User blog:Roinelll/God Eater - Next Crusade - Volume 1 - Segment 11

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Despair.

I...

I don't know anymore...

Was there ever a reason for us?

For anyone in the first place?

Why are we still here?

How long will be?

Utter hopelessness...

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========== G. E. N. C. - 1 - 11

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"Now then #5, Would you like to see the world?"

"Eh?" En's response was filled with surprise. She though that by agreeing to the conditions, she'll be made into their lab rat.

"I asked do you want to be given eyes?" The scientist asked again, but no response came from the girl and a slowly stretching silence fell upon them.

"Lucas, that's... You're insane." Finally it was the smoker who spoke up, after realizing the aim of his partner.

"What will you do to me?" Hearing the voice of Daigo, En became frightened. What she was fearing is starting to become real. She would have to forget the pains, as that was more of an imminent danger.

"One of the cells that are destroying you right now belong to an altered Sariel. I'm just going to give you the eyes of a Sariel and see if it works. You have nothing to lose, do you now? The world is waiting for you." Seeing the girls distress Lucas tried to ease her with a laugh, but was met with silence.

"You want to make a monster out of me..." Finally En resolved herself, she had already given in earlier anyways. "Not like I have a choice, do I? When do we start?" With a sigh, the girl turned towards the scientist who nodded to Daigo.

"This will make you sleep, if you wake up you'll see the world..." The easterner explained as he administered something to a syrenge, then moved over to the girl and felt out his vein on the lower arm. Shortly after that he injected the serum to the designated spot. "There is no need to lie to you, you have low chance of survival." Daigo overlooked her until he confirmed that the girl fell unconscious. He knew it's containing a fast acting agent, however in the current state of the girl anything could go wrong.

"Why are you making that sour face?" Lucas turned to him as Daigo picked up the girl gently.

"You're completely pathetic." He snorted in response and walked over to the table where the girl was earlier in a chomatose state, and placed the girl down before turning to the wondering scientist.

"What are you talking about?"

"You act high and mighty, yet beg for a pitiable girl for letting you make her into your guinea pig." Daigo pulled out a smoke and without thinking ignited it, taking a deep drag of it he glared at the other man. "This is why your daughter is still like that." He blew the disgusting smoke in his face, as he glared even stronger. "Because you're a coward, Lucas."

"Daigo." Reinhardt's face twitched as he held back his anger. "What are you getting at?" Although he was keeping it in check, he stepped up menacingly to the easterner and returned the intense glare. "Explain it in a way, that I will not dismember you for attempting to besmirch my resolve for saving my daughter."

"See?" Once again Daigo puffed out a smaller cloud, which was dissipated angrily by the other scientist. "This is what I am talking about. Excuses, you are searching for nothing, but excuses. What kept you from chaining this girl down to one of the tables and just let it rip? Nothing. Why did you have to wake her up to this life of misery? Just because you're consciousness would be far too heavy to bear?" The easterner poked with a finger at the heart of Lucas. "Admit it Lucas, you're weak and even though you claim to do everything for your daug--"

"DON'T YOU DARE BRINGING NOVA INTO THIS!!" Reinhardt suddenly butted his head into Daigo's as he glared even fiercely. He was about to lose his temper as he balled his two fists tightly, ready to let it loose on a moments notice. "Daigo, one more word and I'll do something that you'll regret."

"What? Chalk me up another for being insolent?" With a smirk, he stepped away and nodded with his head towards the sleeping girl. "Now then, you know what you plan to do will kill her, right? It is one thing to implant Oracle Cells, but you're going to transplant a whole Organ?"

"False. That would only happen if she were to be given a core, without them the cells will function as normally." He gritted his teeth as he contemplated to step in to the other and sock him once for aggravating so much.

"Without a core, the cells will lose their cohesion and go berserk, eroding her faster than she is already undergoing!" Daigo pointed out and was interested in how did Lucas overcome that difficulty.

"Normally that would be the case, however the cells she had been implanted foregoes that, they can sustain a limited size of Oracle Cell colony even without a requisite of it's core." He was frowning, as he didn't really want to reveal this, but since he was asked about it there was no way out.

"Aren't those the very same cells she is rejecting?" Once again Daigo pointed out a major piece and he sighed as he saw the shoulder of his partner drop.

"..." Lucas sighed reluctantly and admitted it. "Yes..."

"And you don't know how will the Aether's infection affect her either. After all, they belong to an Altered Sariel." Continuing from his earlier point, Daigo went to the next part that was on schedule. Two major aspects of the plan a lot hinged upon, and neither made it look favorable enough, it was quite the reverse actually.

"True... However, I will have to risk it. You do understand..." Lucas gritted his teeth and once again glared at the easterner.

"There you go again you hypocrite..." Daigo said as he butted the cigarette and mentally noted that he had more than enough of that disgusting brand. "Fine, fine. Don't give me such a look, after all there was a promise to help you wasn't it. I'm here to make a profit from you, aren't I?"

"On that... we can agree..."

Anthon was sitting in the room as usual before their meetings. One by one the other two arrived, Max bearing a grim visage while Anne as usual was simply cold. The three of them assembled after two weeks.

"Max, how did it go?" Anthon turned towards the stern elder and inquired.

"Let's hear Anne first, you've been in charge of getting info from the earlier patients." He crossed arms before answering, even then he turned towards their colleaugine to get more time for himself.

"As you wish, Max. All subjects that were previously under the care of Lucas are deceased, have unknown fathers while some of their mother is sometimes undisclosed, their births are vaguely around the same time and were named Nova. Without exception, however there were four more significant ones: Eshter Nova, Elaine Nova, Emerald Nova and Esleir Nova. Or as Lucas classified them Patient #1 to #4." Anne passed two stacks of papers to each of the other men. One contained a combined list of all the names that she found out, while the other group had much finer details on the four Nova's.

