A/N:

- )- Denotes a large (2 years or more) passage of time forwards

-( - Denotes a large (2 years or more) passage of time backwards

The Warrior of Light sat quietly on the ground besides the white haired woman, carefully holding one of her hands between her own. She should be crying, but there were no more tears to be shed- those had all been spent during the fight that'd just concluded. Therefore, all she could do was hold Yotsuyu's hand and curse every single person who had contributed to this moment in her mind, with all of her hatred.

Thankfully, at least one of those now laid near them, gasping in a growing pool of his own blood. It wasn't enough. It would never be enough. But it made the woman dying in front of her happy, so it'd be a start.

"I'd never thought you'd be one for cruelty." The Witch of Doma mused, looking up at the blonde. "I could still hear, you know. Your screams, calling out to me. It didn't make this any easier." She chuckled weakly.

"I'm sorry." What else could she say? She'd sworn to herself to help care for the amnesiac woman, and now they were here. What else could she say? It must have made for a sorry sight, Warrior of Light and Primal alike desperately pulling punches.

"Oh, don't be like that. It was-" Yotsuyu trailed off while whispering, before gathering what little life she had left. "-nice." Vibrant red eyes teeming with unfathomable pain stared back at her. "To experience what it's like. To have someone who cares. Someone who understands."

"Wha-" Azennia's expression turned to surprise for a moment.

The white haired woman's smile widened slightly. "Come now, of course I could tell. It was like looking in a mirror sometimes."

The older woman looked away before nodding once. What was the point of it all? She'd become beautifully adept at killing, leaving a trail of corpses in her wake- for what? If she couldn't even save the second chance fate had bestowed to a single person, what was the point?

"Do you even like them? Persimmons?" Yotsuyu smirked, remembering the first time 'Tsuyu' gave one to the blonde. The shorter woman looked like she was trying to find the taste the entire time, but still smiled kindly. She smiled kindly every time she was at Tsuyu's side- which had been pretty much from the moment she'd arrived in the mainland.

"I do now." Azennia managed to answer with a small smile before it was overtaken by overwhelming grief once more.

"I'm glad." The white haired woman sighed while closing her eyes. A moment later, what aether was left of the primal Tsukuyomi left her body, dissipating into the air- leaving only a corpse with raven black hair behind.

The anguished scream that cut through the night paused Hien in his tracks before he could approach the platform. It was his fault. As the leader of the nation that created this tragedy, and as the man who had not allowed the Warrior of Light to take the amnesic woman far, far away from Doma. A large hand held onto one of his shoulders firmly when he tried to take another step once the scream had become a mournful wail.

"Do not, young master." Gosetsu advised solemnly. The pain in his eyes was plain to see. "You must live if you wish to change things. That won't happen if you get any closer right now."

Hien remembered, for a moment, the pure hatred in the blonde woman's eyes when she'd found out that the man who'd 'employed' Yotsuyu still lived as a member of the resistance. The killing intent that beared down on the raven-haired man when he asked her to spare the old man was overwhelming, yet he held his ground- only to later find the once brothel owner strangled on a tree by his own entrails. According to Alisaie, it was a favored method of the Eorzean shinobi, from her days as a Rogue.

Thinking about it, the old samurai's words were wise.

Azennia looked up at the night sky in silence, spent of all emotions for the time being. They'd return before long, she knew. But in the meantime, the Warrior of Light wondered if there was anything at all she could have done differently. If there was somewhere, some other time and place, where Tsuyu could have lived. It sounded like a much nicer place to be.

Far away on the border of space and time, the butterfly of fate flapped its wings.

-( -

The young girl looked off into the distance, eyes unfocused. Words were exchanged around her, but she didn't listen. Maybe, if the world became enough of a blur, she'd be able to blend with it and disappear.

She didn't know. She'd never asked why the aunt and uncle who took her in years ago never hit her, despite the vitriol they otherwise offered. Yet, the way old man Sashihai had stared at her since he'd arrived, the amount of money he brought with him- now she understood. She still wished she didn't know.

The harsh shadows under the midday sun waved and shimmered in the heat. Were she actually looking, she'd have seen the one behind the old man move.

Wide eyes stared up in surprise at the blade tip poking out from Sashihai's chest. The sound of the old man's desperate gasp for a breath that would never come was drowned out by the blast that sent the remains of his heart flying forward in a spray of red.

The young girl didn't flinch when flecks of wet warmth hit her face. Her body tensed, yet she found herself unable to run or even look away from the blade while the corpse slid off of it, past her peripheral vision. The figure moved as if talking to someone, but a dull, high pitched whine was the only thing she could hear. Armour plates dark as night contrasted against the summer glare, golden trim reflecting the sun. She'd seen figures in dark armour before, only once.

The day her adoptive brother had moved away, to something her 'parents' called 'Garlean officer school': the armoured soldiers waiting at the top of the hill. She hoped with him gone, the shouting and insults would go away.

They didn't.

She'd never seen a local soldier in their village. All she'd known about the kingdom is that she lived in it, was berated in it, and made to work in it. Domans, Garleans, it made no difference to her.

The ringing in her ears began to fade, melting into words under the summer sun. "-rrested for crimes against the Empire. The people of Doma are imperial citizens, and your deeds against them will be judged accordingly." The female voice which came from beneath the soldier's enclosed helmet spoke the local language so fluently that she couldn't even find an accent.

Silver eyes refocused on the armoured figure in front of her which now pointed its weapon at her remaining 'family'. Following the figure's blade, the girl, barely twelve summers old, saw the couple who but a few moments ago were counting coins shrivel in fear at the growing number of weapons pointed at them from more Garleans slinking out from behind shadows.

She remembered overhearing stories while doing housework- an unstoppable army that came over the kingdom of Doma, bringing fire and death in their wake. She'd heard how their own forces fought valiantly, and were soundly defeated regardless.

"Hey there." The soft and clear sound made her look back to the figure in surprise, which now stood on one knee in front of her. Platinum strands she'd never seen the likes of before framed a girlish face that couldn't be more than half a dozen years older than herself, yet still exuded the experience of a soldier and a leader. "I'm Azennia. What's your name?"

"I-" Blood still dripped from the blade which now rested at the woman's back, which still made for a less vibrant red than her eyes. Despite that, for the first time in years, the young girl wasn't afraid. "I'm Yotsuyu. Naeuri Yotsuyu."

Azennia glanced over at the young girl staring at the walls of Castrum Cautis while the line of wheeled transports was individually checked at the entrance. The arrest of the pair of child traffickers had gone smoothly, thankfully.

The intel gathered by the imperial shinobi had been faultless, and as such the first sting operation of the Doman colonial affairs division had been but a repeat of the others she'd been part of previously as a member of internal affairs back in Garlemald- with the exception that she had led the agents this time.

"Is this where Garleans are from?" Yotsuyu asked, looking out from the passenger seat at the fortress.

"Oh- no. Garlemald is to the west, a long long way away. But Cautis is our local base in this province." Ahead of the line which stretched in front of them, beyond the external perimeter wall, steel and cermet formed the outpost which held thousands of soldiers, logistical and maintenance personnel, and local contractors. Built against one of the many nigh vertical cliff sides of the region, it was a hub of operations that fueled the frontline that was still being pushed to the northeast, towards the Doman capital.

"Then why are you here?" Despite the weight of the question, the silver eyes that looked into hers bore no judgement, only genuine curiosity. From the tone on the young girl's voice, she couldn't fathom why anyone would want to be in this place.

"To liberate the people, of course. To help them." Azennia answered with a genuine smile. That was, after all, what she'd wanted since she could remember- to simply help people. It was only further reinforced by her teachings, closely guided by her parents and grandfather:

'It is the duty of the strong to lead the weak. To guide them, protect them, and help them reach a brighter tomorrow. That is the royal family's duty to every Garlean citizen, and every citizen's duty to those who are not yet fortunate enough to be one.'

Her smile gained a hint of sheepishness to it. "Of course, that's not the only reason. Natural resources, usable land, regional control of trade routes- us Garleans also get something out of it. It's a non-zero sum game." She dutifully drove the armoured transport closer to the checkpoint as the line shrank.

"What does that last part mean?" Yotsuyu sounded genuinely confused. Perhaps that exact idea did not quite exist in the Doman language. The Echo only did so much, after all.

"Win-win. A situation where both sides benefit from something." Her smile returned while producing a small booklet from one of the interior compartments of the vehicle, handing it over to the younger girl. "You've been a citizen of the Garlean Empire for a little while now. One of us. You deserve to know what that means."

The girl let her eyes run through the black leather cover, words emblazoned in gold written in both Doman and Garlean. "Constitution of Garlean Citizens." The words came out slowly, uncertainly. It'd been so long since she'd read something. Since her parents died. She opened the booklet.

"Article One: Every Garlean citizen is born with the rights to life, health, education, safety and self-dete... determi..." Yotsuyu squinted.

"Self-Determination. Freedom. Everyone has the choice of what they want to do, who they want to be. If that choice hurts someone else, there are consequences- but it's still everyone's choice to make as long as you're one of us." Azennia explained while the younger girl stared at the words, dawning realisation behind silver eyes.

"Tribunus." The gate guard approached her window, data tablet in hand. The hologram on the outside of her left gauntlet lit up in orange, and after a moment, green. At a nod from the soldier to his team, two more guards began to verify the armoured transport, one of them using a mirror to check the undercarriage.

"Portarius." Azennia nodded in greeting. "All has been well?"

"Will be far better once the rail line is operational." Cautis had barely been established by the time construction of train routes between Nagxia and Garlemald began- airships were fast, seaborn vessels had capacity, but only rail transports had both- which would be vital for further operations and citizen integration.

His eyes glanced to the line of vehicles backed up by the dozens, before noticing the small girl in the cabin's passenger seat. "Civilian for processing, I take it?" The man switched to heavily accented Doman. "Welcome to Castrum Cautis, citizen." He made his way to her window.

"Ah- thank you, mister-?" Tsuyu answered hesitantly, having been so distracted by the booklet in her hands that she'd only now realised they had arrived at the entrance.

"Cassius oen Falx." He shrugged. "Or just Cassius, you're not in the military yet." His triangular, furred ears flicked back and forth in mirth, capturing the young girl's attention. Grabbing a rubberized band from one of the pouches of his armour and sliding it into a slot inside his tablet, he took a moment to input several commands on the screen of the device before handing it over to Tsuyu.

"Your name, young lady?"

"I'm- I'm Yotsuyu-ah!" The girl almost dropped the device at first- it was a fair amount heavier than it seemed, yet she still caught it before Azennia could intervene. Looking at it, she saw logographs she recognized but did not understand.

"I don't- I only know how to write Nagxian." She looked at the older woman apologetically.

The platinum blonde officer leaned over, noticing that the interface was set to standard Doman. One of the many things she'd learned before accepting her assignment was that while the spoken language was roughly the same around the larger eastern region, each province had significant differences in writing, up to and including entirely unique symbols for their alphabets.

If anything, learning all of them was more of a task than the training under imperial shinobi ever was. Maybe creating data tomes for languages should be next in line on the Empire's research budget.

A quick tap of the finger at the drop menu on the corner of the screen listed many languages, from Garlean to Nhalmasquei, from Dalmascan to Corvosi. And still, Nagxian was nowhere to be found. That's not-

That wasn't right. The Empire is supposed to be better than this. Her eyebrows furrowed. It will be better than this, if she has to drag it kicking and screaming. That's the whole reason she'd joined the Praetorian Guard- the divisions tasked with looking into egregious crimes and abuse committed in Garlean territory, and therefore, against Garlean citizens.

The omission of a language written by dozens, if not hundreds of thousands of people who they were now responsible for stared back at her, the blinking cursor at the top punctuating the failure.

"Did I- What did I do wrong? I'm sorry." Tsuyu shrank in her seat with dim, avoiding eyes, the expectancy of being shouted at and insulted coming as ingrained habit.

"Wha-" Azennia realised what the displeasure in her expression could be misinterpreted as, quickly backpedalling in surprise. "No! No, you didn't do anything wrong, Yotsuyu." Her expression softened. "You truly didn't. Would you want me to write your name in Doman for you?"

The young woman gathered enough courage to look at the device in her hands again. "Can I- Can you show me how to write it in Garlean?"

Tsuyu watched the gathering of people in white uniforms surrounding Azennia, who'd descended on the older woman almost the moment the two of them had stepped inside the large halls of dark metal. She could see several of what she'd later learn to be data cables connecting similar devices to the one the Guard she'd met had, to her saviour's armour- armour which she'd seen no other like, on anyone else so far. Similar? Surely. Same colours? Each and every one. And still, it seemed different- more angular, more refined, more intricate. Others did weirder things still, like shining a light in her eyes while asking what seemed like questions, or drew a red vial- blood?- from her arm. All the while other soldiers gave the group a wide berth, some staring, others averting their eyes.

Through it all, the Garlean officer simply stood there, responding when asked but otherwise simply looking ahead listlessly with dull, red eyes. Yotsuyu recognized that look. Too well.

"Uhm-" Her voice faltered, seeking the strength to make its way through the people surrounding the older woman like worker bees. "Miss Azennia? Are you alright?"

The Praetorian leader blinked, much like someone waking up from sleep, before looking back at the Doman girl with a kind smile which did not fully reach her eyes.

"Sorry about the delay, Yotsuyu. They'll be done in a few more minutes, then we'll go talk to the integration officer." She responded apologetically. "How about you? You've been really brave so far, I know this is all new to you." The blonde gestured to the cavernous insides of the Castrum's main deployment area, ever ringing to the soundtrack of boots hitting steel.

"I-" Tsuyu looked down at her right wrist, caressing the black band that fit softly around it. In response, a sequence of letters lit up upon it; her name in Garlean script. Yotsuyu bas Resurgens. Her first choice as a free citizen of Garlemald. She nodded to herself, smiling genuinely for the first time in what felt like forever.

"I'm alright."

The integration officer sighed, looking in consternation at the display on his desk. After a few inputs with his index finger, his expression did not become any better.

"Is something wrong?" Azennia inquired in Doman so that Tsuyu could understand, brows furrowed. The man looked like someone had stolen his beet soup from the moment the young girl and her walked in.

"See for yourself." He responded in resignation with practised ease on the language, spinning the device around. Solid red bars followed the names of each and every relief and integration centre in the province.

113%

129%

108%

115%

"What-?" She trailed off, brows furrowed. "What happened? It wasn't nearly this bad just last week."

"Beats me, ma'am." He ran a hand over greying hair, shaking his head before leaning closer. "Scuttlebutt says that some enemy officer had the bright idea of throwing noncombatants at us to gain time, to make the frontline slow down by gumming up our logistics once they learned how we operate." The older soldier sounded tired.

"Knowing full well we'd be obligated to care for them. Clever." Azennia leaned back on the comfortable chair that fit the warmly decorated office, setting her jaw in quiet anger at the significant issues with resettlement the tactic would create even after the Empire prevailed, let alone the prolonging of the war itself. "Infuriating, but clever."

"You can say that again. Closest centre with any vacancies is in Dalmasca." He turned to the young girl in the chair beside the Praetorian. "Miss Yotsuyu, are you sure you have no surviving relatives in the province which would be qualified to care for you? The Empire would provide for the living and education expenses, that is not a concern."

Yotsuyu locked her eyes to the floor, shaking her head slowly. Despite the room being warmer than the chill of the rest of the base, she'd begun shivering again. "No."

Her voice was barely a whisper.

On her part, a faint smirk was beginning to form on Azennia's lips while she tapped the arm of the chair with an armoured finger, eyes focused on something only she could see. "I think I've just had the best bad idea ever. What if we play by AirPullus rules?"

The integration officer raised a suspicious eyebrow, fully aware that the colloquialism referenced doing something that would only be allowed because it'd be so unexpected that no rules had been put in place to prevent it. Yet.

When a member of the military came up with such ideas, the results were often either disastrous, revolutionary, or both. "I hesitate to ask, but do elaborate, Tribunus."

"What if I became her legal guardian? I am of age." She'd settled into the chair with a confident smile, fingertips touching in a scholar's cradle at her lap. Granted, she'd come of official age little more than a month before, but her Imperial Army career had more than four years at this point.

Both other occupants of the room stared at the internal affairs officer in wide-eyed surprise.

"And she'd live- where? At the Castrum?" The man began frantically typing into his data tablet, trying to find anything that could stop the train of thought before it got any further. Granted, sending the poor child hundreds of kilometres away was not a good solution either, but surely...

Azennia nodded in response. "Think about it, Marcellus." Use first name, appeal to humanity. "My quarters has plenty of space for an additional bunk, she'd be more protected than any other child in the entire province, and there is reliable daily transport to and from the nearest officer's school which, might I remind you, shares the complex with an integration school." She leaned forward, pinning the man down with vibrant red eyes.

"The Castrum has plenty of non-restricted areas for her to socialise in, medical staff, a vast database she can access to learn more if she so chooses- do you have a better idea?"

"I-" His mind scrambled to find a valid retort and came up empty. Seeing the growing adoration with which the young girl stared at the only somewhat older girl did not help. This would go incredibly wrong sooner or later. He pinched the bridge of his nose in defeat, letting out a long breath before opening his eyes again.

"If, and I mean if, you can convince the Praefectus of this madness, I will let it slide." He could already see the hours of required reading about the new rules cresting the hill on the horizon. "And you will be entirely, and solely, responsible for her wellbeing. This is not, and I cannot emphasise this enough, a decision to be made lightly, Tribunus. Do you truly mean to care for lady Resurgens until she comes of age?" His eyes bore down against the eighteen year old with just as much intensity as she'd shown before, and decades more experience.

"If she'll allow me?" Azennia looked at Tsuyu, smiling warmly before facing Marcellus again confidently. "Yes. I promise."

The integration officer knew the young girl's answer before he asked, on account of the shocked smile on her face.

Azennia glanced down with a strained smile at the younger girl who walked beside her and seemed to try and take in every direction of sight at once, by now fitted with overly large clothes- the closest the supply officer managed to find on immediate notice- and a backpack containing her basic belongings as an unenlisted member of the Castrum.

Carefully letting out a long breath, the leader of the local Praetorian Guard focused on simply pushing the cart ahead of her which carried the extra bunk to be set in her quarters. What she'd learned during the medical checkup of her new charge still sent fire through her veins and implants.

Her very first moon. Those vermin had tried to sell her literally as soon as they could.

She'd stopped them, of course- they would now spend the rest of their lives doing manual labour while incarcerated, and she'd promised herself to give the girl the best life she could. Still, the anger was slow to dissipate.

"Uh- excuse me, Tribunus? Ma'am?" The nervous voice of an approaching soldier caught her attention, the man followed by a small group of Legionarius, judging by their uniform.

Likely their Decurion, then, Azennia surmised. Blinking a few times to change mental gears, she stopped- and noticed with a small smile that Yotsuyu had done the same. She's aware of her surroundings even in an unfamiliar place. That's good.

"Yes, Shashasume? How can I help?" She turned to give the Lalafellin soldier her full attention after a quick glance at his name tag. Non-commissioned officers were in charge of the welfare of a squad- when one went out of their way to contact internal affairs in an unofficial manner, trouble was most likely afoot.

"Well, uh-" He cleared his throat, glancing back at the squad he was responsible for- which stared back at him. "I'd like to request your help to transfer one of my soldiers out of the frontline, ma'am."

"If you're coming to me for it instead of the normal channels, I need to know the reason, Decurion. The real-" She emphasised. "- reason." Despite the training to always report interpersonal issues so the root of the problem could be solved, many soldiers still tried to sidestep it instead, afraid of possible retribution.

Not on her watch.

"Well- It's a bit of a long story. We were stationed off of the forward base at Shaotou village for the last few weeks, and-" The Lalafell began before being interrupted by one of his Garlean soldiers.

"If I may, sir." Legionarius Lucilia turned to Azennia. "Said long story short, it's love ma'am." She nodded for emphasis before continuing. "I wish to engage in a relationship with a local man of the village, but that's illegal if I'm assigned as part of the frontline troops. I understand why, so I've requested a transfer already- but the estimate is half a year or more. Our squad will probably be reassigned for the next offensive, and that'll likely be within the month." The soldier found it in herself to remember to breathe.

"I see." The Praetor braced her hands on the hips of her armour for a moment in thought, before putting her helmet on and tapping a few commands on her left gauntlet, causing the lights on it to blink in orange twice before turning green.

Yotsuyu watched, entranced, her new guardian seeming to talk with someone that only she could hear. Everything the young Doman had learned in the last few hours had made her realise that there was much, much more to the world than she'd known. She felt like a pond fish suddenly thrown into the Ruby Sea-

And it was the best thing to ever happen to her. Other than the cold inside the base, perhaps: while the new clothes she'd gotten did a better job than what she had before, they still couldn't quite keep the chill out. Apparently, Garlemald was even colder for most of the year, and the Empire brought the weather of their homeland everywhere they went.

"Very well." Azennia took off her helmet again- people felt more comfortable talking to a human face, after all- "I might have found a way, but not before I check any and every bit of relevant data. It'll take a few days." Maybe less if she could rope in a few more Praetors with a soft side for romance.

It'd still be hundreds of hours of armour recordings of the whole squad to go through, either way- her job was to stop abuse, not enable it, and Lucilia had to be squeaky clean if this was to go through in any way. She'd seen more than one case of 'interest in the exotic' end horribly.

"Thank you, Lady Galvus!" The soldier saluted enthusiastically, beaming with hope.

Tsuyu looked up at the door from her new data tablet, the electronic chime and small green light catching her attention just in time to see the metallic panels slide into the wall in the blink of an eye with what she'd learned was the sound of hydraulics. "Welcome back."

Azennia blinked in surprise at the heavily accented Garlean, a small smile making its way to her face. "Thank you, Yotsuyu. You're learning really fast." She made a mental note of how bundled her charge had been under the blanket of the bunk that the two had installed together earlier, while hanging her gunblade and helmet on some of the many attachment points that littered the walls of the officer's quarters.

"I-" The young girl had changed back to Doman. "I like studying. It's fun to understand things. Back home, I used to read Asahi's old school books when my aunt and uncle weren't looking." Her eyes fell for a moment. "Before they threw them all away."

"Who's Asahi? Brother, cousin? Is he alright?" Do I need to call my team so we can rescue another sold child? Her eyebrows furrowed in concern.

"Cousin." Yotsuyu answered, shaking her head. "He joined a Garlean officer's school last year. We didn't- really get along." She realised that they might end up in the same school; she didn't know how many there were.

She hoped not.

"I see." The blonde woman pondered for a few seconds, idly placing her own tablet on its dock atop her desk. The screens around it came to life and she smiled faintly while selecting hundreds of files in an instant before confirming a prompt.

"Hm?" Tsuyu's worry was replaced by surprise when, after a quiet chirp, the screen of her own device began filling with name after name- most in Garlean, a few in Nagxian and Doman. 'The Keys to Power', 'Hybrid Warfare', 'Urban Planning'-

Book titles. A seemingly endless list of them before her widening eyes.

"My library. Some of them are duplicated in all three languages, they were the ones I used to practise before coming here." Azennia's smile warmed fully. "They're yours too now. Though you might find most of them a bit dull. I'll take a look later if I can get some more that won't bore you to tears."

Yotsuyu kept wiping her eyes, but the tears wouldn't stop coming. Still, she managed to smile back.

Tsuyu adjusted the warm, fur lined jacket around herself, before carefully taking another spoonful of the hot stew in her food tray. She was not going to spill anything on the most beautiful piece of clothing she'd ever seen, let alone been effectively given. Granted, Azennia had said that she could return it 'whenever she got tired of it', but the mere notion was absurd.

More importantly- it was very, very comfortable, large or not. Besides, it wasn't actually that oversized, given her new guardian was only a head and a bit taller than herself. It was odd, she realised; every other Garlean she'd seen with a third eye absolutely dwarfed them both.

"Everything alright?" The Praetor leader asked, sat beside the young girl and already finished with her food. Her etiquette teachers had long since given up on making her eat at a normal pace, only succeeding in instructing her on how to eat with the dignity of a member of the royal family- on fast forward. As far as Azennia was aware, no one else other than her nephew had to deal with the energy expenditure the two of them did, so they could kindly get bent.

"Hm?" Yotsuyu looked at the woman. "Oh, yes, I'm alright. Was just thinking about something."

"Was it how to make the biscuit edible?" The blonde snickered to herself, looking at the half-eaten item on her charge's tray.

"No, it was-" She shook her head before curiosity overtook her. "Actually, what is the biscuit for? Or made of? It doesn't even taste like flour. And it comes with the tray itself." Every other item in the mess hall was optional; people were allowed to mix and match whatever they wanted- on Azennia's suggestion, she'd been trying new things every day. All of them tasted delicious to her, but then again, most food was delicious compared to going hungry, she'd realised.

"I was waiting for you to ask." The blonde grinned. "Nutrition, Biscuit, G-Type, Mark Seven. So, back in the early days of the official Empire-" She launched into an excited explanation.

