Marcus, three days before arriving in Erebus…
While Thalia was still at home watching a movie, he stopped by The 300’s current base of operations to finish tying up some loose ends with Lucas so that they could carry on their mission once Marcus left.
In the two years since they had wiped out all of the large criminal organizations present in New York, they have set up manufacturing facilities to build more sets of power armor that Marcus had designed.
They’ve amassed tens of billions of dollars developing new kinds of weapons, technology, and software programs by selling them to various nations and governments across the world and extorting them out of as much money as they could manage.
Although, none of what he had developed would not give those countries any meaningful advantage against The 300 as the technology they kept to themselves was far more dangerous.
The power armor, a renewable source of fuel that runs on repurposed plastic waste, energy weapons, and even control chips that could be forcibly implanted into a person’s spinal cord which could be used to take control of their bodies and shut off their consciousness and pain receptors.
Marcus had argued that the control chips could be used against pedophiles, murderers, and rapists if they were to ever struggle with recruiting enough people to fight with them.
Lucas was initially horrified by the thought, but decided that if it came down to it, he would take the advice.
Marcus was walking up to him as he was sitting in his office cleaning his gun while reading over battle plans that had been drawn up before.
He noticed him approaching the door before he could knock and said, “Come on in!”
Marcus walked inside and Lucas asked, “What’s up?”
“I have a favor I need to ask of you.”
“Shoot.”
“I want your help with escorting me and Thalia to Japan once I leave,” he asked, which made Lucas quiet.
“Right...when you leave. You’ve been helping us for the good part of the last three or so years that I’ve been dreading seeing you go,” Lucas said as he put down the parts of his gun.
“It was going to happen eventually. You knew this,” Marcus said and Lucas nodded.
“Alright…I’ll have our guys give you an escort, but I’ll need to ask...will I be able to depend on you if things go tits up when things start?”
“No. Once I’m out, I’m out for good,” Marcus said firmly.
Lucas nodded and said, “Couldn’t hurt to ask, but I understand. You’ve earned that much.”
“By the way...do you mind setting up a secure line for me? I need to get in contact with Yukino to let her know I’m coming, but I don’t want anyone to piggy back off of it,” he said.
“Oh! Uh, sure. Yeah, I can do that. Give me a minute…,” he said as he started looking around for some equipment.
He eventually dug out what looked like a regular smartphone but also carried some kind of modem that goes with it.
“Here. This should keep the call secure,” he said and Marcus took the phone from him and dialed Yukino’s phone number.
As he listened to the dial tone, waiting patiently for her to pick up on the other end, Lucas watched him.
“Can you...give me some privacy please?” Marcus asked him and Lucas nodded before leaving the office and closing the door.
A few seconds later and he heard her answer the phone, “Hello? Who is this?”
After not hearing her voice for four years, he put his hand over his mouth in shock as he could hardly bring himself to speak.
“Hello…? I swear, if this is a prank call, I’m just going to-”
“Yukino...its me,” Marcus said, his voice cracking as he spoke to her.
A shuddering breath could be heard from the other end and rushed footsteps as if she were moving to somewhere to speak to him in private.
“Sora… I…, er, Marcus I guess. Sorry, I...never got used to calling you by your real name,” she said nervously as he could hear her fighting through tears.
“Its fine…you can call me by either one. Just hearing your voice is enough for me,” he said with a smile.
She laughed and cried at the same time as she said, “I should be the one saying that after all this time…”
A moment of silence passed between them as neither of them could find the words to say how they were feeling.
“I...I take it you finished your business...right? You can come back to me?” she asked him.
Swallowing his nervousness, he said, “Yeah. I can come back. I have to…I’ll need to come there anyways to get rid of those people who were using your family.”
“Oh...well, about that…, you won’t have to worry about them anymore. They’ve been taken care of,” she said with a dark tone of voice.
“What do you mean?” Marcus asked, feeling concerned.
“I took care of them. Well, me, Akio, and Ryuji. We took care of it,” she said, with her voice seeming more and more cold with every word.
Marcus leaned forward, speaking in a wary tone as he asked, “What exactly do you mean when you say ‘we took care of them’?”
