Love Puny Again
Chapter Three: God of the Macrocosm
Pushing the door open, Excel gazed into the glory that was the ACROSS weapons base...
...that was currently populated with nerdy Japanese men chained to chairs typing furiously at their computers.
"So then Matsuya's going to take off her sh..." one began, before noticing the intruder. "Finally! Hey, assistant 87, someone's here!"
A bald man looked up from his computer. "At last!"
Excel raised an eyebrow, confused by the fact that their enthusiasm actually surpassed hers. "Um... what's going on here?"
Assistant 87 spoke up first. "The man with the cape chained us down here months ago when he found out that the latest Love Puny game would be the last. We're scripting it as we speak."
"Why do you need a plot?" the blonde challenged. "Do you have any idea how long the anime went without anything resembling one? And, more importantly, don't you know your dating sim games? All you need is pictures and pointless dialogue that leads to hentai!"
The two assistants froze. One of their jaws unhinged and fell to the ground.
"If we'd known that, we'd be out of here months ago!"
"Mumgmaagsgasga?" asked the jawless programmer. Sumiyoshi, the handy-to-have-around guy that he always is, popped in for a second to add the subtitles, "Is that one of the cape guy's minions?"
"Get 'er!"
"Run, Ha-chan! Or crawl really fast! That's good too! Should they drug me into unconsciousness and drag me into some weird place, I want you to get me out, got that? I guess if I'd stopped talking they wouldn't know where I'm going, so I guess I'll stop now. Okay, Ha-chan?"
The Nabesoft game production staff hopped as fast as they could to catch up to Excel, who had already dashed further into the ACROSS base. Of course, her luck triggered Hyatt's banana peel from the opening credits to slip through the cracked Earth, land into their underground base, and trip her.
Excel's head slammed into the hard floor, which, when combined with the toxic radiation, caused her vocabulary of unnecessarily long words to fling at the programmers. But the men merely swung their laptops at the subtitles, sending "antidisestablishmentarianism" hurtling at Excel and knocking her out. "The" ricocheted off the walls and hit Hyatt, killing her upon impact.
IlPala stood over a dead Matsuya, tossing a knife away. He smirked, all other thoughts of what to do blocked out of his mind. Apparently, he inherited IlPalazzo's fascination with killing young women.
But before he could take out his mysterious rage on other NPCs, he heard a voice from the distance.
"Hey! You bastard!"
Turning away from the broken, battered green sentai, Watanabe was face to face with what everyone else saw as Iwata. The other young man appeared as if he'd rushed there at an incredible pace, as he hadn't uttered a word after those three in minutes. After he was finished with gasping for air, Norikuni raised a pistol to his coworker's forehead.
"Son of a… bitch… How dare you rip my dream from me… My only hope… I won't hold back against you. I've got nothing else to lose."
"You tell him, Senior Iwata," commented the first Ropponmatsu.
Norikuni's head jerked toward the lovely android. "Oh, s—"
Watanabe rushed at him without showing any expression. Iwata fell to the ground, but quickly recovered and found his hand gun yards away from him.
When he picked up the gun and looked upward, his new nemesis's fist was seconds away from slamming into him. Thankfully, Watanabe was down after a single bullet.
"At last," Il Palazzo said to himself with a chuckle. "Matsuya's out of the way. Now I can get back to why I bought this game."
Hyatt: "Oh, hello IlPala-kun. Why, you're at the department store too!"
Hit on her
Ask to join
Stalk her and look into the women's locker room
Put it in
Stab
"What do you think?" the leader snapped at his game, before checking to see if anyone else was around, then selecting "C".
As IlPala bent down to the hole in the locker room door he'd just found, everything around him began to blur. Did he get a Bad Ending for being caught? Wait, why would he know what a Bad Ending is? Was this a dating sim? It seemed like one, now that he thought about it. After all, Watanabe had secretly borrowed Sumiyoshi's collections without asking.
Sumiyoshi and Watanabe… His friend and himself… He had finally regained his memory, much to his relief. He fell to his knees and shed tears of joy, as the life he could have been permanently taken away from had been restored.
And then he blacked out with a bullet in his skull.
Watanabe woke up, staring into the sunglasses of the scarred Dr. Iwata. The silver haired man cursed under his breath.
"What happened?"
"You were shot in the head by my little cousin. Son of a bitch that he is. Join the club."
"Shouldn't that have killed me?"
"Sir, in normal hospitals, people don't die of minor colds. We're a world apart from anything close to reality. 'Course, if you want to die…"
"No! I'm good! I'll just run away now."
"They always do when I'm honest."
Il Palazzo, bored with his video game, decided that it was time to watch some corrupt, unenlightening news from the corrupt, unenlightened media invented for the corrupt, unenlightened masses. Not caring about the lack of brevity in his description of "FQX News", he took a remote control from one of the many secret compartments in his cloak and turned on the television that he placed in Excel's spot.
