Hello minna-san!  Sorry for the long wait for this chapter.

I hope you enjoy this extra-long chapter and I have a question for you readers at the end!

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~Marks P.O.V.~

I watched as Sting, Lexi, Lector, and Hornet left the house. I clenched my fists to conceal my anger.  I still couldn't believe that after all that has happened, Jessie still chose to save him.  Maybe that's why I will never be able to understand why she always puts own safety on the line for her friends and comrades.  "You seem to have a dislike for that man huh?" Dr. Dana inquired after a couple minutes of silence.  When I didn't reply to her, she sighed.  "Well don't just stand there like an idiot, come and help me get your meal ready.  I'm not going to cook by myself just because you and the others are temporarily staying here.  I'm a woman who thinks that you must earn what you use." I was a bit irritated by her words, but in the end I knew she was right.  After all, she was the one who had saved us, and now that I was left alone with her, I couldn't just stand there and reminisce about the past. 

"...Alright," I mumbled after a while, walking over to her.  "What do you want me to do?"  Satisfied, the doctor gestured to the cutting board behind her.

"I take it you know how to mince something right?" she asked.  I silently nodded.  "Good, then go ahead and mince the onion.  Lucky for you, I already peeled it."  Grabbing a knife, she abruptly pointed it at my chest, its tip only inches away from piercing me.  I, however, was not fazed.

"if you want to kill me, then go ahead," I said in an emotionless tone.  "After all these years, I believe I have deserved it." Sighing once again, Dr. Dana twirled the knife around in her hands before gripping onto its wooden handle.

"I'd be insulted if I wasn't aware that you were serious," she commented.  "But, since I am, all I can say is that you know that's not true, and you know why." My emotionless expression turned to one of confusion.

"What do you mean by that?" I cautiously asked. The woman with chocolate brown skin rolled her eyes before handing me the knife.

"I mean that Eric, or should I say your father, would never want you to die, much less willingly," she answered as she walked up to one of the cupboards.  "So don't go stabbing yourself.  I'd hate for blood to stain my wooden floors."

"Y-...you knew?" I stuttered, temporarily stupefied that she knew I remembered her and that she knew me.

"Of course I knew child. The way you keep looking at me says it all," she scoffed as she rummaged through her cupboard's shelves.  "Jeez, you've inherited your father's ignorance."

"But then you should've known Jessie...and you should have saved her instead of me!" I could feel myself getting infuriated again.

"Don't use that angry tone against me," she warned, giving me a sharp glare with her hazel eyes.  "As I already told Sting and his brown cat, I only learned about her being kidnapped recently. I did try to save her, but by then she was overcrowded with guards, making it impossible to have even touched her.  Do not forget I only possess magic suitable for a doctor, not a fighter. That stunt I pulled was not easy for someone like me you know?"  She paused for a minute. "...Besides, the foolish girl would have protested and fought against me, had I gotten to her..." My anger slightly diminished as I realized that, although having a stern and uninterested personality, she felt guilt for resigning as our family doctor after...the Caesar incident.

"And why would she have done that?" I asked.  It was meant to be a retort, but it instead sounded worried, which was exactly how I felt right then.

Giving off another sigh, she replied, "I'm afraid that the mysterious memory spell that had been cast on her after...the tragedy seems to be breaking from age." My eyes widened with shock. 

"Then...that means..." I whispered.  Dr. Dana nodded sadly.

"Yes, the poor girl is slowly remembering," she muttered.  "And when she regains her memory, I'm afraid what she will do when she encounters her after remembering..."  At the end of her sentence, her bangs overshadowed her eyes.

"'Her'? You mean Lady Hikari?" I frowned.  I wasn't understanding this.  At first she was muttering words under her breath, but as it got louder I heard some of the words.  After piecing it together bit by bit, I could feel my blood turn cold.  "No...she isn't...she couldn't be.." My voice was barely above a whisper.  All of a sudden, Dr. Dana slammed her hands onto the kitchen's countertop, making everything, including me, jump as a reaction.

