Get What You Wanted Ch 21
The most prepared armies and showiest fashion shows couldn't hold a candle to the display of discipline or stringent precision when the maids come forth at the ripple of the true Dark Lord's presence inside Castle Akashiya. Four rows deep, twenty wide with a matching platoon on the either side of the hall, faces upon faces directed their attention towards the center from the second and third floor. Beautifully and sharply dressed maids in stark white uniforms stood at ready attention and obedience, bowing low to the red sheathed figure in the middle of the main hall entryway.
"Welcome home, Mother Akasha," Their musical voices called out at once, all in deep waist deep bows with properly down cast eyes.
Directing all of them, personally bending her head, her back, and adding her own lilt, on her knee, with her flawlessly white gown reflecting the glossy shimmer of golden tresses was the second daughter of Shuzen Issa.
Shuzen Kahlua.
Akasha took the gathering all in, studying each woman by sight and scent, looking about the manor to see if anything has changed since the last time she was here over a decade or so ago.
"Rise," She said simply, landing her jade green eyes on Kahlua.
The blond daughter recovered herself gracefully, a pleasant smile full of joy to see Moka's mother.
"Mommy Akashiya!" All formality replaced by her normal childlike demeanor, Kahlua pounced onto Moka's mother like a little girl,"It's sooooo good to see you! Wah! I forgot how pretty you are? Can you play house with me? Can I brush your hair? Lets go put on dresses and play dolls! I want to go to the garden with you and pick flowers and..."
Akasha chuckled warmly to her own daughter's older, lovingly warm sister. Embracing the taller young woman as if she was just that, a child of her own flesh, she hushed her with a hand on her cheek. "And look at you, Kahlua-chan. Let me see how you've grown."
With that request, Kahlua took the folds of her dress and gave a dainty spin, stopping with a toss of hair and pose of polished grace a ballerina would envy.
"Remarkable. Truly, you have blossomed into a beautiful woman." She touched Kahlua's tanned shoulder, earning a pleasured blush at Akasha's praise. "Where are your other sisters and my Moka? Are they with your father?"
"I apologize for not having a proper staff to greet you," She gestured to the humble several hundred staff around her, "but I just came back from Father's work over in Fairy Tale to train Kokoa. It's so good to see you again!" She leaned her head against Akasha's shoulder lovingly, a child to their beloved parent.
Kahlua beamed, full of innocence and joy. "Are you hungry? Thirsty? Any of our staff will be more then happy for you to drink from."
She gestured to the staff to her left and to her right, each one in turn tilting their heads to the side in offering.
"That's very generous of you, Kahlua." Akasha couldn't help but admire the willingness and eager need to please their master. "I'm going to assume your father has them just as ready to do anything else that he requires upon a whim."
Kahlua nodded with bright eyes. "Oh, yes! You just have to ask and it will be, Mother."
"I see." She didn't sound pleased, but that didn't keep her eyes from taking on a mischievous glint. "Well then, I think we should have to take advantage of that, shall we?"
"Mother?" Kahlua seemed rightly cautious.
"Everyone," Akasha pulled her cowl from her head of straight pink hair to take everyone in the staff around her with her slitted green eyes. "You are not to serve my husband, his daughters, or myself tonight. We require the strictest privacy and either I or my daughters will perform any and all tasks necessary to get by. Is that understood?"
The serving staff looked at the other in alarm and confusion. To ask them to stop doing their duties was the equivalent to asking them to participate in treason. It just was their part in life to serve.
Kahlua remained calm, but she tilted her head in confusion. "But, Mother Akasha, there are needs of the house that have to be completed while you are here. Lord Akashiya has made it very clear that anyone who didn't do their duty was to be...well...dismissed."
Akasha folded her hands in front of her as if waiting for something poignant to come out of the younger vampires mouth, even a realization to dawn on the slender woman by her side.
Realizing what she had just done, her eyes flared open and she fell back onto her knee. "Forgive me! I-I apologize, Mother. It will be as you say."
Akasha nodded, waiting for Kahlua to recover.
Kahlua raised up on her feet and called out. "Okay everyone!" She clapped her hands and turned her attention to all of them. "Go to your rooms and play! When we need you-"
"Actually," Akasha rested her white gloved hand on Kahlua lovely bare shoulder again, interrupting her. "Give them the next couple of days off. Anything they want to do, they can. Let them enjoy the town and have Lord Akashiya cover all expenses."
