A/N: Hello, long time no see. I am so so sorry that what was promised to be a 1-2 week break turned into a month. A lot of things happened and are happening which are stripping me of my confidence to keep a consistent schedule for the time being. I promise this won't be the case of a dropped fic given I'm so very close to finishing up the final few chapters, but the reason why uploads aren't consistent for the time being is because I want to be able to edit the chapters as I post them — time I cannot consistently spend doing while I deal with my very difficult real-life issues. As such, for the time being while I work to resolve these issues, my new posting schedule for 0verwritten will be monthly releases until further notice. I'm so sorry if that's something you didn't want to hear, but I promise I'm working to resolve them all.
Anyways, that's enough sappiness, here's the chapter I promised a couple weeks ago!
Date: March 28, 2018 5:26:39PM JST
Divergence: 1.123581β
The sun began to dip low behind the dilapidated buildings that lined the edges of the old Shibuya Crossing. At each intersection, there was the occasional abandoned car, rusted and torn apart by scavengers ever since the onset of the war. Standing tall above the black soot that came from the flames that once blazed across the entire city was the Shibuya 107 tower, however anyone who wasn't local to this part of Tokyo wouldn't have known what it was given the signage, as well as the facade that faced the street, was completely gouged out by bombs that hit it. The sounds of Humvee engines echoed through the streets as, what once was a popular sightseeing destination, became a common passageway for the freshly-established New Government and any rebel forces conducting covert operations.
The convoy of Humvees in this particular instance belonged to the most-wanted terrorist organization in Japan: Valkyrie. Five cars in a row, each carrying four people zoomed along, treating the city-center as if it were a highway, zooming along down the path that naturally cleared up over repetitive use of the route. They had to be quick - having staged a diversion at the Gotokuji temple in Setagaya to the west, they hoped to pull away any potential reconnaissance forces from watching the Crossing and beelined it north to go to Ikebukuro in order to get to Akihabara. The route they took was an odd one — usually it would be a straight line to go from their initial pick-up point at the Haneda Airport towards the old center of moe culture, but new routes were devised by the New Government to prohibit entry into one of the world's most dangerously irradiated places. It was the perfect hiding spot - who would be stupid enough to build a base of operations in a town flattened to nothingness? However, the only way they could get into Akihabara was through an abandoned tunnel system on the outskirts of Okabe's old home town.
Rintaro Okabe usually kept things much more quiet than using a full convoy to get back to Valkyrie's headquarters, opting to travel during the day under the guise of a citizen of the New Government from operation center to operation center until he could reach the tunnel beneath Ikebukuro that led to their destination. However, the sheer importance of their pick-up demanded a rapid transit that couldn't be done in the light of day. If the New Government caught on to their ploy before they made it back to Akihabara, the streets would be swarmed with peacekeepers in search of the scientist that Professor Alexis Leskinen held dear to his heart.
Seated in the driver-side backseat of the third car within the convoy, Okabe maintained a steady grip on the pistol holstered to his vest with his left hand. He was much more dressed up than usual - a black long-sleeve undershirt, a pair of black cargo pants that contained his spare ammunition and small medical supplies, combat boots that went as high as his shins, and a tactical armor vest that had his radio and pistol strapped to it. The look was completed by his tattered lab coat that he'd held on to since the onset of the war: the defining feature of Hououin Kyouma. Next to him on the passenger-side backseat was the person of interest, one of the only people in the world whose drop-off he would personally oversee.
Maho Hiyajo shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Unlike just about every other person in the convoy, she was just dressed in her pajamas so that she could remain comfortable in her long flight from America to Japan. Thanks to the importance with which Professor Leskinen regarded her, the New Government agreed to transport her to Japan to help him as his own personal assistant. However, what neither the Professor and the New Government knew was that Maho's aim in coming to Japan was to assist the very people that they hunted. Using a cipher developed by Daru, Maho was able to communicate with Valkyrie on a plan to pick her up from the airport under legal means, then transfer her to the convoy that she was in now. It was by no means a foolproof plan - information could have leaked, the cipher could have been cracked, Maho could have been a mole for the New Government, and the information regarding the safety of the route could have been false - but Okabe had to place all his faith in it to work. He needed her intellect to help work on the time machine.
"All clear signal received," Okabe's radio chimed, the voice belonging to a young Luka Urushibara. "Full speed ahead."
At the command which came from the leading car, the speed of the convoy rapidly picked up, climbing to as high as 110KPH. At the sudden surge, Maho grabbed whatever she could find to support herself, that "whatever she could find" turned out to be Okabe's arm.
"You could have just said you missed me, Hiyajosephina," Okabe smirked at the woman who was much too terrified to be embarrassed. "You didn't have to throw yourself on me to prove your loyalty to the one and only Hououin Kyouma."
Maho clicked her tongue. "Is now really a good time to start with the jokes, Okabe-san?"
She remained holding onto him as with the increase in speed came the increase in bumps on the road.
"Have our seven years apart made you so forgetful my Little Assistant? My name is Hououin Kyouma."
"Who died and made me your assistant?"
