Chapter 1: The story of seven: A real runaway.
The world as we know it, with its caring community of adults protecting the children and the strong guarding the weak out of common human decency, no longer exists.
Even now, I do not know the exact details of the destructive catastrophe that ended civilization as it once was when each and every day was not yet a constant battle for survival as it was now. At least for those of us they claimed were still too young to understand and cold of being dreams.
Well life would pass me by if I didn't open up my eyes. But as my dear friends when they still lived and we were still fortunate enough to be dashing the same perilous path as one would tell you, I was the most stubborn, foolhardy human being around and nothing was more distasteful to me than the prospect of waiting around to do nothing while I still drew breath and there remained a single spark of life within me.

I had my fill of helplessness and guilt during my younger days. The most tragic of my childhood memories still trouble me even to this day, making me toss and turn entire nights away even in the comfortable bed furnished with proper pillows and warm duvet, actually built for my minute size which I now finally have to myself.
I remember silently making a vow to myself during a time I'd lost track off through the hectic struggles where I and I alone narrowly escaped with my life, that I would no longer run and hide while my pure hearted companions were slowly tortured to death in the most agonizing ways imaginable all in the name of sick and sadistic pleasure from "them".

They. Those things. The abominations. The horrors. The monsters. The mimics. The pretenders. My friends and I had as many insulting names for the towering monsters threatening our very lives as there were stars in the sky before we were driven apart by them and their insatiable greed and bloodlust.
Probably because none of us liked having to refer to those...things by their real name.
Or at least the name the governments of the world bestowed upon the alien invaders prior to the cataclysmic fall of civilization.
They called those demonic ravenous beasts that sought to control what remained of humanity to devour at their leisure, Angels.
Name after some mumbo jumbo in some supposedly sacred scripture, that apparently detailed how this catastrophe was doomed to happen as some sort of divine punishment the all-loving God in his heaven decided we deserved with some nonsense about this being the necessary step towards the divine miracle of something wonderful called "human instrumentality" where everyone came together in perfect harmony and...

Are you laughing yet?
I certainly am. To think that any race no matter how flawed deserved to be subjected to the daily torture we survivors had no choice but to grit our teeth and bear.
Yet people call us kids the crazy ones for thinking such convoluted nonsense seemed a little difficult to believe.
I still remember how I had to do nothing and watch as Two, Three, Four and Five were nabbed by their giant hands to be unceremoniously used as little more than dainty morsels as they were crushed with one small bite and swallowed with a disgusting belch by the giants that we promised we'd work together to avoid.
Their final ear shattering screams still echo in my bones as I hurriedly dash from one hellish place of nightmare to the next, each shave with the hand of death closer than the previous.

We resisted to the end, but for my friends it was too late. Too late.
Yes. My friends had strange names and yes, we fell out with each other in childish quarrels every now and again. But we were all we had.
So long as we were together, we did not feel totally alone and isolated.

There was a strange sort of comfort in dropping off to rest knowing that at least one of us would stay up to keep watch.
As well as a bizarre sensation in having to pass out each crumb of food we happened across between us. It meant each of us had even less to eat than we otherwise would have going solo.
It also made mealtimes a pleasurable affair for more than just nourishing our frail bodies, but also our otherwise hollow souls, without which we would be little better than the mindless automations we sometimes came across with little better to do than try to brutally murder the first living beings that crossed their path on sight.

Sharing the food that I found and putting a ghost of a smile however brief onto the faces of my motley band, suffused my cold heart with a heavenly warmth words alone could not begin to describe. Seeing the unusually decrepit and skinny Five's smile, as she tucked deftly into the shell of the small crab, I had managed to forage with my last bit of strength one warm dawn by some unnamed beach. It filled me with something more than happiness.
It filled me with determination to not simply live but thrive.

Five...
A frail and sickly yet pretty little thing who somehow managed to keep a constant grin through thick and thin. A contagious grin that I was not in the slightest afraid of catching up and could never get enough of.
Her full-length real name was Go. Go Rei Shizuki, her given name matching herself picked number in our team by no small coincidence. Named after the number of elements thought to make up the entirety of the vast universe. Fire, water, earth, air and void.
A name that implied synergy and inner peace, which suited her well with how she took our predicament in stride with a forgiving attitude and was quick to laugh in spite of her lifelong affliction of near constant hunger, shared by a twin and said by their village doctor to be some manner of a rare genetic disorder not yet documented.