"THIS WHOLE FAMILY IS MADE OF A BUNCH OF IDIOTS!" she suddenly yelled, making the entire house faintly rumble.  The entire room was dead silent as I froze in pure shock.  Never had I ever thought that she would ever yell like that, although, to be fair, I had not seen her in over 16 years. 

Letting out a sigh of frustration, she rubbed the temples of her head.  "This whole goddamn thing is giving me a headache," she muttered before giving off a wry laugh.  "Although, I have to admit, life's certainly not dull anymore." Upon further studying, I realized that her eyes were filled with the same emotions I had: guilt, pain, sadness, and regret. Not knowing what else to do, I slowly set the knife I had been holding this entire time next to the wooden cutting board. It was a pathetic attempt to get her back to reality, but it somehow worked. "Ah, right, dinner," she mumbled, taking off her glasses, taking off her glasses and rubbing her eyes in exhaustion. "Are you going to cut the onions or what?" Once she had put her glasses back on, she was back to her normal self. However, I could now hear weariness laced in her voice. 

 I picked up the knife once again and started slicing the onion, first in half then into quarters.  Dr. Dana went out to take a medicine to help cure her headache. I took this time to calm myself down and straighten out my thoughts. When she came back and started cooking again, I waited for a couple minutes before speaking again. "So then...do you know how Father died?" I finally asked. "Since..well, you already knew he passed.." I glanced at her to see that she had stopped stirring, so I quickly looked back at the task in front of me.

"...Magic Deficiency Disease," she said after a pause. "Or MDD for short."

"MDD?" I repeated in a confused tone. I had heard of magic deficiency, but not a disease bearing the same name.

"It's when a mage is unable to restore his or her magic power on a regular basis," she explained grimly. "It seemed that he had had it not long after I resigned." I could feel the weight of guilt grow heavier as I listened, but I tried my best to ignore it.

"If he inherited it after you left, how did you know?" I asked as I started cutting the onion into smaller bits with ease.

"The idiot came in 6 years ago," she grumbled. My eyes widened, but she cut me off before I had the chance to say anything. "If you're about to say something, save it. HE had refused to tell me anything about the two of you, which of course I found strange at the time, and I regret not asking him why." Heaving a big, tired sigh, she continued. "He asked for some medicine to help cope with the illness. As there is no cure, the only thing I could give him was some pills to help regain magic power from time to time. After taking it, he only said one thing before leaving. To be honest, I feel idiotic myself for not realizing the truth behind his words." I kept silent for awhile, debating whether or not I should ask about it.

"...What did he say...?" I managed to mutter. I dared to glance at her again, only to see her smiling to herself with her eyes closed.

"'If you see Eliza, tell her...tell her to go to where it all started'...he had said," she quoted.

I truly had no words for what she had just told me. Eliza....a taboo name I haven't heard in years... Deciding it was best not to discuss the topic anymore, I quietly did my cooking task, not noticing that my hand was shaking as I did so.

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~Jessie's P.O.V.~

"N-nngh..." I slowly opened my eyes as consciousness crept its way back into my mind.  "Jessie!" Caesar ran over to me.  "Are you alright??"

"...Why are you still here?" I murmured, not even attempting to get up.  My voice sounded scratchy and weak, but I had long since stopped caring.  "You shouldn't waste your time with trash like me."  His eyes dilated with shock before he whispered, "What did...you just say?" 

"Trash like me," I repeated in a blunt tone.  He abruptly stood up, making me somewhat surprised.  He attempted to slap me, but his hand went through me, sending a slight chill down my back.  This only frustrated him more.

"You are not trash!" he yelled.  "You...you will never be trash.."  Fresh tears started streaming down his eyes as his voice started to turn soft.  "That's why..that's why..."  

"Ara, awake are we?" a feminine voice cooed.  Caesar's eyes grew wide and he suddenly faded away.  I myself was dumbfounded by the overwhelmingly familiar voice.  I immediately sat up, the chains clasped onto my wrists loudly clanking in response.

