'Moon Halo' won't be in the 'reaction' format I'm using now.

"May I question the nature of what we just watched?" The Awakened Stigma wants to know the purpose of them being teleported to an unfamiliar location.

"Life, mostly, in another universe." HoTE replies… then snickers. "Or we watch KEVIN in a skirt."

Might of An-Utu is instantly materialized and thrown through the False Herrscher's heart, causing Hare to snap at the embarrassed Flamechaser Leader in disbelief. Many start snickering again before she hears another stabbing sound, and when she turns back, a spear from Oath of Judah is piercing through HoTE's head.

"We would like you to drop that, thank you very much." Otto wishes not to bring that up again, which causes Kallen and Sakura's giggle to go a bit louder.

"I can tell things like that will come up again in the future." To Hare's further surprise, she just pulls both weapons out of her body and leaves no wounds behind like nothing happened. "You have no idea how many 'unhinged' events these Recorders managed to catch on you all."

"There would be many exaggerations in between, I have to argue." Welt counters. "Even when we're… out of funds, we don't go that far."

"Who knows?" HoTE's shoulders lift up just a slightly bit with her eyes flash a bit with false comedic mockery. Though it quickly dies down when her next words come out: "One last vision about this world and we will move on to the next one."

"There's only one more?" Tesla raises her eyebrow. "I was expecting more though."

"To not deplete your interest, I suppose. Probably for you to imagine yourself how these guys can actually do."

"Given this 'Outsider' is somewhat the Cocoon of Finality of that world…" PROMETHEUS's gears stop for a second upon hearing that from Bianka. "Even with the body of a human, they surely can outclass some mid-rank Valkyries."

"Skills, sure. Pure strength… eh, that's debatable."

Ai-chan giggles when the other A.I. starts her gears again. "Don't worry about it too much."

"You are a bit too relaxed. Cocoon of…"

"Not our concern now, isn't it?" HoTE interrupts.

Corvo's notorious mask is seen floating on the surface of the sea for a moment before it sinks into the depths.

"...Don't tell us he's already dead?"

"Now now, Tesla, I have never told you much about the visions' time, have I?"

"So it could be many years, even decades, after the previous ones." Einstein theorizes.

"I doubt that." Welt refutes the theory. "Not because that's not a plausible theory, but it's because we're having a mischief MC here."

"I think it still works, though." Carole agrees with the blue-haired scientist. "Besides, who says this one is the same one Corvo has?"

"I doubt you can find a second custom-made mask like that one." It's two-on-two as MOBIUS joins in.

They all then turn to HoTE who just zips her own mouth to not spoil anything… Before she unzips her lips and says: "I just remembered. Cover the kids' eyes."

The calmness of her voice confuses the 'parents' for a second before they quickly do so.

The piano starts the music as the view of a new city appears: Karnaca.

"Looks nice for a holiday, not gonna lie." HoV comments, which earns her some nods of agreement.

"This city looks less steampunk than the one we just saw." Young Bronya adds. "Using the windmills to get the wind to power the city, common yet effective."

"But with the previous city…"

"It's happened. Again."

"It's him again. By the way, is the man floating before…"

"Yep, that's how he looked." HoTE confirms HoFi's question.

"...His appearance is a bit too normal."

"Expecting every overpowered being to be like your leader, KOSMA?" No one can see it, but everyone can tell that he's blushing from the inside.

The vision goes into the depth of the city, where two guards are patrolling the road with the citizens fearfully walking away from them.

"Someone pulled the rug out from under you."

"Different city, same problem." Adam crosses his arms in annoyance. "Like the Honkai."

"At least it's right in front of our face, not behind our back."

"You sure about that, Seele? Remember Dominance?"

"Don't bring that thing up." A heated glance is enough to shut HoTE up.

"An Empire at your feet, and you lost it all."