Kahlua's tan skin paled in worry, even offering an uncomfortable chuckle. "Ahhh...It will be as you wish, Mother Akasha."
Akasha waited for anyone to do something other then stand there looking at each other with wary fumblings of their fingers into the other.
"You're all dismissed. Go away for three days till we call for you. If we don't, know that your services were no longer needed."
They collectively inhaled, afraid that they have done something wrong.
"Go."
In a courtly, well mannered fashion, they streamed out and through the weave of halls into their rooms to back.
The only figures there was Kahlua and Akasha, the one in red looking very pleased with herself while the one in white looking a bit confused with her finger to her cheek in thought.
"Mother, if you don't call any of them back, then Lord Akashiya will only have the butlers and goblin females here to serve him. Won't that make father unhappy?"
"I think it would do well for your father to have such an eclectic and willing unsightly staff so readily available upon his whim when he can do most things himself or teach you girls to do it. I know I had to."
"Yes, Mother," Kahlua gracefully bowed, still sure that her father would not be pleased at this turn of events.
"I wish to see my daughter Moka." Akasha waited for Kahlua to meet her eyes.
"She was in the study with Father." She gestured her long white gloved arm to the direction behind her. "Shall we?"
"Mother," Moka tried to keep a proper and dignified facade in front of her mother, but seeing the worry and warmth that just exuded from her like a pleasant aroma and not seeing her for almost a decade, she started to tremble like a lost child and ran to her, shamefully tearing at the eyes and pushing her chin onto the red fabric of Akasha's elegant gown.
Kahlua excused herself to see that her Mother's wishes were done...and see to her father to give him the current news of his staff.
She was sure he wasn't going to be pleased.
"My darling baby," Akasha stroked Moka's silver hair as lovingly and tenderly as a mother could with their daughter.
"I missed you," Daughter snuffled with a broken attempt at dignity, collecting herself enough to wipe at her eyes with her mother helping with a handkerchief.
"Look at you," Akasha brushed a stubborn lock of hair from her daughter's face, "What a handsome woman you are. I'm sure there's part of me in there somewhere inside you that isn't just your father."
Moka said nothing as her mother tilted her chin this way and that, examining her daughter carefully and with a hint of playfulness that belied the fact that the woman was not just her mother but the most powerful person in the dimension.
"Now look at you," Akasha took her daughters hands and brought them up by her fingertips to be seen. "A wife and so soon. I had not had the honor of marriage till I was over fifteen hundred years into my life. This is what happens when you hang around humans, my daughter. Just because you can get married and start a family doesn't mean you should."
At the mention of family...
"You have met my Tsukune, mother." Moka inquired with deep interest, already knowing from the Headmaster that she had.
"Yes, I have, my Moka." Akasha hooked her arm with Moka's as they started to walk down a long length of hall lined with different pictures of Lord Akashiya in different times of his glory as a vampire in the different times of his reign.
At the very center, a masterpiece of masterpieces, was a picture of Akasha and Issa together in their formal attire standing next to the other.
Her to the left and him to the right. She was in the position of servitude.
"How is he? I have not heard or seen him in a couple of days." She asked when her mother offered nothing more.
Akasha didn't answer, instead directed with a gesture up at the portraits with a hint of melancholy.
"Your father is still so handsome, isn't he?" Akasha answered dreamily, like a lovesick school girl watching her idol presented to her. "I would still do almost anything for him, my daughter. Did you know that is why he is running the dimension as he sees fit? I gave it to him to do as he pleases until I should ever need it back. When it comes to love, especially from one vampire to the next, what is power and control compared to the one you love's happiness?"
Moka blinked at her mother as if she had said night was day and white was black.
"But...why? You gave up your place to make him happy?"
Akasha touched her daughter's cheek. "Those are your father's own words, dear, not mine. Your father loves to rule. He relishes it, the feel of authority by his mere presence and the strength of strict obedience at his whim and word. There is no one as vampire enough as your father or his first daughter that I have no doubt where truer words could have best described as their greed of recognition then by plastering it about this house and making the namesake of our family. Know Your Place."
"But, Mother, if you are the true Dark Lord of Hades, then shouldn't you rule as you see fit?" To so easily give up such a prominent standing was beyond her or most vampire's comprehension.
Moka and Akasha stared at the other, gauging and weighing the other one curiously. "You are in love, aren't you daughter?"
