Siblings reunion

Eventually, Erica managed to drive the floating ship to Amanda's building. She wasn't delusionnal: she knew there was few chances that the clumsy Cifer's operator was still alive, same went for Penny. On her way there, she had all the occasions needed to realize just how ravaged the whole planet was, pulullating with the most infamous of abominations, and people trying to kill each other at every crossroad. Londris was condemned, doomed.

Now, the only thing left to do was to quickly join the terminal, get to their ship and fly away from Londris as fast as they could, she only stopped by Amanda's hideout because it was on the way. If she could get her and Penny, it would be for the best but else, there was no need to bother herself too much. From Cain actions earlier, he didn't seem like he wanted them to die now anyway, so he would probably divert the fight elsewhere and keep their ship in a single piece. Meaning she could allow herself to take a certain level of risk.

Arriving at the building, she had the 'good' surprise to see that Amanda was still alive... unlike Penny.

Erica's mood worsened even more, admitting it was possible. First Tyler and now the adorable little android? How bad could this day even get?

Amanda tried to explain what happened, but Erica stopped her. Despite Cain's intentions, she wasn't naive enough to stay here any more than necessary. She made her enter first, resumed flying to the terminal, and then listened as she was piloting.

"They... they appeared out of nowhere... And they were... no, there is monsters everywhere! And then this man disguised as a magician made an anti-matter ray appear out of nowhere and..."

"Okay, stop right there, you sound like a three year oldtrying to come up with a movie scenario" Erica cut her off. "Calm down for a minute, organize your thoughts and then you speak. We have like... I don't know, five or ten minutes before arriving, don't press yourself. Okay?"

Amanda listen to Erica, and tried to do just that. To calm herself, she tried to think about her childhood. She remembered her mother, pushing her on a swing. It was fun, she did it every day when they she was kid. She loved her mother. She loved her father too, but he was never present: he worked as an opposant of the Paradise Council, and naturally was always occupied.

One day, though, a minor accident had occured. Amanda's mother had pushed too much, and she, as a small child, had fell off the swing and twisted her ankle. That day despite all his obligations, her father had found the time to come home, comfort her and make sure the injury healed correctly. Een now, Amanda still remembered how happy she had been that day.

And what she also remembered was that, the day after, his father was found dead. Was that an accident? The Council getting rid of an annoyance? An unlucky murder? She had never known... What she knew was that, soon after, her mother had taken her away.

She didn't remember the next years, all she remembered was that, eventually, her mother died and she ended up joining Cifer. Not to accomplish any kind of vengeance, but just because her path had led her there by pure chance. Even then, she had never tried to changethe order of things, or even to perform any major action. She just remained passive, doing nothing more than what was asked from her, if not for a few small jokes and small talks.

Yes, jokes and small talks were never a bad thing, were they? People went there and went away, she never knew when it'd be the last time she met someone, nor when she'd meet someone new, be they pleasant company or not... Trying to be friends with everyone as much as possible couldn't be bad, could it?

Finally, she managed to regain enough composure to tell Erica everything that had happened, and even ended up on a small 'joke':

"Haha, we were talking about horror stories when I first met Tyler" she said. "I just wanted him to feel a bit scared by what was hiding in Ghost London... Who would've thought that it's when he's not here that the true horror stories come to reality? Haha... everybody can't have Gentleman's luck, I guess..."

"So you consider being dead a lucky thing? Interesting" Erica said.

"Dead... mr. Tyler is dead?"

"Yes, Penny wasn't Saginus and Cain's first victim today, and definitely isn't the last either"

"Oh my god, it's terrible! We need to-"

Amanda stopped in her tracks as she suddenly realized something:

"Wait... I never mentionned their names, so how do you know them?" she asked, taking a step back.

Erica shrugged:

"I knew them for the start" she said. "I know many things Amanda, I just usually act as I don't to avoid catching undesired attention but today, I don't have the strength left to put on an act. I don't have the heart either to kill you while putting on a facade"

"E-Erica? What do you mea- uh?!"

Amanda looked below, and saw that Erica's hand had grabbed her throat. Rapidly, she felt her life force disappear from her body, faster than the sand falling in an hourglass.

"Erica... I'm your friend... stop..."

If Erica heard it, she didn't show it in the slightest. Amanda found herself praying for her dad to arrive, like when she was a child. He'd save her, comfort her, heal her... she'd just stop everything and retrieve her peaceful live.

