After leaving Anti-Entropy's base, KIANA's journey was back on smooth sails.

Sure, before she left the base she was wandering around having no clue where the exit was, about to try using her Shade of Finality: Void, but luckily the doctors arrived and showed her the way out.

That was quite fortunate, she didn't want to put her faith in the powers of Void again so soon. With her luck she'd probably end up back on the Moon.

Once she had left, she continued along the path she had decided to follow, the one that took her around the coast of… the Pacific Ocean? She thinks that's what it was called. Coasts seemed to have a little better luck in having towns, so she would keep on this path for now.

She did have to now take into account her apparent need for sleep, so her original schedule of exploring by day and traveling by night wasn't quite so feasible now, but she made do.

It had been about a week or so since she left Anti-Entropy, and she was starting to notice a decreasing amount of towns, much less ones with amusement parks.

Somewhere along the line, snow had become much more frequent, and once she crossed a body of water, entering what she believed Einstein had called Siberia, snow became much more common.

She landed in the snow and was surprised at how much it gave way before her. Now she was standing about thigh deep in the snow.

It kind of reminded her of the soft bed she had woken up on back in Anti-Entropy's base.

Having nowhere better to go, and feeling the signs of sleep that she had previously ignored, she decided that she'd make do with the snow as her effort to recreate that bed from back then.

So she lied down and let herself sink into the snow, content with the way it felt around her, and fell asleep.

"Do you think she's dead?"

"If she wasn't before, she definitely would be after having you trip on her."

"Hey! Are you calling me heavy? I reside that!"

"No, I was calling you stupid. And the phrase goes 'I resent that.'"

"I resent you, stupid!"

"Roza Idiotka will always be stupider."

"How about you come over here and say that!"

"Roza Idiotka is still on the dead lady, it'd be rude to fight on her."

KIANA woke to a buzzing in her ear and a weight on her stomach.

Oh wait, the buzzing was people talking.

Oh wait, the weight was a little girl.

"Oh, wait, the dead lady's alive." One of the voices seemed to notice her awaken.

"Silly Lili, dead people can't come back to life." The other voice did not seem to notice her awaken.

"Actually, you'd be surprised." KIANA chose now to chime in.

"AHHHH!" The girl on top of her leaped off in an instant. It seems her interruption worked better than intended. "Li-Li-Li-Li-Li" Oh, and now it seems she was broken. Whoops.

"LILIYA! It's a zombie! Quick, get it!" She suddenly pulled out a pink sword that seemed too large for her and held it with… her tail? Could humans grow tails?

While KIANA was pondering what she knew of human biology, the girl had launched an attack, swinging her sword in a devastating slash.

That was caught by KIANA without any effort.

She still had a hand up to her chin in her pondering.

"Hm? Oh, sorry, I wasn't paying attention." KIANA pushed the sword back to the girl, unknowingly going against all of said girl's efforts to push back.

"Li-Li-Li-Li-Li" And now she was back to this. Was there a restart switch or something? She noticed some humans do that with things that didn't work.

"LILIYA! This zombie… isn't a zombie at all!" Ah, good, that got cleared up quickly. "Such power, this can only be a Herrscher!" Oh, and now she was completely correct. This girl learned fast.

Or, wait. Wasn't it bad if people knew she was a Herrscher? "Quick, form up with me! This is the chance we've been waiting for! A chance to make our names in history!" The girl cried out, getting into a pose.

A silent moment passed without anyone moving.

"Lili? Where's the forming up?" The pink girl had not moved from her pose as she spoke. Didn't that get uncomfortable after a while?

"Stupid Idiotka. The lady clearly isn't a Herrscher, she'd have attacked by now. There's no Eruption here." The blue girl seemed to be the reasonable of the two, if only she weren't wrong.

KIANA froze for a moment, now able to take a closer look at the two.

An excitable girl with warm colors, and a calm logical girl in blue to keep her in line.

.

.

.

Was this what humans called déjà vu?

Shaking herself from her thoughts, she brought her attention back to the tail she saw. Oh, tails, plural. They both had one.

.

.

.

Were those Honkai Beast tails?

Only one way to find out.

"Are those Honkai Beast tails?" She repeated her question out loud this time.

At that, the pink girl gained a victorious smirk, even though no victory had been gained.

"Aha! Noticed our tails, did you? You are correct, these are the tails of Honkai Beasts! For we, Rozaliya and Liliya Olenyeva, are the ultimate combination of man and monster! We who have dredged up the ancient secrets of the past to secure a better future! We who-"

"Yeah, these are tails. We messed around in a lab and got these as a result." The blue girl interrupted.

"LILI! Why did you tell her our secret origin story in such a boring manner?"

"Because Roza would have spent forever hyping it up, and we'd be here all day."

"Hey! Give me some credit, why don't ya? I'd be able to drag it out for two days, minimum."

KIANA decided that this was going nowhere quickly.

"What are you two doing out here?"

The pink girl, Rozaliya, pointed at her.

"We could ask you the same question."

"But I asked first."

"Well too bad, I asked second!"

