46 With Kimi?

46 with Kimi?

“Dance with me,” Nikki said, and Kimi smiled.

Nikki was dressed in a long white evening gown, the very picture of angelic beauty, with her pink tresses cascading over her shoulder and her warm brown eyes glittering in the low light of the ballroom.

Kimi took her hand and allowed herself to be led out onto the floor, the murmurings of the crowd fading away as nothing but music and Nikki’s shining face filled her mind.

A moment later however, she frowned. “This isn’t what happens, though,” Kimi remembered as she realized where they were. The auction. Shade. The dress. Reid. “I don’t dance with you. Not tonight, anyway…”

Nikki tilted her head as they twirled around, looking puzzled, yet bemused. “What are you talking about? We’re dancing right now!”

Kimi halted her steps and looked around them. Everything about the venue matched her memory of being on the dance floor that night, with the exception of Nikki standing beside her instead of Reid. Her former friend was up on the stage instead, watching her and Nikki with the same casual interest the rest of the crowd was showing.

Why on Miraland was she back here? If this were some sort of dream world fantasy, she sure had picked a strange night to revisit. “To be very clear, I’m not saying that I don’t want this to have happened, but objectively, it didn’t,” she explained. “I danced with Reid, and he used the distraction to swipe the White Blossom. This was the night that helped me uncover everything, so as sad as it makes me, you’re not the one I need to be dancing with right now.”

Nikki’s smile finally started to fade, and Kimi’s mouth suddenly filled with a metallic tang as a robotic voice sounded out inside of her head:

Warning: Program will be terminated if any violation of computing logic is detected.

Ah—so this was a trick of the Illusion Zone. Kimi dropped Nikki’s hands and took a step back, feeling a bitter lump rise in her throat. No good would come from dwelling here. In fact, she’d question how she ended up within Ruin’s high tech alternate reality simulator, and more importantly, who might be collecting information from her while it dabbled with her daydreams. It would be best to end it now, before the hurt got worse.

“We tried so hard to fix things, you and I,” she whispered as she reached out one hand and gently brushed her fingers over Nikki’s cheek. It felt so warm, so solid—this technology was genius, really, with its ability to conjure up her Nikki from her head, and let her experience it again. In reality, there had been no Nikki for months now, leaving Kimi with nothing but the coldness of empty hands and an empty bed… “But once the curse was lifted, it got so, so bad, so, so quickly. I know you made the only decision you felt like you had, and I don’t blame you for it, but gods, Nikki… I don’t even know if you’re ok where you went, and that’s just—”

Kimi’s voice broke with a sob, and Nikki closed the space between them and put her hands on Kimi’s shoulders. “Where did I go, Kimi? Why can’t you get to me?”

Kimi squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “I can’t say. If you don’t already know, then I can’t say.”

“Am I dead?”

That was their question, wasn’t it?

Warning: Violation of computing logic is detected. Unable to maintain simulation. Terminating in five… four… three… two…

Kimi looked over to where Reid still stood on the stage, watching her with a look of fury on his face. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” she hissed out, just before the world went black.