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Part 75 - Equal Yet Opposite   Upon my opening the door, Nanami shivered minutely and fell silent.  "Bro...."Although she'd wailed at me so much before, she abruptly switched to a meek attitude. I was puzzled. I'd rarely seen Nanami act like this before. So I ended up thinking. About whether or not this Nanami was the real thing. "If you're here, come out faster...." "....Can I come in?"I couldn't say anything in answer.  I gave the Seira-tan figure another tight squeeze. I clenched her so hard, it made my hand hurt a little. But even that pain was delusionary, anyway. "........."Nanami followed me, voicelessly entering the room.  "........."She didn't say anything. Even though she always started giving me some spiel at me right off the bat. She hugged her knees and watched a single point on the floor with a lifeless face. From beneath her right sleeve peeped out a tiny bit of a bandage. I was about to tell her I could see her panties if she sat like that, but I stopped myself.  Everything in this world was made of delusions. Delusions that unfolded solely within my brain. Both me and the delusions I viewed like this, everything was false. Which was why I didn't give a drat if I could see her panties, or if she strolled around town stark naked.  I didn't want to let Nanami into my sight. Because she'd only make me grow hollower. Silence flowed between us. Only the sound of my computer's fan resonated through this cramped room. Even though my base always turned obnoxiously boisterous when Nanami came over. Maybe those memories, too, were delusions. "Hey, Bro...." "Say something...."A listless voice. This wasn't the usual Nanami, after all. So it meant she was a delusion. "Why wouldn't you say anything to me....?" "My bandage and stuff.... doesn't it bother you?" "........."I concentrated on the business of tallying up the flecks of rust on the ceiling.  Because I'd turned out to be a delusion, she and I didn't have any blood ties. "Say something.... please...."Abruptly, the sound of cloth rubbing against itself echoed through the quiet room. My ears rang. My head ached. Even those things were delusions. So I didn't concern myself with them. Whether Nanami started stripping on the spot, or taking off that bandage, or leaping into any other kind of random action, it wouldn't surprise me. It wouldn't interest me. This was a delusion. I too was a delusion. It was natural for there to be no segue. That was the conclusion to everything "Here.... look...."I didn't look. I was scared of looking. "The bruising is mostly gone now.... It got really swollen up at first." "I was playing basketball, and I tripped and hit myself...." "........." "....You won't even look at it?" "You've never worried about me, not once, have you...." "Though I'm always fretting about you...." I didn't want to see anything anymore. I didn't want to think about anything.  I spoke to my sister--to the female who may or may not have been her--without turning my gaze on her. "I don't care if you're the real thing or a stand-in...." Now I sought only one thing--     She'd had no choice but head outside when Detective Ban told her "Go home right this instant," but she was so concerned about him, she couldn't move from the spot. Pursuing an unidentified figure, Ban had vanished into the hospital's upper floors. Though less than three minutes had passed since then, Yua studied the lobby, wondering if he would return. After Ban went off to the hospital alone. Shaking off Momose's attempts to stop her, Yua had chased after him. In order to come closer to the real criminal and the truth about her sister's death, if only by a step. The person who had sent Ban threatening phone calls saying, "Back out," and who had abducted his junior--apparently someone called Suwa-san. That person was in all likelihood the one who had killed her sister Mia. Yua had a hunch that such was the case. So she hadn't been able to fully hold back the impulse driving her forward. Regardless of how thoroughly Ban had warned her, "It'll be dangerous to get involved with this case," she'd come all the way here.  Yua anticipated that maybe Ban would return in high style, having collared the culprit. When he did, she'd have her chance to question the criminal in person. "Why did you have to kill my sister?" It was the question Yua wanted to ask, no matter what.  "....?" Two hours had yet to pass since sundown, but the hospital's front entrance was uncannily quiet.  Near the side of the hospital, a train decelerated as it ran along. But few cars drove down the wide road in front of the hospital, and there were zero pedestrians. Sandwiched between Shibuya, the city that doesn't sleep, and Shinjuku, this place was akin to the darkness born from two brilliant lights.   A lone girl stood there. The lights around the hospital entrance had already gone out, leaving it dim. Despite that, the girl's form floated out up out of the darkness with a terrible clarity.  "Mia-chan....?"Yua murmured unthinkingly. She knew it was impossible, but she couldn't keep her voice from coming out.  Moreover, the girl was wearing familiar-looking clothing. They were, without a doubt, her little sister's clothes. When she thought that perhaps she was seeing a ghost, she experienced a terror great enough to make all the downy hair on her body stand on end.  --She wasn't a ghost. Yua was dumbfounded. She instantly broke into a run and went toward the hospital entrance, chasing after the girl.  Each time Yua took a step, the sound of her shoes echoed far down the hallway. It had been the same in the outpatient building, but the excessive silence made it seem even eerier. The girl's presence had disappeared in the direction of the upper floors. She heard something resembling faint laughter as well. Like a scene right out of a ghost story....   When she became dubious, suspecting it of having been a hallucination,  She heard female laughter from the floor above. That voice, that manner of laughing; Yua had heard them countless times in the past.    OST: Mysterious  "Fufu...." One of the five to die in the first New-Gen case, the "group dive." Her sister, who was supposed to have died two months ago. Kusunoki Mia stood there, and there was no denying the tangibility of her existence.  Yua took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. But Mia remained there even after she put them back on.  "Mia-chan.... is it you?" A voice so clear, she couldn't think of it as an auditory hallucination. That expression of hers, with an invincible smile. She was the very same Mia from Yua's memories. Mia had always been like that. She'd often sneered that way to make herself out to be the bad guy.  "Mia-chan...." "....What do you mean?" "What if it were the reverse?" "You're Mia. The one who died was Yua. You were the one who killed her." "Wh, what are you saying....?" "Unable to stand your older sister, beloved by her parents, you put in a request online for someone to kill her." "Plus, in order for it to look like suicide, you forced four people you'd never met to jump off with her." "You became your own older sister, and while pretending to grieve and shed tears over your little sister's death, you obtained the parental love your big sister had previously monopolized, and in your heart, you continue gloating--" "N, no, you're wrong...." "I'm Yua...." "I.... must be Yua." "But you aren't certain." "What proves me to be who I am?" "Your face? Your name? Your memories?" "Even though this is about me...." "Is it also possible that I'm Mia....?" "Didn't you research all sorts of things?" "Multiple personalities.... somnambulism...." "Fabricated memories, and.... delusions."The matters she herself had researched up until now were what thrust at her the reality of how "memories," or else "recollections," were such ambiguous things. She ceased to understand herself-- What was she? Yua held her head and shook it like a child throwing a tantrum.        OST End  But compared to the Shinjuku skyscrapers that towered nearby, they were just like children gazing up at adults. The roof of the hospital building. Yua had arrived there, lured on by Mia. Who knew whose work it might have been, but one corner of the fence soaring around it contained a broken area large enough for a single person to pass through. Yua and Mia, having ventured through that broken spot to the other side of the fence, stood at the edge of the roof. Directly in front of them was the outpatient building. Since it was shorter than the hospital wing, they could take its rooftop garden in at a glance. That said, it wasn't illuminated, so Yua wouldn't be able to tell even if someone were there. The wind was strong up on the roof. That strong wind made Yua and Mia's long, soft hair and the sleeves of their clothing flutter fiercely.      Spreading out her arms as though to keep her balance, she held her ground against the vigor of the wind blowing up at her. Close by her, spreading her arms out in the same way as Yua, Mia looked in her direction and smiled.   "You must gain knowledge of my pain." "Come, fly." "Once you do, you and I will share the same pain." "Which am I? Me? You?" "Fufu." "There's no meaning in asking that."  All vestiges of hesitation vanished from Yua, and as she began to take a single step forward-- SFX: BANG  A gunshot tore through the moonless night. Yua came back to herself with a gasp. And, looking down at her feet, she let out a cry. She went dizzy, faced with the height of the place where she had come to stand of her own accord. She lost her balance and seemed about to fall off. She desperately reached for the fence at her back, and avoided plummeting down by clinging to it.  She could just barely make out human shapes in the circular clearing at the center of the rooftop garden. There were two of them. One lay collapsed, and the other stood beside him.  Had that detective shot somebody to death? Or had somebody shot him to death?  "Why aren't you willing to taste the same pain as me?" "That's so cowardly. So unfair...." "Mia-chan...." "You're wrong. I'm Yua." "Yua is me...." "Mia is you." "What on earth are you....?" "I am what you wished for." "You are what I wished for." OST: Gradually panic A powerful pressure on her throat. She was losing the ability to breathe.  Mia wasn't a ghost. She definitely had a physical body. She was strangling Yua by the neck.  "Please die." "At least today, listen to my request for once." "Because I always forced myself to go without." She was going to be killed-- Faced by the extremity of that terror, Yua threw her whole body into the struggle to shake Mia off her, using a strength she hadn't known she possessed. But Mia was strong as well, and Yua simply couldn't compete.  As she shook her head violently, her glasses fell off. A bystander would no longer have been able to tell Yua and Mia apart. The results could freely determine who had killed who. If Yua died, all Mia would have to do was become her. If Mia died, all Yua would have to do was become her. Resignation gradually spread through Yua's heart. The hatred-filled face of Mia--or else Yua--before her. Not wanting to see it, she turned her face away.  She had the sense that a dissimilar shadow was mixed in with those flowers. It may have been a hallucination, one she was seeing because she'd lost her glasses. But-- She could no longer breathe. In the midst of her suffering rose up a faint serenity. While she thought to herself that maybe it would be all right to let everything go like this, the demands of her bodily instincts, insisting she didn't want to die, rejected that serenity. The same instinct made her stretch a hand toward that out-of-place shadow. The distance between her and the planting was roughly two meters. Under these circumstances, it would be impossible for her to touch it when she reached for it. Despite that. Her fingertips brushed something hard and cold. She grasped it. All but unconsciously. OST End     A red light resembling flower petals danced there, sending the twins, one of whom had almost been lying atop the other, flying apart. Coughing, Yua swayed to her feet, looked at what she was gripping, and widened her eyes.       That which lay in her hand. What it reminded Yua of were Ayase's sword, which she had previously seen in the subway, and the sword belonging to the girl of whom Ban had spoken, Sena.  Blown away by the mysterious shock wave from before, almost buried in one of the plantings, Mia came crawling out, pressing down on her head. "What did you do....?" "I...." "Did you try to kill me? Was I about to be killed again? Again?" "In the end, I was scared of you.... I thought you died as a way to get to me. I didn't understand you." "I wanted to reassure myself by proving it wasn't my fault that you died." "I'm the worst sister--" "Why won't you die for me!?"  "Don't"  Mia stopped moving. Wearing an expression of astonishment, She groped at the wound carved from her lower left abdomen to her right shoulder. No blood emerged. "Mia-chan.... died two months ago...." "Th, then, who are you....?" Enveloped in foam, her flesh gradually crumbled, and its outlines faded. And metamorphosed into something separate. Yua looked at it with disbelieving eyes.  A man Yua had never seen before. "Who....? Who are you....?" "Why were you in Mia-chan's form....? How...." Bewildered, Yua retreated with this sword still in hand. The man, too, appeared flustered, since he probably hadn't imagined being exposed as himself. Porter: "You, too, why...." Porter: "Don't tell me this kid's a Gigalomaniac...!? I didn't hear a thing about that....!" Porter: "poo poo, what should...." SFX: Someone swings a Di-sword in the distance  Correction: They threw it Porter: "Ah?" By the time the man turned to look behind him, "it" had already pierced the rucksack he was wearing, Porter: "!" And from within that rucksack gushed a pale flash of light. The man went taut, as though he'd received an electric shock, and toppled over on his face with the whites of his eyes showing. Bubbles frothed from his mouth, and he convulsed.   "This...." Yua remembered seeing that sword somewhere. She had spotted it once before.  She who emerged out of the dimness.  "Kishimoto.... san...." Expressionless, Ayase glanced at the sword Yua held.  "I sense the Great Will at work. Here is the reason why I had to remain in this hospital." "Eh....?"  "So you, too, were one of the black knights of Gladioul."
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Aug 29, 2020 04:31
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| # ? May 3, 2024 03:43 |
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Part 76 - Guest Of Honour   "Ahaha. Bro, cut out the silly jokes." That reaction wasn't like Nanami. Normally, rather than laughing and letting it slide, there was no doubt that she'd get pissed off and preach at me, "Don't say that kind of thing, moron!" Well, it wasn't like I cared.... It didn't matter. If she wouldn't kill me, I no longer had any business with this Nanami. I wouldn't mind if she vanished right away. Seira-tan and I gazed at each other. If Seira-tan were three-dimensional, she would surely be delighted to grant my wish. If I were going to be born as a delusionary existence anyway, I'd have wanted to be born in the second dimension....  "Hey, joking aside.... um, I have something to tell you...." "Um, see, I lost the bangle I got from you...." "Do, don't tell me I probably didn't take good care of it anyway, or something. I wouldn't do that kind of thing. I really treasured it...." "But I don't know where I lost it...." Hmph, she'd treasured such a thing? How comical. From my perspective, there had to be a limit to how comical she could get. When you got down it, it was something I'd given her. That sort of thing had no value. "I'm not a delusion.... I'm not a delusion...." For starters, there was reason to suspect whether or not I'd given Nanami the bracelet in the first place. Even that event may have been imaginary. Therefore, nothing in this world had any value. Nothing appearing in my memories had any value. "I'm not a delusion.... I'm not a delusion...." "Even though it was the first present you ever gave me." "Why'd I have to lose it...." "I'm not a delusion.... I'm not a delusion...." "Bro? You listening?" "I'm not a delusion.... I'm not a delusion...." "........."OST: Pity "....Bro, why are you always like that?" Head lowered. Fists clenched. Nanami muttered. "Once in a while.... show me some brotherly part of you, something worth relying on...." What.... you've come barking up the wrong tree if you're gonna accuse me. Because I'm a delusionary existence. "I'm not a delusion.... I'm not a delusion...." All I stared at was Seira-tan's smile. There was no need to hear out what Nanami had to say. No point in listening. Because I'm a delusionary existence. "The whole time up till now.... I thought I had to be dependable, and I tried my best." "But in the end.... even I want.... someone to pamper me every so often." "No, not just anyone...." "I want you to pamper me...." "I'm not a delusion.... I'm not a delusion...." "Cause you're my bro...." "Even I think about wanting to lean on my brother, you know....?" "I'm not a delusion.... I'm not a delusion...." "Well, I guess you hate how I'm always, always telling you to do this and do that, but...." "I can't help it, cause you're so sloppy...." "No, that's not what I'm trying to say...." "I'm not a delusion.... I'm not a delusion...." "There are times when even I want you to listen to me whining and complaining, or times when I want to cry, you know....?" "There are times when I want you to be nice to me, you know....?" "I'm not a delusion.... I'm not a delusion...." "Hey, Bro...." "Listen to what I have to say....!" ".........!" "Right now.... I'm really sad, you know?" "I lost my precious bangle.... which I got from you...." "I'm so sad, and it hurts so much.... I wanna burst out crying...." "And though I'd like you to hug me...." "And though I'd like you to pet me on the head and comfort me...." "Say, Bro...." "Just for today, let me have my way...." "Uuu.... sob...."  OST End     She sensed no one nearby. Which was natural enough, considering "what kind of place" this was, but when she thought about what waited ahead for her, Rimi ended up wanting someone to be here.  "........."Immediately in front of her was a soundproof door, the kind found in movie theaters. Coldness came floating from the crack beneath it. Along with a white mist akin to dry ice.   "So it's going to be okay...." "So you mustn't be afraid...."    An eerie noise resounded faintly through the room's spacious interior. It was low, a sound like a beast growling. A sound signifying that the "device" was in operation. "Noah II...." "It's already running...." "Thanks to you." A voice responded to the antipathy in Rimi's monologue. The instant that voice reached her ears, Rimi felt her soul quake.  "........."Rimi's instincts harbored terror. Trembling surged up from the depths of her heart. Hateful memories assaulted her. Her shadowed past seemed about to resurrect itself. Shaking her head lightly and clenching her Di-Sword harder to endure it, Rimi swept her gaze toward the direction where the voice had come from.   Nishijou Nanami was being held captive there. Her torn uniform, the blood-soaked bandage on her right wrist, her limply hanging head. Her horribly pallid complexion. She made such a painful sight, Rimi lost all words. Like the crucified Jesus of Nazareth. No, that which captured Nanami wasn't something one could call a cross. It was a long way off, with so much malice filling its shape. All the evil in this world-- All the chaos in this world-- All the corruption in this world-- It wouldn't have been an exaggeration to say that it represented all of them in a tangible form.   "But it will be troublesome if you get in the way overmuch." "........." That man--Norose Genichi--had a placid manner of speaking, but his voice encompassed a blade-like sharpness. Frantically keeping herself from sinking down on the spot, Rimi glared at him. "Let Nana-chan go." "Hoh. Don't tell me you came here for the sake of saving your friend?" "....Let Nana-chan go." "She has nothing to do with it." Norose's suggestion confused Rimi. She was bluffing now, but the instant she saw Norose's face, her heart had awoken to fear, and her legs had begun quivering. Incapable of moving, she called out to Nanami, pinned up there. "Nana-chan?" Nanami's head twitched.   "Rimi-san...." "Are you all right? I'm coming to rescue you now, so...." Midway through Rimi's sentence, Nanami's face contorted in anguish. She went white and took ragged breaths.  "Uu.... uuu...." "It hurts...." "My right hand.... it hurts...." With a slither. Nanami's body slipped down from the cross.  "Hey, Rimi.... san...." Lying down, lifting only her head, Nanami made her gaze drift about. As if she were searching for something-- "Do you know.... where my bangle.... is....?" "I can't find it...." "My bangle.... isn't anywhere...."Staggering upright, this time she began feeling around the area with her left hand.  "My hand.... my hand hurts.... uu...." "Why do I.... know about you.... Rimi-san....? Have we met somewhere before....?" "Rimi-san.... Rimi-san, right....? Rimi-san, you have my bangle...." "No way.... why.... you're so.... horrible...." He was silently watching Rimi and Nanami's exchange, a mocking smile on his lips. "What are you 'showing' Nana-chan!?" "........."  A bloodstained bandage. It almost looked as if her hand were connected. But one scarlet droplet after another dripped and fell from it, without stopping. SFX: Drip, drip, drip...  She needed treatment quickly-- On the reverse side of her sense of urgency, Rimi wasn't able to draw any closer. Because approaching Nanami also meant approaching that man. It frustrated her so much, she found herself on the verge of weeping. "Rimi-san, you have it....?" "Nana-chan, let's go. Come over here." "Why did you take it....?" "Give it back.... Give Nana's bangle back...." "Calm down, Nana-chan!" "My treasure.... Bro.... gave it to me...." "I don't wanna hand it over to anyone...." "Give it back.... Give it back...."  Together with her cry of lamentation.   With the drop at its core, a material like some kind of mineral came flying out of nothingness. Almost as though an inorganic carapace were ripping through a rift in space. In the blink of an eye, it came together to form a single shape.  Or else-- Standing perpendicularly, as though to reject everything before it--a sword. "This is.... a Di-Sword....!" "Give it.... back.... Please...."Nanami held that sword to her chest as though embracing it. Her tears overflowed in sorrow, falling toward it. The Di-Sword blinked a brilliant red, as if it were her pulse. "If you don't, Rimi-san.... I won't forgive you...."  OST: Pity  "Uuu.... sob...."Nanami was crying. Even while she hung her head and fought to withstand it. Tears kept falling from her bitterly. I took a single glance at her. Then soon returned my line of sight to the ceiling, resuming the task of counting up the rusty spots. "Whether or not you cry at me.... I can't do anything...." "Because I'm a delusionary existence...." "A delusionary...." "Don't say that kind of thing!" "You can't be a delusion! Cause I knew you when you were little....!" "I always had to take care of you, and you weren't even a tiny bit dependable, but...." "But you were always together with me, since a long time ago...." "...."I see.... It was as Nanami said.     Rimi wasn't the one in the right. Nanami was the one in the right. If Nanami were the real thing, then so was I. "Nana, mi...." I extended my hands toward Nanami. Nanami's existence was now my sole hope. Hers was the only existence that could deliver me. "Save me.... Nanami.... Save me...." "Bro.... sob...." If Nanami's warmth were real. I could prove I was myself. The forlornly weeping Nanami wiped her tears, Looked at me with reddened eyes, put on a tearful smile, "You'll.... hold me....?"I nodded. Over. And over.   "Nanami.... save me...."Wanting to feel her warmth as soon as possible. I slowly circled my arms around the body that came leaping toward my chest. Tighter, Tighter--    OST End               The blood dripping from the bandage on her wrist slid slowly down the gutter formed by her sword. "It hurts...." "Did you know Nana-chan was a Gigalomaniac?" Rimi's question was aimed at Norose, who feigned being a mere bystander. No matter how much she glared at him, his face remained cool. "You might call it a boon of happenstance." "Even though you've done such horrible things to Nana-chan....! What do you mean, happenstance!" "But then, when it comes to Nishijou Takumi alone, that manual doesn't hold valid, either. There's nothing more difficult than the handling of an irregular monster." "Don't call him a monster....!" "Because you are a monster as well?" "I didn't say anything like that." "I should have phrased it as, 'Because you are one born from nothingness.'" "........."  In spite of her thinking she had to save Nanami, her feet remained rooted to the floor and wouldn't move for her. Norose, on the other hand, was the very picture of calm as he appreciatively caressed Nanami on the head. Nanami hasn't shown any reaction. Face lowered, she repeated her shallow breaths. "A spotlight illuminating a single point in the middle of darkness." "An infinite number of corpses must be lying around it, but no one can see them. You yourself included." "....Stop that sort of talk." "For instance, if you committed suicide.... the spotlight would shift a few dozen centimeters to the side, and you would be covered in darkness." "And 'somebody' who knew nothing would bathe in the spotlight instead." "Stop it!"  "It hurts...." "I want you to release Nana-chan." "I seem to recall removing her restraints?" "I'm going to take her and leave." "Do as you please. I'm already through with her." "Nana-chan, let's go home, okay? Make that sword go away." "Then give me back my bangle...." "I'll give it back, so...."  