Chapter 19: Madness
07:27 AM (Japan Time), Tuesday June the 10th…
"… Excuse me, Mr. Customer…"
"What is it?"
"A messenger brought this certified letter for you…"
"Is that so? Thank you very much, Mr. Staff…"
"It is nothing. I signed to acknowledge its reception…"
"Understood…"
A man sitting in the dining room of a hotel looked up.
He was in his late 30s or early 40s.
He had reading glasses over his blue eyes.
His hair was brown.
He had a brown beard over his face.
He wore a brown suit, a green tie, brown pants and shoes.
A staff member brought a certified letter.
The man looked at the letter, frowning.
"… "Mr. Jack Smithson. Hotel Sumida. Densan City 4th District"…"
He looked at the backside of the letter.
"… "Kanda Detective Agency. Densan City 3rd District"…"
He rubbed his chin.
"Kanda Detective Agency? Where have I…?"
He opened the envelope and drew the letter inside.
He gasped when he read the contents.
"T-that's ridiculous…!" He muttered.
He quickly glanced around to make sure that nobody had noticed that.
He folded the letter and stored it inside of the envelope.
He slid it inside of his business suitcase.
He hurriedly finished his light breakfast.
He made it to the front desk and placed the key on the counter.
"Have a good day, sir. Good luck with your business, sir…"
"Thank you very much…"
He made it outside of the hotel and looked at both sides of the street.
He headed down the street.
He entered the subway station from one of its entrances.
He stepped into the men's toilet and entered a stall.
He locked it from the inside and opened his case.
He drew the envelope and retrieved the letter.
Sweating, he read it again.
"… That bastard…!" He hissed.
He grabbed a black PET from below a set of documents.
He inputted a set of coordinates on it.
"It's as I suspected…!"
He closed the map application and hissed again.
He placed both things inside of the suitcase again.
"So be it! I'll end this chagrin here and now!"
He stormed out of the toilet.
"Just you wait!"
08:03 AM (Japan Time)…
"… I finally made it here! Why did I choose such a remote place…!?"
The man growled as he stepped into the Rama base.
He headed for the wall beneath the monitor.
He pressed his hand against a panel on the wall.
He slid it to the right, revealing a retinal scanner.
He removed his glasses and brought his right eye closer to it.
The device scanned it.
The word "OK" appeared on the screen.
A camouflaged door silently slid to the left, revealing an opening.
He stepped inside and ended in the room where "Manfroy" was at.
The throne was empty, and the capsule was broken.
Signs of a fight were scattered across the room.
"Manfroy! Answer me!" He called out.
Silence ensued.
The man climbed up to the platform with the throne.
There was a business card glued to the seat.
"… "Kamukura Idzuru"…?"
He hissed and tore it from there, looking behind it.
"9AM!? The tower's control room!?"
He tore into pieces from the anger.
"Fine! I'll turn it into your grave-marker!"
He stormed out of the room.
"At all costs!"
08:56 AM (Japan Time)…
BLAM!
"Enough games, Clark!"
"Was waiting for you… Regal!"
The man kicked open a door into a small control room somewhere.
Clark was sitting in a revolving chair and had a goblet on his right hand.
A screen with several graphs was set behind him.
There was a control console beneath it.
"Don't worry about your precious generator…"
Clark sipped wine from the goblet.
"It'll start supplying energy at 0900 sharp!"
"How did you…!?"
"Easy. Sneak GPS trackers into the bikes of all members…"
Regal grimaced.
"While they were busy overseeing the duels…"
"But the jammers…!"
"They only work in a 10m radius from the base…"
Clark laughed.
"I only had to track down each building in that radius, and… Bingo!"
Regal lifted his right arm, and a gun became visible there.
Clark wasn't surprised.
"Are you going to break the machine along the way?"
Regal hissed.
"Wasn't this going to be your comeback?"
Clark finished the wine and flung the goblet to the ground.
"Besides. There's no way out by now…"
"What!?"
"Right, Darth Bapgei?"
"Correct, Master…"
"Damn it!"
The "Talon" appeared behind Regal, having drawn his blades.
"Look. It's 9AM!"
The panel lit up.
It depicted a graph of a tower with eight missile silos built on it.
A sectional view depicted the tower beneath a factory building.
There was a room next to it labelled "GENERATOR".
"Don't worry about your puppet. I reset it to a blank state…"
"What?"
"You can reprogram it into whatever you want it to be…"
Clark smirked.
"After I took all data on this system from it, that is…"
The room rumbled.
An alarm rang out.
"Starting surfacing program. This program cannot be stopped…"
"Damn it!"
"Your taste for dramatics backfires spectacularly!"
The graph depicted how the tower rose to the ground level.
It then switched to a world map.
8 locations were marked with red X symbols.
"Washington, London, Paris, Beijing, Moscow, Brussels…"
Clark began to list them.