Moka nodded with sincerity.
"What would you do for the man you love if you knew that the position you held and loathed took so much of your time that it separated you from your husband? In fact, take that step to one more level. What if it would bring your husband and you closer by doing something he is good at and you can enjoy your time loving him at your leisure?"
"The whole dimension, Mother?" Moka looked aghast, still. It was like asking a normal person to give up a limb for love.
"We are a family of powerful beings, Moka," Akasha chided gently. "It was in my authority to grant him that wish and he has done so better then anyone could ever imagine. Probably better then I would have, that is for sure. I didn't desire to rule and your father took to it like it was his own birthright. Either way, I gave him the dimension and he gave me you. I think I got the better end of the deal."
Moka could only bow her head low at the incredible compliment...however, there was still a point she could not keep silent to.
"You left me, Mother."
Akasha looked humbly apologetic, a very unfamiliar trait among the family in Castle Akashiya.
"I'm very sorry for that, Moka," The silver haired daughter looked up at her mother in another bout of derailment. That an apology would come so easily to her lips without something prideful or arrogant to rebuttal was unexpected. This acceptance of fault and even the knowing blame should be put on her mighty shoulders was such a foreign concept that she was expecting her father and any other family member to come scold her and say, "You can't do that."
"Mother?"
"You see, my daughter," Akasha began, walking away from the picture of her and her mate onto other pictures with Lord Akashiya with women like Ria's, Kahlua and Kokoa's mother. "Your father was a much of a man as he was a vampire in his insatiable desire for power as he was for lust. He also had an unyielding desire for flesh in his younger years that I was unable to fulfill no matter how hard I tried. He felt it was his place, his very duty to take what he could should the offer be put on the table or any other place a man could do the his deed with a woman, and justly proceed on with right on his side."
"You had the power, the authority, the abililty-" Moka argued.
"Yes, but I could not deny him at the time, Moka." Akasha looked away, memories of recent past resurfacing. "I would do anything for him, even break my heart over and over again so I could let him know that no matter how much he hurt me, I was still his love and what was my feelings of pain compared to his need for glory? I was his mate and I wasn't..."
She closed her eyes and sighed.
"...I wasn't strong enough to deny your father openly. When I couldn't stand it any longer so I did the only thing I could. I left."
Akasha nodded and looked over Moka as if renewing every detail about her from the last time she saw her. It was obvious her daughter still had so many questions and had withdrawn into herself, keeping her grudges she had about her mother to herself.
Moka was far from pleased with that answer, so Akasha continued.
"When your father and I met he had a lover and a woman that was selected to be the perfect mate for him, Sekitan Morgan. He was extremely fond of her and as a vampire of noble birth, he sought her out to be a mate because of her own proud standing and her distinct ability to out vampire everyone of his other suitors, even though I had her beat in power. He told her they would have to court for at least a thousand years before he would consider her worthy of that status to be a mate and grant her a child. The truth was your father was just a man and a greedy one at that. He simply took women on the side and eventually gave Morgan his child without being her mate after she had been with him over seven hundred years or so. However, when I had proven myself with my blood in numerous battles through out the dimension, he could not deny I was a better choice to exemplify his glory as a vampire of status. She challenged me when she found out that I surpassed her in prestige and in your father's notice to dual for the rights to be his mate. She lost. From that moment on, I was his mate. In a fit of broken pride, she left your father and never looked back. No one has seen the other since...as far as I know of."
Moka was sure that this was just another reason her eldest sister despised her so much.
"What does that have to do with you leaving me?" Moka's red eyes narrowed with strict concentration and anger.
Akasha absorbed her daughters growing wrath and offered simply, "Despite what you may think of my actions, Moka, you were brought up relatively proper. Your father, in spite of all his flaws, loves you deeply. He would almost deny you nothing, while I would have spoiled you just as I did him. I love you and him without restraint, however that does not a proper mother or mate make. In that respect, the best thing for me to do was to leave."
"But...I needed you!"
Akasha nodded, understanding her daughter's plight perfectly. "You wanted me, but you never needed me. There are things out there in this world that needed my attention to keep you and our family safe. Trust me, your father did a fine job on his own bringing you up as you should be. While I regret my time away from you, I stand by my decision to leave. It was for the best."
Moka could only shake her head in defiance to her mother's words.