Okabe kept a small smile on his face as he looked ahead, free hand still placed securely on his gun. As a citizen of Japan during the years that World War III ravaged the world, his primary focus was on surviving and building out what he could remember of Kurisu Makise's time machine theory from scratch in the confines of the bunker located within Faris' highrise. Now, a few months into this new world order created by the ceasefire agreement to end the war, everything he spent theorizing for the past 7 years required practical application - the former one, the Time-Leap Machine that Maho and Daru created, having been burned along with the rest of Akiba. He formed Valkyrie with the people who joined him in that bunker — now expanded into a full HQ away from the watchful eye of the New Government — but Maho was one of the ones who didn't join him.
When the first rockets were fired at the top of Radio Kaikan to spark the beginning of the war, Okabe pushed a hesitant Maho to return to America via the evacuation zone in Okinawa to be with her family. The act of returning doubled as a way to keep her safe since the primary warzone was going to be in Japan. He could count his lucky stars that he was able to corral the rest of the lab members to join him in Faris' bunker to wait out the end of the war. It was one kept off the books, so the Japanese government — and in turn the New Government — had no record of anyone from the lab finding their way into a legally-recognized bunker. For the past six years, they were considered dead on official records, able to forge new identities when they used the extensive tunnel network beneath Faris' highrise to resurface in Ikebukuro following the war's conclusion.
Despite their legally-dead status as individuals, the name Valkyrie popped up on every watchlist around the world over the past couple of months — the promise of the collapse of the current world's neo-fascistic ruling structure being a dangerous message that the powers at be couldn't allow. Little did they know that the one thing that would lead to their collapse would be the development of the time machine. Though Okabe knew just from the last time he was in the future, Valkyrie's work on the time machine became exposed to the New Government. It was only a matter of time before they were discovered and their lives became infinitely harder.
"Ever since I got into this car, you haven't let go of that gun…" Maho eyed Okabe carefully. "...You seem so much more different from the last time I saw you."
"I know nothing of what you speak of, little girl," Okabe scoffed. "I've been the same Hououin Kyouma ever since you first helped me reawaken from my slumber."
"So I see it's just the aesthetic that's changed, huh," Maho's eyes narrowed at Okabe's nicknames for her. "Next thing you'll say is that you're just holding on to a prop and not an actual killing device."
"On the contrary, it's the real deal," he looked over at Maho, whose narrowed eyes widened at the confirmation of the gun's authenticity. "But worry not, it's just a precaution I must take. I've only ever used it for target practice and I don't intend on using it out in the field."
Okabe spoke the whole truth to Maho. He has killed someone before. He felt the heaviness that a body would take on when a person's life was extinguished. He was always haunted by those dying breaths even to this day — the dying breaths of Kurisu Makise. He could never imagine willfully repeating that process with another human being.
"If you say so…" Maho took her eyes off of Okabe and looked ahead at the road. "...How is everyone?"
"They're doing good," Okabe decided to drop the haughty tone he usually used when speaking as Kyouma. "Everyone was able to make it through the war safe and sound thanks to Faris' efforts."
"I'm… I'm happy to hear that," Maho choked out her words. She seemed to have been worried about everyone from the moment she left for America. "I'm so sorry I left."
Okabe spotted Maho's lips quivering and a trail of tears forming on her cheeks. Trying to see things from her point-of-view, he could understand the guilt she may have felt. As much as World War III ravaged the world, the damage done in America was nowhere near the same as what happened in Japan. Maho got to enjoy the privilege of not being in the center of a warzone like the rest of the Future Gadget Lab.
"Don't forget that I was the one who urged you to leave, Hiyajo-san," Okabe referred to Maho by her proper name for the first time since she left Japan, completely dropping all pretenses of his Kyouma attitude to comfort the crying woman. "If anything, I'm sorry for dragging you back into this mess."
Maho had the opportunity of a lifetime to be an important person within the New Government's hierarchy thanks to her closeness with Professor Leskinen (who never found out what she did at the Future Gadget Lab before the war). However, instead she chose a life of constantly looking over her shoulder and inevitably being branded a terrorist just for Okabe's sake.
"Don't be," she sobbed as she tried to use her sleeve to wipe her tears. "I want Steins Gate to happen."
Okabe opted to remain silent while Maho, who still gripped onto his arm, calmed herself down. The sobs eventually turned to sniffles which eventually turned to just the background noise of a roaring engine.
"And you don't have to be formal and use my last name," Maho added unexpectedly. "'Maho's' just fine."
"Oh?" Okabe let out a little cackle. "What about Hiyajosephina?"
"I'd sooner rat you out to the New Government than allow that."
It was a level tone — a joke by all means — but the joke made the two Valkyrie members in the front seat turn towards her. In the driver seat, a man that Okabe was able to recruit following a checkpoint-search that left him nearly crippled by the name of Satoru Ozawa, in the passenger seat a woman who was recruited at the war's conclusion by the name of Fumiko Bando. Both were masked and wore sunglasses since they had to hide their identities, much unlike the exposed Okabe. Thanks to the assortment of wigs and cosplay materials at Faris' disposal when they initially went into hiding, Okabe's daytime identity was a man with blonde hair and blue eyes, a Japanese-American by the name of "Chris Kurokawa" — the first name being an ode to Kurisu Makise.
The suddenness with which their heads snapped in Maho's direction made the woman flinch and tighten her grip around Okabe's arm. "I-It was just a joke… I wouldn't do that."
