Chapter Twenty-Three: Albedo

The man was smiling, grinning like a child, as we entered his domain. His purple eyes -purple eyes!- were gleaming with an infantile glee. And yet the macabre scene of dead, wide-eyes children surrounding his dark throne gave the man a shadow of insanity that threw his grinning features into sharp, horrible relief. With one hand he held the pink hair of my charge in a fierce grip, while the other stroked her cheek absent-mindedly. I felt my heart stop, then start again in a horrid tattoo against my ribcage. It shook me, shook my brain, shook my heart, to see MOMO, my MOMO, in the arms of that man. But Jr. did not see. He saw only the dark violet eyes of the staring man.

"Albedo..." His voice was a growl, throaty and primal, coming from the depths of his lungs. "YOU!" His white knuckles were on his guns, ready to shoot holes into the man. I wasn't sure if I would mind terribly if he did.

"Please spare me from any trite lines like, 'You're still alive?'" His voice was a man's, dark and full of malice, but yet with a twinge of something child-like hidden in the darkness, like a child without a light. "Life and death are merely empty words lacking any power over me. By the way..." He ran a gloved hand over MOMO's face, her eyes shut fast in horror, "did you ever bother telling the girl? Does she know that we're monsters, both you and I?" I could hardly take my eyes from the scene of horror before me, but I managed to glance at Jr., whose face was now contorted in fear and hate, his cheeks as red as his hair. He had seen MOMO.

"MOMO!" His voice had changed again. It was thin, held on a string as if it could snap at any moment. Watching the terror on his face, I was in for another shock as tiny white fingers took his throat in their grip. It was MOMO. No, it wasn't MOMO... But how could it be anything else? Her doll's eyes, glazed and without emotion, spoke quietly in a voice that was anything but MOMO's.

"I want the me that's inside you," it said menacingly. I felt a sickening chill creep up my spine. Jr. opened his mouth to speak, but MOMO lifted him from the ground, his feet curling with pain underneath him.

"M...MOMO...?" His voice cracked, obviously fighting through the pain. She was unmoved, her eyes staring at the back of the boy's head as she raised him off the ground.

Then before my eyes, that MOMO died. She was no longer what I had thought she had been. I'd been deceived, my sensors, all of my diagnostics scans, but more importantly, my heart. I'd been fooled by this thing that had assumed MOMO's shape. The once pink hair drained of color until it was a dull silver. Her skin was no longer the shade of the girl I knew. She looked like MOMO, and yet was so different. That MOMO, who I had taught to speak, who had listened so intently to the stories, wasn't MOMO anymore.

"MOMO!" It was Shion. Her face was a mask of horror. Her fingers were trembling. I glared back at the imposter, rage bubbling in my stomach at this thing that had impersonated the girl I loved.

"That's not her," I growled. Shion's eyes turned to me. "That's..." I had no idea.

"Free from the bonds of flesh," the tall, white-haired man interjected. The grin on his face was gut-wrenchingly wide. "A pure consciousness has no true form. All that exists is the longing for reality." Jr. clawed desperately at the fingers around his neck, gasping for air. Suddenly, a bright aura surrounded the boy, his very skin seeming to emit the bright red light. I stepped back. A growl of rage exited his small frame.

"Get off me!" His voice ripped through the otherwise silent scene, and he threw his arms and legs out in rage. As he did so, the bright red light flew from his body like a shockwave. The girl was thrown backwards, and with a sickening crunch she hit the back wall. MOMO, in the arms of the madman, twitched and whimpered with pain. I balled my hands into fists as Jr. struggled to his feet.

"Did you see that, ma pêche.?" He spoked soothingly to MOMO, his face inches away from hers. She didn't open her eyes. "You're witness to his true nature right now. A consciousness desperately struggling to stay alive. Such a pitiful sight." He looked up, narrowed eyes staring straight at Jr. "This is unseemly, Rubedo." Rubedo? Who--?

"Jr.," came a pitiful voice. It wrenched at my heart, and it took every nerve in my body to not sink to my knees in despair. It was MOMO, and she sounded as fi she had been through unbelievable pain. Jr.'s face emitted the emotion that I felt through my entire body.

Then the man, his fingers trembling in excitement, reached into MOMO's abdomen. She groaned in pain, and it echoed through the vast room. The pit of my stomach dropped out, and my heart fell through it. I had never felt as helpless. Only once. It was the same feeling, the same as that day.

