A Few Moments Later

  Kogana Restaurant in Douragon

  Main Hall of the Restaurant

  Before Karla's Mirrored Space

  After the ultrasonic pulse of Karla's abilities swept through the entire restaurant in just a few moments, it managed to surpass everyone who was frozen in time, seated in the crowded place, while gradually making the world, once tinted in negative tones, return to its normal colors.

  [Karla — Nostalgic & Serene Voice] I really like this passage from the tale that my brother Karl and I used to tell our late little sister, Victoria. The passage of the hare and the wolf. [She takes a deep breath] —

  It was visible to the incredulous eyes of the young Sork that each person around him was becoming more and more translucent to the naked eye, seeming to turn into colorless specters.

  [Karla — Nostalgic & Serene Voice] "The small and brave hare, who ran for its life from the fierce wolf, without realizing it was only looking back..." [She takes a deep breath] —

  Even more perceptible were the soft outlines of their bodies, as the entire environment now left only two people intact from the strange effects caused by Karla's abilities.

  [Karla — Thoughtful & Serene Voice] "She went around the world with her frightened steps, and thus, at the end of her run..." [She takes a deep, nostalgic breath] —

  They were none other than Karla herself, seated in her chair in front of her table, and Sork himself, who was also seated at his own table, facing his ally Nabi Yu, who had already become translucent and forcibly frozen in time.

  [Karla — Thoughtful & Serene Voice] "The little hare thus ended up reaching nothing less than the wolf's own back, who had been watching her run away from him..." [She takes a deep breath] —

  In that place, where everyone except Karla and Sork had become intangible and invisible by Karla's will to speak more privately and without unnecessary interruptions from others, their bodies still slowed in their temporal flow.

  [Karla — Thoughtful & Serene Voice] "...Seeking to distance herself from the wolf at any cost, out of fear of losing her life." [She takes a deep, nostalgic breath] —

  Leaving only Karla and Sork seated in their respective chairs, facing their tables, while remaining with their backs to each other in that place now completely empty.

  [Karla — Deeply Ironic Voice] ...Don't you find this passage from that forgotten tale, created by us humans, interesting, young Sork? —

  [Karla — Deeply Ironic Voice] Since it teaches in a practical way the young to look forward and not only backward in the face of fear. After all, we can all become "defenseless hares" before our own fear. —

  Faced with Sork's silence and his lightly trembling, completely incredulous breathing toward her, Karla understood the surreal potential that a genetically modified hybrid of human and Oculi could reach, with harsh and continuous training and refinement, in such a short time.

  A potential that could be used against the Oculi themselves in a bloody future that grew ever closer, converging toward a violent battle between humans and Oculi.

  [Karla — Profoundly Empty Voice] I feel that we are living this tale at this very moment, in the face of this unexpected reunion... [A deep, weary breath] —

  [Sork — Deeply Fearful Voice] ...Please, if you wish to kill me for what I did that night a few months ago, then do it in whatever way you desire. [He sighs deeply, fearful] —

  Using those human–Oculi hybrids who succeeded and did not die in brutal ways, in order to control their new Oculi abilities, inherited from a black blood that should not even flow through their veins, mixed with the red of human blood.

  [Sork — Deeply Fearful Voice] You yourself see with your own eyes, blinded by thirst for revenge, many of us from the Oculi of the Reginae faction saving humans, but... [He sighs deeply, angrily] —

  [Karla — Deeply Curious Voice] But? [She breathes slowly and deeply] —

  Sork realized that his own ability had been surpassed by a technique that he himself did not even know was possible for a human–Oculi hybrid agent to achieve in such a short time.

  [Sork — Deeply Worried Voice] But you still blindly hate all of us Oculi alike, even those who fight and defend humans from the damned Oculi of the Inanis faction... [He sighs deeply, fearful] —

  [Karla — Profoundly Empty Voice] ...Coming from someone who has the blood of innocent human lives on their own hands, isn't it? [She breathes deeply, ironically] —

  He understood that fighting in that situation, inside the mirrored space created by Karla, was a death sentence, given her excellence in physical combat and in the simultaneous use of Oculi abilities.