"My daughter, we have eternity to come to terms with our regrets. You have lived without me for what? Ten years? Your pain is what you have come to endure do to being exposed to humans for only five of them? Do you regret my decision to introduce you to them as opposed to being made their equal and have to endure their living for only a majority of a century at best?"
"I don't know what to think of what you decided for me on that, Mother." Flashes of episodes upon episodes of both the happy and sad times of her life during jr high and then with Tsukune and his family. "I know that before my husband I hated them with all my being. They knew how to tear me apart with their laughs and their teasings. I couldn't do anything but endure it! It made me...made me..."
"Humble." Her mother finished for her knowingly and pleased she had come to the root of her anger towards them.
Moka could say nothing as that single word brought her to that realization.
"You see, my daughter, as much as you hated those times with humans," Her mother took her daughters arm again and continued down the long hall, "You were able to make friends eventually by accepting that they were your equal. Basically, as your father would say it, by knowing your place as one of them. Remember?"
She nodded.
"When was that?"
Moka pulled her silvery hair out of her face, "When they found out I had as many faults as they did."
"How did it make you feel when they pulled you into their fold?"
A flash of teeth at herself expressed how much it meant for her to be weak just for the sake of being liked, "Good, but I couldn't be my true self!"
Akasha raised her eyebrow at her. "So, you wanted to feel good while they were weak without understanding what it meant to be their equals."
"Yes!" Moka exclaimed as she finally found someone to understand her plight. "I AM better then them! I am stronger, faster, smarter, prettier-"
"Modest." Akasha threw that word out there, tripping her daughter in the midsts of her self praise.
Moka could only silence herself. "The powerful don't have to be modest when they can back up their claims, mother."
"My daughter, that may be so," She flicked her own pink hair out of her face, "But, again, remember what you said yourself when the humans decided to accept you because they realized you were their equal as opposed to their superior."
One full pink lip was chewed as she remembered her own word. "It felt good."
"You see, my daughter, you felt good once you reached their standard as opposed to them reaching yours. As humans, they don't have the capacity to be your equal. You know that as well as I do. We are superior to them in every way, however," She touched her finger to her daughter's chin, "to find a humble vampire who we can be our true self around anyone is rare when we have to put on airs all the time. Even your own father won't allow himself to be himself for the sake of pretenses. You, my daughter, were not really, truly happy until the part of you that is so deep in your own heart and soul was exposed for the world to see who and and what you truly are."
As much as Moka was afraid to hear it, she wanted her mother to say what she could not. "And what am I, Mother?"
"Just a girl who wants friends to love and to be loved. You are scared and insecure. While that makes you normal in the eyes of a human, that makes you a horrible vampire. As well as it should be." Akasha said delicately.
"But...I am a vampire! I am not human! I am a pure blooded through and -"
"Are you so sure, daughter?" Akasha inquired suddenly, catching her scarlet eyes with her green one.
In that instance, daughter Akashiya knew in an instant what it must have felt like to be told that her father was not the Lord Hades and how Ria must have felt when her position as heir was being taken from her.
"Wh-what did you say, Mother?" Moka's inquiry was but a lisped whisper.
"Who says you are a pure blood vampire?" Akasha folded her hands in front of her, poised and as serious as she could be.
"But I have to be! Father wouldn't marry into anyone else! How could you be so sure that I am not-"
"I am as sure of your blood line as I am sure of my own, daughter." Akasha raised an pink eyebrow to her daughter. "That I am not pure blood is as sure to me as I know for a fact that when I was born, I was naught but a second born myself."
A panting exhale expressed through Moka's nose as if unable to even open her mouth and make words come out.
"Then, what is your other half, Mother?"
"You see, Moka," Akasha cupped her daughter under her arm to keep her on her erect on unsteady feet. "When your father took notice of me, I was naught but just a mere half breed with powers and abilities that matched or exceeded most pure breed vampires. He saw me as only a creature of power, of the blood Shinso and I was nothing more. I kept that secret from him for a while, being as vampire as any could be on the surface save for how I felt towards humans and other 'lesser creatures' our kind so indelicately label them. That is why I put this on you, Moka."
She touched the silver rosario at her daughter's neck.
"That is why I wanted to humble you. Inside of you, in specs and pieces, you are like your mate and the reason you fear yet yearn humans so much. The blood inside you, Akashiya Moka," Her mother held the flesh of her flesh towards her, "Is partially human."