"Albedo!" The voice coming from Jr. was one I had never heard. It was rage, pure and absolute. "Get your stinkin' hands off of her!" His hands finally reached into the holsters and whipped out the identical pistols. "Or else I'll-"

"Hmm?" The man, Albedo, interrupted Jr. with a flick of his disturbing eyes, grin full off malice. "You'll do something if I do this?" With a vicious thrust, his hand went through MOMO up to the man's elbow. I choked on my own growl of anger, staring with helplessness as MOMO threw back her head and cried into the silence. Jr. raised his guns.

"You mother-!" His last word was cut off with a violent explosion from both guns. Both bullets sunk into the man's arm, the one that had violated MOMO, and it exploded into nothingness. No blood, no scream of pain.

Then a laugh. A laugh so terrifying that my blood congealed at the very sound of it. The maniacal laugh sent terror through every bone, every circuit in my body with every repeating, high-pitched gyration in the man's voice. I wanted to rip the throat out of him, just so he would never subject me to that laugh ever again. And against all logic, the man's arm reformed with a flash, and he worked his fingers as if working circulation back into them.

"What pain... so sweet, so alive!" He chuckled as he looked to the sky as if thank the heavens for being shot. "Pain is such a vital part of realizing one's existence." He took his eyes to Jr. "Try to remember, Rubedo." Jr. glared at the man. Albedo, that monster, he kept referring to Jr. as Rubedo... When he had said that Jr. wasn't his real name- "What it takes... What you must do... Or, have you lived in peace for so long that you've completely forgotten?" A grin flitted across his face, an insane grin filled with nonsensical ideas. Jr. pointed his guns again at Albedo, gritting his teeth and ignoring the fact that the man had just re-grown his own arm.

"I don't give a damn about what you have to say! Just give her back!" There was a tense moment of silence, where, in glancing from one to the other, I noticed the eerie resemblance between the two of them, and even Albedo's likeness to Gaignun. In that moment, Albedo brought a hand to his chin in thought and shook his head.

"I don't think so," he said simply. I stepped forward, ready to take her from his by any means possible. I was surprised to find chaos' hand on my shoulder holding me back. "I'll just take what I want to proceed with my plans. And along the way, I'll make you remember," he stared at Jr. as one would as if staring over the rims of glasses, inviting Jr. to challenge him, "who you really are."

"Shut up!" Jr. was livid. I had thought he had been angry with me on the bridge of the Durandal, but now I saw that I had gotten a mere fraction of his wrath. "I don't need some freak contaminated by U-DO to tell me-"

"Jr.?" Shion murmured from beside me. She must have been thinking the same that I was. It was U-DO that Nephilim, the girl from KOS-MOS' encephalon, had told us about. That KOS-MOS would encounter U-DO and fight it in her true form. The connection alone was enough to make me stare in wonder at the white-haired man.

"Contaminated? Not quite. More like," he paused, putting a finger to his cruel lips in thought, "evolved. I experienced but a fragment of my true power that day. The waves that inundated my body are now a part of me! I've reached a higher stage of existence compared to you incomplete mortals." With his filthy hand he delved inside of MOMO, and I felt my own teeth grinding inside of my head. "I am the alpha and the omega of perfect consciousness!" His voice rose to the hypothetical rafters with elation. Jr. was shaking.

"S-Stop it," his voice cracked.

"Mmm..." Albedo sighed and closed his eyes. I hadn't realized that I had been biting my lip until blood flowed into my mouth. That bastard. I'll kill him. I'll kill him by making him choke on his own filthy mind. "Ah, this is nice." He glared obviously at Jr. "Don't you want to give it a try?"

That was it. Jr. cracked. His eyes were wild, like that of a cornered animal, and his shaking had reduced him to a trembling heap. But his back snapped erect and he gripped his guns as that blazing aura formed just around his person once again with one strangled word:

"MOMO!"

The guns fired again as one, dual explosions close to my ear, and I watched in awe (was it satisfaction?) as one bullet eradicated the same arm once again, as the second bullet shot through his head. Both disappeared in flash, and the headless man's body swayed for a moment. I was ready to retrieve MOMO from the dead man's fingers. I was already moving forward when another bright light shown from the lifeless body of Albedo. Slowly, his head was reforming, those violet eyes glaring with adolescent glee at each of us, but especially at his would-be killer. I stared, open-mouthed, at the revived man before us.

"Impossible," I muttered. "Is that nanotechnology?"

