.| Kaiden |.
Age: 32 yrs
Eye Color: Blue
Hair Color: Black
Height: 6'5"
Weight: 225 lbs
Birthdate: August 1st
Appearance: Piercing Eyes, Dark Hair, Tall & Muscular, Scarred
Despite his generally cleanly shaven face, Kaiden has the appearance of a somewhat rugged man. Standing nearly two meters in height, and with the well-muscled physique of a lifelong soldier and mercenary, the haunted man has a striking silhouette that would dwarf most of those he comes across. His body is littered with scars from over a decade of warfare and violent work, only a few of which are new enough to have come as a result of his more recent work as somewhat of a pariah among the civilian police force of Lightning Country. He keeps his long and wavy black hair tied back in a somewhat unkempt ponytail. His eyes are piercing, at times looking azure and at others having an almost indigo-blue appearance. But no matter what color his stunning blue eyes appear, they always look haunted, for they've seen things that no man should have to. Above his brow, Kaiden is branded with an odd pattern of sharply-pointed, curved, and intersecting lines, a mark that is a permanent reminder of his crimes and his status as an indentured servant of Kumogakure.
Personality: Honorable, Selfless, Haunted, Broken
Kaiden is a broken man. Everyone the mercenary had known and loved paid the price of the terrible mistake he made in those he chose to work with. The man lives with the regret of that decision every single day, and the visions that have haunted him ever since are constant reminders that he is the one to blame for his unrelenting sadness. However, despite being broken, Kaiden is also a very honorable man. Seeing the way that his fellow soldiers were treated as an expendable resource has led him to see life and combat differently than most in his line of work, and he would do anything to protect those who he fights beside, even if that involves stark self-sacrifice. No, especially if it involves sacrifice. In fact, if he was honest with himself, there's a part of the man that wants to die, to be freed from the pain, from the truth that everything bad that's happened to him has been his own fault. However, life rarely works out so easily. Too stubborn to take his own life, Kaiden trudges on, doing his duty and trying to atone for the sins of the past.
History: A True Ghost Story
For years Kaiden lived a happy life with his wife Akari. They'd met as fellow mercenaries when they were both green-horned teenagers. They quickly decided they made a good team, and made a solid life for themselves, fighting at each other's sides for whoever was willing to pay a non-chakra-user well. They never went hungry, got to see countless places all across Lightning Country, and always had each other to count on to cover one another's back. Eventually, while finishing a simple contract near the border of Bear Country, the two learned that Akari had become pregnant with their child. Both terrified and excited, they vowed to bring her into a better world than the violent one that they'd lived in. She was a bundle of joy from the moment she first drew breath, somehow managing to look like she was smiling even as she let out her first cries. And on the day of their beautiful daughter's birth they named her Runa, so she'd have the playfulness of youth travel with her forever. Kaiden and Akari's lives would be changed, they thought. Though neither one of the two of them knew how to be a good parent, having lived lives that were full of action and warfare, and were both far from familiar with the wholesome, they stopped taking dangerous work and simply did the best they could. And that was good enough... At least for a while.
However, as Runa grew, and with their savings of mercenary income dwindling in the absence of more life-threatening work, Kaiden and Akari's situation began to seem dire. They'd settled by the sea, back where Kaiden had grown up near Tenouza, but neither Kaiden nor Akari knew a trade aside from combat. For years they'd been able to eke out a humble life that was as self-sufficient as they could make it, attempting to avoid the kind of danger that could potentially leave their daughter without one of her parents. However, as their beautiful daughter grew, so too did their debts to the Tenouza. Despite all this, enduring their grim circumstances and the meager living they could afford, they remained happy. Whenever the stress began to grow, they'd see Runa's smiling face and somehow, to Kaiden and Akari, all seemed right in the world.
