World 062: Continuum
"Lord Shintaro!" As soon as the image of his master popped up in the sky, Zanbatou kneeled down on the clouded rooftop to show his humility before them. "My apologies, my master. I failed to safeguard the sublevel. I foolishly believed that I would need need assistance." In truth he did wonder why Shintaro had allowed them to wander the area so freely in the first place. But it was not his place to question his masters and he did consider himself guilty for letting Olympia go again. And he also knew he wanted them to come up here, beyond the clouds. "You are forgiven, Zanbatou. Their small excursions have been of no consequence." They did not seem disappointed with him either, neither father nor mother. "In the end their emotions kept them on the predicted path, and led them here. You have come to the final trial, what do you make of it?"
"What do we make of it? I feel like my suspicions were right all along." Finally, things were beginning to make sense for Charles. "That thing, that is the third player that Static warned me about.." The reason why Shintaro knew so much about the network, the reason why Renner and his people were not phased by the topic and also not willing to discuss it, the reason why this place had the same feel to it as the fake city where Echo had been living for years and why the power of the Items and Static did not apply here: it all connected to this entity. "You created this world for it to exist in." It did not look human, but it felt alive nonetheless. "But how.." How it and the Shintaros came into contact he could not figure out. Could this thing even talk? Perhaps it conversed in binary or hexadecimal codes, using the lights of its segments to denote numbers. He did not know that either. All Charles could be certain of, was that this entity fascinated him inexplicably.
"That is supposed to be miss Echo's counterpart? You think you can compare the two?!" Olympia could not accept it. She come all this way just to get insulted on top of being assaulted. "Indeed." The Legendary Fisherman quite agreed. "At least now I see what you were comparing my lady so unfavorably too. But I too fail to see what makes it superior? What is its function? What is its drive? What does it want and what do you want? Did you make this? All of this?"
"I suppose we can explain the unenlightened." Mr. Shintaro conversed briefly with Mrs. Shintaro before they came back to the duelists with their answer. They seemed to be coldly amused by their ignorance. "No, we did not create this entity, much like we did not create STHEREA. One arose by itself after the other was discovered and it came to us. What you see here we first called The Third, but in time it created a name for itself as well: Continuum." Shintaro revealed as he leaned down on his desk with folded arms. "Continuum?" Charles blinked. That kind of name alone implied that It did not see itself the same way Static or Echo did. "Yes. That is at least what we can infer from its messages. You should already know that these entities were born when STHEREA got introduced to the human mind. Crossroads of the collective sub-consciousness led to the unintended creation of new digital life. Some were born from instinct, passion and desire. But Continuum was forged from something else... From logic, reason and need."
"Need? Need for what?" Hydra wanted to take his turn now to start getting answers. "I can think of a couple of things!" But Tycho Rivers cut in line. "Your story only works if the network had people using it before it went public! Lots of people! How many were there, eh?! Hundreds? Thousands? How many people did you test this virtual world on before you decided to sell it like it was the next best thing for people to drop into their own house?!" There were more than Exeter's official records claimed, he knew that much. He knew that all along, because of what happened to his friends.
"Ah yes, you must be referring to the incident and the schism that preceded it." Mrs. Shintaro took over for the next round of exposition. "You should understand that all of that took place before we were all connected. There were many test subjects, humans who could not survive on their own. The network had initially been intended as a medical tool to help those in pain, mental and physical. Those people were the ones who helped breathe life into Echo, the First entity. After that STHEREA became known as STHEREA and Exeter took control of the project. Only then did it turn into the dueling haven that you know off, that had been the last wish of the creator. Only then did the second entity known as Static emerge. But at the same time.. Exeter funded its own projects and reached out to the wealthy and the rich. They reached out to investors like us.. The Shintaro line has always strived for perfection and prosperity, we saw the potential for STHEREA from the start. Minds like ours helped Continuum come grow strong. Though It was discovered last, it may have existed since the start of it all. Or even before that.."
