Mitsuari Ayu is from A Certain Magical Index: New Testament, A Certain Scientific Railgun Spinoff: Astral Buddy, and A Certain Magical Index SS: Biohacker. All three are works written by our lord and savior, Kamachi Kazuma.
Beware of spoilers. I would also highly recommend finishing both Astral Buddy and Biohacker before continuing.
This is the story of the gaps between phases, of a girl forgotten but not gone.
"…I no longer want to go on living. Because I'm empty…just an empty, stereotypical 'good girl'. There's nothing to me."
"But…you still tried to move forward. To live is only an instinct…but moving forward takes courage."
(Astral Buddy, Chapter 30)
"…If Othinus has truly created a perfect and ideal world, nothing you say should create any cracks in it /return."
(New Testament, Volume 9)
0.
As a certain girl worked on a powered suit in an underground bunker near an experimental geothermal station, a news report blared in the background.
Deciding to take a break, she set down her tools and grabbed a snack bar, then turned to face the television.
The screen showed a dragon perched atop the Tokyo Sky Tower.
"Somehow, that makes me feel nostalgic."
A wyvern. A knight in shining armour.
"I was right. Mitsuari wasn't good enough."
And then death and rebirth into the darkness, instead of a happy ending. The happy ending, which she should have gotten.
With a loud crunch, her cheap, mass-produced nutrition bar snapped in two. Feeling disgusted, she switched off the TV, and went back to tuning the FIVE_Over Outsider.
There was a strange pang in her heart as she ran her hand over the painted letters.
Modelcase_"MENTAL_OUT".
Soon. Very soon, she thought to herself.
She would get her revenge, and take back everything that should have been hers.
~~[/r]~~
But that was in the morning.
By late afternoon, the world had ended and restarted several times over, and nobody had noticed.
I.
Mitsuari Ayu found herself walking along a large river in District 7, a sandwich in her hand. Festival stalls had been set up everywhere, and soft music was playing in the background.
Eh? What was I doing?
She stared out into the distance across the river as the crowd bustled around her. From where she was, she could see two familiar silhouettes.
The first had long, shiny, black hair, and was wearing a dark-colored sailor uniform.
The second had long, straight, golden hair, and was wearing the familiar uniform of Tokiwadai Middle School.
Somehow, the sight of that blonde hair irritated her, even though she was feeling…happy? Content?
But why?
She searched through her memories.
This morning I woke up and…eh? Eh?
What had she been doing before this?
I was…in school? But I haven't…been…a student?
She looked down, and saw what she was wearing – a light brown vest over a white shirt, but not before seeing spiky dark hair flash in her peripheral version.
Touma?
A name instinctively flashed into her mind – a name of somebody that she did not know.
But the thought vanished, popped like a soap bubble, and she snapped out of her reverie and continued on her way back to her dorm.
The sky turned orange, then dark, and the world ended once more.
~~[/r]~~
Mitsuari Ayu found herself walking along a large river in District 7, a sandwich in her hand. Festival stalls had been set up everywhere, and soft music was playing in the background.
Unbeknownst to her, Kamijou Touma had just fought the first of his 10,031 battles against the Magic God Othinus, and died with blood spewing from his mouth.
There were several things that one needed to understand about this new world.
First, Othinus was not omniscient, even as she held the title of a "God". She did not know what was going on in her entire created world all at once, and could instead be viewed as someone who altered the seed that would eventually grow into the world.
The world designed to break Kamijou Touma's spirit did not need to contain more than a single city, and it did not need to contain more individuals than what was needed. Perhaps, if he had ventured out further into Othinus' new world, more of it would have been created, like an area being rendered in an RPG, but Othinus had not needed to make more than what Kamijou Touma would experience.
GREMLIN had done extensive research into Kamijou's background and his struggles with magic. Othinus herself drew on her own memories, substituting Kamijou's acquaintances into the instantiation of the world to create many personal hells for him.
But how would such created worlds treat someone whom Touma had forgotten and had not encountered since his first contact with the Magic Side?
That might explain Mitsuari Ayu's imperfect happiness in a world where everyone had been saved.
Across the river, she spotted a familiar-looking spiky-haired boy, and her heart skipped a beat.
Why?
She shook the thought out of her head. What was she doing, wanting to chase after some random boy she knew nothing about?
The sky turned orange, then dark, and the world ended once more.
~~[/r]~~
Mitsuari Ayu found herself walking along a large river in District 7, a sandwich in her hand. Festival stalls had been set up everywhere, and soft music was playing in the background.
The basis for the world has two rules.
First, that everyone was saved.
Second, that Kamijou Touma did not exist.
In this world, the incident at Ideal had never taken place, nor would Ideal ever contain any darkness. Yumiya Iruka, Yumiya Rakko, Yuuri Senya, Hokaze Junko – all of the girls would lead peaceful, happy lives, like NPCs after a successful quest, and would continue to do so as long as Othinus dictated a peaceful world.
But there is a crack in everything. Perfection is an illusion. Magic, which at first was thought to surpass the limitations of physical, scientific laws, was bound its own rules, and took its cost in the release of sparks and spray.
Each time Kamijou Touma died at the hands of the Magic God Othinus, he restarted and was forced to restart from the void – the black world he had ended up in after Othinus' first ending of the world following her victory at Sargasso, Tokyo Bay.
Each time, he was forced to tread through the worlds known to us as Alpha, Beta, and many others worlds of suffering, only to end up dying in the yard of his own high school.
And each time the phases were layered, sparks and spray escaped into the world.
~~[/r]~~
Mitsuari Ayu found herself walking along a large river in District 7, a sandwich in her hand. Festival stalls had been set up everywhere, and soft music was playing in the background.
Yesterday had been good. Senya-chan's body were getting better every day, and she had been well enough to play with Junko-chan, and Rakko- and Iruka-chan, for a while.
She smiled to herself, and took another bite of her food. Life was good.
The taste of the light sandwich in her mouth was somewhat nostalgic. It reminded her of a time long ago, when she had fallen asleep in a manga café, her head against–
There was a momentary spike of pain, like electricity shooting through a wire in her skull, and Ayu slapped her small palm against her forehead.
What? But that happened so long…ago?
She looked down at the sandwich in her hand, then looked back at the scenery, the heat haze shimmering over the river.
Must be the heat. I think I should just go back and rest.
~~[/r]~~
Mitsuari Ayu found herself walking along a large river in District 7, a sandwich in her hand.
Kamijou Touma's mind, in order to preserve his sanity, had organized the memories of his many repetitions into a single continuous sequence.
Mitsuari Ayu's mind had no such self-preservation. Her nature was that of fragility, of mental instability that ran deep but would not be revealed so long as she was not pushed off the edge.
