Okay, a few things I need to explain.

First: I said this chapter was going to contain more about Kiran's past... well, the more I wrote it, the more impossible it was to return to that without making it feel forced... you'll probably discover why as you read the chapter.

Second: This chapter has some spoilers of Final Fantasy 7, if you haven't played the game and you want to, I would suggest to finish it first.

Okay, that's it.


The Reason I Work So Hard

"What kind of world do you come from?" asked the Ylissean tactician. "I've never heard of such weird things you described."

"It could be defined as the modern world. Basically, it has better technology. Even a poor piece of shit like me has access to an infinite amount of information through an artifact I can hold with a single hand, operate with the other hand and all that by using a service called the Internet... of course, the only reason I have one of them is because my brother got a job in the neighbor country of the north right now but, meh, details."

Nino's face showed she had remembered something. "You mentioned it was some kind of... of..."

"No physic dimension you could use to communicate with people from other countries." Sharena completed the sentence.

"Yeah, well, that was an example to help you understand, the real way to use it, well, it's by an artifact that displays to you information."

"So, everybody from your world speaks like... well, you know." Alfonse scratched his forehead.

"Swearing almost every two words? the answer is yes, even my aunts do that." Kiran shrugged, again, not giving a shit about it.

Robin gave a more worried face. "I don't think that's something you should consider... normal... even... the way you told the last part of your story... and your answer to Frederick... I think you need some help."

"Je, that's what my mother said," Kiran stood up. "Then she sent me to a mental hospital but the doctors were my bitches and I managed to convince them I was perfectly fine... because I am!" he raised his hands in the air and look at the roof "There's no need to worry, my mental strength is enough to deal with anything..." then he looked at Robin again, but not moving his arms at all. "For real, I mean, I can control my dreams." Then he yawned again and sat on the chair once more. "Necesito más café (I need more coffee)." he drank more. "Okay... more questions?"

"I have one." Ephraim raised his hand. "What is a... vi... vi... that word you said game."

"Videogame. Honestly, it's hard to explain with words... mmh... mmmh..." the stress increased in Kiran's head. "mmmh!... fuck it! it's not gonna work, I need visual support... give me a moment!"

Then he left the infirmary tent as quickly as he could in direction to his own personal tent, he saw on his desk what he wanted, he grabbed it, taking a chalk, too. Quickly he brought both things with him back to where the person who asked him awaited.

"Sorry about that... unfortunately, my drawings suck. I mean, I draw decent blueprints since I studied technical drawing but ask me to make a face or a body and... well... you'll see."

He sat once more, beginning to reproduce in the chalkboard the images of what he was the only visual witness in this world. He did his best, drawing a SNES and his favorite game of that console since those two would be "easy". Needless to say, those who were by his side, Robin and Ephraim, tried to sit on their beds to see him working.

When the super expert artist whose skill would have made Miguel Angel feel jealous had done, he stood up and displayed his ultimate creation... a five years old kid's drawing with a stick kid!

Even though nobody was going to say anything to him, Kiran responded to nobody. "Yeah yeah, it's as horrible as my face, but I've never been a good artist."

He walked to all the beds of his friends.

"So... all this game is inside that... box... paint... thing?" Nino asked.

"Its name is TV, television. It's a box that displays images with movement and even sound."

Sharena was particularly interested "And you... control that character... with that thing in the kid's hands?"

"Basically. The objective of this game is to control Mario to reach the end of the stage. In the stages other beings are enemies, you can either kill them or jump over them and ignore them."

"I'm trying to imagine it... and it seems fun!" said Nino.

"Although this does not look... like the game you described before, the one your brother was playing," Ephraim commented, rubbing his chin.

"It's because that is another game, this in the drawing is Mario Bros 3, the other one is Final Fantasy 7. In that game, you command three characters. Using a list of options like Attack, Magic, Items and Flee you must plan a strategy to beat the monsters in battles per turns."

"And one of those monsters is called... Emerald?" Robin asked.

"Yes, although I prefer to add some letters and a word and say Arma Esmeralda (Emerald Weapon), there's more Armas, like Arma Rubí, Arma Záfiro (Sapphire), Arma Jade, Arma Diamante (Diamond), Arma Artema (Ultima) and finally Arma Omega... the videogames are like playable theatre plays, in Final Fantasy 7 the Armas are powerful giant beasts created by the world to protect it from any threat. And that's because in Final Fantasy 7 the world, the planet itself is a living being... well, only six of the seven Armas are protectors, the last one, Omega, it's a last resort, it only appears when the planet is in dire danger of being destroyed. Omega collects all the lifestream and leaves the planet as a desert husk, it goes in direction to the stars to find another planet where to begin from 0."

