Heya everyone! Here's Chapter 15-3! The last side-chapter for Chapter 15! Meaning that next is the Chapter 16!
I would also thank you all for the support, 10k views, it's encouraging for me :).
Before we dive in the chapter, the reviews:
Colossus Bridger: Hehe, already shipping peoples? I might change plans! Who knows ;)?
With that enjoy!
Chapter 15-3: Bad News
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As she did every afternoon, Mio Yaoyorozu was in the living room reading a book, seated legs crossed on an expensive armchair near the open window of the enormous library. The children should be arriving soon, and the mother was eager to hear what they had to say after yet another day at school.
Kanai wasn't home today and would be returning late from the office… So, she was alone with only the servants for company.
She heard the buses arrive at the entrance, followed by the creaking of the double gates. Mio smiled. They were here. She stood up, placed a bookmark in the book, set it on a nearby coffee table, and stood to head towards the heavy, solid wooden door, which she easily pushed open.
With large strides, she made her way to the front door, crossing the luxurious entrance hall… and opened the front door with a smile to greet her children…
A smile that instantly vanished.
In front of her, the usually white armor of her adopted sons was spotted with dirt, mud, blood, and scratched all over… Only half of the company, if that, was present… Lock and Momo, dressed in their school uniforms, had grave expressions, too serious for her liking, and Momo's eyes were swollen…
They all looked exhausted and worn out…
"W-What happened?"
The question hung in the air for a moment… Momo tried to open her mouth to speak… But Lock was quicker.
In a tone frighteningly devoid of emotion, completely neutral…
"We had…", he hesitated a bit on his next words, "A problem."
Mio's blood ran cold. She feared the worst… She vainly hoped it was a nightmare, that she was just napping right now… But everything was too real… She dug her nails into her skin, closing her eyes against the sharp pain… Wishing that when she opened her eyes, she would wake up in the library…
But when she opened her eyes, her gaze betrayed her, and she looked at the porch of the door…
A dull ache spread through her chest, as if her heart was tearing apart… Then suddenly…
Her sons, her poor sons, why this misery? What had they done to deserve death? What had she done to witness those she cherished die…
Mio suddenly felt dizzy…
"I… I don't feel well…", murmured Mrs. Yaoyorozu, as her vision blurred, and black spots appeared in her field of view… And suddenly everything around her fell away, she noticed blurry silhouettes crouching around her, speaking, calling her name, but she closed the eyes… Leaving her in darkness…
The pain in her chest didn't lessen.
…
/
…
Kanai Yaoyorozu arrived in complete urgency. A call had come from one of the servants, whose voice was trembling, saying that Mio had collapsed, and after she had woken up, she had fallen into a severe depressive episode.
His driver hadn't even fully stopped the vehicle before he unbuckled and literally jumped out of the still-moving car 20 meters from the gates. He nearly fell but managed to steady himself before sprinting. The gates were open, with four clones waiting, as if guarding the entrance. Kanai noticed that something was off with them, perhaps it was the fact that their armor was dirty and damaged, or maybe it was the way they moved, almost robotically. But in his panic, he pushed that aside as secondary information.
"What happened?" Kanai asked, completely stressed out, "Is Mio okay?"
"Yes, buir is feeling a bit better, Lockdown and Midnight managed to calm her down…," Aether replied. "However, she still needs your presence. Especially right now. Follow me, buir."
The sergeant turned and began to walk. Kanai, now calmer and reassured that his wife was okay, could finally think clearly again… And what he had dismissed as a secondary detail resurfaced… He looked closely at Aether as he walked and noticed how his shoulders seemed slumped, how his steps appeared heavy, and how his head tilted slightly forward… The armor was dirty, very dirty, damaged in some places… And there…
Kanai blinked to make sure it wasn't just his vision playing tricks… Was that… Blood? Dried blood?
"Aether, what happened? Is that blood on your back?"
A change in posture, the way the muscles tensed under the armor and the black suit underneatg, indicated that he was right…
"Aether, what happened?" Kanai's voice changed completely, becoming serious. He demanded answers.
Silence was his only response… Then…
"… We were attacked at UA…"
It was like a hammer blow to the man…
"By who?"
Aether didn't turn around, but Kanai heard his teeth grinding.
