Y/N POV
When one's existence is clearly defined, their meaning of being advances to another level.
The level in which the individual fails to be bound by the most basic laws in the wheels of fate.
'They' leap away from the domain, untangling themselves from the outermost shackles.
And all of their futures swarms into a probability storm.
That's exactly why from this moment on, Louis Arneb cannot defeat me anymore. The possibility of me losing just limited itself to zero, and my possibility of doing anything increased.
Louis used to be able to predict every single one of my actions because she ate my memories, and she would've known just by following my train of thought. But now, she needs to face nature like she has never before.
The nature that humans always feared, the state in which they cannot control their own fate.
"Go. Imperceptible Extensions."
The Unseen Hands shot out of my back and zoomed towards Louis, determined to reach their goal. But this time, when she slashed at them, they didn't disappear. To be exact, she didn't even land a hit.
My extensions curved midair as if they hit a barrier in space and changed direction. They twisted and turned before striking Louis in the side, back, and face, sending three consecutive punches to her seemingly frail body, although she seemed fine after the attack.
"What in the-" Louis exclaimed before getting hit by a beam of red light, sending her tumbling back before she stopped after like 5 consecutive rolls on the floor.
"Heh." I smirked before crossing my fingers and formed my greed. "Prudence's Barrier First Shift - Wall."
"We're always going to win, onii-san! Give it up already! We who represent gluttony, will devour everything including you!" Louis snarled before she leapt into the air and enhanced herself with Carnivorous Beast, and sent a Palm of the Fist King my way.
"Wall - Crash."
The time stopping barrier flew towards Louis and slammed into her before she could unleash her attack, making her cough before falling back to the floor in pain.
"I'll show you what it means to be 'Y/N L/N', Louis!" I smiled as I activated Gaston's technique, Ryuuhou, and countered her Palm of the Fist King while I enhanced my entire body with Al Akra. Seeing that the exchange of blows went equally, Louis sent a Samurai's Wind Blade at me, forcing me to dodge before the earth bent upwards, scoring a punch on my cheek and sending me flying as I noticed her other hand stuck in the floor.
She's also learning, huh.
Infinite improvisation combined with the ultimate uncertainty of quanta... there's nothing impossible and nothing for Louis to beat, while she'll be beaten, unless she fights like me as well.
Which, interestingly, is what she's doing.
"Al Jiwald." I unleashed the white-hot laser at the Sin Archbishop, who wasted no effort to dodge before deflecting my Al Minya with a Palm of the Fist King. In response to her next attack with a flurry of wind blades, I erected a firewall imbued with wind magic, blocking the harmful slashes.
Louis suddenly popped up from behind me, and I realized that she used her Earth bending ability to tunnel underground. Summoning Zeam, I slashed at her fist, but she disappeared upon contact with my weapon, and multiple Louis started popping up all over the field.
"Splitting with your Witch Factor? This reminds me of the annoying Great Rabbit, ya know?" I sighed before activating the White Whale's Flying Seal, levitating off the ground before cloning myself as well using Infinite Multiplication, and our clones stared each other down before it erupted into outright war.
When the clones finally finished ripping each other apart, the original Louis dashed at me, while I took out all five of my swords of power, slicing and dicing and attacks she sent at me with the three blades held by my extensions spinning faster than sound.
"Kurayami no Hyakutotachi."
The dark flash of energy swished through the air and bisected a piece of the lifted Earth that Louis held, but she dodged the full slash with a graceful maneuver midair with the utilization of Leaper, before dashing to me and sending a Palm of the Fist King at my solar plexus.
"Dome of Love." Amorum's passive activated and deflected her blow, before I whipped out Ryokyo and pointed its tip at her forehead. "Radiance Pierce."
A flash of light zoomed towards her faster than the brain could comprehend, but she managed to predict my move and dodged at the last millisecond thanks to a maneuver using the earth. Enraged by my actions, she tried to dash at me with her fingers outstretched for one final move, but I already set up my final one as well.
"Element Creation - Tungsten Mountain."
A giant pile of cubes of the heavy transition metal slammed down onto Louis, pinning her down to the floor and she failed to get up despite using Carnivorous Beast. Smirking, I took a knee and got on her level before giving her a smug smile.
