{Observation 5; New allies and mysteries}
In the middle of the northeastern part of the city was an abandoned comic book shop.
A relic of the past, forgotten and made fun of.
In such a cruel and unforgiving world, there was no need for heroes.
...Even if that weren’t the case, such a paragon of virtue was only a lie.
So, if someone called themselves a hero and acted as such, then they were, without a doubt, lying through their teeth.
Sitting in the middle of the wooden floor, reading an issue of The World’s First Hero, was such a liar.
To tell the truth, the only reason he wanted to do such heroic acts was because he was forcing his newfound morals on others.
There wasn’t any such virtuous goal as ‘doing the right thing’ in his mind.
This person was Laurence, the fake hero of the city, who called himself Phoenix.
“Hm...This comic’s really good, even more so than the others.”
Laurence muttered this absentmindedly to the other person sitting in the room with him, Thomas, who was also reading a comic, albeit a different one from Laurence.
He looked up from his issue of The Lion and grinned.
“I thought you’d like it. It’s more about the dialogue between characters than the action though. Thought it might help you with your troubles speaking like a hero.”
At the mention of the hidden motive Laurence frowned a bit.
He knew Thomas only had an interest in him as a hero and not as a person.
Granted, Laurence only wanted the resources and a place to call his home for a while, so he didn’t try to think of Thomas as a person either.
Yet, yesterday night, Laurence had thanked Thomas so sincerely that he felt sick to his stomach for even doing such a thing.
It was a little hard not to treat him like a person after that, and he doubted that Thomas was only thinking of Laurence as something to fulfill his dreams with.
It was actually more foolish to think that they didn’t care about each other to begin with.
They were human, after all; even if you were an enemy, you at least cared about what the other was going to do and if it could affect you.
Thomas must have been catching what Laurence was thinking, because he sighed and put down his comic.
“Yeah… I guess this is a little awkward. We’re too used to the idea of simply using people that it’s hard to open up, huh?”
“But in your case, it’s more like you force people to open up with your power.”
Thomas scratched his head at the mention of his power and nodded.
“I guess that makes sense.”
“So does this mean we’re friends or something?”
Laurence posed the question with a pondering tone.
‘Friends’ was a word one didn’t use too often.
Business partners or acquaintances was the most common to describe someone's relationship to another in the city.
Yet, mere business partners or acquaintances do not let someone live with them or share their food.
Thomas also seemed to ponder this dilemma before reaching a conclusion.
“Friends… doesn’t sound too right. I haven’t really told you anything about myself yet, other than I’m living on my own and that I like heroes.”
“Hmm… I suppose that makes sense. So then are we just roommates?”
“Roommates, huh? That sounds about right.”
Thomas agreed with the assessment and went back to reading.
Laurence looked around at the interior of the store once more, eyeing up the rows upon rows of comics on the shelves, as well as the ones on the floor that both him and Thomas were too lazy to put away.
Even though it had been a month since Yuna died… everything still felt a little surreal.
He never would have imagined he would be sitting here, reading comics with a young boy he barely knew, much less going around and calling himself a hero.
Laurence considered whether he was actually mentally insane, and was just hallucinating all of this, but he decided it wouldn’t change anything if that were the case.
Insanity or this reality seemed about right for him, considering how Yuna’s death affected him.
Just earlier, he had been fighting for his life against a mutant known as Gregory, only for it to be broken up by Birdy.
After that, he just came back to the comic book store, told Thomas what happened, and they’ve just been lunging around since then.
Laurence accomplished his goal for the day (sortof), so there wasn’t really anything he wanted to do.
But the thought of ‘what’s next’ popped into his head whenever his mind wandered.
He knew that things were far from perfect in the city and he only just barely took a step forward in making things better.
Heck, it was mostly Birdy that did the work, convincing Gregory to change his ways.
At the realization he had barely done anything, the thought of ‘what’s next’ seemed to grow in his mind, giving him a headache.
Laurence let out a long sigh and lay down on the wooden floor, just as a knocking sound came from the front door of the comic book store.
“Hm?”
The questioning hum from Laurence’s mouth contrasted with his face, becoming a serious expression.
If someone had found out he was going around using blue flames and followed him here… then the result wasn’t a good one.
Thomas was of the same mindset, having dropped the comic and running towards the back for the gauntlets.
However, a voice came from beyond the door that made them both freeze.
“Laurence and Thomas, I’m Birdy’s sister Ruri. Let me in, we need to talk.”
Both Laurence and Thomas looked at each other.
Laurence had, of course, explained what Birdy told Gregory earlier, so he knew of Ruri.
She was a mutant who could talk to the dead.
But it wasn’t like they could simply believe her, as there was seemingly no reason for her to appear there in the first place, not to mention be able to know where they were.
Ruri answered their suspicions in the next moment, however.
“Thomas can simply read my mind to see that I’m sincere, and as for you Laurence-”
Laurence perked up as his name was mentioned and his eyes widened at the following words.
“-Yuna has been following you around, so of course-”
Laurence slammed opened the front door without a second thought, to two women; one was Birdy and the other looked almost exactly like her.
“-I would know where you are.”
At the end of her sentence, as she looked at Laurence’s bewildered face, Ruri gave a friendly smile.
“Nice to meet you, Laurence.”
* * * * * *
The comic book store was a little more crowded now, for something that had been abandoned.
Grabbing some folding chairs from the back and bringing them to the floor, Thomas positioned them in the center of the room after the piles of comics had been pushed to the side by Laurence and their two guests.
As many questions as Laurence had, he knew it probably would be answered by Ruri, who no doubt had a firm grasp of what he was up to.