Fifteen minutes later, Tsuyu had finished her meal, and also a crash course on the basics of logistics, food science, microbiology and smuggling rings of all things. Most importantly, she'd learned that if anyone claimed to sell a Mark One biscuit -the only one that ever contained sugar-, it was a scam and she should report it. Unlike the black market for the Marks two through four, which was technically not illegal.

The young Doman blinked a few times to process the information while following her guardian out of the mess hall, before remembering what she had been thinking about to begin with.

"What I was thinking about before the biscuit was about, uhm-" She thought about how to say it in a way that didn't come across as rude. "Everyone else with the third eye I've seen is really really tall-" She trailed off, unsure how to continue.

"But I'm not." Azennia completed the unsaid question, a small smile not quite reaching her eyes. "I know, and no, I'm not angry that you were wondering. You should never be afraid to ask questions as long as they're honest." She pondered. Technically, the high level answer to that question wasn't classified-

Azennia stopped, lowering herself to one knee to face Tsuyu at a more equal level. "But it is a secret. So it'll have to wait until tonight, alright?"

Yotsuyu nodded seriously, before having her hair ruffled.

The older woman carefully pulled her greaves off, double checking that the connection ports on her calves were fully sealed- that was a mistake she only wanted to make once, thank you very much. "It's related to this, actually." The sad smile had returned.

"The armour?" Tsuyu wondered. She had been curious since the first time she'd seen her guardian without it, for more than one reason. She never thought chests grew that big. Then again, she never knew some people had bits of metal in them either.

Azennia nodded, putting on her sleeping clothes and checking each piece of the suit before hanging it on the walls. "My growth was artificially stopped when I was sixteen, to make it easier to fit the implants and-" She stopped herself mid-sentence. "Actually, that makes no sense out of context. Alright, full story it is." She sat down beside the younger Doman, extending her pinky finger with one hand.

"But in that case, you'll need to promise to keep it a secret. At least for now. Do you?"

"I do." Yotsuyu affirmed, looking in confusion at the digit before mimicking it.

"Alright then, it's a pinky swear." Azennia smirked, curling hers around the smaller one and shaking up and down once, then twice. "That means you can't ever, ever break that promise. Or you lose the finger."

"Got it." The young girl smiled, answering in accented Garlean. This finally explained why some adults she saw were missing theirs back in the village.

"So, it all began when my mom was pregnant with me." The internal affairs officer reached for her data tablet at the desk, opening a file with practised ease. On the screen, a middle aged couple smiled at the camera, the woman with a small but noticeable bump in her stomach. "Our scientists managed to understand- at least somewhat- some of the technology that the royal Allagan family used."

"Allagan?" Tsuyu remembered reading the word once or twice so far, but always in passing.

"Right, need to explain that real quick." Azennia mentally chastised herself. In her defense, she'd never talked about this with anyone else. "Five thousand years ago or so, there was an empire that controlled a lot of the world with advanced technology. A lot like us, actually."

"What happened to them?" The young girl asked with attentive eyes, burning with curiosity.

The blonde shrugged. "We're not entirely sure yet. There is evidence of a massive earthquake, but that alone shouldn't have led to their downfall. Either way, we sometimes find things they've left behind. Machinery, research, whole buildings if we're lucky. Then our scientists learn to integrate the Allagan technology with our own. Remember when I said that my mother was pregnant?"

Yotsuyu nodded repeatedly, looking at the picture again. After a few moments, she realised something. Both people in it had blonde hair, but neither had red eyes.

"Well, we'd learned that the Allagans could enhance their citizens- make them faster, stronger, smarter. Especially the royal family." Azennia lowered the volume of her voice. "If we were ever to be able to do the same, then someone would have to be the first. To test if the enhancements worked, if they were even safe to begin with. They had to be done before the person was even born." She trailed off, letting the subtext hang in the air.

"You're part Allagan." Tsuyu eventually whispered, staring with wide eyes at the bright red irises of the older woman.

"Yep." Azennia grinned, turning the palm of one of her hands upwards, a small mote of ice appearing in the air just above it. "It's why I can control aether like other races can, and some other things."

"But then, what about your armour and the-" Yotsuyu trailed off, looking at the closed hole in one of her guardian's forearms, the outline still visible.

"That's the thing-" The older woman continued. "There are other ways to enhance people too. Machines can do a lot of things better or faster than us, and be a lot sturdier, but they can't think. So what if we put the machines..."

"Inside the people." The young girl finished the sentence, reeling in surprise at the very idea.

Azennia nodded again. "And because of some of the effects of the royal Allagan blood, I'm the best person to test them on too, at least for now." Her voice softened. "Helping people walk again, give them replacements for limbs they may have lost, cure diseases that happen when the body doesn't work right- we'll be able to help so many people once we know it's safe to do so."

"But-" Tsuyu looked at her guardian with growing concern. "-what if it's not?"

"Then-" The leader of the Praetorian Guard looked at her hand in thought, slowly closing then opening her fingers again in sequence. In the silence of the room, whirring servos could just about be heard "It'll have been a grand and glorious dream we'd tried, I guess." She murmured.

"But I-" Yotsuyu choked up, her eyes watering while looking at her guardian and the first person she could genuinely call a friend. "I don't want you to die."

Azennia's eyes widened while she leaned forward, taking the young girl's hands in her own. "No, no, Tsuyu, I'll be alright." She smiled tentatively to try and reassure her new charge. "It's not like the architecti and medici just threw the implants together in a week, the previous versions were tested extensively in animals with no ill effects. Besides, I made a promise, didn't I?" She rubbed the smaller hands within hers softly with her thumbs.

The Doman nodded, sniffling but not crying. After a while, she asked hesitantly. "Do they hurt?"

"Not at all." Azennia shook her head for emphasis, smiling a bit brighter at having managed to reassure the girl. "I mean, if anything, my spine would hurt without the reinforcement, since, you know-" She chuckled and squeezed her upper arms together for emphasis.

"Right." Tsuyu blushed, blinking. Her curiosity eventually got the better of her. "Are they... supposed to get that big?"

The blonde shrugged. "Depends on the person. I've actually seen bigger-" She chuckled at the way the younger girl's eyes widened at the mere thought. "-but that's pretty rare."

"Is it because of the-" Yotsuyu searched for the word for a moment. "Augmentations?"

Azennia smiled pridefully. "Nope! All natural, no implants there." She happened to glance at the picture of her parents, still on the screen of her tablet before her brows furrowed in thought. "Though-" She swiped through a few more pictures to check. "Neither mom nor grandma on dad's side were this big either. Huh." She trailed off, thinking back on the staggering amount of 'ritual objects' that kept being found in Allagan digs. A recurring joke for those in the know was that their technology was only matched by their debauchery.

"-well, shit. I'm going to have to ask some very awkward questions."

Yotsuyu typed out the answer to the homework question on her data tablet with little effort, her constant practice in Garlean paying off. Granted, the questions weren't necessarily difficult, but they had to get done anyway. The ever present noises of the Castrum filled the air around her, but she didn't mind; much the opposite. The concrete floors, cermet walls and magitek devices felt comforting, a reminder that she'd left her old life behind.

School so far has been nice. She hadn't run into Asahi, and everyone was- kind. Polite, at the very least. She wasn't used to it quite yet, but it was definitely growing on her. Her favourite part was the school uniform; the black fabric with slight golden trim reminded her of Azennia's armour. She felt brave in it.

Which was the main reason she took them off the moment she got back to their shared quarters every day after school. Yes, they'd reassured her time and again that the uniforms were just as mass produced as the military fatigues she was currently wearing- but the latter were not as pretty, and felt sturdier. Plus, the new ones they'd found actually fit her nicely, and she didn't need to feel brave, even when sitting outside of the main Castrum shell like she currently was.

The towering walls around the perimeter manned by soldier upon soldier armed with gunblades did that job quite well.

Her concentration was broken by the horrifyingly loud sound of two pieces of cermet crashing into one another- and from her limited experience, it was impossible to make two pieces of the material touch without receiving hearing damage for your trouble-, making her stare at the offending accident. Within seconds, soldiers spilled out of two armoured fighting vehicles that had managed to drive into each other in the training area nearby and began to stare at the damage.

From what she could see, neither looked too damaged, but if there was one thing she'd learned since arriving at the Castrum, it was that magitek warmachina were complicated. The first time someone told her that the average gunship had over ten kilometres of conductive cabling in it, she thought they were joking. They were not.

Within seconds, an absolute torrent of swearing in a metre-tall package came marching out of the insides of the Castrum, pointing angrily at each and every soldier involved in the incident. The sheer anger of how the- Centurion, as far as she could tell from the insignia?- rolled the 'r's in their insults made anything her aunt and uncle could manage seem like a pleasant chat. Tsuyu watched the grey-haired soldier finish shouting, start to walk away, turn around and resume shouting with renewed vigour several times before they marched back towards one of the entrances to the main shell of the base, before changing their mind one final time and hopping onto the bench besides hers, producing a cigarette from her uniform and lighting it.

"What happened?" The young girl asked tentatively, curiosity getting the better of her.

"THAT FU-" Rurusho caught herself mid-swear, halting her renewed explosion of fury and angry gesturing when she saw that the question had come from a minor. "FRICKING Duplicarius thought he could drive one of MY AFVs just because he outranked one of the drivers, and then what does he do!? He CRASHES IT! Because of course that idiot crashes it! And now I'm going to have to find TWO fenders for the fucking-" She caught herself again, but this time too late, and decided to just keep going. "- the fucking things, they don't even MAKE that model anymore!"

The Centurion took several deep drags of the cigarette to try and calm herself down, glancing over at the young girl who was still slightly leaning away from her in fear. She sighed. "Sorry for the swearing. When you get to my age, you just get tired of seeing these wet eared little shits making the same mistakes over and over again."

Yotsuyu slowly sat normally again, looking at the dizzying speed at which the Lalafell navigated the old, worn out tablet in her hands. "How long have you been here, Miss Rurusho?" She'd caught onto Azennia's trick of quickly reading the nametags of personnel she talked with.

"Sneaky." The Centurion grinned without looking up from the device. "The Tribunus is teaching you well." The old officer stretched her back, looking up in thought. "Forty eight, fifty?" She mumbled before giving up on the mental calculation. "Too damned long. Joined up just after the Empire took over my homeland, Corvus. We only had two provinces back then." She let out a smoky breath, turning to face the Doman girl properly. Good thing the wind was blowing the smoke away from the kid. She was a cantankerous old coot, not a bitch.

"Well, I say my homeland." Rurusho tilted her head for a moment in self-argument. "It was actually the Garleans's homeland, my ancestors just kicked them out. You learned about that in school yet?"

Tsuyu nodded. "I've read it in books, but I haven't talked to anyone about it yet."

"Ain't much that isn't there I wager." The Lalafell shrugged. "They got kicked out all the way to damned Garlemald. Cold as shit, can barely grow anything. Found ceruleum, old man Solus puts together some fancy doohickeys powered by that, becomes Emperor, and by the time I was born, I was a citizen of the Empire. It was kinda weird."

"Why weird?" Yotsuyu wondered. That indeed pretty much followed what she'd read about.

"Is just-" She took another drag of the rapidly diminishing cigarette. "It wasn't normal, you know? All of this. Me. You." She pointed at the confused young girl. "Integration. Taking people in as your own right after you blew them up. You just didn't do that back then. You took the land, then either kicked people out, killed them, or enslaved them. It's so much easier." Rurusho shook her head.

"And the stupidest fucking thing is, it works. Treat people well enough, and they don't just forget, they become your people. Don't get me wrong, it's fucking difficult-" She'd outright given up on policing her language at this point. "-and it takes time but it works. I love the Empire. I love visiting the capital. I've been in Dalmasca, Bozja, Doma, and I'll probably be over in Koshu watching idiots crash my AFVs when we go island hopping." She pointed towards the Ruby Sea with the nearly burned out nub between her fingers. "We're out here making a difference, uniting the world, I've been a part for it all my damned life and I can still barely fucking believe it."

Tsuyu smiled, feeling proud of the uniform she was wearing. Sure, she wasn't part of the army yet- but she was a citizen of Garlemald. Saved by the Empire. And maybe, just maybe, she'd be able to save other little girls too one day, just like her guardian.

Rurusho hopped back down from the bench, flicking the butt of her cigarette at a nearby trash can with pinpoint accuracy. "Welp I better get around to finding those damned fenders." She pointed at the young girl's data tablet. "And you better finish that homework or whatever it is. See you around, ki-"

She was interrupted by the distant sound of a hammer striking cermet plates, making her whirl on her feet back towards the accident. "YOU FUCKING NINCOMPOOP WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?"

Yotsuyu leaned back subconsciously from the extreme volume of the old officer's yelling, the return argument from the soldier something about 'buffing out'.

"I WILL BUFF OUT YOUR GENITALS YOU FUCKING IMBECILE! IF YOU'RE STILL HOLDING THAT HAMMER WHEN I GET THERE I'LL MAKE YOU EAT IT!" The Centurion marched on the warpath once more.

Bright red eyes flew open in the darkened quarters, her hand automatically reaching for the gunblade above her bed. Azennia stared at the small space, trying to find the source of the sound she'd heard- having a very light sleep was something she'd learned as a matter of necessity. The young girl on the other side of the quarters tossed and turned in bed, breathing ragged.

"No-" Tsuyu whimpered quietly, pushing against the form in her nightmare. She wasn't strong enough.

The older woman's eyes widened in recognition, leaving her own bed and crouching down by her charge's. Her chest tightened at guessing what the nightmare was about; Yotsuyu didn't deserve to have nightmares about that. No one did. She herself knew it all too well.

"Tsuyu? Yotsuyu? I'm here." Azennia called out, refraining from trying to touch the girl to wake her up. It'd only make the nightmare worse.

"Don't touch-" Her voice got stronger, before she began to relax. "-me..." Dazed silver made contact with wide awake red, slowly taking in the concerned expression. Small lights from the electronics in the room reflected off the polished metal of the blade her guardian still held in her right hand. The fear of the indistinct person conjured by her mind dissipated faster than it had begun.

"It was a nightmare. You're safe. I won't let anyone hurt you." Azennia smiled gently, platinum hair cascaded loosely around her shoulders. She held Tsuyu's hand carefully. "You will always be safe around me, okay?"

Yotsuyu nodded, starting to return the smile. Deep inside, she began to truly believe in her new guardian's words. Her bed felt snug again in the cool air of the room while the tension finished leaving her body, leaving a warmth in her chest in its place.

Azennia looked really pretty with her hair loose like that, she thought. Like a princess from a fairytale.

"Now, let's see-" The Garlean trailed off, looking at her bed and making a quick spatial calculation in her head. "What if." She carefully hung her weapon near the head of Yotsuyu's bed before walking over to her own and picking it up with little effort, placing it in contact side by side with the younger girl's. Laying down, she turned towards her charge, right hand resting in the line that divided the mattresses.

"Would this be better? Now even nightmares can't get close to you." She grinned and flexed her left arm up in the air in an exaggerated show of force.

"I-" Tsuyu's eyes kept flicking all over the older woman in disbelief. She really cares that much? About me? Her smile returned, even brighter, while she nodded several times before placing her own right hand onto Azennia's, snuggling up close to it. "Yeah. Thank you." She whispered.

"Anytime." The older woman whispered back.

It wasn't long before Yotsuyu was asleep again, feeling the safest she'd ever been. She liked the scent of her new guardian, which she was now close enough to make out. It was faint, but it made her whole body feel- fluffy, for a lack of a better word. And fluffy was very, very comfortable.

Azennia made sure to stay awake until she knew for sure that Tsuyu was sleeping soundly, taking one last look to double check. This sensation, this warmth that she felt was nice. Seeing the younger girl happy made her happy too. Maybe, due to her distance from most other people, she bonded too quickly.

But maybe that was fine too. She thought, allowing herself to relax into a restful sleep.

"So uh- how do you see in that helmet? It's all closed." Yotsuyu asked while skipping forward, looking up at Azennia's armoured form. She wanted to try and not step on the divisions between cermet plates on the ground. Why?

Because it was fun.

The leader of the Praetorian guard took off said helmet, grinning. "How long have you been wanting to ask me that?" A part of her mind noticed the base was a bit more hectic than usual today, but there were no operations or exercises scheduled until the end of the week. No matter, she could ask her squad later in the day.

"A while." Tsuyu avoided her eyes, slightly embarrassed about being caught.

"Well-" Azennia turned the piece of armour on her hand, showing the front to the younger girl. "-see these recessed small circles all over it? They're cameras. And inside-" She turned it again so the inner lining was visible. "-it's covered in screens, just like your data tablet."

"Oehh-" Yotsuyu smiled widely, mouth agape while walking sideways and staring at the images being fed to the inside of the helmet. She'd gotten quite interested in magitek devices and their inner workings, and had already taken her own tablet apart and put it back together several times. Under supervision, of course.

"...Wanna try it?" The blonde woman asked with a conspiratorial whisper, offering the helmet to her charge.

Tsuyu's eyes widened. "I- can I? Isn't it super expensive?" Nevertheless, she still took it carefully between her hands. It was lighter than it looked.

Azennia chuckled. "It is, but if you're able to damage it, then I shouldn't be using it to protect my head in a fight, should I?" She tapped on her own temple to make a point.

"Alright." The young Doman carefully put the piece of gear over her head, surprised at the fact that it didn't fit too badly.

The older woman smiled at her charge looking in what she assumed to be bewilderment side to side, up and down, slowly wandering off to the side- "Tsuyu!" Azennia called out in concern, noticing the girl walking directly towards an incoming soldier carrying a rather large box.

"Wha-" Yotsuyu turned her head towards the direction of the voice, before a dull thunk against the side of her head sent her down on her rear.

"The fu-" Lar oen Silus, Legionarius with all of three months of experience, moved the box he was carrying to the side to see what sort of dumbass managed to not look where they were going. All three of his eyes damned near popped out of their sockets at the sight of the little girl that'd been adopted by the witch princess, the princess who just happened to work in internal affairs no less; shaking her head while sitting on the ground with said heir to the throne checking on her. He wished his hands were free so he could take his gunblade and shoot himself now to save everyone the trouble.

That not being a valid option, he decided that freezing up in absolute horror was the best part of valour.

"I'm alright!" Yotsuyu declared, managing to take off the piece of armour and give her guardian a thumbs up. "It didn't hurt, but it was all dark inside. I couldn't see where I was going." She looked at the helmet with worry. "I- think I broke it."

Silus swore mentally at hearing those words. Not only was he going to be killed, he'd be in debt for the next several lifetimes.

"Huh." Azennia picked up the equipment, looking inside. All of the screens came instantly back to life, showing no anomalies. Handing it back over to Tsuyu, it turned off again as soon as it got further away than her arm's length. "No, it's working fine." She smiled at the girl reassuringly. "I just thought the transmission range from the armour was longer. My bad." She ruffled her charge's raven black hair.

"I-" the Legionarius swallowed dryly. "My apologies ma'am." His voice shook. "I was taking this part to the motor pool and I- uh-" His brain quickly scrambled to try and walk the line between incriminating himself and blaming a child, and found out that metaphorical tightrope acrobatics were not its forte.

"Oh! No harm done, Lar. I should have checked things beforehand. By all means, go ahead with your delivery." The Praetor smiled soothingly, even though the man had begun to sweat with a concerned smile.

Yotsuyu noticed the shape of the box before nodding enthusiastically, picking herself up with the ease only children made of dreams and rubber could. "Rurusho will be happy to know the new fenders have arrived." She smiled.

"Yeah! Yeah, I hope she will." His voice came out a bit higher and more frantic than he intended before he double timed out of there in near panic. Not only could she cast magic and read minds, but she could teach kids to do it too!? Wait- his brain came to a screeching halt, unlike his legs. Did she adopt that kid because the child could read minds as well? He shivered, adjusting his grip on the box.

He was a Garlean, damnit. He wasn't cut out for this spooky woo woo business.

"Is it working now?" Azennia asked cheerfully, trying to glance back at the young girl she was holding up in a piggy back ride.

"It is! Yotsuyu giggled with excitement, staring at all the data overlays of names and ranks that kept being written next to people on the displays, the map on the corner of her vision, the waves of the sensors that allowed limited sensing through walls- this is how her guardian saw the world? She felt like one of the superheroes her friends had shown her comics of in school. "This is so cool!" Her voice came out at a pitch she didn't know she could reach.

"I know right?" The older woman chuckled happily, taking joy in seeing her charge being so full of life. Such a stark change from the traumatised, shy little girl that she'd rescued not that long ago. It felt good to see the true Yotsuyu blossom.

"Uh- Azennia?" The Doman pointed at a group entering the shell of the Castrum ahead of them. "It says here that that's the emperor. And the previous emperor. And the prince." Yotsuyu listed awkwardly.

"Oh Shi-" The Praetor hissed. "-iinngles, that they are." So that's what I forgot, her brain so helpfully realised. Her father will be visiting today. Crouching to let Tsuyu back down carefully, she cleared her throat while clasping her helmet back to the spot on her armour's hip.

"Tribunus." The imposing middle aged man in beautifully built armour led the group towards the two women. Stopping exactly a metre away, his fist touched his chest in a perfectly executed salute, soon copied by the older and younger men flanking him. "Anything to report regarding the Praetorian Guard?"

Azennia returned the salute, and saw Yotsuyu copying her quite well from the corner of her eye. "Nothing that isn't already in the system, Sir."

"Good." He relaxed his stance and pulled his daughter into a warm hug. "How have you been doing dear?"

"I've been well, how's mom?" The older woman stepped back, hugging the other two members of the group..

"Probably happy that I've left the capital so that she can run things as efficiently as she'd like instead of pretending to get my permission." The Emperor of Garlemald chuckled.

Tsuyu stared up at her guardian with wide eyes. A princess? The princess? Azennia was the heir to the throne of Garlemald?
'Armour plates dark as night contrasted against the summer glare, golden trim reflecting the sun-'

She was saved and taken in by a literal princess in shining armour. Yotsuyu wanted to say a billion things at the same time, so with great wisdom, her brain condensed them all into one question.

"Bwuh?"

She believed it was profound.

The Emperor noticed the young girl staring at his daughter in a flabbergasted state before pinching the bridge of his nose. "Azennia yae Galvus. Am I right in guessing you've neglected to mention to Lady Resurgens your full name?"

"Ah! Right-" The blonde woman looked at the group around her, chuckling in embarrassment. "So, Tsuyu." She turned to the Doman. "This is my father, Lucius." She pointed to the middle aged man with greying hair, who bowed his head for a moment in greetings. "My grandfather, Solus." Next, she pointed to the elderly man with a large, white beard. He nodded in acknowledgement with a kind smile. "And lastly, my nephew, Zenos." She finished by pointing at the young man flanking her father, who waved a quick 'v' sign at the young girl with a nonchalant 'Yo.'

"And uh- yeah. Galvus family." Azennia indicated a horizontal circle in the air with an index finger, alluding to the four platinum-haired Garleans.

"Uh- uhm..." No pressure, Tsuyu thought; she was just in front of most of the royal family. Falling back into old habits out of mild panic, she fell into a Doman bow. "I- It's an honour to meet all of you." She had enough presence of mind left to stand back up after a moment.

"And uh- guys, meet Yotsuyu bas Resurgens. You probably already know that I've taken her in as my charge until she comes of age. She's a wonderful kid, I fully believe she'll go far."

"Well, I for one-" The middle aged man sighed while moving down to one knee to try and reach Tsuyu's eye level. He didn't, but at least now he dwarfed her less. "-trust in my daughter's judgement." The Emperor extended his right hand with a confident smile. "Welcome to the Garlean Empire, Yotsuyu. You can call me Lucius; though I guess Grandfather would technically fit as well."

"Uh-" Tsuyu's brain was doing its best to catch up with the absurdity being thrown at it. To its credit, it hadn't completely given up yet. Emphasis on yet. "Thank you, Mister Lucius." She shook his hand awkwardly.

"Pah! You don't have the beard to call yourself a grandfather yet, boy. That's my role." Solus grinned, crossing his arms.

Lucius rolled his eyes with a long-suffering smile. "As you say, father." He turned back to Yotsuyu. "Just Lucius then."

A loud mechanical noise marked the lights of the entire castrum changing from a neutral white to deep red, followed by a blaring alarm echoing through the halls.

"EMERGENCY! AETHER PATTERN BLUE, NEW EIKON DETECTED! ALL PERSONNEL TO BATTLE STATIONS, THIS IS NOT A DRILL! REPEAT, THIS IS NOT A DRILL! EMERGENCY-"

"Well..." The Emperor of Garlemald stood back up, looking northeast towards where the frontline was. "That's certainly some very specific timing for the first Eikon they throw at us." His brows furrowed.

Tsuyu's heart hammered in her chest while the Castrum roared into action around her. She'd learned about Eikons- manifestations of Kamis summoned at great cost of faith and aether, possessed of cataclysmic power and the ability to enthrall those near them. The Empire was adamantly against such beings, and destroyed any that they came across.

