Now completely awake and aware that he had been hoodwinked, Levi demanded that Ace confess as well.
They were running around the hotel apartment, and Levi was ready to physically fight him out of pure frustration, the two parasitic twins inside his head negging him on, saying things such as eat him, eat him whole , fuck him, then eat him.
After ten minutes of immature shouting and running around an apartment, Levi was at his breaking point. He backed Ace into a corner but kept his distance because he knew if he got too close he would blink to another random corner.
“Why can’t you answer simple questions,” Ace asked.
“I could ask you the same thing!”
“She already knows! What are you afraid of?”
Levi paused, took a deep breath, prepared himself for a lie, but then couldn’t come up with one. There was nothing to lie about because he didn’t know what he was afraid of anymore. There was something before, but now he didn’t know and he wished he did, and that hurt a bit more than his current confusion.
“I don’t know. I guess...I was afraid of her…”
“You’re afraid of Mary Jane,” Ace asked.
“No, I mean, I don’t know. I’m worried that if she knew I was someone else she wouldn’t like me anymore.”
Ace looked like he swallowed a bag of dirt and Levi tried to clarify.
“I meant a different kind of like . She feels like my sister, not my wife,” Levi mumbled.
“Who marries their sister, ” Ace groaned.
“I don’t know. Don’t be jealous, it’s not like that .”
It was an answer Ace was satisfied with, and after more ridiculous squabbling, and Levi pretending that he didn’t secretly enjoy arguing with Ace about absolutely nothing, their own strange form of flirting, they went back to his room.
Levi couldn’t sleep.
It was too hot, and Ace was not a light sleeper, always moving about smacking him in the face. Levi knew he had to wait a bit until he was sure he was out cold, wanting to avoid another face pummeling, so he got up, and opened the window.
Taking out another cigarette and smoking he recounted his past conversations throughout the day, trying to fit all the pieces together. He knew there was something he wasn’t seeing.
He looked straight down, watched the stray ashes fly into the wind, and observed the numerous police cruisers that arrived at the Sunshine Hotel after Mary Jane’s stunt of pummeling a ring through several floors.
Who marries their sister?
The words echoed through Levi’s head and he laughed at himself for being so ridiculous. Coming to terms that he wasn’t interested in women at all, and even if he was, it would be difficult for him to see Mary Jane in that way, family friends since they were born.
“I miss her.”
Relieved to say something out loud that Ace would have a conniption over, Levi sighed, hung his head, and did miss her before they dated, when the world made more sense, everything makes more sense the younger you are.
Another fire spread in the distance and Levi muttered something about this town being the new circle of Hell.
He went to bed telling himself to stop finding new reasons to be afraid.
----------------------------------------
Nero was about to collapse out of sheer boredom.
He stood in front of the mall map, trying to figure out which store they had to go to. He couldn’t read the words, but he recognized some of the logos.
After finding a logo he finally recognized and hoping it was the right store, he walked over to Alto who was sitting on the fountain ledge with Amos. Amos was bright-eyed and awake. The people, the smells, the sounds of the mall were exciting and brand new.
“I hope he sleeps tonight," groaned Alto. “I can’t handle this. We should get a nanny."
“We can do this," said Nero. “How hard can it be? Rosie did this all on her own.”
It was very hard.
On their way to the baby supply store, Nero and Alto came upon Ace and Levi. Ace and Nero stood, staring at each other awkwardly in the mall, then suddenly pointed at each other at the same time, yelling, AHA!
I’ve found you, imposter!
Alto rolled his eyes, looked Ace up and down, and all jokes were gone. Ace prayed he wasn’t about to breathe his last breath inside a mall surrounded by the smell of rubber and mall court fries.
“It’s that pig you told me about," Alto said. “Why are you here?”
“This is a mall, we can go wherever we want. Who’s baby is that," Levi asked.
“This is our son . Insult me again and I will kill you where you stand."
“You finally said our," said Nero. “I’m so proud of you.”
Alto blushed.
Ace was concerned for the child and tried to recall the number for social services.
“You need to pay for what you’ve done,” Ace shouted.
Alto glanced at shopping bags in his hands. He was convinced that they had followed them to the mall, and tried to know if they were telling the truth. He didn’t and was convinced that going shopping was just a cover in case they got caught.
He held Amos a little bit closer to his chest.
“Buzz off," Nero said. “I can go wherever I want, whenever I want.”
“You sound like a child," Ace replied.
“I’m not a criminal. Criminals get caught ."
“Let’s go, Ace. I don’t want people thinking we work together with him,” Levi said.