(After all, a single scathing comment from Matsuo Ryuusuke had driven her to commit suicide, tipping the precarious scales already weighed down by the incident at Ideal and her own insecurity.)
However, she was an esper of the mind, and was once a potential candidate for one of Academy City's Level Fives.
Festival stalls had been set up everywhere, and soft music was playing in the background. But somehow, she did not feel at ease.
There was a wrongness, a strangeness in the air.
Her head swam.
I need to get out of here.
She tossed her uneaten food to a nearby cleaning robot, which swallowed it like a strange animal. Then, she began walking, trying to get away from the crowd.
The sky turned from blue to orange above her.
Before she knew it, she had ended up in a park in District 9. Breathing heavily, she sat down on a bench, and extracted a tiny water bottle from her handbag, which she drained in a long sip.
District 9 held schools related to industrial design and fine arts. The culture was said to be that of an absolute meritocracy, where seniority was disregarded in favour of raw skill.
Ayu briefly wondered what such a culture would be like. In Tokiwadai, everyone had ability. If you did not had ability, you would not be admitted to Tokiwadai in the first place.
But being the worst among the best is still being the worst, isn't it?
She grimaced. Why was she thinking about such unhappy things, on a beautiful day like this?
She looked around the park, where not many, but still a significant number of students were present. A boy was painting on an easel and canvas using Hydrokinesis. A girl appeared to be sketching the scenery with nothing more than a pencil and sketchbook, though once in a while she would hold out her hands, probably using some less obvious power.
Apparently, there was an urban legend that if you ask for a portrait in the parks, you might get scouted as a model.
Like anyone would want me to model for them. The thought crossed her mind, putting a bitter smile on her face. Next to people with nicer figures like Shokuhou Misaki? Let's be honest with ourselves here, shall we?
She made another face. Ruminating on unhappy thoughts is bad for one's mental health, she recalled from her psychology class. Yawning, she stretched her arms to the sky, and did the same for her legs, which were said to be more beautiful than that of a certain clique leader's.
She toyed with her phone. Well, she supposed she could always…she turned the phone's camera towards herself, stared at her own reflection in the glass lens.
But that feels too much like cheating. Besides, it won't be a good example for Rakko-chan and the rest, right? To run away from your problems, instead of working hard to face them.
She still felt mild tension in her head, not exactly a headache, but perhaps a migraine in potentia. Sulking slightly to herself, she played idly with the games on her phone for a while.
As the orange sky darkened, she got up and left.
II.
Mitsuari Ayu–
~~[/r]~~
–found herself–
~~[/r]~~
–walking–
~~[/r]~~
–along–
~~[/r]~~
–a large river in District 7, a sandwich in her hand.
The day felt especially long, and the rays of the afternoon sun beat down on her. Perspiration dripped from her brow, and she felt an unpleasant sense of déjà vu.
This is odd. This morning, I was just–
She searched her memories, and came up with nothing but blanks.
It was perfectly understandable, after all. In a world designed to break Kamijou Touma, all others were merely NPCs, nothing more than set pieces to dress the environment.
Like in a video game, such props would no doubt be rendered at a lower resolution to save on computing power. If you could not see a screw embedded in the wall, what use would it be to make it a full object? It would just be a waste of polygons.
What was I doing? How did I get here?
As an esper with mental powers, she knew all about the mind. The layman thought that memories were eternal and unchanging, a true record of the events of the past. But she knew differently. Memories were plastic and fragile, easily distorted over time.
To her, that had always been a reason to treasure them more.
She closed her eyes, tried to float away from the festival music and the noise of the crowd.
Think. You can think, can you? Who would want to mess with you?
As she thought, she began to walk. Maybe her unconscious mind, her procedural memories, would help her where her conscious memories failed.
The only thing I can think of is people after information at Ideal…but I'm not even important there. And it should be easier to attack an adult researcher with no esper powers, right?
Her feet carried her out of District 7, through District 9, until she reached the slopes of District 21.
There's really nothing else I can think of. Tokiwadai? I'm a senpai, but I don't really have many friends there…
Her feet carried her up a mountain, in a winding path below a thick cover of foliage, until she finally reached a familiar artificial lake.
A tower rose in the distance against the darkening sky.
Ground Geo, a geothermal power plant. I know it, but I've never been here…before?
She walked up to the shore of the artificial lake, staring a thousand yards into its depths. She could taste the water of the reservoir, smell the light tang of the chemicals.
She could feel the small prickling of the grass under her feet, after she had taken off her shoes and tried to–
No, this isn't me! I've never been sad enough to want to die…
Have I?
Haven't I been living a happy life?
A sudden feeling of terror gripped her, prior feelings of uneasiness warped into something more, something greater, and she looked up at the sky–
~~[/r]~~
Mitsuari Ayu found herself walking along a large river in District 7. Festival stalls had been set up everywhere.
A primal feeling of wrongness gripped her, and she instinctively hugged herself, despite the warmth of the afternoon sun.
She was scared, and she didn't know why. She just knew that something was wrong.
Am I…under attack? Was someone using their power on me?
She hurried down the river, crossed the bridge with trembling legs.
If there is, I can't see them. I need to get out of sight, and go somewhere quiet so I can check myself.
She ducked into a small, sheltered marquee, a courtesy booth meant for pregnant women and young mothers with children to rest. Given the nature of Academy City, it was empty.
Should be safe here. At least, from people who need line of sight.
(Mitsuari Ayu had never been in a fight in this world, but in the original…you had to learn very quickly if you wanted to survive in the Dark Side, even for a short time.)
She sat down on a wooden bench and looked furtively around. Well, there was nothing for it.
Unlike Mental Out, which was constrained (ironically) by its wide range of possible uses, Mental Stinger had a lower dependency on the need for external tools. There was no need to define different categories of powers, no need to remember those categories, no need to press specific buttons on a remote corresponding to those categories.
Strictly speaking, there wasn't even a need for any external tool. Mental Stinger was usually realised through the camera lens of a phone, but in a pinch, she could also use the alternative of–
Mitsuari Ayu reached her hands under her fluffy hair, touched her fingertips to her temples. Now she looked like a frail girl resting from the heat, as opposed to an idiot staring open-mouthed and drooling at their own phone's camera.
Begin self-suggestion variant: self-checking.
Searching for external contact traces. Raising alert for abnormal sectors.
…
Search complete. No external influences found. Alerts: 1. Possible memory error detected.
She reopened her eyes. Possible memory error…like she needed her esper power to tell her that. She could feel it already, feel that her mind was disordered, her thoughts scattered.
Well, there was nothing for it. She would have to go see a doctor, or something.
A thought struck her then. Maybe…my power is malfunctioning?
