One Week

[FlameStrike]

Oh my god this fic!!!! I haven't LOL'd like this in awhile!! Dullahan you are magic. Seriouslyyyyyyyyyyyyy this damned fic! Lio is having way too much fun x.x

[R.Lock]

...Linkin Park albums. CSR-style Lio-wallrunning-with-Fujyou-in-his-hands-bride-style. Fujyou trolling hard. Fujino beind mad, madder, the maddest mad man... uh, girl... no wait, woman. Damn, so good.

By the end of this fic I'm going to die. Either from feels or from laughter.

[Dullahan]

Split into two pages due to length. Nobody post until it's all up.
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Day Four
“AAAAGGH!”

I wish I could say this is the first time I've woken up screaming.

“Pbbft!”

I wish I could, but I can't. That said, this is the first time I've woken up with a mouth full of sand. You have to take novelty where you can get it, I'm afraid.

“Pffbht! Blagh! Gah!”
I spit out most of the aforementioned sand, and congratulate myself on my victory before lifting myself up from my present face-down position and looking around. I find myself in a vast, sandy, desert-like desert, filled with sand and possessed of great vastness. There are dunes and stuff, but no-one else around, not even a convenient Bedouin or Peter O'Toole. It's morning, or possibly very late afternoon, and – as I sit up, brushing sand off my clothes as I do so – I begin to wonder exactly how I got here. I recall getting into a huge fight scene with Asagami last night – I don't remember the details, but there were a few KISAMAs, a couple of ONOREs and a whole Jojo's volume-worth of YURUSANs exchanged, so it had to have been pretty fucking hardcore. We probably wrecked the inn again; changes should have reverted to the previous version by now, though. Then, I think I lost a lot of blood or orally replaced it with pure methanol or something, because I don't remember anything past my third blackout. Yet somehow, I've ended up here, in this...desert.

Hm.

I look around. No signs to indicate that I was dragged here, nor are there any footprints. Well, it's possible wind-blown sand might have covered them up. I hear seagulls, so the ocean must be pretty close by. Maybe behind that dune over there. Other than that, all there is to find is a small piece of paper sitting on the sand next to me.

“What the...NO! You IDIOT! We've done this already!”

I pick up the piece of paper and read it.

Not exactly.

“Well, I admit I'm not buried up to my neck, but fundamentally this is still the same kind of-”

I flip to the other side.

Wait for it.

“Wait for it? Wait for what?! And stop predicting my responses!”

I flip back to the original side.

No.

...

What the...no. No, this...this isn't right...this shouldn't be here!

“...how-”

And to the other side again.

Don't think about it too hard.

You clearly weren't thinking about it at all!

“Why, I oughtta-”

I stand up. It's only in the standing-up process that I realise something. My left leg has a rope tied to it. No – not a rope; a steel cable, secured tightly around my ankle with some kind of industrial clamp. I'm not getting that off without bolt cutters, that's for sure. Thing is, though, it doesn't seem to be attached to anything. One end ties to my foot, but from there, it just continues off into the distance, becoming buried in the sand before long.

“Oh...kaaaay...? What's the deal with this?”

I pick it up and begin to follow it, coiling the cable I pick up in my hand as I move forward. Turns out, this cable runs for a long way. A hundred metres down and I'm still picking up more. The coil is getting heavy as shit and unwieldy to boot, so once I reach a semi-grassy ridge on the edge of the desert, I set it down on a convenient rock and try to get a better idea of where I am. It's all greenery and stuff from here on out, so it seems like the desert is more of a very large sandy area just next to the shoreline. Doesn't exactly help me much. It seems like I'm still in the country, which is reasonable. There are train tracks down there; what does that tell me? Not too much; if I knew what kind of train, then maybe-

“Huh. Shinkansen.”

What do you know, here it is now. Passing me a fair ways away, Japan's fastest passenger train, the legendary Shinkansen, with a cruising velocity of some three hundred-ish kilometres an hour. Okay, that's more helpful. Where in Japan are there Shinkansen tracks this close to the coast? If I recall the lines correctly, I could be in Hokuriku, or maybe even Kyushu, but the weather doesn't seem apt for the latter. Assuming that, I have to ask how exactly Asagami got me here, when all I could manage was getting her to the beach in front of the hotel. Clearly she's got a silent partner in this operation. Someone with access to a vehicle. But who? None of her friends is able to drive, mainly due to not existing in the first place, and none of her acquaintances or known hostages are old enough. Fujyou certainly can't drive; she never learned before getting hospitalised. So who could it be? Araya is busy, and...

And...um...

What was I saying?

Sorry. I just...saw...something...very distracting.

“Um...”

As the Shinkansen speeds away below, I can't help but notice that the coil of cable I've left on that rock is getting smaller and smaller with each passing moment.

Huh.

W-w-why would it do that? For what reason would the tension in the cable...tied to my leg...be...increasing...as the Shinkansen...moves away?

“...oh, no.”

I look at my hand, at the piece of paper from before.

I'll meet you at the station. Enjoy the next 500 kilometres. Fujino <3

And the cable goes taut.

“This cannot be happening to mAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-”

* * * *

Meanwhile

To whom it may concern: I, Fujino Asagami, am presently enjoying a relaxing morning soak in the onsen, along with Fujyou who's nearby. You'll have to imagine the conveniently-placed clouds of high-opacity water vapour for yourself, but kindly ensure in doing so that the precise number of cup sizes between myself and Fujyou is in no way obscured. No, I don't care if those are overly precise instructions; this is important, and I will not concede this point.

“Asagami...” Fujyou begins to speak. She went to bed early last night, so she missed the vast majority of the amazing, high-budget fight scenes that took place after that. What a shame.

“Yes?”

“You and Shirazumi were still locked in mortal combat last night when I went to bed. As I recall.”

“Yeeeeees?”

“But he's not here now.”

“Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees?”

I try to erase my smile, but Fujyou looks at me with suspicion anyway.

“What have you done with him?”

“I killed him, and intend to prepare his body parts as meals and feed to them to you over the next few days, starting with those strange-looking chunks in the soup you had this morning. Whoops, didn't mean to tell you that~.”

“But you can't cook.”

“Oh, can't I? That's never been mentioned anywhere in canonical sources. Surely, as the very picture of idealised womanhood, a certain aptitude for domesticity is, hm, gratis? It comes with the package, is what I'm saying. One cannot make bentous for one's sempai without such skills.”

“That's unlikely, Asagami. There is a proven medical connection between pain insensitivity and anosmia, the inability to smell. You've been without a sense of smell for the past decade. Even having regained it recently, you don't have the built-up experience to even enjoy food on the same level as a normal person, let alone prepare it. You can't plausibly have any cooking skills. You're basically terrible.” She raises her finger out of the water and points at me, jabbing it forward with each punctuated word. “Shit. Tier. Waifu.”

Oh, it's on now, bitch. She is actually right, but I can't let her gain even an inch in this conversation. Absolute victory is the name of the game. You can't win by margins; you have to crush your opponent with everything you've got. The love rival I meet, the love rival I slay. The false lead I meet, the false lead I slay. That is the Way of the Best Grill! So, in summary, I need to find some way to demolish Fujyou's self-esteem in one shot.

“You're twenty-seven and unmarried. In heroine terms you may as well be in a retirement home.”

Fucking decimated. I ruined her soul with one punch. I love it. Her face looks like she's reliving the moment she heard her entire family had been killed in a car accident.

“To tell the truth,” I lie, “I haven't the faintest idea what happened to him. Perhaps someone just left the catflap unlocked and he wandered outside. We'll put up some posters in the afternoon, 'kay?”

“Japanese-style inns don't have catflaps.”

Notice how she doesn't argue with the implication that Shirazumi would exit via a catflap if given the opportunity.

“Don't they? Fancy that. The more you know. Speaking of catflaps, how good are you at arithmetic?”

“...what connection do those two ha-”

“Because here's a problem for you! A wondrous, conundrous conundrum, if you will. Even if you won't, shut up, I'm telling you anyway. If a train moving at a speed that varies between three hundred and twenty and two hundred and forty kilometres an hour begins to move along a five-hundred kilometre rail line at seven o'clock in the morning, what are respectively the earliest and latest times it can arrive at its destination?”

“Um...uh...three hundred and twenty...five hundred...” Fujyou begins counting on her fingers, and I enjoy the sight of this for a short while before getting bored and telling her the answer. “What's the gauge of the train tracks?”

“Standard. 1435 millimetres. Machined to exacting standards of quality and welded at the joints for optimal smoothness necessary for the stable operation of rail services at extreme velocities.”

“Are they metric or square millimetres?”

“You idiot. Look, the answer is that the train will arrive between approximately eight-thirty-four and nine-oh-five in the morning.”

“...I knew that.”

“Sure, sure.” I yawn, and look at my watch, which I took off and placed to one side of the bath. “On an unrelated note, I have to pick something up down at the station in about one and a half hours.”

“What?”

“Oh, never you mind. Want to do something until then? Go shopping? Swim at the beach? Paint our nails and talk about boys?”

“You're in a good mood.”

“I sure am!”

Fujyou sinks deeper into the onsen, and pouts suspiciously as she blows bubbles in the water.

“You're just planning to make fun of me, aren't you?”

“I sure am!”

“You're horrible.”

“I sure a-as if I'd fall for that!”

“You kind of did, though.”

“Whatever. I know! We could play a game!”

“A game, huh...”

Silence.

“Don't just say 'huh...' like you're going to lead into something and then just leave it hanging! It's unbelievably inconsiderate of your conversation partner! What kind of unfeeling, self-centred sociopath are you?”

“I was just thinking.”

“So the cancer hasn't reached your brain yet? It's taking its sweet time. Any competent soap opera would have killed you off inside a season, yet here you are still dying ten years later. No wonder you chose the high-altitude exit.”

“I was just thinking,” she continues, “about games.”

“Oh, what about them?”

“I was going to ask Shirazumi yesterday, actually.”

“He won't say yes. He's already married to the job.”

“...I'm talking about the first time he killed someone.”

“Yup, yup. Strange men. Dark alleyway. Gets covered in bodily fluids. Go on.”