The two guards pass by another group who execute the citizens for some reason. One tries to run but a robot with sword arms holds him back with the blade in his neck so the guard could shoot him down. Once it's done, the guards start bringing the bodies away.

Many growl at the injustice, including KEVIN who states: "Even IF they committed a crime, which I doubt if it's anything serious or there's one at all, executing on spot shouldn't be the first order."

"We didn't call this 'dishonored' for nothing, you know?"

"No wonder you told us to cover the children's eyes." Cecilia sighs, feeling sympathetic to the fallen.

"Please tell us it's fixed in the future of that world." Younger Siegfried growls.

Once again, HoTE zips her own lips.

Unknown to those guards, someone is watching them from the shadow above.

"Be honest. Did you really deserve any of it? More important… what would you do… to get it back?"

The figure starts jumping through rooftops, running on top of the bridge, landing down to the streets…

"Careful. There's always a price to pay."

"Hold on. Is he talking to her? Or is he talking to himself?" Carole is a bit confused. With some corners, everyone can see that the figure is a woman clad in black clothes.

"I… I think the conversation's some time earlier." Timido replies. "This… might just be a thing for films and such."

"Ah right. Movies do flashbacks a lot."

"Do you think she might be someone like Corvo? Previously a guard or such?"

"Could be." The two Theresa make theories.

"What you decide will ripple across the years. Blood in the gutters, corruptions on the wind."

When the woman passes through a body, a flying insect crawls out of it and flies into the air. Her appearance also alerts the nests nearby, causing the horde to start actively moving around.

"Disgusting." All nods in agreement with Adam's statement.

"Is this a plague in the city?" Hare asks worriedly.

"Yes and no. It's not as bad as the rat plague in Dunwall, but these bloodflies are parasites. And yet in the mature form, they actually help the agriculture of Serkonos."

"Like butterflies and dragonflies?" Himeko's question earns her a thumbs up. "Also, Serkonos is the name of the city?" Another thumbs up.

"It's still bad to look at."

"That we can share the feeling." SU agrees on APONIA's take.

"It will be fun watching this unfold."

"Is this the 'entertainment' part you were referring to earlier?" The amnesia Hua grunts, remembering the answer HoTE gave to Mei.

"I can relate, though. I did that way too many times."

"Did what?" The fifty-thousand-year-old chicken questions again.

"Watching from the side ways. Not involving even when I know the consequences."

"...Why? Shouldn't you try to help?"

"...APONIA, you of all people should be the one NOT doing so. Knowing the future doesn't mean you know how it could occur."

"...It sounds like you know about it personally."

"I do."

No one says any further words about it, considering the seriousness of her voice…

"But…" And the chirpy voice returns. "That doesn't mean you stop helping people. Knowing the future shouldn't be a factor in doing so."

"...Your point being…" The eldest Hua realizes what HoTE means. "You shouldn't try to change the future."

"Correct."

"Unless you know exactly what is absolutely needed to do."

"Also correct."

"...Cap, can you stop speaking in riddles?"

"All time is good for riddles~"

HoV groans, and soon some follow too.

From the left arm of the woman, a tendril fires towards the rooftop of the building across the street. Once its grip is confirmed, the woman pulls herself towards the location and picks herself up from the edge of the roof.

"...Does NOBODY see that?" Sushang suspiciously asks as her eyes narrow a bit. "Even IF normal citizens can't see that tendril if they have no power…"

"I doubt they can see a body fling that fast." Rita answers in the MC's place.

'...Do we even have… wait, Bella is a normal kid. Oops.' HoTE scans around the audience to check if any of the cast is just average people then concludes. 'Sirin was, too, if we counted her past.'

'Then GRISEO should be one too!'

'True. She only joined the MANTIS because…' She instantly stops her thought and turns to where the other voice comes from to see a smiley ELYSIA. '...Since when did I let you be in my mind?'

'You let us do whatever we want, remember?'

'...I hope you're just trying to use Telepathy instead of Mind Reading, Ely.'