"Time to go to work." Azennia sighed, putting on her helmet and selecting several commands on her gauntlet. In response, the aetherochemical reactors in her armour came to life with a satisfying hum. Crouching down in front of Yotsuyu with ease, she carefully took the young Doman's hands in hers.

"Stay safe, alright? We'll be back before you know it." She nodded.

"Please be careful." Tsuyu pleaded nervously.

"Will do, always." The Praetor, and member of the resident Anti-Eikon Reaction Force, gave the girl a thumbs up before making her way to one of the departing airships. "Zenos, on me!"

The teenager looked down at Yotsuyu, examining the way she stared at his aunt's retreating form.

"Don't worry about it." He declared with a calm and collected voice, equipping his own helmet.

"Eh?" Tsuyu looked up in surprise at the member of the royal family, which still dwarfed both herself and her guardian in height alone.

"Auntie is too good to be killed." He stared at the younger girl for a second before taking off in a sprint towards the landing pads.

Zenos yae Galvus, fourteen years old, stared in mounting horror at the limp armoured body of the only true friend he'd ever had sail through the air, crashing its way through the remains of a wall like it was not there. Every detail, every microsecond of it, every metallic bounce of a gunblade off in the distance.

"AUNTIE!" He screamed, voice breaking in despair. She'd taken a hit meant for him. The thrice-cursed Eikon finally had taken notice of him, specifically, after he'd delivered a particularly grievous wound to it.

And Zenos, in his youthful stupidity and tunnel vision, hadn't realised. He'd committed a beginner's mistake, and now the only person who understood him, who grew up at his side and taught him how to parse other people and their emotions, had paid the price. The battle waged on around him, yet he was frozen where he stood, staring at the likely corpse of the one, single person he cared about, fallen in the distance.

"Zenos! Steel yourself, she will live!" Solus shouted through the cacophony of spells and gunfire, blocking a claw swipe from the creature and countering with a ceruleum round from his gauntlet. One way or the other, Hades thought to himself.

EMERGENCY REBOOT_

ROYAL ALLAGAN ARMOURY SYS Ver 5.73_

SYSTEMS CHECK COMPLETE - 37% OPERATIONAL_

USER CHECK - ROYAL BLOODLINE DETECTED_

EMERGENCY_

USER BP 0/0_

USER PULSE 0_

REROUTING POWER TO REVIVIFICATION SYSTEM_

FOR THE GLORY OF ALLAG_

Azennia gasped into consciousness, a garbled sound of air trying to force its way through fluid. Her heart hammered erratically in her chest, every cell forced into function by the sheer volume of aether poured into her body. She felt her neck move of its own accord, fresh, cold pain now flooding from every limb while they did the same, realigning themselves to where they were supposed to be, before they were shattered in a thousand thousand parts by the last thing she saw before darkness took over.

Her vision tried to focus on the malfunctioning displays inside her helmet, covered in red as they were. She couldn't fight like this. A sluggish hand hit the quick release button with great effort even while her fingers aligned themselves back into place with dull, wet cracking sounds. Unfiltered air and light reached her, and between coughs that expelled blood from her lungs to be refilled with air, she saw the battle continuing a good half kilometre from where her corpse had landed.

Slowly, painfully, she brought herself to a knee, and then to her feet. She could feel the implants inside her- the ones still working, at least- repairing her body as fast as they could. They'd buy her a few minutes before the entire system collapsed again. It'd have to be enough.

Zenos grit his teeth in frustration while another cut failed to do the intended damage, the blade missing its alignment by just a few degrees- a mistake he hadn't made in years. No matter how hard he tried to concentrate, the moment, the dread, was burned into his mind. Intellectually, he knew. He was fully aware of what his aunt could do; she had, after all, been the one who could not just keep up with him, but exceed him in everything they did.

He'd never seen her go limp after a strike like that. Which explained his shock at seeing an armoured figure stagger towards a fallen gunblade in the distance.

Azennia yae Galvus, princess of Garlemald and heir to the throne, used her weapon to help herself back upright. Her equipment felt heavy, she couldn't hear, and the only thing that wasn't in cold pain were her lungs- those burned with every breath. But she could still stand. She could still move, fight. She could still...

"It is a grand-" she gasped for air that refused to come, taking a step forward. The movement enhancement system responded, a mix of aether and ceruleum pushing against the ground to move her faster. "-and glorious dream I protect!"

...dream. It was that dream that gave her the willpower to walk, then jog unsteadily, back into the battle. The dream of a united, prosperous planet under the Garlean banner. One with no need for Eikons, no people dying in the cold, no children sold to a horrible fate.

"Zenos!" She shouted with great effort. And then the spot in space she'd occupied was nothing but smoke.

The teenager smiled- not only was his best friend indeed alive, but he knew that tone of voice. Something was going to die, and it would be by their hands. In retrospect, the despair he'd felt looked downright foolish; nothing could kill his aunt. And as he saw a lightning bolt pierce through the Eikon beast's neck, he joined in the process of making it regret ever trying.

Water and ice followed the thunder, further injuring the wounded spot in the creature while he leapt atop its back.

Off of the corner of his eye, he saw his counterpart- energy burned around her while she moved through hand signs, rooted to the spot in concentration. In return, hundreds of glowing blades materialised in the air around him and the creature, the very air vibrating with power. His smile turned into a grin when he sunk his gunblade deep into the spine of the Eikon, focusing all his might into the buried blade. He'd never used this in actual combat before, but now was the time to try.

While the half tiger, half snake howled from the pain of numberless impalements, Zenos willed the mixed aether and ceruleum in his weapon to explode outward, a growing red light tearing the fake god in half.

Azennia couldn't help but chuckle at the sight of her nephew going from a mighty conqueror atop a wretched beast, to a mortified lanky teenager fallen on his arse once said beast dissipated back into its constituent aether. As the adrenaline left her, so did what strength she'd been able to claw back from oblivion, forcing her down into one knee, her sword speared into the ground the only thing that even allowed her that small dignity. She'd pushed an already heavily damaged and hastily repaired system past any and every reasonable point, and the price had arrived.

In a pained daze, she picked up the crystal on the ground under her with idle curiosity.

HEAR

FEEL

THINK

No! Nononono- she knew what this was, grandfather had warned her about this-

She saw the fire raining around her in a dark void- Yeah big whoop de doo I've seen this before, I didn't learn to control my ability just to have a BLOODY EIKON HIJACK MY MIND!

CRYSTAL BEARER

A blue crystal approached her, but when Azennia reached for her gunblade, it wasn't there. I've had it with Eikons for today, GET OUT OF MY HEAD!

I AM HYD-

"I AM FULLY AWARE OF WHAT YOU FUCKING ARE! AND YOU WILL GET! OUT! OF! MY! HEAD!"

Darkness gave way to grey skies once more, the sound of approaching boots and airships faint in her ears. The Praetorian looked at the dissipating aether from the shattered crystal on her hand, before peace, actual peace, robbed her of her consciousness once more.

-( -

Solus zos Galvus, Emperor of Garlemald and Ascian in disguise, sat helplessly in the waiting room of the Royal Hospital in the centre district of the capital with his head in his hands, staring at the doors of the intensive care unit hallway. In another comfortable chair to his side, Hypatia, his daughter-in-law, read through a recently printed stack of papers calmly.

How many times? He asked himself. How many times would he keep trying, keep hoping? Keep believing that the sundered could ever grow enough to be worthy of inheriting Etheirys? Because if Lucius died, then-

He didn't think he could keep trying anymore. He wasn't strong enough. He sighed.

"Have faith, your highness." The young woman at his side advised with a confident voice, carefully flipping the document to the next page and studying the new set of cell diagrams.

Emet-Selch, keeper of the aetherial realm, stared in confusion at the entirely new soul burning within her. It'd been born after the sundering, yet presented itself as one of the most stalwart persons he'd ever seen. In the scant few years she'd spent at his son's side, he'd seen her side to side with him at the battlefield just as often as at the negotiating table; even while pregnant- which had, coincidentally, forced Lucius to take a more administrative role for that time, for otherwise she'd been fully willing to be piloting gunships to give air support to her beloved even while carrying the heir to the throne in her womb.

"That'd be awfully hypocritical of me, what with having banned organised religions within living memory." He chuckled humorlessly.

"We are all hypocrites at some level, it's just how people are." She smiled faintly at memories of demanding Lucius to be careful even while time and again risking her own life to help him; before putting the stack of papers down on her lap and looking at Solus. "But I don't mean to have faith in some manufactured god born out of despair. You can simply have faith in the capability and determination of mankind to constantly achieve the impossible. Be it inventing ceruleum engines-" she watched his eyebrows rise at the mention of what first catapulted him to popularity more than two decades beforehand. "-to machina that soar through the heavens, and even diseases which might seem incurable."

Emet looked quietly at the ceiling in thought. 'Some manufactured god born out of despair' was harsh, but accurate, he mused in sarcastic mirth while scratching idly at the needle marks in his forearms, parts of himself freely given to try and help his son survive. Is that where they went wrong?
"What if it is?" He mumbled, still more than loud enough to be heard in the silent room.

"Nothing is incurable. Nothing is beyond the Empire's reach. Not as long as we keep trying." Hypatia picked the papers back up, finding where she'd left off. "Not as long as we keep trying.", she whispered to herself.

- )-

"Hey there, little one." Emet said, crouched on one knee to be anywhere near Hypatia's rounded abdomen. His cheeks hurt from smiling, and he knew he looked like an old doofus in his current body, but he didn't mind. The almost iridescent blue he could see shining together with the mother's soul brought him too much joy to contain. She was here. As his granddaughter, no less. He couldn't ask for more.

"Father, at this rate I'll have to keep you locked away from Azennia once she's born so you don't spoil her to death." Lucius commented half-jokingly. As the current Emperor, he technically did have the authority.

"Now now dear, it's fine." Hypatia laughed, arms happily locked around one of her husband's. "I have a feeling she'll be enough of a handful to where we'll need all the help we can get." She looked down towards the unborn child, looking forward towards the future- none the least because of the knowledge of what her daughter would represent given the treatments she'd already undergone. The first step.

"Don't worry, I'll just recite tax law at him until he runs out of the room if needed. Works every time." Varis grinned, adjusting his long hair under his riding helmet as he made his way out of the royal compound.

"Kiddo, try not to kill yourself with that contraption. I know you're enjoying your new life, I get that. But we'd still be horrified if we found you wrapped around a tree somewhere." Lucius pleaded with his son, who, being set free of the expectations of rulership, could now indulge in a much suppressed rebellious phase.

"Yeah yeah, I get it." He waved a hand dismissively in the air before turning back. "I do mean that, though. I wouldn't want to do that to you guys." His mind rolled back to the sight of the ambulances around the crash site where he'd recently lost one of his new friends, and the ineffective platitudes he tried to tell their crying parents. He didn't want that. "Besides-"

He shouted over the distance of the outside of the main living quarters, and the noise of his motorbike's ceruleum engine. "-what sort of older brother would I be if I wasn't there to threaten any suitors once my little sister is all grown up?" Varis yae Galvus laughed at his own joke before setting off into the night.

- )-

Tsuyu stared at the ceiling of their shared quarters, fidgeting the fur of the jacket she still kept. She'd tried getting some reading done, to no avail- the words stared at her from the screen, yet her mind just didn't accept them. She was worried.

On one hand, she felt bad about being so worried. She knew how strong Azennia was, and even- Zenos, was his name?- had told her that her guardian couldn't be killed. So she should be able to relax, right? Then why were her insides twisting into a nervous knot?

Her sigh was cut off by a gasp as the sound of a beep code alarm reached the inside of the room. Short-Long-Short-Short, her memory of the Castrum's alerts told her that it meant medical and trauma team should be on standby at the emergency airship land-

She was running towards the pads before her brain could finish the thought.

Zenos yae Galvus leapt out of the descending aircraft the very moment it was safe to do so, immediately helping to organise the path to the emergency centre. It was what he could do, what he had to do. Anything.

He had to do anything else but stand there unable to help while his aunt's condition worsened despite the best efforts of the medics and healers from the reaction force during the entire flight back. They'd been able to keep her alive- if only just. Through no fault of their own, the well trained reasoning part of his brain reminded him; she wasn't exactly a normal patient. Neither of them were.

Yotsuyu spotted the platinum blonde hair from a distance, the imposing figure of her guardian's nephew staring nervously at the darkened insides of the one airship that'd already landed, two more only now appearing on final approach. She'd learned, from reading the instructions for base personnel over and over again, that getting in the way of a medevac case helped no one, and much the opposite, made things significantly worse. So she sprinted to his side, and tried to lean forward to peer through the solid mass of people in white coats surrounding the aircraft's rear loading ramp.

Had the young Doman turned around, she'd have noticed the heavy footfalls of the Emperor also rushing to their position.

Azennia felt her consciousness repeatedly drift in and out of reach in a painless stupor, faint noises and sensations the only thing she could feel. She felt like she was forgetting something. The hurried voices of the medical team, the dull impact of an emergency landing. Something told her that she should be in a rather lot of pain, and the fact that she wasn't would be concerning, if she could remember how to feel concerned. The only constants were the cold, pure oxygen in her lungs and the frantic beating of her heart, struggling to maintain any level of blood pressure. That would have been even more concerning.

Had she a working helmet, she'd have been notified of the remaining implants and armour systems alike reaching their breaking point and failing in sequence, trying to keep their host alive. Azennia yae Galvus had been thoroughly trained to never, ever panic no matter the situation, but that would have been a good time to give it a try anyway. As it stood, only two things managed to catch her attention; a pair of voices in different languages garbled together to the point of being almost unparseable. Almost.

"Auntie!" The uneven voice of a teenage boy cried out. She remembered that sound; it'd been important to her for a long time.

"Āyí Azennia!" The desperate voice of a young girl sounded just as loudly. That was a newer one, but equally burned into her brain.

She managed to crack an eyelid open through great effort, following the source of the sounds to her side. Yellow and silver eyes passed by, staring at her in near panic.

Right. She'd died. And she finally remembered that if she didn't do a certain thing right now, she probably wouldn't be coming back again. That'd mean she'd be breaking several promises- and that'd just be awful. That thought, and it alone, forced the damaged tissues of her right arm to overpower the bent armour plates and dead servo motors trying to keep it in place, reaching for a button on the inside of the collar of her armour- or what was left of it- and pressing a button.

"Seven-" She coughed, fresh warm liquid being expelled from her lungs again. "-Three. Seven. Five. Nine."

The moment the last word had left her mouth, she felt the pressure of the emergency unlock system pushing the plates of her armour apart; or at least the parts that still worked. In retrospect, maybe only her knowing the code was a bad idea. She should keep that in mind in case she survives. Either way, it'd have to be enough for the medici. She'd be going back to sleep now, thank you very much.

Tsuyu stared at the display of the tablet on her hands, unblinking. Today, she'd learned, was apparently just one of those days. To her side, the teenager almost twice her height also stared at the screen, if only for a lack of anything else to do while the two sat outside of the emergency care room at Cautis in the dead of night.

It was only a few hours after her guardian had been taken through the doors to her right that a small army of medici and architecti had arrived from the capital, boxes upon boxes being carted in behind them. According to Zenos, the white-haired man who'd led the entourage was no one less than Midas nan Garlond. She'd seen the name in her studies; if Solus was the father of magitek, Midas was its husband- and apparently, Azennia and her armour were his masterworks.

It took until he'd personally come back out and assured the gathered members of the Galvus family- and herself- that the princess would be back on her feet within days, that Lucius and Solus were able to be dragged away by their aides to deal with urgent matters.

Which now left a twelve year old Doman girl and a fourteen year old Garlean prince as the only ones waiting for her.

"So-" Yotsuyu trailed off, looking up at the older boy with not a hint of exhaustion behind her eyes, despite the late hour and the night lighting of the Castrum being much softer. She'd never been so afraid in her whole life. "-you were there, right? How did she get hurt like that?" It wasn't a demand, or even an accusation. She just needed- something. A reason.

Zenos kept his silence for a long moment. The girl cared, that he could have told with a passing glance. But it took longer for him to notice the details, the subtle mannerisms. The seeds of obsession. Perhaps...

Perhaps he'd just found someone else he could relate to. And if that was the case, she deserved to know.

"It was my fault." He managed to grind out halfway between his teeth, every syllable capitulating his utter failure that day. "Auntie took a hit meant for me." His voice wavered before he swallowed hard, emotions something so rare and fleeting most of the time that his mind struggled to deal with ones this powerful. Especially when the main ones were almost unheard of for him: shame and guilt. But the moment frozen in time stored in his memories from earlier that day would not let go.

"Maybe it was an accident? She didn't see the attack coming?" Yotsuyu offered, trying to find a silver lining for the older boy to hang onto. It was beyond obvious that the notion of Azennia having gotten hurt in his stead ate away at him.

The prince shook his head. "Impossible. If I saw it, she saw it." He declared with absolute certainty. "Auntie doesn't make mistakes." Golden eyes locked onto silver ones while he raised an eyebrow. "Did she tell you? About-?" He trailed off.

Tsuyu nodded, pointing at her own eyes. She wasn't sure how much her guardian's nephew knew, and she figured that was a safe way to check if they were talking about the same thing.

"Interesting." He pondered for a moment, recognizing the unpleasant feeling inside his chest as jealousy, before smiting it down with the force of a thousand suns. Auntie would never abandon him, and doubting her words with something so banal as that emotion was below his capabilities. Zenos yae Galvus was better than that. Not only that, but obviously his best friend would be happy if he got along with this girl. If so, then that shall be reality.

"I'm actually part of that initiative as well." He produced a small smile. Technically, he was talking about something that made him feel closer to Azennia, and therefore, it wasn't fake.

"Really?" Yotsuyu tilted her head to the side slightly in curiosity. "But your eyes aren't-"

Zenos blinked, drawing forth his aethersight due to resonance. "Red?" He interrupted. For once, the way someone flinched back at seeing him in that state was mildly amusing. He was more than aware that the black sclera especially was rather off putting to people, even if it made no difference to him. He blinked again, letting go of the ability. "But you're partially right; my augmentations are different from Auntie's."

"I- I see." That made sense, Tsuyu thought- the older boy's armour looked nothing like Azennia's, after all. Still, if it was both her guardian and him that'd been augmented- "Is it only on people from the royal family? Why?" Someone had to be the first, the older woman's words sounded in her memory. But why risk the entire lineage?

The prince shrugged, leaning back and crossing his fingers behind his head. "Our duty. A leader cannot ask someone to do something they wouldn't do themselves. To prove that is a certain way to inspire loyalty. A loyal empire is a stable empire, and a stable empire is a powerful empire." He quoted from memory from one of the many lectures he'd had to attend. Not that it mattered, of course. As far as he was concerned, the entirety of the empire could catch fire at this very moment, and it wouldn't change a thing for him.

But it would for Auntie. And if she cared, he cared.

"When do you think other people will be able to get them?" Yotsuyu asked in curiosity. How many years does something like that even need to be tested for?

"I don't know." Zenos asked honestly. Truth be told, he'd never even considered it. "It probably depends. Five, ten, twenty years? For the ones Auntie has, at least." Now that he thought about it, if everyone could reach even a fraction of his best friend's capabilities- well, the world would be a lot less boring, at least. Maybe that was something to look forward to after all. "Mine will probably take longer, at least until they fix the problem."

"What problem?" Tsuyu's eyes widened slightly in worry. Did it mean that Azennia's augmentations had a problem too? She said they were safe...

But maybe even she doesn't know it.

The older boy extended an arm towards the device the Doman was holding in an unspoken request before accessing a remote server, a small light in his gauntlet turning green before he could access the files. After copying some to local storage, he handed it back to the girl. "Did auntie get a new tablet?"

"Huh?" Tsuyu asked in confusion before actually paying attention to the device for the first time in several hours- and realising it wasn't hers. "Oh! I-" She got up immediately. ""-when I ran to the landing pad, I... I need to go put this back."

"Nah, it's fine." Zenos claimed nonchalantly. "If she didn't want you using it, your band wouldn't have unlocked it." Like his ID couldn't. He didn't like what thinking about that meant, so he simply decided not to. "Besides, I'm sure auntie will need it once she wakes up."

Yotsuyu pondered, looking at the ground. The older boy was right; Azennia would probably need it. She'd just refrain from snooping around any files, and it'd likely be fine. Sitting back down, she started opening the documents he'd downloaded.

Visio Futura Project Report 04

Subject A has been successfully carried to term with no visible anomalies other than the expected iris pigmentation. All values are within nominal expectations, with the exception of a variation in the aetherial frequency when outside stimuli is detected. Further study is required.

Funding for a possible Subject R variant in the future has been granted.

"A? As in Azennia?" She asked the prince which followed her reading closely.

Zenos shook his head. "Allagan. Same as R stands for Resonant." He pointed a thumb to himself. "A version we manufactured based on her augmentations, without using the material we dug up. We'd have run out of it eventually if we kept doing that."

Tsuyu nodded. A lot of the books her guardian had given to her mentioned how important it was to not rely on very limited resources, so that made sense.

Visio Futura Project Report 13

Subject A shows accelerated cognitive and physical development as per expectations from the translated documents. Reports of personnel reliving possibly traumatic memories when in close proximity to subject under investigation. Possible evidence of uncontrolled memory diving capability, which would require changes in caring standards to reduce, or if possible, remove, outside actors to assure mental stability by diminishing cross-contamination.

Subject R has been confirmed, project diversification will proceed as planned.

Visio Futura Project Report 37

Subject A shows signs of post-traumatic stress disorder after repeated uncontrolled memory dives onto nearby personnel. Further interviews with said personnel confirmed the memories in question to be highly likely as the cause. Screening started of therapists with risk management of past history as a key factor.

Subject R showed similar accelerated development as previously seen in Subject A, but significantly stunted emotional intelligence. Psychopathy diagnosis possible. More data required.

The young girl stared at the text on the screen in shock. The therapist she'd been visiting had explained to her what PTSD was, given that was one of the conditions she'd been at risk for. But Azennia? That seemed impossible, she was the strongest, kindest person Yotsuyu had ever seen, how-

"What's a memory dive?" She stared into golden eyes with uncertainty.

"Exactly what it sounds like. Auntie could-" He corrected himself. "-still can, actually, see other people's memories. Even experience the sensations, apparently. I can't do it, so I'm not sure how it works." He shrugged.

"But it says that it was uncontrolled, and that-" Tsuyu trailed off, the mental image of her guardian slowly changing- from an idolised symbol to a person of flesh and blood. It was a lot to take in.

"I was really young, so I don't remember it all too well but; yeah." Zenos's voice got softer. "Apparently it just... happened, sometimes, when she was near someone. The main problem is that for some reason it seemed to always target bad memories, times when people got hurt one way or the other.

Auntie never spoke much when we sparred way back then. I didn't mind, but looking back at it now-" He knew, intellectually, that a four year old child had absolutely none of the tools necessary to help in any meaningful way, let alone with his condition. It didn't stop him from wishing he somehow did anyway. "She wasn't well." He sighed.

Yotsuyu remembered the way Azennia held her hand that time she'd had a nightmare- and every night since. That was only with her own traumatic memories. If her guardian had seen, felt, the traumas of several other people, while even younger-

How could she have become so kind? Was it why she was so kind? Tsuyu couldn't even begin to understand. But thinking of the older woman alone inside that emergency room made the air inside her jacket feel cold, no matter how much she tried to curl up on herself. The only thing she could do was to keep reading.

Visio Futura Project Report 79

Subject A currently shows mental and physical capabilities reaching three to five times the nominal values for her age bracket. Cognitive therapy continues to show little effect on mental state due to continued memory dives, although the rate of the events seem to be diminishing. More details about the tutelage under the previous emperor repeatedly denied.

Subject R shows similar development compared to records of Subject A at his age with the known exception of emotional intelligence. Subject R seems to have formed an emotional bond with Subject A, and continued contact has lessened the deviance of expected values. More data required.

Visio Futura Project Report 166

Subject A's growth pattern successfully halted. Subject's mental state has reached 85% of nominal values, within acceptable deviation. Implant installation will proceed as planned. Subject R shows expected development with continued unexpected growth in emotional intelligence. Further testing narrowed the source of off-nominal value due to supplanting of empathy capability by advanced reasoning and examination. Subject R's categorization changed to 'functional'.

"That's the most recent one I can access." Zenos commented, noticing the girl had gotten to the end of the last entry.

"So- she got better?" Yotsuyu asked; hoped.

"More or less. Great grandfather taught her how to control it, at least. I'm not sure how." The prince stared at something beyond the solid opposite wall. "Honestly, I'm not- great, with emotions, like it said. It's the part of my augmentations that needs to be fixed before other people can use it." He explained, still looking at something only he could see. "I can barely feel any. Anger, joy, fear, it's either not there or it's such a faint trace of it that it might as well not be. And because of that, I couldn't understand how or why people felt them either."