"A group of kriffin' chaakaryc villains. We made them pay for it… Bunch of di'kuts…"
But he knew that this alone couldn't have done that to his wife… As they entered the mansion, the sergeant raised five fingers on his right hand, closed his fist, and then raised two more. Kanai understood.
The number 7.
"We had 7 KIA. And nearly thirty others wounded to varying degrees.", said Aether in a somber tone…
Kanai came to an abrupt halt…
"W-What?"
"You heard me.", the sergeant replied in a dark tone, before approaching a door and glancing inside after opening it…
He then stepped back and gestured for him to come closer. When Kanai approached, trembling, holding himself back from collapsing on the spot… Mr. Yaoyorozu looked into the room, and what he saw broke his heart… In the middle of the room, there was a pile of cushions, blankets, and a mass of sleeping bodies. Mio and Momo were in the center of the pile with a pair of clones who seemed particularly distressed by the loss of their brothers, surrounded by a mound of about ten other clones. Momo was clinging onto Lock like he was her savior, like her life depended on it. Mio well… Was buried under two clones, and held them close like plushies.
…
In the beginning…
Kanai had wanted to profit from them; it was something never seen in the world. Aliens, coming from another dimension where humanity lived among the stars, with technology far more advanced, reaching heights that no one could imagine…
But Mio and Momo had opposed this, and he had to give in. Then came the adoption. If he could no longer benefit from the money they would bring by being sold to governments or labs, he had to find another way to leverage their knowledge… And the engineers proved to be a good avenue.
As a token of gratitude for their kindness, they assisted Kanai with the projects he sent to I-Island, whose schematics were then sent back to him. He used the clones almost insidiously, without showing it.
However, little by little, as he spent more time with them, he began to think that these intruders in this world were perhaps more human than others. To him, it was only their appearance that made them human; otherwise, they were just pale copies of a man created simply to fight. But he began to doubt the image he had of these clones.
Despite their military habits, they cared about everyone, they had fun in their own way, they lived a life that had been deprived of them by their creators.
The fact that they saw him as a true father added to this…
Thus, he wondered if he had made a major error in judgment…
…
"We call that body piles. When we were back in our universe, we usually made those to comfort mentally broken, grieving, and guilt-plagued vods, or those who had nightmares
Seeing this completely shattered what remained of his doubts, the image he had formed, already cracked, shattered. He realized how wrong he had been about them… They had always been more human than him…
Tears formed, and he couldn't hold them back… He grabbed Aether, lifted him off the ground, and hugged him, surprising the sergeant.
"B-Buir?" the sergeant managed to articulate with difficulty, compressed like a sardine, his voice slightly muffled by the filter pressed into Kanai's shoulder…
"I'm sorry…," said Kanai, "I'm sorry for doubting you, all this time… Sorry for everything…"
Aether couldn't respond to that… Kanai released him and asked.
"Aether… Is there still a place for me?"
The sergeant looked at the pile… An arm raised on the periphery, giving a thumbs-up.
"Looks like there is one.", said the sergeant, the pained smile audible in his voice…
"Aren't you coming?", Kanai asked.
"Negative, buir… I still have a gate to watch.", the sergeant replied.
"To hell the gate, you're coming with your buirs and your vods.", responded Kanai as he literally picked up the sergeant, tucking him under his shoulder, before approaching, putting down the sergeant in the pile, and laying next to his place after one of the armored teens made room.
Aether's low grumbles filled the air for several before the sergeant literally fell asleep on the spot… Kanai managed to get a hold on his wife's hand, his thumb gently rubbing her hand… Then his hand moved over to Momo and Lock and his hand slowly shuffled both hair, a saddened smile appearing on his face…
So young… And already knew war in Lock's and his vod case, and death, blood, and the loss of those who were close for Momo…
He turned the head, his arms wrapping around one of his ad's torso to bring him closer, before he closed his eyes, keeping the armored boy close to him with a bear hug… The clone surprisingly… Gave back the hug…
His job could wait… His big family needed their father…
I saw several times in fanfics peoples actually using the bodypiles... So I kind of followed the movement? Anyway, I felt bad for Mr. and Mrs. Yaoyorozu. I mean, I made them, imagined personnalities and appearances...
Just to put them on a shelve and mention them a pair of times. They deserve screen time. So I think I'll make some chapters where they appear... And not only for the funerals. (Yes, a chapter or a side chapter will feature the funerals), on that, have a good day/night depending on where you are.
Seeya next time!