If Yuna told her, then it was without question.
Thomas had also checked her mind just to make sure, and he saw no problem with this turn of events.
When they had finally sat down, there was a moment of silence between the four.
Three of them were looking at Ruri, to which two of them looked to Birdy In response.
It was as if Birdy herself had wanted answers to something, which seemed odd.
Returning the gaze of Laurence and Thomas, Birdy shrugged.
“She dragged me here without telling me much.”
So then Birdy didn’t know anything upon coming here? Laurence thought to himself.
Clearing her throat, Ruri grabbed the attention of everyone else and started.
“I know this is sudden, especially since everything that happened earlier this morning, but I’ve decided to act before another unexpected event happens.”
Everyone gave Ruri a confused look to which she mouthed an ‘ah’.
“Of course none of you would know yet, but let's leave that for now. I’ll tell you what I mean later, since telling you now would make the following conversation harder to process. I hope you understand.”
Laurence gave a look of exasperation, as if to say, ‘Just tell us now!’.
Birdy gave a look of patient understanding.
Thomas, however, was wide-eyed and seemingly distraught.
Ruri realized her mistake and covered the mouth of Thomas, surprising the other two.
“That was my fault, I suppose. But you agree with my decision, right?”
Thomas nodded slowly and Ruri removed her hand from his mouth.
Now the other two were even more curious about what this unexpected event could have been, but Ruri ignored them and sat back in her seat.
“I know this has probably been said before, but it needs to be said again, ‘This world is wrong’. But it’s not just the world, but rather, us as well. For example, why would a shy shut-in of a twin sister suddenly want to go out and meet some random people she’s never met before?”
“Ah!”
Birdy covered her mouth in the next moment, having realized what her sister was getting at.
The way things were felt wrong, yes, but then why did they let it continue for so long?
“‘I just did something out of character for me, as if it had been a lie all along.’ Have any of you had that thought before?”
Laurence nodded, putting aside his earlier curiosity for the sake of the conversation.
“Yeah, but I thought that maybe it was because Yuna’s death caused me to change.”
Laurence spoke the words, pondering, then he looked regretful at the very next moment.
Ruri laughed, then shook her head.
“She’s actually happy that you're so hung up on that. She’s also wondering if you hate her because of that.”
Laurence’s eyes widened and he choked back some tears.
Yuna was there. Right now.
“Ah, I meant to only mention her later so that you wouldn’t be distracted. Hm, I suck at this.”
Ruri made fun of herself with a mocking scowl.
This conversation had just started and already it was a mess, but even so, she continued on.
“So yeah, basically most of our memories are fake.”
At first, they doubted what they heard Ruri saying, but as they looked around at each other, they realized that they didn’t mishear her at all.
Birdy stared blankly at her sister, who gave a smile in her direction.
“I’m not saying that our relationships are fake, mind you, I’m merely saying that we aren’t remembering everything. Although, I guess it’s hard to believe me, considering I’m seemingly saying this out of nowhere, but can I ask you to humor me for a while?”
Ruri seemed to command the attention of the few in that room, her voice unwavering as she spoke.
“There was something odd about all the dead I’ve been speaking with as of late; they only remember dying within the last month and even stranger is that all of the dead I’ve supposedly spoken to who died before that one month suddenly disappeared. Gone without a trace, as if they were fake to begin with.”
Ruri tapped her head and looked at the ground, exhaling loudly, as though she were calming herself down, before continuing.
“Of course, I thought I was going crazy, but then you started acting differently, Rumi.”
At the mention of her real name, Birdy opened her eyes a little wider.
“Me?”
“That’s right, you. And it happened within that one month I noticed the strange details involving the dead. That’s when I started thinking long and hard about why things changed so suddenly. I asked the spirits for help, to go out and observe the different residents of the city, and found that more and more oddities popped up, why did we have trusted friends and lovers, much less family members? It’s contradictory, how we can have these people in our lives if we are so cruel and selfish.”
“What do you mean?”
Laurence then answered Birdy’s question, as if he reached the same conclusion as Ruri.
“If we only cared about ourselves at the start of the apocalypse, then what caused people to open up enough to others to the point where they can have families?”
“Oh!”
Ruri nodded.
“That’s right. I’m not saying that working together with others has no benefit whatsoever that would appeal to our selfish sides, but raising a family together with someone you care about? Now that’s a vulnerability that nobody would want in these circumstances.”
Ruri’s voice was calm and calculating now, like the socially awkward shut-in that Birdy knew was merely a lie… and she started to realize just how real this idea that their memories were fake started to become.
Laurence seemed to doubt something, however, his mouth becoming a frown.
“But what if it’s just in our nature to be contradictory?”
Ruri seemed to think about that point for a moment, then nodded.
“Hm, that might be true, since we have no idea what our nature as people was like before the apocalypse… but that wasn’t the biggest point in favor of our memories being faked. The biggest one was that everyone started acting differently a month ago.”
“One month ago…”
Laurence thought back to how he killed Yamada’s lover, whose name now escaped him.
He wondered if it was because he didn’t want to humanize her, as that would make what he did feel more painful, but it was that exact thought that was strange.
“I killed someone and now I’m bothered by it, yet I wasn’t bothered by any of the previous people I killed?”
Laurence asked this aloud, as if to reaffirm Ruri’s points.
Granted, he hadn’t been too bothered when he killed her, and the only time he started having regrets was the next day, but he had merely dismissed it as him wishing he hadn’t killed her because Yuna may have then been alive.
If that wasn’t the case, then maybe he was bothered about it because…
“Was she the first person I’ve actually killed?”
