[02] Forest Sector

[Belle Hibiki]

Belle listened to Sage's story, thin-lipped and narrow eyed, but silent. There wasn't really anything he could say, and the girl, as treacherous as girls were, didn't seem to be playing a trick. Belle's own emotions were oftentimes too intense for him to control, but with that lack of inhibition had come a keen sense of empathy. Watching Sage go on about her battle, it was all too clear to him how badly her actions were hurting her.

A demon, indeed. Belle shook his head. Menstu Ration might be real, but if he was, he wasn't in the bunker. "What does she mean, she knew she would have to kill?" he asked. He looked to Kaden, who gave a very tired, exhausted shrug. "I thought there wasn't supposed to be any permanent shit. That's what they said on my invitation."

"There isn't," the ice princess murmured, her voice so low that Belle almost didn't hear her. "When someone... 'dies' in Dante's Abyss, they're taken away and instantly healed..."

"So then why-" Belle started. He wanted to ask, 'why are you getting so worked up, then?', but the look on Kaden's face shut him up. It was hard for him to remember that not everyone had come here of their own accord; and of them, not many were true fighters who were used to blood and carnage. Belle didn't like it all that much himself; the fight against the Construct had been full of it, and he still sometimes awoke from a fitful sleep with the afterimages of that day burning in his eyes.

But even though Belle didn't like it, he had at least gotten used to the idea. Clearly, that didn't extend to everyone. "Weird," he muttered.

Ashe looked up. "What's weird?"

Belle eyed her, then surreptitiously slid a half step back. "I thought that there might be someone behind the people actually dying, you know?"

Ashe, Sophia, and Kaden exchanged looks. Sage just stared at the ground. "Uh," Kaden spoke first, having had the most experience talking with him, though looking as if he thought it was a dubious mark of distinction, "someone else?"

"First thing that happened when I got here was someone trying to dump an avalanche on me," Belle explained. "When I couldn't outrun it, I stopped it, and then - "

"You stopped an avalanche."

"Well, sort of shoved it to the side a bit, you know. It's kind of hard to - hey, don't interrupt me!" Belle barked, then took a breath and lifted an index finger in front of his face. "Just as it was splitting, I saw something in the snow."

"Was it another fighter?" Sophia asked.

Belle glanced at Sophia. Strange girl, he thought. Who went around with a halo? "No, that was the weird thing. It didn't look like a person at all." Belle explained the strangely spherical, metal object that had been hiding in the avalanche. "And then, just as I saw it, it blew up."

Silence.

"Are you sure you weren't seeing things?" Ashe asked.

"I know what I saw, dammit! If I said I saw a metal ball explode, I saw a metal ball explode."

"Okay, okay," Ashe lifted her hands. "Just making sure."

"Stupid girls," Belle grumbled, half to himself. "Talkin' about my sight..."

Kaden rubbed his temples, looking tireder than Belle had ever seen him. "At any rate," the courier said, "it's really late. Even if Belle did see something, there's no point in arguing about it. It might be a fluke."

"That's a stupid idea," Belle grumped. "Metal balls don't just show up out of nowhere in the cold."

Kaden grimaced. "That's not what I - " he stopped. "Nevermind." He turned around and strode out of the room. Ashe seemed to wince.

"Geez," Belle said. "What crawled up his ass and died?"

~+~+~+~+~

It was a little bit later when Belle returned from raiding the supply closet to find the snow girl sitting by herself at the table. From the next room, Belle could hear the faint snoring of one or more individuals. Kaden must have gone back to sleep, he realized.

Sage didn't even look up as Belle edged around the side of the room. The table was large, but the girl occupied the nearer end. Working his way to the far opposite edge, Belle deposited his handful of food onto the table, pulled out his chair very slowly, and sat down.

He started to eat. He'd always found it strange how often people said they were 'full' after just a few helpings. Maybe it was different for Belle, but he almost couldn't get enough; and after the shortage of any real cooking on the Maiden's Dream, the bunker's wide selection of baked and spiced breads and meats were a kind of heaven.

Belle often looked up to see if Sage had done anything, but she hadn't. After waking up and telling her story, she apparently didn't want to go back to sleep. She stared at the tabletop as if her obituary had been carved into the smoothly polished wood.

