In which we are reminded that Jade likes bratty kids that are actually kids (for example, Anise) trying to be older than they are and providing free entertainment.

Also, similarities with Arietta crop up.

Sometimes the Liger Queen adopts random cubs. More often they get eaten, of course...

-

Ordered to stay back while Jade, Anise and Tear fought the Liger Queen, Luke ended up rescuing Ion and Mieu and getting involved in the fight anyway. This ended with Luke acquiring an indentured servant/pet in the form of the cutest thing Tear had ever seen. And no, stupid Tear was not allowed to touch his thing. Anise snickering when Luke said that didn't help, especially when she let him in on the joke and everyone laughed at the madly blushing Tear and Luke.

The monster in the Cheagle Woods and Rugnica Plains were weak, so Luke was allowed to train his heart out along with Anise on the way there and back to report to Rose, while Jade's minions, he meant soldiers, loaded up the stolen food and returned it to Engave. Ion, and to a degree Anise, had insisted on it to help him get over having to let the Liger eggs get broken.

"We don't want him turning into another Glomietta," Anise had muttered under her breath before going back over to Luke and Ion after getting permission to walk back. "Come on, Luke, killing monsters for gald is fun!"

"I'm sure General Grants will be proud of you for helping save Engave," Ion told him.

Luke perked up instantly. "Yeah! And for saving his sister all those times! No wonder he trains me instead of her!"

"That… Brat…" Depriving her of cuteness, insulting her constantly… Luke. Would. Pay.

"He is a little monster isn't he?" Jade agreed, although there seemed to be some inkling that far from being sympathetic he thought Luke was a monster after his own heart. "No wonder he and Anise are getting along so well."

-

Luke's extra training came in handy when the Tartarus was attacked and Jade was sealed. Luke was left to stand guard while Tear and Jade went into the bridge. Somehow, the unconscious soldier whose life Luke had pleaded for woke up (Luke blamed this on the Thing, and didn't talk to it for days, meaning Tear was allowed to comfort Mieu to her heart's content) and attacked Luke.

They ran out to find Luke crouched there. "I killed him… I killed him…" Shoulders shaking with the desire to sob.

"What the hell is a little kid doing on a battlefield?!" After an icicle rain forced Tear and Jade to dodge someone that had to be a god-general appeared. "Go home to your mommy!"

"But…" Luke started crying now. "She won't recognize me! I've always been weak and stupid and acted like such a little kid because I can't remember anything and now I look that way too and they won't want me back!" He curled up tighter around his sobs. "They don't want me anyway, I'm just a burden and a coward who's too scared to remember and…"

"Look, just shut up already! You're not the only one whose parents don't give a damn about them! It's not the end of the world, so get over it already!"

Luke kept crying. Apparently this god-general's training had not included anything on how to deal with children. He looked utterly lost.

"Captain, what should we do with the prisoners?" an Oracle Knight asked.

"And now I've gotten captured again," sob, "and they'll never let me outside ever again even when I do turn twenty and I'll be stuck there forever and ever and what if they blame Master Van for his stupid sister kidnapping me and I never get to see him again…" The last half was almost impossible to make out around the sobs. "I don't want to go home!" Luke yelled. "You can't make me!"

"Luke!" Tear wanted to grab him but was restrained by an Oracle Knight.

Luke's wild dash for freedom was intercepted by the god-general, who caught him by the scruff of his coat easily and held on as Luke struggled and wailed at him with fists, feet, and he would have tried with his teeth two if the Captain hadn't held him back easily, a child's strength no match for a god-generals. Teeth bared and growling, hair sticking to a tear-streaked face, Luke really did look like a little monster. "Let me go!"

"What did she call you?" There seemed to be a heaviness, a potential threat to those words, and Tear remembered that red hair usually meant someone related to the Kimlascan royal family. Even if Luke's existence was rarely mentioned someone related to him would know, and might have a reason to detest the current most likely candidate for kingship, especially as he was the son of the Duke of Belkend, a semi-outsider.

