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Systematically, Lucia worked through the stack of papers. It was like every country in the world wanted something from her, and this was just the most important stuff pertaining to India. Poor Hippo was overworked in sorting the incoming mail, him being one of the very few in her service who could read human writing.

Sign this treaty, deal with the unexpected backfiring of another agreement ... more requests for interviews.

Kaito embraced her from behind. "Hello, Lucia."

There was this mild teasing tone that indicated what kind of a free time he wanted. Any inclination to go along with it was washed away by the knowledge that that in the mean time, things might just get out of hand even more. What if another disaster happened and she wasn't around?

"Not now, Kaito," she said softly. "I'm sorry, but I have work to do."

"I'm here for you," he said with a confidence Lucia could not match. "You're strong, I know you can pull it off."

For some reason, this annoyed her. What did being there for someone actually mean? What did strength have to do with any of this? She glared at the paperwork and all the unseen problems they represented and for once, she didn't feel peaceful and forgiving at all.

"No Kaito, you're not here for me." She unhooked his arms and turned around. "You're there for a pretty princess that needs protecting from evil villains. I'm not that girl anymore, I'm a goddess without a clue on politics. I don't need a warrior prince to shield me, I need a supporter and advisor to speak with. That's not you."

She could hardly believe how cold she sounded, yet what she said was the truth. There was a tug to apologize, to get back that happy feeling that she now saw so casually destroyed in Kaito's eyes. He took a step back and said nothing for a moment. The entire time, her eyes never left him.

"Lucia, did something happen?"

"Off course. Years happened where you tried to shield me from the problems that would come if the Panthalassa Clan might try to drop the masquerade. You never actually talked to me about it, you just said we should leave them because it was too dangerous. You never looked for other options, and all I had to believe in was the Aqua Regina's words that they'd be in a peaceful sleep. As if that were true ... if there was anything like that, they would not have been so desperate to get out!"

His expression hardened, confirming what she had suspected for a long time. Kaito didn't give a dime for his own people. What he went on to say only confirmed it.

"The Panthalassa Clan has a rotten core that needs to be contained. Doesn't the conflict in the Arabian Sea prove that yet again?"

She so badly wanted them to agree, but no. It wasn't this simple.

Mermaids were affected by that love field, but the Panthalassan Clan wasn't, or at least less. That was why the Aqua Regina had refused to let Clan go free in both events where she sealed them. No control. It had been Kaito's choice entirely to ignore them, and leaving them to Gackto, who in turn listened to Sara.

All of this, the very thought that everything in the world was so wrong because someone had decided mermaids should be in a certain stunted way, she couldn't handle it. Yet raw anger was not something Lucia frequently felt, let alone knew how to express. The currents around the castle swept harder, a storm threatened to rise, but she knew her power might someone who did not deserve it, so the anger stayed within her.

"Lucia?"

"It proves nothing. That rotten core, do you have proof of it? Is it some sort of gene? You've gone to school, you should have learned about things like civil rights and genes."

"You went to school too," he said. "What are you getting at?"

"I can barely write and it was only one year before I became Aqua Regina and had no more time for it! You've been to school from age six onward and completed your studies. You were good at it, unlike me. So how could you live with it? Knowing it wasn't alright they were locked up down there?"

He averted his face. "It's not that simple, Lucia. You see what dropping the masquerade resulted in. Maybe it's not genes, but their culture—"

"That we created by keeping them down there! Tell me in honesty, some other method to set them free would not have worked? You didn't even try, Kaito. Sure, it would have been difficult, but that's what we as rulers are for, to make those things easier for the people we serve."

"Lucia! I did try! How do you think I found out what their plans were?"

"That's not trying, Kaito. To try would have meant to actually let something happen. Like I did, even if it was the wrong way. If you had been there for me not as a protector, but as an advisor, then I would have talked to you on that day I went to rise the waters at shore."

"You're blaming me?" he asked, incredulous but also a bit angry.

"Yes! I'm blaming you for not doing your duty as a Panthalassan Prince!" she shouted. Then softer, she added, "I'm also blaming myself for not having done more to understand the world. I ... I wanted it to be so simple. Every problem sung away."

Kaito sighed, a few bubbles escaping his mouth. He swam away from behind her desk, sank down on one of chairs folding his hands before his face and closing his eyes.

Lucia sat back and waited, she wasn't sure for what. Hopefully he would have an idea, because she wasn't getting any.

"What are we going to do, then? You do have a point, we haven't been doing enough and you may be right, I haven't even been trying to be the prince of my people. Seira spent the last decade dealing with her torn kingdom, she probably has more knowledge of government than either of us."