Unfortunately, that peace and tranquility wouldn't last. One day, a member of the Tenouza's debt collectors came by with a written notice. It was an offer. They'd heard of Kaiden and Akari's relative talent compared to most non-chakra-users, and offered to wipe their debt clean should they agree to fight for the Tenouza in their ambitious upcoming campaign. It broke the parents' hearts to think of bringing violence into the world of their daughter, but in the end Kaiden convinced his wife that this was their best option. "You're right, Akari... A life of danger is no life for a child... But neither is starvation. Don't you want Runa to have more than we did?" He'd said. Remembering those words now, how stupid he'd been, makes Kaiden's gut twist with regret. Neither of them had grown up good, but what a low blow it was to bring Akari's own dark childhood into things. Compared to her, he'd had it easy. "Of course I do, darlin'... But promise me Kaiden... Promise me that as soon as this is all done, we're out for good. No more mercenary work. No more paid soldier gigs. I'll hang up my knives, you'll hang up your spear, and we'll go back to just being a family." Akari had relented, and Kaiden agreed. "I promise, Akari. On our daughter's life. One last job and we can all start over, debt free." The thought of those words sickens him to this day. What a liar he'd become.
The brutal truth of the Tenouza's offer became clear very quickly. Though they'd allowed some families to join the recruited soldiers in their war camps, the battles that Kaiden and the other men were to take part in were hardly planned with their survival in mind. Their debts would be wiped away, sure. But so would the lives of the vast majority of these men. But Kaiden was a man of honor, and a mercenary that had grown to understand that his worth was determined by his willingness to get the job done. Plus, running away, especially with a young girl, would have little-to-no chance to succeed in the long run. They'd be caught and forced back to the front lines, or worse. So he worked. Harder than any of even the Tenouza's overseers expected, he trained, teaching the other unlucky recruits all he knew about how to use a spear, how to think when the chaos of battle surrounded them, how to stay alive. The Tenouza wanted them to be fodder, but Kaiden swore to himself that he would fight for each and every one of their lives.
For a little while it worked. They were able to use tactics and teamwork and sheer numbers to overcome some of the odds in the early battles within the Tenouza's war. Sure, their losses far outnumbered those of the chakra-powered super-soldiers that they were going up against, but of all the Tenouza's non-chakra contingents, Kaiden's group had lost the least. They'd learned to care for one another, protect each other, and most importantly, they'd learned to survive. Even Akari, who refused to take the battlefield, instead staying with Runa in the camps, let herself believe that they'd somehow make it through this and back to the life they'd grown to love. Kaiden had even started going off into the forests between some of their early battles to carve wooden 'medals' for the men that he believed deserved it, so they'd be able to show their families how brave and strong they were. They might not be much compared to a shinobi, but to these average men going to fight, Kaiden brought inspiration.
That made it all the more difficult when the inevitable happened. The shinobi were smarter, faster, and stronger. They'd employed shadow tactics and wielded powers with chakra that mere men couldn't even comprehend. So when one early morning, while Kaiden was out carving trinkets for his brothers-in-arms, they struck the war camp, it was hardly even a battle. With extreme efficiency, every soldier, every man, woman, and child were shuffled off this mortal coil. They were exterminated, like they were nothing more than mere pests. And when Kaiden arrived to the devastation, saw the bodies of his men, saw the tents torn apart and in shambles, saw no movement whatsoever, he trembled. The hardened man shook in fear for the first time since he was a boy learning how to fight with the spear against real opponents. The men he'd learned to call brother were all gone, but that was nothing compared to what he saw next. Like a zombie, he trudged through the wreckage, without thought lifting the canvas of the collapsed tent in which his wife and daughter had survived. He knelt, pulled them close, hugging them like they used to before everything changed. And as Kaiden held their cold heads against his still-beating chest, something in the man broke. No... Everything broke.
