The orange sky was beginning to dim, tainted with the gray ash of fallen clones. The scorched surface of Venus hissed beneath the heat of Kyi's wings as she hovered in the distance, suspended like a phantom between the living and the dead.
Noir stood at the edge of the shattered field, his clothes torn, face bruised, and hands still faintly trembling. He raised his voice—not in anger, not in fear—but in hope.
"Kyi!"
His voice cracked against the wind, carried upward toward the retreating figure.
"You said it… You said kill me."
She didn't turn back.
"But… did you really mean that?"
Still no response.
"You were locked in a chamber for a month, with only your thoughts, your guilt, and your grief. Maybe you believed it then. Maybe those voices convinced you. But look around you now!"
He spread his arms wide. The broken remnants of her clones circled them like a graveyard. Charred earth stretched in every direction. The Victinions were gone—nothing left of their twisted ambitions but smoldering regrets.
"You're not trapped anymore," Noir continued. "There's no cell. No bars. No expectations. No orders. It's just you now."
She remained still, hovering above like a ghost in the twilight.
Noir took a step forward, breath heavy. "Have you ever thought about what comes after death? What if there's nothing? What if there's no peace—just more silence? More guilt?"
Kyi twitched slightly in the air.
Noir pressed on.
"Have you ever thought maybe… just maybe… what you really want isn't death?"
He put a hand to his chest.
"Maybe what you really want… is relief. From the pain. From the weight. From what they made you do."
Kyi's head tilted slightly, and her grip on the sky faltered. She dipped lower, as if gravity was reminding her she didn't belong in the clouds.
"They made you into a weapon. They wanted to control you. And when you finally tried to feel something—when you asked to be forgiven—they made you hate yourself for it."
Noir's voice grew firmer now, like a fire building inside his chest.
"I don't know you. I don't know what your life was like. But I do know what it's like to feel like nothing matters. Like the world doesn't care if you vanish. Like you don't have a place."
He took a breath.
"I felt that way… until I met people who needed me."
Cloud stepped forward beside him, silent but present, like a monument of calm.
"We're going to Earth," Noir said, voice clearer now. "There's stuff happening there—stuff even Cloud doesn't fully understand. Some war that's bigger than us. But we're gonna try to stop it."
His eyes met hers in the sky.
"I don't know if we'll win. But I'd rather try and fail than sit in a chamber waiting to die."
Kyi hovered in place, tears barely forming in her unreadable eyes. Her markings pulsed faintly. The voices in her head were quiet now. Waiting.
"Kyi… the whole of Venus is gone. There's nothing left to protect here. Nothing left to mourn. You could stay and be a ghost, or…"
He extended a hand toward her—his palm stained with dirt and ash, but open.
"…you could come with us. See what's still out there. Be something more than what they told you you had to be."
The wind fell still.
Kyi stared down at the boy below her. This child who had faced her wrath, faced the broken creation of her darkest thoughts, and still reached out.
The voice in her head whispered again—but this time, it didn't say kill me.
It said: What if they're right?
Then the scene cut.
---
Far from the ruined surface of Venus, a room of sterile white lights and humming consoles pulsed with quiet urgency. Massive screens hovered in midair, all displaying the same fractured imagery: drone feeds of the battle, biometric readings, environmental data.
At the center of it all stood the scientist.
He was tall and thin, with gloves that looked stained from years of chalk dust and notes scrawled in so many languages no one dared ask which was his first. His face was half-covered by a visor that seemed to be streaming dozens of calculations at once.
He tapped the screen showing Noir and Cloud.
"The boy," he murmured.
"Subject: White-haired human, black-eyed," another technician clarified. "Designated tag: Potential Conceptual Anomaly."
The scientist nodded. "And the blue dragon?"
"Cloud Solslade. Public figure, though he's stayed off-grid recently."
"And the girl…"
A third screen displayed Kyi. Her body hovered midair, twitching with residual heat and emotional volatility.
"She looks human," one assistant muttered.
"She's not," the scientist said simply. "Her body is human. Her adaptation isn't."
They watched the scene continue in silence. Noir's words. His plea. His offer.
The scientist leaned forward, murmuring softly into a recorder embedded in his collar.
"Log Entry #512. Observation: Venus.
The anomaly, subject 'Noir', is progressing faster than anticipated. His contact-induced erasure ability—if that's what it is—has destroyed multiple adaptation-based entities. Still unclear whether this is a passive conceptual field or emotion-triggered burst.
Blue Dragon remains stable—still calculating. Likely unaware of the full extent of the anomaly.
Victinion Weapon #0 has broken through conditioning but remains unstable. Mental degradation high. Potentially salvageable."
He turned to the other scientists.
"Prepare for interception. If they leave Venus… we follow."