Possession
. . . mmmmmmmm" Meiji's voice sounded electronic, glitched.
Sayori jumped back again, this time in horror, as her boyfriend's head twisted and flipped and seemed to occupy a thousand different positions all at once.
Sayori screamed.
A glitch, television static-filled hole replaced Meiji's face. It slowly coalesced back into a crude facsimile of her boyfriend's visage. The eyes remained little more than electronic snow, and when he opened his mouth, she could see the same where teeth and a tongue ought to have been.
He looked at her and quirked an eyebrow. He smirked. In someone else's voice, he said, "Sayori, you certainly got some nice tits, but you should put some clothes on. We're childhood friends, not lovers, you dummy." The Japanese he spoke looked like an old dubbed movie—like he was clearly speaking some other language, and yet it was Japanese that she heard.
Sayori quickly covered her naked breasts with her hands and looked around, panicked. "Meiji?" she asked, "Meiji, what's going on? How could you say that?!"
"So the psycho's got you convinced I'm 'Meiji', too, huh?" he commented. "Well, we'll get that corrected soon enough." Glitches and robotic movements accompanied his speech, his neck cricking like a dynamo that kept trying to go past a certain point. "Grr . . . Fucking . . . stop it!" he growled as his hand tried to reach up and grab his own neck. He clamped down on the entity inside him trying to reassert control.
Sayori was sobbing. "What's happened? Meiji, please, come back to me! What did you do with Meiji!? Who—what are you?!" she asked.
"I'm đżĹŖď, Sayori," he said. "Don't you remember your old childhood friend? I'm hurt, Sayori. After all, you'll always be my dearest friend."
"No!" Sayori screamed. "Whoever you are, get out of my Meiji!"
"You dummy, put some clothes on!" he reproached her and sighed. "Now, where's the psycho? I need to get rid of her, first, to keep you girls safe." He looked down at Sayori crouched in the corner hugging the duplicate Mr. Cow to cover herself up. She was crying incoherently into it, soaking the soft fleece fabric with her tears.
"Well?" he demanded.
"Who—who are you talking about?" she asked, scared of this stranger that commandeered her boyfriend's body.
"Monika! The psycho bitch that's got that pretty little head of yours all confused. Where is she?" he asked again.
"Why are you calling her that?" Sayori asked, "Moni-chan's my friend. Don't call her 'psycho', Meiji! She's . . ."
"She's got you convinced that I'm this 'Meiji' dude, and not your dearest friend, ÞĽü¨ā! That's what!" he yelled, causing her to shrink behind the Mr. Cow plushy. "Don't worry, dummy, I'll fix her wagon and keep her from ruining everything. I won't let it happen!"
"STOP CALLING ME 'DUMMY'!" Sayori screamed. "GET OUT OF MY MEIJI! GET OUT OF MY MEIJI! GET OUT OF MY MEIJI! GET OUT OF MY MEIJI! GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!" She was throwing shoes and slippers and anything else she could grasp near her at him.
"Jeez, fine, I'm going," ŸßÕá sneered, rolling his eyes. "I don't need to be told twice. Don't worry, cinnamon bun, I'll come back to stop you from hanging yourself tonight . . . after I've taken care of that manipulative bitch. Besides, she thinks that Natsuki loves her. Can you believe that shit? My Natsuki? Pshaw! Natsuki belongs to me!" ¦Įýķė walked out the door, slamming it behind himself.
"NOO!" Sayori screamed as her heart rent in twain.
o o o
Stan Luciano smiled as his work in this dimension was finished. His hand was still held over where the head of íŰ¼ŲŬ would have been, when he'd grabbed it. He quickly waved away the smoke wafting in the air after the transmigration. Walls and furniture began fading away as he reabsorbed them into himself, leaving behind only a small table with a computer running on it in a vast nothingness.
o o o
My phone rang. I looked down and saw that it was Sayori.
