I guess I'll just post it here.

Will continue my other fic soon-ish (tm).

Edit: just notice the linebreaks got fucked by formatting. Edited.

1.0

He felt empty.

He had known that it was always a possibility. A possibility all too real after the deaths of his comrades. Yet, it hurt all the same.

He could feel his idealistic side shattered a little more. How it had started out strong and determined, and how it was being chipped away with each and every loss. How he could see that happening and yet unable to stop.

How he knew that yet again, he failed.

It was inevitable, really, the task that he had taken upon himself was an impossible one. That they all had prepared to make the final sacrifice.

Yet, it still hurt.

He hated the Jaegers for killing her, even though his own team would have done the same – it was a war, after all. He hated that they had to put her here. And he hated it even more that he couldn't retrieve her to put her to rest. She deserved better than that.

So he just sat there, invisible to all, his knees failed to find the strength to stand up. He just needed a few minutes to compose himself, he knew. No matter what, they must push through, to put an end to the rotten Empire, to make sure no one had to die anymore.

Then, the sky and the Earth opened with a blinding flash of light, day and night jumped back and forth as space and time distorted and twisted, and he thought he could see glimpses of alien skies.

And he saw two people stumble out near the center of the fleeing crowd. Various strange objects and vials scattered around them. The older woman fell down, slowly shaking her head as she tried to get up.

The other person, however, caught his attention. She was young, around her early teenage years, with curly blonde hair in a ponytail and wearing a grey shirt. Unlike the woman, the girl immediately became alerted, and after taking a look at her surroundings, she fixated on the head on the spike, and spoke aloud in a strange accent he had never heard before.

"Friendly neighborhood, huh?"

"Are you O~kay, Doc?", she asked the woman with a singsong voice, who was currently in the process of sitting up. She'd offer her a hand, had she not been busy mixing whatever she could find from the scattered remains of her lab to prepare for the probably unavoidable encounter with the local authority.

Glancing back at the head, Riley had serious doubt that they would be terribly friendly or understanding.

"Where… where are we?"

"Somewhere in the multiverse. I dunno. Probably the attack that made all the ruckus earlier." She paused to take a sip from one of the vials. The purple liquid tasted of despair and dried eyeball. Hmm, it would do. "Didn't expect it to reach all the way to the headquarters, though. You're Valkyrie's therapist, right?"

"Yes, and you're Riley." A statement, not a question. "You can call me Jessica. Do you know where the other are?"

The blonde just shrugged. "Probably everywhere in the multiverse, and if they're lucky, each of them in just one universe. We just got lumped together by chance."

The doctor finally stood up, and looked around. The square they landed themselves in was deserted by now. The crowd from earlier had made a quick escape from the scene.

All that remained, of course, was the head of the young redhead on the spike.

Admittedly, she had met with killers - killers with a massive kill counts on a daily basic. But witnessing violence first-hand was not something she's used to. Such casual display of brutality still made her kind of uneasy. The locals don't seems very… civilized, she thought.

"Hey doc. Need a hand here." Riley grinned. "Get the tank over there, throw the heart out and put her in," the teenager moved her head to indicate first the nearby glass container full of suspiciously bubbling black liquid (and, apparently, a heart), then to the decapitated head.

"Why? What would you do with that? And it's too far up!"

"Well, she's still pretty fresh. I can try to revive whatever I can. Because we'd need information and I'd rather not stick around for an authority who would do that. Don't worry about the height, I have some acid here, we can cut the spike down."

"Plus it just wouldn't be nice to leave her there, don't you think?"

Well, the therapist thought, the (ex)-serial killer had a point. And while enabling her behaviors may have a negative effect on her recovery, listening to the one with superpower in situations like this seemed like the best chance for both of them to make it out alive.

So the doctor got to work. The tank was around fifteen feet away, so she briskly walked toward it. It was a tube about a size of an office fishbowl. The kind of fishbowl that would look real neat in a corner of a worktable, but was small enough that most experts would advise against if you want to keep your aquatic pet happy and healthy. It had a latch on the top, which she popped open…

"Just reach inside, find the heart and toss it out. The liquid is safe."

Jessica gulped and reached inside with her right hand. The liquid felt cold to the touch but was surprisingly light, and almost instantly she could feel the fleshy texture of the heart. Picking it up within her hand, she gently put it aside, then lifting the tank up, she made her way toward the head, and noticed that her hands were shaking.

Calm down, Jessica, you've survived the end of the world. You've been in the same room with people who can end you with a thought countless times. This should be just another day working with parahumans. She tried to reassure herself.
And even without her training, she could still tell that it was not very effective.

