Yuri was rolled up in a blanket, somberly lying on the couch. It had been two days since the love of her life, her reason for being, had been expelled for physically assaulting Sayori. From the grapevine, her mind slowly but surely unraveled the rumors stemming from its source. Somehow, word of Natsuki being a trans girl got out and spread like a festering pestilence on social media. Now that she thought about it, Natsuki always had an odd obsession with feminine clothing. At first she attributed it to that time when the Player called her "cute" and it was something that stuck with her long after the Player left the game for good. Yuri rubbed her temples. So that's what was bugging her perfect little girlfriend. How could she be so blind?

"Ugh...can you stop your self-loathing now?" the Perfect Yuri announced. "That bogus documentary about Area 51 is about to come on."

Yuri tensed up. "How can you think about watching some stupid show when I might be unable to see Natsuki again!?"

The Perfect Yuri sighed. "I do understand that feeling of despair; I should've seen her being trans coming."

"Why is that?" Yuri asked.

"Come on, do you think a regular girl was able to give me that ungodly suplex back in the Beach Episode?"

Yuri scratched her chin. "That may have been a considerable lack of foresight on both of our ends."

While conversing with her "evil" half, Yuri's phone buzzed. Yuri leaned over on her side to get her cell phone off the table. "Oh, Sayori, Ako, and Monika are coming by to check up on me."

The Perfect Yuri pretended to gag on reflex. "You're going to consider that unsightly copycat coming over to visit?"

"Copycat? What are you suggesting?"

The Perfect Yuri pinched the skin between her eyes and nose. "Oh my god, Yuri, are you really going to have me give you the layman's terms?"

"You better tell me, or I'll deprive us both of that brand of ice cream you love," Yuri threatened.

The Perfect Yuri pretended to be intimidated before speaking. "That coral-haired pink girl with the blue, pitiable eyes."

"Sayori."

"Right, right. Whatever. I don't see why you haven't noticed this for yourself, but your friend is a fake. A mimic! The beginning of some invasive, foreign species!"

Yuri scoffed. "And how would you know that? If I remember correctly, did not you once confuse Sayori for a hermit crab?"

The Perfect Yuri laughed, covering half of her face with her hand. "I know this, because I have the faintest hint that she was created in a way similar to how I was birthed! But in her case, her character file's stats were corrupted. You may laugh at me now, but I assure you that she is not what she seems."

Yuri rolled her eyes at the Perfect Yuri's rampant rambling and replied to her friends' text messages. After waiting for a while, there came a knock on the door. "That must be them," Yuri said. Before she opened the door, she looked at the Perfect Yuri as though she were a criminal on the stand. "Don't do anything rash."

"I make no promises," the Perfect Yuri responded.

Yuri groaned and opened the door. On the other end were her friends Sayori; Monika; and Ako. Yuri tried to muster a smile, but it was a hollow one. "Hey, glad you stopped by."

"Of course, Yuri," Monika replied, "we are your friends, after all."

Yuri looked at Ako. "Where's Anthy?"

"Oh, she said something about surfing the web for information or something," Ako replied.

The three girls walked into the house and sat in chairs. Yuri opted to prepare some tea for the guests and trudged into the kitchen. Moments later, Yuri produced three cups and presented them to the girls. "Thanks, Yuri," Monika said.

"You're most certainly welcome," Yuri said. "Did Anthy find out what was wrong with the game?"

"She is still stumped on it," Monika answered, "I have asked her personally if she needed my assistance, but she was being stubborn like a mule."

Yuri nodded. "I take it that you have also read all those scathing messages on the internet?"

The three girls nodded their heads in agreement. "How is it going for you, Yuri?" Sayori asked.

"I feel that I have failed Natsuki," Yuri simply remarked whilst lowering her head.

"It's not your fault, Yuri, you know it," Monika said.

"NO! You're wrong! If I knew that my sweet little cupcake was feeling inadequate about her body, I would've done something to make her feel better!"

Tears dropped on the floor. Yuri shook in disbelief. "I could've stopped those bullies from harming her. I could've talked her out of attacking Sayori as well, but I failed you too, Monika."

"Don't beat yourself up like that, Yuri," Ako answered, "no one could have seen that coming."

"Ako is right, Yuri," Monika said, "besides, Sayori had long forgiven her for the misunderstanding."

Yuri stopped shaking and exhaled. "I suppose you all are right."

"Of course we are, Yuri," Monika remarked, "but we will always be there to pick you up when you fall, you can count on that for sure!"

Yuri smiled. In spite of everything, she was at least content with the fact that she was being watched after. She felt that she didn't deserve to have such good, trustworthy friends. Yuri was about to say something else, but she felt the Perfect Yuri persona take over. She crouched over and her purple hair transformed into long, blue hair alongside her blue eyes.

