Intermission – Chisame's Story

She sat in the darkened room, her eyes shut.

Misora hadn't stopped screaming, not even by the time she had handed her over to Fate.

She shivered. The others were bad enough; she knew each of them far more intimately than they had any way of knowing. But Misora was the worst. Only very rarely had the athletic girl ended up in such a terrible state; it was a miracle Chisame had made it there in time.

She wiped some of the building moisture from her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself.

Misora had barely been conscious, but even so, the look in her eyes when she realized Chisame had handed her over to the enemy...Chisame shuddered and pulled her knees up onto the edge of the bed and hid her face.

Betrayal...Misora had certainly seen it that way. And who was Chisame to say it wasn't? Was betrayal for what one thought was a good cause any less betrayal?

She shuddered and pulled the ragged blanket up over her shoulders to better drown out the stillness of this world. It could really get to a person after a while, the sheer oppressive silence of a truly dead universe, where even temperature didn't exist as a measurable phenomenon. The air was utterly still with not even a hint of a breeze, trees and grass existed, but only as a pale imitation of their former selves, each specimen's dry lifelessness a horrifying mockery of what existed now, in this place, only in memory.

This was her twenty third world. The Adversary had won, here, and had eaten the reality of this world, leaving behind this empty husk. It, too, would eventually be gone. The only reason it still existed, in the most extreme stretching of the word, was due to its importance to Chisame; it was in this world, on her twenty third attempt, that she had truly begun to understand just what her role in this farce entailed.

It was simple, really. The forces of good and light verses the forces of evil and darkness; life versus entropy. To fail meant worse than death, worse than the death of her friends. Failure meant the death of existence. All of existence, in every timeline.

In her twenty third world, Negi Springfield had told her he loved her.

Her knuckles went white as she gripped the blanket more tightly around herself and sobbed.

She had been weak. She had been lonely. She had known about his past, his personality type; she had known what made him tick. In a moment of weakness she had made her decision, and ultimately he had told her he loved her. Desperate to keep their false relationship going, she had manipulated the others as well. She had manipulated her classmates, growing bolder and more vicious as time passed until the unthinkable happened.

Her memory of her realization was perfectly clear, even now after so, so many other worlds. She remembered everything from that day when she had stood in front of Nodoka's grave. She recalled the horrible way the sun had continued to shine, the way a refreshing breeze had blown up, the way the world had continued on, if only for a little while, while Nodoka was no longer there as a direct result of Chisame's own actions. In her twenty third world, Chisame had personally destroyed the only force capable of fighting against The Adversary. In her twenty third world, as had happened twenty one times before, existence died and Chisame had been forced to watch it, knowing that this time, in her twenty third world, her loss hadn't been a result of being overwhelmed by a superior enemy. It hadn't been a result of trying to stop an unstoppable force, it hadn't even been a result of the weakest link causing their downfall. Chisame's loss in this, her twenty third world, was a direct result of her own selfish actions. The death of this world was, without a doubt, her own fault, and that simple fact had hit her like a ton of bricks. It had hit her so hard, in fact, that after it was over, she had fled back to Hodge's bar to hide in the shadows of the cavernous back room. She had no way of knowing how long she had stayed there, her self-loathing running wild, before Elle, the elegant woman in the tight dress who was always seated at the bar whenever Chisame visited Hodge's bar, had come in, sat down next to her, and hugged her.

With Elle's simple comforting gesture, Chisame knew they had all seen her actions, they all knew what she had done. It was almost more than she could bear...

As there was no sense of time in Hodge's bar, she had no way of knowing how long she and Elle had remained there. She had no way of knowing how long it had taken her to summon the courage to go back out to the main room. It might have been a few hours or it might have been a few centuries, but when she finally left the back room, she had found not the hatred and disgust she had feared, not the disappointment she felt she deserved, but a quiet understanding, the sense of a shared experience.

The blanket ripped where she gripped it with white-knuckled hands, dragging her up out of those old, agonizing memories as it came apart around her. Sighing, she stood up from the bed, shrugging off the ragged remains of the blanket. Once, this bed had been very important to her. But now...

"Time's almost up," she said to no one in particular, not even noticing the complete lack of an echo in the dead air. She walked over to the window and looked out over the ruined world spread out before her. "This is my last chance."

All of her options were exhausted. This really was her last chance, a massive all or nothing gamble for the fate of her home universe. The other branches had been trimmed long ago; the one she had come from was the last of those she felt she could call home. Only...it wouldn't be a gamble. Not this time, not if she had anything to say about it.

Chisame looked down at the ruined world spread out before her.

No, not a gamble. Her gaze hardened. Sacrifice...there had been too much sacrifice, but she feared there must necessarily be more, much more. A hundred million worlds lay in ruin already, but a number unfathomable still remained, each in just as much danger as her home universe, each just as real. The death toll had already been almost incomprehensible, but what had gone before was as a mere drop in the ocean when one considered what might come to be if the constant failures continued.

When all the branches were stripped away, the only thing that remained would be the root, the world that started it all. When that, too, was devoured...

Chisame's expression was hard, unreadable. Her fists were clenched, her lips locked into a snarl.

The Adversary had to be stopped.

Too many had died, too many would die if she failed again. This was it, this was the last time.

She turned her back on the window, turned her back on her twenty third world. This world was dead and gone; it would never return. Those who had lived in it were gone, moved on to what came next. This world...

She reached up to take hold of the key attached to the chain around her throat. She unhooked the chain's clasp and held the key, warm in her hand, the only warm thing in this world, as she approached the door.

Yes, this was it. It was now or never.

She put the key in the lock and opened the door onto a small room in another world as the one behind her finally begun to crumble into nothingness.

Chisame opened the door of the sports equipment shed and paused to take in the sound and feeling of life, deafening after the emptiness of that dead world she had held in her heart for so long. She took a few steps and paused as the campus-wide speaker system crackled to life.

"Greetings everyone, and welcome to the eighty-fourth Mahora Festival!"

Chisame easily recognized Kazumi's cheerful voice calling out her welcome over the speaker system, utterly unaware of the very real danger the whole world was in.

She couldn't tell them; most wouldn't understand...she had found that out the hard way. Over a dozen worlds had died pointlessly in the vain hope that such a thing would work; she wouldn't make that mistake again.

This was it, this was her last chance. She wasn't stupid; she had taken notes. As a being living outside of time, she had all the time in the world to make her plans, and now, she had a vast database of information to work with. Manipulation...it was an ugly thought, but it was the only way. She wouldn't fail, not this time.

This was her last chance.