Song: "Platinum", by Orgy.
Song, characters, setting, and any coincidental likenesses do not belong to me. I own nothing but the unbolded words written here.
"Platinum", Dilandau's Lullaby
You can't escape what makes you tragic, you know...
"AAAAAAAAAAAGH!" The silver-haired albino jerked awake with a pained cry. Gasping for breath, he wiped the dripping sweat from his forehead. His heart was racing and his burning body felt like ice... Feeling too sick to withstand, Dilandau, a Zaibach elite, pilot of the guymelef Alseides, turned off the bed onto the hard, cold floor to empty his stomach. Wiping a bit of vomit from the corner of his mouth, he sat up to ponder what could be causing so much disturbance to the strongest, most cruel boy in all of the Zaibach Empire. This dream that he couldn't remember... He had been having it for several days now, creating a rather irritable sleep debt.
Closing his eyes, Dilandau focused hard on the picture he had seen so faintly in his dream. Eyes... a young girl's eyes... blue... He had to stop and fight off a wave of nausea. What did a little blue-eyed girl mean to a boy who had killed thousands without so much as a second glance? He cursed himself for being weak and forced himself to stand, ignoring the dizziness. He was headed for the showers when there was a noise at the door. Chesta, one of Dilandau's faithful Dragonslayers, slowly peeked his head inside his master's room.
"Chesta..." Dilandau stopped by the doorway to the commonroom showers and leaned on the wall for support as his vision went dark again. "What are you..."
"Master Dilandau, let me help you." Chesta scampered into the room over to his commander. He reached out to help him but had to avoid a few swats from the independent teenager.
"I can help myself, Chesta." He hissed wearily. Chesta backed away as Dilandau trudged off to shower.
"Master, you are ill..." Chesta called after him.
"I'm FINE!" and the door slammed behind him.
Vicious cuz you want to be...
When Dilandau came back from the showers, he found Chesta cleaning the vomit from the floor by his bed.
"Sir, something is bothering you. You wake up at unspeakable hours, screaming in horror. All of the Dragonslayers have noticed your strange behavior lately."
"Chesta, go back to bed." Dilandau spat, his blood red eyes flaring. It disgusted him that he had been seen in such a state by one of his squad.
"If I may, sir, the Dragonslayers are more than just your comrades, we're also your friends. You can trust us, and we can help..."
"Friends?" Dilandau sent him a quizzical glance. "I have no friends. I am far too independent to be burdened-"
"But you need to talk to someone! You're not immortal!" Chesta interrupted quickly enough to finish before Dilandau's fist sent him to the floor.
"Why are you trying to help me? Why should you bother, and why do you care?" The angry growl came across to both of them more as a rhetorical question. In his mind, when there was no personal benefit in aiding another, one should destroy the weak.
"I... care about you master Dilandau. Like a brother." Chesta said softly, rubbing his swelling cheek. Ever since the Dragonslayers had been harvested from their homes as children to be trained as Zaibach soldiers, they had constantly been growing closer and accepting their comrades in Zaibach as their family. "I don't want you to be miserable."
"Chesta, leave. Tell no one of tonight. I can handle this." Dilandau said calmly, but strictly. Chesta nodded, clambered to his feet, bowed and quietly left his chamber. Pausing for a moment, Dilandau sighed and went to dress into his red armour. He knew Chesta's intentions were good, and right where they should be, but it was just so draining to have him around that he was more grateful for the solitude.
'How can I command the Dragonslayers if I'm so distracted?' he asked himself, storming down the dark hallways to the docking bay. He needed some time alone to figure out what was bothering him and how to put and end to it. 'I'm lucky my Dragonslayers trust me so much. They don't share my same bitterness toward the weak.'
Arriving at the Viona's entrance, he looked up at his faithful guymelef, the Alseides. 'Together, you and I have won many battles, killed countless opponents... We have experienced the sore blows of the enemy, bittersweet taste of vengeance, and the euphoric thrill of victory. You and I, we are friends!' He hopped up to his guymelef's control dock and placed a hand on the energist, the heart of the machine. "Wakey, wakey..." he smiled as the Alseides powered up and glowed with life. As he crawled inside, a split second of desire not to be alone crossed him. He frowned and took control of the Alseides filling with the metallic liquid, and he took a step forward...
Leaving time possessed to please you...
Standing at the edge of the Viona, Dilandau looked down and grinned, enjoying the view of the land so far away, and the irony of looking down on the sleeping world below that deserved to be looked down upon. He took one more step... The thrilling feeling of freefalling, plummeting hundreds of feet with no safety nets, was a feeling Dilandau loved and savored. Pushing forward, the Alseides slowed its descent and moved up into the night's sky. Sailing into the distant dark, Dilandau marveled at the stars and the eternal blackness beyond... empty...
He turned and hovered in the atmosphere, giving himself a grand view of the Mystic Moon. It was amazing, staring up at a planet millions of miles away and across another dimension. A world inhabited by beings just like those on Gaea... As he let his thoughts turn, he stumbled across a stray thought...
The image of the blue-eyed girl flashed across the Mystic Moon. She was clearer now, and she was crying out in a voice so innocent and desperate... "Onegai, Tasukete!"
Shock and fear seized Dilandau at that moment. For whatever reason, the paralyzing outpouring of emotions gripping his concentration seemed to be caused by this one powerful little witch, as though he were experiencing what she seemed to be. He scarcely noticed when the Alseides begun sinking through the indigo air. When he finally snapped out of the vice-like trance she had on him, it was to notice his guymelef had set off an alarm, indicating a dangerous loss of altitude. Cursing, he took the appropriate counteractions, only to realize he wasn't stopping. He tried again and felt only anger and contempt when it became obvious that, like it or not, his next destination was the ground, and it was her fault.
He reached the roof of the forest, and with mere meters left to the floor, his machine gave him a spark of life, altering their course by a rough eighty degrees to skim the treetops. With a chill, Dilandau smiled and pushed the Alseides to acsend, an order that was refused. Still no panic ever took him, even as the splintering trees rose into his view and thrashed the guymelef, acting as the only restraint to his deadly velocity. All of the energy of his armor disappeared and the Alseides, with Dilandau inside, cannoned into the forest floor, a trail of fire and broken evergreens in the wake.