Schrodinger's Sanity 6
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Note: this chapter is not meant to be offensive to anybody. If you feel severe psychological trauma or a sudden fear of chemtrails, please contact a psychologist. I assure you, they are not real and you don't have to prepare for the end of days.
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-Spirit
The standoffish situation with the pizza hadn't been eased yet. Holding the pizza like an idiot, I stood in the center of the room, commanding attention from all of the cultists as Sakura struggled with Freed Sellzen, who was in a contest of strength to get past her and probably stab me.
"Cease your struggling!" I said, being as dramatic as I dared. "Or I shall unleash the full potential of this fiendish item!"
Brandishing the plastic bag, the "angels" squealed in fear. The insane exorcist actually looked afraid for once and stepped back.
"It still isn't too late for your soul!" the girl on the ground that had her coat split in half said. "Put down the weapon, and we can talk peacefully!"
"Who are you, to be associating with this filth?" Freed snarled, pressing forward once more with renewed vigor. Sakura almost buckled under the pressure of the western sword, but through pure fear and disbelief powered strength, managed to persist through the push.
"What the hell is your plan?" Sakura whispered, leaning her head back as much as she dared."
"Unleashing the immeasurable, incomparable power within this artifact of power, of course." I said, playing up the "insane cultist fear" factor as much as I could.
"You're just a human!" one of the angels said, getting up from her cowering stature and realizing something. "You don't even have a sacred gear or a sacred sword! You have no way of channeling your power!"
"Who says I don't?" I said, trying to puff up my faux-confidence but to a lesser effect. "I totally have a secret power that's unique to me given by a deity."
The thing was, I totally confused. Even the concepts of gods were unscientific and flat out absurd. Were there beings that persisted based on the hypothetical "belief energy" of people? It was something that couldn't me measured, and therefore probably doesn't exist.
"He's right, you know." Rias said, still looking at the "artifact" in shock. "He has a sacred gear."
The angels squinted at me, before realizing… well… something… and tried to buff up her own confidence (I recognized the deep breaths and closed eyes that people did before they tried to act like I did. After all, I had done the same thing.).
"Join us, then! Be on the side of good in this city! Would you rather consort with those vile reincarnated devils?"
"Reincarnated devils? What kind of weed was she smoking?" I thought, mentally scratching my head. "Okay. You can work with this. You have a powerful artifact and a secret ability. Even if I don't know what it is, they think I have one. There are two opposing factions, and there are four types of people there: the angels, the devils, the nun, and the insane exorcist. Just get going with this. "
I didn't know what the hell she was talking about, so I just said it back.
"Reincarnated devils…"
I took a dramatic pause, but I really just took a moment to gather my thoughts. Were they… lower class or something?
"Are not worthy of my attention. And neither are you." I said, as condescendingly as possible.
She gasped. Some people in Rias's group looked vaguely offended.
I walked forward, watching as the exorcist began trembling a bit. The eyes of the devil faction followed the pizza like the eyes of cats would follow a toy.
"Oh god they probably have swords or something. Why am I getting close to them?"
It was a bluff. A very dangerous bluff.
What other information was there? Okay. So there were two factions, and they are fighting each other over Issei's appearance at their house. And there was a dead guy.
I could work with the dead guy. When Issei first turned to the dark side, wrecking my favorite pizza restaurant and leaving the horrible food stand that gave me diarrhea intact, he had said something about clients beforehand and the cultists sending him on a bike. This time, he also rode a bike over here.
Dead guy is client confirmed? That theory was the best I had.
I pretended to place around the room now, giving appraising looks at the devil faction now (but mostly at the candlesticks they were the only things I could understand, for god's sake!).
"But this city's peace does concern me"
Yeah, you go Keiji. Play up the faction rivalry.
"I'm the city's owner, thou-" Rias began.
I shushed her to prevent the information from going out. "Quiet, insolent brat."
She fell silent, clearly confused. She was definitively senior to me, so she probably had good reason to be confused and/or feel slightly annoyed. Still, the angel faction was the one that probably wanted to kill me, so I was okay with leaving my back open to the devils.
Sakura and Freed's clash had ceased, both looking at me with strange expressions. Sakura looked at me like I was presenting stuff on chemtrails and how it was made to make us all pay more taxes, while Freed was looking at me like a Disney villain would look at their enemy mastermind.
And I was like "oh my god that worked".
"Stay focused. Stay focused. I can't even panic now. It's too late to back out. You're pretending that you're an all powerful god thing. Roll with that."
I took a deep breath, before continuing my bluff.
"When you broke the treaty between your two factions, killing an innocent in the process," I pointed to the corpse in the corner. Thank you, corpse-kun. Your presence will not be forgotten. "I knew I had to do something."
Freed found a hole in my logic here. "And then you came in, throwing minor demonic charms at us? Those weren't even powerful." A creepy smile began crawling up his face again.
"You see, uh, that was, uh…" I panicked, gulping and fidgeting behind my back, "I was just… uh…. Testing you!"
"What?" He said, almost confused by the impossibility.
"If I had wanted to end this conversation, long ago, I would have unleashed its power." I said, smugly.