The following months still remain a blur in Kaiden's broken mind. He'd ran, blended in with the other shell-shocked non-religious refugees, and was assimilated into the new country that would be fully governed by Kumogakure. However, this only gave his regret more shape. He came to realize just how wrong the Tenouza had been. He and Akari had always known that their religion was a bunch of bunk, that they used it for power and to control the populace, but he didn't understand the depths of their corruption and the cruelty of their plots against the Lightning Country. Once he'd learned the truth, the fact was... The Tenouza had deserved their fate. He couldn't fault the shinobi for that. But not Runa, not Akari... They were innocents. He wished with every fiber of his being that he could've gone back, held onto his debt, worked and lived a meager and normal life. Maybe then he and his family would be just like the poor souls that were now being taken care of by the ninjas of Cloud. But it was too late for all that. Kaiden had only one option left. He turn himself in for judgment, and be rewarded with the punishment that would bring he and his family back together in death. But as usual, life had other plans. When he came forward, admitted to being a soldier, told the truth that he fought without understanding what the point was, that the religion didn't matter to him or his family, and that the Tenouza were wrong, but that he still fought, he expected execution as every other soldier of the Tenouza he knew about had received. But instead, the Judge had decreed that he'd be bound to indentured servitude with an indefinite term. So he resigned to his fate. He'd pay for his crimes for the rest of his pitiful life, and he'd do so while being the kind of man he was... the kind of man that stood up for those in harms way... the kind of man that put lives above objectives... the kind of man his daughter and wife might be proud of when he finally gets to join them.
He never could have predicted that it would be them that would join him first.
Core Ability: Ghost Walker
Months passed, then years, Kaiden's twenties rolling into his thirties as he worked menial jobs, until his overseer in the Kumogakure government saw that he had little skill aside from basic combat; not that incredible ninjutsu or taijutsu that shinobi were able to achieve, but the kind of martial arts a soldier possessed. However, even those warriors like him who were cursed to not have chakra flow within their veins, had a use in this growing technological society that Lightning Country was becoming. And so after years of service without stepping out of line, he had earned enough length on his leash to be assigned to the Kumogakure Civilian Police force. His history, as well as the general lack of desire to socialize that his deep depression brought, did little to combat becoming an outsider and pariah amongst his policeman peers. However, his bravery, selflessness, and physical prowess caused Kaiden to quickly become a valuable asset in dangerous situations. So, in turn, those were just about the only assignments he received. When someone had to put their neck on the line, when other cops didn't want to be there, when danger was involved, Kaiden was the first one sent in. It wasn't overly often that the civilian force faced anything beyond the pale, but every now and then a case would come through that was too mundane for the shinobi to handle, but just wrong enough to be a 'Kaiden job'. Today was one of those days...
A little girl laid still in her room, blood slowly pooling onto the bedsheets. A neighbor had heard the girl's father ranting and raving, screaming as he raged inside the home. And when the man had thrown the girl's limp body onto the bed, in clear view of the window, she'd called the civilian police. Sure enough, when Kaiden's unit arrived, the man had barricaded the door, hoping to seal himself within the house. He was yelling through the door, almost raving. Some sort of threat, to get out or he'd do the same to them. They were words that Kaiden didn't recall. They weren't important. What was important was making sure that no one else got hurt. That the men and women who worked alongside him as officers of the law were safe, even if that meant Kaiden wasn't. The massive man dove through a window that the murderous patron had neglected to board up, and within seconds had tackled the man to the floor. Kaiden held him there, hands pinned over the man's wrists as the same knife that the father had used to eviscerate his daughter cut weakly against his forearm, then managed to wrest the weapon from the man's hand and subdue him long enough for his fellow forces to batter down the door. His unit looked at him like he was crazy, gawked at the blood that flowed from his lower arm. This wouldn't change their opinions. Most of them thought the broken man was crazy anyway. He thought they were right. But it wasn't the struggle, the brush with potential death, having to take in another terrible human being. It was the sight of the little girl in the room upstairs... Though she laid still, her chest still heaved, Kaiden called down screaming for help, and in a blur the paramedics that had arrived shoved past him. The girl could still be saved... That's what sent Kaiden running outside, collapsing into a sitting position on the stairs, his elbows on his knees as he stared down the steps.