Zenos looked at the younger girl. "But when I was around auntie, I could feel things. I don't know why, but when she taught me how emotions worked, what they meant, how I should react, I finally understood it. I still rarely feel anything when I'm near other people, but now I at least can understand them, and know what to do around them." He focused on the locked doors of the emergency room.

"Auntie is amazing. I just wish she didn't get hurt saving my stupid hide."

"I think she did it because she cares about you." Tsuyu stated the obvious, watching the blonde teenager look back at her. She felt the soft fur of the jacket collar nuzzled against her neck. "I think that's why she does a lot of things."

Zenos was quiet for a long while, the red emergency sign burning into his retinas. "Yeah."

Yotsuyu jolted awake at the sound of opening doors, squinting her eyes through the light. Zenos had been forced- almost physically- to leave in the small hours of the morning by Lucius to follow him and Solus back to the capital; they did not want to risk the Domans summoning another Eikon to try and kill the Emperor. Even then, the prince only agreed to do so upon Tsuyu promising to message him the moment his aunt was awake.

"Dear Empire, you're still here, child." The tall medicus with pointed ears let out a deep breath, tiredly rubbing her eyes. Evriane lux Shiefofier had dealt with horrible injuries before- if anything, it was simply part of life as a trauma chirurgeon. She had not, however, helped take someone apart while they were still- barely- alive, replaced literal boxes full of magitek paraphernalia inside them, and put them back together overnight, all while Midas nan Garlond of all people ordered her around; before. Oh, and her patient just happened to be the crown princess, which somehow was healing at a rate that would make the world's most aggressive cancer blush.

It'd been a rough night, is what the Elezen wanted to say.

"Hmm" Yotsuyu mumbled incoherently, slowly uncocooning herself from within the jacket. "I'm waiting for Azennia to wake up. What time is it?"

"It's nine in the morning." Evriane double checked the small digital readout on her wristband. She'd seen the Doman girl there when she first went into the room sixteen hours ago. "Have you even gotten something to eat?"

"I'm not hungry." Tsuyu shook her head. It was true; she wasn't at all. "How is she doing?"

"She's under anaesthesia, but it should clear out of her system in a few hours. She should-" And Shiefofier could not believe she was saying this- "make a full recovery within a few days." The mere thought was mildly terrifying.

The young girl smiled, looking at the unlocked doors. "Can I-?" She trailed off, before looking at the chirurgeon with pleading eyes.

The Elezen was too tired for this. "Yes, but do not disturb her while she's unconscious." With all of the absurdities in the past day, she did not put it past the head of the local praetorian guard to somehow wake up through enough anaesthetics to knock out an aurochs. "Am I clear?"

Yotsuyu nodded enthusiastically, already halfway past the doors.

"...I need some ice cream." Evriane shuffled towards the mess hall.

Tsuyu walked past the medicus at the entrance, which did not regard her with more than a passing look and a gesture towards the back of the room. Quietly making her way there, the young girl opened the door to the last dividers.

Azennia laid unconscious on the bed under sterile covers, on her right side much like Yotsuyu had seen every night- to the point of having left space in front of her. Only this time, most of the skin she could see was covered in bandages, and the few places which weren't- the connection ports on her limbs and back- sprouted long, thick cables that converged into a device on the side of the bed. The line on the screen pulsed up and down rhythmically, with soft beeps accompanying every peak.

A faint memory danced just out of reach, of a tiny little girl besides her parents watching the puppet show that'd come to her village. Of one of the dolls lying lifelessly on the small stage once the play had ended, strings abandoned by its master laying behind it.

She found herself not liking that memory anymore.

After a long moment, Yotsuyu bas Resurgens carefully climbed onto the hospital bed, laying the warm fur-lined jacket over both her guardian and herself, before slowly, gently placing her hand on top of Azennia's like she'd done every night for a while now.

- )-

An entire concert in the pouring rain. Even for one who had embraced theatrics such as him, it was silly, he thought. Surely, even if it was the founding anniversary of the Empire, with the open air event centre at the capital under a torrential downpour, it'd be called off sooner or later.

Yet here Solus was, looking over the thousands upon thousands of people cheering the band on into the night, including his granddaughter and her girlfriend, right in the middle of the crowd. Granted, one of the two didn't see the relationship as such yet, or rather, deliberately avoided doing so, but he knew that'd eventually change. He knew Azennia.

More importantly, he knew Azem.

He smiled, watching them bellow out the lyrics to the last song.

And I don't want the world to see me

'Cause I don't think that they'd understand

When everything's made to be broken

I just want you to know who I am

They, just like the rest of the crowd, swayed side to side with the melody. Hades glanced at the vocalist in a moment of curiosity, seeing a sundered soul still burning brightly. Yes, that made sense. He smiled faintly, adjusting the worn body he currently used on the comfortable chair in the VIP room. Perhaps it was time to start preparing a thing or two.

For their sake.

"Ah-" Yotsuyu inhaled sharply, but the sneeze went away before she could finish it, cold water dripping off her clothes onto the main hall of their apartment. "-guh! I hate it when that happens!" She shook her head to try and clear the tickling inside her nose.

"Yeah, it's just awful." Azennia chuckled while throwing the clothes she was removing straight into the washing machine, hand already reaching for a towel. "Come on, you should take a warm shower, the last thing I want is for you to start basic training with a cold." She smiled at- well, Tsuyu wasn't her charge anymore since a few weeks before. Best friend?

Yeah, best friend worked.

"A warm shower would be nice, yeah." The Doman sniffled, adding her clothes to the wonderful and miraculous device that meant her nails hadn't gotten eroded into ugly nubs from manual scrubbing for the last six years. She was halfway into the bathroom before looking back and stopping dead in her tracks, glaring at her roommate.

"And what do you think you're doing, exactly?"

"Hm?" The blonde looked back innocently, towel already tangled with drenched platinum strands. "It's fine Tsuyu, I'll just dry myself off, I'll be alright." She smiled warmly.

"Don't you even start with that." Yotsuyu deadpanned, marching back towards Azennia before grabbing her wrist and guiding the two into the- admittedly, surprisingly spacious for an apartment- shower stall.

"Tsuyu, you need it more than me. I don't even know if I can catch a cold." The Garlean tried to argue, but didn't resist. If anything, she'd taught the younger woman how to be assertive a bit too well. Either that, or she was an unbelievable softie whenever her past charge was involved. Maybe a bit of both.

"That doesn't mean you deserve one any less than I do. Besides-" Yotsuyu sighed in contentment while the warm water cascaded down her back, gently pulling Azennia under it as well. "It's not like this is the first shower we've taken together."

"Well yeah-" The older woman tried to find the words while the soothing droplets washed away the cold of the wet night. "But it's been a while." She wasn't blind. She'd noticed Tsuyu's growing infatuation with her over time, and the mere thought that somehow she'd been partly to blame ate away at her.

Bright red eyes stared at silver ones; and it hurt. Azennia knew, from the bottom of her heart, that Yotsuyu deserved so much more. So much better. But that also meant the princess would have to, at some point, break her heart. And just entertaining that notion for a moment hurt more than any time she'd ever been killed.

"And what changed?" Tsuyu asked, deliberately letting a sliver of knowledge slip past her mask of innocence while wrapping her arms around Azennia's shoulders, an easy feat since she'd outgrown her guardian. Letting them hang there meaningfully for a moment, she then carefully slid her fingers between blonde locks, allowing the warm water to pass through deeper. She knew that she was being mean to the poor target of her affection, but she also knew that said target was incredibly hard headed if they believed they were doing the right thing.

Azennia wanted to say it, but couldn't. That'd lead to things becoming more real than she wanted, and she wasn't going to risk that talk with Tsuyu just before the two wouldn't be able to see eachother for six months. She settled for silence, with a pleading look that she knew her past charge would understand.

Yotsuyu smiled back affectionately as an equally silent answer.

No more words were needed while the pair finished the shower and prepared for bed. Neither would budge from their point, but one was significantly more willing to push weaknesses than the other. And when they laid down on the queen sized bed, the younger woman was fully aware of that.

"You know, you still haven't told me what you want for your birthday." Azennia smiled gently while holding hands with her roommate as usual, breaking the tension. She didn't like it when the two disagreed like that. She wanted Tsuyu to be happy, differences of ideas notwithstanding.

"Actually, I was about to tell you." Yotsuyu smiled back, without second intentions on display this time. "But I'm not sure I should now." She trailed off, avoiding her eyes.

Against her better judgement, Azennia took a step forward towards the trap she could already see. "It's always alright to tell me. I'll never judge you."

"I wanted to have my first kiss. With you." Silver eyes stared into bright red irises, any games or defences left behind. Tsuyu could see the renewed turmoil in them. "You're the only one I can trust like this." She whispered weakly.

Azennia stared back at the younger woman- though at this point, no one would be able to tell from just looking. The memory of the shocked little girl with blood on her face felt like a lifetime ago, but she knew the shockwaves of that moment would ripple for many years still.

'You're the only one I can trust like this.'

Trust. Tsuyu trusted her. So much so to want to share something that intimate.

Memories of such trust, horribly betrayed over and over again in every and which way resurfaced in her mind. They weren't hers, but it hurt all the same. The little blonde girl cried in her bed, unable to sleep. Unable to understand the horrors of the world that she'd seen inside other people's souls. Why did they hurt eachother like that? How could they hurt eachother like that? Her hand was shaking, if only to stop the rest of her body from following suit.

"I'm sorry." Yotsuyu averted her eyes. "I know I'm being selfish. You don't need to do something you don't want." She tried to keep the hurt from her voice as much as she could.

It still pierced into Azennia's chest with no defense. No. Not Tsuyu. Not her trust. No, she deserves better. She's hurting. She trusted you and now she's hurting. Nonononono-

"I-" She needs to fix this- "it's alright." The Garlean took a deep, shaky breath before working her way to a tentative smile. "I-I'd be honoured to, Tsuyu." Her hand was still shaking, but each passing moment made things more and more clear. She wasn't going to be like those people. She did love Tsuyu from the bottom of her heart, she knew that. But what type of love was it- well, she guessed now it was time to find out.

"Are you sure about this? I don't want it to be something you don't feel comfortable with." Yotsuyu asked earnestly, caressing Azennia's hand in hers softly.

The older woman nodded. "I am. I'm willing to try, and if I feel uncomfortable I promise I'll tell you. Though-" The princess blushed somewhat. "You know I don't have any experience either."

"I'll hold you to that." Yotsuyu answered seriously before smiling "And I know. I'm really happy you trust me enough for this too." She closed the distance in bed, caressing Azennia's ear with her right hand softly. "Ready?" Tsuyu whispered.

"Yeah..." The princess trailed off, distracted by how something as simple as the lightest of touches against her ear felt like electricity running through half her body. That did not bode well, was the last thing she thought before her eyelids fluttered when soft lips pressed against hers. She didn't have much time to get used to the warmth spreading through her body before she felt something hot and wet, carefully sliding between her lips and touching the tip of her tongue.

Her brain had no say whatsoever in the matter anymore when her mouth parted wider, inviting the wonderful intruder further into a dance of caresses inside her, a small moan escaping her lips while she embraced Tsuyu tighter.

What little logical mind was left realised that the way she was completely melting under the younger woman's touch, the way the heat and electricity were spreading like wildfire from her head to every single part of her body, and most importantly how obscenely happy she felt meant that she'd long since lost any sort of argument. Every single time the subject matter came up in the future, her body would remember this, and that was simply not fair. She was supposed to be better than this, to be able to make whatever decision was best for Tsuyu no matter how badly it hurt her own feelings. And now she was going to have this moment burned into her soul forever.

Yotsuyu sighed happily into the kiss, gently running her fingertips against the back of Azennia's neck, smiling slightly at how that made the older woman arch her back against her. She'd built up massive expectations about this moment- how could she have not?

And still they comically undershot the real thing. The faint scent she'd become accustomed to now filled her lungs, her ex-guardian's taste was going to drive her mad, and the way the princess of Garlemald didn't just not have any defences to crumble but eagerly demanded more with every touch and every caress of their tongues not only confirmed her feelings but multiplied them a thousand times over.

Addicted. That's what she'd become, immediately and utterly. And it took every single bit of sanity she had left to not push things further, because every other part of her was demanding more, in every way, right now.

Eventually, though Azennia had no idea how long it was, she felt Tsuyu pulling back from the kiss, nuzzling against her. The strength of the desire to reinitiate it was terrifying, but she overpowered it, instead continuing to hold the younger woman into the embrace and carefully running a few fingers through raven black hair. She had nothing to say. She didn't think there was anything she could say, instead resigning to catching her breath and waiting for the tingling all over her body to slowly, painfully slowly, die down.

"I'll never forget this. Thank you." Yotsuyu whispered, idly caressing the older woman's back in the embrace, moving her way down to nuzzle against the princess's ample cleavage before letting out a long sigh and relaxing muscles that'd been tensed up the entire time. She looked up with dazed, lovestruck eyes. "Can we stay like this tonight?"

Any sort of resistance Azennia could muster had long since tagged out, packed up and went on a holiday to Rabanastre, she realised, while looking back at the younger woman with an expression that she feared wasn't much different. She cuddled Tsuyu closer before whispering back. "Sure."

'And I just want you to know who I am.'

Azennia tilted her head to the reverbing synth melody while doing the closest thing she could to dance on her way to the oven that'd just dinged its timer, the smell of pizza filling the apartment.

"There are many, but let's add one more-" She sang in Hingan, the latest of the languages she'd had to learn for her job. She didn't get to spend as much time in Koshu as she'd like, but at least they were integrating surprisingly quickly. "-Can you give me one last kiss? Something I won't forget." The mixed Garlean into the lyrics was a nice touch, she thought.

Perhaps her focus on the song was the reason why it took until she heard the lock on the front door being opened to notice the familiar aetherial signature on the other side.

"Surprise!" Yotsuyu sing-songed tiredly while standing under the door frame, amused at the shocked reaction of the older woman holding a plate of food in her hand.

"Tsuyu! I was going to wait for you at the station tomorrow!" Azennia quickly put her plate down and jogged over to hug the younger woman.

"I know, I know. But I managed to pull some strings and get cleared this afternoon. I missed you." The Doman returned the embrace tightly, sighing happily after feeling the familiar scent again.

Oh oh oh oh oh...

I love you more than you'll ever know

"Did you become even more of a hopeless romantic while I was away?" Yotsuyu chuckled, noticing the lyrics while staring into red eyes fondly. It was absolutely fine by her.

"Come on, it's a very pretty song." The princess argued in evasive defence with some embarrassment, taking the younger woman's bag inside. It wasn't her fault that most beautiful songs were either about romance or heartache.

"I never claimed it wasn't. I like it." Tsuyu smirked, carefully taking off the well worn but cared for coat and hanging it up, as well as the rest of her uniform, before heading like a guided missile towards the freezer. "You've already stocked up on my favourite." She smiled softly in surprise, taking a cup of chocolate flakes ice cream.

"Of course I did, what sort of-" She stumbled mentally; 'guardian' hadn't been true for months anymore, and she did not dare use the first word that came to mind instead. "-friend do you think I am?" Azennia watched the younger woman carefully hop in bed, sitting back against the headboard. "Sorry I didn't make a proper dinner, I didn't know-"

"Yes you have, don't you dare diminish the wonder of magitek that is frozen pizza." Yotsuyu pointed the small spoon in her hand towards her roommate in mock offence. "I'm just not really hungry, that's all." Her voice got softer while she spread her extended legs and patted the spot in the middle.

"Have you already taken meds?" The blonde asked with concern before taking her seat in front of Tsuyu with her food, immediately finding two slender arms wrapped around her- ice cream included- and a head framed in raven black hair resting against her shoulder.

"It's not that bad this month, I'm mostly just tired." The bags under her eyes, as well hidden as they were through makeup, were proof. Basic training was nothing compared to six months without a single good night of sleep, though already knowing how to shoot and cast healing magic due to Azennia teaching her years ago certainly helped. No amount of sleep deprivation could make her try to fire a gunblade after inserting a magazine backwards, unlike some of the people she'd seen. The fact that even those eventually ended up as decent soldiers spoke volumes on the experience of the Empire's training program.

"How are you still keeping track of my cycle better than me, anyway?" Tsuyu asked with a spoonful of ice cream in her mouth, before taking a long, deep breath and relaxing further against the older woman. She thought all the singers of the love songs Azennia listened to were being overly dramatic when describing how badly they missed someone. Turns out, they weren't.

"It's-" The princess swallowed the bite of pizza and salad before continuing. "-It's not like I have my own to keep track of, so I just track yours instead." She thought for a moment, the documentary about wildlife on TV completely ignored. "Sometimes I kind of wish I did." She trailed off.

"Oh trust me you do not." Yotsuyu answered immediately as firmly as she could, poking her roommate's waist for emphasis. "The grass is most definitely not greener on the other side on this one, I assure you." She tapped her tiny spoon against Azennia's forehead admonishingly.

"Ow-" The older woman played up the impact in complete deadpan. "I know, I know. But it does make me feel...distant, if you know what I mean. From normal people." She prodded a bit at her food before taking another bite.

"Look, I've just spent half a year surrounded by normal people." Tsuyu argued. "Four out of ten, do not recommend. Totally overrated. You're way better to be around." She put away the empty cup and spoon, wrapping her arms further around Azennia's waist and cuddling closer. "Like a small, hyper competent, adorable and infuriatingly voluptuous plushie."

"Why infuriating?" The princess chuckled, enjoying the younger woman's touch and warmth far too much for her own liking.

"Because I've exercised my ass off-" Yotsuyu stopped in confusion. "On? Does it still count as off if I was making it bigger? Anyway-" She cut off her own derailed train of thought. "I went all out to try and match you, and it's just not possible. I have a smaller waist than you and I still can't match you on waist to hip ratio, let alone this- this-" She squeezed Azennia's rear. "Bakery you have. I've been tricked, backstabbed, and quite possibly bamboozled." She fumed in mostly exaggeration.

The blonde shook her head in disbelief, taking the younger woman's hands in her own. "I did notice you're in great shape, you know? I'm proud of you." She could feel Tsuyu's cheeks pouting against her neck. "And you should never base your own self esteem on someone else, only on how much of your own potential you're achieving. You know that. And you look gorgeous anyway." Azennia praised her best friend, looking over her shoulder to be able to meet her eyes.

"Of course I do, I'm the fair maiden of the story." The younger woman deadpanned back. "But thanks, it makes me happy that you've noticed." She smiled. "By the way, did you ever get around to asking? About-" She pulsed her arms up slightly, making the princess's chest bounce.

"I did." Azennia sighed, blushing slightly. "All that the translated documents said about it was 'standard cosmetic and utility augmentations.'" She air quoted while putting her empty plate and fork away before refilling her cup from the jug by the nightstand. Tap Water at room temperature, her favourite- much to Tsuyu's continued bewilderment.

"Ah, gotta love it when people don't write something down because it's common knowledge, the favourite of any anthropologist." Yotsuyu giggled, nuzzling against the nape of Azennia's neck, slightly tracing the edge of the connection port there with the tip of her nose. "Hang on- If you're the standard, what did the advanced cosmetic augmentations look like?" She wondered. "Just how epic was Allagan debauchery?"

"I'm not sure we want to find out." The blonde mused with a sigh, trying to tame the warmth coming from her core due to Tsuyu's cuddling. She'd never been this clingy before, but Azennia couldn't necessarily blame her. Still, she had to at least try something. "Have you decided if you want to look at a new apartment for you?"

"Pfft. And never sleep well again my whole life, or have you like this again? Good try." The younger woman shot the idea down with a mercilessness that'd make her mother in law proud, leaning forward to look her past guardian in the eyes. "I'll be with you as long as you'll have me. I mean that, and you know it." She whispered seriously, cradling Azennia's face in one hand gently.

"I-" The princess let out a deep breath with closed eyes, relaxing her shoulders. "I'm trying, damnit." She looked back with a defeated smile at loving silver eyes.

"I know. And I know that you do it because you care about me." Yotsuyu smiled back before nuzzling against her roommate's neck, letting her breath caress it softly. "I'm thankful. But this is my choice. My decision." She let her lips touch Azennia's earlobe. "Mine." She whispered with emphasis while hugging the older woman tightly, grinning in success at the way she shivered.

'When did that little girl get so dangerous?' The blonde thought before a warm tongue wrapped itself around hers and she lost any sort of hope of winning the ongoing battle against the heat and emotions filling her chest.

Tsuyu slowly cracked open her eyes to a facefull of cleavage, the sensation of actually having had a restful night of sleep almost foreign to her after many months. Judging by the sunlight that was able to sneak through gaps in their curtains, it was already the middle of the morning, which meant both her and Azennia had slept through their alarms. She smiled.

For as much as the older woman kept claiming she'd gotten enough sleep every time they'd called, the fact that she was still out cold said otherwise- the Doman had gotten used to her roommate always being up and about by the time she herself would wake up.

Stretching slowly to not disturb her once guardian, Yotsuyu took the time to simply enjoy being cuddled together. Sure, there were still more clothes in the way than she'd prefer, but one thing at a time. Eventually, however, her brain had woken up enough to remember that a portion of her old clothing likely didn't even fit her anymore- any of her previously form-fitting legwear.

So, the vast majority of them. As much as she'd complained to Azennia the previous night, the constant training had helped fill out her figure, which meant she'd have to either go shopping, or wait until her lower body slimmed down again, which she'd already decided was not an option because she would not let it happen.

It wasn't vanity, it was a strategic decision.

Carefully reaching behind herself for her data assistant- thank the Empire for the neverending march of magitek miniaturisation-, she turned it on to make sure that the older woman's card had enough left on the spending limit. She'd pay the expenses back within the same day as usual, of course, but it's not like she was old enough to have her own ca- she mentally corrected herself before finishing the thought, before adding one more thing to the to-do list.

She just wanted to spend the day cuddled with Azennia on the bed. Adulting sucked.

Suppressing a sigh, a quick check showed that, as always, there was plenty left on the limit. Not a surprise, considering that the blonde was incredibly frugal for a princess- perhaps that's simply what happened when logistics and economics were drilled into someone's head since childhood. If anything, the only thing that mildly stood out in the past purchases list were several digital books. Tsuyu, of all people, had firsthand knowledge of the vast size of her wife-to-be's library. What didn't she already own?

The younger woman looked up more details about the purchases- and had to stop herself from the impulses to either jump up and down in bed in triumph, or wake up her roommate with a tongue down her throat.

Romance novels. Interracial, Garlean-Doman romance novels. Several of them. If she had to admit at gunblade point, there had been a tiny part of her mind that worried about Azennia having gone along with her affections out of a sense of pity, or duty, or- something, that wasn't reciprocal love; or at least not the right type of love. And now that part of her mind had just been summarily executed in front of its family with great glee by the rest.

Maybe it was a good thing that the older woman was still fast asleep, and as such missed the way Yotsuyu was grinning while staring at the princess's peaceful expression like a lovestruck idiot. In her own defense, that's what she was.

Tsuyu carefully put her PDA back on the nightstand before happily nuzzling against the soft pillows under her head- and in front of her face. All was right with the world.

- )-

Frozen wind whipped around the public face of Doman integration, stinging her eyes and nose- the only parts not defended by heavy fabric and fur. For as much as owning a car might avoid that during the winter, Yotsuyu couldn't find it in herself to justify the expense just to cut out the two minute walk from the red light district to the nearest metro station. That, and maybe she'd go for a motorbike instead- even if it'd be unusable in said winters, regardless of how much Azennia's older brother would argue otherwise. The fact that no amount of snow tires stopped him from falling over every time there was a mild blizzard was more convincing.

If anything, the heavy clothing helped her look inconspicuous enough. Her closeness to the princess was a widely known- and extremely effective- part of her public image; she'd made sure of that herself. While she already had a counterstory prepared in case someone saw her in the area, prevention was always better than a cure.

"...Yotsuyu?" She'd heard the man that just passed her by ask in surprise. Shit. If she didn't react and just kept walking, maybe-

"Little sis, is that you?" He started walking after her. Double shit. Of all damned people, after all these years- she changed direction towards a nearby alleyway, stopping halfway through it and turning around while lowering her scarf.

"Asahi? What do you want?" She glared at the man, disdain flowing from her voice in a way she didn't even know it was capable of while carefully flicking the safety switch off on the gunknife inside one of the pockets of her warm jacket. Her only family was Azennia and the rest of the Galvuses, and if she had to physically bury someone to make sure it stayed that way, she would. She had more than enough strings to pull.

"Whoa, whoa there-" Asahi bas Brutus lifted his hands, showing them to be empty while taking a step back. "Ease up sis, I'm not stupid. I'm not going to try anything. Pretty sure I'd be flayed alive by the princess if I did." He tilted his head with a manufactured nervous smile. "And regarding that- you did amazing. From Sashihai to the heir to the throne of Garlemald? Damn, you're good!" He praised her, chuckling.

Concubine. He thought she was still nothing more than a concubine. Blinking for a moment longer than normal to let the anger flow over her, she then packed it neatly in a mental box. An image of her 'brother' being impaled by two Doman swords flicked into her mind for a moment for some reason, and she put it in said box as well.

