CHAPTER 3. DIRTY LAUNDRY UNVEILED

It was difficult to say who was shocked more: McBurn or Rean…

'Are you going to fight me?' Rean asked, staring at him wide-eyed. Then he focused his gaze on all the people behind him and shuddered, realizing what kind of a lion's den he'd walked into.

'Why would I bother fighting?..' McBurn looked at Rean like he was insane.

Then he looked back at the Grandmaster just to be sure. Maybe she did want for him to fight. Luciola shook her head in a negative way. McBurn relaxed.

Rean suppressed a great sigh of relief and walked in sheepishly.

Claire shot Lechter a look, but Lechter looked utterly confused, just like everyone else. And they didn't look confused before, so she could only conclude that this time Rean Schwarzer was real. Judging by how much more sheepish (and not at all like Bleublanc) he sounded, it was probably the original specimen, indeed. That actually was quite bad. Really bad. For him. What was he even thinking coming here alone like this?

'I hoped to find you', Rean mumbled, apparently addressing Ouroboros in its entirety, 'but Celine the Cat laughed at me for months, and then she told me that in accord with Murphy's Law I can only find you if I stop searching. So I stopped and aimlessly wandered the lands. Then I gave up on the lands and told Valimar to aimlessly fly us around through the skies. And wow that really worked…'

Nobody in Ouroboros knew who Murphy was, but they didn't want to ask and reveal their ignorance, so they kept silent. They knew of Celine the Cat, though, and decided that Murphy was probably one of those witches from their Hexen clan. What a strange and potent magic she gave to Rean! Thanks to it, Valimar managed to accidentally bump right into their airship, hidden behind advanced cloaking techniques, now that was magic on par with the Sept-Terrions...

Slowly, the hall morphed back into a sunny glade. Everyone looked at Luciola for a moment in surprise, then shrugged and took back to their cushions. Apparently the show was going to go on. McBurn moaned loudly, but was completely ignored, as always.

The happiest person in this new iteration of a glade happened to be Campanella. Finally, someone with worse clothes than him showed up! As usual, Rean was wearing a school uniform everywhere, he never realized how stupid that was. Of course, Campanella's own pink suit could compete with Rean's garb in stupidity any day, but at least he actually was The Jester and so his clothing made some sense. Rean had finished Thors, yet apparently wandered the world for past months wearing a school robe. He just couldn't let go of Thors, he couldn't.

Experiencing this pleasant bout of gloating happiness, Campanella graciously offered Rean to sit down and share a toast.

Rean sat down and suddenly noticed Lechter, Claire, Millium and Altina present among the Ouroboros members. He stared at them, unable to conceal his strong shock (and having no reason to do that anyway).

'You I can sort of understand,' he addressed Lechter. 'But you guys… I mean, girls?'

To distract everyone from his blatant staring (after all, it was supposed to be a secret that the four were the Ironbloods, and he could blurt it out any minute), Lechter loudly demanded to know why Rean came and what he wanted.

That's when Rean suddenly remembered that indeed he wanted something from Ouroboros. Cursing his forgetfulness, he stood up and claimed in a determined voice, suddenly becoming more and more like his old emo self: 'I want to join you, guys!'

Everyone else nearly fell off their cushions. From laughter.

Rean looked more confused than ever.

'You're all acting strange,' he commented. 'Especially you.'

The latter was directed at McBurn, and he lifted an eyebrow as a hint for Rean to elaborate, coz he just CBA to actually open his mouth and verbalize the question.

'I was told that you'd be searching for me,' Rean elaborated, going into the CS3 pre-release info details. 'And that you'd be obsessed with the idea to fight me.'

'Bah, what fun could that possibly be,' McBurn shrugged. 'I'd swat you in one go like a fly, you and your toy robot.'

'Not if creator gods were on my side,' Rean found courage to say. 'And they are, we all know that. You do. Deep inside, you do.'

