Here we finally are at the first half of the Second Nonary Game! It's been briefly proofread, so I apologize in advance for any glaring mistakes, but I hope you all enjoy reading it!
Heads up, there's a little bit of Aoi/Light in this chapter. I couldn't resist, I'm sorry, haha! I love those two together so much.
Also, I've made a Twitter and Tumblr; my username for both is turnaboutwriter, so follow me! I think it will be a good way to get to interact with my readers more, and post teasers, answer any questions, get opinions, and give updates.
Chapter 9
- - November 5th, 2027 - -
Keiichi and Nona watch and hear everything that is happening in the Second Nonary Game through CCTV footage from the Study in Building Q.
Aoi and Akane didn't want to pre-record Zero's introduction to the game to play over the speaker, in case one of the participants would notice and suspicion would arise. That meant either Nona or Keiichi needed to address the participants' concerns or talks in some way during Zero's speech. Nona halfheartedly offered to speak, but Akane insisted that Keiichi should be the one to do it.
So, at the start of the game, Nona hooks up a microphone, with a voice changer – set to a frequency that would match the distorted voice of someone trying to speak through those special gas masks Akane had – to the intercom system of Building Q. Keiichi inhales and exhales once before he addresses the participants with the use of the microphone.
"Welcome aboard. I welcome you all, from the bottom of my heart, to this, my vessel," he speaks into the microphone, holding back a shudder at how he sounds like his father. When he sees his father's horror-stricken face on the security footage, though, he relishes the moment, satisfied that Gentarou Hongou is beginning to realize the bigger picture.
He feels Nona's eyes burn into the side of his face; he's not sure if it's because this was not part of Akane's script at all, or he just used the same words his father spoke 9 years ago, or both.
He then reaches over for the paper that Akane scribbled the speech on, and begins to read them aloud.
"I am Zero . . . The captain of this ship. I am also the person who invited you here." His voice is calm but his thoughts are harsh, full of hatred for his father.
"Hey! Asshole! What the hell is this?! C'mon out here! I wanna get a look at you!" Aoi – who is Number 9, posing as 3, instead of Number 4, this time ("because 4 is a half-ass number – and 9 is better since it's not a lame middle number") – yells, with a fist clenched in the air. Keiichi would laugh at his dramatics if the situation weren't so grave.
"What do you mean to do to us?!" his father questions, looking at the speaker with a hunched back and deeply-furrowed eyebrows.
He now understands why Akane found him the most fitting to pose as Zero over the speaker.
A sick, twisted grin graces Keiichi's face as he answers his father.
"I mean to have you participate in a game."
.
"H-Hongou, a few of the kids . . ."
"What?"
Keiichi looks up from his laptop to the screen above him – that shows the grand central staircase – at the sound of his father's voice. Each of the participant's bracelets are bugged with microphones, so Keiichi and Nona are able to hear what they are saying.
"They were from the batch we had chosen for the Nonary Project," Keiichi's "Uncle" Teruaki hastily whispers. "One participant here is blind, and I believe that he is the same blind boy from our experiment 9 years ago."
"Ah." He nods. "I understand. Keep as low of a profile as possible and stay away from me. If the others see we know each other, it will draw attention to ourselves."
Kubota nods. "W-We will take different doors."
Keiichi rolls his eyes. Nona will hear if any important exchange occurs in their conversation. He resumes working on his laptop, tuning out the rest of their conversation.
"It seems the settings for the DEAD were altered. Now it only requires a single person to deactivate the detonator in the bracelet. Investigate what's beyond Door 5. We'll meet again later."
.
Keiichi's eyes widen in shock as he hears the man's final scream. From the corner of his eye, he sees Nona wince, quietly telling him that Hongou - or Ace, as he now has as an alias for the game - misinformed him that the DEAD settings were reconfigured to only have one person deactivate the bracelet's detonator.
Sick bastard. A chill runs through Keiichi, but for more than just that reason.
Was the 9th Man, Teruaki Kubota, meant to die? Akane didn't inform them anything about that – hell, if Keiichi goes by the fact that Akane's fever has struck up at that moment, then there's a chance he wasn't supposed to die. Fuck, Akane warned Nona and him that her fevers were supposed to mean this wasn't the alpha timeline they were seeking.
There was a possibility she could have been faking the fever, too, as a way of planting the seeds of a hint to Junpei that when her fever gets worse, things are going wrong. Maybe it's her way of throwing Junpei off the idea of going through Door 5, and to also bring his attention to her, so that he chooses to go through the same door as her.
Keiichi doesn't know.
