"BABALITY."

- Shao Kahn


The sun's first rays returned to warm Mia's eyelids just like Kishu had promised. She opened them and was greeted by a harsh golden blur. Her lashes fluttered and her pupils adjusted to the new morning light.

The first distinct thing she could see was her husband's smiling face staring down at her. His bright, flush, living face.

Mia practically lunged from under the sheets and anxiously wrapped her arms around his waist. The emperor's carefree expression instantly changed to a look of concern.

"Mm-Mia! Your hands are like ice cubes! And you're sweating like crazy! You look like you just came back from Hell."

"That's a good way of describing it." Mia groaned against his chest like someone had just finished suffocating her. The sunlight was already making her feel a hundred times better as it warmed her skin.

"Do you want me to call the doctor?" Her husband's worry grew. He started to move the sheets from his legs so he'd be ready to climb off the bed at a moment's notice. "Is it the sickness again?"

Mia's hand nervously reached down to her abdomen. It was still there, just like she left it last night: A lively melon-sized bump that pushed her belly button through her negligee and did all sorts of weird and interesting things moving her internal organs around. Her fear began to ease.

A few months ago, she had enough natural agility to spend hours entertaining guests with riddles while she swung upside-down from a gymnastic bar set up right beside Kishu's throne. But these days she was pretty grounded, in multiple definitions of the word. She was enjoying her retirement with the most powerful man in her kingdom tending to her every need. Damn that awful, terrible Kishuku for doing this to her. Heh.

"No," Mia shook her head with a gasp of relief that was also trying to be a yawn. She gently tightened her grip around Kishuku's waist so he'd stay on the mattress with her. "Not this time. This was just a bad dream."

"It wasn't about the baby, was it?" he asked hesitantly.

"No. It was just about how things could have turned out… different." Mia swallowed as she briefly glanced away from her husband.

"From the way you look, it must have been a worse kind of 'different'." Kishuku gently brushed the side of her face for reassurance.

"The worst." Mia nodded like she was going to start pouting.

"I think I get it." Kishuku smiled at his wife while cradling the back of her neck. "You're worried because things have gotten so quiet since your Otome days. You're used to dealing with threats. Political intrigue. You're got poor Yumi bored out of her gourd because she never gets to see any action."

"She caught a mouse when she was cleaning the pantry last week," Mia corrected.

"Did she kill it?" Kishiku asked, slightly caught off guard.

"Nm-mm." Mia shook her head. "She's keeping it as a pet."

"Intriguing girl, that Yumi." Kishiku nestled his chin against the top of his wife's head. "Always investigating the most minor things. Very polite to the guests. She's lacking that edge you had, but she's still a good fit for a peacetime Cassiterite."

"That's not why I picked her. There's no guarantee peacetime will last forever." Mia hinted at something darker on her mind. "She has her own edge, alright. I picked up on it during her training. It's part of the reason why I trained her. She's just never dealt with someone try to kill a person she deeply cares for. That's what would bring it out."

The empress slowly pulled her head back so she could look into her husband's eyes.

"The ones who love their Masters make the best initiates. They'll push themselves harder than any of the others when things get rough. The ones that are just duty and honor, 'Ooo, I'm waving my flag around'? They don't bond as well."

Kishuku looked a little confused.

"Are you telling me my 21-year-old wife is playing matchmaker for my 17-year-old cleaning lady because Ms. Fluffer Duster has the hots for me?"

Mia just smiled at him with ambiguous, somewhat sleepy eyes. The grizzled war general couldn't give away all of her secret strategies. Not even to the emperor.

"Too young for my tastes." The 27-year-old ruler shrugged half-heartedly. "Anyway, I hope you're not suggesting I stage some kind of fake assassination just to manipulate the sweet girl to act a little tougher." He glanced at his wife cautiously.

"I'm saying if there's ever a time she needs to be in Revenge Mode, she can bring it out completely on her own. You won't have to worry about her holding back when your life is on the line."

"Can she get as mean as you?" Kishuku tilted his head with curiosity.

