Untold Tales of Zero Escape

by sonicking2004

The last Zero has hosted his last game, and Sigma and his comrades are now prepared to save the world, but what of those who paved the way? How were Alice & Clover going to return home? Did Akane and old man Tenmyouji ever find closure? And what happened to Diana and Sigma after they used the teleporter to save that most precious to them? Those stories remained untold, until now.

Schrodinger's Cat

As Akane looked up at the enormous alien machine a flood of memories filled her mind: the first time she and Junpei had seen it back when Carlos showed them where it was in the shelter, what she had went through to gain possession of it and bring it up here, and so forth. Overlaying all that was the memory of far too many years of loneliness. She had thought that she had outgrown such emotions after so long a separation, and indeed serving as a surrogate mother of sorts to Kyle had filled the void in her somewhat.

Still she had felt a strange tangle of emotions back when she had heard that Junpei was coming up here in response to the letter Sigma had sent him as Zero: eagerness to see him again, fear that he might not feel the same, hope that he might remember what they went through together in spite of what measures she took to ensure that he wouldn't, dread that he actually did remember and that might cause the AB Project to fail. She had thought that when she saw him in the flesh, looking and sounding like an old man and nothing like the man she loved. While he did indeed look and sound older, however, there was enough of him in his face and voice that the emotional distance she had hoped for didn't come. Things didn't get much better when she heard him tell the others that the reason he came here was to find her, and Akane had a hard time sticking to the script and not removing Kyle's helmet to show him that she was there. Still Akane had waited too long and sacrificed too much to chance throwing it all away in the 11th hour on an impulsive whim. There was too much at stake, 6 billion lives, which was more important than her own happiness, and she stroked the ring Junpei had given her clear back then as she tamped down the mental lid on her emotions that threatened to spill over.

"So is this it?" Akane heard Alice ask as she entered the room behind her, Clover entering right along with her, "This the basis for your 'Schrodinger's Cat' idea?"

Akane took a steadying breath before she turned around to face the others and said, "That's right, Alice. This is how I intend to send you back to your time."

"But...what is it, Kanny?" Clover asked in confusion, her wide eyes fixed on the alien device casting huge shadows around the room.

"It's a transporter," Akane explained to her, "An ancient and alien device capable of sending matter across space and time."

"A 'transporter'?" Clover asked her, "Like the kind in that old sci-fi show with the captain who speaks with too many dramatic pauses, his pointy-eared second-in-command, and the red-shirted guys who are always dying on every episode's away mission?"

"Sort of, but not quite," Akane told her, pointing out different parts of the machine, "After the transporter is activated by inserting the cards in the proper order on the core here, and a destination is chosen on the console here, the machine then scans the objects placed on the bed-like Input Pods here, anylizing them down to the molecular level. After that the atomic data is transported through space-time to the export pods at the destination, which uses that data to recreate the objects scanned."

"You mean to say that this thing is like a fancy 3D printer?" Alice asked her, sounding rather unenthused, "That doesn't sound too useful. I mean why would we want a second us to be stuck here as well?"

"I agree that wouldn't be too useful, unless you were trying to build up an army composed entirely of yourselves," Akane quipped, smiling slightly at her own joke, "But that's not how this transporter works. In fact I'm certain that you can't use it in that way. You see, the scanner sends the atomic data to the export pod located at the space-time destination chosen on the console."

" 'A different location in space-time'?" Clover asked in confusion, "Are you saying that...?"

"The export pod that receives the scan data isn't the one here," Akane confirmed with a nod, "but rather one that can be found in the past, future or an alternate timeline."

"You're saying that you can use this transporter to anywhere, or rather anywhen we want to go?" Alice asked.

"Almost," Akane clarified, "There are some restrictions limiting what destinations you can choose. First is that the transporter has to exist and be in working order in the destination chosen. If it's damaged, dismantled or outright destroyed there the transportation will fail. The second restriction is that the transporter has to have a full charge both now and then. It takes all the energy stored in the core to scan an object and transmit the atomic data, and the same applies to receiving that data and using it to recreate the object. What's more is that it takes at least ten months to charge back up again. This means there's a twenty month void surrounding any potential destination where the transporter has already been used, either for sending or for receiving, negating any such destinations including this moment on this timeline. Other than that anything goes."