Looking down at her PDA nonchalantly to check the time and verify that it was always recording audio, as usual, she forced herself to stare back at him with a neutral expression.

"Thanks. But you didn't answer my question."

"Oh, you know, catch up!" He put up his best winning smile. "Have a chat, the likes. We haven't seen eachother in years and-'' He saw that it wasn't landing, with both being fully aware that he could have easily reached her through social media. He shrugged. "Alright. Truth is, I might need a small favour."

Yotsuyu sighed, putting on the mix of exasperation and resignation one does when fulfilling familial obligations. It was a lie, of course, but more importantly- it was what Asahi was expecting to see. She was becoming rather good at her job.

"Do go on."

"So, there was a bit of a misunderstanding that happened a while ago-" He began explaining, looking as innocent as he could. "-no big deal, trust me. But one thing led to another, my superior officer felt threatened by my abilities, yadda yadda. You know how that goes. Politics."

"Politics." The woman repeated with a small nod, doing her best to not let any venom pass through her tone.

"Yeah. And, you know, you have pull with the Praetorian Guard, what with the princess and all. So, here's the deal. You give me a hand here, and I can introduce you to some people I know." He smiled. "Some people who might be looking to change things up a bit. Don't get me wrong, you've done great for yourself, but hear me out-" He took a step forward, whispering. "Queen."

Yotsuyu's eyebrows flew up in genuine surprise. Was this idiot actually implying an insurrectionist plot? Against the beloved royal family? Had he read none of the- she stopped herself. Of course he hadn't gone deep into political and power theory, why would he. Regardless of her personal allegiances, it'd be civil war at best, the fall of the entire Empire at worst. Granted, approaching someone with easy access to the internal affairs division and the royal family could have been a smart move. In another dimension.

"That's-" She idly rolled a strand of wayward hair in her fingers with a conspiratorial smile. It technically wasn't a lie. Her voice went down an octave. "I can see that. It looks very enticing." It'd be at Azennia's side with no coup necessary of course, but he didn't need to know that. "How bad is it?"

"Oh, it's just a dishonourable discharge, should be no big deal for you." He waved his hand dismissively. "So, do we have a deal?" Asahi extended his hand forward.

"Absolutely, brother." Tsuyu shook his hand delicately.

"You FUCKING BITCH!" The Doman man in restraints snarled while being taken to the armoured truck emblazoned with the symbol of the Praetorian Guard. In several other places in the city- and a few in the provinces-, other arrests were being made at the same time.

Yotsuyu smiled calmly with arms crossed back from the entrance to the same alley they'd met at a week beforehand, Azennia in full armour at her side. While taking the recording to the internal affairs division, she'd learned that he and his 'friends' were already under surveillance by the imperial cyberwarfare division for a time- the audio data was only further proof for the ongoing investigation. They'd only been too happy to launch a combined operation to make use of the meeting she'd organised.

"Do you really think you're anything more than you were before? Huh!? That she sees you as anything else than her little Doman toy-" His manic diatribe was interrupted by a harsh shove from behind by a praetorian officer.

"You have the right to remain silent, and I wish to the Emperor that you'd bloody use it." The imposing figure grumbled, voice modulated by the helmet from which protruded two extensions to house large, rabbit-like ears.

"Goodbye, Cousin." Tsuyu waved her fingers and sing-songed at the man while he was unceremoniously thrown inside the reinforced enclosure at the back of the black vehicle. Once the doors were closed and locked, she sighed. "I didn't want you to get involved in this."

Azennia shrugged. "It's kind of my job. Besides, you know I don't like being cooped up in the central office." She looked up at her roommate- even the armour wasn't quite enough to make it otherwise. "Are you okay?"

"I am." Yotsuyu smiled back slightly, her face tinged with worry. "But you probably have a few questions." She looked around, implying the part of the capital they were on.

"I won't say I'm not curious, but if you're not comfortable with talking about it, I won't pry either. You're your own person, Tsuyu. I don't own you." The blonde's voice was soft and soothing, even with her helmet on.

"I know." Yet. "But I don't want to leave you with the wrong impression either." The younger woman pondered for a moment. "I guess it was a sort of...morbid curiosity? To know what my life would have been like?" She held up a finger before Azennia could interrupt.

"And yes I know it's like comparing popotoes to polecats. That Companionship work is so well regarded and regulated is part of what makes the Empire great, and one of the many, many reasons we need to integrate the rest of the world, I've seen it myself." Yotsuyu disarmed the argument ahead of time before continuing.

"But it is a safe way for me to explore that trauma. And I've actually made quite a few friends that work here." She smiled. "You wouldn't believe the ways they've learned how to help people emotionally. And no, I haven't made use of their other services."

"I wasn't going to be angry at you if you had." The older woman assured her.

"No, but you'd have been jealous." Tsuyu teased confidently.

"...a bit." Azennia mumbled to herself.

- )-

Yotsuyu stepped quietly into their apartment, the familiar lyrics of a popular heartbreak song echoing from the balcony. A Doman singer, belting out in Garlean for her lover to come back. She smiled sadly at the blonde woman looking out into the distance. Her best friend was many things; subtle was not one of them.

"Welcome back, Tsu." Azennia whispered hoarsely under the pleasant night sky of the end of summer in the capital, leaning to the side slightly.

"Hey Az." Tsuyu stood beside the older woman who she'd long since grown taller than; leaning softly against her in return. "Are you making yourself cry on purpose? Again?"

The heir to the throne half chuckled, half sobbed through a sardonic smile, tears still running down her cheeks. "Look, it's my midlife crisis, I get to pick the coping mechanism." She sniffled. "And-" her voice tapered off to barely audible. "It's nice to let it out every once in a while."

"You don't have to do this." Yotsuyu pleaded quietly. Her heart tightened at the reaction she knew that tone would create on her once guardian- of renewed tears, and the other woman's posture curling slightly within itself from the emotional pain.

"But I do, Tsu." Azennia took a step back, letting herself slide down against the wall, scraped paint due to her armour be damned. She hugged her own knees, hiding her face between them. "I'll need to take the throne next year. To have an heir. To-" Red, bloodshot eyes met silver. The silver she'd seen grow from belonging to a shy girl, to carrying beautiful, adult confidence. The sobbing returned, threatening to turn into a wail if she stopped holding back.

"And if you think I won't be there with you, you must've taken more knocks to the head than I thought." Tsuyu sat down, pulling the princess of Garlemald into an embrace. "Why can't it be me? We'll find a way. We're Garleans damnit, it's what we do." What's the point otherwise!? Her eyes began watering as well.

"Tsuyu... I made a promise. To take care of you. If I break it I-" She struggled to get the words out. "I'm no better than Sashih-" The general of the Praetorian Guard found herself being thrown to the floor with completely unexpected force, the usually beautiful lines of Yotsuyu's face staring down at her from directly above with white hot anger she'd never seen before.

"Don't you ever dare-" The Doman's voice wavered before she cut herself off, the tearful face of the woman she loved staring back with desperate concern cutting through the fury like a gunblade through powder snow. She swallowed. "Please. Don't ever compare yourself with that- thing."

Yotsuyu rolled off of Azennia, laying down on the ground beside her. "You did take care of me. You've given me more than I could have hoped for." She turned to face the older woman. "You've given me more than I could ever have imagined before we met. I'm happy with you. I'm happy because I'm with you. Is that so wrong?"

The love song faded while it ended, the voice of the singer reciting the main line of the chorus, the last thing that could be discerned.

Stay with me

Azennia took a deep, shuddering breath before turning to face the person who was the main reason for her despair at having to soon give up her current life. "It's not." She turned on her side as well, gently taking one of Yotsuyu's hands into her own, controlling the servos in her gauntlet like she was holding the most precious jewel in the world. Because she was.

"Tsu, every day here, every day I get to spend with you- it feels like a dream. But to go further, I-" She couldn't bring herself to look the younger woman in the eyes, every word coming out through immense struggle. "It wouldn't... be-"

"Right?" Tsuyu sighed shakily, using her free hand to caress Azennia's face softly, guiding the pureblood Garlean to look at her again. "Az, you've given everything to the cause of doing the 'right thing'. Your innocence, your body, hell, even your life. Several times." The blonde tried to look away again, but Yotsuyu did not let her.

"The people don't need a perfect icon." She saw red eyes widen slightly in realisation. "All they want is a good leader that cares for them, and you've been that ten times over. Besides-" She smiled lightly at a nostalgic memory. "You're already my princess in shining armour. Always have been. If you can't be selfish for yourself; then please be selfish for me."

Azennia let out a strangled mix of sob and chuckle, cuddling up to Yotsuyu while shaking and nuzzling into her neck. "You're evil, you know that?"

Tsuyu held her once guardian close, caressing her hair. "Wouldn't work at the propaganda office if I wasn't."

Yotsuyu sighed happily into the kiss, holding Azennia as close as she could. The ceramic tiles she was backed up against were cold, but she didn't mind. Between the steam of the warm shower, her lover's body against hers and the sheer happiness she felt, it barely registered at all.

Kind. Gentle. Caring. Those were all ways she thought to describe her blonde's kissing and caresses- yet no less loving than the intense, deep and long way she did it. Even though it was visible in the bright red eyes how something she held important to her heart had crumbled- self restraint- the sheer, unbridled love that replaced it was so clear that it hurt. And still; Tsuyu realised. Still, Azennia could not help but be kind to her in every single touch.

The older woman slowly moved her kissing down the Doman's jawline, briefly stopping near her ear to say one, incredibly important thing.

"I love you."

She'd already said earlier, of course. In between bouts of crying and kissing- the hardest she'd ever cried in a long, long time-, she'd said it many times. And it just wasn't enough. No words she could possibly say would ever be enough to describe the way that one, singular feeling overwhelmed her mind from the moment she'd let go. It was mildly terrifying, how utterly encompassing it was, how Tsuyu was the only thing she could think about.

The dam she'd spent years building had been torn down, and she could never, ever be ready for the torrent that came forth.

"I love you too, Az." Yotsuyu sighed back happily in response, shivering at the soft kisses and nibbles she could feel at the side of her neck. She didn't know it was possible for a person to be this overjoyed, yet she most certainly was. She caressed the back of Azennia's neck in return, briefly wondering if this is what hard drugs felt like, before deciding that there was no way they could possibly compete.

Even still, she felt blood rising to her cheeks when the older woman started meticulously kissing her way down one of Tsuyu's arms, red eyes locked onto silver even while half-lidded in a daze. This was- love was not a strong enough word to describe what she saw. Worship, perhaps, was more accurate. She instinctively tried covering her face with her free hand out of embarrassment. She didn't think she could get embarrassed around her former guardian.

"There's- you don't need to."

"But I want to." Azennia tilted her head to the side in innocent confusion before carefully taking Yotsuyu's hand away from covering her own face to nuzzle against it, closing her eyes for a moment to focus on the sensation before starting to lick the younger woman's fingers. "I'll go crazy-" She whispered while taking an index between her lips and sucking it softly before moving on to lick a different one. "-if I don't let all of this out." Her tongue reached out to the tight space between Tsuyu's middle and ring fingers, letting her tongue run over it. Her study on this subject matter must have been woefully inadequate, because it never mentioned how good it'd feel to do this.

"Fair." Was all that Yotsuyu managed to squeak out in response, pinned in place by the older woman's pleading look and the way her mind was extrapolating the sensation in her hand to other parts of her body. Was anything even allowed to look and feel like sin incarnate yet loving and pure at the same time? Because Azennia's mouth and tongue were managing just that, and she was pretty sure the shower had absolutely nothing on her right now.

She'd finally got her answer regarding Allagan debauchery, and it was 'yes'.

The princess couldn't help but smile at the answer, kissing her way back up the other arm and neck before their tongues touched again, taking the time to kiss Tsuyu more. It just still wasn't enough to stop the yearning in her chest from eating her inside. Following what her body was demanding more than anything she'd studied, Azennia kissed her way down, stopping at the younger woman's breasts. They were smaller than her own, but still plenty enough to fill the hand she used to caress the one that she wasn't currently covering in licks and suckles using her mouth. How beautiful Yotsuyu was, on top of the overwhelming love she felt for the woman, was just unfair.

"O-oh, that's-" The Doman shivered and squirmed while caressing the platinum strands between her fingers, her other hand firmly holding one of Azennia's. The heat in her chest that left her breathless, the way every gentle nibble or flick of the tongue sent shocks all the way to the tips of all her limbs- it was nothing like when she tried touching herself. She knew it'd feel better, but it wasn't even on the same scale. The more her lover kept going, the more an intense feeling between tickling and tingling spread around her body, while the actual pleasure she was feeling was already far past any orgasm she'd had before.

"I love you-" She didn't say it; not consciously. Her body did it on its own between gasps and moans, and she had no say in the matter.

The three words had managed to get through the heavy daze surrounding Azennia's mind, immediately making her pull back from the nipple she'd been lavishing with attention- despite her mouth's protests- and kiss Tsuyu again, messier and sloppier but even more passionate than before, both tongues seeking contact desperately. "I love you too, Tsu-" The princess managed; or at least tried, to say during it. It was only after she leaned back a fraction that she could finish the sentence.

"-so much that it hurts."

Yotsuyu felt a shiver down her spine at the sheer devotion behind the half-lidded red eyes that stared at her, the way the smile that accompanied it felt- broken, almost. It wasn't the right word; maybe there wasn't a right word, and that was just the closest her mind could find. A small part of said mind felt scared of what'd she'd done, of this irreversible change to the kindest person she'd ever met. A darker corner felt an undeniable thrill at finally having accomplished just that.

The rest of her mind told both sides to shut up the moment soft lips made their way down to her inner thighs, the tingling from before rising even further.

Blank. Not a daze, not hard to think or slow. For the first time, Azennia's mind was utterly blank; with her body instinctively following a single goal- getting more of Tsuyu's taste. It'd started the moment her tongue ran across a drop of it running down between the younger woman's thighs, and it was the only thing she knew now. Even still, an inviolable feeling forced her to make sure of one thing when she began licking at the source-

She'd be gentle.

Yotsuyu's whole body shook while she held onto one of Azennia's hands tightly, her other hand buried in the older woman's hair and pulling her closer, harder. She thought she was the quiet type in bed, able to hold back anything louder than a harsh breath or a whimper and no, no she wasn't. Not if the future Empress of Garlemald, currently kneeled between her legs and making her feel like the sensitive nub there was melting, had anything to say about it. It was a very good thing that every apartment around the one they shared was empty for security purposes, because her mind mildly registered her moans rising to screams and swearing in Doman. It took every bit of willpower she still had to not dig her nails against her lover's scalp.

The blonde happily followed her instinct in lapping up and swallowing the renewed flow of the most addictive liquid she'd ever tasted, glazed over eyes mesmerised by the scene above her. It was Tsuyu, the once little girl; now gorgeous woman, that she loved with every single fibre of her being. She was feeling good, because of her. That made her happy. In fact, it was probably the happiest she'd ever been. They were the only thing that existed right now, the only thing that mattered. So, she kept licking, and kissing, and suckling with all her heart, watching her love react to the smallest movement of her mouth.

But that still wasn't enough, right? A distant corner of her memory told her she could make Tsu feel even better. She should do that.

Shaking was upgraded to convulsing when Yotsuyu felt two warm fingers touching her inner lips while the princess kept making her nervous system melt; slightly pushing in, pulling back, pushing in just a bit deeper, repeating and repeating, making their way to her most sensitive spot and driving her crazy but still in Azennia's maddeningly gentle way that she couldn't get enough of, and then she started screaming swears again.

Tsuyu's beautiful voice echoed off the ceramic tiles of the bathroom, filling the blonde's ears and soul while she kept giving more of the torrent of love that kept churning in her chest. She'd happily kept going forever had the person who owned her heart not shakily pushed her forehead back, repeating 'I can't' between gasps. Anything that the younger girl asked for, she'd do, and so she was happy to just nuzzle against the hand that still held her head and stared up at Yotsuyu. She was beautiful. Azennia knew she was beautiful, of course. But she was still beautiful.

"Holy- fuck-" Yotsuyu swore between gasps, trying to catch her breath while wiping her face with a shaking hand that at some point had worked itself loose off of Azennia's. She stared in confusion at the smudged eyeliner on it. Had it been so intense she'd teared up at some point without noticing? She'd unleashed some sort of beast, and it was equally terrifying and exciting.

Fine, mostly exciting. "I'm- I'm pretty sure my legs would have given out if you kept going." The Doman giggled, looking down at her still dazed lover.

The princess tilted her head in mild confusion. "I'll always catch you if you fall." She responded naturally before smiling again, like the sky was blue. As far as she was concerned, both were simple laws of nature.

Tsuyu, somehow, found it in herself to blush. Leave it to her princess in shining armour to be in some sort of trance, kneeled between her legs, nuzzling against her hand like a pet and still manage to spout the most stupidly loving thing this side of the Rhotano Sea.

There was only so much she could take. The younger woman took Azennia's hand, helping her up before kissing her again, but now her way, deep and intense while caressing the back of her neck and the small of her back, enjoying the familiar way the older woman simply melted. Being able to taste herself in the kiss somehow made it better.

Some level of presence of mind slowly returned to the princess, despite the jolts her nerves were sending from anywhere Yotsuyu touched her. Wrapping her arms around the shoulders of the taller of the two, she let herself relax into the kiss, the usual heat at her core that the Doman's tongue invading her mouth caused multiplied several times due to just how sensitive her body had already become. If she were to be honest with herself, she liked Tsuyu's aggressive kisses quite a lot; especially when being kissed from above like now.

It's not that she was particularly submissive, she just- liked those things, is all.

Yotsuyu smiled into the kiss, reaching over to a bottle at the top of the stall divider and lathering plenty of the gooey substance onto an index finger, before using her other hand to slowly but firmly grab one of Azennia's glutes, making it easier for her to start teasing a certain tight entrance.

The blonde gasped with a small jolt at the cold touch, blushing all the way to her ears but still only pulling away from the kiss after a moment, nuzzling against the crook of Tsuyu's neck to hide her embarrassment. "How did-" she trailed off into a small moan at the sensation of the gooey finger rubbing against that place.

"How did I know?" Yotsuyu whispered in a teasing tone, taking great joy at how she felt Azennia hug her tighter and a tongue start licking her neck reflexively every time she slowly pushed the tip of her finger in before pulling back. "You can't go through that much lube every month and not be into this."

The older woman looked up at Tsuyu, bewilderment joining her embarrassment "You were keeping track of how much I use-" she found herself trailing off again due to a finger sliding deeper inside and starting to move around slowly, making her eyes want to start rolling back against fluttering eyelids while she couldn't help but go in for another kiss, her tongue teasing her lover's to invade her mouth again.

Yotsuyu noticed how the more she caressed Azennia's tongue and insides, the more the older woman started moving her own hips, seeking more contact while moaning into the kiss, clinging to her even more desperately. She knew her past guardian was into anal, she didn't know it was this much. The sheer difference between the person she saw during everyday life and the romantic, clingy and lewd woman rocking her hips against her fingers was an incredible turn on. Maybe that's why she had the idea she did.

Through great willpower, she managed to force herself to pull back to the entrance, teasing it again despite the whine of disappointment from her lover.

"Tsu-" Azennia pleaded, red irises looking up at silver in a different type of daze than before. Just a bit more.

"It's okay-" Yotsuyu forced down her own embarrassment at what she was about to say. "-you just need to tell me what you want me to do." She couldn't help but grin a bit in excitement.

"Eh-?" The princess's mind took a moment to process what the younger woman meant, and then to process what she meant. Her own face must've looked like a tomato, but her hips kept trying to grind against Tsuyu's hand. It- should be fine, right? It's not like she was into that sort of stuff, and her whole body was tingling so much, she was so close. With Tsuyu, finally, no less.

"Please-" The only reason she wasn't wishing for a hole to open and swallow her alive right now was because she trusted the raven-haired woman completely- and maybe because she desperately wanted to... to... "Please keep fucking my ass, Tsu."

Yotsuyu's heart just about leapt out of her chest. She wasn't even expecting Az to go along with it, let alone with such unambiguous wording. This meant- she could maybe push it a little more, right? Just a bit? Grinning, she nuzzled up against the blonde's ear, nibbling on it a bit before adding a second finger and whispering as lovingly as possible-

"Good girl."

Azennia didn't have time to consciously register why a gigantic jolt of pleasure from her ear joined with the one from inside, all she did was cling to Tsuyu as hard as she could while her muscles stopped obeying, moaning against her lover's tongue while hot fingers slid in again and again and she was already climaxing, how did it keep getting stronger- why did feeling like she belonged to Yotsuyu make it that much better- She didn't know, and couldn't think about it.

By the time anything made sense again, she was barely able to stand up, and Tsuyu was caressing her hair with one hand, while the other still had two fingers firmly inside her, but moving deliciously slowly. Her tongue had almost gone numb under the younger woman's assault, but stopping the kiss was the furthest thing from her mind. The only thought was a hesitant acknowledgement that apparently yes, she was into 'that sort of stuff'. As long as it was Tsu.

"We should keep-" The Doman did her best to talk and kiss at the same time. It wasn't easy. "-going in bed." She managed to finish, turning the shower off before carefully pulling out and picking up the shorter woman in a princess carry, much to said princess's surprise.

"Wha-?" Azennia took a moment to even realise what was happening before her eyes went wide and she adjusted her arms around Yotsuyu's shoulders. In her defense, the feeling of emptiness in her back and the immediate need to have Tsuyu rectify that was rather distracting.

"Ah! Tsu!" She giggled nervously, this time clinging to the younger woman to avoid falling.

"What? It's literally what it's for, isn't it?" The taller woman smiled back with a mix of confidence and love. "Besides, you've told me no one actually carried you like this before. Might as well get every first out of the way tonight." She winked.

Azennia thought she couldn't possibly have any embarrassment left in her after what'd just happened in the shower. The way she struggled to maintain eye contact with Tsuyu proved otherwise, but still, she couldn't help but smile. Maybe being spoiled like a fairytale princess by her beloved every once in a while wasn't too bad. The happiness she felt that was able to dwarf the embarrassment was probably a good sign of that.

"I love you." Yotsuyu whispered the moment she set the older woman down in bed gently, leaning forward while silver eyes were locked onto red, but not quite kissing yet.

"I love you too, Tsu. So much." Azennia pulled the Doman into a kiss, part of her mind making a note about having to dry the mattress tomorrow, before remembering that the cover Yotsuyu had bought months before was waterproof. She began to ask herself since when did her past charge plan for this, only to remember their first kiss on the night of the concert, years ago. Probably about that long, she realised.

"Mm- I do have a question-" The black haired woman pulled back, leaning over to the princess's nightstand with a mischievous look. Unlocking the fingerprint sensor of the last drawer, she grabbed the contents. "Which one is your favourite?" She held up the variety of pink 'toys' for the older woman to see.

"How did you-" Az began to ask in horror, only to realise that it was probably trivial for Tsuyu to bypass the magitek device. Tinkering with the technology had been her hobby for many years, after all. She pinched the bridge of her own nose, sighing. She would never be embarrassed again in her life, after tonight. It'd be all used up.

Avoiding eye contact the best she could when Yotsuyu kept moving closer the longer she took to answer, she finally pointed at the one in the far left.

"Ah, the biggest one. I figured." Tsuyu sing-songed in satisfaction, putting the other ones away and keeping the one made of semi-translucent soft material around a firm core with exaggerated features and extra ribs and bumps along the surface.

"Wha-!? What do you mean you figured!?" The heir to the throne asked in a high pitched manic voice, just about to take her gunblade to shoot herself with. The saddest part is that it probably wouldn't even kill her.

"Oh, you know, Allagan debauchery and stuff." Yotsuyu answered nonchalantly, moving over to her own nightstand and planting a kiss on Azennia's forehead while she did so.

"I am not a size queen just because I have Allagan blood!" The blonde whined in a muffled voice, hiding her face with her hands. The kiss did make her happy, though.

"I never said you were." Tsuyu smiled innocently, now with another, significantly smaller toy in her hands as well as more lube.

Azennia put her hands down in defeat. "Kill me. Call in an AP artillery round, it's the only way to be sure." She sighed.

"No can do, that'd be unconducive to cuddles." Yotsuyu refused simply, kissing over one of the older woman's connection ports in her legs. She was happy that they'd become smaller with the newer implant models, it seemed to cause less problems. Taking a page out of her past guardian's book, she slowly kissed her way up the inner side of said leg without breaking eye contact, guiding both of them up while she did so before sliding a pillow under Azennia's hips, making the powerful limbs rest spread open with the knees beside the blonde woman's head.

"Did you buy that one?" The princess asked while looking at the smaller magitek device with a thin tail, a single light visible through the material at the very end of said tail while Tsuyu carefully coated the thicker end with lube.

"I did. I think you'll like it." Yotsuyu whispered conspiratorially before blowing a warm breath over her lover's exposed core. She smiled at the way Azennia reached over with one hand to caress her hair with a mix of sigh and moan, the other meeting with one of her own and entangling together.

