Fictions Mentioned:

Episode 20

OP Insert Song:

Johnny Cash - Hurt

Start:

Hoshina Kamijou was crying which disturbingly compliment her rough, torn, and bruised appearance after all of the running that she had been doing at this time. Her glove hands were bloody because she was holding on to the bleeding chest of her father who was smiling at her. Her father looked pale even in spite of the slashed marks that were on his chest. If the wounds ran any deeper, they would have reached his heart too. But her father was suffering from losing a lot of blood to the point of undergoing a hypovolemic shock.

Her father was barely breathing as he lay on the cold cement wall. The gasps of his breath were something that Hoshina had dreaded for every single second that seemed to have passed by. And then, he passed away just as he was patting his daughter and whispering a few words that only Hoshina knew and listened and recorded them all in her heart...one last time...right before his right hand lowered itself down by itself as it signaled the death of another parent.

"...No...Papa..." she muttered. Her starry eyes were now leaking with tears, flowing down both sides of her face. Her forehead was now resting on the bleeding chest of her father, right near his neckline. And she was sobbing with tears both of her hands trembled.

She...She lost her father...Both of her parents are now gone...The cycle of misfortune has turned into a full circle. And she cried, with sorrow, with anger, with frustration, with everything else that she couldn't describe at this point as her mind refused to admit that her one and only father was gone. And her cries were heard echoing from the cold-hearted corridors with no one else to mourn for the passing of the spiky-haired man that had accomplished so much in one's lifetime.

Somewhere behind Hoshina, there was an adult with dyed blonde hair and with a little blood dripping from the lower right side of his mouth. It appeared that he had been shot somewhere in the right side of his chest, at least counting two shots. He was carrying something from his left hand, a silver-modified Desert Eagle with a scope from the top of its barrel. He was wearing a red shirt with a white colored shirt and sunglasses.

"...Kami-yan..." Motoharu Tsuchimikado muttered softly, not believing with his own eyes what he is seeing.

You're telling him that the guy who had fought through magicians and espers, the guy who had fought against a Magic God and faced the world as an enemy to protect that Magic God's smile, the guy who had gotten involved in the final battle between Aleister Crowley and Coronzon, the guy who survived through all of that...is laying dead here and now...?

He just couldn't believe it. He just couldn't. But here he was. Seeing this scene with his own eyes. How did this world come to this? Without Touma Kamijou, who would be the inspiring heroic figure of this world? Touma Kamijou, even in spite of giving up his 'heroic ways' all for the sake of giving his daughter a normal life in accordance with the promise that he made to his wife before passing away, was still considered the best of them in many ways.

Now the best man on earth is dead, killed by several slashes from sharp claws that resulted in blood loss.

Speaking of blood loss, Motoharu Tsuchimikado was suffering from it as well, just not as badly as Kamijou, so he gets to live for another day.

"...God... damn it..." Tsuchimikado muttered in grimace as he punched the nearby wall with his clenched right fist.

Unfortunately, there was little time for mourning. They needed to move. He needed...He needed to keep the promise that he made to his best friend... a late best friend that is... He needed to get his daughter out of this world. He tried to limp himself over to a crying Hoshina whose cries were just so bittersweet and painful that it hurts, and by the time he kneeled down and touched her shoulder...

"Hoshina-chan," he whispered, bringing the girl's attention immediately with widened eyes. "You can't...You can't stay here...You have to run..."

"Tsuchimikado-ojisan?" Hoshina muttered in shock as she sees the bleeding figure standing in front of her.

"Listen to me!" Tsuchimikado muttered a bit harshly out of concern. "You have to go. MERD forces are gonna be swarming here at any minute now. I can only hold them off a bit longer and buy you more time to go near the lab to the right. That's where you'll find the gateway that would get you the hell out of here."

"Wha-No! I can't-" Hoshina tried to utter, not wanting to leave her father's corpse behind.