The night Nanami's hand had been delivered to Takumi's room. After Takumi trembled in humiliation atop the roof of O-Front and collapsed there. Rimi had retrieved the hand from inside his fridge. Now "Shogun" had it. He had preserved it, freezing it so it wouldn't rot. The bangle, too, was there-- "Bro.... gave it to me." "It's Nana's bangle...." "It's so mean of you.... to take it away on your own...." Nanami's voice, whose words had also sounded like those uttered in delirium, grew more and more savage. "Calm down, take deep breaths. Get a firm hold of yourself." "A question for you." Norose's abrupt interjection. Rimi inwardly clicked her tongue.  "........."Rimi lowered her eyes.  In opposition, Nanami raised her gaze. Light had returned to her once-empty eyes. It was so fiery as to be described as deviant-- "--"  It was as though the lights had been cut. Rimi didn't know whether it was something done deliberately, or an accident.  "You can't lose...." Rimi murmured, as if to encourage herself. Her voice made the air tremble, but it soon melted into the darkness. She noticed she had stopped hearing that growling sound from "Noah II." --She hated the dark. Because it made her recollect memories of "that time." Rimi turned her head. What spread out before her was an endlessly deep darkness. Not a single thing one might call light existed there. Could she see nothing because her surroundings were dark? Or was she not seeing anything because her vision wasn't working? She lost even her sense of up and down. She no longer had understood where she was. Darkness invaded her five senses, and she lost her ability to distinguish her own physical body. Or else it was as though her flesh had transfigured to vapor. As though her consciousness were spilling out of its vessel. The past and the present melted together, and her memories began intermingling. When was now? When was the past? A single beam of light shone into a world, covered in a perfect blackness. In the center of that circular spotlight. Rimi hugged her knees. Rimi looked at this from the midst of the darkness. It was the same as that time-- That time-- Rimi had possessed nothing. Before she knew it, she was being confined and tortured. Her psychological agony was worse than the physical agony. Hellish days. Days of only enduring it. Rimi knew nothing of who she had been before then. When and how had they imprisoned her? How long had they been torturing her? Rimi didn't know. She had a feeling that it wasn't amnesia. She felt as though--the instant she unexpectedly awoke, the consciousness known as herself had been born. Maybe the personality that had resided in this body until then had wanted to escape the overwhelming hardship, and had committed suicide inside her own delusions. And maybe the current Rimi had then been born as a new personality. Maybe there had been many different personalities before her. Maybe even the name "Sakihata Rimi" was in truth something different each time. --To myself, I don't exist. She sensed something moving in the darkness. Rimi stood up and dragged herself toward its presence. When she moved, the spotlight followed her. The real identity of that presence-- Was a dead Rimi, lying down there. Without looking at Rimi, Rimi murmured,  "Which number are you?" "I am...."  Rimi's eyeballs twitched wildly. Tears overflowed incessantly from the corners of her eyes. Her Di-Sword slipped and fell from her hands. Rimi sank down in place with a thump. Like a child, covering her face with her hands, feebly shaking her head. --I'm sorry. --I didn't last.    SFX: In the background, the sound of a Porter Noah II Terminal can be heard. Nanami had disappeared without a trace. She had dissolved into bubbles before my eyes. She hadn't existed as anything of substance. "Nana.... Na, nami.... where are you.... co, come on out.... hehe.... he...." "Y, you must be there, pulling m, my leg again, huh.... hehehe.... you, you're hiding.... qu, quit it.... hehe.... hehehehe...."Tears made my sight go fuzzy. No matter how I wiped them and wiped them, they kept welling up.... hot droplets. But even this heat. And even the emotions making me weep. Were delusions. Because I myself was a delusion.  "He, hey, when.... will I wa, wake up from this delusion....? Hurry, wake up...."I myself didn't really know who I was talking to. But in any case, I wanted someone to listen to me, and I didn't care who. "Wh, when I wake up from this delusion, it, it'll turn out that I'm re, really a total stud, of, of course I am.... with a sensible little sister and a ge, gentle big sister...." "Go, going out with my cute girlfriend...." "And she won't be a batshit crazy chick like Ri, Rimi or Sena.... she'll be a good girl like Se, Seira-tan.... hehehe....."   "I, I wanna die.... Uuu, I wanna die...." "Why won't a, anyone ki, kill me...." "Hey, Seira-tan.... kill.... kill me...." "You wanna die that badly?" "I wanna die.... I can't.... take this anymore.... I can't stand.... my own existence..... I don't wanna think about anything.... I don't wanna go on living...." "Poor widdle Takkii." "Then I'll tell you a way you can get yourself killed real soon."Ahh, just as expected from a wife of mine.... Seira-tan always showed me tireless devotion. "For the time being, head on outside." "Out.... side?" I harbored no doubts about doing so. Seira-tan was the only one who would never betray me. Because she was my bride. Because she wasn't a 3-D girl.  "Follow this sound." "If I follow it.... will someone.... kill me?" "Yep, pretty much." "I, I wonder if they'll kill me gently...." "I guarantee it~" "That's great...." "I can fi, finally die.... hehe, hehehe...."This sound was my Messiah. The key to my salvation, inviting me toward a more restful land. Holding Seira-tan, I began walking in the direction the noise was coming from.  When I seemed about to catch up, it would rapidly go far away. When I seemed about to lose track of where it was coming from, it would approach me and wait for me. Like it had a will of its own. A sound with its own will-- It was evocative of "Shogun," and his face flickered at the back of my brain, but I soon stopped caring either way. Whether or not it was him, I didn't mind who it turned out to be, so long as they were going to kill me. I also stopped thinking about what the sound's true form might be. I was going to die in a little while anyway, and I was a delusionary existence, so there was no meaning in my pondering it. Making the inside of my head a white blank, I all but unconsciously reeled my way after the sound, like a moth swarming in the direction of light.  SFX: Wherever Takumi has wandered, there's a lot of people and they're very excited about something or other. The Noah II Terminal can still be heard, but the crowd makes that difficult. I had a start.  I realized the tumult came from the astoundingly huge crowd of people flooding this intersection. They were pretty much packed together like sardines. Everyone was pushing and shoving, like on the morning train to work. It was an even greater number of people than at the time of my live broadcast from atop O-Front. Come to think of it, Grim had posted about it in our chat. That there'd be a major party at the scramble crossing tonight. Seira, what's going on? I only have nasty memories of this place. Why'd you take me here.... "Revenge, baby."Besides, where's the person who's supposed to kill me?  "Right in front of your eyes~" "In front of my.... eyes...."A stunningly large crowd. On this chilly autumn night.  This is the final Delusion Trigger. From the next update on, it's more or less a straight line to the ending (or an ending). Make your choice: Positive, Negative or Neutral? OddHaberdasher fucked around with this message at 12:26 on Sep 1, 2020 |
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Aug 30, 2020 11:31
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Well if it's the last chance to gently caress with poor Takumi, then it's gotta be Negative I almost feel bad. Almost.
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Aug 30, 2020 16:41
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Aww, I’m afraid a negative will make him successfully die. At least give the poor guy a Neutral.
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Aug 31, 2020 00:12
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Positive! Die happy, pal.
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Aug 31, 2020 14:53
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Yeah, as soon as Nanami started going full imouto I knew she wasn't the real thing. Though I wish she had been.  Poor Nanami.Positive, negative would be like kicking a dog that's already down.
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Aug 31, 2020 16:20
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I'm thinking the Nanami that's been visiting him has never been the real thing, because there's no reason the real Nanami would know he exists.
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Aug 31, 2020 17:43
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Oh, just give him a Positive already.
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Aug 31, 2020 19:20
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malkav11 posted:I'm thinking the Nanami that's been visiting him has never been the real thing, because there's no reason the real Nanami would know he exists. No, the real Nanami has been visiting till now. OddHaberdasher posted:
How else would she get that bangle?
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Sep 1, 2020 02:04
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The voting is now over. Positive has come out ahead.
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Sep 1, 2020 04:44
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Part 77 - Self Reflection  I braced myself, thinking they were going to denigrate me and sneer at me and expose me to humiliation again, like they had before. The trauma from back then made my knees go weak. But-- Well-wisher A: "Keep it up." Well-wisher B: "We're rooting for you." Well-wisher C: "Do your best, Nishijou-kun." Well-wisher D: "Go out with a bang." Well-wisher E: "You're so brave for your age." Well-wisher F: "We won't forget you." Well-wisher G: "We'll watch over you to the very end." Well-wisher H: "So show us what a man you are." The spectators' reactions were utterly different from last time. Everyone spoke to me kindly and encouragingly. Which was why I blinked countless times, feeling like I'd gotten taken in by some kind of trickster spirit. They were going to cheer me on....? "That's what the fiesta's for." "Everyone was waiting for you, Takkii."Before me was a pathway created by people lining up on either side. They went so far as to create an overhead arch with their hands, and they were waiting for me to pass through. It was practically like an elementary school graduation ceremony.  The words they tossed at me grew warmer still.  SFX: Everything's quiet now that Takumi is in O-Front. The real party is outside. Bravery rose steadily within me. Bravery in the face of death.  The bitter experiences I'd been through the last time I came here revived in me, making me briefly hesitant to keep going forward. Even though I'd mustered my courage and everything. I became aware of my own neverending uselessness.  "I had faith that you would surely return."SFX: Squeak, Squeak The sound of a wheelchair's wheels creaking.  On top of that, "Shogun" wasn't the only one here.       "We'll fly together with you." "Soooo, there's nothing to be scared of." Was this a reenactment of the "group diving"? The mass of people who had been watching us protectively from below, with bated breath, burst into simultaneous applause. As though to bless us. As though to praise us. "Farewell. I shan't forget you."Shogun waved his thin hand. Kozu-pii and Ayase pulled me along. As though they were frolicking. As though they were dancing. While smiling tenderly. As a result, I didn't feel even the tiniest scrap of fear.    SFX: The mood has changed from before. Where everyone was yelling and hollering, now they are mumbling. Where there was a festive feeling before, now it's become a dangerous feeling. But when you got down to it, that too was a delusion. A pathway of lined-up people had certainly opened its maw before me, as though to guide me forward. But no one was making an arch with their hands. Everyone was watching me. But their eyes were cold and sharp. The emotion they flung at me bordered on the urge to kill. Everyone was savage. No one had been awaiting me. They didn't bless me. Today I couldn't see a speck of the mirth they'd shown before, when I shamed myself at O-Front. Apparently they wouldn't let me die pleasantly. Well, that's just how things are, I thought. But I was okay with it. As long as they were going to kill me. I smirked and began advancing down the path made by the parting of the crowd. When I looked up, all four of the massive jumbotrons depicted me walking through the crowd.  The death of me, a mere delusionary existence. The death of me, one who had zero value. You guys wanna see it? How simplistic of you. But I don't especially mind. If you're going to kill me, then watch as much as you like. I stood before the firing line of cameras and microphones.  A dazzling light blinked at me. Narrowing my eyes, I tolerated the brilliance of it. The first to speak was an aging reporter I'd seen on TV news shows and stuff. Aging Reporter: "Nishijou-kun. What kind of performance will you show us this time?" "........."Aging Reporter: "On a side note, the truth is, some say that the suspect arrested this afternoon for the 'staking' case was actually nothing more than the direct perpetrator, and that someone else has been controlling everything from the shadows. What do you think?" Why was this old fogey acting so overfriendly with me? Anyway, what was "What do you think?" supposed to mean? Was he seeking my opinion? Well, stuff like the kind of comments you usually saw coming from professors of criminal psychology were always the same standard stuff, no interesting content to speak of, so sure, an amateur like me could probably fill their shoes. That said, I didn't care about such things now. I'd lost all interest in New-Gen. I'd come here in order to get someone to kill me, and not to answer the media's questions. Nor did I have the energy to answer them.   "........." "May.... be...."My mutter passed through the jumbotron speakers and was transmitted all through Shibuya. An uproar broke out. SFX: As might be expected, the crowd has become much more hostile after Takumi's seeming admission. They seem content to throw harsh words at him, for now.... The agitation of the people gathered here made the air accelerate faster and faster toward becoming something brutal. "I don't care...."Hurry up and kill me.... I want to hurry up and be at ease. Don't make me do anything aggravating. Though that was what I wished for, several more mics pressed in on me. There was such force behind them that they were practically being pushed against my mouth. As if the floodgates had broken, the other reporters began hurling questions at me. Female Reporter: "May we take this as acknowledgement of the fact that you're connected to the cases?" Male Reporter: "Have you ever found yourself unable to distinguish between reality and games?" Female Reporter: "Tell us about the relationship between you and Komaeda, the suspect under detainment!" Male Reporter: "Could it be that you felt like you were playing a game as you committed murder?" In a certain sense, I'm much like a game character. Somebody, reset me. Get me to Game Over, be quick about it....  At my words. The mass of people, whose tension had reached its zenith, erupted. Ill-Wisher A: "Die!" Ill-Wisher B: "You aren't human!" Ill-Wisher C: "You brute!" Ill-Wisher D: "I'll kill you!" Ill-Wisher E: "Go to Hell!" Ill-Wisher F: "Execute him!" Ill-Wisher G: "Beat him to death!" Ill-Wisher H: "Murderer!"  SFX: Everyone in the crowd has thrown their restraint away. The sounds of people rushing around and yelling are everywhere. Glass is broken and punches are thrown.... but it doesn't seem to be directed solely at Takumi? They shoved me, crushed me, jostled me. With people pushing at me from every direction, my body went buoyant. The soles of my feet separated from the earth. No matter how I struggled, nothing came of it. They hit me in the head, socked me in the arm. But it wasn't enough pain to make me think I would die from it. I didn't fight back against my difficulty breathing, which threatened to suffocate me, either. When I gave my body over to this chaotic situation, the pressure on me abruptly went away. I toppled down in place.  Numerous legs sprouted there, as close as the trees in a forest, writhing, and my wife rolled into the gap between them. No matter how desperately I stretched out my hand, I couldn't reach her. The countenance that had borne such a dazzling smile, the smile that had healed me-- someone's leather shoe trod on it.  "Takkii! It hurts, help me! Takkii--!"It continued further, as someone kicked her body, and she tumbled, and a woman's red high heel stepped on her torso with a crunch, crushing it.  "Seira....?"I called to her, but no answer returned. My sole ally was gone. My chest seemed about to cave in with sorrow. With this, any meaning there had been to my life in this world had completely vanished. When I looked up. Even the night sky was blocked from my view by the wall of people surrounding me. No one noticed that I was crouching here. Even though I'm here. Even though I'm asking you to please kill me. Why does everyone ignore me....! "Ah...."SFX: The sound seems to drain away, though still faintly audible. Without warning. I felt it at the back of my neck. A kind of prickle--  "You--"A voice resonated  "Mustn't die here."Inside my head. I drank in a breath, "Attain your Di-Sword."And bit my back molars together tightly. "....'Shogun'....!"SFX: Now nothing can be heard. Takumi's sole focus is finding Shogun. I looked for that wheelchair among the tight-packed herd of legs. I looked for the bastard dressed up as Darth Spider. Are you the host of this "festival," after all? Are you going to put on some stupid costume and threaten me again? Are you trying to reenact the same thing as before? Death is what I desire. No way do I want to be made into a living exhibition....   That's exactly what I don't give a crap about.... Whatever, just kill me, get to it faster.... "They're on the move." "This place will become even more chaotic than it is now."They....? "The ones manipulating everything from behind the scenes. Those who brought about this disorder. Those who use disorder as a means to advance their own interests." I pushed myself up. Angry shouts went on spiraling above my head. No one gave me a second glance. The spectators and the media were jumbled together. Grabbing at each other, slandering each other, punching each other. Why were these people-- "A silent weapon...." "'Noah II' has already been activated." "The number one aim behind the scheme of this disorder is--" "An indiscriminate human experiment."SFX: THWACK  Something hard struck me on the head. Acute pain shot through me. Enough to make me think my skull would break. Unable to withstand it, I cradled my head. When I looked over, teary-eyed, a stone about the size of a fist had fallen nearby. A little bit of blood clung to it. That stone, which someone had hurled at me, seemed to have landed a direct hit. Splitting pain. When I put my hand to it, my fingers touched something damp. There was blood stuck to my fingertips. My blood. SFX: BANG BANG  From far away came a dry, explosive sound. Followed by a woman's shrill voice. A gunshot....? There'd been someone with a gun here....? Why was everyone so worked up.... Why was everyone picking fights with people who had nothing to do with them.... Why were things becoming so chaotic.... The "scapegoat," the "living sacrifice" everyone had been waiting for, wasn't it me? "Shibuya's GE rate.... people's biorhythms are ascending at an unbelievable pace." "Didn't I tell you? It's an indiscriminate human experiment." "The people here are currently on the receiving end of an invisible 'attack.'"SFX: Squeak, squeak    There were so many people here. Chaotically swelling walls of people. Despite that, "Shogun" continued straight toward me in his wheelchair, without bumping into anyone, without getting tangled up with anyone.  His eyes were a cloudy white. I couldn't tell what he was looking at or what he could see. I couldn't take my eyes away from him. The clamor around us suddenly died into the distance. "I was always watching you."The same voice as from the first time we met. Not a weird voice, like the one I'd heard at O-Front. "Who are you?" "I am you."Those three words enlightened me.    "Yeah."He was my creator. He was the existence who had imagined me into being. And to me, someone I could never measure up to. "What's your name....?" "....Nishijou Takumi."The real me. The original me. "How.... old are you?" "The same age as you. Going by your 'setting.'" "........." "At this rate, the world will die." "All manner of people will have their hearts controlled by Noah II." "That was why I entrusted it to you."Entrusted.... entrusted what.... "I don't get what you're saying.... that sort of thing.... it has.... no, nothing to do with me." "Please.... erase me. I want you to erase me.... right away."Shogun's wrinkles shifted. It seemed like he was making a different expression, but it only looked as though his wrinkles were moving. "It's all my fault."   "And so I brought you into being." "To have you stop them for me." "I don't know anything about that stuff.... I might be a copy of you, but I don't want to do it...." "Having to suffer, even though I'm just a copy.... I don't want that." "Let me die...." "You aren't a copy of me. You are my other self." "In other words, doesn't that make me a copy?" "What you're doing is incredibly cruel...." "I'm sorry for it." "But there was no other way." "It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that the fate of the world now hinges on you." "So--" "Something like that...." "Can't you just ask Rimi to do it for you....?" "You're acquaintances, aren't you...."'Acquaintances' I phrased it in such a way deliberately. I didn't want to think that maybe they were a couple, or close friends. And now, of all times, I noticed my own feelings. I was jealous of my original. Despite being a delusionary existence. How.... hideous, how unsightly. Talk about not knowing my place. My own emotions sickened me. I felt more and more pent-up. I want to die....  "Eh...." "You see, Rimi was trying to save me." "The reason why--"   "That sky--" "Why is it so blue that it makes me want to cry?" "Not me...." "I wished for it." "Because this place is your imagined world, and at the same time, it's also mine." "Who are you? There shouldn't be anyone here besides me." "Are you a separate me?" "No." "Then who are you? How did you come here?" "This is inside my heart, you know? There was never anything more than darkness. The only light was the spotlight on me." "Yet the moment you came here, the darkness went away, and the sky was born." "Our delusions synchronized. Because your power was so very strong." "I see...." "I've never seen the real sky." "When the personality that is me was born, I was already shut up in a dark room." "Both inside my heart, and outside it, there was nothing but darkness." "They'll never let me out." "........." "I tried to die just now." "To make my heart kill itself." "I think every other me up till now did the same thing." "But since you've gone so far as to bring the sky to me," "Would it be okay if I carved this scene into my memory? So the next me can imagine the same thing." "Do you want to die?" "Yeah...." "Don't you think you'd like to see the real sky?" "........." "....Say." "It's there." "But the real sky is much more dirty than this one." "Where is it?" "Where is that sky?" "Anywhere you wish it to be." "Is it okay, to wish....?" "Of course." "How do I wish for it?" "Light is made up of waves in an electromagnetic field. Human sight detects its oscillations as color." "Try applying the color you desire to your own dead spots. If you do--" "You can create the color of the world you desire."  We were fellow patients staying at the same hospital. Fellow bearers of the power belonging to Gigalomaniacs, which transcended human understanding, and which left us unsure of whether to take pride in it or detest it.  OST: M.I.L. "Hey, hey, who is she? Your girlfriend? When did you meet?" "Way to go, Bro." "........." "....We meet again." She was very worn down. Her skin had a sickly pallor. Her hair was dry and neglected, left to grow as it liked. There were cracks in her fingernails. She kept her eyes constantly narrowed, as if it were bright out. "Were you able to see the true sky?" "Yeah." "Ah, I know." Nanami, who had been watching us, clapped her hands as though she'd remembered something. "I've gotta go do the laundry. Rimi-san, right? Take your time~"Nanami left. Rimi and I absentmindedly watched her go in unison. Rimi turned back toward me. "How long have you been hospitalized, Takumi?" "About five years." "Do you have any plans for being discharged?" "........." "Thanks to you.... I was able to try harder." "I'd thought there would never be an end to it. But I decided to try my best to keep going until I could see the sky you had told me about." "And then, all of a sudden, they let me out. Although it might be more proper to say that they'd simply finished up with me." "I see." "You saved me." "So this time, I want to become your strength." "You don't have to worry about it." "You don't have to come out of your way to see me." "I want you to live a normal life from now on." OST End  As I remembered them, my chest tightened. "Why did Rimi approach me?" "By being close by you, she meant to keep watch over your actions and the people making contact with you, and prevent you from awakening." "Please don't resent her. She's simply a bit of a meddler." A sad note resided in Shogun's voice. "I didn't want her to get caught up in it, but no matter how I tried to stop her, she wouldn't listen to me." "Feeling a one-sided debt toward me...." "She's truly a meddler...." "Who's holding Rimi and Nanami captive?" "He's also the man who held Rimi prisoner and tortured her in the past." "Despite that, for the sake of saving Nanami, and me, and you, Rimi marched into his territory all by herself."   