[Scene: Dev and El's place. El is sobbing on the bed while Dev shakes his head in disgust.]
Dev: I hope you're proud of yourself.
El: Of course I'm not proud of myself.
Dev: You've ruined everything… Not that you care, I suppose… I take it you want to go home now? So you can go crying to Big Daddy and tell him everything that has happened, right before he takes a belt to our asses?
El: Big Daddy has never hit us.
Dev: Oh, well this is going to do it…[sighs]…I thought this out so carefully… I tried to account for every contingency…I guess the only thing I didn't plan for is my supergenius sister might be tempted to MOON a Shitennou.
El: Fine! I fucked up! You're the smart one! I'm a complete moron! You know what? Next time I'll do all the careful planning while YOU design a weapon that can destroy a major god of chaos!
Dev: [grins] Point taken.
El: So…you're not mad?
Dev: [Lies on his side next to her on the bed] I'm never mad at you…Disappointed? A bit. But I'm never mad.
El: Really?
Dev: No, I take it back. I'm not even disappointed…You wanted to go home…now we might as well go home…
El: We're NOT going home!
Dev: Yes, we are. We're aborting the mission. It's gotten way too dangerous now.
El: Just because some mouthy little kid dropped her pants in front of Zoisite Midori? Do you really think he's going to go tattling to Metalia? As I recall they weren't on the best of terms.
Dev: No, but I'm willing to bet he's going to mention this to his boyfriend. Who very possibly might mention this to Mommy Dearest.
El: Why would he bother Mommy Dearest with this? We're just a couple of normal human children as far as anyone can tell.
Dev: Except if Metalia or any of her brood becomes curious about us, they'll quickly discover we're not the slightest bit normal. And only the slightest bit human.
El: Then we have to be careful.
Dev: It would be better to leave here and come back another time.
El: we can't. Going into the future would do no good if she's on to us, and going into the past just increases the risk. Besides, she might have put a magic tracker out already…No more magic. No charms, no spells, no teleporting. Not even any tarot readings. We live off the money you stole and act completely nonmagical until we get the God Gun finished.
Dev: No magic? [winces] That's going to be a pain.
El: Tell me about it.
Dev: We'd better finish the God Gun as quickly as possible. No dating. No social work. And no more getting yourself into trouble! You're really going to have to keep a lid on your temper if we are to have any chance of surviving this.
El: [laughs cruelly] Dev. We're NOT going to survive this.
Dev: We might.
El: We won't. I've explained that to you at the start. This is a suicide mission. If we fail, we die. If we succeed…we die. The odds of us pulling this off without dying in the process are so slight we might as well not even consider it.
Dev: I prefer to think of our odds as being fifty-fifty. We either die, or we don't.
El: [laughs cruelly] Oh you really suck at math. If you still insist on believing in fairytales, maybe we'll get saved by the Tooth Fairy.
[Dev pulls El into his arms]
Dev: El. Remember when we were tiny? Back when we were too young to learn magic, and Metalia sent a monster to kill us?
El: [laughs a fond little laugh] Yeah. I remember that like it was yesterday.
Dev: We ran into the kitchen and hid a cupboard…
El: You were great. I was so scared. But you weren't scared at all
Dev: You peeked out the crack between the doors and you whispered to me you could see it moving around, trying to find us. You tried to get me to look. Do you remember what I said to you?
El: You said you didn't need to look. You already knew what was going to happen…Big Daddy was going to come home and kill the monster for us…then I would go running to him, and he would pick me up and call me his baby girl and tell me he loved me. And he did! You were right. It happened exactly the way you described!
[El smiles at her brother and her smile fades when he doesn't smile back]
El: What?
Dev: El…I lied.
El: You…lied?
Dev: I didn't believe Big Daddy was going to save us.
El: Huh?
Dev:When he showed up and killed that monster, nobody was more surprised than I was.
El: But…then why did you say that…?
Dev: Because I was scared, El. I didn't want to look. I thought we were both going to die. I could hear the monster slithering around, trying to find us, but as long as I didn't see it, I could pretend it wasn't really there.
El: So you didn't know Big Daddy would come home?
Dev: I didn't think Big Daddy would bother risking his neck for us, regardless of whether he was home or not.
El: [sad] Oh, Dev… So you didn't think Big Daddy loved us?
Dev: I still don't.
[El blinks in surprise]
Dev: Think about it. We're savage monsters. If you were Big Daddy, would you be able to love us?
El: [closes her eyes and trembles] No…not even a little bit.
Dev: We're expendable little pawns in his war with Metalia… Why did you think he took us in? Taught us magic? Trained us to protect ourselves against the Shitennou? Told us all those fairytales about the Legendary Silver Crystal… he was using us. Steering us to Metalia so we'd do his dirty work for him.
El: So if you think he was just manipulating us this whole time, why are you here?
Dev: Because I knew you needed to feel like a real little girl, with a real daddy who loves her. He gave you that, and for that reason alone, I am willing to risk dying to give him what he wants in return.
El: [crying] Oh, Dev.
[Dev wipes her tears away]
Dev: The point I'm trying to make, my love, is that I let you keep your fairytales. Please let me keep mine.