The two then looked at Okabe who nodded his approval before turning back towards the road. Based on the speed that they were going, they were no more than five minutes out from where they needed to be in Ikebukuro, however it was about a two hour walk underground from there, one that he hoped Maho was ready for. They were five minutes away from the home stretch.
And those five minutes passed without incident or without another word said from either of the pair. Maho was much too frazzled by the sudden scare and Okabe was just silently hoping that everything was uneventful. His car pulled up to the entrance of the tunnel, prompting him and Maho to get off. Maho had her luggage bag, Okabe carried the extra backpack that she packed. At the entrance to the tunnel system which started at the subway station, Okabe took his hand off his gun to speak into the radio.
"Kyouma moving with VIP to HQ," he said. "Warrior Actual, proceed to Operation Center Delta, we shall reconnect once we reach our destination. Warrior 4, I appreciate the lift."
Warrior 4 was Satoru. The entire convoy in itself was under Luka's command as he found his knack for strategy during the downtime of the war. This plan to get Maho to Akihabara was one that was mostly designed by him.
"Copy, Kyouma-san," Luka spoke back into the radio. "Warrior Squad moving now."
At that, Okabe heard the distant revs of the Humvee engines before promptly being shrouded once more in silence.
"This is going to be a long walk," he warned Maho. "If you need a break, let me know. There'll be plenty of times where you'll have an escort in and out of this tunnel system, but start trying to memorize the route we take. It'll be a maze."
Maho gulped as she looked down the dark passageway. Once a place where trains would go and people would gather, it was now just a damp void threatening to swallow her whole. "...I understand."
And so they walked. Now that it had been years, Okabe knew the tunnel system like the back of his hand, not hesitating for a bit whenever the path they were on split to different passageways. There were times that on their walk, Maho got carried away and tried to walk the path herself only for Okabe to pull her back down the correct way. Throughout the walk they spoke, trying to catch up on how things went for the last few years. Thankfully for Maho, she and the rest of her family were perfectly healthy and had a place in one of the less-rowdy zones of control in Los Angeles. However, he could see Maho grimace when he revealed that his family unfortunately did not meet the same fate. When the initial firebombing campaign began, Ikebukuro got hit, setting the grocer that his parents owned alight with them still inside of it.
Their conversation then turned to Maho's own work on the time machine theory as they started comparing mental notes. Throughout the conversation, Okabe found himself being corrected constantly by the woman, but with each correction brought excitement as it just meant that work on the actual time machine could proceed at a faster pace. During the gaps of their conversation, all that could be heard was the rolling wheels of the luggage bag that Maho dragged along behind her.
Maho toughed out the whole walk. There were times where her pace reduced drastically, but not once had she asked for a break. Okabe looked down at his watch, the time reading 7:56PM - by his estimations, they were directly underneath Akihabara by this point. All that remained was a couple more forked paths and they would reach the entrance to their hideout.
However, as they walked, Okabe could not shake the deep sense of foreboding he felt invading every pore of his body. He raised his hand to Maho, ordering her to stop. When she did, the sound of the rolling wheels ceased and they were engulfed in silence… which was intermittently broken up by a male voice he didn't recognize. As they waited, the voice progressively got louder, whoever it was was walking in their direction. Okabe quickly unholstered his pistol, pointing it down the tunnel as he picked up Maho's rolling bag and beckoned her to join him in hiding in one of the many dark corners of the expansive tunnel they were in.
Very shortly, light belonging to a flashlight appeared out of the passageway that they were supposed to go down. Okabe tried his best to steady his breathing, both hands now on his gun as he waited to confirm the identity of the voice. He truly hoped it was someone from Valkyrie who forgot to check in on the radio. Despite the steadiness of his hands, his very soul was quaking.
"...-not gonna use fucking resources to get me," the voice became clearer. It sounded like it belonged to someone in their teen years on the verge of a mental breakdown. "What the fuck am I supposed to do? Why would they send me down here if they were just gonna let me get lost? And with a cheap fucking radio too, goddamnit. I'm so fucking screwed."
The voice spoke in English. No one from HQ primarily spoke in English. Finally, the source of the light passed by Okabe and Maho's hiding spot allowing him to see the emblem of the New Government on the person's shoulder and an assault rifle in their hands.
What's the New Government doing down here?!
They were clad in normal militia gear, albeit dirtied as they trudged down the path that Okabe and Maho came from. The future of Valkyrie's operations were at stake. Taking a deep breath, Okabe got out of his hiding spot and squared himself up behind the soldier, activating the tactical flashlight he put on below the gun's barrel.
"No move!" he shouted in accented English. "Drop gun and put you hands up!"
Okabe did his best to learn English over the course of the years. While he could understand just about most of it, there were still some tough spots he found when speaking the language itself. He hoped that with Maho joining headquarters, he could improve his fluency. However, what he said seemed to register with the soldier as they froze, though without dropping their weapon. His head twitched ever-so-slightly prompting Okabe to raise his pistol and shout again.
"I say no move!" the soldier froze once more and they faced ahead, though their rifle still remained in their hands. "Do you understand Japanese?"
"Y-Yes!" the response came back in English.
"So you're saying that you can understand the words that are coming out of my mouth at this moment, is that correct?" Okabe decided to quiz him immediately.