Its effects could of course be staved off with constant feeding, though in these chaotic times when just about every living creature remaining was out to eat us instead, this was easier said than done.
Partly out of a connection deeper than simple friendship and partly out of my inexplicably robust constitution which allowed me to withstand longer periods without sustenance than my fellow children, I was the one most often responsible for giving up my portion of food to keep our costly yet charming companion fighting fit.

The second daughter of a poor couple who had fallen on hard times even in the current ramshackle state for what remained of the corrupted world.
A family that would treasure a crumb as solid gold.
The twin sister to a certain "Six" who she knew about only from rumor after they had been separated at childhood by a similar intrusion by the giants, as the one that claimed the lives of my parents and nearly my own had it not been a certain stroke of luck that I did not know whether to thank or curse even to this day.
The number of days the good book claimed it took God for create the Earth that was once a blissful paradise free of hardship and sins.
It seemed almost fate that Five's former family and mine were united in their kindred spirits, this bond reflected in both the names we as their offspring bore and the uncanny speed at which we became more than simple friends.

It was like we'd known each other from a previous life, like we were vaguely familiar to one another long before we'd met.
Like a brief glimpse of Five brought back a riot of faint flashes that were too faint to be clearly discernable, yet felt too familiar to seem like nothing more than mere dreams.
Even long into our flourishing romance, neither of us knew what to make of this.

"Truly I am blessed to have a pretty girl as strong and sympathetic in my life as you, my dearest Five." I murmured as I nursed the still bleeding gashes on my arms and legs from fighting the exotic seafood meal that did not give itself up without a fierce struggle.
I knew these wounds would likely never full heal without leaving permanent scars on my already deformed and knackered form.
I was also aware that however difficult that pincered beast almost the size of me had been to subdue, it had been a godsend with how rare natural life had become following the so called "impact". The global catastrophe that put the surviving humans in the endless life and death struggle we now found ourselves in.
She begged me to take some crab meat for myself after how nastily the fight had injured me. I declined. "You're the one of us most likely to keel over in starvation any time soon and I will not have that after all we've been through and how good you've been not just to me but to all of us. You need it more than me."

I feigned a façade of toughness as a spasm of pain nearly knocked me off my feet.
"Besides. I'm tough to kill and you know that. There's nothing I wouldn't do for you."

"For all of you. That is" I sincerely added, addressing all the other children who politely sat and watched as Five gained back burst after burst of her usual cheery fastidiousness with each bite.
They too, knew that her poor upbringing even in comparison to the rest of ours, as well as her near stillbirth-conception made her constitution extremely poor and mandated more frequent nourishment for her to even stay alive, let alone anything close to healthy enough to keep track with the rapid pace of our daily race going nowhere.
Aware of the fact that she was already beginning to shiver even in the relative warmth of the soon ending winter of the end of March on this sunny shore, I instinctively stepped forward and placed the navy blanket I had scrounged from the remains of a tailor and had been using as a makeshift jacket till now onto her already convulsing form.

She looked at me and said nothing, but the solitary tear from her usually stony eyes and the quickness in which she was able with the help of the thick cloth to suppress her shakes said more than any words ever could.

Seeing that she was already beginning to let off an uncontrollable yawn of exhaustion, I gently caressed her wavy coal black bob as I gave her the delicate pat that allowed her already heavy lids to fully droop to cover her emerald orbs.
I would bridal carry her the short distance to the makeshift raft made from a wooden door that the others had already prepared.
She needed her rest and she needed it now. I would continue holding her in my arms throughout the row to the next island while uttering the set of prayers I had memorized from my brief years prior to being orphaned as the only son of a humble yet content Shinto priest and priestess who were for a time able to hide with me in a forgotten shrine amid the slippery and snowy slopes of the mighty mountain of Fuji.
We subsisted off of a nearby stream fresh enough to still be populated by fish and a field of rice hardy enough to survive the frigidity of the nigh constant snowstorms

Why the angels decided eventually to come after us despite us having apparently done nothing to draw attention to ourselves, is a tragic tale that wrenches me open with grief to even start upon it.
It involved myself and a heavy birthright that had chosen me as its successor through no decision of my own nor my parents who depending on your perspective, were either very lucky or very unlucky in not possessing the gifts that allowed me and me alone to slay our brutal attackers thus allowing my sorry hide to singularly be preserved as I knelt over the corpses of mother and father and bawled my heart out for half a day.
Before finally managing through colossal struggle to restrain myself as I took the last of the firewood and incense in our home to raise a respectful funeral pyre for the holy man and woman who bestowed upon me their love, their dedication and their ideals.