My façade was cracking. We had to leave. Grab the person that has suffered the second most (the nun on the floor) and leave.
So I did just that.
"But I am a merciful person." I said grandiosely, "and I will let you all live without much fatal injuries. Now, let us leave you to your peaceful negotiations."
Shooting a condemning look at the angels and Rias, I grabbed the nun's arm, helped her up, and dragged her out of the door. My backpack was hanging loosely from my arm, and I put the pizza in the bag before sipping it up, slinging it across my back, and running for the bike.
Sakura came as well, sheathing her katana and getting on the bike.
"What the hell was that?" She said, breaking her composure and wheezing, breathing quickly and shallowly. Clearly, the corpse's presence had a much larger impact on her than I thought.
"And why is there another person on the bike?"
"I don't know anymore!" I shouted. "I don't know bullcrap about whatever!"
I then looked at the girl. "You don't look nearly as insane, so we're getting you out of there."
"But they are real." She said, green eyes wide like a doe's eyes.
…
"Wait! I'm not insane!" She shouted, running after our bike after we ditched her.
"Pedal, Sakura!" I shouted. "Pedal!"
"Aaaaaaaah!" She screamed, making the bike rocket forward, leaving all traces of insane cultists behind.
…
"Did you see those light weapon things?" Sakura said, once we were back in the safety of the conspiracy room. Dad hadn't questioned us when we came back from our "investigation" shaken and sweating.
"Yeah." I said, dumbly. "I didn't think they were real, but they are."
"They aren't." Sakura said, with firm conviction.
"How do you know?" I said, looking at her.
"It's drugs. But not in the way we think they're applied."
"So they're not consumed?"
"Of course not." She said, sitting down in the armchair. I was delegated to the small chair usually reserved for her. "It's in the air."
"What?" I said, spitting out my water before getting the mop on the corner of the room.
"Yeah." She said. "There's no way I was infected by their drug rave fury or whatever they do in their mansion, but I know what I saw was fake."
"But what about the glow sword thing?" I said. "You fought against the thing. It's totally real."
"You were on the right track." She said, pacing around the room and fidgeting with the katana. "There are trigger phrases. Stuff like "holy" and "demonic", "boosted gear", or whatever thing they repeated a bunch, they're all the trigger phrases for the hallucinations."
"But how were we able to interact and fight?" I said, looking at the ceiling.
"It's an especially powerful drug, then." Sakura said, grabbing my head and forcing it back down, so that I was looking at the conspiracy board. "If they can make an airborne drug that activates via trigger phrases, they can make it powerful too."
"That makes so much sense!" I said, standing up. "It's no wonder people are so addicted to LARPing, Dungeons and dragons, and video games! That's why people are still sticking with religion, despite it being scientifically impossible for a god to exist! It's because there's the drug in the air that activates via all of the video game jargon and religions sermons and whatever! But then how would they spread the chemical? An operation of that scale around the world would be almost impossible not to notice! The nun looked very Italian and the rest of the people looked, well, foreign."
"Chemtrails." Sakura said, suddenly. "If many rich mofia groups are colluding with the government and spraying the chemical over the world, causing people to become obsessed with anime and video games, while also making people believe in deities and donate to churches because they think that gods are real, the mofia could do it through chemtrails."
"And since people get obsessed with anime and video games, they won't focus on self improvement and get the source of money away from the mofia groups, allowing them to put more hallucination drugs in the atmosphere and reinforce the cycle."
I sat down, with a humph, my brain utterly exhausted.
Sakura did so too.
"Wow. It feels good to go on a conspiracy rant." Sakura said, sighing.
"I know, right?" I said, waving a hand in the air. "That's why it's so fun and that's why being a detective is my dream job."
"Wait." Sakura said, sitting up again. "If the drug is all over the world, and everywhere, then aren't we breathing it in right now?"
"Isn't everybody breathing in drugged air?" I said, standing up now.
"We have to tell somebody about this!" Sakura said, throwing open the door and running out of the room. I followed her, finally noticing the severity of the issue.
My grandfather laughed crazily.
However, the consequences of our actions of telling our parents didn't end as intended.
…
"You all did what?" my mom shouted, holding me up by the collar of my shirt.
"We… uh… went cult busting?"
"Don't you know how dangerous it is out there?" my mom shrieked, almost slapping me but instead getting the photograph of the severed arms. "Cultists out there are cutting people's arms off for fun, and you're off on delusions of grandeur!"
She stopped, looking at my dad for a moment, before putting me down.
"Go to your rooms. I have to talk to your dad for a bit. She said, with a sickly sweet smile on her face.
As I shut the door to my room, I heard a shout that would change our lives for ever.
"Tantei, you bastard! Look what you've done to our children! I want a divorce!"
…
…
…
AN
Well, that was insane!
I took inspiration from the kind of famous "wrong number" comedy strip. If you feel like I've been OOC with some of the characters, please tell me.
Hope you enjoyed! And please follow, favorite, and review!
Remember, a discord server is here if you want to talk about issues with my writing or just chat. The link, again, is here. /8Jzasj6cxj
-SpiritOfErebus