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They were all reunited at the same place.
However, it was not the time to celebrate or talk yet.
With the revelation delivered to them, they are stunned.
Kiana slowly turns her head to her side, to look at the person who stood right by her side with the same look of utterly shock displayed on her face.
Both of them stare at each other for a few seconds with widen eyes.
They say nothing.
They don’t know what to say.
She was not dead.
Her lips tremble.
She was not dead at all.
She holds her breath.
She was very much alive the whole time.
Under a different name, under a different look.
And not even the own person was aware of it.
Kiana closes her eyes with a frown and hangs her head down in frustration and disbelief.
She goes back to breath when her lungs scream for it.
She slowly turns her head forward again, still looking down, bangs still hiding her expression.
Something snaps. She can feel it. She is shaking by it.
And then rain decides to make its appearance in the battlefield as if to match the mood.
There is silence, but shared frustration.
Kiana doesn’t look, but she can imagine how Theresa must be feeling.
She doesn’t look, but she can imagine how her dad must be feeling.
She feels numb for a moment.
The only sound they hear for a while is the rain drops.
One drop. Two drops. Until it become uncountable.
But suddenly there is a weird noise. It calls everyone’s attention.
They all look at Kiana again.
The drops that fell over Kiana’s skin began to evaporate and soon they didn’t even need to touch her to disappear.
A huge smoke began to replace the water drops around her and soon a sparkle of furious flames began to leave her body.
She grips her sword harder on her side and steps forward.
Behind her, burned footsteps were left behind on the ground and grass.
“Is it fun?” Kiana asks.
The tone of her voice is terrifying.
It sends hard shivers through every single person on the battlefield.
It was not loud, but the raw emotion hid inside was clear.
Someone tried to approach her.
Kiana can’t remember who it was, but they have immediately stopped in place when they catch a glimpse of her face.
No one has ever saw Kiana look so pissed, so mad.
So furious.
The violent flames coming out from her body expressed her deep rage and conflict.
“Is it fun?” She repeats with the same tone, with the same fury.
She approaches the short staircase and looks up.
Otto looks down.
He always did.
She can only focus on him.
He keeps his boring expression. His tired expression.
She can only continue.
“To play with people’s lives?” She bites the last words.
He finally frowns.
But it isn’t enough.
The flames are wild.
Her blood is boiling.
She wants to see him bleeding.
She has never had such violents thoughts before.
Yet, she is not in the right mindset to care.
“Is it fun to destroy a family?”
Her body hurts, her head hurts, her body is hot, her body is burning.
But she ignores it.
“Is it fun to torture kids at an isolated tower?”
Babylon tower.
She is reminded of everything she saw through the core’s memory.
“Is it fun to push children in to a deep abyss of despair?”
She remembers what Sirin went through. She remembers experiencing the pain through her dreams.
She remembers every-single-piece of that.
She can't forget. It's impossible to forget.
“Is it fun to watch they become what they never wished for? Drived by raw rage and anger towards humanity? When what she wanted the most was the love from it?”
She steps forward. She can hear and feel the burn under her steps.
She feels suffocated, but she doesn’t care.
“Is it fun to kill the same kid, who only wanted to be loved, who only wanted to live along side their friends and send a woman, a mother, to her death, together with the same child, when they finally found what they were looking for?”
Her breath hitches.
Cecilia, her mother.
Not her mother.
She doesn’t know anymore.
She feels dizzy.
“Is it fun to take the only child, of a single father, away? Is it fun to see the same man take with him, not his real kid, but a clone? And to imagine how was his expression when he noticed it?”
Siegfried, her father.
Not really her father.
But still her only father.
The man who raised her, the man who taught her, the man who showed love to her.
She clenches her fist over her chest.
She thinks about her earliest memories.
She remembers the looks on her father’s face.
The disappointment and pain he must have felt when he realized she was not his daughter.
She grits her teeth harder.
She can’t control it.
She doesn’t want to.
