Dante reentered the room with a clear mind, looking ashamed of how he handled things on yet another mention of his past, that specific to his family. Taking notice, Alexandra wasted no time or effort to get him to reengage with them to the present matter of this, much less expecting his immediate questions after, all the while her discomfort was raising higher and higher by looking at his demeanor gradually changing from soft-spoken and ashamed, to the same regular confusion mixed with anger.
"Sorry, again. I'm a little...jumpy when it comes to the whole case. You know...that case.", Dante sat back down as he exhaled deeply, looking around the others.
"No shame is needed, indeed. I was well aware of the events that transpired within the ruins of Dirunon, and I was also informed on how those news fell on your eyes and ears. While most of you in this room might prove incapable of understanding due to inexperience, such hefty matters are to take a long time to get over of. Your demeanor of relaxation, from processing those events over the past few days, speaks of your character and firmness build from Cecilia's raising as a whole, though broken upon the very beginning. It will take a long time before volatile reactions like these are eradicated upon the hearing of your past misfortunes, and that understandably so."
"While you are saying the truth, I don't think I'll pretty much ever get over that fact. Rather, someday, I naturally will get over the tragedy along with the feelings it spikes in me by itself, but leave the whole scene as a very, very sizeable landmark in my memory's tracks. Rather, for the most part. War as taught to me by Cecilia isn't to be glorified...and I didn't listen. I craved deeply for the day conflict would start for me to prove to myself, Cecilia and everyone that I was that shinning knight, a Silverlance in pure, glazing armor capable of taking beasts and saving lives.", Dante inhaled deeply, "The final lesson I learned upon stabbing Cecilia to death was that. Conflict of any kind, small or big that might lead to a war, or be at the very hiatus of a war's end, like with Dirunon, is such a shitty experience.", he realized his mistake on his wording of pure emotion, "Sorry."
Wallace shook his head, "As a Silverlance myself, who bore witness to your fails in your test to be assimilated by the great infantry force, don't be. Your wordings are both justified for the timeframe of learning the information, it's contents, as well as within the realm of your mother's teachings. The Commander was a brave woman. I'd know, since under her lead she was nothing short of exceptional."
"So you are indeed a Silverlance. Hmph.", Dante got serious, "Then I need to answer this for the new royalty of the land you swore protection to. Alexandra, you knew, didn't you? Everything that goes within Victorian boarders to a hundred percent, and a lot more from your connections outside. You accepted the fact that Drima wanted to wipe my memories, appoint Magi and Glady as my new 'biological parents' and toss me to Insinia, far away from Dirunon and Victoria, right? Toss me far away enough to the point I'd have a grant total of zero chances to come across any memory triggers of my past to reawaken my actual memories, but close enough to where you could keep check of me...right?"
A brief moment of silence came across the room as everyone's eyes shifted from Dante's lips onto Alexandra's face, knowing full well that with the insurmountable evidence provided, though basic, truth was a guarantee for that accusation. But rather than the usual quick aggression under the effects of boiling blood, his demeanor was hostile in terms of speech and not physical movement, with the lesser aggressive look of distrust followed by everyone else pinned right at her.
"I did. And it was all to protect you, your family and everyone else from what darkness you held within."
"Cut that out. What were you really trying to do? Answer correctly this time.", Dante saw right through her.
"I wanted to train you to a point where your abilities, physical and mental, would come to a point where you could be reinstated and reintegrated into Victorian ranks. Though unfortunately enough, due to the attack of monsters that claimed your step-father's life, your training never came about when it was suppose to intensify for two years forward, hence why I lost contact of you."
"Are you serious? God!", Dante slammed the table.
"I did not do it because I wanted the worse for you. It was all because from a young age, I knew so much about your sister, Angelica, who joined the Sister Knights in order to help heal others, your brother, Angelico, who's boon of power and skill granted him a position of a squire under the commander of the Goldenlances and...Freya, the unbelievably gifted scholar, tactician and all round gifted and intelligent young girl who was sent to one of the most grandiose higher education facilities in Spain."