“Yeah, let's go get our uh… our…what did we come to the mall for exactly,” Ace asked.
“You’re always forgetting stuff,” Levi snickered.
He took Ace’s hand but then he paused.
“I can’t remember how we came to the mall Ace. How did we get here?”
Everyone in the mall disappeared.
The sound of sneakers disappeared, the fryers in the food court were left on, strollers continued to roll, and came to a halt. Everyone vanished, poof, nothing left except their clothes, crumpling to the ground, in a heap where they stood.
Ace clutched the sides of his pants, afraid that they would disappear, irrationally worried about them instead of his own safety.
Nero’s hair was on fire, and their first reaction once his child disappeared was to blame it on the other two people who were left in the mall.
“ Where is my son,” the demon screamed. “ Give him to me.”
“I don’t have him,” Ace shouted.
“ You lie!”
Nero spun his head around, the flames on his head growing longer, whipping in a frenzy, setting off the water sprinklers, and with one last whip, he smacked Ace right with it.
Nothing happened.
They passed right through him, sparkling, and both he and Levi blinked rapidly in shock. Water from the sprinklers seemed to bounce right off of them, or slide off, yet not feeling wet, more obvious clues it was a dream.
Nero’s flames fizzled out, he screamed, he stomped his feet, and Alto grabbed him once he too realized that something was not quite right. He fought back, biting his hands, scratching his face, certain that someone had stolen a defenseless baby.
“Nero! Just pay attention! This isn’t real,” Alto said.
“ I want him! Give him to me!”
“Nero. When did we ever pick him up? ”
He slumped, and then mumbled intelligible noise to himself, and then laughed, disturbing everyone around him.
“Oh, gods above it's another fucking dream. That asshole is coming back to fuck with us,” Nero laughed.
“Is he okay,” Levi asked.
“He’s nuts but this is a dream. I’ve been getting them too.”
Nero wriggled out of Alto’s grip and decided he wanted a private conversation.
“These C-Chips don’t translate Ionadian. Let’s talk freely,” Nero said. “I want to know why you’ve been getting these dreams and if we can stop them.”
“What do you have to hide from me,” Alto asked.
Nero ignored him and coughed, clearing his throat and loosened his jaw.
What came out of his mouth sounded to Levi and Alto like the sounds of a monster.
Years of the Ionadians, a race of warriors, cultivating their language to strike fear into the hearts of those who they conquered, made a simple conversation between Ace and Nero sound like the barking of feral beasts.
It was spoken deeper, from the throat, teeth bared. Nero and Ace traded pleasantries and their names, but to Levi, it sounded like they were arguing. It was nothing close to it, in fact, Nero and Ace were much more well-spoken in their native tongue.
“ I am Aelfric des Regalis, Grand Duke of the Holy Regalian Empire and Her Blessed Territories. Why do you wear my face and walk with confidence? Are you a born liar like him?”
Nero gestured to Levi and he flinched.
“Don’t worry, it’s fine, he just thinks you’re a thief,” Ace chuckled.
Levi was not happy with this answer.
“ This is my own face, I’ve stolen nothing. I’m Acheus Tirinus des Mettala. I go by Ace. They have shorter names here for some reason. Probably because they’re all impatient.”
“I go by a short name as well, Nero. They’re strange, with shorter names and shorter people.”
Levi did not like seeing a new side of his partner he wasn’t aware of, and it frightened him. He had never heard a language that wasn’t translated. It could have been the softest language ever created uttered from Ace’s mouth, and Levi would never know the difference.
His unease became worse, as they laughed from their throats, their deep accents and flashing black eyes making them look demonic when they simply told a joke about ducks.
“ You’re a funny imposter. You can keep my face for now,” Nero snickered.
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“ You call me an imposter and my partner a thief, yet you claim you’re blessed-born. That’s impossible.”
“I don’t lie to those of lower birth and standing.”
The barks became more rapid as a real argument started.
“Why have you crawled yourself, ass first into my mind,” Nero asked.
“ Why would I want to be inside the mind of a beach lover?”
“Well, I implore you to leave. Please .”
Another barker appeared, and Alto instinctively reached for his gun in his back pocket, but none was there, still in dreamland, where he had no control.
The man came running through the mall, weaving through the piles of dresses, shirts, and shorts, and stumbled over a bag, but continued on, wheezing and out of shape. Ace and Nero stopped their barking, and he began his, shorter, wheezing in between, and was happy to have found them.
“ I have been searching this entire hall! Why must the same place all of you have been to an enormous bazaar?”