"Guess I win." :)
"You lost, Louis Arneb. And that's fact." I said to the girl pinned beneath the pile of tungsten blocks, who stared at me with a deathly glare.
"No, no, no! no! no! nO! NO! Onii-san, you are wrong, we will we will we will-!"
"Stop it." I deadpanned at her outrage. "Get some help."
"..."
"..."
"But there is no help, onii-san. We're confined in this place since birth, and will continue being so forever and ever. Why can't you understand? This is our only way to live. Do we not have the right to be happy? DO WE NOT, ONII-SAN?"
"Who said there isn't help?"
"Huh?"
"You're looking at your help right now."
"... What? You, onii-san, help us? We're a Sin Archbishop who has taken the memories and names of thousands, all in the sake of pursuit for our own happiness. Your friends hate us, your comrades dislike us, you..."
"..."
"...?"
"Yes."
"...don't... hate us?"
"No, I do not. Sure, your actions are obviously atrocious and unforgivable in a sense, but I believe in rehabilitation. Redemptions are kinda my thing. You are different from your brothers. You have always been different, in a higher state of existence because of your constant observation and the desire of Satiation kept you wanting someone of equal standing to share a 'meal' with you. So why not let me help you?"
"And escape the Corridor?" Louis laughed. "That's going against the will of Od Laguna, onii-san. It will do everything to maintain its order, despite not having a sense of self. In time, its enforcers will be after you, and they might be the ones to turn your sword saint friend against you."
"Reinhard won't listen to them. I know him well and he knows better than to listen to some random enforcers."
"Hehe...by enforcers...we meant..." Louis stopped mid-sentence, before sighing and smiling once again. "So, Onii-san, how exactly do you plan to get us out of here?"
"Simple. I just take your consciousness and soul into my obsidian pendant, have Chid-chan create a temporary domain for you while I construct your physical form, and then inserting your soul into it."
"It is truly that easy?"
"Well, no, but in simple terms, yes. Only I could pull this off, after all."
"We believe it might be worth a shot. But no guarantees on not eating extremely delicious meals once we're out."
"Heh, that'll be a problem I can deal with later." I snapped my fingers, and all the tungsten blocks pinning her down disappeared, allowing her to stand up. For the first time, Louis gave me a genuine smile and extended her hand towards me before I noticed something wrong.
"Al Huma."
A thick, ten-meter long piece of ice shot towards us, and I immediately crossed by fingers before the icicle hit, causing it to shatter to pieces before I noticed who shot it at us, and consider myself very surprised.
"Louis?"
"I'm right here, onii-san." The Louis who just accepted my deal said behind me.
"No... not you, her." I pointed at the Louis Arneb who just emerged from the mist, a wicked smile like the one she gave me during Priestella plastered on her face. "Who are you?"
"Not your turn to talk yet, onii-san." The new Louis pointed at the Louis behind me. "Come back, 'Louis Arneb'. Don't walk away with a happiness we have all not yet agreed upon."
"NO! Onii-san promised us that, so he mustn't be lying, right, right?!" She looked at me, and i nodded seriously.
"No, I would not lie about that." I turned towards 'Louis Arneb', who smiled sinisterly.
"We see, we see..." 'Louis Arneb' reared her head back, before letting loose a devastating beam of magic straight at us, which caused me to instinctively react and block it with Prudence's Barrier, but it passed through the barrier, much to my surprise.
"Wha-"
The beam hit Louis Arneb right on her stomach, and she disappeared within an instant, along with some particle floating back to the newly appeared Louis Arneb. "You're just a Split, just a split! You, belong to us. If you dare disobey us, we'll make you disappear in the name of Louis Arneb."
"The main body?" I asked Louis, who stood their shuddering in pride.
"Yes, yes! That's one thing we all agree on. Onii-san is smart, so it saves time from explaining everything. However, you have influenced 'us', enough. Time for you to go, onii-san." She unleashed some more unknown magic at me, and I realized it was as the same nature as the attack that erased her Split. Panicking, I quickly brought up my hands to try and defend, but not even Haywire Warp was able to nullify the attack.
Bracing myself for the painful erasure, I covered my head with my arms before a barrier stopped the attack and deflected it off into the unknown. "That's not your place to decide."