"I see," Clover said, "But what happens to the scanned object itself?"

"Nothing really, It's still there," Akane answered her, "It's like how when you send a fax the paper doesn't actually travel there physically, instead the machine on the other end reproduces what you sent."

"Are you kidding me!?" Alice asked, and Akane heard the irritation bordering on full out anger in her voice, "You get our hopes up with this big plan for sending us home, and now you're telling us that we're going to just be faxing a...a fake us there!?"

"I see. So that's how this looks to you," Akane said, a note of sadness slipping out against her control, then she turned to Clover and asked, "Tell me, Clover, do I strike you as a fake? Does Junpei?"

"What? Of course not! Why would you ask such a thing...?" Clover started to ask in surprise, then her eyes widened in realization as she said, "Wait, are you saying that...?"

"Yes, I am," Akane confirmed with a nod, "The me standing before you, and the Junpei out there with the others, actually arrived in this timeline by means of this teleporter."

"But what about the Akane and Junpei originally from this time?" Clover asked, "What happened to them?"

"They...we died," Akane answered her, "Junpei and I were among the six participants killed in the Mars Mission Simulation Project. "

"You were killed? But how? Who killed you?" Alice asked her, "Wait...wasn't Radical 6, the virus that killed 6 billion people, released from the Mars Mission Test Site, and didn't Free The Soul claim responsibility for that? Were they the ones who killed you?"

"You could say that," Akane confirmed, "After we, together with Phillip and Sigma, infiltrated the test facility in order to stop them we, along with the other participants at DCOM, were captured by FtS's leader Brother. He then locked us in an underground shelter, presented himself to us as Zero, and forced us into a game where the only way to escape was for six of us to die."

"Brother," Alice growled, "First my father, then Radical 6 and now this? Just how many lives is that man going to ruin anyway!?" Alice then took a deep breath and, in a low and calm voice that sounded even more dangerous than her angry growl, asked Akane, "Just who is he, Miss Kurashiki? Who is Brother?"

"I don't know," Akane answered her.

"Don't know or won't say?" Alice retorted, her voice laced with suspicion.

"I hadn't discovered his identity on this timeline or on the one I originally came from," Akane explained patiently, "I only learned that the Zero of the Decision Game we were being forced to play was Zero because he openly admitted it when Junpei and I arrived in this timeline. There was once a time when I could have accessed the morphogenic field to see if any of my other selves learned who Brother really was, but I'm afraid that I'm far too old now and my abilities aren't as sharp as they used to be."

"Why didn't Junpei tell us any of this?" Clover asked her, "He was trapped there with you, right? And I know that he was restricted by Zero...that is Dr. Klim, from telling us about his involvement in the past Nonary Games. However, even after the Ambidex Game was over Junpei still said that he never found you after you and your brother vanished."

"That's because he doesn't remember, to which I admit is largely my fault," Akane told her, "You see, all of us who were forced to take part in the Decision Game wore bracelets similar to what we wore in this one. However, those bracelets were designed to inject us with a drug mixture after being awake for ninety minutes, one which would knock us back out and erase our memories of that period of time. It seems as though Zero...Brother had a fine control over the drug's injections as at least on one occasion he was able to exempt us from the injection of the memory-erasing drug. When we escaped from the shelter our bracelets came off, but when it became clear that our mission to prevent the release of Radical 6 had failed I used my bracelet to inject Junpei with a large enough dose of the drugs to ensure Junpei forgot everything that happened in the shelter or even tracking me down to DCOM."

"I don't understand, why would you do that?" Clover asked her.

"Because I had learned from Sigma and Phi that Junpei was an important part of the AB Project, that apparently he remembered nothing about the Decision Game or about finding me," Akane answered, "He seemed to have stopped looking for me a few years before Sigma contacted him as Zero, spending most of his time raising Quark instead. Since the AB Project was the best chance we had to save everyone I felt it best to not risk it failing by changing anything that happened. In order to save everyone I was willing to sacrifice my own happiness, my own life even, in order to make the AB project succeed."

