Megalos

The door opened like rust colliding with one another. Inside the damp, gray, concrete room sat a broken man. He had been promised by his commanding officers that Concursus would be an easy place to handle, with minimal fighting and mostly skirmishes and all.

Now that he sat in this room, with the only light he saw in hours came from a recently opened door, he knew he shouldn’t have followed his dreams. The man that stood in front of him wore clothes similar to his, red-orange. The color of a true Caspian, yet its dirtied and disgraced exterior would prove otherwise.

The man, his presumed jailer, stood with a tablet. Dorsia couldn’t ascertain who the man was, if this was his senior officer or a traitor to the flag, “Lieutenant Colonel Barbus Dorsia, hmm…” The man analyzed Dorsia's military records, “Impressive, very nice. I assume you know me, yes?”

But Dorsia does not know, due to that he didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer.

“I guess not. Best it stays that way,” The man squatted in front of Dorsia and glared at his beaten eyes, “We’re going to ask you three specific questions and you’re going to answer them as honestly as possible.”

“I would rather die.”

The jailer chuckled, “You won’t. First question,” The jailer stood up, “What brings you to this lovely p--”

“Go to hell.”

“Way ahead of you.” The Jailer kicked Dorsia’s face down, “Second question, Wh--”

“Kill yourself.” A knee this time, straight into the face of the Lieutenant Colonel.

“Right, I get it, you don’t want to answer. An honor to uphold, maybe you think you’re getting out. But you’re not getting out, you will stay here for the rest of your natural life, or if you don’t answer, unnatural.” Another punch, and that sent Dorsia down. He coughed what little blood he could.

He saw his jailer head out of his cell, he felt the light slowly go out, but not before he heard one final thing from the man, that Dorsia would, for the next three days, stay in the “White Room”. Jupiter knows what hell awaited him in such a place.

*

Caius and Agrippa stood in the flight deck of the Reichsstadt’s only carrier. From here they could see the entirety of the town, and though it had been attacked four days prior, the carrier itself surprisingly didn’t sustain much damage.

The carrier was moored in the lake of the cavern, at the end of the lake was the other exit of the Reichsstadt, a waterfall exit that perfectly concealed the insides of the cavern from view. Though he hadn't seen Jupiter, Agrippa assured the boy that she was there as the carrier began to move.

The beast of a ship parted the waterfall as it moved past it and gave the crew that never went inside a nice bath for today. The carrier was followed by the rest of the Kaiserreich’s navy, they moved through deep rivers and wide swamplands. There would’ve been an easier route towards the ocean, sure, but wouldn’t it be weird if Imperial satellites just saw a carrier group moving out of swampy rivers into the ocean? Massively!

Caius and Agrippa sat down on the flight deck near the edge, they ate their lunch, one that Agrippa himself cooked. T’was fried tempura. It was a wonder he got the ingredients, he said it was the last ones on deck so he may as well.

Caius took a bite and… it was the most delicious thing he has ever tasted in his life. It was more than the wonderful gourmet that the rich nobility of Caspian are oh so proud of themselves over, it was more than anything he had ever tasted, “You are a genius!” He complimented his friend.

“Aha, it’s nothing.” He humbled itself, though as Caius visibly gulped down the food, it was clear to him that the boy may have been genuine, “Calm down, you might c--”

“ACK!” Caius choked. a small panic set in as Agrippa pulled the boy up and did a heimlich maneuver. It launched the choking hazard out of the ship into the swampy waters below, “Damn… thanks.”

“Please calm down with the food, I would not be able to forgive myself--your uncle especially-- if you died of that.” Agrippa let out a small laugh and so did Caius as they both sat back down.

“Hey, Caius.”

“Yeah?” Caius chomped down on the food once more.

“I don’t mean to pry but earlier. Why’d you rage out on Julius like that?” It was surprising for Agrippa, of course. He had never seen someone threaten Julius like that and live. Though maybe it’s due to filial influence.

“He lied. Simple as that.”

“If It’s alright to ask, what did he lie about, exactly?”

Caius stared at Agrippa, then back to his food, then back to Agrippa, seemingly deep in thought. He thought hard, perhaps about telling it to his friend. Perhaps about the wonderful food he’s eating with Agrippa, he said, “He lied about my parent’s death. That whoever did it was gone and wouldn’t trouble us anymore.”