"I understand the words coming out of your mouth, yes!" the soldier translated Okabe's words and spoke them back to him in English.
"Why are you down here?" Okabe decided to get to the important part of the conversation. However, this question got no response. "Answer me or I'll shoot!"
"W-We received word of squatters in the Sumida City tunnels. I was sent in with a squad, but somewhere along the way we got separated and I lost all contact with my team."
He came from the other side of Akihabara?
Okabe mentally breathed a sigh of relief, comforted by the knowledge that the entrance they used at Ikebukuro wasn't being investigated.
"L-Listen, if you can point me in the right direction, I won't even mention you're down here," trying to be familiar with him, the soldier tried to turn to face Okabe again.
"You try turning around one more time and I will put a bullet through the side of your skull, do you understand?!"
Again, the soldier's head snapped back into place. In any other world, Okabe would have willfully answered the questions of any person who was asking for directions. However, here, now, so close to the entrance of his hideout, he couldn't run the risk. He grit his teeth, trying to find a way out of the situation. If he sent him down the path they took from Ikebukuro, the practicality of that tunnel would be revealed to the New Government and make entering Akihabara much harder. As for sending him back east towards Sumida, the task proved impossible since Valkyrie never used the eastern side of the tunnels so they weren't mapped out.
Think, Rintaro, think! There has to be a way. This kid doesn't even sound like he's in his 20s! There's still so much life for him to live.
"Y-You do know the way… right?!" the soldier started to sound frantic. "Please, I've been in here for hours. I can't handle being lost for another minute!"
"How can I know that I can trust you? From where I'm standing, it might just be better for me to let you stay lost."
Okabe tried to test the soldier again. He was willing to accept any response he gave so long as it made sense. He was just a kid, there was no way that he would be able to manipulate the situation in any way. However, what Okabe failed to realize was the quickness with which a younger person would crack under pressure.
"God fucking damn it! I can't do this anymore!"
"Don't–!"
The soldier's body began to swing around as Okabe heard the safety of his assault rifle go off. It was a split-second decision, one that Okabe wished he would never have to make. He felt his finger squeeze the trigger; he saw the bright light that flashed from the barrel of the pistol as the slider recoiled; he heard the painfully loud crack that reverberated along the walls. All it took was one shot in that singular moment of time, that singular moment of time taking him back to July of 2010. He watched the person in front of him immediately crumple as the bullet found its mark in the front of his target's skull. He heard the death rattle as air escaped from the wound that was created. It was all done in an instant, and in that instant Okabe felt his entire stomach turn upside down.
Maho immediately rushed to Okabe's side as he dropped to his hands and knees, feeling the urge to vomit immediately overtake him. "Okabe-san! You did the right thing! He was going to kill you - kill us! You gave him chances to avoid this whole thing, you're not a murderer!"
Yet those pleas and validations reached deaf ears.
In the past of the Beta Worldline, on the night that Maho Hiyajo arrived in Japan to assist with creating the time machine, Rintaro Okabe was forced to reckon with the one thing he wished to avoid repeating since he first arrived to the worldline. He was forced, yet again, to feel the crushing weight he felt so many years ago. He was forced to relive taking the life of another human being.
Date: November 16, 2036 10:21:59AM PST
Divergence: 1.048596 (Steins Gate)
Okabe walked down the hall dumbstruck. It had only been two days - two days since he first arrived on Steins Gate — two days of showing Kurisu what he was truly all about. She wanted to wait a week to do any work with Amadeus following the betrayal of her trust that his past self put her through — that's what she claimed.
So why are we at the Neuroscience Institute on a Sunday?
Granted, in those two days, Okabe learned a lot about Steins Gate. He learned exactly how Kurisu and himself started dating and when they got married. He learned that he and Kurisu now resided in America, which made why he couldn't recognize the cityscape make sense. He learned of the occupations of all the lab members: Daru was a freelance network engineer who did odd jobs for many different big companies to enhance their security - Viktor Chondria being one of the institutions that regularly contracted him; Mayuri was an elementary school teacher in Ikebukuro; Moeka became the editor-in-chief for Arc-Rewrite; Luka was about ready to retire after nearly 20 years of work as a cosplay influencer; Faris became the owner of the largest (and first ever) maid cafe franchise in the world; Suzuha was a university student at Tokyo Denki University; and both Kurisu and Maho took on and split Professor Leskinen's old role as Co-Directors of the the Neuroscience Institute. Okabe himself was both the Project Lead for projects involving Amadeus as well as a professor of the entry-level class for Viktor Chondria's Neuroscience Program. As the couple walked along the campus, they were occasionally stopped by students who recognized him, concerned about the cancellation of his office hours. For those answers, he relied solely on Kurisu.
However, in those two days, Okabe was also a victim to many different triggers ranging from bad dreams to the popping sounds of car engines, to the loud crashing of a plate that Haruki accidentally dropped. Each trigger brought him back to the Beta Worldline, some experiences making him simply dissociate, others completely transporting him to that past he wished so desperately to forget. Kurisu seemed to wordlessly be dealing with it, though she kept her distance at the same time. Ever since they had sex, there was no other romantic interaction to follow. It made Okabe worried, but he couldn't do anything about it - he didn't allow himself to do anything about it. He was certain that her mind was a mess ever since it was made clear that his past self betrayed her. However, those thoughts would cease because, as soon as they woke up this morning, she told him to get ready to go to the Neuroscience Institute.