Akane let out a melancholy sigh before she said, "Anyway, the only clue I learned about Brother's identity before we escaped the shelter was that apparently he had been born in that shelter. His parents used the Teleporter to transport him and his sister into the past. That means his parents must be amongst those of us who were trapped in there."

"His sister? I thought Brother had a younger brother," Alice corrected her, "Isn't that what Dio was supposed to be a clone of?"

"The brother in question is the son of the couple who raised him, they weren't related by blood," Akane clarified, "At any rate if you want to get any answers out of him you'll have to use the transporter to go back and ask him yourselves."

"But how can we?" Clover asked her, "You guys just finished arguing about how the transporter creates another version of ourselves at another point in time, that we ourselves don't actually go anywhere. How will using it get us any answers."

"I was just thinking about that, and I think I have a solution," Akane told them, "It's highly likely that with everything we've been through, especially you Clover, that you guys have gained the ability to SHIFT. If so then with the right push you might be able to send your consciousnesses to the versions of yourselves the teleporter creates back then."

"Are you going to pretend that you're going to stab us, like you had with Phi and Sigma?" Alice asked mockingly.

"I doubt that would work with either you," Akane said with a wry smile, "There has to be a sense of genuine mortal danger for SHIFT abilities to manifest, and even if you hadn't been trained to defend yourselves in dangerous situations I doubt that a trick you have seen before would be good enough. Actually I intend to destroy this teleporter after I use it this one last time to send you two back. Not only would this keep it from falling back into the hands of Free the Soul or other groups like them, but if you're still in the import pods when it goes then the threat of being caught in the explosion should be enough of a shock to cause you to SHIFT back into the past."

"WHAT THE HELL!?" Alice bellowed suddenly, "You're going to BLOW US UP!?"

"That's just a suggestion, and it's the best one I could come up with to get you personally back there," Akane said as she held her hands up placatingly, "If you feel it to be too much of a risk, and I wouldn't blame you if you did, you could just choose to just use the teleporter instead to send 'yourselves' back there, and I'll wait until after you're out of here safely before I destroy it for good. Of course you will be 'stuck here', as you put it, and you won't be able to learn what your others had learned about Brother or if he escaped justice for what he's done."

Alice snarled at her, but from the way she fidgeted and her forehead worked Akane could tell that her words had gotten through to Alice, that she was seriously considering it. "Um, Kanny?" Akane heard Clover say somewhat quietly, the nervous tension in it making her voice vibrate slightly, "Is this really going to work?"

"The transporter? Absolutely, Junpei and I are proof enough for that," Akane assured her, "The only risky part of this plan is whether or not you have enough of a connection to the morphogenic field by this point to be able to SHIFT, but this is the only way I have that can possibly get you back home."

"Th-th-then I'm going to do it," Clover stammered, "I'll place my faith in your plan, I want to see my brother again."

Alice let out a disgusted-sounding grunt of frustration before saying, "Fine, then I'll do it too. Even if I wind up dying in that explosion it'll be more tolerable than spending one more minute in this place, and if I actually get a chance to wrap my hands around Brother's scrawny neck that will make this totally worth it."

Akane nodded in acknowledgement, then she inserted the cards into the core before moving to the console and threw the switch. As they climbed into the now opened pods Clover asked Akane, "So where, I mean when are you sending us to?"

"11:48 am on January 1, 2029, on the timeline where we have stopped the release of Radical 6 and escaped the shelter successfully," Akane told them as she located that point on the timeline displayed on the console.

"Why there?" Alice asked.

"Partly because I don't think that you want to live through the time when Radical 6 is turning the world into Hell, and I wouldn't do that to you even if you asked," Akane answered her, "Also shortly after that the us from that time briefly had Brother in custody, though we had no way of holding him as his followers from Free the Soul had cleared out everything and anything that could have been used as evidence of his crimes against us, including the teleporter, before we came to."