"Please, we're not a family of miracles. Only one who ever was a 'gifted child' was Freya. Angelico was lucky as hell to actually pass the exam to be a squire, not legitimate leader to, the Goldenlances, all because Cecilia definitely put her dirty fingers somewhere along her connections to get him there. Like she did to me when she thought my sheer Obsulyte powers would directly land me as the leader of the Silverlances too. Angelica joined the Sister Knights, big deal. The Church was always after more bodies anyway, and I hated that. This whole bullshit attitude of 'peace and love, acceptance and care', that locked them into being sheep."
Alexandra got irritated, "Such words are of big disgrace to your family-"
"You are nobody to me, deal with it!", Dante slapped his hands together, "You, Magi, Glady and everyone else share no connections to me by blood or otherwise, aside from now with our meeting. You are third parties who want to inject themselves not to my life, but Cecilia's because you have shit to gain from it. Everything I said was true, much how I felt after that hellhole of a household. There wasn't a single day after a point where I was going to bed without a new bruise or scar from Cecilia's homebrewed training, where no matter the severity, I'd always look to Angelica for healing and expose her to images of horror from the wounds, as well as screwed up commends, language and complains about Cecilia. I can barely grab a few moments of sincerity between us two that weren't connected to me complaining or crying about something. All, the, time. Angelico? Oh, I'd drive a knife through his over the top arrogant throat all the time. Only things that ever came out of that throat and mouth of his anyways were sarcasm about my weaknesses and self-praise about his greatness. To think I even looked up to these people too, with how 'cool' my brother's satisfying fighting style was, along with Cecilia's, and how much I wanted to be like that. Only now do I realize that I'm both weaker, and way less gifted than them. How many run ins did we have with things that were of significance that posed a massive threat? I've been getting bailed out by Mellistar, someone else in this room, or divine intervention for all I care. Had my strength been able to 'blow the world up', which is pure mad-talk by the way, how many of those fights should've been a decisive, undisputed victory?!"
Alexandra stuttered under the rain of facts coming from Dante, things she never could know unless told by him. For no matter how much information went around and existed, the contents of his heart were always locked away and hidden behind his lips long before today they were opened.
"I-I see...your points are valid, but I still have to ask. Was all I did, even for the promise of an old friend that would see you standing tall amidst your dream life worth it?"
"No, because my dreams turned into a nightmare!", Dante wasted no time answering, "I despise the Silverlances, Obsulyte, everything that had to do with Cecilia and everyone in my family aside from my little sister, who at least had the guts to stick it out before we were separated, unlike Freya who up and went to wherever! Consider this. I run the same respect you do for Cecilia, because at face value, she was a mother that was no less that fully willing to sacrifice her life for the sake of her children...even if that meant that instead of dying doing so, one of the children she'd try and protect would stab her to death. But that runs short there. Unlike you, I do not glorify Cecilia, I do not look up to Cecilia, not like I even can since I just gaze at her grave from above and...I do not like Cecilia. There, I said it. I can no longer hold it when all of the important figures of the country I called home are apparently interconnected to a scheme that made my life this big a hell. Where I am at right now, I don't have a single positive things to say about Cecilia, at all. Rather, I maybe do. She trained me since I was little, teaching me the basics of why in an age full of firearms, having super soldiers that are able to run freely or at breakneck speeds across the battlefield clad in heavy armor and holding melee weapons was a viable option. Only to then use that and try to turn that dream real for me way, way before she was supposed to. She made sure to teach me about Obsulyte and how mine was special, making me not only feel like I was something completely different to others, but also actively hating the very thing that did so, which is currently running through my veins. Need I continue? All the things I know about Cecilia, as of what I recall now, are negative. The positives turned into negatives."
"Dante...even when I talked with Naga about all that happened after you awoke...why didn't you say anything way before? Why did you keep it all locked away?", Alexandra genuinely.
"Because what would change? You were going to spank her and tell her 'Bad Cecilia, bad girl, that's not a good job!'? Deep down, I sure as hell knew that she knew...it was all so bad. But she just kept going. She knew but she kept going. You all saw my memories through Yuno's word's, right?", he turned to the others.