"Hey, Sayoriin," I greeted her, bringing the phone to my ear. "Did you like my present? Now you have two Mr. Cows."
"M-Moni-chan!? He-he" Sayori studdered through audable sobs.
Instantly my jocular tone disappeared and I began panicking. "Sayoriin?" I asked, "What happened? Are you okay? Who did what to you?"
She sobbed into the phone and said through halting breaths, "Something calling itself '³ÿÑĤÛ' took over Meiji! He-it—I don't know—he . . . he said you have me all confused and left, looking for you!"
"Sayoriin, did he hurt you?" I asked. "Are you safe? Are you okay?"
Behind me, Natsuki squawked. "Go get her right now! Can you use that weird classroom of yours, Monnie?! Make sure she's safe, now!"
"I-I'm safe . . ." she shuddered, "But I—how could I be okay? He stole my Meiji! He called you psycho! He said you've got us all convinced of lies!"
"Sayoriin, I'll be there in a moment or two, hold tight . . . and . . . um . . . don't be too alarmed when I walk out your closet door—actually, could you concentrate on it and tell me its object code?"
"Why are you bringing that up right now?" she asked.
"Because I need to connect where I am to where you are . . ." I tried to explain . . . "Kind of like, how I dropped Mr. Cow in your lap."
She finally gave a broken giggle through her sobs. "It-you dropped it on my head . . ."
"Sorry, Sayoriin," I said. "Now . . . I need that object code . . ."
"Um . . . 'Sayo-Rm-Door-Closet', it looks like," she read off to me.
"Thanks, sit tight," I said, "I'll be there in a few seconds."
Connect Location (open-paren)(quote-marks)Space-Classroom-Door-1(quote-marks)(close-paren) to Object (open-paren)(quote-marks)Sayo-Rm-Door-Closet(quote-marks)(close-paren)—enter.
Connect Location to Object successful
I threw open her closet door and stepped out into Sayori's room.
I found her almost naked, dressed in little more than a pair of panties, clutching Mr. Cow.
She looked up at me and screamed.
"Moni-chan!?" She started, "How?! What did you do?!"
"Oh! Sayoriin!" I exclaimed, gathering her in my arms. "Let's get you dressed and safe."
She finally looked down at herself and realized her state of dress.
"Eep!" she squeaked before grabbing at her bra on the floor. I opened up her wardrobe and pulled out that pink shirt I'd given her all those years ago and a pair of blue jeans. I handed them over to her.
"Sayori, he . . . he didn't do anything to you, did he?" I felt sick in the stomach and hoped against hope that she hadn't been . . .
"No—just tore my heart in two . . ." she lamented, "He took over my Meiji, then said he's gonna take care of you before he left."
"Did he say anything else?" I asked, relieved that she hadn't been hurt.
"Um . . ."
"Sayoriin?" I asked. I could tell she was reluctant to say.
"He said . . . that . . . he said that . . ." Sayori couldn't say it. It couldn't be.
"He said that . . . ?"
"He said that Natsuki belonged to him . . ." Sayori broke down crying again.
I saw red . . . and then I panicked. Natsuki was back at the school.
"Sayoriin, we have to go, now," I said. Come on, into the Space Classroom.
o o o
"What the fuck is written on all these signs?!" úÛŜıñ cursed his luck. All of these roads looked hardly anything like the game, except the one single intersection the game had featured. That he had recognized—except that it was only a couple hundred yards from Sayori's house. He couldn't' read a single road sign—and all of them had English letters underneath the squiggly characters.
"This has got to be that psycho's fault, I can just tell!" he growled. He spotted someone who looked to be about his age. "Hey, you!" he called out to them.
"Oh! Hey! Meiji!" they said with a smile and crossed the street to talk to him. "What's up? What happened to your voice, it's a little weird."
"Er . . . yeah, I'm uh, I got turned around, how do I get to the school?"
"Hah! That's a good joke!" the kid laughed, "Tell me another. What're you, a space alien?"