Louis Arneb widened her eyes at the figure in front of me, who has his left hand's fingers pinched together, with a topaz coloured barrier that surrounded us. "You! This is exactly why we don't trust you! You dare deceive us by faking into being our meal, then coax us into happiness like this, onii-san? We'll never forgive you, you-"
"Hey, that part about helping was genuine. It wasn't even me who said it, but him." The guy pointed at me. "I would help, too, if you would just listen to me, but you're too narrow minded. I gave you an offer, Louis, and what was your reaction to your possible salvation? That I'm pitying you? Hell yeah I am, and what exactly are you going to do about it?!"
That shut her up. With a swish and a flick, the empty world of the Corridor of Memories vanished, and I came face to face with the original.
"So, Prime... how have you been?"
"It's been a really long time, hm?"
"Yes... yes it has, Prime." The original said to me.
"I suppose we won the gamble, then?"
"Yeah, we kinda did. So... how did things go? I myself couldn't personally experience the lost of memories and restarting from zero due to safety issues, so I decided to duplicate myself instead. I will apologize now for any discomforts you may have had."
"Oh, don't worry about it. I'm fine. It's honestly not all that bad." I replied, sighing before crafting a chair for me and the original before we sat down and faced each other.
From one Y/N to another.
The same sense of self was flowing through both of us, yet we're separated. It feels so... strange. The eccentricity didn't stop there though.
We were sorta melting...?!
"Oh yeah, that's what happens when clones get too close to the original. Kinda like a satellite to a planet. We tend to mush together until we become one again, and our memories become shared, along with the fact that you will be 'frozen' and in stasis until I clone myself again. I don't exactly know how it works, but it doesn't destroy 'you' in general."
"So... I won't exactly disappear?"
"Yeah, no. At least not from now on. You actually helped me once back in Priestella, but I didn't know how to work certain things out yet, so now it's okay. It's also the reason I left you on your own for a while while you tried to find me. After all, building another existence of self isn't easy. Louis said so herself."
I gave a sigh of relief. "But Louis said that? How did she know?"
"I suppose it has something to do with her authority... but I'm not sure. Everything about Arc 6 deals with the unknown, especially things that we're too weak to interact or perceive. Same with the Corridor of Memories... if you stay in there for too long, it may well devour you."
"And Louis isn't being devoured?"
"She serves as a temporary devourer, I suppose. The Authority of Gluttony links closely to the Corridor's ability to recycle memories and names into pure energy. Subaru may be devastated when he realizes that Crusch and the others cannot be saved by simply killing the Sun Archbishops, since the Memories and Names they devoured long ago has already been digested by the Corridor."
"So you're saying... coming to the watchtower was simply to see if we could help them?"
"Yeah... and I lost that gamble. It was inevitable, though. The only way left to help them is through... I don't like the idea at all, but it's the only way. Pandora's Authority of Vainglory could possibly undo the effects."
"You can't be serious..."
"I'm honestly out of ideas myself. Cappy's problem was easily solved once I got her to cooperate (maybe a bit too much), but the Gluttony curse is a different thing entirely. Not mentioning there were weird cases like Louanna and Theresia van Astrea. Louanna was put in suspended animation much like the other victims of Gluttony, and was even diagnosed of the same disease, but everyone in the household remembers her somehow. Theresia probably was also subjected to the Mist of Elimination, but it was possible that Pandora had a hand in the effects of the Mist and later her resurrection."
"How in the world are we going to get Pandora to join our side? This sounds all a little too far-fetched, does it not?"
"We don't have to worry about it now. What we need to think about right now is how to end this Arc as efficiently as possible, before our conversation time runs out."
"Do you have any goals?" I asked the original. "The only ones I could think of is to let Subaru die less and... potentially see Volcanica, considering you defeated Reid?"
"Yeah. I do have some goals. Like three and a half weeks prior, I have three exact goals. One, we get the Authority of Gluttony from Lye, who would be killed, and Roy, who'll be sealed. We'll generate the last third ourself and leave Louis to her devices for now. Two, I want to get access to the Watchtower's zeroth floor. If not, I'll have to make up for it by getting a piece of Volcanica's talon somehow. The last one... Frakinedottir gave us an Authority Detector back then, did she not? I'm going to find something beneath those dunes."
