When you try to put a good idea into practice, you still gotta play by the rules.
After handing over the controlling threads of her own body to Cecilia, her body immediately slumped from a sitting position on the bed to lying limply on it, like a building with no support.
“Sorry, I can’t help you fight just yet.”
After Sienna handed the threads over to her, Cecilia, now also a Herrscher of Dominance, figured out how to use her new ability after a few tries.
But it was still because her current power was too weak; she couldn’t control Sienna’s entire body.
The most she could manage was moving a few fingers.
Seeing that Cecilia couldn’t operate her body alone, Sienna tried a different approach: the two of them working together to control it.
“This was expected too.”
After all, Cecilia had just woken up.
As a soul, she’d need a long time to fully recover her former strength.
Even if they worked together, it wouldn’t give them any real power boost.
“Guess I’m still on my own for now, then.”
Sienna wasn’t too disappointed that she couldn’t just leech off a pro to fight her battles for her.
Given her own strength, as long as she didn’t do anything stupid on the battlefield, facing those enemies would just take a little more time.
“Cecilia, you rest here for now. I’ve got things to do.”
Taking back the threads controlling her body from Cecilia, Sienna prepared to leave.
“Almost forgot about her.”
Suddenly remembering something, Sienna glanced around at the other cores scattered nearby.
She brought one of them over and said to Cecilia:
“This core holds Cheng Lixue from your Snowwolf Squad. If she wakes up, fill her in on the current situation.”
“Cheng Lixue? Do you know where my other squad members are?”
Cecilia still didn’t know what had happened to the rest of her Snowwolf Squad.
“When I found her, her condition was worse than yours. Your soul was relatively well-preserved, thanks to the Abyss Flower’s help. Even though I’ve managed to save her soul now, it’ll take much more time for her to wake up.”
Sienna didn’t expect Cheng Lixue to wake up in just a few days like Cecilia.
“Shigure Kira fell into the Sea of Quanta and survived. If we’re lucky, we might run into her in some Bubble World someday.”
From what she knew of the story, she only knew Cecilia died with Sirin.
Cheng Lixue died outside the Babylon Laboratory.
As for the rest of the Snowwolf Squad, who died alongside Benares?
No idea where they ended up.
She’d had a mission back then, so she couldn’t exactly just drive around the battlefield picking people up.
“Just managing this much is more than anyone else could have done.”
Cecilia hadn’t survived the battlefield herself, and her teammates’ situations were surely desperate.
Just knowing two of them had made it was already a huge relief.
“Well then, good luck, Miss Sienna.”
As Sienna finished explaining things, her soul began to slip back out of the space, returning to her body.
Left alone in this space, Cecilia closed her eyes and entered a dormant state to recover her strength more effectively.
“Time to head out.”
Back in her own body, Sienna checked the time, grabbed her backpack, and headed out.
“Captain, be careful on the battlefield!”
At Schicksal’s airport, Sienna said goodbye to her teammates who had come to see her off.
“Got it. Don’t you guys worry.”
Even without using her Herrscher of Dominance powers, she was still a B-rank Valkyrie.
And a B-rank’s combat ability nowadays wasn’t like the ones a dozen years later, propped up by equipment.
Sitting on the private plane Schicksal had arranged, Sienna pulled out the intel she’d had someone gather on Cocolia.
“Comes from a military family, tough fighting style. Supports the orphans she adopted on a lieutenant’s salary.”
Using her authority within Schicksal and help from her family to dig up info on an ordinary person from a country not entirely under Schicksal’s control?
In just a few days, all she got was basically what she already knew, stuff that matched the story.
“At least I’ve got her address and last known location.”
“How could I forget about Duck’s mom?”
Sienna thought back to Cocolia’s first appearance in the official remastered manga.
She remembered Cocolia reporting someone for stealing military weapons, only to be framed and arrested by higher-ups who were doing the same thing.
Then, while imprisoned, she saw the Honkai for the first time.
“Duck’s dad, rest in peace. Duck’s mom… maybe I can save her.”
Cocolia only got out of prison because a Honkai Beast destroyed the building.
She escaped from the collapsed structure.
But the father of the Bronya she’d caught, who’d come to visit, died there.
Cocolia grabbed weapons and car keys from him and drove away from the disaster zone with the wife, who’d been waiting in the car for her husband.
“A woman, alone, pregnant, trying to live in Russia at a time like this…”
Considering Bronya’s backstory—becoming the “Silver Wolf of the Urals” a few years later and being sent to assassinate Cocolia—it seemed Duck’s mom hadn’t stayed with Cocolia after escaping the Honkai zone.
Whether it was because life was too hard or she got corrupted by the Honkai during the escape, she didn’t survive more than a few years.
“Duck’s childhood? I’ll protect it.”
Find Cocolia, get to her before Anti-Entropy does, and offer support.
That way, I can get intel on Anti-Entropy from her later, and also meet all the kids at the orphanage.
“Seele, who punched her way through the Sea of Quanta. The initial-S-rank Rozaliya Olenyeva and Liliya Olenyeva. The time-stopping Sin Mal…”
Besides Bronya, the future top fighters of Anti-Entropy were all gathered in that little orphanage.
“I can’t get my hands on Kiana yet, but these guys? No way they’re slipping through my fingers.”
Until she felt she could go up against Otto, Sienna wouldn’t dare make a move on either the real Kiana or the game’s protagonist, K-423.
“All the girls in that orphanage? Mine. Nobody else touches a single hair on their heads.”
Thinking about all the characters she’d pulled in-game, and the ones that hadn’t even been announced for the roster yet, all about to show up right in front of her…
Sienna probably forgot that the oldest of them, Bronya, wouldn’t even be born until August of this year.