"How do you know this if you can't access the morphogenic field anymore?" Clover asked, sounding confused rather than suspicious of her.

"I still remember a bit from when I did access the field when I was younger, back when I was setting up the AB Project," Akane explained, "Of course it got harder and harder to recall the memories gained from the field as I got older and they were replaced by memories from this timeline. One thing I feel sure of is that you will have until until shortly after noon to get back to DCOM. Any later and Brother will either have escaped or be shot dead."

"And since Free the Soul is moving the transporter I'm guessing that we'll have to fight our way through them first," Alice said dryly.

Akane nodded as she added, "However, unlike Clover's mission in which she got captured, this time you'll have the drop on them as they won't be expecting anyone to be coming from the transporter."

"I see," Alice said, "Anything else?"

"Maybe ," Akane said, "In the ward we were trapped in there was an anagram. I wasn't sure if I'd solved it correctly as there were left over letters, but what I'd come up with was 'If you are with me there are ten of us.' Now I'm thinking that Zero, Brother, had been trying to give us a clue as to his identity, but I can't think of what the remaining letters spell."

"What are the letters?" Clover asked.

"L, E, T, A and D," Akane told her.

After a moment's pause, Alice said, "Could it be 'Delta'?"

"Maybe," Akane said thoughtfully, then when the console chimed she looked down and nodded and said, "Okay, the destination's locked in. You guys ready?"

"Let's do this," Alice said with a nod from her pad.

"I'm ready," Clover agreed from the pad on Akane's other side, "You take care of yourself, okay Kanny?"

"You too, Clover," Akane agreed with a nod and a smile, "Stay safe over there."

Alice barked out a laugh as she said, "Brother and his group of losers won't know what hit them!"

Akane smiled at the last exchange, then she touched the highlighted section on the console, causing the lids of the pods to close over Alice and Clover. Then, as the pods began to glow, she looked around the room until she spotted the device she and Sigma had identified as something used to calculate the aliens' numeral system to the base 10 numbers humans like her used. Picking it up she felt that it had a good heft to it, and she carried it back over to the console. Lifting it over her head just as the pods stopped glowing, Akane paused as a seed of doubt entered her heart. What if even after being exposed to the mental altering effects of Radical 6 and all the dangerous situations here on Rhizome 9, after all the time they have spent around other people able to access the morphogenic field, their own connection to the field was still not strong enough? If they were unable to SHIFT then Akane would effectively be killing them, and with everything that they've been through together Akane considered Clover to be one of her best friends. Then she imagined the furious look on Alice's face and the hurt and betrayed look on Clover's as the pods opened and they realized that they were still here, and Akane squeezed her eyes shut as she swung down hard.

Hearing the crackle of broken electrical circuits, Akane opened her eyes again to see the panel of the display cracked in half and practically folded up and around her makeshift club, the supporting column knocked askew. For a moment nothing much happened beyond a few sparks flying from the console's damaged areas, and Akane wondered if she had misunderstood Carlos about this being all it took to destroy the teleporter completely. Just as she thought to find something to pry open the pods and let Alice and Clover out, however, huge electrical bolts began arcing out of the core from every angle, engulfing the teleporter's other components, splashing against the walls and striking the floor around her, giving her the impression that she was caught in the worst lightning storm in all of history. The light show was such that for a few terrible seconds Akane simply stood and stared, her knees locked and her eyes wide with fear. Then she turned and sprinted towards the exit. Before she got halfway to the door Akane already felt her legs and lungs burning and she found herself wishing that she hadn't chosen to wear this stupid, heavy old-ladies dress. When a bolt struck her shoulder hard and turned it numb she stumbled and nearly fell, but she regained her balance turned outside the door. Akane barely made it seven feet down the hall when the base was rocked by an explosion from within the teleporter room, the shockwave sending her flying forward then landing painfully on and sliding across the polished floor.

