Sequel time, part 3!
Disclaimer: I don't own Vandread.
#3: How and Why?
Barnette's mind was reeling under the strain of the new information pressing in. The man on the screen had answered her question, saying that Jack was his evil twin. But Barnette was not the simple minded kind of woman that would just except this information from the stranger.
"How do I know your telling the truth?" She asked, her voice thick with skepticism.
"Well, for one, look at me, and then look at him, and tell me we don't look the part of what I said." He said, gesturing to each of them as he spoke. Barnette did have to admit that he was right about that much. The white cloaks shining, as they were bathed in light. Jack however, did also look the part, siting in a dark room, dark black coating him, sharp talon like claws on his hands, tarnished and lacking the high sheen of the others.
"So, looks don't determine very much." She said.
"Oh, but you see, in this instance they do! You see, when a person carries the paexis energy, it changes to match them." He held out his hand palm up, and a orb of bright purple energy glowed to life. "You see how brightly mine shines, hold up yours Jack." Cage ordered. Jack held up one arm, and an orb appeared on his palm as well. The deep darkness of the orb was a bit more intimidating then the bright one that Cage held. "See, you can see the darkness bubbling up from within. The paexis energy used grows to resemble the person who wields it. There are two sides to everything. There are 12 paexi in all, two of each color. Only when the two of each combine, can they be destroyed, as the dark and light sides neutralize each other." He said this, and things began to make more sense to Barnette.
"Is it true?" She asked, staring at Jack. Jack was so furious now, that he was using all his self-control just to avoid blowing up, and destroying everything around him. He managed on fury-laden roar, and dashed to the door. He ripped them open with such force that the hinges shattered, and the giant metal doors fell to the floor with reverberating thuds.
"Wow, what a temper, so, who might you be, little lady?" Cage asked Barnette, and they conversed for a while, Connie merely taking notes no and then.
Jack was saddened, but not surprised that Barnette did not join him for the night. He rolled around, still filled with rage, until he finally fell asleep, returning to the field with the table, and the little girl. He saw himself sitting at the same table, the little girl staring back. But something was drastically different this time, and it was a few seconds before he realized what it was. He was watching himself and the girl. He looked around, and saw he was in his normal gear, standing behind a tree, looking at another one of him down at the table. The little girl ran off into a house in the distance, and Jack walked to the table. The him at it already, was not the least bit surprised to see the cloaked him.
"Well, well, haven't seen you for quite some time." The uncloaked Jack said. "Why, it must have been almost five years ago."
"Who are you?" The cloaked Jack asked stiffly.
"I'm you. At least as far as the Mrs. is concerned anyway." The sky turned from a bright blue, to a light gray, as clouds moved in.
"What do you mean?" The cloaked Jack asked, though he was sure he knew the answer.
"During the fight we lost our cloaks, and she couldn't tell the difference, and chose me. The right choice, too, because where as you could only offer death and destruction, I gave her love and peace." He smiled as lightning flashed, and thunder rumbled. Jack wanted to jump at the man, bury his claws deep into the man, but found he could lift his arms. The other man rose laughing, walked over, and grabbed Jack by the throat. He lifted him as if he were nothing. "How does it feel, to be helpless in the face of an enemy you though was a friend?" He said, coldness in his voice, as a lighting flash revealed the insane pleasure in his face. Jack remembered he had done the same thing, but to Barnette when she first returned, though he never imagined hurting her. The other man through him to the ground and, instead of colliding with it, dark enveloped him, and he sank into it.
Jack woke up with a start, and just lay, thinking about what he had just seen. It was a few moments before he noticed something move next to him. He shifted his gaze, to see a tuft of green hair sticking up from beneath the sheets. It took a full two minutes of thought to figure out that Barnette had joined him while he dozed. He wiped his face with his hand in relief, but only managed to summon a wave of pain. He looked, and saw he was still wearing all of his gear, and had managed to slice open his face. This did not worry him to bad, even though he had almost never inflicted injuries on himself with his newly razor-edged fingers. He found that he was no longer mad about his twin's call, having seen that Barnette was still comfortable around him, enough so that she was still by his side.
"Note to self, don't go to the bathroom with these on." He chuckled to himself. He placed his hand over his face, more blood falling from the new wounds made. "How am I supposed to hold an empire together, when I can't even hold myself together?" He shook his head slowly, until he realized where his other hand was. He followed the arm down into the lump that was Barnette. He was worried, because he had just cut up his own face, and his other hand was no doubt wrapped around her. He slowly pulled the blankets down, an to his great relief, found the metal gauntlet missing, and his arm around the sleeping girl. He shook of the other gauntlet off, and, wrapping his other arm around her, when back to sleep, thinking of how even after all of the strange and harmful things he had done to this girl. He banished the thought of his original dream, think of the saying he had once read. "Visions are only conceived by those who believe they have a future." It was just a dream, and he had something better than he could have ever gotten in a dream, wrapped in his arms.
The next morning, Barnette and Jack both entered the food court together. She was still not afraid in the least of Jack, even though she couldn't explain why. She had explained how she was worried about him spending so alone with other women, and he just laughed in her face. She smacked him, and several nearby people dove for cover, expecting anything but for their Leader to give the girl a kiss.
"Hey, I've seen pregnant women before, and I'm positive you're just fat, especially in the head."
"I'm telling you, I'm not fat!"
"Well then, have you let a trained medical professional confirm it?"