The thought sent up a wave of nausea, and her grip on her phone tightened, even as her hands began to shake.
What could you trust, if your own mind was lying to you?
She bolted out of the tent–
–and crashed right into a certain spiky-haired boy.
~~[/r]~~
Kamijou Touma was not a regular high school boy by any means, despite his repeated claims.
Regular high school boys did not have mysterious powers locked in their right hands. Regular high school boys did not befriend grimoire libraries, stop world wars, and get targeted by multinational magical cabals.
He had came out of situations that regular high school boys would almost certainly have not survived.
But even he had his limits. Sure, he had dragged himself out of the hospital many times, and even fought a certain lightning god while recovering from a gunshot wound–
But Othinus was on another level altogether.
It goes without saying.
How do you fight someone who can remake the world around you?
How would you fight someone who was, in no metaphorical or figurative sense, a god?
His organs had been crushed, his bones had been broken, and his limbs had been blasted off. That was enough pain for multiple lifetimes. A person that endured even a single one of those traumas, who could still emerge intact out from the other side – people in the real world would call them heroic, and demand nothing more.
Also, we who have the luxury of retrospection know that Touma would take 10,031 repetitions. If each of his journeys took an hour, that was still a year and a month in total.
Only a year, you say?
How much of your time do you spend sleeping? A third of that? How about resting, or leisure?
Real life was not a video game. A batter could know the trajectory of the ball and still fail to hit it. A person could know what they needed to do and still not do it.
Kamijou Touma would have to spend every single hour of that one year and one month walking towards his likely death, in full knowledge of the fact that he would most likely meet a painful end.
Would it be so easy, especially for one that had already been broken once by Othinus? Even with the speech from the Will of the Misaka Network, would it really be that easy for him to throw himself into an abyss of time and suffering?
~~[/r]~~
A name popped into her head, a forgotten name from a different time, and certainly a different place.
"Touma…" she disentangled herself from him, muttered a panicked apology.
The spiky-haired boy did not appear to hear her. Ayu looked up at his face, and stared into the eyes of a dead man walking.
This is not the Touma I remember!
It was not quite the stagger of a drunk man yet, but it was close. Ayu gently took the boy's arms, steered him into the interior of the tent she had just emerged from.
But I shouldn't know any boys! The School Garden is females-only, and Ideal only had girls. So what is this familiarity, and…a blush crept up her cheeks as she sat the boy down and looked him over. And why do I feel, as if…
She briefly considered using Mental Stinger on herself again, even though she knew it would just say the same thing. Definition of insanity and all that.
"Are you okay?" she asked instead.
No response.
"Do you need help?"
No response.
Well, this is dumb. She reached into her handbag, offered the boy her water bottle, which he accepted without a word.
He's not especially handsome. Or tall. Or muscular. Or charming. Ayu shut her eyes. Which means I probably didn't delude myself and accidentally implant false memories or something.
Unless it's him that did it?
She looked back at the boy, who still held his thousand-yard stare. The bottle in his hands was half-empty, and he sat perfectly still.
No. I'm still the Mental Stinger! It's not that easy to rewrite my mind!
Besides, the boy looked half-dead. A pervert of some sort would be more energetic than this if they were left alone with their target…maybe.
Besides, a small voice said in the back of her mind, if someone had such an ability, I'm sure that they would be going for the millions of girls more cute and more beautiful than you.
Either way, it seemed that she would have to read his mind for some answers.
Ayu reached for her phone, angled the lens towards him–
Ksh
Ksh
Ksh
–and promptly recoiled from the sheer amount of negative emotion, the qualia of suffering itself, tumbling a few steps back and landing on her butt.
What…what was that? Even though my power has safeguards against inputting this kind of malignant information…I still…
She scrambled upright, and stood. The overload had prevented much information from being transmitted, but bits and pieces still made it through, like debris from a shipwreck washing up on the shore.
Othinus? Gremlins? Magic God? The image of a blonde girl with an eyepatch and a witch's hat surfaced, and Ayu became even more confused.
Magic?
It was at this moment Kamijou Touma chose to return to his senses, and he took a deep breath, as if surfacing from underwater. The regular high school boy then stood.
Ayu instantly went forward to try and help, but he brushed her away, right hand held up in warning.
"Stay away from me," Kamijou rasped out. "Or your happiness might be erased as well." He sounded fearful, and wildness and pain was clear in his eyes.
"What?' Ayu made to move forward again, but the boy shook her off and staggered out of the tent.
"Wait! Come back!" Ayu dashed out of the tent as well, but it was too late–Touma had already disappeared into the crowd. She frantically swivelled her head left and right, trying to catch a glimpse, but it was fruitless.
My happiness might be erased…she looked over, to the glittering surface of the river, dyed orange in the setting sun. There was a strange ache in her heart.
Who are you, Kamijou Touma? Why can I remember you so clearly, when I have never met you before?
And how is it possible that you've been killed, over and over again?
III.
Mitsuari Ayu found herself walking along a large river in District 7, a sandwich in her hand. Festival stalls had been set up everywhere, and soft music was playing in the background.
Her sandwich nearly dropped from limp fingers, and she decided she wasn't hungry and threw it away. Rakko would probably chastise her for wasting food, but that wasn't important right now. Striding forwards, she headed towards the bridge, crossed to the other side of the river. Details were fuzzy in her mind, and she kept moving only out of some unconscious impulse, looking for a face and a name.
Touma.
In front of a certain tent, she spotted a distinct head of spiky hair, and she ran forward and grabbed his hand.
The boy jerked in surprise, as if hit by a bolt of electricity. "Who are you?"
"I'm Mitsuari Ayu," Ayu said, knowing that the name would probably mean nothing to him, and saying it anyway for the lack of a better option.
"You…Othinus…no." Touma seemed to have made up his mind. "Stay away from me," he said. "I can't drag anyone else into this. Not since I've already decided to trample on everyone's happiness."
"?" Ayu did not understand what was going on, nor did she know why the boy was speaking such dramatic words.
(And if she had more time for self-reflection, she would have been puzzled at how she knew of Kamijou Touma in the first place.)
Before she even began to think of a response, the boy had already moved on, walking ahead in long, rapid strides.
But this time–
"Wait!" Ayu dashed forward, grabbed on to his left arm. "It sounds like you're in trouble, so–"
This time, Kamijou stopped. "Who are you, really?"
In his mind, he was thinking.
This is not the world where random bystanders would attack me. This is the world where everyone had been saved.
Therefore, this unknown girl should probably not be a trap, right?
There was a phantom tingle in his back, where a version of Komoe-sensei, his adorable and reliable homeroom teacher, had stabbed him. Betrayal from those that one trusted had been a reoccurring theme across the various hells he had been forced to traverse.
