The thread consensus is that they would like to see a summation of all the delusions missed the first time through, as well as a summary of the routes added in the NoAH release. Since I have to go through from the beginning anyway, no reason not to.





1st Delusion Trigger:

After talking about his tastes with Hazuki Grim, getting a bad drawing of an upcoming murder from Grim, then getting a realistic depiction of that same murder from Shogun (as well as a quick quote of "whose eyes are those eyes"), Takumi heads to school in the morning. After being talked at by Misumi, about things Takumi has no interest in, Takumi has the opportunity to tune out and have a delusion. The thread picked Negative.

In the Negative Delusion, Takumi sees a short vision involving a guro dead cat in an alley, followed by a sound coming after him (which, in hindsight, sounded like stakes being hammered in). When the delusion ends, Takumi critiques it for having too much guro and creepiness.

In the Positive Delusion, Takumi still has sees the alley, but this time he hears someone dragging something in the distance:



When Takumi heads deeper to see what's going on, Rimi's voice warns him against doing so as something grabs his arm from behind:



Takumi spins around, but the withered arm is replaced by a female Suimei student he doesn't recognize:




When the delusion ends, Takumi critiques it for being too creepy, but he wouldn't mind if the girl became a recurring feature in other delusions. This is the potential unlock point for Rimi's Route.

In the Neutral Option, Takumi doesn't start daydreaming and notices something was written on the blackboard:




Takumi has no idea who put it there, is too timid to ask anyone about it, and ultimately convinces himself it was just a disturbing coincidence:



This is the first Ending B Trigger, as well as the potential unlock point for the Yua Route in NoAH (more on that in the Yua Route post).





2nd Delusion Trigger:

After coming across the Staking Murder, Takumi is indulging in an ESO marathon session to take his mind off it when Nanami shows up to amke sure he's still alive. After making fully justified complaints about his lifestyle and the cleanliness of his house, Nanami takes a bottle of Coke and prepares to drink it. The thread, leery about Takumi's interesting choice of words regarding his sister and eager to avoid anything that may result in incest, chose the Neutral Option where nothing happens. Considering the other options available here, that was not entirely unjustified.

In the Positive Delusion, Nanami confirms that she is romantically interested in Takumi:



As Nanami declares that she's tired of waiting and moves in for a kiss, the delusion ends. The following is Takumi's reaction:





This is the unlock point for the Nanami Route in NoAH.

In the Negative Delusion, Nanami suffers a horrible price for stealing Takumi's Coke (that he had poisoned beforehand):



In the end, Takumi feels pretty bad about that one. He may dislike her, but she doesn't deserve that. Next time, he'll try and stick to slapstick violence.





3rd Delusion Trigger:

After spending the better half of a day being stalked, even in the net cafe, Takumi and his stalker (Yua) are on opposite sides of a busy crosswalk. The thread chose Positive.

The Positive Delusion has Yua walk up to Takumi and reveal that she was actually after him because he dropped his school ID some time ago and she was just working up the courage to speak with him. Also, she likes Takumi and was wondering whether he'd like to go on a date?

The Negative Delusion has her show her true colours as an accomplice to the New-Gen Murders:




Yua proceeds to take a stake and cross the busy crosswalk to finish Takumi off, when an unexpected, yet predictable, saviour arrives:





The Neutral Option has Yua say something while they're both staring at each other. Takumi can't hear her due to the distance and traffic, but he can read her lips enough to make out the words "whose eyes are those eyes?"

All options end with Takumi getting creeped out by the situation and trying to run away, only to sprain his ankle.





4th Delusion Trigger:

After meeting Yua, and being taken back to his house, Yua and Takumi are making small talk when Yua asks if Takumi can do her a favour. The thread chose Neutral, in which Takumi thinks she's going to ask to borrow his CD's.

In the Positive Delusion, Yua reveals that she has loved Takumi for a long time, and has come prepared with a swimsuit to ensure he'll reciprocate:




In the Negative Delusion, Yua reveals that she has loved Takumi for a long time, and has come prepared to ensure he'll be hers forever, starting with his eyes and his fingers:





All options end the same way, with Yua tripping on something and helping Takumi to clean up, with Yua getting a promise to help her pre-order the new Seira model (and pocketing the stake she found under his bed).




5th Delusion Trigger:

After having a couple of conversations, and with some encouragement from Grim, Takumi is actually feeling optimistic that maybe his new-found friendship with Yua could become something more. They've just sat down on a bench in the park, when Takumi notices that something feels off about the three Gero-Froggies on Yua's bag. He can't help but feel he's seen them before. The thread chose Positive here.

The Positive Option has Takumi shrugging the whole thing off as Deja vu, only for Yua to get nervous from him noticing the Froggies and end up revealing herself as a stalker and amateur detective by knocking over her bag and reveling it's contents.

The Negative Option has Takumi remember that he saw them in the net cafe, and realize that Yua was stalking him for longer than she admitted to.




Yua attempts to distract Takumi, but ends up knocking her bag over and revealing her lies.

The Neutral Option has Takumi attempt to figure out where he saw them by getting closer look, only for Yua to slap him.




Unfortunately, her motion in slapping Takumi manages to knock over the bag, and Takumi learns the truth.

All options end with Yua revealing everything her investigations have uncovered, and accusing Nishijou Takumi of being Shogun. I'd give her a 7/10 for that conclusion.


The Yua Route Post will be up later today.

OddHaberdasher fucked around with this message at 07:21 on Sep 18, 2020

In Chaos;Head NoAH, the first time you play the game is predetermined. You follow a single Common Route encompassing most of what's been covered in the thread, until you reach Ending A 'Silent Sky'. Afterwards, all the character-specific routes, as well as Ending B, unlock and you have to see them all in order to unlock the True Ending 'Blue Sky'.

The first route you have the opportunity to see is Yua's Route. On the first Delusion Trigger of the game, choose neutral so that Takumi notices the writing on the blackboard. In NoAH, you then have to answer a series of questions similar to the ones I ran polls for. In this instance, to access Yua's Route you have to answer these questions so that Takumi believes that the writing on the blackboard was written as a direct threat to him, and that the best thing to do is to wipe off the black board (as opposed to ignoring it).


We then get an 'intermission' from Yua's perspective, which reveals that she wrote 'whose eyes are those eyes?' on the blackboard to see if Takumi was the New-Gen killer.

She had formed this hypothesis when she decided to read her sister Mia's diary, to try and figure out any reason for why she was part of the group diving. Towards the end, she came across a part of Mia's diary that had nothing but the words 'whose eyes are those eyes?', repeated over and over again:



Yua searched the phrase on the internet, to see if there was any meaning to it, and the only useful result was an essay entered into a contest, an essay titled 'Whose eyes are those eyes' and penned by Nishijou Takumi. Realizing that Takumi is a student at her school, and with no other leads, Yua decided to sneak into Takumi's homeroom, write the phrase on the blackboard and wait to see how Takumi would react.

When Takumi responds by erasing the message, Yua is certain that Takumi is the killer.



From there, the plot is the same until Chapter 8 'Ir2', when Ban and Momose meet with Yua. After Yua explains her story, and Ban explains how the police don't consider Takumi a suspect, Yua heads home.

Along the way, she meets Suwa. Suwa informs Yua that the police don't have any real leads and, ever so innocently, informs her that there was a Darth Spider helmet found on Cornelius Tower, the scene of the group diving. You really wouldn't expect a vicious murderer and a weirdo like that Esper Boy, who was also found with a Darth Spider helmet on the O-Front roof, to share an interest like Spark Wars (though Suwa, of course, can't begrudge their taste). Yua makes the connection in her head and races to Takumi's house, more certain than ever that he's the killer. Suwa watches her run off with a smirk on his face and a giggle on his lips.

Takumi, who's just finished learning about the DQN puzzle, hears a knock at the door and, thinking it's Rimi here to comfort and protect him, opens the door only to have a hand shoved in his face and get pushed down to the floor:



Yua's come to 'make Shogun come out', and she's prepared to hold Takumi prisoner for as long as it takes to get the 'Shogun personality' to arise. She refuses to listen to Takumi when he says Shogun is a separate individual. Even after Takumi bites her hand hard enough to draw blood, she doesn't let him free, only loosening her grip long enough to tie his hand and leg to the bed. Yua then locks the door, trapping Takumi with her.