Fujyou gives me a look like she's about to force my head underwater and hold it there for the necessary one hundred and fifty-two seconds to guarantee brain death. Do it, bitch, I dare you. Strike me down now and I shall become more popular than you could possibly imagine.

“In the book, the victim is this underclassman from the same school, who Shirazumi lured out there by beating him over and over again at some arcade game.”

“Yup, yup. Arcade. Playin' the vidya gaems. Close...um...uh...yeah, I can't really think of anything to make fun of that with.”

“...I was wondering what game it was.”

“Pfft. Obvious. Not even a question. Dance Dance Revolution. You know how he loves to get down. One the ground. And drool on people.”

“You're really reaching, Asagami.”

“Making bad jokes is cute when I do it. Only when I do it, though. You can't do it. Only me. Sorry.”

I'm not sorry at all.

“DDR wasn't even out in 1995, so it can't have been that. Darkstalkers, maybe...”

“Know what? It was probably Street Fighter II. That came out in, what, 1991? I'll wager he just exploited cheap tactics to win over and over again with no real skill. Wasn't Guile broken as all hell on the original World Warrior machines? The real fight between those two probably came down to seeing who could pick him out of the character select screen the fastest.”

“I just don't know if that'd be his kind of game.”

“What else could it be? A shmup?”

“It might not even have been an electronic game. It could have been pinball, for instance.”

“Are you quite serious? I know they might have when you were in high school in the 1980s, but no-one seriously plays pinball anymore.”

“Maybe we need to take a different approach. The kid Shirazumi played against, so we hear, had a habit of beating up people who defeated him in games. What kind of video game could engender such rage?”

“Given the right player, literally any video game. This one time, at Reien, the president of the DotA club threw some chick out a window for feeding. Had to get stitches all up her back from the broken glass. She'll never walk again. Quoth the president, bitch doesn't need legs to take mid.”

“Your school sounds terrifying.”

“It's how the one percent learn. Poorfags gotta deal.”

“Though I suppose, really, the other school everyone in this show went to is even worse.”

“You mean the nameless high school with no uniform policy that features so prominently in Murder Speculation Part 1?”

“Indeed. Has it ever occurred to you, Asagami, that the school attended by Ryougi, Kokutou and Shirazumi is the Japanese equivalent of one of those hellish inner-city schools in the US which are desperately in need of an inspirational teacher played by Edward James Olmos to give their students the opportunities without which they'll be trapped within a vicious cycle of poverty, petty crime and socio-economic disenfranchisement?”

“No, I have never thought that. 'cause I don't care. Besides, it looks pretty all right on screen.”

“I'm serious. Consider, if you will, every known character who attends or attended their school. That's Shiki Ryougi, Mikiya Kokutou, Lio Shirazumi, Kokutou's friend Gakuto, that guy Keita-”

“Ah, yes.” I nod, nostalgically. “The one that got away. You know, I kept his number after Remaining Sense of Pain wrapped up. I still call him every weekend to tell him I'm going to murder him one day when he least expects it. It's hilarious. Sometimes he even cries.”

“-and, of course, that kid from the games centre that Shirazumi killed. Of them, what do we have? Games centre guy is a violent thug. Keita is a rapist. Gakuto does drugs – or at the very least has some reason to be on mate's-rates basis with local drug dealers, as depicted in MSP2. Shirazumi is...well...himself. Ryougi is a yakuza princess. And Kokutou-”

“-is the one normal guy?”

“College dropout who works for a serial fraudster. And he knocked up a high school girl that one time.”

“Bullshi...oh, right.”

“Mana is around nine or ten in 2008, so, working backwards, we can conclude that after that scene at the end of MSP2 with all the cherry blossoms, those two went home and immediately got busy. Without delay.”

“Feeling NTR'd much?”

“I'm dead by then.” Fujyou says, glumly. “There's no use.”

“Well, thank-God-you-didn't-get-killed-by-some-blonde-jackass sex is a thing, I suppose. Doesn't that happen in Fate? Saber's second H-scene? My memory fails me. But your wording is still somewhat misleading. They're both 20 by that point, or close to. The fact that that truant Ryougi still hasn't finished high school doesn't influence the fact that she's no longer a minor under Japanese law.”

“Yes, but recall that after MSP2, Ryougi still has to finish at least one and probably two more years of high school before she graduates. She'll be pregnant with Mana for a not-insignificant proportion of that period. It is going to be unbelievably awkward for everyone. Is it possible to get maternity leave from high school?”

“Her parents will probably arrange home-schooling sufficient to get her a high school diploma.”

“But it goes further than that. According to data gathered by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the mean age of first marriage in Japan in the latter half of the 1990s stood at around 28 for men and 27 for women. Furthermore, the mean age of first childbirth in that same time period is around 28. What-”

“And yet neither you nor Aozaki are-”

“Shut up. What I'm saying is, what kind of message is this sending to-”

“The children? Bitch, please. Damn brats shouldn't be watching KnK anyway. And besides – it's pretty obvious that Shiki Ryougi is not intended to be a role model for anyone. Nor is her relationship intended to be representative of anyone's. Kokutou meets, falls in love with exactly one (1) girl, shit happens, shit un-happens, they marry young and babies ever after. Don't even bring traditional values into this; Ryougi wants to have an irritating loli daughter, let her. Who gives a shit? It's really no more toxic than the dumb Twu Wuv fantasising we have in >85% of YA fiction these days, and they don't have knife fights, mass destruction and thanatotropic interior design.”

“Okay, fine. But my earlier point stands. Their school – the school of a sizeable number of named characters – is no idyllic purveyor of youth's halcyon days, but rather, a veritable Heart of Darkness within the urban jungle that is Tokyo.”

“So, basically Cromartie, right?”

“It's what Cromartie would be if everyone actually lived up to the hype.”

“A terrifying thought. There's no telling what would happen next.”

“Why's that?”

“Mechazawa. True sentient AI finding widespread acceptance in society, with the exception of a few prejudiced holdouts. The universe of Cromartie High School exists one step away from a technological singularity.”

“Audible gasp. Could it be that in our universe, the untimely death of Freddie Mercury in 1991 is what diverted us from that course?”

“It's a possibility, Fujyou. If only he had lived long enough to harness his innate coolness into a functioning room-temperature superconductor design.”

“Hm. Yes.”

A long pause follows.

Silence settles over the hot spring bath.

Neither of us can think of anything to say.

It is very awkward.

“This is weird.”

“Why is it weird?” I ask.

“We've been talking for a while now, and no-one's started screaming.”

“It's because Shirazumi isn't here.”

“Asagami. Tell me the truth. What have you done with him?”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“I may have been half-asleep last night, but I did overhear-”

“Nothing?”

Nothing incriminating. I made sure of it.

“-something about traintracks.”

“I like trains.”

“No, you don't.”

“You're right. I was talking about the incalculable volumes of hatred I feel for the common locomotive. My father was killed by one when I was a child, you see.”

“He was hit by a train?”

“No, it broke into our house and smothered him in his sleep.”

“Impressive manouverability.”

“No, it's about average for modern locomotives.”

“Do you even know what the word 'locomotive' means?”

“Dear me, you're right again. I must have gotten confused. Actually, he jumped in front of one when the economic bubble burst.”

“Please don't mention some of the grim realities of post-1990s Japan in your throwaway lines.”

“Eat shit. You're the leading cause of Tokyo Prefecture suicides in August/September 1998.”

“That's only in the females aged 20 and under demographic.”

“It's a valuable market for all kinds of products! You ever been to Otome Road in Ikebukuro? Oh, wait – that area only took off after you were hospitalised. Suck it!”

“It doesn't matter to me. Everyone with taste knows that shoujo peaked with Oniisama e. It's been all downhill since then.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You missed out on a lot when you missed the seventies, Asagami...”

“Yeah, well, it's got Onii* in the title so it's obviously shit and your taste is bad.”

“To be honest, I think you'd actually likeit. Despite the title, it's about overly-dramatic lesbians at an all-girls academy.”

“Pfft. I can just go to my school if I want that.”

“Not like this. There is a particular extreme of insanity to which only 70s shoujo manga by Riyoko Ikeda can lay claim. Everything these people do is over the top.”

“You know, at Reien they had to change the uniform to one without a tie because so many people were re-enacting that bit from Marimite.”

“So that's why they're so ugly.”

“The girl maketh the clothes. They're not ugly on me, that's for sure. Everyone else, I don't care about.”

“Please. The only attractive outfit you've ever worn wasn't even yours. I refer, of course, to when you wear one of Kokutou's shirts at 00:04:39 in Remaining Sense of Pain. Framegrab it if you don't believe me.”

“That only betrays shallowness on your part. Girls wearing mens' shirts is one of the most common fetishes there is. It may have subtextual erotic appeal which operates on a deeper – more intimate, one might say – level than the simple exposure of flesh at the heart of a more naive conception of fanservice, but fanservice it nonetheless is. Long skirts, by contrast, express the beauty that comes from the soul! Why else do you think the main heroines in every Type-Moon work always have long skirts? Arcueid! Saber! Ryougi! A-”

“Aoko doesn't wear long skirts.”

“Then Aoko's a useless whore. And I was going to say 'Alice', for your information.”

“But Arcueid's getting a mini-skirt in the remake-”

“Doesn't count until it comes out, so I confidently expect to be right for the next decade or two. And besides, you know the original outfits are going to be unlockables.”

“You are so full of shit. Look, I'm going to curtail this right here and ask you, straight-up: Did you, perchance, tie Shirazumi to the traintracks while cackling maniacally?”

“I swear on all that is smooth yet firm yet subtly pliant in Azaka Kokutou's thighs; I absolutely did not tie him to the traintracks.”

* * * *

400 Kilometres Away

“-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AA-”

* * * *

I wake up.

“-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaa...aaa...aa?”

Situation overview. Suddenly – shocking truth – lying face-up in snow, hard surface underneath. It's asphalt. Sit up. Night-time. Yellow streetlights. Snow-covered road. Snow is falling. View over the city. And over by the railing...whoah! A dame!

“RYOUG-”

I jump to my feet, slip, and immediately fall face-first on the ground.

“FUCK!”

Okay, second try. Stand up.

“RYOUGI!”