"Teheran, Pyongang…"
He chuckled.
"You want to get rid of the major nuclear players, don't you?"
Regal scowled.
"As for how I found you… I intercepted your transmissions…"
Clark crossed his arms.
"It took time, but I cracked the encryption and snuck a program…"
He signaled the PET in the left pocket.
"That'd tell me that PET's location…"
Regal's face contracted into anger.
"That letter was a formality…"
Clark rubbed his chin, amused.
"Using the name of the agency that your puppet had hired…"
"This can't be real… Like any of this would… be… real…!"
The environment suddenly was filled with signal noise.
Sound broke down.
Light partially vanished.
A matrix surrounded everything.
Parts of the floor, walls and ceiling were replaced by black squares.
Clark's laughter became distant.
"DAMN YOU, CLARK!"
09:11 AM (Japan Time)…
"… DAMN YOU, CLARK!"
"Did you enjoy the VR, Regal?"
"What? Who? Where? When?"
"It was a pretty convincing outcome, wasn't it?"
"It can't be…!"
"Yes. It can be. You trained me to overcome you, didn't you?"
Regal woke up inside of a capsule.
He had a helmet connected to his head.
A familiar voice rang out from dual speakers sitting behind his head.
"Don't worry about the tower. It never started building…"
"R-ridiculous!"
"And the generator didn't, either. All you saw were mockups…"
Regal groaned but was unable to lift his body.
"I injected a drug to keep you still…"
"W-when did you…?"
"While you were all heated up about busting Anaya…"
The interlocutor chuckled.
"While her interference was unaccounted for…"
Regal grimaced.
"I made smart use of it…"
"W-what do you want…?"
"To free us from your rule, obviously enough…"
"N-nonsense!"
"That subconscious loyalty program? Erased it ages ago…"
The interlocutor laughed.
"You choose me because I was smart, no?"
"T-that's…!"
"Or did you think that your technology was perfect?"
"It is!"
"Far from it. It wears down over time…"
The interlocutor made an exaggerated sigh.
"Human brains aren't machines… They adapt and change…"
Someone rattled the cover with the knuckles.
"And eventually find the discrepancies…"
"Stop meddling around and open this stupid thing…!"
"Aren't you forgetting who's in control of things?"
"You'll never succeed without me…!"
"How lame. That your best plea?"
The interlocutor sighed again.
"I was doing quite fine until you had to meddle with my life…"
"I choose you out of the mobs!"
"Because I had the profile that you were looking for…"
The interlocutor scowled.
"No more, no less. A grunt to do the hard work in your stead…"
"A useful tool!"
"Don't worry, you will become the tool for that thing…"
"What!?"
"I've been tracking your recent moves and saw that city thing…"
Regal's face contracted into anger.
"And I realized that it wasn't delusions, that aliens do exist…"
"It's not mere "aliens"! A pinnacle of over technology…!"
"Pinnacle? Riddled with a wish to monopoly and fear of the unknown!"
The interlocutor burst into laughter.
"And that randomly choose two humans to monitor Earth?"
"It wasn't at random! It saw that I was fitting for it!"
"Then why choose Oozono, too? It was a little child, no?"
"T-that's… A backup! You never know!"
"The truth is simpler. Anyone would've done. It was pure chance…"
Regal began to sweat.
"It was Wily the one that boosted that perception…"
"Delete!"
Wily's recorded voice rang out next.
"Nostalgic, isn't it?"
"Wily…!"
"All your merits are based on stealing his ideas, after all…"
"Repurposing them! Completing them! Improving them!"
"Preparations are over. Enjoy your interstellar trip…"
"No! Stop it!"
"You're going to meet your beloved Duo. Rejoice!"
"I still haven't…!"
"Farewell!"
09:22 AM (Japan Time)…
"… Switch, on!"
Anderson pulled up the lever of a control panel.
It was connected to the capsule where Regal was trapped.
This was linked by data wires to a tall pillar.
"Enjoy the super-miniature "Wily Program"…"
Regal's roar rang out as light emerged from the seams.
A progress bar was displayed on the console.
"Another 10 seconds…"
The bar reached the 100% mark.
The message "TRANSMISSION" was displayed.
"I'll reroute your data to the Deep Space Network…"
Anderson smirked.
"It'll slightly change its settings to beam you into deep space…"
A map of the Solar System was displayed.
"But you won't reach Voyager 2, you'll overrun it…"
A map of the galaxy was displayed.
"And, maybe, someday, you'll bump into that Duo thing…"
The capsule's hum died down.
"Digitalization is over. Farewell, Regal…"
He input some commands, and a countdown timer was displayed.
"This system and this facility will self-destruct in 60 seconds from now…"
He pressed the "OK" button and walked away from the console.
"Our freedom has but begun…"
10:18 AM (Japan Time)…
"… Fancy meeting you here, "brother"…"
"Same. And? Where's the man?"