Meanwhile, Ban has been reviewing the Group Diving case after talking with Yua, and there's one niggling detail that's annoying him. According to forensics, among Kusonoki Mia's personal effects were a pair of prescription glasses. But according to medical records, Mia had no need for prescription glasses or any other visual aids. In addition, he's been asking questions at the locations Mia was last seen before her death, but the only thing anyone could tell him beyond "I don't remember' was a fast food employee recalling that Yua and Mia were in the washroom at his restaurant for some time before going their separate ways.

Back to Takumi. He and Yua have essentially been in a staring contest for eighteen hours. The only break is when she fed him some pasta she picked up on the way to his house. Eventually, Both Yua and Takumi have no choice but to fall asleep from exhaustion.

When Takumi wakes up, he finds that Yua woke up first and tied him down even more thoroughly. He has no chance of escape. After spending some time worrying that the absent Yua has left him to die, Yua returns, having simply gone to school, as well as a trip home to pick up a few things. Since waiting him out didn't work, Yua has decided to go on the offense and attempts to use Mia's diary to try and 'force' Shogun out. Takumi, however, notices a stark contradiction. That's not Mia's diary:



However, even after pointing this out, Yua doesn't believe Takumi. She seems incapable of seeing that 'Yua' is the name on the diary. In an attempt to get her to let him go, Takumi says that if he can't prove to Yua that he doesn't have a split personality, she can't prove she doesn't have one either. Can she even prove that Mia existed, or that she isn't Mia?

Yua quickly comes up with proof: Mia had a birthmark on her left breast, while Yua doesn't. She takes off her shirt to show Takumi. However, Takumi does in fact see a birthmark on Yua's left breast. At this point, Takumi is now convinced that Yua has been suffering the same symptoms she's been accusing him of, and demands more proof. In response, Yua shows him a photo on her cell phone:



Takumi, unable to find any sign of editing, is forced to admit that the twin did exist. But when he asks Yua to point out which one she is, she keeps pointing at the one without glasses. But before the line of questioning can continue, the Third Melt hits Shibuya.

A flashback ensues, where we see what happened in the hours before the Group Diving. Mia and Yua are talking together at a fast food restaurant. Mia wants to ask Yua for a favour. Mia was on her way to an offline meetup with some people she talked to on an online anime fansite, but she's getting cold feet, worrying about making a good first impression and what they'll be like in person. She wants to ask Yua to go in her stead. Yua, eager to help her sister, agrees. They change clothes in the washroom and note how identical they look. The only difference is Yua's glasses, though Mia makes her promise to take them off before meeting her friends to avoid embarassing Mia.

Yua heads to the offline meet. Mia heads home. The next morning, the Group Dive is all over the news.

Back in the present Takumi wakes up after the Third Melt. Yua, or rather, Mia tells him that she remembers everything. How she started acting like Yua, posing as her, how it went so far that she started thinking she was Yua. How Mia's parents went along with it, maybe out of pity, maybe because they also wanted to pretend that Mia, the unfavorite, was the one who died.

Mia cuts Takumi's bindings, as she no longer cares about Shogun. She was the one who sent Yua to her death, after all. She only makes Takumi promise one thing: to take her to Cornelius Tower. To the scene of the Group Diving.

Making their way through Shibuya, to the intact but abandoned Cornelius Tower, they head to the roof. There, Mia reveals that she's come there to atone the only way she can think of: by leaping off the edge and suffering the same pain her sister did. She asks if Takumi wants to join her. This scene is from Mia's perspective, so we don't know what Takumi is thinking, but he refuses on the grounds that their relationship isn't that good. Mia accepts that, tells him that she did actually buy the figurine he recommended, and goes off the edge.

As is often the case with these things, the moment of doubt and regret is the moment after one is irrevocably committed. Mia feels the same fear Yua did. Feels the same regrets. Feels the moment of impact. Realises that she doesn't want to die.



She suddenly finds herself on the roof again. Not knowing how she fell off the roof and got back up again, Takumi explains it as a delusion. After having gone through it once, Mia is too scared to try again, but she doesn't know what to do with her life. Takumi tells Mia that, now that she's experienced Yua's death, she no longer owes anything else. She's free to live her life, to live for herself and for Yua. Mia thanks him for his words and cries for Yua.

OddHaberdasher fucked around with this message at 12:38 on Sep 16, 2020

The second route is Nanami's route. In order to unlock it, you must pick the Positive Delusion in the second Delusion Trigger.

Unlike with Yua's route, nothing changes initially. The plot remains the same, until Takumi receives a Gift just before the Nanami-chan Rescue Quest.

As before, he hears Nanami's phone in the box and prepares to open it. However, the contents are different:



After seeing this, Takumi runs straight outside, worried for Nanami. It's only after realizing that he forgot to bring Seira to keep him calm that he reluctantly heads back, only to find something peculiar outside his house: Nanami, on the ground, alive and conscious, and also naked.

After battling his own embarrassment at seeing Nanami, he hurriedly brings her back inside, gives the freezing Nanami some clothes to wear and something warm to drink and asks her what happened, but she can't remember. With neither having any idea what's going on, and Takumi's fear that Shogun may attack again, Takumi agrees to let Nanami stay at his house for the time being.

In the middle of the night, Takumi wakes up, with Nanami nowhere to be seen. Before he can get up to look for her, he gets a phonecall. It's the same call from Part 68, the one where Nanami asks Takumi to give back her hand. Given that Takumi just saw Nanami, and she had her hands, he decides this was a cruel prank by Nanami and goes back to sleep.

The next morning, Takumi asks Nanami about the prank, but she doesn't know anything about it. He also notices she has a bandage on her right hand, but after she takes it off, there is no wound. Apparently she just put it on since her hand was aching a bit that morning.

Nanami heads out to buy a new school uniform since she can't remember where her things are. Takumi remains in the container. While he's waiting for Nanami to return, he gets another prank call and learns of a New-Gen murder: the victim was a male college student, who choked to death after having pieces of cloth stuffed down his throat, cloth from a Suimei Academy uniform.

Eventually, Nanami returns and Takumi comes clean to her about everything. Shogun, New-Gen, Di-Swords, everything. Nanami stays at Takumi's house again, and as Takumi watches her sleeping face, he realizes that he never needed Rimi, or ESO or Seira. What he needed this whole time, what is most important in his life, is his family, his sister.



Takumi wakes up later that night, with Nanami nowhere to be seen again. Worried, he takes his phone out to call her, and notices a discrepancy. According to his phone, it isn't the middle of the night, but eight in the evening. Not only is the clock wrong, but the date is a week later than it should be. He turns on his PC to confirm the date, and the date is the same as his phone: one week later.

Takumi checks the news, and uncovers a number of news stories. From articles about an Esper Boy who never showed up to the O-Front, to a string of New-Gen murders (all of them the same as those from the Common Route, including the DQN Puzzle), with the one Takumi remembers (the man choked with cloth) being non-existent. He also has 50 emails from Shogun, all of them castigating him for not showing up at O-Front and threatening to kill Nanami.

Takumi hears a knock at the door, and hears Nanami's voice. When he opens it, Nanami is there. Covered in blood. Missing a hand. Holding a Di-Sword in the other hand. Suddenly, the Nanami who has two hands (the one he's spent the last two days/week with) appears behind him and accuses the Nanami missing her hand of being an imposter. As the argument becomes increasingly heated, Rimi arrives, Di-Sword in hand, and demands Takumi stop his delusions or she'll kill him.

Takumi, confused and afraid, tries to hold the Nanami he knows (the one with two hands), only for him to pass through her. The only part of her body that's solid is her right hand. Rimi confirms the truth to Takumi: After opening the box and seeing Nanami's hand, he was so shocked that he created a scenario where there was no hand in the box. A scenario where Nanami appeared, alive and unharmed.

Takumi has been real-booting a delusion of Nanami this whole time, and the strain of it has kept him in a comatose state for most of the past week. Not only that, but it's killing Shogun, and Rimi is here to make Takumi end the delusion. Before she can do anything, the Third Melt hits Shibuya.