"Mizula!?" I looked around for any signs of an oceanic blue dragon, but only found my captor entering my isolated cell and closing the door behind her.  

"Eh~? You don't recognize the sound of my melodic voice?" she pouted, putting on a false hurt expression.  I sighed and rested my back onto the cold slabs of gray stone.  I let out a wry laugh.  A being you thought of as a mother show up in a prison cell after disappearing for 7 years? You're pathetic, my mind sneered at me.  Such miracles never exist, but if they did I wouldn't want such things to be wasted on me.  "Ara, something funny?" the white-haired wench raised an eyebrow in amusement.  I gave her silence and merely glanced at her.  Her eyes grew wide and, suddenly infuriated, she created a whip of black feathers.  Lashing it out at me, I yelped in pain and was thrown backwards, the chains pulling on my wrists as they reached the limit of their length.  She stomped over to me and forcefully grabbed onto my shoulders, her sharp white nails piercing into my skin.  I shouted out in pain when she slammed me against a wall, making the metal clasps of the chains tightly squeeze my wrists.  "Don't you dare give me that look," she hissed. "You..you of all people shouldn't look at me like that!"

"I don't...know what you're--"

"SHUT UP!" She cut me off by digging her nails deeper into my skin.  I could feel my own blood trickle down my arms as I let out a grunt of pain.  "You know, your entire life is just one big lie," she said in an unusually quiet tone, a sadistic smile creeping its to her lips.  I didn't understand what she meant by that, but it gave me an uneasy feeling in my stomach, as if i did.  My silence only made her sickening grin widen.  "Ah, of course, you don't know.  Well, Jiemma was a much better master than that weakling anyways~"  My tightly shut eyes immediately flew open to her words.  Although they were numb, I clenched my fists.

"You have no right...to say that..." I growled, feeling my body once again.

"Eh? But I do because," she paused to give me a disgustingly smug grin, "I was the one to hire him, and made Sting strong while I was at it..."  Hearing her say his name, I snapped.  I lunged for her, not caring about the sharp pain in my arms, but she saw it coming and jumped back before I had a chance to hit her revoltingly arrogant face.  "Now now, don't get all angry," she smirked, wiping the dust off of her navy blue dress.  "You should be thanking me for making Sting one of the strongest mages in Sabertooth...well, that is before you tainted him again."

Finding the strength to stand up, I snarled, "You manipulated him to be something he was not!"

"That is where you're mistaken my dear," she chuckled.  "I merely showed him the error to his thinking of comrades and all that human-thought dirt." 

"Of all things, you didn't need to bring Sting into this!" I yelled angrily at her.  Her arrogant grin fell as her bright pink eyes narrowed into a glare towards me.

"Actually, he was the perfect target to ignite my vengeance on," she said as her voice turned dark.

"Why?" I whispered.  "Why!?"

"It's simple really; one reasoning could be because of the connection he holds with Hornet.  The other, more main reason is because he is your love...right?"  My pupils dilated in fear.  Had she...heard my confession?  "I am only returning the favor for what your so-called 'father' did to my love," she smiled in a devilish manner, as if she had been waiting for this moment. I could feel sweat drip down my forehead and I thickly gulped.

"I don't...understand what you mean..." I muttered slowly.  Her arrogant smile returned as she chuckled to herself, which then turned into laughter.

"Of course you don't understand!" she laughed hysterically.  "How could you, the girl who doesn't know she's adopted, ever understand???"  My heart stopped its accelerated beating and I could feel my blood turn cold.

"A...dop..ted?"

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I know we all are sick of cliffhangers, but if I put more it would have taken a couple more days, and you readers have waited too long already!

So, the question: Would you readers rather wait a long while but have a 2000 word chapter, or faster updates, but with 1000 word chapters?

It's up to you readers! Either way I'm trying to get at least 1000 words.

Don't forget to comment and vote!