I'm back!!! I'm so sorry it's been an AGE since I last uploaded something but the writing block bit me and wouldn't let go until I relieved all my favourite Gakuen Alice fanfics and I remembered why I like writing so much. Yes, much to be said for this chapter since it's so short but I don't expect a long chapter until Chapter 17 which is TWO chapters away. But I hope all of you are still watching! or Reading... whatever. Anyway, to also compensate for the delayed chapter, I have been busy with another non-GA project after I played Devil May Cry and promptly got hooked on it. But don't worry, I'll finish everything I promised!

This chapter is not so much emotion than speculation and after much complaining, I have decided to add in the POVs so complainers, be appeased! Okay, enjoy! So until I see you next in the Chapter 15! '

Much later (hopefully)

Blase

This alone, you're in time for the show
You're the one that I need
I'm the one that you loathe
You can watch me corrode like a beast in repose
'Cause I love all the poison
Away with the boys in the band

The Sharpest Lives, My Chemical Romance

Chapter 14: Family Portrait

Mikan

I scrutinized the man sitting before me, elegantly sipping his tea as if he didn't just waltz into the Academy – sharing the shit out of the security guard – and announce the existence of a father I thought dead for the past sixteen years, the man whom is never knew.

Iroyashi Kieran was a man who stood at an alarming six foot one – nothing compared to Ruka and Natsume's six foot four – and had the eyes that had been inherited by myself. Grandpa had always said I was the splitting image of my mother but my eyes were my father's. I could see why but the curling emotion when I saw him wasn't relief, happiness, joy, sorrow or confusion.

It was a red, red, red, bright, bloody anger and the dark cold feeling of abandonment I had let go of when Janus had told me my parents had abandoned me. That was an empty feeling, I had told myself, knowing that I was an instrument to be used, not to think because instruments do not think.

They are used for other people.

'Mikan,' he said after a painful five minutes of absolute, deafening silence. 'I am not here to say I am sorry for letting you get taken away.' He set his tea cup down and settled back into the settee, fingers clasped. I felt my fingers tense on the fabric of my khakis, the tears that threatened to shed crawling around my eyelids, testing its boundaries.

'I came to help you against Janus because you are my daughter,' he said with a calm I found infuriating. Why was he intending to provoke my anger which would inevitably lash out and smack him in the face? I was a perfect weapon, not perfect patience. 'He killed your mother and I cannot let the fact that he did cloud my judgment of your murders.'

'So you're trying to imply that I killed for sport and that I could have had a choice?' I asked. I could hear all the anger coming slowly, converging in a point that was beginning to swell, explode soon. 'That I had a choice in everything I did?'

'Everyone has a choice, Mikan,' he said, not unkindly, not gently either. 'Everyone, even a mutated child has the choice of a different future. Legends are made in ways you would not understand and you are nothing short of an ugly legend.'

'An ugly legend? Please explain.' I wasn't gritting my teeth. For the first time, I was in danger of murdering someone for the sheer pleasure of it.

'A force that can be reckoned with but under the control of another, a legend not made by yourself,' he said. I reached forth to cut the cake Narumi had brought in for us. I felt anger rear its ugly head. I was the perfect weapon, not the perfect saint. 'You, my dear Mikan, are nothing but an ugly legend.'

That was it.

I let the knife fly and it – sadly – missed his head by a few inches. 'I've had it!' I yelled. 'Do you have any sort of clue as to what I went through those bloody sixteen years ago? Actually, did you know, I'm twenty, twenty bloody years old so, dear daddy, I was lost to you twenty years ago, not sixteen! Couldn't you get THAT right?'

'I'm afraid that I did not and I honestly do not really care,' he said, picking up his tea and sipping again. The behemoth in my mind was held by a thread, the leash slowly snapping from the weight and pressure. 'I do not care that I have a daughter but I do care that you are mine and that you were taking away from my love, your mother.'

Then it struck me that he'd never referred to her as his wife. He called me his daughter but not legitimate nor a bastard. That would be the icing on the cake. Sakura Mikan the Bastard and Murderer. 'Mikan-…' he said before I screamed for him to stop.

'Do not call me that,' I bit out. 'I am not Sakura Mikan, evidently if your story is true which I guess it is. What was my mother's name?'

'I am not going to tell you.'

'Fine. What was my name?'

'I do not know, actually.'

'Iroyashi Kieran,' I snapped. 'If you value your life in the least, you will tell me the name that my mother christened me with. Should you tell me anything but, I swear that whoever knew you in this present time will find themselves wondering about your disappearance and I should tell you I have immunity from law enforcements unlike those of the normal community. Like you have so implied moments ago, I am an ugly legend, not above murdering my own father.'