"… Um… not really." Jura said, finally defeatedly. Her and Jack had gotten into an argument, because Jura would not shut up about being pregnant, and he just was sick of hearing it. Barnette and vinn just sighed as Jura stormed out of the room.
"Do you have to do that all the time?" Vinn asked, casting an exasperated look at him.
"What? Of course I did, I could think with all the noise." He stated bluntly.
Meia and John had managed to find a very nice room, which had a transparent floor, which showed the planet's surface as the metal rings, rotated around it. Parfait was working to find a way to restore the lower atmosphere to a non-hazardous state, and was having moderate success. The acidic clouds parted, showing a vast body of water, a few small islands dotting it.
"This is beautiful." Meia said, staring awestruck at the sparkling water, miles below.
"Yeah, it ain't to bad, but it doesn't hold a candle up to you." He was trying to do his best to be, as a few of soldiers called it, romantic. Meia cast an odd glance at him, her cheek slightly pink.
"And what is that supposed to mean?" She replied, trying to seem, as the soldiers had put it, alluring. He just shrugged, and he embraced her from behind, both staring down at the ocean now.
"Well, anyone can fall in love with an ocean, but it can never love you back."
"What do you think, Mr. Alien?" Dita said, modeling a new choice in attire. Hibiki coughed, and choked on what he was drinking. A word shot into his mind so fast, it was all he could do to keep from blurting it out. He had, like most of the other people from the 'Nirvana, asked questions of the soldiers, who allot had been from planets where men and women co–habitated. He had learned a word from what this occasion was construed as. Sexy. But he did not fully understand what it meant, so he decided against using the descriptive term for the moment, as he began to feel a rising sense of heat in an area quite apart from his face, which had instantly heated to the boiling point.
Uh... very… er…um… nice." He was having trouble focusing, coughing as he struggled with the word. Dita giggled in a cute fashion, which gave Hibiki a new wave of sensation, that he found both uncomfortable, and yet extremely gratifying at the same time.
"Well, doctor, I think I might need a check up." A girl said seductively.
"Well, are you feeling anything different from normal?" Duero seemed to have not noticed the way she was talking, as he went into diagnosis mode.
"Well, I'm feeling really hot." The girl said, smiling as the hansom man put his hand to her forehead, checking to see if she was feverish. In truth, there was nothing physically wrong with the girl, or for that matter, any of the girls he had looked over in the last couple of days. He had been receiving a lot of attention from the females of the army. The door hissed open, and an extremely attractive blonde walked in. She gave a look to the girl Duero was examining that could have frozen a solar flare. The girl gave a small eep, and rushed out of the room, as the plump women plopped herself down on the examination table. She grabbed the Doctor by the front of his robes.
"Tell me that there is a baby in here!" She said in an angry growl.
"Ok, I will need a minute to prepare the equipment." He replied, not phased by Jura's actions.
A small explosion buried the lead engineer in a cloud of black smoke, and the machine she was working on stopped running.
"Damn, shorted out. I need a stronger transformer!" She yelled, as her Maintenance crew dug through the storage building's many boxes, looking for random parts. She was making strong progress in restoring the Earth's atmosphere to its former glory. The poisons thinned with every completed purification machine she made. It was already 35 percent less toxic than when she had started, and the less resilient species of flora and fauna began to emerge.
The 'Nirvana' drifted past a dazzlingly blur planet, Bart and Celtic the sole occupants of the ship. The captain had given him permission do check out the system more thoroughly explore the system while they were here. He was extremely good at piloting the ship now, and had set the automatic functions to various tasks. The Planet, Neptune, was displayed on the main screen, floating serenely in the heavens. Close ups appeared in windows as the camera's focused on different spots, and the pair was bathed in blue light.
Everybody mingled with each other, getting to know more about them as the asteroid base sent pirating and reconnaissance missions, still lead by captain Magno. Almost the entire earth fleet had grown to respect her as a near mythological being, as tales of her exploits, battles, and amazing captaining skills spread. B.C. handled her fare share of the workload, still being Magno's second in command, but still found the time to meet a nice young girl named Lindsey. They were spending more and more time together, and the captain enjoyed seeing her serious companion pursuing something other than work.
Jack and Barnette were in the throne room, Connie having the day off to do whatever. The guard were also gone, Jack giving them all the opportunity to try out the new spa that had been built on one of the metal bands ringing the planet. The door opened, and they both looked up, seeing Jura walking in, looking down trodden. When she was a few feet from them she stopped.
"I just went to see Duero, so I could see if I was pregnant." Her voice was sad, and Jack was surprised, because he had actually though Jura had been pregnant, he was just trying to get her to shut up for a while. "And… you were… WRONG!" she yelled, holding a picture up, which showed a granny image that was a underdeveloped child. In a corner in black marker, it read "Jura Basil Elden, Month Five."
"Well, I'm glad to be proven wrong, and allow me to properly congratulate you. Now, we are in the middle of something, so if you wouldn't mind?" She waddled of to tell Vinn the good news, her ego satisfied, and after the door closed, Barnette continued telling him what Cage had told her the night before.
End of #3.
Fun to right this one, as I can use terminology that would have been unfit for previous chapters of the other story, as now they have educates, from where men and women are together.
So, just dreams right? And if not, hasn't it been proven that they aren't always set in stone? I was trying to go for a better look at a few of the relationships, and personal projects of the main and sub-main characters, and take a break from the main plot.