"Goodbye, Amanda. I'm honest when I say I hated you much less than most other people"

Nobody came, and the only peace Amanda found was in death, joining her father in the afterlife, or most realistically in the nothingness that came when everything went blank. Her body turned to dust, and only small traces of light remained in Erica's hands. The latter sighed: why did her body had to be so weak? Even after killing all the agents that had surrounded her ship, she had still been short on energy, and had had to kill Amanda to harness the last bit needed.

It could have been avoided if only the floating ship, like their spatial ship, was equipped with even just the most basic healing Fefnir technology to allow John to cling to life longer... such a waste, really.

'At least Penny can still be brung back' she thought, putting the android's memory chip in her pocket before getting back to the current situation:

"I'd say I hope you can rest well, Amanda, but it'd be a lie" she said. "Because even in death, one can't escape suffering. The only difference is that the living keep struggling"

She walked to the unconscious John, and poured all the light she had harnessed in his injury. Under her eyes, the wound started to close and, after a few minutes, it had turned into nothing but a scar. Now, John would definitely wake up in the next... minutes? Hour? Hopefully, soon enough so she wouldn't have to carry him into the space ship.

A few minutes later, they arrived at the terminal. They didn't have to get past security, as there was none left. Except of course the flesh abominations, but Erica was pretty sure they wouldn't ask for their ID's anyway.

She parked the floating ship right in front of their spatial ship, crushing a few dozens creatures in the process. Then, as Jon seemed to be slowly waking up, she passed his arm around her shoulders, leading him to the exit.

"Come on, John, you just have to walk for a minute and then you can go back to sleep" she said, as the gigantic man answered with nothing but a pained groan.

She managed to get inside the spatial ship with John, closing behind them to make sure no creature could enter.

Finally, no more danger would get in her way for a moment. That was what she thought as she made the ship fly off, successfully escaping the hell Londris had now become.

She technically wasn't wrong as, at least for the next period of time, no more danger would threaten her. However, it didn't mean that more unpleasant surprises couldn't show themselves:

"Finally, we meet again. You can choose not to believe me but, sincerly, I couldn't be happier than now that I can finally see you again"

She froze on the spot as she heard the voice. No, it couldn't be here. She knew it couldn't. He... he was supposed to be on the other side of the galaxy!

"I missed you, sister"

She quickly turned around but, when she did, she couldn't deny it anymore. It really was him.

"It's you... Yohan" she said on a cold tone.

He was right there, in front of her, in the piloting room of the spatial ship. Maybe he was already there since a moment. After all, this bastard had always found ways to know everything before it happened. To understand everything after it did. And when he was in front of you, you couldn't even lie.

"Yes, it's me, Maria. After all these years, I can finally see your face again, little sister..."

He hesitantly approached his hand toward her, but she slapped it away:

"Little sister? I don't remember having any brother, though" she retorted coldly. "My brother died back on Earth, I don't have any sibling left, nor even a single relative. All that's left are nuisances"

Yohan didn't try to get closer again and simply sighed:

"Your reaction hurts me, but I can't deny I deserved it" he said.

"What are you doing in my ship, anyway?" Erica asked. "Trying to ruin my plans while I'm still vulnerable?"

Yohan laughed slightly and shook his head:

"Ruining your plans? Quite the opposite" he replied. "Be it your plans, Yoria's or even Cain's, all are participating to make the world as the Genova's curch and the Paradise Council wish"

"The world you lunatics wish? What even is that world, if you're constantly threatened in it?" Erica retorted.

"A world of freedom. A world where people would be free to choose their own path, instead of blindly being forced on a linear path"

"And you think you people can achieve that by forcing the galaxy under a dictatorship?"

"In all honesty? You might think it's stupid, but yes. Maria... No, Erica, do you know when was the moment in history that led to the greatest ameliorations of both humans' rights and developpement?"