He killed someone for the first time one month ago… the idea was absurd, considering all of these vivid detail of how he killed again and again.
He even killed some of Yamada’s men the next day, but…
Ruri, shook her head.
“I don’t know, as I never payed any attention to you. To tell you the truth, I never got to learn what you had been doing up until today, as Yuna only got the chance to communicate with me after following my sister back home.”
Yuna had no way of knowing that Birdy’s sister was able to communicate with the dead until today, as that’s when Laurence found out as well.
“So… Yuna’s been watching over me, all of this time?”
Ruri looked to the side for a bit, then she turned to Laurence and shook her head.
“Most of the time, but for a while she didn’t know where you were. She didn’t even realized she had died either, so she just hung around your place until people started ransacking it… that was when she realized she wasn’t able to be heard, much less able to physically stop them. She said she wandered around aimlessly as a spirit, looking for you, until you started using the braces.”
“The braces…?”
Ruri nodded and looked at Thomas, who perked up and nodded in response.
Having been reading her mind, he had understood things faster than everybody else, and walked into the back to retrieve the braces and hand them to Ruri.
She looked them over in her hands, then passed them off to Laurence.
“What do you think these braces summon? It clearly isn’t real fire, yet it has the warmth of a human being. Surely you know the answer?”
The hint Ruri gave him, combined with him recalling how he first caused the flames to come forth, made it easy to see what it truly was.
“No way…”
“These braces are a way of summoning the spirits and converting them into a form that can affect the physical world. By sheer luck, you managed to summon Yuna’s soul and have been using her spirit ever since. Oh, and she says that she never felt any pain while being used, before you worry about that.”
Laurence looked at the braces, stunned.
He never once thought about what the flames were made from or where they had come from, and even if he did, he couldn’t have even guessed the truth.
He looked up at Ruri a bit skeptically, despite knowing that she must have been telling the truth, however.
Ruri gave a smirk in response to the suspicion.
“You first met Yuna when you were ransacking her parent’s home, you admitted to her that you were scared of her the first time you saw her kill a person, you also admitted to stealing her underwear when you reached pu-”
“Okay, okay, I believe you.”
He doubted that Ruri would have gathered that information from anyone other than Yuna.
Technically speaking, it was possible for other spirits to have eavesdropped on them during those times, yet he didn’t think Ruri would have put so much faith in him if she didn’t hear from Yuna first.
She was serious about all this.
“Of course, those memories can’t be real.”
Ruri’s voice lost all humor and became serious, looking between Laurence and Birdy.
“There’s too little dead going around for the apocalypse to have been twenty-ish years ago, not to mention our changing values. If anything, only the month prior was real.”
“But that’s…”
Birdy trailed off, and shook her head.
She had the feeling that Ruri wasn’t just saying this all on a whim.
Ruri tilted her head to the side and looked at Birdy curiously.
“It’s alright to doubt me, even if we are family. I’d look at you strangely too. Nonetheless, to make sure we’re all on the same page, I should probably mention that Gregory’s brother and mother don’t exist.”
At the mention of Gregory, Birdy’s eyes widened.
Birdy had only briefly mentioned Gregory to her and what was going on, yet she knew that he had a brother and mother who had died, whereas Birdy hadn’t learned until she overheard his yelling upon being restrained by Laurence.
“Gregory himself confirmed this.”
The meaning of those following words sunk into the heavy atmosphere of the room and made it uncomfortable.
The only way Gregory could have confirmed this himself…
“He died?”
Laurence asked the question just slightly above a whisper and Ruri nodded.
“Killed not even 5 minutes after leaving you two. First thing he did was come to the address listed on the paper Birdy gave him.”
“W-wait! This is way too fast!”
Birdy exclaimed this, the suddenness of everything confusing her.
“How did you learn all of this and come to all of these conclusions so soon? It’s strange, right?”
Birdy went straight home after what transpired with Gregory and Ruri was acting as though nothing had happened from the moment she had walked into their home.
It didn’t make sense to her that the ghost of Gregory would beat her, and even less sense that Yuna would, as she was following Birdy.
Ruri tapped her head, as if it were a legitimate answer.
“Spirits also live on a different timezone than us. In order for me to communicate with them effectively, my mind works much faster than any normal human’s or mutant’s. Although I will admit it was a bit impatient of me to come here right away.”
“But… you speak normally around them…”
“I can’t imagine how you would look at me if I spoke at them with the speed I usually would. Even if I explained it, it’s still an unsettling sound, as my body isn’t made to specifically communicate with the spirits. So it was simply better to pretend I had to talk with them normally when you were around. I finish my conversation, albeit slowly, and you’re none the wiser.”
At the mention of it, everyone did realize that Ruri was speaking hastily, faster than most people would converse.
Thomas frowned and clutched his head.
“My mind is a bit numb after hearing Ruri’s thoughts, but I thought I was imagining things”
Ruri looked at Thomas curiously.
“Did you more or less get all of it?”
“Yeah… I guess my mind can keep up with fast thoughts, somehow.”
“I see.”
With a nod, Ruri looked over the others.
She had been worried that it might have taken more time for her to convince them that what she said was the truth, but she underestimated them.
Thomas could trust her since he could read her mind, and Laurence could as well, not to mention the fact that she knew things Yuna was the most likely person to know.
As for Birdy, of course she would believe her sister.
It wouldn’t make them family if they doubted them in the crucial moments.
Ruri seemed content that they accepted her words as truth, so she continued.
“I don’t know exactly why things are this way though. I just know that someone falsified our memories regarding the apocalypse. Of course, it might just be more than that, since I doubt there would be no dead before last month, so just keep that in mind. There are a few things I have left to say though. Laurence, Yuna wants to know how she died.”
