Kiana
"BRACE YOURSELF!"
The scream was torn from Wendy's throat as the elevator shaft rushed past them in a blur of gray concrete and sparking cables.
The wind howled around them, a chaotic vortex fighting against gravity, trying to slow the terminal velocity of three falling Valkyries.
Kiana squeezed her eyes shut, gripping Wendy's arm tight enough to bruise.
"WENDYYYY—UGH!"
They hit the bottom.
It wasn't a graceful landing. Wendy's wind cushion absorbed the lethal impact, but the force still slammed them into the floor of the Lower Industrial Sector with a bone-jarring crunch.
The metal grating buckled, sending up a cloud of dust and steam.
"Ouch..." Kiana groaned, rolling onto her feet and shaking the dizziness from her head. "Talk about horrible service… Next time, we're taking the stairs…."
"Complain later!" Mei shouted, her voice cutting through the ringing in Kiana's ears. "Incoming!"
Kiana snapped to attention. The dust cloud settled to reveal a war zone.
They had landed in a massive junction of corridors leading toward the Hangar Bay. The space was filled with a chaotic brawl. A squad of remaining Anti-Entropy Titan mechs was currently engaged in a brutal melee with a pack of lingering Honkai Beasts.
But the moment the Valkyries landed, both sides paused.
Red optical sensors and glowing pink eyes turned in unison toward the intruders.
"Oh, come on!" Wendy yelled, summoning a gale that knocked a group of Chariots backward. "Can't you guys just kill each other?!"
The corridor erupted into violence. Kiana cartwheeled to the left, dodging a Mechs heavy fist that pulverized the floor where she had just been standing. She returned fire mid-air, her bullets tearing through the mech's joints.
She was about to attack more when a purple blur blitzed past her. Mei slashed through dozens of Mechs and Beasts in the blink of an eye.
Then she stepped inside the guard of a charging beast, her katana severing its head in a single, clean stroke, before pivoting to impale a drone trying to flank her.
"Pathetic."
The voice boomed over the facility's PA system, amplified and distorted, echoing off the metal walls.
Kiana froze for a split second, recognizing the tone instantly. "Cocolia!"
"I see the wind has blown the trash back into my facility," Cocolia's voice sneered. "Wendy. I am surprised you are still alive. After your subpar performance, I calculated your value at zero."
Wendy flinched, her wind faltering for a second. A Mech took the opening, shooting a missile past her winds, creating an explosion that sent her skidding across the floor.
"Wendy!" Kiana screamed, blasting the hull to stun it before kicking it away into another group of Mechs.
She ran to her friend and helped her up. "Don't listen to her! She's just trying to get in your head!"
"It is fascinating, really," Cocolia continued, her voice following them as they fought their way deeper into the corridor. "You were supposed to be a god. Yet you possess the fragility of a glass doll. You broke so easily in New Zealand."
"Shut up!" Wendy screamed at the ceiling, sending a blade of compressed air that sliced a security camera in half. "I'm not your experiment!"
"No," Cocolia agreed, her tone shifting to something darker—pride. "You were a prototype. A failure necessary to pave the way for true success."
The blast doors ahead of them began to seal, but Mei surged forward, channeling a massive surge of lightning into her blade to jam the mechanism open.
"Kenji Aoyama," Cocolia purred. "Now there is an asset worth investing in. Unlike you, Wendy, his body adapts. It endures. Even after all the experiments, every acid bath, every incision, and he still stands. He is magnificent."
Kiana felt a chill run down her spine. The casual way Cocolia spoke about torturing their friend made her stomach turn.
"You witch!" Kiana yelled. "When I find you, I'm going to—"
"Enough."
The word didn't come from Kiana. It came from Mei.
But it wasn't the Mei Kiana knew. The voice was low, vibrating with a frequency that made the air hum.
Mei stopped fighting. She stood in the center of the hallway, surrounded by the wreckage of destroyed mechs.
Her head was lowered, her hair shadowing her eyes. The purple lightning arcing around her body suddenly shifted, growing stronger and stronger as the moment passed.
"You think this is a game?" Mei whispered.
"Raiden Mei," Cocolia chuckled over the speakers. "The heiress. You should understand the cost of progress. Sentiment is a weakness."
"You—!" The floor beneath Mei's feet fractured.
Mei looked up. Her eyes were glowing, a glow that made Kiana instinctively step back.
The glow of the Third Herrscher.
Her eyes widened as two red horns sprouted from Mei's head.
"Sentiment?" Mei said, her voice rising to a scream. "You forced Bronya to fry her own brain just to buy yourself minutes! You put her in a coma!"
A wave of lightning erupted from Mei, disintegrating the remaining security drones on the ceiling and melting the nearest PA speakers into slag.
Kiana and Wendy froze as Honkai Beasts stepped back from her as well.
"And now you brag about it? You brag about carving up Kenji like a lab rat?! You treat my friends like spare parts!"