"You have to!" Tsuchimikado muttered harshly with gritted teeth. "It's what you're father would have wanted. A normal life...away from this hellhole. There's nothing worth saving in this world anyway...except for you. Only you. At least you get to live on and not have to hide like you're some wild animal that escaped from a petting zoo."

Hoshina was conflicted, looking back between her dead father and Tsuchimikado. "But what are you going to do?" Hoshina asked.

"Me?" Tsuchimikado smiled sadly. "What? You concerned about me dying?"

"Yes!" Hoshina said with no hesitation with tears in her eyes. "You're my father's best friend! I can't just leave you behind! You're...Papa wouldn't want you to die, and so do I!"

"Heh," Tsuchimikado smiled sadly in reminiscence. "Spoken just like your father. But I can't...I've got some unfinished business to do here in this world..."

"Attention all available units, be advised. The fugitives are located somewhere near hallway A-5. MERD Troopers are to be sent to intercept and bring in the package..."

Both Hoshina and Tsuchimikado heard the radio chatter from the modified walkie-talkie that the latter had on his belt which he used to monitor the various enemy chatter for information. Both of them have their eyes widened and their hearts pounding like crazy.

"Shit! They're already coming! You have to go, Hoshina-chan! Don't wait for me, just go...Go now!" Tsuchimikado made her stand up straight, with Hoshina clutching her worn-out starry bag, and sends her in the direction of the right.

"Go! Now!" Tsuchimikado said as he readies his gun and pulls the firing pin, dashing in the opposite direction as he uttered before disappearing around the left corner, sporting a confident grin on his face. "For my sister and for Kami-yan, you sons of a bitches!"

And so, Hoshina...with hesitant steps and glancing back at her father's corpse with tears in her eyes, decided to follow her father's best friend's orders and move towards the laboratory that was only a few meters nearby. By the time she got to the lab, she can see a window of sorts from a nearby concrete wall, one that was powered by two power cables from each corner. There was a control panel that had a few selective buttons and features that would allow for personal transport from one dimension to the next. The window was showing what appeared to be a ruined Academy City, with not a hint of life left.

That wouldn't really do at all, she thought to herself with a grimace as tears were still roaming down her face. She heads immediately toward the control panel and sees a few letters and numbers on the screen. And then, Hoshina would try to operate the control panel and begin to push a few of the buttons. A few random locations pop up. There were a few coordinates with designated numbers. One leads to a world that is nothing but a body of water. One leads to a place where a blizzard-like place. One leads to yet another apocalyptic wasteland. Several random coordinates later that only had a dozen or so apocalyptic wastelands as if fate was trying to give Hoshina a last-minute mockery, right from the twenty-fourth pick, there were the following coordinates.

Coordinates: 0000/2004.1875

The window shows the presence of Academy City, but it wasn't like the other images that came before. It was a place that was teeming and buzzing with life. There were no ruined buildings and cars laying around the grassy roads. People walk in broad daylight with smiles on their faces without any hint of fear. Unlike her world...

Her world used to be like this. She heard the stories and saw a few pictures. Her world was peaceful before the Mushroom Incident and ████ Kihara took over the entire planet, with his MERD and Watchmen now stationed in most of the world. The MERD and the Watchmen were once known for hunting down magicians and espers. Now that the magicians and espers were almost driven to the brink of extinction, they now turn their sights to the civilian population that refused ████ Kihara's rule.

Everything was so bleak. There was not a hint of peace. There was only living in the shadow of a brutal regime that controlled almost everything in daily life. The poor people living in poverty and lacking any sense of education (ones indoctrinated and regulated by ████ Kihara), those who could not even afford anything, are considered disposable and expendable like trash, sent to laboratories to provide for the cruel scientist's curiosity. She had never been to these concentration camps personally, but she knew intimately from what she had gotten from the few soldiers that she had used Mental Broker on that it wasn't so pretty. In fact, the first time she saw it, she vomited due to the sheer inhumanity of the experiments. It was a living hell for those poor people.

