The Deserter

-Somewhere on Fifth Jerusalem-

Fiery red hair blows in the breeze created when the cockpit of a maroon E.S. opens in a quiet forest. They were alone, hidden away from the metropolis near their landing spot.

"I can only drop you off at this point," says a woman with short blonde hair. Her blue eyes pop in contrast to her Ormus attire clinging to her slender figure. She watches the red head hop out of the E.S. as soon as it was safe to jump out. Her hood fell off to reveal the full length of her long hair and the bronze skin of her face. Stone grey eyes turn to her blue eyed superior with a small smile. She stands up straight and gives a salute to the woman in the E.S.

"I can't thank you enough for allowing me to do this," replied the red head.

"Normally, I wouldn't do this for anyone, but for once I am willing to give an exception." the Ormus superior crosses her arms at her red headed subordinate and says, "The Chief Inquisitor will not be happy if he learns of your plans. I suggest you do not fail the ones you serve. Use your assignment here to steal data from the target and collect information on their associates. It will be your cover for now while you resume your search." The blonde woman frowns with a sigh. The red headed woman matches her expression watching her superior close the E.S. cockpit. The craft begins to start take off.

"May GOD help you find what you have lost, Angeles." The E.S. echoes the blonde's voice as she takes off towards the atmosphere. The woman watching from the ground looks up at the E.S. flying away.

"Thank you, Pellegri." Once the vehicle left her sights, she turns to the wooded walkway of the forest and starts running towards the metropolis up ahead.

Almost seventeen days have passed since she disappeared. Angeles remembered it starting as just a squabble between mother and daughter, and the petulant girl walking off to school in an act of defiance.

Angeles was so exhausted that morning she couldn't make herself drag the girl back home. 'All she ever cared about was being normal. How dare she think I never gave her that?! After all I've done for her!'

She remembered fuming over the rebelliousness her daughter had displayed for what felt like the whole year. Angeles fumed herself into slumber and woke up hours later to an inexplicable feeling of terror.

How could she not have seen this coming? She knew he was after them again, using legal means on the surface to cover his own façade. Yet behind the curtain, Angeles was certain he was trying to get back at her. All he needed to do was figure out where they were, just find that one little thing that would tell him where they were hiding. The terror that built in the pit of her stomach told her all she needed to know.

"That naïve man will never see through your conniving mind," frowned Angeles. Angeles moves through the forest floor, with a few 'magic tricks' of her own, suddenly appearing onto a road just in time to catch a train without being noticed.

As she rode the rails, the woman recalls her discarded pride the moment she heard him on the phone. Panic dialing her number only to hear his voice. That smug bastard…his voice was cold when he listened to her weeping, begging for her back. 'He said he could never hurt her. I should have known he would lie about that too.'

He ignored her pleads when he gave her his threat, breaking the phone when she started to curse at him. Angeles restrained her tears maintaining an apathetic mask until her eyes glance down at her wrist. A strange pendant was tied tight around it, glimmering blue. Grey eyes soften looking at the pendant, captivated, never taking her eyes off the pendant while walking with the shopping district crowd.

"I remember when I gave you this. You were very sick back then…I was at a loss on what to do. Who would have thought such a charm would keep you here with me," she brings her wrist to her chest looking out at the mass of people walking around her. Angeles finds a bench in the pedestrian walkways and sits for a short while. A memory plays in her head, a bitter one of the two going window shopping together. They loved being out together, the woman trying to enjoy the time they had. Just pretending they were just, normal. Angeles rubs the pendant frowning. 'That day I thought you would…'

Angeles' mind relives her daughter's eyes flashing pink before collapsing to the ground. She was curled up in pain as random objects shook and fell off the shelves of stores. Her outburst was felt for a few blocks, thankfully written off as an earthquake. 'We were lucky nobody thought you caused it. Though I wished we were lucky enough not to go to the Pavilion when you wouldn't wake up.'

The woman wandered through the city looking everywhere she went. She retraced her steps, remembering all the places her petulant child liked to go. Despite her daughter's tracker being crushed along with her phone, she was certain her daughter was still here. Angeles continues wandering through the city, thinking back on his actions.

Why would he do this? He never showed an interest in her, his contempt only focused on who he viewed as the betrayer of his trust. "You said from the beginning you didn't want to be involved," she murmured.

