A Lamecia Dinner [Plot :: Shiina]

Isla glanced to the Wild Card. Even with all this food spread across the table, she hadn't taken a bite. Infact it appeared she only watched the young woman and her children eat. Perhaps she lacked an appetite? ...And now question? Normally the Queen would have answered, but the time for questions were over. The young woman had missed her chance just seconds ago before the spread.

"An answer I'll perhaps give when we meet again, young Tsurinai." The Queen smiled as she rose from her seat. Her black gown danced upon her frame, almost as if alive and with a mind of its own. "I tire from the night. It was a pleasure to meet you properly. And for my children, I wish you all the best of luck for endeavors to come. If you require room and board, you may stay the night, Cadet."

The woman walked from the table with a gentle step while speaking with a soft, albeit drained tone. It almost appeared she were gliding upon the floor as she made her exit towards the large wooden doors. As the Queen left the room, a hand raised to her head as she slouched slightly. The woman appeared to have a headache, or something similar. Regardless, this did not stop her from vanishing from sight, and ascending back to the darkness of her quarters.

..There was silence until the sound of her doors closing rang throughout the room..

"Well I think that went pretty well! Mother was alot more talkative tonight than she has been in months, don't you think, you two?" The Princess spoke in an excited tone to break the silence of the room. Her keen eyes moved from her Brother and then to her young Sister. Where he seemed indifferent, Lisa was obviously upset. Serenity lost her smile and instead found herself a frown as she went to address her younger sister. However, before she could say a word, Lisa would raise from her chair and grasp her plate.

"I'll be eating the rest in my room." Her words were short as she turned and immediately left the room without looking back. Julius didn't say a word as he partook in the tasting of some fatty tuna. He would wait for his younger sister to have left the room and stomped her way upstairs before wiping his lips and focusing on the two women across the table from him. Serenity wanted to give chase to Lisa, but she could tell from Julius' eyes that he had something important to discuss with the both of them.

"I apologize for interrupting the meal, but may I speak with you two for a moment? Recently, thanks to the excellent work from the cadets, we were able to capture one of the fiends that have been running through this city in clown-like garments. I went to meet with the Terrorist in his cell to gather more information about these recent attacks in our strongholds." The crown Prince spoke with a low tone as his piercing gaze fell upon Shiina. "You shared with me some personal information, and thus I will do the same for you. I will tell you what that man shared with me when I went to question him. I did not want to say anything around Mother.. nor Lisa, for obvious reasons. If she knew anything about this, she'd charge off without half a thought, looking to bring those to justice and only become a causality. Though I am hard on her, I do love my siblings. I won't willingly send her into the devil's nest ill prepared."

"What are you saying, Julius? What is this about? Those guys are crazy, what useful information could you possibly get from a psycho? You'd be better off letting me try to pull the information from them." Serenity leaned forward upon the table and propped herself up with her right hand. Her eyes shifted to look towards Shiina, and she gave a thin smile. "Keeping secrets from the rest of the cadets? What a shame, I wish you would have told me first. But it makes sense. Though if you'll be having an internship with me, you better be including me in these secrets from now on, Shiina." The Princess nudged the Cadet with a slight giggle before looking back towards her brother. "Though I don't agree with keeping this from Lisa, I understand why you would. But I think she charges off like that because you're not giving her what she needs to grow. But.. that's a conversation for another time, hmm?"

She wanted to avoid a sibling debate at this time. Their viewpoints over Lisa differed but there was one thing that they shared and it was that they treated her like a child. They never would admit, but Lisa knew her older siblings thought of her as a child and not capable of making her own decisions thoughtfully. And maybe they were right. Every decision she had made had put herself, or the team in danger. But she believed nothing ventured, nothing gained. If she continued to put herself on the line, then her Mother would be forced to acknowledge her. And this was why Julius chose not to share this information with her.