"Surely you don't mean..."
"Yes. I will find the Centipede Coffin and Daphne's remains. After all, what could I do besides fulfilling my promises? It's the least a Y/N L/N could do."
"Hah... you're absolutely right about that, original." I sighed in relief. Perhaps it's a sense of calmness that came to me. That I'm not so different, after all. "And how are you going to take care of the five obstacles?"
"That'll be left to the battalion and Subaru's squad. I'll help boost his Cor Leonis when he finally realizes it."
"You really do seem to have everything under control, don't you? But I suppose that is to be expected, considering that we were that 'Young Sage' after all."
"Don't mention that name, man..."
"Why not? I see no reason to fuss over it..."
"I suppose that is the good part about having clones. We can all think differently and work towards a better solution by having different viewpoints openly expressed, instead of myself sometimes disregarding them or hiding them away."
"True... as a clone myself, I personally feel like we might be the best person to have this technique." I answered truthfully.
"Hm? And why is that?"
"We have no desire to take advantage of each other, nor will we force each other into slavery. The only thing we want is time... and space. Existing everywhere at once, the ability to do what we need to do without having to sacrifice the time needed for other things..."
"That's right. Well, as the original, I will live up to your expectations, that's for sure." He gave me a smile just as my lower torso melted, and he smiled. "Hey. It's been a good experience, right?"
"Yeah, it's been a good learning experience, despite its brevity." I returned the smile and grasped the original's hand.
"Then let's return together, and embrace our sense of existence, as Y/N L/N."
Y/N POV
"So... you're finally done." A voice echoed to me as the scenery shifted to a green, grassy hill. A white haired woman sat in her metal chair, sipping the tea that she made just a while ago. "What? Are you going to stare at me forever? The tea's going to be cold soon, you know."
I hastily made my way over and devoured the tea instantly, earning her surprise. "Huh. It's a bit salty. Which bodily fluid did you use this time? Don't tell me-"
"It's still MY SALIVA! Nothing has changed! You're assuming too much..." She flared up for a moment, but her anger vanished as quickly as it came.
"I'm just teasing ya, Chid-chan."
"Duh. My wisdom already knows that." She turned her head around. "Why did you take so long?"
"Sorry... I was having a moment of discussion with Prime, ya know?"
"Y/N, self-cest isn't really..."
"You know what I mean!" I yelled a little too loudly, but Echidna only had laughter in response to my annoyance. "Oh, I see now... you turned the tables against me, you nasty-"
Before I could finish, she enveloped me in a hug, faster than my brain could process, as if she teleported. "Welcome back, Y/N."
I took a moment to process this, but I returned her hug and felt her warmth upon my skin.
Maybe it's nice to stay like this once in a while.
It's not the taste of tea that matters, it's 'who' you're tasting the tea with.
I suppose one could learn something from anywhere, including Louis.
Satiation is important after all.
"Yeah."
"I'm back, Chid-chan."
Subaru POV
"Subaru! Subaru!" A voice echoed down the aisles that I was browsing through, and my supposed contracted spirit, Beatrice, appeared with a face of urgency.
"What's the matter, Beako?"
"Y/N has left you a note."
"He's awake? Why didn't he come to tell me himself then?"
"Eh... he has business with his Battalion, I suppose. Anyways, come on! He said it was important to you, and I can't read the script he wrote it in."
Japanese, huh? I see.
Understanding part of Y/N's intentions, I rushed back to where the others were, and they were trying to figure out what the note was trying to say. "Oh, Subaru!" Emilia said, delighted that I'm back. "Y/N said you could read it, but we all couldn't for some reasons. Is this some ancient rune that you know about?"
"No, Emilia-tan... it's just the language of my home country."
I picked up the note, and digested each word slowly.
Hey, Natsuki Subaru.
I succeeded. I need to talk to my Battalion, so I headed downstairs for now.
Just remember one thing: You and yourself are always one. There is no choosing.
Believe in your sense of existence.
And also...
I flipped to the back of the note, where a string of words was bolded on purpose.
Now, it's your turn.