"We did. A vivid description that required no image to understand fully.", Luna confirmed.
"Then know this as well, since I pioneered this whole 'No secrets' attitude between us. I stabbed Cecilia to death, nothing new there. And when she began to sing that song she learned from Terna...I twisted the knife as hard as I could, to end it faster. I didn't want to listen to that song for a last time. I didn't want to have her and me...have a moment like that. At that point, I don't know why...I didn't want to be connected with Cecilia in any way, shape or form. I wanted it to end, not drag out...she was a hero like a hero should be, at that moment. She didn't just save me fully, rather than inspire me to save myself and then others. A hero...not my mother."
Everyone froze dead on their seats upon listening to Dante barraging Alexandra with that last piece of information. As if they didn't understand him in the first place, unable to bring themselves into his shoes fully in order to support or advice him, now they were at a total loss. Still, through sheer coldness after the coating of sadness, Dante wasted no time forcefully dragging the situation back to his control, in a sentence's length no less.
"Now, with that out of the way, now that you know I don't plan on giving you any affinity on a personal level like I did with the others in this room...what was really your plan to begin with? You ended our mission early. You gave us valuable info as to where sources of power, more soldiers in a way, are stationed."
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
"It was...nothing. I wanted to connect with you on a personal level. Seeing as you are physically around my age, our common dreams and primarily due to Serena's presence and yours..."
"Honestly, between me figuring out that you are yet another person connected to this mess, my fatigue from the 3 to 4 hour battle prior and all, I just want to shower and relax. This childish bickering among us you accept, my anger at all of you that messed me up and the fact I have to turn around and look at everyone every couple of days only to see their mouths dropped from some brand new atrocities I did is getting to me. Do whatever, secrets or not, I don't want to be anything more than someone leveled with the others, nothing more and nothing less anymore."
"Son of-no.", Wallace corrected himself, "Dante. I reassure you that her Majesty was well aware of the stress on your mental health these past three days that transpired in an uncouth way. It was expected somewhat, that upon mentioning your possibly living relatives, that it might spike another reaction such as the one you had down at Drima's lab. You lacking purpose and a goal after learning so is something we just wish to reignite via mentions of possible objectives."
"Goals and objectives to what, Wallace? Have I not made it abundantly clear that those grand tasks you are setting up are just a bigger strain on myself? If I don't figure out myself first, like many of us here need to do, there's no going anywhere. Third party vigilantes, coercion for some task that'll benefit you in the long way...we should've just let go and follow Terna down to Galatea for vacation.", he turned around wanting to leave, "You have things to say, so do I, but you made a major mistake by dragging and dropping me into this room right after my adrenaline spiked from battle. Like you forced it to begin, I'm forcing it to stop, at least for me...my head hurts, and I need some fresh air. For me, I'll come talk with you at the evening, if you'll have me.", he calmed down under his headache.
"Your Majesty. May I please escort the young man myself?", Wallace looked at Alexandra.
"Certainly, if he agrees."
"Can't you wait for the evening, like I said? My head hurts, so whatever you have to say, I won't listen to.", Dante annoyingly said.
"If that is so, then I will be restraining myself until so.", Wallace nodded.
With Dante making yet another unceremonious exit out of the room, the atmosphere remained not tense, but fatigued, as with everyone other than Alexandra and Wallace who were just enduring words and questions, harsh or otherwise.
"You know, Mrs. Alexandra...he is sort of right. It is a bit hectic right now.", Terna stretched out.
"We did have a bit of an episode mid-battle too, so there's that. I honestly don't know how he was taught by Cecilia, then that Sentinel, but he doesn't really strike that much a leading figure to me either. Around when Luna was initially surrounded, he started panicking. Now, especially mid battle, panic is a surefire to get yourself killed. Way too inexperienced, honestly. We're lucky I was both able to start calming him down by slapping the shit out of him, and Victorian military stepping in to erase monster numbers for us to make our plan to beamline to Luna."
"Wait, seriously? I never once would think he of all people would start to get worried like that over something?", Yuno was surprised.
