Time: during episode 6

Characters: Yuri, Otonashi, Naoi

She lost.

There was no point in sugarcoating it. She was down. She was beat. She couldn't even stand.

And the same went for her entire platoon.

The sound of blazing gunfire and raw hysteria were still fresh in her ears, and not even the sound of the pouring rain could erase it from her mind. The field was eerily quiet. Yuri gathered up the meager strength left in her body and raised her head as high as she could. What she saw made her stomach turn.

Blood.

Blood everywhere.

She should be used to it by now, what with the nightly operations they charged through with Angel's blades slicing them up like meat for butchering. But the sheer amount of blood that covered the rain-soaked field was…wrong. That much blood should never be dumped in one place. The downpour did nothing to wash away the disgusting pool of red.

And lying in that bloody lake — some of them motionless — were her teammates, her Battlefront, her friends. Amidst the ringing of her ears, Yuri picked up the faint sound of pained groans and muttered cursing. Those who were still able to move were fighting to stand.

Several NPCs had their guns trained on those struggling for footing. NPCs. With guns. As she watched, one of them fired at a Battlefront member who managed to push himself up to a crouch. She flinched at the sound of the gunshot, lying low as if the bullet would fly by her head. She and her teammates had always been the ones firing. She had never actually been shot at with so many guns…

Much less by NPCs.

Yuri glared up at them through heated eyes. These students were supposed to be model high schoolers. They never acted out, never strayed from the norm, never stepped out of their rut. So when the hell did they become professional gunslingers? Why are they so eager to protect the student council president?

Exactly how much control did he have over the NPCs?

A sharp pain rang through her ears and she clutched at her head. She could feel herself slipping out of consciousness, and she did nothing to stop it.

She lost, anyway.

There was nothing left for her to do.

"Hinata!"

Somewhere in her foggy mind, a scream rang out. She had no energy left to pick up her head, but she heard splashing footsteps skipping down the stairs before landing in a stumble. Another set of footsteps, this one much smaller and calmer, followed the first. They rushed past her, causing small ripples that reached her lifeless fingertips.

That had to be Otonashi. Who else would run to Hinata first? Following him must be Angel.

"Are you okay? Hinata!"

Yuri heard a groan and a muttered reply from Hinata.

"This isn't the time to joke around!" Otonashi responded with exasperation. It was a miracle he wasn't being pelted by bullets, but Yuri guessed the reason. And sure enough, she heard the unmistakable sniff of the student council president, the instigator of this bloodshed: Naoi Ayato.

"How did you get out of detention?" he sneered. Angel's answer was drowned out by the rain, and so was Naoi's heated retort. Yuri strained her ears to pick up on the conversation, but she couldn't even hear Otonashi's angry reply. There was a brief flash of light, and she guessed that Angel had activated her Hand Sonic.

Did that mean she was on their side? Would she fight against the NPCs?

Would they fight back?

"Are you going to defy me? I'm god." Naoi's voice carried clearly throughout the field. "I. Am. God," he repeated with defiance. Yuri grit her teeth. Not this speech again.

Delusional. That was the only word she could think of to define Naoi Ayato. Completely and undeniably delusional. Him? God? As if. She could never accept him as her ultimate enemy. Punching him in the face would do nothing to relieve the massive burden on her shoulders, though it might gain her a certain amount of satisfaction. His ideas of this world, how it works, and who makes it work was completely off from what it really was.

Or was it Yuri that was wrong?

No. She shook the thought off. She wasn't wrong. Naoi was crazy, and she was the sane one.

"Your souls carry the right to become god, yet you suffer from memories of your previous lives," he was continuing. Yuri realized his voice was coming closer and closer to where she lay, approaching her at a casual pace.

"I've become god," he said with smug resignation. "As such, I should put you to rest."

The footsteps stopped right before her. She heard his shoe grinding on her discarded gun.

"Yuri!" Otonashi warned. But it wasn't like she could cut loose and run away. There was nothing she could do. A hand grabbed her hair without warning and yanked upwards with enough force to make her cry out in pain. No strength came to her limbs and her body was worn down so much she couldn't so much as lift a finger. She flopped limply into Naoi's arms, his face disgustingly close to hers. "What more are you going to put her through?!" With an angry shout, Otonashi sprinted towards the pair. But stopped short at the gunpoint of the NPCs.

Yuri couldn't exactly recall what happened next. She remembered hearing more of Naoi's delusions. Something about Iwasawa. Something about hypnotism.

Something about a wonderful dream.

Her siblings. Their coffins. Their smiles. Their forgiveness.

"Don't!"

The next thing she knew, she was being dropped to the ground. She heard the sound of a meaty punch. Then a splash.

"Don't obliterate her with those false memories!" Otonashi shouted. "Don't do it!"

Yuri watched with disbelief as he grabbed Naoi by the collar of his shirt. "The lives all of us lived were real! There's nothing false about the lives we endured! Everything was real, everyone lived their fullest!" he screamed. She had never seen him so angry, so desperate to prove a point.

It hit her, then, just how different Otonashi was from her. Yuri had considered them to be on an even level, rational enough to think things through but irrational enough to throw those thoughts away as a sacrifice. But she could never do what Otonashi was doing. He wasn't fighting, nor was he going for a gun. He was talking it out like a human being, a friend. If she were in his shoes, there would have been a hell of a lot more gunfire.

"Wasn't your life the real deal too?" he demanded.

Naoi's expression changed at the question. But then Otonashi did something Yuri would never forget: he hugged Naoi like an older brother would to his sibling.

What the...

"What would you know about it?" Naoi snarled with a twisted expression.

Otonashi didn't miss a beat. "I know. I know because you're here," he said.

That was it. Humanity. Otonashi was able to see the humanity in everyone and everything; Yuri was far from achieving that skill. After all this bloodshed, this massacre of the SSS, after seeing Hinata covered in blood, Otonashi still saw Naoi as a human being. In his eyes, this hypnotist mass-murderer was a misunderstood child with a troubled past to compete with the Battlefront's. And what had she done? Pinned him as a delusional psychopath and tried to lead an army of equally misunderstood high schoolers against an enemy they couldn't shoot.

She had lost. Not to Naoi.

But to Otonashi.

A/N: yeah I was going to abandon this but your reviews made me reconsider. I apologize if it seems rushed/has multiple typos, but hey I literally typed this up in like thirty minutes because I'm going away for a couple of days.