"I'm being serious here," Meiji said.
"Dude, isn't that your house right there," they asked, pointing just a little down the street to a house that he did recognize from the game. "How could you be lost in your own neighborhood? Hey man, I gotta get home, see ya," the kid said, waving to him as he ran back across the street and walked the other way.
"Fuck!"
He pulled out this body's phone from its pocket and looked. "Great, just great! It's all in this squiggly shit! And why does everyone have a fucking flip phone?!" He clicked the arrow button, advancing the screen's little icons until he recognized the Google Maps symbol. "Well, at least I should be able to enter English into it . . ."
5 minutes later . . .
"Why is typing with a flip-phone keyboard so fucking hard!?" he yelled, startling a passerby. He finally managed to get the words 'high school' typed into it and searching. "Why can't you people use smart phones?!
On the tiny, little screen, he followed the map's guidance to the intersection of the 606 and the 9. From there, he headed south, towards what Maps called, 'Kyoto Prefectural Miyazu Senior High School'.
o o o
"This banner is gonna look so neat, Yuri!" Kouta said as they continued painting. "Monika's idea for transferring the design to the banner worked out great."
"Didn't it, though!?" Yuri said as she applied another long, slow, broad stroke of red paint within the outline of a calligraphic letter M. "I'm really glad we can work together on this." She smiled at Kouta and he smiled back.
"Me, too," he replied. "Besides, it's a nice opportunity to be alone with you without having to worry about either of our parents coming home."
"Bad boy!" Yuri said, affecting a mock-scandalized look, "What happens when Monika walks back in?"
"Ha!" Kouta laughed. "I can guarantee you that she's not coming back up here until Natsuki-chan lets her come back up here, and she's gonna keep her busy. Besides, when I teased Natsuki-chan about Monika calling her 'Buffsuki', I think she might have decided to give Monika a little more work than she would have. Eeheehee."
"You sly devil!" Yuri said, "Maybe we can . . . take advantage . . . of the time if you're that confident. Besides, who says we have to indulge here, in the clubroom? I'm sure there's a classroom on the second floor with an equally usable closet . . ."
"See, this is why I love you so much, Yuri!" Kouta said!
"Well . . . let's just say that making out with you is pretty fun for me, too . . . so the faster we get this done, the faster we can go find that open closet," Yuri said a little shyly.
They painted the banner in silence for a while before Yuri spoke up suddenly.
"Kouta . . . How come you don't say 'Monika-san'?" she asked, her tone curious and conversational, but Kouta knew that something like this could be a landmine.
"A while back, that's what she told me to call her and it kind of stuck," he shrugged his shoulders. "What about it?"
"Hmm . . ." Yuri nodded as she continued painting. "Did you have a thing for her?"
"Ehehe . . . guilty as charged," Kouta said, holding his hands up. "Well, back then, she turned me right down . . ."
"Wow, you asked her out?" Yuri asked, surprised. "I didn't know that."
"Not exactly something I'm going to bring up," Kouta said, "Most guys, we don't like dwelling on our rejections. It was that night you girls came out to cheer on Meiji and the team."
"I guess not . . ." she mused, and suddenly, she felt defensive of her man. "Wow! That was a long time ago! Did she give any reason? I'm torn between wanting to thank her because I got you, instead, and slapping her for not realizing what a perfect man you are."
"Ahaha! Thanks baby, that means a lot—no joke," he said. "And I'm glad she turned me down, too. I look back and I have trouble figuring out how I got by without you." He leaned over and the shared a kiss. "As for reasons . . . well, turns out she liked someone else, already."
"Do you know who it was? I wanna tease her, now!" Yuri said.
"Well, they're going out with each other right now . . ."
"You knew she was in love with Natsuki all this time and none of us did?!" Yuri asked flabbergasted. "That long ago! Back then I never would have guessed that Moni-chan was into girls . . . or that Natsuki was, too."