Laurence gave a wide-eyed look before taking a deep breath in.
He didn’t want to remember that day, but if Yuna didn’t remember, he wasn’t about to deny her the right to know.
“I don’t know what happened persay, but… I found you in the spare room. It looked like you had run into there before… having your face ruined by an axe.”
With the most important knowledge being that Yuna was fine, even though she was dead, Laurence was able to answer as accurately as possible.
Ruri, however, gave a frown almost immediately.
“Seems like our memories aren’t the only thing being messed with.”
“...What?”
Laurence asked the question incredulously.
With the way she had said it, it was as if she suggested Yuna’s death was altered in some way.
Meeting Laurence’s gaze, Ruri nodded as if to confirm that it was indeed what she implied.
“Yuna woke up as a spirit, but her last memory of being alive was sleeping on the couch. If she had died while sleeping, then this wouldn’t have been a problem, but if she had run in there- well, you get it. Oh, and spirits aren’t able to ‘forget’, before you ask.”
Knowing Thomas would simply call out any lies, Laurence had no choice but to accept that spirits were like that, but this posed a bigger problem.
Yamada was the killer of Yuna, but if he had killed her while she was asleep, then wouldn’t she have been lying dead on the couch?
He could have moved her, but it made no sense for him to do so.
His only goal was to kill Yuna for his empty revenge, so moving the body was pointless.
Part of that revenge was having Laurence see the body, so hiding it, especially so half-assedly, made about as much sense as Laurence’s character development. (Hello observer, while I’m breaking the fourth wall. It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?”)
(...Ahem.) So then the question was who moved the body, if it was moved at all?
Laurence frowned, even more so than Ruri, his brow furrowing in deep thought.
A lot of information had been thrown his way just now, but the circumstances revolving around Yuna’s death was the only thing on his mind.
“Now then, there’s only one thing left that I wanted to ask.”
Ruri’s voice earned a glance from Laurence, but his mind was on other things at the moment.
“Can me and Rumi live here?”
“Sure.”
“...”
“...What?”
Laurence’s straight answer, one that came from not fully understanding what Ruri was getting at, made Thomas and Birdy look at him with a blank expression.
Ruri gave a big smile, perhaps realizing he hadn’t realized what he just agreed to and stood up.
“Alright, that settles it! Let’s go grab our stuff from home.”
“Wha- Wait a minute!”
Birdy jumped out of her chair, flustered, and gave her sister a glare, which was responded with an amused expression.
“Oh? What, dear sister, are you getting flustered over?”
“Wh-why do we need to live here!?”
“Because we’re going to help them, of course. It would be far too much trouble to move between here and our home to talk to them.”
“Help them?”
“Yup. They can get a steady flow of information from the spirits thanks to me, and you… well, I’d miss you if you weren’t with me.”
“Why am I not even contributing in that sentence?!”
At Birdy’s still flustered face, Ruri tilted her head before making an ‘ah’ sound.
“Oh, I get it. That’s rather shameful of you, isn't it?”
“What is…?”
“To think of something like that which happens when members of the opposite sex live with each other when all I’m doing is suggesting an innocent arrangement to everyone's mutual benefit.”
Birdy’s cheeks grew even redder, then she narrowed her eyes.
“You know that it will bother me.”
Ruri dropped her smile and responded seriously.
“I know.”
“Do we absolutely need to live with them?”
“It would be wiser to. If we were separated, we could get picked off more easily with the way the world is. But since we know we can trust each other, then our odds for survival increase if we stick together.”
Birdy eyed Laurence, who seemed to fully understand what they were talking about now, giving a nervous laugh in response to her gaze.
Sighing, Birdy reluctantly nodded.
“I guess it makes sense. But you better not pull anything…”
Ruri smiled mischievously as she answered her fears.
“As long as Yuna’s spirit is around, he won’t do anything.”
At that note, Birdy’s face became one of realization and she nodded, convinced.
Laurence surely wouldn’t do anything distasteful with Yuna around.
Ruri already knew this fact, which was why she pushed for living with them right after meeting them.
Although, she felt as though he wouldn’t have gone that far anyways.
“Well, now that- Everyone, we have company.”
At Ruri’s sudden shift in tone and topic, everyone looked to where she had snapped her head towards; the front entrance.
Her eyes narrowed, then she spoke in an upset whisper.
“One of the girls who was with Gregory’s killer is out there.”
* * * * * *
Lucy’s purple eyes looked at the comic book store, wondering whether she should simply knock on the door.
She had thought that it may have been too obvious for Phoenix to have been hiding away there, but it wasn’t as though she had any other leads to his whereabouts.
And, if it was his hideout, she would look at him with judging eyes; there were no other places in the city that screamed out ‘superheroes!’ more than this one.
Crossing her arms, she thought about what she would say after knocking on the door, if he was there.
Hmm… I can’t just simply go in and say, ‘Hey, you think all of this is wrong too, right?” Sigh.
Ironically, someone had already done that, but she had no way of knowing that a mind-reader was inside the comic book store, so she hesitated.
She thought that whatever excuse she came up with would be met with doubt, especially for such an irrational line of thinking.
Lucy looked at the issues of comics covering the front window, then back to the front door, boarded up as though it had been abandoned for a long time.
That being said, every place in the city, even the ones being inhabited, looked like it had been abandoned.
Eventually, Lucy decided to knock on the door, after giving up on finding a better reason to visit him.
If he didn’t believe her, then that was that.
She took the rough, brittle handle in her hand and just as she was about to pull on it, the door opened.