'What?' McBurn frowned. 'Come at me, you big-mouthed cheater…'

Luciola waved at him dismissively, and McBurn stepped back, looking a little miffed. Everybody else felt deeply disappointed, like never before in their whole lives. They were so hopeful to finally see McBurn in a fight, even if it'd be the quickest fight in the world! Apparently, Luciola was too curious about Rean Schwarzer's motives to join Ouroboros, though. His claim was crazy comical, indeed. And she'd never get to know the details if he died prematurely.

'So why am I getting rejected?' Rean asked sternly. 'Do you have anything to say for yourselves?'

Claire worriedly thought that he didn't yet realize what a dangerous situation he was in. Or he realized it and forgot about it. Human psyche would sometimes employ extraordinary self-defense mechanisms.

Campanella, continuing to be happy and helpful to someone worse off than himself, deigned to explain to Rean that he was unworthy of joining their ranks. He was just an average Joe, after all, freshly out of school, and his combat prowess was by far inferior to theirs, and they only accepted the best to Ouroboros. Rean flinched. Campanella's words deeply hurt his sore spot: self-esteem.

But Campanella had been smiling while talking, just like he always did, and he tended to be sadistic, so Rean chose to hang on to hope that his explanation was merely an expression of his theatrical sadism at work and the Ouroboros members laughed at his offer to join them for other reasons. Very mysteryious reasons, after all, Ouroboros always tended to be mysterious. Telling himself that and still believing in the best, he decided to further elaborate on his reasons to join Ouroboros.

According to him, he really wanted to fight his dad, and that was all there was to it. He'd fight him with them, of all criminals, if that's what it took! Because nobody else wanted to...

After another bout of laughter, even McBurn himself opened his mouth to say:

'Did it ever occur to you that he wasn't a villain? Not that I care one way or another, I'm just using logic... If nobody else wants to fight him, then maybe they all like him?'

Rean huffed and thought that he'd never heard anything as irrational before. Apparently McBurn knew how to crack a good joke and that's what he did just now - words like those couldn't be meant seriously, after all, - but Rean was in no mood to laugh.

'I know what your problem is, you lot,' he suddenly frowned, shaking his head. 'It's The Darkness, right? I'm supposed to have some 'darkness' to me to be eligible for joining. Well I do, and Osborne is the one to blame: he deserted his own son, kicked him out into the snowy woods and left... I've always felt that I'm worthless after that, since even my own parent abandoned me.'

'How is that dark?' Bleublanc asked, thoughtful. 'And not just pitiful? Let go of your childhood already, young man...'

'If that's not enough, I turn into an ogre sometimes!' Rean claimed, belligerently. 'And I don't know how, but I just know it's his fault. He was probably conducting some experiments on his own son, then something went wrong, and I was kicked out like a puppy who was no longer needed. '

'An ogre...' Bleublanc muttered. 'An ogre, how curious... Who did you say your mother was?..'

'Who cares who she was,' Rean shrugged with a hint of derision. 'Don't you know that mothers are irrelevant in video games? And to me personally, unless she was someone important in society. But she probably wasn't, so she's never going to receive a mention in the games, for all I care.'

Lechter felt highly entertained by that point, Rean was golden comedy today! Lechter had known for a long time that Rean Schwarzer was taking everything about his image extremely seriously. But he'd rarely seen his righteous mask drop like this (under the stress of getting rejected, no doubt) and reveal his true colors so vividly. It was enlightening to see the magnitude of lies a human ego could tell itself: a boy who cried to everyone how universally unworthy and undeserving he was, was actually projecting his own derision towards others... on others. If that made sense. Lechter studied psychology under Osborne, so it made sense to him.

Taking matters into his own hands for a change, Lechter reminded Rean about something: the day when Osborne told Rean that he was his father was the First of April. The chancellor just happened to be in good mood after all his plans worked out so well, Lechter said, and when that old man with a serious face joked he looked dead serious! Lechter admitted that he'd been fooled more than once himself by the chancellor. He and a couple of neighboring nations who were careless enough to want to negotiate with the Erebonian Empire on April Fools' Day. They even had wars started over that. Ah, that old memory that featured Osborne? He did indeed find a child in the snow, but it wasn't his, so it was natural he gave it away to another family to raise.