'You want us to do the latter?'

'...This has become a Discord chat, hasn't it Welt?'

'Yep!'

'Thanks for the confirmation, Ai-chan.' That earns HoTE a giggle from the Pristine Girl. 'Please don't add more into this…'

'A bit too late for that.'

'...HoV is the last one until I say otherwise, okay?'

Thankfully the others agree.

"Oh and you can let the kids see now."

"What would you do with the power I'm giving you? How would you make your mark in this wretched world?"

The new Marked uses her Spyglass to give her a clearer vision of a faraway mansion, which is her new target. Once she locates her target, she jumps back down to the street.

The scene changes to a 'sort of' laboratory inside of the mansion, where an inventor is fixing a gadget on his table. Behind him is the picture of his former teacher, Anton Sokolov.

"Can we guess what makes him the target of this woman?"

"Making war machines?" Lyle instantly guesses after Adam questions.

"That's an obvious answer." HoS, while the logic is sound, doesn't agree. "I doubt it's that easy."

"Isn't that the same with the corrupt officer that Corvo killed? I mean, the easy-to-notice reason." Himeko recounts the event. "The guy was doing bad things to people and ignoring the state of the city… Bad guys to me."

"Killing him is a bit too far, though." EDEN can understand why, but she tries to look at it a bit differently. "Exposing him would be a better option in my opinion."

The camera zooms out to see the woman climbing onto the balcony of the mansion. She turns the handle and opens the door…

In the next ten seconds, the waiting room before her literally transforms itself into a gallery room where the inventions are displayed.

HoTE pulls out a pair of sunglasses and puts it on to block the sparkles from the kids' eyes. That doesn't stop her ears from hearing the gasps of astonishments from them. It's the same with some young Valkyries too and even veteran ones like Sushang or Theresa.

Even the scientists are surprised and interested in how the mansion is made, with VILL-V starting to make blueprints to create one herself.

"...Even Grey Serpent didn't think of making this." PROMETHEUS places her hand on her forehead while thinking of possibilities of someone having time to make a mansion like this. "For what purpose did they make the mansion this way?"

"Maybe to stop thieves? Or assassins, like this woman?" Hare suggests. "Normal people wouldn't be able to comprehend this for sure."

"Superpowers like that shouldn't be well-known…"

"It IS well-known there are people with power in that world. Everyone knows who The Outsider is and everyone knows that all with power are connected to him somehow" HoTE corrects. "But each is different from the others, and so is the level of subtlety. That's why it's hard to pinpoint if someone has power or not. And they aren't immune to those deadly Pylons."

"Right, those things vaporize humans from existence." HoO rubs her eyes in annoyance, remembering the scene.

"There's no way to disable them?"

"If you can get past the guards, MEI."

Putting an arrow into the crossbow, the woman pulls herself into the room with the tendril and fires the arrow towards the man's head…

And the projectile is cut in half midway by the blade of the Clockwork Soldier.

"Is it just me, or that crossbow looks way too big and heavy to hold in one hand?" KEVIN voices his confusion. "Or this 'Void' also enhances their physical traits too?"

"In a gamer's term, they can even Double Jump, so yeah it does."

"What do you mean by 'gamer's term'? We know what Double Jump is."

"Because it's technically not, Tesla. They can jump higher, but that's all, so it's not truly a Double Jump."

"You can only count it as Double Jump when there's a second boost in the air."

"Thank you Bronya (APHO)."

"The inventor doesn't even flinch when the woman appears…"

To answer Susannah's curiosity…

"You covered your face, but I know who you are." The man calmly talks, with the two Clockwork Soldiers starting to approach the assassin who lowers her crossbow down a bit.

"Emily Kaldwin."

Everyone blinks for a second after hearing the name, and THEN they remember the last name of the late Empress…

"That's the daughter!?" Old Siegfried exclaims in shock. "First the bodyguard, well maybe Corvo was, and now the girl herself?"

