"Who even are you?!" Suzaku interjected.
"I'm glad you asked," replied the green-haired man. "If I wanted you dead you already would have been, son. Call me Rick. Short for Ricky."
"You don't have authorization to be here," Lloyd asserted.
The man in finery replied flatly, "In fact, I do."
"Then prove it," Suzaku demanded.
"Well, here you go," he commented, whipping out a badge from one of his pockets.
"Riki Kagami..." Suzaku noted with the man kneeling before him.
"You're not from here..." Cécile commented.
"That would be because your whole world is a charade," Rick spoke with a grin on his face.
"The hell do you mean by that?!" Suzaku screamed.
"It would appear that you are all in a bind, fearing that you'll spend the rest of your days slaving away in some manner of prison," the man commented.
"What..." Vivian said.
"Allow me to provide... elucidation on the topic for you," he calmly began to ramble.
"The world, as the good Doctor said, consists of Asplund bosons, among other elementary particles. Where, pray tell, do you think they came from?!"
"I..." Lloyd commented, at a loss for words.
"Matter only exists to meet your consciousness' needs," Rick explained. "Awareness is the only constant force, in any universe, aside from change."
"How is awareness force?!" Lloyd demanded. "I hope you plan to elaborate. I only ever learned of the four fundamental forces, and that's not one of them."
"Ha! I knew you would ask that. Curiosity is so in you humans' nature," he reveled.
"Okay, but why all the smug sense of superiority?" Lloyd asked.
"I'm not superior to any of you, son!" Rick answered. "I am you!"
"What?!" Lloyd yelled, aghast.
"Listen, there are infinite worlds other than this one, but only a handful of worlds are the source."
"Why do I even have to be here?!" Vivian demanded.
"I know you mean that with every ounce of your being," Rick replied. "I'll tell you; you are the only real person here."
"Why does that sound familiar..." Vivian inquired.
"Consciousness inherently creates matter and the first gradient," he added. "That is what it means when it is written that you were made in my image—or rather, my manifestation."
Everyone's eyes widened and teeth bared.
"You must have met my son by now," Rick said to break the awkward silence. "I call him Johnny."
"I did," Vivian replied. "But you mean to say you're fucking God?!"
"You said it, my girl. You may be agitated right now because of what your life looks like. But the world that was the source of your soul's body was on an alternate calendar 210 years from now. Surely you saw it."
"What?!" Vivian demanded, remembering getting hacked to pieces.
"That's not all," Riki elaborated. "In that world consciousness is used as a power source!"
"What?!" Lloyd shouted. "That's incredible. I literally am incredulous."
"Good. There will come a time when you won't be. Anyways, you probably recognize this body. You, Prime Field Device 24. Zoe."
"Ah... AH..." Vivian recoiled with shock.
"The reason you aren't susceptible to pain from those memories, allowing you to remember this without the repercussions of global destruction, is because I'm here," the suited man commented.
"I thought God was supposed to come on a white horse with spoils and trophies and an army of angels," Cécile replied.
"That is not who I be as God," Rick didactically replied. "That's my son's job."
"...which one?" Vivian asked, beginning to remember her real family.
"...yes." Rick gestured, stretching his right hand overhead, "Ha! C'mon, the timing on that was perfect!"
"Does that make Shin fucking Jesus?!" Vivian asked. She then looked down in shame at her language, for some inexplicable reason.
"Hey, I get that you said it for emphasis," Riki replied. "What do ye mean you have to avert your eyes?!" The man's grin widened. "And no; no, he isn't. Not yet, at any rate."
"But I resemble my parents here so much," the girl commented.
"Your parents changed with the world you were in," Riki elaborated. "And they did so through death."
"But..." the girl protested, confused. "Does that make you my real dad..."
"Not of your body, not even in the first timeline," he commented. "That would be my other son."
"How many kids do you have?!" Suzaku shouted, standing.
"You'll meet them all someday, it'll be great!" Rick replied in invitation.
"How... are you even... Japanese..." Suzaku asked, clutching his head in confusion.
"I'm not from here," Riki shot back. "That includes Japan. Anyways, the branch of science that uses the souls of people as a power source? It's called ars magus. There are various technologies that do what resemble miracles on this planet through them. They're called Grimoires. The most potent ones were people categorized as Prime Field Device causality weapons and Azure Grimoires. But you, like the Prime Fields and Azure Grimoires before you... were a vessel for one of them—created from the sacrifice, of billions of souls."
"What do you mean when you say this world is a charade?!" Lloyd asked.
"You'll see soon enough," Rick explained, turning back to Vivian. "And you can thank me for the pain in your chest going away. Ordinarily the pain and the wound persist despite timeline changes. Your last Emperor sought a downturn of any trace of your totalitarian government, by the way, including Schneizel. And he succeeded."
Riki then vanished in a flash of green lightning.