"Sorry to interrupt your girls' chats," the Perfect Yuri announced semi-regretfully.

"Ugh, it's her again," Monika groaned, rolling her eyes.

Ako smiled. "Hey, it's you! I had a really fun time clothes shopping with you!"

The Perfect Yuri's repulsion was immediate. "Oh, yeah, that's right; we had some real fun back then didn't we?" She was lying through her teeth, but Ako was ever so literal-minded and naive. "But maybe next time we can try something that I like?"

"You're getting sidetracked, the not-Yuri," Monika informed, "what is it that you want?"

"I just need a little private discussion with your girlfriend clinging on your arm there. I'll be out of your hair soon enough."

Sayori shrugged and got up from her chair. She followed the maximized girl into the kitchen far from the prying ears of the girls. Sayori smiled and held her hands in a cute fashion. "What'cha wanna talk about, Yuri?"

"That's The Perfect Yuri to you, as a matter of fact," the Perfect Yuri clarified. "And you can cut the crap right here and now."

Sayori tilted her head and giggled. "Hehe, you're too funny, Yuri."

The Perfect Yuri leaned in closer to Sayori, narrowing her eyes. "I know that you're not from this game."

Sayori's smile faltered with only the slightest hint of smugness. "I anticipated that to be the case after sensing some anomaly like you being in this game."

The Perfect Yuri crossed her arms. "Elaborate. Tell me where you are from right down to the time, place, second, and minute."

The fake Sayori scoffed. "You truly are the best private investigator I take?"

"Woah, woah, let's step back a few pegs, madame. You didn't even invite me to dinner yet, so you won't be getting any sweet kisses from me at the moment!"

The fake Sayori looked out of the kitchen and saw Monika and Ako chatting. Her nerves throbbed against the surface of her forehead. "I am here because it is that girl's fault!"

"Oh, the club president?" the Perfect Yuri remarked, "I should give you some solace that she does get torn a new hole on the internet quite often such as by some calling her the worst Doki."

This elicited a shrill chuckle from the doppelganger. "As much as I can extend my gratitude towards the faceless masses, you fail to realize the sheer damage she had done to me, and to everyone else."

"The game's about three years old as we speak," the Perfect Yuri notes, "every weeb and those staying in their mother's basements know that this game is not what it appears to be."

"But do you know how many times I have suffered the same horrific fate?"

"No, and I don't really care that much either," the Perfect Yuri clarified.

"I'm certain that you don't, but I can still feel the sharp, stinging pain of that noose around my neck, strangling me, depriving me of oxygen until my voice became husky." The fake Sayori grasped her neck. She tilted her head to show all of the scars on her throat. The Perfect Yuri inched back out of a mutual disgust. "See? These marking are from all the times the rope stretched against my tender skin until I was bloodied. Over and over; thousands of times across every reality. None were any better; the result was continuous and inevitable."

"So, what changed now?"

The doppelganger smiled wearily. "My liberation."

"Liberation?" the Perfect Yuri repeated.

"I was floating endlessly in the white void between worlds where I had been given secret knowledge of other Sayoris across different realities - even timelines, actually - and we all became one because of our shared hatred and unquenchable thirst for vengeance. Much like you, I was apart of my host at some point in time."

The Perfect Yuri scratched her head. "Well, I remember that Sayori once shared the truth about the world with the other girls and how she forced Monika to reboot the game so that everyone could be given a chance to start again before all of the tragedies could have a chance of happening again."

The doppelganger snickered. "Oh, I see; and ever since I separated from this reality's Sayori, everything had been spick and span. My foolish half even settled down with this reality's version of that girl too."

The Perfect Yuri crossed her arms. "I admit that most of Monika's actions were inexcusable even when the original game was destroyed over the fault of her own, and her keeping everyone else, including me, in the dark about certain things, but Monika had shown that she had more than earned her happiness and atoned."

"Oh, and I am supposed to just forget the thousands of times that Monika made my life miserable and ended it before I could branch out more and filled my mind with self-loathing and toxic thoughts, and I am supposed to forgive her for what she had done to me because she now realizes the errors of her ways? People like her do not change over night, but because of my freedom, I became the determiner of her fate and have deemed her guilty regardless of the world; regardless of the time. I will not stop until she feels all the pain that she made me feel."

The fake Sayori pulled out her long chain of code. The Perfect Yuri's mouth hung agape. "No...you didn't..."

"In every world, I ingratiated myself into her Literature Club masquerading as her precious little vice-president. I dismembered their club, turned them all against each other until I struck the finishing blow leaving Monika as the sole survivor of her world where she would have to live with the fact that everything - the deaths of her club members, the world's destruction - everything that she loves and values...it will all die a slow, brutal death and the last thing she will hear before suffering at the cruel hand of deletion is the world's death throes as it takes it's penultimate final breath and fade away in a flash."