“Ah!”
Lucy jumped back in surprise as she was greeted by a young boy who appeared to be around her age.
It was Thomas, who had been listening in on her thoughts from behind the door.
“She’s good.”
Thomas spoke this to the others inside the store and Lucy looked at him with harsh eyes, body hunched forward and prepared for any sudden movements as her hand reached into her bag.
She felt around for her knife, but ended up grabbing a makeshift smoke bomb instead, as she felt retreat would be wiser if there was danger here.
Turning to face her, he gave a nervous smile.
“Uh… Hello. I’m a mind-reader and my name is Thomas…”
Lucy’s eye twitched for a moment, but she didn’t let her guard down.
“What am I here for?”
“...To see Phoenix.”
“What do I hate the most?”
“Doing nothing.”
Exhaling, she asked her next question in a hushed tone.
“...What do I secretly enjoy, which I’ve never told anyone?”
“...Observing a person with your power as they die.”
Thomas answered in the same hushed tone, understanding her embarrassment.
She was convinced he was a mind-reader, but if Phoenix wasn’t in there, then she had no reason to risk going in.
Hearing this cautious reason, Thomas called back into the store.
“Laurence, can you come here?”
Lucy’s eyes remained on Thomas until another person entered her field of vision, one she didn’t recognize, but was willing to admit could have been Phoenix.
“...Powers.”
Laurence looked at Lucy a little oddly before her eyes narrowed and she backed up a bit more.
“Show me your powers, then I’ll know for sure.”
Laurence looked at Thomas, as he was the only one who could say for sure whether they could trust Lucy, and he nodded encouragingly.
After going to the back to retrieve the braces, Lucy immediately recognized them and relaxed a little, but still waited for the blue flame to appear.
Laurence put the braces on his left arm, and some flame came out.
Lucy observed it and saw that she couldn’t make out what it was made of, just like before.
Making a sigh of relief, Lucy finally stood upright and let go of the bomb before moving her hand out of her bag.
“Okay. Now let me in before anyone happens to walk by.”
The street the comic book store was on wasn’t one that people walked on usually, but there wasn’t necessarily a reason for them to avoid it.
There were just better streets to take, whether it was to get somewhere faster or simply because there wasn’t much reason to go anywhere on said street.
Thomas and Laurence let Lucy inside, where an upset pair of twins awaited.
Ruri seemed to get over it rather quickly, however, as she didn’t know the entire story of why she had been there when Gregory died.
Lucy gave a confused look at the twins for this reaction, but when she realized that it was Birdy’s sister, Ruri, she recalled the conversation she had overheard with the valkyries.
If she could communicate with Gregory’s ghost...
“Oh, so you know I was there when Gregory died.”
At this remark Ruri, gave a questioning look, then smirked.
“Did you eavesdrop on their conversation in the alleyway?”
Now Lucy was the one who looked back at Ruri with questioning eyes.
She’s a quick thinker.
“...Yes, I did. I’m sure you have your share of questions for me, but just to be sure, all of us here are aware that there's something wrong with the way things are?”
Ruri had a brief expression of surprise on her face before she smiled bitterly.
“And yet you didn’t prevent his death…”
By this time, Laurence and Thomas had already sat back down in their seats after Thomas had retrieved a chair for Lucy to sit in.
Lucy ignored the obvious resent in Ruri’s voice and sat down as well.
She knew why she spoke in such a way, considering that she allowed the killing to go through despite knowing things weren’t ‘right’.
But she made no effort to apologize; there wasn’t an excuse she could make that would justify her actions.
Sighing, Lucy began to speak.
* * * * * *
“Well, that was eventful.”
Birdy stated this while scratching the back of her head with a troubled expression.
She was currently alone with Laurence, although she was sure that Yuna was there as well, even if she couldn’t sense her like her sister.
They sat in the middle of the store, so that they didn’t disturb Thomas and Ruri, who were sleeping peacefully in the back.
Even so, they kept their voices quiet, just to make sure.
They finished talking with Lucy two hours ago.
During that time, they explained how it seemed likely that their memories before last month had been falsified, to which Lucy seemed able to accept readily.
She, in turn, explained of the existence of the Valkyries; a group of herself, Erika, and Hana, their leader, who dedicated themselves to bringing justice to those that were ‘evil’.
At the mention of Erika’s name, Laurence frowned.
He did even more so when the description matched up with Gregory’s testimony of who killed him (who spoke through Ruri).
Before Lucy left, she said this to Laurence; “Hana wants you to join our group… Of course, I’m sure that won’t happen, but she’ll come looking for you. Not only that, but she still stubbornly set in her ways. I don’t even know if she has a sense of what's going on like we do either. So it might take some convincing before she comes around… I’ll try to help, but I don’t want her to feel betrayed. For now, I’ll just head back and we’ll go from there.”
With those words, Lucy struck Laurence as the type to just do whatever felt right; an impulsive girl.
He himself was impulsive, but he lacked the self awareness to realize it.
Anyways, after grabbing some stuff from Ruri and Birdy’s home and bringing it back to the store, it was already nighttime.
Laurence looked at Birdy and nodded.
“First Gregory, then your sister's theory about our memories, Lucy coming in and…. Yuna. ”
Laurence sighed as he leaned back in his seat, looking at the ceiling.
“I wonder if she can even understand what we’re saying, or if we speak too slowly for her to recognize it as speech…”
“Laurence…”
Birdy looked at Laurence with sympathy, but he shook his head dismissively.
“No, it’s fine. Simply knowing shes here is enough for me.”
“I see.”
Birdy shifted around uncomfortably despite those words, however.