Believe me when I say wholeheartedly that it took each and every ounce of willpower, I could muster up to not jump into the fire as it consumed their lifeless husks to liberate their souls for their ascension into the afterlife. Which hopefully would be an idyllic place of peace, if their teachings to me during the seven years I'd been alive up to that point held any grain of truth.
Time and again I still frown upon myself for choosing to find the will to live as I left the still burning flame behind having said my solemn prayers to the mystical powers that be which were said to watch over this forsaken world even in its darkest hour. Only to then be reminded by one brief glance into the faces of "Two", "Three", "Four" and "Five" reminded me that this was my new family and that a family meant a team that kept together no matter what.
All for one and one for all.

The way humanity once chose to do things and in doing so, ensured its prosperity and long life till they too forgot the way.

We felt as if it was worth waking to see another day each night when our strength gave out and we were forced to snuggle down in whatever fairly concealed shelter we had happened to come across.
Lying up against the ruins of a farm one night between the columns of decayed cornstalks our mindless pursuers didn't even bother taking with them when they no doubt raided the place as they did with all others. Hiding out in an abandoned quarry the next.

We and by extension I never stopped travelling even back then. We changed places and destinations so many times that for me to even begin to give you an outline of our journeys or at least the little I remember or care to remember of them would keep us here until we were both old and our voices weak and hoarse.

Heh. I say that my friends had strange nicknames to refer to each other by when mine was none other than the number following Five's missing sibling Six, Seven.
Yet once again, the pot calls the kettle black.
One of my most glaring flaws which I've been working tirelessly my whole life long to curb, with limited success.
I did not take the honorific Six out of respect and perhaps more importantly, a faint glimmer of hope that we might one day come across Five's lost sister and experience what might perhaps be the most joyful reunion seen in an age.
I tried telling the group that the position of "Six" was open for the day we were certain to find her. I told Five I believed I could and would find her twin and she swore to believe with me.
What a gullible past me had been back then. How gullible and thoughtlessly inconsiderate giving the love of my life false hope when there was none.

We were named in the order we came together, with the esteemed founding father of our little gang surprisingly not being referred to as "One", but the equally fitting title "Mono".
According to the great forbearer if Two's recollection was to be believed, as the leader he wanted a more interesting, hip and edgy way to be called than simply another number, not that he had anything against numbers.

Why he left?
Two's remembrance of the true reason was hazy at best. He remembered with some difficulty, a fearsome argument in which he rejected Mono's proposal that they venture to the perilous Grey city, a dreaded hub of chaos among a world of chaos.
Mono claimed that a satanic mastermind had his den there and that taking him down would certainly strike a blow to the villainous fraternity terrorizing the few surviving innocent children such as he and us.
He stated this to have been part of the reason he gathered the group prior to my coming under one banner, and that with "Mono's" rigorous belief of strength in numbers, even that paragon of evil power would not stand a chance if they went together.

Perhaps somewhat expectantly, Two turned down such a risky endeavor and was quickly agreed by the rest of the gang who instead believed that even a sad life of sorrow was better than no life at all and wanted to see as many days ahead of them as possible.

His attempts to convince Mono of the unworthiness of the dangers involved were only met with cold disdain, followed by a light slap to Two's jawbone which healed well physically though never mentally, when he tried in vain to restrain the by now incredulous Mono who insisted he would go alone if he had to.
The iciness in that boy's expression when he left that day according to all the others, Five included, never fully melted from their traumatized minds no matter the passing of time.

As I once again grimly expected even before Two finished the solemn retelling, the great Mono was never heard from again. Three added that perhaps even if he were by some divine miracle alive, the bitterness in his usually calm demeanor that fateful day if nothing else had made it clear he did not ever want to be found by those who once looked to him like disciples to a sensei.
Mono, the invincible titan whose immense strength let him left a massive hammer to strike down lethal threats twice his size.
Whose tradition of freely providing his rations to those who he deemed to be in need of vital nourishment more than himself, I resolutely pledged to follow as the retelling of not only his sad departure but also his long line of self-sacrificing acts of heroism captivated me utterly.

