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Koto knows the plan before Kiki breathes a word, before AGI materializes in front of them with word of a broken trigger and a missing Infinity. How do you lose something endless?
She could have stopped it, but why would she? Reiji is their friend, he saved her Kiki’s mind, once.
(Oh, the irony.)
They race for the center of the universe, the multiverse, everything. Towards a monster made of endless hate, and Koto thinks about the week she was alone as she pilots the ship and Kiki sits on the front, ready to jump up and fight.
If she knew, she would have demanded Kiki stay inside until they got closer, demand every last moment with her. If she knew…
Well, she wouldn’t have stopped it. Kiki wouldn’t let her.
Reiji is their friend.
He called them his sisters, once.
Kiki drops her trigger before the shadows eat her. They get in too easily, as though the cracks remain of when Reiji broke reality to save—
It wasn’t to save Kiki.
It was to save Koto herself, from what she’d be without Kiki. Kiki who didn’t know her but looked st her in love, she could have— live with it, fallen for her again.
The ship breaks.
Koto is there for a week, when Kunai finds her.
“We thought you were both dead,” he says.
Koto looks up from where she was, clinging to her partner’s weapon and the reseed keychain - Fade stole it and brought it back sewn.
Fade, of all people.
“I think I must be,” Koto says. “Kiki… she’s gone.”
“No,” Kunai says. “You’re still alive. We’ll take you home.”
“I am home,” Koto says, looking around the cockpit at Kiki’s organized chaos. “I want Kiki.”
“…let’s go,” Kunai says.
She’s at a food cart they started frequenting by accident, and ignore the details of. Koto shouldn’t be here, not without…
“Where’s your partner?”
“Gone,” Koto says. “I have to give my report tomorrow.”
A man she totally does not know freezes.
“Gone?” He asks.
“We went to save Reiji,” Koto says. “And because I… because I need her, she… she disappeared.”
She sobs, and she doesn’t eat.
Nusumi Yu puts a hand on her shoulder, and she clings to him. He’s shaking.
“She can’t be gone…” Koto says. “I can’t… without her…”
His arms wrap around her, slowly. Hesitantly.
“You can,” he says. “You have to. What if she’s still out there?”
Koto wails.
And then they talk, and they plan for something with hope.
The Supreme Chancellor stares her down like a thing, like he’s above her. He could be a god for all Katanari Kotobuki cares, and it wouldn’t matter.
“Where’s Kiki?” She asks.
“Beyond our purview,” the Supreme Chancellor says.
“So she isn’t dead,” Koto says, and she takes a breath. She’s breathing for the first time since Kiki fell into the darkness, she thinks.
The Supreme Chancellor places down a blank Emolgear.
Koto places down Kanky.
“Kiki is still Gavan,” she says. “I’m a temporary replacement, is all.”
“This will cost—“
“No,” Koto says. “You cost Kiki and Infinity enough.”
“…alright then,” Supreme Chancellor says. “But you do your duty, as well.”
The Emolgear is no longer blank.
Love, Koto knows, is the core of her being. As long as Kiki is with her.
“I’m sorry,” Koto says as the Emolgear bounces up to Kanky and her.
Emo?
“I’m sorry little one,” Koto says. “I probably won’t use you much.”
Emoooo
Kiki would know what it was saying.
“Are you worried?” Koto asks. She should have earlier. AGI and Daisuke pause from where they’re working.
“…I trust Reiji,” Daisuke says. “Do you trust Kiki?”
“You don’t get it,” Koto says. “I’m her partner.”
“More than anyone else,” AGI says. “And it’s really a Gavibe.”
Her smile is smaller. They’re worried. Koto feels horrible, all of a sudden.
“We’ll find them,” Daisuke says. “We have to. They can handle themselves.”
When Koto first meets Sunscorch Kiki, she’s bleeding. She’s laughing.
She isn’t even her Kiki.