Theresa
Inside Theresa Apocalypse's office, Mei and Kiana sat in the two guest chairs facing her desk. Himeko stood near the window, her arms crossed and her expression uncharacteristically somber.
"So," Theresa asked, starting the conversation. "How did the visit go?"
Kiana sighed, clasping her hands on the desk. "Better than we expected. Wendy was a little withdrawn, but we got her to open up in the end. But I think she's still mentally processing everything. At least she can walk again."
"She ate some chocolate," Mei added. "And she looked a lot better at the end of our visit. That's progress, right?"
"It is," Theresa agreed with a small, tired smile. "You two did good."
Mei nodded, though her gaze drifted to Himeko. "Himeko-sensei, you said we had a lead on Kenji. Is that why we're here?"
Himeko straightened, her expression hardening. "That's right. But before we get into the details, I need to head out. I've got some scouting to do."
Kiana blinked, confused. "Scouting? Wait, aren't we planning the rescue mission right now? Why are you leaving?"
"Because someone needs to make sure we don't walk into a trap," Himeko replied, already heading for the door. "I'm taking a transport to the coordinates Theresa got. I plant some distractions before we commit any forces."
She paused at the door, glancing back at them. "Don't worry. I'm not going in alone. I'm just looking. The real fun starts when I get back."
With a final nod to Theresa, Himeko slipped out, the door clicking shut behind her.
The room felt instantly smaller without her presence. Kiana turned back to Theresa, her brow furrowed. "Okay, so Himeko is scouting. Where exactly is she going? You said you had a lead, but you didn't say where."
Theresa took a deep breath, her gaze shifting between Kiana and Mei. "The lead came from a… reliable source. I'm sure you two are familiar with what this building is."
She tapped a command into her desk, and a holographic map materialized in the air. It showed a massive complex highlighted in red.
Mei instantly went rigid in her chair. Her eyes widened, fixated on the glowing red building. "ME Corp… My father's company?"
"Yes, one of ME Corp's primary research facilities," Theresa confirmed gently. "Or rather, what's left of it. It turns out, they've been using it as a black site for years. It's heavily fortified, shielded from satellite surveillance, and completely off the grid."
Kiana looked at Mei, concern etched on her face, before turning back to Theresa. "So… Cocolia took Kenji to Mei's dad's old office? That's messed up."
"As messed up as it may be, it is a strategic move. ME Corp has some of the most advanced labs on the planet. If Cocolia wants to study Kenji… that's the best place to do it."
Mei's hands were clenched in her lap, her knuckles white. "So we're going back to ME Corp."
"We are," Theresa said. "But we can't just fly the Hyperion up to the front door and burn everything to the ground. Schicksal doesn't want all out war with Anti-Entropy yet. That's why Himeko is scouting for a ground insertion point."
"So it's a stealth mission," Kiana said, her eyes lighting up slightly. "Like ninjas!"
Theresa gave a dry chuckle. "As stealthy as you can get while smashing Anti-Entropy mechs, yes. But the goal is to get in, grab Kenji and Bronya, and get out as fast as we can."
Kiana nodded, "Stealthy smashing. Got it. We can do that."
Mei didn't say anything. She was still staring at the hologram of ME Corp, her expression a mixture of dread and fierce determination.
Theresa watched her expression with pity. She knew Mei must have mixed feelings about her father right now, with him being a part of the organization that kidnapped her friends.
She watched them for a moment, her own expression softening into something heavier. She tapped the desk again, and the hologram vanished.
"There is… one more thing."
Kiana and Mei looked at her, sensing the shift in the atmosphere. Theresa wasn't looking at them. She was looking at her hands, her fingers tracing the grain of the wooden desk.
"I don't like that look. Auntie, what's wrong?"
Theresa was silent for a while, gathering her courage. "Kiana, Mei…. I haven't been entirely honest with you two about Kenji."
"What do you mean?" Kiana asked, her voice losing its playful edge. "Honest about what?"
"About what he really is, and the true extent of his powers."
Theresa tapped a sequence into her desk console, and a new projection materialized—a complex, rotating 3D model of Kenji's body.
Though it was stripped of skin and identity, reduced to a wireframe of nerves and energy pathways.
Blue lines traced his nervous system, but at his center, right in the middle of his chest, a deep, pulsing red light illuminated the core of his being.
"You know about Kenji's abilities. How he can redirect the attention of Honkai beasts. How his body seems to... absorb Honkai Energy without consequence."
Mei nodded slowly, her eyes fixed on the red pulse. "He told us. He said the energy gathers in his chest, but he can't use it."