"Our friend behind bars shared something with me. His first encounter with the woman that caused all the madness. Her ghost continues to haunt us, and this time in the shape of those by the name of J E S T." Julius folded his fingers together as he leaned upon the table.

Closing his eyes, he'd begin to relive that conversation and share its contents with his sister, and the Cadet he had garnered trust for.. The story of an average man that had lost himself to just one bad day and a fateful encounter...

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Red, the largest amount of red he ever saw up til that day. It stretched like a growing blanket across the concrete and spilled down to the drain. In the center, there was a body spread like an eagle. It didn't move, save for the moments when dainty fingers effortlessly scraped through the flesh. He foolishly had that momentary desire to run. A temporary moment for flight. But what stopped him was noticing someone was sitting on that corpse. That there was a girl...


She had the most bewitching smile on her face. There was something wrong... so much wrong. Yet, he couldn't help, but watch as she kept digging into the flesh and relishing the stickiness of blood. It was almost as if she were admiring each shape and function of bone, sinew, and organ. There was a visceral joy and enjoyment in the taboo act. Yet, there was a kind of innocence in it, like that of a child in a sandbox understanding for the first time of their new environment. His heart stopped and breath froze when her shark-like eyes drifted lazily at his direction. She stopped to smirk before finally rising from the corpse to walk towards the singer.


No words could even escape him, the singer who once relied on them for his craft. None could even describe the very moment he was in, not even for a song. He couldn't even tell whether the fear or the fascination were winning him over as the girl tilted her head to the side still observing him. But for what, Cela would never know. When his eyes flitted over to the mangled corpse behind the girl, the possibilities in this very moment were discouraging... and even bizarre.

She followed his vision and nodded her head towards the corpse's direction. A somber, yet dreamy look on her face was apparent to him as she continued to regard the motionless body. "Oh... him? He was such a dear. The sweet release he so desired when he finally made that important step. He despaired his lot in life, wishing an escape from it all. Tired of the suffocating boundaries of this horrendously normal and cruel world. I only gave him what he wanted, after revealing to him the truth of his fate. Cried he did, but he laughed quite happily... satisfied with his deserved end. And what of you? Do you find your purpose just as meaningless as he did his?"

"N-no... No." Cela stuttered back at her. Though his heart maybe terrified, there was a kind of nerve that was touched on. Something deep inside he held so dear and with a grudge. Yet, there was something creating a deeper pit in his stomach. That there was something for him here, almost as if anticipating something dangerous.

Her head tilted to the side in interest. "Oh? You don't seem quite sure of yourself. He he... It's okay, I can help show you the way. Say, what's your name? What do you do for a living?"

"S-singer.... Cela." Cela replied deliberately and breathlessly.

He felt his skin begin to pale and prickle when her smile grew deeper and when she touched his forehead with a bloody finger. "Well then, Cela. Why don't you use me as your source for inspiration? I can be your Goddess, your Muse, your Rei. Make a song, one based on me, won't you?"

He immediately yelped back in shock and fell onto his back. A mark of red was on his very forehead from the blood staining her fingers. What exactly did she do to him? Before he can even ask those words, the girl began to walk away, back to the body and began dragging it with her by the ankle. The blonde gave one last smirk towards as she disappeared deeper into the alleyway, leaving behind streaks of crimson against the asphalt. As she was absent in his sight and with the giggling gone, poor Cela was already running for dear life...



He wanted to forget that night. But the words kept repeating in his mind day in and day out. It weighed on him like an anchor and bound against him tightly like barbed wire. The singer would never again complain of the mundane in his life was. Never to complain when he saw such a horrific fate... Or so he thought, until he found himself ripping through pages and pages of washouts and disappointment. Something was driving him. He wrote down the words, the stanzas, the lyrics, and the rhythm. They leaked out of him more than before, promising a successful venture. Sweat, blood, and tears poured themselves onto each white page. Something about himself began to change as he spent countless sleepless nights on the project.