"Wow!" Nino exclaimed. "But... your brother mentioned something about... fighting against Esmeralda... why would you fight the Armas if they are guardians of the planet? aren't they... good monsters?"

"Technically, yes. The problem is that the government Shinra has been extracting the lifestream, the essence of the planet, to transform it into electrical energy in order to become richer... the problem is... that's killing the planet... which is even more concerning when the story explains the lifestream contains the knowledge of all the living beings that have existed... their memories, dreams and all that stuff so..."

"They were harvesting souls..." concluded Alfonse.

"Pretty much. Now that's why you have to fight the Armas, not because you're the bad guys, actually, it's the opposite since the mission of our protagonists is to destroy Shinra," Kiran grimaced. "but the Armas cannot differentiate between good and bad humans so... yes."

"Wait..." Nino began to analyze. "If life force is real here... could it be that the world is a living thing here, too?"

"I've considered that possibility, too... but if that's possible... I'm very worried... to think something like the Materia Negra (Black Materia) could exist... I mean... if a spell like Meteor can be done here... it's..." Kiran placed his hands on his hair and negated with his head.

Again, this was one of the few times everybody of the order had seen Kiran showing perfect signs of... fear.

"What's Meteor?" Robin asked.

"... Try to imagine... a shooting star... but... em... it has a big size... like, bigger than the moon and that's saying a lot considering we see it tiny because it's big but very away... Meteor is described as the Ultimate Destructive Magic... while normal spells are cast to face an opponent... Meteor summons a celestial body to harm the planet itself! it's a spell that literally causes the apocalypse a month after you cast it..."

Nobody said anything for at least five seconds.

"I gotta admit the plot of that story is very interesting..." Ephraim nodded slowly.

"Good thing it's a story... a spell as powerful as Meteor cannot be real." claimed Robin.

Kiran remained silent... which, for those who know him... it wasn't a good signal.

"Gods..." exclaimed Alfonse. "Please do tell me Robin's right..."

"Well... just like fire not necessarily needs a spell to exist... the shooting stars that Meteor summons already exist... governments from my world spend tons of money to have the necessary instruments to detect those giant space rocks and determine if any of them is in course of impact... and since we have discovered the existence of a giant crater... in my country actually, known as the Chicxulub crater... a hole in the Earth that can only be created by that kind of rocks... well, it's needless to say we know that kind of event has already happened at least once... 65 millions of years ago... approximately."

Again... silence... but for much time...

Kiran turned to see the entrance of the tent, crossing his arms and narrowing.

"I guess that's a good motive to spend almost all the days working and training without rest... right?... the people of my world actually have something that might destroy one of those rocks in case we confirm the end of the world is near... you all? there's no hope for you... in the best case, the asteroid would destroy your world instantly... in the worst, it wouldn't be big enough for that, but due to its size, an insane amount of dust would be sent to the sky... blocking the sun's light for years..." Kiran sighed. "Quick question, what happens to the plants when they don't obtain light?"

"T-T-They... die..." said Sharena.

"And what happens to the animals that eat plants if that happens?"

"They die." said Alfonse, unlike the others, he now seemed less scared and more... determined?

"And finally, that kills the rest of the animals... without animals or plants we won't be able to hunt or harvest and because of that, the survivors of the initial impact are going to be ironically the most unfortunate ones..." Kiran turned to see the heroes again, his face displayed a lack of hope, as if his mind was already broken... he also spoke with a very low tone... like if he was whispering. "Because they are condemned to live without anything to eat... and probably nothing to drink, waiting for the unavoidable end..."

That was the destiny the dinosaurs suffered... and who knows what kind of Meteor was out there in this solar system... awaiting...

Kiran didn't expect anybody to answer after that... he saw Nino holding a pillow... Sharena and Robin clearly horrified. Ephraim seemed to be reflecting on what he heard.

"So that's why... you might be the only difference between the extinction... or the salvation of all of us..." Alfonse concluded.