And what about the remaining magicians and espers?

She didn't know. It must be assumed that most of them are long dead by now. There were a few espers that had yet to be accounted for. And one of them would be Accelerator, one of her father's old friends. But neither she nor her father knew where he was at this time. Was he dead? It was doubtful at least considering that Accelerator was once considered to be the strongest esper in Academy City. The last time her father saw him, it was a time before she was born, a time when her father and Accelerator agreed to split up in order to cover their tracks and prevent anyone else from finding them. And of course, they couldn't tell the other on where they would eventually end up.

That was the very last time anyone ever saw Accelerator.

But what about the other Level 5s?

Once again, no one knew.

Dark Matter, or whatever remained of him after what the Magic God had done to him after the events of the Infinite Hell and her father's fight against the world for said Magic God's release, was now being used for sick experiments that she'd rather not like to remember.

Railgun, another of her father's old friends, had disappeared on and off the radar, gathering up a resistance movement against the MERD and the Watchmen, and the Kihara who made them all possible. The result was...not so bright. There were even rumors that she was killed in a violent battle that had happened in Academy City a few years ago when she was only five years old, and that was the last time the Railgun appeared in the public. Maybe she did die? Maybe she's in hiding? Who knows at this point?

Meltdowner also disappeared on the radar, last seen with a disabled wheelchair bounded Shiage Hamazura and the remaining ITEM members.

As for Mental Out...she didn't need to ponder it further as she knew what had happened that left Hoshina's heart a big gaping hole of sadness and desire to know her late mother.

Number Six...no one really knew his identity even back then, ergo no one really knew where he is. Her father knew the Number Six's identity somehow but he wasn't gonna tell anybody, not even her, making sure that this identity stayed with him all the way to the grave...and that's exactly what had happened recently.

As for Number Seven, he gave up his very own life trying to put a stop to the machinations of ████ Kihara and fought to the bitter end as the Watchmen swarmed all over him, overwhelming him with nothing but sheer numbers...until he eventually passed away.

By this point in the present time, there truly was no one left to oppose ████ Kihara and his iron grip across the world. This Kihara had managed to overturn society and government and nation, and making them bend and submit to his will. Science became the norm for all schools. Magic has been banned for good to the general public. If one sees a person, man, woman, or child practicing magic, they are killed on the spot even if it were in a public place, setting an example as it were. But magic was something that ████ Kihara was studying in secret, gathering all of the available information about it. And it was because of his studies that he managed to improve upon the design of the Watchmen into more efficient killers. One Watchmen was more than enough to kill off an entire magic cabal. Five was just asking for trouble. Ten was overkill. And the numbers keep piling up the threat level of these man-made machines hell-bent on killing the magician and esper population.

There was truly nothing left to be done in this world. And that was the main reason why Touma Kamijou wanted to bring her here to this place. An interdimensional gateway that would send her to another world. It can be any world of her choosing, and the more preferable one would be a world of peace and of civilization. And so, she had finally managed to find a close approximation of that.

But she needed to move quickly and make a run for it. She didn't have the time to finally take in the scenery as she heard the sound of explosions that were rumbling the laboratory. And so, without any protective gear on her, she eventually made her way towards the portal...running like hell...

And she would fulfill what her papa wanted for her...To live a life without any fear...

She never intended to go back here anyway. There was nothing left for her to hold on to hear. This was a world devoid of any sense of hope. And she intends to run away from it.

And so she did...

She left everything behind...

She ran...and never looked back...

But there were still tears that were left unsaid...

End:

ED Song:

Terminator Salvation - Break The Silence (Soundtrack)

New Characters:

Touma Kamijou (ACMI Alpha Universe-173005) - VA: Atsushi Abe

Motoharu Tsuchimikado (ACMI Alpha Universe-173005) - VA: Anri Katsu