Once the stars cleared from her eyes and she realized that she was still alive Akane simply remained lying where she was, stunned. Then, feeling every ache and pain of what she just went through, Akane began pushing herself up from the floor as she groaned, "I'm way too old for this shit." Despite her bitter words, Akane felt a sense of wonder at how impressive the explosion was, much more than Carlos' description made it seem. She briefly wondered how much more powerful it would have been if the machine had a full charge at the time, imagining the moon splitting in half by it, before her thoughts turned once again to Alice and Clover. She fervently hoped once again that they had managed to SHIFT back to 2029, that she hadn't killed them and nearly killed herself in vain. Though the logical part of her brain told her that they were too new at this to manage it, that they were likely vaporized in the explosion, Akane chose to hold on to the hope instead as that was pretty much all she had left since she had chosen to proceed with with her plan that didn't include...

"Akane!" she heard a familiar voice bellow over the sound of pounding feet, an impossible voice that shouldn't be here. Certain that she had suffered a head injury that was causing her to hallucinate she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, coughing slightly as she did so, but when she opened her eyes again she saw him running down the hall towards her with a speed she wouldn't have believed him capable of anymore.

"Jumpy?" Akane groaned in disbelief when he skidded to a stop beside her, helping her to her feet with a strength that belied his appearance as a frail old man.

"Akane, what the hell...!?" Junpei started to ask before he was interrupted by a fit of coughing from the smoke still in the air. "Akane, what's going on here?" Junpei asked once again, "What happened to you?"

"I got mauled by Shrodenger's Cat," Akane quipped, rolling her eyes at the irony.

"Shrodenger's...?" Junpei started to ask in confusion, then Akane saw in his eyes that he'd made the connection just before he said, "Alice, and Clover?"

"They're both fine," Akane assured him, "though they're probably wishing that I'd sent them with a large water canteen and about a gallon of sunscreen."

"So the plan that they mentioned, you're telling me that it worked?" Junpei asked her.

"They're back home in 2029," she told him with a nod, "just as they wanted. What about you, though? I'd have thought you would be halfway to Earth with Quark by now."

"We were about to launch when I heard that explosion," Junpei answered her, "I was worried that we might have missed one of Dio's bombs, that you might have been hurt or worse, so I convinced Sigma, that is Dr. Klim, to delay the takeoff while I checked it out."

He does still care! Akane thought to herself, though she frantically worked to smother the thought before the happy relief could show on her face. "Well I certainly won't be doing anything like that again in this lifetime, even if I was able," Akane assured him in the most chagrined expression possible, "I don't think that my old bones could take it."

" 'Old bones' huh? Poppycock, you don't look a day over 50," Junpei said with that same lopsided smile that made her fall in love with him back when they were kids, and even though she knew he was lying though his teeth, despite her determination to not let it happen, Akane still found herself blushing at his praise. "Still, it's a good thing that you had...whatever that thing was so deep in this facility," Junpei continued, "Any closer to the surface and you could have possibly suffered an atmospheric breach here."

"You're right," Akane acknowledged, feeling chagrined for real, "I had seriously underestimated just how powerful the..." What she was going to say died in her throat when she noticed that Junpei was not looking directly at her anymore, his face having lost its smile. "Junpei?" Akane said in equal parts confusion and concern.

"That ring..." Junpei said in a low voice, and Akane realized with a shock that she had been working so hard to not focus on how flustered she had been getting at having him here when she thought he had left, to not let it show and pretend like she wasn't feeling that way, that she hadn't realized that Junpei was still holding onto the hand he'd helped her up with. Her right hand, to be specific, the one that still bore the ring Junpei had given her a lifetime ago before she literally pledged her life to the success of the AB Project, and he was currently staring at that ring with a thoughtful intensity. Was he remembering something from the past that she'd stolen from him with Brother's drugs?

"I...I had a ring much like that a long time ago," Junpei continued, "I can't remember exactly when I got it for it was so long ago, but I'm pretty sure it was after you and your brother vanished from the incinerator during the last Nonary Game, you remember?" When Akane nodded, Junpei said, "Anyway I held onto that ring I'd gotten for the longest time. The last time I can remember clearly having it, though, was sometime just before Christmas of 2028. After that things get blurry. Not sure why, maybe I had a bit too much to drink after a particularly bad day at the agency, but the next clear memory I have is waking up in some nowhere motel just after the start of 2029 and finding that my ring was gone. I found out that someone named Carlos had checked me in, and I used every trick I could think of to try and find him as I believed he might have been the one who took it. I spent nearly as long trying to find the ring as I have seeking you out. In the end, however, I had to accept that both of you were lost to me for good, and I had...until Dr Klim sparked that hope again recently."

