Second Steps To Completion, Behold The Seggs, Wait What?

~Echidna's PoV

How utterly fascinating.

She couldn't help but think this as she watched Julian's trial while analysing what she gleamed directly from his mind to make it.

Most of it was hidden from her, both by himself and by something else. It was like she was restricted to a specific part of his memories. Those concerning a part of his life who shaped the boy was.

Simoly put, the boy had never been ordinary. From his birth, he been cut from a finer and more complex clothes than the people surrounding him. What he could do and achieve not limited to normalcy and the shallow imagination of mundane people.

That fact was obvious, what was less so was where the boy stood.

Sacrifice, longing, regret, guilt, loneliness.

Death. That was how the sole life she could gleam could be resumed to.

From a logical point of view, she could understand these feelings and concepts and what use they had and could cause them. But she couldn't empathize with them, because those were not emotions she could feel. Well, she could with one of them. Since every waking seconds, she longed for the unknown and more knowledge. For something new to learn.

What bothered her was that this image of the boy both perfectly corresponded to her image of him she had constructed inside her head and didn't at all.

She had felt his deep greed for many things, a void kept under control by chains of an even colder void. She had directly seen how dominating and domineering he could be, the barely kept under control lust he had felt for her and the most of her sisters. And how confident he was when entering her castle of dreams and talking with her.

Was this passion a lie then? Or was it the utter cold of his soul that was?

Somehow, she felt that neither were. That it was more complicated than that. Yet at the same time, simpler.

The more she thoughts, the more she felt that the being Julian was a thread of yard without end.

But that was impossible, everything mortal had an end.

She felt the corner of her lips quirk up.

An unending mystery, the meer thought made her shudder.

"Here she go, smiling creepily again."

Her smile quickly turn into an annoyed frown as her delightful fantasy was interrupted by Minerva.

*Sigh* "Minerva, you know how she is. Besides, even I find myself curious about him. So I can only guess how she feel."

"Whatever, I'm just sad. He promised me he would help me repent for what I did. But it look like he has some self-imposed repenting to do before that. In hindisght, I didn't think he'd be the kind to feel things like this." She whispered the last part to herself, her face turning sideway as she fell in thought with a soft expression on her face.

*Sigh* "I don't like very much us all being forced like this. But I feel better knowing our new 'boss' is not as unreasonable as I first thought. His transparancy with us by showing us this is also rather surprising. It put me more at peace going forward. Though there is something I feel need to be addressed..." Sekhmet trailed off, looking too lazy to continue speaking.

Carmilla, seemingly picking on what she was speaking off, hided her face with her hands and turned bright red. "A-are you refering to t-that?"

"I'm quite sure she is, Carmilla. And if I may say, I personally see no problem with it. It's part of my contract with him after all. And Julian seems like quite the ideal specimen to experiment with, to boot. Well, more than any other I have seen so far, at least." Echidna replied casually, steepling her hands together, as if she was talking about the weither.

"H-How can you speak about 'that' so casually! Plus, what do you actually know about it, uh!?" Minerva pointed at the white haired witch, flustered.

"Well, I know it's the biological process by which life is normally created. And that it can be done with the simple idea of pleasure behind it, whitout neccessarily implicating pregnancy or creating an offspring. Though that is a concept used almost exclusively by sentient beings. I'm more than 400 hundreds years old, of course I would know about it." Echidna crossed her arms and pouted, looking offended that she would be accused of not knowing about such a basic need.

Minerva looked dazed by her words and palmed her face. "That's so wrong, but I can't find anything wrong with it... Because everything is wrong with it!" She stomped her feet on the ground, looking frustrated. "You didn't speak about the feelings involved in the act or the signifiance it can hold, only the technicality of it!"

"There's no need for any feelings to be involved to my knowledge, and I don't quite get what you mean when you speak of signifiance."

Minerva deflated, looking defeated. "I can't do it, Daphnee, tell her for me."

"Don't speak to me, I'm too hungry to think clearly. Though I'm curious, the act you're speaking of. Can it fill me up?"

"Heep!" Everyone turned their head as Carmilla let out a small sound and fell to the ground and fainted, steam rising from her head.

"Ne Ne, what are you all talking about? And why did big sis faint like that?" Once again, everyone turned their head as small Typhon spoke up. And an awkward silence over the grass field of the castle of dream.

"Well, Typhon, what we're speaking of is when-"

A pair of hands suddenly covered the witch of greed mouth just as there was a shift in the air. Subtle but definitive.

It seemed to happen just as the first trial came to an end and Julian uttered a name.

"Who's Kass?" Typhon tilted her head and asked as she noticed the change in the air and in expression of everyone else.

"Oh? Intriguing, it seems I've suddenly lost control of the trial, and I cannot feel the outside world at all anymore."

...