I knew I would never match his astounding feats of either selflessness nor strength but I would nonetheless die trying, especially when at Five's request I was proclaimed the new leader despite my reluctance at taking any such kind of responsibility.

But where are my manners?
I never properly introduced myself beyond a few superficialities completely impertinent to the true nature of my identity.

Somewhat coincidentally, I was born with the full name Sichi Shinji Sendai.
By pure coincidence my name opened with the exact Japanese Kanji for the numerical title I took upon entry into my long dead group of whom I am the sole survivor.
I'm not proud of that achievement and even less proud of my failure to move a muscle that dreadful night.
Mum and dad always possessed a vested interest in recorded history of which the small collection of books in our monastery held plenty of, as well as a deep-seated belief in a wide range of superstitions.
As such, they held the belief that seven was the luckiest number, that none of this mess would have befallen humanity had a legendary hero briefly mentioned in a tattered yet about legible memorial book succeeded in his vainglorious attempt to single-handedly thwart the interstellar invasion that laid ruin to a once thriving civilization that had been succumbing to hubris and greed even before their downfall, so sayeth my beloved old man.

My parents had great belief in the idea that a name contained great power, and that to truly show their love to their beloved son, me, they needed to come up with an equally impressive name. They were very loving people too good for this sinful Earth.

Shinji. The name of the great titan who had single-handedly remained uncorrupted in his futile effort to save an ungrateful race that treated him without one whit of honor, dignity nor respect now also my middle name to commemorate his efforts long after his demise to pay tribute to the past that we were doomed to repeat if we did not learn from.
And with how the even now dwindling cadre of human survivors were brutally slaughtering each other every day, I did not think they had the presence of mind to learn much of anything.

My hobby had always been art.
From the format many of these "history" books I had the luxury of studying in my youth, I had always believed in the adage that a picture, colored or monochrome, was worth a thousand words.
The artists who had diligently recorded the last stand of Shinji as he was tragically forced to turn on first his friends, then his superiors then his own parents as incurable corruption spread fast outside of his control.
He had been described frequently by others in his time as a stupid bratty coward, but despite these labels in truth he had always been first to charge into the frontline of each battle against the then not so dominant Angels and the absolute last to flee each time.

He sought naught but the prospect of a single person he could call friend before his grave closed over him. Always polite, never letting his emotions especially negative dictate his careful choices.
Faithful to his friends, merciful as his circumstances permitted to his enemy.
Never engaging in wanton slaughter for its own sake but always with a pragmatic motive and always after all other possibilities of diplomacy had been exhausted.
Many close shaves in which he cared nothing of his own life, only the lives of others who could not protect themselves as he and his onetime friends could through the use of the double edged
weapon known only as the "Evangelions".
A potent biomechanical device said to be the final defence against the Angels, cobbled out of Angelic body parts itself. Known to prove equally as destructive to its user as the adversaries it was supposed to combat. Only able to be wielded by the chosen few who did not know whether to call themselves lucky stars or god forsaken for their immense responsibilities it seemed only Shinji ever fully rose to the task of taking.

Even the devoted historians deemed wholly inane for their fascination with an unappreciated altruist and his selfless contributions to a world that gave him nothing but their damning apathy worse than malice, could but conclude that the boy wonder's death was shrouded in mystery.

Some say he died gloriously fighting the Angels, doing what he was loath to do but knew was his calling for the sake of his loved ones, his race and his beliefs.
Some claimed he joined the Angels, though they at least admitted this would be highly unlikely given his integrity and strong will.
Yet others claim it was a brutal infanticide in which his commanding officer, also his father who unlike Shinji was known for his shady demeanor as well as never being on good terms with his caring son since the death of his beloved wife for unclear reasons, pulled the ultimate sucker punch.
Perhaps the poor child had outlived his usefulness in the eyes of a brooding cheapskate who was also notorious for his love of coin.
Even now, no one knows for sure.

But one point all the historians agreed upon were the approximate nature of the young loving prodigy's final words which he exclaimed dramatically with his last breath.
"The ideals for which we have fought, will last longer than any empire you could ever build."