Yet, he helped her cover up her existence. It was confusing on so many levels. Every chance he got was just a twisted combination of abandonment mixed with betraying her as the wicked mother who deprived her child of a father, sprinkled with fleeting instances of caring for them. Angeles scoffs at the thought. 'Yeah, he cared alright…he cared only to serve his own ends.'

Angeles looks down to her connection gear at a message she received while riding with Pelligri. He was one of the last people she wanted to talk to at the moment. But perhaps he could help her get to him.

With only five days left, she was coming down to the last grains of sand in the hourglass. She looks over the cityscape and clinches her delicate fists.

"I know you're here Lydia…hold on just a little longer," the woman then begins sprinting further into the metropolis following her next stop.

-Dammerung-

Claret eyes meditate in the confines of his comfortable spot in the office. The glass walls of the pyramid shaped room reflected his slender frame unmoving. His ears enjoyed the enchanting voice of a soprano belting a timeless melody. What he wanted was a moment to breathe in silence, to quell his thoughts before they became too consuming. His minions were away tending to their assigned duties, giving him the excuse to simply sit and breathe. The repression of his thoughts yields to a memory.

A blurry memory flushed from an excess of wine shared with a rather reserved beauty years ago. The blurry memory distorted in grasps of sensory stimuli, the smell of perfume waking him up from that blurry night, greeted by her heart beat. He catches the smile that formed thinking of her elegant hair, the color of a roaring fire. Red, fiery red, how he loved the color. It contrasted well with her stone grey eyes, cold as the stones in tombs encompassed in death.

Wilhelm covers his face and smugly mutters about his creator rubbing off on him too much. The mere mention of the Matriarch spreads a sneer on his angelic face, and ruins his enjoyment of the melody booming through his speakers.

Pushing his creator from his mind, he moves one of his fingers to twirl the brim of his scotch glass. His face was flush from the scotch when he takes another sip from his sixth glass that evening. At the end of a quick sip, he spots quizzical turquoise eyes watching him from the doorway.

It was a young looking man with silver hair. His body suit was layered with white pants and a blue and orange vest that matched the gloves on his hands. The silver haired teen didn't appear surprised to see Wilhelm drink, but was curious as to why he was drinking to excess.

'Did he already know what I did?'

"Would you care for a glass?" Wilhelm slurred his words before making another glass appear out of thin air.

"You know I'm not much into scotch. What's the occasion?" chaos replied. Wilhelm wore a mask in his old friend's presence ignoring his question before smiling at his scheme.

"I just wanted to see if you're a man who honors his bets," The red eyed man smirks and passes a spare glass for Yeshua. chaos grimaces watching Wilhelm pour him a serving of scotch.

"W-why scotch? You know I can't stand the taste," chaos holds back his gag reflex.

"Don't be such a child, Yeshua. You asked for something benign, and I thought this was most suitable for our little bet." Wilhelm leans forward leering at chaos with his smirk. "You take three servings of this scotch, and I'll tell you what you need to know. You don't drink three, well…" chaos looks down at the scotch in his glass grimacing again. There had to be a way to get more information about KOSMOS without resorting to Wilhelm's games. The silver haired teen glares at the man before he takes the scotch glass. Wilhelm adds, "Come now Yeshua. I've already had six glasses before you got here. Why, you could say I tied one hand behind my back."

chaos takes no comfort in his words watching the albino down his seventh serving of scotch. The silver haired teen sighs and pinches his nose before quickly downing the drink. He sets his glass on the desk before sitting down in the visitor's chair. His tanned face contorted into restrained disgust for the drink while Wilhelm kept smiling with sadism.

'He's pouring more?!'

Wilhelm laughs at chaos' face when he pours his second serving of scotch and his own eighth glass that evening. chaos notices an air of tension in the room when watching the typically stoic man.

"Wilhelm, did something happen recently?" he asked.

"Why would you say that?" Wilhelm questioned in return.

"Because you already got intoxicated on scotch before we even decided to gamble on information," chaos continues to frown.

"A man can't drink for fun, Yeshua? How many years has it been since I did that?" Wilhelm pouts playfully. "Sixteen years or so, I think," chaos answers his rhetorical question. Wilhelm slips up on his playful demeanor to drop a sneer at him, and quickly downs the next glass. He stared up at the ceiling softly exhaling the emotional turmoil from his being.