Oh, right. Kaito perhaps was smarter than her and better at school, but he didn't have any political experience either. But it seemed he had relented. Whether he actually understood the Panthalassans weren't inherently intent on causing problems — he was one himself, he should know — that was left to be seen, but if she could just get him to move ...

"You can start by no longer turning your back on your people. Use your powers and heritage to lead them in the right direction. Gackto listens to Sara, they need someone who leads them down a more peaceful flow."

"I don't know, Lucia. It could be too late to get them under my rule."

Her brow dropped and he grabbed her staff. When she stood up he did so as well, but he didn't get closer again. Uncertainty was all over him, almost as if he did not recognize her. Lucia pushed back how unpleasant she found that and said, "I have some cameras that I need to smile to. It's the only thing I can do right, make people love me. I'll be starting a peace fund or something, once I find some people willing to really talk with me. If you are not going to go speak with your people or keep your brother in check, at least you could look through my paperwork and simplify them for me."

She walked past him, but just when she was out the door, Kaito spun around and swam after her. "Lucia, I ... I never meant to keep you down. Please believe me, I just wanted there to be peace for us."

"And I want peace for everyone else." She bent forward and kissed him on the cheek, then she turned away. Kaito didn't follow her. Through the waters she noticed his power shift, telling her he had moved into the office.

It wasn't what she wanted. If she had that, he would have his arms around her and they wouldn't need to worry about anything but the weather.

What she needed was something else, though. As an immortal goddess she would outlive him, so she might just as well learn her limits and ability. Some day, she would have to learn to be without Kaito altogether and all of her friends would move on to the next world.

Why did it have to be that way? If she could ascend them all to a greater role, perhaps they could become immortal ...

If there was a goddess of the sea, shouldn't someone rule the land? If there ever had been a god of the skies, then it probably had been the emperor whose fossil she had seen destroyed.

She was the only goddess on this world, not withstanding creatures that were called gods without possessing the powers or immortality. A cold settled over her when she wondered what had happened to the other gods.

Was Earth going to tire of her and the humans too? Maybe she would end up like the old emperor as well, a soul trapped in a fossil with no afterlife and no escape. The former Aqua Regina herself had been trapped in a similar half-life, unable to reach the other world or regain life.

That appeared to be the only way for a god to die : to run out of energy and become a relic.

In a way she was alone already, but she wasn't going to accept that. Once Kaito had pushed her away due to his own loneliness. She now understood what he spoke of, but that also meant she was not going to put up with it in herself.

It was just a little odd that in order to gain someone who truly stood at her side, she had to push him away.

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Radu tapped her pen on the desk and looked at the orange princess behind the glass, then at her friends at this side. Merron often wiped imaginary strands from her face, while Richard was on his fifth cup of coffee. You'd think they had a taxing week, but in reality, they had just spent the day listening to song in various volumes.

Richard was at best indifferent to bubbly J-Pop and Merron was downright antagonistic, but off course, the real reason of their stress was auditory overload.

"For goodness sake, my taste buds. Sugar poisoning ... Even ancient magical creatures cut off from human culture somehow manage to be weea—"

"Merron, you do realize she's not really singing in Japanese, right?" Radu said, just because the response would be fun.

"Off course I know! But it gets translated to us as Japanese for some reason and they are clearly catering to the Kawaiiko culture! Look at all those frills!"

Undisturbed, a Seira who believed she was on tour kept performing happily. Before her was a large room with people who believed they were visiting a private concert.

They were on their seventh test audience now, having already gone through school kids, politicians, random folks off the streets, convicted criminals, desperate housewives and bureaucrats. All of them were wired up to a device that scanned their brain; for this purpose they had been given memories of chairs always looking like this, preventing them from questioning it.

The majority of this stuff was in the hands of the neurology team, but Merron's magic team was called in today due to the unusual fact they were researching mind altering magic.

The previous six test audiences had given report of bliss and scans indicated activation of pleasure centers in the brain. The severity of the effect was directly related to personality and previous neurological state. People already happy were more easily influenced, while those with an aggressive personality took longer. People suffering a purely physical state that caused sorrow, like manic depression, were easily given a better mood, while those whose sorrow was influenced by a tragic event took more time.

All in all, mermaid song in its nice mode appeared to simply be a magical anti depression pill and potentially disproved the theory Seira and Michel had hatched, but that was what science for : to keep going till all angles had been covered.

Their first clue was that being exposed to mermaid song made humans more able to perceive the earth magnetic field using the small magnetite deposit between the eyes. The magic field of the planet was closely linked to it, and that meant that while there might just be something more complex at work.