"That's what he thinks," Theresa corrected gently. "And that's what I also thought, for a while at least."
She gestured to the hologram, expanding the view of Kenji's chest. The red light wasn't just a shapeless mass of energy.
It had a structure and pulsed like a second heart, beating out of sync with the first.
"When we brought Kenji in for special training, everyone else was focusing only on his anomaly or OFA energy—which he still wouldn't tell us what it meant—but I had a feeling that something wasn't right. I created a new, far more advanced scanning technology and put it to use in one of his sessions, and I found something unexpected."
Theresa tapped the desk. The hologram zoomed in further, peeling away layers of digital tissue until a single, crystalline object hovered in the center of the projection.
It was small, faceted like a diamond, and glowing with an ominous crimson light.
Mei instantly recognized the crystal and felt the blood drain from her face. She knew that shape. She knew that energy signature. She felt it inside her own chest every day.
"A Herrscher Core…"
Kiana stood up, her chair scraping violently against the floor. "What?! That… that doesn't make sense."
She looked from the hologram to Theresa, still struggling to believe her eyes. "Kenji isn't a Herrscher! We've never seen him do anything like Mei or Wendy! Heck, he feels entirely different!"
"He has a Core, Kiana. But it's... different."
She walked around the desk, standing between the two girls and the glowing red ghost of their friend.
"Usually, a Core has a parasitic relationship with its host. It corrupts them, makes them enemies of humanity. That's why Mei's energy is volatile, and why Wendy lost control."
She pointed to Kenji's pulsing red light. "But Kenji seems to have a symbiotic relationship with his core."
Mei stared at the light. The notion of a Herrscher Core not fighting its host was utterly alien to her. She felt her hand unconsciously landing over her heart. "It's not fighting him?"
"It's sustaining him," Theresa explained. "It's completely hidden from our standard scanners because it doesn't leak energy. It's completely hoarding it."
"So... he is actually a Herrscher?" Mei asked, her voice trembling.
"By definition, yes," Theresa admitted. "But a Herrscher of what? We don't know. It doesn't match any known frequency. It's an anomaly in every sense of the word."
She looked down at her hands, clenching them into fists. "That's why I was so terrified of Durandal seeing him. That's why I couldn't let him be captured. If HQ found out there was a stable, symbiotic Herrscher... they wouldn't see a student. They would see a specimen. Or a… weapon."
If Mei and Kiana weren't too occupied processing all this new information, they would have seen a flash of guilt on Theresa's expression.
"There's one more thing," Theresa turned to Mei.
"Mei... have you noticed anything different about your own condition lately? Specifically, in the last few months since Kenji joined the dorm?"
Mei blinked, confused by the sudden pivot. "My condition? I... well, the voice in my head has been quieter. The pain isn't as bad, and I haven't needed to do any checkups in a while… Why are you asking?" She frowned.
"It's because the reason you have been this stable is due to Kenji," Theresa revealed.
She swiped the hologram, overlaying Mei's energy signature with Kenji's. The red energy from Kenji seemed to reach out, wrapping around the violent spikes of Mei's Honkai energy.
"Kenji's energy... it somehow acts like a sedative for Herrschers," Theresa explained. "He's been absorbing the excess radiation leaking from your Core. He's been unconsciously suppressing the Herrscher inside you just by being near you."
Mei's mouth hung open, and tears pricked at the corners of her eyes.
All those times she felt at ease around him, even when they first met. All those times the Voice had gone silent when they were watching movies or training. It wasn't just because she was happy with her friends.
He had been saving her. Every single day. Without even knowing it.
"He was... helping me? Even when he was just sitting there?" She hung her head and clenched her fists tightly. Slowly, a frustrated expression began to creep across her face, then turned to one of anger.
Theresa was about to comfort her, but didn't know what to say. She understood what Mei was feeling, realizing that you failed to protect the person who had been saving you for so long.
But then a long sigh broke the tension.
Kiana was staring at the hologram, her eyes wide and watery. A strange, wobbly grin was trying to form on her face.
"So..." Kiana's voice trembled. "So what you're saying is... everyone gets a cool Herrscher power-up except me?"
Theresa blinked, startled out of her grim mood. "Kiana?"
"I mean, seriously!" Kiana threw her hands up, though a tear slipped down her cheek. "Mei has lightning! Wendy has wind! Now Kenji has... whatever that red stuff is! And I'm just here with my guns? That is so unfair!"
She let out a wet, choked laugh. "I'm the only normal one in the group! I'm the boring one!"