Indeed, it's her, and - wait. Hold up a second. Is that...aw, gyp. It's the pink kimono.

“...oh, it's just you. What a fucking wash. Got my hopes up for no reason. I thought it might have been Capslock; you know, the good one.” I brush the snow off my legs. “Oh hai, Void. I notice you're not doing a headtilt, so evidently this is the epilogue as opposed to the beginning of MSP1. Are we going to have a 45-minute talk about the Origin, mayhaps? If so, great! See, my persistent raiding of Fujyou's emergency suicide kit has led me to build up a tolerance to sleeping pills, so I've been looking online for new insomnia cure. In all seriousness, what the hell am I doing here?”

“You,” says Void, “are having a near-death experience.”

“So this is, what, early-access content? Is this the Steam Greenlight of afterlives? 'cause it looks indie enough to b-”

“As you well know, the soul returns to Akasha upon death for recycling. You are here because you are having a near-Akasha experience.”

“Really? Sweet! Are there postcards on sale? I want to send Araya one. Wish you were here, from the Root. He'll get so fucking mad.”

“As a consequence of that, I am unfortunately required to have a near-Shirazumi experience.”

Lengthy pause.

Tumbleweed rolls by.

The hell? Those don't even grow in Japan...

“Oh, fuck you. Is this about MSP2? Is that it? You know, you of all people really have no right to complain about anything that ever happens ever ever ever in all perpetuity throughout the universe no matter what. You're omnipotent! Kind of. Maybe. Probably. Potentially. Somehow. The point is, you could have intervened there at any point, but you were just too busy, I don't know, playing beer pong up here with the True Magic users. That's what you do, isn't it!?” I look around suspiciously, trying to see if there are any vampires or homunculi or student council presidents hiding in the nearby buildings. No luck; gotta try to draw them out. Don't even worry about it. I learned the cheat codes for this last month. “HEY, AOKO! YOUR SISTER'S ALWAYS BEEN HOTTER THAN YO-”

“That's not how it works, Shirazumi. The True Magic users-”

“Please don't pretend like anything about those people is ever going to explained in a substantiative capacity. Even in Mahoyo, we all know it's just there for pretty lights and boytoy resurrection. And here's another thing! What no-one seems to take into account when they talk about the saliva scene is that I have extenuating circumstances which no-one else in this story can claim, and that is the fact that I am HIGH AS BALLS at the time, and have even less idea as to what the fuck I'm doing than I do in the entire rest of the movie. Notice, twelve angry men of the jury, my bloodshot eyes and the fact that the movie literally shows me smoking a joint beforehand, and God knows what else. I am probably legit hallucinating that Ryougi is some kind of...primary-colour-wearing...humanoid...popsicle-based lifeform. Made of salt! Cats like salt licks, right? Fucked if I know. The point is, for me, the entire finale probably takes place in some Fear-and-Loathing-esque drug-induced haze.”

“I thought your metabolism meant you weren't affected by drugs, due to your body breaking them down too fast for them to have any effect.”

“Nowhere is that stated. Sounds like some pretentious fanfic writer's headcanon to me.”

“You have a relatively coherent POV section during the finale, though.”

“One which doesn't not say that the walls look like conveyor belts of moving plaid fabric stained with the blood of the seven greatest pre-Reformation Christian martyrs whose deathless voices command obeisance and French toast from beyond the gravy!”

That is your brain on devil ether. Stay in school, kids. It makes it easier for the Man to keep you down if you're all in one place.

“Would you like to hear the ugly truth, Shirazumi?”

“Are you going to tell me what your actual power level is? Because people have been scratching their heads over that for years.”

“You don't just ask a lady's power level, Shirazumi. Like her weight, age and three sizes, it is to be kept secret at all costs.”

“...but they're not. You have the same body as Ryougi, and all that stuff's in the side material. Though Takeuchi does seem to enjoy changing your cup size at rando-”

“I'm still not telling you.”

“Mother of pearl! Well, fine. What's the ugly truth?”

“Complain as you may about being underwritten, the truth is that no-one outside of Shiki, SHIKI and Mikiya are actually important characters in this story. Kara no Kyoukai employs what you might call a lateralised model of character development, whereby the conflicts and driving motivations of the protagonist are understood through their reflection in other characters. Like you, for example. You don't need any more development than is required for you to externalise an element in Shiki's internal conflict, and what the audience thinks of you is basically irrelevant. After all, this story is about her.”

“Huh? Sorry, I switched off about halfway through that. Have you noticed how beautifully-animated these snowflakes are? I guess they have to be, considering all of the FUCKING NOTHING ELSE that is happening in this scene.”

“Certainly, if KnK was some Dostoevskyan-realist exploration of the human condition, there'd be time and space enough to develop every single named person in the story down to their unique childhood traumas, but it's not. Ultimately, whether you're good or evil, however sympathetically you're portrayed, and however well or poorly you're written, it doesn't matter as long as you serve your purpose. Everything in this story orbits around Shiki Ryougi.”

“Notice how what you're saying does not rule out, and in fact makes it significantly more likely that the entire story post-MSP1 is Ryougi's coma dream.”

“All reality is illusion. I am, and am not, what is real.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure; fuckin' whatever, man. I'm totally in the subjunctive right now. I'm tripping like an kneeless acid-head on the wrong escalator. You're not impressing anybody with your crypto-Buddhist-Taoist mumbo-jumbo, Void. Considering that Tohno managed to get through Tsukihime just fine without being the embodiment of the universe itself, as far as I'm concerned you are just something Nasu pulled out of his arse when he realised he'd written himself into a corner on how to get you to beat Araya, and then explained retroactively in this snorefest of an epilogue. I mean, couldn't you simply have done exactly what Tohno does against his George? Get your shit kicked in, then use a one-liner power-up and stab him right in the plot?”

“It wouldn't fit with the tone. Kara no Kyoukai is more grounded and rea-”

“Jumping between skyscrapers.”

“That's-”

“JUMPING BETWEEN SKYSCRAPERS. Have you seen that part? Ryougi knife-lunges, like, a hundred metres! Across a street! Not even in the heady days of energy-sword-only TDM in Halo 2 could you do that! Even assuming that she's running as fast as Usain Bolt when she jumps off, no matter how aerodynamic her jacket is, she should be a fucking PANCAKE ON THE SIDEWALK after trying that! And the worst part is, that was actually completely avoidable, because we have interior shots from the Fujyou Building which show that it's split down the middle by a central courtyard, so she could have simply jumped from one side of the roof to the other on the same building, which would have been marginally less unrealistic.”

“That doesn't happen in the novel. It was added by the animators.”

“Well, yeah, 'cause pretty much nothing happens in that scene in the novel. As I recall, Ryougi does the You really are evil; guess I'll kill you bit and then it just goes straight into the final part with her and Fujyou. She doesn't even do anything about the other ghosts; they just...watch, I guess. It's just like every other girl posse in every other teen rom-com, where the alpha's hanger-ons are just around her 'cause she's rich and popular and don't actually have any deep connection with her, so when the princess lays an egg or whatever and loses her lustre they'll just ditch her, leading to what would in the classical sense of Greek tragedy be termed anagnorisis, in which the reality of the queen bee's situation is impressed upon her and leads her to despair, which is of course understood as the subjective realisation of the depth of difference between the way the world is and the way one had imagined it to be, and it is this moment, the nadir of her narrative arc, by which the cathartic intent of the story is made most manifest, so, uh, in summary, Mean Girls is a work of unparalleled storytelling genius and the belated Western counterpart to Revolutionary Girl Utena. What was I talking about?”

“Overlooking View.”

“YEAH! See, just because the original scene was boring as shit doesn't give them the license to take it too far in the other direction. That's the kind of thinking that slippery-slopes its way down to the unmitigated disaster that was the Oblivion Recording adaptation. And, fuck, now that guy gets to direct the UBW anime? What a crock! They should have gotten Takayuki Hirao to do it. Then we'd be cooking with nitroglycerine! Sure, the story would be pretty much incomprehensible, but you need these kinds of barriers to entry if you're going to keep the plebs and zerofags out.”

“You know, I think the reason you're so unhappy all the time is that you take everything far too seriously.”

“Oh, sure, make fun of the obsessive fanbase who allow high-budget productions like this to recoup their initial investment through their characteristic willingness to purchase preposterously overpriced Blu-Ray collections.”

“They're just movies.”

“That would be a justifiable argument if I didn't happen to be a character in those same movies. In the most fundamental way possible, this has relevance to my interests!”

“And then you have this bizarre one-sided relationship with the caps-lock key...”

“SAY WHAT?!” Wait one. One what? Just wait. Ding. Ding. Ding. Lightbulb! IDEA! “-wait just one goddamn minute. This is the afterlife, right?”

“No. There's no afterlife. What you perceive here is but one facet of the bardo pseudo-consciousness experienced between reincarnations, albeit in a somewhat more limited fashion due to your not actually being dead yet. This is a simply an extended illusory state; it's something like a dream, generated from the fruits of karma accumulated in your previous existen-”

“Tl;dr – this is the afterlife, right? So that means dead people end up here, right? So that means SHIKI is here too, right?”

“No, i-”

“I knew it!” Too late; I'm already running off down the street. “CAPSLOCK, COME BACK! YOU COMPLETE MEEEEEE!”

“You will not evade me, Lio Shirazumi!”

-huh?

Odd. I could have sworn I was some ways down the street, but somehow I just teleported back in front of Void.

“Seriously? Everquest? I guess you really are as old as the universe.”

“SHIKI isn't here, Shirazumi. As you should recall from the fourth movie, Capslock got absorbed back into the Void.”

“So considering you're the Void, does that make it vore or unbirth?”

“You know what? If you're going to be like this, you can just unlive out your near-reincarnatory state in some other illusionary submanifest. There should be one nearby...”

“Wait, wait, wait. What does that mean, exactly? Is it going to suck?”

“...ah, there we go. See, I just do this, and-”

“No, no, please explain, 'cause I have a horrible premonition that this is going to-”

“No explanations. Not ever.” Void smirks at me. “You in Nasu's world now, motherfuckaaaaaa!”