The man cried. Holding his face in his hands, Kaiden wept a river of tears into his palms as he recalled the sight of his lifeless daughter. 'That girl... She almost looked like her...' He thought, his brow furrowed, almost pawing at his face as he tried to rid his mind of the images that had plagued him daily for years. As those horrific memories replayed in his head, it was like the rest of the world faded away... That is, until he heard something odd. It was like a high pitched hum that whistled in the wind. Out of instinct the man raised his head to look at the source of this unnatural sound. A mote of azure energy flew around Kaiden at remarkable speed, her form blurring into a ribbon of blue-white light, before finally coming sit within his open hand. Runa curtsied at her father with that bright infectious smile that he had grown to love. Kaiden's eyes went wide with shock. It was his daughter. Unmistakable, despite her translucent blue appearance. And although she glowed like an afterimage from looking at the sun, her form provided no real illumination. "Daddy, you did so good! I'm proud of you!" She looked like a figment in her tiny cerulean form, but Runa sounded exactly the way he remembered. The sound of her voice caused the tears to pour from his eyes in streams that dripped off the bottom of his chin. "R-Runa?" He murmured in disbelief. "I couldn't save you... I couldn't protect you like I promised..." He choked on the words as he said them, his tears battling with his vocal chords. His daughter put her hands on her hips and gave him a disappointed look. "That's already happened now Daddy... Just like you said when I was little: 'You can't change your past, but you can choose what you're gonna do with your future.' Now I'm with mommy on the other side... But we still remember you. We still see you. We're still with you. So you gotta keep doing your best! You saved that little girl's life today! And daddy... try to be a little happier~" He started to respond as a member of his unit descended the stairs. "You did good Kaiden. The girl's gonna survive." The man said, reaffirming what his daughter had predicted. It caught Kaiden's attention and he turned his head back to nod to his fellow officer. But when he turned back to where his daughter had been, she was gone. 'Was I imagining her...?' He thought. Of course he had. She was dead and there's nothing that was going to change that fact. However, through his tears, Kaiden smiled. He couldn't help but be happy like his little girl had asked. After all, he got to hear Runa's sweet and bubbly voice again, even if only in his insane mind.
[Kaiden]
[Akari]
[Runa]
Age: 32 yrs
Eye Color: Blue
Hair Color: Black
Height: 6'5"
Weight: 225 lbs
Birthdate: August 1st
Appearance: Piercing Eyes, Dark Hair, Tall & Muscular, Scarred
Despite his generally cleanly shaven face, Kaiden has the appearance of a somewhat rugged man. Standing nearly two meters in height, and with the well-muscled physique of a lifelong soldier and mercenary, the haunted man has a striking silhouette that would dwarf most of those he comes across. His body is littered with scars from over a decade of warfare and violent work, only a few of which are new enough to have come as a result of his more recent work as somewhat of a pariah among the civilian police force of Lightning Country. He keeps his long and wavy black hair tied back in a somewhat unkempt ponytail. His eyes are piercing, at times looking azure and at others having an almost indigo-blue appearance. But no matter what color his stunning blue eyes appear, they always look haunted, for they've seen things that no man should have to. Above his brow, Kaiden is branded with an odd pattern of sharply-pointed, curved, and intersecting lines, a mark that is a permanent reminder of his crimes and his status as an indentured servant of Kumogakure.
Personality: Honorable, Selfless, Haunted, Broken
Kaiden is a broken man. Everyone the mercenary had known and loved paid the price of the terrible mistake he made in those he chose to work with. The man lives with the regret of that decision every single day, and the visions that have haunted him ever since are constant reminders that he is the one to blame for his unrelenting sadness. However, despite being broken, Kaiden is also a very honorable man. Seeing the way that his fellow soldiers were treated as an expendable resource has led him to see life and combat differently than most in his line of work, and he would do anything to protect those who he fights beside, even if that involves stark self-sacrifice. No, especially if it involves sacrifice. In fact, if he was honest with himself, there's a part of the man that wants to die, to be freed from the pain, from the truth that everything bad that's happened to him has been his own fault. However, life rarely works out so easily. Too stubborn to take his own life, Kaiden trudges on, doing his duty and trying to atone for the sins of the past.