"The creator again eh? I don't suppose you now who the guy was.." Hydra once again tried to come back to his questions, questions which Hansen had only half-answered back when the two of them dueled. "We never learned his name. Hansen, the only one who can now claim to have talked to them in person, erased all his other records wherever he could." An expression of disgust crossed Mr. Shintaro's face. "He clearly did not do a good job at it. Then again, incompetence seemed to be his passion. Because of his incompetence, demos of our projects got left behind on the main STHEREA network when we were already perfectly capable hosting our own closed systems. He suffered from his own emotions in the end. Hansen envied the Creator's work and disapproved of his noble yet limiting intentions. He forced the creator's hand, drove him into a corner. He too reacted emotionally and tried to shut down his work in the only way he knew how. He destroyed the facility and all of its work. Perhaps he had come to regret his invention. Unfortunately he did not realize that all his data had already been backed up."
"The explosion? It was because of that?" Tycho Rivers' eyes widened as he finally got confirmation that what Charles had told him had been the truth all along. "Who else knew? Who was responsible?" He wanted names, more names.
"The CEOs, the CTOs, the board of directors and the creator's software team. They all knew what they were getting involved with, They all understood what STHEREA could do for them. Project Flute arose as a natural consequence, a method to clean up stains on the mental database of mankind whenever one of their branches made a big mess. But no one understood than better than mister Hansen. His unique connection with the mastermind behind STHEREA allowed him a place in our inner circle and a top position as the biggest Exeter branch despite his low rank. They all knew and covered the accident up anyway, though I believe you figured that part out for yourself. You likely slipped through the cracks because the network was still too new at the time and targeted manipulations were impossible. An explosion is difficult to erase from everyone's memories either way, so they settled for just subtly lowering people's interest in the case. But you clung to that emotion... Though the memory is still fading, isn't it? Can you say his name, I wonder?" The lord taunted him, and Tycho could not come up with a quick rebuttal.
"Why are you telling us all of this?" Crescent finally voiced her own concern. She'd steadily been feeling more anxious due to the way they spoke and acted: acting entirely indifferent towards the horror they described. "Yes. If you believe that you hold no responsibility for this, you are very much mistaken! I knew Exeter was bad, but I had no idea how much worse this whole network could get!" Heleil had no intentions of letting this news go unheard either. And if they tried to stop them, she would fight her way out. Most of the duelists felt the same way.
"Ho? You still do not appreciate the situation you have found yourself in. We can afford to tell you this, because this is our shared domain." Mrs. Shintaro's strangely monotonous laughter was the only warning the duelists got before Continuum became active. All the lines of its body lit up at once and the world began to rumble. "Whaa!" Heleil and the others were hurled upwards, falling up-side down until they were floating in the middle of the air. "What now? There's no gravity?" The pendulum champion could not budge her body in any direction, vertical or horizontal. All eight of them were suspended. This felt weird even for the normally boundless Hydra. "Zanbatou! Now would be a good time to help us!" He shouted at the samurai duelist who did not have to suffer this effect. But he might as well have been trying to get help from a brick wall. Zanbatou showed only a mild look of concern as he maintained his submissive position.
"You think you can do this to us?!" Tycho shouted again. "We clearly can. You've been acclimated to the system now, the previous trials were merely a stalling tactic for this purpose. We had been hoping to catch for more of you in fact. But both the first and second entity evaded our grasp." Mister Shintaro shook his head. He did not seem too displeased with the current results. "They will have to come for you eventually, such is the way of all emotional responses. And as long as we possess but one of the seven legacy items, they cannot override Continuum's control of this closed system. It should not have been this way to begin with. The plan had been to grow until we were too big to fail, to expand STHEREA until humanity could not live without it. Already the global economy is this close to a crisis because of a perceived shutdown, imagine what would have happened in a few more years. Losing the network then would have collapsed the world. Yet now we have to accelerate our plans. If they come out into the open, so shall we.."