“Wait a minute...Void doesn't talk like that, YOU FUCKING CHARLATAAAAAAAAAA-”

------------------------------------------------

[Dullahan]

-----------------------------------------------------
Migrating Host...
I wake up.

By contrast, the city never sleeps. I can attest to that. As I awaken to another beautiful day on my rooftop hideout and look out over the city, wherever I look I find activity. From the vines that stretch between buildings, the trees that break through the concrete below, the animals that wander the desolate streets of a once-bustling urban population centre and the birds that ride the thermals between overgrown buildings, I find life making a new home for itself. The urban jungle has become a literal metaphor. This gleaming expanse of glass, concrete and steel is, slowly but surely, being painted green.

Let me back up a little. How little? About twelve thousand years. That's the beginning of what geologists called the Holocene epoch. It had a good run according to one or two independent commentators, but, well - enough of that shit, thank you very much. Welcome to the Liocene epoch, named for its creator, me, like any geological epoch should be. I, Lio Shirazumi, am the last human on Earth. I made sure of it. It having been several years now since I individually killed the entire human population - well, I may have cheated with by using bioweapons to deal with the birth-rate issue on a global scale, but I certainly murderstabbed all of Japan by myself, I assure you of that - what stands before me now is nothing short of the realisation of my ideal. I, who desired a world without ignorance, unfairness and chuunibyou, thought upon this matter at great length, and determined that there was only one possible way to achieve this goal: the expedient destruction of not only human civilisation, but of humanity as a species. To cut a long story short, everyone's dead now. Now, I know what you're thinking - what gives me the right to wipe out human civilisation just so that I can live with myself comfortably? A very good question, but one with an extremely obvious answer. If they'd known I was planning to kill all of them, they'd have killed me first; obviously, I felt the need to defend myself. This was all self-defence, you see. Likewise, when small groups of survivors kept poking their heads out of underground bunkers every so often once the project was 99.99999% complete, I naturally had to kill them too - also out of self-defence. At any rate, I greatly enjoyed coordinating my own personal mass extinction event, and would recommend it to both couples and singles seeking something to do something with their spare weekends.

There's just one problem.

No - look - don't get the wrong idea. It's not like I'm bitter or anything. Perish the thought. It's not even an issue. It's just, uh...an annoyance. Yes. Annoying. It's really...really...look, basically, this is what happened. When I was down to the last million people in Japan - finish line in sight - Void decided to show up, and what did she do? Fucking said she was taking Kokutou and portalling out to a parallel universe. And I swear, the bitch laughed as she did it. And I thought to myself - after finishing off the last million - that this was uncharacteristically petty behaviour for an ostensibly-omnipotent being, and that she was probably just mad because her power level is stupidly unclear, her character is not only pointless but specifically defined by the fact that it doesn't do anything in order to ward off claims of being a Sue, and that no sane person actually watches the Epilogue outside of those hipsters on tumblr who make gifs of ufotable's beautiful snowfall animation so that they can place Deep And Meaningful captions over the top. But once I finished thinking all those things, I thought - are you fucking kidding me? In an infinite number of parallel universes there are bound to be an infinite number of Kokutous. The mathematics states - Georg Cantor will support me on this - that she can spare one at zero loss to herself, but nooooo. I don't get to have my Good End, even if I do kill everyone else on the planet, because I don't get to have ANYTHING, do I? DO I? HUH?!

Whatever. Make all the 'forever alone' jokes you want. I am the God of this new world. President-for-life in the kingdom of homicide. From the rooftop garden of this building I see all; in this world under my command, nothing can possibly-

"Hey."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGH!"

I jump a full thirty metres into the air, then latch on and conceal myself behind a vine-covered billboard. Another person? That shouldn't be possible. I just had an entire paragraph about how I murdered them all. Wait, hold on. That was a girl's voice. Maybe I missed one of the Toukos? Even I'll admit that hiding one of her bodies on the International Space Station was pretty ballsy, but I was all but certain that was the last of them, after the one kept in suspended animation inside a portable toilet at the summit of K2, and the one concealed inside an Incan temple concealed inside an Aztec temple concealed inside a Mayan temple concealed inside an Olmec temple concealed inside a Spanish cathedral buried beneath the icy wastes of Honduras. But could I have been mistaken?

"Hey, I can see you up there. There's a hole in the, um, thing."

Shit. Shit, shit, shit...what do I say? God damn it. It's a girl. I can't deal with this! I need an opening. If I can just make my escape-no! Impossible. I'm surrounded. She's getting closer. She must be hopping from rooftop to rooftop, like an Italian ninja descended from an Arabic ninja.

"No, you can't. It's an illusion."

"Uh...is this one of those Buddhist things? Like, uh, matter is void and such? Perception is emptiness?"

That voice...do I know this person? It sounds vaguely familiar. Can't be one of the main cast, though...who is that? A minor character? Fuck, is it Shizune Seo? Was she so irrelevant I forgot to kill her along with the rest of the planet, and now she's using her precognitive powers to lead a small tribe of (lesbian?) survivors in eking out an existence within the overgrown ruins of Tokyo? Ugh. Idiot. Stupid mistakes, the story of my life. Well; that's it, time to nuke the city and move somewhere else. I'm thinking South-East Asia. I hear Bangkok is lovely this time of year, and with a population of zero, it's bound to be even lovelier.

"No need for that. You're simply deluded. There's no-one here."

"Huh. Do I exist, then?"

"I fucking hope not!"

"Do you exist in the same way I exist?"

"I do not exist."

"That's so lame...I've been wandering around for hours, and you're the first person I've seen since I got here."

Eh?

"What do you mean, 'got here'?"

"From another universe, obviously."

...ah, I see. She's clearly been driven insane from the isolation of being the only living human in a city otherwise devoid of life. Unfortunately, that emotion is copyrighted and I own the rights, so it now falls to me to lagstab her soul out with the +5 Chaos Zweihander of Intellectual Property Enforcement. You invaded the wrong host, motherfucker.

"That was in no way obvious, and no-one in the history of mankind up to this point would have considered it to have been so."

"But it's true! I died, and then some weird shit happened, and I fell through a crazy portal in extra-dimensional afterlife space, and now I'm here and everything's all eerily familiar, yet with a chilling touch of alienness. Parallel universe. It's a dead cert."

"Hey! I'll have you know I put a truly unrealistic amount of effort into creating this oppressive sense of dislocation, so at least pretend you appreciate it!"

"Huh...your voice sounds familiar. Do I know you?"

"Nope. Definitely not. Couldn't be. Impossible. Maybe, what's your name?"

Carefully, I begin to lower myself down from the billboard. This person seems to be standing in the garden below, where I was until about a minute ago. I step onto a rusting metal beam-

"Rio Shirazumi."

-I slip and fall ten metres. Faceplant on the roof.

"...bull...shit."

"Wow, are you oka...wait-"

Fortunately, I landed on grass. It's all good. I stand up. Dust off. Point dramatically at this unwanted newcomer.

"You can't be Lio Shirazumi! And I'll tell you why! Because-"

She's doing the same, surprisingly.

"-I'm Rio Shirazumi!"

"-I'M LIO SHIRAZUMI!"

In the silence that follows - since proven mathematically to be the awkwardest of all possible silences - I become aware that I am looking into the face of a person identical in appearance to myself.

Well, mostly identical. The breasts are something of a change.

Boing.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGHHHHH!"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGHHHHH!"

"W-W-WHY ARE YOU NAKED?!"

"WHY ARE YOUUUUUU NAKED?!"

"Excuse me? Just because I forgot to narrate what I was wearing doesn't mean I'm naked. How dare you be so presumptuous!”

It can scarcely fail to be mentioned at this point that I was wearing...uh...clothes, I guess. I can't be bothered. Use your imagination.

"...ugh, this shirt is so not my colour. Thanks a lot, imagination. Anyway; there, see? Problem solved."

"But why am I still naked!?"

"Idiot! You're being entirely too postmodernist about this! If you're really that hung up on a close reading of the text, have it your way."

The mysterious intruder does not lend herself well to being described - that is to say, in the elucidation of her physical appearance through the means of verbiage, critical insufficiencies in the language become evident - but, suffice to say, if it is to be said that she is - for want of a better term - 'wearing' any manner of material entity, those which are known as 'clothes' would serve this purpose admirably in any attempt to apprehend her physical form. The details I leave to the reader's discretion.

"Hey, that's a nice scarf. And boots. And...an ao dai? Which one of you chuckleheads imagined tha-"

Actually, fuck this polite conversation.

"WAIT! NO! WHY ARE YOU A-"

"-MALE VERSION OF-"

"-FEMALE VERSION OF-"

"ME?!"

Perfectly symmetrical screaming never solved anything, but in this case it serves to illustrate what's most important. This...individual...does indeed appear to be identical to myself in appearance, facially, heightwise and so forth, with the singular exceptions of breasts (aforementioned) and, as logic would dictate, the requisite substitution of downstairs equipment. There's another awkward silence, but when its timer runs down, I snap my fingers.

"Ah, yep. Okay. I think I've got this." I stare down Girl-Me with a steely, ironic gaze. "Question. You said you died, right? How did that happen?"

"Uh..." It looks like she's got a question of her own to ask, but she'll have to get through mine first. "...got...zandatsu'd to death by Ryougi. It was pretty brutal-"

"-not gonna lie?"

"...yeah...that's exactly what I was going to sa-"

"Right. And in the universe you came from, is Ryougi ma...is Ryougi biologically male or female?"

"Male, of course. Why would...oh. I get it. In yours-"

"And Kokutou's a girl for you, right?"

"Yeah...but for you, she's a guy?"

"Wa...yes. Yes, definitely."

"So Aozaki, Asagami, Fujyou, Ouji, Seo and Kokutou's little brother are all girls here too?"

"Yes. Now give me names.”

“You give me names.”

"Shiki."

"Shiki."

"Touko."

"Touya."

"Souren."

"The same."

“Fujino.”

“Fujihiko.”

“Kirie.”

“Kiri.”

"Azaka."

"Fire Lord Azulon."

"Indeed."

"Indeed."

"In-deed."

We both nod our heads sagely.

Then point at each other and scream.

"YOU'RE FROM-"

"-THE RULE 63 UNIVERSE!"