The blonde squirmed and gasped at the sudden spike in pleasure when Tsuyu began caressing the small, sensitive bit above her inner lips with a warm tongue. She was sensitive enough whenever she dealt with things herself, but every single time the younger woman touched her was orders of magnitude more intense. Not to mention the fact that she was already even more sensitive due to before, and there was no way she'd last long.

Yotsuyu forced herself to remember that she wasn't planning on just repeating what Azennia had done to her earlier, despite how much her body was screaming otherwise. She slid a finger back inside her lover's rear entrance, making sure it was relaxed and ready, before replacing it with the thicker end of the toy she'd bought, without forgetting to lick the tempting nub a few times, just because she could.

And because the blonde's moans were the hottest, most beautiful sound she'd ever heard. Grinning, the Doman opened an application on her phone, turning it so Azennia could see the empty graph on the screen.

The princess stared at the device in mild confusion; in her defense, she was rather distracted with other things at the moment. That changed the moment that Tsuyu's finger touched the bottom of the graph, turning on the vibration on the toy inside her and immediately forcing her voice out at the intense sensation. She could see the predatory, satisfied look in the beautiful silver eyes looking back at her before the younger woman slowly slid the finger touching the phone upwards, the intensity of the vibration- and the volume and pitch of her scream- following it exactly.

Yotsuyu couldn't hold back anymore with the sight in front of her and the music in her ears, adding her tongue to the equation for the few moments before she slid her finger down again, and eventually stopped touching the screen. The way Azennia was still shaking, the mix of pure lust and slight apprehension on the red orbs looking down at her, it was intoxicating. The way her tongue was immediately wetter when the blonde realised what exactly had happened- this was corrupting her. Having that much power over the woman she'd loved for so long was absolutely corrupting her, and the time where she should have stopped was long ago. So she decided to keep going and see what happens.

"You. Belong. To me." The Doman crawled her way up on the bed while emphasising every word with a short touch on the phone-turned-control-device. Every single one eliciting an intense response from the blonde, still looking at her so loving, so vulnerable, so irresistible.

Invading her lover's mouth with a kiss again, Yotsuyu traced a rising then falling line curve with her finger, setting it to repeat and putting the magitek contraption away before grabbing her lover's toy and starting to slowly fill up her inner lips.

Too much. After Tsuyu moved down to suck and nibble at one her breasts, one hand sliding a toy in and out on the opposite rhythm of the vibration in her rear, her lover's other hand using its fingers to play with her lips and tongue, she just couldn't. There was no way she could last more than a few minutes while being assaulted in four places at once- just the pleasure as is, was more intense than even her previous orgasm, which meant she couldn't stop shaking or moaning.

Yotsuyu had already broken her through love, and at this rate she'd manage to do the same with pleasure, too. Still, she couldn't help but be excited when her lover moved back up to ask something with a whisper, and nibbles, to her ear. It was far less embarrassing than the last one, but still, just knowing she was obeying Tsu was enough to make every sensation even more intense. Of course, the younger girl then kicked it up another notch with something deceptively simple.

'I love you' Azennia heard whispered in her ear, overflowing with the actual feeling mentioned. Over and over again, every single time Tsuyu moved her hand to slide her favourite toy deep inside. That was finally what sent her soaring into a climax, making her do what her lover had asked.

"I'm cum-" She gasped halfway through the moaned words, trying to hold back a scream. "Cumming-cummingcumm-" the pitch quickly rose into a whimper- why? Why did doing what Yotsuyu asked felt so damn good?- somewhere in her mind, she half noticed that the raven haired woman had stopped repeating the same three words, and smiled warmly against her ear. Oh no-

'Good girl~' The sensual tone reverberated through her soul, bringing her orgasm higher and higher.

Oh no.

Azennia handed the empty glass back to Tsuyu with a shaking hand before collapsing back on the bed, the shivering of her body only interrupted by the random spasms still wracking her legs. Apparently, the human body could, in fact, reach a state of almost complete numbness while still being painfully oversensitive. Quite how that worked, she wasn't sure. In retrospect, the fact that her lover had a whole jug of water ready at her nightstand probably should have been a tip of her second, third and fourth intentions that'd lead to the two needing to rehydrate that much.

"I love you." Yotsuyu nuzzled against the blonde, cuddling with the shorter woman. Both of their makeups were long since gone, with raven and platinum strands in an equally chaotic mess. And it was the most beautiful scene she'd ever seen. Grabbing her phone with a shaky hand, the Doman turned on the frontal camera with some difficulty- turns out that touchscreens were not made with fingers coated in a variety of lubricating substances in mind-, framing the two of them cuddled together in bed.

"You madwoman, don't-" Azennia giggled despite herself, trying to block the offending device from capturing the moment with an unsteady arm. Her body felt too much like a pudding to be angry.

"It's fine, I'd never publish this." Yotsuyu kissed the princess's neck softly. "It's just for me." She promised with a warm whisper, causing the blonde to slowly stop hiding her face.

"I didn't think you'd publish some of the ones we took last week in Corvus either." The shorter woman pouted. It'd been one of the very rare cases of the heir to the throne actually using her influence, to secure a beach for the two of them alone for a few days. Granted, said beach was mostly deserted already, and it'd have to be deemed private during their stay for security reasons regardless, but still. "Especially after you picked those bikinis for us!" Azennia whined. "They were more string than fabric!"

"I never said I wasn't going to publish one or two-" The Doman argued mischievously. "And I only picked them because we looked absolutely gorgeous. Besides, have you seen the spike in approval for the Empire in the Ala Mhigan resistance afterwards?" She grinned confidently, pulling up the analysis graphs from the last few days on her device.

"You must be joking." The princess groaned, rolling her eyes. Ten percent. There were deliveries of heavy weaponry which had less of an effect. She wanted to claim that there were other factors involved, but her thorough studies into propaganda and human psychology wouldn't let her. At the end of the day, she knew that people had an innate subconscious bias towards believing those that they found attractive were also intelligent, kind, honest and hardworking.

Coupled with the fact that in any resistance movement, most members were relatively young, and it really wasn't that surprising.

Her being with Yotsuyu also increased the appeal towards the population with one sexual preference, while discounting either from being competition against the other preference. She had to admit, it was a propaganda stroke of genius. Little Tsuyu had become terrifyingly good at her job.

"Either way, this one is just for me. I promise." Silver eyes looked lovingly at vibrant red irises, leaning forward towards a kiss while activating the camera again.

"If it's for you-" Azennia sighed with a helpless smile. "Since when could I say no?" Her lips parted slightly, inviting the younger woman's tongue to ravage hers for the countless time since the beginning of the night, happily caressing and suckling the invading part with her own. The kiss was sloppy and messy due to both of their mouths having long since gone numb and tired, but she didn't mind. If anything, it only made it better.

The blonde eventually found herself cuddling the taller woman against her chest while caressing her hair gently, as usual. The way the two of them were naked, drenched and slippery all over was different, though she guessed it'd likely become the norm as well. She surely wouldn't mind. The princess would happily have fallen asleep just like that, had she not realised something rather annoying.

"I-" She cleared her throat. "I think I drank a bit too much water." Azennia chuckled softly in embarrassment, disentangling herself from her once charge.

"I don't think I brought enough water, honestly." Yotsuyu looked down at the load of laundry they'd need to do the next da- she mentally corrected herself- later today, that called itself their bedding. She wasn't sure which wet patches were natural and which were synthetic, and probably nothing short of a lab analysis could figure it out. "Are you sure you can get to the bathroom alone?" Tsuyu looked at the way the older woman's body was still shaking while she moved to get up.

"Of course I can, don't be sil-" Azennia had her giggle interrupted by a yelp when she fell back towards the bed the instant she'd tried to take a step forward. "What the hells?" She stared at her own legs in embarrassment which had simply given up under her own weight without any warning.

"Yeah, that's what I thought." Yotsuyu mused, moving over to her lover's side of the bed. "Just because they don't hurt doesn't mean your muscles aren't completely worn out, you know? If it wasn't for the sea of endorphins your brain is swimming in right now, you'd probably be groaning in pain."

"Gee, I wonder who could have caused that." The princess glared flatly at the younger woman, though the love in her eyes betrayed any actual animosity, before accepting Tsuyu's help with walking to the bathroom. When she noticed that the Doman didn't leave, and was rather looking at her with a hungry expression, she blushed. Something was coming, but she hadn't the faintest idea what it could be that her lover hadn't already done to her.

"Can I try something?" Yotsuyu whispered in Azennia's ear warmly, nibbling the earlobe gently while running a hand gently down the blonde's navel, to the entrance still slippery from earlier. At the shy nod she got in response, Tsuyu slid two fingers inside smoothly, aiming directly for the slightly different patch of flesh at the front. Judging by the gasping whimper she heard and the arms that wrapped around her tightly, she'd found it right away.

Azennia felt her voice being forced out with each movement against the already overstimulated most sensitive spot inside, making both her toes and fingers curl due to the extremely intense sensation. Her tongue refused to stay inside her mouth instinctively, seeking Tsuyu's skin while she easily soared past another orgasm- she'd long since lost any sort of count tonight-, not able to stop from being even louder when the younger woman kept going again. Her eyes widened slightly while trying to roll back when the whole reason why they weren't in bed anymore came back, but her lover's tongue invaded her mouth again before she could say anything.

This felt incredibly perverted, one of the few remaining bits of her mind realised while Tsu made her cum again.

It took all of Yotsuyu's determination to pull her fingers out of Azennia's hot, wet and convulsing insides, before using the mix of lubrication to rub against her lover's sensitive nub while kissing, purposefully overstimulating the princess to the breaking point. Licking her way to the princess's neck, she bit down and sucked harshly on purpose, listening to the strangled high pitched moans while softly caressing the spot over the older woman's womb, feeling the body in front of her shaking and the tip of the nails that refused to dig into her back no matter what.

Azennia clung to Tsuyu for dear life while her mind tried to restart itself, slowly realising what Tsuyu managed to make her do. The mental list of "not into that/won't do that" was getting frighteningly short. She giggled into a hiccup, realising by the tears that kept coming out of her eyes that her nervous system had just been scrambled entirely and nothing made sense anymore. "Wow, I had-" She giggled again, her body alternating between convulsing and limp. "-no idea you were this much of a sadist, Tsu." She properly embraced the younger woman despite the awkward position with herself sitting and the Doman leaned forward.

"I-" Yotsuyu licked the mark she left on the princess's neck lovingly before pulling back and cradling the blonde's tear-soaked face gently. "Honestly, I had no idea either." She averted her eyes in embarrassment before looking back. "Did I go too far?" Her voice wavered in concern.

"Hmm. Not really." Azennia answered truthfully after a moment of thought, nuzzling against the younger woman's hand. While she did feel a little bit scared at how intense things had gotten at some points, she trusted Tsuyu completely that if she asked the Doman to stop, she would have. That, and she hadn't said that word, or even implied it, at any point.

Curiosity- and desire- had most thoroughly killed the cat. "And I love you too. More than I can ever say or show." Bright red eyes overflowing with love and devotion bore into silver ones.

The pair eventually found themselves back at the damp, warm nest they'd made their bed into, with the blonde being the one cuddled up against Yotsuyu's chest for once. With all of their energy finally spent, the Doman carefully ran featherlight fingers through the sleeping woman's platinum hair. For a moment, Tsuyu wondered just how different her life might have turned out had the two of them never met on that fateful day. It was a very short moment, because she decided it wasn't worth thinking about.

Her real life, right here and right now, was perfectly happy as it was.

- )-

"Sorry, I almost couldn't get out in time." Yotsuyu excused herself, stepping into the entrance hall of Solus's laboratory facility- part of the well defended complex in the capital from where the royal family of Garlemald ruled and lived. "We've had to expand the propaganda personnel by twenty percent to account for the growth in the network user base." The Doman smiled. Guiding the flow of information in the Empire's media was a colossal job, especially in the age of user-generated content. On the other hand, it allowed their operations to be more successful than ever. The growing division and unrest in the nations of inner Aldenard would make their upcoming military offensive much easier.

Azennia embraced the younger woman warmly, slipping into a short kiss. She'd much rather it be a long kiss, but it'd be quite awkward considering the entirety of the extended royal family had been summoned, including her uncle Titus, her aunt Arrecina and their son- her cousin- Nerva. "It's alright love, I've just arrived too. Naago and I were overseeing the latest counterinsurgency reports." The Empress of Garlemald tilted her head towards the pink haired woman with cat ears leaning back against the crown prince.

Naago tol Rahz shrugged with a confident grin. "If you can even call them insurgents anymore. More like malcontents at best- people tend to reconsider their life decisions when surrounded by gunship fire and paratroopers." The inventor of the Fireforce tactics, she'd risen meteorically from leader of the allied Ala Mhighan resistance, to Tribunus of the Imperial Army under the command of the Legatus of the fourteenth legion, Gaius van Baelsar, which was charged with integrating the province.

"Would still be faster if I could go in, myself." Zenos suggested nonchalantly, looking down at his girlfriend. Literally, not metaphorically- the Miqo'te just about reached his chest. Despite that, the markswoman could hold her own at his side in a fight; one such when dealing with an Eikon summoned by one of the snake-like Ananta tribes being when the two met. As one of the first to receive the updated version of the same Resonance augmentations he'd been given as a child, her nigh prescient ability to hit the weak spots in her targets was what first caught his attention.

The rest, as they say, is history.

"You'd be bored out of your skull within the hour." She looked up at the blonde man with a knowing expression.

"...perhaps." The prince dodged the accusation poorly, looking away with a slight blush.

Azennia smiled while watching the couple. She'd been endlessly relieved when her nephew had come to her asking about dating advice. While she didn't have much to share- her own situation with Yotsuyu being highly unusual-, the mere fact that he'd found someone else was what mattered. If she had a gil for every time someone she helped care for had then become obsessed with her romantically, she'd have two gil. Which wasn't a lot, but it was concerning that it'd happened twice.

Not only that, but Naago being an important public figure in Ala Mhigo had done wonders for propaganda, just like her own relationship with Yotsu- Her train of thought derailed while approaching the station. If her cousin Nerva ended up with an Eorzean partner, she'd have to start asking some very serious questions to grandfather about deliberate design of romantic preferences via genetic manipulation. As the saying went, once is a coincidence, twice is suspicious, three times is a conspiracy.

Her musing was broken by the approaching sound of twin cylinder ceruleum engines, followed by the screeching of vulcanised rubber when two motorbikes slid their way sideways to a perfectly acceptable parking slot near the group.

"Son, you do know that tires do not grow on trees, right?" Lucius sighed tiredly at the approaching forms of Varis and his wife, Carosa. He loved them both dearly, but found it curious how even the beginnings of greying hairs did not stop either from pulling death-defying manoeuvres on the regular on their twin-wheeled contraptions. Then again, the couple had literally met at a hospital, so maybe it was just how their minds worked.

"Considering it's what he spends half his salary on, I'd hope he does." The Empress smirked, returning the middle finger her older brother sent her way at the verbal dig. For the two of them, the gesture held the same amount of affection as a hug.

"You're just jealous it's something you're unable to do, for a change." The older man countered before hugging his daughter-in-law and giving his son the usual overly complicated handshake.

"Why would I be jealous?" Azennia asked in befuddlement. "I can keep up with it using my armour, and I wouldn't be allowed to ride it even if I wanted to." It was an official policy backed by extensive research- hitting something at triple digit speeds from using the latest version of the movement enhancement system still had a lower likelihood of fatal injuries than the same impact while on a motorbike.

The main reason the upgraded system hadn't been retrofitted into every soldier's basic kit was that the rank and file got into enough trouble as it was with the older version's capabilities. The Imperial army was already busy untangling legionarii from tree branches and rooftops. The poor NCOs did not need to deal with nineteen year olds suddenly capable of sliding on ceruleum jets at speeds illegal on most highways.

"Exactly!" Varis grinned, ignoring the first part of his little sister's sentence deliberately, before a very distracting piece of knowledge came back to his mind. "Wait a minute-" His eyebrows furrowed in confusion, looking back at his vehicle. "Rubber does grow on trees. Then why is it so damned expensive?"

"Because it's not exactly easy to make it into circles as thick as someone's thigh, honey." Carosa chuckled while reminding her husband.

"Good, good. You're all here." Solus's weathered voice instantly got him the attention of eleven pairs of eyes. He took a moment to look over the assembled royal family, a small smile coming to his lips. Yes, this would do, he thought. "Please follow me. I am afraid this will take a while."

The Empress of Garlemald led the group after her grandfather, a gauntleted hand easily finding its way to one of Tsuyu's. Even the Doman had donned her own armour for the occasion, as decorum mandated- even if it looked somewhat simplistic in the lake of heavily allaganised cermet around her. The propaganda office was technically not a military branch, as vital as it was. Azennia still thought Yotsuyu looked incredible in it, of course- her opinion was official, as the acting ruler, and not biased whatsoever.

She waited while the elderly man sat down, watching his closed eyes and shallow breathing. It took her a moment to realise he wasn't gathering his strength- in fact, his chest had stopped moving.

"Grandfather?" The blonde woman called out in concern, approaching him. Her chest felt tight, while the pit of her stomach felt cold. She knew, intellectually, that he did not have many years left. She'd been aware of it for a while. It didn't stop her eyes from starting to sting when she knelt down and connected the systems in her armour to his, hearing the alarm from her helmet even as it was latched against her waist. "Opa-" She whispered with a wavering voice, for the first time in many years.

"My apologies." Emet-Selch stepped out from the shadowed door at the other end of the room with a new body and an apologetic smile, to a wall of weaponry immediately pointed at him. It was only a moment before three of them wavered in confusion. "That happened rather earlier than I'd planned. Such dramatics were not my intention." He shrugged. "But I am thankful for the sentiment nevertheless."

Azennia's mind raced to make sense of the sight of a younger grandfather- the one she remembered as a child- standing before her. More importantly, of the fact that she could see the correct colour in the soul inhabiting the body. It was her grandfather, Solus Galvus. Of that she had no doubt, and it was the reason why she could not bring herself to aim her gunblade at him any longer. But how-

"Cloning. You reverse-engineered it." Her mouth fired before her brain could catch up, vibrant red eyes wide in astoundment. Slowly but surely, all the pieces of the puzzle had matched in her mind. The old Emperor's research complex was extremely secretive- even to the acting ruler-, and it had been completely silent regarding their findings for years now. The last time she'd heard of the technology, the imperial scientists could not make heads nor tails of the allagan technique. That, coupled with the mastery of the Echo the man had- it explained what she saw. It was still preposterous, but it did explain it.

"Hang on-" Resonant eyes looked over the sight of Naago's gunspear, flicking between the Empress and first Emperor. 'Gunspear', of course, was a traditionalism at best when naming the twenty millimetre anti-materiel rifle the Miqo'te carried. A good ninety five percent of it was gun, with only the small bayonet at the front enabling any sort of melee engagement which she would be foolish to get into in the first place. "Surely I'm not the only one who just saw his soul up and leave before grabbing that new body from somewhere?"

"Those two things were exactly what I did, yes. And you have no idea how much it pained me to not make the joke." He mused, watching the rest of his current family slowly holster their weapons. "That wasn't even the reason I called you all here today, though it does happen to be somewhat related. I believe you have become worthy of bearing the burden of truth. Of our past."

With a theatrical snap, darkness enveloped the group.

"I-what-?" Azennia asked breathlessly once light reached her eyes again. The warm light of gleaming skyscrapers and spiralling monuments criss-crossed with wide roads, peppered with the fallen leaves of carefully maintained trees. It looked achingly similar to the capital, in perhaps another lifetime or so of progress, other than the sheer scale. For some reason, looking at the city filled her chest with an indescribable pain, an overwhelming feeling of loss-

A loss that danced at the edge of her memory, almost within reach but never within grasp. A beloved home she could never come back to.

Yotsuyu dragged her glance away from the beautiful city in front of her, and from wondering how they were currently standing at the bottom of an ocean, while completely dry and breathing- to her beloved, trying to wipe away the blonde's tears gently. They kept coming. "Love? Are you alright?" She noticed others in the group having the same reaction, though not all.

"Bugger me. So this is what I kept dreaming about?" Naago asked in wonderment. Another thing that had brought her closer to the crown prince was that he was the only one who understood what the experience was like.

"It is." Zenos trailed off, subconsciously pulling his girlfriend closer. With his mind busy dealing with the surge of emotions he was absolutely not used to- even if Naago had gotten him more used to them than before-, he did not register the faint sound of tears hitting the top of his chestplate.

"Welcome, to either your home, or your birthplace. Or at least, how it lives in my memories." Emet declared in soft reverence, looking at his family before turning back to the city. "Welcome to Amaurot."

It was a good hour later that Yotsuyu found herself walking hand in hand with Azennia, down one of the roads of the fabricated city. Towering shades in robes passed them by, every one of which they'd already conversed with. Solus- or Emet, as he'd reintroduced himself- had left the family on their own to explore, content to wait at the capitol building.

An idyllic city and its people frozen at a moment in time, right at the edge of a massive calamity: the Final Days. A calamity that would require such vast amounts of aether that even nigh-omnipotent beings would have to offer their very souls to stop it, to create a god. An Eikon with the power to rewrite the laws of reality itself.

"It's a lot to take in." Tsuyu took a moment to realise the accidental joke, deciding then to simply stare at her lover with a knowing look.

"You can say that aga-" Azennia stopped herself, trying to figure out why the Doman was looking at her like that. To her brain's credit, it only took a few moments to realise why despite having been most thoroughly exploded since their arrival. She gave the taller woman a light nudge, chuckling. "Meanie." She shook her head. "But yeah, it's not everyday that you learn that people used to be five metre tall demigods. Or that you were the one dissenting voice in the leadership that did not agree to summon an Eikon." The Empress sighed, guiding Tsuyu around a corner. "Here, it's a right from the Polyleritae district." She mentioned absentmindedly.

The Doman looked at her lover with some concern. "You know this place like you've lived in it your whole life."

"It feels like I've lived in it my whole life. It feels like-" She trailed off, looking at the large building at the end of the long boulevard.

"-Garlemald." Yotsuyu offered. "Looks like it, too. If a bit damp." She glanced up at the millions of tons of water being held at bay by an invisible incantation around them.

"Grandfather certainly wasn't kidding when he said he was an archmage of eld. Where are we, even?" The blonde took out her phone from a storage bay in her armour, letting it calculate their position by triangulating the signals of several Garlean satellites in orbit. Her eyebrows furrowed at the result. "Off the southwest coast of Aldenard?" It took a moment of consideration before her expression turned into a small grin. "Clever, Emet. Very clever." It was odd how natural that name felt when referring to the man.

"The exclusion zone around Lominsan waters for our navy." Tsuyu's eyes widened in realisation. The official explanation was operational security- to stop a future opponent from even getting glimpses of their ships or submarines before the upcoming invasion. And every good lie has a hint of truth.

"I do hope your forays have been enlightening." The ancient wearing Solus's body mused once the group had gathered at the capitol. His expression fell into sadness. "There is yet more you must know." Walking towards the back of the main hall, the gargantuan doors opened with little more than a wave of his hand, revealing fire and ash beyond. He turned back to his new family. "You will bear the knowledge of the final days of Amaurot, and the sundering of the very world itself."

Azennia stared dumbfounded at the thirteen orbs circling the representation of the source- seven of them since rejoined, and one lost to darkness. The summoning of Zodiark had already been a lot to take in, but to learn of the truth- the whole truth- behind Hydaelyn and her plan was almost too much. She stared at her grandfather, the man who'd lovingly raised her. The man who'd killed countless millions for the sake of the ones he loved, and would kill millions more had Garlemald not flourished to the point of giving him hope for a new, better plan.

The blonde glanced at Tsuyu before having to admit to herself that she'd be little better if put in the same place, even if her past self had died trying to find some other way.

"And you believe us to be worthy of inheriting the star, and with it the responsibility of forging a better path for the rejoinings." Yotsuyu attempted to summarise his speech for the sake of her own overtaxed mind. They could do it, of course. If the Empire had to conquer the reflections and the very moon itself to release their ancestors from their duty, then it would. A dream ever grander, a goal always closer.

"To put it simply, yes." He shrugged. "To use the most practical way to deal with those who stubbornly refuse to see reason, to conquer and crush them under your heel. It is almost pathetically easy, and something that even the malformed societies that came since could manage." He looked back at the image of Amaurot that filled the large orb representing the source, watching it melt away to reveal Garlemald.

"But with even the slightest guidance, you rose to the real challenge. To quench the embers of animosity, and actually achieve peace. For the conquerors to treat the conquered with dignity, convincing them to let bygones be bygones." The image of the capital changed to a map of the planet, with the imperial banner slowly spreading further and further as a unified whole. Golden eyes quickly glanced over Yotsuyu and Naago. "A surprise, to be sure. But one that I was all too glad to witness."

