Comfortember 2022

Her Power - Aftergame Trio

11. Holding Hands

Warning: spoilers for the whole game, violence

***

How long had it been since he was forced onto the ground by gunshots? Mikado Sannoji certainly had no idea, especially since time had been warped in this collapsed virtual world. All he knew were that the bullet wounds in his body were maddening.

It must have been nearly a day, and Mikado was feeling himself teetering at the edge of his sanity. Not only was he wracked with pain, but the world around him was white and empty, so he had nothing else to focus on. Well, there was something else, but they didn't like it when he focused on them.

This version of Utsuro in front of him was nothing but a copy he had worked so hard to make so he could steal the Divine Luck, not knowing the truth of everything. Sora stood beside Utsuro, an algorithm with the memories of Akane Taira that Mikado had created to safeguard the killing game.

In the end, it turned out that she had the Divine Luck, which she used to stop Mikado's plan. And after Yuki Maeda was uploaded into Akane's body and left, Sora still seemed to be connected to the Divine Luck, based on her games with Utsuro. Mikado couldn't understand it, but one thing was still making him curious. He decided to play one final game with Sora.

"Fufufu... It's really funny how you can play so innocently like that with him and not help me..." the Alter Ego quietly laughed, though he could easily be heard in the silence of the virtual world.

"...What the hell are you going on about now?" Sora grumbled, glaring in his direction. "I thought I told you to shut up."

"We're both the same, aren't we? Masterminds that have ended countless lives with our games," Mikado continued, knowing that this sore spot would get a rise out of her. "So why am I being bullied like this? We have the same crimes! You should be a little gentler-"

Before he could finish his sentence, Sora walked over to him and kicked him hard in the side. Mikado began coughing from the impact and pain, and Sora knelt down to grab his hair. "Shut up, we're nothing alike," she growled.

"Ahaha, are we?" the wizard laughed. "You doomed your own classmates by your own hands, but even with the Divine Luck in your hands in this game, you still couldn't save anyone. Doesn't that make you just as bad as me? Didn't you want them to live? Didn't you want to save your friends?"

From afar, Utsuro watched the scene and wondered what Mikado was trying to do. In his state, it would be stupid to taunt anyone like this unless he was planning something. But as he listened to the blonde's words, a faint memory of his despair at a certain policeman with a gun in the ballroom made itself known. Utsuro suddenly realized what was happening and decided to stay quiet.

"Of course I never wanted them to die! You're the one who killed them all in the first place!" Sora shouted, beginning to hit Mikado. The wizard underneath her groaned, which served to anger her more. "I promised to escape together with them! And you betrayed even your own teammates and murdered innocent people to revive a man who didn't want to live!"

Mikado tried to struggle out from under the enraged girl, wondering if he had gone a bit too far with her taunting, or if she was easily set off by his words. But in the end, she always would have beaten the hell out of him at any given opportunity, so taunting her was like poking a sleeping bear with a stick.

"You can't fucking compare us! I didn't want any of this! I didn't want anyone to die from the beginning!" Sora's voice had risen to a scream. "I didn't want them to die, I wanted them to live! If I could you life for theirs, I would!"

"You don't need to," a calm voice interrupted, and both Sora and Mikado froze. The wizard opened an eye and saw Setsuka standing above them with a hand on Sora's shoulder. The white-haired girl launched herself into the billiard player's arms, and Mikado coughed from the sudden lack of weight on his chest.

He looked around as he gasped for air, and he noticed that there were more people in the collapsed virtual world. Yuri, Hajime, Kokoro, Emma, Setsuka, Hibiki, Shinji, Nikei, Teruya; the deceased participants were all revived within this space - except for one, which he didn't fault Sora for. Kanade scared him until the end as well.

Utsuro walked over to the wizard as Sora was in the middle of her tearful reunion with the others. "This was your endgame wasn't it? Reviving everyone like how I revive Tsurugi Kinjo," he questioned.

"It was more out of curiosity to see if it was actually possible. After all, the timeflow difference between the virtual world and the real world would have ensured that the deletion of an avatar would have at least render the participant dying," Mikado weakly explained. "And if she never wanted them to die from the beginning, then it might have planted the seed that would allow them to be saved in the end. Who knows? Not me."

Unbeknownst to the men, Sora had approached them and heard the conversation. "So you were just goading me into using the Divine Luck..." she realized, conflicted on what to do with the wizard now. "You caused me to bring them all back?"

"Not for a noble purpose at all," Utsuro sighed. "But now that these people are back, the program will have to be rebooted to make new places for them. Mikado, you have administrator commands. Reboot the program. Sora, support him with the luck."

The island was brought back from the backup data of Sora's utopia, which was in another corner of the Neo World Program, and Kokoro took out the bullets from Mikado's body before he was put into his room to rest. Food was programmed to appear in the diner at certain times, Monocrow's backup data appeared to supervise the 'students,' and the ex-participants lived together in harmony while waiting for the Kisaragi Foundation to return.

***

Art credit: Linuj