Cela crumbled slowly. Not gently. His fixation was less than stellar. It became his obsession. He didn't know why, but that smile and the blood on her hands, there was a kind of macabre beauty. It was something he realized was only he could truly understand. The more he wrote and threw away, the more Cela began to realize what she gave him. It scared him as he grew deeper and deeper into the obsession and the depravity she promised. But he needed to finish this, his magnum opus, to see her one more time.

When he did, the singer was certain his effort would be fruitful. This was going to be a success, but he needed her opinion.



Was all she said when he finally shared the contents of his hard work on the next fateful day. Like a ghost, she appeared in his apartment, how she got here and how she earned that information wasn't important. Her casual rejection of the culmination of his dedication cannot be taken so lightly. Something boiled inside him for the first time in a long time as he shook after standing there dumbfounded. His vision was turning red at the mere sight of her sardonically chuckling at his effort. The precious effort culminating the sacrifice of countless months and countless opportunities in the business turned down for just her. All this time isolating himself just for this?

"What do you mean that's all...?" He asked quietly. His voice was deadly quiet with the promise of venom laced in each word.

She replied in her usual smug smirk, gauging his reaction. "I expected much, much more. Something grand. And yet, this paltry excuse of a litany is all you can muster? I suppose disappointments will remain disappointments, huh? I expected too much of you."


The girl suddenly felt fingers grasping around her throat as she was pushed against the wall. As much as she was in such a dangerous situation, her smirk grew deeper at seeing the heinous, infuriated, and desperate look on the singer's face. The look of murder was on his expression, something had finally snapped for him. How dare she. How dare this sow throw all of that hard work away? He wanted to squeeze the life out of her, deny her voice as she dared denied him.

But she merely looked on with devilish glee as he kept trying to strangle her. Try as he may, she risked dying if it continued. Yet, she didn't bother to kick her legs or struggle away from his grasp. Cela would soon find himself bewildered as she was still able to derisively and merrily laugh at his face.


She continued to laugh and giggle derisively at his measly attempt. It would only spur him even further to grip even tighter, until there was something that broke. Something about her laughter was so infectious... that he began to chuckle, then laugh. He didn't quite know at first why when he should be seething in rage. But Cela was beginning to understand. He kept guffawing as if he finally understood a joke. She grasped both of his hands and forced him off her. But it wasn't necessarily difficult as he was still laughing once from disbelief and in uncontrollable gales. The girl simply patted off the dust from her skirt as if nothing had happened. She gave one last glance towards the singer, but she didn't need any more words. The shock that once was on his face transformed into tears. And from tears, came laughter. The halls filled with the endless guffaw escaping his maw.

He curled down to the ground, as if bowing his head towards her. He tried to contain the madness that exploded from within, but nothing could stop the floodgates. When that seal was broken, you couldn't even fix it anymore. The last strands of his sanity had snapped. The unfairness of this reality was absolutely comical. What was even the point of it all? He tried so hard, but no matter what, it all just fell flat into a pile of unrequited goals and broken dreams. Perhaps, that was the lesson the girl wanted to teach. That was the joke.

Cela kept laughing, the mania was finally setting in. It came out in ad nauseam as his sides began to tire, but he'd continue laughing. Before he knew it, night fall came and she was gone like a ghost, like a dream. But the singer knew it wasn't as the electric recorder he shared was still flat on the ground blinking its light after it went silent from finishing its composition. It was a tumultuous moment of birth, of enlightenment. Violent and painful, that it was, it was only an inevitability.

The shackles that tied him down so fell at his feet at the prompting of a teacher. And now that they were loose, he was finally free, to laugh and to thrive. From here on forth, the world was his stage and he had to give all of his thanks to his beloved Mother...

With all of the Lamecia departed, all that was left was Shiina. Or so, she thought. The small Jale would remain in the room with her, waiting on her to finish her food before sending in the rest back to the kitchen. He addressed the Wild Card with a stoic lack of emotion as he began to guide the Wild Card to the quarters.

SQ Gained: