We're BAAAAAAAACK! Good god did this take a while. I don't even have an excuse, so let's not waste time coming up with one! Welcome back!

My parents were wiped out by a fusion general when I was five years old. No one knows which general did it, but whoever it was wasted no time assimilating what was once my city into the darklands. I was left alone, helplessly wandering the burning wreckage that was once a suburb that I called home. I still remember the smoke that would constantly fill my lungs, how my feet would scar when I stepped on a still hot piece of metal, how the week I spent wandering that twisted ruin was spent without a wink of sleep, out of fear that I wouldn't be able to reopen my eyes. Then, a week later, it was over, I was found. My parents used to work for a mercenary company, and they'd finally reached the ruins of haven heights to look for survivors. That's where they found me, my naked and burnt body huddled in a corner.

The company, known as the Valkyries, operated near a place called Peach Creek Commons. So, they left me in an orphanage there. Oh, they would visit constantly, but they felt I would be safest away from their work. Not realizing, of course, that even back then, at the young age of 5, I wanted nothing more than to pick up one of those guns twice my size, run out there, and ram it into Fuse's smug mouth and pull the trigger until it went "click". Problem child was the nicest thing they called me; I was angry, I was bitter, and I was determined to keep on being so until either my mom and dad came back, or someone gave me Fuse.

And then, I met Ed…

"Kira, even if your hair grows back, it won't be the same color as before," said Professor Utonium, who received no response from the bald-headed little girl on the bed, curled up in a ball facing away from him. "I just felt you deserved to know." Utonium stared from his chair seated next to Kira's bed. As quietly as he could, he held out his hand to the little girl to give her any form of physical comfort. But Kira just inched further away, almost halfway off the edge of her bed. "Kira, I can only imagine how hard this must be for you, but I promise, we're doing everything we can." Utonium stood from his chair and walked to the door. "If you need anything, we're right outside." He would've finished that with "okay?" but he knew he wouldn't get a response. So, he quietly left and closed the door behind him.

Kira didn't move from her spot. Another day, another round of bad news. No one here cared about her, not one bit. If they did, why hadn't they given her her mommy and daddy back? They couldn't be dead, there was just no way.

Kira broke from her spiraling thoughts when an odd sound came from her window. It was…a tapping. Like a finger. A finger was tapping on the window above her bed. Kira sat up, straightened her white bed gown and crawled up to her window. Kira then came face to face with a boy. He looked about her age, with lightly yellow tinted skin, and a smear of dirt on his dimpled left cheek. A bushy black unibrow hung above wide green eyes and an ear to ear grin. "Hello," said the boy. "My name is Ed. What's yours?" Kira deadpanned, reached to her left, and lowered the blinds on the silly boy. "Aw, okay," she heard him say. "I'll come back tomorrow, and we can play then, k?" Kira didn't bother answering, and after a few seconds, she heard him run off.

She didn't have time for these stupid people. She just wanted to go home. Hopefully, the stupid boy wouldn't come back…

Yeah, it didn't take long for bitterness to turn into denial. I convinced myself that mom and dad were alive, but for some reason that wasn't important, these people were keeping us apart. Fortunately, the "stupid boy" did come back. Often. For the first few weeks, I tried ignoring him. Unfortunately for me, I was a little girl at the time, so I eventually needed to interact with someone, anyone. And dolls were no longer cutting it as conversationalists. So began my friendship with Edward Alba.

Getting switched in the butt was punishment enough, as far as Kira was concerned, why did the nuns also feel the need to make her sit on her sore butt for an hour, staring at a wall? But, here she was again, for the 4th time this week. By now, Kira had grown a strange sort of camaraderie with the wall. She'd made a habit of carving in a tally on the wall for every time Mother Tamara put her here. She was almost at 30 times by now!

Thank goodness she had Ed. Having a wall as a best friend would be significantly less fun. "Kira," said Mother Tamara, who leaned in through the cracked open door. "You can leave now, and Ed's here to see you."

Speak of the devil, as the nuns liked to keep saying. Kira hopped down from her chair and sped out of the room past Mother Tamara.