SFX: Judging by the ringtone, it sounds like Shogun's using Nanami's phone.  "Ah, yeah. It's me." "The truth is, I've got a wee little something to report to you." "....I think I'm going to go save Nana-chan now." "....Stop it." "You don't want to see that man.... to see Norose anymore, do you?" "Tahaha. You sure don't have much faith in me. I'm totally fine." "It happened a long time ago." "Both rescuing Nanami and stopping Project Noah are things I should do. You don't have to go so far." "Didn't I tell you? I want to help you." "Besides.... I don't want to get Taku involved." "....You like to meddle." "Maybe so. Although you're the only one who tells me that." "Say, would it be okay if I talked? Just for a moment?" "I said a whole bunch of cruel things to Taku...." "And after having done that, I know it's really selfish, but...." "I find myself thinking about how the time I spent with him was so much fun." "Even though everything about it was nothing more than a delusion-drenched game of pretend." "Our school life" "And the way Taku and I went back and forth to school" "And being friends with Daichin" "And how I tried to stay together with Taku" "And Taku's existence itself." "Taku is overwhelmingly pathetic. And overwhelmingly weak. The kind of boy any regular girl definitely wouldn't give a second glance."  "Yet, in my heart--I feel like we had fun." "Yet, in my heart--I feel like I wanted to be with him longer." "I wonder, what is this feeling?" "Something akin to imprinting, perhaps." "Instinct, you mean. That might be unexpectedly romantic." "If you enjoyed yourself, I'm sure he had fun as well." "It'd be nice if he did...." "Because Taku and I are the same sort of thing." "A body created by means of a delusion." "And a personality created by means of a delusion." "They aren't any different, are they?" "That's why I didn't want to erase Taku." "Though I thought I had to erase him." "But it seems like, at some point, I got attached to him." "I want Taku to lead a regular life." "I want to save both you, Takumi, and Taku." "Please leave Taku be." "I can't afford to. He's necessary for destroying Noah II." "I'll do something about it." "You don't have to do such a thing." "You yourself should lead a regular life." "........." "Now then, I've gotta hang up soon." "Rimi, stop it." "Ahaha. Really, it's all right. You don't have to worry about a thing. Cause I'll get everything settled for you."    OST: M.I.L. Rimi's words sank into my heart. She was truly a meddler. What enabled her to fight so hard? What enabled her to act so much on the behalf of others?   The brief amount of time we had spent together up until the present. The emotions hidden behind each word she'd uttered.   I'd immersed myself in them and remained shut up in my base. Rarely going to school, not attempting to speak with anyone. Born into this world, I had been throwing my time away, as if I were dead.              OST: Tender hearts But she'd stayed together with the likes of me. "At school, we'll talk about silly things during our breaks."She'd pacified me as I quivered in fear.  "We'll eat together during lunch."She'd supported my no-good self. She'd encouraged me. "And leave school together in the evening."She'd embraced me. "Once in a while, on the way home, we'll stop by a shop somewhere."She'd shown the meaning of human warmth to a delusionary existence like me. "We'll chat a bit in your room."She could've erased me, but instead she tried to protect me. "And then we'll say see you tomorrow, and wave good-bye to each other."She made memories for me.  "If you don't mind, we can do as much of it as you like."Even now, I could think vividly back on my time together with Rimi, out of my mere year-and-a-half-long life.  OST End  The sound of Rimi's breath. The light in Rimi's eyes. Rimi's cheerful voice. Rimi's tender warmth.  
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Sep 2, 2020 14:37
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OddHaberdasher posted:I'd immersed myself in them and remained shut up in my base. Rarely going to school, not attempting to speak with anyone. That's it. That's the core of the game. That's what we've been building up to this entire time, and why Takumi was built to be such a loathsome character. Don't be like Takumi, and escape into delusion. That might seem like a pretty obvious moral, but you'd be surprised how many people need to hear it. If Chaos;Head's story has fascinated you, I strongly recommend that you watch Paranoia Agent, which covers very similar themes in a very different (and arguably more relatable) manner. It's a short watch (just 12 half-hour episodes), and though the company that translated it folded, the subs and dubs can both be found with a quick Google search. Fair warning, though--while Paranoia Agent is never gory or perverse like Chaos;Head, it's still a surreal, disturbing show, and tackles topics like child sexual abuse and suicide.
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Sep 2, 2020 19:42
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Is it fair to blame Takumi though? I guess I figured he was created that way. He’s a delusion of someone else’s making. It’s not like he made the choices that naturally lead to that lifestyle. It’s not even entirely clear if he has free will.
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Sep 3, 2020 00:36
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I was thinking from a more meta perspective--that the writers constructed Takumi's character and the story to make a point about the pointlessness of extreme escapism. The true revelation here is that the real world (i.e., Rimi) is more fulfilling than his beloved 2D worlds (i.e., Seira). I'm willing to bet he becomes more proactive after this point. But you do have a point. I figured that he became a hikikomori in some sort of mental reaction to springing into existence as a teenager. But that's not much better than your theory, is it? Either way, the cause of his isolation would have more to do with the unique (and impossible) nature of existence, rather than any of the real-life circumstances that cause people to spiral downwards into extreme isolation. If that's the case (who knows what the rest of the game holds), then the writers are undercutting their message. Well, I never said that Chaos;Head was perfect. v  v I'm going to repeat my recommendation of Paranoia Agent, which is all about the personal hells that leave people longing for a way out.
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Sep 3, 2020 04:27
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Part 78 - Birth of the New Generation of Madness   A delusionary existence, falling in love? Could even a delusionary existence harbor the emotion of loving someone? Or was it a hallucination? I didn't know, But I Wanted to stay true to this feeling. Rimi regarded me as a friend. She definitely didn't have any awareness of me as the opposite sex. An otaku freak like me wouldn't suit Rimi well, to begin with. But.... even if it were unrequited love, even if it were mere self-satisfaction, even though I was a delusionary existence, I wanted to at least do something for somebody.... do something for Rimi, and then disappear. It was creepy for a creepy otaku to be in love. It was creepy for a delusionary existence to be in love. So what?   Our memories of this past month were a form of local shared recognition between the two of us, me and Rimi. Even if everything was make-believe. These memories. And the emotions born from their accumulation. Were the real thing--  Said "Shogun." I shook my head. "I'm not a hero. I'm not a human being, either." "What're you thinking.... asking someone like me to save the world or whatever?" "I feel truly sorry, but there's no choice except to have you do it on my behalf." "That's so stupid, apologizing to yourself."I glared at the real me. The real me accepted my impostor's gaze. "I hate you." "I envy you." "I can't push myself for the sake of the world." "I don't care about stuff like saving the world."I'd be the one to decide the meaning behind my birth. "Only.... I'm gonna.... save Rimi." "....Thank you." SFX: Beatings, glass breaking, raised voices. Above it all, the sound of the 'silent weapon'. At this point, it had become a riot. In my surroundings were the smell of blood, roars, screams, moans, and.... a howling, mechanical sound. These things overflowed everywhere. "Tell me how to get my Di-Sword." "........." I raised my line of sight. I searched for the shape of a sword blending into this scenery. Rocks flew through the air, smoke from tear gas bombs climbed higher, and nearby people crashed into me over and over. Under those conditions, I made my consciousness focus, and sought the sword I had glimpsed for only a second before, from the roof of O-Front. I should be able to see it. Without a doubt, it was somewhere out there. Part of the scenery. Mixed in with the rest. Catch sight of it. Your Di-Sword is always by your side.  The building to the right of 107. A colorful billboard arranged vertically along it. It appeared as a sword to me. Tension. My breath caught. I'd been able to perceive it in the form of a sword before as well, when I saw it from the roof of O-Front. But at the time, I'd ultimately failed to grasp onto it. "Maintain your will with as much strength as you can. You mustn't waver." "You're already more than qualified to attain a sword."Standing in place, I extended my hand. In order to rescue someone precious to me. I needed that sword no matter what. No matter what--! I clenched my back teeth together. It was different from before. My heart was so serene, even I found myself startled by it. I wasn't afraid. I couldn't afford to be afraid. But I wasn't cool-headed. There was an emotion simmering, boiling hard inside me. There was something I had to do no matter what--! "Seize it."   "....!"SFX: Takumi has grabbed hold! Though I should have closed my hand around empty space. I felt something. It was neither cold nor hot. Neither hard nor soft. Seizing it, I slowly pulled it toward me. Ripples rose in the air. It came slipping out from within them.    Listen to thisOST: Find The Blue (Instrumental)  So slender, it seemed about to break any moment. Brimming with a phantasmal dignity. Revealing absolutely no surface resplendence. Possessing both a pure malice, as though the soul had been sucked out of it,  It linked with my exalting heart, and the foreboding pattern of flames in its hilt quivered. I felt not a trace of its weight. In fact, it was as though it had become one with my hand. As though it had been there from the start. As though it were a part of my body. I had no real sense that I was holding a sword. This is.... a Di-Sword....! I clenched it tight with both hands. Now I should be able to real-boot it as well. If it attained the shared recognition of those in the area, this sword would bring its shape forth into reality. I didn't know how to do it. I simply prayed. Become real, I shouted at it internally. I would no longer waver. "Aaaaahh--"SFX: The Di-Sword is beginning to Real-Boot. As though answering my cry, the Di-Sword began glowing faintly. The pattern of flames on its hilt transformed to real flames, enveloping the sword. I felt no heat. At last those flames were sucked away into the sword's entirety--  A portion of the people nearby spotted my sword and went dumb with shock. But it was only a portion of the whole. The others were fixated on hitting and slandering each other. The riot didn't seem likely to calm down. "Find the porters causing this disturbance. If you destroy the devices they carry with them, the rise in people's biorhythms will also start to settle down." "Porters?" "Those who exist as terminal units for Noah II." "You should already have viewed a hint about them." "It's carved inside your head as a memory."                  "So I'm a Peeping Tom. How fitting." As I laughed self-mockingly, "Shogun" calmly gave me directions. "Open your channel, and read the porters' minds. In the same way as 'Kozu-pii.'" "They're somewhere in this scramble crossing. Find their locations."I opened my channel. I didn't think about how to do it. Without taking conscious heed of it, I enacted it through my senses alone.  OST: Gradually Panic  Became visible. And poured into me all at once. "----!" A manifestation of the ugly emotions people hid from others, far more direct, and atrocious, and revolting, than anything communicated in words. Every manner of negative emotion people embrace within them became a torrent of images, swallowing up my heart, breaking me, violating me. They bathed me in despising gazes, abused me with words of contempt, spat at me, Peeled my nails off, pummeled my cheeks with their fists countless times, kicked me in the buttocks, Ripped my hair out, bit my nose to pieces, gouged out my eyeballs, Pulled my tongue out, sucked up my blood, poured scalding water on me and burned me, Raped me in the rear end, smashed my genitals, ripped off all the skin on my body, Severed my arms, broke the bones of every part of my body, struck me with blunt objects, Stabbed me with blades, dug out my intestines, strangled me tight around the neck, Made vast beasts devour my flesh, pushed me off from high places, drowned me in water, Burned my whole body in flames-- Once I tuned into it, my heart would break. I seemed about to go crazy. Gritting my teeth, I frantically held up my own will. Could it be that Kozu-pii had constantly been living under these circumstances? "Control which delusions you need to see." "You mustn't accept and believe everything. Narrow it down methodically." "Rely on the 'sound.'" The sound-- I listened desperately, enduring the negative delusions pressing in on me. All I could hear were voices. I blocked them out. I sought out the sound. I heard it, a mechanical noise. Seira-tan had called it "the sound that would kill me." That sound also appeared in my memories, the ones I'd obtained by recording the thoughts of others. A porter's rucksack made this noise, and Sena had used her Di-Sword to destroy it. When I concentrated on that noise--    SFX: There are three voices. Two male, one female. The woman sounds familiar... "There seem to be three of them."OST: Find The Blue (Instrumental)  A chaotic flock of people. This pedestrian scramble, without so much as a fragment of law and order, where they walked wherever they liked and struck out at one another. It would be a trial to go straight forward. I hacked into the delusions of the people leading up to my target.   Our eyes met. He was plump, and wore a suit, and had a rucksack on his back. "Number one...." Through the crowd. Without bumping into anyone. Straight ahead. As the crow flies. Dragging along my Di-Sword. First Porter: "H, how--"  In the same way as Sena. I swept my Di-Sword, much longer than I was tall, horizontally. As before, I sensed no weight in it. I could manipulate it as if it were part of my own hand.   The man slumped down in place and trembled, holding his head.   Again, all obstacles on the way there disappeared. They were constructing a road for me.  Upon catching sight of me, he tried to blend into the crowd. Before then, I threw my Di-Sword.  I had a delusion. That it disregarded the laws of physics, and accelerated as it soared forward, horizontal to the earth.  A faint flash burst forth. The man fell down on the spot.   I had met that porter several times before. No, to put it more accurately, I was used to talking to her on a daily basis. The waves of people parted. For the third time, a path manifested, a perfectly straight line. At the end of that path. Was a woman who stood out very much, a woman in white clothing. OST End    Now she glared at me with a piercing look in her eyes. She held an oversized handbag. There was most likely a Noah II terminal inside it.  "If you show the people here what she's done--" "This feverish disorder will subside." What she's done?  "Think back to the first time I made contact with you." "I foretold the 'staking' incident to you. It was meant as a warning."  "....!" I remembered. Our exchange in that chat.    And when Grim first explained the New-Gen cases to me, he'd said: "They're all in your neighborhood, heh" Never mind the fact that I'd never said a word to him about living in Shibuya. And in our chat just a few hours before, Grim had let slip words that suggested he knew I was Nishijou Takumi. "You're a celeb, so you'll be the center of everyone's attention"    I sucked in a breath. "She's...." "The true criminal....?"      Atop the bed was the form of a young man--Konoe Chizuo. Fed sleeping pills, he was in a state of clouded consciousness.  "May the Divine Light save us...."Repeating the same words over and over like a Buddhist chant, Hazuki rubbed her enormously swollen stomach. She slowly shed her nurses' whites. She sat down on the operating table and took up a scalpel. "Haa, Haa... salvation..."And without anesthesia, she slit open her own belly. If any surgeon or obstetrician saw it, all would laud her as having nigh-genius abilities. Though she was a nurse, she possessed a startling faculty for surgical operations, and while enduring the pain of cutting her own body open sans anesthesia, Hazuki made an incision into her abdomen with commendable skill. Blood and amniotic fluid came leaking out of the wound. As her face contorted in pain. Hazuki at last thrust her own hand into her abdomen. She took out a bloodied fetus. Still not fully developed, the fetus had already perished in the process of being forcibly removed. Cutting the umbilical cord, Hazuki lovingly cradled her child, then laid it on a platform beside the operating table and began suturing her wound. Upon completing that step in less than an hour, she rose from the operating table while bearing up under an excess of pain in her abdomen--an ordinary person would have passed out ages ago--and, holding the fetus, stood beside the man lying in bed. She looked down at the unconscious man's face with bloodshot eyes. She deliberately stuck a scalpel into his stomach. With a violence far separate from the delicacy and accuracy with which she had slit her own stomach. Pain made the man awaken. But both his arms and legs were bound firmly to the legs of the bed, and he had no way to escape. Paying no heed to his weeping and shrieking, Hazuki pulled at the scalpel she had thrust in him. It tore his skin and flesh. Blood sprayed out, landing on her face. "Fufu.... May the Divine Light save you...." She put both hands to her victim's wound. With a coerciveness it would be safe to call forcible, she spread the wound open on both sides. The sound of meat ripping echoed through the operating room. The man's body convulsed as he fell into a cycle of blacking out, then reviving in pain. Contemplating the sufficiently opened wound, Hazuki smiled gently. And she took her own child, which she had removed shortly before-- And shoved it inside.     Atop the bed was the form of her colleague, a psychiatrist--Takashina Fumio. He was strapped down to the bed. But he wasn't merely bound there. His brain lay exposed in his head. His cranium had been cleanly cut away from above his eyes. "May the Divine Light save you, Dr. Takashina...." Takashina was conscious. As there was anesthesia at work in him, he appeared not to feel any pain in his head. His eyes were wide with fear, and cold sweat ran down his whole body. "Haa, haa.... salvation...."Ignoring Takashina while he pleaded for his life, Hazuki slowly removed a silver, shining instrument from the pocket of her white uniform. To be more accurate, it wasn't a surgical instrument. It was a spoon. A regular utensil, the sort one might see around a dining table.   Wearing an expression of ecstasy, Hazuki scraped out part of Takashina's brain as if she were scooping up curry.  She shook it off the spoon and onto a stainless steel tray as though to hurl it down. His pink brain tissue pulverized atop the tray like jelly. Hazuki jabbed the spoon into his brain for a second time. This time, she shaved off a more heaping pile of brain matter.     SFX: The riot seems to have been stopped. Nothing can be heard. No violence, no shouting. Not even Hazuki's Terminal. The four jumbotrons set around the pedestrian scramble. Her own memories were playing out there as a film. She didn't understand how it had been done. It was probably due to Nishijou Takumi's power as a Gigalomaniac. "Your.... memories...." Nishijou Takumi murmured, head hanging, holding his Di-Sword.  Several thousand people, who moments before had been striking out at each other, not caring who they hit, all looked up at the jumbotrons in unison. Those who went pale and averted their eyes. Those who vomited in revulsion. The members of the media attempted to fix their cameras on Hazuki. Their brilliant flashes burned over and over. "You were the true perpetrator behind the New-Gen cases...." "....You projected my memories into video, didn't you." "You can't make any more excuses...." "They'll know once they analyze your DNA and the baby's...." "........." "Why would you do such things....? Hey, Grim....!" "....Neidhardt...." "I followed the words of our revered founder in everything."  Therein lay a Noah II terminal port, and a surgical scalpel. Grabbing the scalpel, she laid the tip of its blade against her own neck. As she was a nurse, her line of work meant she was well familiar with the location of the carotid artery.  Hazuki smiled at Nishijou Takumi. Her kindly smile, akin to the one she gave her patients--     Female Crowdmember: "He's the.... Messiah...." Someone murmured. I realized they were speaking about me because of the countless gazes piercing me. Before a vast number of people. Hazuki Shino had committed suicide by slitting her throat. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say she'd become a martyr. The choking smell of blood hovered in this place. The riot had now completely subsided. Hazuki Shino's memories of her crimes, which I had projected onto the jumbotrons, had been ideal for silencing the agitated crowd. Every last one of them lost all words in shock at the video.  The dead body of a violent murderer. So they were saying they didn't need to pay it any respect. What would they do next, decapitate her and hang her head up like we were in the Warring States era? What difference was there between her and the people kicking her corpse? People were helplessly ugly. Myself included.  SFX: Noise has returned, but it's now gone back to the excited feeling it had when Takumi first arrived, as opposed to the violent riot of a few minutes ago. About half of them went to Hazuki Shino's body. The remaining half were near me. Male Reporter: "Nishijou-kun! Splendid work!" Female Reporter: "Did you just use a supernatural power!? You were an ESPer after all! How amazing!" Male Reporter: "Was the gathering today intended from the start to draw out the real culprit?" Female Reporter: "At what age did your supernatural abilities first appear?" Male Reporter: "What were your childhood nicknames? Have you ever been called a wonder child or something?" Female Reporter: "Do you have any future plans to cooperate with police investigations?" Male Reporter: "Won't you appear on one of our station's programs?"  Fan A: "Nishijou! Great work!" Fan B: "Kyaa! Nishijou-kuuun, look over here!" Fan C: "You're incredible!" Fan D: "I love you! Please go out with me!" Words of good will, tossed at me one after the other.   Everyone Present: "Takumi! Takumi! Takumi!" That mirth returned. The enthusiasm they'd shown when looking up at me on the roof of O-Front. Everyone Present: "Takumi! Takumi! Takumi!"  SFX: Everyone obliges. Unable to take it, I yelled.  Tears came out. I was terribly grief-stricken. And it was so terribly ridiculous. I couldn't get by without crying. I'm not a hero. "I'm a creepy otaku! A perv who faps to sexy figures of Seira-tan!" "I'm a guy who plays eroge and goes way moe~ over them, never mind that I'm not eighteen yet!" "In my head, I take all you bitches walking around town, and strip you naked, and have ero fantasies! That's me!"  "So how d'you like them apples? Tell me, am I still a hero!?" "No. I'm not anything like a hero. At the end of the day, I'm a delusionary existence, an otaku creep, a good-for-nothing who can't do a single drat thing on his own!"The voices in the area went quiet. The silent spectators. The reporters showing me dubious faces. At the heart of Shibuya. In this wide pedestrian scramble. My voice alone rang out. "That's me! I won't let you people, you strangers, decide what kind of person I am! I'll be the one who decides what I'm really like!" "I'm not your toy! I'm not gonna be your exhibition!" "There's something I need to do! I'm not gonna act for the sake of people like you!"  "I only--" For the sake of the one I loved. I would fight. And disappear.  Not from clouds. And certainly not from out-of-season snow.  "The Third Melt!? Earlier than planned....!" Next, I was assaulted by a fierce ringing in my ears. A shrill, head-splitting resonance. Everyone around me covered their ears as well.  