Mei grabbed a Mech that was still fighting. She channeled electricity until the machine's reactor went critical and exploded in her grip.
She walked through the fire, untouched, her gaze fixed on the surviving camera lens at the end of the hall.
Her expression was twisted into a mask of pure, homicidal promise.
"You want to talk about endurance, Cocolia?" Mei hissed, the electricity crackling wildly around her horns. "Pray that you can endure what I'm going to do to you. Because when I find you, I'm going to fry every nerve in your body, and rip your head off your shoulders."
The feed cut out with a burst of static.
Silence fell over the corridor. The only sound was the crackle of burning metal.
Wendy stared at Mei, eyes wide. "Wow..."
Kiana swallowed hard. She walked over to Mei, reaching out a hesitant hand. "Mei? You okay?"
Mei took a deep, shuddering breath. The glow faded back to its usual hue, then dimmed. Her shoulders slumped, and her horns disappeared. But her grip on the katana remained iron-tight.
"I'm fine," Mei said, her voice cold and steady. "Let's go. Kenji's waiting for us."
/ — /
Kiana
As the trio sprinted down the final stretch of the industrial corridor, the PA system crackled back to life.
Cocolia wasn't cowed by the death threat. She was laughing.
"Such passion," Cocolia's voice echoed, bouncing off the steel walls. "It is truly a pity. You possess so much raw power, Mei, yet you lack the vision to use it for anything other than petty revenge."
"Shut up!" Kiana yelled, aiming her pistols at a ceiling speaker and blowing it to pieces. "Stop talking!"
"Why?" Cocolia asked, her voice shifting to another speaker further down the hall. "Are you afraid of the data? Let me share the logs for your friend. You claim to care for him, so you should know what went into his making."
Kiana grit her teeth, trying to tune out the voice, but the woman was relentless.
"Day 3. Introduction of Necro-Virus Strain B. Subject's immune system collapsed within three minutes."
Mei didn't slow down, but the air around her grew more electrified.
"Day 4," Cocolia continued. "Subjects Regeneration factor adapted to the virus. We proceeded to the acid immersion tests to measure recovery speed. Subject unable to speak after the vocal cords dissolved, but the heart rate monitor showed he was still quite... stimulated."
"Stop it!" Kiana shouted, tears already spilling from her eyes.
She imagined Kenji—her goofy, kind friend—dissolving in a tank, dying over and over again while this woman took notes.
She looked at her teammates.
To her left, Mei was a storm of violet and crimson. The lightning arc'd off her body, scorching the floor with every step. She looked like a demon of vengeance, her humanity suppressed by a singular need to kill.
To her right, Wendy floated effortlessly. The wind howled around her, a visible vortex of green energy that deflected debris and tore loose pipes from the walls. She was a Herrscher in full command of her element.
Kiana looked down at her own hands. At her pistols.
They felt... heavy. And useless.
'What am I doing?' Kiana thought, a sudden, cold pit opening in her stomach.
Mei was evolving. She was finally tapping into a power capable of leveling cities. Wendy was a force of nature. Even Bronya kept upgrading Project Bunny and was practically a genius.
And Kenji? Kenji was the anomaly, a being capable of summoning Honkai Beasts and strength that could clear the skies.
'Everyone is getting so strong,' Kiana realized, her footsteps faltering slightly. 'They're all monsters. They're all special.'
And what was she? Just Kiana. The one running behind them, shooting bullets at enemies they could crush with a thought.
'I'm being left behind,'
"We're here," Mei said, her voice snapping Kiana out of her spiral.
They skidded to a halt.
Blocking their path was the massive blast door of the Main Hangar Bay. It was a fortress gate—three feet of reinforced titanium, locked down with magnetic seals and shielded against heavy ordinance.
"It's sealed tight," Kiana said, trying to mask the tremor in her voice. She raised her guns, "Stand back. I'll try to—"
"Save your ammo, Kiana," Mei interrupted, stepping in front of her. "This door is too thick for bullets."
Kiana lowered her arms, the sting of inadequacy burning her cheeks. 'Right. Of course.'
"Wendy," Mei said, not looking back. "Can you handle the pressure?"
"Please," Wendy scoffed, floating up beside Mei. "I can cut a battleship in half. A door is just a suggestion."
Kiana watched from a few steps back. She felt small.
Mei grabbed the hilt of her katana. The air pressure in the corridor plummeted. Violet lightning surged from her body, coiling around the blade like a living dragon.
Beside her, Wendy raised a hand. The wind screamed. A vacuum sphere formed in her palm, compressing the air into a singular, razor-sharp point.
"Together," Mei commanded.
"On it," Wendy grinned.
Mei drew her blade.
Wendy snapped her fingers.
A beam of concentrated lightning merged with a tunnel of pressurized wind. The combination created a drill of plasma and force that slammed into the blast door.
There was no screech of tearing metal. The metal simply ceased to exist.
The three-foot-thick titanium gate was vaporized in the center, the edges glowing white-hot as the rest of the door was blown inward by the shockwave.