“Would it not be a white lie then?” White lies, lies told to avert a person’s feelings, mostly harmless and trivial.

“But it isn't trivial. It was MY parent’s death. I mean, for the past few years he had been teaching me this one philosophy called ‘stoicism’. He told me things like, ‘people’s deaths are trivial’. To control myself if something bad were to happen, as if to admit that there was something that’s going to happen. You get me?” Caius ranted.

“That does sound like something he would say. After all, he went through a lot, he saw his comrades die, his life ruined. All because of a simple mistake, perhaps Lord von Kaiser really just wants the best for ‘ye?”

“If someone were to tell you, right now, that Romulus never existed, that your memories of them were just fabricated, lies. All told to you to instill this weird sense of nostalgia for something that never existed in the first place. Then, after you find yourself comfortable, content, with the thought, they just say that they lied. How would you feel about that? That man is a liar, and I don’t know If I could trust him anymore.” Caius felt his heart sink, he breathed. And breathed once more, held the tempura, and gnawed it violently.

Agrippa just sat there quietly and analyzed his friend. Caius cried, sniffed, cried, sniffed. Agrippa didn’t really know how to help Caius like this, for all his military and physical achievements, emotional stability remains as his worst enemy. The least he could do was a hug, and a hug he gave. Even if he still couldn’t quite understand the extent of Julius’ harm on Caius.

After a while, Caius stabilized, he was okay now. Tears are gone, yet the gnawing thought of his uncle’s manipulation remains. He stared at the ground, into nothingness. Deep in thought about his uncle. About his family, his crisis of meaning. But no more, he didn’t want his life to be led by people anymore, not by his father’s ghost, not by his uncle’s manipulation. He is now his own man.

“Say, Agrippa.” He snapped out of it and went back to his friend.

“Yes?”

“What do you know about Jupiter? Y’know, the pilot lady that flew with me during the battle.”

“Madame Jupiter?”

“Madame Jupiter.”

“Well, Madame Jupiter is an enigma. There she goes right now.” Agrippa pointed at a plane about to take off for exercises, it bore the markings of an eagle’s claw in its tail. At the cockpit sat Jupiter, her face obscured by her flight helmet. In this flight helmet, scribbled with white paint marker pen were the words, ‘Jupiter Megalos’.

“Quite cocky ain’t she?” Caius said as he watched her take off. She flew circles around the carrier and practiced her maneuvers.

“Yeah, well. The honor wasn’t given to her by herself, y’know?”

“Well, yeah, she did say that her friends below called her Jupiter.”

“Friends? Madame Jupiter has no friends. She keeps to herself a lot, hell I barely see her walking around the town. Most of the time she’s just flying until her fuel forces her to go down. What she has, though, is the Lord von Kaiser.”

“Uncle? What about them?” Caius took another bite of the tempura and watched Jupiter’s fancy aerial maneuvers and acrobatics.

“The legend goes, before the formation of the Kaiserreich, when Julius was still a conscript of the Caspian Army, he and his forces were tasked to raid a village. In this village he found an orphaned child. This child came to be known as Jupiter. Now, he raised this child in secrecy. Even after he defected and formed the Kaiserreich, he didn’t tell anyone much about her. All we truly know is that Jupiter is the name given to her by Julius himself. That was how we should refer to her, and that we should treat her with utmost respect.”

“Interesting, so she was raised by Uncle like his own child?”

“Hm,” Agrippa thought for a moment, “Something along those lines, yes.” He plunged another tempura in his mouth, “She was raised by a Caspian, like Caspian. He taught her to fly, aeronautics, everything Julius learned in the military he passed onto her.”

“That’s why she’s good huh.” Caius witnessed her magnificent aerial acrobatics die down as she slowly positioned herself back towards the runway.

“Yes, oh yeah, another thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Not a lot of people actually like her, maybe it’s the fact that she keeps to herself a lot. Anti-social and all, or maybe it’s her prideful nature being the greatest pilot in the Kaissereich, maybe it’s just because she was raised by Julius. Here’s what I found though, her name.”

“Her name?” Caius asked.

“It’s Angelica. Angelica Selene.”

A figure stood in front of them, a pilot, it shadowed the both of them as her crimson red hair flowed along the wind. She held a flight helmet, and this was the only way that Julius recognized Jupiter Megalos.