The absurdity of it—Kiana Kaslana, calling herself boring in the middle of a crisis—snapped the tension like a twig. Mei let out a wet chuckle, wiping her eyes.
"Only you, Kiana," Mei whispered, reaching out to grab Kiana's hand. "Only you would be jealous of that."
Theresa watched the two with a blank expression. 'If only you knew…'
She gave the two some time to gather their thoughts before coughing into her hand to get their attention.
Theresa tapped the desk again, the hologram turning back to the fortress-like schematic of the ME Corporation facility.
"Now, with that out of the way," Theresa said, her voice regaining its overseer edge. "Let me fill you in on how exactly we're going to get him and Bronya back."
She zoomed in on the map, highlighting a series of perimeter defenses. "Himeko is scouting for a breach point here, in the lower drainage sector. It's the only part of the facility that hasn't been reinforced in the last decade."
Mei leaned forward, studying the map. "If we get in there, do we know where they're keeping him?"
Theresa shook her head, a slight wince crossing her face. "Not exactly. My intel was good, but Cocolia is paranoid. She's moving his lab around the facility. Thankfully, we found out that all the high-security bio-labs are in the central spire."
She pointed to the massive tower in the center of the complex. "If we get there, I could use my special scans to pinpoint his exact location, and hopefully Bronya won't be too far away either."
"So we just have to fight our way through a bunch of mechs?" Kiana asked, cracking her knuckles. "Sounds like a Tuesday."
"It won't be just mechs," Theresa warned. "The Aesir Titan… the one that took you down in the garden will also be there. And Cocolia won't hesitate to use Kenji against us if she can. We have no idea what she's done to him after all this time."
She looked at each of them in turn. "Due to the… dire nature of this mission. I have decided on a rather unusual lineup."
Theresa tapped a command, and five portraits appeared next to the map.
Herself. Himeko. Fu Hua. Kiana. Mei.
"This is the strike team," Theresa announced. "Me, Himeko, and Fu Hua will handle the heavy lifting—breaching the gates, drawing out the main forces. You two will be the infiltration unit. Anti-Entropy would be too focused on us to notice you two."
Kiana blinked, looking at the lineup. "Hold on, that many Valkyries? Against one base? Isn't that a little overkill? I thought you didn't want to start an all out war with Anti-Entropy, this is kinda…"
"I don't think it's overkill. Cocolia has been watching Kenji like a hawk. Now that she finally has him, sending only a few Valkyries would be a death sentence." Mei quickly added.
"Well said, Mei,"
Kiana frowned, chewing her lip as she looked at the map. Her gaze drifted from the tower to the surrounding mountains, her mind working through the logistics in a way that was surprisingly sharp.
"Even with five of us," Kiana said slowly, "if they have that Titan… and if they have Bronya… Me and Mei won't be enough."
Her eyes widened, "We should bring Wendy!"
"Absolutely not."
"Hear me out!" Kiana insisted, standing up. "She's a Herrscher! If she helps us, we'd have way more firepower and could get Kenji and Bronya out so much faster!"
"Wendy is unstable," Theresa countered, her voice sharp. "She's very much traumatized, still recovering from her injuries, and she's a flight risk. Bringing her into a rescue mission is insane. If she loses control—"
"She won't," Kiana interrupted, her voice fierce. "She wants to save him just as much as we do."
She looked at Mei for support.
Mei hesitated, thinking back to the girl in the glass cell, the one who had eaten chocolate and promised to be friends. The girl who felt responsible for Kenji's capture because he took the hit meant for her.
"Kiana's right," Mei said quietly.
Theresa looked at her, surprised. "You too, Mei?"
"Wendy feels guilty," Mei explained, her voice steady. "She thinks this is all her fault. Leaving her here… letting her sit in that cell while we rescue him… It's just going to eat her alive. She needs to do this. For herself. And for Kenji."
Theresa rubbed her temples, looking between the two determined girls. She saw the fire in Kiana's eyes, the quiet resolve in Mei's.
She sighed, a long, defeated sound.
"I must be losing my mind," Theresa muttered. "I'm actually considering letting two Herrschers walk into an enemy base together."
She looked up, her expression softening into something weary but trusting.
"Fine. But she is your responsibility. You two watch her. If she starts to lose control… You handle it, alright?"
Kiana nodded happily, pumping a fist.
Mei also nodded, a small smile touching her lips. "We won't let you down."
Theresa leaned back in her chair, looking at the map of ME Corp one last time. The pieces were set. The board was ready.
"You two go convince Wendy. We leave in three days."