Stories Never Told
October 17th, 2015; 11:10PM
We're back now to our normal way of doing things. ^^" Sorry for the disturbance last chapter.
This is an adventure I've had in my head for ages. Kemu's PANDORA VOXX is a series I admire so much. The stories are so unique, so amazingly interesting, I had to figure out how they were all connected. So for a long time, I'd connected the pieces myself. I really, really love this story. I'm very proud of it. Yet, it's so intricate that I've no idea where to start, how to put it onto paper.
I'd given up on that for a long time; maybe I'm just not meant to write a story like that. Maybe it's best to just keep it in my head. But somehow, I wrote this... thing. It's not perfect, but I kind of like it.
You get a few previews of my vision, a little idea of what I have in mind. Someone familiar with the PANDORA VOXX series - Life-Reset Button, Six Trillion Years and One Night, Wind-Up God, Reincarnation, so on and so on and so on - should definitely see some references.
This is an idea that, while doubtful, I will consider expanding into a full story, so please be mindful of that when you critique it. ;)
Title: Ikasama
Characters: Gumi, Rin
Genre: Adventure/Supernatural
Rating: K+
Subject: I'll spend my life running, resetting, cheating and whatever else, if it means I can finally save you.
Case #4 - Ikasama
She couldn't really explain it.
It had just appeared in front of her, like the screen of a television, and she was almost certain that the people surrounding her couldn't see it. Pictures curved around her, like some futuristic technology, playing feeds from who-knows-where. Were they real or all in her head? Either way, amidst the chaos, she'd focused on one specific frame.
Kaiba.
She recognized the area, it having been the corner she'd turned at a while ago. It had only taken her fifteen or so minutes to have walked from here to there, so if she ran, maybe it would only be half of that, seven minutes. Maybe she'd make it this time.
She'd never run this hard in her life. Her lungs swallowed cold air and she felt the ice scorch her from within. But she didn't stop. Every time her feet hit the pavement, pain shot through her long legs. But she couldn't stop. An older gentleman walked in front of her, carrying a crate of fruits. And she didn't stop.
She crashed into him, his crate falling to the ground and the fruit rolling everywhere. "I'm sorry, sir!"
"Watch where you're going!" he yelled, as she frantically tried to scoop up the red apples.
She apologized again and dropped as many fruits as she can back in their crate. She was running out of time... How long had she spent here? A minute? Two? How long did she have?! "I'm sorry, I have to go!"
"HEY! I can't sell these! They're bruised."
She ignored him, ignored the guilt, and started running again.
How had she gotten those screens to pop up? She couldn't do it now. No matter how much she pleaded to see something, anything, nothing appeared. She could only run through the busy street, pushing and shoving.
She wasn't sure why he was doing this. She wasn't sure why he was wearing girls' clothes. Why had he come back? Had he given up on his dreams? Why?! To leave, to go so far away, only to give up on everything so soon? It made his entire journey pointless.
A few minutes left. Maybe even less time. A screen popped up in front of her, but this time, it wasn't the blond boy. This time, a girl was pulling out her long blue hair, infuriated. The runner ignored it, mumbling apologies as she pushed past an old woman. She could see the video from the corner of her eye, could practically hear the blue-haired girl's crying.
There was blood now. Blood running down that girl's arm, scars traced on her neck, chest, hands...
And then straight ahead.
The street.
Another screen appeared of a child, barely a skeleton. Her head hit the wall, hard. Hands wrapped around her neck, squeezing, hurting, killing, torturing-
She was so close. The street was there and- "LEN!"
He was there. She could see him, his blond hair free from its usual ponytail, wearing white clothes. There was something in his hair, maybe a costume piece. And he was standing. On the crosswalk. Right in the middle of the road. As the light turned green.
"NOO!"
Why wasn't anyone noticing? Why wasn't anyone stopping him?!
From the corner of her eye, the blue girl gave up. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a button.
The truck made impact. Gumi screamed. And then suddenly she stood somewhere else, in a busy intersection. A familiar intersection. And a screen popped up, like before. A familiar screen. She saw the truck hit the blond boy. Her throat squeezed, she felt her heart drop, and she looked around.
The same woman dressed in black walked by to her left. To her right was the young couple. They stopped and kissed, just like they had last time. In the exact same spot. At the exact same time.
PANDORA was giving her another chance.
She began to run.
Faster this time.
Her legs didn't ache, even though she'd already sprinted last time. She dropped the umbrella she'd been holding in her hands and pushed by people.
"Watch where you're going!" The apples fell everywhere. She didn't have time to pick them up. "HEY! I can't sell these! They're bruised!"
Focus. Faster. She had to save him.
"Hey, be carefu-! MY ICE CREAM!"
At the sound of her little brother's cries, a woman spun and set her target on the runner. "HOW DARE YOU! I paid money for that, you know! Haven't you any shame?!"
Stop, stop! She had to go, she had to go-
From the corner of her eye, the girl on the screen reached into her pocket with her bloodied hands.
...Hadn't her shirt been orange the first time?