What did he mean? Who was he referring to? His father. The corrupt dictators who were put in charge of the trying times and yet saw the mass hysteria as nothing more than another easy power grab?
The Angels themselves?
Or maybe it was none of them but rather one of the many pretender friends who had let him down even as he fought to the bitter end, no one at his back, no one to miss him in his final moments.
They who dumped him like garbage the instant he was no longer of any use to them.

Yet it does no good to dwell on the past. To learn from it was only appropriate but we could do so without being consumed by it. My dogmatic yet fair parents insisted as they raised me giving me their love but not their thoughts, respecting fully the fact that as I had my own thoughts and that I would be part of a new generation wholly different to that of any before.
Leaving me free to pursue my interests more or less as I wished, happy to let me join in their Shinto prayers when it was convenient for me but never forcing the decision upon me.
I had to work hard to survive in the snowy highlands through fishing, tending the rice farm and hunting the occasional game that still inhabited a mostly pure landscape that the nuclear holocaust prior to the impact had not touched in a serious manner, but I was never worked to the bone and always given rest and respite as I needed.
So long as we all worked in harmony like a good family ought, everyone got plenty to eat.

This life of balance in which we called the middle way, made me very strong at least in comparison to the rest of my less fortunate friends.
I had quite the stack of muscles beneath my sleek and wiry form, and could go toe to toe with at least most reasonably sized foes that my group, Five especially would not dare, cementing my role as the hunter gatherer for when we came across live prey that could well be our next meal but would not go down without a fight to the death.

…
Present day me gathers his courage to take a brief look into the looking glass he requested by his eccentric Saviour into his small but cozy room.
A still thin but far less malnourished short brown-haired Friday faced swell with his bangs carefully trimmed to reveal his sky-blue eyes to the world he's spent far too long hiding them from, looks back still not without sadness but with a new sense of heated confidence he's not possessed in quite some time following his closest brush with the grim repeat yet.

He wears a simple blue kimono that matches the colour of his eyes as a display of his vows of peace and tranquillity in spite of his newly mustered strength.
The art of Bushido, the ancient warrior code of the chivalrous age of Samurai dictated that the mind and soul be trained alongside the body to maintain synergy with the heavens.
More importantly, upon his feet he sports a pair of sturdy and comfortable cloth shoes that are well made with no holes while being specifically tailored for his exact size.
For far too long, he's run across coarse surfaces in various degrees of agony barefoot and this is a welcome change that not only turns walking from a pain filled nightmare into a pleasurable sensation, but also enables him to race at even greater speeds in a pinch with his improved balance while also gifting his until now barren arsenal of defence with a nasty kick afforded by their hard leather soles that can easily knock the wind from even foes several times his size.

He shifts his clothes slightly to reveal the still faintly scarred but no longer hurting bite marks violently inflicted upon him by a certain long-lost sister he was eternally grateful to fate for finally uniting him with, even if under the least hospitable of circumstances.
He goes through a few motions, applying pressure on both his legs which no longer wobble under the slightest of pressures. He practices a few of the punches and kicks his gracious host and Saviour has taught him during his injured period of convalescence to find that he can now pull them all the way without causing himself unbearable spasms of muscular shock.

He knows that his time in what he calls the closest thing to Nirvana that a place on Earth could offer him, is up and that in spite of his savage attacker's less than civilized greeting of him, that she needs him more than ever now.
In spite of his impatience, he decides that a little morning music can do no harm to his less than calm spirits which have been worsening for quite some time now in anticipation to this fateful day he knows for a long time has been coming.

He strides purposefully to the Gramophone placed conveniently by his neatly folded bed, even more conveniently also built for his minute size.
He presses a button for the disk he has already loaded in and hasn't changed out since he got here and made this his temporary sleeping space till his recovery both physical and mental was complete.

He first got to know the jazzy tune composing of many trumpets and much lively drumming which now fills the solemn silence of the room, through Five whose divine pitch and intonation of each word raised the roof each night she could muster up her strength to bless him and his friends with her killer voice of a siren.
It was his humble way of paying tribute to a dear partner for a good life lived, and a good life lost.
His own voice nearly cracked several times out of grief and sorrow. But he steeled himself and pulled it all the way till the final fanfare as a gigantic ocean wave mightily splashed the cliff outside his window causing a massive storm of foam to rain down.