Mermaid neurology was surprisingly similar to that of humans. Aside of such functions as pressure resistance and lack of menstruation and testosterone, they had all the chemicals that humans had ... with some key differences in levels. Greater release of dopamine allowed them to generally be happier, and then there were the extraordinary presence of Oxytocin.

Oxytocin was involved in forming bonds, increasing trust, reducing fear, and when administered to the right spots it could impair memory and learning. A nation of loving mermaids who never developed technology, kept the same culture with uniform rigidity, who were blindly trusting of their goddess and never get around to thinking about the injustice of her actions?

The neurology team checked for Oxytocin abnormalities early on and their findings were startling. The mechanism behind it appeared to be magical, but the effect was very much organic and seemed steered precisely to counter the development of mermaids. The orange princess displayed lower levels of this, for some reason. Either exposure to the earring or her unusual birthing situation were suspect. She regularly used the so called dream circuits to travel, which might cut her off as well.

Now the seventh test audience was returned home and Seira, yet again, was placed to sleep with gas, Radu's team finally got to their part. Merron immediately called for the Black Beauty Sisters, which at once turned the other team apprehensive. Radu was fairly certain this was because the two were very firm about letting nobody figure out their brains, and the only reason they worked for the organization was that they needed certain sea magic to become people. Pure mercenaries that they couldn't understand, it made most scientists uneasy or irritated.

They let themselves be awaited. During this time, they erased Seira's memory of the previous performance, brought her to another room of the studio set and implanted a slightly altered version of the memory set that had her sing. It wasn't hard, the poor woman loved to sing.

They had her hooked up to a brain monitor through the headset she wore, and now she lacked the earring — she reached for it every time they reset her — the effect of the sea's magic became more apparent on her.

Across the next hours, the actor playing either a director, assistant or whatever they needed had asked her some innocuous questions, playing a man concerned about the state of the world. Every time, this would include a question about the Panthalassans. The longer Seira was exposed to the hypothetical field, the more her answers changed.

"It was high time, Lucia had already wanted to do it years ago."

"Well, Kaito did have a good point about the chaos it caused."

"Perhaps we should have gotten a few experts first. Lucia really ... I don't want to badmouth her, but it was a poor choice. She did mean well."

"She should have listened to Kaito. The time wasn't right, for none of this. I don't want to badmouth her, but ... I'm not sure ... she is right, yet ..."

"The Panthalassans may not be dangerous as individuals, but as a whole, we have to be careful."

"I don't understand how Lucia could doubt the Aqua Regina's judgment, she has always been there for us."

Hearing it was depressing. To divert herself, she pointlessly adjusted the barrier that kept them from being influenced, ever time a new answer arrived. She had to resist the temptation to argue about the ethics of this all, it would raise too much fuss in her direction.

"Where were you?" an irritated Richard said when Mimi and Sheshe finally stepped into their room.

"Oh, we met with Izul, Eriru and Maria and decided to tell some animal rights organizations that fish are sapient and could potentially be turned into people. You should've seen their faces! They're now starting a campaign to demand vegetarianism world wide."

"But not all fish are sapient," Radu said. "The mermaids will be quick enough to tell them that.

"Those in touch with magic become so, and there's plenty of little fish who have swam through a mermaid castle. Every net hauled out of the ocean could contain a potential person. Isn't it fun to get them riled up over that?"

"There's a war brewing over at the Indian Ocean, and you two think it's a good time to start even more trouble, by working with servants of that Gackto figure no less?"

Mimi clapped her hands together. "Yes, it's a wonderful time!"

"As if they need more problems."

"Are we here to argue about this or to do some fancy experiment?" Sheshe asked.

"Actually, we just need a fresh recording of your song to see how it interacts with Seira's song. We don't have any data yet on this first hand."

Sheshe and Mimi both rolled their eyes. "Fine, whatever."

Sheshe laid her hand around Mimi's waist and pulled her into the studio. It was on the set rather than one of the normal studios, separated from Seira off course, on Merron's demand. She promised the result would be interesting.

"Voice in the dark, Folia of the dark ... "

As they performed, Merron started muttering along.

"Harmony is nothing but an illusion, a deception without a mirror reflection. If it would get entangled in a thread of waves, it would come to an ebb tide. Turn the charm inside hearts into a wicked aphrodisiac, and lead astray the weak people ... holy crap, they're describing the effect."

Radu yawned. "Indeed," she said with feigned disinterest, knowing full well this would provoke Merron to rant. Things went quicker than way than when Merron decided to play stuck up scientist who refused to talk to assistants.

