Empress

January 13th, 2003 - Tokyo - Yamato Empire

What was 'the Empress' really?

Yukikaze often asked this question of herself. Was she the greatest leader, the greatest commander, like Mikasa had been? Was she the strongest, the most powerful, and the most ruthless, like Yamato was? Or, was she simply a lucky shipgirl who happened to be born into the Imperial Family, like Musashi?

Fifty years ago, when she had been Mikasa's right hand and the captain of her guard, back when Yamato was just another battleship, and Mikasa was still Empress, Yukikaze hadn't had that question. In her mind, it only made sense that Mikasa would be the Empress. After all, she had been Empress for the entirety her life. It didn't occur to her that anything could be different. Even if it had, she still would have thought that Mikasa should be the Empress. She was an excellent commander, and, more importantly, she was the only surviving Yamato shipgirl created by a builder.

When Yamato had approached her, she was already known as a hero of the frontline. While the Singularity supposedly prevented war, in reality, all it did was prevent shipgirls from being able to attack each other. Conflicts still happened, but they were mostly shipgirls bombarding unguarded islands, and small groups of elite marines infiltrating dockyards and opening the path for their own shipgirls to occupy them. Back then, the Empire was at war with the Communist Union, and Yamato had made a name for herself for defending islands against enemy infiltration attempts and attacking Communist islands.

She had asked Yukikaze what she thought of the Empress. They had talked, and Yukikaze was surprised to find that she found it interesting. Up until that point, only Mikasa had ever managed to engage her. Because of this, Yukikaze believed maybe Yamato could also be the Empress. She joined Yamato's guard in secret, and laid the groundwork for a silent revolution. In the end, she held a gun to Mikasa's head when Yamato forced her to abdicate the throne. 

The public was told that Mikasa had fallen ill and appointed Yamato as her successor. In reality, she and her guards were kept imprisoned on a small island near Tokyo. Yukikaze oversaw their captivity, and spent the next few years doing Yamato's dirty work along with her sisters, cementing the new dynasty. 

But it got boring.

Once things had calmed down, she found that being in Yamato's guard was no longer interesting. Using her position as the overseer of the island that was Mikasa's prison, she began to talk to her. The novelty of it, the knowledge that she had now betrayed both of her Empresses, caused her to become engaged again. But, once again, after several years of interesting events, she grew bored. She had almost given up on ever being engaged in her life. Her two previous masters had grown boring, and the only interesting thing left for her was to play on both sides of the board, carrying out orders from both Mikasa and Yamato. Then, she met her third master.

***

The gardens were beautiful this time of year. A layer of snow, only a few inches thick, covered the ground. The trees were dusted in glistening white powder, and the ponds had frozen over. It was cold, even inside the garden house. Musashi sat on a tatami mat, sipping a cup of warm tea. A destroyer, Isokaze, knelt in front of her, her head bowed. She had been like this for several minutes now, waiting for Musashi to acknowledge her presence.

Officially, she was Musashi’s guard. In reality, she was a member of Yamato’s guard who was assigned to observe her this week. Musashi was, as the woman who would be the next Empress, a valuable asset. For her protection, she was kept under house arrest in the Winter Garden, the largest garden in the palace. It was beautiful at this time of year, but nothing was ever planted for the other seasons, leaving it rather decrepit the rest of the year.

The house- she refused to think of it as hers; she knew that her sister Yamato could take it from her on a whim- was rather small, with two floors, and rooms for five people, in addition to the common room where she sat. No one else lived here, even the guards spent the night in the palace by the side of their Empress. Making the guards wait, like she was doing with Isokaze, was one of the few ways that she rebelled against her sister’s control.

She glanced at the dark wood grandfather clock in the corner of the room, a gift from some foreign diplomat. It had been ten minutes now. That was enough.

It was one thing to do this with Yahagi, after all, she had some inflated sense of unearned self-importance that made you want to punch her in the face, as she became visibly impatient and frustrated within a minute in a rather amusing way. With the Kagerō-class destroyers though, it was a different story. They were all emotionally detached to the degree of lifelessness. Each one had a different trigger that gave her a sense of life. Having them sit in place for a few minutes would have no effect on them. If anything, Isokaze might stay there until she starved if Musashi didn’t give her something to do.

“What is it, Isokaze?” She asked, her tone bored.

“I have come to report the arrival of my replacement. Yukikaze has returned from her foray to the front lines.”

With that, not even waiting for Musashi to acknowledge her, she stood and left.

After exchanging a few words with her sister, Yukikaze stepped into the room. She knelt quietly in front of Musashi, but she kept her head raised. Her cold blue eyes shone from under the veil of her snow white hair, seeming to pierce through Musashi’s soul. It was as if every word, every action, every thought was dissected by her gaze. It was no wonder that she was considered the most unsettling of her sisters.

Where her sisters were cold, she was freezing. Where her sisters were intelligent, she was cruel and calculating. There were some who believed that she ran the Empire from the shadows, changing the Empress from Mikasa to Yamato as nothing but a ploy to maintain control of the country in the changing political climate.

Musashi knew that this wasn’t the case, for the sole reason that Yukikaze would be too bored to do that. She was an adrenaline junky, something that both Mikasa and Yamato had failed to understand, and that was why she would betray both of them. She had been doing Musashi’s business for years. The war with Westaria had pushed her plans forward several years, allowing her to make far more aggressive moves, and she was almost ready to overthrow her sister.