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Sep 3, 2020 09:26
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these revelations do not at all make up for how miserable of a slog most of the game has felt, at least from an lp viewer perspective doing something obnoxious on purpose, to make a point, for artistic merit, anything, doesn't mean you didn't do something obnoxious and endless lines of a creepy weirdo slobbering over everything from his younger sister (semi-real) to his figurine waifus (fake) to rimi (real ish?) while whining the entire way is simply unpleasant, even if it was obviously intended to be so that said, drat, this game finally became good Jen X fucked around with this message at 10:15 on Sep 3, 2020 |
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Sep 3, 2020 10:06
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I mean...does all media have to be pleasant? There's a ton of nasty, disturbing media out there that we as a society consider to be worthwhile or even Art-with-a-capital-A because of the meaning behind that nastiness. poo poo, you had a whole artistic movement in the '20s that was all about being mean, gross, and obnoxious. Chaos;Head is a gross, obnoxious game, but there is a reason for its nastiness. The creators wanted to explore the character of a creepy internet weirdo and make some points along the way. Considering the disproportionate impact that creepy internet weirdos are having on the 21st century, I think that's a topic worth exploring in fiction.
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Sep 4, 2020 01:36
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I believe my whole response while reading that can be summed up as “holy poo poo”.
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Sep 4, 2020 02:05
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Viola the Mad posted:I mean...does all media have to be pleasant? There's a ton of nasty, disturbing media out there that we as a society consider to be worthwhile or even Art-with-a-capital-A because of the meaning behind that nastiness. poo poo, you had a whole artistic movement in the '20s that was all about being mean, gross, and obnoxious. would you prefer if I said it was poorly written and took far too long to reach any kind of point at all, or is that also going to prompt a defense of the importance of this game that had the main character think about masturbating to his younger teenage sister
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Sep 4, 2020 08:20
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Part 79 - Blue Sky    SFX: There is nothing to be heard save the gentle sound of of waves flowing back and forth. A shallow shoal, no higher than one's ankles. I didn't feel any coldness. The sound of the waves whispered intermittently in my ears. I was holding the handlebars on the back of a wheelchair. "Shogun".... No, the real Nishijou Takumi's head, clad in a knit cap, was close before me. He sat in the wheelchair with his back hunched a little. There was nothing around us. Shells buried in the sand, for instance, or seabirds flying gracefully through the sky; I couldn't see anything of the sort. Life had no presence here. There was only the blue ocean and the absolutely clear sky. The land was flat, and no matter which way I faced, I could look out across the horizon in every direction, 360 degrees around. This wasn't the real world.  I heard Shogun's voice, mingling with the sound of the breaking waves. From where I stood, I couldn't see what kind of look he had on his face. His was not a voice filled with any particular sense of lamentation. It was truly as though he had said it offhand. "I think you'll understand if you take a look at my body."Tiny, and covered in wrinkles, and underweight. All of his hair had fallen out. "It's a hereditary disease." "My body stopped developing when I was ten years old, and the symptoms first emerged." "And then.... it began aging." "When you were ten...."A certain gruesome spectacle engraved in my memory rose to the forefront. "I started having symptoms about three months before that bus accident." "The bus accident, did you....?" "....Maybe so. But at the time, I had little awareness of my power." "........." "Long before my illness manifested.... as long as I can remember, in fact, I was able to use my abilities as a Gigalomaniac." "I thought it was normal." "Consciously or unconsciously, I've used my power countless times before now." "Which is why the 'contradictions' in my existence have grown too large."   "Mathematically speaking, antiparticles are that which 'leads toward the past.'" "Because of this, the more of them a Gigalomaniac stocks up, the greater the consequential 'lag' between him and present conditions."   "The more I use my abilities, the more this disease advances." "Can't you just cure yourself with your power as a Gigalomaniac?" "If I use my power, the disease progresses. To put it bluntly, even if I make use of my power, the balance of plus and minus adds up to zero. Nothing changes." "....Why?" "Why did you make someone like me, an otaku freak, a good-for-nothing jerkoff? You should've gone with someone stronger, and more proactive, and cooler, and better-looking...." "It isn't an easy task to create an individual person--not to mention one capable of using the power of a Gigalomaniac." "In fact, creating you sent me into a coma for close to a year." "....Are you saying I'm incomplete?" "That itself is what makes you so very human." "You don't have to follow through like that for me." "I'm in earnest."  "Rimi always got angry at me, telling me not to use my power." "She wants to save you, doesn't she?" "........." "But I can't afford to obey Rimi's warnings." "Because my Ir2 was the trigger leading to the current critical situation."I r 2.... That peculiar doodle drawn on the reverse side of the essay. "Ir2 caught the eye of a certain scientist, and at last the Nozomi Technology Company began researching it." "The result was Project Noah." "You could describe it as a device to artificially generate the abilities of Gigalomaniacs." "I only picked up on their plans after meeting Rimi." "The terrible torture she went through was one aspect of the project." "They needed CODE samples to make the Noah System more efficient." "They're unique brain waves emitted by Gigalomaniacs in the process of using their powers." "In order to obtain them, Nozomi's president--Norose--inflicted harsh torture on Rimi." "Because the power of Gigalomaniacs awakens when they harbor intensely negative emotions, and then they come into possession of their Di-Swords."   "Depending on the person, it could be when they're in a hazardous situation, when they're agitated, sad, filled with hate, or laughing."  "Yes. To coerce you into awakening." "I'm sorry." "........."It wasn't only me and Rimi. Those who had been forced to awaken as Gigalomaniacs because of the psychological or physical torture involved in Project Noah, they were: Ayase. Sena. Kozu-pii. And even Nanami. They had been through horrific trials. "Ir2 gave rise to Noah II, and I have to stop it with my own hands." "But I'm stuck in this body. I can't so much as move to my satisfaction." "In addition, Nozomi has started targeting me, wanting to take my CODE sample."The place where he'd been hospitalized was indeed AH Tokyo General Hospital. It had hidden ties to the Nozomi Group. "So I had to hide myself." "The 'Ami-chan' in the illusionary hospital room...." "Rimi was the only one able to come in there." "I became incapable of moving about, and then--" "You made me....""Shogun" gave a small nod. "Rimi told me to erase you over and over." "She told me to stop, because it would whittle away at my life." "But there isn't much time left to me anyway. Whether or not I use my power now won't make much of a difference." "Besides, once you awoke and became capable of using your power, my life would surely fail to hold out any longer." "You mean, we're.... one in self and soul?"   "'I won't have any more delusions.'" "Okay?" "Because you have a very powerful imagination."  "How much longer will your life last?" "Most likely.... until sometime today or tomorrow, maybe." "That soon....!?"The time left to him was so much shorter than I'd expected, it stunned me. "Because I awoke?" "Don't worry about it. Because I longed for your awakening from the bottom of my heart." "What'll happen to me if you die?" "At the same time that you share my heart and body, you have also become a real human being by means of real-booting." "Your manner of birth may be unique, but you're a human being." "........." "If I disappear, will it save you?" "It'd be pointless. At most, I think my remaining lifespan would extend from a few days to a few weeks." "But don't make such foolish choices." "I'd like you to destroy Noah II. With that goal in mind, I don't want you to hold back on using your power." "....You don't have to tell me. I know." "I'm not such a good person that I'd hold back for your sake." ".........""Shogun" laughed, his shoulders shaking faintly. It kind of offended me, since I hadn't meant to be funny. "I'm glad you awoke."   Its two wheels cut through the water, forming ripples. I had no intention of chasing after him. I hazily saw him off. "My role has ended." "Pretty selfish of you. Gonna just shove it off on me?" "I'm a little bit tired. Let me sleep."In his wheelchair, he turned back toward me. As usual, I couldn't read his expression. But his voice was urgent. "There's no time. Be fast. Norose has moved Noah II into full-scale operation." "At this point, our only choice is to destroy Noah II directly." "I'm counting on you...." "You've got no right to rely on me." "I'm only doing what I myself decided on." The sound of the waves retreated into the distance.      SFX: The earthquake brought on by the Third Melt has come and gone. Yet the sound of rubble crumbling away and falling can still be heard, alongside an electrical sparking sound. A downed power line, perhaps? A heavy wind blows through the empty streets. Radio Newscaster: "233 casualties have been confirmed at present, but the final count is expected to surpass 30,000--" Radio Newscaster: "According to an announcement by the Meteorological Agency, this latest earthquake was a 7 on the Japanese earthquake scale--the highest level possible--and magnitude 7.8, which puts it on par with the Great Kantou Earthquake of 1923." Radio Newscaster: "Some of the buildings in Shibuya have been destroyed, and there is also an emerging pattern of large-scale cave-ins." Radio Newscaster: "The Shibuya portion of the Shuto Expressway has been completely closed down due to the collapse of overhead structures." Radio Newscaster: "As for public transportation, all railways, such as the Yamanote Line, have been--" Radio noise began to mingle with the newscaster's voice, and at last she stopped saying anything.    "It's too old to be of much use."   "........." "........."Both Ayase and Yua's school uniforms were completely soiled with dirt, making it readily apparent how much they had struggled to walk this far.  After the earthquake took place, Yua and Ayase had returned to Shibuya from Roppongi on foot, and by going even further, to the Freesia office, they were able to join up with Momose. Expecting the missing Ban to come back, the three of them spent the night near the office, in a mixed-use building, which tilted from the earthquake, and which had looked ready to topple over any minute now. But in the end, Ban hadn't shown himself. Momose proposed leaving Shibuya, but Ayase disagreed. "Gladioul has awakened. We must hasten to combine forces with the other black knights...."She asserted, tugging forcefully at Yua's hand, and heading off toward the wreckage-swamped central district of Shibuya. Yua and Momose were left with no other option but to go along with her.  Seven in the morning. Less than an hour had passed since the brightening of the sky. There was absolutely nothing in the way of refreshing morning air. The wretched state that had been hidden by the darkness of night grew gradually more and more visible together with the arrival of the sun. Now they were right in the thick of it. The neighborhood of Shibuya had transformed into a vision of Hell. The roadways were broken to pieces, with their asphalt projecting up. A number of buildings had collapsed, and the sides of the streets were buried in fallen wreckage. Most everything made of glass had cracked, and even a huge sign originally found on the roof of a building had fallen and was lying down there.  It pained Momose every time she saw those bodies, and she would mentally press her hands together in their name. But there were so many of them that, midway through, she made up her mind not to think about it. Otherwise, her own heart wouldn't last much longer. The people they occasionally passed were expressionless, and appeared to be wandering around on heavy feet without a destination. Several men cooperated in an effort to rescue those buried alive in the wreckage, but there was little they could do without heavy machinery. Momose looked again at the thing Yua had in her hand. A Di-Sword. Ayase had explained it to them. A sword one could draw, as if by magic, out of nothingness. Ban had been telling the truth. Yua seemed startled and bewildered by the fact that she'd obtained one of those swords.  Ayase, walking ahead, didn't look back when Momose called to her. Her expression was tinged with impatience.  "You said there are seven people in total, the two of you included, who have these Di-Swords, right?" "....Yes." "Do you know where the others are?" "I don't." "Then...." "I sense it. The Will." "They're definitely in this direction."Ayase was an impenetrable fortress. Helpless, Momose repeated the same words for the nth time. "It's dangerous to walk around rashly right now. Before anything else, we should retreat to a secure location." "No." "There's no time."   The ravaged street of Dougen Hill, which cars could no longer drive along. She cast her eyes beyond it. "There."  She wore a Suimei Academy uniform, but it was even more tattered than Ayase and Yua's. And she embraced a massive, cross-shaped sword to her chest with her left hand alone. Her footsteps were uncertain, and she seemed about to collapse at any moment.   She was concerned about the Di-Sword Nanami bore up, but for now she set aside the prospect of inquiring after it, and instead supported Nanami's small-statured form.  As Momose spoke encouragingly, Nanami turned vague eyes in her direction. "Ba.... gle...." "Eh? Did you say something?" "Where is.... Nana's bangle?" "This girl.... she's Nishijou-kun's little sister....!" "I see." "It makes sense, for her, to qualify as a black knight. If she's Takumi's sister." "It hurts...."Nanami moaned in pain. "My right hand.... uu..... uuu...." "Your right hand?"Momose, taking an offhand glance at Nanami's right hand, sucked in a breath. "...." "How awful.... it can't be...." "........."Yua and Ayase couldn't comprehend why Momose was so shaken up. There was a bloodstained bandage around Nanami's right hand, but it didn't seem to be such a dreadful injury. But in Momose's eyes, Nanami's arm appeared as having been hacked in two at her bandaged wrist. She had undergone some treatment, but the wound was still open. Ayase, blank-faced, tried to grasp the fingers of Nanami's right hand. But her extended hand slipped clean through it without holding onto anything. Like a hologram, Nanami's fingers had no actual substance. A single drop of blood dripped from the crimson-stained bandage into Ayase's hand. "...." "A delusion...." "Rimi-san.... saved.... me...." "Rimi-san, you mean Sakihata Rimi-san?" "Ye, yeah.... She's Nishijou-kun's friend...."As she had always thought of Takumi himself as being the true perpetrator behind the New-Gen incidents, Yua had investigated his affairs in considerable detail. Naturally, she had also looked into Nishijou Nanami and Sakihata Rimi, as they were people who made frequent contact with him.  "........." "Sakihata Rimi is also one of the seven black knights." "Eh? Sh, she is?"  "Please don't get any closer to Taku." "I don't want him to be forced to awaken." "Have you no sense of responsibility? As one of the black knights." "I'll do something about it on my own." "...."SFX: SMACK "........." "It's very beautiful, that emotion of yours. But it isn't what the 'Great Will' desires." "Nor do I wish to make you shoulder everything by yourself."  "For now, we have to hurry up and take her to a hospital. The blood isn't stopping."Momose gently laid the handkerchief she carried with her against Nanami's wound. "She has a terrible fever, and she looks pale. We've got to be quick about it." "Bro.... I wanna see my bro...."A single tear streamed from Nanami's empty eyes.   SFX: Everyone screams as they fall. As they lost a place to stand, Momose and the four others began free-falling, pulled down by gravity. As though they were plummeting toward the darkness of a bottomless abyss. 
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Sep 4, 2020 12:49
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okay but how the hell did Nozomi get their hands on lr2 in the first place Like...it's a few characters scribbled on the back of a elementary school kid's essay. Why would some evil conspiracy even think to look at a random kid's homework, much less reach the conclusion that their scribbles are the key to world domination?
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Sep 4, 2020 21:23
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Viola the Mad posted:okay but how the hell did Nozomi get their hands on lr2 in the first place It's never mentioned in this game, but it's mentioned in NoAH that Takumi's essay was entered into a contest of some kind, with the entries being publicly accessible on the Internet. Given the reach of the Committee of 300, it's not impossible that it got flagged by some algorithm or another. The equation used for Noah was originally going to be a Millennium Prize problem before it was suppressed, so they already knew it's theoretical existence, but it was unsolved. Takumi simply gave them the solution (or, more accurately, he real-booted the solution like Einstein real-booted E=MC^2). Also, I'll be posting the next update soon after this post.