Takumi doesn't care about any of that, however. He no longer wants to care about New-Gen, or Shogun or the Third Melt. He just wants to live with Nanami in a peaceful world. Just as he thinks that, he wakes up in the morning. No one else is there. Just Takumi, and Nanami, in a peaceful world. In a delusion dreamed up by Takumi as he lies dying on the floor of his container house.

OddHaberdasher fucked around with this message at 12:39 on Oct 12, 2020

6th Delusion Trigger:

In the aftermath of Yua's accusations, Takumi has decided to meet with a psychiatrist who helped him when he was a child (Doctor Takashina), so as to prove to himself that he isn't a sleep walker or possessing multiple personalities. Takumi makes the necessary arrangments and starts to wait in the waiting room. The thread chose Neutral, in which Takumi waits three hours without incident.

In the Positive Delusion, Takumi has a delusion. When he meets Takashina, the doctor remembers Takumi and says it's good to meet him again, before amending his statement to not imply he wanted Takumi to need him again.



Takumi tells Takashina everything. After taking some time to think, Takashina informs Takumi that it is his opinion that Takumi is sane. Indeed, Yua is the one who is mentally disturbed, and should be reported to the police. Furthermore, Takumi should tell the police everything he knows about the girl he saw at the Staking, as that is surely the key evidence the police need to solve the crime and make Takumi a hero to all of Shibuya. The delusion ends while Takumi is fantasizing about the accolades he'd earn.





In the Negative Delusion, Takumi meets Takashina and tells him everything. After listening to everything Takumi has to say, Dr. Takashina calmly and gently informs him that he has nothing to worry about from Yua and the Demon Girl. Indeed, Takashina can guarantee that they don't exist, because Takumi has been in a secure mental ward for the last seven years.








7th Delusion Trigger:

After meeting with Takashina, and agreeing to rest for a time so they observe whether he is a sleepwalker, Takumi has nothing to do than to sleep; perchance to dream? The thread chose Negative.

In the Negative Delusion, Takumi has a nightmare where the Demon Girl, seeking to silence Takumi and make her tenth kill special, storms Takashina's office, slaughtering Takashina, mutilating Hazuki's face and finally stabbing Takumi in the hear while he sleeps.


In the Positive Delusion, Takumi has a dream where Seira comes to his bedside. Takumi, delighted to discover that his waifu is real, plans to do plenty of ero things. However, before any of that happens, Seira wants to turn Takumi 2-D, like her:



Fortunately, Seira can very easily do that by locking lips with Takumi and sucking out all his organs:



Afterwards Takumi is conflicted on whether that was a good dream, and whether he should stop reading doujins by that doujin group:




In the Neutral Option, Takumi simply passes the time dreaming about Seira, which gets him teased a bit by GrimHazuki for talking in his sleep (Note: Hazuki has glasses because I answered Grims questions at the beginning in a different way, so Takumi likes girls with glasses):







8th Delusion Trigger:

After learning of a mysterious girl names FES, whose song lyrics apparently predicted the New-Gen Madness, Takumi has reluctantly gone to one of her bands live shows. After listening to her sing, things are winding down when FES looks directly at Takumi. The thread chose Positive.

In the Positive Delusion, FES starts to take off her clothes and proceeds to take Takumi for herself as everyone else succumbs to their base desires in a Satanic Orgy. FES whispers in his ear "Whose eyes are those eyes?" Takumi wakes up in his house, where he reflects that FES was hot, but the atmosphere of the concert was too much for him. This is the second Ending B Trigger.


In the Negative Delusion, Takumi has a delusion where FES and himself are on the school roof. After FES tries to communicate with him twice, with Takumi unable to hear her, FES leans back and falls off the roof. After the delusion ends, Takumi reflects that FES has the sort of melancholic, destructive beauty that leads to that sort of thought.





This is the unlock point for Ayase's Route.


In the Neutral Option, Takumi's nerves get the better of him and he flees the venue. Even as Misumi grumbles about missing out on the rest, Takumi is thinking about what he heard. He doesn't know whether FES is a friend or enemy, but he is certain that she is a prophet and that her songs are about New-Gen.







The 9th Delusion Trigger:

After getting home, Takumi is playing ESO and doing pretty bad. As he screams abuse at his character, Neidhardt, he considers the relationship between himself and his Player Character, and whether he too may be controlled by an outside source (who, in his opinion, is doing a pretty crappy job). Takumi ends up asking Neidhardt whether he's ever noticed Takumi's presence over his shoulder. The thread chose Negative.


In the Negative delusion, Neidhardt takes the opportunity to castigate Takumi, saying that he is ashamed to be associated with Takumi and that he inteds to cut ties and forge his own way. When Takumi threatens to cut the power, Shogun accepts his threat and, in turn, warns Takumi to fear the one over his doing the same thing.


In the Positive Delusion, Neidhardt makes the offer to bring Takumi over to his side of the screen, so that they can adventure side-by-side as equals. Their watchword would be "Whose eyes are those eyes?" Takumi refuses on the grounds that if he's ever going to a fictional world, it'll be an eroge, and turns off the power. This is the third Ending B trigger:





In the Neutral Option, Neidhardt turns around to look at Takumi....JK lol Takumi was just having fun. Nothing actually happened.

OddHaberdasher fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Sep 18, 2020

This isn't an OP for NoAH, but rather a trailer. However, it has an in-universe song by FES, so I feel it fits this update (though I was not able to find an English subbed version) :
Chaos;Head NoAH Trailer - Mikkyou no Kubikazari


The Ayase route is unlocked by choosing the Negative Delusion during the 8th Delusion Trigger. The plot is the same until Takumi and Misumi go to visit Ayase in the hospital.

Rimi does not return to school and is still missing in this route, so Misumi and Takumi head to the hospital by themselves. Just as Misumi is about to knock on the door, Ayase opens it herself. The first thing either boy notices is that Ayase is covered in blood. Misumi immediately starts running away, but Takumi is too shocked to move and ends up being dragged into her room.

After recovering enough to ask Ayase the reason for all the blood, she replies that she has given up on gathering all the Black Knights to stop Gladioul, instead focusing on the Di-Swords. She has gathered two so far. Takumi does not recognize either, but the player can realize that Ayase has Rimi's and Nanami's Di-Swords:



Takumi doesn't really understand anything, but as far as he's concerned Ayase has never threatened him and, given that Rimi's gone off somewhere and isn't protecting him like she promised, Ayase seems like his best bet. They make a promise to protect each other and Ayase makes Takumi stay in her room.

As Ayase continues to explain about the prophecy, Gladioul and the rest, Takumi makes the connection that the 'knights of Gladioul' are her term for Gigalomaniacs. That doesn't help too much with understanding the rest of her spiel, however. Takumi mentions that he tried to look up the book that Ayase supposedly got the prophecy from, but the pages were blank in the only version he saw. Ayase responds that she can see the words, that Takumi can't see them because of the Malice within him, and that there are as many different views, as many different worlds, as there are people in the world.

Takumi is not very convinced, beginning to wonder if all of this is just in her head, when Ayase suddenly pushes him into a closet and puts her lips over his mouth:



Takumi is initially anticipating something ero, but those hopes are dashed as Ayase's motivations become clear: No sooner are they safely hidden away than Hazuki comes into the room. Hazuki is on the phone with her collaborator Suwa. They're annoyed that Ayase apparently escaped from the hospital, but it isn't a big problem. After confirming that Suwa can handle things on his end, Hazuki heads to the scramble crossing to start the riot there.

After Hazuki leaves, Nishijou is just beginning to hope for more close contact from Ayase when they hear a gunshot. Ayase immediately heads for the roof, dragging Takumi with her. There they find two bodies: Ban and Yua. Ban is dead. Yua is technically alive, but according to Ayase her heart has been killed and she's not long for this world. Ayase takes the opportunity to take Yua's Di-Sword, 'absorbing' it into her own, when the Third Melt hits Shibuya.

For a moment, just as the Third Melt hits, Takumi finds himself in a strange world, similar to his own, where the sky is red and he can see writhing human-shaped lumps of black mist. Then he wakes up.

After they both wake, Ayase says that everything happening is according to prophecy. Claiming to be guided, she drags Takumi with her to Shinsen Station.