But…
But. There was a "but".
(Why had Kamijou thought of an existing person that he had trusted, instead of the legions of strangers that had hunted him down?)
There is a crack in everything.
"My name is Mitsuari Ayu." The girl looked up at him from her position on his arm, then leapt back as if burnt, as she realised she had been clutching on to him like a lovestruck girlfriend. "Ah…I mean…" Her face had a blush on it. "I just want to help you!"
"You want to help me." Kamijou repeated dully.
"Yes!"
"Fine then. I'll tell you what you can do." The side of Kamijou Touma that would coldly analyse his opponent and thread the needle to victory showed itself. It thought: Even if this is a trap, to spring it may also give us some information.
Also, the boy thought, it's not as if I have any secret plan rather than to just keep going on. There's nothing that that god doesn't already know about me.
"I'll tell you everything." Kamijou said, and he did. He spoke about the Magic God, Othinus, and about Gremlin. He spoke about what he knew of magic, the supernatural phenomenon unknown to the esper population of Academy City.
This was how Kamijou Touma led Mitsuari Ayu back to the room that would have been his student dorm in so many other worlds, and the room where he had told a certain Network's Will that Othinus bothered him.
Mitsuari Ayu did not speak up once. The story was wild, fantastical, and yet–
She sensed that the boy had been keeping everything to himself, for a very, very long time. She knew that the boy that she felt a strange attraction to was in pain, and that perhaps by letting him speak, by letting him rant, by simply listening, she might be able to ease that pain.
The sky outside the dorm room was beginning to darken, now. The dorm itself was empty of furnishings.
Both Touma and Ayu were sitting on the floor, a feet apart from each other, watching the setting sun dye the sky orange.
Ayu was at a loss. What could she say? She was a just some sheltered young girl, nestled deep in the cocoon that was the prestigious School Garden and Tokiwadai. She had never knew real loss or suffering. (Not in this world, at least.) She could not comprehend the sheer scale behind what it meant for the entire world to be destroyed and remade several times over.
So she asked the next obvious question. "What are you going to do?"
"Confront Othinus, obviously." Touma said, as if it was natural.
"But you–" Ayu's hand came up to her face. When Touma had talked about his gruesome ends, she had known, at least, that he was telling the truth, she could see the vivid images as if she had been there, even though she couldn't recall reading his mind– "You're going to get killed!"
"Oh, most likely." The shadows were still under Kamijou's eyes, and he spoke with a light tone. "But giving up is worse than losing, isn't it?" Kamijou got to his feet.
Liar, Ayu thought. She saw the quiver in his limbs, the way the boy seemed to force himself to make every movement to walk to his doom. You say that, but anyone can see that you're already close to your limit! Don't go!
"Thank you for listening to me," Kamijou said. "But I shouldn't involve you any further. It's bad enough that you had to listen to me go on about meaningless things, when I'm the one stealing everybody's happiness for nothing more than my own sake."
But there had been an instant, Ayu thought, where everything had felt right with Touma's explanation. A repeating world. That would explain the strangeness, the wrongness in the air that she had been feeling.
As her mind scrambled for more questions to ask, she heard the sound of the door opening and then closing.
"Wait–" she ran to it, ran to follow, but–
The door was jammed.
"Sorry." Touma's voice sounded from the other side. "I thought you might try to follow me, so I barred the door from this side."
"You–" She rattled the doorknob to no avail. "I can help! I may only be a Level 3, but I still can help! I can–"
"I don't want someone who has nothing to do with this to get hurt." The boy's voice was pleading. "Please. Right now, I barely have enough strength to save myself, so just stay put in here until it's all over."
Ayu heard the sound of footsteps fading into the distance, and sat herself back down.
Well, if the wild story she heard was correct, she wouldn't remember anything in a while anyway.
Mitsuari Ayu sat back down and tried to think, but she couldn't think of anything.
Magic was real, and the world was apparently now controlled by some Norse God out of fantasy.
Even if it felt correct, it was still too much for her to understand.
Eventually, the time of that self's memory ended.
IV.
Even for a god, you could not repeat everything so easily. Eventually, bits and pieces begin to pile up, hints of what had been taken away. Sparks and spray of pure intention got caught in the husk that was the world, burying themselves deep.
And a certain right hand that acted as the world's reference point disrupted everything further still, cutting its own straight path through everything.
Mitsuari Ayu found herself walking along a large river in District 7. She had a terrible headache, the kind that you got when you slept for too long on a hot and humid day.
Before her, the world wavered in a kind of double vision, where she saw–
–Senya, the Yumiya sisters, and Junko all happy at Ideal, where every peaceful day was followed by another–
–Senya reduced to nothing more than a ghost, Iruka fighting Junko, Rakko being thrown away by the Dark Side of the city–
Mutually impossible events.
She staggered, ran over to the nearest rubbish can, and puked inside, in a very unladylike manner. Some passers-by gave her looks of sympathy, and she retrieved her small bottle from her bag and rinsed out her mouth, trying to make sense of it all.
False memories. The answer came to her immediately, as an esper whose ability manipulated the minds of others.
But I'm the Mental Stinger. I'm a potential Level 5. Surely my memories can't be that easily manipulated…right?
(Evidently, people had the tendency to think the same thing when reset to the same conditions and given the same stimuli.)
She would have been more sure, except that everything had felt so real.
–the report, with the picture of Rakko's body burnt to a crisp by the Meltdowner–
–Iruka and Junko working together, breaking into the old Ideal lab to track her down–
–Shokuhou Misaki, who stole everything from her, foiling her plan to use Ideal's power–
–Houjou-sensei, the doctor that had taken her side, laying down on a grassy field after fighting to protect her–
And a long time ago…
–the AIM storm that robbed Iruka's eye and killed the adults, closing Ideal forever–
–and a dragon that had pursued her through the back alleys, where she was saved by her white knight and a beauty of a senpai.
Despair settled into her gut, and she took out her phone, to dial Junko's number, to check if she had fallen into some strange delusion–
–only to find her contact list empty.
But the people who tampered with my memories could also have replaced my phone, right? She grasped at a possible reason that would preserve her happy memories.
Yes, that was indeed true. But the more she ran through what she knew, the more she felt her heart sink.
Because…the happy memories were shallow. That was not to say that happy memories were superficial by default, but hers lacked any landmark events, any special occasions. No standout visit to any special places, no sleepovers or games or laughter or even arguments.
It was all simply dull, rolling plains of mild positive emotion. She couldn't even remember what she did yesterday…if 'yesterday' had even existed at all.
She looked around. The festival was going on as if nothing was wrong, the low beat of the music and the constant chatter of the people audible.
A strange chill settled into her bones.
This happy world is an illusion.