Here we go. He sang with clenched fists as a solitary tear trickled from his left eye which was crimson from many sleepless nights in which his nightmares over the daunting prospect of the difficulty in what he would soon undertake only got worse with each passing day.

Off the rails. Don't you know it's time to raise to raise our sails.
It's freedom like you never knew
Don't need bags. Or a pass.
Say the word, I'll be there in a flash.
You could say my hat is off to you.

Unlike her twin sister Six, Five did not wear a hooded raincoat to cover her face but did possess a yellow baseball cap she salvaged from a trash can and called dibs on.
She only usually wore it on cold or rainy days however since she found the idea of obscuring her face even slightly, a rather ghastly idea.

Oh we can zoom all the way round the moon, round this great wide whacky world
Jump with me, grab coins with me, oh yeah.

Pearls, outdated coins even if they no longer held any value in this collapsed society, even various assortments of jewelry ranging from necklaces to rings.
Five was quite into shiny things but was never reckless enough that she would try to take them if doing so put herself or her friends at risk.
Just another reason I found her so perfect, I think to myself as I gently place onto my finger the nickel ring, I also found on a fancier part that terrible ship in which I was taken captive along with Five's twin whose reception to me in the less-than-ideal form I was briefly forced to take, was less than welcoming.
I had marked the number 57 on it with crayon, and now in the tiny gap between the numbers I had also jotted 6, changing the complete number on the special ring my captors no doubt took as yet another piece for the treasury into 567.
Fitting. Very fitting.

Far better than the iron chain around my right leg which had thankfully been removed, but which I still felt a cold chill run down from time to time.
Mostly when I was getting overly sentimental over what was done and could never be changed as I was now.

So let's all jump up in the air
Jump up, don't be scared
Jump up and your cares, will soar away
And if the dark clouds start to swirl
Don't fear, don't shed a tear cause
I'll be your one up girl

Ah. 1 up. A lemon flavored beverage with a wicked fizz.
The shared weakness of Five and I who murdered whatever cans of it we could get our hands on, as our celebratory champagne.

So, let's all jump up super high.
High up in the sky!
There's no power-up like dancing
You know that you're my Super Star
No one else can take me this far
I'm flipping the Switch
Get ready for this
Oh, let's do the Odyssey
Odyssey- Yes, see!
Odyssey, Odyssey!

Oh, the way my heart nearly thudded from a chest the day Five confessed she loved me as more than just a friend. Oh, the warm fuzzy feeling I got when I reached the abandoned vending machine containing our favorite 1 up cans only to find that they had a switch which had to be held down by someone so someone else could actually reach inside to grab them from the high shelf they were on.
They drove me almost to furious frustration till I felt a tap on my shoulder as the dispenser door was opened by Five who while not so strong as me, still had more than strength enough to sustain the switch as I wiped my tears with a satisfied grin and easily retrieved the cans that would bring us both happiness for days to come.

Spin the wheel
Take a chance
Every journey starts a new romance
A new world's calling out to you
Take a turn
Off the path
Find a new addition to the cast
You know that any captain needs a crew

A shame. A darned shame that this failed to hold true when I first encountered Six.
If only that woman with the creepy ass mask did not invoke that curse which turned me into a Nome from a person, maybe Six would have had the foresight not to...

Not that I had anything in the slightest against the Nomes without whom, I could never have dreamed of coming as far as I did. Them too in their entirety, were in my eternal debt.
They, like myself and Six were simply poor souls who had fallen on hard times and were scrapping to get by any way they could.
I could but offer my sincerest condolences that I could not take them with me when I eventually escaped that ship, I had heard in whispered rumours to be called "the Maw".
As well as my prayers that they one day find a way to regain their human forms as I did in some way other than me.

Take it in stride as you move, side to side
They're just different points of view
Jump with me
Grab coins with me
Oh yeah!

My stance on the nature of risk following the deaths of Five and all my other friends, had drastically shifted. Now I realized that even if I spent the rest of my life in hiding, there would be an eventual natural end to me in the form of old age and infirmity.
The only times I felt an excited thrill through my veins, in short, the only time I felt I was truly alive was when I was one step from death's door with only my wits to take down the giant alien invaders on their own turf, beating them at their own game.
I never found another travelling companion despite my many victories, but from my realization at the hands of my transformation into a Nome then back into a human, I could joyfully suppose that each one of those things I outsmarted meant several other children like myself, five and Six set free.