"I, I see," Akane said stiffly, working hard to keep her emotions under control. She wasn't sure if she was affected more by how she felt hearing about how long he had looked for her, both before and after what he couldn't remember happened at D-Com, the pain she had at hearing he's given up, or her rebounding heart at learning that he had enough hope remaining that Sigma's communication was able to spark it back to life. However, nothing would be served by letting any of that show now.

"Your right hand, huh?" Junpei said thoughtfully as he ran his thumb over the ring on it, "I remember that back in elementary school you had a dream of wearing a ring on your left hand. I guess whoever the lucky guy was didn't know you as well as he thought." He chuckled once, and in that moment Akane saw a glimmer of the Junpei she once knew in his eyes. Then the smile fell from his face as he released her hand at last, and she heard no hint of the previous levity in his voice as he continued, "Something he and I have in common, I suppose."

Or "he" made a simple mistake, Akane thought quietly to herself, remembering how Junpei himself had placed the ring on that hand before they transported to this timeline because it "looked like the left" from his perspective. The memory of that moment moment was almost enough to make her laugh again just as she had back then, but the pain she felt at Junpei not so subtly hinting that he didn't really know her was enough to sober her up. "I suppose so," Akane said aloud in the same emotionless tone.

For a moment it was silent in the corridor, neither Junpei nor Akane looking directly at each other, the mood hanging between them rather somber. Then Junpei cleared his throat and said, "I suppose I should be getting back to the hanger. Quark is probably getting rather worried by now, and I'm sure that Dr Klim isn't happy about having to wait in the control room all this time."

"Yes, of course," Akane said simply, clasping her hands together before her as they hung down, "Your home is waiting for you guys."

Junpei nodded in acknowledgement, then he started to turn back the way he came before he turned his head to look at her once more and ask, "Akane? This plan of yours: the years you spent preparing for it, what you had to do, what you yourself went through...was there anything that you regret?"

"Just... one thing," Akane admitted, "Even though it would have jeopardized the success of the AB Project, though the future of humanity depended on my doing everything correctly, I always regretted not letting you join Crash Keys when you asked, that we couldn't spend those years together."

"What?" Junpei asked in confusion, "I don't understand, what are you...?"

"It's okay if you don't remember," Akane interjected, "For us the past is the past, right? No more communicating over the morphogenic field, no more SHIFTing. No way to turn back the clock, our past's set in stone, so there's no use in thinking about what might have been."

Akane thought she saw Junpei nod slightly as he turned away again, then he spun back towards her again suddenly as he blurted out, "Come back with me, Akane!"

"Wh...what?" Akane said genuinely surprised. She had not expected this turn in the conversation at all.

"Come back to Earth with me, with us," Junpei said once again, his eyes more alive than she had seen them since his arrival here with Quark, "Your part in this AB Project is done, right, and there's nothing more that you can do to help it along? Then there's nothing keeping you here anymore, so you can come back with us. We can't change what happened in the past, but we can spend our remaining years together, and I'm sure that Quark would like to have you as well. Besides, it would be nice to have someone around who will call me on my bullshit. Heaven knows that there's no one down there who has the balls to do so." Junpei then extended his hand out to her as he said, "So come with me."

"That...that sounds wonderful, Jumpy," Akane said, feeling one hand itching to reach out towards Junpei's even as she gripped it even tighter with her other to the point where it started going numb and her ring bit into both, "but I can't. I'm sorry, but I've been up here for far too long, and I'm afraid that that Earth's gravity wouldn't do my old heart any favors. Besides, even if could go with you without dying shortly afterwards, I couldn't go and abandon Kyle. I know that he might look like an adult, but emotionally he's still very much a child. I'm afraid I put him through far too much with this Ambidex Game, and since he spent his entire life up here he would likely fare as well with Earth's gravity as me, so I must stay here with him."