When the participants of the Second Nonary spilt off to search for the missing RED parts Keiichi hadn't yet put in, he and Nona scour through the security camera footage to find Light Field. When they finally see him, near the end of the hall with the rooms on C deck, Keiichi quietly whispers the location in the dark, silent makeshift-surveillance room. It feels so surreal to see Light, all grown up, even if it's through the security cameras.
And then, Aoi appears on the screen, an injection of Soporil in his hand, slowly creeping behind the man known as Snake.
Immediately, Keiichi jumps to his feet, one hand blindly for the soft, black folded fabric, the other reaching for a cluster of batteries and wires for the RED. With a parting nod to Nona, he sprints towards the large hospital room.
"Keiichi," Aoi whispers breathlessly to the earpiece in Keiichi's ear from the microphone chip in his scarf, just as he finishes inserting the parts into the RED.
"On my way," he answers without hesitation, his feet moving automatically towards C Deck.
After stripping an unconscious Light down to his underwear and then zipping up the black, Free the Soul robe on him, Keiichi and Aoi lug Light's body to the Chapel.
When they gently lower him into the coffin, Keiichi sees Aoi's hands tremble. Before they close the lid, which have tiny holes for breathing to sustain him for a certain amount of time, Aoi places a hand on his cheek and squeezes his eyes shut, whispering a quiet apology to the comatose man.
His face leans closer to the blind man's from above, and for a moment, a shocked Keiichi thinks he's going to kiss him - he didn't know the older Kurashiki felt that way about Light! But instead, Aoi leans his forehead against Light's, sighing to himself as their foreheads touch.
Keiichi quickly looks away, feeling as though he is intruding on a personal moment between the two of them, even if Light isn't awake for it and might never know it has occurred.
Suddenly, Aoi wrenches up from his crouched position and wordlessly turns to the door, leaving Keiichi to close the coffin lid.
After obeying Aoi's silent order, Keiichi, too, walks out of the room without a second glance, hearing the door lock behind him with a click. Love sucks, he declares to himself internally, as his mind immediately flits to Rikona. He can't imagine how Aoi must be hurting right now.
He heads towards Door 1, who waits for him to open the door with his arms crossed. Keiichi is wearing his own "master" bracelet on his wrist, which has the ability to open any door locked with the RED. He also has a master key and a master card for all of the doors that require the planet keys. Not Aoi, though. Akane specifically stated that she and Aoi were not allowed to have any access to any of the master keys, for the sake of the game. He verifies on the RED, pulls the lever and lets Aoi in. He doesn't need to verify on the DEAD, as the master bracelet doesn't activate its function. They walk past the Chart Room and go straight to the Captains Quarters, where Musashidou and Nijisaki, both drugged and half-conscious, are on the floor, restrained by rope tied around their arms and torsos. A flash of hatred surges through Keiichi as he stares at the two Cradle executives pathetically moan and roll around, half-willfully trying to free themselves.
"Up!" Aoi spits out to Nijisaki in disgust, roughly pulling him up. He unties the rope that, truthfully told, wasn't tied very tightly (which adds to their pitiful state). He grabs onto Nijisaki's wrist and yanks it up in front of Keiichi.
Keiichi's stomach flips as he stares at the man's shaking, pale hand. Maybe he is slightly remorseful for what he's about to do. Not because he is killing this pathetic man's life, but because he is killing Rikona's father. How will he tell her that he is the one responsible for her father's death, that he killed him? . . . No, he must never tell her – he will never tell her that he killed her father.
Is this how Aoi has been feeling since they left Light in the coffin?
Shaking the thoughts his mind is starting to wander to, as he focuses on Nijisaki again. I'm sorry, Rikona, he thinks to himself, as he places the duplicate Number 2 bracelet with the active detonator on her father's wrist.
.
"I'm gonna . . . I'm gonna close my eyes for a second, Keiichi."
Keiichi, whose eyes are trained on the CCTV footage of his father placing his scrap of paper with the pile of everyone else's at Junpei's feet, each paper detailing their choice of door number, simply responds to Nona, "Go to sleep if you want. I'll wake you up once the participants go through Door 9," his eyes not leaving the screen. Junpei has two other pieces of papers folded up in his pocket, the sneaky little bastard.
"No, no . . . s'okay. I'm not gonna to fall asleep."
Keiichi rolls his eyes. "Sleep for a bit, Nona. We'll have to get out of here soon, so rest while you can."
There's no response from her, so Keiichi turns to look and sees that she has fallen asleep in the office chair.
For once throughout this wretched night, he genuinely smiles, amused, and shakes his head.
.
Akane warns them to prepare for many scenarios.