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Sep 6, 2020 07:12
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Part 80 - Family Reunion SFX: There's something faintly at the edge of hearing, but too muffled to make out. When I came to, there were thick clouds overhead. At some point, day had dawned. But I couldn't see a blue sky anywhere. It seemed dispiriting. An oppressive sky. Far away rang the noisy sirens of a number of ambulances and fire trucks. The shapes of helicopters circling high in the air came flying into my field of sight. There were an awful lot of them swooping around, almost like a swarm of flies. My head throbbed. Like road construction was being carried out inside my skull. It was a more severe pain than what I'd felt during the previous earthquake. I attempted to recall what had happened immediately before my memories died out. The whiteness of the sky. The words "Shogun" had shouted, "the Third Melt."    SFX: Now the sounds are clear. Screaming, panicked voices, helicopters flying overhead and the wailing of ambulances. It was similar to the imagined spectacles of "Y2K" that had been all the rage about a decade ago. Shibuya had collapsed. Traffic lights, roadside trees, a number of buildings: all lay fallen. The famous jumbotron monitors around the pedestrian scramble were cracked and silent. The roof over the stairs descending to the subway had caved in, burying the entrance. The Yamanote Line's overhead railway had come crashing down, and the rails on the tracks had snapped.  People who didn't so much as twitch. People who moaned agonizingly. People who screamed "Help!" at the top of their lungs. People covered in dust, who crawled around with their entire bodies pure white. People who held those lying unmoving and wept. The smell of blood. And a smell like something burning. And the smell of dust hovered in the air. Somewhere distant, several plumes of black smoke rose like signal fires. This was the might of Noah II.... I had chills. There was nothing to separate it from a weapon of mass destruction. I finally had a real sense of why "Shogun" had been so desperate to stop it. Speaking of which, what had become of "Shogun"....? Coming back to myself, I looked around. A twisted wheelchair had toppled over close beside me. Next to it lay his small body. Hastily dashing over, I pulled him up in my arms. "Hey! Hey, hang in there!"He didn't react when I called to him. I couldn't hear his inner voice, either.  I put my ear close by his mouth. He was breathing, albeit faintly. But he wasn't conscious. I tried lightly swatting him in the face and such, but he wouldn't wake up. "Noah II.... where is it....?"Without knowing that, I couldn't so much as go to rescue Rimi and Nanami. I should've asked "Shogun" beforehand. Clicking my tongue in irritation, I took my cell phone out of my pocket. But it was out of power, and it remained unresponsive no matter how much I fiddled with it. It wouldn't do me any good. Was there anyone besides "Shogun" who seemed likely to know.... Think about it.... You've got to think.... You don't have time to dawdle. While you falter like this, that Norose guy might kill the captive Rimi on a whim....!    "The most special among you is"  Sena's father. One of the initial members of Project Noah. His whereabouts were currently unknown. I'd never met him. No, we might've had a near miss. According to Kozu-pii, he appeared here and there in Shibuya, looking like a homeless person. "....There's nothing for it but to find him."I picked up Shogun's startlingly light body, carrying him on my back, and began cautiously walking through the ruins.    SFX: Judging from the background and sounds (crumbling debris, heavy wind, electric sparks), we're somewhere near where Momose and the others are (or were). I didn't have the stamina to walk around Shibuya carrying him--especially not with the roads so jagged and uneven. Anyhow, there were no prior instances of me having gotten any proper exercise. Since sitting in front of my PC was my daily routine. I thought I ought to take "Shogun" to the hospital, but with Shibuya in this state, I doubted I'd be able to call up an ambulance. "Haa, haa...." It wore me out just to climb the slight rise of Dougen Hill. I ran out of breath, and huge amounts of sweat came pouring out all over me. Wiping the sweat off my forehead, I paused to collect my breathing. SFX: Suddenly, the air is filled with the musical tones of a certain prophetesses song...     Then someone's faint voice came into my hearing. It was very lonely, but by no means on the brink of despair. A singing voice that comforted me as I listened to it. I had heard this singing voice before. At the time, it had come from atop a concert stage. In the midst of excessive lighting that stimulated my sight, and deafening sounds that seemed to shake the tight-closed space itself, I had heard her. But now. In the middle of the road, absent any human presence. In the midst of this fallen city governed by death, I heard her. "Ayase....?"Laying "Shogun" down where I stood, I surveyed the area. But in terms of human forms, all I could see were a number of corpses lying prone. Doing my best not to look at them, I searched for Ayase. Where on earth had I heard her singing from? In front of me was a caved-in street. A huge hole opened its jaws there. If I remembered right, the subway ran beneath this road. While thinking to myself that it couldn't be, I tentatively looked down from the edge of the hole. It was about five meters deep. A vast amount of small debris had piled up inside. Ayase lay fallen there.  "....Takumi."   "It isn't only me." "There are three others. Including your sister." "Nanami....!?"Why was she here? Wasn't she supposed to have been captured by that man called Norose? "Nanami! Nanami!"Repressing my bodily pain, I got up and tried shouting, but no answer came. When I looked around, in addition to Ayase, I saw a stout woman lying prostrate on her stomach. She wasn't moving, but she didn't seem to have any external injuries, so she'd probably just lost consciousness.... I spotted neither Nanami nor the remaining person. It was possible they'd been buried alive. I had to do something fast....! I took a glance up at the hole. Dust flew around, enough to send me into a coughing fit. Beyond it was a circular cut-out of the sky.    I pulled my Di-Sword out of invisible space.  I gazed only at her eyes. --That was enough. "We're going to have a delusion."Powerfully. Powerfully. "The debris on top of your leg isn't one big piece. There's a lot of it, but the individual pieces are tiny." "It isn't heavy. You can easily pull out your leg--" "We can save the other two as well--"Ayase and I. If we two Gigalomaniacs achieved shared recognition of that delusion.    "It was due to the guidance of Gladioul. Your coming here."I blinked and warily raised my face. "Ha, haha...." Once we moved some of it out of the way, Ayase could withdraw her leg. I certainly hadn't dreamed it would go this well.  "I heard your song, Ayase. It led me here...." "I see..... I'm glad I kept singing." "Where's Nanami....?" Had our delusion failed? Or else, was Nanami already.... I grew anxious. "So, somebody...."I heard a voice. When I looked in the direction it had come from, I discovered a hand extending from the ruins. I seized that hand--its slender fingers--and peeked in through the ensuing gap.  A tunnel-like crevice. Buried alive at the bottom of it was a familiar-looking, glasses-wearing girl. It seemed like a long while had passed since the last time I'd seen Yua. "........." "Um.... for some reason, all of a sudden.... this crack appeared...." "I couldn't move at all until a second ago, but...."She said apologetically, averting her eyes from me. "Hold on tight....!" "Eh...."I gripped Yua's hand tighter. And pulled as hard as I could, in hopes of dragging her out through the crevice. Ayase helped as well. When the two of us pulled at Yua's hand with all our strength, she escaped the wreckage rather speedily.  "Th, thank you.... so mu.... cough...."All her body was covered with dust. Bits of concrete were stuck to her long hair. But Yua didn't seem to be injured, either. That left only Nanami....  Considering the fact that Yua had been able to work herself free, my delusion must have taken effect well. If so, it should be possible to rescue Nanami from a crevice or something, like Yua. As expected, while I looked around in a number of wreckage heaps, I saw Nanami's face in one of the cracks there. "Nanami!"I called to her, but Nanami didn't react. She appeared to be unconscious.  The form of the Nanami who had turned to particles yesterday, and dissolved before my eyes, flitted across the back of my brain. --No, this Nanami had to be the real Nanami. I took the plunge and grabbed Nanami's shoulder--her blouse. I succeeded in distinctly touching her. Her warmth was there. I pulled her out with all my strength, in the same manner as I'd done with Yua. Unlike Ayase and Yua, Nanami wore bloodied clothes. Her arm in particular was pure red. For the time being, I laid her on her back and checked her breathing. It sounded painful, but she let out slight exhalations. "Thank god...."At this point, I was most worried about the condition of her blood-drenched right hand. When I tried to hold it, to examine it, my own hand passed through it. ....A delusionary hand? Nanami's right hand really had been....   "Uu.... uu...."Groans spilled forth from Nanami's mouth. Her dust-coated face. When I softly brushed her on the cheek, Nanami's eyelids slitted open. "Br.... Bro....?"Her line of sight wandered for a bit before her eyes took hold of me. "Nanami...." "Uu, uuu...."That instant, Nanami's expression crumpled, contorting. Great big tears overflowed from her. She clutched hard at my hand with her left hand. "Bro.... Bro...."She murmured it as if to cling to me. But I shook my head a little as I answered.      Nishijou Nanami sensed it. Her brother's words served as the trigger, heralding in Nanami's heart the sensation that she had two brothers. Not, "It seemed like she had two." "She had two." She had flashbacks to the faces of her two brothers. One was pathetic-seeming. One was all wrinkly. On the other hand, she was positive she had only one sibling. Her memories and what she recognized. They weren't matching up. What had been reality? What had been an illusion? Unknowing, she became frightened, and as she tried to make the inside of her head go blank, Suddenly, she heard her own voice, coming to her like tiny ripples on water.   The scent of disinfectants pricked at her nose. In front of her was a plain-looking door. Nanami was holding its handle. And without her will having any bearing on it,   OST: M.I.L.  "I'm always telling you to eat properly. If you don't, you won't get better, you know?" "Ah, is it cause there's some green peas in there?" "You're not a little kid, so how about you stop being so picky--?" "We, well, I don't like green peas either, so I can understand why you'd want to leave them, but...." "If you don't eat right, she's gonna get mad at me. That scaaary head nurse--" "Nanami." "Wh, what...." "I'm sorry for all the times I lashed out at you before now." "....?" "It's so weird for you to apologize." "You don't need to push yourself for my sake any longer." ".........Er, uh" "What're you saying?" "I have to go into hiding." "So you--" "Don't have to come here anymore." "...." "What're you--" OST End   The fact that she had a real brother. The fact that she had poured her heart into nursing her severely ill older brother for years. The fact that she'd gone on straining herself, thinking she had to hang in there and be dependable, to take care of him. Up until this very moment, for a whole year and a half, all those things had completely slipped out of her memory. Those memories were made to never have been there in the first place.  Her mother had requested that she go check on how he was doing periodically, and once in a while, on the way home from school, she'd stop by his room-- She'd made herself think it was a perfectly ordinary custom of theirs, a continuation of the past, and that she did it because they were family. She hadn't experienced any doubts whatsoever.    He was lying on the road. He was breathing, but he wasn't conscious. As always, he was wrinkly, and small, and all dried up, and looked very feeble. This was the brother Nanami had always known, from long ago.  "I only ever complained to you.... I complained, but...."She spilled tears as she clung to her brother's diminuitive, numb body. "I never ever, not even once, thought I wanted to forget about you...." "You're selfish.... you're too selfish...." A sound like the scraping of metal came from her brother's clothing. Something went slipping out of his breast pocket. "Ah...." A cheapish bangle with a pattern of snow crystals. Bewildered, she stared at her true brother's face. But his wrinkle-covered eyes remained shut. Nanami picked the bracelet up with her left hand. It felt familiar to the touch. The first present she had ever received from her "brother." It was her treasure.   He was walking away. He was leaving this place. Nanami understood that intuitively. She became forlorn at the thought that maybe he meant to leave without saying anything to her. "Go to him." "....?"Knitting her eyebrows, Nanami took a quick glance around. "Just now, a voice...."It was the voice of the brother in her memory. A voice reaching her heart from he who should have been unconscious.  "........."Nanami didn't know if it was a voice her brother had emitted, or else merely an auditory hallucination. But even then-- "Yeah, okay...."She said to her brother, lying prone.  For days, she'd been pinned up to a eerie objet d'art, in a pitch-black room, forced to experience horrific suffering. She had no idea how many times she'd thought of dying. Her right hand especially; the powerful pain in it had continued incessantly, like there was a huge flea stuffed in her bone, gnawing it down. The sensation that she didn't have a hand and the hallucination that she did mixed and collided, almost driving her crazy. She was exhausted both mentally and physically. If she let her guard down, she'd crouch right where she stood and be rendered unable to take another step forward. Which was why Nanami had to fight desperately to keep stretching out her hand. She wanted to halt her brother so much, to the point of putting in such an effort.  Once she just barely managed to squeeze out her voice, he noticed. He stopped and turned back in her direction. "........."She'd succeeded in stopping him, but Nanami was torn about how to address him. The reality that this person wasn't her brother. The conviction that this person was her brother. Those two feelings became hopelessly entangled, and she couldn't put her emotions in order on a moment's notice. Except--  She felt like this bangle's existence tied the two of them together. She was fine with that being the sole answer. Her confusion soon vanished.     Struggling to keep herself from crying, Nanami smiled with all her might. "....Ah, eh, thanks, Nanami."   ".....ah...." She'd gone unconscious. Her face was as white as a sheet. Her breathing, too, sounded painful.  Said the plump woman who had introduced herself as Momose, looking over into Nanami's face and speaking gravely. Next, she turned her eyes on "Shogun." "Same goes for the boy sleeping over there."  "Take care of the two of them...."  "There's someone I have to look for...." Noah II's location. I'd tried asking Nanami, but she told me she wasn't sure where she'd been held captive. The only thing I could do was search for the person called Hatano, after all.  "Gladioul, huh...." If you were to rephrase it as Noah II-- "Yeah. That's right." Ayase's expression went tight.  "I'll go with you." "You don't need to."Even after I told her so, Ayase shook her head in refusal. "All seven must gather." "Ayase, and Yua, I'd like you to look for someone called Hatano." "Because he knows.... where Noah II is." "Even if we're not acting in tandem, I know everything that all of you observe." "So for now, let's split up and look for him."For the moment, I thought it was the best possible strategy. We had to hurry. There was no guaranteeing our safety if another earthquake took place.  Ayase said, though she lowered her eyes regrettably.  "Norose Genichi is the one who's been controlling everything from behind the scenes." "....!" "So that's how it is...." "Then leave your sister and the others to me."Momose-san thrust out her chest. And nodded as though to encourage me. "However, don't go overboard." "And I have a single request to make of you."   I "knew" that he'd died. Shot to death by his partner. Because I'd unconsciously witnessed the moment when it happened. I was about to convey this to Momose-san. But-- "Good grief. I wonder where he's loitering around at a time like this." "Well, maybe, unexpectedly enough, he's helping out the wounded." "........."Since Momose-san said such things. I found myself unable to tell her. "Anyway, thanks in advance." "Yeah...." But I couldn't think of how else to answer her.  Yua, head lowered, spoke in a voice as weak as a fly's rasping. I'd noticed that she had been peeping timidly at me for a while now, looking as if she were about to say something. "....I'm sorry I suspected you." "........." "The things I said must've hurt you...."The lenses of her glasses, considerably soiled with dust. Behind them, her eyes were surely wet with tears. "I don't think you'll forgive me even if I apologize...." "But please let me apologize anyway." "I'm sorry...." "........." "The Seira-tan figures in my base...." "Yes....?" "If you'd like to, will you take them for me?" "....Ah"It had been a shock when she deceived me, but now I understood her circumstances. Which was why if I said something like "I forgive you," I'd start to see myself, conversely, as being presumptuous. I'd thought Yua was my enemy all along. I didn't possess the right to have her lower her head to me, or to forgive her. "Um, is it really okay....?" "I want you to have them." "Ye, yes...." "Yes." At last it returned to Yua, a gentle smile like the one she'd worn when we met for the first time. I nodded at her words.  