Suddenly she was back in that intersection. To her left, a woman dressed in black walked by. To her right, a young couple walked hand in hand. The girl smiled at her boyfriend and plucked a leaf out of his hair. They laughed. And suddenly a screen popped up in front of her, a picture of a boy standing on a crosswalk in the middle of the street.
She started running.
How many times have we done this? How many times have we tried - and failed - to reach our goals? How many times have we died, how many times have we predicted, how many times have we reset, how many times have we disappeared? We've wished, we've dreamed, and every time it ends the same, stuck in an endless cycle of hope and failure.
Why do we even bother?
There he was. In the middle of the street. She saw the opposite light turn yellow, then red. She jumped. She felt the white leather, dug in her fingers and yanked backwards, heard the blonde cry out as they fell, let out a shaky breath as the truck sped off behind them.
She did it. She did it. She'd saved Len. Len was safe.
The screens went out. She could focus on what was in front of her, finally. A few drips of rain began to fall, but she'd abandoned her umbrella. People crowded around her. "Are you okay?" they asked, grabbing at her, helping her up.
"I-I'm fine," the girl said breathlessly, "but you really should ask L- LEN!"
The boy had stood while the crowds swarmed and slipped away between them. Gumi ran after him, but people pulled her back. "Careful! Don't run, you're hurt!" She pulled, shedding off her jacket as she pushed.
It seemed she was always pushing. And that blonde was always running.
"LEN! Come back!"
At the sound of his name, the person nearly tripped. The ribbon slipped from their hair. They glanced over their shoulder, saw Gumi behind them, panicked, ran to the curb-
"STOP! DON'T DO IT!"
The crowds had followed her. "Honey, are you alright?" a woman asked her, gently rubbing her back. "That truck nearly hit you, you really should sit down."
Gumi spun. "Me?! D-Didn't you see Len? Len just...!" She turned and stared at the traffic. The tears in her eyes confused her vision. She couldn't see anything. "L-Len just... he jumped! In front of the car...! Didn't you see him earlier?! I pulled him out of the way, he's even more hurt than I am-"
The woman stared at her, dressed in black, her concern increasing more and more as the young girl babbled. "Honey... it was just you. No one else was there."
"N-No, but there was Le-"
A screen appeared at the corner of her vision. She ignored it and focused on the traffic. No, this couldn't be right...
He stood there, in the middle of the road. And the car had stopped right in front of him.
Thank PANDORA, they'd seen him. They'd stopped. They got out of their car, they walked towards Len, they bent down in front of him- "Stupid cat! Get off the road!" The feline let out a loud, irritated meow and sat down stubbornly. "Go! Scram!" He didn't seem to even notice Len, standing very still right behind the cat. "Go away!" He tried to pick up the cat. It hissed and bat its paw, threatening to scratch him.
Len opened his mouth and screamed.
It was ear-shattering, loud and tortured. It made Gumi cover her ears. It could have shattered windows. But no one reacted. No one turned towards the sound. No one winced or covered their ears. No one seemed to even hear it.
She ran from the grasp of the woman. She grabbed Len's hand. She pulled. And as Len stumbled out of the way, the stubborn cat stood, and proudly walked towards the sidewalk. "Finally! Stupid cat..." As soon as the cat was off the road, the man started his car and the traffic began to dissipate, everything returning back to normal.
"H-Honey, wait!"
As soon as the blonde was off the road she yanked her hand out of Gumi's grasp and sprinted, away from here, away from this place, away from the girl who'd saved her.
This wasn't Len. It looked like Len. It even sounded a bit like Len. But somehow, Gumi knew. Even if they were identical, this girl was nothing like the boy Gumi knew. This person was a stranger, and yet... somehow she wasn't.
Screens appeared in front of her. A blonde girl in a classroom. Other students talked amongst each other, laughed, chattered, gestured, squealed, moved, lived. Then there was a lone blonde in the middle of them all, sitting at her desk, immobile... invisible.
The same girl, in another screen, ran towards a warehouse. She grabbed rope and began to tie knots, amateurish, like she couldn't remember the exact directions. She stared at it for a few seconds then raised it over her head, slowly dropping it down over her knotted blond hair, the rope brushing against her long lashes, over her small nose, kissing her lips. It sat patiently around her pale neck and she yanked a little, testing it, admiring the way it choked her if she pulled hard enough...
Gumi ran. It seemed she was always running; maybe she'd been running her whole life.
"What do you think?"
A woman stood in a dark room, every wall covered in scenes. Brushing a pink curl over her shoulder, she squinted, pulling the screen wider apart with her fingers, increasing its size.
"You've given them so many chances," she murmured to her god. "Do you really think it will work this time?" She pursed her lips as she watched the foolish girl run. "You've let them try thousands and thousands of times again... Don't you think it's time this game end?"
Of course, PANDORA didn't reply- not out loud, at least. But she already knew what it would say if it could. She could feel the answer within her, as an entity of its creation. She let out a sigh, pushing the current screen away and pulling up another one from its right, widening it with her hands to make it larger.
