Chapter Text
F-09-22: Repeating Spring.
You took cover behind the steel doorway, feeling the rough bite of rust through the thin fabric of your sleeves. The dilapidated interface that controlled the Abnormality’s containment cell beeped incessantly, its red alarm lights shining even through the dirt and scum that covered its long neglected surface.
You peeked into the room, the singular cherry tree within it now glowing with the light of a dying star. Winds that should’ve been impossible for the musty, mold-covered ruins you were in to have, roared out from it with the force of a hurricane, having already blown open the steel door that used to keep it locked within.
“M-Mister Rien..! I!–”
A voice you’ve never heard before, in a place where you should’ve been alone in, called out from within the tree.
“I don’t want–” you squinted your eyes, shimmering petals and screaming currents tearing at your face as you beheld the sight of a… person, clawing her way out of the hollow base of the tree. Every instinct in your body, from your tensed calves to the hands you held up to your face to your lamb-like ears that fluttered in the wind, screamed at you to run. To leave. It had never brought you any good to stick around other people before, so why would it now?
Yet somehow…
“I don’t want you–” …hearing her voice made you feel something different. “–To forget me..!”
She burst from the cavity within the tree, smashing into the sheer steel wall with enough force to leave a crater in it. The magnitude of the impact was so great that it sent rumbling echoes throughout the entire facility, liberating lines of rust that then fell from the ceiling like red, rotten snow.
…Did she die..? You thought.
As the winds and light quickly died down, you stuck your head out into the room, before heading into it altogether.
There, slumped against a wall, lay a girl with short, curly black hair and round, smashed up glasses. She wore the white cape of the Index, which draped over a white vest accompanied by an ink black tie and a similarly dark long-sleeved undershirt. She wore a black pleated skirt, and had thigh-high boots with golden trimmings around their soles.
Most saliently of all, though, was the giant golden collar around her neck that covered half of her face, linked via chains to a cuff that restrained her white gloved hands.
She groaned, her eyes winced shut in pain as she struggled, and failed, to get up.
“Are you okay?” you asked, hesitant to approach as your eyes flicked between her and the now serene cherry tree.
“I… ah?” she adjusted the broken glasses on her face, her eyes opening only slightly before she took notice of where she was. She stared at you, wide-eyed and blinking rapidly, as if in disbelief of what she was looking at, before taking a quick glance at the room around her.
“W-Where am I?” she asked, pushing herself back against the wall, as if she was afraid. “Where… where is Ren? Big sis Yoshihide..?”
“I… don’t know who those people are,” you said. Her cloak, which had been unstained just moments prior, suddenly began to turn red as it steeped in the blood that made its way out of her. “Oh– you’re… bleeding.”
She lifted her cuff up, tilting her head as best as she could to see the blood for herself.
“A-ah, you’re right, I’m sorry,” she scooted off of the wall, stumbling to her feet as she checked where she sat for blood.
“Woah, it’s okay!” You rushed forward, catching her by surprise as you gently held her by her arms to support her. “Come, let me take you somewhere I can treat you.”
She stood frozen for a second, her round, black irises glimmering with little white stars as she stared at your face, each one a milky night sky in its own right.
“O-okay. Thank you...”
You tried arranging her onto yourself, though not without the large cuff and collar she had on her getting in the way of you adequately supporting her. After some kerfuffle, you landed on a decently comfortable position, with one hand supporting her waist and another supporting her arms.
Slowly, you guided her out of the Abnormality’s containment cell, before leading her down the partially caved in hallways of the ruined facility.
Moss and mildew covered almost every inch of the decaying compound, and the few overhead lights that still operated had been concealed by several layers of green algae and minute foliage. Only a few rays of white light managed to filter through the greenery, just barely enough for you to be able to make out your next step.
Not that you necessarily needed to see, of course. Your ears were sensitive enough to be able to echolocate all on their own.
“Is… this your home..?” the girl asked timidly, her near-whispering voice muffled even further by her oversized metal collar.
“Kinda. It’s… more like a temporary stay,” you said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch your name earlier. What should I call you?”
“Ah… Sora. My name is Sora.”
Sora. What a pretty name.
“Do you know how you got here, Sora?”