"It doesn't matter! I can't… I can't… I can't remember, don't you understand that I've been trying?! It's not my fault, it's those stupid people that kidnapped me but everyone expects me to just snap out of it and I can't! And Guy's always having to go to so much trouble for me and Natalia's always so sad because I don't remember all the stuff I did with her and they'd be better off without me! I wish they'd just killed me! Let me go!"

"Asch, what are you doing?"

"Major Legretta?" What was Tear's teacher doing here?

Asch brushed Luke's hair away from his face. "You…"

"Put that child and the rest of the prisoners in the cells and hurry up, we have a mission to accomplish!"

Ignoring her, Asch regarded Luke as Luke both sniffled and glared, about as threatening as a wet kitten. "I don't care what you do, I'm not going back! They won't take me back anyway, and I'm glad!"

"In a moment, Legretta. Are you?" Of course he wasn't, that element was easy to pick up. Yet there was still that same sense of threat, a liger that hadn't yet decided whether or not to unsheathe its claws as it circled helpless prey.

Luke looked away, silent for a moment. "…They don't want me. I'm sick of trying to be what they want. I want… I want them to love me, but no matter what I do… So if they won't let me go back home… Then I'll know they'll never love me, but at least I can stop trying. It hurts, it hurts when I try and…No matter what I do it's not good enough!" Why, why wasn't it good enough? Why wasn't he good enough for them: his eyes begged Asch for an answer. "They say I'm just not trying, but I am trying! I'm trying my hardest, and even my best isn't good enough that it even counts as effort!"

It seemed the helpless prey had been recognized as a liger cub, the way Arietta had been adopted by one. Tear started breathing again when Asch lowered Luke to his feet, although he still kept a firm grip on his jacket. "Oh." Legretta seemed to be enlightened. "Tear, I don't know what you're doing here, but you have been fighting our troops and we're on a mission. I'll find out later but for now you all will be placed in the cells."

"I understand, Major Legretta."

"I'll take them down," Asch informed her.

"Who is he? Someone's recognized child?" That was the polite term for someone known to be a bastard: a child who had been sired outside of marriage but recognized by their (usually) noble parent as their child. They were often taken into noble households as somewhat-servants, often trained to defend the rest of the family and their status, food, and clothing were dependant on a strange combination of familial affection and how useful they were. They were often detested by the rest of the family, especially if they had been sired before the lord's marriage and hence were older than the rightful heir to the property.

"Yes," Asch told Legretta after a moment, smiling strangely. "He's certainly illegitimate."

Legretta didn't notice anything strange, but perhaps Tear and Jade were paying more attention since they didn't think they knew what was going on. "Well, if you fight that well at your age, child, there's a place for you in the Oracle Knights."

"…Really?" Luke asked her, a note of surprised hope in his voice. "You think I'm good?"

"You killed one of my men, didn't you? There aren't many seven year olds that can do that." Legretta gave basic training: she was a good judge of ages.

"I'm sorry."

"He was trying to kill you. There is no 'sorry' in that situation." Legretta departed.

"Take them away." Asch gestured to Jade and Tear. "I'll handle this one personally."

"At once, Captain!"

"Come with me," he ordered Luke, releasing his jacket.

Luke glanced at Tear and Jade, then asked Asch, "Will they be okay?"

"They're prisoners. No one's going to touch them. Provided they don't do anything stupid."

Luke looked really worried. "Tear's not all that bright, and Jade's going to try to escape. He always has a plan for everything. I kind of… Tear is my teacher's sister, so…" That meant he had a duty to protect her, because teachers and students were sort of family.

"If my men can't handle a fon slot sealed soldier, even the Necromancer, and a novice seventh fonist without killing them then Legretta will have their heads, the same way she would if her student Tear were killed."