"What happened to her?"

"Did Corvo fail to save her?"

Similar questions were raised, but at least everyone doesn't just jump out of the seat.

After about a minute, HoTE gestures to them to calm down. "Alright alright, since there's no further visions of this world (for now), I will answer them for you. When the Empress was killed, Daud kidnapped her and sent her to his contractors. Corvo was busted out of prison by a group of Loyalists who didn't believe that he would kill the Empress and they helped him save Emily. Afterward everything's fixed, she's back as the new Empress with Corvo's full support again… until 'It's happened again'."

That gives some relief to everyone, but since many details are not spoken out, their curiosity raises a bit.

"Who are those contractors… please don't tell us it's some of the corrupted officers."

"You are correct, Hua (Phoenix). The plague was caused by them, and when the Empress wanted to find out the truth, they silenced her. And put down the sword please, Tesla."

"Are they six-feet-under? If not, let me do it."

"There are fates worse than death, KALPAS. And those guys received it."

"Good."

"But what caused her to flee this time? And where's Corvo?" EDEN continues the question.

"Hm… I did say I will answer… so be it." HoTE thinks out loud for a moment, then decides to show the hand in full view. "A woman named Delilah who has the Mark managed to dupe everyone to believe that she's the rightful Empress after the previous one died."

"You can't be serious." SAKURA doesn't believe it.

"The story goes… a bit quite deep. Delilah does have the Kaldwin blood in her veins, but… eh, family matters."

The kids are a bit confused about the answer, but the adults manage to connect the dots.

"Anyway, there's a Crown Killer who killed targets which are Emily's political enemies, and Emily and Corvo were framed for it. She had to run away, and Corvo was… petrified."

"...Petrified." Sakura has to ask again, to make sure she hears it correctly. "Don't you just say 'killed'? Turning someone into stone is the same as killing them."

"Normally it is, but in this case, the body's just covered in stone on the outside while the inner organisms are frozen in time like a cryo hibernation. Reverting the spell will free the person."

"What happens if you try to break the person out of that spell forcefully?"

"Either A: You can't, or B: You would wish the person's fully petrified."

HoTE makes a demonstration for the possible consequence by pinching her right fingers' tips together then making a 'boom' gesture.

And that's enough to drain color out of many faces.

"Then… how do you revert it?" Timido scaredly asks.

"Beat up the one who casted it. Although it's a fifty-fifty since sometimes the spell is unaffected by the caster's life. But at least it's better than risking unknown factors."

"And she's finding a way to revert the spell while getting her city back." APONIA guesses.

"Defeating Delilah would save everyone, but yeah your words aren't wrong either. And by the way, by eliminating Jindosh who is the target here, Emily will cripple the witch's 'war machine' productions."

"Only one person to make them? Is this Delilah an idiot or…"

"There's only two people smart enough to make them, Sieg (Young), and the other person is a hundred percent against making those things and against Delilah."

"Is this person an ally to Emily?"

"He helped Corvo save Emily, so yes he is, Cecilia."

"Nothing is an accident. Everything is in motion." Jindosh stops his work and leaves his chair as Emily watches him doing so. "All of it has led you to this exact second in time." He calmly leaves as the clockwork soldiers start rushing to Emily…

"What's with the face behind the robot?"

"Three-sixty awareness, Sirin."

"That's… actually smart." Tesla voices her slight surprise. "...Yeah, why didn't we do that to our machines?"

"Because it's distracting and distorting?" Einstein counters. "Even we have trouble dealing with attacks from multiple directions."

Before the soldiers can attack her, Emily reaches her left hand into her inner pocket and throws out a grenade. The moment it leaves her hand, she Time Stop and fires an arrow towards it, triggering the explosion that eliminates one of the two soldiers while knocking the other and her away.

"That easy?" VILL-V raises her eyebrows in suspicion.

