Chương 62: Lunch's aftermath
"Mmm, that was absolutely delicious." Esdeath said with a brightly smile pointed Kije's direction while patting her filled stomach over Parc's hand that he had wrapped around her to keep himself from leaning backwards due to gravity.
'Wish I knew. But hey, apparently chairs don't get fed,' Parc grumbled to himself.
"I'm glad you liked it," in comparison to the others sitting at the table, Kije along with her daughter was the only one with anything that so as remotely resembled a smile, "It's a family recipe."
"I can see it; the taste is very refined. Your parent must toiled many long hours to craft such a meal."
"I suppose so. I won't lie, it changes with every generation, we like adding our own spin to the dish. Maybe Logue will even add her own, isn't that right sweetie," Kije, lowered her head to the little one who had a trail of soup running down her chin from where she'd been chugging soup by the gallon. "look at you!" Kije huffed bringing a towelette to dry off Logue's chin.
"Mnn! No!" Logue tried her utmost to turn away from Kije's hand, failing completely as a child on their mothers lap would never win in a battle of cleanliness.
Esdeath watched this scene with a surprising amount of intensity to her gaze. Her eyes turning to slits just analyzing the entire scene even though she found it so uninteresting.
Below her, Parc had noticed her intensity even under his own intense glares from a particular metal armed girl. 'Interesting, so even with all that some part of you is interested in motherhood. You're not as heartless as you seem.'
"There wouldn't happen to be anything still left for me, would there?" he tired to ask the group only to be ignore by everyone bar Kurome who immediately turned over the table frowning when she saw the empty pot with barely even dregs left and empty platters filled only with crumbs.
"Oh-oh, I am so sorry!" he heard Kije exclaim, having to lean his head to the side to see Kije herself, "I completely forgot about you. Let me get something for you!"
'Of course, there's nothing.' He groaned
"Don't worry about it miss. I'll just grab something on my way back to my cell."
"That won't do! You're a guest in this house. I will not be having you go hungry on my watch. Logue sweetie, could you please get off. I need to get mr…"
"Parc." No point in arguing, not much a chair can argue about anywys.
"…Parc, something to eat." Kije pushed her seat out, lifting her daughter up and gently placed her down on the ground, albeit a little reluctantly.
"Ah, I will join you. I have a few questions if you do not mind my asking." Esdeath pushed Parc out from under the chair, following just a step behind Kije as they disappeared around the corner.
Now without is human ice shield, Parc was stuck with four sets of sharp eyes on him and one set of curious child eyes.
No matter how calm he looked outside, nothing could stop the sweat pouring down his back. "Ok, so I'm gonna get this out now. I currently do not have any intentions of making your lives any more difficult, for the most part."
"Shut. Up. You degenerate monster." Seryu hissed.
"Yeah, no, wasn't talking to you, Ubi, I was talking to my good prison wardens, Run, Bols and Wave, and Kurome," he added Kurome as an afterthought as she barely classified as a prison warden whenever she was with him. "You, not so much. You're too homicidal."
"For a good reason you lunatic murderer."
"How about we do not devolve into baseless name calling. I am far from a lunatic. So please, if you are going to call me anything, just call me a murderer. That's more accurate."
"I WILL CALL YOU WHAT I WANT TO! YOU MURDERED EVERYONE I CARE ABOUT!" she slammed her fists down on the table. The wood crunching under her fists.
"Seryu. You're scaring poor Logue again."
Seryu flinched, looking to Logue who was once again cowering behind her father. Guilt filling Seryu, she slowly retracted back into her chair, curling herself up into a small ball to seem not as intimidating to the little one.
"Thank you, now if you may. Please do keep yourself calm around Logue. I'd rather not leave this house with a scared child on my conscience."
"You've left many children scared for their lives." Seryu retorted.
"Name them."
"What?"
"Name them. The children. Give me their names. Because I don't recall ever running into a child on my operations."
Left a blank, Seryu began to think. But found nothing coming to her, "a-uh, um." Until one, a particularly gruesome murder from many, many months earlier. "Aria Tellien! She was terrified before you murdered her and her family!"
"Why are you pinning that on me?" Parc snorted derisively, "I wasn't the one to axe her and it was a group operation. I didn't touch either the mom or the dad. Out of everyone, I was the one with the least number of kills on my hands. I like, killed two guys, guards." He crossed his arms before continuing, "did I scare her, absolutely. She deserved every second of it."
"How can you say that?" for the first time since lunch began, Wave decided to speak up. "How can a child deserve terror? Is your mind so warped to feel nothing?"
