Neun, Chapter 4
Disclaimer:
This fanfic is not warranteed against character death. This fanfic is written so as to deviate from referenced materials and thus not plagiarize their works. Properties referenced include Kampfer and Guyver.
All characters are based off of the referenced fictional people. Any resemblence these characters or situations may have to real people is entirely coincidental, in addition to being highly unlikely.
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Akane paused for a second as she walked towards her locker. No, that didn't make any sense. It had to be her imagination, or perhaps something she had eaten that disagreed with her and was giving her such an impression. Surely the Reds would not attack her here in the middle of... It felt like someone had slapped her under her breast.
"Too slow." Came the familiar voice of The Student President.
She whirled around, but the black haired idol of their school was not visible amongst the crowd. She was distracted by a kind of sticky warm feeling on her back and chest. Unconsciously transforming in annoyance she felt a spike of pain coming from right below her left breast. Reaching towards the offending area her hand came back covered in what took her a moment to recognize as blood.
It was not the usual red hue of the cells in the interstitial tissues and capillaries. Nor was it the dark maroon of the veins. No it was a nice pinkish color it took her several minutes to try to make sense of, before it occurred to her, in part inspired by the rhythmic oozing, that it originated from her heart. She vaguely recalled that the left ventricle, was the return side and so housed much thicker and strong muscle tissue then it's compartiot on the right which pumped the blood into the lungs.
Regardless of what her books had told her and how her other side might rage, the fact was she was dying. The part of her that had awakened when she had become a Kampfer, and she hadn't cared much for, pointed out she had a choice. She could either curl up in a corner or do something about this whole situation.
Wreaking her just revenge being denied to her that left only one alternative. She wasn't quite sure Neun was a guy today, but she'd looked up his assigned class before and knew how to get there. Should would have to settle for vengeance and dying in her beloved's arms.
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Akane continued to walk towards the boys side where she knew Neun currently was. Why did it have to feel so cold and alone as her limbs seemed to get heavier and her body less responsive while it felt like she was beginning to swim through a dreamworld?
Sure she'd never really seemed to connect to anyone until she'd become a Kampfer. Then there had been the older Blue who had shown her the ropes, before sacrificing herself for her sake.
"Akane, get down." She couldn't tell if the cry was real or part of the increasingly weak grasp on reality as she realized she was becoming more and delirious as the blood continued to seep out of her. It seemed vaguely familiar.
"You're too reckless. I've seen a dozen like you, all gone in a instant. You're like a pile of gunpowder." She glanced around for a source to the voice but only saw shocked students here and there looking like a pack of deer caught in headlights. No that was something else. Why was it getting so hard to think?
She stumbled and landed in someone's arms, looking up she found she had arrived.
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Natsuru followed the rest of the class out into the hall to see a fierce looking redhead hobbling along, with seemingly everyone simply looking on as she determinedly kept moving, using the wall as a means of support with one hand as she clutched the other to her breast. Her one white school blouse was now more red then white, while her complexion was quite the opposite.
Natsuru had a long history of opting out. This however was different. This was a human being in need, and while he wasn't certain quite what he should do in a situation like this he felt at the very least he should do something.
Just as he started to get close, she stumbled and he rushed forward to catch her. Instead of gratitude the eyes that looked up at him were filled with determination, and gave him the sense of having a very dangerous undertone. Not that he could quite piece together how that worked.
"What took you so long, asshole?" She said after a second in a way which seemed to have a odd divided quality that might have potentially been gratitude. It was at this point however he realized that the girl's other hand held a pistol, which was now being shoved rather aggressively into his face.
"I..." Natsuru trailed off dumbly, wondering if his brain was to be replaced by a bullet any minute now. And yet the bullet never came even though he found himself completely unable to come up with an adequate response.
"It was Shi-zu-ku, Nu-en." It took him several seconds to try to make sense of what she just said, while she started blinking blearily at him. Then the paramedics were there taking her away from him. As he started to protest their seperating them a hand fell on his shoulder.