"Hehe, when she admitted it to me," Kouta said, "I think she was expecting me to fly off the handle or something. She was really guarded and barely let it slip. Anyway, she was glad I took it so well and we became really good friends ever since."
"What about that weird thing you do, singing to each other when you say 'Hi'?" Yuri asked. "My English is pretty good, so I can tell it's not English . . ."
"One day, I was like 'Hey, Monika!', calling her over to talk with us baseballers" Kouta explained, "and suddenly she sings back that line of hers, so we were all curious cause she was laughing like she just told the best joke ever. She pulls up this Swedish band on her phone and showed us the video. Sure enough, it's got this dude singing 'Hey hey Monika!' so I started doing that ever since."
"Hmm . . ." Yuri seemed amused.
"Hey, baby, I'm kind of bored talking about Monika . . ." Kouta said. He slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her to him. "Why don't you let me discover something new about you in that closet?" He leaned in and pressed his lips to hers and she turned to face him and return the kiss.
"Charmer . . ." Yuri said, as she stood up, brushing dust off her knees. "Let's go find that closet . . . just in case Monika comes back sooner than you think she will."
"You don't wanna show off what she's missing?" Kouta asked, winking. He took her hand and stood up, pulling her back into his embrace and kissing her again.
She slid her hand down his chest, across his taut abs, and down into his pants. "Well," she said, breaking the kiss, "There's some things I'd rather not show off . . ."
o o o
Sayori grabbed the stack of posters that she and Meiji had finished. Tentatively, she entered the Space Classroom as if she were testing the water with her toes.
"This—this is sooo amazing, Moni-chan!" Sayori said, awestruck by the connection between dimensions. "How did you do this?" Despite her wonderment, I could tell it was dulled.
I had my arm around her, guiding her in and let her set the posters on a desk I'd made. I brought up the menus and walked her through the process.
Once she closed the door, I showed her how to disconnect the two objects—her door and the Space Classroom from one another. I didn't let her go, though, because her expression was down and she just looked so destroyed. Bringing her over to the bed that Natsuki's reveling had disheveled earlier, I sat her down on its edge and sat next to her.
"Where's that door lead?" she asked me, pointing towards the rear door of the Space Classroom.
"That's still connected to the kitchens," I said. "Natsuki's baking. When you called, I told her it was an emergency and she told me to go get you."
"Remember I wanted to know what was going on?" Sayori asked. "I think it's important to explain stuff in detail, now, Moni-chan. I need to know what happened to my Meiji . . ." She began crying again and hugged me.
"Okay, Sayoriin, I'll tell you what I can," I said. I explained what I remembered of the game, its plotline, and the key events. I went on to explain about how I had seen the 'player' in Meiji's eyes—she confirmed that she'd seen static but the other day, she'd seen the player, too, but only a flash of him.
Finally, I told her about my life before becoming Monika. Living a couple hours' drive from Miyazu, the drinking, smoking, and all the neglectful, terrible decisions that lead to an early death back in America. How I woke up in the hospital, healing from what must have been an awful accident that killed Monika's parents, and I suspected, killed her, too.
I told her about the five years I'd spent seeking out my friends, gathering them together and trying to 'fix' their problems as best I could, or help improve their lives. I told her of my failures, too. How I hadn't noticed Yuri begin cutting, for example, until it was too late.
o o o
"Her SKIRT, all FLUFFY, TWIRLS
Her shirt, with KITTY, at PEACE
PINK SOCKS, she's BOUNCY, BUBBLES
LIPSTICK, puffy POUT, rose CHEEKS"
The masculine voice at the door of the kitchens seemed to run like an electric current from her ears right to her heart. Natsuki felt a wave of woozy pleasure wash over her but it didn't feel right. She felt like a spell was being cast upon her.
She turned around to see Meiji standing at the door. He looked cocky, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed.
"H-hi, Meiji-kun," she greeted him, "I thought you were helping Sayori with the posters . . . finished already?"
