I considered "me", Flat Escardos, to be a lovely neighbor.
I'm hearing... something.
We're not exactly siblings.
Much less split personalities.
Flat and I have different souls and different foundations of existence, after all.
What am I hearing?
It's like the sound of gears grinding.
Something inside my body is breaking, tearing, and snapping.
I was the first of the two to become conscious, apparently.
But I can't say for sure.
Well, since Flat's brain activity was a stepping stone for the development of my consciousness, it's pointless to ask who came first, I guess.
The sound, the sound, my body, I can't mo- Ah, it's me.
The sound, inside me. My spine. It's hot. It hurts. It's cold.
What's? Happening? To my body?
At the moment the Magic Crest is inherited, the consciousness of the provisory proprietor... Flat's consciousness concludes its role and is supposed to vanish from inside me completely.
That was the plot written 1800 years ago.
Flat's ancestor, Messara Escardos, was a proper mage, despite his romanticism.
He was a mage like the ones you know.
Does that give you some peace of mind?
A v-v-v-voice voice. Whose voice?
I can't see anything. Who where? Where?
Flat was an unwanted child, a soul despised by his own parents. He was meant to be deleted, as needless data I wasn't going to absorb anything from.
But guess what? Flat noticed me.
He found me in there. Can you believe that?
Ever since he was conscious, he could tell I was living under the circuits that composed him.
His genius has nothing to do with me... I think.
He had my body in its perfected state but it was through his own sharpness that he managed to manifest my abilities, even if only my eyes. And that's not even the most amazing thing about him.
Where did my eyes go?
Remember. My finger. That monster. The monster plucked my finger off.
Flat, Flat.
Right. Flat Escardos.
That's the target's name.
The brat I, the brat we shot dead.
Faldeus said he was regular mage.
Then why we couldn't kill him for real?
Did the Heroic Spirit do this? No.
I was incomplete until the start of the transplant of Magic Crest, which contains my program.
So he could have erased me if he wanted to.
I've heard of this one vampire who can reincarnate by printing his soul into others, but unfortunately, my existence isn't as firm as his.
I was arranged to first reach completion when combined with the Magic Crest Messara designed.
If I was discovered before this stage, I'd be the one deleted. When that happens, whoever had my perfected body would be running Messara's Magic Crest instead of me, giving a chance to the next generation. That's his idea of settling for the second-best outcome, I guess.
Expect Flat didn't erase me.
Not even when he was old enough to understand what I was. Not even when he gained the means to eliminate me.
Flat extended a friendly hand to the one who was planning to delete him.
Fully aware of everything.
Perhaps a mage who understood of what his ancestor was trying to accomplish would offer themselves, but... Flat wasn't like that.
Well, I'm also sort of special... or I should say Messara was. The data recorded in the Magic Crest contained no algorithm demanding that I be like a proper mage.
Messara only demanded that I stayed alive. That I kept existing.
He didn't want his continued existence, only the continued existence of his creation.
He wanted me to, if possible, find a way to stay alive on this planet after the end of Human Order or after humanity detached itself from the planet.
What is this voice?
Is it talking to me?
Oh? You're conscious of me? Took you long enough.
Or is it that your mind finally got used to the situation?
I guess it was weird of me to expect you to zone in any sooner.
After all, it only has been three seconds since I accelerated your thoughts, if I had to count in terms of this planet's standard time flow axis.
Accelerated thoughts? What have you...?
It's too dark, I can't see anything.
Is this telepathy? What's going on? I can't move!
It's not dark at all.
Our world is brimming with radiant light... It's really a place worth living in.
Flat told me it was. If he said it's bright, it can't be dark.
It's just... not visible to you right now.
Might be because I gouged your eyes out.
That said, Flat wasn't talking about light in the visual information sense. He meant it in the emotional sense.
Well, you won't be able to sense that light either, considering you're about to die.
Unless death is a source of hope for you.
Ah, that reminds me, Flat always dreamed of having something called the Mind's Eye.
Gouged my eyes? My eyes, eyes?
Who? Who are you? What are you?
The last thing I saw...
Was like...
Flat's... other personality?
That's not what I am. Did you already forget the first thing I told you?
I am... hmm, let's see.
I believe the answer is too complex for you, so just think of me as something like a devil.
Not a devil. Something like one. Important distinction.
Nowhere near as major of an entity as the True Devils lurking on this planet.
Think of a more abstract kind of devil. The kind that appears in your human society allegories.
The kind that appears in the cartoonish hell invoked by Jack the Ripper's Noble Phantasm. Yes, that might be the closest analogy.
After all, that's the exact idea Messara Escardos was going for when he created me.
Messara? Who? What are you talking about?
Aaah, Aaah, eyes! My EYES!