Junpei's face fell along with his hand, and Akane saw the light fade from his eyes as he acknowledged, "Yeah, that makes sense."

"What about you, Junpei?" Akane asked, her heart irrationally holding onto the last shred of hope that their reunion here might have a happy ending, "You and Quark could stay here instead of returning to Earth. Rhizome 9 is hardly the only establishment we've set up up here, and some of the others are so much nicer than this one that you would forget that you are not back on Earth. We could pick one and claim it as our own, spend our remaining time swinging on a porch swing as these events fade into our forgotten memories. Also, if Quark ever got tired of exploring the bases up here he could take the shuttle back to Earth. Even if there was nobody left to pilot it back it could still get him there safely operating on autopilot."

Junpei let out a melancholy sigh punctuated by a chuckle that sounded self-disparaging more than anything before he said, "You make that sound so tempting, Akane, but I'm afraid I must pass. I know I may look like I can bench press Kyle over my head, but I believe that the lack of gravity up here will have a similar effect on my old ticker that you've said Earth's would have on yours. That alone wouldn't be enough to stop me from taking you up on your offer, but then there's Quark. I promised him that I would stay with him, and it wouldn't be fair to him for me to cut short what time I have left on a selfish whim."

Akane had been expecting that answer, but she still found that it hurt. Straightening her back, Akane looked Junpei in the eye and said in a voice as heavy as her heart, "So, that's that then, I suppose."

"I suppose it is," Junpei answered her as he extended his hand to her once more, this time as a farewell greeting rather than an invitation. When she gripped it in her own, Akane was surprised when he pulled her into a firm, one-armed hug as Junpei said in a low, husky voice, "You take care of yourself now, okay Kanny?"

"You too, Junpei," Akane responded, not daring to raise her voice above a whisper, "Give Quark my best, will you?"

"I will," Junpei said as he released her, then he turned and walked back down the hall. Before he got too far, however, Akane called out, "Junpei?" When he looked over his shoulder at her Akane continued, "That ring you lost? What you intended with it, I would have said yes."

Junpei said nothing in response, merely tightening his lips as he nodded, his slow and heavy stride making him look even more like an old man than before. For a mad minute Akane was tempted to change her mind, to throw away her prior commitments and follow Junpei to Earth, but she held firm to her resolve and whispered soft as a breeze, "Goodbye Jumpy. I love you," then used a nearby wall for support as her body was racked with silent sobs. Then, when her tears finally dried, Akane wiped them away and walked down the hall herself, running her hand along the wall as she did so. Junpei was wrong about one thing: even though she was closer to the finish line than ever before, her work here was not quite done just yet.

Akane stopped walking when she felt what she had been searching for: a rivot that was not set flush with the wall. When she pressed it in with her finger and gave it a small twist Akane heard a robotic voice intone, "Passcode," to which she replied in a voice that was nearly as mechanical, "Jumpy Doll." Immediately afterwards a section of the wall beside her hand slid aside, revealing it to be a door to a hidden chamber. The lights came on as she stepped across the threshold, illuminating a number of items scattered around the room: plans and models for different ideas she had for the different ideas she had for incorporating the rooms of Rhizome 9 into the Ambidex Game (many of which were rejected for being too dangerous, not dangerous enough, or simply too complicated to fit into the timetables of the different scenarios Sigma and the others might run into) as well as other odds and ends that came into her possession over the years since she managed to escape from that first Nonary Game. Right now, however, she only had eyes for the equipment occupying the space of the back wall of the room, the very equipment she took a seat before now. The headset she picked up and placed on her head was a little old-fashioned by today's standards, but the tactile feel of it was more comforting than the wireless, practically microscopic units that were made before the outbreak of Radical 6 and the resulting horrific death toll changed people's priorities to merely finding ways to survive on a dying world.