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Natsuru was less then happy. The student president, of the boys side, had dragged him away to... "record a statement." This in turn involved paperwork that the "student president" was not happy with unless it was ridiculously detailed. All while he walked around the little conference room typing away on some sort of absurdly small computer that Natsuru was not only not familiar with, but hadn't been aware even existed.
It was all rather patently ridiculous. He hadn't seen anything related to the actual murder attempt, and yet they were going to grill him for details. And this was all being overseen by some whack job that he could only assume was texting his girlfriend given he seemed to be continuously typing away on his little computer.
"Well that's very interesting." The "student president" declared before going back to typing.
Natsuru waited a few minutes before his curiosity got the better of him. "What?"
"I can't remember the girl I was just writing about." He said seeming to become wrapped up in himself once more, grousing about this and that. "Perhaps some kind of suggestive mechanism? But then how are they creating the suggestive state and imprinting the conditioning?"
Natsuru had, had enough, "What are you talking about? You saw her too, You were right there when the paramedics took her away."
"Actually..." The device he was holding beeped. "Akane has just been deleted from the school database, and if things stay true to form once you leave this room I'm the only one who will acknowledge this happened or there ever was a girl called Akane. "
Natsuru mentally rolled his eyes, while refraining from following through with the actual physical gesture out of some sense of propriety. Ever since he'd followed the Student President into this room things had been nonsensical, and letting this guy get a raise out of him on something so patently nonsensical wasn't in the offing.
"Can I go now?" He did a heroic job of keeping the annoyance out of his voice.
"Yes, here's your pass."
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Akane blearily made out figures hovering over her. A small part of her mind noted the surgical masks and related attire, but she wasn't really coherent enough to make any sense of it all.
"She's coming around." Some voice declared she couldn't identify.
"Safeties have been engaged, so there's no reason to sedate her really. Make sure her quarters are comfortable."
"But sir it's Number 4."
"Yes, Number 4. You may remember that when Number 9 decided to try to escape Number 4 was on the ball. While she might have her quirks she's nothing if not reliable, and her utility is far from being exhausted."
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Natusuru returned to class. The teacher was oddly absent minded about the fact the Student President had pulled him away, which was odd because he was his usual highly observant self regarding the fact he had been absent. He'd also didn't say anything about the girl simply accepting the pass skeptically, before going back to the lesson. It was mildly tempting to humor the idea that nutbar of a student president was right there was some kind of grand conspiracy with magical powers able to make people forget something like that, but that was both ridiculous and a sure path to madness. If he started doing that next thing he knew he would be thinking the trees were conspiring to take over the world. Or maybe the squirrels, or the cicadas.
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After the close of the class in the period between the teacher moving to his next classroom, and the delay before the arrival of the next teacher, the usual chatter started up. Noteworthy in its absence though was any discussion of the girl or her murder. It was almost as if nothing had happened, at least as far as they were concerned. Which only served to make his own thoughts on the matter come more to the surface where they'd been bugging him constantly since the incident.
What had she meant by "Neun" and why had she warned him about what most people considered The Student President, Shizuku? Had she been the one who killed the her? Or was it another girl with that name that the redhead had meant. And why had she sought him out specifically? Or had he just read too much into things and he'd simply been conveniently close, or resembled someone else?
Had it been right to go with the student president and leave her to the paramedics or should he have insisted on riding to the hospital with her? It had felt like he had abandoned and somehow failed her when he'd given in to the student president's insistent requests to come with him. And for what? So he could listen to some inane conspiracy theories while she lay there dying? What kind of person was he?
"Hey there, Natsuru. What's up?" Higashida said in his usual carefree manner. An idle thought occurred to Natsuru that if anyone might have an idea who the girl was it was Higashida. Afterall he... made a big point of photographing any girl on campus who was or could be generally considered hot and selling them... Why did he hang out with this guy again?
"Do you know who that redhead was?"
"What redhead?" Higashida asked looking around excitedly as if he expected to spot some hot redhead lounging about.
