Tactical Espionage Expert

An LLS Production

Prologue: Swordsman from a Distant Land

I wasn't always like this.

The words hung in the air as I laid on a mink-lined couch. Across from me, the Mind on Air attempted to make a small note that I read upside down, despite that no written record was supposed to exist. If I imagined strongly enough, perhaps the words would take solid form and I could make her use the frost to write them upon her flesh.

"We are not the people we often believe we are, ma'am," the Mind on Air commented.

"We do not pay for pedantry," I warned.

The Duel Spirit shrunk back. "I must say, it's not often that I... I am given royal appointment. Ma'am."

My anger did not appease itself. "In the mortal world, there is a saying: Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. I find it difficult to express myself; half-truths dog my paths within the Courts of Winter. Today we are here, because I find myself losing trust in my faithful retainer Dewloren despite our common ground." I paused. "It has been since my fourteenth summer that I began to lose trust in Winter's majordomo. Perhaps that was also the catalyst of my change."

"What happened then?" she nearly flinched as the Winter Queen's mantle of power seemed to stir.

I stayed silent, before I started. "We went to London."

The June that she arrived in London, it snowed.

An Aston Martin DBS was parked, the vintage automobile parked in place somewhere around of London's Heathrow Airport. A cold, fog-laden wind blew, bringing the heavy downpours of rain so familiar to England's capital. Squatting on top of a roof, a blond man yawned, stifling the gesture in a half-hearted manner.

A car rolled down.

It was black, unmarked, and so nondescript as to be suspicious. The TX4 narrowly escaped having its wheels shot off of the tunnel road because of a bored secret agent. Neither agent nor automobile should have noticed, was it not that the car stopped at the road shoulder.

The window rolled open, and from within the dark confines, a slim, black-clad arm poked out. The fingers were small, well-formed, clearly not fully grown. One finger made a pointing gesture.

Said agent, peering through the scope attached on his rifle, had the feeling that the owner of that arm was gesturing to him. The hand made another gesture, and then a small wave that had nothing innocent of meaning and everything to do with a vague warning, before it withdrew back into the confines of the car. The glossy polymer rolled back up, and the car rolled away with its triple-glaze armour intact, leaving the agent of MI6 stunned, soaked, and rapidly getting colder as the downpour froze, and rain became half-frozen pellets of hail.

"We arrived in Heathrow International Airport without the knowledge of Cheryl Madison, then," I continued. "We were not even supposed to stop within the United Kingdom in the first place; Paris, the land of my parents' romantic honeymoon destination, was our destination to ensure the continued running of the French arm of the European Arcadia Movement. It would be by complete coincidence that I would find myself and my guardians landing there."

"The humans survived Winter's wrath?" my psychologist questioned.

"The Winter Queen..." I slowly admitted. "She dwells in my bones, blood and spirit, but no, we held fast. It is for that reason that you see an adult, and not a child crowned as Queen."

"And you had no entourage?"

"The butler," I admitted. "Raiho is an able butler, but we find Nakamura Iemitsu to be the most loyal of creatures. Were it not that my estranged cousin holding the larger claim to his service and loyalty, I would imagine that I would have made special provision for him within Our Court. He promised that I could buy my weight in tea when I made my objections clear. Another member was James Crocodile Cook the Second. It was only with these two men that I arrived, to attend to the man who would be crowned in Summer and his father."

She paused. "You and your consort assisted Winter's enemy, ma'am?"

"We were uneasy allies then," I confessed. "I did not know that he would be Summer's vessel, but it made everything laid out perfectly for my final gambit as a human being to escape the curse of Winter. Know nothing else, save that it failed."

"Of course, ma'am."

"James held my hand and led me to the Customs and Excise counter," I reminisced. "We declared nothing, but I brought a suitcase of cards along. His dark eyes crinkling in amusement, and I remember a desire to inflict violence upon his person. His amusement gave me a warm feeling that I had made someone smile. I had not made anyone smile since my family shattered and I made the contract that awakened Winter's Queen."

"Do you regret?" the Mind on Air questioned. She immediately shrank back later, though.

"...is there a point?"

"Oh, hello," the Customs officer mentioned once it was my turn to exit the queue and have my passport stamped. "First time in London, sweetie?"

Somewhere behind the desk, a lamp flickered. The insipid species of woman seemed not to have noticed the difference in temperature in the air. "Well now, don't be shy. Passport?"

The girl in black slid the documents over. A passing surveillance camera ceased its sweeping arc to focus on her features, before the lens winked out and the LED died a horrendous death.

"Japanese, Setsuka Shimotsuki..." the woman smiled, stamping the book with a heavy rubber thing of the last century and then handing it back, closed. "Welcome to London! Oh, erm... right."

"I truly hope so." the girl spoke in English tinged with some unknown mix of accent as she left. A small plant may or may not have been frozen solid in her wake, before two personages followed behind her.

Either way, they left Heathrow International Airport in a black cab before she looked out of the window, towards London sprawled out. In many respects London was much like Neo Domino, though at least the road surveillance would have been oriented more towards the speeding cars rather than the innocent cabs and their passengers in the rain.

Look outside.

What did they want from a multitude of buildings- A ray of light shone through. A mirror? A reflective surface. Not the drizzle that hung overcast, but something smaller, almost small enough to be ignored if it were not for the invisible retinue.

"Please stop by the road shoulder," she asked the cabbie.

"Now, miss, I'm busy-"

Ice blue met the man's eyes squarely in the rear-view mirror. Whatever he must have seen there made him stop in silence and stunned him into compliance. As he stopped, the window rolled open and she waved, smiling slightly before it closed and the driver to continue onwards.

"Where to, then?" the driver started conversing, since the imminent threat had passed.

The oldest of the trio spoke with the address.

"Oh, you're with them Arcadians, eh?"

"Business," he replied neutrally. "Necessity dictates."

"Oh, I know," the driver winked. "Bloody Arcadia Movement, some of them came with the police! Right, pfft, as if they can amount to anything."

"I think they will do admirably," the older man commented again. The younger man said nothing, his eyes merely hidden under a broad-brimmed hat.

"Heard the case about that lad, the scientist," the driver shook his head, "quite a looker, the kid. Too bad he's a monster."

The glass cover of the speedometer cracked in warning, possibly from the cold of fluctuating temperatures. Wheels skidded, rubber cracking, fake leather upholstery running with cracks under fingers. The door opened, window cracking as well as Setsuka climbed out. A heartbeat later, the two men followed, the younger of the two nodding to the driver before all three left. The engine began to catch fire.

"Reimburse our driver, Nakamura-san," her request was cold, polite and chilling. "We will not see him again. Crux will have seen to that."

"Of course, Missy," was his only reply. "I believed that we agreed to restrict the violence to a minimum?"

"Take it to him," she nodded to the third of the trio, who smiled. "He just set the cab on fire."

"Better than the man facing your wrath," Jimmy Cook replied, shaking his head. "Why are we here?"

"Ah," she commented. "I've just seen a face."

"That was our first meeting," I reflected. "The man who created a Winter Queen, a hand in the greatest terror of humanity."

A belle went off, its shrill echo muted quickly as the Mind on Air sat up. "Our appointment is concluding, Your Majesty."

"Very well." I rose to leave.

"If I may ask... what was his name?" The door had barely opened before I looked back and smiled.

"Bond. James Bond."

Critique, s'il vous plaît!