian Dynasty — who destroyed the villages whose survivors eventually formed les Soldats…"
"And the Searrs Foundation," Kirika added.
A nod. "Indeed. While we were originally set on the same goal — to find a way to bring peace to the land and put an end to wizarding dark lords — our approach to the problem took radically different directions. We, of course, researched the means by which we could create Noir, two maidens blessed by the Archangel Michael himself to be the Mistresses of Death. It was the original Noir that dealt with the dark lord I mentioned earlier. And with the elimination of other wizarding dark lords haunting the Carolingian Empire at that time, that prompted the rulers of the day to form 'wizarding councils' that would directly govern those blessed with magic so that relations between the magical and the normal would, as best as possible, remain peaceful."
"What was the Foundation's approach to that problem?" Triela asked.
A sigh. "They decided that it would be best to find some power they could use that would overwhelm the advantage magic gave wizards," Remy explained. "They believed — and as you can all confirm — that magic in and of itself was only part of the greater sum of Existence as a whole. Thus, they set forth to find ways to learn everything that was learnable. Not allow local superstitions to overcome them with fear but to guide them to the truth of phenomena that, to this day, remains unexplainable by scientific method." He tapped the papers Mireille gave him. "That is what is leading them now to probe the possibility of mastering the powers welded by the Princesses of the HiME Star — or 'HiME' for short — now attending the Fūka Academy in Japan."
"'Princesses of the Princess Star?'" Henrietta Croce asked.
"In that case, the word 'hime' as written in Roman script is an English acronym meaning 'Highly Advanced Materialising Equipment,'" Remy explained. "In essence, they're a form of psychokinetic metahuman that can manipulate the energies flowing through a breach between our dimension and a pocket dimension linked to Fūka Island, where the Academy is located, to create combat 'elements' that would allow them to fight with skill and power that would overwhelm even Voldemort himself if they were trained properly. What's more, they would then inherit the ability to command a being known as a 'child,' which is native to this pocket dimension, to aid them in battle."
"Like wizards commanding a dragon, you mean?" Mireille mused.
"Exactly. Furthermore, it is know that there is a human-level sentience native to this pocket dimension calling himself the 'Obsidian Lord.' He wishes — according to what we have learned — to control all the power within his dimension as represented by these 'Childs,' then use that power to spread his domain all across Earth."
"Something that should be handled by the Earth Defence Force," Kirika noted.
"Perhaps. However, this would interest the Searrs Foundation as they, over the years — especially after the Statue of Secrecy went into effect in 1689 and wizards as a whole retreated from normal society to form their own private enclaves worldwide — have modified their goals to seek out and create a 'golden millennium' by which all humans can live in peace and harmony. With them as leaders, of course."
"No different than Hitler and his 'thousand year Reich,' you mean?" Mireille asked.
A shake of the head. "No different," Remy stated. "No doubt, on learning of the Obsidian Lord, Searrs and his people decided the best thing to do was to allow the HiME Festival — when all chosen HiME would fight for dominance, with only one winner at the end commanding the most powerful of the Childs — to occur, but then influence the event to their favour, then offer the surviving HiME to the Obsidian Lord."
"Thus, they'd become the 'power behind the throne,'" Claes concluded.
"Exactly."
Silence fell as the women there considered that, and then Mireille reached over to take up the pages to scan through them. "So this Greer fellow is the Foundation's agent monitoring things on Fūka now," the Corsican mused as she scanned through the information there. "What could happen if we sanction him?"
Remy sighed. "Most likely, the Foundation will react quite overtly to being 'blinded' like that. We know that Greer created a special combat android — known properly as the 'Multiple Intelligential Yggdrasil Unit' and currently posing as his adopted daughter, Miyu Greer — for the Foundation's use; she currently attends the Academy as a high school student. John Searrs' own daughter, Alyssa — we're not sure if she is his real daughter or an adopted one — is also at the Academy in the elementary grades. I'm sure you can carry out the mission without implicating us, but we have to keep in mind that this Academy has a thousand innocent students from ages six to eighteen currently attending the school, not to mention whatever staff might be there that aren't HiMEs themselves. Do you wish to see them caught in a crossfire?"
"No," Mireille stated, shaking her head. It was not only unprofessional, it would totally darken all the new goals she and Kirika had set for themselves as the current generation of Noir. "We'll have to do some more research. Find out if there are Avalonians currently attending this Academy and see if we can garnish their help as our own eyes and ears before we head in ourselves." A sigh. "And for that, we need to head upstairs for a while. So, if you'll excuse us, Remy…"
He nodded. "Please keep us informed," Remy asked.
"Of course."
In orbit over Paris (local time: 3:29 PM)…
When the French armed forces created the Armée d'Espace Extérieur — literally, the Army of Outer Space, though it was often known as the French Republic Space Navy — it elected to go all-out when it came to creating the necessary support bases to support a fleet they intended to be as powerful as possible. Thus, unlike their Canadian, German and British allies (and more in line with what the Americans, the Russians, the Indians and the Chinese had done), the French commissioned one central base for command and control purposes (in orbit over Paris) and a total of SIX fleet bases (in orbit over Toulon on the Mediterranean coast; Brest on the western tip of the Brittany peninsula; Cherbourg-Octeville on the English Channel coast on the northern tip of the Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy; Djibouti, covering the southern end of the Red Sea near the Horn of Africa in support of France's obligations to its current and former colonies in Africa and the Indian Ocean; Cayenne in French Guiana, which protected the Republic's largest land colony and helped support the European Space Agency activities there; and Papeete on Tahiti, which helped shielded all of France's far-flung Pacific colonies).