Kira threw open the doors to the orphanage, seeing Ed waiting for her with his giant grin at the bottom of the white stone steps. Kira ran down the steps to join her friend, and the two ran off together towards the cul-de-sac.

Ed and I had some good years together. We're still technically friends, but not nearly as close as we used to be…Anyway, while I was still angry about my parents, his friendship helped me cool off. However, that anger still wouldn't go away. I was convinced that I was the only one who deserved revenge. He killed my mom, my dad, so I deserved to blast Fuse's green face into the next century.

Then I learned the hard way that I wasn't the only one hurting…

The fortress walls that would soon tower around the cul-de-sac were only about halfway completed, thus the doors had yet to be installed. So the crude wooden gate doors were under constant heavy guard, even as the gloomy grey skies and increasing winds called for an intense thunderstorm. As it would be some time before the Urban Rangers had a more readily available militia, strike teams were only sent out when their intervention was absolutely required.

Now was one such time. A terrafuser had been established in the nearby abandoned construction site, so a small demolition team had been sent out to eliminate it. Ed's father was among the soldiers sent on this mission, and no word had come back on the progress of the mission. Kira, Eddy and Double d had done their best to reassure him, but Ed wasn't convinced. So, he tried to keep his mind off of it with training. As it turned out, just one year prior, Ed began to show signs of superhuman powers. While he had always been inhumanely strong for his age, he was now able to, with enough concentration, add on to the body mass of one of his limbs. As such, his parents arranged for the GDI to assign him a mentor.

Her methods were…abrasive.

"Again," ordered Garnet, who crossed her arms as Ed forced himself to his feet.

"You can do it, monobrow!" Shouted Eddy from the bleachers, where Kira and Double d sat next to him. Kira scratched at her itchy head, which had by then begun to sprout clumps of white hair. She looked up, noticing the clouds gathering in the sky above. It was going to rain soon.

Kira called out to the two below. "It's gonna rain pretty soon, maybe we can do this tomorrow?" she asked.

Garnet looked up at Kira, placing a large hand on her hips. "A little rain shouldn't get in the way of training," she said.

"But-" Kira tried to get out before being interrupted.

"I'm fine Kira, don't worry," Ed called out to her with his usual dumb grin.

Kira sat back down and pouted. Eddy chuckled. "Stubborn piece of work, ain't he?" Eddy asked with his crooked smirk.

The teen girl rolled her eyes. "Been that way ever since we met," she grumbled.

"Well you two have always had that in common," Said Double d with a matter-of-fact smile and a cross of his arms.

Before long, occasional droplets of rain turned into constant downpours. Even Garnet eventually relented and let Ed join his friends at his house.

Ed's house, like every home in peach creek, was a one story suburban home fortified with barred windows and an outer shell of scrap and junk. The inside was a cluttered mess of dirt, broken furniture, and poorly hidden weapons. While a personal generator out back ensured that the house had electricity, the generator in question was an old hunk of scrap that needed tuning every 5 hours.

Regardless, it was a warm place. Especially for Kira, who was always reminded of home whenever she stayed over. Like every night, she and the eds watched as much t.v as they could before turning it off to conserve power. They would then either play board games or listen to Eddy's latest scheme.

"So, your dad's out, huh?" asked Kira, who absentmindedly threw corn chips into her mouth while lying on the living room rug.

"Yeah," Ed replied with a carefree smile on the top of the couch. "He's gone to kick some butt, it's gonna be awesome!" Ed pumped his fists up in the air, causing him to lose balance and fall on the couch seat and then on the floor, flat on his face.

"You okay Ed?" asked Eddy.

"Yep."

"Good." All three kids erupted into laughter. The laughter stopped, however, when the rumblings of truck tires echoed through the house.

Ed looked up and beamed. "He's home!" Ed shouted, bolting out the door. The rain was now coming down in torrents, soaking into the house from the open doorway.