.
In some timelines, Keiichi's father kills everyone with Uncle Kubota's knife and leaves to escape with his, Kubota, and Nona's mother's bracelets.
Things branch off, though, as in some histories, he uses the "sinister hand" hint to open the coffin and kill Light, while in the others, Light simply suffocates to death, since Keiichi and Nona are unable to open it in time. His father finds himself unable to open the number 9 door and tries to leave to retrieve everyone else's bracelets.
Before he can, though, Keiichi locks him into the incinerator and stoically watches him burn to a crisp as he struggles with the final puzzle, feeling absolutely cold in emotionless from watching everyone die, while Nona mourns the deaths, especially her mother's. Keiichi checks the coffin to see if Light is alive, (if his father does not kill him), though he is found dead in all of them. Keiichi leaves the desert area with a despondent Nona and calls the police to leave an anonymous tip of the players' whereabouts and insinuates that Cradle Pharmaceutical is behind this.
.
The timelines where Clover kills them all are similar. She kills mostly everyone with an axe – in a few, she manages to kill Keiichi's father, her axe overcoming his knife, or resorting to use the golden revolver gets after killing Aoi, and kills Lotus, too; but she is unable to open the number 9 door, and solve the final puzzle, and burns to death in the incinerator.
In others, though, his father manages to stab her, or takes the revolver from her, killing both her and Lotus.
There are another set of histories where Clover hears someone in the coffin that has been placed into the chapel: in some, she simply ignores it and walks away, which leads to the set where she tries to kill "Ace" and "Lotus"; in a few others, she tries to slice the coffin, whether to open it, or to stop the banging of whatever dead being is trying to come back to life, only to realize in horror that she has killed her brother, and responds to it in the only way that she can – by shooting herself with the golden revolver; in the last few timelines, she opens the coffin by determining the code through the "sinister hand" tip from Zero, happily reuniting with her brother, but also filled with guilt for killing Aoi, that detective, Junpei, and Akane.
Still, she and Light make their way to Door 9, but before they can even think about getting out of here, Ace spies them and immediately threatens to kill Lotus if they try to come closer. Lotus struggles against him, so he slashes her with a knife. Clover tries to point the golden revolver at him, though Ace overpowers and shoots her. Snake immediately jumps to attack him, but the incinerator activates and, depending on the timeline and who manages to hurt whom, either one or the two of them are burned alive.
.
Akane also warns them that when it seems like they'll be so close to winning, they'll actually lose.
"Keiichi," he hears her whisper breathlessly into the microphone chip, outfitted into her hairpin, in one timeline. From the live CCTV feed, he sees that she is slouched down against a wall in the steam engine room, alone, while his father, Aoi, and Junpei are trying to find a way out of the room. "This isn't the one . . . this isn't the ending we needed."
His eyes widen in terror. "What!?" he shouts, startling Nona awake.
"Mm, Keiichi?"
He ignores his sleepy companion, trying to focus on the question he wants to ask before panic can cripple him. "H-How can we get the right ending, Akane!? What can we do to bring ourselves back on track!?"
Nona gasps, more alert now. "This isn't the right timeline!? What are we going to do?"
Akane sighs. "We can't . . ." Her voice is raspy, strained even. Keiichi sees her close her eyes, resigned. "This is all we could have done. I'm going to die, Keiichi. I lost . . . Zero lost."
"No! No, don't say that Akane, please!" Nona shouts to Akane desperately, as she grabs onto Keiichi's arm tightly.
Akane smiles sadly, knowing that they can see her. "Don't worry about me, and just listen to my instructions. At the end of this, you both have to spray Soporil in the incinerator to knock out Seven and Lotus. Aoi will bring Junpei's body into Keiichi's SUV. You both will return Junpei, Seven, and Lotus to their homes, as well as yourselves, and forget this whole affair ever happened."
"What about Clover and Light, and . . . Hongou?" Keiichi's voice is steady as he asks the question, even though he already knows the answer to it.
"Your father will kill Clover, I believe . . . it's inevitable. Snake, however, will put up a fight before dying, and drag your father to death with him in the incinerator."
Keiichi feels his throat tighten.
"What . . . what about you and Aoi, Akane?" Nona asks hesitantly. "What will you do?"
"I . . . I don't know how much longer I'll have to live after Junpei realizes I've disappeared, but . . . Aoi and I will leave in the other car – I-I can spend my last moments in peace."
In spite of how calmly Akane speaks, in spite of how subtly manipulative she has been, and in spite of the way she has been playing God, Keiichi can hear by her shaky voice that she is scared of dying, too.