To the side, Riley had finished whatever it was she was doing, and she spoke as she made her way toward the spike, a bottle in hand.

The girl reached the base as Jessica got close, and she gestured Jessica to put down the tank and come closer. She did. Riley applied the contend of the tube to the base of the spike, which then sizzled violently.

"Here, lower it slowly so I can get the head."

The spike was around five meter tall, but thin and was not too heavy. Jessica grabbed onto it and tried her best to not drop it too fast, until Riley could reach up and grab the head. She walked back to the tank, put it in and began to close up the latch.

Before she could finish, from the corner of her eye, Jessica noticed that the air around her simmered, and suddenly, a huge brute in some kind of armor appeared, his face concealed with a finned helmet, and he spoke.

"Who are you and what do you mean by 'reviving' that head?"

"Depend. Did a golden man show up two years ago and destroy half the world?", the blonde asked, in the most matter-of-fact tone possible.

The sheer ridiculousness and seemingly irrelevancy of the question almost made him blurt out a "What" in response.

However, he noticed that as she spoke, she carefully shifted the vial in her hand to a position more suitable for throwing. It didn't look like something that could threaten a teigu user like him, but better be careful, Tatsumi decided. So he focused on her before answering.

"No?"

The girl narrowed her brows, seemingly deep in thought for just a moment, mumbling something that sounded a lot like "Interesting", then she forced out the fakest sweet-smile he had ever seen.

"In that case, we're just travelers from a faraway land, who mean no trouble. Just let us pack our things and we'll get out of your hair."

Then, the smile changed into a much more convincing, toothy grin, the kind of grins that promised pain and suffering.

Well, those, he could deal with. After all, he had experience.

"Or we will both regret our decisions."

"And what are you going to do with her head?"

"'Her'?" The older woman spoke for the first times since he appeared. "Was she your friend, perhaps?" He could tell that her voice was shaking, but she had made a commendable effort in hiding it.

"Yes, she was." Tatsumi paused. There was this lump in his throat again at the mention of Chelsea. He swallowed hard, and continued: "So I want to know what you are planning."

The girl, 'Riley', he reminded himself, spoke again. "Let's just say that I have a talent for putting people back together. Can we get something in return for helping the lady out?"

He could feel his heart speeding up. Did she mean bringing back the dead? But it was impossible. Not even the power of the Teigu could do that.

Were they just trying to trick him? Agents of the Empire trying to make him give up their secret in exchange for a false promise? Or was she just crazy?

He didn't miss the worrying look the doctor shot Riley.

But then, what about the flash of light from earlier? It couldn't just be some kind of fancy flashbang to conceal their real entrance.

After all, he knew he saw reality shattered for a moment before reasserting itself.

"Who are you and where are you from, really ?" He lowered his voice and tried to muster as much seriousness as he could into the question, and was rewarded with both of the women flinching.

The older one, 'Jessica', he mentally noted, composed herself, looked him straight in the eyes and answered.

"Would you believe me if I say that we're from another world?"

Before he could process the information, he heard shouting, and the sound of guns being chambered.

Aw crap.

Even with the Jaegers having left the town, fighting his way out of here would have been hard enough without having to worry about the two mysterious strangers.

Or so he thought, as Riley tossed the vial she had been holding straight up.

The armored behemoth followed the small glass tube as it soared through the air, the green-ish liquid inside spilled out and immediately vaporized into a greenish faint cloud.

And it was windy that day.

Seconds passed, and the first of the Empire troops got close enough, and they instantly fell to their knees. The ones behind had just a moment to show their surprise before they, too, suffered the same fate.

The ones far back began unloading their guns. The bullets would just ping off his armor, but the women...

He tried to rush to the two to shield them, but to his horror, his legs felt numb, and he could only watch as some bullets found their marks. One of them hit the older one in the stomach, the other tore through the left side of the girl's neck.

To his greater horror, the girl simply ducked low and made a rush toward him, and then she very unceremoniously stabbed him in the exposed part of his face with a syringe.

Her wound didn't even bleed.

He felt the numbness quickly receded, and it seemed like the paralyzer had reached the backline, too, as the gunshot was quickly silenced.

The girl said:

"Don't worry about me or the doc. I can patch us both up. Now can you get us somewhere less noisy to discuss matters?"

