Always darkest before pitch black

[empress_without_a_throne]

[1]

[When she awakes, Mizuki finds herself no longer in the DuskBird and the battle is long since ended.  The second battle with SolEraser, and her desperate, last attempt at taking the machine down... it's still fresh in her mind.  But she's in the infirmary, bandaged and with whatever deep see-based medicines the Unity Group had on-hand in case they were needed.  She felt... weary.]

What happened out there?

[And it's then that the medical staff gets to break the news to her.  About just what happened to SolSavior and the power it had unleashed.]



-But if I'd done that much to SolSavior itself, then...

Oh God!

[2]



[And some time later, Mizuki is just, lying in a sobbing heap nearby Ken and Dido's beds.  It was the SolBalmung incident all over again... there was just a hard limit to how much Void energy a human being can be exposed to and Ken and Dido had skirted dangerously close to it.  She had done this.  She had brought forth all the power of the Abyss Empress to bring down on the Eraser team, but it was her own friends and comrades that'd paid the price for it.  SolSavior itself lay wrecked even more than before, and this too was her doing.  And even if her body was in better shape now, her mind...]

Stop it...

[It's barely above a whisper.]

Stop congratulating me... all of you!  I'm not Marianas!  I'm not here to cause suffering!  I didn't want... I never wanted any of this!

Comments

[empress_without_a_throne]

If they're exposed to Void energy of any noticeable quantity in the foreseeable future... they'll die.

My energy... it's like a poison, a life force that runs completely contrary to how things on this planet work. That's why I get sick when I eat normal food, or feel uncomfortable when I'm in contact with sunlight. I was engineered to be able to at least endure moderate exposure, but they...

... It's not the first time Solaris pilots have been put through this. And it's proven fatal in the past.

[a_louse]

But right now they are safe, aren't they?

[empress_without_a_throne]

For now, yes. The worst of the rejection process is over.

But it doesn't mean it's something people should just write off. And if those civilians had been closer, they might've even been in a similar boat as them. Or even worse...

[a_louse]

This is a decision you had to make in the heat of a moment. Its consequences are now your responsibility.

If you didn't do it, the most likely outcome is that all those people, your teammates, and possibly you would die. The result we got is a better alternative. Now, it's up to you to ensure Ken and Dido won't be exposed to Void energies again.

Can you do it?

[empress_without_a_throne]

For the time being... yes.

But if we find ourselves in another situation like that in the future... I don't know. The more I'm thinking about it now, the more I wonder if the whole idea between combining the DuskBird with two Sol machines was just putting a square peg in a round hole.

[a_louse]

It's too late to change that, isn't it? You can't really build another machine to take DuskBird's place in the combination.

Besides, what guarantee you have that without Void energy, SolSaviour would have the power that it possesses now? There are just too many hypothetical scenarios to consider. And none of them really affect the reality of things as they are now.

[empress_without_a_throne]

They'd... obviously have to look into that sort of thing of course.

[Although considering Solaris's history with making add-ons and the like for their machines...]

I just don't want to have to repeat that, make the same kind of sacrifice and gamble with Ken and Dido's lives to protect people.

[a_louse]

Then do everything you can to make sure it won't happen again. It's easy to say and hard to do... But you have a whole bunch of people supporting you, not to mention your own strength. I'm sure you can find a way.

I don't want to see Ken and Dido gone, either. I quite like them.

[empress_without_a_throne]

Same here...

[She looks down at her hands, before raising one up so she can rest her head on it.]

I don't even know how to start though. Or where. Too many ideas... and I don't know how valid any of them could be.

[Alter her powers? Try to help Ken and Dido handle the strain of the Void energy? Find some way to safely expel it? Just sitting in her bed and with doctors, not scientists, on-hand didn't give her many options.]

[a_louse]

Care to share some of them?