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Sep 6, 2020 07:34
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Part 81 - Stakeout SFX: The only thing to be heard in this empty station is the breeze. The station itself was completely underground, being located in a tunnel, and the only outside light that reached it was a faint amount coming in through the outdoor exit area at the end of the platform. Now, due to the earthquake, all the light fixtures had gone off, and it was terribly dim, much more so than usual.  There had been no need for her to buy a ticket. She didn't spot any station workers anywhere, and the ticket machines were out of service, too. When she looked at the tracks, the rails there were visibly warped. Naturally, the trains had been at a standstill since yesterday.  "........."Kozue's left foot was completely bloody. Broken glass had sliced into her during the earthquake. Sena had wrapped a towel around it in hopes of stopping the blood, but the depth of the wound surpassed her expectations, and first-aid treatment wouldn't be enough by itself. Gigalomaniacs couldn't use their power to heal their own wounds. Pain compelled them to be reminded of the reality of their injuries.   "I can't walk anymore~"No matter how Kozue whined, looking as if she were about to cry, Sena remained silent. All she had done was focus intensely and wholeheartedly on walking toward this Shinsen station.  Kozue, who could only stand up one leg, immediately crumpled in place.  "....?"  "........." "I've finally found you....!"OST: Silence At the end of her line of sight. A lone human figure was sitting down at the back of the dim platform.     "Who is that message aimed at?"Her voice was frigid.   "Sena."The homeless man--Hatano--kept his head lowered and didn't look at his daughter's face as he spoke evenly, voicing her name.  "....I thought about it constantly over the past half-year." "How I would kill you."   "Because to me, being killed by you is perhaps the best way to atone. So I thought to myself."   The "method she had selected to kill her father" was cutting him down with her Di-Sword. Its simplicity, in other words, came closest to the truth. There was no meaning in how she killed him. There was meaning in killing him.  Hatano had yet to raise his face.  "Why do you apologize?" "Because I'm forcing you to dishonor yourself by murdering your father." "As long as I can kill you, I'll take on any amount of disgrace or slander." "You killed Mom and my little sister." "Those are the facts." "And even worse, they met with such a dreadful end...."Sena's voice, which had until then maintained its cool-headedness, all emotions repressed, wavered a tiny bit. "I didn't want you to see it." "No, forget what I just said." "Why did you do it!?" "There's no meaning in explaining the process." "It won't satisfy you, and it won't alter the outcome." "Is this how you're going to run away again?" "I was the one at fault. That's the whole of it." "I'm.... disappointed in you...."SFX: The sound of a Noah Terminal suddenly appears, and Hatano Issei's voice starts to periodically gain a strange quality. Something like a mix between his regular voice and telepathy. "You still expected something of me? What?" "........." "Everything in the world is an electrical device, people included." "You said it yourself, Sena." "....!"Sena's shoulders trembled.  Discomfited, she attempted to blow away her reason by transforming her internal uncertainty to rage. "Sena, don't be misled." "If you are an electrical device, then your emotion of resenting me is made up of no more than electrical signals."Hatano was pressing at her. So Sena told herself. --Calm down. "Your words won't work on me." "Don't act on your emotions too much. Otherwise, you'll develop contradictions." "You mustn't take in those words. It's a psychological attack." "Suspend your judgment." "We're done talking....!"  Kozue, who had been on pins and needles as she watched their exchange, was torn over whether to stop their quarrel, but the pain in her foot made her give up. She wasn't sad, but something wept, sobbing, in the depths of her chest. Hatano took a long stride toward Sena. "...."Slow to react, Sena switched to a receiving attack. But as she braced her legs, one of her feet caught on some gravel.  She was frightened. She'd maintained herself by hating her father. But when it came to confronting him, she became afraid to face him. She herself didn't understand why. At least, it was certain that what her father had said right beforehand lay at the root of it.  "No....!"OST End As she fell backwards. She swept her massive Di-Sword up from below. A sword that disregarded both gravity and centrifugal force.   Her father's hands sent her flying.   Her father's relieved eyes. Sena bit her lip. SFX: BANG  Having flown from behind him, something grazed Sena's cheek and vanished. Blood spurted not only from his shoulder, but also from his chest. The scarlet liquid overflowing from his wounds caught Sena on the cheek. --A bullet!?   That man stood on the boundary between the Shinsen station tunnel and the tunnel continuing toward the Shibuya station, in the crossway that was the sole place from which one could see a wide piece of the sky. There was a revolver in his hand.  "But, well, don't you think I've got some pretty sweet skills, considerin' the distance and all?"Sena's father toppled over beside her. His upper body was already bloodstained.  Sena stared disbelievingly at the pool of blood spreading across the tiles. "Words are chaos...."Her father mumbled, his breathing feeble. "You're too honest, Sena...." "When I see you like that.... it fills me with sadness.... and adoration...." She was supposed to have been trying to kill her father, but her father had saved her life. "Don't screw with me...."OST: Fear Sena gripped her Di-Sword harder.  "Meh, doesn't irk me much either way. I meant to have both members of the Hatano father-and-daughter combo die for me anyway, see." --How long had this sound been ongoing? She couldn't forgive him. She could never forgive that gun-bearing man, he whose existence had interfered and kept her and her father from settling things. "How dare you get in the way--"When she stood up and looked ahead of her. SFX: Suddenly, a baby starts crying "....!"  "Hiii...."She reflexively flung it away from her.   Her sister whose name she didn't know, who had been devoured by her mother. The baby before her eyes had gaping bite wounds on it. White bones with pink shreds of flesh clinging to them peeked out from the gaps in its dried-out skin.  "Uu...."Sena-- Became lost again. She couldn't take her eyes off it. She couldn't forgive herself for throwing her little sister away, for finding her disgusting.  Her sister's miserable corpse, embraced by their mother, gnawed upon by their mother. When she was forced to watch it. More so than sorrow or dread, what she had felt was disgust.  "I...." "I...."Even though, in a corner of her head, she understood that this was a psychological attack brought on by a delusion.  OST End     "Who are you?" Wounds she had wanted to forget. A past she hadn't wanted to remember. Decayed tears leaked forth in her heart as well. She began longing to escape. Not wanting look at the mirror, she wished she could turn her face away. Despite that, her body stayed unmoving, in opposition to her will. And on the other side of the mirror, she wasn't crying.  "Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?"  She was falling into a Gestalt collapse.     She was uncertain of the shape of her own nose. She was uncertain of the color of her eyes. She was uncertain of the fullness of her lips. She was uncertain of her own shape. She was uncertain of her own face. "Who.... am I?"  Her image had been on the verge of splitting infinitely within the mirror. At the voice that suddenly came flying toward her, it stopped multiplying. "I am.... Kozu-pii...." "I'm Kozu-pii!"  The colossal mirror towering before her broke into tiny pieces. Kozue looked for the source of the voice that had saved her. In the passage leading toward the turnstiles. She recognized "his" form there. "....Takumi-shan!"  Kozu-pii cried out. Not just in her heart; in reality. Come to think of it, this was the first time I'd ever heard her speak out loud. It was thanks to Kozu-pii that I'd managed to come running here. While near the police box atop Dougen Hill, I had distinctly heard her inner screams for help in my head. And once I ran off, relying on her voice, There was Sena, going white as she was forced to witness a delusion I couldn't see, Kozu-pii, and--Hatano-san, blood-drenched and fallen.   A man stood near the crossing with a revolver in his hand. Maybe he thought he was some kind of gunman, going by how he twirled his gun around and around in his fingers. Though he was in a suit, he also wore a rucksack, and from within it reverberated a nasty mechanical noise. Suwa Mamoru. A detective in the investigative department at police headquarters. I had met this man before.   "Originally, I'd just come to get rid of them eyesore Hatanos." "Nishijou-kun. Thank you so, so much for jumpin' into the fire of your own accord for me." "See, they told me to grab ya if I spotted you." "Who told you....?" "It's secret."A flippant smile. That way of smiling brought his late partner, Detective Ban, to mind. But there was a decisive difference between them. Detective Ban's smile had been a performance, meant to set the other person off-guard, or else irritate them. When it came to Suwa, on the other hand, this sly smile itself was his true nature. "Hey you, do you know where Norose is?" "Look here, Nishijou-kun."Suwa shook his head exaggeratedly and let out a sigh. "I'd like you to be a teensy bit more careful about how you talk. I'm your elder, ya know?" "Ban.... you're the one who killed him...." "....So what?" "Killing someone, even though you're a detective...." "I'd rather not hear it from you, man."I clenched my Di-Sword tightly. "I have no obligation to use honorifics.... with a prick like you." "Hm--m...." "You think it's okay to talk down at me like that?" I could tell clearly, even from this distance. The smile had disappeared from Suwa's face. And. Without moving a step out of place. He made an unexpected gesture, as if he were shaking out his free hand.     When, startled, I looked at my shoulder, a familiar cross was protruding from it.  One of the cross-shaped stakes that had been used in the "staking" incident. It'd come too fast for me to see it. The dimness of the premises also contributed to how I'd completely failed to notice it flying at me. Suwa had thrown it. All this distance, without the slightest inaccuracy. I tentatively touched the stake. It felt cold and smooth. Was this a delusion? Or the real thing? The pain grew steadily stronger and stronger. I couldn't flex my hands. I couldn't hold onto my Di-Sword.  Suwa spoke in a voice tense with repressed fury.     Forcibly suppressing his explosive anger, he unleashed that stake at Nishijou Takumi.   As though it had a will of its own, it shot in a straight line to stab through Takumi's arm. So far, fifteen stakes had hit their marks. Not a single miss. Takumi's shoulders, upper arms, wrists, palms, waist, thighs, knees, shins. Blood lapped idly out of his deeply pierced wounds.  "Not that it's all that interesting, playing a game of darts where you never miss."The next stake was already in Suwa's hand. He repeated the same motion, flinging it.      The following events are presented through the thoughts of both Takumi and Suwa, with repeated cuts back to Suwa's face every 1-2 lines. In the interests of not bloating this post too much , all instances of Suwa's face have been cut (save for when something actually happens or is said), and all instances where both lines are the same will be text instead of screenshots.  "I'm just a regular human being, but I got my hands on a power equivalent to what you guys have."     "This power is a gift from God." "Because it allow me to fight for the divine light, for what I believe in." Suwa hurled yet another stake.    "Haa.... haa.... haa...."    "Like an insect pinned up as a specimen." "And you ain't no rhinoceros beetle or butterfly." "A brat like you is more like the dung beetle type."    "If you've got any last words, go on and say 'em. But keep it to twenty letters or less." "Ha.... ah.... ha, ah.... ha.... ah...." "Earlier.... you called me a cherry-boy...." "Did I hurt your feelings?" "This is the last one." "As for the salvation of the divine light.... I'm sure as hell not givin' it to you!"   "....Did you know?"   The one who would die with this single blow was-- "Virgins have incredible imaginations--"SFX: The noise of the Noah Terminal abruptly stops. With a dull sound.       "The miracle of the Resurrection is a story, and a delusion." "What.... did you do....?" "Delusion synchronization."      "If you're God's vanguard, then crumble to dust like the Messiah."  "Also" "I don't need salvation."  Kozu-pii had on a blank, dazed face. It seemed like she'd been shocked by watching the whole thing from beginning to end. Her foot was bloodstained and painful to look at. "Kozu-pii, you okay?"Still slumped down, she bobbed her head in a nod. But it appeared as if she couldn't stand up on her own. She looked up at me with sparkling eyes.  Kozu-pii, you're talking normally.... "Fueuu?" "Ah, you're riiiight...."Putting a finger to her lip, she tilted her head in wonder. But she soon appeared to tire of thinking about it. "Um, ummm! Do viiiirgins have amawamaaazing imaginations?" "....Yep, they're pretty awesome."Sena had said that ignorance was a sin. But I didn't agree with her.  You can have the sorts of delusions that would be impossible to have if you knew. Delusions are a virgin's number one talent.   Sena stood at the edge of the platform, her head lowered. At her feet was-- "....Hatano-san." I hadn't made it in time. Even though I'd thought he might know Noah II's location.... "Noah II is close beside Shibuya Station." "Eh....?"Sena murmured, gazing down at Hatano-san--at her real father's remains--as if she'd seen through what I was thinking. "On the verge of his death, this man conveyed it to me... to my heart." "From the south exit in Shibuya Station. A now closed-down planetarium on the roof of a building." "Noah II is in there." "....Th, thanks."I waffled over whether or not to say anything to Sena. She had borne a grudge against her father. She had longed to kill him.  OST: Pity "Dammit...." "You plan on atoning, by protecting me....?"Sena's words were aimed at her father's unresponsive corpse. "You acknowledged your own sins. And then, as if you were showing it off to me.... it's like you committed suicide." "I can't forgive you.... I won't forgive you." "The truuuth is, you didn't wanna kill your daddy...."Kozu-pii's whisper hit the nail on the head. That was when Sena stopped showing us her resolute attitude. "Uu, sob...." "Why didn't you try to make up for what you did wrong by living...." "Why're you leaving me alone...." "Wh.... y...." "Sena...." "Nishijou.... please...." "Break.... Noah II...." "Considering that you tried to kill me.... I've got no duty to hear out your wishes...."  Two wide, gaping holes. What spread out in their depths was a deep darkness. If I passed through there, it'd be the most direct route to Shibuya Station. "For my own goal, and no other reason--" "I'll break Noah II. Without fail."
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Sep 8, 2020 13:28
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I don’t like the whole “virgins have better imaginations” thing. Linking imagination to having had sex is stupid. I can at least find plausible an argument that shut-ins have better imagination. I hope that was the intent of the author that got lost in translation. Now I’m worried that the creator really was some otaku lameass, and wrote all this as a justification of his life.
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Sep 9, 2020 05:51
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Domus posted:I don’t like the whole “virgins have better imaginations” thing. Linking imagination to having had sex is stupid. I can at least find plausible an argument that shut-ins have better imagination. I hope that was the intent of the author that got lost in translation. The idea is that people who are ignorant have "better" imaginations, because they can imagine whatever they like without it contradicting something they already know (because they don't know anything). Virgin in this case is just an example of someone who is ignorant about a particular topic. I think that's what the game's going for at this point, anyway. quote:Now I’m worried that the creator really was some otaku lameass, and wrote all this as a justification of his life. This seems unlikely given everything else that has happened in the game up to this point.
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Sep 9, 2020 09:23
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Part 82 - Choose Your Destroyer  "I wondered how things would turn out when you declared you would kill 5,000 people." "It took backbreaking effort on my part to iron things out for you. Especially making certain that the Committee of 300 didn't pick up on it." "I'm most grateful for your cooperation."Norose bowed his head slightly. "But now that this has been completed, it makes 5,000 people seem like a piddling number." "We can already witness it taking effect. The people out there are beginning to turn into cattle." "With this, the day when the world falls into our hands will at last become a reality."Inohana and Kuramochi exchanged looks with each other and smiled disquietingly. Norose watched them without lifting an eyebrow. "That aside, Norose, what fascinating taste you have." "Whatever might you be speaking of?" "It's a piece overflowing with such artistry. I'd very much like you to prepare one for me as well." "If it's ingredients you want, feel free to select the cream of the crop from among my organization's believers." "Kuku, how lavish of you, Kuramochi." "....It's bait." "Bait?" "To make Noah II reach even greater heights of perfection." "Well, let's leave it at that." "More importantly, I'd like to see a demonstration of just how much Noah II is capable of accomplishing, in concrete terms." "Good idea. So show us, be quick about it."Still as expressionless as a Noh mask, Norose gave a little shrug of his shoulders. "Then how about this?"  That miraculous occurrence had become reality without any alterations or gestures on the part of either Norose or Noah II. "Hoh, it's exactly the same as the real thing." "Almost like some kind of sleight of hand." "You can't lump it in together with party tricks, I'm afraid." "Those guns exist in reality."As they scrutinized their guns, Inohana and Kuramochi nodded in satisfaction again. "Truly magnificent." "Indeed. A power transcending God." "I suppose I'll keep this gun for the sake of commemoration." "....Such lightweights you are."The other two failed to hear Norose's faint murmur. "Let us move right into considering our plans from here on out." "First comes the elimination of the Committee of 300." "Norose. You've worked hard." "We'll contact you again later with respect to our next step."In excellent moods, the two of them readied themselves to leave the planetarium on light-stepping feet. However-- "There won't be any need for that." "....What?" "What do you mean?"  No, in actuality, he was looking down on them-- "I'll inherit your plans. Not, however, for lowbrow goals like the ones you have in mind, but for the sake of something far more sublime."Norose's tone continued to be courteous through and through. Yet when they realized the meaning of what he was saying, both Inohana and Kuramochi naturally became infuriated. "You bastard, you're going to betray us!?" "Do you perhaps think you've become a god?" "The Committee of 300 won't stay quiet about this!" "Are not the two of you waving flags of rebellion against the Committee of 300, even while numbering yourself among its members?"Norose's eyes, fixed on other two. The emotion in there was--contempt. His cold gaze, as if he were contemplating something dirty, signified the fact that he had merely been using Inohana and Kuramochi all this time. "Everything you've done has been according to my plans." "Including how you're going to die here." "Don't gently caress with me!" "Such nonsense!" "It isn't nonsense--"SFX: BANG BANG The two guns fired at the same time. The sound they made thundered around inside the dome. SFX: Thump, thump "It was foreknowledge."  Instant death-- The pair of them, lying there as comrades with holes open in each other's foreheads, had already stopped breathing and changed to mere lumps of flesh. "Noah II is in my hands." "You Philistines seem not to have understood that."The "demonstration" that Norose showed the two of them hadn't ended with producing the guns. He had made them mistake each other for him, and forced them to kill each other. Everything up until then had been part of the "demonstration." With the power of Noah II, he'd accomplished it all too casually.   Rimi had entreated Norose to release Nanami, and in exchange for agreeing to this, he had taken her hostage instead. Perhaps because of the psychological attacks she'd received from Nanami, most of the vigor had gone out of Rimi, and now, staked in place, she hung her head powerlessly. But her shoulders shuddered faintly when Norose approached.  "Without.... dirtying your own hands... you do only cowardly things...." "You're the... Philistine." "...."Norose backhanded Rimi across the cheek. Then he grabbed her by the chin, forcing her to face him. Though her expression was dead-looking, her scarcely-open eyes alone pierced Norose with a blazing light, even now. "Why don't you seek Nishijou Takumi's help?"He whispered by Rimi's ear. "Don't.... get him involved in this...." "Of which 'him' are you speaking?" "Both.... of them...." "As far as I'm concerned, either one would be more than enough by himself." "The one who conceived of Ir2, and his perfect copy." "Both of them possess monstrous power." "If I obtain one of their CODE samples, Noah II will draw even closer to perfection." "Achieving a power that surpasses the gods." "........."Rimi lowered her eyes in apparent pain. Norose roughly removed the hand gripping her jaw, then looked up at Noah II, a smile playing about the corners of his mouth. "Now, call out to him." "I don't care which one." "I'll welcome him."   My pace naturally started to hasten. It was my first time doing anything like walking along subway tracks. Even though I thought there was no way they'd come, I kept inadvertently checking in front and in back of me to see if a train were running my way. By train, it took about a minute to get between Shibuya Station and the station at Shinsen. In terms of distance, it was surely less than a kilometer. Luckily, it seemed like the Inokashira Line's tunnel hadn't experienced many cave-ins, and at this rate, I'd probably be able to make it to Shibuya Station.   "Kozi-pii can't heeelp you, but...." "Be careful, Takumi-shan." I came close to cowering. I felt really lonely and helpless. Continuing all on my own down this pitch-black tunnel. When someone told me there was something dreadful lurking beyond here, of course it made me hesitate to go on. My heart whispered to me, teling me I should turn back right away and head to Shibuya Station aboveground. But I couldn't afford to lose so much time. So I chased away my fear by picturing Rimi's smile at the back of my head. I thrust my Di-Sword forward and illuminated what lay down the tunnel. Its red light aggravated my sense of eeriness and insecurity. A sudden feeling of displacement. I felt like something peculiar had crossed my eye, and I sent my gaze darting around restlessly, wondering what it could be. About ten meters ahead down the tracks. There I found a tiny, protrusive shadow, the likes of which I hadn't seen before. I strained my eyes.   "........."What? Why had someone left a figure in a spot like this? It was all too out of place. In the dim subway interior. Atop the tracks between stations. A place the general public definitely couldn't enter. Smack in the middle of the tracks. The figure laid there. It was my current favorite, the post-awakening version. On top of that, the area around her chest had been crushed. Could it possibly be.... My figure, which I'd dropped in the midst of the tumult at the scramble crossing yesterday....? Why was it in a place like this? Plus, she was standing upright, and her bewitching smile looked straight at me. "Seira, why're you...." "Hm--m, so that's how it looks to you, Takkii."I heard her voice. Seira's voice, which I always fantasized about in my head. The majority of the text below this point features excessive amounts of Orgel Seira, and is thus NSFW. Click these links at your own peril. "Well, I'm okay either way. Hmm~n~"In less than a second, the amount of time it took me to blink. Seira-tan, who should've been a figure, began converting her form to life-size scale. And, just like a human being, she wriggled her smooth and sexy body. Her full breasts shook, and her hair rippled. Was this a delusion of mine....? "Hey, Takkii. Let's play."I heard her voice from behind me. When I turned around with a gasp, another life-sized Seira-tan was there.  "Leave Rimicchi be."Not just behind me. To my left. And to my right. The Seira-tans steadily multiplied. They came streaming up out of the darkness. I felt a faint chill as I regarded that spectacle. At last, the number of Seira-tans increased to almost three-digits. OST: Mysterious  "Wanna do sexy things with me?"Those hundred Seira-tans surrounded me and spoke simultaneously. "Of course you do, you dummy~"One of the Seira-tans in front of me lunged at me, smiling.Her slender arms lowered an enormous metal club.   It had a real impact. I felt it passing down my Di-Sword, which I'd used to stop it. Such a heavy blow that my hands went numb, as if they were convulsing. They ached. At that, I finally knew. Reality-- This wasn't an illusion-- They were real-booted existences. Everyone here was my enemy-- "If you won't play with me, I'll send ya flying." "If you're my wife.... open the way for me...." "Nuh-uh--" "Then...."I would have to break my way through. I re-clenched my sword tightly. The fiery symbols on the hilt of my Di-Sword blazed. The sword gave off an increasing amount of red light. "Aaaaahh!"I slashed. At one of my brides. I felt no weight in my sword. Smoothly. It traced the orbit I desired.   I cut her down from shoulder to hip. I felt absolutely none of the resistance I would've expected from flesh and bones being severed. There was almost no need to put any strength into it. Seira's glamorous body split in two diagonally. She collapsed, spraying blood. Even her innards had been reproduced realistically. They glistened pink. I shifted my eyes away. "I'm sorry, Seira...."I'd killed my favorite character with my own hands. As an otaku, there could be nothing tougher than this. Even so, I couldn't let myself get held up here..... "So strong, so strong!" "There's my Takkii~" "I love you when you're like that, Takkii." "Make me feel even hotter." "Let's play." "I'll mess ya up real bad." "So fun, so fun!"The individual Seira-tans began talking on their own, all as they pleased. Their voices became a deluge and threatened to swallow me. I had to stop thinking of them as Seira, I told myself. In order to continue forward, I took a swing at the Seiras blocking my path. "Outta the way....!"    "Takkii~"Another one of them grabbed for me from behind. She wrapped her arms around my neck, like a rear naked choke. Her large, soft breasts pushed against my back. "Lemme.... go...."I impaled my Di-Sword through the face of another Seira-tan, who was trying to cling to my leg. It made her attractive face melt down, a hole opening up in it. I couldn't breathe. She was choking me. It seemed like I would asphyxiate. "No cheating on me!"Her metal bat approached me from the front. I switched myself around where I stood. Presenting her with my back.  "Gueh!"As Seira-tan shuddered, her arms weakened around me. "Forget about Rimicchi."I shed the Seira-tan on my back. Pivoting, I swung my Di-Sword. "....!" All three toppled forward at once. I stepped over their backs. "I love a strong man~"I lowered my sword toward a Seira swinging her bat around further back. Her metal bat caught my Di-Sword.  To be more precise, my Di-Sword didn't "cut." Rather than saying that it sliced things, it would be more accurate to say that it forced everything along its arc to vaporize. No matter how hard. No matter how soft. No matter how cold. No matter how hot. In a matter of moments, this sword made everything it touched boil up and burn off. "Takkii~"I felt the hairs on my body stand on end. At the spectacle of anime characters, all with the same face, calling my name simultaneously. Attacking me. "Uwaaaahh!"I raised my voice to fire myself up. I lanced the Seira-tan who was right in front of me through the chest.  "Aaah, Takkii."That Seira-tan seized the Di-Sword. At almost precisely the same time, her hands evaporated. "It's hot, it's so hot...." "........." Chills shot through my spine. I turned rigid. This wasn't Seira. Seira wouldn't turn on me.  "Takkii, you dummy!" The sound of several of my ribs shattering. The dull noise of the bones in my right arm creaking as well. It resounded from inside my own body. An impact. I went flying. Slammed into the wall. Hit my head straight on.  "Let's fold our arms and think real hard!"  Everything below the elbow of my left arm turned to mincemeat. She gored right through me and into the wall's concrete. "Gyaaaahhh!" "My arm.... My arm....!" "Takkii, you can't run away~"Another metal bat swept toward my leg. "----"My limp right hand. If I moved it even a little bit, agony would reverberate up to my brain. I ignored it. And swung my Di-Sword. Cleanly severing the metal bat pressing in on me. Pain made a howling sound leak from my mouth. I dove within reach of the Seira in front of me. I pressed my Di-Sword to her torso. I swung it all the way through.   My numbing heart. Pain alone reigned over me. I wanted to block all it off, but I couldn't. Not as long as this "pain" were here. "Gah, haah, haa, ah, gah.... uguh, haa...."Gouts of blood overflowed from my crushed left hand. It was hard for my right hand to hold my Di-Sword, too. Pain strong enough to make me faint rang out from inside my bones. Before I knew it, I'd gone sweaty all over. Drops of it entered my eyes, making them sting. My fogging vision. The Seiras closing in on me. Like a deep reverberation, their delighted, laughing voices made my eardrums shiver. With these wounds, I might not be able to live for more than another few hours. That thought occurred to me suddenly. But I didn't especially mind. I was a delusionary existence, anyway. The kind of existence that would probably disappear on the morrow. I didn't care how much I got hurt. As long as I could rescue Rimi. As long as I could destroy Noah II. If all I needed to offer up were parts of this body of mine, I'd give them as much as they wanted. So-- "Open the way...." "Let's stay together~"A metal bat attacked me yet again. I'd thought, I would avoid it. But pain and exhaustion slowed my reactions. I took it right in the temple. There came the sensation of its enormous studs sinking into my skull.  I tripped and fell. As I fell. I used my right hand, resonant with pain, to make sure my Di-Sword was still there. I clenched my crushed left hand in an effort to push myself back up. My exposed bones hit the earth. A crash like an electric shock ran through me. I momentarily passed out. But soon revived. My sight returned. My body was rising. The bottoms of my feet got a hold of the ground. Using the centrifugal force of having been knocked with such momentum. I charged into the midst of the Seiras. Swinging my right hand. My bones creaked. Fresh blood spurted from the Seiras. The stench of blood reached my nose. My own blood? Or Seira's? I no longer knew. They mingled together. I knew I was covered in blood. My fogging vision went red. I went on slashing. I had no idea how many of them I'd cut down. When would it end? I had the hallucination that Seira would keep multiplying infinitely. Seira clung to my right hand. I swung that Seira around along with my Di-Sword. But she wouldn't get off me. Instead, she bent my arm backward. "Gah.... ah." My joint popped out. I couldn't flex it anymore. I dropped my Di-Sword. Nausea surged up. I broke out coughing. The taste of blood spread through my mouth. My broken ribs may have damaged my insides. Every kind of pain out there ate into my body. I was going out of my mind. I prayed. I couldn't keep myself from praying. I wanted to be released. I knew it to be impossible. And so this prayer was akin to a little charm for luck. "Shall I wipe your sweat for you?" Seira peeked into my face, smiling widely. I kicked her in the jaw with all my might. I forced my right arm to tense up. It was losing all sensation. I had the hallucination that my nerves were burning apart. My entire body went hot. At this point, the pain in my bones went rippling through my whole body, instead of being confined to my arm. As though my entire body was breaking. I heard a voice like a beast growling. I wondered whose voice it was, and it turned out to be emerging from my own mouth. I moved the fingers of my right hand a tiny bit. "Aaaaaaaahh!" I picked up my Di-Sword. A delusion. An image of being bound by a cord. For an instant, it became reality. A cord affixed my hand to the sword. I had to go. To where Rimi was. Beyond this darkness. "Takkii, why won't you stay with me?" I spat out the blood stopped up in my mouth. Around me were piles of Seira corpses lying prone. Other Seiras rushed toward me, kicking them. Ripples went through the pools of blood on the ground. I slowly shook my head. "But, Seira"I grit my teeth. "Aren't you from an anime--" OST End Those standing became life-sized cardboard cut-outs. The corpses lying down became body pillow covers. They had returned to their original dwelling--the second dimension. And they were no longer moving. "Dust has gotta go back to dust." "I'll join you later."I lowered my head for just a little bit, as though holding a moment of silence for them and their wreckage. In a corner of my head, I thought to myself that body pillow covers with Seira looking all bloody and guro on them definitely wouldn't sell too well. Even now I was on the verge of passing out, but I bit my lip hard and withstood it. 