When the dust settled, the door was gone. In its place was a gaping, molten hole leading into the cavernous darkness of the Hangar Bay.
Mei sheathed her sword. Wendy dusted off her hands.
"After you," Wendy said cheerfully.
Kiana stared at the hole. She looked at her friends—powerful, terrifying, and effective. She gripped her pistols tighter, her knuckles turning white.
'I have to get stronger,' Kiana told herself, forcing her legs to move. 'I can't be the weak link. Not now. Not ever.'
"Yeah," Kiana muttered, following them into the breach. "Let's go get him."
/ — /
Mei
Mei stepped through the molten ruin of the blast door, her katana raised. Rows of docking clamps hung empty from the ceiling, and the massive runway lights stretched out into the darkness like a landing strip for giants.
"Where is he?" Mei demanded, her voice echoing in the emptiness. "Where is Kenji?"
"The radar says his signal is right here, but... I don't see him." Kiana said, scanning the room with her pistols drawn. "The radar says his signal is right here, but... I don't see him."
WHIRRR.
A massive holographic projector in the center of the room flickered to life. A fifty-foot-tall image of Cocolia materialized, towering over them like a deity.
She was checking a datapad, looking bored, as if she hadn't just been threatened with decapitation.
"You are persistent," Cocolia's hologram said, glancing down at them. "It took me a while to realize you had a tracker for the boy, so I replicated the signal to lure you here. Good thing you took so long that my evacuation transport cleared the airspace three minutes ago."
Mei felt a vein throb in her temple. "You were stalling… Was anything you said even true?"
"That doesn't matter," Cocolia replied smoothly. "You fell for my taunts anyway. Anger makes you predictable, Raiden Mei. You focus so much on the enemy in front of you that you forget to look at the ground beneath your feet."
KLANG.
The ceiling clamps directly above them disengaged.
"Move!" Wendy shouted, making a siphon of wind that dragged Kiana and Mei backward.
A massive object plummeted from the rafters, slamming into the deck with a force that shook the entire hangar.
It was the Aesir. The same one they faced back in New Zealand.
Kiana raised her guns. "Just this thing again? We can take it easily!"
The wind swirled around them as Wendy glared at the Aesir with murderous intent, "I won't lose to it this time."
"Oh, you are severely mistaken," Cocolia corrected, her holographic face twisting into a cruel smile. "That is merely the appetizer."
The floor behind the Aesir began to rumble. The heavy plating of the central lift retracted, revealing a dark pit glowing with ominous red light.
"I told you," Cocolia's voice boomed. "I do not waste resources. Kenji Aoyama's suffering provided us with rivers of data. We mapped his energy output. We analyzed the way his body metabolizes Honkai energy without breaking down. And we asked ourselves... what if a machine could do the same?"
Slowly, a new nightmare rose from the pit.
It wasn't bulky like the Aesir or crude like the usual mechs. It was sleek, armored in charcoal-black plating that absorbed the light.
Veins of neon red energy pulsed beneath its armor, mimicking a circulatory system. It had a humanoid shape, but distorted—elongated limbs, razor-sharp claws, and a single, burning red optic sensor in the center of a faceless helm.
"Behold," Cocolia whispered. "Project Nidhogg: Prototype 1."
Mei stared at the machine. Her skin crawled. The energy radiating from it wasn't the buzzing of Honkai Energy. It felt alive.
It felt like Kenji.
"Standard mechs have limits," Cocolia lectured, acting as if she were presenting a thesis. "They overheat. They drain. They require cooldown cycles and break down after just a few missions."
The Nidhogg stepped off the lift. The metal deck groaned under its weight. It didn't move with the hydraulic stiffness of a robot. It moved with the fluid grace of a human.
"But Nidhogg is different," Cocolia continued, her eyes gleaming with triumph. "Its core is a synthetic replication of Subject Zero's ability. It devours Honkai Energy from around it.l, recycling waste heat back into power. The closest thing we have to a perpetual motion machine."
The machine let out a sound—not a siren, but a mechanical roar that sounded horrifyingly like a scream. The red veins on its armor flared blindingly bright.
"Near Infinite stamina," Cocolia declared. "Zero cooldown. It will fight until there is nothing left to fight. It is the God-Killer that could stand toe-to-toe with Herrschers!"
Kiana stepped back, her earlier confidence eroding. "It... it feels just like him. It feels like Kenji."
"It's just a cheap knockoff," Mei said, gripping her sword with sweaty palms. She realized now why Cocolia tricked them down here.
She wanted to test her new toy on strong opponents.
"Kill them," Cocolia ordered.
The hologram vanished.
The Nidhogg turned its single red eye toward the trio. The air around it distorted, heat waves shimmering as its reactor spiked to maximum output in a fraction of a second.
"Get ready!" Mei shouted, lightning flaring.
***
Author Notes: I made a quick sketch of Kenji and the gang but have no idea how to upload on here... help.