Rean paled like a ghost upon the news. Everyone bated their breaths, anticipating more drama to come. They started taking bets and the majority ended up betting that emo-Rean would perk up and end up happy at the end of CS3. But suddenly he cried like a child, surprising everybody and making a lot of them lose their money.

'I finally thought I became significant and important...' he said between sobs. 'If not on my own merits, then at least by being a son of someone as well-respected and famous as him…'

Rean couldn't bear his obsession with himself anymore. Even Ouroboros members felt sorry for him.

'I'll help you', the Grandmaster said, taking out her trusty tarot deck. In a few minutes she predicted that Rean was going to become a drunk and live the rest of his life in a dirty gutter.

'Sorry,' she said. 'That didn't work out so well.'

Rean bawled. Running out of the main hall and hopping onto Valimar, he flew away to the very first tavern he saw by the road, drowned his sorrow in a drink and became a worthless drunk for the rest of his days.

Our four protagonists were looking down from the deck of The Glorious, watching Valimar leave. The new recruits were allowed to stay and ride the airship a little longer, as they'd never seen it fly before.

It opened to an amazing view below, with tiny tiny dots of houses and clouds close above, so close you'd almost touch them if you just stretched your hand out.

It was a mystery how our protagonists survived being in the open on the deck on The Glorious. After all, human beings generally couldn't. Mountaneers referred to high altitudes like this as 'death zone' for a reason. There wasn't enough oxygen at high altitudes to sustain human life, so normal human beings would soon experience brain damage and, if left to their own devices, death. Apparently Zemurians weren't normal human beings and didn't need hermeutically sealed spaces or oxygen tanks and could just stand on decks of airships forever.

But the Ironbloods weren't surviving alone on the deck of The Glorious. Bleublanc was shamelessly hanging around and was currently telling everybody about his travels, whether they wanted to hear about them or not. Altina listened with interest. Millium suspected the worst of his intentions and resolved to watch him like a hawk.

The other three people on the deck happened to be the Grandmaster who was busy berating ashamed Campanella for something, and McBurn who stood close by with a zoned-out expression, apparently waiting for his turn.

Finally, Campanella got told off and walked off into the Ironbloods' general direction. The Grandmaster promptly switched to berating McBurn.

'She absolutely destroyed me!' Campanella complained, albeit with a hint of admiration to his voice. 'As if I'm the one at fault that toy robot Valimar managed to land here… Yeah, I know that it was a security breach, but she could take it out on the jaegers instead.'

'Wow you're whiny!' Millium whistled. 'Shame on you! The right hand of the Grandmaster, by the looks of it, and crying like an infant… Be a strong girl, alright?'

'Campy is a boy,' Lechter said automatically.

He was so used to clearing that up that it was quite automatic of him to do so. It didn't help Campanella that he had such a name. It didn't help that he had a voice of a young girl and wore a pink suit, either. And it emphatically didn't help that he was caught wearing make-up at least once throughout the games.

'Really?' Millium stepped closer to Campanella and leaned in to study his face. 'You're trolling, right? Looks like a girl to me…'

'Well, I heard he wore a dress once,' Lechter said non-chalantly. 'So it's hard to be completely sure.'

'I'd like to see that,' Millium muttered.

'Girls these days…' Bleublanc shook his head in mock horror.

'What?! You're saying it like I'm some kind of a pervert, just like you!' Millium shot him an angry look. 'Stop judging people by yourself, masked freak! I just think he'd look hilarious in a dress, especially with some badly applied make-up and an ugly hairwig and innacurately smeared on lipstick, you know?'

She laughed out loud, imagining that picture.

'At this rate beware, I might actually dress up for you,' Campanella slightly bowed. 'The Jester exists to entertain.'

'Nah, don't put yourself down like that,' Millium waved him off. 'Maybe that's all they see in you in Ouroboros, but I am sure you're worth more than that.'