"We're here because we ran away from home." The girl named Liliya was turning out to be much more reasonable. KIANA liked her already.

"I see, and I'm here because I'm a traveler. Glad we could sort that out, Liliya, was it?"

"That's correct. And the idiotka here is Rozaliya. And you are?"

"My name's KIANA, nice to meet you."

"It's nice to meet you too, KIANA." Liliya replied.

"STOP IGNORING ME!" Rozaliya added.

"So why did you run away from home?" KIANA asked, once they had found a building in a city to chat in, per Liliya's recommendation.

She had mentioned something about avoiding frostbite, whatever that was.

"We wanted to become idols!" Rozaliya answered. She was much more reasonable when she wasn't trying to attack people.

"What's an idol?" It was a new term to her.

"An idol is someone who brings joy to everyone around them with a beautiful voice and pretty looks!"

KIANA thought over what Rozaliya said, with only one face coming to mind.

"Like Elysia?" She fit all the descriptors Rozaliya gave.

"Who's Elysia?" Oh, right. 50,000 years.

"She's a friend of mine. She sounds a little like what you described."

"I don't think I've heard of an idol called Elysia, but maybe?" Liliya seemed to be thinking hard about this.

"Oh, you probably wouldn't know her, she's been dead for a while." 'A while' was putting it lightly.

"Oh, I'm sorry for your loss" Liliya seemed much more mature than the other kids she's met. Like Rozaliya.

"It's fine, we didn't know each other for long, but she taught me a lot."

A somber silence fell over the table they were at.

The mood became melancholic. That was her bad.

"SO! We came here in hopes of becoming the best idols in the world!" Count on Rozaliya to be able to lift the mood, however forcefully was needed.

"And you got permission to be out here on your own? Most kids I see usually have parents with them." KIANA's journey had shown her that parents tend to like having their kids near them, but she'd met these twins on their own with no parents in sight.

"We don't have parents. We grew up in an orphanage with other kids under our Matushka."

"So then wouldn't this 'Matushka' be your parent then?" It may have come off as insensitive, but luckily the twins didn't seem offended.

"Yeah, that's a great way to put it! Our Matushka is our parent!" Rozaliya in fact seemed happy KIANA thought that way.

"So then you got permission from your Matushka then?" KIANA asked, bringing the topic back to her original question.

Silence.

"Ummm…" They both turned their heads away with a bashful expression, refusing to answer.

"I see." Her question was answered anyways.

The conversation fell to silence as the twins didn't want to continue and KIANA didn't know how to continue.

She let her gaze fall to the two tails that sat off to the side to let the girls sit on the chairs. She had seen a tail on a human, before, but where?

The answer came to her suddenly as she opened her mouth.

"Cat ears."

"Huh?" The twins seemed caught off guard.

"Hm? Oh, sorry. I was just remembering someone I had seen with a tail before, and she also had cat ears with it." She clarified.

"Someone else with a tail? So we're not even unique? And she's got cat ears as well? Where is she? I must meet this rival!" Rozaliya seemed very provoked by KIANA's words.

"She's dead." Rozaliya's anger came to a quick halt.

"You know a lot of dead people." Liliya spoke up.

KIANA shrugged.

"You two talk pretty morbidly, you know?" Rozaliya was eyeing the two of them with a grimace on her face.

"Where are you heading now, KIANA?" Liliya asked her once they were outside again.

"South, I believe. At least I think that's the right direction…" She was still learning human geography. "There doesn't seem to be too much to see in this town. What about you two?"

"Well, our goal of becoming an idol is currently at a standstill, as we kind of…" Liliya trailed off.

"We suck at being idols! For now at least! So we're gonna have to learn how to be idols! Though…" Now Rozaliya was trailing off too. "This town doesn't have much in the way of helping us, so we're probably going to head elsewhere like you!"

"How do you two plan to get around?" KIANA could fly, but she met the twins in a snowy field. Were they walking everywhere on foot?

"Hehehe. We happen to have a secret weapon up our sleeves." KIANA looked at their arms and saw a distinct lack of sleeves. "The crown jewel of Siberia, HUZZAH!"

She held her arms out towards the small building they stopped at. "Public Transportation! With fully heated stops and buses that can take you all over!"

KIANA wasn't convinced.

"Then why did I meet you out in the fields without any 'buses'?"

Liliya chimed in with an answer as always.

"We missed the bus and Roza Idiotka got impatient, so we traveled on foot."

KIANA let her gaze fall upon Rozaliya judgingly, who was pointedly looking away.

"You should try it too. It's the warmest way to travel around here." Liliya spoke up. "And you can sleep on it too, instead of the snow. It's a lot warmer." The idea was kind of tempting.

She had no issue with such things as cold and warm, but the idea of being able to sleep while still on the move was intriguing.

She figured it was at least worth trying out.

"All right then, I suppose I can try it. How does it work?"

Rozaliya ran up to the bus stop's entrance.

"We wait here for the bus to come, then when it arrives we show them our ticket and that's that! Matushka got us permanent tickets a while back so we can use the bus as much as we want." And how kindly they repaid her for that, by running away.

Though this posed a new issue.