Surreptitiously, she held up her cellphone, whose screen was still showing an empty contacts list, and pointed it around, as if taking random pictures.
In reality, she was reading the minds of every single person around her, diving rapidly from the thoughts of one person to the next. Usually, she would not have resorted to using her Mental Stinger in such a brazen manner, but right now…
Everyone is all…sort of blank?
It was a disconcerting feeling. Even the researchers that she had tested her power on had deeper thoughts than this: hopes and fears and dreams and desires. The people around her all seemed to be…pale imitations.
(Remember, Othinus was only remaking the world to break Kamijou Touma. A magic god she might have been, but she was a human originally. Why waste effort on things that would not be used? It wasn't as if her filter needed to create anything more than a transient stage for Touma's suffering.)
Ayu lowered her phone, her hand giving the occasional tremble. What could she do?
She was completely, utterly alone. Even before, she did not have many friends, and those that knew her and were alive in this world, she did not want to get into trouble.
Because I'm still everyone's big sister. I need to protect them all.
(She did not dare open the Pandora's Box that said maybe her other set of memories could have been faked as well.)
That left only one option. One very obvious option, which had been the only option from the very beginning.
Touma.
He would help. He would always help. He had never hesitated once, never hesitated to clench his fist, to rush headfirst into disaster, to stretch out his hand to save her.
So why haven't you a█ked fo█ his he█p a██ this time?
The stray thought came into her head like a buzz of angry bees, a suppressed thought from another time, another place, and she shook off the disorientation, ignored it.
I need to find him.
No, her inner voice said. You're not being completely honest with yourself, are you? Say what you really think.
I want to find him.
But where would she even start? It was already hard enough to walk around freely in the growing crowd of the festival. She knew that he was in high school, but not which high school he came from.
But she couldn't give up. Not like this.
~~[/r]~~
Those of us with the benefit of foreknowledge know that Mitsuari Ayu had never sought out Kamijou Touma, ever, not until her plan to exact revenge on Shokuhou Misaki failed.
It was said that this was because she was too ashamed to show her face to him, after sinking into the Dark Side of Academy City.
If humans thought the same thing after being reset to the same conditions, and given the same stimuli, then conversely, changing either of those would result in the individual going down a different sequence of thoughts.
And science showed that having happy memories, even if they were completely false, could give one hope and change one's mood for the better. That was the rationale behind all those self-improvement books that told you to "visualise yourself having succeeded at your goal" every morning.
Somewhere, something settled into an attractor state.
V.
Mitsuari Ayu found herself walking along a large river in District 7, a sandwich in her hand. Festival stalls had been set up everywhere, and soft music was playing in the background.
She felt oddly calm, considering that she was apparently in the hands of a not-at-all benevolent god.
Magic, huh? But if AIM fields can be affected by urban legends, maybe it's not that hard to believe that stuff like charms and horoscopes actually work?
It certainly helped that the one that had told her was the single person that she would always trust without hesitation.
She walked across the bridge to a small sheltered marquee, and waited at its entrance, biting her lip, clutching her phone to her chest.
Sure enough, after a while, he appeared.
The damage he had taken–the psychological damage–was clear, in the blankness of his stare, in the way that he dragged his feet ever-so-slightly.
Still, he moved forward with purpose and intent.
She badly wanted to reach out, to touch him, to hold him, to tell him that everything was okay, even if it really wasn't.
But she held herself back, clenched her teeth. Quietly, she following him through the crowd, followed him as he made his way out of the crowd.
The middle school girl tailed the high school boy all the way to his high school, all the while scanning left, right, above, trying to engrave where she was going into her memories.
She hid in the shadows, making sure that she was not seen. If there was someone that could reduce Touma to such a state, much less remake the entire world and alter everyone's memories, she most definitely had to make sure she wasn't spotted, or in fact detected in any way at all.
From her position a block away and four floors up, she overlooked the backyard of a certain high school.
She saw Touma face down a girl with long blonde hair, and a witch's pointed hat.
She saw a sphere of darkness gather in the sky and descend to crush the high school boy.
~~[/r]~~
Mitsuari Ayu walked up to Kamijou Touma and took him gently by the hand.
"Who…who are you?"
Wordlessly, she led him into the tent, sat him down on one of the wooden benches. "Rest a bit." From her clasp bag she extracted her tiny bottle of water, which she gave him to drink, and a packet of tissue paper, which she used to wipe the sweat gathering on his forehead.
When she saw the black sphere descend on Touma, she knew.
That was an opponent that she could absolutely never defeat.
If she was spotted or detected by that god, she would definitely be erased without a second thought.
So, this is all I can do.
The breeze outside made the canvas of the marquee flap gently like a flag.
"Who are you?" Kamijou Touma asked again.
"I suppose your memories are wonky after dying so many times." Ayu smiled sadly. "I'm Mitsuari Ayu. You saved me a long time ago."
The Will of the Misaka Network had told Kamijou Touma that Othinus had cheated. It had told him that it had been fine to be selfish and fight for himself, to search for the salvation that he alone had been denied.
Unknown to him, it–or she–had done that in order to make sure that Kamijou did not waver, did not need to rely on anyone else to make it through this endless torment.
So, when a heroine like Ayu appeared…
…that was a sort of bonus, wasn't it?
Ayu only smiled wryly. "You really can't remember, can you?" She took his silence as an answer, the true answer upon false premises. "I don't know what happens if you keep subjecting a human mind to the same negative stimuli over and over again, but it's probably nothing good. But if you need someone to comfort you…I'll be here, okay? Well, if your god hasn't noticed me and erased me, I guess." She finished fussing over him and stood aside.
That last line brought back an unpleasant fact to the forefront of Touma's awareness. "You can't," he said. "You should stay away. Othinus will definitely erase you if she notices, and the more you stay close to me, the more likely she'll notice."
"I thought you'd definitely say that. But I've decided I want to help you anyway."
"You shouldn't." Kamijou said flatly. "Look, I–This world was created to be a paradise for everyone except me, and here I am, choosing to erase all of that happiness. At the very least, you should just enjoy this happy world while it lasts–"
"Don't give me that." Ayu turned her face away. "A happy world? How am I supposed to enjoy that when some part of me knows that, somewhere out there, you're suffering alone? What if I could only be happy by knowing that you're safe?" Her voice rose.
Yes, Othinus had cheated, Touma recalled. She had made it so that nobody had remembered the original world, that nobody would know that, effectively, she had sacrificed him to save everyone else.
"Othinus was afraid. She was terrified of everyone gathering together to save you, so she hid that fact."
And here at last was living proof.
"Thank you, Mitsuari." Touma held up his right fist and clenched it. "I'll…I'll accept this. I'll accept your help. And I'll continue fighting." He stood. "I'll save myself, return everything to the original world, and free everyone from Othinus. Wait for me."
