NOVEL NEXT PROLOGUE: Truths Hard Sold
A cold, dead body slammed the floor. The holographic array displaying the whole meeting room fizzled slightly. Blood oozed from their wound. Emiya Taka-Calibana knew the cost of everything.
The Under-senate session this week was more brutal than what Emiya expected, but he was used to it by this point.
Tit for Tat. Skin in the game, and a player and piece within the industry.
Emiya Taka-Calibana, Second of the Seven Mercenaries & Head of the Bounty's Collection Administration, sat idly in his office, though the holograms of the under-senate meeting were… flavourful, to say the least.
Another body dropped dead as they were dragged away.
In one of his hands, Emiya played with a celestial crystal, akin to the essence of a star-god used in the creation of so many brooch gems. It hummed with power… trickling into Emiya's exoskeleton and beneath his armour before he clenched it, hiding it and sliding it into a pouch connected to his auxiliary exoskeleton systems… feeling his Ironstar legion grow stronger with each passing second connected to the power shard.
'Our Contract-Breaker must pay!' The agenda was handed down by the holograms. Senator Ílize grunted. 'How many victories will you give him until you realise he requires… our direct intervention.'
The lights were dead, and the reflective filters activated. Clapping his hands together.
'Cardinal,' another person started, raising their hand as they began to speak. Ah, it was a famous diplomat… One of the Castlereighs. 'I must implore us to remember that it was the irk Obadiah that had brought this upon himself.'
'Ah, yes, and he will pay for his severance,' Ílize snorted, before tracking the Lord Castlereigh's movements, silencing the diplomat, dressed in robes and hidden by a mask, the same as many in the room. 'My fellows, my peers, my Cardinals, we will have justice… We will have our order, be it the Contract-Breaker's head on a spike or not…'
The holographic vision displayed a room closer akin to an esoteric chamber, if Emiya was to be honest, with numerous floating chairs, pods and seated individuals – close and far along the walls.
It was a makeshift senate… Except here, things got done. Emiya and the rest had their masks on, hiding their identities – as if that did anything.
Emiya wore a blue-trunked Ugiphant mask, native to his homeworld of Mithradati, even if Belsaran blood ran through his veins. In the central column of shadowed chairs hung high one individual. The holographic relay made it clear that some were… present in the meeting chambers.
Others, like Emiya, were distant, but had to be kept up to date. Director Hamzarhi of the CRIS was close by, as was Second Consul Lorenza…
The central man himself slowly arose. Senator Maximillian Ílize, an old man, looked kindly and gently. But beneath that thin smile was a cold, cruel and vicious tyrant.
With a single gesture of his hands, two guards came into the holographic reel, throwing a man to the floor, well-suited and wearing a Senatorial cloak.
'Maximillian?!' he shrieked. 'What is the meaning of this?! I have been loyal, faithful to our order!'
The others in the holographic chamber were silent. No one wanted to get on the Senator's bad side.
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Many in the room were players in the grand game. Others were pawn… Either way, they were tools, and that made them guilty all the same…
Rias Endomiya, a 'thrall' of sorts to the regime, was nestled beside the disgraced business magnate. She was a Board of Director for the High Table Exclusive… and her other board members sold her out to slave away as the front-line trooper in a cut-throat Republican cabal…
Emiya's eyes ignored the debacle, taking in the opinion of Xavier Pellot, a slimy representative of the Linked-Star Banking Conglomerate… Emiya knew that Xavier had no care for this, and was merely here for his ends…
Just like Emiya.
'You have betrayed us all…' Ílize said, standing up. Drones formed the stairway as the Senator walked down his throne's way, staring down at his peer.
The other Senator looked back at his guards. 'You will protect me!' he demanded.
The guards' silence sealed this fool's fate, much like how the idiot Obadah sealed his fate… By ever shaking hands with similar players.
Emiya sighed, placing his head in his hands as she tilted his head. This was just going to be the regular meeting… an execution to create fear… and reports – endless reports.
'You sent information to the First Consul. He is not a part of our… intelligencia,' Senator Ílize commented. 'Take him away…'
With that, the guards dragged the man, screaming and begging, away and out of the holographic field.
Ílize rose once again, before sitting down upon his throne again.
Second Consul Lorenza sneered, 'The First Consul is nothing to us!' She wore a boar's mask.
'Nothing to us…' Hamzarhi replied. 'Everything to you.' The Intelligence Director had a pale, white masked-ball facemask on, hiding his eyes.
Senator Ílize agreed, it seemed. 'The Marquis Gilbera de Fer-Charelota is a host unto himself. A threat as long as he can write and speak… He is aware of an existence… but not our existence. Time may come for him to die.'
Emiya sighed. He didn't want the Marquis dead… not now at least, Gilbera seemed to be an interesting person – one that Emiya may be able to use… to topple the throne from within. Emiya kept his eyes on the throne, glaring at it before it rotated to reveal the Senator.
'The Marquis is no true threat to us,' Emiya remarked. 'We shouldn't kill him, that man does have your little Contract-Breaker problem on a tight leash.'
'Don't you mean your problem, Taka-Caliabana?' Senator Ílize sneered back, wearing his signature Leviathan mask, showing the true face of the smiling old man.
Emiya remained silent, not wishing to outshine the star… For it is the tallest tree that is felled first, and Emiya… must grow steadily, his roots must be planted, before he can fell his peers.
'Of course, your Seal, I will keep a close eye on the pair of them, then,' Emiya volunteered – and that was that.
Good… If Someone like Hamzarhi were given the task of monitoring the Contract-Breaker, it'd probably lead to bloodshed. Emiya, on the other hand, wanted to keep things calm, for but a moment.
'But something must be done!' Senator Ílize croaked loudly. 'He has wrought chaos unto our order, our order and stability that we have BLED for. Obadiah, your fellow cardinal. He must be avenged. He must be dealt with… and swiftly… Second of the Seven Mercenaries, I charge you with this task.'
'I cannot.' The answer was swift, but caught the ire and eyes of every Cardinal in the conclave chamber. 'You ask for stability and chaos, I cannot provide both. But if it is the wish to destroy the little Prince – so be it!'
Such a brilliant move, Emiya pondered. Kazuki was an artist after all… comforting the disturbed, robbed of justice. Disturbing the comfortable, unjust and gluttonous…
Emiya took in a deep breath, weighing the odds on his fingers to himself… What to do, what to do? Sacrifice, it was all that was left. Bad asset for a good one? A trade? No… Perhaps?
Defying Ílize was a death sentence… but the 'honoured' Senator wanted peace, stability… Assassination. No. Emiya was not providing that; Emiya needed noise – chaos.
And chaos… so there shall be.
'Then the die is cast,' General Lars noted, wearing his Yamikoi attire.
So the die is cast… Emiya thought.