Along the way, Takumi keeps seeing flashes of the 'red world', accompanied by flashes of radio static. The red world seems to be a perverted form of the real world. In the real world, a man is busy organizing fellow survivors to effect an evacuation effort. In the red world, that same man is shooting everyone around him, reveling in the bloodshed. And everywhere, everyone, is covered by a black mist.



When they arrive at Shinsen Station, they find three bodies: A dead homeless man (Hatano), Sena and Kozue. Both Sena and Kozue have had their hearts killed, like Yua. Ayase comments that someone is hunting down the Black Knights. Just as Ayase has finished retrieving their Di-Swords, Takumi gets another vision of the red world.

Kozue, catatonic in the real world, gets on her feet, muttering about mirrors, grabs a shard of glass and starts stabbing Sena's face. With a burst of static, Kozue is back on the ground and it is now Sena who starts moving, crawling over to her father's corpse and tearing at his throat with her teeth.

With six Di-Swords in Ayase's possession, Takumi's the only one extant, the two of them proceed to aimlessly wander Shibuya. As they do, Takumi's visions of the red world grow longer and longer. Eventually Ayase asks if he can see the sky.



Takumi affirms, commenting on it's red colour, only for Ayase to say that the colour is blue. Takumi begins to disagree with her, but realizes that he cannot find the words to describe the colour 'blue' except to say that it's the colour of the sky. But to Ayase, the sky has always been that way.

As Takumi listens to her speak, he realizes that the 'red world' he's been seeing is how Ayase has been seeing the world her whole life. A world with the hidden emotions, the hidden malice of everyone on full display. Ayase confesses that after Takumi saved her from her suicide attempt, she's hoped that he could also save her from this horrible world as well. As she makes her plea, her strong emotions seep from her chest as black mist.

Takumi is scared at the thought of anyone relying on him, but after recalling the promise they made, he realises that Ayase is his only friend and that he wants to try. He grasps at the black mist, the Malice seeping from Ayase as it turns into a leech-like form, and tears it off her.



In his hands, the leech turns into a Di-Sword. His Di-Sword. The seven Di-Swords have been gathered, and Gladioul comes.

The red sky is painted black. With the seven Di-Swords in hand, the time has come for Ayase to enact the prophecy. But she doesn't know what to do. The guidance she felt has vanished. Could it be that the Black Knights were needed, and the Di-Swords are otherwise worthless?

Takumi starts to despair. Everything is ruined, just like after the Staking.... Takumi has an idea. There was one thing about the staking that didn't fill him with despair: Ayase's song. He asks her to sing it again, hoping there may be a hint in it.

A Contract of Blood to Seal Our Sin

As Ayase sings, Takumi deciphers the meaning behind the lyrics. The song was not about the staking of humans, but the staking of Gladioul. The Di-Swords are the stakes!

Understanding what she has to do, Ayase takes Takumi's Di-Sword into her own and throws it at Gladioul. The sky turns back to red, then cracks at the point of impact. Then the sky shatters.




As Ayase see's the true sky, she breaks down in tears. She never knew blue was such a beautiful colour.

OddHaberdasher fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Sep 17, 2020

Viola the Mad fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Sep 18, 2020

I'm running out of appropriate videos, and I'd rather have one for the last route. So instead, I'm posting a short story with Sena as the main character, guest starring a certain Insane Mad Scientist.
E* P** K******.


Sena's route is unlocked by not picking any delusions during Takumi's first proper encounter with her in Chapter 3.

The first extra scene is triggered after Sena and Takumi have their talk in the empty streetcar. Sena flashes back to six years before the game, when her father came home from work brimming with excitement. He was just going home from work via the subway, after another long day of banging his head against the Ir2 formula, when he came across a number of essays from schoolchildren, displayed in the station as part of a contest. He'd picked one at random for no particular reason, and found the answer to his problem scribbled on the back! An incredible coincidence, almost as if he were divinely guided in that moment! The essay was titled 'Whose eyes are those eyes?'

The plot diverges after Takumi learns about the DQN Puzzle murders. With Rimi having gone missing, he decides that Sena is the only person he could rely on (due to the other possibilities being too crazy to be reliable). He makes his way to the streetcar again and meets Sena there, explaining the situation and asking for her protection. She agrees suspiciously quickly.

Sena quickly binds Takumi with chains and drags him with her to conduct a frontal assault on NOZOMI. Sena believes that Shogun is a high-up at NOZOMI, and therefore that Takumi would be a good decoy to drag him into the open. In exchange for his help in this, Sena will protect him.

Entering the NOZOMI headquarters, Sena uses her powers to convince everyone she and Takumi are employees and enters the emergency stairs. At that point, she release Takumi, since he's already committed.




While making their way upstairs, the two hear a strange noise, the sound of Noah II. Before Sena can warn Takumi, he sees a vision of Nanami bound on a cross and missing her hand. Becoming convinced that Nanami is being held in the office they are heading towards, Takumi heedlessly rushes there, closely followed by Sena trying to stop him.

After both enter their destination, the doors lock behind them. This was a trap. The room is the meeting room where Norose met the traitorous members of the Committee, Inohana Kouzou and Yuudai Kuramochi. The two Committee members appear on the screens above Takumi and Sena, informing them that they will be trapped in this room for a week, after which they will taken out and tortured/experimented on. The sound of Noah II returns, and Sena finds that her Gigalomaniac powers are nonfunctional.

28 hours pass. Between the lack of food and water, and the constant noise of Noah II, Takumi and Sena have nearly reached their limit. There is a computer in the room with them, but it is only capable of receiving information and not transmitting. All they can do is watch the news. Just as Takumi is reading articles about a sudden outbreak of rioting at the scramble crossing, the Third Melt hits Shibuya. Just as one of the monitors is about to fall on Sena, Takumi manages to teleport over to her and pull her out of the way, before falling unconscious.

When Takumi wakes up, he and Sena are trapped together in a pile of rubble. He becomes increasingly nervous about how close Sena is, but can't move any further without risking a collapse.





Eventually, they hear the sound of digging, and two men talking. Takumi is thankful for the rescue, but Sena is not so enthusiastic. She recognizes one of the men as her father. Eventually, Hatano manages to remove the rubble and free them. It turns out he is the only person in the building, the other voice being a remote transmission from Yuudai.

Yuudai attempts to convince Hatano to come back and follow the Church again, but Hatano is having none of it. Yuudai starts gloating about how the plan will soon be finished, with or without his help. Then Yuudai gets shot. After more shooting and screams, the line is cut.

While Sena gets into a one sided argument with her father, Takumi notices a chat screen on one of the monitors. It asks Takumi, specifically, whether he can see it and upon getting an answer, the person on the other side introduces themselves as a member of the Committee of 300.

The sender claims the Committee is an existence separate from the world, controlling it and capable of extraordinary feats. Sena is suspicious, but Takumi is optimistic. Isn't what the sender is saying a bit like how the game master of an MMO is like?

The sender confirms Takumi's hypothesis, saying they have a role similar to that. Further, they can offer Takumi 'cheat codes' so that he can remake himself into a better person, if he can get rid of an error (i.e. Noah II) for them. Sena wants nothing to do with the Committee, until they claim that with these cheats, it would even be possible to bring Sena's mother and sister back from the dead. Sena, unable to ignore the possibility, leaves with Takumi for the nearest train station to find these codes.

Hatano stays behind to ask a few questions. Over the course of their conversation, the Committee reveals that they have already executed the traitors, they want Noah II gone because it interferes with their plan and they chose Sena and Takumi because they were the easiest Gigalomaniacs to contact. Also, to preserve the secrecy of the Committee, all three of them will have to be killed. Before Hatano can even move to try and warn his daughter, the building collapses.

Meanwhile, Takumi and Sena have made it to the designated staion and prepare to open the designated locker. What they find is not what was expected:



It's a baby. A seemingly real, crying baby. Desperately trying to figure out the meaning behind this, Takumi comes to the conclusion that the 'cheat codes' are inside the baby, and demands that Sena extract them. Sena is unwilling to kill the baby. It turns out that Suwa is, silencing the baby with an expertly aimed shot.

Suwa has come to eliminate Takumi and Sena. He won't allow anyone to interfere with Noah now. While Sena is still shocked by the baby's death, Suwa lines up a shot on her. Takumi dives in the way, believing that he has invulnerability. He does not. Takumi is shot multiple times. Just as Suwa is about to finish him off, Rimi appears out of nowhere and cuts off his gun hand. Rimi yells at Takumi and Sena to go ahead while she handles Suwa.