*Sigh* "How troublesome."

~~~~~

Julian felt the world shift as he said ghe name of his goddess of Death. He didn't exactly know what to expect but since she could read his mind anyway she would know what he wanted.

In fact, he wasn't even sure if she could help him at all with that after what she had said to him last time, she was standing on thin rope.

So you can expect his surprise when he heard a voice speak in his mind, a warm and rich one, seemingly amused at something. It wasn't Kass' one too.

"Behold an unthinkable present, I think it go like this, no?"

Hearing that voice make something flare inside him, a sensation similar to when he woke up from sacrificing his arm for Rem. But it wasn't as pronounced, this time, it was more like it gave him determination and cleared up his mind.

Shaking his head at the strange sensation and the unknown voice, he threw a look around him. And immediatly noticed he wasn't in his past body anymore but his actual one. He stood in a sort of wide plaza filled with greenery in what appeared to be the middle of a... Futuristic Metetropolis?

Skyscrappers reached for the sky and beyond, and flying cars could be seen fleeting between them. He was in the middle of a city, yet the air felt pure and clean.

Taking a curious step forward, he paused, seeing from between the crown of the trees before him a hint of gold. And in the same moment noticing that his magic was almost entirely locked away, and that his body felt noticeably weaker.

It was more of a suppression than anything, like the world didn't allow him to be himself fully because of its laws.

Having an inkling of where he was, he took a deep breath and gritted his teeth in preparation of what was to come. Then he walked forward, toward the hint of gold.

It didn't take long to come into a clearing, in which the golden gleam he could see stood in the middle in the form of an intricate status made of millions of moving parts and small gear. Representating a boy sitting and reading a book, a small robot like machine on his shoulder.

Beneath the statue stood a memorial, on which words were written:

-Julian Vercant.

-Unparalled Young Mind, Revolutionary, Hero of the people, Mover and Shaker, Savior, Father of robotics.

- Misunderstood Undeserved by the world.

This monument stand in his honor, and so that we may never forget our wrongs.

His face twisted in disgust briefly before he brought it back under control. His eyes were attracted by a grey stele, seemingly ordinary, laying beside the monument, and the old man laying some flowers before it. Idly, he noticed how the same flowers were placed at the feet of his statue.

He had half the mind of turning back and never look back, however, in the end. He advanced until he stood besides the kneeling old man. Reading what was written on the stele, he was shook.

"When did she die?"

The old man looked at him briefly and stayed silent for a few seconds before turning back toward the tomb. His voice was weary, but peaceful "A few days after our son, she couldn't take the guilt of having an hand in it."

Julian lowered his head and closed his eyes forcefully, massaging them. "And you could?"

"I couldn't die, I had to make sure to make things right. That his legacy wouldn't be spat on and tarnished by the world. That he would be remembered for what he really was. In the end, it wasn't neccessary, they came to the truth by themselves."

"How so?"

His original father stayed silent for a while, organising his thoughts. "They wondered, why would a man so powerful, who had the whole world in the palm of his hand. Kill himself? Then they realised why... They were horrified." He chuckled mirthfully. "At least there's that."

Julian sighed deeply and looked up at the sky. He hated how vulnerable this all made feel. But this was the root of it all. "Do you know how much you and mom hurted me, that day? How betrayed I felt when you two gazed at me like the rest of the world did?"

Marco slowly stood up with difficulty, the question seemingly making him age another decade. "Me and your mother were blindsided at the time, too much success, too much money, too much power. Too fast. We foolishely projected ourself on you, that you'd become corrupted by it all. Like any other man would. We were wrong. You've never been any man..."

He turned toward him, needing to lift his head to gaze into his eyes. In the blue eyes he had inherited in his first life, Julian could see regret, pain, but most of all, acceptance. But despite it, his father's eyes still filled with tears "We failed you, Julian. We weren't up to it. I can't even imagine what you went through, both during, and after. I'm sorry. And your mother would be even more. That's all I can say, all I can offer you. I know I can't expect forgiveness, but that's still what I hope. Because I know you... I know that if you don't forgive me, you'll never forgive yourself. And that's all I hope for you in your new life, that and happiness, what we failed to provide you in this one."

Julian stood still, helpless to do any other things but let the words wash over him and repeat over and over in his head. They made him dizzy and tearful. He realised it was all he ever wanted to hear, not the why, but that he had never been the one in the wrong. The words came unbidden from his mouth.

"I forgive you."

His father smiled through the tears. "I'm glad."

Then he turned to gaze silently at the tomb of his mother, which Julian decided to fo the same.

After a while, Marco spoke up. "You know, I don't think I've ever had the occasion to tell you. But what you achieved, and what you sacrificed for it. I couldn't have been prouder of you. Those accomplishements, they are yours alone. So you too, should be proud of yourself."

Julian didn't answer immediatly, since for the first time since basically forever, he felt something from a praise. "Perhaps you're right, it's not often you can boast of propulsing a civilisation into a golden age single handedly."

His father snorted. "What do you know, maybe I did that too in one of my past life."

"I highly doubt that, since I can attest that you'd remember it."

"Not like I can contradict you on that, I don't ever remember dying." He chuckled softly.

...

A comfortable silence settled on the pair as a breeze fluttered through the clearing.

"Before you go, will I ever see you again?"

"I don't know."

"Then I need to say it. I love you, son. And your mother did too."

...

"I think I do too, dad."