The invisible girl hung from the ceiling. Despite her attempts to stay calm, her body still struggled on its own, at least part of her fighting to stay alive. Her smile stretched as she felt her breath leave her, death welcome her... Her rope snapped. She fell to the ground, gulping deep breaths of air, coughing. She grabbed the rope's end, stared up at the other half, still tied to the ceiling. The rope had been weakened, chewed on by rats. And it had snapped, saving her life. She'd failed to kill herself, yet again. The rope slipped through her weakened grip; as she slipped into the unconscious, she began to cry.
"Should I intervene?" the wind-up god asked. "They're caught in cycles, all of them. Running, dying, lusting, lying helpless... they're too focused on their own circles to worry about other things. Saving the world is the last thing on their minds."
She brought up another screen, widened it and watched. The blue-haired girl was cutting at herself again. The blood pumped freely from the wound in her arm and for a moment the girl stopped sobbing, watching it with a dark sense of curiousity. And then she stopped. For a minute, she felt numb; she couldn't feel anything around her. "This life isn't good enough," she murmured. From her pocket, she pulled out a button.
"Prediction, invincibility, to disappear, to try and reset..." The wind-up god breathed a sigh. "It's meaningless."
She minimized the scene so that dozens, hundreds of moments surrounded her side-by-side. Pasts, presents, futures, surrounded her. She could see the humans' past attempts, and even some of their future failures. It was tiring.
"Of course I'll obey you, PANDORA," the wind-up girl said softly, her cobalt blue eyes taking in the visions she'd witnessed hundreds of thousands of times. "You're my only god. I will do anything you desire me to do." She paused. "Must I die again?"
She closed her eyes and felt the answer within her. She didn't hear words; it was more like a feeling, like an intuition, and she always knew what PANDORA was trying to get across. "I see... You want me to grant a wish?" She smiled, twirling pink hair around her finger. "It's the only thing I'm able to do. I was born to grant wishes; I'd be honoured to use my ability for your purpose."
She focused on what PANDORA had to say, and slowly nodded. "Ah... Is that so...? I see." She stepped away from the scenes, letting it sink in for a moment. "I'll do anything you want me to do."
"Rin! STOP! Don't do it! Please, don't die-!"
She sat, folding her legs together as she watched the green-haired girl in her mind. Slowly she smiled, remembering the many times before now, the way she'd screamed, the way she'd failed.
"So this time again... God is your enemy?"
She closed her eyes and left her subconscious world, waking up on the seat of a bus. She glanced out the window, at the tall buildings, knowing one of these would be a courtroom; her desired destination. She smiled, pressing a button to indicate her stop, and slipped on her glasses.
"P-Pardon me for asking," a woman spoke, bouncing a blanketed baby in her arms, "but aren't you that lawyer that was on TV...?" She took the lawyer's silence as admition. "That's right, you're representing that Kaiba-Hatsune case, aren't you? The prosecutor?" Her baby began to cry and she swore, bouncing it a little more energetically. "I really hope you win... I just can't stand perverts like that! A teacher, preying on a teenage student... Disgusting!" She shivered animately. "He ought to get the death penalty!"
The lawyer smiled, standing and grabbing her briefcase. More to herself than to the mother beside her, she said smoothly: "We'll see about that."
October 18th, 2015; 10:12 PM
Sorry if the end confused you a little; you'll have to read between the lines a little. Remember Life-Reset Button? Remember Kaiba-sensei? Seems things got a little... intense.
I find I don't really have much to say about this piece. It's very rough and there are inconsistencies (wasn't it raining at one point?) and if you haven't been paying attention to kemu's series, a lot of this might sound very random. 'From her pocket, the blue-haired girl pulls out a button.' *expecting some huge twist/catastrophe/something* 'She minimized the screen.' Like, can someone say anti-climax? XD
But yeah, as I've said several times, this is heavily based on kemu's PANDORA VOXX series. The button part is a reference to Life-Reset Button. This whole oneshot was based on Ikasama Game Life, with Rin appearing from Invisible. Special cameo goes to Six Trillion Years and One Night, as well as a separate cameo to Wind-Up God.
They're amazing songs, so if you don't know them, I strongly recommend you get to know them. Like, right now. 10/10 amazingness.
As was the standard before, please review this chapter including a rating of the story from 0 to 10, 0 being shit, 10 being absolutely amazing, and leave a comment about what you liked/disliked, etc.
I guess that's all for today.
.o0o.
November 16th, 2015; 11:19 PM
A month went by with me forgetting to post it. Huh? But it was already finished! Am I so much of a procrastinator that I couldn't bother logging on and posting a simple story? Sorry about that. ^^" It slipped my mind. A lot of things have been keeping me busy- maybe I'll tell you about that later.
For now, though, I hope you've enjoyed this story, and as usual, sorry for the wait!
~Naty17
This life isn't nearly good enough... but since I don't have a life-reset button, I'll push the review button instead.
Shall you give it a try? ^^