Phew. Luke let Asch put a hand on his shoulder and lead him away.

-

"What am I going to do with you?" Asch wondered as soon as the door of the room he'd chosen to talk in closed behind them. It appeared that he would be guarding the ship instead of Arietta, once she returned with Ion.

"Please don't let them make me go home. You understand, right? You said that your parents didn't care about you either." Luke looked up at him with hope. "You're a god-general?"

"Yes. God-general Asch the Bloody, head of Special Operations."

"Wow." Honest admiration there, almost hero worship. "Do you think I could?"

The answer was obviously no, but he found himself not wanting to say it. "You're quite good, for only seven."

"I'm not really seven." Except that he was. "I'm seventeen. I was kidnapped by Malkuth when I was ten and when they found me I didn't know anything, not even how to walk or talk. They all… they all want me to be the person I once was, but no matter how hard I try to remember nothing comes back. I should have mastered Ancient Ispanian and I still make some spelling mistakes with the fonic language… I guess I am just like a seven year old, huh. Maybe that's why the hyperresonance turned me into one." Small comfort, when, "It's my fault I don't remember. I was traumatized and I'm a coward who is refusing to face those memories. So maybe it's just more running away to want to give up on being Luke fon Fabre."

"That sounds… difficult."

"It's harder on everyone else than it is on me. Natalia's always so hurt when I don't remember things we did, and Guy has to go too so much trouble, and I'm always embarrassing Father in front of guests, and Mother's so worried by what could have happened to me that was horrible enough to make me forget. I'm just a burden on everyone.

"It would have been better if I'd never been found," Luke added, and Asch didn't know what to say to that. He hadn't considered… they might have mistaken the replica for him, but that didn't mean the replica was him. How much worse was it to be surrounded, day after day, by people who didn't recognize you but looked at you and saw someone else than to know that people had looked at someone else and thought they were you and been able to say goodbye to them?

The pain he'd through was buried rose at recognizing the same pain in his replica. They really were the same, even if Luke didn't look all that much like him at the moment. Well, not as he was now. When he'd run away from Daath, perhaps, trying to escape Van and go home, in the same way that the replica was trying to escape the manor… but didn't have a home.

"What did you do?"

"When I found out they didn't care about me? Joined the Oracle Knights."

"I would really want to do that, but even if no one else would recognize me Master Van would. He's the only one who could understand that I was trying. He encouraged me and scolded me. If he found me he would tell me they would love me no matter what because they're my family like he always does and I would go home because I wouldn't want to let him down. But they're not like Master Van. He doesn't care that I don't remember. They… want their Luke back, not me. So… I couldn't ever see him again. Or Guy. But… I think that's better than just hurting people every day. Mother, though. She'll worry, and worry, and she'll get sick from worrying so much." Luke looked down at his feet. "I don't want to go back." But it might be his duty to. "They did so much work to make me quit acting like an infant, and…"

"And?" Asch asked him sternly.

"I owe them. I should go back."

"You don't owe them anything."

Luke stared at him. What?

"Thanks and gratitude are things that have to be earned. It doesn't matter how much someone thinks you should owe them, what matters is what you feel you want to give them. Tell me. Were they doing this for you, the Luke fon Fabre that is standing here in front of me, or the boy that disappeared seven years ago? Can you honestly tell me that you are a coward when you just killed a man? Can you honestly tell me that you're not a hard worker when you learned to speak the language you just spoke to me in with more difficulty than I had learning Ispanian?" Combine the difficulty of learning a language with the difficulty of learning to speak from scratch and what speech was? Unprogrammed replicas, Asch had learned, were utter blank slates. "The person who they did all that for wasn't you. They did that for a coward and a weakling and you are not those things. You don't owe them anything, not even thanks."

"Are you sure?" Luke seemed caught between knowing Asch was right and knowing he was wrong.

"I'm sure."