'I do not know,' he said again. I felt my eyes rise to its tiger orange eyes, sharpening and the furrows between my eyebrows deepening; and I lost the humanity and mercy I had in a loose grasp. My hand swung backwards then forwards to grasp his throat in a cobra's vise. I tightened until he could not speak unless I permitted it. His eyes finally flickered with fear as my words sunk in.

I am an ugly legend, not above killing my father.

'I will ask you one more time before I fling you out of the window, Iroyashi-sama,' I sneered. 'What is my name?'

'I will not tell you what I do not know,' he said. 'But I will add an explanation if you would so kindly set me down.' The tiger essence inside me now, the Halogen induced personality of Hemorrhage refused to do so but the Sakura Mikan inside me, the person I wasn't but was at the same time, pleaded with me to listen.

'I won't kill you,' I heard my voice say, 'yet. But I will listen to your explanation, so long as it makes sense that will not cause me to kill you just yet. Start.'

'Very well,' he said. 'I am the son of your deceased grandfather, Iroyashi Imamura. Currently, I run Iroyashi Holdings, a private company based in the States. Once upon a time, I met a woman called... I do not think I should tell you… anyway, we fell in love and it is a very Romeo and Juliet tragedy. Suffice to say, I had no idea she was an Alice and she disappeared, carrying a child I knew nothing about.'

'So you're saying you're nothing but an injured party in this whole tragedy?' I asked quietly, the tiger fading slowly into the background. The fire of my anger had been banked if not, snuffed out. Instead, pain came to take its place. What was his part in this then? Why was he here?

'Exactly.'

'Then, get out,' I snapped. 'If all you're here to do is tell me how much of a failure I am to you, then go back to your family. I am guessing you were forced into an arranged marriage, that's why you never call my mother your wife. Because you have family you sort of cherish although not with passion.'

'Exactly,' he said again. I released my hold on his throat and he went to sit on the settee again, sipping his tea like he was some kind of bloody Brit. 'But I didn't come here to rant your many mistakes and the chances you could have taken. Quite frankly, I do not care what happens to you although I do have a small portion of advice for you to take. Do not be the sacrifice you need to be to save this pathetic world you're trying to desperately to fit in.'

'You know?' I asked, slightly dazed by the fact that this man who spawned me knew all along about who I was. 'Who the heck are you?'

'Didn't I already explain this before? I am Iroyashi Kieran-…'

'That's a whole lot of crap and you know it,' I said. 'How do you know about the Tract of Death? The Sacrifice?'

'Oh, well,' he said. 'There's very little I do not know. But, this has concern to your mother. She was a servant of the Immortals and it suffices to say, she gave you up to ensure her place in amongst the Immortal ranks.'

The warmth disappeared from my face as I listened to his words and my eyes closed as I imagined an older Sakura Mikan, no, an older Hemorrhage, giving away her only child to a madman because the child was an Alice, a more durable force of life than a normal human. I felt all the feeling of anger and the emotions of abandonment return to me. I opened my eyes and saw Iroyashi Kieran putting on his coat and reaching for his hat.

'It's cold outside,' he said conversationally. 'Don't forget to wear warm clothes, even if it isn't very ceremonial. The day of Reckoning is coming soon, don't let it slip. The Slaughter will only work if you really think the Sacrifice will work.' He slapped on his hat and turned to Mikan.

His hand, warm, dry but soft having never seen a day's work outside an office cubicle, touched my cheek and ran it up and down my face. I was drained of all emotion – anger, sadness, fear, happiness, sorrow and abandonment – were all gone. Exhaustion plagued me. 'Even if I were never to more of you than the fact that you're so giving, I would be regardless proud of you. So proud.'

He kissed my forehead and held up a hand in farewell. 'Goodbye, Sakura Mikan,' he said. 'I hope you take my advice today.' He opened the door of the sitting room and began to leave.

Then stopped.

He turned to face me with an inscrutable face, one I couldn't decipher. 'You know, if you hadn't already been made a legend, I would have called you 'Scelta'. Don't go hunting your mother. She isn't worth it, selling you to the highest bidder for her life. I won't tell you her name because it doesn't matter anymore. She doesn't matter anymore. Live your life the way you want to because it's the most important thing.'

He scanned her face again, as if trying to etch it into his mind and smiled just a little. 'I hope I don't see your gravestone next. Goodbye, Sakura Mikan.' He shut the door behind him, leaving me with a wealth of questions, wondering, wondering, wondering which had been answered and which hadn't.

Scelta, he'd called me.

He couldn't have been more wrong than that. I was nothing like that. I have no choice, no option, no other door to run to. Nothing was all I had. That was sad and horribly ironic. Hemorrhage, assassin, Immortal, Alice and two-faced idiot of the century had nothing to call her own, nothing to care for.