She had used Laurence to enter and rob Bug’s home.
She had seen Laurence kill two people without any mercy, even going so far as to beating up the dead bodies.
She had then seen him stagger through the rain, a broken man who had lost everything to live for.
And now, here they were, sitting in the same room without so much as an ulterior motive for either party.
With how quickly everything changed, Birdy was having a hard time being relaxed.
Not to mention she wasn’t sure whether he would forgive her for saving Bug.
Hiding it might just make things worse…
Birdy sighed at this thought and steeled herself as she admitted the truth.
“So, you know… I saved Bug after you left his place.”
Laurence looked at Birdy with a blank expression, then, as realization dawned on his face, he made an ‘oh’ sound.
At this underwhelming reaction, Birdy was taken aback.
“You don’t care?”
Laurence shook his head.
“Well, to tell you the truth, I forgot about him.”
“...Oh.”
Birdy sighed, thinking that she was silly for thinking it was a big deal to begin with.
Laurence chuckled a bit and she looked at him with suspicious eyes.
“What’s so funny?”
“Just your reaction, that’s all.”
At this blunt answer, Birdy couldn’t help but sigh again.
How could she get mad at him when he answered so honestly?
“...”
Laurence still seemed troubled over something, however, as his amusement vanished in an instant.
Birdy wondering what could have possibly caused this sudden change, heard him mutter something under his breath.
“Our memories, huh.”
That was when Birdy realized; if her sister was right, then that meant that Laurence’s relationship with Yuna could have been one that only existed because of the current circumstances.
She didn’t quite know what to say in this situation, as she couldn’t possibly know how much time Laurence had supposedly spent with Yuna before last month.
What she did know is that he couldn’t have spent much time with her past that point, as she had died just afterwards.
Laurence gave a sideways look at the comics lying around on the floor, lost in thought.
“If… If we were made to be a couple because of fake memories, then does that mean we were never in love to begin with? I want to doubt what your sister is saying, but I can’t because what she says makes sense… so then…”
Laurence shut his mouth forcibly, not wanting to finish his sentence.
Birdy looked awkwardly at the wooden floor, even more uncomfortable than she was before.
Even so, she still found something to say.
“But… you were in love during that short time, right? Those feelings and actions then were real, so…”
Laurence looked at Birdy with wide eyes, surprised.
“‘Actions’? ...Were you watching us?”
“Huh? ...No, no, no! What I mean is, uh… you wouldn’t have been so angry if Yuna didn’t matter to you, or even be relieved to know that she's alright… right?”
Birdy said her point despite being a little flustered and Laurence stared at her like he saw her for the first time.
“Wh- what’s with that look?”
“...Why are you trying to cheer me up?”
At the intense attention she was receiving, Birdy looked to the side and put her hands on her lap.
“I… I just can’t stand to see you like that again.”
The impression that Laurence left on the day that he walked aimlessly in the rain terrified her.
But, at the same time, it made her feel pain.
She had never seen anyone as hopelessly lost as Laurence looked on that day.
This wasn’t because it was Laurence, but because she empathized with other people's emotions the moment she saw them.
Another sign that her previous personality had been a lie.
Birdy was more emotional and caring than she was before.
Laurence seemed to be confused on what Birdy had meant, but she just shook her head.
“Nevermind, it’s nothing. Just… try not to take on everything by yourself, alright?”
“? Okay…?”
“Good. I’m going to bed now.”
“...Goodnight.”
Leaving behind a slightly confused Laurence, Birdy ran away to the back, to the spare room where her sister was sleeping.
She found the empty inflatable mattress beside Ruri’s and threw the sheets over her in an attempt to hide her embarrassment from trying to cheer up Laurence.
Birdy didn’t know that it was okay to be empathetic towards people who weren’t important to you, so she was under the mistaken impression that she had fallen for him when she really hadn’t.
The thought hadn’t even occurred to her, as no one was that nice to others unless they were lovers or family in the city.
She burrowed her head into her pillow until she tired of being flustered and turned over to sleep.
* * * * * *
Lucy entered the hideout with a yawn, having had a long day of hunting down Gregory and finding other like her who felt the same way.
Well, at least in terms of this feeling of ‘wrongness’.
It wasn’t that she doubted the idea that they were missing memories, it’s just that there was always the possibility of another explanation for why they were feeling this way.
Ruri had neglected to mention that some spirits disappeared a month ago to Lucy, so that might have been a contributing factor to her conclusion that there might be another explanation.
As she walked into the chilled basement, she felt her skin crawl, but not in an unpleasant way; she was used to this feeling and it helped her relax.
This was her home, along with the other valkyries, so it was easy to unwind here.
She saw that the others were nowhere to be found in the main room, however, so she walked around the corner into the hallway that led to their ‘strategy room’.
This was the room they used the most next to the main room and like the name implied, it’s where they made plans.
Lucy knocked on the closed door and it was opened by Hana, who looked grim.
“Where were you?”
“I had an idea of where we could find Phoenix, but it was just a waste of time.”
Lucy responded while shrugging, but Hana appeared to be in no mood for her lax attitude.
“Just get in here.”
At Hana’s stern tone, Lucy blinked for a moment and walked into the room.
The room had a plain table made of wood in the center with a scribbled on map of the city laying on top of it.
The map was hand drawn by Lucy herself, at least, if her memories were to be trusted.
The wobbly chairs, the hanging light fixture barely in it’s place overhead, the rough, chipped walls… all of this was familiar.
What wasn’t familiar to Lucy was the panicking, tied up man in the corner, bruised and crying.
Her body stiffened and her lips trembled.
“What in the hell-!?”