At once, every gauntlet in the room lit up in orange, blinking incessantly. The Empress was the first to accept the radio request. "This is Overlord, come in."

"Your grace! I-" The soldier took a moment to calm himself and allow his training to come back to the forefront of his mind. "Overlord, two-three Charlie. We have a possible hostile at map grid two-five-seven-one-five, zone one. There are car accidents all over the capital and-" Caius quo Rullus steadied the grip on his gunblade, keeping it pointed at the dark robed figure hovering ominously in front of the royal complex. "-and the skies look just like the final days. How copy, over?" A hint of fear crept into his voice.

Red eyes widened. "Two-three Charlie, Overlord copies all. Say again comment about final days, over." Her mind raced. How did a Centurion in the middle of the capital-

"Overlord, two-three Charlie. I-" It was hard to get his thoughts in order when it felt like his mind had just come out of a blender. "We saw it. Amaurot, Zodiark, the sundering, everything. I don't know how. It felt like those descriptions about the Echo." He forced himself not to hyperventilate, before ordering some of his personnel to fully close the encirclement around the, as far as he could tell, Ascian.

"I think everyone did, ma'am. I don't know if it's the same everywhere, but there's fire raining from the sky up to the horizon, please advise, over."

"Two-three Charlie, Overlord. Maintain standard capital defense procedure. All units are cleared to engage if subject is confirmed hostile. Overlord on its way. Out." By the time Azennia had put on her helmet properly, they were already through darkness again and back in Garlemald. She felt the push of the ceruleum thrusters distributed around her armour making the world a blur for a few moments, her momentum violently changing direction several times before a hard stop brought her to the front of the royal complex. A single glance at the colour of the soul hovering above them called forth a name. Lahabrea.

"Azem." The name felt bitter in his mouth. "How like you to try and cause problems, even in that pitiful state." The Speaker of the Convocation glared down at the 'Empress'. Empress of what? Malformed creatures witlessly trying to copy their forefathers, not knowing how or why? "But you, Emet-" He turned to the man who'd just teleported besides his 'granddaughter'. "To think that you of all people would give up on our duty-" Lahabrea trailed off, looking at the two of them, now joined by a third; an abomination trying to reach the heavens that were rightfully theirs. "-I have overlooked your little pet projects this whole time, and I see that it was a mistake. But that is a simple matter to correct."

The Ascian grinned, bringing several beasts into existence beneath him with little effort. Before they could take a single step, lances of darkness had fallen upon each and every one.

"Give up my duty?" Solus's face twisted into fury. "If I hadn't gotten involved, you and Igeyorhm would have lost several shards due to sheer incompetence, instead of just one!" He shouted, gesturing widely around him. "Look around you! I have found a better way in guiding the sundered to free our brethren, while your own actions doomed the plan for rejoining from the very start! I will follow blind stupidity no longer!"

"And your better way would have our lord Zodiark be undone at the end, with His task still unfulfilled!" Lahabrea screamed back in fervent rage.

"Zodiark was a god we manufactured, out of despair! And even half of all our souls was still not enough!" An uneasy feeling grabbed his heart in darkness, and Emet squashed it through willpower alone. "It fulfilled its purpose, and now it will relinquish the souls of our loved ones so they can be born again! I refuse to put His will ahead of OUR people!" A beam of darkness left his hand, striking his fellow Ascian and sending him reeling for a moment.

The Speaker straightened his form, glaring in disdain at his fallen brother in arms. "So be it, then." With a wave of his hand, a rhombus-shaped cage formed around 'Solus', chains rising from the ground to bind him further. "You will watch your better way burn to the ground before I banish you until our work is done. Thank you for your sacrifice, Emet-Selch."

The gravity of the moment was spoiled by the staccato sound of semiautomatic gunblade fire beginning to shower the figure from below. Solus smiled at the gathered capital defense forces following their training, before nearby anti-air guns joined in on the offensive by replacing most of the air around Lahabrea with bullets. It would not be nearly enough to take down the paragon, but it certainly sent a message.

His smile fell, however, when he noticed the dozens- nay, hundreds- of black portals opening as far as the eye could see, each spewing forth voidsent and beasts alike.

"Tsuyu!" Azennia shouted, thrusters and martial techniques alike sending the Empress as a barely visible blur towards the younger woman who'd, much like the rest of the royal family, already opened fire against the horrors nearby. Vibrant red eyes saw the Doman dodge an incoming claw swipe from her flank after hearing the warning, allowing the Garlean to slice the malformed being that'd attempted to kill Yotsuyu in a single blow.

A cacophony of magics and blades joined the torrent of gunfire keeping the targets at bay, with more echoing in the distance across the city.

"Papa! Mama! What's happening?" Sornatia bas Gratian asked in mild panic, looking outside the living room window of their apartment at the raining fire, the sounds of battle outside echoing closer and closer, the explosions making the frame shake. Her parents had seen the same vision she had, and had then ran into their bedroom, coming out with weapons and helmets she'd been told never to touch.

Modia pyr Gratian, kindergarten teacher and reservist of the logistics division of the capital, knelt down and held her daughter's shoulders warmly. "Me and daddy need to go help people, dear. I need you to be brave and protect our home, alright? Don't open the door unless us or someone else from the IAF tells you to, just like we practised. How copy, little soldier?" Her modulated voice came clear and steady, despite the trepidation she could tell on her tone inside the helmet.

"G-good copy, mom." She nodded while tearing up, before receiving a quick hug from the both of them. She could hear faint shouting through their radios, and then they were gone, joining the flood of adults rushing down the staircase of their building with gunblades in hand.

"Ten o'clock! We need that auto covering ten o'clock!" Augustus quo Barrius screamed over the sounds of battle from his position at the northern defensive position of Via Bellorum. Armoured cars formed their barricade, with his men and several Magitek Armours manning it. The walkers were poorly suited for a stand-up fight, their light plating blocking little more than small arms fire; but their main cannons could put on the hurt pretty well.

His radio crackled to life. 'Hoarhound three-one, this is Hoarhound two-two. I have visual on enemy heavies closing in on your position from the atrius concertorum. Supported by light infantry and fliers. How copy, over?'

He swore under his breath before thumbing the button on his gauntlet, keeping his automatic gunblade pointed downrange. "Hoarhound two-two, Hoarhound three-one copies all. Maintain overwatch and do not engage, out."

"Contact left! Contact left!" One of his soldiers called out, and the world was concussion and noise.

"Tursus units, this is Tursus Actual. I've assigned each platoon to one of the defensive lines currently needing heavy support, you are free to engage at will. Tursus one, on me. We'll be giving the main hostile something to think about. Disperse." Titus yae Galvus released the send button on his tank's radio, feeling the sixty tonnes machine whine forward under the power of the ceruleum turbine sitting behind him and the rest of his crew. The other three Galateas Mark twos in his platoon flanked his vehicle down the road, pushing abandoned cars aside. He watched the Black Force tracker to his left, showing the real time positions of friendly forces and identified hostiles-

The numbers of the latter were increasing by the second.

Antistia oen Falco grit her teeth, maintaining her outgoing fire at the forms attempting to approach the third anti-air gun emplacement in Urbs Antiqua. The older, lower buildings gave them a much better arc of fire than the emplacements at the more built-up areas of the city. The quad autocannons behind her fired another burst, causing her vision to shake and a few of her own gunblade shots to go awry. Her squad had already run out of explosives minutes ago, and if they kept getting swarmed at this rate, their ammunition wouldn't hold for much longer either. From the corner of her eyes, she noticed barrels of the static emplacement- glowing a dull red against the night sky- start to swing back and low, towards the incoming hostile infantry.

"Get down!" Her commanding officer shouted, and she obeyed. When the barrage of fire roared overhead to defend their own position, she could feel the oppressive force of the rapid shockwaves keeping her against the ground.

Hypatia wir Galvus threw her gunship violently to the side, evading the marked line in her heads up display; and the torrent of flame and plasma that then filled that space coming from the mage beneath. "Fox one." At a twitch of her finger, a missile left her craft and speared towards the Ascian in retaliation, guided by the laser designation from the troops below. Behind her seat, her copilot fired the aircraft's main cannon as fast as it could be loaded, high explosive shells opening holes in the stream of targets crashing against the defensive lines nearby. Hundreds of metres behind, tertiary lines were already being manned, ready for when the second fell.

The first lines hadn't lasted ten minutes.

Emet-Selch stared at the carnage taking place in the capital of the empire he'd built, the soldiers defending every centimetre of ground with their lives while the sky continued to rain fire. He'd berate Lahabrea for his insanity, his inability to see how he was doing nothing but causing a repeat of the final days, but the battle against the Ascian had since moved away from his position. The one difference, of course, being that every able bodied adult had joined the fight. None ran, none panicked. They stood, they fought, and if necessary, they died with gunblade in hand, down to the last.

He grimaced. Even if they won, Lahabrea would simply try again, and again. The Speaker, as one of the unsundered, had the benefit of eternity on his side, while he was bound by the internment spell, locking his soul down to the very concept. He understood very well how the incantation worked- and what he'd need to do to escape it.

"I'm sorry, Hythlodaeus." Emet-Selch closed his eyes and began burning his very essence into aether.

Yotsuyu manned the barricade at the entrance of the control bunker at the southern edge of the city together with the rest of the units that'd managed to make it. She adjusted her supporting grip on the spine of her gunblade, warm as it was from helping Azennia fight her way from the royal complex to the place she was most needed- commanding the defense of the capital.

Perhaps helping was a strong word to use, given the absolute hurricane of carnage that the Empress had wreaked to get the two of them to safety, but it was not incorrect.

She might not be an augmented child soldier with the soul of an ancient heroine, but she was still a Garlean. She could move, and she could fight. Layering the holographic dot of her standard issue gunblade over an approaching target, she breathed out and squeezed the trigger.

'Blackstar one-three! We do not have enough shells remaining in the battery to provide effective supporting fire for your position! We are pulling back to the Regio Fontis defensive line, out!'

'This is Foxtrot four-two at the Augustus Memorial! We are taking heavy fire! Requesting arty and airstrike on our position! Send whatever you got! Broken arrow! Broken Arrow!'

The cacophony of radio communication mixed with explosions and gunfire echoed through the room while Azennia stared at the digital map of the city, real time information from the BlakFor tracker letting her know the situation. It was bad. Several sectors in the northern end of the city were hued in grey, while a red line blinked as it slowly but inexorably made its way down; each dot representing a reported hostile too small to count- but she could see the black dots fading out every moment even as more were organised.

'Overlord, this is Stalker two.' A voice came into her helmet. 'Warhorse five-one: flight of two Assault Craft is down. I see only one chute deploying. Stadium Magnum is taking indirect fire from ranged hostiles. How copy, over?'

The blonde sighed, looking at the area around the Stadium. It was one of the staging and evacuation points for the defense plan- which meant there were likely wounded and children there. Still, the reality of the situation stared her back in the face. "Stalker two, this is Overlord, solid copy on all. We do not have any other close air support in the area at this time. Displace to a more secure location south of Via Solaris and await further instructions. Out."

Decades of study, simulations and experience all told her the same thing: they were not winning this. Not with the forces available at their disposal, and even though the rest of the Imperial Armed Forces were being mobilised at that very moment, they would never arrive in time. And judging by what Lahabrea's intentions were, simply evacuating into the frozen wastes would do nothing but allow his summons to pick them off at their leisure. One of the harshest lessons of warfare she'd learned was now playing itself in front of her.

You can do everything right and still lose.

'Overlord, Bozja Receiver here.' Her eyebrows rose. If other provinces were also under attack- "Bozja, Overlord. Give me some good news, over." She'd take 'we are currently not actively dying' at this point.

'Overlord, my team is crunching the numbers, and we believe it would be possible to trigger a full discharge from Dalamud over the capital.'

Azennia's head recoiled in shock at the idea. The Bozja Receiver Array had enough capacity to power three entire provinces, and it still only used a fraction of the lesser moon's power output. "Bozja, Overlord. What would be the blast radius and yield, over?"

'Still calculating radius, Overlord. Power output on target is estimated to be at the forty megaton range.'

The Empress stared at the map in front of her in shock. Nevermind radius, that would turn the entire city and surrounding countryside into a crater. Her teeth clenched. But the same would happen to Lahabrea. She took a deep breath, looking back at the entrance to the bunker. She could still hear the gunfire coming from it. The safe room was fifty metres below the surface. If she could get Tsuyu there and seal the entrance with rubble before the discharge- Her train of thought trailed off.

"Bozja, Overlord. How long will we have Dalamud on station for?" She asked, voice calm.

'Fifteen minutes, Overlord. After that it'll take thirteen hours until its orbit brings it back over your horizon.'

"Bozja, Overlord. Copy all. Standby on this frequency. Out" Azennia braced herself with extended arms while leaning forward against the command table. One thing.

There was one thing she could still do.

'Tursus one-one, we've been tracked! Ceding command to Tursus one-two! We'll continue to fight as long as we can!'

'Gator two-six, Gator two-five! Be advised: We are pulling out of Regio Domus! BCT-Three taking seventy percent losses! Our position is untenable! I say again, we are out of here!'

Darkness one moment gave way to flaming skies and acrid smoke the next, the scent of ceruleum, blood and burned flesh filling his nostrils. Elidibus reached up, taking off his mask and pulling the hood covering his silver hair down before taking in the devastation. "I've failed. Again."

Emet-Selch smiled sadly at the younger unsundered at his side, even while his own soul faded away. He could feel the grip of the incantation binding him weaken. "I'm afraid not everything can be reconciled. There are times where two ideas clash, and the only solution is conflict."

"So it would seem." The Emissary's expression fell further. Ever since the older man's most recent creation began to take over Etheirys, the work required for his duty of keeping the balance and guiding the star upon its true path had been few and far between.

"Still-" 'Solus' focused, willing a small, amber stone to materialise at Elidibus's feet. "You are still able to keep a promise, if you so wish." He grinned confidently.

Blue eyes widened, their owner kneeling down to pick up the object that brought back his dearest memory, almost forgotten.

"Grizzly, this is Overlord. Use of thermobaric weapons is now authorised. Go ahead and level the building, out." The Empress's voice was calm and collected. She had a plan now, as horrible as it was. Her only regret is that Yotsuyu would never forgive her. When a dark portal appeared at her side, she was halfway to drawing her gunblade into a cut when she saw the colour of the soul coming through. Vibrant red eyes stared at brilliant blue.

"Themis." Her subconscious stated before her brain could catch up.

"Azem." The Ascian with the resemblance of a young man stated back, before offering the stone in his hand. "Even should you lose all that is dear to you. Even should it cost you your life-" he trailed off, smiling.

"-You bear the burden and fight on, kicking and screaming until your last breath is spent." The blonde completed the saying, carefully picking up the amber crystal.

Herein I commit the chronicle of the traveller. Shepard to the stars in the dark. The voice echoed inside her mind. Though the world be sundered and our souls set adrift, where you walk, my dearest friend, fate shall surely follow. For yours is the Fourteenth seat - the seat of Azem.

"You are their guide, are you not?" Elidibus smiled. "Then lead them to where they are needed."

He was barely able to finish the sentence before a burst of ceruleum filled the space where the Empress stood, a golden trail of light leading to the entrance of the bunker.

"Here. Let's take a break." Antistia oen Falco set down the injured soldier she was helping carry with a grunt of exertion against the wall of the crumbled building her team had just gone around. Her team, she chuckled to herself, checking her last magazine- four rounds. She was just a Legionarius fresh out of basic trying to get what was left of her squad not killed. The evacuation point they were last heading to had already fallen, so the three of them were now trying to just survive behind enemy lines. She whipped around in mild panic, pointing her gunblade at the light and wind suddenly coming from behind her cover.

Out of all the things she was expecting- most of them different forms of horrible death- pillars of light coming from a golden incantation on the ground all along the street were not one of them.

"FALCO! LOOK OUT!" The other soldier in their makeshift squad that could still fight aimed his gunblade at the monstrosity behind the woman, squeezing the trigger repeatedly, to all the effect of a multitude of clicks leaving his empty weapon.

Antistia whirled around, letting her training take over and emptying what remained of her magazine in the creature's chest in less than a second. It barely flinched. The Legionarius watched a bloodied claw approach her head with horrifying clarity- before it, and the rest of the being, were torn apart by a torrent of autocannon rounds. She stared at the mound of mutilated flesh and blood for a moment, until an incredibly loud shout finally made her look back again.

At a full Cavalry Regiment, it seemed, that now occupied the entire street as far as she could see. In the top hatch of the lead Armoured Fighting Vehicle, a white haired Lalafell gesticulated wildly in her direction.

"HEY KID! WHERE IN THE FUCK ARE WE!?" Rurusho shouted.

Modia slammed the bolt of her gunblade forward, to no effect. Her weapon had begun to jam five magazines ago, and it seemed the mechanism had finally overheated to the point of locking up entirely. She pulled what ammunition she had left out of the now just blade, lifting the smoking equipment above her head. "Need a new one!" She felt herself shouting, long past being able to hear anything but tinnitus. All around her, gunfire and grenades flooded the south entrance of Stadium Magnum, desperately keeping the mass of monsters outside at bay.

A poke on the back of her shoulder made the logistics officer turn to grab the replacement gunblade- and stare eye to eye with a young girl, not many summers older than her own daughter. Modia grabbed the weapon numbly after a moment, watching the child run back to deliver another bloodstained weapon to the defense line.

Check chamber. Load mag. Rack bolt. Shoulder, stabilise, line up, squeeze. She did not think those things, her body did them automatically- which was a good thing. Was Sornatia still alive? Had she been torn apart by these things, buried beneath rubble, burned alive? A distant part of her mind reached the count of zero, causing her thumb to reach for the magazine release control- and slip.

Modia turned the gunblade slightly to look at the problem, seeing the drying blood caked over the button. Before she could obey the distant part of her mind telling her to clear it, a voice inside her helmet brought her consciousness back to the there and now. 'Gunhammer actual to anyone on this frequency, be advised: artillery is now available over the capital, Gunhammer standby for fire mission, over.'

Cassius quo Falx stared at the smoke trails and ember glows coming from the capital. He did not know how his artillery unit had gone from full alert in Doma to suddenly standing on the snows of Garlemald, and he didn't have time to ask. What he did know was that the city he'd visited several times and made some of the best memories of his life in was burning, he had command of several tonnes of concentrated, phallic destruction, and things were going to die.

'Gunhammer Actual, this is Three Foxtrot Echo Four Gamma! Requesting immediate suppression, Grid Two Five Three Three Five, Zone Four running west-east south of my position! Massed enemy targets along Via Solaris, we are in Stadium Magnum, as soon as possible! Danger close, canister!'

He turned to his teams with a predatory smile, cat ears flared back. "You've heard the lady, turn that grid into a blender!" The Miqo'te thumbed the radio switch on his gauntlet. "Message to observer. Copy all, canister danger close, Confirm. Fifteen rounds, five guns, time to target thirty seconds. Standby for shot, over." Like a well oiled machine, the men and women behind him input the information on the firing computers of their guns while loading the gigantic pieces of ammunition. It was only a few moments later that the shouts of readiness rang out from the entire artillery battery.

"Incoming!" Modia shouted, diving for what little cover she had left. The overwhelming noise from her position was replaced by silence for a fraction of a second- though the only reason she could tell was the suspicious lack of shockwaves assaulting her body even through her armour. And then herself, together with the entire barricade and everyone manning it, were thrown clear from the entrance by the barrage of concussions coming from outside. She'd never been in a tumble dryer full of dust before, but the part of her brain that wasn't hiding in terror imagined it felt quite similar. 'Danger Close' turned out to be quite a bit more unpleasant than in digital games, the Optio thought.

Once the world had finally stopped shaking- another barrage, this time at the north entrance, interrupted that thought- diminished shaking, she corrected herself, the kindergarten teacher stumbled over towards the street. Unfortunately, Via Solaris was now a smoking ditch piled full of random pieces of flesh and bone. That did not explain how what seemed to be half of the Imperial Armed Forces now swarmed the city, but since they were already dealing with seemingly unending horrors summoned by an ancient mage, perhaps it was just that type of day.

"Jotunn Six, Overlord. Clearance for all conventional ordnance confirmed. Deploy packages as required, out." Azennia maintained the expected professional tone before sighing once the radio was not transmitting. Granted, it was much better than expected, considering the expected was dead after burning through so much aether for that spell. It was only later that reports from the seismometers in Ala Mhigo would reach her regarding the earthquake that had nearly turned Mor Dhona to rubble. The Empress stared at the live map of the capital, dark dots recapturing sectors, pushing the red line further and further north.

Towards Lahabrea.

Naago grinned at the explosions that began enveloping the dark robed man in ever increasing numbers, following the infrared laser that she still kept on his form. It wasn't difficult, given that she could still clearly see past her scope the colour of his soul through the fire and smoke. Other than a few errant blasts of plasma, the sorcerer hadn't bothered to try and kill her since the start of the engagement, other than the endless streams of horrors that kept appearing out of the portals he'd made.

Unfortunately for him, all that accomplished on her end was giving her boyfriend the time of his life.

"Did you see that summoning spell!?" Zenos shouted while laughing, cutting down two more of the beasts that dared approach. A third that leapt at him found itself blocked by twin gunblades before a blast of blood red aether sent it flying in pieces. "I had no idea I was so far behind!" And he could not be happier.

"I could taste that spell." The Miqo'te replied with a small grin, sighing. It was fairly rare to see the crown prince acting like an excited teenager, but she found it precious every time. The fact that it normally happened when he was covered in blood from head to toe would be concerning if not for the fact that she knew she didn't have to 'fix him'- his beloved auntie had already done that for her.

The pink haired woman grimaced at the increasing frequency of the torrents of fire that Lahabrea was using. With his summons being pushed back, he seemed to be changing tactics to a more direct means of assault- and the approaching armour and aircraft were paying the price, even with her relaying the patches of aether she could see in the immediate future to the other units. Even missiles were beginning to fail to reach the mage due to his increased aggression, which bode poorly for the barrage she could see coming in the distance. Unless...

Her sighting unit confirmed the bullet drop estimation she'd already calculated in her head. Compared to the bow she used in her childhood, her gunspear might as well be instant. Bracing the bipod against her knee, Naago squeezed the trigger, sending the twenty millimetre round piercing through the air; the barrel of the weapon recoiling backwards against heavy springs to absorb part of the recoil. Little more than a second later, the incendiary armour piercing high explosive- she once wondered if the imperial engineers hadn't tried to also fit a kitchen sink inside- bullet detonated against the Ancient's head, making him turn towards her in surprise.

The Miqo'te would have given Lahabrea the middle finger for full effect, had she not had to dodge a scorching pillar of aether that soared from where she stood.

"Ye. Ye!" Rurusho's volume rose in excitement while she watched the barrage of cruise missiles hit the mage in her thermal sight, going so far as to track and follow him as he fell from the sky. "Ye! Get fucked you bastard!" The old Lalafell laughed, pumping a fist in excitement. She could hear the cheering from her other units over the radio for a moment before it began to turn into nervous laughter. Squinting, she switched through sensor suites until one managed to get through the smoke and heat enveloping the spot where the ancient had crashed-

Only to show a mutated, bestial form of the sorcerer stand up in four legs, before incinerating the lead vehicle in her formation so thoroughly, the ammunition inside did not even have time to detonate. "I DON'T REMEMBER ORDERING A CEASE FIRE!" The Tribunus shouted into the radio.

Azennia watched the drone feeds in addition to the zoomed in map of the northern outskirts of the city, the main battle now focused on a single point while the infantry units cleared the capital from the remaining monstrosities with little difficulty. No amount of people with gunblades would do much good against the ancient anyway, not when his new form was fast enough to dodge artillery strikes. Only the remaining mechanised and aerial units in the area were able to keep up with the being, but not without taking constant losses from attrition. She could feel, even through kilometres of ground and concrete, Lahabrea's aether dim with every tank round and air to ground missile he took. But it wasn't diminishing fast enough.

Her eyes widened when three gigantic radar contacts came alive on the map to the east of the city. It made no sense, the only thing there was the experimental airship yard, but those wouldn't be ready until-

'Overlord, this is the Imperial Battleship Agrius. We are the Provisional Seventh Fleet, now under your command. Awaiting orders, over.'

She saw the two black shapes beside it light up in a joined formation, Gration and Audax lighting their IFF systems as well. Despite the impossibility, the altitude number that accompanied the Seventh Fleet kept rising. "Agrius, Overlord. How the fuck are any of you in the air at all? Over." She knew, of course, that as the Empress of Garlemald and commander of all imperial forces, maintaining radio decorum was absolutely vital. The problem was that she'd been commanding a surprise battle for the capital for what felt like days, and now three airships that were years away from completion were suddenly at her disposal.

Her mind was a little stressed at the moment.

'Overlord, Seventh Fleet. Our main batteries are online and we have enough ammunition for a few salvos of each type. I am afraid that we have few functioning systems other than that. Also, your brother asked us to send you a message. It reads "Get Ninja'd". How copy, over?'

