Vega Vs Vanilla
Arena 8 - Spectator SideWhile cheers, bets and stares of shock and awe made the stadium quake with anticipation, two girls with white hair and skin pure as porcelain looked down on the match below.
While everyone smiled and grinned and laughed like normal people enjoying bread and circus, only these two didn't smile. Their eyes stared down with an emotion they scarcely showed in front of Vega.
Concern.
It was a rainy night in the slums of the Nexus city. It was a time they didn't like remembering much. Back then, they didn't have names, only numbers.
01275 and 21409
Because they weren't born from ciconias, but in tubes. Because they weren't human like the men in coats and cloaks, they didn't have the right to carry happiness, sadness, not even a name.
Because they should have never been born in this world. Dolls are only made to be broken. And yet, one day, they escaped. Was it love? Or fear? Or perhaps simply fate.
On that rainy night, they met him.
"Kh..." That man had appeared from the sky, and without warning had fended off men who were ready to capture them again. This had been the first time anyone fought to defend them. They had never seen something fight with so much ferocity. And yet, that wasn't what struck them the most.
Because even after he fought so hard, even when covered in the blood of these hunters, he managed to turn back and smile at them. For dolls that never knew love or hatred, who only knew how to survive... something like this was incomprehensible. It wasn't the smile of something that wanted to use someone, or the smile of someone enjoying their broken state.
It was a beautiful smile.
"...Why?" Asked number 01275. She asked that man, who had fought and bled for seemingly no gain at all. The man who was breathing heavily, yet not without an air of dignity to him.
"I'm not so callous to let beautiful flowers be trampled on by rabble. And you two... remind me of someone."
And from that day on, these dolls became human.
Atya and Vatya.
This was a tale of a few months later. At the time, they didn't understand it. That man's heart, the true meaning of his actions. Yet still...
"What are you doing, Master?"
Vega was, surprisingly enough, sculpting a doll. It was quite crude, it must have been his first attempt. The craftsmanship was adequate, but the carving was amateurish. He still had much to learn.
"Oh, I didn't notice you there. Have you finished your reading exercises already?" He asked her kindly.
"Y-yes."
She couldn't help but stare. Even though it seemed pointless, and his technique was an amateur's, there was a kind of passion she hadn't seen in a long time. His eyes looked as intense as that night's. She could never forget them.
"I thought this house was growing lonely. It would be good to make it a bit more lively, hm? Like a family..."
He had met earlier that week with a strange man. There was so much she didn't understand that day, but the one thing she felt that day was a sense of unease. That man's eyes were just like the ones of the people who would operate on her and sister. She did not like those eyes.
Yet Vega invited that man more often than once. Every time, she felt like he was sinking deeper and deeper in a darkness she couldn't understand.
Yet Vega's smile was as beautiful as ever.
"She is my precious -"
Atya and Vatya stared down at the Arena. The smaller one simply watched with concern. But it was the older one that steeled herself and held her hand decisively.
Because that man's eyes were the same as back then, she knew just how serious he was. And so she spoke.
"He won't lose. That man isn't someone who will lose to anyone."
That was the simple truth of it.
Vega"Yes, she told me enough." He put his violin down and stared at the archdemon with eyes as fierce as a star.
3With a daint finger, he grabbed the claw hanging on his side and twirled it, and like a magician he put it on and took a fighting stance all at once. As if with that single motion, he had already transformed.
2"I didn't think I would dance with one as beautiful as you..." He lowered his body as elegantly as a beast, ready to pounce at any moment. In the eye of his mind, a ghost from the past embraced him.
1...Mother.