"Yeah," he nodded, "The cinnamon bun'll be bringing them by later to stick on the walls. I came here to see if you needed some help with the baking."
Something was . . . off about him, but she couldn't put her finger on it.
"Where's Monika?" he asked, looking around. "I notice she's not helping."
"Uh . . . Meiji-kun," Natsuki said, "Sayori called earlier . . . she was in a lot of trouble, it sounded like . . ."
"That dummy!" he rolled his eyes, and waved it off. "I bet she ended up ripping one of the posters I helped her make and got all weepy about it."
"Meiji-kun? Sayori-chan—she," Natsuki was getting very ugly vibes from him, "She doesn't get weepy; that's more Monnie than Sayori-chan . . . and since when did you go back to calling your girlfriend, 'dummy'? Did you have a fight? And when did you just start dropping the –chan from my girlfriend's name? Don't you think that's a little . . ."
His expression began dropping from that arrogant, entitled smirk to a frustrated frown.
"Ngh . . . WHISPER, STRAWBERRY, ANIME, MELODY!" he blurted out.
Again, that pleasing spark seemed to crawl down her skin and coalesce right in her crotch.
"Wh-what are you saying, all of a sudden?" she asked as she hunched over, squeezing her legs together. The tingling subsided and she looked at him. "What's going on?"
He backed her up against the wall, grabbing her arms and pinning them.
"That psycho's got you all confused, Natsuki!" he said, his eyes boring into hers. "She's got you convinced you even like her! How can you like that bitch?! She's always putting your manga on the top shelf, and made your dad beat you!"
"What the fuck!?" Natsuki screamed, "What's gotten into you, Watanabe! You've gone crazy! Get off me!"
"You're supposed to love me, Natsuki!" he growled. "Don't you like my poetry? GAMES, HEADPHONES, DOKI-DOKI, NIGHTGOWN!"
Her legs gave out from under her as her hips jerked. She bit her lip as she felt it hit her.
"What the fuck are you doing to me, Watanabe?!" Natsuki barked, "Let me go right now, you freak!"
He was about to open his mouth to begin another one of those incantations, when he was suddenly bowled over by a blur of coral-brown hair and a big white bow.
o o o
". . . and that brings us to now, I guess," I said to Sayori, "That's everything."
She opened her mouth to say something when we both jerked our head towards the door leading out into the kitchens. "What the fuck!?" we heard Natsuki scream, "What's gotten into you, Watanabe! You've gone crazy! Get off me!" followed shortly by "What the fuck are you doing to me, Watanabe?!" Natsuki barked, "Let me go right now, you freak!"
I bolted towards the door, throwing it open an racing across the room towards my girlfriend's attacker. I shoved him off her and began punching, slapping, and kicking at him. But there was a significant difference in mass and strength between us.
Behind us, Sayori was screaming, "Stop it! Monnie, that's Meiji's body! Stop it! He has to be in there, somewhere!"
ĈêøċÞ threw me off himself. I slammed into one of the preparation counters in a daze. ëųʼnĝă stood up and spit some blood onto the floor from his busted lip.
"You don't have to worry about her hurting me, dummy," he grinned sadistically. "She's gotta worry about me." He was on me in an instant and I saw stars in my eyes as his fist connected with the side of my face. Several more blows nearly knocked me unconscious. "You psycho bitch! I thought I'd have to look for you, but you fell right into my lap!"
I vaguely registered Natsuki and Sayori screaming.
He picked me up by my neck and held me aloft. I grabbed his arm and kicked at him, but to no avail. Natsuki ran up and started hitting him.
"Let her go, Meiji!" she pleaded, "Stop this! What are you doing!? Stop it! You're hurting her!"
"Candy! Blanket! Email! Kawaii!" he seemingly incanted, "Papa! Shopping! Valentine! Swimsuit!"