You already knew a few things about the Abnormality that she had come out of. You understood that it was a Tool type Abnormality. You knew that it functioned by sending whoever interacted with it a certain amount of time into the future, after which that person had to then relive time in reverse as they gradually returned to the present day.
What the manuals hadn’t told you, though, was that a complete stranger would come bursting out of the woodworks, literally, to join you once you completed living the skipped time in retrograde. A stranger who had no idea where she was, or who you were.
One with really pretty eyes, though.
“Uhm… no…” you could feel a droplet of her blood trickle down the arm you had wrapped around her, and you moved to support her better. “The last thing I remember was… fighting big sis Yoshiside. She was moving so fast… and her sword…”
“...What about it?”
Clang!
The shining metal of Ryoshu’s Arayashiki sung through the sweltering air of the House of Spiders, deflected off of its course by Sora’s shadowy claws. The two leapt around each other, Sora dancing and weaving her way through arcs of steel that seemed to erase the very air they tore through, unable to even consider a counterattack in the face of the Non-Self.
To her side, Ren held off the coordinated onslaught of two figures, one dressed uncannily similarly to the Thumb Nursefather, and the other wearing the equipment of a Wing she recognised as the fallen L. Corp. The hems of his hakama glowed and turned to cinders as he dodged in and out of the attacks of their blade and barrel, his sword fighting hard to fend off their encroaching red and blue flames.
“Arayashiki… It was tearing me apart.”
Sora spied an opening, lunging through it like a bolt of darkness as she made a beeline for Ryoshu’s sword-arm.
“Slay the Heavens–” Ryoshu deflected her straight assault with a singular curved blow. “–Tiansha.”
The silvery edge of her blade ripped its way through Sora’s body, tearing through as if it were cutting through air. The winds themselves shrieked as she sliced again and again, the looping whorls of her attack ripping wider the invisible wounds she inflicted onto Sora’s body.
“Not just by cutting me…” Sora lifted her arms to her chest, as if trying to shield herself. “But by… e-erasing me.”
Each incision, each cut, each jag Ryoshu made through the fabrics of Sora’s vest and cloak shot out splatters of her blood, sending them dancing through the air of the ember-lit room. Those droplets of blood twirled, fluttered and floated, but none of them ever landed on the cinder-covered floor she and Ryoshu fought on.
“Erasing you?”
They simply turned white as they flew, shimmering with a pure glow, before fading into the atmosphere.
As if they never existed in the first place.
“Mmh,” she hummed, holding her arms close to her body. “Yeah…”
You sensed that Sora wasn’t exactly keen on recounting the details of whatever battle she was a part of, so you decided to ease up on the questions. That being said… a blade that erased whatever it struck was a very intriguing thing. You’d never heard of anything like that, no Workshop weapon nor Singularity that even came close to being able to do something of that magnitude.
“Arayashiki…” you whispered absentmindedly to yourself.
“A-ah, yeah,” Sora perked up. “It’s a relic that Mister Rien and the other Nursefathers trained big sis Yoshihide to use!”
“A relic..?”
That was a first. In all your travels through the City, all your ventures into the mines of X. Corp, the ruins of the Outskirts, not once had you yourself managed to get your hands on a relic.
“Mhm!” she hummed excitedly. It seemed her vitality was starting to return. Surprising, given the force with which she had slammed into that wall with, but, if she really did manage to survive being torn to ribbons by a literal relic, then it probably meant that she was pretty resilient.
Hold on. If it really was as she said, and Arayashiki was a relic capable of erasing things from existence… then just how was she walking with you? How was she… even existing?
You looked over, viewing her side profile as she marvelled at the sight of the overgrowth covered lights abovehead.
She looked pretty real. Pretty in general too. And the warmth of her body and the feeling of her blood dripping down your arm felt genuine.
You looked back, and despite the lowlight, you could distinctly see the dark red trail of droplets she left behind as she walked.
You shook your head slightly. You could worry about that later. Now was the time to get her back to the facility’s dormitory, where you could treat her wounds. Maybe she could help you figure things out too, once she got to read the Abnormality’s manuals.
“Oh, I… I’m sorry, but,” Sora said, her head shying away as she made fleeting attempts at eye contact with you. “W-what should I call you?”
“You can call me…”