And while the French Space Navy was quite large in proportion to the population it was sworn to serve (France had its full treaty compliment of six star battleships [the Richelieu class] and six space aircraft carriers [the Joffre class]), it often drew snickers from their counterparts in the American, Chinese and Indian space services since well over seventy percent of the full-time regular force personnel were Avalonians. The French, of course, simply shrugged at their counterparts' scathing words and stated quite proudly that they were at least willing to trust the newly adopted daughters of the Fifth Republic to do what they had promised to do when they fled to Earth five years before (which was certainly what the Chinese People's Liberation Army-Space Navy and the Indian Navy's Space Command were NOT ready to do with the Avalonians living amongst them, which numbered less than ten percent of regular force personnel and only served in a technical advisory role).
France's central space base over Paris was known officially as the Central Outer Space Army Command Base, though it was nicknamed la Royale d'Espace in reflection to the headquarters of the surface navy on the Rue Royale in Paris' Huitième Arrondissement. Currently, the base hummed with activity as the command staff there were in the midst of coordinating a massive planetary defence exercise involving all the main combat forces preparing for a sudden attack from the direction of the Phentax system (even if the Niphentaxian Navy had been effectively crippled five years before, the forces of that particular world were seen as the Primary Enemy by most E.D.F. groups). While this was happening, of course, standard and non-standard administrative work was ongoing as the exercise was pretty much being done in simulation.
Case in point: the Central Communications and Information Complex.
Located in the very heart of la Royale, the CCIC was the domain of the Outer Space Army's current chief of intelligence, Contre-amiral Caroline Bouvet de Maisonneuve, the senior-ranking Avalonian in French military service. She was currently hosting the three members of Noir and the six former Italian Social Welfare Agency warriors in her private office as one of her staff officers, a smiling maître principal who was very good with computers and an insanely-fast typist, was preparing the list of known sisters currently attending the Fûka Academy. "So you've been asked by Lady Negako to kill this man, correct?" Caroline — who looked very much like a red-haired version of Mireille except that her French was proper Parisian in lieu of being heavily influenced by the tones of Corsica — asked as she gazed on the picture of Joseph Greer.
"We have, but please, Carol, don't pass it around," Mireille said as she winked at the other woman. "You know the capabilities of the Searrs Foundation?"
"Unfortunately so," Caroline hissed. "François raves about them all the time." That was the current Chief of Staff of the French Navy and Caroline's top military boss. "One decommissioned upgraded British Majestic-class light fleet carrier, the former H.M.C.S. Bonaventure, which the Foundation saved from scrapping in Taiwan when no one else was looking. They claim the ship was built on its own and is used more or less as a support base for their humanitarian efforts." A snort. "Amazing how many people are willing to accept such lies." She sighed. "Escorted by five decommissioned destroyers, all former American Fletcher-class ships. Of course, no visible armaments on any of them, but it's easy to hide missile launchers on these ships. Scans taken from Richelieu when she was on trials two years ago showed them to be possessing quite the arsenal." She then tapped another screen before her. "Until recently, they were supported by land bases and decommissioned oil rigs scattered across the planet in remote locations, away from major shipping routes. These days, they're a lot more mobile; they just acquired a support ship, the former U.S.S. Sacramento, which was decommissioned some years ago and saved from scrapping very recently. This allows them to remain at sea for a lot longer period of time as all vessels have been converted to nuclear fusion technology to extend their range and save up on fuel costs."
"Fusion?!" Claes asked. "That's impossible! Fusion technology hasn't been properly prepared for civilian OR military use outside the E.D.F."
Caroline smiled. "The Foundation does have its own private research groups."
"Oh, joy! Any surprise we might be in for?" Mireille breathed out.
"Save for the android that poses as your target's daughter, no," the French officer stated as she sat down at her desk. "We believe there might be something they may have put into orbit recently, but we're not sure exactly what it is. If it might be linked to these events in Fûka you warned me about, then we won't be able to take any deep scans without offending the leadership of the J.S.S.D.F. I would suggest speaking to Lady Negako when you get over there, learn what she knows about events there."
"Already planning on it," Mireille noted.
"Mon amiral?!"
Caroline jolted before she sent the smiling staff officer gazing at her an annoyed look. "Dans la Marine, il y a Mon Dieu et mon cul, pas mon amiral!" she spat out, which made everyone laugh, and then she moaned. "What is it, Simone?"
Simone du Casse handed a PADD over, a grin on her face; she always loved to rile up her boss whenever she could get away with it. "The list of our sisters at Fūka. There's a new one that just joined them, Mademoiselle Haruka Suzushiro; she's listed at the bottom. She just was converted two days ago. She is the daughter of the chairman of one of Japan's largest keiretsu that currently support their expansion into space and the construction of the Space Self-Defence Forces." She then paused. "You'll note the names marked with asterisks, Caroline." Caroline always was willing to relax the ranks when her group were alone or with sisters. "All of them are identified as HiMEs."
Caroline and Mireille looked down the list. "Okay, so we'll have allies, too," the latter then mused. "Well, let's get prepared to head over."
The former stared at her, and then gazed on the former Italian special operations cyborgs. "Are you taking them as well?" she asked.
"No!" Mireille instantly stated.
"Yes!" Triela snapped.
"Triela!"
"Forget it, Mireille!" the Tunisian teenager stated. "We said it the day we met you and the A-Team when we all went out to deal with Josephine's father and his friends: We will ALWAYS have your back!" She then smirked as she gazed on Angelica. "Besides, if you get hurt, who the hell will Angelica give her wine-cream cakes to?!"
Mireille moaned as Kirika and Chloe laughed while we now…
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