"What's their connection to Lucas then? Especially those four stand out." As both of them read the list through, Max posed a question.

"He's keeping an eye on them, then contacts each one when some conditions are met apparently, just like in the case of those four."

"Conditions?" Anthon asked with a raised eyebrow.

"I'm more interested in how many more there are." Max furrowed his brow as he looked at the throughout list one again.

"To this point Lucas handled 70 ones counting the current Nova girl, as for how many are there... I haven't the slightest idea, he is keeping it very strictly under control and for how does he managed it without notice..." Anne stopped there, she was really irritated at being outwitted at her field of expertise. Especially if her target apparently employed someone else to do such things for him.

"Up till now, Lucas did this before our very eyes... Anyways. From over 70 potential, there was only five patients he picked out by hand. I believe, these have to do with the currently unknown conditions don't they?" Max furrowed his brow even further, turning his attention also on the topic which Anthon was most interested it.

"Yes, but as I stressed earlier... Unknown..." Anne sighed and wiped her forehead. "Another common symptom was that each one suffered from Oracle Cell related illness, their eyes developed a secondary color around  the pupil and finally... There was a distinct disability for each one that had been hand picked, something unique to each up till this point."

"Disability? Maybe the conditions were these?" Anthon hummed and Anne shook her head in response.

"Unable to hear, walk, move their hands, or taste. The current Nova who is with him has eyes that do not function. However interestingly, until the hand picked patients appeared... These disabilities didn't surface in either of them, though after each numbered patient the disability variety increased."

"That raises another set of questions..." Max concluded and Anthon hummed a 'right' on that.

"We still need to work out how he does contact or monitor them, we need to secure one of the Nova's." Anne joined in furrowing her brow.

"Without Lucas knowing, I believe that will be impossible." Max said something that made the woman go 'hmpf' in response.

"We could arrange for an incident." She coldy said, venom dripping from her tone almost visibly.

"Anything else on the list of patients that might be interesting?" Anthon asked, he wanted to move onto other matters as fast as possible.

"All of them were female, at least so far that is." Anne recalled.

"Max, I believe it's now your turn to talk about the current Nova girl." Anthon nodded and turned towards the elder, who still wore a very stern visage. With a sigh the man steeled himself and started his part of the report.

"Anne's summary stands for her similarly. She suffers from an unknown Oracle Cell illness, as her eyes are unuseable therefore she is technically blind, the rings in her eyes manifested a few days ago and she became infected recently by an Aether. The girl is right now under the influence of two different types of cells. And is under the direct care of Lucas at this moment." Max concluded and he couldn't help but frown even harder as he noticed the frown appearing on both his boss and partner.

"She is still somehow alive then I assume... Despite the situation, is that all we know about her?" Anthon turned towards Anne.

"Currently that is." She admitted with a sigh.

"And the daughter of Lucas?" The your leader asked about an earlier agenda.

"Still nothing." The eye of the woman twitched as it reminded her of another major failure up to this point.

"Find her. That's our priority." Anthon stood up, he deemed this session concluded. "Ah and, what is the name of this Nova?"

"That's--" Before Anne could have answered, someone kicked the door to their room open quite forcefully.

Nearly 13 days passed since Lucas and Daigo completed the surprisingly short organ transplant from the Sariel into En. The easterner asked every detail on what is being done and his partner complied. He detailed the way of submerging the severed head of the Aragami into a specially prepared liquid which was based on the genetic make-up of the Sariel and something he didn't reveal much to the chagrin of Daigo.

Then the two proceeded to separate the eye from the rest of the head, and transfer it to the girls forehead. When the easterner asked if it will work, the response was that it will since the cells that are flowing through the girl will both keep the eye stabilized and operable. In theory at least...

In return, all Daigo asked for was the rest of the special preparation liquid and the remainder of the Sariels head. While Lucas tried to talk him off that, the other didn't budge an inch and demanded it outright.

Although...

It went surprisingly well and finished in less than a half hour, En didn't wake up until now neither was it looking like she's going to wake up. Nothing that Daigo tried worked either...

While it was frustrating for the two of them, at the least there were no visible signs of the cells behaving irregularly after the transfer. Much to their surprise it seemed like her state has stabilized to a point, furthermore at times there was even movement from the eye itself.

Which was quite interesting. They've done a number of attempts at determining if it is a conscious movement or not similarly with no clear results much to their frustration.

"You know Lucas..." One of the evenings when the two of them sat down to rest, Daigo smoking one of the brands he liked while his old partner was as usual drinking.

"What is it now, Daigo?" He tried to focus his eyes on him, but the sight was starting to fail him so in the end he just gave up. "Don't tell me you want trouble. I'll be more than enough happy to kick your ass and feed it to an Aragami while you're watching."

"That's... Quite colorful, but no I don't want anything like that. Instead I'll take back what I said to you earlier." Daigo rebutted with a laughter.

"You mean when you called me a coward and insulted my resolve?" Lucas tried to glare at the easterner, but he was met with a laughter as the other man couldn't help as he failed to make the eye contact for it to work. "Do you think I'll forgive you?"

"The way you do things... is certainly different how I would approach them." Daigo admitted and butted out his cigarette.

"Just spit out what you want to say." Lucas gave up on staring down the other with a sigh.

"Both of us were motivated by--" Daigo's sentence was cut short as a half empty bottle shattered on the ashtray beside him, splashing him with some of the alcoholic drink and a few of the glass shards.

"I don't care..." Lucas shouted in anger as he stood up and quickly left him alone with shaky steps.

"You still can't forgive yourself, huh?" Daigo mused and took out another cigarette, the final one for that day.

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End of Chapter 2016,02,22

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