Erika was also in the room and looked at Lucy’s sudden exclamation from her seat.
Lucy shook her head quickly and sighed, trying to cover up her supposedly out of character moment.
“Well, I didn’t expect to see this when I got back.”
Shrugging, Lucy hid her dismay and tried not to look at the groaning man in the corner, taking a seat.
Hana closed the door and walked over to the man, who was still loudly groaning.
She took off the piece of tape he had on his mouth, to which he yelped, but was immediately silenced by Hana’s glare.
“Go on, tell her what you told us.”
His voice was shaky and cut off from time to time, having obviously been beaten past his limit, yet still somehow conscious.
“W-w-we a-are k-k----k-killing th-th-th----”
Hana kicked him in the side and he screamed out the next words.
“NORMALS! W-WE’RE KILLING THE NORMALS! AND WE’LL KILL YOU TOO! WE’LL KILL ALL OF-”
Hana placed the tape over his mouth after kicking him once more in the side, then threw his face on the ground.
“There you have it; The chosen are going to commit mass genocide against the normals.”
Lucy wasn’t sure what she was unnerved by more; the brutality the nine-year old showed the man, clearly one of the chosen, or the fact that observing the effect it was having on him thanks to her powers calmed her down.
Maybe it was because of her powers that she enjoyed seeing what happened to a certain being or substance.
Having been observing the world through her powers, the reaction in a human’s body was nothing more than something fascinating for her to witness.
Even if her memories were falsified, she enjoyed watching the changes in whatever she was observing right now, so maybe that made the feeling even more of a comfort when confronted with the possibility of false memories.
Putting those thoughts aside, she looked at Hana questioningly.
“It sounded more like a spiteful statement rather than him admitting to a grand plan.”
“He was talking much more… coherently before you arrived.”
Lucy looked back at the man at Hana’s words.
His injuries were far worse than she originally thought, now that she took another look, and she could see the various components of a bone scattered through parts of his body among torn and bruised tissue.
“Did you throw him off a building?”
Lucy directed her question to Erika who nodded in response.
Using her teleportation, she could easily drop another person from the sky.
Erika was also a good judge of distance to the ground, and how much damage it would do to a person if they fell from said height.
A couple of calculated drops and the man no doubt sung like a bird.
But for him to break under the pain and tell the other two of the plans, yet be incoherent and sniveling by the time Lucy had arrived suggested he was tortured even after the two got what they had wanted.
“Did you hurt him even more after getting the information?”
Hana gave Lucy a judging look at her words, and responded with a warning tone.
“Are you sympathizing with him?”
“No, I’m finding it hard to believe you got him to admit anything coherent with the way he is right now.”
Hana narrowed her eyes and gave a ‘hmph’.
“I merely made him face his sins for a while.”
Lucy’s face contorted for a moment, but she tried to keep a straight face on, hoping they hadn’t see her sudden conflict.
Hana’s power made her victims relive whatever suffering they may have inflicted on others.
It was activated by her touch, when she really wanted to use it, and it would make them relive all the memories, pain and emotions they had caused to others.
The worst part was that if she used it for long enough, the victim would eventually die due to their mentality completely giving out from the psychological and physical torture.
Even so, it didn’t take too much for someone to go mad from being touched by Hana.
Lucy started to get a bad feeling in her gut, like things were just going to get progressively worse the more she learned.
Even so, she needed to know what was going on.
“Then why even bother keeping him in the room? Clearly he didn’t help me understand the situation better.”
“How was I supposed to know that he wouldn’t be coherent? Whatever, let’s just kill him.”
At Hana’s blunt statement, Lucy’s bad feeling continued to grow.
With the way she was acting right now, it was more like a child her age that was full of themselves than the leader she had supposedly know for all those years.
Not to mention that her decision to keep the man there to explain what was going on made little to no sense; she could have simply explained the situation to Lucy without showing her anything.
Then there was the fact that she made someone suffer for the sake of making them suffer rather than for the sake of information…
If Hana’s memories were falsified and she was an average nine year old girl, then maybe she's starting to return back to her old personality?
Lucy remembered Hana as a mature and calm collected individual despite her age, but some cracks in that impression was starting to form.
And if she was under the impression that she was just acting as usual…
Lucy frowned internally.
Hana was used to fighting against the harsh circumstances of the city, and she also was relied upon by Erika.
If she did indeed start acting more like someone her age, then she would become hard headed and arrogant, thinking that she was always in the right and refusing to admit that they were in the wrong.
All of those fake memories would get to her head.
Lucy hoped that the idea of fake memories was wrong, more so than ever now.
Because if it were true, then it would be difficult to convince Hana of anything.
Hana stretched her hands out towards the captive and touched his head.
His eyes widened as they rolled back, and his body started spasming violently.
Lucy bit her tongue, knowing that complaining here would only arouse suspicion from her companions.
Even looking at Erika, she didn’t seem to mind killing this man as much as she did with Gregory.
I guess she wouldn’t feel any mercy for someone who’s showed no remorse, or gives no indication that they can change… Lucy concluded.
Erika caught Lucy’s glance and she spoke.
“His powers allow him to electrify whatever he touches with his hands.”
“Huh? ...O-oh.”
Erika seemed to think that Lucy’s expression was curiosity over why the man was spasming upon being subjected to Hana’s powers.
As much of a relief this was, there was still that fact that Hana was murdering someone right in front of her.
If this were a little earlier, then she wouldn’t have minded as much as she did now, but right now, it was taking everything she had to simply keep her mouth shut.
She watched the reactions in his body, how nothing was physically wrong, yet the nerves were sending signals towards the brain regardless, telling him that he was being electrocuted, no doubt.