"Unforgivable." One voice was heard saying, the last voice to respond to the madness that filled the air. "What you are doing is unforgivable!" Zettai screamed and struggled more than anyone else. "Oho? You are one of his corruptions: Abigail Starling now known as Zettai. So tell us, what is it that you believe? What are we going to do that is different from what Static has done to you? The eternity he offers is one of chaos and war. The immortality we are working towards will be one of order and reason. All we do is store life beyond death and give it a new eternal purpose. Can any of you say you were using your current life for the betterment of mankind?" Mrs. Shintaro chided the ace duelist but sent some glares at duelists like Charles as well. "What? I..." He tried to defend himself..
But Zettai was far too outraged to let anyone else speak. "It wont be life! It wont be human! Static is going to free the soul from the flesh! You are merely replacing the soul with a mind that suits your design! You would make puppets of us all, like you have done to him!" Zettai pointed down towards Zanbatou and the Karakuri drones. "You truly cannot see that the one being replaced is you, can you? There is no such thing as a soul. Anything that comes close is not what Static or even Echo seek to uplift." The Shintaros pointed towards her. After all if Hydra and Schwarzwald could exist at the same time, how could she deny her own duality? "I... I will not allow it. It goes against the nature of existence itself. You have to be stopped." Yet denial could be strengthened with revulsion. "IT has to be stopped." Zettai raised her arm with a clenched hand, and projected a large Vector Blast rifle on top of it.
"What the?" Charles and the others visibly shuddered as Zettai's weapon launched a beam through the air and sent shockwaves of energy across the sky. Before the blast could hit Continuum, the elliptic entity blinked out of existence and re-appeared on the edge of the network instead. "Gwaaah!" Everyone dropped back down to the rooftop a second later. Continuum's hold over them had been disrupted by the ace's strike.. her inexplicable strike. "How did you do that?" Charles yelled. Her mods should still have been disabled. "I felt the power come back to me. Static has come to our aid.." Zettai said with a determined grin slowly creeping up on her face. "I imagine that you did not see this coming, did you?" She began to laugh as she started projecting more cannons and aerial mods.
"Our power returned? Then that means..." Olympia tested it out for herself. A single snap was all it took now to create a spark of fire. "That means it is time to pay them back!" She tossed the first fireball towards the Karakuri unit that had cast the hologram of the Shintaro. The liveless pair gave only a look of mild concern before their visuals went offline. "Yes, run while you can! First we will deal with your puppets, then with you!" The Fire Princess shouted as she started laying into the remaining Karakuris with more blasts of flame. Zettai backed her up with various laser blasts and afterburn salvos. They avoided hitting Zanbatou, for now. And the samurai duelist seemed too stunned to react to any of this.
Hydra felt the same way. "Static is helping us? Never have I been more confused.." Whatever reasons there were for this sudden turn, he saw nothing good leading up to it. "This is exactly what Static did to the research complex, he used the legacy items to control reality itself.. virtual or not. But I do not know why he did not use his full power as soon as we left." Charles did not believe that Zettai had been holding back all this time. Something had changed between then and now. "Melyria once told me.. that the legacy items were made by the creator to help fight Exeter. But maybe they were meant to fight this instead?" Crescent had her own theories involving the Third Entity. Right now It seemed powerless, though it could also not be touched by any of their attacks. "But it would have to take a lot of... Oh no." At that moment, it dawned on Charles what could have been the altered variable. "Blanche! Static took the World Armor back!" And that moment of realization paired up with the world around them realizing a whole new power.. A power that shook the foundations of Shintaro castle.
...
And it shook the foundations of the Shintaro estate as well. "What on earth?" The storm that had troubled Yoro-Himiko for some time now, grew into calamity of all elements. The winds tossed water and ground against the walls of her house, lightning bolts struck the earth within visible range and the floor beneath her feet vibrated as if she'd been standing on an active volcano. "This is... not possible." The monitor that showed her the fates of her friends had gone black a while ago. She did not need it anymore to follow them, they would come to her. Ancient castle walls and wooden floors replaced the inside of her room, while the outside now looked like a feudal city from centuries ago. "The virtual world... is here?" Her mind refused to believe her eyes, or her ears and body. She could touch this new merged reality, she could move her hands across it and push against it. If this was all some grand projection experiment, she might have come to terms with it eventually. "And... that was not there before." But what she could not explain was the spiraling tower that now cut the sky outside her window in half: the Tower Beyond.