"Well he did.", Tiki reaffirmed.
"Considering that Dante has not been deployed on a large scale battle before, along with his innate stressed attitude I have confirmed through a number of examples.", Luna added.
"He? Anxious attitude?", Enemy was weirded out.
Luna nodded, "I have access to a large array of data for comparison, as well as manuals and training for brutal or mild interrogation methods, from physical, to psychological, or by sheer observation. I have long sensed that Dante is under constant stress and anxiety that leads to major 'blow ups' whenever he is slightly or worse harshly pressured, either induced by himself, environmental or situational factors, or otherwise."
"The guy is more blank sheeted and constantly oblivious like one of the many, many characters in his ridiculous books he reads.", Enemy argued.
"How would you know what he reads?", Terna asked.
"So anyone remember Hikari having black hair all the way back then? Yeah. Her body was essentially destroyed after the war, and instead of letting her fully use mine, I took the drivers' seat to ensure survival. Aside from a few moments she took over, my body, my rules, until hers recovered and we started with the same song and dance again."
"That makes less sense. If you were capable of using your body as the primary host over a recovering Hikari, that points to you actively choosing to bond with Dante, as well as the others in that age.", Luna said.
"I befriended his sister first, Angelica. The Sister Knights he's talking about was a body of the Church. Naturally, when we came into contact often, I entering the Apostles instead, we became friends and then it snowballed to me meeting everyone else. Hikari in particular loved to come out more when she found about Mellistar's existence, shortly after Cecilia boiled that Neker guy, son of Izuko into a battery for Mellistar to feed off, connecting it to Dante. It was also at that time I wanted to really start killing Dante of the past while sacrificing Dante of now. Make no mistake that there's a connection between them aside from the name, it's just pure luck. But there's, of course, always something holding me back. Angelica, Cecilia and Hikari then, now narrowed down to just Hikari. Locks are now being removed, and sooner or later, I'll have my chance."
"Yes, so cool and badass. Spare us the same words and get over it, while also looking as to how you'll choose your name for you or generally working on yourself instead of this shit.", Tiki got up, "We should head down too and chill. Sorry Your 'Monarchness', but Dante was right on this one thing. We need to relax, and approach you when we are ready, not the other way around."
"As it does stand, her Highness's plan was to somewhat relax you with the climate and tea, but I did point out to the fact you might be more tense than what this was capable of achieving...very well. So long as you do not stand directly against Victoria or her Majesty, you are more than permitted to treat our lower quarters as you base, seeing as some of our most esteemed *former*, for now, allies are in need of a base of operation.", Wallace explained.
"Many faces I owe to, Cecilia, in extend her offspring and their Links, as well as previous and very much dear to my heart, friends. That isn't to say that I do not accept those unincluded in the former, but rather my way of speaking as to show connections of vital trust to you, and vise versa. I will gladly accept all of your presences shall you wish to speak with me on my next invite.", Alexandra showed them the door.
As they all agreed to let their spirits calm first before attempting something that dug, and was to dig further, into a serious talking matter, all but one exited the room in a unified manner. That one being Tiki, she instead turned around and looked at Alexandra with distrust, moving aggressively towards her as she tightened the grip on her weapon. Wallace, placing himself between them, attempted to act as a wall between the one his loyalty was pledged to, and a very eager for violence master of war.
"I'll take that thing off of you. Now.", Tiki pointed at the book.
"You attitude-", Wallace was interrupted.
"As was Dante's, is justified. I too am as young as I've ever been thanks to my Obsulyte renewing and not letting my cells die, but my experience is the only thing holding same manners back."
"You never cared about royalty, did you? Why pose as one? Why directly smash the hornet's nest?"
"You are as cunning as ever, I see. Contrary to what first impressions might align with. I empathize with you for what you have lost, and I will be giving you this book under one condition. Do not destroy it. Please. Who you once were, your mistakes and triumphs aren't to be driven in the mud because of you choosing to cut your name short, and walk a different path. Take this with you, and teach yourself from it.", she handed Tiki the book.
"Making amends?", Tiki calmed down, surprise to see no form of resistance, "You could've ended both my life and yours there, but you didn't."