That's right...from her point of view, it is I who is from the genderswapped universe, isn't it? Ugh. Reality is difficult.

To cut a long story short, about ten minutes later we're on a different, larger rooftop garden - bit of misnomer; all the rooftops are gardens now, due to the mountains of countless thousands of corpses that once filled the streets acting as extremely good fertiliser for the resurgence of plant life into the city - sitting on opposite sides of a table, sipping tea from teacups that I stole from somewhere. The tea has a pleasing tang of iron to it; understandable, since the leaves come from plants I grew on the mass graves of the thirteen million late inhabitants of Kyushu. Cause of death: knife to the throat. Tragically, a very common ailment in recent years, with a shockingly high mortality rate. The medical establishment is rather at a loss.

"How did you ever manage to kill everyone? It seems impractical on a number of fundamental levels."

"Shut the goddamn hell up and drink your tea. Moreover, you fell into my universe, so you're the one who has to answer the questions first. Agreed?"

"I guess."

"Sooooooo..." I click my tongue in anticipation. In situations like these, it's of vital importance to establish the most...relevant...facts before anything else. "...what's Kokutou like as a girl?"

Rio's face lights up, and blushes bright red.

"She is the sweetest, cutest, most huggable waifu of all time." Buries face in hands. "Miki-chan is a national treasure. UNESCO World Heritage. I am not worthy. No-one is."

"You still get her first kiss?"

"Muahahaha!" Now she's standing up. "That's right! It was not with Shiki! Her first kiss was with me - KONO RIO DA!" Eyes burning with pride. And now with shame. She collapses down onto the table. "...I'm so fucked up."

"Don't sweat it. Opinion polls say that yuri is never entirely unjustifiable."

"Wait." Looks back up at me. "Do you mean to imply that you, too-"

"Not in this continuity, but in canon, yes."

"...that's so hot."

"It's really not."

"And yet you're blushing."

"My face just does that, okay!? It's a skin condition! Are you making fun of people with skin conditions, girl-me? You insensitive piece of shit! I hope you get a melanoma and die! Again!"

"How many times did you deliberately screw up that scene so you'd get to do a re-take?"

"...mmbmgle..."

"What was that?"

"...fifty-four and a half. ANYWAY! Forget about that. Entirely. Let's talk about...Ryougi! Yes! So, how is Ryougi? What's, uh...'he' like?"

"To be honest, I'm more interested in what girl Ryougi is like."

"Why?"

"As a guy, he's kind of..."

"Oh, shit. Is it really bad? Because there's this other Shiki - unrelated but similar - who's a guy, and he's a douchebag. And a rapist, depending on player input. I tell ya, these VN protagonists are a sketchy bunch..."

"No, no, nothing like that - I mean, the other Shiki you're thinking of, Tohno, we have her as well...still a rapist sometimes...but Ryougi - well, some of his scenes do have that kind of vibe, like when he pulls a knife on Enjou when they're on his bed, but..."

"Hold that thought. What's Enjou like, actually?"

"Twintails. Easily flustered. The sporty type. She's a sprinter, you know. Kimi to~...dea-"

"Kalafina can, but you kan't. She a tsundere?"

"In parts."

"Fucking called it. Hah! What a loser. Anyway, you were saying?"

"Well...with Ryougi, generally it's more like, um..."

"How can he possibly be that hard to describe? You've been stalking him for years!" I narrow my eyes. "Haven't you?"

"Of course. I take photos, I take videos, I paint pictures, I draw yaoi doujins of him and Aoza-"

"No-one needs to hear that."

"But don't you als-"

"Okay, so maybe I skipped out on stalking her in the runup to Oblivion Recording so I could put out my Touko/Shiki yuri anthology at Winter Comiket 1998 - the scans you're looking for, gentlemen, are (C55) [Satoi Toguchi] In'you Ningyou Soushuuhen (Kara no Kyoukai) - which actually turned more profit than that entire month's marijuana sales, but that's beside the point! The point is, it's not relevant-"

"You know," she says, ignoring me entirely, "I even have photos I took where he was looking directly at the camera and still didn't notice me."

"So? I have those too. Plenty, as a matter of fact."

"I always thought that was weird."

"I always thought that was a result of the imposition of story elements retroactively. MSP2 requires me to have a wall of stalker photos for no particularly good reason, and thus retroactively imposes the truth of them having been gathered in spite of what logical constraints there would have been on such an endeavour."

"Too much of a meta explanation. I used to have this theory that I was actually dead all along, and that I was some weird kind of ghost which only Ryougi and Kokutou could see, and only then under particular circumstances."

"That is literally the dumbest shit I've ever heard."

"No, think about it - who actually interacts, or even directly sees me, or you, throughout the entire story? It's only Ryougi and Kokutou!"

"And Araya."

"In that one scene, yeah. So what if we take the narration in that scene to be incomplete or otherwise unreliable, and Araya actually killed us there, but as he planned, we lived on as an element within the subconscious of Ryougi and Kokutou? That's why we act so differently around the two of them - we're actually the reflection of different subconscious thought processes within them. Didn't you ever wonder why the three of us are never alive in the same scene at the same time?"

"So...what, we're like a Remnant Psyche from Killer7?"

"Ryougi is kind of like a poor man's version of the Smith Syndicate, right?"

"I stand corrected. That is literally the dumbest shit I've ever heard."

"Why?"

"Because it's too clever for Nasu."

"Nasu does clever stuff all the time."

"But he doesn't play with narrative reality like that. His prose doesn't generally draw attention to the fact that it's prose, except in rare cases like that bit in Mirai Fukuin where Ryougi cuts the text on the page. Nasu isn't pomo enough to rationalise that kind of plot twist. His text is implicitly a more-or-less reliable window to a highly complex world of his creation, not the world in itself. Even though it is, really, in spirit it's not. For stuff like that you need someone totally fucking batshit like Suda51 or Mark Danielewski. Look - we're getting sidetracked. What is the deal with male Ryougi?"

Rio sighs.

"Before the accident, he is alternately an aloof, darkly attractive bishie-bordering-on-trap and a hyperactive, ridiculously cute, darkly attractive bishie-bordering-on-trap. Depending on which personality is active."

"So, basically the same as girl Ryoug-"

"But after the coma, he's an angsty, brooding, stoic, aloof, snarky, darkly attractive pretty-boy who inwardly just wants to be loved, who has supernatural powers of a mystical nature, improbably well-developed combat skills for his age and an idiosyncratic fashion sense."

Rio started drooling toward the end of that sentence. She notices, wipes it up, and waits for me to connect the dots.

"Holy shit. That's Squall. He's Squall Leonhart! He's a FINAL FANTASY PROTAGONIST!"

"I know, right?"

"Mo'fucker could use his own edginess to stab bitches in the face!"

"And he does! But not really. He's got, like, knives or whatever..."

"It seems like it's only being a girl that saves Ryougi from being a walking mass of cliches."

"Yeah, I think your universe really got the better end of the stick in that regard."

"What did you see in him, honestly?"

"...you serious?"

"Yeah."

"Is this a question? Is this a query that is seriously being queried of me? Who doesn't want to fuck Squall? Holy shit, come on! Cliches, yes, but not all cliches are bad cliches. That character type is popular for a reason."

"Is it, though? Is it really?"

"You pickin' a fight with my ovaries, boy-me?"

"You know what? We're not going to go there. Let's talk about, uh..." Quick. Pick someone at random to stave off awkwardness! "...what's Araya like, as a girl? 'cause I really can't imagine-"

"Kind of a MILF. But really, really scary. And with no sense of humour."

...

A tumbleweed rolls by.

At rooftop altitude.

Yeah.

Damn it! Never should have tried to grow those amaranths on the roof of the Tokyo Big Sight.

"...you're kidding, right?"

"Well, she's got this weird thing with her eyes that kind of ruins it, but longcoats have never before looked so rad on a woman."

"Oh, God. Oh, God...mental images! AAAAARGH! FUCK!"

"I don't get it. Is he that different as a guy?"

"Uh...well...not...really? Still scary...still has the eye thing...longcoat...no sense of humour..." I bang my fist on the table. "But damn it, it's just not right! Who's the VA?"

"Atsuko Tanaka."

"...of course. It makes sense...she'd be uniquely suited to both long-winded philosophising and being a stone-cold badass, thanks to her years of experience as the Major..."

No. It goes deeper than that. Tanaka - Nakata. Anagrams. Coincidence? Or a message, spread throughout multiple parallel universes - clues to an ancient mystery, transcending space and time? Zelretch is behind this. He has to be. And I intend to get to the truth.

This summer, one man-

"I don't get why you're so hung up about this."

"The idea of a hot female Araya disturbs me on a fundamental level. I feel like it's the end of The Last Crusade and I just drank from the wrong Grail. And it was filled with Angra Mainyu! AGH! It's starting! Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Di-"

"Look past that knee-jerk reaction, boy-me. Araya could be played by a fucking Roomba if we painted enough eye-shadow on it. Gender isn't relevant to his characterisation."

"Are you telling me there's a Roomba Universe out in the Kaleidoscope somewhere?!"

"Nah. Turns out that one of the rules of the Second Magic is that it's impossible to travel to a parallel universe that lacks the concept of 'stairs'. It's why you can't go to the Dalek Universe."

"Why?"

"It's not safe. They don't have stairs in their houses." Smiiiiirk. "They're not protected."

I throw my tea in her face.

Well, I try, but my cup's empty, so I just end up looking like an idiot.

"You're a louse, Rio Shirazumi."

“Yeah, whatever. Hey, want to hear about our universe's ridiculously hot young Zouken? 'cause she is a FOX. Woman's got legs for centuries. I'm getting excited just thinking about it!”

“MAO, NEVER SPEAK AGAIN!”

“You don't have Geass, bro; it's not gonna work.”

“'Bro'?”

“Well, we're basically twins, right? Genetically speaking.”

“That's not how it works. Your universe is Rule 63'd with respect to mine. That means our parents are also genderswapped, as were all of their ancestors. We're essentially strangers with the same name and similar appearances.”

“You're incorrect there, boy-me. Our parents must be the same.”

“Why?”

“It only affects the actual characters who feature in the work. If every single person in a Rule 63 universe was genderswapped with respect to another, including those in the past, then there would be massive setting variations between the two as a result of societal and historical differences, making it all but impossible to compare the two stories.”

“I'll buy that for their ancestors, but surely it must apply to our parents too-”

“They don't show up. They're not characters.”

“My father's a pharmacist! It says so in the glossary!”

“Doesn't matter if he doesn't show up.”

“The glossary matters!”

“The glossary will never matter to anyone who isn't an obscure lore fanatic.”

“Every Type-Moon fan worthy of the name is an obscure lore fanatic. It's how we define ourselves.”

“It's beside the point. No-one has parents in KnK.”

“Uh, what? Yes, they do. Otherwise they wouldn't exist. It's how biology works.”

Except for Araya; I always suspected he grew from a spore. Or that he congealed, fully formed, from a vat of Vegemite. That's why he needs to have an Australian accent in the dub. It reflects the darkness within.

Araya, what do you seek?

A bit o' that bloody true wisdom, mate. Shrimp on the barbie, G'Day and whatnot.

“But they're useless. They don't do anything, even when they really should. The only one who does is Asagami's father, who calls up Garan no Dou to capture/kill the offending offspring. Ryougi's parents in particular are guilty of this. The entire plot – not just of MSP1, but of the entire story – could have been avoided if Mr. and Mrs. Ryougi had thought to impose a curfew on their mentally-unstable daughter. At which point Araya says something like, Curses! Responsible parenting – my plan's only flaw!”

“His plan had numerous flaws. Responsible parenting is just the most serious for the MSP1 phase.”

“Oh? What are the rest?”

“This is just off the top of my head. First is that he doesn't learn from experience or otherwise just doesn't pay attention to his experiences. In Paradox Spiral he's surprised when Ryougi can cut his Bounded Field, 'cause it's a spiritual thingy and not alive, but this should not be the case, because spiritual things that aren't alive comprise the overwhelming majority of things Ryougi has ever cut. There's, what, Asagami's spirals, Fujyou's ghost posse, Fujyou's ghost, those disembodied spirits that did something well-animated and poorly-explained in Part 4, and – oh, yeah – the FUTURE in Mirai Fukuin. And then he gets blindsided not once but twice, the second time being when Ryougi cuts her way out of Mobius space inside his building. Are we to assume he was touching up his eyeliner while these things were going on? Because I...find that strangely believable, actually. Okay, we'll write that off as being justified in-story. But secondly! Remaining Sense of Pain. How did that even happen? Was that even planned at all? Because that requires an exceedingly specific sequence of things to happen to Asagami in order to even take place. It requires a bunch of guys who've been gang-raping her twice a month for half a year-”

“Whoah! Just – pause there for a second. That's what happens to girl Asagami?”

“Yeah. Why, what happens in your universe?”

"It's basically Carrie, but with guys. It's a harrowing account of bullying at one of Japan's most elite all-boys schools. It gets super bad."

"Narutaru bad?"

"It certainly does have that characteristic Mohiro Kitoh level of utterly monstrous behaviour to it." She makes an abhorrently cute expression, and adds, “and that's coming from a serial killer!”

"A scathing critique."

"Rather. Boy Asagami is kind of this withdrawn, reticent Shinji Ikari type, but like Shinji Ikari, there's only so far you can push him before-”

“The end of Rebuild 3.0 happens?”

“I was gonna say End of Evangelion happens, but that works too. Still, gang rape's pretty harsh, isn't it? Wouldn't it worked just as well if her story was Carrie but with guys, but with girls?”

“You mean, Carrie?”

“Yeah!”

“Yes, it would have worked just as well. The fact that she was gang-raped is only relevant inasmuch as it means the people she kills aren't fellow female students but are instead by and large the same kind of nameless scumbag street toughs who seem to be a dime a dozen wherever a main heroine needs rescuing – or, more commonly these days, when a main heroine needs someone to beat up without feeling guilty to show how much more awesome she is compared to the beta-as-fuck MC, who she'll still fall madly in tsunderes with due to blah blah blah who gives a fuck? You see, blah blah blah, entrenched stereotypes of gender dynamics, blah blah, transgressions perpetrated by men against women are understood as inherently more serious than those by women against women, blah blah blah, Asagami needs to be as much of a victimised moral patient as possible so that she can kill loads of people while remaining a Good Person (TM). Unlike the rest of us, you see. It's cheap and exploitative of the writer, and it makes me feel like a child who didn't prepare for his exams. I carelessly neglected to get sufficiently abused by my parents when I was young, or victimised in some other sympathy-grabbing way, and now I'm stuck having to actually be responsible for my actions. Like some loser!”

That means you, Enjou.

“I know that feel, boy-me. And I also feel our universe's Asagami is a more well-drawn character because of being a guy. Our Fujyou is a shitbag, though. I don't think anyone likes him.”

“Yeah, I can guess. Male yanderes never work out well for anyone. Well, outside of some yaoi, and some shoujo, and...actually, a bunch of stuff, I guess. Sometimes. Where was I?”

“Requiring a bunch of guys-”

“Yes! As I was saying, it requires a bunch of guys who've been gang-raping her twice a month for half a year – naturally, of course, not resulting in a pregnancy and going entirely unnoticed by her friends, family, the doctor she is going into the city to recieve regular specialised medical checkups from due to her pain insensitivity – it requires those guys to suddenly decide, first of all, to hit her in the back with a baseball bat just right so that it turns her pain sensitivity back on, and second of all, that one of them tries to stab her immediately after, because...reasons! I mean, what was he thinking? Hey guys, know what's a great idea? Killing this girl! It's not like we've left any DNA on her, am I right? See, it's funny, 'cause he's wrong. Point is, it needs to happen exactly like that, otherwise Remaining Sense of Pain doesn't occur. HOW DO YOU ARRANGE THAT?!”

“Actually, there's a pretty obvious solution for that.”

“What?”

“I believe your universe should be in accordance with ours on this one, but in the testimony given by the sole survivor of the initial event, I believe it's mentioned that a new member of the group was responsible for those actions. If you assume the new member was a plant courtesy of Araya, it all falls into place.”

Mentally, I rewatch my video footage of that scene with Kokutou. I was analysing it the other day, to study the nature of the intangible process by which being in the same room as him can make the difference between surviving to the end of a story and getting horribly murdered.

It's recent, but there was this messed up guy in our group.

“Holy shit, you're right. It was all doori to keikaku.”

“Really, the amount of effort Araya puts into manipulating teenagers' emotions just throws into sharp relief how much we amateurs suck at it.”

“Perhaps,” I speculate, “the reason he's so good at understanding teenagers is because he is himself an overgrown emo manchild who never mentally matured past puberty. Life is pain, salvation is suffering, woe is me, I'll end the world because despite my advancing years I have even less ability to deal with the oh noes, can't save all the people all the time issue than a pathologically-parricidal hamburger-munching lolicon, a sword-obsessed ginger from Kansai and his greying, fake-tanned future self. See, I have this notion that he, Alba and Aozaki only met because no-one else would let them sit at their table in the Clock Tower cafeteria. They were the weird kids no-one wanted to talk to.”

“Really? I always thought of it more as a Breakfast Club kind of scenario. Like, Lorelei gave them all detention for various reasons, and they met there.”

“Then who were the other two?”

“Huh?”

“You need five to make a Breakfast Club. If I recall correctly, you need an athlete, a brain, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. Who are the other two?”

“There don't have to be those exact five; it's just an analogous situation...”

“No, no, we can do this. Athlete...well, I don't think Alba or Aozaki work out; Alba isn't the type to hit the gym, or know what one is, and it would be uncharacteristic of Aozaki if she didn't customise her puppet bodies so that gaining weight is all but impossible. She clearly has a plan to counteract the effects of chain-smoking. That leaves us with Araya. Considering how he trashed Ryougi in their first fight, it stands to reason he's going to be pretty solidly built under the longcoat, but-”

“I can attest to that. My world's Araya has abs like Mikasa Ackerman.”

“Sorry, I don't think I caught that. Girl-me, I believe I said something about mental images a while back; perhaps you might like to – HOW ARE YOU AWARE OF THAT?”

“There was an eight-page beach-themed KnK art feature in Type-Moon Ace a while back. Swimsuits for everyone. Takeuchi did the first two, but the rest were guest artists. There's this one by Yun Kouga which has the Garan no Dou team playing volleyball, and I wanted to get it as a poster but they were sold out...”

“You're drooling again. I'm just pointing that out.”

“Anyway, Araya and I show up in it – not in that poster but elsewhere in the feature – and that's how I know about the abs.”

“You two...drawn by whom, may I ask?”

“The Black Lagoon guy.”

“REI HIROE DREW YOU?” I slam my head down onto the desk, jolting the teapot and cups and saucers a good inch up into the air before sending them crashing down again. “This...this is INIQUITY in the highest! I barely get to appear in official art, let alone celebrity-drawn guest art! By TEX-MEX, no less! MOTHER! FUCKING! TEX-MEX!”

“That's just the way the chips fall, I'm afraid.”

“Grghngmbghhhhh...I'll bet you looked really good in it, too, didn't you?! You bitch.”

“I don't have the print with me, due to having left it behind in a parallel universe, but I recall that the picture features me, bikini-clad, dangling my feet in the water from a rock while messily stuffing my face with watermelon. Bits of red-coloured flesh and juices all over the place. I think that's supposed to be suggestive of something, but it's too subtle for me.”

“No, I think I get it.”

Ah, there you are, unbidden thoughts of my genderswapped counterpart licking watermelon juice off her face in a suggestive manner. I was wondering where you'd gotten to.

“Anyway, Araya's in the same one. Off in the background, sitting under an umbrella and reading Sartre's Being and Nothingness and trying to have the least amount of fun possible.”

“Being and Nothingness? Hah! I guess even in omake art in genderswapped alternate universes, Araya still goes out of his way to be shitty and boring. Why can't he just read Camus like all the other hipsters?!”

“Funny you should mention that. I actually have this Meursault/Holden Caulfield slash fic idea I want your opinion on-”

“The fucks I don't give right now are of cardinality equal to Aleph-one! That's an uncountable infinity, girl-me! It's infinitely more infinite than infinity itself!”