“This is a mall. Don’t be ignorant,” Nero replied.
Ace said nothing, so still, that Levi put his hand on his shoulder, and gently brought him in close.
“What’s wrong,” Levi asked.
“He’s the same man from another dream, pretending to know my dad, or be him,” Ace replied.
Levi didn’t see the familiarity, but Ace claimed he did. Their similarities were much harder to notice. Their build was the same, lips as well, skin tone, length of fingers, but Levi could not tell these things, as Ace could.
Tamuz had a flash of pain over his face and nodded.
“ He was my brother, long dead, killed because he was caught with this idiot’s mother.”
Tamuz pointed at Nero and he quickly made various offensive hand gestures.
“Nero, why are you signaling like you need to help land a plane,” Alto asked.
“I told him to go fuck himself.”
Tamuz ignored him and brought his attention back to Ace. He tried to walk closer, but Ace shook his head no rapidly and looked away. The closer he came, the more Levi started to see the similarity, and now he too was disgusted.
“Why are you people stealing identities,” Levi mumbled.
“This DayWalker is confused. I can’t pretend to be Tyreceus. He died almost forty-three years ago and left a son, and he’s gone too…”
Levi, who was much faster on the pick-up than Ace, realized what was happening and panicked. Tyreceus was Ace’s father and this man’s nephew.
“Ace we should leave,” Levi shouted.
“What, why!?”
“You can’t leave unless I let you, or someone else outside wakes you up, ” Tamuz said. “ I’m delivering my message, whether you like it or not.
Ace did not like not the idea of being surrounded by someone who looked like him and his father, and he started to insult anyone and everyone.
Former colonies of the Empire had several, wonderful nicknames for their former benefactor and matriarch, the Mother Empress.
Current favorites were Flower Farter, Rainbow Shitter, Unicorn Fucker, and the well-loved and classic name, Sunshine Bitch. All names were based on the strange obsession the Empire had with light, magic, purity, goodness.
Ace looked Levi dead in the eyes and immediately he knew who he was talking about.
“This creep claims that he knows Sunshine Bitch —”
“That is not her name!”
“—and that she’s my mother. Fucking nuts, right? ”
Levi looked at Ace, then at Nero, and back again, and thought, well it wouldn’t be the strangest thing to happen to us, now would it?
“It’s absolutely insane! This one over here believes he’s related to Sunshine Bitch as well,” Alto said, pointing at Nero.
“I don’t think you should talk about my mother like that,” he replied.
“When this is over, I’m taking you to see a doctor,” Alto shouted.
Levi drowned out the siren of their failing marriage and he tried to recall what Sunshine Bitch looked like, but he had no idea. The Union and the Empire had many petty games they played with each other.
The Union refused to have any communication with the Empire unless it had to do with money, of course. Most C-Chips couldn’t translate Ionadian, and only Ionadian, the language of the home planet, another petty jab.
Levi had no idea what most Ionadians looked like, lived, believed, or any normal concept of their lives outside of the confines of what he was told by the government, his family that dedicated their lives to killing their entire species, and the three Ionadians standing in front of him that were arguing amongst each other.
What he did know was that celestial objects were attracted to Ace, he brought them all to the yard, wanting to drink his milkshakes because they were better than yours.
That wherever he went odd things followed close behind, such as demons, witches, monsters, zombies, a sentient rock, and now a doppelganger that claimed that he was of noble birth.
He went with the few facts he did know.
“I don’t think he’s lying. Why else would he go through the trouble,” Levi asked.
“Don’t encourage them, they’re unwell, ” Alto said.
“You don’t want to admit the truth, because if you did, that meant you married the son of the woman that destroyed your home,” Nero screamed.
“I’m not arguing with a sick man. I’m leaving.”
“Don’t you dare!”
Alto left.
He left to wander the barren mall, because as the facts piled up around him, the gross, hard to dispute facts, the harder it was for him to deny that he had married someone who had ruined his life.
“I don’t lie. Ask me anything,” Tamuz said.
“You said my mother is calling for me to return home. If she can see into the future, why didn’t she send for me earlier?”
“ Sunshine Bitch can see into the future? No wonder the Empire is invincible,” Ace said quietly.
“There was a miscalculation,” Tamuz mumbled.
The mall faded away, crumbling like sand, blown away in the wind, and in the distance, one could hear Alto screaming. Nero was a little worried, but not too worried, once the scenery changed once again.
It was familiar to him and Tamuz but unfamiliar to everyone else.
It was the inside of Hearst Castle.