Natsuru couldn't help but scrunch him face in annoyance. He started to say. "You know the girl who died in my arms before the start of the class period." but stopped himself. Now he was starting have his doubts that anyone else remembered. Instead he said. "She had shoulder length red hair."
Higashida seemed to consider that for a while. "You mean Konaka?"
The name didn't ring a bell, but then he didn't share Higashida's fascination with cataloging every girl on campus, despite the rather serious security measures in place.
Higashida dug out a picture of a girl that could have been her, but clearly wasn't. Natsuru couldn't help but make a mental note of her even as he recognized it wasn't the redhead. Not that he thought he'd have any chance with her.
It suddenly occurred to him that the student president had mentioned another name. "Do you know a Akane?"
Higashida thought about it for a moment, weighing the possibilities. "Well there's one in the swimming club, but she's kind of flat."
Natsuru wouldn't characterize the girl he'd caught earlier as kind of flat, but then he wasn't as obsessed with girl watching as Higashida was, and their standards as a result weren't necessarily in sync. For all he knew Higashida might consider girls kind of flat unless they were almost ridiculously well endowed.
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Classes finally ended before the start of lunch period. He was really beginning to feel the need to talk to someone about this, but the closest thing he could come up with to someone he wanted to talk to about it was Sakura who was securely on the girl's side and thus quite beyond his ability to see, let alone talk to unless he was lucky enough to meet up with her on the way home.
He wasn't interested in dealing with the student president, even if he had the creeping sense he was right, in defiance of all seemingly unassailable logic to the contrary. Higashida was really only interested in either trying to sell photos, and was disturbingly good at setting him up to do something stupid. And the sad thing was really that was it. No one else came to mind he even vaguely felt he could talk to about this.
Natsuru bit into the bread he'd bought for lunch with about the farthest thing from relish. While the food was actually rather good it simply wasn't the same when...
Natsuru felt a warm liquid trailing down his hand, and without thinking started to look around for something as he felt his arms begin to shake. He recognized a second later he had been looking for the girl and the liquid was just some sauce, just in time for the comments to start coming in about his freaking out.
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"What's going on here?" Said bursting into what passed for the, boy's side, student president's office.
"If I knew I'd tell you. Usually information control requires controlling the avenues of distribution so as to control the message going out to the people. You use propaganda, disinformation campaigns, and other various techniques to focus attention on the wrong areas or the areas you want in the way you want and you create consistent dialogues to do that. Cutting through these techniques requires being able to break the illusion by looking at it from angles that cause it to fall apart, just like optical illusions. You need to avoid getting sucked in by the fantastical elements they like to use and work with an understanding of how things work. Things like having the means, motive and opportunity or that people aren't puppets you can just manipulate like there on strings.
I still can't quite figure this out how this work though. It's like they've managed to cut through all that and they can just push a button and suddenly they can make everyone believe whatever they want. But if they can it doesn't explain why they're using it this way. Why go through all the effort with however they're doing this to cover up the murder of female students? Why murder them in the first place? Why not just use it directly to accomplish whatever it is they want if there's a real objective to all this." Agito trailed off for several minute before starting up again.
"When I started digging I found whatever they're doing to change people's memories seems to be mainly constrained to the school. There are people who remember outside, but they're people so disconnected it doesn't mean anything, and they just start into rationalizing of their own accord.
So my current presumption is there's basically some kind of magic artifact here that allows them do it, which they can't move."
"You say that like this isn't new."
"It's not." Agito set down hit little computer facing Natsuru. "When I checked the computers I found while they removed the records they neglected to clear out the log files of the modifications to the database or to destroy their old back ups and stuff that was in hard copy. I know I don't have all of it, but these are the ones I've been able to recover pictures of." Pressing a button started an application which began opening pictures and then tiling them to the background. It quickly became obvious there were a _lot_ of them. After the picture of a brown haired girl in glasses flashed up and tiled to the background, it started bringing pictures forward in order and the dismissing them back to the tiled background.
Natsuru realized the girl who'd died in his arms wasn't among them, at all. "Where is she?"
"Who?" Agito asked clearly puzzled at the question.
"The girl that died in my arms."