Parc just blankly stared at the spikey haired boy, "did you see that families torture dungeon? I won't go into the details because of little Logue here." His eyes diverted under the table where he could see a small blonde shadow staring up at him with her sapphire blues. Bols looking mighty worried with his daughter not by his side when an assassin was in the room. "But there were a lot of dead in there. And guess what," Parc returned to Seryu.
"Tatsumi's best friends were some of the bodies locked in the cages." That was enough to earn a twitch from Seryu while the other's just tilted their heads confusedly. "Oh yes, poor Sayo and Ieyasu. Did he ever tell you about them?"
"Who are you talking about? Who's Sayo? Who's Ieyasu?" Wave asked the question Parc was going to answer whether or not Seryu nodded or not.
"Who am I kidding. Of course you do. Tatsumi surely told you about the two people he left his village with. He also tell you about them leaving to go work for a merchant somewhere in Wakoku if I remember." Parc felt a poke on his calf even through the icy shell that encapsulated them.
"How… how do you know this?" she asked an obvious stutter to her voice.
"Ubi, you've literally got a wanted poster out for Sayo. You tell me how I know this."
"I-I don't know."
"Oh come on. It's not that difficult. Wave, you have a guess. Why would a girl with a wanted poster in the capital who was thought to be in another country, have a wanted poster in the Capital."
"It was, a, uh," he had to think.
"It was a cover." Run sighed and answered for him. "You crafted a scenario in which both this Sayo and Ieyasu would disappear from the capital with ledgers guiding them to being in Wakoku while they joined Night Raid. Am I wrong?"
Parc snapped his finger, a hard knock from Logue reverberating through his calf, "not even slightly right, well no, a little. Sayo's not technically a part of Night Raid. We're just sort of taking care of her while figuring out what to do with her. Not much a girl with one leg can do for an army, so that's been taking a while."
"So that 'one-legged' thing was true?"
"Do you think they put that up for the giggles? Of course she's got one leg. Aria Tellien was the one who cut it off." Huffing he focused on Logue who was waving her hand beneath his butt trying to see if there was any support keeping him levitated.
"Mr." Logue looked up to him with sparkling eyes, "you're floating."
"Uh, yeah, sure. Guess I am."
"No she did not!" Seryu argued.
"Oh for the love of." Parc was growing increasingly impatient with this fanatical imperialist. "Yes she did and if you don't like it, I can get you the little diary Maria Tellien was writing about the stages of the virus she infected Ieyasu with that ENDED WITH HIM DEAD."
"W-what?"
"Seryu, for once in your life. Just, shut up and think for yourself. I'm honestly tired of dealing with your shi-"there was a six-year-old right next to him with her hands on his thighs like she was about to pull herself onto his lap, "-p… This Empire ain't as great as you think it is. Those Telliens? They lured in people from outside the capital, drugged them and dragged them to their shed where they mutilated them while they were still alive. Sayo was screaming as Aria sawed through her leg. And throughout that all, Ieyasu was forced to watch. All while he was dealing with unbearable pain. It was a miracle I could even get him a meeting with Tatsumi before he died the very same day.
"you're just blind to it. Just like you were blind to Ogre's crimes. Just like you're blind to the crimes of the people you're supposed to protect. Have you ever gone out and done an inspection on the mansions you so righteously defend? Because I have. And I've seen stuff that would make even god cry in fear."
By now Parc's cheek was beginning to twitch as the little girl tried to climb onto his lap under the watchful, jealous eyes of Kurome and the concerned ones of Wave amd her father, unsure of what to do about a six year old being so close to a criminal. Seryu on the other hand seemed to be unable to retort, or just simply held no want of retorting, simply intent on grinding her teeth into dust.
"Hey mister," Logue sat atop Parc's lap staring him in the face.
"Yes, Logue," Parc rolled his eyes before locking onto her.
"How are you floating? And why are your feet cold?"
Those were two questions he could very easily answer.
"Magic, and magic. I'm a magician you see," he grinned.
Logue beamed at him, "really!? Can you pull a bunny from a hat! I've always wanted a bunny! Make it white! Make it white!" she bounced up and down, creaking Parc's frozen body.
"I cannot summon fluffy white rabbit from the void of a hat," Parc sadly shook his head drawing a disappointed whine from the little girl. "But tell you what, I do have a little spell somewhere on me. Do you want me to show you?"
"YES!" Logue bounced even faster.
"Alright then," Parc lifted his right hand up and pressed it against Logue's ear and whispered, "when I snap my finger, Kurome will bark like a doggie, okay?" Normally he wouldn't do such a thing to Kurome in the presence of others, but a six year old with sparkly eyes sort of trumped anything else.