Relief and a smile started to bloom, but then Luke realized something. "I do owe Master Van, then."

"It's not owing if they do it because they love you, and if they do it for some other reason," and there was no way Van would let himself get attached to this sacrificial lamb, "then they're not doing it for you and you don't owe them anything either. If your teacher wanted what was best for you…" And wasn't that a big if. "He would want you to live and be happy."

Luke thought Van loved him. No, he thought Van was the only person who loved him, and it started to make Asch feel sick, that happy, innocent smile at the thought of him. "I could go back to Engave. They said that they could always use another errand boy and more help around the fields."

"You want to be a peasant?" Such a modest ambition. Such a simple life.

"I don't like killing, and I do like plants. I wasn't allowed to play around in the flower beds, but Pere was always nice to me. They wouldn't let me talk to him because I was a noble. Being a noble sucks." Asch couldn't argue with him there. "And the monsters here are weak, so if I needed extra money I could kill some, and I'm strong enough that I could probably run errands to St. Binah all by myself before too much longer, they don't have a lot of strong fighters here so I would be a big help keeping the monsters from eating the crops. And the apples taste great because they're really fresh, and if I worked for someone even half the day I would get room and board. I was only there half a day, and I learned how to shop, and someone started to teach me how to cook but we got interrupted because Tear got herself arrested. It was the best day of my life! That I remember, anyway."

Was this how Van had felt, Asch wondered. Confronted with children who were going to die. The real Ion had been a god-awful brat behind the façade and Asch had been the son of the man who invaded Hod. Asch hadn't wanted to even tolerate his replica. If he'd recognized him he would never have given Luke a chance to speak, but once he spoke then even once Asch knew what he was…

Luke would die. Luke had been created to die. So that Asch could live.

Luke had grown up with a father and a teacher who were both raising him as a lamb for the slaughter.

Luke's smile dimmed as he looked at Asch's blank mask.

Luke wanted to be just an ordinary person. Asch had thought he was destined to be king. The Score wasn't going to let them have what they wanted. "You're going to have to go home. You're Duke Fabre's heir and Princess Natalia's fiancée." Only he wasn't. "They won't stop looking until they find you." Or think that they have.

"If they think Malkuth kidnapped me again then that war will start." Luke realized something. "You're here to rescue Ion, right? He wasn't kidnapped! He came here to stop there from being a war between Kimlasca and Malkuth! You have to let them go or more people will die!"

A war. The war, the war that Luke was meant to start with a bang. The war that Kimlasca would win.

By Lorelei's name, what were they doing?

But what could they do? If it was Luke or countless more innocent children, what could they do?

Damn the Score! Damn Lorelei! Damn it all!

Bring all to ash and ruin: the arte that had sprung from within him wanted to spring to his lips and engulf the world.

So this was how Van felt.

"I have to go home, don't I. Or else they'll blame Malkuth and there will be a war because of me. I'll have to go home and they won't let me outside again until I'm twenty-nine and they might blame Master Van and not let me see him again and…" That devastation began to appear again. "But I don't want more people to die because of me."

Why didn't the replica just stab him in the gut? It would have hurt less and an apple gel would fix that in an instant. There was no way to fix this.

"Luke. Our orders were to recapture Fon Master Ion, and no one can countermand them but Van. Van is at Kaitzur." In other words, get yourself and Ion to Kaitzur and you might be home free. "I'll go report to Van personally right away." And ask him what to do, even though Asch knew the answer was nothing. "Arietta will be bringing Ion back to the Tartarus at some point, probably before too much longer. Tell the Necromancer this when I put you with the others."

"So…"

"I can't go against orders." But he could give them tacit permission to escape. "Who knows who you are?"

"Tear."

"Good. Keep it from the rest. I'm Van's student too," he told Luke, and saw Luke's face light up at the idea that they were practically family. "And Tear is Legretta's student. But a mission is a mission, so be careful."

"I will," Luke promised him.