Scelta.

Choice.

I walked to the other door that led to Aki Tsukaima's rooms and rested my hand against the cool wood. All the tears I had been holding back, all the sorrow that had been building up like a crescendo of a choir piece was escalating beyond that was allowed…

…and my knees buckled, I crumpled onto the ground and I cried. I wailed, sobbed, wept and plain out cried as I replayed my meeting with an estranged father and a life I could never wish for simply because I was me and when you wished wishes, they either didn't come true or didn't last long enough for you to smile.

I cried and cried and cried, never noticing that he never once said he loved me.

Raion watched as Hyuuga Natsume arranged the last pieces of kindle around the body of Dalta. His eyes were ringed with dark circlets of tiredness, sorrow and anger. He couldn't and wouldn't blame Sakura Mikan for this mess, this pandemonium that they now called their lives.

Dalta, Kaitou and Raion were never high ranking in the ladder of Janus operatives but their usefulness – Dalta's visions, Raion's speed and Kaitou's fury – were always in demand when it was called for. It was so, so hard to not place the bulk of the blame on Sakura Mikan's shoulders.

Hyuuga Natsume, ever the epitome of cold and aloof detachment, touched Raion's shoulder in respect. The latter nodded and turned back to the lifeless body of the one he had loved an age ago. Sakura Mikan was absent from the cremation, having a guest of some sort. If the rumors were to be believed, it was her birth father.

The one that Janus had supposedly killed twenty years ago.

'Dalta lived and breathed for the day we would kill Janus, Raion,' Kaitou said to Raion who stared as Hyuuga called forth the flames were his right. The dancing fires licked greedily at the girl's blonde hair and crumpled her skin, charred it till nothing was left. Raion couldn't take his eyes off her even if he wanted to. It was impossible.

'Yeah, so much that she died for it all,' he said cynically. The pain hurt. Then he looked to Natsume as he also stared at the spectacle and Raion fancied that Natsume saw a different body burning on the pyre. A body beloved, a face cherished; a soul lost forever behind the Gates of Hell he knew she was damned to go towards.

'She will go to a happy place,' Hyuuga said in a hollow voice. 'She will… and that's more than we could hope for if Mikan were to be in her place.'

'Sakura Mikan will live forever,' Raion said. The times were getting hard, cynicism was hardening the hearts of the hopeful, destroying the faith they held in a single soul, anger that she, the person destined to stop this madness, would live eternally, forever in a body that would never age beyond its twenties. 'She's lucky.'

'Something isn't right,' Aki Tsukaima said abruptly. Imai Hotaru, Kokoroyomi, Tobita Yuu, Nogi Ruka and rest of their gang turned to the Student Council President and for the first time, wondered just to what extent the kid knew what was happening in the tragedy that was swallowing the Academy. 'Sakura isn't telling us something and I feel like no matter what we do, how much we become and how much healing she goes through, she won't tell us until the point where we can't do anything.'

'Definitely, Mikan,' Imai Hotaru put in dryly. 'She's not going to tell us precisely for the reason that we'd try to stop her and, in the process, get hurt. Don't you think it's just like the baka to go off and pretend to be the knight in shining armor? And I would love to add in that that should have been Natsume's role but that would be out of character and wrong, wouldn't it?'

'Amen to that,' Ruka said, wrapping an arm around her waist. Natsume raised his eyebrows slightly at this – he still had to put up his aloof façade – and wondered when did those two get so close? Was it when the panic was becoming evident? Or were they just giving action to the saying 'troubled times makes the oddest allies'?

All in all, it was just plain out weird.

Like a very bad soap opera he couldn't turn off because his role had been killed off and he wanted to stop it all.

'Hyuuga aside,' Tsukaima said with a pointed glance at said subject. 'I think we should start preparing don't you think? The time of Reckoning is coming very soon and I for one do not want to be caught unawares.'

'Speaking of Reckoning, can't we call it something more interesting?' Koko put in, a grin on his face. 'I mean, Resident Evil has Armageddon and Terminator had Doomsday. It sucks that we have such a lame name!'

'Koko!' Tsukaima, Ruka, Imai, Sumire, Nonoko, Anna and Yuu scolded in unison. The mind reader simply shrugged and followed them as they headed towards the teachers' lounge to get information on what weaponry and magic mojo they could get their hands on.

Natsume walked on par with Koko and smirked his trademark. 'I for one prefer Armageddon. I mean, pssh, it is the coolest name!'

'Ah, but Doomsday is straight to the point and doesn't confuse the people that do not have the intelligence you posses!' Koko argued, smiling.

There was a collective groan amongst the group but inside their hearts, a radiance that hadn't shone in days glinted brightly.

What a perfect day.