With Sena having dragged the dead baby with them all the way to the planetarium where Noah II is kept, Takumi has had enough. He snatches it out of her arms and is about to smash it against the ground when he sees his Di-Sword lying on the ground nearby. Convinced that the cheats are finally working, Takumi heals himself (though he's only tricking himself into thinking he's healed) and prepares to destroy Noah II. However, his first swing is deflected by the defense systems and Takumi is riddled with bullets.

With their leaders dead, the remnants of the Church of the Divine Light have armed themselves and are prepared to defend Noah II to the death. Surrounded, with no escape and their target in front of them, Sena decides that she won't let anyone else die in front of her. She stands at his back, using herself as a shield, grabs hold of his Di-Sword alongside him, and together they unleash a wave of destruction that destroys not just Noah II, but the entire building.



The final part of this route consists of a phonecall between Momose and an unnamed party. The following is a translated transcript of the conversation (we only hear Momo's side):

OddHaberdasher fucked around with this message at 07:08 on Sep 19, 2020

The Kozue route is unlocked at the 24th Delusion Trigger. If Positive is chosen, a series of questions concerning Takumi's first impressions of Kozue follow. Takmui must be convinced that Kozue is here to help him.

A scene from Kozue's perspective follows a short time after. Kozue is walking around Shibuya, but wherever she goes there just happen to be people talking about mirrors, there just happen to be mirrors pointed in her direction. At first Kozue is eager to dismiss these as coincidences, but then she notices that she's being followed by a white car. A passenger in that car is pointing a mirror directly at Kozue. Kozue runs, pursued by the white car. "It's happening again", she thinks.


The plot diverges after the DQN Puzzle Murder. Takumi has decided that Rimi is unreliable, and decides that Kozue is acceptable. He knows that there's something seriously wrong with how Kozue thinks, but he also thinks that she's dumb enough that he can manipulate her into being his protector. Takumi neglects to consider the difficulties of manipulating someone who can read your mind and see right through your efforts.

Fortunately, Kozue seems not to mind too much, saying that the only reason she can't help him is because Sena told her to stop trying to kill people. Kozue offers to hang out with Takumi for the day, and drags him to her favourite place in Shibuya, the staircase by the Roft store.

After chatting a bit, Kozue takes out a handful beaded bracelets and asks Takumi to pick one, saying she gives one to all her friends. Takumi is initially going to refuse, deeming the beads too girly, but he accepts after he realizes that he is Kozue's second friend. He sees himself in Kozue, thinking their only difference is that Kozue was so broken by her problems that she became capable of handling them herself, even if it's in an extreme fashion. Takumi is too weak for that, always relying on other people.



Eventually, both call it a day and go their separate ways. On the way back to his house, Takumi is plagued by the sound of a camera taking pictures of him. But when he turns around, there's no one with a camera. Eventually, the camera men become more and more blatant, to the point of openly taking pictures. Takumi flees to his house, pursued by the sound of cameras and the squeaking of a wheelchair.

Even after escaping home, Takumi can hear them outside, circling his house, taking pictures, laughing. After what seems like hours, the noises grow silent. Takumi gathers the courage to check outside. No one's there.

Takumi turns on his computer and checks one of his favourite sites, where his online friends post things. But his feed is dominated by a strange account spamming files with titles like "In front of the building", "In the elevator", "On the rooftop". He clicks the first one and sees a picture of his apartment building. Takumi desperately tries to convince himself this is a coincidence, clicking on the most recent one to be sure.

It's a picture of him, only a few minutes ago, looking outside his house to see if there was anyone there.

The next day, in school, Kozue is dragged by the girls in her class to the roof. There, they bully her for her silence, and because their leader, Misumi's girlfriend, is jealous of the attention Misumi is giving Kozue. This is nothing new to Kozue, and compared to what's happened before is endurable.

But then a strange noise fills the air (a NOAH Terminal), and all the girls reach into their pockets, take out mirrors and ask Kozue "Who are you?"

As those words endlessly repeat in Kozue's head, Kozue's awareness blurs. The only thing she remembers clearly is grasping her Di-Sword. And the screams.



As Takumi heads to school, he is plagued by the sound of cameras and wheelchairs. As the sounds become unbearable, Takumi starts to entertain thoughts of murder to get them to stop. He's even brought a knife for self defence, in case Shogun makes a direct attack. In the end, he decides to focus his efforts on convincing Kozue to help him. When he reaches his classroom, however, he realizes that not only is Kozue missing, so are all the girls in his class.

Confused, he wanders the school for a while searching for Kozue, finally finding her crouching by the emergency exit to the roof. Shaking, and covered in blood.

Takumi holds her to make sure she's okay. Kozue asks if Takumi is her friend or her enemy. Affirming that they're friends, and promising to help each other, Takumi finally realises that none of the blood coating Kozue is her own. A vision appears to Takumi. Screams, blood and limbs everywhere. Takumi races to the roof.

A sea of blood and unidentifiable lumps of meat lies there. As Takumi stares appalled at this display, Kozue walks up behind him and asks if Takumi is her friend.

Takumi screams and runs from Kozue. Just as he's considering that running from her might have been bad for his life expectancy, he trips and falls head first from the stairs. As he lies there, without any strength to get up from the floor, Rimi appears and picks him up, saying that she's going to bring him to the infirmary.

Takumi, however, starts to think the police might be outside and that having blood on him from when Kozue hugged him would be a bad look. When he turns to tell Rimi this, he sees her pointing her Di-Swords at his back.

Rimi apologizes and says Takumi has to be erased. All Takumi feels is betrayal. He was right all along, Rimi was working for Shogun. He charges toward Rimi and struggles with her, thinking to himself that Rimi deserves to die. Suddenly, their fight is interrupted when Kozue smashes Rimi aside, launching her into the lockers nearby. Rimi falls down, dead.

Outside, Suwa is having a good day. He set up a porter nearby to provoke this violence, in order to give him an opening to extract Takumi's CODE sample. The Third Melt is this evening, so everyone will be too busy dealing with that to investigate this incident.

Takumi, having seemingly been rescued from one bloodthirsty murderer by another, flees upstairs. Along the way, he encounters Misumi, alongside a delinquent. Misumi, who has just been to the roof and saw what's left of his girlfriend, is Not Happy. After seeing blood on Takumi's clothing, Misumi initially thinks Takumi killed her, but the delinquent convinces Misumi otherwise, believing Takumi too weak to kill anyone.

The delinquent then mentions that, during one of his girl pickups the other day, a man in a Darth Spider mask gave him a girl to 'play with'. A girl named Nishijou Nanami. He even has pictures. He shows those pictures to Takumi.

Takumi is Not Fine with this. Takumi has a knife. Takumi uses the knife. Repeatedly. Misumi is shocked and horrified by the violence Takumi is committing on the delinquent and begs him to stop. Kozue splits Misumi in half with her Di-Sword.

Kozue asks again if Takumi is her friend. Takumi affirms. It's them against the world.

Kozue and Takumi head outside, and in the courtyard they meet Sena. She tells them they were being tricked by a Porter and pleads for them to stop. Sena promises to stop the Porter, and reminds Kozue that it is dangerous to both the mind and body to use a Di-Sword too much. But it's already too late.

Kozue suddenly swings her Di-Sword at Sena. Or rather, her Di-Sword made her body attack Sena. Even as Kozue mentally apologizes and cries for help, her body attacks Sena. After a tough fight, Sena manages to use a delusion to get behind Kozue and get her in an arm lock.



At first, the fight seems resolved. But then, Kozue's Di-Sword makes her dislocate her own arm, putting it in a position to stab Sena in the back. Sena has enough time to apologize for not arriving to help earlier, and to tell Kozue that Sena valued their friendship. Then Sena dies.

Before Kozue can finish mourning, Suwa shows himself. He shoots Takumi and Kozue in the leg, then shoots Takumi a few more times to make sure he can't move while Suwa extracts the CODE sample. Before Suwa can finish the job, however, the Di-Sword musters enough strength out of Kozue's body to strike Suwa down.