...
"The Tower Beyond!" Crescent shouted. They were seeing the same building pierce the clouds, intruding on Continuum's domain. "Static must have been really serious about helping us.. or rather, about helping Zettai. We need to fall back." Hydra grimaced. It would only be a matter of time before the rest of his cronies came to join in on the fun. "If we do, we're giving them the chance to retrieve the Chalice." Void argued back. He did not doubt that Static had stolen back the Armor from Blanche, which would mean he only needed the Legacy item that Shintaro held to complete his plans for both worlds. And while they had not come across it yet, the Chalice had to be stored in this virtual environment somewhere. "Yes, we cannot run now." Crescent nodded and turned towards the samurai duelist. "Zanbatou, can you help us? Please. We... Zanbatou?"
"This is not right." He however seemed to be in a state of disarray." The arrival of the tower beyond forced twisted the skies and blew away the clouds, revealing what parts of reality it had also sucked into the virtual world with the power of the ark. "That is where.." And he recognized the stately home that appeared below, the Shintaro manor that had now become a part of the castle. "That is where the Shintaros live, isn't it?" Unfortunately Zettai picked up on his despair and acquired a new goal in her mind. "No. That is where.. lady Shintaro lives. But my masters told me that this network was attached to a different location." Zanbatou's mind could not reconcile what he knew with what he saw. While Zettai only cared about one piece of information. "Your masters lied. They have to be down there as well. Even if they are not, they cannot hide Yoro-Himiko anymore!." With no more Karakuri units to slaughter and with no Entities to stop her, she blasted off towards the lower levels and flew straight towards the mansion. "No! Do not hurt lady Shintaro!"
"Zanbatou! Wait, let us help you! We don't want anything to happen to Himiko either!" Crescent stopped the duelist before he could run down the tower. "We cannot catch up to her!" Tycho growled. "We cannot leave yet either!" Crescent yelled back. This was her one chance to do what she came here to do. "Hey! I agree about that part!" Tycho did not want to run away either, not when the real culprits were this close. "You, samurai guy! You have to know where Himiko's room is or whatever. If you want to rescue her, you will have to take us with you!"
"Very well. I know I can trust you. But please... hurry." Zanbatou allowed them to follow him. Why he did not really know, he was going against his orders already. But then again, who could maintain order in this chaos now?
"Zanbatou, what have you done? You should not even be here. They should not be here either!" He got reminded of that fact when they ran into an unexpected face as soon as they reached the bottom floor of the castle. "You again?" Olympia cursed. It was mister Hikaru, who found himself in a bit of a daze as the halls around him suddenly shifted realities. He recognized the duelists as well, which only added to his confusion. "You know him?" Heleil inquired. "Yes. He is the one who took me here!" Olympia summoned flames to her hand again. "But he is not so dangerous now, is he?" The perfect chance to get even just walked up to them, she could hardly say no.
"Wait." But Zanbatou denied her. "Hikaru, where are the masters? Where is Lady Shintaro? We have to get them to safety. The enemy is upon us." He held up one arm in front of the duelists, while his other lingered above his dueldisk. "Do not think you can order me around just because you were given the treatment before me, Zanbatou." Hikaru did not talk like he was in the mood for cooperation either way. "The enemies I see are right in front of me!" He made that quite clear when he pulled out a dueldisk of his own to defend himself, or rather to attack the duelists with. "Hikaru! There is no time for this! The masters are in danger!" Zanbatou yelled more forcibly this time. "Any who try to approach them are in danger. They do not need the likes of you. And I will be damned if I let you do as you please." Hikaru was not taking his challenge back. But as he could only duel one at a time, he had to settle for the 'treacherous' Zanbatou. "Curse it. I will have to leave the lady in your care, her room is at the end of the hall. But please, save the masters as well!"