Azennia's mind broke for a moment before she laughed loudly, shaking her head. Of course. Of course Varis would find a way to mix logistics with witchcraft, as that was the only possible explanation for that the man had just pulled off. Regaining control of herself, she thumbed the radio switch on her gauntlet. "Seventh Fleet, Overlord copies all. Do you have a firing solution on the main hostile, over?"

'Partial, Overlord. Dispersion is two hundred metres due to unstable enemy heading, over.'

The Empress tapped her right feet repeatedly in nervousness, eyes darting erratically. If she remembered the specifications of the main batteries of the Agrius-class, that'd reduce the energy on target by more than half, even with high explosive shells. That wasn't a gamble she'd like to make, but the only way to improve their firing solution would be to immobilise Lahabrea-

Azennia immediately picked a radio frequency she'd never used before.

Minicia mal Caeciliana, head of Ultima Operations, turned on the receiver key on her radio in surprise. Her and the rest of the lab, situated hundreds of metres below the capital, were in battle stations as a formality. The Prototype and Test Type were still in early stages of development, neither with any real combat capability; let alone able to absorb Eikons which was the main force multiplier of the original model they'd found in the allagan digs.

'Ultima, Overlord. Are your pilots there, over?'

The purple haired woman looked at the two teenagers which had requested repeatedly to sortie out and help somehow during the entire battle. The fact that the cyborgs only worked if calibrated against young minds was horrendous, but something the Empire was far from being able to change. At least the two units she had were never supposed to be deployed in combat regardless, though she was beginning to have a bad feeling about that.

"Overlord, Ultima. They are, but I must remind you that Zero and One can't do much more than walk for now-"

'Perfect.' The Empress cut her off.

"Come on Oswin, let's do this!" The Viera grinned, willing Proto-Ultima Unit Zero to advance through the gaps in the armoured vehicles which surrounded the mage via leaps and bounds, the ceruleum thrusters in its armour sending back warnings in protest. She gripped the induction levers tightly more out of practice than anything else, considering that without weapons, the fine controls they provided were not really necessary- her mental synchronisation with the machine's core would be more than enough.

"You're gonna to get us both killed one day, Vraz." The Hyur could feel the concussion of the gunfire from the vehicles he passed aboard Unit One, the sensations of the mostly biological creation being fed back to him through the mental link. Still, he couldn't help but smile a bit at his fellow pilot's sheer joy; bloodthirst induced as it was. He grunted in exertion at willing the war machine to dodge a torrent of plasma from the target, focusing on the rapidly shrinking distance- at least until a shrill scream filled his radio and his blood froze.

'Vraz? Vraz, come in!' She could just about hear Oswin's voice through the furious bubbling of the link support liquid coming from her left arm; the same place on her cyborg that had taken the brunt of the flame pillar which she hadn't managed to dodge. Her eyes watered, and she was pretty sure her arm had actually been injured somehow. Still, her grin widened further into a manic expression while she continued her Unit's advance. "Damn, the synchronisation is a lot more intense than in the simulator." The Viera teenager giggled darkly, joining her fellow pilot in dogpiling Lahabrea with their draconic centaur machines, just about managing to physically overpower the bestial form of the mage despite being more than twice its size.

"Hey, asshole!" She made sure the external speakers were on with a mental command before slamming her cyborg's head against the ancient's. "You're gonna die." She waited the fraction of a second for her enemy to realise what she meant before locking Unit Zero's muscles in place and following Oswin in pulling the ejection handle of the command plug, causing the back plating of the construct to explode outwards; her synchronisation being forcefully cut due to the entire plug being jettisoned via rockets into the night sky.

At the stairs of the royal complex, Emet-Selch finally felt the last of the internment spell give way, placing his body back on the ground. The air around him was dense with the aether of his soul, and he did not have much time. He turned towards the sounds of battle north of his position, and was not there anymore.

"Firing Solution ready! Dispersion is half a metre!" Asano pyr Tatewaki, gunnery officer aboard the Audax called out loudly while keeping her eyes glued to her station, watching the main hostile struggle against the unmanned cyborgs binding him in place.

"Initiate firing sequence." Septimus sas Asellio, Tribunus in charge of the vast battleship, ordered. He saw from the corner of his sight the Au Ra woman all but slam the button for the main battery, the other two ships of the fleet lighting up on the main display in a green outline before the whole craft shuddered at the discharge of four cannons more than forty centimetres wide each.

HE VEHICLE 1X12, Asano watched closely the named dots on her radar collate into an almost indistinguishable blob, trajectories and timing of fire deliberately set so they would all impact the target so close to simultaneously that it did not make a difference. A fuzzy reading emanated from the mage- a wall of plasma between himself and the Seventh Fleet, she saw on the visual camera. The eight hundred and forty kilos of high explosives approaching him at four times the speed of sound were not impressed.

Augustus quo Barrius felt the floor shake under his feet while going door to door with his newly put together squad to clear another residential building. The last thing anyone needed were monsters hiding inside nooks and crannies of the city, but even from several kilometres away, the plume of dust and fire rising several hundred metres into the air was visible from the nearby window. He took a moment to whistle in amazement.

"Holy fuck. Think that asshole's dead?" The Tesserarius beside him who had until a few hours ago had been preparing in Rabanastre asked with a whisper while the shockwave from the explosion threatened to dislodge the panes of acrylic in front of them.

"I sure hope so. Don't think we can hit any harder." Augustus whispered back before falling into formation and kicking another door down.

Emet willed his body to walk the last stretch at the bottom of the smouldering crater, the mixture of smoke and aether in the air crackling and buzzing while they interacted. At the very centre, he could see the dark orb forming above the dissipating physical form of Lahabrea. With a deep breath, he began to concentrate all of him, all of the aether that once formed his soul that was now undone forever-

But that he still held command over.

"Impressive. I concede for now." The Speaker of the Convocation of Fourteen laughed in his aetherial form, fully aware that he could find another body and try again ere long. Garlemald would fall, sooner or later, he thought before the smoke cleared enough for him to notice the form in front of him. "What!? The internment spell is absolute! How-" His bewilderment trailed off, replaced by a mixture of disgust and shock. "You would sacrifice your very existence for these malformed beings in the vain hope that they will manage what we have not for thousands upon thousands of years. You've gone mad." He would have continued to express his disapproval, had a lance of aether not began to eat away at his own.

"Perhaps." The guardian of the underworld answered calmly, an odd sort of peace filling his heart while his essence continued to flow from his hand. "But it is a grand dream I've learned to share with them. It's a shame neither of us will be here to see it complete." The lance grew denser.

"I will not abide by this! He will not abide by this, and by His grace I will not be undone!" Lahabrea's soul screamed, forming a shield around itself as if by faith alone.

Emet-Selch grimaced. Two unsundered at the brink of death, and it was still a sorrier sight than he'd expected. More importantly, he was not sure if what little life he had left would be enough to finish his task. Looking up, he located one of the drones overseeing the crater, and saw through it.

Yotsuyu stared at the yellow eyes looking into the video feed at the bottom of the bunker, before watching Azennia look back through it. She did not know what- or how- the two rulers were able to have an unspoken conversation through a one-way link, but she saw the blonde opening a small slot on her armour and pressing the only button on the small device she'd taken out of it.

To kill a soul. Something a mere gun cannot do, no matter how big. Not unless you were willing to cheat.

"Seventh Fleet, Overlord." The Empress of Garlemald stared at the one-time code. "Use of Shatter ordnance is authorised. Code is Seven-Two-Juliet-November-Echo-Whiskey-Three-Five, over."

'Overlord, Seventh Fleet.' The radio in her helmet crackled to life. 'Code verified. Please confirm Shatter barrage, over.'

"Confirm Shatter authorisation. Fire when ready, out." Her stance deflated before Tsuyu approached her from the side, finding one of the shorter woman's hands with her own. Azennia smiled sadly at the raven haired woman before setting her own radio to transmit on every channel. "This is Overlord to all units. NBC warning level four is now in effect. I say again, NBC warning level four is now in effect. This is not a drill."

Rurusho's eyes went wide in fear before she promptly began to peak every single tone in her radio. "Polecat Actual to all Polecat Victors! You heard the Empress, button up and get as far away from that crater as you can! Double fucking time it, out!" The Tribunus could hear the engines of the aircrafts overhead even louder than the engines and turbines of her own Regiment, all of them having had the same idea at once. Granted, it was about the only thing they could do.

Asano looked up nervously at the red lights and blaring alarms that filled the Audax, having only trained on this procedure a few times before. Granted, there was nothing that she herself had to do differently- that was entirely on the command crew and loaders. All she had to do was her job, as usual.

"Firing solution ready. Dispersion is five metres." The Raen called out, tail waving nervously under her seat. For normal ordnance, such a margin of error was barely in the acceptable range. Both unsundered were locked firmly in the centre of her video monitor.

"Initiate firing sequence." Septimus ordered in the deafening silence of the battleship, broken only by the continuous alarm- and now by the shudder of the main battery firing.

The Au Ra watched with wide eyes a sight she'd never see in real life- the radar reliably tracking the outgoing fire, just as it had been designed to do. Twelve dots, grouped with a single label.

NUCLEAR KILL VEHICLE 1X12

Lahabrea's soul sensed the incoming lights against the early dawn sky, but paid them no mind. Crude explosives had no power over his current form, though they would probably be just enough to finish off the man that currently held his being down to this place. It was truly a horrible shame to lose one of his fellow unsundered in such a pathetic way.

That was the last thought he had before twelve suns dawned one minute ahead of time, their brilliance dwarfing the pink bands on the horizon.

- )-

Azennia looked at the bevy of screens in front of her- reports upon reports, decisions upon decisions. The ongoing hostilities between the duskwight and keepers against the Gridanian government were going well, with no small part due to the psychological effects of the tactical strike against the guardian tree. With their Eikon burned to ash under white phosphorus, a sizable portion of the city state's population came to realise that the forest they dwelled within did not, in fact, depend on the creatures. With their biggest lie broken, the ruling class were now scrambling to maintain control. The Empress approved the request for the gathering of military forces behind Baelsar's Wall for the scheduled 'training exercise', before stretching her body with a sigh.

She could see the warm electric glow of the torch from the Statue of Unity through the office window. Built upon an artificial island over Lake Solus, the gunblade it held on its other hand held aloft high in the sky, representing everything Garlemald stood for; standing as a silent guardian over the capital on the site of its creator's demise.

I shall take your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. These, the homeless and tempest tossed, I embrace and raise my lamp beneath the golden blade.

Azennia smiled at the memory of the plaque that stood at its feet. It was, strictly speaking, an unnecessary expense at the end of the reconstruction of the city- Yet, at the same time, it could not be more important. In the bridge that led to it, thousands of names were inscribed into the reinforced cermet; a memorial to those lost in the defense of their common dream.

Before she could move on to the next matter at hand- the intricacies of the next steps in the naval campaign from their bases in the Cieldalaes Islands- a repeating digital chime caught her attention, signalling the completion of this month's infusion treatment. She disconnected the transparent tube from the port behind her neck, taking a moment to look at the remnants of blood inside it; the Empire's best kept secret.

When members of the data archaeology division brought forward the allagan documents that mentioned the treatment of senescence by simple transfusion of a young person's blood into the subject, the medical researchers scoffed at the idea that something that simple could work. It was only after several animal trials that they were forced, to the horror of everyone involved, to admit its effectiveness. All data about the studies and translations were then immediately buried so deep under red tape that it'd take anyone decades to recover it, even if they knew where to look.

It was the first, and to this day only, allagan technology which the Empire had deemed effectively 'forbidden'. The moral implications alone were horrifying- they were warmongering imperial expansionists, not monsters. And if it wasn't for the cloning breakthrough from her grandfather's personal team, that's where it would have stayed. But by multiplying samples of the blonde's own stem cells taken during her young adulthood and using those to generate the blood infusions, the procedure could finally undergo human trials without the soul-withering implications that it'd otherwise require.

At this point, 'human guinea pig' was Azennia's most experienced career, but she didn't mind. Not when she knew that samples from Tsuyu had also been taken back in the day as part of routine medical checkups. Anything that could buy the two of them more time together was worth it, she thought with a small smile before locking her workstation and pressing a button on top of the infusion machinery that would signal the researchers to take it back to the lab.

"Seriously, how can you make them this good?" Yotsuyu asked with an amused smile past a mouthful of sushi, looking at the older woman who was currently cutting the last roll into more practical slices. The Doman had gotten the ingredients ready before her lover had arrived home, but the final preparation was exclusively the blonde's realm- which was a good thing. The few times Tsuyu had tried her hand at actually putting them together had all resulted in malformed, crumbling affronts to the very idea. Given the younger woman's pride in her own manual dexterity, she'd concluded that the recipe was simply cursed and only Azennia's augmentations allowed her to make it work at all, let alone to make them look like something out of a high end restaurant.

They could, of course, afford said restaurants; but that was not the point. The shorter woman happily humming one of the thousands of love songs she knew to herself while washing the pots and utensils, to experience at least some parts of a normal life was the point, one which she made a point to never give up. What most saw as chores, the Empress of Garlemald saw as calming therapy.

"It's not rocket science." Azennia chuckled softly while drying her hands before making her way to the table, sitting down glued to her lover and leaning forward, resting her head on her arms while looking at the Doman with a loving smile. Truth be told, if it was only for herself, she'd likely not bother. But knowing that Tsuyu was enjoying something she'd cooked made the blonde very, very happy. "Besides, even if it was, it'd be worth it for you."

"Flatterer." Yotsuyu answered flatly before smiling. "But I do love your flattery. And you." She leaned down to kiss the blonde warmly, the only thing delaying her from escalating things being that she knew that Azennia still needed to have dinner, and there was no way the Doman would allow her to do that- especially not with what the couple had recently learned.

"Besides, are you sure it's not?" Tsuyu pulled back from the kiss, pointing at some of the variety that the shorter woman had made. "Even the ones with the salmon on the outside, or the ones with collard strips on top, or corn chips on top, or the fried ones, or-" She started to laugh. "I'm not sure how the Koshu province hasn't revolted yet."

"Look-" Azennia started, laughing back. "Look, if they didn't want to have their food improved, maybe they shouldn't have lost the war." She sat back upright, nuzzling against the Doman's shoulder. "And I love you too, Tsu. A lot."

Silver- she'd really come to like that colour, the blonde realised while carried away in the sensation of licking and caressing the warm, pulsating lengths her lover had summoned onto her body. The semi-translucent constructs of aether had the exact same colour of the Doman's eyes, the same supple skin, scent and even taste as their owner. They undeniably belonged to Tsuyu, even down to the way the younger woman gasped and squirmed when Azennia took one of the two into her mouth while purring and caressing the other against her cheek.

"You've-" Yotsuyu's mind lagged for a moment from the combination of the sensation that was flowing to her body from the appendages- definitely different than what she was accustomed to, but just as intense in their own way- and the bright red eyes looking up at her with the absolute devotion that hadn't changed since their very first time together. Somehow, watching one of the shafts of light disappear into the Empress's mouth and down her throat until her lips pushed up against the younger woman's actual skin made her feel like they'd reached a new level of allagan debauchery. Granted, she had found the spell in a recent batch of translated records, so perhaps it was only right.

That didn't explain why Azennia apparently had a complete absence of a gag reflex, but at that point the answer was rather obvious; Tsuyu thought while gently pulling the blonde's head closer once more, the sensation of having such a sensitive- if artificial- part of herself swallowed tightly into the wet, velvet-like softness forcing her own voice out in sweet tones.

A distant part of the older woman's mind knew, intellectually, that having her mouth ravished like this should not make waves of pleasure flow down all the way to her toes. It should feel uncomfortable at best, it argued while Azennia pulled back for a moment to breathe, still nuzzling and caressing both saliva soaked lengths before letting Tsuyu guide her head again.

Problem was, it did not feel uncomfortable. If anything, it felt wonderful to make the younger woman feel good this way, to feel the younger woman's heartbeat against her tongue and inside her throat, to watch her expressions of pleasure tinted by the desire, the need for more, for her, specifically, behind the silver eyes she loved so much.

It totally wasn't the fact- and the knowledge of the fact- that having her lover fucking her lips had Azennia caressing her own sensitive nub using the lubrication that flowed freely just below which made her even more excited in a positive loop of pleasure; and she'd deny the fact that the mere idea turned her on to her dying breath. Unless Tsuyu asked.

The Empress felt the hot, aetherial lengths thicken and harden slightly while Yotsuyu began calling her name repeatedly, causing her own movements to quicken in response by instinct; her left hand seeking the one from the younger woman that wasn't buried in platinum strands to entwine their fingers together. Her need to be as close as possible to the raven haired woman was more important than seeking her own climax.

"Az-" Yotsuyu called out to the blonde with every pulse of summoned substance that flowed out of the lengths, half of it being swallowed by her once guardian and the other half covering and marking her neck and chest. As hers and hers alone, the Doman's instincts reminded her. There was no bigger proof than the small bundle of cells growing in the older woman's womb, carrying their shared genes.

Azennia pulled back, feeling the hot, gooey liquid coat her mouth before she coughed and swallowed it, the last bits of Tsuyu's essence landing on her lips. She nuzzled against the younger woman's hand, looking up with a satisfied smile. "It's always a lot." The blonde chuckled, feeling the warmth flowing down both inside herself and down her front. She'd always thought it'd be bitter, but that wasn't the case at all- at least not with the way the spell worked. It just tasted like the Doman always did, a flavour she loved.

"It's just how much I love you." Yotsuyu grinned, helping the blonde up to sit in bed at her side before kissing the Empress deeply, taking some of the still hot liquid dripping down from Azennia's chest and using it to massage her breasts, slowly making her way to the sensitive, soft tips.

"I love you too." The older woman smiled, managing to answer between kisses despite the sighs and moans that Tsuyu was already getting out of her. She'd already been close just a while ago, and her lover had long since learned exactly where and how to touch her to get the most intense results. It didn't help that her chest felt even hotter than usual, the tingling beneath her areola stronger every time the younger woman caressed the sensitive skin in strokes towards her nipples. "You really-" Azennia was interrupted by the moan that the Doman caused when she began to suckle and nibble her neck. "-really like playing with them."

"How could I not when you get like this?" Yotsuyu answered in a teasing tone, gently dragging her teeth against the blonde's sensitive skin before biting down softly, enjoying the shivering she got in response. "Besides, you're the one that told me they've started feeling full and aching everyday." She kissed her way back up to Azennia's earlobe, feeling the delicate skin under her fingertips starting to leak; the milk mixing with the rest of the white gooey liquid she was using to caress the tips. "I'm just-" Tsuyu whispered while squeezing lightly from the outside towards the nipple again, feeling the Empress's arms wrap around her. "- helping with that. Not my fault you've started lactating eight months ahead of time." The younger woman smiled predatorily while kissing her way back down, rolling one of the sensitive nubs around her tongue before sealing her lips around it.

Azennia held the raven haired woman close, toes beginning to curl with the soft suckling on one of her breasts while Tsuyu kept slowly flicking a finger covered in the mixed fluids against the other sensitive tip. The fire from her chest had already spread to everywhere else in her body. Her lower lips were screaming for the younger woman's attention, but an equally strong desire inside her wanted her lover to keep going just like this; to drive her crazy. What she didn't expect was that even with her body beginning to shake, despite her moaning, holding her once charge like that- The blonde just about realised what instinct was being mixed with the pleasure before her voice got louder and she began to finally climax.

Yotsuyu let her instincts take over, suckling harder while sliding one hand down between Azennia's squirming legs, easily finding the sensitive nub there too before rubbing it with the mix of white fluids using her thumb, a pairing of index and middle fingers easily finding their way inside through the soft and flushed, soaked lips, feeling the blonde's walls tighten up and squirm against her digits. The only reason the Doman had the willpower to pull them out and carefully slide inside the blonde's rear entrance as well was because of the two appendages between her own legs.

"Tsu-" The Empress of Garlemald spread her legs more while clinging to Tsuyu, the familiar feeling of warm fingers inside her extending and empowering the orgasm that kept twisting the otherwise soothing and happy sensation from caressing the younger woman's hair while having her breast sucked. "Are you trying to corrupt my maternal instincts?" She asked breathlessly while shaking, the pleasure from Tsuyu's touch combined with increased sensitivity making everything even more intense.

"Maybe a little bit." Yotsuyu answered innocently before kissing the blonde deeply, mixing their flavours together into it while sliding a pillow under Azennia's hips with practised ease, leaning back to watch the older woman's reaction to the two summoned lengths spreading her entrances, the extensive lubrication that the constructs provided making the process even easier, little by little until both were all the way in. Even her fingers felt good inside Az, but this sensation- it just couldn't be compared. Not when it felt like she could sense every single fold, every single twitch and shiver of her lover's insides against her own core.

The blonde smiled happily at the addictive sensation of Tsuyu filling her thoroughly, watching the Doman's expression when she deliberately tightened for a moment. In response, she felt the additional, small bit that her lover summoned above the other two start to vibrate slowly against the engorged bud that began sending shocks of pleasure up her body, causing her own legs to wrap around the younger woman and pull her closer. Azennia extended her shaking arms towards Yotsuyu, inviting her into an embrace. The two of them had quickly figured out that it was their favourite way to express their mutual love, to have the raven haired woman on top of the Empress of Garlemald while clinging as close as possible.

"I'm-" Yotsuyu trailed off, cuddled on top of Azennia while the blonde caressed her hair softly. In return, she had a hand rested over the older woman's womb. "I'm not sure how good I can be." She nuzzled against her lover's neck.

"You mean, as a mother?" A blonde eyebrow rose, before she held Tsuyu a bit tighter. "I don't think it'll be a problem. You love me a lot, and our daughter will be part me. I love you a lot, and our daughter will be part you. I won't be able to not love her a lot." Azennia chuckled softly. "I trust you."

"Easy for you to say, you took care of me like it was the easiest thing in the world." Yotsuyu smiled at the memories, cuddling closer. "I barely remember mine. Obviously, my aunt never counted. And I don't even know if I saw you like that, back in the day. I don't know if I ever knew how to." She brought her left hand up against the dimmed light of the bedroom, the silver band around her ring finger that matched Azennia's easily visible.

"I see. Now I'm curious, what did you see me as, back then?" The Empress joined her with her lover's, caressing it with her thumb.

"An older sister, maybe? Someone I could trust, someone I looked up to. I even wanted to become a Praetorian just like you." Tsuyu moved up, kissing the blonde warmly for a moment before continuing. "Honestly, it really didn't take too long for me to end up with a crush."

"Really? Do you remember how long?" Azennia asked out of mild curiosity, eyes widening at the response. She knew that girls matured a lot faster than boys, but that was- Then again, her own stunted growth really wasn't a good basis to gauge other people on. "Now I'm expecting my old team to bust down the door at any moment." She giggled at the idea.

"As if you didn't keep my love at the other side of a three metre pole until I snapped it in half." Yotsuyu scoffed. "If I was any less persuasive, you'd still be keeping your silly morals in the way-" She kissed Azennia's jawline, licking it softly before whispering in a sultry note. "-Instead of being filled with my essence in every hole and pregnant with our daughter." The raven haired woman took joy in the small shiver the words sent through the blonde even after they'd already cooled down.

"See? The corrupt side is so much better." She grinned.

"Honestly, sometimes you'd make a voidsent blush." The Empress pinched her lover's cheek softly in jest, smiling. "But I guess you're right. If anything, I'm glad you didn't get into Internal Affairs." The smile faltered a bit, her voice taking a somewhat distant tone. "I would never want you to see the things I've seen. Dealing with the worst in people day in, day out-" She trailed off for a moment, shaking her head. "There's a reason the average turnover is five years. I think one of the reasons I've lasted as long as I did was the fact that I was already sort of used to it."

"The memory dives?" Yotsuyu asked, caressing her lover's shoulder lovingly.

Azennia nodded. "Yeah. But the main reason was you." She looked at the Doman, leaning down slowly until their foreheads touched, warm red eyes almost shining in the low light. "Every time there was a particularly bad day, or when I was tired of people's cruelty-" The blonde tucked away a strand of raven hair behind Tsuyu's ear carefully. "-I'd come back to whichever Castrum, or base housing, or apartment we'd be at, and I'd see you. And I'd remember the promise I made to myself that day in the integration office."

"To take care of me?" Yotsuyu smiled back, looking at the boundless love behind those crimson orbs.

"No, that's what I promised to you. I promised myself to always, always do everything I could to help you find your smile. No matter what." Azennia's own smile returned. "I don't think that's changed in all these years."

"You-" Yotsuyu straddled the blonde, leaning over her. "-overly romantic, sappy-" Her eyes started to water despite the wider smile. "-loving dumbass. I don't think you've really changed at all." The Doman chuckled with a wavering voice. "I love you."

"Don't blame me, you knew what you were getting into." Azennia teased, lifting a hand to caress Tsuyu's tear-stained cheek. "I love you too, more than I can ever say." She could barely finish the sentence before the younger woman was kissing her again.