"The past continues to haunt me," the albino man mumbled loud enough for chaos to hear. chaos fidgets in his seat.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brought that up…" before he could feel more guilt over that, Wilhelm taps on the desk toward Yeshua's glass in a condescending manner. 'You can't avoid the issue forever.'

Yeshua glares back once more at the drunk albino and drinks the second serving.

The red eyed man looks at the greener looking Yeshua from his chair, and starts to play his hand. He pulls out a document from his holographic computer screen.

"I received this in my messages from a diagnostic company owned by the Federation. It was a hefty bill from their medical division looking into genetics." chaos suddenly felt the urge to vomit at that moment as the albino studies his reaction. He hides his face in poker player fashion before hastily replying,

"Does this mean you've been found out?"

"Well, no. The bill itself was short a payment for DNA testing done earlier this year. For some reason their department contacted me for payment since I was still listed as a contact in the recipient's records. I could have contested the need to pay, if weren't for what the test was for."

"I don't think I follow," Yeshua frowns.

"Angeles wouldn't bother with asking for a test like this."

chaos's shoulders droop hearing the woman's name and says after an awkward pause, "You don't suppose it could be…?" Wilhelm pours a third glass for chaos with a stoic face.

"I suspects so, but the child, I didn't think it was still alive," Wilhelm clarified. chaos pretended to be confused, the silver haired teen impressed he could hold back his guilt ridden expression from being detected by his scrutinizing gaze.

"The child, I assume, must be hunting me down through some amateur investigating. Though I wonder where did she get the money to pay for this without her mother knowing."

chaos politely smiled at the man, the teen becoming sentimental and yet apprehensive.

"I'm happy for you, Wilhelm. The possibility of this being-"I don't know if I can meet the child." chaos blinks at the unexpected response.

"What? But why?"

"Maybe you have forgotten, Yeshua. But the last eight times didn't work out so well," Wilhelm began to recall his first eight failures spanning back centuries. chaos knew all eight died unexpectantly from unexplainable circumstances, most unintentionally the result of the Matriarch's intervention.

"But it wasn't your fault. No one could ha- "I could." Wilhelm hinted towards the Compass of Order, making chaos roll his eyes.

"Right…but what would be the harm of meeting the child? If this is the child?"

"A lot of things could come from it, Yeshua. Let's consider the possibilities: A) stake through my heart. B) Black mail. C) I end up on Jerry Springer!"

"Wilhelm…I think you've had enough scotch," chaos looks at Wilhelm like his head was screwed on backwards. "Enough I have I tell you," Wilhelm slurs in gibberish.

"How many did you have again?" chaos smiles cautiously while thanking his stars the excess drinking started kicking in for his rival.

"...I don't remember." The silver hair teen gently removes the glass from Wilhelm's hand, and sets it away from him. "This isn't like you at all. Look whatever this is, I think it might turn out good for you."

"How? How would any of dis good for me?" Wilhelm humored chaos with a sarcastic tone.

"I think meeting them would bring you both peace, something that should have been done a long time a…" chaos spoke solemnly when he feels Wilhelm fall forward onto his chest clinging to his vest.

chaos tries to speak when Wilhelm hisses in his drunken state, "You will…regret helping her…"

Wilhelm slumps in his arms snoozing and muttering in his sleep to Yeshua. chaos held his old friend with uneasiness before slipping an arm around his shoulder. He drags him to his room listening to the man mutter about the past. chaos makes it to the bed, gently placing Wilhelm on the sheets starting to mutter in Latin.

"Ipse renatus fuerit, creatura de duabus animabus…."

chaos pauses before finishing placing Wilhelm on the bed. He chooses to continue walking out of the room. "In sanguine equites…." He flinches at his words knowing with each word, Wilhelm struck a nerve.

chaos looks back and only replies, waiting to ask Wilhelm about those words another day. "Just think about it. chaos knew in the back of his mind she may end up like the others, but he knew that she was getting to a point where she had a lot of questions. So many questions about where she came from, and so little time to have them answered. chaos's eyes blink quickly when he hears snoozing coming from his old friend. The door closes behind him, leaving Wilhelm to mutter the words, "Ipse renatus fuerit… creatura de duabus animabus…. In sanguine equites… erit bestiam esse completum."