Drained, wounded and bleeding out, neither Kozue nor Takumi will live long. They fall to the ground, grasp hands together, confess their mutual feelings and slowly pass away, as the sky above fades to white...

OddHaberdasher fucked around with this message at 14:20 on Sep 20, 2020

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.

Aoi Sena stepped onto the platform, carrying Orihara Kozue on her back.

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 breathing began to sound painful from time to time, but she wasn't conscious.

There was dried blood plastered to her forehead.



Gigalomaniacs couldn't use their power to heal their own wounds.

Pain compelled them to be reminded of the reality of their injuries.

They couldn't create local shared recognition to the effect of, "I'm not wounded." They couldn't make it be as if nothing had happened.

Their human instincts wouldn't permit it.

Which was to say nothing of the fact that one couldn't construct local shared recognition when the other person was unconscious. Sena could now do nothing to help Kozue.



Her expression was harsh.

She gave the lowered Kozue only a single glance, then soon shifted her gaze back to the station premises. And, glaring at a certain fixed point, she ground her teeth together.

At the end of her line of sight.



One was a tall man wearing a high-quality suit. From head to toe, he gave off an aura of refinement. He had excellent posture, and a relaxed smile played about his lips.

The other was a homeless man clad in filthy clothing. His hair was overly long, and his face had been left unshaven. Since he had his head lowered, it was impossible to be certain of his expression.

The two of them had overly contrasting appearances.

All they did was stand quietly in this dark station platform, where there were no other people.




In the past, her mother and little sister had met with a gruesome end before her eyes. And these people themselves were the culprits who had killed Sena's family.



The homeless man--Hatano--murmured desolately, his head hanging.

Her target was Norose Genichi.





Sena followed it with her eyes.

Shocked. She looked at the headless body before her.

It had been wearing a suit a second before, but now it was in a homeless person's tattered clothes. Powerless, it went toppling over backward.





In age, countenance, and demeanor, he was a completely different person from her father.



After tracing an arc and falling, it had splattered blood on the floor.

It was her father's face. Her father's head. Sena couldn't tear her eyes away from it.

--Bewitchment brought about by a delusion.

As she came to that realization. Sena's breathing went fast and shallow.



The man who was previously supposed to have been her father, who was now a separate person, called Sena's name in an intimate tone.

It was the scream in Sena's heart. Upon hearing that cry, which resembled madness and seemed to curse reality, I came running to Shinsen Station.

But by then, it was already too late.

When I entered the dim premises, the faint smell of blood hovered in the air. Kozu-pii was lying down by the wall, unconscious.

And on the platform, there was Sena's form, sunken down, her back facing me.

Her head was lowered, making her long hair cover her face, keeping me from seeing her expression.

Next to her was a headless body.

The round object lying fallen a short distance away was the head that had once been connected to the corpse, I realized.

Hatano-san. Becoming aware that it was him, I bit my lip.



A lone man stood on the tracks.

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. And--I knew what this man had done.

Suwa shook his head exaggeratedly and let out a sigh.



Without taking my eyes off Suwa, I cautiously jumped from the platform down to the tracks.

It ended up so that I was shielding the motionless Sena with my back.

I immediately started to brandish my Di-Sword. Nothing was going to come of brandishing it, though.





Pushed back by it, I almost fell over. So I desperately braced myself.

But my body didn't go through with it, and instead I curled up in a ball on the spot.

I couldn't control my own body. It moved by itself. Like it didn't belong to me.

Before I knew it, my surroundings had gone dark. Below me was a nighttime vista that one might easily mistake for a field of stars.

I came to the realization that I was standing somewhere incredibly high up.

Beside me were four guys and girls I'd never met. No, I'd seen one of them before. Yua. For some reason, she wasn't wearing her glasses.

....No, not Yua.

She was Mia. Yua's younger twin sister. Who should've died a month ago.





And my body wasn't my own. I was wearing an unfamiliar school uniform. Even my stature was more brawny.

To begin with, I could guess who I was based on the fact that there were only four other guys and girls near me, crumpled down, petrified, and wailing and crying.

This body into which my consciousness had climbed.

It belonged to one of the five victims who had died in the first New-Gen case, the "group dive"--

Without my will having any bearing on it, my field of sight slowly moved. It slid to the side. I turned back toward the heliport.

"Shogun," who had filmed that video, must be there--



The "Shogun" who'd cornered me at O-Front had put on a similar get-up.

But was he really "Shogun"?

No....

No matter how I looked at it, his legs, sticking out slightly from beneath the black cloak, were clad in slacks.

On top of that, they were as thick as those of a regular adult male.

They weren't the skinny, pitiful legs of "Shogun"--of Nishijou Takumi-- whose bones protruded visibly.

Looking more closely, even his seated height was totally different. The cloak kept them hidden, but his shoulders also appeared fairly broad.

At the very least, he wasn't Nishijou Takumi.

Nor was he carrying a video camera.

Moreover.

From the darkness spreading out at the fake Shogun's back,

I heard dragging footsteps.

And not just one set of them.

It wasn't a hallucination; those peculiar footsteps belonged to many, many people. It meant that several dozen "somethings" were lurking beyond the darkness.

These footsteps hadn't been a part of the video uploaded on MewTube. Besides, there was no way such a large number of people could've accessed this heliport.

What the hell was the source of this sound....?

The four others next to me screamed and wept in lamentation. Disregarding my will, my body, too, let out a cry and began shaking.



Something was approaching.

If we were in a cheap horror movie, these scraping footsteps would turn out to be from zombies.

Zombies, their rotting bodies swaying slowly as they walked, both their hands extending limply in front of them.

But that was only what happened in movies.

A mob of zombies couldn't possibly show up in reality, much less in 21st-century Tokyo....!

So what about it?

My chest seemed about to cave in with fear. I wanted to look away, but the owner of the body I'd entered wasn't averting his eyes.

At last, those unknown beings began to emerge from the darkness. They flooded the heliport. Sealing off our escape route.

I didn't know whether to describe this as getting the wind knocked out of my sails. What appeared were perfectly ordinary people.

They wore suits, student uniforms, parkas. They were different ages and genders, but all of them were the sort of people you'd normally see walking around Shibuya at night.



None of them said a word. They simply wove a dissonant melody, made up of the mingling of their numerous wild, nasal breaths.

For some reason, I couldn't see their expressions too well. It was like all of their faces were made of paint blurred by water.

Their faces were vague, disintegrating.

Were their faces truly deformed? Or else had my sight, watching them, gone off-kilter? I couldn't tell.

With lethargic but certain steps, they were coming our way. Like robots ordered onward by a single program.

I'd thought maybe the fake "Shogun" was giving them orders, but he didn't appear to be doing so. Once in a while, he moved his wheelchair forward a tiny bit, and afterward, he didn't budge an inch.

The five young people, being driven back, had nowhere to run.

In order to escape from this incredibly high place, 180 meters above the ground, their only option was to "dive."

Holding their blades, the crowd approached. Little by little, bit by bit. They'd already closed the distance to the point that I could reach them if I stretched my hand out.

Still silent even at this final stage, drawing near us without attempting to leap upon us all at once, the horde moved about bizarrely, but as a result, seemed far more dreadful.

Enough to make me think I wanted to get out of here right away. Even if it meant jumping off.

My field of sight slowly panned across. And mysteriously enough.



It went right to the roof of a building standing close beside Cornelius Tower--the adjacent building, not Sign City, which was on the other side of the Shuto Expressway.

"A building standing close beside Cornelius Tower." Despite the fact that nothing of the sort existed in reality.

Even so, the five of them harbored absolutely no doubts about those stairs possibly being illusory.



Holding each other's hands. It was exactly how the "group dive" incident had concluded.

They hadn't taken the "dive" because they wanted to.



We were falling. A horrendous wind pressure lashed at my body.

The girl next to me, holding my hand, screamed in a voice like a beast howling. She clutched my hand so hard, her nails dug in.

The amount of time it took us to plummet 180 meters felt like an eternity.

The dark earth rushed up with breathtaking force.

Since the area around us was also dark, I came close to lapsing into a hallucination of being sucked down endlessly into the middle of darkness.

And then.



Were crushed

With a crunching sound.

The pain of it grabbed hold of me without my expecting it. That single blow, leading straight to death.