"Think about it. If the harmony of the seas is the result of an ongoing mindwipe, it's an illusion because it is not founded on a solid base. No mirror reflection because it cannot exist within those not exposed to the magic, unlike actual altruism, which affects those around it," she said. "It will reach ebb tide if it gets entangled in the thread of waves. Waves don't have threads, do they? Or should we assume the sea is part of an intricate weaving, rather than free?"

Mark of the neurology team tapped the window and signaled Mimi and Sheshe to stop. When they came out, he asked, "Ladies, where do these lyrics come from, did you make them up yourself?"

"I don't know. They just come naturally to us," Sheshe said with a shrug.

"Given those lyrics, can you actually turn people against one another with your song?"

"I wish. We can knock out people with it, blow up a building if we really try, but if we could have just sown discord amongst the mermaids, we would have won back then!"

"But mermaids can bring out the best in people through their song if those people are receptive to it, and those people tend to stay on their side."

"Those people already were looking for redemption anyway. Heck, Michel already had redeemed himself, he was just mind controlled by Fuku at the time. So what?"

"How much did you catch of the conversation we intercepted, of Michel and Seira?"

"Stuff about oceanwide brainwashing," Mimi said with a shrug. "Pretty sure we're immune to this happiness field, so we didn't really care. Why do you?"

"This hypothetical 'happiness field' makes mermaids trusting without warrant, forgiving those who have no remorse if that fits the day's theme, unable to leave the butterfly stage of love and unable to question the morality and judgment of their god," Merron said casually. "We have reason to believe it was steered, possibly by the former sea goddess. That which is made, that can be controlled by us."

"Ooh, I see why you want it. I'm with you people there," Sheshe said.

"Sister Sheshe, imagine if we could shoot people to make them trust us. Wouldn't that be interesting?"

"Don't count on it, ladies. From what we gather, the song just makes people perceptible to it, it doesn't cause it," Richard said.

"Could be possible test this?" Merron wondered aloud. "Where can we get a goody-two-shoes susceptible to the effect and see how well they get hooked on it and give us inside information? Our unknowing test groups can't exactly be interrogated easily."

And they shouldn't need to interrogate, Radu realized at once. That was not to mention they already had a good idea on how the song interacted with personalities. The experiment was still ongoing.

Casting a quick look over at the neurology team, she subtly put a finger before her mouth, concealed as a thinking pose. They understood and played along.

Richard shrugged and pulled at a questionable magazine, starting to flip through it demonstratively.

"Being horny doesn't appear to be a big moral failing, Richard. The sea goddess was doing it with her boyfriend when she was like, thirteen and unmarried. She let it slip herself on that interview a few weeks ago," Merron said.

"I also cheat taxes and have employed company means on the stock market. You know why you yourself won't do it. Why not ask Radu, she could use a little more corruption."

"More? Now do I?" said Radu, chewing on a long fingernail that she held up from a limp wrist, trying her best to appear anything but innocent.

Merron shook her head and looked back at the computer screen. "I am head researcher, I cannot do it, and Radu ... do we really want to know?"

Radu smiled slyly. "I suppose we will have to find a goody two shoes elsewhere."

"If you don't need us, we'll be going," Sheshe said.

Merron gestured at the door and sipped her coffee. The two were out in no time.

When they were gone, she abruptly put down her coffee and took her computer out of standby, starting to load something.

"Perfect," she muttered after a few seconds.

Radu couldn't help but be curious, so she stood up for a better look.

"Care to share what this was all about?" Mark asked. He and his team gathered around Merron's computer.

"Our princess was still singing the entire time they were here. I've played it at a low frequency through the computer and it didn't hurt them. In fact, they were remarkably cooperative despite not getting anything out of it," Merron said. "Normally, they would have asked for a reward for this service and cracked an insult about our jobs."

Richard also came to stand aside of Merron, muttering, "If even they are affected positively by it when they're not set to consider it 'enemy' and it works at such a low frequency ... "

"The possibilities aren't endless," Merron said with a deeply satisfied voice. "But well within the scope of many applications that would improve our organization."

"We should get our hands on one of those people that turned on Licht Amagi and see whether we can truly alter their memories."

Radu had been here for a few years, but this was the first time she really worried for the outcome of a research project, sans Michel off course, but that was a case of the research itself being the problem.

If they could manipulate emotions, they could truly alter memories without the risk of a snap back or recall. Currently, they used the Sea Staff to steal and replace, but even an ancient item like that couldn't truly alter a the soul. It wasn't made for that.

Merron and Mark agreed they would obtain one of that mob, as well as a full blooded Panthalassan. Licht Amagi's orchestra trick had given a good reason to assume the Panthalassans were immune to the effect.

Meanwhile, Radu considered the risk of sending out a message.

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