Not knowing how to dress, he simply followed her lead: she basically wore a more grown-up variation of what she once wore on the Alpha Worldline: a black pantsuit paired with a brown coat that fell just past her shoulders with straps on her biceps, and a white dress-shirt with a red tie beneath it, made complete with black inch-heel slippers. His dress-code took on what he used to wear in the past of the Beta Worldline: black pants with a matching sports coat, and a black dress-shirt beneath it. For shoes he opted for black Oxford dress shoes.
Now, they were deep beneath the campus at Viktor Chondria University, an extension of the Institute building which housed the primary terminal for the world's most advanced creation: Amadeus. The amount of security checks Okabe had to go through just to get to this room rivaled the security checks that the New Government ran at their checkpoints. However, once they flashed their ID, or scanned a fingerprint or eyeball, they were immediately let through to the next stage. Finally, the couple reached the most secure part of the Institute, Amadeus' Control Room. Scanning her ID badge at the door's lock, the RFID sensor chirped in acceptance of Kurisu's credentials and let her into the room where only four people in the world had total, unmitigated access: Rintaro Okabe, Maho Hiyajo, Kurisu Makise, and Alexis Leskinen.
Okabe followed her in to reveal a rather odd and relatively small square room for a research institute. The floor was linoleum while the walls were opaque and glass-like, covered in writing from dry-erase markers. There were four desks in a row, each with a varying amount of paperwork on them and at the wall to the left of the door was a central terminal hanging from the ceiling with a rolling chair in front of it and a table next to it which had a neural interface headgear eerily reminiscent to the headgear used for the Time-Leap Machine. On the far wall, where the last desk was located, was a refrigerator with a microwave sitting atop it.
He learned that, in order to maintain as much privacy as possible, his past self suggested this kind of central set-up that would dictate how Amadeus operated on the cloud. All the sensitive data remained within the Control Room, but how Amadeus interpreted it was viewable to anyone who used the A.I..
"Looks like we're the first ones here," Kurisu remarked as she found her seat at the chair in front of the terminal. "Get comfortable, Okarin."
All Okabe could do was stand a few feet away from the entrance and look at Kurisu. She refrained from speaking to him the entire time besides the morning when she told him that they were going to the Institute and just now when she told him to get comfortable.
"Would you mind telling me why we're here in the first place, Kurisu?" Okabe was much too unnerved to be anything but direct with his wife.
"You'll see in a bit," she plainly responded. "Grab a seat."
For some reason that response ticked him off. "Now who's keeping secrets?"
Okabe crossed his arms and raised his eyebrow at Kurisu. Her initial shocked response rapidly evolved into a fierce glare of her own, one that was much more intense than any other that he was witness to since he first made it to Steins Gate. However, he was far too incensed to be intimidated by the look that she gave. They both remained glaring at each other, neither of them backing down or blinking, both of them waiting for the other to say a word so that they could immediately retort. During their staredown, the door beeped once more, letting yet another entrant into the room.
Before Okabe even had the chance to turn around, the person made their presence known to him.
"What lovers' quarrel did I interrupt this time?" It was a voice that Okabe longed to hear since he first left the Beta Worldline. He turned around and looked down.
Standing there, iced coffee in hand, with bags beneath her eyes and matted hair, was the woman whose contributions were absolutely vital to reaching Steins Gate. Maho Hiyajo entered the lab alert, wearing an actual matching pair of green slippers for once, a long white dress with green accentuation, and her lab coat. She eyed him up and down as she entered since he was directly in her way.
"Did someone die or something?" Maho raised her eyebrow at him. "What's with all the black?"
"I… just decided to wear this today," Maho's comment caught Okabe by surprise, putting a pause to his nostalgic feelings and desire to greet her. "Is it wrong that I just wear black without the need for an occasion?"
"Very," Maho responded matter-of-factly before pushing past the stunned Okabe. "Kurisu, I hope this isn't you trying to make up for taking the day off on Friday. I really was going to let you enjoy the weekend."
Kurisu got up from the seat she took, a smile immediately replacing the glare she donned earlier, and extended her arms to embrace her approaching friend. "Don't worry Senpai, this was an actual emergency."
They embraced for a short while before Maho disconnected and found herself standing at the table next to the terminal. She was directly in between Kurisu and Okabe who shot the occasional dagger at each other. Maho, perceptive of this, had her eyes darting back and forth between the two of them.
"Does this emergency have anything to do with whatever this is?" she dryly asked, motioning her arms at the warring couple..
"I wouldn't know," Okabe was quick to fire the opening salvo. "I wasn't even awake for five minutes before I was wordlessly dragged to this basement."
"Why can't you just trust me?!" Kurisu fired back, upping the ferocity of the battle. "I shouldn't have to explain every little thing I do to you!"
"Well I would appreciate an explanation if whatever you're doing involves me, Kurisu!" Okabe raised his voice to match his wife's, but caught himself immediately, taking a deep breath before he let himself get carried away. "I'm a fish out of water right now. I need all the help I can get, especially from my wife."