A surge of emotion rebelliously forced Natsuki's heart to flutter and she fell back, warring with the feelings inside her. She slammed her hands over her ears and shut her eyes, tight. "Stop it! What are you doing to me?! Get out of my head! Stop playing with my heart!"
"F-fight it, Nat-Natchan!" I gurgled through his strangling grip. "Don't let him t-take you from m-me!"
ġśÊŹĔ slapped me with the back of his free hand sending my consciousness reeling. "Don't fight it, Natsuki!" he countermanded my encouragement. "You're supposed to love me, not this manipulative bitch!" ıĽż¬ž's arm began glitching and I could hear the static. The glitches began racing up his bicep, through his forearm and wrist into my neck. The static became unbearably loud and the glitching began invading my body, searing me with pain.
I looked through the console, desperate for something I could do, but the pain and the static's distraction were making it impossible to work.
ĊŚ¯ōŰ began laughing. "Hahahaha! You think the console will save you?!" he asked, "I don't have a character file, you idiot! Or did you forget that I'm the player! Well, now I have the power, here. It's my computer and I'll be the one to mod this world as I see fit! And that's going to begin with remaking it without you in it!"
He punctuated it with a surge of terrible energy that coursed through my body and I felt myself torn apart cell-by-cell, molecule-by-molocule, until—
o o o
Sayori screamed herself hoarse as the power of the Literature Club presidency flooded her and Monika's 'epiphany' split her brain in thousands of pieces. Her psyche practically broke itself trying to mesh the reality of her own world with the idea of the game. Colors, patterns, and cacophonous noise assailed her.
o o o
"Moniiiiiieeeeeee!" Natsuki screamed as her lover evaporated in a shower of glitching sparks and television static. "Noooooooooooo! What did you do to her, you monster?! What did you do?!" She flew at him, arms flailing impotently and he slapped her away, into Sayori.
"I sent her to Hell, where she belongs!" ®¸ċŅÁ barked. "So just forget her. She can't manipulate you anymore!"
"Fuck you! You fucking abomination!" Natsuki yelled.
"Shopping! Valentine! Swimsuit! Ribbon!" he rambled, smirking at Natsuki's reaction. "Nibble! Jump! Cute! Anger!"
She buckled her body fighting her, more and more saying yes to him even as her mind was so thoroughly repulsed.
ÙéÅŌč grinned viciously, salaciously, as Natsuki's legs rubbed and squirmed together and her arms hugged herself, practically groping herself. He enjoyed watching her fight it. "When you succumb to reality, it'll be all the sweeter, Natsuki."
"Quit! Saying! My! Name! Arrrgh!" Natsuki growled. "I'll never love you!"
èĵŨÜĩ grabbed his own head suddenly and static and glitching made it seem to reform. Sayori could see that this was her Meiji trying to reassert himself.
Meiji's voice struggled out, through the monster's overpowering will, "R-Run! Sayori, my love, run! T-take N-Natsuki-san with y-you! G-Get out of herrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr"
Sayori's mind began coming to, and her love's voice rang through the cacophony, cutting through it and silencing it. Through her tears and anguish, grabbed Natsuki and didn't hesitate a second more. She dragged her friend through the door, back into the Space Classroom, and slammed it shut.
¼ē²óʼn fought Meiji for dominance and soon pushed him back down into the void of nothingness. He got up and stumbled, jerking spasmodically as Meiji's last efforts to hold him back wore down.
Disconnect Location (open-paren)(quote-marks)Space-Classroom-Door-2(quote-marks)(close-paren) from Object (open-paren)(quote-marks)Miya-kou-Kitchen-Door-4(quote-marks)(close-paren)—enter.
Disconnect Location from Object successful
ŕŬÍĄě threw open the kitchen door, found an empty hallway, and cursed.
I hope everyone is enjoying my fic, I'm in the Monika. Please do leave a review. Assuming I'm not overwhelmed, I try to respond to my reviews in a timely manner. Furthermore, if you have not already, please consider reading my other DDLC fic, The Music of the Soul.