Cheerful, kind, and almost disgusting levels of optimistic, Kiona could make even the most candy-adverse creature crave sugar. She is full of life and energy, positively brimming like a bubble with her own anomalous existence, and fills the world around her with sweetness upon every bombastic victory... or so she fiercely believes. Kiona is quick to identify the wrongs of others, and goes to great lengths to correct them, but she so rarely turns that discerning sense toward herself, which ironically happens to be the place where it is most sorely needed. For all her honey, she is a bee unaware of her own stinger, who underestimates the magnitude of her power and often leaves her rescuees in worse condition than the actual villians. She goes through life a chipper yet dangerously ignorant "hero," who flits from galaxy to galaxy in search of bad guy ass to kick; what does it matter to one whose head is so high up in the clouds (pun intended) if she leaves them in shambles, so long as she receives her sugar rush?

That is not to say that Kiona's desire to help others comes entirely from a place of selfish frivolity. She genuinely wants to protect vulnerable worlds from destruction; however, her warped perception of what it means to be a hero (and her inability to take it seriously) prevents her from ever truly being one, leaving her other half (Eclipse) to pick up the messiest pieces while she obliviously goads the bat. Kiona blocks out anything that would weigh on her light heart; she does not understand loss or even simple pain, and immaturely believes that even the deepest wounds can be sealed with band-aids.

All in all, Kiona is ripe with potential to be a great hero, and her fun personality is not inherently a flaw; in fact, her bubbly nature makes her an excellent conversationalist and an adorable ally. Pair that that with godlike abilities and a crippling lack of empathy, however, and a cotton-candy-colored menace with a permanent smile is born.

Enthusiastic, warm but noticeably restrained when compared to her S1 counterpart, the centuries of introspection have inspired a certain growth in Kiona that had long been lacking. She gives others, especially her rescuees, the time of day she'd never once offered before, and dutifully tends to them in the wake of their brush with disaster. With Eclipse's parting words weighing profoundly upon her, her heart finally shed the bubblegum-coating it once wore, exposing the tender inside to her lifetime of carelessness all at once. It was difficult to face, but she learned to meet the sudden guilt in as dignified a manner as possible.

She bears a couple of scars from her battle with Eclipse, including a prominent one on her brow; she does not mourn her changed appearance, however, but instead regards it as a physical mark of her growth, and a reminder of the event (and the person) who helped her properly begin her journey to becoming a true hero.

What isn't directly stated, however, is Kiona's continued guilt long after its expiration date. She struggles to let her troubled history go, and try as she may to face it with grace, it is eating her alive. Self-flagellation was never her style, but that was when her heart was unconcerned. She wants desperately to turn to Eclipse when they find one another again, but too greatly fears disturbing their hard-won equilibrium to burden her with further "disappointments." She spends more time alone than ever, her outward warmth chilled by uncharacteristic evasiveness and a heavy blanket of unspoken sadness.

Beneath that sadness, however, brews something truly insidious. Accustomed to a life free of emotion, she finds herself overcome by it, driven to an anger unlike anything a mortal could understand. With Kiona's wrath comes a transformation into the powerful, brutal Stellar Flare, a creature of fire and loathing that cannot be tamed. It seems as though her optimism has been muted, while everything else has been turned up several notches. There is something simmering inside of her with a brilliance so tremendous, and so sinister, that to unleash it would mean certain disaster, both for Kiona and the very being who started her on this path: Eclipse. Once again, Eclipse may be the only being in the universe capable of reigning Kiona in before her star explodes a second time.

x

Solar Storms

As Kiona flew through the multiverse, visiting one galaxy after another, her emotions and memories steadily came back to her, including distant ones of her original life which had been carefully locked away. Kiona would seek out her old planet as part of her tour, which she discovered had been thrust into an ice age in her absence. Deeply unsettled and made regretful by the emptiness of her former home, Kiona sadly left it. She vowed not to return; the heartache was too great to bear.

She completed her tour a few centuries after her battle with Eclipse, an experience that had changed her not only mentally, but physically as well: Kiona had always been able to heal herself of any wounds after a battle, but wounds inflicted by a comparable (if not greater) force are not so easily washed away. Much like the scars inside, the scars across her nose, chest and nicking her ear were to be permanent fixtures. A few decades taught her not to mind them, an in a century she came to accept them completely, though she would forever avoid mirrors as not to remind herself of her own failings.

Eclipse and Kiona would accidentally cross one another's orbit once again years later on an alien planet. Eclipse did not approach her upon first seeing her, but Kiona would later bump into her, and the reunion brought the starborn immense (but cautious) joy. No longer isolated, the two would spend significant time together, pledging to meet frequently, but Kiona would always hold herself back from sharing or showing too much. She decided only to put her best foot forward in the bat’s eyes, never mind when that foot was aching and blistered. Seeing Eclipse again proved that she had yet to move on fully from their confrontation, and what's worse, her protectiveness over their new bond as friends was leading to bursts of anger at anything that threatened it.

The balancing act weighed heavily on Kiona, and though she longed to confide in Eclipse, she withheld it out of a misguided fear of harming her again, which would only bring harm to herself. She even displaced a forbidden guide to time travel from Eclipse's library in the desperate hope of preventing their conflict from ever happening in the first place, which only drove a wedge between them when Eclipse discovered the deed, damaging the delicate trust they had cultivated and plaguing Kiona with the horrors of witnessing Eclipse's death repeatedly as the timeline struggled to correct itself.

Ultimately, her refusal to let Eclipse shoulder some of the burden would manifest a twisted, dark and powerful form in Kiona: Stellar Flare, a being born of anger and loneliness. There are glimpses of Stellar Flare after her and Eclipse's reunion, temporarily brought about by the hubris of lesser villains, but she fully adopted it at the chapter's end when faced with a truly terrible enemy. Only Eclipse could likely stop the impending cataclysm and rescue Kiona from herself again; after all, perhaps a being made from fury, grief and anguish was best met by misery of equal measure, for Eclipse had plenty of her own to spare.

Taking a Vacation (From Saving the Galaxy)

Stellar Flare was defeated. Some part of her will always reside within Kiona, as that is an immutable fact, but she has reached a state of inner balance that had not existed before. In the wake of these events, she and Eclipse spend more time together than ever before, and their chemistry is no longer such a subtle thing. It is obvious that the two make a spectacular team with the past safely behind them. Kiona's heart, however, is not so stable, and as Eclipse's affection towards her becomes all the more evident, the starborn refuses to acknowledge it. She thinks Eclipse is delusional for humoring a relationship with her after everything that has transpired between them, because despite her growth as a person, she does not believe herself to be someone worth loving, no matter how much she may want it.

Her world is turned on its head, however, when the two take a vacation together on a faraway planet of gentle lakes and perfumed flowers. It suspiciously resembles a romantic getaway, which squeezes Kiona's conflicted heart all the tighter.

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