Its impact made it seem like my entire body had exploded and been ground down to a fine powder from the inside out.

I experienced the sensation of my heart contracting violently from the shock of it.





I was walking along Tamagawa Street. My body was completely intact.

Even though the previous sensation of colliding with the ground lingered distinctly within me.

I was walking normally down the street, not that what I willed had anything to do with it.

This body, too, was sturdier than mine. This wasn't me, either. I had a nasty premonition.

Suddenly, there was a strange man walking toward me. When I saw him, I was forced to acknowledge that my hunch had been right on the money.

The man I passed was clothed in a suit, but for some reason, he wore a Darth Spider helmet on his head. The image he made was much too surreal.

There were no other passers-by. I wanted to flee from here this very second.

Despite that, the owner of the body my consciousness had come into turned back toward the Darth Spider man I'd just passed.

Darth Spider was standing right behind me.... so close, it seemed like I could feel his breath.

Coming from my blind spot, he socked me in the stomach.



After some time, I felt a searing pain in my abdomen.



Before me stood Hazuki Shino, her nurses' whites open, her stomach bloody. Though she was deathly pale, she gave me a kindly smile.

In her hand was a scalpel. She slowly laid it against my belly.

Hazuki's hand pressed down. A rift appeared in my skin.

Blood sprayed from the wound, catching on Hazuki Shino's face. Even then, her smile remained pasted on.

I watched, overwhelmed by dread and pain, as she gradually slashed me open.

I had viewed this spectacle once before. When I read Hazuki's memories.

In short, this was the "pregnant man" incident.

The pain in my stomach was becoming unbearable.

Screaming and crying, I tried to somehow escape by squirming, but my limbs were tied down to the bed, and I couldn't move away.

Shaking myself made the pain in my abdomen grow still more intense.

Her fingers writhed inside me, and the feeling of them came through to me clearly. And, just as I had seen before in her memories, Hazuki forced my wound to open up on both sides.

The sensation of skin and flesh ripping.

Taking it straight on, sans anesthesia, I--and the possesser of the body into which I'd entered--lost consciousness, then soon woke again from an excess of pain.

But Hazuki went on making the wound widen impossibly.

I'd long since stopped caring about little details like which part of me hurt, about where in my body the pain was erupting from.

I had the illusion that all of my nerve endings were being pierced through with burning needles, one by one.

And I passed out again. But I couldn't escape. The pain mercilessly forced my consciousness awake.

My body convulsed. If it meant being released from this suffering, I though I'd be fine with biting my tongue off.



This woman was insane.

She took the remants of the fetus she'd removed from her own body, and plunged it into the depths of my stomach.

Her hand--and the fetus she held there--shoved aside my innards, boring into me, gnawing deeper and deeper.

I started to vomit blood, and it got caught in my throat, and even while I seemed about to suffocate from it, I went on emitting wheezing screams.

Maybe because the pain had made my brain release too many neurotransmitters, my head felt weirdly vague, but the pain still didn't ease up, and I began to understand less and less of what was happening.

Pain was all that controlled me.

Hazuki withdrew her hand from my stomach and nodded with satisfaction.

She said softly, as if she were dealing with a patient, then abruptly fainted and collapsed in place.

At almost the exact same time, somebody entered the operating room. The sound of his shoes rang out.

But I had zero interest in whoever it was, and went on bawling and shrieking, exposed to nothing other than excruciating anguish. Seeing the unnatural swelling of my abdomen, I panicked.

Together with the pain, I had begun feeling a kind of itchiness. It itched. It itched so bad.

I wanted to scratch at the wound. But my hands were bound to the bed, and I couldn't do it.



He picked Hazuki up in his arms and left the operating room, then, after some time, returned by himself.

I didn't know what he was thinking, but he had a sewing needle and some fishing line with him. And he began ponderously stitching together the opening of my wound.

At this point, the pain it caused was absolutely nothing compared to the pain of having a foreign object pushed into my body, and the pain of my flesh tearing apart.

Darth Spider's suturing was incredibly sloppy. An elementary schooler could've done a better job.

When he pulled at the fishing line, it chafed against the holes he'd made in my skin. The wound grew more itchy.

An unbearable itchiness. An itchiness that seemed to seethe up from inside me.

Itchy. Itchy. So itchy.

I wanted to scratch it. If he'd let me, I'd be happy to die.





The ache and the itchiness subsided minutely. But it didn't mean they had gone away completely.

Now, even as I walked through the neighborhood of Shinsen, itchiness in the depths of my body, and the sensation of something foreign in my abdomen, and a pain like having fine needle plunging in and out all over my body:

They stayed behind in me as markedly as a tumor, continuing to psychologically torment me.

A dark road, with few people on it, located away from the heart of the city.

As I walked down it, I spotted a human figure coming my way. Since the road was narrow, we would have to angle ourselves sideways to pass one another.

But I went cold when I saw the appearance of the figure walking toward me. It was that Darth Spider man again.

We crossed paths. Darth Spider displayed no particular reaction.

My heart went into a tumult. An emotion resembling obsession rose at the back of my brain.

A nasty old rear end in a top hat had been hitting on my woman. It pissed me off. I wanted to kill him.

That feeling, truly coming out of left field, drove me into motion.

The face of "my woman" was vague in my memory. I couldn't recall her clearly. It was doubtful that she even existed in the first place.

Despite that, the face of the "nasty old rear end in a top hat who'd been hitting on my woman" appeared vividly at the back of my mind.

I'd seen that face before. He was the victim of the "staking" incident.



And in front of my eyes was the victim who'd died there. I was tightly clenching the aging man's neck.

His body convulsed violently, and bubbles frothed from his mouth, and his eyes rolled back in his head.

I went faintly cold, tasting the sensation of someone's life disappearing in my own hands.

At last, the man's body stopped moving.

After confirming this, I--Komaeda, who'd carried out the actual homicide in this case-- I took my hands off his neck, kicked his fallen corpse once in the side, and began to make my departure.

Hearing a voice, I turned around to look, and the man who should've been dead had risen, the whites of his eyes showing. His hands reached for me.

With a shriek, I punched him down. But though his movements themselves were sluggish, he kept rising, without fail. I seized his neck again.

In the same way as before, more powerfully than before, putting my whole body and spirit into it, I strangled him as hard as I could. With enough strength to snap the bones in his neck.

He soon stopped moving again. This time, I put my ear to his mouth, making sure he wasn't breathing, then let go of him. For some time, I watched over him.



His expression itself remained absolutely unchanged; he had the face of one who was dead. Yet he rose and approached me.

As I started to retreat, terrified, my foot trod on something.

When I looked down at my foot with a start, a huge number of cross-shaped stakes were scattered across the roadway.

A phrase from one of Phantasm's songs played at the back of my brain. "Strike the stake, strike the stake"

I had to drive a stake into the monster in front of me, and stop him from moving. If not, I'd be in trouble.

Controlled by that sense of danger, I hurled the rising man back against the wall. And picked up a stake.





Although the pain from it, and the sensation of an object in my stomach, kept on torturing my nerves to their very limit.

There were two human forms in my field of sight. They watched me steadily, with bated breath. One was Darth Spider.

The other was Hazuki Shino. Her uniform wasn't stained by blood now, and so I soon figured out that this wasn't the "pregnant man" incident, but instead something taking place at a different time.

I had been made to lie in bed. The needle for an IV drip was stuck in my arm.

But it wasn't as if anything were flowing into me. The liquid pouring down the IV tube was flowing backwards.

Blood.



A terribly grungy-looking bucket was the only thing at the end of the tube. Blood filled it to the brim.

Into it fell one drop, then another drop, of the blood dripping from the tube.

My head went blank. I was outstandingly dizzy.

That pleasant feeling, like my consciousness were about to go off into the distance, mingled with the ongoing pain left behind in me from the "pregnant man." And I was overcome by an amazingly peculiar sensation.

As if they were showing off to me, Darth Spider and Hazuki Shino embraced each other gently, like lovers, supporting one another. Hazuki had a blissful look on her face.

I couldn't comprehend how she could make a face like that, right in the middle of creating the dessicated corpse from the "Vampyre" case.

But before I could think about why I had trouble understanding it, the pain turned severe, and my throat became incredibly dry, and my sight steadily went dark.