History: A True Ghost Story
For years Kaiden lived a happy life with his wife Akari. They'd met as fellow mercenaries when they were both green-horned teenagers. They quickly decided they made a good team, and made a solid life for themselves, fighting at each other's sides for whoever was willing to pay a non-chakra-user well. They never went hungry, got to see countless places all across Lightning Country, and always had each other to count on to cover one another's back. Eventually, while finishing a simple contract near the border of Bear Country, the two learned that Akari had become pregnant with their child. Both terrified and excited, they vowed to bring her into a better world than the violent one that they'd lived in. She was a bundle of joy from the moment she first drew breath, somehow managing to look like she was smiling even as she let out her first cries. And on the day of their beautiful daughter's birth they named her Runa, so she'd have the playfulness of youth travel with her forever. Kaiden and Akari's lives would be changed, they thought. Though neither one of the two of them knew how to be a good parent, having lived lives that were full of action and warfare, and were both far from familiar with the wholesome, they stopped taking dangerous work and simply did the best they could. And that was good enough... At least for a while.
However, as Runa grew, and with their savings of mercenary income dwindling in the absence of more life-threatening work, Kaiden and Akari's situation began to seem dire. They'd settled by the sea, back where Kaiden had grown up near Tenouza, but neither Kaiden nor Akari knew a trade aside from combat. For years they'd been able to eke out a humble life that was as self-sufficient as they could make it, attempting to avoid the kind of danger that could potentially leave their daughter without one of her parents. However, as their beautiful daughter grew, so too did their debts to the Tenouza. Despite all this, enduring their grim circumstances and the meager living they could afford, they remained happy. Whenever the stress began to grow, they'd see Runa's smiling face and somehow, to Kaiden and Akari, all seemed right in the world.
Unfortunately, that peace and tranquility wouldn't last. One day, a member of the Tenouza's debt collectors came by with a written notice. It was an offer. They'd heard of Kaiden and Akari's relative talent compared to most non-chakra-users, and offered to wipe their debt clean should they agree to fight for the Tenouza in their ambitious upcoming campaign. It broke the parents' hearts to think of bringing violence into the world of their daughter, but in the end Kaiden convinced his wife that this was their best option. "You're right, Akari... A life of danger is no life for a child... But neither is starvation. Don't you want Runa to have more than we did?" He'd said. Remembering those words now, how stupid he'd been, makes Kaiden's gut twist with regret. Neither of them had grown up good, but what a low blow it was to bring Akari's own dark childhood into things. Compared to her, he'd had it easy. "Of course I do, darlin'... But promise me Kaiden... Promise me that as soon as this is all done, we're out for good. No more mercenary work. No more paid soldier gigs. I'll hang up my knives, you'll hang up your spear, and we'll go back to just being a family." Akari had relented, and Kaiden agreed. "I promise, Akari. On our daughter's life. One last job and we can all start over, debt free." The thought of those words sickens him to this day. What a liar he'd become.
The brutal truth of the Tenouza's offer became clear very quickly. Though they'd allowed some families to join the recruited soldiers in their war camps, the battles that Kaiden and the other men were to take part in were hardly planned with their survival in mind. Their debts would be wiped away, sure. But so would the lives of the vast majority of these men. But Kaiden was a man of honor, and a mercenary that had grown to understand that his worth was determined by his willingness to get the job done. Plus, running away, especially with a young girl, would have little-to-no chance to succeed in the long run. They'd be caught and forced back to the front lines, or worse. So he worked. Harder than any of even the Tenouza's overseers expected, he trained, teaching the other unlucky recruits all he knew about how to use a spear, how to think when the chaos of battle surrounded them, how to stay alive. The Tenouza wanted them to be fodder, but Kaiden swore to himself that he would fight for each and every one of their lives.