"Okay, time out!" Maho cut off the couple before any more words were exchanged, placing her coffee on the table. Her head then snapped in Okabe's direction, her arms crossed and an investigative glare washing over her face. "'Kurisu'? 'Fish out of water'? This whole outfit you have going on that you never wore once in your life before to the lab? What's gotten into you, Okarin-san?"
Okabe grimaced, snapping at Maho without even thinking. "Does everyone just call me some variation of Okarin on this worldline?! Why would I allow this?!"
He immediately froze up. Kurisu whittled down his ability to stay cool with whatever attitude she currently displayed against him. With his defenses lowered, all it took was a simple comment from Maho for him to unintentionally out himself without even being mentally ready for it. He eyed the woman as she analyzed what he said, but all it did was make her furrow her brows even further.
"Worldline? Why are you acting like you're just finding this out?" Maho pushed.
All Okabe could do was slump his shoulders. There was no point in hiding anything anyways, especially not from one of his closest friends in the Beta Worldline. He walked further into the room and grabbed a rolling chair from one of the cubicles, rolling it over to Maho for her to grab a seat.
"I suppose as someone I consider one of my closest comrades," he said, motioning for her to sit. "You deserve an explanation."
And so, for the second time in two days, Rintaro Okabe broke down everything he knew about Attractor Field Theory and how it applied to him. He watched Maho's cynicism slowly dissipate as each time she looked over at Kurisu in the middle of his explanation, Kurisu simply nodded silently as an affirmation that he really wasn't talking out of his ass. He explained what happened in the past few days and a summary of events of the Beta Worldline that were vastly different from Steins Gate - namely that Kurisu Makise was dead, World War III began due to the time machine, and that she and Okabe were two of three leading figures in a resistance group by the name of Valkyrie.
Maho leaned back in her seat trying to process the glut of information she was just fed. Her eyes remained on the ground as she let herself get lost in thought.
"So you're not the same Okabe Rintaro I've come to know for these past two decades?" she asked.
"I'm still Okabe Rintaro," Okabe made sure to stress this fact. "I just lost my memories of this worldline and have those of a different one."
Maho's eyes narrowed at Okabe as if he just called her wrong only to prove her point. However, she dropped the subject in favor of her next question.
"In this other worldline we were much closer friends?"
Okabe was slightly taken aback by the question since it was one he had no real answer to. "I don't know how you and I got along before I lost my memories. But in the Beta Worldline, my closest friends were you and Daru."
At his response, a grin formed ever-so-slightly on Maho's face. One that only Okabe was capable of catching since she squarely faced him.
"And we were… just… friends?" Maho made sure to go as slow as possible, enunciating every syllable in her statement – her eyes off to the side to catch a glimpse of her prey. Before Okabe even had a chance to respond, the other woman in the room immediately butted in.
"What kind of question is that, Senpai?!"
"Oh?" Maho's grin grew and her tone became evermore playful, having reeled in her bait. "Is that jealousy I sense in your voice Kurisu? From the way you looked at Okarin-san earlier, I would have imagined you hated his guts."
Okabe's tense shoulders immediately loosened up. The question was never meant to be taken seriously, it was just Maho's way of trying to ease the tension that existed between Kurisu and himself. Tension that Kurisu caused because of her recent distance.
"I-It's not like that…" Kurisu's face immediately went red, realizing she was just caught in Maho's trap. "W…We're still husband and wife…"
Okabe looked at Kurisu as she spoke, but when Kurisu met his eyes, she immediately averted her own, fidgeting with her tie as she looked down at the ground. "A-Anyways! About the emergency!"
Kurisu cleared her throat before continuing to speak. "You know how Okarin and yourself were working on a project to expand Amadeus' capabilities to PTSD victims?"
"Yeah," Maho replied. "We were thinking of fine-tuning the perfect-recall of its memory storage to forget the feeling of stress-hormone release during a traumatic event. We thought that if we could do that, we'd be able to mitigate the 'flight-or-flight' mode that someone with PTSD is stuck in and lessen, if not completely eradicate, the potential of being triggered into recalling the event."
Maho sighed. "The only problem we've experienced over the past few weeks, though, is that there's no viable candidate among the consenting individuals we currently have stored in Amadeus. Our efforts in recruiting PTSD victims to participate in the study has also yielded very little results since we only put out feelers a couple days ago. I was able to finalize the last bit of code for the first phase of testing, but if there's no one to apply it to, there's no way to even begin."
Okabe saw Kurisu's eye twitch at the "no viable candidate" line. Despite their lack of connection in the past few days, he knew what she was thinking – there was a viable candidate in Rintaro Okabe himself. However, it was safe to assume that if he kept as much of what happened on the Alpha Worldline a secret to Kurisu, he shared even less with others.
"What if I told you that we now have a perfectly viable candidate?" Kurisu said.
"Really?" Maho's eyes lit up. "Who–... Oh…"
Maho almost immediately connected the dots as she looked right at Okabe. "World War III must have been tough on you, huh?"
"To put it lightly," Okabe mumbled, though a majority of his issues didn't come from the war itself, rather its aftermath.
"Well for that, we don't even need to test the code I've been working on," Maho turned back to Kurisu. "Since our main concern is that he's lost his memories, we can just put them back, and overwrite these ones, right? Problem solved on two fronts."