I was being forced to vicariously experience the sequence of "New-Gen" murders. The pain and fear from each one of them. I was being forced to taste it.

If so, then there were still three remaining. Becoming aware of that, I despaired.

I shouted "Don't go" in my heart, but of course my voice didn't reach him.



I--Dr. Takashina--followed her without harboring any suspicions whatsoever.



While I stood there in startlement, he pushed something like gauze over my mouth. I then lost consciousness.

It wasn't just vibrating. It was being whittled away. I felt that sensation distinctly.



A number of lights, like a gathering of eyes, hung down from the ceiling. Shining brilliantly, they illuminated my face.

Suddenly a fierce lust surged up in me, and my chest tightened ardently.





They dwelt separately from my heart, my soul, the consciousness known as me, thrusting at me the ambiguity of my own existence.

As my psyche went to shreds via this mental rape, which would ultimately lead to the denial of my existence, I found myself walking under a railroad overpass.

Taking the order into consideration, this time it would be the "delicious hand"....

As expected, my body had become female. I was awfully hungry. Maybe the victim had been on a diet or something.

I crossed paths with the Darth Spider man again.

He appeared and disappeared when I least expected it. Given how much his appearance made him stand out, why hadn't the police or the media picked up on any information about him?

Darth Spider spoke for the first time. He pointed at my right hand as he said it. A surreal spectacle.



For some reason, it was holding five unwrapped skewers of chicken. Each skewer was sticking out from between the fingers of my closed fist.

Warm-looking steam. The juicy scent of cooked meat.

It stimulated my appetite. My mouth watered. Unable to take it for another second, I bit in.

An intense pain bolted through my fingers. But I didn't stop chewing.

It was the first time I'd ever eaten such delicious skewered chicken.

Lots of juice poured out of the meat, splashing to the ground.

Delicious. So delicious, I thought I'd die.

I polished off the five chicken skewers in the blink of an eye.

Without my noticing it, Darth Spider had disappeared. But I didn't give a drat about such a weird guy.

I wanted to eat more. My stomach sought more food.

The fingers of my right hand throbbed with pain, but my appetite far surpassed it.

I looked back at my hand. I hadn't just been holding skewered chicken.



When had I obtained it, and how long had I been carrying it?

That, too, stopped mattering in the face of my hunger.

I sank my teeth into the meat with all my might.

Excruciating pain.

I tore it apart with my teeth.

I masticated it.

I tasted it.

I swallowed it. It was a soft and fairly fatty meat. I bit further into it.

Both my hand and the area around my mouth had gone slick with lard, but I didn't let it bother me. This was a deliciousness I'd never experienced before.

I bit the meat off the bone. Fat spread in my mouth, seeping in, like it was melting, leaving behind a unique aftertaste.

It hurt. For some reason, it hurt so bad, I thought I'd die. But I kept chewing.

Compared to the size of the bone, there wasn't very much of the meat itself. I'd soon devoured all of it.

At the end, I licked up the thin scraps of flesh just barely clinging to the bone, savoring even the bone's taste, almost sucking at it.



I gave them a good gnawing. Pain so intense I almost crumpled in place ran through me, and with tears streaming down my face, I lapped up the juice seeping pleasantly out from within the bones.

I ripped one of the bones off, and while collapsing in place from how the stimulation of it seared me, I rolled it around in my mouth. Crunch crunch. Munch munch.

When I swallowed it, it got trapped in my throat, and I couldn't breathe. I unconsciously began to swing my legs around, kicking out wildly.

But without my taking heed of it, a cord had been wound around my ankles, and I couldn't move freely.

Darth Spider stood before me.

As I writhed, the exposed bones of my right hand struck the ground, and the vibrations from it sent pain spreading through my whole body, like waves on water.





As I walked, I leaned on the shoulder of a thuggish guy with his face pummeled to a pulp, looking like he was about to cry.

The three of them were in an awful state, myself included. Their clothes were drenched in blood, and their faces had puffed up, and they'd chipped a number of teeth.

The one who had done this was probably.... me. They were the trio of thugs who'd picked a fight with me. And after this, they would have their torsos "torn apart," and would die.

Again, the Darth Spider man stood at the end of their path.

He forced the helmet to come off.




He was Hazuki Shino's accomplice. So he'd been the other New-Gen criminal....

Suwa rammed a knee into the belly of the guy who was making a grab for him. The polish evident in how he carried himself set him utterly apart from the thugs and their violence.

Suwa's gaze penetrated me. I awoke to the fact that he was the one setting this alien to work.

I told myself this was a delusion, but it didn't do any good. Faced with absolute terror and overwhelming violence, I just sank down and pissed myself. Afterward, it was all I could do to look dazedly up at that monstrosity--





Three times? One time? Seven times?

Four times! Two times! Five times!

Human flesh is pretty drat tasty.

It hurts.

No more.

Dark Spider's get-up is surreal. A gag.

Well, how many times have I died? Who're you saying died? I'm not dead.

That monster is, like, straight out of a horror movie. But Suwa said the monster came from "Spark Wars." Yeah, what about it?

Human flesh is pretty drat tasty. The bones, too.

Why does Darth Spider wear black?

Hazuki Shino is hot stuff. But she's scary. She's crazy. That's what makes her a hottie.

If Darth Spider is made of bones, what's his meat?

How many times have I died for a gag? Wait, is it a gag or what?

Not passed away. Died.

Death. DEATH. death.

it's surreal. no more. look, bones.

i don't wanna die. black. i died.

OddHaberdasher fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Sep 27, 2020

A gaze falls from the sky.

The stare pierces through the rain clouds coated in pitch black. It pours down on me like the rain.




I don't feel the chill of the rain.

In fact, the droplets on my cheeks seem almost warm. It's the first time I've thought of rain as being warm.





No one is here. No one moves. No one lives. The only thing audible is the sound of the rain, continuing to fall.



If everything remains this way-- anything alive and anything dead-- will it all be gently enveloped and washed away?

I, too, hear him murmur this in his heart.




It's my fault he's ended up like this. If I handled things better, he wouldn't have needed to become involved.

Guilt torments me. I blame myself.




To one whose heart was so timid, fragile as glass, and so pure, it shattered into pieces.

I didn't want him to suffer, at least at the end of all this.

Lying there, he looks up at me with empty eyes.

I push aside my emotions. Despite seeing him, I look away to keep myself from weeping.

If--

If you 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 your eyes reflect? Would your world be reduced to what my eyes reflect?

You are what's reflected in my eyes. I am what's reflected in yours. Viewing it that way instantly reduces the size of the world.



Whether it's a painful world, a difficult world, or even a sorrowful world, I'll make it so you no longer have to see it all.




Hanging my head-- I spread my arms apart--

Like aiming to fly above the rain clouds.

Like catching all of the rain.













I softly embrace his head. His body is empty of tension. It's as if he's prepared for death.

His demeanor tells me it isn't merely conceit on my part.

--He wore a very peaceful smile.

That smile is so sad.

Even though I've held it in all this time, my tears blur my vision.

Because I didn't want him to see those tears,

Because he had finally attained peace, I didn't want to worry him any further.




I kissed him on the lips. A cold and dry sensation, seeming more and more sorrowful.

But his trembling stops at my kiss. I cherish how my warmth has been of some use to him.

Because he'll see my tearful face if my lips leave his, because I'll want to kiss him again if my lips leave his,

Because, if my lips leave his, I'll become selfish, and I won't be able to kill him,

I remained like that, plunging my Di-Sword into his chest.




You can sleep as long as you want now--




It isn't blue.

Not a speck of azure anywhere.

And so, we reach Ending B, titled 'Crying Sky' in the NoAH release. With this, we've reached the end of Chaos;Head. There is still Chaos;Head Love Chu Chu, but I have not had much luck in finding any materials (CGs, etc.) the way that I did for NoAH. I'll probably go through it all in one post.

OST: Gladioul



I'd just like to preemptively thank all of you. Making this LP has been a learning experience, and like all learning experiences, there have been rough patches. This game, too, is a bit divisive in how people view it. Regardless, you've stuck with me through all of it, and for that I am truly grateful.



Thanks for sticking it out with me.

OddHaberdasher fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Sep 28, 2020