“No wonder Cantor went insane. God, if someone had told Imaishi about transfinite numbers back when Gurren Lagann was in the planning stages...”

“It wouldn't have ended well. No-one, not even mecha pilots, want to get into an infinity-measuring competition where neither side is capable of losing in a meaningful way due to the non-constructability of anything past Aleph-two.”

“Couldn't the Anti-Spiral just turn off the Axiom of Choice to fuck everyone's shit up? And then Simon could re-enable it through hot-blooded determination, because the right to Choice is in a man's soul!? And then they could just take it to Aleph-infinity.”

“Are you seriously postulating the existence of an infinity which exists by way of a process for creating an infinity infinitely larger than the preceding infinity iterated a number of times which is itself infinite!?”

“It's what happens when you divide by hyper-zero: the zero that's so zero, it makes regular zero look like the reciprocal of zero.”

“...what?”

“I'm talking a set so empty it doesn't even have brackets around it.”

“That's just a blank space on the page...”

“And if you want to write it down, you have to physicially get out a hole-punch and cut a section out of the paper.”

“Sounds like way too much effort. Can't you do it in TeX?”

“Not sure about that, but I know there's an Emacs command. C-M-Del-0 holepunch-on-print ENTER. It only works on inkjets, though, 'cause it OC's the ink cartridge on the hardware level, and you can't do that on anything else. Last time someone tried to overclock a laser printer, they mutated into the Bed of Chaos.”

“And that, kids, is why you should leave the Chaos upgrade path to professionals. Just go with Lightning, like Motomu Toriyama and all the other grade-schoolers.”

“But seriously, though,” says Rio, “It's super dangerous, messing with laser printers. Try it and you will not survive. You'll be fucking decimated, boy-me. There'll be nothing left.”

“Actually, there'll be ninety percent left. If I'm 'decimated'.”

“You'll be ERADICATED! ANNIHILATED! INVIGILATED!”

“I'll be...supervised during an exam?”

“Sorry, I thought 'invigilated' meant something else.”

“Either way, division by hyper-zero sure sounds dangerous.”

“Understandably!”

“Since it's basically 'division by Void' – or rather, 'division by Ryougi'.” Smiiiiiirk. “I guess you'd be an expert.”

Rio throws her tea in my face.

She actually had some in her cup, and as it turns out, scalding hot tea is exactly as the name implies.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!”

“Don't make fun of other peoples' dismemberments.”

“Isn't it amusing how there's no distinction between the passive and active in that construction!? The object of the sentence is 'other people', but it could easily be either the dismemberments they have committed or the dismemberments they have suffered that is being referred to here! Ah, sweet mysteries of grammar.”

“I don't get it. Are you insulting me or not?”

“Yes, I am insulting you or not.”

“You're just lucky I already threw my tea at you.”

“Would you like some more?”

“Thank you.”

I pour her some more tea.

Then she throws it in my face again.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAGHHH!”

“You just walked right into that one, didn't you?”

“OH GOD, WITH THE SCALDING!”

“Oh, stop it. Like you've never had boiling-hot water poured on your face before. You went to high school, didn't you?”

“Just what are you implying about the Japanese education system?!”

“Oh, they don't do that in your universe? It's a freshman hazing thing, in mine...”

“NO! And that is ridiculous! There's no way such a small change in initial conditions as manifested by what you yourself explained the Rule 63 process to be would produce such a substantial variance in one's school life!”

Rio bursts out laughing.

“Sorry. I'm just messing with you.”

“I would accept that apology, but by saying that you're basically admitting you just threw hot tea in my face for no reason.”

“Unprovoked acts of comedic violence against other people are one of the few remaining ways I have to bolster my self-esteem.”

“What about MY self-esteem?!”

“If I esteemed your self-esteem, it wouldn't be your self-esteem, would it?”

“I can't quite express how, but you're definitely wrong about that!”

“Consider it your initiation into the School of Hard Knocks.”

“Couldn't you just knife me like all the other girls I know?”

“Like all the other girl you know?”

“Yes, like Ryougi. I went to a rough school, okay? That shit happened.”

“What? You went to the same school I did. Albeit with everyone relevant genderswapped, and in a parallel universe, but I don't doubt their respective PTAs kept in touch somehow.”

“...actually, that's pretty weird, isn't it?”

“Yeah, it is. My theory: it's either True Magic, Kohaku's shady new drug, Zelretch is fooling around again, or it's all an Einzbern conspiracy.”

“No, not the template..." I think to myself some more. Indeed, I'm now deep in thought. Thinking. "See, I was thinking, and it just occurred to me. If we're running with the kind of Rule 63 logic you've been talking about..."

"Yeeeeees?"

"...what does that imply for the, uh, saliva scene in MSP2 in your universe?"

Rio's head, meet table. Table, meet Rio's head. Thunk. Despair.

"Does it, uh..." I try not to laugh. "...still happen?"

"Yes. It happens." She glares up at me. "Wow. You must come across as such a creep during that scene."

"I sure do! And, in fact, in general. For some reason ufotable likes to ruin my sexy face by making me look like a total lunatic in nine out of ten shots."

"Audience is like, I'm twelve and what is this NTR bullshit doing in this pretentious anime I watch to feel superior to others?"

"It's barely NTR. Ryougi pretty much doesn't react. As a matter of fact, she even finds the time to have a plot-relevant flashback while it's happening. If she's like that when she's actually in bed with Kokutou, it's no wonder they stopped with Mana. But we're not talking about me, are we? How does it go with you?"

"He's like that for me, too...I mean, I was HIGH AS BALLS at the time, you understa-”

“We've done this already.”

“Look, I'll confirm what you're thinking. The same logic you mentioned being behind Asagami's victimisation in your universe is also what tends to minimise the perceived impact of sexual assault perpetrated by women. Just like it works for murder."

"And?"

Head and desk become re-acquainted.

"I'm a fandom bicycle. Any character who could plausibly fix this Sad Little Crazy Killer Girl - or, in darkfics, break her even further - has an AU."

"...heh."

"Some of the Sherlock crossovers are actually all right," she continues, mumbling, "as are the yuri fics with me and Kokutou, but the rest...well. Sturgeon's Law, you know."

"Heh. Hah. Heheh. PUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA-"

"This isn't funny!"

I pause, to wipe the tears from my eyes.

"This is just too precious..."

"It gets worse, you know."

"Yeah? How much worse?"

She lifts her head up, and looks me straight in the eye.

"I'm obscenely hot with a yandere vibe, know my way around handcuffs, due to Origin-related complications am justifiably unable to not fuck like an animal...and by the time of MSP2, I come pre-mindbroken. The doujins..."

Rio breaks down sobbing. I was going to say something like, at least you get to appear in doujins, but now I think it's really in poor taste.

"Oh, wow. Shit. I am...I am so sorry."

"It's no use! It's no FUCKING use! I wanted to be a serious female villain, but now I'm just a useless little psychopath, only good for my sex appeal..."

"I feel you. Shit like this is the reason I killed everyone else on the planet."

She sniffs, wipes away her tears, and looks up at me. God, she's cute. Too bad she's me. Yeah, shutting that down fast. I'm curtailing that line of thought right here. The incest/masturbation dilemma is complicated enough when it's just got Aozaki's puppets to deal with.

"You know...about that-"

"No. No! Don't ask any questions, don't try to have fun."

"But - where exactly does this continuity diverge? You're still alive, so MSP2 can't have happened. Is this after Paradox Spiral? Is it-"

"God damn it, Rio-" Off in the far distance, I hear the metallic groaning sound of credulity straining. "-you're not supposed to ask that!"

"Why not?"

The universe implodes inwards, collapsing under its own weight. The rooftop, the table, the tea - everything begins alternately exploding and/or falling in various directions. Hard to tell, really.

"I TOLD YOU GIRL! I TOLD YOU ABOUT QUESTIONS!"

"SHIIIIIIIIT!"

"YOU DONE GOOFED! THE DREAM IS COLLAPSING!"

"FUCKIN' NOW WHAT?"

"BE CHILL! THIS MEANS YOU'RE PROBABLY NOT REAL! I'M THE ONE WHO'S GOING TO HAVE TO-"

* * * *

BRRRRMMMMM.

I awaken to the sound of a foghorn being blown in my ears. Actually, it's some girl blowing a raspberry into a megaphone, but there aren't too many other convenient ways to replicate that sound effect. In any case, I immediately jump out of bed and assume the Winged Crane Stance.

"Who am you? Where are I? What be's? Better answer 'cause I learned ten years of martial arts in two years by skipping the discipline part so if you wanna go then BRING IT HARDER THAN ANY HUMAN BEING HAS EVER PREVIOUSLY BROUGHT IT YEAAAAAAHoh, it's you."

"Ah, good." Fujyou beams at me, and puts down the megaphone. "You're awake!"

I beam back at her.

"You betcha, champ!"

Then I kick her in the stomach. The expression on her face freezes as, with the wind knocked out of her, she crumples to the floor.

"....whyyyy...?"

"Nemo me impune lacessit. The Inception noise stopped being funny years ago."

"I feel the Warp overtaking me...it is a good pain..." She lies splayed on the floor, gurgling in that manner for a while, during which time I take stock of the situation. This is the bedroom of our suite, yes. Futons and such; I know it. I seem to recall falling asleep outside, however, so I assume she moved me and Asagami.

...wait, seriously? This girl has enough trouble lifting herself off the edge of a building. And if that's true, where's Asagami? I don't see her here. In order to resolve this conundrum, I wander through the open screen door to the main room, which is greatly improved by lacking an Asagami but doesn't exactly help me because of it. From there, I head out to the garden. It's about noon, I notice. I must have slept all morning.

She's there. In the hot spring bath. Naturally. Having observed her there, it falls to me to introduce myself - as I make my approach - in the most tactful and respectful manner possible.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't the TITS! Or 'Asagami', as is a valid alternate reading. Aren't kanji fascinating? It's as if every moon rune has a story to tell!"

She turns her head. It's a reasonably cool day, so there's a fair amount of vapour rising from the bath.

"Mock what you'll never have, you failure of a trap. These are the reason I'm the only one who survives to the end."

"How interesting! I just had a dream about that."