Campanella looked at her with a mixed expression. It was a little bit of incredulity, a little bit of doubt, and a little bit of gratitude.

'What?! You're grateful?!' Millium caught on to that. 'Wow they really mistreat you here… That's just horrible.'

Campanella opened his mouth - most likely to object - but couldn't really come up with anything to object with, so he closed it. Then he opened it again, but changed his mind again. He looked confused somehow and slightly shaken.

Claire frowned. Lechter felt concerned, too. Maybe it was their mistake to involve Millium in this infiltration scheme. She was already affecting people here in odd ways and she was probably too young and inexperienced to think of them as enemies for long. No matter what Campanella's deal was, he was the most loyal servant of the Grandmaster and one of their worst enemies. Everyone and his dog in this rotten world had been mistreated by someone, not just him, so that shouldn't make him special!

'This is for your own sake, dimwit!' The Grandmaster screamed so loudly at McBurn that everybody and their toy robot heard. 'Not a single mira more! Stop being irresposible and get a job if you want to eat something next month! How are you going to live once I'm gone and there's noone left to take care of you?'

'She sounds like she cares for him,' Millium said. 'In her own way. But not for you...'

Campanella looked like he wanted to say something again, but didn't.

'Look!' he called out instead, trying to distract Millium from the sore topic. 'Just would you look at them!'

Millium turned in the direction he was pointing at and was rewarded by a scene of Bleublanc and Altina chatting, all alone, at a distance. Apparently he'd managed to walk her off so they'd have more privacy. Millium felt positively murderous.

'What a nag,' McBurn winced once the Grandmaster was gone. 'Why was I born to that woman, of all of them?'

The Ironbloods exchanged glances. They thought that McBurn was just a comical character with weirdo traits, but all in good fun, yet his life turned out to be so tragic. Or at least it was going to be tragic, once he was left alone in this harsh world to cope for himself, that much was certain.

'I hate my life,' McBurn shared so candidly that everyone wondered who of the two was a real emo - him or Rean. 'And I hate all women. They always want something from you. Get a job, grow up, eat something next month...'

Bleublanc, who received a black eye from Millium just a minute ago, rolled his eyes. But he did it in vain: nobody noticed it behind his hand, meant to hide the unseemly new facial feature from Altina.

Suddenly McBurn stepped up to the abovementioned girl, looking at her in a sort of cautious wonder. He didn't have a chance to observe her this closely before. Up close, the new recruit was so... so apathetic! She really looked quite listless and empty, that girl. Could it be that he's finally met his match? A girl who'd never try to force him out of his lifestyle? A girl who wouldn't give a damn?! His eyes shone with newfound hope...

'Would you want to go to a casino with me?' he asked, bating his breath.

'You're too old, fool!' Millium said Jusis-style, before Altina could reply anything. 'What is it with my sis and old guys? I know she had to dress like a child prostitute, but that was long ago. The joke's getting old by now.'

McBurn suddenly realized that he'd seen Altina before, indeed, and that was on the Noble Alliance's airship during the events of CS2. She used to dress like she was fanservice, so he hadn't taken her seriously and never paid attention.

'I'm not old,' McBurn said. 'She just never grows, a loli like you. How is that my fault and me being too old? I remember her now, she looked the same age on that airship.'

Millium looked stressed. She suddenly realized that she'd never grown, indeed. A loli? Was she destined to be a child forever? The thought filled her with terror. Would she never be taken seriously, like an adult, always judged by her childish looks? Would she never date anyone, let alone have a family?

'You get used to it,' Campanella said, with a hint of real compassion to his voice. 'I won't lie to you that it's nice, but you get used to it.'

Millium was surprised to learn that he was a never-growing loli, too. A male loli, now that was quite rare. She felt a sort of bond forming between them suddenly, and opened her mouth to say something about it when...

'We need to go and fast!' Lechter claimed, grabbing both Millium and Altina. 'Look just how late it is...'

Everything was going wrong. Everyone here was getting along too well.