His mind itself was lit up with all of those signals, creating a beautiful fireworks show to Lucy’s eyes.
This was it.
This was why she liked watching people die so much.
Their innerworkings reached a certain ‘crescendo’ before their lives were extinguished for good.
It disturbed and mystified her, how the images flashed in her eyes, something that can’t be seen by normal eyes.
She knew what each and every particle of his being was doing, and what effect it was having on his body.
It was as if her earlier discomfort completely faded away, watching this.
The man wasn’t human to her anymore; he was simply a thing that released a fantastic chain reaction.
Lucy loved chain reactions; she loved how something that starts off small gets to become bigger and bigger until it’s impossible to ignore.
It was one of the things that felt ‘right’ to her, as in, one of the things that didn’t feel as though it was fake.
And then, as she was watching, something in the man just clicked off.
The brain was still alive, yet he was not.
It fascinated her, and terrified her.
This wasn’t something a normal girl, or person, for that matter, should enjoy.
Hana, perhaps realizing the man would no longer move voluntarily, tossed his head to the ground.
“Okay then, now let’s move on to what we’re going to do about the attack.”
Hana spoke calmly, despite the fact that she had just killed a man, and Lucy realized that maybe Hana was just as messed up as her.
Lucy was grateful that she calmed down, but her stomach slightly turned when thinking about what made her calm down in the first place.
It was truly frustrating to her, yet she enjoyed it.
She almost didn’t catch Hana’s words while she was thinking about it.
“First, adding Phoenix to our ranks should be a top priority. One more person on our side will make things much easier when we try to kill the chosen.”
“...Wait, did you just say kill the chosen?”
Yes, it went without saying that the valkyries killed whichever member of the chosen they got their hands on, but Lucy felt like Hana was getting at something else entirely.
“Yes. We’re going to stop the group once and for all by killing them.”
Lucy couldn’t believe what she was hearing; trying to kill all of the chosen, a group of numerous mutants with powers they had no knowledge of, was tantamount to suicide.
Not only that, but she started losing faith that Hana had thought things through as well as she usually did, supposedly.
Erika didn’t seem to have these worries, as she just nodded her head in agreement.
Lucy frowned and spoke up.
“So what’s the plan, Hana?”
Hana looked at Lucy with confused eyes.
“Plan?”
“Yeah. You’re our leader after all, so you no doubt have an amazing plan for how we’re going to accomplish this.”
The blank look in Hana’s face was all Lucy needed to know that she was in over her head.
“Well, I can’t make one until we know whether we have Phoenix for sure.”
The way she said it almost made Lucy believe it, but she had no doubt that Hana never thought about it to begin with.
That being said, the way Hana explained without any hesitation made Lucy wonder if she actually believed what she was saying.
“So then we need to find Phoenix first.”
Erika noted, to which Hana nodded and turned to Lucy.
“You said you were following a hunch on where he might be, right?”
“Y-yeah. I thought I knew where he might’ve been, but he wasn’t actually there.”
“What location could have made you feel so strongly that he may have been there?”
Lucy tried to put on as nonchalant as an expression as possible, but she was panicking on the inside.
She knew that Laurence and the others wouldn’t agree to anything that Hana had in mind and she felt as though Hana wouldn’t take it well at all.
Not only that, but if the choice came between helping Hana or stopping her… Lucy had no doubt she would try to stop her.
The moment things went sour in trying to get Phoenix on their side, Lucy wouldn’t go back with the valkyries.
She couldn’t imagine how hurt and betrayed Erika and Hana would feel, since it would seem like it came out of nowhere to them.
But she knew that it would be the right choice, since there were too many suspicious things about the city’s circumstances and residents right now.
They didn’t know enough.
Lucy swallowed her fears for a moment and answered honestly for once, lacking the nerve to lie more than she already had to her friends.
“It was the abandoned comic book store in the north-eastern section. He was going on about being a hero and all that, so I thought it might’ve been a good place to start. Way too obvious though.”
Speaking of which, I forgot to tell them how obvious it was… Lucy realized.
“I see. I guess I can see why you checked to make sure, but it really is way too obvious.”
“Indeed.”
Lucy laughed nervously while she scratched her cheek.
Hana seemed to ponder about something after the mention of the comic book store, then she spoke again.
“Let’s go there now.”
At those words, Lucy’s breath stopped.
“Wh-why!?”
At Lucy’s sudden loudness, Hana looked at her with curious eyes before answering.
“Well, for all we know, he could have been out all day. If he went back there to sleep, then he’ll more than likely be there now, don’t you think?”
“Ah, well…”
“For that matter, did you even check inside the store? What was it like?”
“It looked pretty empty, aside from the comics lying around.”
“...Lying around?”
....Uh oh.
Lucy cursed herself mentally as Hana came to a conclusion, which she no doubt would assume was right without a doubt, being the way she was now.
“If they were lying around, then that meant someone had read them at some point, right?”
“But they were all covered in dust, so…”
Lucy tried to cover up as best as she could, but Hana shook her head dismissively.
“We might as well go there to make sure, however. There’s no reason not to, since Erika can just teleport us there and back before we get too tired. Lucy, you’ll tell Erika where to go.”
Lucy dismayed at the thought, but then she realized that she could ‘accidently’ forget where the store was located on the way.
Even this hope, however, was shattered in almost the next moment as Erika stated something.
“Oh, I know where that store is. I’ve seen it a couple of times and it stood out.”
“That’s great, it means we can get there in no time!”
Lucy clutched her head and groaned, ignoring the questioning looks of her friends.
This… is not going to go well.