After turning on the machine and confirming that it was set to the right frequency, that the signal was strong and everything was in working order, Akane adjusted the attached microphone and reached forward to press the send button, saying aloud as she did so, "Dio has failed in his mission and the location of Free the Soul's headquarters may have been compromised. Scatter and vanish, go to radio silence, and stand by for further orders. That is all." Akane then released the button and shut down the machine, removing the headset and slumped back in her chair as she said, "You sure that was enough? That they will do as I said?"

"I am," a small voice said from the shadows in a corner near the room's entrance, and Akane turned to see a little boy emerge from them, "After all, they sent Dio here on your orders."

"On 'Brother's' orders, yes," Akane amended, "but sending someone to sabotage efforts to thwart their plans to create their 'perfect world' is one thing. Totally disbanding with no indication as to when they might be able to reform their group and resume their plans is quite another. What if they decide that it's too far out of character from the Brother that they've come to know over the last few decades, that they may decide that it's a trick and not follow through."

"Perhaps that might have happened back when Free the Soul's membership was largely composed of human beings," the boy countered, "but now they're almost entirely made up of the Myrmidons, the clones of Brother's brother. They might look human, but they're more like robots than people. It's more than their philosophy that makes them different than us, it's their minds, their hearts: being clones of the same man means that the differences between them are practically nonexistent. They don't have the same capacity for critical thinking as you or me, their 'free will' a mere shadow of what we're capable of. The only thing they're really capable of, what they're good at, is following orders. Specially Brother's orders, who they think you are thanks to that."

Akane looked back at what the boy was pointing, at the modified communicator behind her, and sighed. It had been years since they had confiscated it from Free the Soul during one of their raids, modified it to make her look and sound like Brother. Back then she had thought it was too easy, though she since dismissed it as unfounded concerns and uncertainty. After years of reflection, considering how this equipment was so relatively unguarded, how Brother had went into seclusion some time before his death, how his communicating with his followers remotely until then made it rather easy for Akane to impersonate him from that point onwards, all of that struck her as too much coincidence to actually be so. Decades after escaping his Decision Game, after even his passing, Akane was still dancing to Brother's tune and she didn't like that one bit.

"Is something wrong?" Akane heard the boy ask her, and she looked up to see a concerned look on his face.

"It's nothing, really," Akane assured him, "I just don't care much for being played, that's all."

The boy flinched back at this, looking hurt as he said in a small voice, "I never played you, miss Akane."

Akane felt a moment of surprise that he had come to that conclusion, then she said hastily, "No, I didn't mean it like that, I wasn't talking about you. You've been a great help to me and this project, particularly during these later years when my insight wasn't what it used to be. More than that, however, you've been a good friend and a great comfort these many, lonely years. In many ways I feel you're as much a part of my family as Kyle is."

"Thank you," the boy said with a smile, "I feel the same way."

"I just wish..." Akane started to say before she had to swallow and begin again, "...I wish that I could be sure that it was all worth it. All the pain that I put everyone through, that I myself have endured, the compromises and sacrifices I've made: it would be nice to know that it wasn't all in vain."

"I could take a look for you if you'd like," the boy offered.

"Would you?" Akane asked him.

"It'll take just a moment," he informed her as he canted his head to the side, and as a light started flashing in his pupils (providing a visual indicator that he was accessing the quantum computer his consciousness resided in) Akane noticed that the movement had caused the synthetic skin-like fabric of his neck to bunch up oddly where it covered the metal coupling his head was attached to. Though most of the time he looked and acted just like an ordinary child it was moments like this, as well as the fact that he hadn't aged a day in all the time they've been together, that reminded Akane that this boy wasn't human. Not that she needed any reminders, however, as it was her who replaced his hideous orb of a head with this more normal looking one.

After a moment of silence that seemed to stretch out longer than it actually took, the boy looked directly at her (with eyes that once again looked perfectly human) and said, "Okay, got it.

As she listened to what the boy told her, Akane once again felt her eyes tearing up involuntarily. Once he finished his report, Akane gave the boy a watery smile as she said gratefully, "Thank you, Sean."

Sean returned her smile as he said, "You're quite welcome, miss Akane."