"What I don't get," Belle finally said when the silence became annoying, "is why you even came if you knew that there was gonna be fighting."

Sage shifted her eyes to the side. For a moment, Belle didn't think she was going to answer. Then: "If I win," she whispered quietly, "I can find someone."

"You couldn't do that on your own?" Belle asked around a mouthful of mutton. "Couldn't you just, like, use a tell phone, or something?"

"I don't know his number."

"Can't you look it up? Aren't there 'phone books'?"

Sage lowered her face. "He's not there."

"Hmph," Belle snorted. "Useless. One more reason why I'm glad I never bothered to learn how to read." He paused, watching Sage. When the girl went quiet again, he took a few more bites before saying: "The guy ... hurt you, or something?"

The question made the girl shift. She didn't say anything, but the look on her face was all the answer he needed. "So why do it?" Belle asked. "I mean, if he hurt you, why look for him? Some kind of ... revenge? Is that it?"

"I have to stop him," Sage whispered.

Belle chewed thoughtfully. "Doesn't make much sense to me," he said at last. "If he hurt you, wouldn't hurting yourself more like this just be the kind of thing he'd want?"

Sage looked up at that. "I mean," Belle continued, "that's just what I think."

She shook her head and lowered her eyes. "It's not like that."

Belle kind of doubted that, but he decided to let it drop. "Okay," he said. "Whatever."

More silence. Belle picked his way through a slab of freshly baked ham, then a quart of mashed potatoes, and was just getting started on a pound of steak when Sage looked up again. "Did you ... mean ... what you said before?" she asked hesitantly. "That it looked like ... a monster had killed him?"

Belle had to think back. "Yeah, I did." He watched her carefully. "Anyone would think that, looking at what happened. But I guess," he looked down at his plate, "that was wrong."

"Do you think so...?"

"I don't think you're a monster, if that's what you mean," Belle muttered. "Do you?"

"I... I don't know," Sage admitted. "I... I couldn't control what happened. I just... I just d-did it, and he..." she suddenly cut off, her eyes brimming with tears. But instead of shedding them, she seemed to take a breath, and blinked them away. "I don't know," she whispered.

Belle listened, working a bit of steak loose with his fork. Stabbing it, he took a bite. "When I was a kid, this was probably like ten years ago or something, I found a bird that had fallen out of its nest. His mom must have forgotten about him, or maybe he wasn't strong enough to fly. His leg was broken, so I bandaged it up best I could and took care of 'im." He swallowed, then stared absently at the light reflecting off his fork. "We were real good friends.

"One day, when I was training, a wolf showed up. I'd put Chickie down so that I could do my warm ups, and the wolf went after him. I grabbed Chickie up quick and kicked the wolf so hard the bastard went flying over the top of the trees." Belle paused. The memory wasn't painful; it was the memory of a memory of pain, like a phantom limb in his heart. "I was really scared that he might, you know, get hurt. That's probably why I squeezed so hard." He closed his eyes. "And I was ... stronger than most kids."

Belle took a deep breath. "I dug Chickie a little grave and buried him. I wanted my dad to tell me that it wasn't my fault, but he never did. I thought I might have done it because I secretly wanted to, like I was, you know, a terrible person, and my dad must've been able to see that. I was like that for a month, I think, and it really started screwing with my training. I didn't get better until I accidentally crushed an apple I wanted to eat in my hand. That was when I realized why my dad had never tried to comfort me. I had a lot of strength, but I had never learned how to control it. In a way, it was my fault that Chickie died. After that, I tried real hard to figure out how to control my own strength."

He looked across the table at Sage. "You're a girl, but you're strong; not quite the same like I was, but you've still got power, and I just think you never learned how to control it. If you don't want to keep hurting people, you're going to have to face your powers, not run away from them. Sitting here moping around isn't going to help you or anyone else."

Belle squared his shoulders. "Anyway," he said, more firmly. "Whatever. That's your business. If it makes you feel better," he added, "you did heal that other girl instead of killing her."

Belle got up, stacked his plates, then realized that Sayana wasn't going to be around to clean them. "Fuck it," he muttered to himself, and headed out the door. He wasn't a Goddamn head shrink, anyway.