“We...took a page out of your book, so to speak. I couldn’t allow them to threaten the safety of my family or take advantage of us any further so…I put them in their final resting place,” she said.
She killed them…
“Yukino, you...you shouldn’t have had to do that. I could have-,” he tried to say but Yukino cut him off.
“No! No… Knowing what you’ve done…what you’ve had to do…I knew I wouldn’t be able to stomach the idea of standing next to you if I wasn’t able to do what had to be done. If I couldn’t put myself in your shoes and bear that same burden, then I would never forgive myself for making you sacrifice so much. You had to take care of your business…, I had to take care of mine. Its simple as that,” she said in a firm voice, clear in her resolve for what she had done, without a hint of guilt in her words.
“Yukino…that’s...not a price that anyone should have to pay,” he said, heartbroken that she put herself in that kind of position.
“Knowing that I paid that price…, do you think it was wrong of me to act for the good of my family?” she asked him.
“No…not at all. You did what you had to, just like I did… I just regret that I wasn’t there to pay it with you,” he said.
“What’s done is done. Now...there is nothing that can stand in our way, right? You can...you can come home to me, right?” she asked, her voice going back to its normal lovely tone that was like music to his ears.
“Yes. I’m calling you to let you know that I’ll be one my way home to you in about a week,” he said and to his surprise, he heard her hand cover up the microphone on her end while a muffled sound of excitement could still be heard despite her efforts.
“A week?! You’ll be here in a week?! Really?!” she asked excitedly.
“Yes, I promise. But uh...there’s something else I need to tell you about. I’m going to bringing my little sister Thalia with me. Now she isn’t fluent in Japanese, but I’ve tried teaching her a little bit to help-,” he tried to say but Yukino interrupted him.
“You’re bringing your sister too! Oh, I’m so excited! This is great! I think she’ll love it here!” she said and Marcus smiled as Yukino could not manage to contain herself.
“Yeah, I think so too,” he agreed before he heard a muffled voice on the other end, likely a little girl but he couldn’t seem to make out what was being said.
“Are you babysitting a kid or something?” he asked.
“Uh…or something. Its a surprise! One that I’m certain you’re going to love! I can’t wait to see you again and I’m sure she’s dying to finally meet you as well,” Yukino said, her voice so cheerful he could just imagine the size of the grin on her face.
“I’ll be there soon,” he said.
“I can’t wait.”
“Yukino?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you,” he said.
There was a pause before he heard her sniff and said, “I love you too Marcus. I have never stopped loving you. Please hurry home to me.”
Moyako, after the call ended…
As soon as her mother hung up the phone, she held it close to her chest and started crying with a smile on her face.
“Mama…was that daddy?” she asked as her mother started to wipe away her tears.
“Yes it was! That was your dad on the phone! He can finally come home! You’re going to meet him!” she said as she reached out her arms and pulled Moyako in for a tight hug and some of her mother’s tears fell onto her own cheeks.
“W-What if…what if daddy doesn’t like me?” she blurted out and regretted the words the moment they left her mouth.
Her mother pulled away and looked at her with concerned eyes as she asked, “What makes you think he won’t like you?”
“I…I don’t know. I’ve never seen him. He’s never seen me. He doesn’t even know about me yet…,” she said in a somber tone.
“Well...daddy couldn’t talk to us because...if he did, then we might have been in danger. However now, all the bad people are gone and we can finally be a family,” she said with confidence in her voice.
“B-but what if-” she tried to say but her mother gently put a finger over her lips to quiet her.
She then started to brush the hair our of her eyes and press the wrinkles out of Moyako’s clothes as if to make her look more presentable.
She then said, “Moya...my darling girl...you are the greatest gift that your father ever gave me, the very best I could have ever asked for. Now he may not know it yet, but you are the single greatest welcome home gift that he will ever receive. When that front door opens and he walks into see your face, stars will light up in his eyes the instant he sees you. You will be so beautiful and wonderful to him that he will be rendered speechless! Do you want to know why?”
“Why?”
“Because you are our child. You are our daughter. You are perfect in every way to your mama and daddy. When your father lays his eyes on you, he will fall to his knees so that he can embrace you. He might even cry he’ll be so happy to see you. I promise you that,” she said and her words were so warm that even Moyako couldn’t help herself but cry as she hugged her mother close to her and wept into her chest.