"Ed, wait for us!" Kira shouted after him as she, double d and Eddy ran out to catch up with him. The cold rain soaked Kira's mostly bald head, the clumps of white hair clung to her scalp, and her clothes were soon dripping wet. But Kira couldn't feel the rain, or the freezing cold. She, like Ed in front of her, had gone completely numb.

A truck had indeed come into peach creek commons, carrying the remaining soldiers from the attack. The men and women were in various states of injury. Those who were less fortunate barely even had bodies left to bury.

And there was Ed, on his knees, hunched over a small box labeled "remains: Cpl. Alba".

At first, it was almost impossible to wrap my head around it. I had spent so long drowning in my need for revenge, I never…I never even considered that others were in just as much pain. I didn't even know what to say to him for the first few weeks. After a few years, I decided I just needed to get out of there. I couldn't hold it in any longer, I NEEDED to strike back at Fuse. So, as soon as I received my acceptance into the G.D.I Military Academy, I packed my things, said my goodbyes and left, forcing myself to not look back.

It didn't go well.

Another day, another fight.

Kira was having a hard time keeping track of the reasons at this point. Especially when her opponent this week slammed her down back first on a cafeteria table and slid her all the way down like she was a thug in an 80's bar fight scene. When she reached the end of the table, Kira grabbed onto the edge of the table and used the momentum to launch herself up into a backflip. Kira landed on the tile floor, dukes up and ready for more. A small crowd of recruits had gathered around the two to watch Niste go at it once again.

Her opponent, a Latina recruit that stood head and shoulders above her, cracked her knuckles as she approached. "I'm getting really sick of your trash talk, Niste," she growled.

Kira chuckled. "Tell you what, Santiago," she said. "I'll stop trash talking, if you stop giving me free material." Santiago growled at Kira, and the two ran towards each other to continue the fight. However, both stopped dead in their tracks when a gunshot rang out from behind the crowd. Everyone turned around to see Agent Six and Bobo. Six had one of Bobo's blasters aimed up into the air, its barrel smoking from the blast. Six promptly returned the blaster to Bobo, who walked away with a roll of his eyes.

"Alright girls," Six said in his usual firm monotone. "Who wants to point their fingers at the other first?"

Santiago stood at attention. "Sir, I-" she started.

"Actually, I don't have the patience, so I'll stop you both right there," Six interrupted as he walked up to them. "Just two months you two have been here, and I'm already fed up. I'd compare getting either of you to fall in line to herding cats, but that would be an insult to cats. So, who do I have to thank this wee-"

"Me, sir," Said Kira. "I…it was me."

Six turned to face Kira head on, leaving Santiago to stare at Kira with restrained shock. Because of his glasses covering up his eyes at all times, Kira couldn't quite make out his emotion as he regarded her. "Why doesn't that surprise me?" he asked. Six sighed. "Niste, you have such potential, but if any of these people are going to trust you on the battlefield, you need to get your pride in check." Six turned away from her and walked away. "Don't come back until that changes."

She was expelled. He didn't need to say it. She didn't look at Santiago as she turned to leave for the barracks. She needed to pack.

Between my expulsion from the G.D.I and my cold departure from Peach Creek, I was kinda at a loss for where to go next. Then I remembered my parents old merc company; the Valkyries. When I looked them up, I found that since I left, Eddy had taken command of Peach Creek and turned it into an economic trade hub, with the Valkyries, among other merc companies, working for him.

I wasn't sure if they'd take me back as a friend, but I had enough confidence in my skills to know they'd at least accept me as another hired gun. Sure enough, Eddy accepted me back with open arms, though it's still unclear for which of the two reasons.

And that's basically how I spent my life the following two years. Blast a fusion here, go out for drinks there, and drift from one day to the next when I wasn't doing the above. It was tedious, but it was fulfilling. Then Eddy approached me with the job that started this whole mess; guard some rich asshole while he looked for some ancient thingamajig. Well, you know we found it, you wouldn't be here otherwise.

And that's my life, or at least the most important bits from what I remember about it. So all that's left is the pressing question on my end: that pyramid responded to my actions like I was meant to find it.

So, Abelardus, what does that tell you?