For a little while it worked. They were able to use tactics and teamwork and sheer numbers to overcome some of the odds in the early battles within the Tenouza's war. Sure, their losses far outnumbered those of the chakra-powered super-soldiers that they were going up against, but of all the Tenouza's non-chakra contingents, Kaiden's group had lost the least. They'd learned to care for one another, protect each other, and most importantly, they'd learned to survive. Even Akari, who refused to take the battlefield, instead staying with Runa in the camps, let herself believe that they'd somehow make it through this and back to the life they'd grown to love. Kaiden had even started going off into the forests between some of their early battles to carve wooden 'medals' for the men that he believed deserved it, so they'd be able to show their families how brave and strong they were. They might not be much compared to a shinobi, but to these average men going to fight, Kaiden brought inspiration.
That made it all the more difficult when the inevitable happened. The shinobi were smarter, faster, and stronger. They'd employed shadow tactics and wielded powers with chakra that mere men couldn't even comprehend. So when one early morning, while Kaiden was out carving trinkets for his brothers-in-arms, they struck the war camp, it was hardly even a battle. With extreme efficiency, every soldier, every man, woman, and child were shuffled off this mortal coil. They were exterminated, like they were nothing more than mere pests. And when Kaiden arrived to the devastation, saw the bodies of his men, saw the tents torn apart and in shambles, saw no movement whatsoever, he trembled. The hardened man shook in fear for the first time since he was a boy learning how to fight with the spear against real opponents. The men he'd learned to call brother were all gone, but that was nothing compared to what he saw next. Like a zombie, he trudged through the wreckage, without thought lifting the canvas of the collapsed tent in which his wife and daughter had survived. He knelt, pulled them close, hugging them like they used to before everything changed. And as Kaiden held their cold heads against his still-beating chest, something in the man broke. No... Everything broke.
The following months still remain a blur in Kaiden's broken mind. He'd ran, blended in with the other shell-shocked non-religious refugees, and was assimilated into the new country that would be fully governed by Kumogakure. However, this only gave his regret more shape. He came to realize just how wrong the Tenouza had been. He and Akari had always known that their religion was a bunch of bunk, that they used it for power and to control the populace, but he didn't understand the depths of their corruption and the cruelty of their plots against the Lightning Country. Once he'd learned the truth, the fact was... The Tenouza had deserved their fate. He couldn't fault the shinobi for that. But not Runa, not Akari... They were innocents. He wished with every fiber of his being that he could've gone back, held onto his debt, worked and lived a meager and normal life. Maybe then he and his family would be just like the poor souls that were now being taken care of by the ninjas of Cloud. But it was too late for all that. Kaiden had only one option left. He turn himself in for judgment, and be rewarded with the punishment that would bring he and his family back together in death. But as usual, life had other plans. When he came forward, admitted to being a soldier, told the truth that he fought without understanding what the point was, that the religion didn't matter to him or his family, and that the Tenouza were wrong, but that he still fought, he expected execution as every other soldier of the Tenouza he knew about had received. But instead, the Judge had decreed that he'd be bound to indentured servitude with an indefinite term. So he resigned to his fate. He'd pay for his crimes for the rest of his pitiful life, and he'd do so while being the kind of man he was... the kind of man that stood up for those in harms way... the kind of man that put lives above objectives... the kind of man his daughter and wife might be proud of when he finally gets to join them.
He never could have predicted that it would be them that would join him first.
Core Ability: Ghost Walker
Months passed, then years, Kaiden's twenties rolling into his thirties as he worked menial jobs, until his overseer in the Kumogakure government saw that he had little skill aside from basic combat; not that incredible ninjutsu or taijutsu that shinobi were able to achieve, but the kind of martial arts a soldier possessed. However, even those warriors like him who were cursed to not have chakra flow within their veins, had a use in this growing technological society that Lightning Country was becoming. And so after years of service without stepping out of line, he had earned enough length on his leash to be assigned to the Kumogakure Civilian Police force. His history, as well as the general lack of desire to socialize that his deep depression brought, did little to combat becoming an outsider and pariah amongst his policeman peers. However, his bravery, selflessness, and physical prowess caused Kaiden to quickly become a valuable asset in dangerous situations. So, in turn, those were just about the only assignments he received. When someone had to put their neck on the line, when other cops didn't want to be there, when danger was involved, Kaiden was the first one sent in. It wasn't overly often that the civilian force faced anything beyond the pale, but every now and then a case would come through that was too mundane for the shinobi to handle, but just wrong enough to be a 'Kaiden job'. Today was one of those days...