OddHaberdasher fucked around with this message at 09:20 on Oct 14, 2020 |
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Sep 9, 2020 12:53
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Part 83 - Prayer Almost all the other buildings had collapsed partially or fully, yet it alone remained unscarred. On its roof was the dome of a planetarium that had closed down several years previously.  Noah II rose in state. A chill in the air stole away my body heat. And then there was the objet d'art that had been made to stand beside Noah II. "Ri.... mi...." Our eyes met. Her eyes went wide.  "Why...." "I came.... to save you...."The light in her eyes flickered. "....You idiot...." "Idiot...." "You're.... an idiot...."She shook her head sadly. "Becoming.... so covered in wounds...." "Overdoing it.... so much...." "Even though I told you.... to wait...." "Why...." But I didn't put it into words. I couldn't say something along the lines of, "I love you, so I've come to rescue you," like this, drenched in blood, my arm crushed to a pulp. I looked nothing like a prince on a white horse. And she'd definitely find it to be nasty and creepy. It would pretty much make me the equivalent of a stalker. If I conveyed my feelings to her one-sidedly, it would only bother her. From here on out, she would go on living. From here on out, I would soon die. If someone on the verge of death went off and decided to tell you their feelings, it would just leave you with a bad aftertaste. Which was why I didn't speak of how I felt. "I wanted to give this back to you."My weak right hand. The hand still holding my Di-Sword. Desperately using those fingers, I pulled a handkerchief out from near my heart. A soft vermilion. I couldn't tell if that were its original color or if my blood had soaked into it. It didn't give off a floral scent anymore, either. Something Rimi had given me. One of the irreplaceable memories I'd received from her.  "And break Noah II." "And give back this handkerchief...."It was all I could do. If I saw those things through to completion, I could vanish without regrets. Besides, it didn't seem like I'd be able to accomplish anything else. For a while now, I'd been having the hallucination that all my senses had gone numb. Maybe the excess of pain had made my brain start blocking off those sensations, which were being transmitted through however many of my nerve endings. I couldn't move my body well. Blood kept dripping from my arm. My eyes were going cloudy. It was incredibly cold. If I weren't careful, I'd probably pass out. "Taku...." "Taku........."SFX: Clap, clap, clap, clap  A tall man--Norose Genichi--emerged from Noah II's shadow. Expressionless, he faced me and clapped with feigned innocence. "However, you have one fatal flaw." "To wit: you're acting on your emotions. That is how barbarians behave." "........."I didn't really understand what this man was saying. I was frantically working to take in and deal with my pain, and I didn't have the spare room to comprehend other people's words--Rimi excepted. "Taku, run away...." "Making small sacrifices for the sake of the greater good." "Do you consider that evil?" "I certainly don't." "At this rate, humanity will eventually destroy itself." "By means of human avarice." "Such ugly hearts." "Such a deluge of self-interested greed." "Human society is already beginning to fail and decay." "Everyone thinks only of themselves, and as a result, they kill and steal from one another." "If you too have awakened as a Gigalomaniac, you must have seen it. The essence of the human heart." "I awoke at a very young age, so I've witnessed it for decades." "In the name of preventing humanity's self-destruction, a most noble goal, the Committee of 300 has been moving forward with the worldwide Human Domestication Project." "However, that too is ultimately nothing more than a way for them to stroke their egos." "I came to a revelation."  "Hence Project Noah." "With Noah II, it's possible to cleanse all human beings in the world of their negative delusions, leaving them purified and with more upright hearts." "War will vanish, and we can grant the world eternal peace." "And as for you, no one will hold you in contempt anymore."His lengthy speech came to an end at last. I desperately braced my legs to keep from collapsing. I'd managed to get a little rest. It had saved me.  Not that I'd been listening closely. If you were to take the future of humanity into consideration, his way was surely correct. A truly righteous point of view. Norose was the president of a large enterprise, and a man motivated by justice; he devoted thought to the entire human race. I was a monster, and a virgin, and a creepy otaku, a selfish and blatantly egotistical guy trying only to save the girl I loved. Under normal circumstances, I'd totally play the villain. Justice would defeat the monster and come out victorious. "But--" "I can't.... let myself lose to you...." "Why do you deny what I've said?" "Purely for my own self-satisfaction....!" "What a shame--"  And in front of that sculpture, he extended his right hand to the side. OST: Gradually panic   The work of art, which should've been standing vertically, appeared to have installed itself in Norose's hand. It wasn't a piece of artwork or anything of the sort. And it certainly wasn't a cross made for crucifixions.  All too massive to be called a sword. Cruel. And cold. A tool for sowing terror. A contaminated Gospel. Intricate chaos. Sacrilege for violation. Unadulterated wickedness. Just like the door to Hell, it would steal the hearts of those who saw it, tempting them into a cycle of endless suffering. Its shape blended everything negative in the world into one whole, embodying all of it. "........." I took a step toward Noah II. Namely, I began closing the distance between me and Norose. When it came to the range of our weapons, his was overwhelmingly superior.  "I'm not particularly skilled at such savage activities as slashing at people with a sword." "However, I need to obtain your CODE sample. For that, I must render you powerless."The tall Norose swung his even taller Di-Sword, one-handed.   My arms wouldn't respond right away. Pain shot through them when all I did was tense them. Even then, I forced myself to raise my arm.  If I had a normal sword, there was no doubt that it'd have split clean in two. Not to mention that my Di-Sword was terribly thin. It contrasted too sharply with Norose's. But. My Di-Sword didn't break, and I somehow managed to hold off Norose's first attack. My hand went numb. Since my left hand was all but gone, I had trouble keeping my balance. My posture crumbled. It seemed as if he were about to send me hurtling back. I withstood it--   Don't be led astray by how his sword looks, I warned myself.   Somehow, I succeeded in going up against him. But that was very much just for now.    It appeared as though he had clenched down on the grip of his sword. His Di-Sword undulated. Releasing an eerie sound, it hummed as its structure recombined. The tip of its blade opened like a pair of scissors. Thrusting up toward my chest. "...."That transformation-- I realized it would be fatal to me.   OST End   "........."A brutal smile played about Norose's mouth. His grip loosened. The colossal scissors closed.  "Gah....!"My chest. Together with my ribs. Together with my lungs. The scissors gnawed into them. I retreated a step in desperation.  "--"Norose swept his arm further toward the side.   Although my senses were supposed to have gone numb, it was enough to render me speechless. I clenched my teeth and endured it. My chest, roiled up, had turned to shredded meat. If I hadn't backed up, he'd have gotten to my heart. Huge amounts of blood came spraying out. "Guh.... giiih--!"I started to topple. I caught myself. --I couldn't die. Like I'd let myself die after coming so far....! I ignored Norose. I frantically advanced toward Noah II--and the fallen Rimi. "Taku...."Lying there, Rimi raised her head a little bit without moving anything else, and looked up at me. She was probably weakened, wasn't she. Her body must be insisting on limpness. Weariness--or else my injuries--made my vision fuzzy. I didn't know what kind of face Rimi was looking at me with. I couldn't bring myself to meet her gaze. I didn't want her to see me like this, bloodstained and beaten. My tiny little pride. It made me picky about that kind of thing, even though I was going to die anyway.  SFX: Noah II suddenly starts blaring a music-like tone   Noah II, towering before me. The sound resonating from it grew shriller. As it resided there solemnly, I sensed something unknown beginning to move inside it. For a second, I quailed. But I gradually lowered my center of gravity, readying myself. I faced Noah II's tube-ridden, almost organic-looking surface. And mowed it down with my Di-Sword--   I'd definitely been attempting to destroy it. I'd had no intention of spinning around. But I was facing backwards. Norose, rather than Noah II, appeared in the center of my vague sight, standing in front of me.   But, though I'd meant to turn around, I hadn't. I had willed myself to turn around. I had made the motion of turning around. But the final result was that I hadn't. I grew befuddled. "You might call it Noah II's self-defense mechanism."Norose's quiet voice echoed through the dome. Mingling with the melody of "Let Me Pass." "It interferes with the hearts of those who approach it, bending their will." As he finished speaking, Norose closed in on me with elegant strides.  I bit my molars together. I didn't have enough blood left. I couldn't think clearly. Despite that, I took my all but senseless right hand, my right hand that was basically crippled by pain. I raised it in desperation and prepared myself for his next blow.   It tumbled across the floor. Moving away from me.  SFX: Noah II has stopped playing 'Let Me Pass' and is now making the siren-like 'beeepbooopbeeepbooopbeeepbooop' noise. The music shifted. As though it were giving me some kind of warning. As though to urge me toward something. "Let me now deny your existence."SFX: Noah II abruptly becomes absolutely silent.  All too overwhelmingly. All too destructively. All too viciously. His Di-Sword. In opposition, I was unarmed. Without anything to help myself stave off his blow. I became petrified.  Rimi threw herself between me and Norose. Something soft-feeling covered my face. "Please don't kill Taku...."Rimi's chest. Rimi was embracing me as though to wrap herself around me. Shielding me from Norose. "........." Rimi had saved me again. Even though I'd come to rescue her. God, how pathetic. In my mortification, I reached for Rimi's blouse, the gap between its buttons. I slipped my right hand inside it. "....Taku?"The lingerie she wore was warm and just a little rough to the touch. The pain of the wound gored in my chest. And the pain of my separated left hand. And the pain in my dislocated right shoulder. The anguish of being unable to breathe properly through damaged lungs. Her warmth seemed like it would heal all my suffering. Rimi's lingerie. Rimi's bare skin. "What.... are you....?" "Haa, haa...." Exposing her bra. "Taku, sto...."I grabbed them through the fabric. Her ample breasts. "Ow...."I pressed my bloody right hand to her bra. To her naked skin. As though rubbing the red blood up against her. I felt her suppleness, her elasticity. So very soft.... "No....!"Rimi squirmed in an attempt to escape. I hung onto her. I wouldn't let her run away. I buried my face in her breasts. Smooth skin that seemed to fit right against me, to suck me in. I went further, using my freed right hand to grope inside her skirt. "Stop it.... Stop it.... Taku...." "I don't.... want this...." "Uu.... sob.... uuu...."Even after I moved away from her, Rimi hid her chest with her hands and wept heartbrokenly. Despite her protecting me. Why had I done such a thing.... What the hell was I doing at a time like this.... Why was I making Rimi cry....   Why was I alarmed? Because he'd hit the nail on the head? Because he'd seen through me? Who had? My voice. The voice in my heart. My.... true self?  "That wrinkly little rear end in a top hat is gonna be doing Rimi, you know?" "You don't want to be cuckolded, do you?"  I wanted to cover my ears, but I couldn't do it without my left hand. Rimi, crying, unable to fix her disheveled clothes. Seeing that face of hers pained me so much, it felt like my heart would be crushed.   "Norose's nice enough to give you some time for getting it done with." "I'm going to die soon anyway. Who cares if she holds a grudge?" "Let's do what we want before we die. They'll say, 'It couldn't be helped,' and let it slide if I do something a tad horrible here, given how it's poor little me, with my pitiable background." So it'd be real bad if I didn't work on not listening to him. I wouldn't be able to avoid getting swept away by the flow. My weak heart was guiding me in the wrong direction, in an easier direction. But I couldn't let myself get swept away now....  "gently caress her. Get rid of your virginity before you die." I yelled. As though to break through my inner weakness. As though to hurl it all away. Thankfully, it made the voice in my heart go away. Before me, Rimi had stopped crying as well. She lowered the hands covering her face. She gave me a cold, brief glance.  That single sentence filled the inside of my head with tar-black emotion. "Ah, aaaaaahh--"  With mind-blowing momentum, a colossal stake burst up through the concrete floor. Its sharp point impaled me in the crotch. OST: White out "Ah.... guh....?"I couldn't swallow what was happening. My legs hovered in the air. I couldn't run away, even if I wanted to. The stake steadily ate its way into my body. Ghastly pain. But not enough to kill me. The stake continued extending, hoisting me up about a meter above the ground. If I stirred, pain shot through my crotch. I became incapable of movement. "Ah, ah...."I wanted help. I sent pleading eyes down at Rimi below me. But she walked over to Norose without taking a glance at me. And crouched down there with a thump, as though worn out. Both Norose and Rimi. Watched me up here, me and my shame. They simply watched me, expressionless. They didn't attempt to help me. "Did you know?" "In the past, impalement was used worldwide as a form of punishment by torture."  "Your own body weight gradually makes you sink deeper and deeper down the stake. The key point is to avoid making the end of the stake overly sharp." "This helps prevent injuries to your internal organs, thereby increasing the period of time before you die." "At the very end, your execution concludes once the end of the stake breaks through your mouth or shoulder." "I'll keep watch over you for the next three days." "Until you die." "She appears to be thinking along the same lines."Rimi gave a little nod. "Then again, the wounds on your chest and arm may mean that you'll die of blood loss first." "........."This was a delusion, I told myself. A delusionary attack. In reality, I wasn't impaled on anything. I was just standing still in front of Noah II. I was merely seeing an illusion. So I believed. I had to believe it.  If I could tolerate that much, this delusion would come to an end. It would have to end. It'd be so much easier if I could at least fall asleep or pass out, I thought to myself. But I couldn't. The pain wouldn't let me. That was precisely what made it torture. "Ah, higuh.... uu, uuu, guh.... hah, ah, haa...."I'd go crazy if this continued-- Even though, a second ago, I'd thought about enduring it. Now, in a shift, I lapsed into despair. When I considered the vast quantity of time left before I died, every emotion other than despair went rushing out of me. Just kill me....   I wanted to see a clock. But if I did, the slowness of the hands' progression would probably break my spirit. I clenched my teeth together. Sweat trickled down all over me, like a waterfall. It made my throat go parched. Once in a while I moistened it by swallowing coughed-up blood. Inside my body. I felt the stake gradually push aside my viscera, burying itself deeper. I definitely felt it. It was a countdown toward death. With this, it would finally surge up to my shredded chest. It would go further, skewering itself up my neck. And it'd break out through my mouth. "Ah, giih, gii, ah, ah...."I was going out of my mind with pain and fear.  What I learned from it was that when I fainted, my body relaxed. In other words, the stake began eating into me faster. Naturally, the pain also increased beyond the point of comparison. And that pain would then rouse me. And my trapped body would writhe in agony. I'd faint again to escape it. It was the worst of all vicious cycles, and it kept repeating.  My sight was dim. I'd thought maybe it was night, but there were no windows in this dome, so that had nothing to do with it. I figured it was most likely because I'd lost too much blood. It was only a little bit, but blood went on trickling from my chest and my left arm. If more of this blood would drip out, maybe I'd be able to die peacefully of blood loss before I died from behind impaled. When that occurred to me, I made an effort to swing around my left arm, crushed from the elbow down. But it wouldn't move. The nerves in it had surely died long ago.  Abababababah. Bubububu, bupeh. Bupepepeh. Boh. Bybyabyabyabya. Buhehehehehehehehe--   When would it end? Was it really going to end? What had made me believe it was a delusion in the first place? How did I know it was a delusion? What if it were reality? After enduring it, I'd only die. There'd be no meaning in enduring it. But I was gonna endure it anyway? How stupid. Moronic. I was an idiot. Die. Not dye, die. I oughta die right away. I'd had enough of this pain. I'd had enough of this suffering. Bite your tongue off. Do it, and things will become easier for you right off the bat. Let me go already.... ....This is a delusion, isn't it?   The amount of blood hemorrhaging from my chest increased. I was losing the ability to breathe. No matter how much I tried to suck in oxygen, my throat just made this dumbass sound, kind of like a faint whistling. When I looked down, I could see the stake peeking through the wound in my chest. I violently vomited blood. My mouth flapped open like a goldfish all the while, as I sought oxygen. I was relieved at the prospect of dying soon.  Norose's voice. His presence, right in front of my nose. But I couldn't see him. My eyes didn't reflect anything anymore. Because I'd been impaled for such a long time, exposed to continual agony, I'd utterly forgotten that he and Rimi even existed. I wondered if Rimi were still nearby. Not that it mattered. I was preoccupied with inhaling. For some time now, I'd been spending all the strength in my body, and every one of my nerves, on that labor. "Before you safely reach death, I'll dispose of her."I didn't quite get what he was saying. I couldn't afford to think about it. "You're going.... to kill me?" "Yes. That's what it comes down to." "Go on, say your last words." "....I'm sorry, Taku. I'm sorry I couldn't save you."SFX: BANG "Uu--"I heard Rimi's dying wail. The sound of someone falling. He'd shot Rimi to death, I thought. It didn't stir my emotions. I had other things to deal with. I went back to the work of breathing. And, in the process, I astounded myself. What meaning was there in this kind of thing? For what purpose was I frenetically breathing? Wasn't this all far too much? Something hot trailed down my cheeks. I might've been crying, but I had no way to know for sure. With only a little bit left out of the three days I was supposed to withstand, I'd lost my reason for struggling and enduring and coming this far. I'm sorry, Rimi. I'm the one who should apologize. I wasn't able to protect you.  The speed at which I sank lower, propelled by my weight, increased. The sensation of a foreign object in my throat. It was utterly impossible to breathe. Something was pushing up through me--   OST End SFX: Beepboopbeepboopbeeepboop I came back to myself. The feeling of something foreign inside me had vanished. I wasn't impaled on anything. The only bloody parts of me were my chest and my left arm. How much of it had been a delusion? My brain's processing speed couldn't keep up with things. I couldn't grasp my situation. Before me was Norose, and his raised Di-Sword. "Have you come back to us?" "It was a delusion after all--"When I muttered to myself in relief,     My upper body and lower body slid apart. My field of sight tilted. From the waist down, I was standing on the ground. Yet from the waist up, I had fallen. I'd been cloven in two at the torso. The cross-section where he'd cut me was all too clean. "Ah...."I stared blankly at the lower half of my body. A reality I didn't want to acknowledge. Was this a delusion, too? It'd be nice if it were. Please be a delusion....  Rimi was calling me.... In a grief-striken voice, calling me.... "In this condition, you'll last for a few minutes before dying." "I say this as a former doctor, so it's quite certain." "In the meantime, shall I harvest your CODE sample?"I crawled. Using only my right hand, I pulled myself forward. In the direction of Rimi's voice. I wanted to touch Rimi. I had to save Rimi. Rimi-- My right hand. Forward. And forward. I stretched it.  I didn't reach anywhere-- "So obstinate." Norose's leather shoe had stepped on the back of my outstretched right hand. "Just what one would expect from an abomination, I suppose."SFX: The sound of Noah II's siren fades out, replaced by a shrill tone. Norose's foot wavered like a mirage. The floor tiles began to look fuzzy.  The floor and the ceiling reversed. I was crawling on the ceiling on all fours. Blood spilled from my severed waist with incredible force. Like a faucet turned up all the way. My blood was leaving my body. My innards poured out, too, traveling through the opening of the wound in my arm.  But it didn't completely cut off. A pool of blood was forming.  Ba-dum. Ba-dum. My beating heart. Tumbled out before my eyes. Creating ripples in the puddle of blood. As I vaguely watched those ripples.    My flesh melted. My bones twisted like gum. My eyeballs become squarish. My lungs flipped inside-out and spilled through my mouth.  The wrinkles in my brain smoothed out neatly, one by one. My body went mushy. I was dissolving into the air.      Wrapping around it. Over and over. Over and over. Over and over.  Glub-glub. Like water balloons. Full to bursting. My skin stretched. Making a creaky sound.  Both my muscles and bones. They melted away and got stopped up in my calves. A tiny head sprouted up from my hips. It looked at me with boggly white eyes.   It got crushed, and it turned gloppy.   To the earth. Whooooosh.  My brain made a drippy puddle.         Steadily decreasing.  I'm not anywhere. What am I? I am what? What is I? I? What?  whatI. Iwhat. iwh. i?? ??wh?? "You aren't a delusion."Wh???ou???    OST: Pity  In the hospital where she has been accommodated together with her older brother. She curls up in a corner of a waiting room overflowing with the injured. Holding her true brother's wrinkled hand. Withstanding the pain in her right hand. She closes her eyes. And prays.   By the wreckage of a fallen building. Inside a container house lying toppled over, all but buried in the rubble. Holding one of "his" bishoujo figures. Withstanding the pain she had felt in her chest when she saw how hideously the figures had metamorphosed, thanks to the earthquake and the ensuring fire. She closes her eyes. And prays.   At Suimei Academy, now a place of shelter. From the roof of the school building, she gazes up at the sky. Holding a paperback book with legends written in it. Withstanding the pain of the malice displayed by the myriad, indeterminate number of delusions covering the now-fallen Shibuya. She closes her eyes. And prays.   At the dim platform of Shinsen Station. Holding Aoi Sena's trembling hand. Withstanding the pain of her wounded foot. She closes her eyes. And prays.   Sitting next to her father, who lies there. Holding her father's cold hand. Withstanding the pain of her regret over her inability to be honest, even at the very end. She closes her eyes. And prays.   Lying on the chilly floor. Tightly clenching her own hand, which she had extended toward "him." Withstanding the strangling pain in her chest she had felt when she saw "him" covered in wounds. She closes her eyes. And prays.    "You took action." "As a result, everyone saw you." "The local shared recognition known as you has long since reached completion." "From now on; no, already." "You yourself are--" "I....?"     We may have had the last Delusion Trigger some time ago, but that wasn't the final vote. You must answer the following statements 'yes' or 'no'. Answering these statements 'correctly' will lead to the True Ending. Deviating from that sequence will lead to another Ending. The poll will run for at least 48 hours from the time this is posted. What is Takumi?