"Put the wrong kind of pressure on her, and she'll make me look like a classical waltz instructor. That's why her version of the Robe makes her look more like a barbarian chief."

There was one thing about Mia's absurd dream she was still thinking about, wondering where those alternate events were heading after the part where she woke up. In separate isolated voids, she could picture her killer already crippled and sickened with regret, she could picture her protégé crying alone on her knees, she could picture at least one more gravestone in Garderobe's memorial hall, and she could picture what that protégé was capable of when she wasn't in the right mood—and it didn't follow the mantra of Make it quick. She didn't want to think about how those separate pictures all came together.

"I always figured you switched GEMs on me before Yumi's contract ceremony. You're not holding on to the original as a souvenir somewhere?" Kishuku asked, oblivious to the horrible visions his wife was trying to keep buried. She was glad his carefree spirit could bring her back from the worst things she encountered as an Otome. The world could be sinking into a pitch black eclipse, and he was always her relentless sunshine.

"Nope. Same GEM, different Meister," Mia explained. "The GEM doesn't just generate our Robes and our Elements. They're more like a combination of the GEM and the girl wearing the GEM."

"Mood armor?" Kishuku blinked.

"That's a simplified way to describe it," Mia replied.

"You're sure you're okay with her being around me, though? Even when she Materialises?" There was a little bit of hesitation in the emperor's question. "I mean, that contract ceremony, with the Master ring, and the processions, and the kissing... It felt like getting married a second time. To me, at least. I made that vow with you to only take one wife five years ago, and I always planned on keeping it. I could have her transferred to a different Master if it makes you uncomfortable."

Mia grinned back to him playfully.

"I was fine with the concubines when we were younger. Do you really think I care if you give your cute bodyguard a little nibble on the ear once in a while?"

She took the back of her husband's hand into her palm and lightly pulled his arm to her belly. Both of their hands rested over their child.

"I put Yumi in charge of making sure this little one will have a dad for a good while yet. She knows I'm proud of her. Changing the contract now would make her think she's done something wrong, or we've lost faith in her. Her morale would never recover from it."

Kishuku carefully thought it through. He said "You girls really do know how to look out for each other. Once an Otome, always an Otome?"

Mia nodded silently. She couldn't think of a clearer way to put it.

"We could always switch you as her Master after the baby's born. Do you think she'll mind then?" Kishuku asked honestly. His suggestion made Mia snort jokingly through the corner of her lips.

"I think Yumi would love to be in that contract, actually. But you'd be butting heads with Garderobe for months. You turned me into a Founder Candidate, Kishu. I'm a biological battery for the younger girls who haven't become Meisters yet. I could end up being the Master for hundreds of Corals, Pearls, and the Academy admins, and I'll never have to answer to the authority of any one country. They'll do anything to make sure I never disappear."

The only thing Mia left out of her explanation was the part where she probably had to be dead and preserved in a giant jar of jelly before any of that could happen.

"Yeah... Can't compete with that." Kishuki's answer was short, compact, and submissive. His way of assuring her Don't worry. I'm not going to start a war over you.

Mia's dream lingered in her mind again. That horrible, horrible sound echoed faintly in the back of her head. That desperate feral scream. There was something she still needed to know.

She looked up to her husband with her arms around him. He could see the anxiety growing on her face.

"Have you talked to Emperor Krau-xeku lately?"

"Is that one of your jokes, Mia?" Emperor Sou's expression became jovial and lighthearted. "He's been my first sworn brother ever since I paid off the Florince contract. We pass messages almost every week! Remember that nice tapestry he sent us? The one with the phoenix perched on the tiger? I sent him some mandarin trees and a year's worth of pineapple sake for his 19th birthday."

"How's his wife?" Mia asked with one eye squinting tiredly and the other eye still looking worried.

"Even more bloated than you ever since Mahya left her alone. I think her kiddo has a couple months' head start on yours." Kishu playfully chuckled. He was thinking he and that smart Cardair lord must be the two most fortunate men on the planet.