Without another word, he left the tent.
Ayu only shook her head.
And there he goes, huh? Just like that? Was he always so much of an idiot?
~~[/r]~~
Were it so easy, to save the world.
"I see you've decided to persist in this fruitless endeavour." The high, cold voice of the Magic God cut through the night air. "It looks like I really need to crush an idiot along with the world."
~~[/r]~~
Kamijou Touma tumbled forwards into the ground screaming, his intact limbs flailing from the phantom pain of being twisted at strange angles and torn off.
It was a while before his body remembered that it was still intact, that he could stand up. It was a while after that that he could walk without his legs quivering.
I can't give up…
"How tiresome."
~~[/r]~~
Kamijou Touma curled up on the ground, his hands jumping back and forth between his eyes, which had been boiled in their sockets, and his stomach, where his organs had been liquified.
I just need to surpass her once…
"Surely it would be easier to just concede."
~~[/r]~~
Kamijou Touma spread out his limbs and curled back in on himself, like some strange flowers whose petals were repeatedly opening and closing. His body had just been torn in two at the abdomen.
Yes, if my memories are retained, I can find a way out…
~~[/r]~~
He held on to his skull, which had been cut off and thrown into the skies.
Yes, I just need to calmly a█alyse things…
~~[/r]~~
He held on to his body, which had been stabbed by countless sharp objects.
Try different things, and p█t th█m all t█gether…
~~[/r]~~
He held on to nothing but air, which had just exploded out of nowhere in front of him.
That is th█ w█y out…
VI.
"Touma."
Ayu clutched at her forehead in pain as she gently shook Touma.
"Come on, get up."
Even prepared, just reading his mind still hurts, huh?
Out in the open was no place to be. Crouching down, she draped Touma's arm around herself with one hand and supported his waist with another, until she was able to stand up with him leaning on her.
In the span of those timelines, she had managed to work out and reach Kamijou Touma's 'starting point' in her world.
"What did I tell you, Mitsuari? Don't–"
"Shut up." She spoke quietly, turned the lens of her camera phone onto him.
Let's see, his dorm room is…
Without another word, she started to walk, a slow path to the eastern side of District 7, away from the School Garden in the west and the Ideal Lab in District 2 to the southwest.
Far, far away from when I was still a Tokiwadai student. Even further away, once I became a delinquent and left my sparkly everyday life. Ayu ruminated.
The boy who would clench his fist and charge head-on into anything fell silent for a time, until he eventually spoke.
"Who are you, Mitsuari?" The question asked again and again, in an endless number of timelines, an endless number of forgotten first meetings, the meaning changing each time as another layer piled on–
Ayu shut her eyes. It would always hurt, for someone that she liked to say that to her. "You saved me a year ago. It was at–"
She told the story where it had all began, as she so clearly remembered, from her perspective. The dragon in the alley, a trip to a manga café, a stopover at a senpai's apartment.
Then the attack on the L.S.S. headquarters, where it had all gone wrong.
The sun began to graze the horizon as Ayu finished her story, and as they trudged up the stairs to the familiar dorm room.
"So I hid. I didn't want–I didn't–" She took a deep breath to calm herself, and opened the door. "Never mind." She unceremoniously dumped him onto the floorboards in a reflexive action, and Touma let out a grunt of pain. "Ah! Sorry! I'll–I'll make some tea or something!"
Ayu disappeared into the kitchen.
Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, Touma wondered about his missing memories.
His brain was frying from fatigue, but he was still cogent enough to remember the world that existed before this repeated hell.
But he couldn't recall Mitsuari Ayu, except as an anomaly Othinus' repeating phases.
For him, his life had begun in that hospital bed, looking at the anxious face of the girl designated the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. And, for the sake of preserving the smiles on the faces of everyone around him, he had pretended as if nothing had happened, even if that lie was eventually found out by Index herself.
Did a better way of using his right hand lie in his lost memories? He wasn't a god like Othinus, but could he maybe have saved a little more people?
(That thought would continue to plague him long after this incident ended, and would later lead to another conflict altogether.)
So I was able to save more people than I thought. But…what else have I lost? What else…will I lose?
"Are you okay?" Ayu had returned, and set down two bottle of cold mineral water. "Ah, that was a dumb question…anyway! There's nothing in this house, so we need to settle for this." She cracked open her own bottle and drank, the plastic crinkling. "Touma?"
"Sorry. Just thinking."
For a while they simply both sipped in silence, while Touma remained blissfully unaware of Ayu's inner turmoil.
Okay, I have him here. He's sitting in front of me. And I called him 'Touma' without thinking! Now what? NOW WHAT?
Like a dog chasing a car, who didn't know what to do if it actually caught up…
But before she could open her mouth, Touma spoke. "Sorry," he said simply. "That I can't remember you."
How am I even supposed to respond to that?
"You see, the truth is…"
That he lost his memories in a magic battle. Ayu shut her eyes again.
"…and in these four months, you fought more magicians, defeated the Number One, stopped Academy City from shutting down, fought more magicians and went to Britain, and then stopped World War 3 in Russia by defeating the culprit." Ayu summarised Kamijou's summary of the events. "And then you got tricked by magicians and went to Hawaii, found out you got tricked and went to basically Russia again, came back in time for the Ichihanran festival, fought more magicians…" Ayu trailed off. "They're really not letting you rest, are they?"
Kamijou lightly scratched the back of his head. "I suppose not."
Magic really shouldn't exist, she thought to herself. Not if it ends up hurting you like this.
But outwardly, she kept herself calm. In this world, in this labyrinth, she was irreplaceable, the only one able to provide Kamijou Touma comfort. Touma looked at her for herself, not for her power, not as a knockoff or cheap imitation of the Mental Out.
It was a stupid thing to take pride in, she knew, especially since it could be taken away from her at any moment, something thinner than a hair, smaller than a speck of glass, but take pride in it she did, and play her role she would.
"And this Othinus person wants you to kill yourself," she said simply.
Kamijou glanced down at his right hand. "She wants this. Imagine Breaker. But I'll never give up. I'll find a way to defeat Othinus, and return everything back to before." He looked back at Ayu. "Thank you again. Just knowing that someone is waiting for me makes things a little bit more bearable."
Even though, logically speaking, he knew that Index, Misaka and the rest were also waiting for him. Even though I'm supposed to be doing this for myself, hah…
"You know," he continued, "I think this is the first time I've ever spoken to someone like this." With everything that the present Kamijou Touma had experienced, he somehow never had a chance to rest, to reflect upon all his actions. Ironically enough, it was only by being in a rest stop in the middle of hell that he could do such a thing. "Yeah, I guess when you look at it from the outside, it all seems kind of crazy."