  [Sork — Deeply Regretful Voice] I will pay for my failures. I am not some kind of "God" who can save every life in danger before me, but... [A painful, nostalgic sigh] —

  [Karla — Profoundly Empty Voice] ...But? [A subtle, disgusted sigh] —

  [Sork — Deeply Determined Voice] But please. I beg you that... at least allow my ally, Nabi Yu, to leave this place safely. [A sincere, deep breath] —

  Even so, they were still inferior to Karla's current power, which showed how far she had come in only a few months since their last encounter. In Sork's eyes, the only opponent truly worthy of Karla was his own master, who had trained him, and who at that time could have easily defeated her.

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  [Sork — Deeply Determined Voice] Even if the cost is my own life, Miss Karla... [A sincere, deep breath] —

  [Karla — Serene & Assertive Voice] ...Rest assured, young member of the Reginae faction. [Deep breath] —

  Karla, now drinking a smooth and pleasant wine, held a glass in one hand and let out a light, amused and restrained laugh, hiding her sarcasm within the silence of that place, which felt dense and heavy in the air only to Sork.

  Thus echoed, at the moment she placed the glass back on the table—no longer filled with her favorite drink, but completely empty—the deep breath of Karla within that environment now in total silence.

  [Echoing Desperate Cries from Karla's Past Memories]

  Many Years Ago

  In a City That No Longer Exists

  In the blink of an eye, Karla finds herself reliving her own past amid the ruins of her former city.

  She is forced to see, right before her eyes, herself—but as a younger version—embracing and trying to protect her little sister Suzi, who lay injured on the head and unconscious.

  Both of them were bleeding from their heads after being struck by debris that had flown from one of the many buildings that collapsed throughout the city.

  This was after the end of the first clash between humans and the Oculi, which had taken so many innocent lives in just a few minutes of brutal and bloody combat, leaving a large part of the city in ruins and stained with the black blood of the Oculi.

  And also with the red blood of innocent humans, which marked the countless pieces of debris of what had once been a calm city, a place that only hours earlier had been full of life, but now was filled with visible or buried bodies of both Oculi and humans.

  There, one could see the young Karla, covered in dust and rubble, trying even amid the chaos to protect her little sister Suzi, who was not only unconscious but also gravely injured, without young Karla herself realizing the true danger Suzi was facing at that moment.

  Thus, as time seems to rewind through the chaos surrounding young Karla and her little sister Suzi, the present-day Karla now remembers herself as a younger girl, running during what would become the clash between the two Oculi factions.

  One of those factions was Inanis, which sought to kidnap a large number of humans to begin, on a massive scale, their first genetic experiments related to the Eva Theory.

  Meanwhile, the Reginae faction sought at any cost to stop Inanis, which led both sides to engage in combat within the city. At the same time, what would later become the powerful Sagittarius Corporation was making its very first active appearance.

  Humans were caught in the midst of the bloody confrontation between the Oculi and their special abilities, while many tried desperately to protect themselves and find refuge at any cost from the slaughter and kidnappings.

  The humans, in that desperate situation, did not know that the Reginae faction was protecting them under direct orders from the current queen and former princess, Lilian.

  She had ordered that humans be protected from the Oculi themselves, who wished to use them as part of a revenge born from the painful past involving the former queen.

  Present-day Karla realizes, as she looks around within that traumatic memory, that this was the city where she and her brother Karl had dreamed of giving a better life to their little sister Suzi.

  For the three of them had been abandoned and had become homeless at a young age after losing their home in a fire. What was meant to be a simple blink of an eye in the present ended up pulling Karla back into her own past.

  She remembers, within her own mind, what she and her brother Karl would lose months later in a hospital bed, after finally managing to take the one they cared about most to a hospital.

  That person was none other than young Suzi, who was taken to the hospital in time, yet still ended up losing her life because of the chaos. Even as a child, Suzi had fought with all her strength and tried to heal from the injuries she had suffered due to the conflict in which she and Karla had become involved.

