Work Text:
B-07…
B-08…
B-09…
“Ah, B-10! There we go!” Kiana says, stopping before a door and then leaning against a wall with a box in front of her, careful not to drop it while she slides a keycard out of her shorts and pressing it on the scanner. With a beep the metallic door slides open, revealing a small apartment, with all of the necessities present. Closet, drawers, couch, bed, with a small shelf and board above it, work desk, a small kitchen area and a door leading to the bathroom. The most striking component of the apartment would be the massive window next to the bed, and the sole reason why this particular apartment was handpicked for Kiana by Tesla and Einstein, as opposed to being randomly assigned to her, as was the case with the researchers who are also staying in New Atra. As for the reason why this window was so important, it’s due to it providing the clearest view on the planet below.
All in all, this is where Earth’s new Goddess will be staying for the next several years. A dull, grey apartment, hundreds of thousands kilometers away from the planet. But that’s what the box she’s holding is for!
Putting the box down on the desk, Kiana starts taking out its contents; an Anti-Entropy provided laptop, a small photo printer, three sheets of photo paper and Mei provided clothes. Not a whole lot, but more than enough for the time being, until the next package is sent to her by her friends back on Earth. If anything, Kiana is surprised that much could be arranged for her on such short notice, considering how busy everyone was both on Earth and on the Moon in the days following Kevin’s defeat. In fact, the coming night would be the first time in a while where Kiana could finally take a rest, as she had helped with the restoration of New Atra’s communication functions and its various facilities this whole time. Thankfully, it didn’t take as long as it could’ve, thanks to Seele’s own considerable contributions when she first woke up in the station, back when Project STIGMA had just begun.
Shaking her head to snap out of her thoughts and focus back on the task at hand, Kiana plugs in the laptop and connects the photo printer to it. While it’s booting up, she opens the Gallery app on her phone, looking for what photos to print. She was given only three sheets for now, so she has to make every decision count. With that in mind, Kiana keeps scrolling and scrolling, wanting her first printed photos to be very special.
And she keeps scrolling.
And scrolling…
And scrolling…
Dammit, I really should use the Favourites feature more often.
Frankly speaking, Kiana is a horrible organiser and paired with her love of taking photos and selfies every chance she gets, it leads to her scrolling for another 10 minutes, looking and contemplating, while not forgetting to favourite photos she’d like to print at a later date.
The first photo Kiana decides to print out is of her, Mei and Bronya performing at a festival that was held in St. Freya to boost morale, an idea that Theresa was very fond of, especially since it would also allow her to perform as a magical girl idol later. Chuckling to herself, Kiana sends the photo to the laptop and uses it to tell the printer to do its work. While that’s happening, Kiana continues her search for a second photo. Following the same train of thought, reminiscing of St. Freya, she starts looking for a photo of their dorms, particularly one where all of its residents would be present, especially her.
She found one, a photo of her, Mei and Bronya eating dinner, while Theresa and Himeko are drinking together, with Himeko happily passed out on the table. As soon as her eyes landed on the photo, Kiana immediately sent it for printing. When it was done, she brought it close to herself, looking at it with a wistful smile. Everyone is so carefree here, so happy. Their lives and their occupation were anything but normal, constantly putting themselves in danger with a risk of never coming back home, but that’s what made those peaceful moments back in the dorms special. Despite everything, they could find relative normalcy in their lives and simply spend time with each other like this, like a big happy family.
Of course, in a world with Honkai, this would not last. And during Kiana’s moments of vulnerability back when she struggled with the Herrscher of the Void, she desperately longed for time to turn back, back to when she could carelessly sleep during classes, dominate the Sim Battle leaderboards and come back home to Mei’s cooking, with Himeko to later scold her.
Kiana traces her fingers along Himeko’s sleeping face in the photo, remembering the promise she had given to her. It is precisely because of her longing for that life that Kiana had continued fighting. Fighting for all that is beautiful in the world. Continue to fight until she could bring this imperfect story close to perfection.
I did it, Auntie Himeko, she smiles proudly. Once I’m done here and I come back home, we’ll hold the biggest party you could ever imagine. For you, for all the fallen soldiers, for everyone’s that helped us become who we are, for everyone’s that helped us in this journey. Because if it wasn’t for you, we could’ve never achieved this.
Tracing her eyes higher on the photo, they land on a certain purple haired woman. Knowing what her last photo for the day would be, she goes back to her phone and opens the only folder in the Gallery app she’s ever bothered organising. A folder simply titled ‘Mei <3’. Inside the folder were thousands of pictures she had taken with her beloved throughout the years they’ve known each other. Kiana would especially take a staggering amount of pictures of her whenever they had to separate from each other for a considerable amount of time, before and after, a habit she developed at St. Freya whenever they would be assigned missions separately from each other.
“Something for me to look at until we can see each other again!” Kiana had reasoned at the time. With that in mind, it doesn’t surprise her seeing just how many pictures she had taken with Mei after they reunited in the Sea of Quanta and safely landed back in the Deep. There’s photos of her and Mei in the Radiant Blaze and Orochi Cuirass outfits respectively, a similar photo but with their Herrscher forms instead (“Mei’s a badass samurai and I’m a radiant knight!”). Another photo with their Herrscher forms, this time joined by Bronya in her Reason form and another with Truth form, a photo of themselves again but with her and Mei in their Finality and Origin forms, followed by a photo of just the two of them in those forms, with Mei holding Kiana in a bridal carry (“Hehe, this time I’m the princess while Mei is my handsome knight!”)
The joy Kiana feels looking at these photos is enough for her to ignore the gap in time between the pictures she had taken with Mei before she left for World Serpent and after their reunion. Although, there is a picture of Mei in her Herrscher of Thunder form when they met inside the Herrscher core. Kiana has no idea how she managed to take that photo.
Kiana decides to scroll all the way down, to one of the earliest pictures she could take with Mei, following the pattern of remembering her roots in St. Freya with these photos. It was the day Mei was assigned her own personal battlesuit, Crimson Impulse. Kiana remembers just how happy she was seeing Mei getting her own battlesuit, to the point that she begged Bronya to take a picture of them in their battlesuits the moment Mei had put hers on, and Kiana inadvertently bombing the photo while it was being taken when she jumped at Mei hugging her.
While not the actual start of their journey, that one goes to them meeting each other on that rooftop in Nagazora, it was a turning point of their lives. Two bright eyed Valkyries, getting officially recognized and approved for field missions, starting their journey of protecting the world.
With her last photo printed, Kiana carefully pins them on the board above her bed, smiling, knowing this is what she will be waking up to every day until she can come back home. Looking out the window and onto Earth, she presses her hand on the window and stares at the planet below, imagining that Mei is also looking up at her from there, holding her own hand out.
Starting as just two schoolgirls trying to survive in a zombie-infested city, now here they are; Origin and Finality. The beginning and the end, the end and the beginning. Their journey to save the world might have ended, but with an end comes a new beginning, a new journey for Kiana and Mei. But before that…
“Come home soon, Kiana.”
“I will. I promise. Ich Liebe Dich.”