"She wasn't the brunette with glasses at the end?"
"No! She was like the opposite of that girl." Why would he even suggest that? Whoever the redhead had been she was someone who was aggressive and took charge, not some kind of meek bookworm.
Agito paused for a long time over that. "I have a theory." He eventually stated.
Natsuru made a rude noise, while he might as well be living in the Twilight Zone given current events, that did not mean he was suddenly humoring crackpots. And even if this guy was the only one who seemed to know anything about this, he was clearly as cracked as they come. First he was claiming all these girls had somehow been murdered with no one the wiser, and now he was getting ready to claim two people that were clearly polar opposites were the exact same person.
Given that was clearly going nowhere he decided to drop it in favor of a more pressing issue then one Agito was likely to be unable to provide anything useful about. "What do you mean nobody knows? How can no one have seen something and reported it?"
Agito paused with a secretive smirk. "In 1964 Kitty Genovese was brutally murdered and raped in New York City. It is said there were thirty eight witnesses who watched it happen and none called the police. The media and the experts as a result flocked to denounce the public at large."
"That really happened?" Natsuru deadpanned.
"Not quite. There weren't thirty-eight witnesses, there was only five or six and they confabulated more then they saw anything. Not that the media cared. It was a perfect opportunity for scandal and drama like creating the myth of spontaneously exploding cars because fuel leaks and fires simply lacked enough pizzazz."
Natsuru rolled his eyes. What did this have to do with anything? It was just more conspiracy theory nonsense.
"What it does demonstrate is that people are willing to engage in rather dramatic rationalizations with nothing more backing them up the what someone in a perceived position of power and authority said without even attempting to verify things themselves. A problem old enough that Bram Stoker had Van Helsing make a rather eloquent statement on it in his novel, Dracula.
As you saw the trappings are maintained for the outside world and rumor formation is suppressed by wiping those who'd be actual witnesses to the event. Ambulances of the same apparent type patrol the area on a more regular basis then the actual incidents, but still infrequently enough as not to seem out of place. So the bottom line is if you're not already looking into this or are able to remember, what's there to know?
It's not like you believe me, and I have the most substantial evidence available."
Natsuru had to grant him that much. Grudgingly, because reality seemed determined to twist his arm along those lines, but he had to grant him that much.
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Natsuru felt like kicking something as he made his way to the library. A girl was dead, and the very universe itself seemed to be conspiring to force him into a choice of believing the patently absurd or that it had never happened. But as absurd as the alternative was, it had happened. His memory could not be more clear, and it had unsettled him on a very fundamental level.
Seeing nothing better to do he figured he might as well at least try to find something in the library so he at the very least could feel he was doing something.
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She will come to change her opinion quite dramatically once she "realizes" Natsuru is Neun and the connotations of their relationship with Kaede.]
The blue bracelet he couldn't remember where he'd picked up flashed like it was some kind of miniature strobe light, and his arm started shaking involuntarily again. Looking up he saw a girl with hair obscuring her face that was regarding him curiously.
"It really affected you didn't it?" She said calmly sitting down across from him.
He regarded her for a moment to mentally exhausted by the universe being contrary to make heads or tails of what she was referring to. "What did?"
"Why the death of your partner. It's never easy for a new Kampfer to deal with that particularly if they have to watch the life slowing fading away like you did." She said regarding him in a consoling manner.
"Wait, you mean you actually remember?" Just when the world seemed to be ready to cave in on him it decided to throw him a bone.
She regarded him with no small parts compassion. "Yes. Don't worry it happened." Glancing away she added. "And not by my hand."
"I don't understand."
"I'm afraid there's not much to understand. We'll meet again Senou-san. I look forward to that day."
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Shizuku leaned back from her perch on the banister along the edges of the library's second floor. While it would not be accurate to say everything was proceeding according to plan, things were proceeding more than smoothly enough. The remaining Blue was bordering on turning into a nervous wreck and Midori instead of taking advantage was actually regarding the survivor with pity.