  And even after so many painful and complicated surgeries, combined with increasingly stronger medications to sustain her now fragile life, young Suzi could no longer endure.

  In her final conversation with her siblings, after so many months of treatment, her premature death came to pass, as her body was no longer able to hold on.

  Even so, young Suzi had given everything she had, encouraged daily by her brothers, Karl and her sister Karla, to fight, not to give up, and to keep trying to survive despite the pain, because they had promised to play together once more in the park they had always loved to go to.

  These memories, relived once again by Karla, of the chaos the city experienced for nearly two continuous hours, cause her to recall in a fragmented way the image of a beautiful afternoon sky turning into nothing but total darkness, covered by thick smoke and flames rising from different parts of the city.

  The older Karla of the present knows that she and her brother Karl are the only people born in that city who survived, a city that now stands abandoned after that bloody moment so many years ago.

  They were the only ones who knew the full truth about the real direct culprits of that chaos: the Oculi of the Inanis faction, and also the indirect culprits, the members of the Reginae faction of the Oculi.

  After so many years, and now alongside her older brother Karl, Karla finally joined the Sagittarius organization to fight against the Oculi as a whole.

  Together, they understood why none of that had ever appeared in the newspapers and why it had been erased from history. The ruined city had been declared radioactive by the local government just hours later.

  This was done to prevent any information from being revealed, and to hide the very existence of the Oculi from humanity, since they were classified as beings from another reality, not originating from the human one.

  Beings who had been disguising themselves as humans in physical appearance since the 1960s, intelligent enough to conceal their presence, even while belonging to two opposing Oculi factions.

  All of this remained hidden from the vast human population, which had no idea of their existence or of what they were capable of doing once they stepped into the light and were no longer kept in the darkness of human history.

  Returning to the Present

  Kogana Restaurant in Douragon

  Main Hall of the Restaurant

  Still Within Karla's Mirrored Space

  Karla, after reopening her eyes and returning to the present, instinctively lifts her gaze slightly upward. There was a distant look toward her own humanity, which she had lost many years ago after Suzi's death.

  She observed the beautiful chandelier shining above their heads inside the restaurant, in complete silence.

  [Karla — Voice Deeply Empty] Even in the face of your so-called "help" to us humans against the despicable Oculi of Inanis... you, just like them, continue to kill more and more innocents indirectly. —

  Meanwhile, Sork himself lowered his head under a painful and melancholic gaze. He had unwillingly experienced a mental resonance with Karla, without her realizing it, when she herself had been reliving her past moments earlier.

  [Karla — Voice Deeply Painful] Inanis faction or Reginae, it doesn't matter which side of the same coin it is. Both, even though different, carry the blood of so many of us humans on their hands, including innocent children... like my little sister, Suzi... [Subtle, trembling sigh] —

  Sork clearly understood the profound hatred that Karla and her brother Karl held against the Oculi as a whole, even though, deep down, she refused to admit that she saw the members of the Reginae faction as wanting to protect humans from their own Oculi kind.

  Even after humans themselves had once cold-bloodedly killed their former queen and used her body to improve their own human society in terms of medicine, after the first contact between the Oculi and humans back in the 1960s.

  [Karla — Voice Merciless & Deeply Vengeful] I have more important matters to deal with in this restaurant than your two pathetic Oculi lives. —

  The two of them were in that beautiful and luxurious restaurant in Tokyo. Sork was there on duty for his Reginae faction alongside Nabi Yu. At the same time, Karla was on duty for the human organization against the Oculi, called Sagiitarius.

  [Karla — Voice Merciless & Extremely Vengeful] Which I know I will have the opportunity to end once and for all at another time... [Subtle deep breath] —

  Karla and Sork, seated in their respective chairs with their backs to each other a few meters apart, had eyes that seemed not only distant from reality and humanity, but also from any feeling such as pity or mercy, as they once again recalled their past.

  [Karla — Voice Merciless & Extremely Vengeful] Or did you not notice that, young Sork? [Subtle deep breath] —

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  (Act 15 — The Last Light Still Shining Before the Darkness)