A little girl laid still in her room, blood slowly pooling onto the bedsheets. A neighbor had heard the girl's father ranting and raving, screaming as he raged inside the home. And when the man had thrown the girl's limp body onto the bed, in clear view of the window, she'd called the civilian police. Sure enough, when Kaiden's unit arrived, the man had barricaded the door, hoping to seal himself within the house. He was yelling through the door, almost raving. Some sort of threat, to get out or he'd do the same to them. They were words that Kaiden didn't recall. They weren't important. What was important was making sure that no one else got hurt. That the men and women who worked alongside him as officers of the law were safe, even if that meant Kaiden wasn't. The massive man dove through a window that the murderous patron had neglected to board up, and within seconds had tackled the man to the floor. Kaiden held him there, hands pinned over the man's wrists as the same knife that the father had used to eviscerate his daughter cut weakly against his forearm, then managed to wrest the weapon from the man's hand and subdue him long enough for his fellow forces to batter down the door. His unit looked at him like he was crazy, gawked at the blood that flowed from his lower arm. This wouldn't change their opinions. Most of them thought the broken man was crazy anyway. He thought they were right. But it wasn't the struggle, the brush with potential death, having to take in another terrible human being. It was the sight of the little girl in the room upstairs... Though she laid still, her chest still heaved, Kaiden called down screaming for help, and in a blur the paramedics that had arrived shoved past him. The girl could still be saved... That's what sent Kaiden running outside, collapsing into a sitting position on the stairs, his elbows on his knees as he stared down the steps.
The man cried. Holding his face in his hands, Kaiden wept a river of tears into his palms as he recalled the sight of his lifeless daughter. 'That girl... She almost looked like her...' He thought, his brow furrowed, almost pawing at his face as he tried to rid his mind of the images that had plagued him daily for years. As those horrific memories replayed in his head, it was like the rest of the world faded away... That is, until he heard something odd. It was like a high pitched hum that whistled in the wind. Out of instinct the man raised his head to look at the source of this unnatural sound. A mote of azure energy flew around Kaiden at remarkable speed, her form blurring into a ribbon of blue-white light, before finally coming sit within his open hand. Runa curtsied at her father with that bright infectious smile that he had grown to love. Kaiden's eyes went wide with shock. It was his daughter. Unmistakable, despite her translucent blue appearance. And although she glowed like an afterimage from looking at the sun, her form provided no real illumination. "Daddy, you did so good! I'm proud of you!" She looked like a figment in her tiny cerulean form, but Runa sounded exactly the way he remembered. The sound of her voice caused the tears to pour from his eyes in streams that dripped off the bottom of his chin. "R-Runa?" He murmured in disbelief. "I couldn't save you... I couldn't protect you like I promised..." He choked on the words as he said them, his tears battling with his vocal chords. His daughter put her hands on her hips and gave him a disappointed look. "That's already happened now Daddy... Just like you said when I was little: 'You can't change your past, but you can choose what you're gonna do with your future.' Now I'm with mommy on the other side... But we still remember you. We still see you. We're still with you. So you gotta keep doing your best! You saved that little girl's life today! And daddy... try to be a little happier~" He started to respond as a member of his unit descended the stairs. "You did good Kaiden. The girl's gonna survive." The man said, reaffirming what his daughter had predicted. It caught Kaiden's attention and he turned his head back to nod to his fellow officer. But when he turned back to where his daughter had been, she was gone. 'Was I imagining her...?' He thought. Of course he had. She was dead and there's nothing that was going to change that fact. However, through his tears, Kaiden smiled. He couldn't help but be happy like his little girl had asked. After all, he got to hear Runa's sweet and bubbly voice again, even if only in his insane mind.
[Kaiden]
[Akari]
[Runa]
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