But something Kamijou said tore off the thin bubble wrap of happiness that was surrounding Ayu's thoughts.
"Hey, Kamijou."
"Yes?"
"When you say that things will be returned back to before…"
Mitsuari Ayu wasn't stupid. She was a student at one of Academy City's most prestigious schools, and the presence of her intellectual ability was shown in her grades that kept her there. Her main weakness thus far had been her naivete, her lack of life experience, and even that had been somewhat remedied with her involvement in the Dark Side.
But in a situation like this, where things important to her were concerned, she saw the implications right away.
"…does that mean that I won't remember anything?"
Touma considered her statement. It was probably true. If he was to make Othinus concede the world to him, it would likely result in a world where none of this had ever occurred in the first place.
"Probably…why?" He turned to look at the girl, and saw that she was now shaking,
Ayu couldn't find the words to reply him. In her mind was a string of thought something like this: I'm selfish. I don't want you to forget me, and I don't want to forget what I did for you either.
So instead of speaking, she crossed the gap.
She crossed the space between them, buried her face in his chest, and began to cry.
"H-hey…" Touma didn't know what to do. Usually, around this time, he would be comically bitten by Index, or Mikoto would happen to open the door, see him, misunderstand, then give him a big electric shock.
Awkwardly, he put her arm around her and patted her back.
"I don't want to forget." she sobbed quietly. A part of her was reprimanding herself for breaking down, for failing at the single role she had been given; another part of her was glad for the excuse she had to reach out and fall into her hero's chest.
"I don't want this." Her crying grew louder. "I don't want you to forget me! I don't want to forget you!"
Even if it was all a lie, I don't want to forget the time where I finally had the courage to face everything and find you again, when I could never bring myself to do so before.
She cried and cried, and her tears stained the front of Kamijou's white shirt, making it see-through.
Not that his physical appearance ever mattered. She would have fallen in love with anyone that looked at her, anyone that loved her and showed her love first.
Touma moved his hand up, stroked her head in an almost automatic fashion, being in unexplored territory. Her hair was soft and fluffy, like cotton candy, and smelled vaguely sweet like the same.
"I don't want this." She continued. "I don't want to have to leave you again."
On an impulse, she broke away and straightened, drew herself up to her full height while kneeling, mimicking an action she had only seen before on TV dramas and in her shoujo manga.
Oh yes. The formerly sheltered schoolgirl had definitely learnt some things from observing the older onee-chans that worked in the Dark Side.
And the words of a certain researcher came back to her.
"It doesn't matter if no one recognises it. It doesn't matter if it's selfish or anything personal. Just let out everything you're feeling. That will lead you to your path in life."
I don't have to be a good girl…right?
She kissed Kamijou on the lips. It was awkward, but it was full-fledged, with enough emotion behind it.
Time passed.
Eventually, they broke apart again. Ayu's face was an almost luminescent red, complimenting the color of the sky through the window. Touma was not blushing as hard, but even he was failing to look at her, his shock driving him to the point beyond words.
If nobody will remember this, not even me…at least…let me have this…
"Look…at me." Her trembling fingers reached out, grazed Touma's face to turn it back towards her own.
Their eyes met, and she pushed him down, kissed him again, a single, long action that made sure she got as much of him as possible–
"Mitsuari…"
"Call me Ayu." She was leaning over him, her hands on the ground, her face right above his. A single teardrop gathered on her cheek, then fell to the floor, grazing Touma's chin in the process.
"Ayu-chan–"
"Just Ayu."
"Okay, Ayu." Perhaps due to the stresses of the situation, Kamijou did not react in his usual manner of flailing arms and embarrassed shouting, having surpassed that stage of panic into a zen state of composed acceptance.
Kamijou Touma was not stupid, after all. He was not a completely dense protagonist oblivious to love. When he had gotten drunk during his return to Academy City after World War 3, a great number of girls had gathered to welcome him back, and he had noticed.
But remember that Kamijou Touma leads a life of misfortune, and as such, never assumes anything, especially since the heroines he meets were usually encountered on the field of battle, with most of them possessing the ability to deal him serious bodily harm. If a certain Railgun happens to blush slightly on some occasions where they talk, he simply assumes that she's acting strangely for some unknown reason and thinks nothing more of it, for example. Or, if a certain priestess dressed up in a fancy costume to visit him in the hospital, he simply takes it as mere gratitude, a thanks (that he had never asked for or expected) for his involvement in yet another incident.
But none of them ever had the courage, or perhaps the audacity, to do something honest like this.
The girl lowered herself down slowly, until she was resting on his chest. Absentmindedly, he began to stroke her hair again, and stared up at the ceiling.
Is this right? Kamijou thought. Is it correct to accept such feelings, even in this temporary phase?
And…
Is all this just a trap? Does Othinus want me to soften my heart in order to break me more easily?
He had experienced mental warfare before, and could see the possibility of it happening. Many of the phases Othinus put him through also involved betrayal, ranging from a single person to an entire village, the entire world turning against him.
He would not put it past her to create a character from scratch for the purposes of breaking his heart, especially since it was strange that this girl hadn't yet been noticed and erased, if she was indeed something unintended.
But that had never stopped him from accepting anyone's feelings.
On Touma's chest, Ayu rested with her eyes closed.
Touma's actually quite thin, huh? Her hero was not as muscular as he was in her fantasies. But I suppose this is fine. Touma is Touma.
And a great weight seemed to have lifted from her shoulders. You've saved so many people, and a lot of girls must like you, but I got to you first!
Wait, did I? Her eyes flicked wide open.
"Hey, Touma."
"What is it, Ayu?"
Her heart fluttered at the sound of her name. "Was that your first kiss?"
"So far as I can remember, yes."
"Good." Her eyes closed again.
This girl really is spoilt in her own way, eh? Touma thought to himself. He stared up at the ceiling, and for a time there was nothing but the comforting weight of the soft girl on his chest, the oasis in the eye of…
…the storm. Othinus. If I don't take roughly the same amount of time to get to her, would she get suspicious?
He shifted, and the motion made Ayu stir. "What is it?"
"Othinus." He spoke the name of the villain, and Ayu understood.
"She might think something is wrong, huh? Ayu collected herself, collected her thoughts, and asked a separate question. "Are you ready to fight her? Is your mind okay?"
"I…" he remembered the static creeping into his thoughts, the fog, the fatigue. "I don't know," he answered honestly. "I know that if I fight her enough times, memorise all her attack patterns, there's a chance that I can get through to her. But…"
"It only works if you keep your memories." Ayu finished. "That's what…that's what I thought you were doing. So maybe…I'd thought of something that could help you."