That Heroic Spirit... The man calling himself Dumas knows I exist.
But he ignored me.
He avoided my domain almost completely when he mixed Flat and Jack the Ripper.
I have nothing but praise for his finesse, but it disturbs me a little how I have no idea why he did that.
Still, I couldn't exactly take my time to ponder his objective while the process was happening.
While my emotions have no real equivalent in human emotions, I guess it'd be somewhat accurate to say I was jealous.
Oh yeah, that's right, I
envied that serial killer Heroic Spirit.
His soul was mixed with Flat's in a much truer sense than mine.
If it was me instead of him, I wouldn't have let Flat die.
I could easily have reflected your lead bullets.
This very Holy Grail War could have been...
...
No, forget it.
The Grail War was Flat's, not mine.
It's not a place for someone like me, who doesn't have a wish for the Holy Grail.
I just helped him do his analyses sometimes.
Flat is enough of a genius to do it on his own, but he's lazy, so I'm often helping.
Think of me as his navigation system.
What are you talking about?
What are you making me listen to?
Sorry, I've gone off-topic.
I didn't mean to get this emotional.
Flat had a mostly positive view of everything, but I'm more of a negative person.
I'm a fan of poetry and melodrama.
That's the reason.
This is why I'm accelerating your thought channels and taking turns talking to you one by one.
Flat would never do something like this. He's too efficiency-minded for it. If he were in my place, he'd have laughed this whole thing off.
But I can't be like that.
I've existed for a long time, but this is the first time I can go out and talk to people.
I wished I knew how to talk like Flat's mentor.
What a fascinating teacher, that man is.
His speeches are clever but clear, irresolute but strong-willed.
And most of all...
...oh, sorry. Off-topic again.
The most relevant and important thing here is the first thing I said.
I considered "me", Flat Escardos, to be a lovely neighbor.
Everything I said about myself so far has been a preamble to emphasize this main point.
After he recovered the whole Magic Crest in the Casa and I gained all of my knowledge, I became sure of my mission and tried to delete Flat. When I did...
That hopeless genius smiled at me.
Flat saved my heart.
Flat swore the two of us would live together.
And you killed him.
A, ah!
I remember I remember I remember.
M-m-my bod-d-d-d-dy-y-y-y.
He fol-ded-ded me.
I heard the creak. It was my spine.
Crushed? Torn? No, which? No, no, NO.
Don't get me wrong.
This is not revenge. My goal is not to extend your suffering.
Well, me killing you is obviously your just deserts for killing Flat and also a means to fulfill the mission engraved in me.
But this part about accelerating your thoughts to get this whole telepathic speech across is because I wanted you to know the motive behind your gruesome deaths.
I don't think Flat would kill you if you killed me.
One time, I told Flat he needed to kill someone. His answer:
"I won't say murder is NEVER okay, but if you have to kill someone, I think you should tell them your reasons first. I'm sure both of you will feel better about it that way. Even if you can't get them to agree with you, the fact that you took your time to tell them is important."
What an idiot, don't you agree?
Why waste a chance to kill for a parting rant?
You'd think someone who refuses to kill because it's inefficient wouldn't advise me that not carrying any hard feelings when I kill is a long-term benefit.
Even in his last minutes, he was wasting his time with concern for
that thing.
He made his excuse that the thing looked like Sajou Ayaka, but why should we care? Our eyes can tell at first glance that it was someone else...
Not even human.
That's why he died.
You ended Flat and I began.
And I told you the whole story, as a tribute to Flat.
That's all I wanted to say.
Sorry for wasting your time.
There's no stopping what's happening to you, so I'll turn off the mental acceleration.
Sto
He lp
My bad. One thing I said was a lie.
You have no idea how much I'd love to make you suffer for a long, deep, hollow, and eternal time.
You should be grateful that I'm not.
Not to me but to Flat Escardos.
...
...
Ah, ah.
Look at how easily a human dies
just from being folded to the size of a kitten.
You people need sturdier souls.
The Holy Grail could fix souls into a material state, was it?
...Well not with the Grail here.
Snowfield's vessel doesn't have the Third's essence.
But what about the real one?
Could Fuyuki's Holy Grail do it?
Does the famed land still have the Holy Grail? Its vestiges? Its corpse?
...
No, don't get any stupid ideas.
It's too late to materialize his soul. It won't turn back time.
That's the domain of another magic. One far distant from the third one.
I'll just do what I must.
Human malice took Flat Escardos away from me.
It was an attack against my reason to live. Against my very life.
Then I'll strike back.
To prolong my survival.
To continue my survival.
I'll live the long life my friend couldn't. This is for the only one who understood me... The sole human I meant to protect.
Originally Posted by Kamera
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