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Sep 10, 2020 16:23
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At the end of the world, he sexually assaults his crush. Of course he does.
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Sep 10, 2020 16:58
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Jen X posted:At the end of the world, he sexually assaults his crush. That was part of the delusion, same as the impaling. Granted, Takumi only realised something was wrong after a rather lengthy time, but he had lost an absurd amount of blood by that point.
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Sep 10, 2020 17:34
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Yeah, I've been pretty forgiving of this game up until now, but between the sexual assault and graphic description of torture (delusionary or not), that was just too much.
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Sep 10, 2020 20:00
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At the very least it’s shocking and uncomfortable. It’s too...Palahniuk for my taste. There was a time in my life where I would have found it an interesting transgression of appropriateness, but there was a time in my life where I wore a diaper. Doesn’t mean I should crap my pants now. What is he? A fictional character who could have gone some interesting ways, but didn’t quite make it. This is kind of the nail in the coffin for my tolerance of him. I guess I can’t deny the existence of this character, so, yes I guess?
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Sep 11, 2020 07:38
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The Poll is finished now. The next update, with the ending, will be out within a day or so.
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Sep 12, 2020 16:51
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Part 84 - Silent Sky Yes  Yes  No  No  No  Yes  Yes  Yes  Yes  Yes  Yes  Yes  No  Yes  Yes   The instant I heard that voice.   OST: Find the blue (Vocal)  The sloppily stirred-up world gathered together all at once. The chaos collected, forming my Di-Sword. I returned to the shape I held as me. The world returned to the shape it held as the world.   My body had healed. My upper and lower halves were connected. I stood on my own feet. The pain had utterly disappeared. My heart was calm and still. "You did well to overcome the delusions." "I entrust the last of my power to you." I recognized Rimi's form at the corner of my eye. She was unhurt. She was looking at me. She was crying. Don't cry. I tensed the hand with which I held my Di-Sword's hilt. I tested the sensation of it. My arms moved properly. I'd completely come back to life. "This is.... truly fascinating." "You.... monstrosity....!" I fixed my eyes on Norose.  In order to rescue Rimi. In order to destroy Noah II.     He had yet to take Nishijou Takumi's CODE sample. Norose had meant to drive him into a corner via delusionary psychological attacks, but instead, he himself had been made to trip up. He couldn't afford to forgive that.    He sliced Takumi across the chest. With his Di-Sword, which severed all manner of things. The target's hardness made no difference. Cutting down a mere human being was as simple as cutting through jelly.  His head and his right arm, his right shoulder, slid apart. With a slithering noise.   Takumi's lower body was on the verge of collapse. He started bracing his legs. He'd braced his legs. The next instant, waves beat across the severed surface of the wound. It squirmed.   Unhurt. Unaffected. His body, which had been cut down merely a second ago, had already brought into being a new neck, a new right hand and shoulder. His old head and intestines remained where they had slipped and fallen. "I blocked off my sense of pain." Takumi took a step closer to Norose. Norose clicked his tongue. He turned his Di-Sword around. "You cast aside your fleshly shape--" "Therefore, you can take any earthly form." "It's thanks to the delusion you showed me." Being unable to maintain his shape as a human being-- Takumi had co-opted that delusion and made it his own. This wasn't regeneration. It was replenishment. As for his lost body parts: Out of the dust infinitely multiplying from within him, Takumi once again produced flesh and bones. He replenished himself.  That was the reason Takumi had called himself a monster. Takumi's feet took another step toward Norose. Norose's irritation increased. Clenching the grip of his Di-Sword, he lunged at the approaching Takumi. Catching Takumi's head in what resembled a giant pair of scissors.     He lost everything above the neck. Even then, Takumi's body continued forward. Regeneration--replenishment--happened in a second. When his heel, which had been stepping forward, touched the floor. It was though nothing had happened. As though he had been wholly replaced. His head was there without a single scratch on it.  Physical attacks with his Di-Sword would have no effect. Takumi had co-opted the delusionary attacks that denied his very reason for existence. The current Nishijou Takumi was All too abnormal as a human. All too warped as an existence. All too appropriate as a monster. Even so, Norose couldn't bring himself to withdraw.  Every kind of existence would transform to negative matter when confronted by antiparticles, thereby arriving at self-collapse. If it were impossible to destroy him with outside attacks. Then one simply had to make him crumble from within. "True enough." OST End Takumi had read Norose's thoughts. "Wha....!"  Black flames enveloped his sword. Growling. Lengthening.    OST: Last Battle  As though licking the roof and the floor. As though scraping away at them. It ate and ate.   It forced everything it touched to undergo self-collapse. Such an avaricious stream of destruction. "I don't really care much for tentacle games, though." Standing there, Takumi held his Di-Sword. Its point was fixed in Norose's direction. The black snake, which had been coiled up, lashed its body out like a whip. Its jaws snapped at Norose. "To think you could do this much....!"Norose had never before witnessed such a phenomenon coming from a Di-Sword. He couldn't determine whether this was a hidden power belonging to Gigalomaniacs, or part of Takumi's delusion.  So sluggishly. Like a frog gradually dissolving inside a snake's belly. He was being swallowed by darkness. He felt no pain. Normally, this would have led to his death in an instant. But that wasn't what Takumi wished for. Realizing this, Norose twisted his lips self-disparagingly. Norose had no dread of death. It would be fair to say that the ideals he aimed for had been achieved together with the completion of Noah II.  "It's a perpetual motion machine." "It will continue to monitor humanity for all eternity." "A man-made god, one that will intervene for the sake of human happiness, rather than simply sitting there and watching." Norose was, so to speak, God's creator. As long as Noah II remained in existence, humanity would be indestructible. The eternal utopia Norose had desired would become a reality. However-- "You can approach it, can't you?" "Wh.... at....?" The snake that held Norose undulated its body. Raising him higher. "Then you're the key."  What did Rimi feel as she looked at him? It would have been a simple matter to read her heart. But Takumi didn't do it. --It seems like I've been able to save you.  His gaze moved to the still-buzzing Noah II. A deity's inapproachable throne. A cradle for the display of happy dreams. "Sorry." He apologized to no one in particular. "I might be an enemy of the human race."The endless utopia this device would bring about. A future without war. Takumi was going to nip it in the bud with his own two hands. He couldn't provide the answer as to whether that was right or wrong. "But it happens a lot in legends." "Even gods slack off when they get tangled up with women." "So I, too--" Will sacrifice the happiness of all humanity for the sake of the girl I love-- Holding his Di-Sword Takumi drew his arms far back, almost in the shape of a bow.   As its tip bit into Norose, its bait, it went to Noah II. A massive spear of antiparticles, capable of annihilating anything. It had no will of its own. Therefore, nothing about it could be warped.   OST End    Norose and the anti-particles are thrust into Noah II, and upon contact mutual annihilation results.      SFX: The sound of a gentle rain makes itself known.  A violent explosion had taken place. The blast from it had sent me flying away as easily as some old rag. Before I knew it, I was here. Those eyes are always watching me. The stare pierces through the rain clouds coated in pitch black. It pours down on me like the rain.   But, it's more the cold rubble I'm sitting on than the chill of the rain. It's horribly cold...... An anonymous gaze from the heavens pierces me. As if to escape it, I raise my head ever so slightly, surveying my surroundings.   No one is here. No one is moving. No one is alive. All I can hear is the sound of the rain, continuing to fall. If everything remains this way, both alive and dead, will it all be gently enveloped and washed away?   The action is involuntary. I don't want to shiver like this. If I can't move it freely, then it isn't my body. It's as if I was never born with my own free will. No one knows where it is the soul is kept. Despite that, how can anyone say for sure that my soul is inside my body? But. If that's the case, then where am I? Am I here? Am I nowhere? SFX: The sound of footsteps on the rubble is heard.  The source comes floating out of the midst of nothingness.   Is it because you're frozen from the coldness of the rain? Or because you're already dead? But, she isn't trembling. And those eyes, almost hidden by her bangs.   If- If she and I are the only ones in the world, if we continue gazing solely at each other like this for the rest of eternity- Would my world be reduced to what her eyes reflect? Would her world be reduced to what my eyes reflect? I am what's reflected in her eyes. She is what's reflected in mine. When I think about it that way, the world instantly becomes much smaller.   She hangs her head and spreads her arms apart- It's like she is trying to take off and fly away, taking aim above the clouds. Or it's as if she were to catch all of the rain.    What kind of face are you making beyond that thin film of rain......?      Those feathers of light that dance wildly... are they giving me a blessing? Or maybe......      She'll use "that" to kill me-  Even now, her head remains lowered. She softly reaches to embrace my head. Relieved that she isn't looking at me, I simply surrender my body to her.    A whisper near my ear. A beautiful noise. "I'm sorry...... I'm so sorry......"There's nothing to apologize for. If I don't disappear, the other me, the real me, will die. So I'm fine with this.    A warm, soft, tender, and sweet sensation. Much like anesthesia-- And mysteriously, my trembling gradually calms down. Her faint breaths tickle my cheek. A very sweet scent.  The great sword she carries is tearing through the skin of my chest, boring into my flesh, threading between my bones, and steadily sinking its way into my body. Yet, numbed by the anesthesia of her kiss, I no longer feel any pain.    OST: Pity   And so we reach Ending A, titled 'Silent Sky' in the NoAH release. Unfortunately, everyone got all the questions right, bar one. Come back next time, for the True Ending to Chaos;Head.
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Sep 13, 2020 14:46
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RIP Takumi, he never scored.
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Sep 14, 2020 01:35
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I’ll wait for the true end to see, but I feel like this game was a swing and a miss compared to S;G. Instead of a protagonist who is aware his fantasies are just that, C;H stars a guy who can’t tell fantasy from reality...and that’s his superpower. There’s no growth, no satisfying arc in that. He gets a bit less pathetic as time goes on, but who cares? Growth seems pointless if he could have just been imagined as a better person. Plus he doesn’t turn into that much better of guy. I mean, at the end he’s getting his poo poo kicked in from imagining his 2d waifu into reality. I hope we get an explanation as to why Takumi had to be so terrible.
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Sep 14, 2020 06:46
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Part 85 - Desire Blue Sky Last time, everyone was close to getting the True End (also known as the AA End or 'Blue Sky'), only to be undone by a single question:  The right answer to this question is Yes. Takumi is a delusionary existence, as in something that was created from a delusion. That being said, let's continue. There isn't much difference between the A End or AA End, indeed, the only difference is that one stops halfway through and the other doesn't. So, let's just skip ahead to the point they diverge: The great sword she carries is tearing through the skin of my chest, boring into my flesh, threading between my bones, and steadily sinking its way into my body. Yet, numbed by the anesthesia of her kiss, I no longer feel any pain.   Removing her lips from mine, Rimi spoke painfully. "I can't kill you after all, Taku...."  "But if you don't erase me...." "The real me will...." He would die. I was the one who should die. And thus we needed to prolong his life, even if only by a little. That ought to have been Rimi's goal as well. "Erase me." "........." "You have to.... erase me...." "I can't...." Rimi gave a small shake of her head. She watched me with wavering eyes.  "I love.... your weakness." "Even though you're weak, even though you're a coward...." "You went to tatters, coming to save the likes of me." "I love.... that strength of yours." "I want to share more time with you...." "I don't want to lose you...." "I want you to live...." You'll look at me....? "I'm a monster...." "So am I...." Is it okay for me to live....? "If you choose to do so" "There's nothing wrong with living." I heard a voice from the sky.   "Takumi.... has died, hasn't he...." Rimi was quick to pick up on the emotion that had emerged in my expression. After some brief hesitation, I nodded a tiny bit. SFX: Rimi starts sobbing.  Don't cry. I don't want you to cry. Feeling returned to my body. Warmth returned to me. I was still clumsy. I was still trembling.  The tears running down your cheeks. Those drops, so lovely and so clear. I wiped them softly with the memory you gave me. OST: Desire Blue Sky  Rimi held onto my hand for dear life. As though to ascertain that we were here. Our warmth was contagious. Our separate temperatures melted together.  But--  "Taku.... those words...." Words only he and Rimi knew. The words with which he had given Rimi hope. But I knew them, too. Because I'd seen all his memories. He and I shared the same soul, the same heart. Our memories belonged to the both of us. I had inherited the memories of his seventeen years of life until now. And he had vicariously experienced the memories of my year and a half of life until now.     It was clearing up. It was coming back. Seeming as though it would draw us in endlessly. Covering this world so gently.  Video: Blue Sky Credits   And now we reach the AA Ending, or 'Blue Sky'. Takumi is alive, and he has successfully foiled Norose's plan to institute world peace (through mass mind control). Nanami has her hand back. After everything they've suffered, the main characters now have the opportunity to try and heal from their traumas.  Not all is well, of course. Takumi may have dealt with Noah II, and ended the threat posed by the traitorous members of the Committee of 300 (now, for the time being, the Committee of 298) and their doubly traitorous pawn. But the true Committee is still out there, making plans to enact the Human Domestication Project. On a more personal note, Shogun, the original Nishijou Takumi, is dead. Ban is dead. Nearly 4,000 people died as a result of the Third Melt, with a further 30,000 injured. The scars left, both by the Third Melt and the New-Gen Madness, will linger in Shibuya for years to come.  On to other business. There is a third ending to Chaos;Head. Ending B. This ending is initially locked and can only be unlocked by reaching either Ending A or AA. You then need to start a new game (no reloading to the beginning!). Even then, you need to make certain choices at specific Delusion Triggers to unlock the ending. Many of which were missed by the thread anyway. The end result is, I need to start this from the beginning (or near enough as makes no difference). So I figured I'd put this up to a vote: Would you all prefer me to make quick summaries of the delusions we didn't see over the course of this thread, or just 'skip ahead' to the required delusions and Ending B itself? Similarly, would you prefer me to summarize the NoAH routes before moving on to Ending B, or save all of it for afterwards? Please bold your answers. Have a good day. OddHaberdasher fucked around with this message at 08:11 on Sep 14, 2020 |
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Sep 14, 2020 08:06
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I'm kinda curious to see all the summaries. Sorry for the extra work  My main feeling about the game as it stands is that it had some genuinely good suspense at the start, but then it went way off the rails. The fight scenes towards the end especially ... Once it was established that he had superdelusion powers (around the time he killed the detective), it lost any kind of tension for me. Also too much horny for my taste.
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Sep 14, 2020 09:29
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Yeah I wouldn't mind seeing a few summaries.
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Sep 14, 2020 14:33
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Summaries. I was originally hoping to see the differences from my original playthrough (and ending B - I had no intention of replaying the entire VN to see it) but I quickly realized I didn't remember much at all it had been so long. Still a fan, though. It's imperfect (I especially didn't like the delusionary assault on Rimi) but on the whole I've definitely enjoyed taking this ride again.
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Sep 14, 2020 14:57
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