She fumbled with her pocket, extracted her cell phone with some difficulty. "Mental Stinger," she said hesitantly. The words of a senpai from long ago surfaced in her mind.
"There are two kinds of people who come out and explain how their power works: liars trying to sow confusion, and complete dumbasses. Now, for a sheltered young girl, which possibility is more likely?"
"It lets me manipulate the minds of people." She settled on saying. "I can use it, give you the strength to move forward." She fiddled with the buttons, flipped the cover up. "Smile!"
There was a flash and the artificial sound of a camera shutter.
"What? Is that it?" Touma scratched his head with his left hand, carefully placing his right on the floor. "I don't feel any different."
"No, that's just me taking a picture." Ayu giggled, feeling like a normal girl for the first time in ages. Is this maybe how it feels…to have a boyfriend?
"Okay, I'll be serious now." She schooled her expression to follow her words, and envisioned what she wanted in her mind.
When she made up her mind to stand by Touma's side, she knew that it would not last. That everything here was a happy dream, but only a dream, and in the end, she would have to return to the cruel world with her friends dead, with Touma gone.
But she had to be strong. She had to repay the trust that everyone had in her, given to her long ago, and that meant constantly moving forward.
Yes. To live was only an instinct.
But to actively try and move forward…took courage.
She got off Touma, raised the camera lens of the phone to his face.
An esper had the power to rewrite the world as it was to the reality that they wanted, and she wanted–
Be strong, my knight in shining armour. Save the world for me.
Save me.
But more importantly, save yourself, okay?
Without any fanfare, it was done.
"I don't feel any different." Touma said. He was still making a conscious effort to not accidentally touch his head."
"I've dulled your pain perception." At her words, Touma immediately pinched himself, to which Ayu laughed. "Not like that, silly. I reduced your pain perception by a logarithmic scale and installed a floor function for higher levels, while altering your sensitivity at lower levels to make sure your proprioception isn't too affected…" At the glazed look in Touma's eyes, Ayu backpedaled. "Ah, just think of it as you feeling less pain!"
"And my brain…"
"It'll reorganize itself," Ayu said. "Your memories…if you were to go and fight again. I made it so that you'll rearrange the memories in your head to look like a fight following a single path. That'll make it easier for you to follow and adapt, as well as trim off the long spans of time in between where nothing important happens."
It was like gathering chocolate chips from cookies in order to eventually create a human-sized block of solid chocolate.
Touma nodded, and they both stood.
"In the original world…" Ayu began, and her voice cracked. "In the original world, I…I forgot everything that was important to me, and threw away everything for the sake of vengeance. The 'me' of that time would never have dared to ask you this, but…"
She looked him in the eyes.
"After you have saved yourself, please come and save me."
"I understand. So wait here for me."
Not trusting herself to let go if she clung on to him once again, she forced herself to stand still as Kamijou Touma once again departed.
When he had gone, she collapsed to her knees, and looked at the moon through the window.
During then span of time where Touma had been killed over and over, Ayu had been thinking of how to help. But her ability only let her define rules up to a certain complexity. Therefore, to maximise her chances of success–
–she sacrificed the memory of their time together.
If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
Mitsuari Ayu thought it still did. She was at the core, after all, a hopeless romantic, who thought that a single spark here, in this place, would echo into eternity, and come back tenfold.
VII.
There was one final thing to do.
She crept silently into the yard of a certain high school, where a Magic God waited for Kamijou Touma. With their exchange, she raised her phone, viewed the blonde, one-eyed witch through her camera lens.
Like how Index could not be ordered around by Mental Out, magicians had countermeasures against mental control. If she attempted to use her ability, a measly Level 3, against someone like Othinus, she would be detected, then killed and rewritten away. After all, she did not have the Imagine Breaker, nor anything else that Othinus would want.
That was what Touma had said.
So she waited. Waited, until the Magic God's attention was fully focused on the fight, or the slaughter.
In an instant where everything was blown away, and the current world ended yet again–
Mental Stinger.
A wish and a prayer.
In the confusion of resetting the phases, Othinus would only briefly wonder how some random girl would find their way to a place only she and the Imagine Breaker should know. She would correct the bug, the aberration, with no more thought than a programmer would correct a simple typo in their lines of code.
But Mitsuari Ayu's wish would already be answered.
Any external stimuli would never defeat a god. Not directly.
But if you altered their feelings ever so slightly, increased what was already there, plant a seed that would grow–
Perhaps something might defeat her from within.
(And if that same Magic God later suddenly acted like a lovestruck girl, who are we to say that finding her Understander was the only reason?)
~~[/r]~~
And…
And…
And…
Mitsuari Ayu found herself working on a powered suit in an underground bunker in District 21. In the background, a news report blared about an incident happening in Tokyo Bay.
Gently, Ayu picked up the controller, and switched off the television. There was a strange gaping sensation in her chest, a phantom heartache. Somehow, she thought of the boy named Kamijou Touma. Her knight in shining armour, and the one person she could not face after all this time, not after she had defiled herself with her own actions.
She put down the controller, picked up the screwdriver that she had been holding. Feeling unenthusiastic, she set down the screwdriver again.
Soon, she thought to herself. Soon, I will take back what should have been mine.
As she worked, a plan came into her mind, and she smiled. She knew what to do next with a certain annoying bee. It also helped that she had already taken some measures in that regard.
Maybe, just maybe, I will finally be saved.
She didn't know it, and it may not have been what she intended, but after so long, her wish would finally come true.
After.
"Why did you suddenly show up at that artificial lake last night?" The honey-blonde girl questioned him.
"Oh, that."
Kamijou Touma looked up at the blue expanse of the sky overhead, where he was sitting on a bench in a hospital courtyard after the conclusion of a certain incident.
"An upperclassman told me that 'it's her birthday today, so how about setting a flower out for her'. I didn't know what she meant, so I thought I would visit that mountaintop to find out."
And besides…he had the strangest feeling that that was where he was meant to be, at that time, and at that place.
As the honey-blonde girl moved in to kiss his forehead, he felt a phantom tingle on his lips, another kiss from another time, and the feeling that once again, he was forgetting something very important.
Well, here's my first ever completed work that's not a crossover.
Othinus giving up? It was Ayu. Othinus falling in love with Touma? Ayu. The events of NT11? Ayu, from another timeline.
The multiple coincidences were due to sparks and spray, guys! It-it's not like I'm a bad writer or anything!
"If a screw's body could not be seen…" comes from a post somewhere I read long ago, where a video game designer was complaining about lag, and someone found out that each individual screw in the wall were all fully detailed objects with many, many polygons.
I wonder how many angry messages I'll get from Kamikoto fans. Or Kamisaki fans. Or Kamidex fans. Or...
Review please!