Come on and jump up in the air
Jump without a care
Jump up 'cause you know that I'll be there
And if you find you're short on joy
Don't break, just don't forget that
You're still our 1-UP boy

How kind for her to bestow such generous compliments upon a humble farm boy such as myself.

Now listen, all you boys and girls
All around the world
Don't be afraid to get up and move
You know that we're all superstars
We're the ones who made it this far
Put a smile on that face
There's no time to waste, so
Let's do the Odyssey!

…
"The ones who made it this far? Yes. That we are. And I'm not going to let this second chance I've been given go to waste"
I firmly exclaim as the music draws to a close and the room is silent once more.

I throw open the door in one smooth motion as I march with a newfound spring in my step across the corridor, stopping at another door just before the stairs to give it a gentle rap.

My Saviour, deserves a heartfelt show of gratitude prior to my departure.
The least I could do for the kind Chihiro Daisuke Ogino, whose own experiences in another world filled with eccentric spirits that would make the masked lady who transformed me seem plain in comparison.

She not only reverted me to my true form, but had taught me each and every tidbit of knowledge she had gathered up on how to counter such malicious spirits who were becoming more common in this world as the veil between our world and theirs continued to weaken in no small part thanks to the impact's terrible damage.

Now I was ready. I was going in well prepared, not bringing a knife to a gunfight as Six and Mono were no doubt trying to do with admittedly noble but foolish intent.
Now I knew why I was of such interest to the Angels that they went so out of their way to capture me no matter which way I went, taking several of my friends along the way in their single-minded pursuit of me who had earned the honorific "the runaway Kid" from how little time he could afford to spend resting in one place even for a minor in these dangerous times.
I had seen it in the quick glimpse I caught of Six as she took over the Maw as overcoming the multitude of bites, she'd riddled me with, I stole a lifeboat and put to sea thankfully unnoticed.

But hearing Chihiro's full account of the little she'd been able to find out about Six and even Mono's ascensions to great power and dominance over imposing structures of equally expansive influence.
In Six's case, the maw and for Mono, the so-called Pale city which as it turns out was not merely a fantasy after all these years.
Then finding out about my own untapped abilities which my brief time as a spirit (for that was essentially the identity of a Nome stripped of its true body) had in no small part helped to reawaken, I now knew that their pursuit of me was not fuelled by simple hunger, but by fear.

Fear of what they knew I could do once I had attained that inner power.
Of how powerless they knew they would be to stop me afterwards.

Irony did not begin to cut the fact that despite my namesake as the runaway kid, I loathed the necessity of escape even in the most hopeless of odds.
I had already lost my reason for living once and it was not until I found Six alive and well that my self preservation instincts had slowly began to kick in once again.

In this sense, I, Six and Mono shared one belief in common.
That the only way to escape, was to stop running.

Why be the slave, when you could become the master?
Why be the prey, when you could be the predator?
The last line, take with a little grain of salt, but the point still stands.

I have made my choice, and I will follow it through till the end with no one to blame if all goes awry but myself.
Mono and Six. I'm coming to find you.
And do not worry, I too am familiar with the biblical texts that I had little else to read.
Even if the two of you do not, I believe in turning the other cheek.

...

Thank you so much for reading.
Seven is probably the nicest of the three protagonists even if he only appears in DLC and ends up dead by the end of his story. He treats both the Nomes and Six (another human) as friends that he needs to save, and he seems a lot less kill happy than either Six or Mono, killing the least out of all of them.
Six is not totally heartless. In very little Nightmares, she tried to save another girl in the yellow raincoat she now wears even when the other girl kept locking her into various buildings and hindering her escape.
Also, she doesn't just mindlessly kill every other human or nome she comes across. She only eats when she's practically starving and as we know, when she's starving, she isn't in control of her own actions.
Take the time when she ran into a mousetrap knowing it was a trap for instance.

This might also explain why she was reluctant to go with Mono at first even though he'd been nothing but kind in saving her life from the hunter.
I always wondered why the world of little nightmares is the way it is.
I also really like the premise of the game. How you're all alone with no one to help you and everyone and everything out to get you, just barely hanging on by the skin of your teeth with each day a fight for survival.

Any reviews welcome and have a nice day.