"I don't have a 'ticket'." She had never needed a bus before after all.

"Oh, that's no problem, you can buy one at the bus stop!"

"I don't have money either." At that, the twins stopped and stared at her.

"How have you survived like this?" Liliya asked. KIANA shrugged.

Rozaliya however, seemed to be prepared.

"Don't you worry! I have just the plan to help us out. Here, you take my ticket for now, and then just leave it all to me…"

"*hic* I-I'm sorry! I *hic* lost my ticket! I don't want to be left behind! WAAHHAHAHA!" KIANA thought she could hear some laughter hidden in Rozaliya's cries, but other than that she was a good actor.

"Oh, don't worry. I can let it slide here, and you can get a new ticket later, ok?" The bus driver seemed to fall for it, which was all that mattered. Rozaliya was allowed on, and the plan was a success.

As soon as they settled in their seats at the back, Rozaliya turned to KIANA and Liliya and flashed a thumbs up.

"And that's how to exploit the pity in people's hearts!"

KIANA and Liliya stared at her, before Liliya spoke up.

"Roza, you're heartless."

KIANA took the bus as far south as she could go before getting off.

When she stepped off the bus, two other passengers got off with her.

"Is there any reason you two happen to be heading in the same direction as me?" She turned towards the Olenyeva twins who had stayed on the bus as long as she had.

"Oh, well, you know how it is. It's so difficult to find work in Siberia after the Second Eruption, much less idol agencies, you know!" Rozaliya seemed to be putting on an act again.

"Even less agencies that would take us…" Liliya muttered.

"And we put some thought into what you said about being out and about without a guardian, and decided it'd be best to change that!" Rozaliya continued with a cheer.

No, they weren't possibly…

"So if it's not too much of a bother…" They actually were doing it.

"We were hoping to travel with you!" They finished together.

KIANA was half tempted to ditch them right that moment.

She paused before she could fully turn around, realizing that these two… were idiots. And it was very likely that they would die on their own.

Damn this human emotion called pity.

She sighed, knowing that she was about to make a mistake.

"Fine, but only until we either achieve your goal, or I find a way to get you back to your home." She conveniently ignored that her journey would undoubtedly be taking them further from their orphanage.

"YAY!" The two girls jumped and cheered, even the calm and reserved Liliya. KIANA couldn't help but feel that she had been duped just like that bus driver.

Suddenly, Liliya reached out and grabbed KIANA's hand softly.

"Then it's a pleasure to travel with you, Big Sister."

KIANA was already regretting her decision.

The World Serpent was a wide reaching organization that spanned the whole world.

They may have seemed dormant, but they were simply biding their time, like a snake waiting for the right moment to strike.

Once their Sire reappeared, the prophesied day of triumph would be upon the world, as the Serpent would encircle the Earth.

Until that day, they prepared for the Project that would save humanity.

Jackal was doing her part in said preparation when she received a call from an unknown number. However, the number itself was a code that told Jackal that the call was coming from the Moon.

So it was one of the Gray Serpents, then. Hopefully he would skip the cryptic bullshit this time and get straight to the point.

She picked up the phone and answered not as a member of World Serpent, but as a member of Heliopolis Life Sciences, as per protocol.

"Heliopolis Life Sciences, this is Doctor Hypatia speaking, how may I help you?" She answered the call professionally yet kindly, even if it sickened her.

"Do you know where the Devil lies?" Oh, so he was skipping protocol entirely and going straight to the cryptics, how very like him.

"Gray Serpent, if you called me like this and ignored protocol for a prank call then even being on the Moon won't save you from me."

"The face of extinction is no longer present." Great, he was still going with this. He wasn't just repeating the same sentence over and over at least, so it seemed he learned something from the last time he tried this. She was about to hang up when he spouted another line.

"The End approaches, yet I am blind to it." That was new. Gray Serpent never talked about being blind, even as a joke. All of them prided themselves on their omniscient network of Gray Serpents across the globe and beyond. This might actually be something important.

If it wasn't and he simply threw away his pride to get a one-up on her? Then she was booking the next flight to the Moon to blind him herself.

"What is it? Preferably without the cryptic talk, please."

"The statue has moved, and I know not where." That was still cryptic in her book, but less so, so she'd work with it.

The statue moved? There weren't many statues that fit that description. Was he talking about Hare's Seeds of Ideas? Had they made progress on that aspect of Project Stigma so soon?

No, she remembered his earlier statements. 'Where the Devil lies' and 'face of extinction' likely didn't refer to Hare at all. Sure, 'the Devil' could refer to any member of the World Serpent, but 'face of extinction' could only mean the Honkai. Specifically a Herrscher. Has a new Herrscher appeared? The one after Thunder should be Wind, but there was always room for error.

It was then that she recalled his other statement.

'The End approaches'.

No.

It couldn't be.

The phone spoke again,

"Have I lost you? Are you even still alive? Or has Finality already descended and I now speak to a corpse?" This jackass picked now to stop being cryptic? When she had already deciphered his meaning?

But if the Herrscher of Finality had truly awoken, then…

"Tell me everything."

This truly was the worst case scenario.