"You can depend on us." Charles nodded. "What? Are you nuts\? You want to help those bastards?" Tycho shouted well in earshot of Zanbatou. "We can argue later! Just keep going!" Charles ignored the rest of his complaints and ran passed the Zanbatou, following his directions. The Samurai only gave them a solemn nod as a sign of gratitude.
...
"What now?" Nakana expected the worst like an attack of apocalyptic proportions, when the sound outside her door reached a loud climax. Next thing she knew, her immovable gate got blasted off its hinges by the flames of a woman that looked a lot like a card she once knew. "A.. Fire Princess?" At first she wondered if she was dreaming all of this, but then she started recognizing faces. "Aurora?" Especially the weather painter duelist. "Himiko! I am so glad..." It was her alright, the girl who could not even think of what to say now that she'd finally found her again. For now she would just greet her with a smile. "I... is this reality? Or am I trapped in a simulation?"
"Half and half." The half invisible man muttered to the bewildered daughter. "You? You're Hydra?" His face might have been wiped off, but Himiko could not mistake his voice. "And you must be.. Heleil? And you were called.. Charles and Tycho? Who are you? Why are there ADIs in your group now? Where is Zanbatou? What is that tower in the sky?" These were all the same people she'd seen on her now defunct monitor, but what she'd seen on it did not really explain why or how this had happened. "I am surprised you even know my name. But its me, Void. I would love to fill you in on the rest, but we should get out of here while we can. Zanbatou got delayed by one of your parents subordinates. He asked us to come and save you.. and your mother and father." Charles could not lie to her, even if he did in fact not like the idea of having to rescue those two as well. "My mother? My father? They're here now? Then I... we should assist them. I know where they would normally be. I can show you the way."
"Are you sure you want do do that?" Heleil asked her. Everything was happening so fast that she could not blame her if she needed some time to think things over. "I do." But in this moment, Nakana could only think about her family no matter how badly hay had treated her.
"You know this is quite a nice place you got to grow up in." Tycho remarked with a hint of envy. Every wall of this house had something fancy on it like a painting, a clock or a chandelier. One could almost appreciate it if they had not been in the rush of a lifetime. "It felt differently to me. Trust me." Himiko bitterly noted and quite enjoyed not having to stop and look around for once. In fact she could not recall ever running down these halls. Still there were places that gave her a shudder of fright. Like the office at the end of the hallway. "This is the room... They should be waiting in there.." It seemed unreal to her now that she would be entering it without their permission. The only times she'd seed this place before involved her mother or father calling her over to be disciplined or lectured. Nobody else had ever been allowed inside. "Wait.. I can hear someone else." So it felt even stranger to hear a third voice coming from the room. "Oh no." And when she opened the door she realized the roof of the room had been blown open. There she saw a familiar figure advancing on her mother and father at the same time, and caught the tail-end of their conversation.
"If you kill us, you will not dismantle Continuum's organization. We have people everywhere." The father asserted with his usually dominant tone. "You need us to cure you of your madness, miss Starling. You need to cease being Zettai." The mother insisted with her cold and detached insensitivity. Himiko would have frozen if both of them talked to her like that at once. The one they spoke to now was the opposite. "You are wrong." Zettai took one step closer. "This is not your world anymore." She took another and grabbed a red blade with her left hand. "It is ours. And people like you, who have abandoned humanity for a cold lifeless immortality, do not deserve to live in it anymore." She took another few steps, faster and faster.
"Zettai!?" Himiko gasped when she realized who she was looking at. Her instinct took over. "No! Zettai! Do not.." But her reaction came too late. She turned around the corner of the office, only to see the ace duelist cut both her parents down with a bloodied sword... "No. NO!"
(To Be Continuum in World 063: Inside a Black and White Box)