Ch 10: Stepping Into The Past

"What's wrong Celia!" Mayu cried upon seeing the 17 year old girl who had run up to her and grabbed hold of her in an embrace. Tears were flowing down her cheeks and she was visibly upset. Her outbreak had gathered the attention of Kouta and his wife who stepped outside to see what the problem had been. "Celia!" Kouta yelled, running over to her. Lucy stayed where she was, she wasn't good at things like this and felt it better to let the others handle the situation.

It took a moment to calm Celia down before she could speak and even then she found it hard.

"N-N-Nana and I were walking in the Sakura Tree Park when…when…"

"When what?" Mayu asked as soothingly as possible.

"A-a Diclonius attacked us! Nana told me to run away and oh my God! What if she got hurt!" She fell to her knees and started to sob uncontrollably again. Her other personalities moaned simultaneously.

Kouta looked back over to his wife , mentally asking her what to do. She thought to herself for a moment, thinking of the best plan of action. Another Diclonius in the vicinity, suddenly she remembered two weeks ago. The ghastly public homicides, the deaths certainly caused by Diclonius' hands. She hadn't believed Celia at first, as was usual, but now…if there had been another Diclonius.

"Celia stay here with Kouta and Mayu, I'm going to find Nana." She said soothingly, she felt terrible for scolding Celia in the past. She gave a curt nod to the other two who returned it. Lucy walked away, at this point she could only feel one Diclonius energy signal which would either be Nana's…or the other.

His foot tapped the base of the yacht's floor, his eyes gazing out into the sea. He could see the small island just coming up, its rocky shores broken and torn apart. He eyed further ahead to see a building, or rather what remained of it. It was demolished, destroyed, not even a third of what it used to be.

That didn't matter, the main part was in the base of this Island.

Torino Kakuzawa let the wind hit his face, enjoying the cool breeze. Wasting no more time, he walked into the derelict building. If the outside had been bad, the inside was absolutely terrible. There were no lights, the walls were all but caved in. He had to fight his way around rubble but soon came into a large room.

The room like all the others was a mess. The monitor room above had a shattered window and parts of the room were shaded with a dark blotch. The kind of blotch that came from dried blood. He continued searching, noticing the large machine container in the far side. The wires useless, the machine useless…he noticed the number on it.

35

This was the wrong room, he left it. He continued searching, he had to take many detours because of the collapsed walls. He almost feared he wouldn't be able to find the place. The hallways were dark and dank and filled with that shade of dried blood. Even after 4 years, blood was never easy to go away. He opened the broken door and went into the next room.

A large cage stood there, it's bars broken. The inhabitant had apparently broken free of it's restraints. Perhaps they had been responsible for the bloodshed across the halls? It didn't matter to Torino, this was not where he wanted to be either. His journey continued until he came to an elevator. Just as precaution he pressed the button, of course it didn't come. He had to take the stairs and that was if there were stairs, the place had fallen completely apart.

At last he made it downstairs and the first thing he noticed was a body. It was a naked girl who appeared to be wearing a paper bag over her head. The body had decayed and rotted both from air and water and its stench had to be unbearable. Yet Torino walked over to it and pulled off the bag.

A weaker man might have gagged. Even considering the rotting that had taken place, no face looked like that. It was a blob, an ugly festering thing the only thing that was even in place were the rotting eyes. The nose was misplaced, the mouth twisted. A real freak of nature. He dropped it in disgust. Then he noticed the other body, also rotting but without a bag. This one had a face, the one very familiar to that of Ex-Chief Kurama's real daughter.

"Now I understand." Torino said to himself looking at the two bodies. "Clones."

He proceeded on his way and finally through the a door way he stepped into the outside. An ocean underground which surrounded over a hundred stone tombs. Torino felt the air around him grow thicker, almost intoxicating. He took his time to catch his breath, this is where he wanted to be. What he was searching for was not hard to find because it stuck out like a sore thumb.

Floating in the water like a used trash bag, the slanted eyes starring without sight. A bulbous veined head massive in size.

"How do you do sister?" Torino spoke to the head calmly, knowing perfectly well it would not speak back. He said nothing for quite some time, as if expecting it to speak to him anyways. He glanced around the area and two things caught his attention. Heads, decapitated heads with horns. He strolled to them, going to the one with hair first. Their faces of course were coursing with maggots and rotting away to nothing. Yet he had a feeling who this one was.

"Franco." He mumbled.

Then he went to the bald one and he actually smiled.

"Long time no see father. I admit I never thought I'd be speaking to you again, even if you won't speak to me. You always wanted the humans gone, to have our Diclonius heritage grow. While you may have died a pathetic death, the end of you wasn't for naught. I have learned much from you, and thus I will continue our family's legacy.

He gazed around the cavern, looking at everything. This was it, this was where it all began, this is where it all began. The very Eve of that day, when the first Diclonius was born. His father, his brother, his half brother his sister. All dead and gone, all killed by The Old Queen.

The base of operations would be here. It was fitting.

Author's Notes: I know that not many people have not read the Elfen Lied manga and those that have may not remember this. For those who have read the manga, you may remember the clones of Mariko and the many Diclonius that had escaped from the institution. Many people forget that all of these were clones of Mariko, but only four of them actually had human faces.

So if you're a good reader, you'd notice what I meant by the face of that one Diclonius looking rather bizarre.