"No," Shion answered from beside me, her voice shaky. The man had just lost his head and it was growing back against all possible laws of science. She had an excuse to be frightened. "Nanomachines can't work anywhere near that fast, and besides, not even the research laboratories have models with head-regenerating capabilities yet." If I hadn't seen the frightening display before me only moments ago, I might have laughed at the absurdity of head-regenerating capabilities.

"He's a U.R.T.V. Just like Jr."

Shion and I spun to see chaos, his eyes narrowed in concern, staring at the frightening man that was Albedo. U.R.T.V. They had been in the encephalon as well. It all made sense now. How all of them had looked similar to Jr., to Albedo...

"What!" Jr. interjected, eyes inspecting chaos as if he, too, was unaware of the fact.

"U.R.T.V.s." chaos explained, as if a professor to his class. "They were created for the express purpose of eradicating U-DO."

"U-DO," mimicked Shion. There it was again.

"Rubedo, you still don't remember? Or could it be," that terrible grin filled his face, "fear. You're frightened, is that it? Am I right?" Fear. I felt it, cold and alien, in my veins. I pushed it away. Emotions couldn't interfere. The mission, my mission to protect MOMO, needed my full attention. I would save her. "I can't blame you. The only thing that matters to you is yourself. Rubedo, so cruel." He ran a finger along MOMO's jaw, and she flinched involuntarily. I let an inhuman growl escape my throat. "And yet this girl clings to you so dearly. Isn't it pitiful?"

Again, he sunk his arm into MOMO's abdomen, again she whimpered, helpless, unable to resist the strong grip of the man. And I averted my eyes. I couldn't stand to watch, and each piercing sob from MOMO's lips drained my resolve. Why couldn't I do anything?

"One more layer. Just one more layer, and then I'll have everything inside of her. I'm sure you know what that means, Rubedo." A cackle was all I heard, and the ice in my blood thickened at the mere sound. "Now then, I wonder how much more she can take?" Then she screamed. The breath stopped in me, and I felt as if the very life were being stripped from me with every second she was in pain. Her voice melded suddenly with Jr.'s, as he screamed only one word.

"NO!"

A bright light suddenly overtook us, and I shielded my eyes. It was Jr. His fiery red aura surrounded him and exploded with a suddenness as it had with MOMO's imposter. I felt the heat given off by his anger, his hatred, those raw emotions that I had long given up, and how I longed to have them now. A gasp from Albedo, and a rustle, then a dull thud. The light died.

Albedo was gone. MOMO was lying, unconscious, at the foot of the madman's throne. I started running. I didn't know if the others had followed me, but I knew that Jr. got there first. Both of us had knelt to the ground, and he cradled MOMO's fragile head in his hands.

"MOMO! Are you okay!" He intensely called to her, calling through the levels of pain she'd had to endure. I could only stare.

She was broken, a broken girl just as much as she was a broken Realian. I could see it on her face, the pain, the anguish at the mere thought of that man and his maniacal delving into her subconscious. I had failed. I had failed again, after everything that I had promised to her. All I'd ever wanted was for her to be safe, to never have to face pain as she had done inside the Song of Nephilim. Again, it was my fault.

I would kill him.

"I see." He was laughing. He rose from the ground, where Jr. must have knocked him from his throne. And the bastard was laughing. "It all makes sense now..."

He held his head in his hands and laughed. Jr. stood to face the monster of a man, and I took MOMO's sad form in my arms as I knelt next to her.

"But now, Rubedo, how about we enjoy a moment or two together?" He cracked his knuckles with that mad grin on his exaggerated features. Jr. growled as a response. A red bloodlust stood in my field of vision. I passed MOMO's limp body to Shion, who looked at me with concern. I stood, now beside Jr., and met the gaze of Albedo with my own, fierce and untamed.

I would kill him.

AN: Well, I wanted to get this up two days ago but FF.n was being evil. But here it is, Albedo! I used the Japanese version of his infiltration of MOMO's data; he stuck his arm into MOMO. I thought it'd get Ziggy more riled up than the dumb American version. Speaking o' which, I'm not sure if I want Albedo to fight with E.S. Simeon, just because writing a fight scene with a mech would be boring. Tell me if you think I should just have some of the party fight him or if I should skip a fight scene.

Also, there is a winner in the title contest! The sequel to "Promise" shall be... -drumroll- "Providence!" Thanks for playing, have a nice summer!