"Good." Mia murmured with a satisfied nod. All of her stress finally lifted away. "She earned the time off before me."

"And what is that supposed to mean?" Kishuku asked while mischievously flexing his eyebrow.

"Forget it." Mia sighed with a grin. "Do they know the gender yet?"

"The hubby tells me she's got a little boy in her." Kishiku said it as a casual fact.

Keep surprising them with those big wins, Akane, the empress thought in cheerful silence. "Good for them. That's exactly what they needed," was what she actually said. "That will finally end all those nasty debates over the succession line. Cardair's going to have a loving family of pacifists to lead them from now on. Just as long as they keep those other two grumpy old guys in check."

There was nothing to worry about. She was sure the nosy ladies at Garderobe were always grilling Cardair's physicians on Akane's health just as often as they were bugging Mia for updates. She and Akane were no longer bound to the Otome system, but they could never completely escape Natsuki's endless grumbling doubts and Shizuru's invasive sisterly affections. If anything went wrong with either of those little tikes curled up in their bellies, Garderobe would be on the first ones on the case with the most advanced medical technology in the world. Had to make sure the futures of each kingdom were safe.

Mia brushed her hand on her waist again.

"Maybe we found a husband for our little girl."

Kishiku folded his hands behind his head and started rolling his eyes.

"Oh brother. Are we really getting into this alliance talk again, Mia? We just got out of the Florince alliance six months ago."

Mia gently shook her head. "I don't want to force any agreements over trading property. Not like that. I want to help royal houses form stable alliances through family ties. Romance. A Cardair prince married to a Konalan princess could open a lot of doors for everyone else."

"Saving the world with romance?" Kishiku skeptically chuckled. "Sweetcake, we don't even know if these two people will like each other. They don't even exist yet! I think either the baby or the nanomachines might be making your hormones a little too happy this morning."

Mia smiled against her husband's chest and peacefully closed her eyes.

"I'm just trying to think of some of the brighter possibilities, Kishu-doodle."


Author's notes: The design process for this character has definitely been interesting. When I created Mia for Solvents & Shieldmaidens, I was really just picturing her as Otome Miaka with Emperor Tamahome as her Master. When I decided to expand her into a more "serious" character in this story, she wound up becoming Otome Mi-Akane-Qiao-D. Va-Quinn-Lee with Emperor Tama-hori-Kazu-Rufio-Zuko for her Master. (I call her Alolan Akane for short.) I guess I just really like the Akane motif in this setting, and it helps Miaka Yuuki and Akane Soir both have "red" and "evening" in their names.

Konala (originally Konalite, but I changed it just because I thought Konalite sounds too much like a GEM) was just a lazy stand-in for Konan before I wound up turning it into one of those fictional anime countries where they haphazardly fuse Japan and Native Hawaii into a single culture. I was trying to make Mia more like a Chinese Katherine of Aragon starting in chapter 2, because I read the Constant Princess a couple years ago, and I thought the book was COOL while the TV show was mostly an okay but weirdly paced adaptation.

It's been fun writing this, aside from chapter 4 happening out of nowhere and being one of the most emotionally heartrending things I've ever written. It's like, okay, they're doing the War of the Dragon King again, but now it's the main cast from the TV series. I wrote all those vivid descriptions, but I didn't even get into how there might be something else going on there, where they're also kinda doing an updated sci-fi version of Cao Cao's war over the Qiao sisters. It further plays off the idea of Mia and Akane being "sister" units, and it 100% tragically fits Mia's design origins in a way I never planned out.

BUT: In hindsight, nothing about the diaogue in this chapter makes sense. Because if Cardair and Konala are working so close together, and Akane and Mia are such great BFFs, how does Mia not already know everything she's asking Kishu-bro about? Why is she asking these things? Have she and Akane not talked at all in the past year? Doesn't she think about Akane often? It makes less sense the more I re-read it. But I'm a lazy bastard and I don't know how to fix it, so blaaah.