Kurisu's eyes darkened at Maho's words. "...We can't do that…"
"What do you mean we can't? That's the one thing we've perfected about Amadeus… or did the memories he stored in Amadeus also get replaced?"
Without waiting for a response, Maho raced towards the terminal and turned it on. Since it was the central hub where Amadeus operated from, the boot-up was almost instant. The same A.I. form of Rintaro Okabe appeared on the screen, clad in a lab coat and a collared shirt with a loosened black tie. With the help of the camera on top of the terminal, Amadeus was able to spot Kurisu just inside its field of vision. His eyes widened as he appeared to nearly shoot out of the screen.
"Kuri–!" Before he could get any words out, Kurisu silently reached her hand out towards the terminal keyboard and shut down the A.I. once more. The expression on her face was mostly stoic, but Okabe could spot a near-imperceptible quiver in her lip.
"Kurisu?" Maho was taken aback by Kurisu's reaction. "What's going on?"
"...The plan is to merge Okarin's memories as he is now with who he was before," she finally spoke after a couple seconds of being stared at by Maho. "We can't– I don't want to overwrite everything…"
"What? But Kurisu, Okarin-san as he is now is basically a stranger– no offense Okarin-san," Maho immediately turned to apologize to Okabe who raised his hand and gently shook his head. He took no offense. In fact, when he first started mulling over whether or not he should observe the shift to Steins Gate, this was one of the reactions he expected which initially pushed him to not do so.
"Please, Senpai…" Kurisu's hands slightly shrunk into her coat to get a tight grip on the cuffs. "I… I would like Okarin to have the memories he experienced in that worldline…"
Trying to shake off whatever emotion she was feeling, she very rapidly followed her statement. "The only problem is that those memories carry a lot of trauma – trauma that I hope we can free him from."
Maho silently eyed Kurisu as her junior bowed her head once more, not finding the strength in her to look at anyone else. After a couple seconds of mulling it over herself, she simply sighed. "I hope this is also something we can talk about at some point, Kurisu."
She faced Okabe once more who, at this point, was just a glorified spectator. "Okarin-san, if you will, please put on the headgear on that table. We'll scan your memories and upload them to the server as a separate entity of the avatar that currently contains your old memories. The scan and upload will be near-instantaneous, but in order to make a testable A.I. out of those memories, the system will probably need the rest of the day to make one."
"If that's all, I'll take my leave," she said, beginning to make a move for the door. "I really would like to at least be able to enjoy my Sunday."
Kurisu remained silent, her eyes still on the ground. However, Okabe raised his own objection. "You're not going to stay and do the scan?"
"Kurisu knows how to do it, she's done this countless times," Maho shot the objection down like it was nothing as she got closer to Okabe. In a quiet voice she whispered so that only he could hear "Besides, you two have to sort out whatever this is and I don't want to be in the room for it any longer than I have to be."
With that said, she went to the door, waited for it to slide open, and made her prompt exit, leaving behind the silence that became even more deafening with her absence. Okabe looked back over at Kurisu who still held the same look that she had ever since she shut off Amadeus. He still didn't know why she was so distant from him, but at least this conversation was able to confirm that her aim for the day did not spawn out of malice. No doubt fueled by the worry that his triggers caused, she wanted to help him before they turned their attention towards merging his memories.
"Why didn't you just tell me you wanted to help me?" Okabe asked, still maintaining his spot a few steps away from the table with the headgear.
"It's… it's not to help you," Kurisu said, shifting her focus to the side, but still avoiding his gaze. "I just figured… if we were to merge your memories… it'd include the problematic ones you currently have. If we got rid of those beforehand, we wouldn't have to worry about anything when the time comes…"
"There's the tsundere I know," Okabe lightly chuckled before approaching the table and taking the seat next to it that Maho once inhabited. He figured that Kurisu would do most of the work at the terminal – all he had to do was put the headgear on. However, as he reached out to grab it, a small hand stopped him. He looked over once again to see a still-seated Kurisu trying her best to fight back the blood rushing to her face.
Why is she so embarrassed about this all of a sudden? he thought, however he placed his hand back on his lap. With his hands out of the way, Kurisu got up from her seat and grabbed the headgear, gently placing it atop Okabe's head. Once she confirmed it was secure, she returned to the terminal, tapped a couple keys, and then turned back to face him.
"Upload is done and the A.I. is being made," she said, taking the headgear off with the same gentleness in which she put it on. "We can go home now."
She placed the headgear on the table and quickly tried to make her way to the door, but before she could take even two steps, Okabe grabbed her arm. Shocked by the sudden touch, Kurisu quickly snapped her attention towards Okabe, pulling her arm away.
"What's going on?" he asked earnestly. "The way you've been acting lately makes it seem like you hate me or something."
Kurisu clicked her tongue, her head tilting towards the floor once more.
"It…It's nothing," she said, doing everything in her power to avoid his gaze. "I promise I don't hate you."
"This vagueness does nothing to quell any of my anxiety, my love," Okabe was earnest with her, trying to get his head low to look at her face, but she turned away from him as soon as he did so.
"Why would you be anxious?" Kurisu snapped defensively, her fists clenched. "I'm sure you were some ruthless guy in infinitely more stressful situations in that worldline. This should be nothing to you."