She too had dreamt of the day that she would finally meet her father and that day was just around the corner.
Finally…
August 9th, 2021…
Moyako was soundly sleeping in her bed until she was woken up by her mother’s panicked voice as she was talking to someone over the phone while the TV was running a new feed in the background.
She pulled herself out from under the covers and rubbed her eyes as she went into the living room to see what was wrong.
“-mean there’s no trace of him?! I can see him on the news right now! It is clear as day where he ran off to!” her mother shouted into the other end of the phone.
As she slowly stumbled down the hallway and into the living room, she started to hear what was being said on the news report.
“The unknown assailant seemed to have been wearing some kind of armor and wielding a weapon powered by a supernatural force as he used it to mercilessly carve a path of absolute carnage through the streets of The Bronx neighborhood in New York. Only one man was able to fight back against this monster, but local officials have so far been unable to identify this man either. The local police have tried to find where he had chased after the assailant who was last seen carrying the body of a young girl into an alley way. There has been no further news regarding these two unknown men, but the estimated death toll has continued to rise as more and more bodies are being identified as more time passes.”
As she turned the corner and walked around the couch to get a better view of the TV, she watched a clip of two men, one of which was her father, and the other, a red headed knight covered in blood, fighting to the death.
“M-Mama…? Is that-?”
Startled by her voice, her mother turned around to look at her as tears were falling down her face once more.
This time however, they were not tears of joy like before, but rather of sadness. Of horror and hopelessness.
“Moya! Please, go back to-go back to bed,” her mother said, failing to hide the pain in her voice.
“B-But…I thought daddy was going to be here soon…? Where is he?”
Her mother’s voice became caught in her throat as she took a step back while the TV showed a new image of a sketch of both the blood soaked knight, and that of her father with a caption above them.
Missing.
Following her eyes, her mother looked at the TV and quickly reached for the remote to turn it off.
“Mama…?” Moyako tried to say but her mouth started to tremble as she started to cry as well.
“No no no! Please don’t cry Moya, please! I’m sure your father is alright! He’ll be here! I told you he would!” she tried to say as she knelt down to reassure her but her own tears had not stopped.
“Where is daddy?!” Moyako cried as her mother took her in her arms once more.
Her mother never found an answer as to where he was and never would.
Her mother would later end up dying completely alone, leaving their daughter to wonder where her father had disappeared to.
Now…
After two hundred long years had passed, after she had finally met her father face to face, she stood upon the floor of the arena with her sword at her hip and her hands trembling at the thought that she might have to use it to cut her father down.
Whatever it took to bring him home.
She would stop at nothing to make sure that her mother and father would see each other again, and they could finally be a family.
But then she heard the heavy footsteps of her father as he walked through the entrance and onto the arena.
Her breath was caught in her throat at the sight of him as one of his eyes, that were the brilliant color she knew her mother had fallen in love with, was now a blood red.
He stared her down with such a primal murderous glare that she could hardly recognize the man that was her father standing before her.
She could only seem to recognize the Enderman who was in attendance to this fight.
“So today’s the day,” Marcus said, with his voice strangely overlapping with another, colder voice in perfect unison.
“Today’s the day…,” she echoed, with fear and heartbreak in her voice.
She had never wanted to turn her sword against her father, but he was not giving her a choice.
“I guess there is no point in getting down on my hands and knees to beg you to give up and come back home with me quietly…?” she asked, despite knowing what the answer would be.
He shook his head ever so slightly and said, “No...not a chance. I’m going to drive my sword into the base of your spine and push your immortality to its limits.”
She let out a shuddered breath from hearing his words as she knew it was not a threat, it was a promise.
“F-Fine then...I will do as you ask and end your life so that this blade will truly be mine, just like you wanted. Maybe that will be enough to bring you back,” she said as her hand wrapped around her sword and the whine of it being pulled from its sheathe echoed through the arena.
Watching her pull out her sword, he responded in the same manner as he quickly unsheathed his own blade.
There was no hint of hesitation on his face as he was prepared to win this fight at any cost.
“Prepare yourself,” he said to her just as the announcer called for the start of the final match.