"Fukuokan residents have reported a string of disasters that they can only describe as acts of the Great Will of the Macrocosm. The local civil servants' offices are in ruin, and head of the Department of City Security Dr. Kabapu is blaming the popular children's anime and video game franchise, Pokemon."
The clip cut to the odd-looking politician. "Well, Shinji, it seems that young Toru Watanabe, a former employee of mine, in fact, has performed a 'seismic toss' on the Earth, attacked with a 'flamethrower' and caused all the telephones to deliver a 'thunder shock' onto unsuspecting residents. Clearly these are all Pokemon moves."
"Mr. Kabapu, if I may, we heard that he was using guns and brute force, not Pokemon attacks. Also, what are your thoughts on Misaki Matsuya, another employee of yours that the crazed Watanabe killed with his bare hands?"
"Ah, yes, Matsuya… Quite a tragedy indeed. There are tears in my eyes, as you can see."
"We can only see your eyes in the manga and manga-based writings. Can't see a damned thing from here."
"And the less you know, the better."
The reporter chuckled nervously. "And what about reports saying your two other female employees, the Ropponmatsu sisters, I believe, have been repeatedly sited after multiple deaths?"
"Ah, well—" he coughed, "—they were both practicing members in the Church of the Great Will, as I am as well. Who knows, maybe Her mercy is what revives them perpetually, Great Will bless them."
"…Sure, we'll buy that."
Il Palazzo froze, dropping the remote to the ground. In the background, he could still hear Kabapu talking to the reporter, probably thinking the microphone was turned off, but that was second in his mind.
What were the odds that Misaki would die the same day he killed her character in the game. And, more importantly, what were the odds that the characters in his game would look exactly the same as his neighbors?
It was no coincidence. He killed someone just by hacking the newest Love Puny game. He had the ultimate power in the entire universe.
"Finally!" he snapped. "It took the Great Will long enough to grant me what I deserved! At last the cosmos is under the control of only I, Il Palazzo of ACROSS!"
Underground, Excel's "ACROSS victory sense" triggered her to break out of her state of unconsciousness.
"Yes! At last, we're number one, and my helping you all this time has to be a somewhat contributing factor to all of this! Hail Il Palazzo, foolish mortals!"
She glanced to her left to see Hyatt oozing blood onto her shoulder, unconscious (unconscious by Hyatt's standards, anyway). The ropes that bound them in place weren't as common as the rest of the situation.
"Ha-chan! I knew you weren't a reliable servant of ACROSS! But Il Palazzo keeps you around and dumps me in that trap door on a regular basis, submerging me in the corrupt masses' filth! Where's the justice there, Ha-chan?"
"I'm sorry Senior," Hyatt whispered. "It seems I died hours ago… As I usually do."
"Ah, yes. Well, GET UP!"
Excel smacked Hyatt. Due to her light weight, the dark haired corpse flew a few feet after the strike. This loosened the ropes, causing them to fall to Excel's feet.
"Finally! Those hemp-based constraining devices are child's play compared to the eels I have to fight off constantly! And the alligators, oh God the alligators; vile reptiles from hell they are. Once you think you've killed them, they just jump up and slam those huge jaws down on… Ha-chan, are you listening? I thought you'd want to learn how to die less frequently, being as perpetually terminally ill as you are."
The blonde turned her head at almost 360 degrees before realizing Hyatt's absence.
"Hmm? Ha-chan? Other random dialogue, as I can't stop speaking after just a grunt and a coworker's nickname, probably linked to ADHD or Rikdo Koshi's bizarre opinion of women? Well, that filled up the time nicely."
"Your friend isn't here," a mysterious female voice echoed.
"What did you do to her? Whatever you're doing to her is useless! Killing her will not thwart ACROSS!"
"I, Secret Leader of Nabesoft, am quite aware of that. You're here because I, Secret Leader of Nabesoft, told all my underlings to collect ACROSS members. You're number two in the organization, if I'm not mistaken?"
"That's top secret ACROSS information that only a number two ACROSS officer like me can be entrusted with."
"Thank you."
"Damn!"
"Don't worry for ACROSS. I, Secret Leader of Nabesoft, have been working to ensure Il Palazzo's rise to power. But, at the same time, I, Secret Leader of Nabesoft, have been conspiring against you. You, Excel, to be exact."
"Who are you?"
"I, Secret Leader of Nabesoft, cannot reveal that."
Defeated, Excel stood still, alone with her thoughts. And, apparently, someone else's.
Hah! Little does she know that I, Elgala, am going to kill her! I, Elgala, may not be top officer in the manga, but in this world, maybe I have a chan… Why's she looking at me like that?