The man who stepped out of the leviship and onto the dry, hot earth before the hut was, at the moment, the most inwardly complex character on Gaia. His name was Dilandau Albatou, though once it had been Kiyoshi. He had several titles, military and political, none of which he had ever done much to earn. He led the most feared crack force on the planet, Zaibach's premiere Dragonslayers. Somewhere in the depths of his mind slept Selena Schezar, whose heart kept them both alive until they found a way to escape. Threatening to engulf them both completely was the total insanity, inflicted by the same lunatics that had bound them inexorably forever. In no way could he ever hope to lead a normal life, no way in which he could ever understand the trials and tribulations of ordinary humanity.

And yet he was scared shitless to confront his girlfriend.

"Migel, Blake, Tatooloo, hold the fort." Respectively, Migel was the most trustworthy of the Dragonslayer's, Blake the most sensitive, and Tatooloo the best pilot. They were used to accompanying him on his AWOL romantic exploits. He didn't wait for their familiar, "Yes, sir!" He had to get this over with.

He didn't knock; it annoyed Sutefani. She was the only person he knew easier to annoy than he was. "Fan?"

"Hey, Dilly." She was stirring something over the fire. Laundry or lunch he couldn't tell—she was a lousy cook.

"You don't seem surprised." If getting this over with was as important as he thought—no, knew, why was he skirting the issue?

"Who else pulls up around here in a fucking Zaibach leviship?" She poked the kettle with what looked like a rusty sword. "This'll take a while. Play with Dilla."

He shouldn't do this. He should say it now and get out of here. "Right." Dilandau breathed deeply and made his way gingerly over to the cradle in the corner. His own face, albeit much younger and female, smiled up at him and giggled. Sanity, perfection, innocence… He lifted his daughter with all the tenderness he knew how.

"Hey, little me." He beeped her nose. Someone had done that to him, in the childhood he didn't really remember. All he had were snatches like that.

"Da!" She stuck out her tongue at him.

He started. "Did she just call me…?"

"No, she's much too young to talk. It was a random syllable."

"Oh."

"Lu' oo Da!" This was going to be worse than he thought.

"What's for lunch?"

"Whatever the hell this is. I'm pretty sure it involves goats. Invite the Slayers. Gotta be boring sitting in that ship all day." The furs wrapped around her legs rippled as she shuffled back and forth, as tired as an old woman from life alone in the Zaibach/Freid mountains. Dilandau wasn't sure, even when they were together, what it could be about the bitter, emaciated, uneducated peasant girl that set him on fire.

"Um… I'd rather not…"

She exquisitely misinterpreted his reluctance. "No fucking in front of the baby, jackass."

"Uh…" He put Dilla back in her cradle. "I need to tell you something."

Something which he assumed to be the women's intuition he'd heard so much about warned her. There was something very dangerous in her cold, gray-green eyes that put his own notoriously maniacal pair to shame. "So tell, prettyboy."

"They know." The statement didn't carry the self-evident weight he'd hoped. "I told you everything I know. What I am to them. A prophesy come to life, and a successful experiment."

"Yeah, real successful. Just a teensy bit homicidally loony."

"Alive, mostly. But that's really it. I'm getting better. I know what the hell I'm doing half the time. They wanted to know why. They had me followed. They know." He didn't explain who "they" were. He practically didn't know himself. "I can't keep seeing you."

"…Say again?" There were rock tigers living near here; he'd heard them howling by night and even seen a few. They weren't half as terrifying.

Dilandau shook his head, to deny or to clear he couldn't tell. "You think I want this? You're—You two are—If they find out about her she becomes another variable. They'll take her. They'll kill you. Please, Fani, understand! Tatooloo shook off the leviskiff trailing us, but we can't rely on it. He's good, but not that good. And I have no idea what I might say when… When you know. When my head doesn't work."

She didn't seem to have heard anything. "It's that hussy from the castle guard, isn't it?"

"That who…?" He was completely mystified for a moment. "You mean Natsumi?"

"Oh, is that the name?"

"How do you know about her?" It was a sincere question, but the wrong one. She threw a knife at him, clipping his ear on its path to the wall.

"Fine. Fine! See if I care, you piece of shit, you fucking bastard. We don't need you. Never have." Dilandau was a cutely aware of the strength rippling through her arms, and the fact that she was half a head taller than he was, but she almost didn't seem angry after the initial outburst. "Get out, shit."

"Fani, please, I just don't see any other way…" His lower lip was trembling. Don't be such a crybaby. Another echo from forgotten past, come back just when he didn't want it.

"Go."

"It's not Natsumi! I don't even like her! I love you! Please don't hate me! Please!" He felt hot tears on his cheeks. "Please…"

"Shut up and go." She waved him away, like he was inconsequential. Dilla was crying, but he seemed to have stopped existing for Sutefani.

He wiped his eyes on his sleeve and, with one last look at what he loved most, Dragonslayer Commander Dilandau Albatou swept back into the outside world, leaving behind whatever semblance of happiness and sanity remained to his life.