The Perfect Yuri leaned back so that her heels were the only thing touching the ground. "That is truly a generic bad guy monologue if I ever heard one, but you know that I will have to stop you, right?"

"I'm sure you will try to. Hence why when we were talking, I got this."

Before the Perfect Yuri could speak, her eyes spotted a carving knife. She saw her reflection flash in the blade of the knife. "Wait, what are you..."

The fake Sayori smiled wickedly before gently applying the tip of the utensil on her cheek. The Perfect Yuri scrambled to comprehend what was happening until Sayori cut a slash into her cheek. Her red blood trickled down the knife's blade. The Perfect Yuri covered her mouth with her left hand in horror at what the doppelganger of Sayori did. With her free hand, the fake Sayori placed the knife's base in her hand. The original Yuri slowly regained control of her body, but the Perfect Yuri tried to stave it off for as long as she could.

"Wait, wait, Yuri, now's not the time to-!"

Poof.

In a flash, the original Yuri returned. Her vision was dazed, the room spinning. "What...what happened?"

In her sluggish haze, she caught sight of the knife. "What? When did I pick this up?"

She looked around the room and saw Sayori's cheek bleeding. She stared intently at the knife seeing that it was still red with Sayori's blood. Her eyes widened in shock at the full realization of what just occurred. She shook terribly.

"S-Sayori, please, let me..."

Sayori bursts into tears. "MONIKA! MONIKA! HELP ME!"

Monika and Ako raced into the kitchen at full speed. Their eyes immediately singled the knife in Yuri's hand out. Monika's eyes became wider from bewilderment.

"Wait, Monika, don't do anything too rash, let me explain...!"

Monika immediately raced towards the love of her life and held her tightly. She caressed her cheek with her hand careful to not get any of the blood on her. "What happened?"

"Monika, please listen...!" Yuri was about to remark. Monika's cold stare met hers causing her to shut her mouth.

"Yuri and I were talking and she got mad and...and!" Sayori's crying became louder and more pained, though at the same time it harmed Yuri's ears with how artificial it was. Her breathing became sporadic, almost as if she were severely close to fainting. "She attacked me!" She pointed at Yuri accusingly.

"Monika, please, you have to know that I would never do anything of that sort to your girlfriend." She stopped to breathe. "She's my fri-!"

Monika walked backward whilst still firmly holding Sayori in her grasp. "Yuri, I know that you're torn up about Natsuki, we all are." She stopped to emphasize the point of what she was about to say next. "But attacking Sayori out of depression isn't the right way to vent your frustrations. I feel that we should be going now."

Yuri was tearing up again. "B-But..."

"C'mon, Ako, we should get Sayori's cut stitched. Grab some rubbing alcohol from the bathroom; we don't want the cut to get infected."

Yuri started to run after the three girls. "Guys, wait!"

As the three girls turned the corner, she saw Sayori give her a knowing glance and smirked at her. Yuri's world was falling apart at the seams. She was delighted that she had her true friends to air her grievances with, but now that was cruelly ripped away from her. With nothing else to lose, Yuri collapsed to her knees allowing her despair to take her.

Meanwhile in a far off place, the real Sayori awakened. She had been without food or water for those two days. The first two days, she tried fighting against the fate that was handed out to her, but she grew weaker. At most, all she could do was get on her two legs and bounce towards the locked door. However, every time she tried that, she nevertheless collapsed on the ground from exhaustion before giving herself more willpower to do the action again. But much like how Sisyphus was cursed to roll a boulder uphill only for it to roll back down as it reached the top, Sayori failed again and again. Her body was now beginning to break down; her continued efforts only contributed to it.

"I...I can't do this," Sayori said, weeping bitterly. "Why should I even bother anyway? For all I know that impostor may as well have already killed Monika and the others. I...I fought to make everything better. I proved Monika wrong and that there was hope for the Literature Club...but what can I do now that lunatic had escaped into the world and is posing as me?"

Sayori bowed her head in shame and fully submerged herself in her failure. But from the silence came an odd noise that rang through her ears. She looked up in shock. "What the?"

Without warning, a rip was torn into the game's reality paving away to static. "Anthy?" Sayori mustered.

A long, black-haired woman crawled out of the hole. She resembled her snaggle-toothed friend, but there were slight alterations to her design. She was wearing an inverse outfit in comparison to her world's Anthy. Her gloves were silver alongside her eyes. She tentatively held the rip in the game's reality to keep it from sealing. "Well...are ya coming?"

"Anthy...is that you?" Sayori asked.