"It just proves how powerful one who can control time is." SAKURA argues back.

"I'm sure those machines had a way to deal with the grenade had Emily not used the spell." MEI agrees.

After recovering, Emily reaches out her folded sword then backs away as the soldier tries to cut her in half. The blade breaks the ground, showing how deadly the strike is. Unfolding her sword, she starts parrying and dodging the rapid slashes from the four-sword. With the right timing, she dodges under a swing and heads to where Jindosh just left, which is a staircase.

Instead of running down all the way, she simply Far Reach herself to the bottom level.

"For a young Empress, she's fighting well."

"Expecting a damsel-in-distress, Siegfried?"

"Hey now Cecilia, I don't mean to offend her. I guess she had to learn to survive, given what happened in her past."

"That pulling is convenient."

"Any teleportation is convenient, Susannah." Sushang giggles at the B-rank Valkyrie's awed eyes.

"Grappling hooks are common…" APHO Bronya addresses. "But they still need the traveling time. And if not increasing the speed properly, the human body might… not stay the same after getting pulled."

"There's no need to go that deep, Bro… Act Squad Leader." Lyle changes mid-way when the girl sends him a glare.

Being a machine, it has no fear of falling damage as it immediately jumps out to chase after Emily.

She places a Stun Mine on the wall on her right as she walks past the wall margin.

"Aren't those things Daud used before?" Tesla is a bit triggered when it comes to anything Pylon-related.

"Arc Mines and Stun Mines. One to kill, one to shock. Both are effective against these Clockwork Soldiers."

To prove the point, Jindosh nods to give order to the soldier who charges towards Emily… and explodes as the mine activates.

As Emily 'calmly' approaches Jindosh, he pulls down a level that makes the mansion's walls close on Emily. In return, the Empress turns herself into a smokey thing, allowing her to easily crawl through the narrow space.

As she reaches her target, she lifts him up in the air with one hand and the other starts morphing into a knife, ready to kill…

"Think before you strike. If you kill me, you will become the assassin we claimed you were… You will become one of us!"

The vision turns black before the blade hits, though most know Jindosh's fate.

"What did he mean by 'the assassin we claimed you were'? They were framing her as the Crown Killer?" SU manages to catch up with the last accusation.

"Corvo or her, one of them. I mean, from a normal person's perspective…"

"A good reason to suspect them. We saw how skillful Corvo is." Welt agrees. "And if I'm correct, he's also the one who trained Emily. "

"I just remembered something." All turn to Hare. "While I didn't get the full context, shouldn't there be someone else who could be the suspect here?"

"You mean Daud?" PROMETHEUS theorizes. "He has the power to do so, and everyone knows of his skills…"

"But this is the 'Crown Killer'." Otto argues. "Daud has made his name in Dunwall. If he's the one, why the change of title?"

"And for your information, after Corvo roughed him up, Daud left Dunwall and laid low."

"Hold on, Corvo just let the man live? Isn't he the man who made Corvo go to jail?" Carole is surprised at how the story happened.

"Can't blame your surprise, even The Outsider found it strange too. But, from some perspectives, Daud was doing his work for money, dirty money but still. And Corvo had more direct beef with those corrupted officers than to Daud… and it's also partially Corvo's fault that he took the blame."

A giant claw is grabbing HoTE's head. Abyss Flower is poking her chin. Judgment of Shamash's blade is touching her neck. Multiple invisible strings are wrapping around her torso. And five Key Of Reason are ready to fire.

"No, it's not because he couldn't save the Empress. Before the day, the Empress had sent Corvo to the neighboring cities to ask for help to deal with the rat plague. The Empress was supposed to be killed during the time but Corvo returned earlier than expected. And thus goes the story."

After more seconds of intense glares, the weapons are retracted.

"Speaking of perspectives…"

'Probably' one more vision before I shift my attention to my other stories, so eh... Enjoy!