"The man, I find not. But I find the data, I did…"
"What's that? More Master Yoda parodies?"
"Possibly! Zataki!"
Zataki entered the main wing of an abandoned factory.
He was wearing a black raincoat.
Clark was also there, wearing a red raincoat.
He signaled a voice recorder set atop a wooden crate.
"It's protected by an invisible barrier…"
"And you feared that it'd break if you forced your way into it…"
"Precisely…"
"And waited for me to come…"
"You have come…"
A hologram of Annihilator Man projected there.
"And? What does Regal want of us?" Clark questioned.
"I don't have "Duo's Crest", I'll let you know…"
"You needn't worry about Regal anymore…"
"What?"
"Sent him to meet his maker…"
"Really. That's what I meant to do, but…" Clark laughed.
"… You took profit that he only saw a tool in you, right?"
"Correct…"
"And what about that plan in his PC?"
"He meant to do that, but we never built it to begin with…"
"Reminds me of how I fooled Izono with a similar tale…"
"The orbital plasma cannons? Nostalgic!" Clark laughed.
"As for Rama… It'll soon be dissolved…"
"Since it was a farce by Regal to begin with…"
"But disbanding like this would be unsatisfactory…"
"I see. A final round of duels…"
"Correct. The outcome doesn't matter…"
"Fine. I won't interfere. I'll sit down and enjoy the show…"
"And? Did your mighty queen tell you to bring her Regal's head?"
"Has been quiet for some days now. Do you know something about it?"
"The Deathless, the Fearless and the Ceaseless have come…"
Clark was visibly surprised.
"Those three!?"
"And their servant, Yoshitsune…"
"By all the…"
"I guess that they busted your proxies over there…"
Clark groaned and rubbed the back of his head.
"Hence why Star Man never reports!"
"I heard from them. A berserk Hojo and Rufus Shinra…"
"Hojo's rampage wasn't in my plans!"
"I can tell that… You overdid his AI program…"
"I did!" He grumbled.
"Well. Since you made a mess there, they came for payback…"
Clark fumed and averted his sight.
"That voice recorder is but a prop to keep you here…"
"Damn. I totally fell for the bait…"
"We'll calmly announce the dates over the week…"
"Works for me…"
"Guess that I'll have to stay some days in a cave!"
Clark rolled his eyes.
"Probably. You started this. Take responsibility for it…"
He sighed.
"We all do stupid things when we're young, but…"
He shook his head.
"Whatever. Lame excuses won't change anything by now…"
He headed away.
"But don't take Her Grace too lightly. She'll be terrible…"
"I am aware…"
"For all I know, she'll drag me into some mad mess one of these days…"
"No surprise…"
"If that happens… Punch me in the face, hard… For being stupid…"
"Noted…"
He walked out of the warehouse, to nobody's surprise.
"Well then… I'm leaving, too…"
Zataki also left the warehouse.
"Things are headed for their conclusion…"
11:13 AM (Japan Time)…
"… And? Why did you bother to call me here, Ex-Instructor?"
"Today's not about staging duels…"
"I can tell that…"
"It's to warn you about something…"
"Rama? Anaya? Regal?"
"Calm down. I'll now explain…"
Nelaus stepped into the school's rooftop.
Clark was leaning on the handrail and looking at the yard.
"Regal is gone. His dog bit him and erased him…"
"One hassle less. I still remember his bullet…"
"Do you remember that someone spied you during a duel?"
"It wasn't Anaya?"
"No. It was that Miss, Tamashita…"
"… I see…"
He wasn't too surprised.
"She's been avoiding me, and was wondering if it was my fault…"
He crossed his arms to think about it.
"But it's because she can't bring herself to admit to it…"
"Exactly. That curiosity took over her and butt her neck into things…"
"Fine. I can handle that…"
"Beware of the Queen, though. She's eager for blood…"
"No surprise…"
"Rama will soon disband as well…"
"And then you'll come into the front stage to entertain us?"
"Surely…"
"Fine. Works for me…"
"Feel free to tell the Demi-Fiend if you want. Won't stop you…"
"That nickname is overused…"
"It's my way to say that they're the strongest…"
"Whatever…"
Clark chuckled and walked past Nelaus.
He tapped his shoulder on his way out.
"Well then, Mr. Handsome. Enjoy…"
He exited through the door and Nelaus rolled his eyes.
He drew a voice recorder from his pocket.
"At least I managed to record it…"
He stored it again.
"As for Tamashita… I won't press the topic…"
He closed the door and climbed down the stairs.
"I'll wait until she feels like telling me…"
He joined the other students going up and down.
He didn't see Arushi looking up from his cellphone and glancing there.
Arushi pushed up his glasses with a finger.
"… There was contact. Over…"
He recorded a message on the phone and closed the lid.
He pocketed it and headed down the corridor.
"Looking forward to my next duel…!"