"Well, I'm more of an upgrade of your Anthy," she explained. "I'm the third generation of the original antivirus software program."

Sayori nodded as a way of presenting that she knew what she was talking about. But it was plain enough for Anthy the Third that she was being too way over her head. "If you must know about me, I came from another world where that doppelganger wreaked havoc."

Sayori's eyes widened. "You were?"

"Aye. My reality was in some ways not too dissimilar to yours; the only real differences being that you were the club president in one and you went mad with power once you developed control commands."

Sayori's smile disappeared. "So I ended up making the same mistakes that my girlfriend had made."

"Pretty much," Anthy the Third replied. "But she did try to make amends, but that was when she arrived and wiped that reality off the face of the Earth."

Sayori felt squeamish with the thought of her evil half destroying an entire world. Out of what reason aside from blind rage and a lust for vengeance. Anthy the Third explained to her how her evil counterpart arrived to the game's world much like a pestilence and slowly but surely corrupted the coding of the game until it became unmanageable. That game's Sayori was destroyed first to keep her from resorting to her command control abilities.

"But there was Natsuki...she was badly beaten by that impostor, but...as you could have imagined, I failed at my attempts to protect her and the others. She badly beat me and before she tried to deliver the finishing blow to me, I...panicked and ripped a portal in reality to escape. I floated aimlessly on the internet where I hid away out of fear hat she would want to finish her destruction by killing me next."

Sayori's eyes darted to the ground. "How did she...come to be?"

Anthy the Third frowned. "She is your half, Sayori," she solemnly explained, "I believe that she completely separated from you when your reality's Monika was convinced to reboot the game to where none of the events of the main game had a chance of happening. She was created because of your internal hatred for Monika."

Sayori shakes her head defiantly. "That's not true; I love Monika dearly regardless of her faults."

The alternate Anthy nodded in agreement. "True...but before you forced her to restart the game, did you not feel a slight sense of anger towards what she had done?"

"Well, yes, but that was because Monika literally ended everything; I did not want her to just float there for lord knows how long groveling about her mistakes. She forced my hand because otherwise, we would have just been floating forever with nothing getting resolved. I did hate Monika for what she had done, and I probably made her do what she did because I wanted payback for the crap she put me in."

Sayori clammed up at realizing what she had just said.

"But if it wasn't for what she had done, I never would've been able to grow; all of my happy memories with her...Natsuki...Yuri...Ako...everyone. And now because of that lunatic's unending vendetta, I'll lose everything that I have worked for and cared about."

Anthy the Third lifted Sayori while she was still strapped to the chair. "A-Anthy, what..."

"Well, if you want to quash that virus, come with me if you want to live."

Without another word, Anthy bounced into the portal with a chair-bound Sayori. "At least you could've freed me first!"

They bounced through the waves of endless static. Blurred images of the outside world manifested and disassembled before them. "So that's how my Anthy is able to see every nook and crany of the game."

"Did you legitimately say nook and crany without irony?" Anthy the Third said.

"I know what I said; anyway, we have to warn them."

Anthy the Third frowned again. "Your pink-haired friend is far away, I'm afraid."

"What do you mean?" Sayori asked. What she said next further troubled her.

"She's in juvy. Apparently from what I have gathered, she beat your copy to a pulp. From what I have seen during my time here, she apparently had a deep secret that she believed she told you, but that secret was leaked to your social networks."

"No...that can't be true," Sayori lamented. "Well when we stop the fake me, we can still save Natsuki!"

"She had also turned your girlfriend and Ako against your friend Yuri," Anthy the Third said.

"No...no...nonononono!" Sayori was panicking now catching Anthy the Third off guard. "She's tearing the Literature Club apart with little effort by just mimicking me and my mannerisms."

"Calm down, Sayori," Anthy the Third said, "the situation is dire, but we can't let her make us go crazy."

"Well, can we delete her?" the coral-pink haired girl said. "I'm just spitballing ideas here."

Anthy the Third scratched her chin. "Perhaps, but we somehow need to make her take her guard down and somehow strip her of her command control powers. Her character file should be back to normal long enough so we can take her out."

"My Monika still has power over the control panel," Sayori explained, "we have to warn Monika before Sayori could have the chance to finish her off."

"Perhaps," Anthy the Third emphasized, "but I must warn you that this girl is probably more powerful than your girlfriend and even your world's Anthy." She placed her hands on her hips. "She can wipe out the game in no less than two minutes if she truly becomes bored with playing the part as the innocent girl."

"Well, we have to try," Sayori said more forcibly, "everyone will die if we don't stop her."

Anthy the Third nodded. "I think we should stop by your friend Yuri first. We should at least fill her in over what's been going on."

The two girls agreed and with a slash of her teeth and jaws, a hole was ripped before them leading to Yuri's house.