Erica thought for a bit:

"The decades following the world wars" she replied. "Because of the war, civilization's advancement was forcibly accelerated. Moreover, because of every philosophical, moral and ideological problem revealing themselves, most countries of the time were forced to change their laws and views on ethnicities and intolerance. At the very least, it's one of the peaks of humanity's journey toward freedom"

"That would be correct" Yohan agreed. "Think about it, during the Expansion, Choas and Pact Era's, considering that already back then, Angels had joined the side of the Paradise Council, Cain was hiding, and the Greats Sins didn't yet reveal their existence. Maybe now that the armement is advanced enough, the six Angels of Virtues left can't be the deciding factor in a total war between the different global superpowers of the galaxy but at this time, interplanetary conflicts were still in their early phase. Even admitting that by all uniting together, the other Stellar Fields could have fought the Angels fairly, if we added the Council, it would have been over in a matter of months"

"So you're saying that if the Paradise Council failed to take control of the world, it's because it wasn't its intention in the first place? It was just all a trap to replicate the conditions needed to force humanity's advancement... or its 'freedom', as you call it?"

"Precisely. You see, freedom as I perceive it depends on three factors: the methods to act freely, being represented by humanity's advancement, the rights to act freely, represented by their legal rights and the margin of action they offer, and finally, the context to act freely, represented by the number of party that can be created and joined. The first two criterias were met thanks to the war, and the third was met thanks to you"

Erica bit her lip:

"You mean... when I provoked the Lichtkrieg?"

"Precisely" Yohan approved. "And during the Lichtkrieg, most Angels and Great Sins eneded up incapacitated. The only ones who remain able to move are Aldea of Forgiveness and Cain of Will for the Angels, and Leonidas of Pride, Saginus of Greed and Yoria of Sloth for the Great Sins. The 'true' Genova is occupied guarding the prison of the 'true' Slient One, which leaves only them. And since Yoria and Cain both parted ways to etablish their own side, and the galaxy is still at a balance of power to this day.

We finally reached the wanted point, the one where no one can predict who'll come out on top and reign over the Milky Way"

Erica frowned:

"Then I'll modify the question: if you truly wish for freedom that much, then why did you instaure a class system in the Council's territory?" she asked. "It destroys everyone's freedom, and ends up imprisonning them in a system that completely chains them up, isn't it precisely the opposite of what you want to accomplish?"

"Let me ask you back the question: don't you think that the fact you managed to escape Glactia-62 in the conditions at the time pretty anormal?"

"What do you mean?" Erica asked, becoming more tensed up all of a sudden.

"Even in the twenty-first century, monitoring technology was already near omnipresent. What do you think it should be, at the current era, with humans' developpement and the apparition of Fefnir technology? In truth, the Paradise Council's first priority when we established ourselves as the major global power in the galaxy wasn't the military developpement: but rather, the developpement of a technology that could disable any potential monitoring device, and was easy to make. That's why this sector has been at a bottleneck for so many centuries: everyone just abandonned its developpement since it would have been pointless.

And now, with each revolution, each rebeillon, a new group, a new path to follow, emerges. The entire galaxy is one step away from falling into the most absolute chaos, and yet humanity is evolving faster than ever... don't you think it's magnificent?"

"No, it only looks sick to me... you did all of that... In the end, if it was your goal since the beginning, what is even the point of the Genova's Curch backing up the Council? Now that it is strong enough, shouldn't it hold its position on its own, while the curch and Angels remains in the background to ensure that the balance remains unchanged forever?"

Yohan, raised an eyebrow:

"Isn't it obvious? It's because in the end, I still intent to win" he said as if it was an evidence. "I simply offered every side a fair chance as, be it the Silent Cult, Cain or Yoria, each of their versions of freedom deserve to get its chance to come out on top, but it doesn't mean I'm not trying to win. I simply limit my chances to make the victory reachable for all of you. After all, it wouldn't be freedom if the game was rigged from the beginning, would it?"

"You're insane" Erica replied, the words coming from the deepest part of her soul.

Yohan took her in her arms, hugging her as a big brother would:

"You may be right" he said. "But I rather be an insane man than to abandon my values. The Paradise Council, the Curch, the Angels, the 'true' Genova... you... all are infinitely most precious than my own life, yet I'd never hesitate to abandon them for freedom"

He got beside her and took a picture of them as they stood before the board showing the outside of the ship, in the direction where Londris was. Yohan then printed a copy and put it into his sister's hand, before getting away:

"Your friend will soon wake up, and I have other ressing matters to attend to" he said, though with a bit of regret. "Until we meet again, my precious little sister"

And just like this, he left Erica alone, except for John who was slowly starting to wake up once again. She didn't pay attention to him, though, as something else had catched her attention, a detail on the picture. She turned to the several digital boards of the piloting room.

On one of them, she could see Londris, covered in bright orange, white and blue.

The entire planet was burning.