"Leave me out of your fantasies. I'm not into saliva play."

"Don't flatter yourself. If we were the last two humans alive, that's officially it for the species. Besides, in my dream, I had a discussion over post-apocalyptic teatime with my genderswapped counterpart about how dumb your story is, inter alia. It was so very very edifying."

"Ah, so Rio featured in your dream as well."

I freeze. Halfway across the garden. Feel a twitch run down my face.

"What."

"Oh, it's nothing much."

"What?"

"You see, Shirazumi," says Asagami, turning away with a truly horrifying smirk, "in my dream - in which I created a subserviant lesbian harem out of the student population of Reien Girls' Academy, naturally featuring Azaka as the Official Wife-"

"You didn't."

"I do seem to recall, somewhere in the lower castes-"

"Let me stop you right there, so I can ask WHO THE HELL HAS A HAREM LARGE ENOUGH TO NEED ITS OWN CASTE SYSTEM?! IS MEMBERSHIP HEREDITARY? IS THERE LEGALLY-MANDATED DISCRIMINATION? IS THERE ANY SOCIAL MOBILITY TO SPEAK OF? HOWEVER YOU ANSWER, THESE ARE DISTURBING CONCEPTS PSYCHOLOGICALLY, LOGISTICALLY AND POLITICALLY!"

"Don't have a cow, man. It's simply a generalisation of the main-heroine/secondary-heroine dynamic to larger population sizes, presided over by the objectively best grill."

"LARGE ENOUGH TO COMPRISE A SOCIETY UNTO ITSELF?! IMPLAUSIBLE! ARIENAI! SHINJIRAREN'! DON'T YOU REMEMBER? RESEARCH FROM THE RANCE INSTITUTE INDICATES THAT WHILE HAREM STABILITY INITIALLY CORRELATES POSITIVELY WITH SIZE, BEYOND THE SO-CALLED 'IONO-SAMA LIMIT' THE CORRELATION BECOMES NEGATIVE! WITH THE SIZE YOU'RE SUGGESTING, EVEN COMEDIC MISUNDERSTANDINGS ARE LIKELY TO RESULT IN A CHAOTIC BREAKDOWN OF THE ENTIRE SUPERSTRUCTURE! YOUR TWISTED DREAM IS A SOCIOLOGICAL IMPOSSIBILITY!"

"Do you really want us to start calling you 'Capslock' that badly?"

"I'm afraid this obsession of his is truly irreversible." Fujyou says this as she wanders out into the garden after me, and sits down on the verandah. "Not satisfied with being the only one of us who got to kiss Kokutou, he wants to be the only one who got to go on a date with him as well."

"Daring."

"Depraved."

"Degenerate."

"De...tergent?"

"Fujyou, you ruin everything."

"I'm sorry! I thought we were just listing D-words..."

"ENOUGH!" I point at Asagami. "You! Hold that thought! Whatever you're thinking, freeze that gamestate and I'll get back to you." Now, I spin around on my feet and point at Fujyou. "You! Did you have a weird dream, too? Was there subtext? Freudian shit? Did you have to fight an indistinct figure in a foggy maze as a mysterious voice calls out and makes cryptic comments suggestive of the supernatural adventures you'll be having over the coming school year?!"

"...I dreamed that my family was still alive. And that I wasn't sick. And that we were all happ-"

"Good GOD, that is boring as shit!" I turn back to Asagami. "Firstly, you're terrible. Now, what were you saying, again?"

“Perhaps it's best if you just see for yourself.”

As if by command, the water in the hot spring just in front of Asagami stirs – and out of it, a previously-hidden head emerges. It's Rio. Face flushed. Tongue hanging out slightly. Eyes wide and crazy.

“Ahn...Mistress...~”

Asagami inclines her head to smirk at me.

“You jelly?”

I'm speechless.

“Ooh, you jelly! Get mad! Get furious!” She turns back to Rio. “Okay, back down again.” With that, the blonde-haired figure mumbles something lustily, then sinks beneath the water again and disappears.

“What.” I say. That's a full stop at the end, not a question mark. Not What? but simply What. Sometimes there are no easy questions.

“As you can see, Shirazumi; bitches love me, 'cause they know that I can rock.” She then turns to face an imaginary camera. “This yuri scene was brought to you by Twisties. Remember: Life's pretty straight without Twisties.”

Oh, this has officially gone too far.

“How...” I say, beginning slowly but becoming louder with every passing moment, “...did you NTR...my genderswapped self...from a PARALLEL UNIVERSE...from INSIDE A DREAM?!”

The purplehead shrugs.

“Dunno. But we've been reaching samadhi in yuri every night for a while now, so-”

“No. Stop. Shut up. I just worked it out.” I glare at her, and at Fujyou. Spreading it around, like butter on asphalt. “This is completely out of whack.”

“Oh, she's very much in whack, I assure you. In BED!”

“What does that even-”

“Shut up, Fujyou. You're out of your element. It MEANS...” I say, posing dramatically, “that there is BUT ONE EXPLANATION for this...this...this LUNACY!”

And now, cue the dramatic wind to lift my hair.

“It means I'm still dreaming.”

Silently, and ever so suddenly, I feel reality start to crumble around me.

“Well, now you've gone and fucking done it, haven't you?” Asagami glares at me. “You shitty trap.”

“Help!” cries Fujyou. “Don't wake me up! I don't want to be a butterfly again!”

The sky breaks in half, and shatters like frozen toast in a lawnmower.

“Relax. Neither of you is real. I'm the dreamer, which means Joseph Gordon-Levitt should be giving me the kick right about no-”

* * * *

Migrating Host...

BRRRRRRMM.

I wake up.

“-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaa...aaa...aa?”

Situation overview. Suddenly – shocking truth – lying face-up in snow, hard surface underneath. It's asphalt. Sit up. Night-time. Yellow streetlights. Snow-covered road. Snow is falling. View over the city. And over by the railing...whoah! A dame!

Hold on. This seems familiar.

“Welcome back,” says Void. “How did you enjoy your-”

“You are not Arthur. Identify yourself!”

“I am thou. Thou art I. Shoot yourself in the head or crush cards to attain victory; the choice is yours.”

“Enchanté. What the fuck was that?”

“A continuation of your near-death experience by other means.”

I get to my feet. This time, I'm successful first try.

“Did you script those dreams?”

“No. As I said, if you had been paying attention, the pseudo-consciousness of the bardo state often manifests itself as terrifying hallucinations which emanate from the karma of-”

“Nobody cares.”

“Tibetan Buddhists care.”

“Nobody cares about Tibetan Buddhists. God damn it! Everyone goes on and on about freeing Tibet, but no-one wants to talk about how before the Communists came in Tibet was this basically medieval-style Buddhist theocracy with a shitty standard of living for the vast majority of the population. Neither side in this argument has a moral high ground higher than the soapboxes they speak from. True change in that region won't come until-hey, wait a minute! Why am I back here?”

“Your time's up.”

“My ti-what the hell? Is this a trial period? Do I have to pay for the full afterlife experience? This is unjust! I disavow myself of your business model! I'll torrent a cracked version from somewhere, see if I don't!”

“I wouldn't recommend it. Our DRM is exceptionally good. And no, I mean your time is up. It's time to return to the land of the living.”

“Oh. Wait – hold on. I recall...isn't my body going to be all fucked up back in the real world?”

“Yeah.”

“But that's going to be-”

“-horribly painful, I expect.”

“...right.”

“Yeah.”

“Void?”

“Yes?”

“Can I ask you a favour?”

“I'm not healing you.”

“No – just – when I regain consciousness, tell me, is Asagami going to be nearby?”

“She'll be quite close by, yes. Immediately proximate, one might say.”

“Okay. Okay.” I crack my knuckles and smirk. “Why, I oughtta-”

“Well, have fun. Cheerio!”

“Wait, WAIT, NO, I WASN'T REA-”
-------------------------------------
What can I say? I was really...really...really...stuck with MIAL for a long time.

[Kirby]

r e j o i c e

[Riven]

What's up with the font size?

[Dullahan]

Copying straight from Openoffice does this, on the rare occasions it doesn't decide to lose the formatting completely.

[Riven]

I see. I'll note to never use it for these things then.

But seriously, that Rio. That's gotta be the worst origin awakening ever.

[Rafflesiac]

Well, I guffawed.

[Der Ritter]

The amount of lulz I have is marginally equal to the amount of fucks I normally don't give about everything. Which is to say a whole damn lot.

[Leftovers]

I genuinely have no words. So many things to quote, so many hilarious tangents. God damn you are magic.

[Frostyvale]

I don't think I've ever seen something so intensely captivating since EarthScorpion last updated.

[Lycodrake]

An odd choice to venture into a meeting of minds such as Lio and "Rio".

[Christemo]

I come back from my prison in injust hell just in time for this. Thank you for providing another endlessly quotable hilarious chapter, Dullahan. I want whatever you're snorting.

[Flere821]

This has to be the most hilarious thing I've read in the last few months. Thanks a lot Dullahan

[TheInfamousMan]

Why must you be so hilarious Dullhan?

[Der Ritter]

Why must you be so hilarious Dullhan?

Because if he wasn't we'd be drowned under a un-Lovecraft-ly large amount of shit Grail War fics and authors trying to write "serious" stories. He is the great equalizer of the Fanfic thread; without stories like his and yours to balance out people like Siriel, who knows where we'd be.

[TheInfamousMan]

Because if he wasn't we'd be drowned under a un-Lovecraft-ly large amount of shit Grail War fics and authors trying to write "serious" stories. He is the great equalizer of the Fanfic thread; without stories like his and yours to balance out people like Siriel, who knows where we'd be.

That's... flattering? I guess?

Anyway, keep up the good work Dullhan!

[Frostyvale]

Because if he wasn't we'd be drowned under a un-Lovecraft-ly large amount of shit Grail War fics and authors trying to write "serious" stories. He is the great equalizer of the Fanfic thread; without stories like his and yours to balance out people like Siriel, who knows where we'd be.

You have the strangest fascination with disliking Siriel.

[Der Ritter]

I wasn't dissing him. It's just there can be only so many people who try to write a "serious" story and actually succeed. Siriel is one such person.