"Pretty much... not that I want to sound arrogant," Kiran responded, returning to be simply serious and nothing more... but that didn't last as he let out a hysterical laugh "And wanna know something funny? even if a Meteor never falls again, there's a certain event that's gonna destroy the world anyway. I'm not saying this because it's too powerful to stop it, I'm saying this because, unlike any other possible end of the world, this one is awaiting with a probability of 100 percent at the end of the corridor with a black tunic and a scythe on its shoulder... and it is..."

However, before he could end his sentence, the voice of a woman interrupted him.

"Excuse me."

Kiran got surprised to see a red-haired woman, she wore mage clothes and glasses.

"Is there something I could help you, my lady?"

She walked to inside and then she spoke. "I've been informed by the oldest descendant of the captain about the existence of a genius whose mind might contain the deepest secrets of everything that exists around of us." she had a stoic expression... and if Kiran was honest, he liked it.

He scratched his hair and responded. "Uh, it must be me. But I think she has exaggerated my intelligence. I know a lot, for real, but I cannot compare myself to the real genius of my world." Kiran extended his hand. "I'm Kiran, nice to meet you."

The woman, instead of shaking her hand with Kiran's one, adjusted her glasses. "If the information is reliable, the subject presents signs of underestimation of his cognitive abilities. Such a condition is usually suffered by those who seek exaggeratedly the social quality defined as humility."

Kiran laughed. "I know it as the Dunning-Kruger effect. Without the self-awareness of metacognition, people cannot objetically evaluate their competence or incompetence."

She nodded. "A more technical definition would be this. The miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the competent stems from an error about the others."

Kiran played with his index finger as he smiled. "I ensure you, if you could meet Stephen Hawking or Carl Sagan, you'd agree with me when I say they are ten times smarter than me. Anyway. I guess you desire to see my work and explore the knowledge I brought from the physical plane of the existence I came from."

"The answer to the assumption is affirmative."

"Very well..." Kiran, once more, turned to see the other people inside the room. "Not that I wanna stop having a talking with you, but... I hope you comprehend this thing is more important... I will tell you more about my life later, see ya."

Alfonse shrugged. "Have fun... I guess."

If Alfonse was honest, he already had expected something like this. Miriel was the only hero that perhaps rivaled with Kiran at being intelligent.

Sharena and Nino stood up in order to hug each other as they were still very scared. Ephraim was as serious as Alfonse.

Robin... on the other hand... had certain thoughts crossing her mind.

Following Veronica's orders by her desire of protecting the loved ones of only her friends... might have killed the only man able to prepare the future generations to save the world... or worlds... considering the existence of all those worlds the Emblians claimed to have conquested...

all that motivated by... a selfish feeling...

Selfishness... the same thing her friends applied on her to convince her to do not kill Grima when she had the opportunity...

...

...

...


Usually, people forget that having a world that stays always as a medieval one is not exactly a good idea. I suppose I don't need to explain why... right?

Miriel was one of the characters I've been waiting so much to introduce to the story. I think she's the only scientist I've ever seen in Fire Emblem. I tried my best to represent her rightly since she in the game speaks with very technical vocabulary. I feel very insulted by the fact she's not in the game yet!

You'll learn more of Kiran's past, just have patience since I'm going to enter the university the next August 5 so... you know.

Something I need to say is that these days I've found another FEH fanfic worth to be read... even if it only has one chapter by the moment. Its name is Journey Through Pressure. It's in Archive Of Our Own and is another realistic fanfic. The author is SousChefSean. Go to read it and write reviews, we must not allow that fic die!

Anyway, time to answer reviews.

Half-BeastDragonSoul2013:

You should seek the documentary: Which Universe Are We In?

It explains very well all the levels of the multiverse, those that exist by the fact the universe is infinite and those created by the time effects. I just want to be sure everybody understands the FE Universe is the Universe 2 and our Universe where we live is the Universe 1 in this story... but all the heroes come from the Universe 2 Timelines 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and all the numbers to the infinite and beyond.

Bexan22:

I have to admit I have problems at remembering how kids think so it was a challenge to me.

HarmonyDST05:

I watched the video, it's fucking hilarious! I'm taking in consideration make Kiran sing that... of course, he sucks at singing... well, he kinda sucks at anything that is art.

Piddle:

If you mean Thorr, the answer to include her is... no... if you mean the ones from Three Houses... honestly I'm not sure. Too many characters and too many continents for a single planet already.

Savkow776:

The what is what?