Unreality

31. Scarred and Scared

Luther Weiss was no longer the Commander of Anima. After his repeated failures to capture the dangerous fugitive sufferer Victor Margulis, as well as letting another sufferer, Virgil York, escape from headquarters under his watch, the higher-ups at Ethos had decided he was no longer fit for the role of commander, and promptly demoted him to Lieutenant Commander, meaning he would become a subordinate to the new Commander, who would be announced soon.

After being informed of this decision, Luther had tried to protest, but his attempts were cut short and he was told to take leave from Ethos HQ for the remainder of the day in order to contemplate the reasons for his recent failings and better prepare himself for his new role of supporting his replacement as his lieutenant.

How humiliating, Luther couldn't help but bemoan to himself as he walked towards the front gate of Ethos HQ.

The position he had worked so hard to reach since the day he had joined the Alpha Federation's Special Command Forces had been taken away from him just like that, and all because of those loathsome brothers who had managed to elude his grasp and escape his control time and time again.

As he swore to himself he would one day catch them and put them in their proper place, the now Lieutenant Commander of Anima was called out from behind by a voice he did not want to hear at all right now.

'Commander, wait!' it was Mephisto's unmistakable coarse voice.

Commander? Oh, that's right, she hadn't been informed of his demotion yet.

Luther turned around and glanced at her with glacial eyes that clearly took her aback, before she tried to compose herself and started to speak in an earnest voice.

'Please give me orders to go out in search of York,' she desperately urged him as she brought her hand to her left cheek, where the now former agent of Anima had pierced her skin before making his escape from headquarters. Mephisto had already received treatment and was now wearing a new mask which concealed it, but surely the wound had left a new scar on her already disfigured face.

Luther did not even have the authority anymore to acquiesce to her request, but he did not feel compelled to inform her of that, as it was ultimately irrelevant to the matter at hand, since he would have refused her even if he was still the Commander of Anima.

'Why should I?' he replied in a voice as cold as his gaze. 'So you can fail to apprehend him just like you failed with his brother multiple times before?'

Mephisto could not hide the shock in her crimson eyes as she heard Luther speak to her in such a reproachful manner.

'But Commander...!'

'Enough!' Luther cut her off at once, further vexed by her continuing to address him by a position he no longer held. 'Return to your living quarters. I have nothing more to say to you.'

Turning his back on her before he could even glimpse her reaction to those words, Luther started making his way towards the nearby front gate of Ethos HQ.

The gate took some time to open and close, so after Luther's request to the guards to open it so he could leave, he had to wait a short while before it did.

During that time, unbeknownst to him, Mephisto continued to watch him from behind, still rooted to the same spot, with a now forlorn look in her eyes that heavily contrasted with her generally menacing appearance.