"My pride always got into the way before both meeting Weis and Wallace. Same with when I sided with Thaddeus, on a matter that seemed justified...I carried discrimination, unjustified as such, from my world in yours, and in an attempt to better it like you did when you enabled higher education that branched to paths other than war to your people. While I state Victoria constantly, the land where people's lives were put under my direct care when appointed. The bigger picture I'm thinking of is a world that cannot exist, a utopia, but as it must stand, Victoria and my initial supporters are to obviously care for first. It is natural, wouldn't you agree? And no, no life would have ended with my mention. Like I said, your significances are something I indulged in enough to fully check you and your past, some being harder to find like Luna's, and some way more obvious like yours, the near highest ranking military officer of the world's now decayed greatest military."
Tiki relaxed her axe, "I don't forgive easily, mind you. Took me a few weeks glued to Dante to forget all about Cecilia's atrocities...comparing them to ours."
"I can see that upon finding care for another group like back then, a purpose and indulging in it, your spark of genius came out once more. Please, if it's not much to ask, since you know from horrid tragedies and mistakes first hand, you are one of, if not the best capable person to level with Dante on the matter. Help him in any way you can. Although he was eccentric at the start, his gradual turn into a book shut tighter than your hand's grip on your weapon was a grave error for Cecilia to leave him to. We are all, in our core, still young, some physically, and all of you both mentally and physically. I do not bare any ties with him as family or personal relationships go, and my gain from him has nothing to do with it. I simply care as someone normal, with proper empathy also would, for what I know he's been through, under the same lands we rule and live in. As I do for you."
"So you know about 'that' too, huh? Figures. Me and Dante are polar opposites in many ways other than that. He is anxious, hectic and has much more manners than I do, as well as a more dense and hardheaded attitude. Brothers and sisters, having and lost, land and duty due to title or sheer power, faith in something greater but pragmatic and idols we looked up to from their shadows....I am working on it. I have been, and still am trying to, a little when I met him, a lot when I learned about how eerily similar our paths were...figures, under the same values we decided to share with Victoria, engrave and base morals under. He'll pull through when he's ready, like I did.", Tiki relaxed after melancholically looking at the book, "We all will leave our past eventually...but in a world like this where we founded it with such pasts...why grow up and lead a future?", she whispered.
"In a pinch, the same bickering among you that causes inconvenience now will be greatly missed once gone. I can't say for certain, but if it were to follow how us, the Abyss Hunters faded in our paths, you will still have each other, somewhere. Heart or roaming this world. Best you do not let go, or worse cause yourselves the same divide this world guides you, by intention mostly, or accident. Level with each other in any way you can, as a broken heart like that of mine and Serena's when it all spiraled out of control, is truly, a memory that will cast and leave you stranded."
"Maybe we do have things to say after all. I'll see to it that I'm the first to talk with you, Alexandrina Victoria. Because we have a lot to say.", Tiki left the room.
"All of them hold great powers. All of them hold different minds and ideals...they connect with minor things, but something far greater must be keeping them together for what they're going through. What say you, your Highness?", Wallace wondered.
"Fear of being alone, need of allies...no. I can't quite point it out, and a fairytale value is indeed out of the question, which frightens me. This is the Golden Generation, as Drima stated. I am ashamed with how the world's history here ended up in the same way as did on earth. And the same way those events ended up here in a different way, I am terrified to find out what a conflict at the hiatus of this unrest hides. Surely, shall it turn to such...losing my life or yours, will be mercy to witnessing other horrors."
"You are thinking far too much in the future, your Highness. Remember that the same way you acted then, in fear of a future without basis, was rack and ruin in the end. Let things go naturally, as you should've back then. After all, like you said, their story isn't yours, and your ties are minimalistic compared to what they were once with people like Cecilia and Serena."
"I think you have covered my worries most adequately yet again, Wallace. Nothing more to say, than that you are right.", Alexandra relaxed as she looked at Wallace.
"Gladdens me deeply that humility forwent pride this time."
"Indeed.", she chuckled.