They stood in the center, at the bottom of the grand staircase, the same spot in which Nero saw his father pulped and churned to bits, a tomato inside of a blender, and for a few moments, he was not there.
Even inside their dreams, the runes etched throughout the floors of the castle reacted to his pain, shimmering and winding, the path leading right up to his feet. Ace looked at the ground and he stared at the runes on the floor, and something in the back of his mind came to life.
“I’ve seen these before,” Ace mumbled.
He squatted, rubbed the glowing marks, until they faded away, muttering under his breath, finally considering that this was not a trap, and if it was, it was quite an elaborate one.
“You’re a cruel man. You leave me in the same spot they kill my father and lie that my mother is still alive. You’re disgusting,” Nero said.
“She planned to only leave for a few days, nothing more,” Tamuz replied.
“If she was alive, how could she let me go knowing someone would hurt me,” Nero cried. “She let him touch me and—”
Levi and Ace looked at the floor, nowhere else to look, because he was now sobbing, wailing, that it was not possible. Tamuz was not devoid of emotion, even though he did detest Nero’s rude behavior, but he forgave him.
He slowly walked over, offered his hand, but it wasn’t acknowledged. So he continued, he confessed to the sins of someone else when he promised to never tell a soul, unable to ignore the destruction she caused, laid bare.
“She saw two future paths in which both of you would live. In one she would lose her kingdom forever, and in the other…”
Tamuz laid out his palm, gesturing to Nero. He pointed at Ace and confessed to his fate as well.
“She...saw you as trouble. You were not as strong as she predicted, and if she gave up a few , the others would live,” Tamuz said.
“Don’t listen to him,’” Levi said.
Ace nodded, agreed, and said he had no attachments to a woman he didn’t know, yet something hurt. Years of always fearing he was inadequate, if he was enough for others, or even himself , were lies that died once he gained a bit of self-confidence.
With the few words out of Tamuz’s mouth, he questioned his inherent self-worth again.
“She...asks that you forgive her and come home,” Tamuz feebly said. “Our Lady regrets her decision to throw away—”
He shut his mouth again, carefully choosing his words, once he saw Nero’s tear-streaked face.
“She regrets not waiting longer for uh… this one’s ability to blossom,” Tamuz said, pointing at Ace.
“I have a name. It’s Acheus. If she was my mother, she would have named me.”
“She never named you because she didn’t want to get too attached so early on. ”
Tamuz clapped his hands, tried his hardest to not make his news sound as horrible as it was, and told everyone that everything was forgiven, and they could come home!
He apologized for the actions of a woman who saw her actions as necessary, the lesser evil. Even if it was, no one would ever know. The path she chose ensured another future that never happened, therefore impossible to compare a non-existent future to the current events they lived in now.
“Now that this is all sorted, you can come home and stop throwing a tantrum,” Tamuz said cheerfully.
Levi, Ace, and Nero, glared at him, and again Tamuz had chosen the wrong words, or possibly he was failing at an inappropriate time to be facetious. His words became heavier, nastier, as footsteps became louder, and Alto returned, sweaty and confused, slightly different from his usual state of being only sweaty and angry.
“What did I miss,” Alto asked.
The glares turned to him and he shook his head no and apologized.
“I know what I gotta do,” Nero said with a smile.
“You’re coming home,” Tamuz asked.
“I’m killing her. She knew papa was going to die, and she did nothing. ”
“You can’t—”
“She destroyed the home of my husband and left me to be raped. She threw us away when it was easiest for her!”
Tamuz rubbed Nero’s shoulders, and for a moment, Nero reconsidered his plans to kill his mother. Not all problems could be killed until Tamuz opened his mouth and ruined everything like he always did.
“Your sacrifice ensured the survival of Our Lady and will never be forgotten. It was necessary,” Tamuz said. “We will forever be in your debt and—”
Ace blinked over and punched Tamuz in the face. The runes on the floor flickered to his pain, and Ace stood above him, feeling a surge of power, tasting it, wanting more, licking in his lips, and swallowing its unique taste.
Nero felt it too, and he giggled, both of them slowing down their breathing to meet each other. They locked eyes, and together, all animosity was lost, they found a common enemy.
The two monsters had found each other, now complete.
No longer two, there was one.
“The Empire is coming in a few days. No one knows that they’re coming. A lot of people could get hurt,” Ace said.
“We should do our best to protect Atlaan,” Nero replied.
“ Sunshine Bitch would hurt people. We could kill her.”
“We will.”
Tamuz made the smartest decision of that evening and said nothing.
He kicked them all out.