Okabe's eyes glazed over at Kurisu's retort. His mind was brought back to 2018 on the Beta Worldline when Maho first returned to Japan. He remembered the anxiety that clawed away at his throat deep within the tunnels below Akihabara as he confronted the young soldier. He remembered the clamminess of his hands that betrayed the stillness with which he gripped his pistol with intent to kill. He remembered the knot that formed in his stomach from the moment that he first heard the soldier's voice, a knot that was only undone by the urge to vomit after doing what he did. He remembered the fact that things only played out the way they did because he didn't give the young man any reason to feel at ease. He coerced that young man into the final throes of insanity. He lured him into acting against his own self-interest. He killed him without a moment's hesitation. If anything, he was a murderer. He looked down at his hands. What right did a murderer like him have to be anxious about anything? What right did he have to even experience love?
"—rin," he heard Kurisu's voice pierce the haze of his thoughts. "Okarin, are you okay?"
The fog lifted only slightly. When he looked up at his wife, all he could see was an 18-year-old Kurisu, blood dripping out of her mouth, and the glow of her eyes becoming entirely lost. He looked down at her belly, seeing the red that soaked through her white shirt where he stabbed her. A cold sweat formed on his brow as the stare from her dull violet eyes only served to increase his already-elevated heart rate. The zombified Kurisu reached out to him and, fearing she'd drag him down to Hell, he recoiled, rolling away from her.
Okabe was speechless. He shuddered at the sight before him, his teeth were grit and his heart threatened to leap out of his throat. All he could see was Kurisu; all he could see was the result of his deeds; all he could see was an Angel of Death.
"I… I swear… I didn't mean to kill you," he choked out. "I didn't mean to kill that boy. Please… forgive me. I don't want to die…"
Kurisu simply stood still, dropping the hand that she reached out with. He tried his best to get his breathing under control, using the reprieve he was granted. He looked around, the black in his periphery slowly fading away and giving way to the dull glow of Amadeus' Control Room. His head then snapped back to Kurisu, bloodless, older, and full of life. She covered her mouth with both hands and her eyebrows trembled as tears threatened to stain her cheeks.
"You… you've killed someone else…?" Kurisu's voice came out muffled as her hands still covered her mouth.
A chill ran down Okabe's spine, threatening to transport him back to that evening in the Beta Worldline. All he could do was try to keep his breathing steady, his eyes wide to maintain the sight he had before him. He didn't want to risk blinking and seeing a lifeless Kurisu again.
A small sob escaped from Kurisu. "I… I'm so sorry."
It was a reaction that Okabe didn't expect, shocking him into forgetting the fact that he was fighting a flashback. She began to take a couple steps towards the unmoving Okabe, however, before she could fully close the distance, the door chirped once more.
"I forgot my coff–!" Maho rushed through as soon as the door opened before stopping abruptly. The sight before her confounded her, a scared, sweaty Okabe, and a Kurisu who was actively crying. "...What happened here?"
Kurisu froze in her tracks. Her head snapped towards Maho, then slowly turned her attention back towards Okabe. Her face was stuck in a toothless grimace as she looked around. Her eyes connected once more with Okabe's terrified gaze before she bowed her head. She then turned away from him completely and began walking towards Maho who was still by the door's threshold.
"Please take him home whenever you're both ready, Senpai," Kurisu sniffled as she slowly made her way past Maho. "I'll… I'll leave him in your care for now…"
Before Maho could open her mouth to respond, Kurisu's pace suddenly picked up and she rushed out the door.
"Kurisu?!" Maho followed her toward the door, but stopped there, choosing to poke her head down the hall that Kurisu went down. She watched for a couple moments before she sighed and re-entered the room to address an equally stunned Okabe.
"What the hell happened?" She crossed her arms, anger evident across her face.
Okabe sincerely didn't know how close he was to Maho on this worldline. He didn't know how much of himself he shared with her, if they even spoke outside of being with Kurisu or at work. However, this was the very same woman who helped him escape the Beta Worldline, the one who shared his conviction in saving Kurisu and, conversely, saving the world. This was someone he could consider his closest confidant back then. From where he was seated, he grabbed the rolling chair from the terminal and rolled it towards her. Maho hesitantly accepted the seat, rolling closer to him by the side-table that contained the headgear and her forgotten coffee. Her feet dangled in the air as she got herself comfortable in it.
"She… triggered a flashback," Okabe admitted, feeling shame for allowing the woman he loved to trigger him. "One that reminded me of the sins I committed in my efforts to reach this worldline."
Maho listened silently to Okabe, sipping on her coffee without taking her eyes off of him. And, for this moment in time, Okabe allowed himself to fully slip into the nostalgia for the friendship he had with her on the Beta Worldline – this situation mirroring the many times where he would speak of his anxieties to one of the very few people who'd listen to him. Once again, Okabe laid the darkness that burdened his heart bare to the woman who, in his mind, was one of his most precious friends; a burden that this woman, as she was now, seemed willing to help him carry like she did many times before in a forgotten worldline.
A/N: And there goes another chapter — one of my favorites because I adore Maho. I actually really enjoyed diving into the past of the Beta Worldline and trying to make the most sense of the timeline of it, and I hope you all enjoyed reading it as I did writing it. The story is continuing to heat up! I will see you all next month (I'm sorry) with the next chapter: Operation Forseti!
Quil~