Tatsumi stared silently as the girl worked her... magic, or whatever unholy sorcery it was on the doctor. He had some experience with tending to wounds, his career was one that usually lead to lots and lots of them. And he still couldn't understand what she was doing. Using the strange devices she brought and some random plants and mushrooms she found in the forest they were resting in after the escapade, the mad tinker had brought the doctor – who he was sure was on the brink of bleeding out, back to consciousness. She looked pale, but otherwise seems healthy enough.

God, he felt so tired. Picking the both of them, along with Chelsea's head-in-a-tank, up and dash out of town had exhausted him.

Tired enough that he had questioned himself if he was mishearing their story.

"So... you two are from another world. That there are a whole lot of those out there, and you have the power to fix the body, and she has the power to fix the mind?"

"No, just I have power. She's just a regular therapist."

"And a therapist is...?"

"Someone who'd take your money and listen to your problems and help you work through them. It's actually more complicated than that, but that's the gist of it."

"And you can bring back the dead?" He could feel his voice tremble as he spoke those words.

A part of him was skeptical. That even if all the scholars and scientists from the Age of the first King, the wise men and women who were capable of creating such powerful tools as the Teigu couldn't do it, how could a little girl who hadn't even hit puberty do that?

Another part, however, wanted nothing more than for it to be true. That he could bring them all back. Sheele, Bulat, Sayo, Ieyasu.

Chelsea, he looked at the tube to his left side. Can you really do it?

The girl slowly rubbed her chin, and after a moment of consideration, she answered. "Well, depend on how dead. Little lady over there should still have her brain mostly intact. I can work with that."

His heart dropped with those words.

"I mean, I can clone the ones without a brain, too, just need some tissue. But they just wouldn't be the same, you know? Getting the personality right all the way is practically impossible. Hey, are you listening?"

No, he decided. Whatever happened, even if she could only bring one of them back, it would be worth it.

So, Tatsumi said:

"What do you want in exchange for that, then?"

"How did you do it?"

"Do what?"

"How did you paralyze him? Icursio should've protected him from poison."

Akame looked at the young girl, who was skipping along the way, poking at every plant and critter, and occasionally picking them up and putting into her bag.

She had been worried when Tatsumi didn't come back after an hour.

And she had sneaked into the town by herself to the eerie noise and (mildly) disturbing sight of people laid moaning on the ground, with no sight of him or Chelsea.

When she returned to their hiding spot, however, he was there waiting for her, with two strangers nearby.

One of them was sitting down on a rock, she wore a black skirt and a white long-sleeve shirt. The shirt was torn, and there was blood splattered on it. On the exposed skin of her stomach, there was a blackish patch covering what she suspected to be a wound. The woman looked around thirty, with short brown hair and glasses.

The other, younger one was happily chewing down a red mushroom, a mushroom which she also suspected to be poisonous. She, too, had blood over her grey sweater, but it didn't seem like to be hers. At her feet, there was a small pile of similar looking plants.

And Chelsea's head in a tank.

She didn't spot it immediately - the liquid was dark. But there was no mistaking, she could recognize that headband everywhere. Her head was immersed in the water, the hair floating gently around in the liquid.

It was what she expected, knowing Kurome. But it still felt like an iron glove reached inside her stomach and tried to crush it.

She squashed that feeling aside immediately. There was no time for such emotions now.

Akame would mourn her comrade later. She would cry for them, and she would commit to remember everything she could about them, to make sure that they were not forgotten.

Or she would have, if Tatsumi didn't tell her, his voice hard and uncertain:

"I have something to tell you..."

"Impossible! A Teigu that can bring back the dead doesn't exist!"

"Well, do I look like one of these Teigu things?"

"So it's not really a poison. It's a highly adaptive virus that can paralyze anything with a nervous system in seconds. Will wear out fast, though. I'm not allowed to make anything too strong."

"And those weapon of yours. They're surely interesting, huh?"

The girl had moved closer to her, and got dangerously close to poking Murasame. She stopped her.

"Don't touch the blade. A single cut will stop your heart."

Riley made a "tsk" sound and stepped back. She didn't seem to be concerned with the prospect of potentially dying. In fact, she added:

"I have doubt that whatever poison you got there can affect me. And even if it can, while working without a heart is inconvenient, I can fix it."

"After all, I'm going to bring your friend back, what is a missing heart compared to a missing body?"

A little distance behind the two girls, the boy and the doctor walked side by side. He was holding the tank, trying his best to not think about what's inside, while she kept asking him about his country, his friends, and his world. He answered them as best as he could, but he couldn't shake the feeling that she was carefully dissecting his very soul.

Tatsumi noticed, however, not a single moment had the Woman's eyes wandered away from Riley.