“IS IT FUN?” She finally shouts. Her voice falters through the sentence. “TO TAKE AWAY EVERYTHING FROM THE REAL CHILD?”
Everyone winces at the words.
“IS IT FUN TO SEE THE CLONE THINK SHE IS THE REAL?”
She holds back a sob and it only makes her jolts.
“IS IT FUN TO TORN A FAMILY APART?”
And she snaps.
She doesn’t have reasons to hold back anymore.
She doesn’t even want to hear the answer to her questions.
She only wants to bring the man in front of her down.
And so she does.
She dashes forward and there is no one capable of holding her back.
The flames will burn anyone who dares to come closer and she can only hope they will keep their distance.
She is mad.
She is heartbroken.
She can’t fix this.
It frustrates her.
She never wished to steal someone else’s place.
She never wished to live under the name of someone else.
Yet, the best birthday present of her life was her name.
Or what she thought was her name.
But she can’t change the past
She can’t control her anger.
She hopes she can be forgiven for throwing Fu Hua’s teaching out of the window just this once.
She keeps swinging her sword at the enemy in front of her.
He is tougher than she thought in a close combat, but she got him struggling.
It’s somehow satisfying, but not enough.
She hears noises.
She knows they are calling for her.
But she can’t go back now.
She can’t stop her moves.
She can only focus on the man in front of her.
She is consumed by her own flames.
The man in front of her is already down.
She brought him down.
But she wants more.
And she can’t think very well right now.
She is being drived by her own rage and getting burned by it.
When she is about to do something to swing her sword for the last time, it’s also her own flames that stop her.
She fliches.
She can’t see it, she doesn’t has the strength to turn around now, but she is sure that the flames took form of someone she knows.
It hugs her from behind.
Her mind finally starts to be cleared again.
She smiles weakly, sadly, and sighs.
Even now I only give trouble, huh?
Tears try to fall, but her body is still too hot to allow it.
But she finally calms down.
The flames start to extinguish themselves.
She hear voices.
She finally hears them calling for her.
The name that wasn’t even supposed to be hers, but that everyone uses to call her.
And she couldn’t feel happier than that.
When she is about to fall on her back, someone catch her.
She looks up and sees Mei.
Then Bronya,
Seele,
Fu Hua,
Theresa.
And many more.
Mei brings her closer and wraps her in a tight hug.
Kiana relaxes. She feels lighter.
She squeezes Mei, she squeezes back.
When she looks up again and Mei looks back at her with concerned eyes, she is reminded.
Mei’s words from their second time in years at Nagazora come to her mind.
“Kiana… I don’t care about your name or what you are. To me… to all of us, you are a friend…” and the person I love the most.
She widens her eyes.
She knows. Of course she already knows. She already went through this.
How many times will her mind go back to this?
She already accepted the way she came to this world.
She already accepted how she came to this world as subject K-423, a clone of Kiana Kaslana. How she was supposed to be only a vessel for the Herrscher of the Void, but later she figured out they both were actually just the continuations of Sirin’s persona.
However, through all the process, she became her own person. Surrounded by people who accepted her the way she was.
Surrounded by people who came to love her.
People who stay by her side no matter what.
She looks around and she sees them.
Looking at her, worried about her.
She smiles.
They will stay by her side no matter what.
She hears footsteps and she turns to the source.
It was the strongest valkyrie, Durandal.
Bianka Astagina.
The real owner of the name she bears.
The very first Kiana Kaslana.
Her sister.
Kiana looks down, ashamed, sheepish.
This was all messed up, but she wonders…
Would Durandal still wish to have her as her little sister again?
Like the very first time they met?
Like on the memory they both didn’t remember?
The answer comes through an action.
Kiana sees a hand in front of her.
When she looks up, she is met with an endearing smile.
She knows. They all know.
The anger she felt was for all of them.
Kiana’s eyes sparkle.
Maybe there was still a chance.
Maybe there was still time.
For them to build the relationship they always wanted.
Kiana reaches back.