A/N: Written for the
Short Oneshot Competition
WIXOSS bingo, the non-flash version, #157 - blue (colour)
Diversity Writing Challenge, d79 – write using a paradox
cycling despair
Despair begot despair. But then that begged the question: where did despair begin? Did it spring out of the ground and infect someone like a virus and then gradually evolve into an epidemic? Is it like Adam, created by God and who then goes on to be the forefather of the whole of mankind and thus the whole theory of creation would fall apart without the existence of God.
Mayu sat at the centre of despair, so did that make her the God? She ruled over them, to be sure: the LRIGs and the Selectors but she was a God in a little prison she named Heaven and who granted her the Adam and Eve that began the games in the first place?
It's a puzzle, and Ruko isn't sure she has the means to solve it. There's simply too much missing from the picture, and that's after everything they've put together. Mayu: who created Yuki and Tama – Kuro and Shiro… How did they come to her? And how come, when she defeated her, did the game not disappear entirely, but only change shape and form?
The girls who became LRIGs were freed, yes, but something else sprung up from amongst them: this new game that put memories and regrets on the line and turned a game of balancing numbers into a game of overriding them. What did that mean, in the end? LRIGs that weren't humans once but rather imprints of certain memories – the strongest memories… How did they live as normal humans, at the end of it all?
Some didn't. Some did. Most twisted along the way and then came the bookmaker to collect all those twisted souls. And he made so many more twisted souls. LRIGs that weren't quite human to begin with walked in human bodies increased amongst the humans and that was more frightening than humans who became LRIGs and then humans again.
But some things were the same, Ruko found. Whether they won or lost, they suffered for it. Whether they fought or refused to fight, they suffered for it. The ninety day limit was new. The coins and coin bets were new. But the desperate fight they didn't fully understand wasn't new at all.
If you had memories to regret, the LRIG would come, they said. If you had emotions that blared from your soul, the LRIG would come. There had to be a source of those too, she thought. Like Mayu had created the rules of the first Selector battles, then there must be someone now as well. But above them all was someone else still: the unknown figure they gave the designation of "god" to, because they simply had nothing else to place in that position.
There was only one way to search for the god, and that was to play and beat the games. And so she had to throw herself into them again, once she knew of them. Play and play and hope she didn't lose the memories she so desperately needed in the process. Hope she didn't maim souls irreparably in the process – but she'd made that decision in the last round: her wish was to free them all and reverse the damage that had been cause and that was a wish worth any price if it could be fulfilled at the end of the road.
That was the weight of the challenge she'd taken on, but as long as she could end it, it wouldn't matter.
And so she fought. And though she knew allowing the time limit to expire was a way to win as well, she couldn't do it. She risked losing too much and stood to gain nothing. She needed to unlock the closed door on the game's secrets, and that meant fighting and winning and continuing to fight and win, no matter how many memories and regrets she trampled on along the way.
She was Kominato Ruko who could survive defeat and turn it into a victory. She was Kominato Ruko who had LRIGs for friends and LRIGs for enemies and LRIGs she'd wished could live happy fulfilling lives as humans… and, sometimes, she wondered if that wasn't the cause of this new game of Selector battles they faced.
Was it because she'd wished for Tama and Yuki to be human? Was it because Ulith had disappeared to fill the void, and Mayu's soul had finally been set free?
Or perhaps it was because Mayu had ripped her own soul in two to create Shiro and Kuro, thus creating an imbalance in the world.
She couldn't prove either of those. Or disprove them. So they were simply theories she explored while searching more: more hypothesis, and more hints to paint the full picture she sought.
Or perhaps it was a different sort of imbalance, accounting for the girls who'd died during the games… but that didn't make sense. The number of LRIGs grew and humans waned, but overall numbers didn't change at all. New bodies didn't spring out of the earth for them.
Ruko couldn't find the answer and so she fought on and on. Every time she won five coins, she made the same wish, to let her remember everything up till that point. And so she searched and searched, because "everything" was all-encompassing and thus included the answer, if she knew it. She didn't. So she had to keep on searching for it and she couldn't afford to let anything slip her by along the way.
And, outside of her, around her and elsewhere as well, the games went on. People fought. People own. People lost. LRIGs grew in number. Sadness grew in number. A few managed to survive the time limit and go on, barely realising the weight of memories that had slipped them by but most realised the gaping holes in their fabric left behind. She'd seen many of them. Tracked all the people she'd fought and beaten and her friends helped her, just like they'd stood behind her the first time they'd entered the Selector battles.
And outside of her and her own agenda, they had their reasons to fight as well. Hitoe searched for the memories of friends she'd lost. Kazuki searched for the past whose subtleties had escaped him until Hanayo coaxed the most recent ones into light. Some sought to forget. Others sought to recall. But all those memories carried the weight of emotions behind them and they were a potent force to behold.
So it came back to the question: despair begot despair but where did it all begin? LRIGs reached out to and created Selectors, and if they won, they entered human bodies and often entered the games with new LRIGs and thus it went on. That part, at least, hadn't changed from the old battles: LRIGs found no peace in their victories, even though they longed for it so desperately. Battles upon battles failed to open the floodgates of knowledge she sought, so where was the God of the Wixoss world hiding from them?