"Mnn!" Logue bobbed her head up and down.
"Alright, three…" he pressed his thumb and middle finger together.
"Two," he squeezed them together.
"ONE!" A sharp snap came from his fingers.
Soon followed by a girlish, "Wan!" coming directly from the girl besides him. The very sound causing must of the people in the room to gape at the girl who was trying her best not blush but was failing completely.
"It worked! It worked!" Logue sang, "Again! Again! Do it again!"
"Uh, alright," he gave Kurome an apologetic look, though he was sure by this point she was enjoying having an excuse to follow his orders outside of a private room.
"Wan!" Kurome rose her hand to her mouth, tilting her head down as if to hide her reddened face from the crowd.
"Again!"
Who was Parc to reject a little girls request.
"Woof!"
Not one. The answer was not one.
"Now Wave!"
"Wait wh-" Wave paused seeing the glare Parc gave him that seemed to say 'if you don't listen, I will shove my dagger so far up your ass, you will be wishing I killed you.
With a quick snap of his finger and a following depressed sounding, "woof…" Logue began to go through everyone in the room. Only Seryu getting the same glare Parc so gratiously graced Wave with while Run and Bols seemed more than happy to follow along with the game.
"Now me!"
'Oh shitake.'
"I, uh. My-my…" he tried to think up and excuse, "my magic only works on adults, y-yes, only on adults." He avoided the disappointed look of Logue.
"Boooo! I want to be a puppy!" Both Parc's and Kurome's cheeks twitched for different reasons.
"Woof!" Logue barked herself. "Wan!" her voice cute, cuter even than Kurome's. And it made any who saw it melt just from how dedicated and pure the little one looked doing it.
"And what's going on here?" Kije asked walking into the dinning room with Esdeath, who was carrying her plate with what Parc guessed was a sandwich atop it, though it was a little to high out of his view to see.
"Mr. Coldy used his magic to make everyone bark! But his magic doesn't work on me… I still wanted to be a puppy…"
"Mr… Coldy?" Parc gapped at his new nickname.
"How cute," Kije approached Logue and lifted her off his lap, "can you be a puppy for mommy?"
"Nnn, Wan!" Logue bounced in her mother's arms.
Kije tightly hugged her daughter, her lip trembling while a blush grew on her cheeks, clearly feeling the same cuteness overload that the others were feeling.
As Kije walked back to her husbands side. Esdeath retook her spot-on Parc's lap, sitting on it sideways. Placing the plate down before picking up one of the sandwiches that had been made for Parc. And as if to spite him, took a bite of it.
"Um, Esdeath? Isn't that for me?"
"It is."
"So why are you eating it then?" She took another bite out of it.
"I don't believe I answer to you." Her 'bites' were more chomps bringing the sandwich down to half its previous size in a swift few second. "But if you must know," she started with half a mouthful, "I'm hungry."
'So am I!' He screamed on the inside.
Just as Esdeath brought the sandwich up to her mouth, she stopped right as her teeth were about to bite into the bread. Her cheeks going paler while her eyes seemed to be trying to force down something.
'Great.'
"Ms. Kije, could you get a bucket. Quickly. Or just anyone in general."
"Why do you need a-" Wave was about to ask.
"No questions. Need bucket. Or just something like a buck…et…" He eyed the pot in on the table. 'That'll do…' though he doubted Kije would ever be cooking in it again. "Just, could one of you push the pot closer."
Kije nodded her head with an understanding smile, after all the questions Esdeath had levied her, she had gotten an inkling of an idea of what was going on. And so Kije pushed the pot towards Parc until it was close enough for him to hook, his finger around the handle and lift it up. Bringing it onto Esdeath's lap.
Esdeath in response dropped the sandwich into the pot and wrapped her arms around it, her body hunching over, her face half into the pot unable to hold back the nauseous regurgitating.
"Captain!"
"General Esdeath!"
Repeated the Jaegers in concern for their leaders sudden sickness.
"No idea how long she's going to be doing this for, so I might as well do the announcement for her…" he rubbed Esdeath's back in slow, circular motions to help quell the onslaught of acidic smells coming from the pot.
"Esdeath, is going to be a mother."
That day he swore all jaws dropped apart from two wide eyed girlish squeals that came from Kije and her daughter who he believed was only squealing because her mom was.
***
'No. Fucking. Way.' A certain kitten swore sitting on the windowsill outside a dinning room where a regurgitating woman was hunched over a pot emptying her stomach.
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