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Natsuru still felt off balance as he packed his bag. Even with the odd girl and the student president helping to confirm he wasn't simply losing his mind, what was happening was just so weird and disturbing.
Finally getting his stuff together he left the gate to find that Sakura just happened to be walking by, by some manner of divine providence. Of course, telling her was just a likely to result in alienating her as anything else.
"Hi there, Natsuru-san." She said in her usual cheerful manner.
"Hi Sakura." Natsuru responded back with a complete lack of energy while he found himself unconsciously trying to wipe away blood that was no longer there.
Sakura seemed to notice the gesture, leading to her having a concerned look while she seemed to be pondering something. Natsuru expected she was probably wondering if there something wrong with him.
"Don't worry. It's just…" He went cold inside as he dared even try to come up with some lame excuse. It felt like it would be a betrayal of her memory to do such a thing.
"Natsuru, if something's bothering you, you can talk to me about it." And then you'll throw me in a loony bin for my own good Natsuru mentally finished.
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Kaede couldn't help but feel somewhat annoyed as Natsuru walked away. He didn't trust her enough to talk to her about the truth, and so he kept on suffering. The Rules made it so she couldn't simply reveal what was going on to him, but if he actually honestly came to her that was a different story.
She hoped this didn't extend to the identity of his other self, particularly if he was interested in meeting her feelings. If he couldn't be honest about her with something like that, what could they build a relationship on. It might simply be better to play the villain at that point, for both their sakes.
At least then there would be closure.
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Natsuru felt a strange sense of dread of as he caught sight of his home. He was at a loss to explain the source or the nature of it beyond being strongly apprehensive. He spent an excessive amount of time checking various things, like he was some sort of paranoid freak, before finally deciding to simply ignore it.
What he needed was a nice hot bath, so he could relax for a while.
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Natsuru settled into the bath. What a day. But now he could finally have to chance to take a load off and relax. Just let everything go and...
Neun woke up to find herself in an unknown location, sitting in a bath with nothing on. Well she supposed it was only natural she had nothing on given she was in a bath afterall, but she recalled nothing of how she'd gotten there or had the slightest clue even where here was. So while under different circumstances she would have appreciated the chance to rest in the nice hot water, as it was quite pleasant, she couldn't get out of it fast enough.
The last thing she remembered was getting ready to go to school with Kaede… and she had the oddest sense that Viere was either dead or in serious trouble. Moving quickly she found something that was good enough to throw on before heading out the door, realizing she was leaving the house she'd first woken up in on her way out.
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She found Akane's apartment easily enough but there was a dead feeling to the place…
Remembering that Akane had thrown the two entrails animals into the dryer she made her way to the communal laundry room, and found they were still where they'd been left. With her instincts telling her that Viere was long gone, they were the last lead she had she weighed what they could offer against the threat they represented.
She almost didn't do it, but the need to know overcame her objections over the risks. Moving quickly she opened the door and quickly grabbed both by the head. While the tiger struggled in her grip, the rabbit simply hung limp like a stuffed animal was supposed to.
Putting the rabbit down she slowly let pressure off the tiger's head, allowing it to speak. She made sure to keep a good grip so that she could neutralize whatever it did quickly.
"She's dead." The tiger said in a quiet subdued fashion. Neun's eyes were drawn to the rabbit which continued to simply hang there like a limp stuffed toy, but had the sense the tiger meant both Viere and the doll.
"I'm sorry." She said picking up the stuffed animal in a more normal fashion, who seemed to be taking the loss harder then she was. She had the sense this had all happened before, although she couldn't seem to catch the memories as they ran through her mind.
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Kaede paused outside the apartment laundry room where she could hear Neun sobbing. Her heart tugged at her, but she knew doing so with the Messenger there would undermine everything she'd done so far.
Author's Notes:
This wasn't the most easy chapter to write and has been rewritten quite a few times now, even if you don't count the fact the original outline for this chapter was ultimately broken down to handle multiple chapters.
And honestly I'm going to leave it at that for now as I've rewritten the Author's Notes a dozen times while trying to say something more meaningful, and haven't come up being happy with it any of those times.