AKUDAMAX [Final Trial]

[akudamods]

You’ve really done it now. The sun rises on Saturday morning, and Kansai is simmering with rage. After massacres throughout the week, the citizens have no more patience, and they’re armed. Even the holy Shinkansen itself rejects you. There is one way out, to get past the fortifications of the city. The requisitioned blimp. Well, some of you can fly far more gracefully. Perhaps it's even possible to ignore the barbs of the population. But you do have a destination for answers in mind.

Out here the land is wasted. It’s more obvious, without the concrete covering, that nothing was growing in soil that had been bombed in the past. Whether thin for lack of plant roots or tainted with industrial byproducts, there are particles in the air that easily catch the light and turn green. You see a network of production facilities and even pipes. Glowing above them all is the tower you have summoned out of the blighted earth.

Inside… Everything manages to occur on the walls of the tower. Service staircases, riveted dumbwaiters, control panels, vats of capacitors, wires, metal, sheets of it, and a note of human blood. You can look all the way up to the blue light that marked the roof. Echoes easily bounce off the walls.

When you approach any of these panels (and even the industrial containers are electronically mediated in the end), the light that comes from them is yellow.

Comments

WHAT TO DO WITH FACTORY COMPUTERS?

[cantwaittowatch]

[The tentacles clatter over the control panels, and metal rods slam down to frame large squares appearing on the floor of the factory, flashing in uniform but unpredictable blocks of color, like a dance club. The terminal screens cycle wildly in time with this. The antimatter provided spins above everything, suspended along hardlight wires, drawing to mind a comparison too old-fashioned to name.

The printing queue is paused as requested for the moment. There are squares where each body would appear, in the outfit they were wearing most recently as they remember.

There is an option on one terminal to use the time gift on each present player character, de-anchoring each one from this spacetime, catapulted into another one corresponding to the square they stand on.]

It's configured. My usefulness is complete.

[thefifthchild]

[


Well, that was fast.] ...I assume you're leaving as well, then? I'm sure you understand why I don't trust you with this world. [Or any world for that matter.]

[cantwaittowatch]

[There was a reason she was so determined during their talks!]

...I needed a minute to think. Obviously trust is an important thing. You can lose it in an instant.

[Cracks a thin little smile. Doesn't reach her bespectacled eyes.] Isn't so bad to watch this play out for a while first, right?

[thefifthchild]

[He frowns. He can't describe the feeling in his chest. It's not happiness, or even relief, because frankly he'd already been banking on the theory that nobody who died here was ever really dead. That didn't make it easier to live through. Maybe that apathy just made it worse.] No, I suppose not.

I still have a lot of questions. [Let's focus on that first.] What was she saying about Akira? Do you know?

[cantwaittowatch]

Hm, Akira... The Demon...? Like I said about Biker, even though he had preexisting powers, it didn't make him special to us. She was probably shocked because it seemed like it had already been revealed to everyone that Akira was in Kanto.

[Rolling her eyes.]

I mean, he's the one you tracked and everything.

[hunterandhunted]

I am most pleased we could remain as allies, in the end.

[cantwaittowatch]

Remain? I antagonized you the whole time... but... you were fun to watch.

[hunterandhunted]

[Well, he's not good entertainment really, but he supposes he can't dislike her for that.]

It is only too bad you have not seen me at my best.

[cantwaittowatch]

Does anyone but the man in the mirror? We don't all have Garlean vision.

[Heck, Liv has glasses.]

[voidseeing]

What about those of us who can't go back?

[Strangely enough, he doesn't sound upset about it. In the end, he'd managed to accomplish what he'd spent years trying to do. He has no regrets about how things ended back at home.]

[your_best_friend]

[* Flowey puts a vine on Gai's shoulder.]

Stay determined. You'll eventually find a way.

[voidseeing]

[That earns him a wry little smile.]

I've done what I set out to do. The rest is in everyone else's hands... and now I can finally rest.

[Yeah, there's... definitely an implication there.]

UNDERTALE SPOILERS

[your_best_friend]

Heh... Heh heh... That's how I first discovered I can SAVE and LOAD.

[voidseeing]

You mean like data?

[He still doesn't fully understand exactly how anything Flowey does works.]

[your_best_friend]

It's more like... going through various points in the timeline. And a RESET is going through to the earliest point in the timeline that you... well, were aware of.

And let me tell you, there was this one bonehead that caused me to go through way too many RESETS.

[voidseeing]

... that only works if you want to change the outcome.

[And honestly? Gai's okay with it. He's at peace. Mana is finally at peace. The world is safe, and Shu and Inori can live their lives the way they want to.]

[your_best_friend]

Heh... You may be okay with that, but...

...

To be honest... Even though I have no emotions... the thought of it happening to me... the thought of me dying... terrifies me. It's such a primal thought... It's why I always come back.

[voidseeing]

It was inevitable. Even if I hadn't died the way I had, I wouldn't have lasted more than a year.

[Death is something he'd prepared himself for long ago.]

It becomes less frightening when you know it's something that's going to happen sooner rather than later.

[cantwaittowatch]

I mean, that's what it does. What do you even mean? Morally?

[She sounds SO cold here in her chipperness but it's clear that she listened very closely so it's more like she just doesn't even know where to put one word in front of the other.]

[voidseeing]

I mean that I'm dead.

[He's no fool; he'd known he didn't have any chance of survival the moment those crystal spikes had pierced his body. No possible medical treatment could have saved someone from injuries like that, and even Hare's void wasn't likely to be able to heal that amount of damage....]

[cantwaittowatch]

So, what, is some shinigami going to write your name down in a notebook?

[The rearrangement of units is unsurprisingly casual for the Physicist. She tilts her head.]

It'd cause problems if you were back in the city. But maybe it wouldn't be so bad with Brother and Sister in Shikoku.

[voidseeing]

I'm not going to run away from what I've done.

[Even though comparatively what he's done here has been... a lot less bad than what many of his companions were responsible for, but!]

If they need someone to blame, then I'll play that role. It's all the same to me.

HERE IT IS. THE THING

[cantwaittowatch]

No, I guess you're not that type to let this stuff get to you.

[Still... She eyes the flute. Or looks for where he might have put it away.]

If you're gonna make waves that big, the ripples might get to Shikoku. They'll have questions about your new body and then the descendants of biological engineering too.

[As in the aforementioned brother and sister.]

HMMM NOPE DON'T LIKE THAT

[voidseeing]

You think they aren't already going to have questions about my body if the cancer starts appearing?

[The cancer that was, you know, caused by a certain someone attempting to bioengineer him, which is exactly why he does not like this revelation one bit.]

[cantwaittowatch]

...they probably will.

[She looks him up and down for signs already.]

You should know the transfusions were a pretty elaborate setup from here too, like the other drugs. When you were going to be wrapped up in Kanto before a second month, I didn't exactly plan for this scenario.