Chapter Text
The door to the gymnasium crashed open and Eito Aotsuki felt his eyes go wide. His grip on his scythe tightened even as he tried to hide his instinctive revulsion at the disgusting sight of a far too familiar face. “Takumi?”
“Huh? Sumino?” Sirei’s voice echoed Eito’s confusion. The egg-like machine looked just as bewildered as he felt, but Eito tried to focus on making sure he looked appropriately confused and concerned despite the very unfortunate position he’d just been caught in.
“What are you doing–”
“Shut up, Eito,” Takumi Sumino snapped, dressed in his full combat armor with his sword in hand. Which was significantly bluer than the last time Eito saw it. “I’ve done this too many times already, so just keep quiet for once!”
A flash of confusion shot through Eito’s mind, genuine bewilderment piercing through his instinctive discomfort. “Too many–Takumi, what are you talking about?”
“I mean I’ve done this over and over and over again! And every single damned time, nothing goes right! Do you have any idea how many times I’ve been murdered?! And not even just by you, Mister ‘I Hate Humanity’!”
“You what?!” Sirei exclaimed, looking at Eito in open shock.
“And don't think your hands are clean either Mister ‘Will of Humanity’! Do you know how many times you've caused one of our deaths or lobotomized one of us!?” he snapped, before taking a slow breath, “But it’s fine. It’s fine. We’re starting from the top. Sirei, I want you to know, despite everything, I’ve been on your side. I’ve taken Eito captive, I’ve even killed him a few times. I have been on your side through thick and thin because I genuinely believed in the cause of saving humanity.”
“Sumino…heh. Good to hear! You’re a true soldier of humanity!” Sirei declared as Eito felt himself grimace. He took a step back, ready himself, only for Sirei to point a stubby limb at him. “Ah ah, Aotsuki. Don’t you try going anywhere. You say you’ve taken him down before, right Sumino? Then let’s see it.”
“W-What? Are you two serious?” Eito stammered, trying to put on an innocent look, “S-Sirei, this is crazy! You can’t really believe him! He just ran in here and started shouting–”
“I told you to shut up, Eito,” Takumi interrupted, and Eito felt an involuntary shiver go down his spine at the rotten redhead’s cold tone, “We’re not doing this again. I’m not listening to any begging, to any excuse, to anything. I’m done.”
“...that’s it then?” Eito couldn’t help but laugh. “Really? That’s…so you’re really just going to kill me before I can do–”
Takumi began running, and Eito brought his scythe forward, his teeth gritting at the realization that his entire life’s work was about to be undone by a madman–
Then Takumi ran past him. “...wait, what?”
Eito turned, his eyes going wide as Takumi slammed his foot straight into Sirei’s face. There was an audible cracking noise as the stubby robot seemed to freeze in pure shock, before a boom of sound echoed through the gym as he went soaring in a majestic arc worthy of an angelic chorus. Sirei soared through the air, unable to do anything but scream “BWAAAH!?” in a truly baffled tone, right up until he smacked straight into the ceiling overhead and all noise cut off.
Eito stared. He could feel his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide as a bit of plaster crumbled down from the ceiling. There was an actual crater where the egg impacted, and some dim part of his mind pointed out the strange irony of the ceiling breaking instead of Sirei as the so-called commanding officer’s hat floated gently down to land at Takumi’s feet.
“I WANTED TO DO THAT FOR SO LONG!” Takumi shouted, before he pointed up at Sirei. “GO FUCK YOURSELF, YOU ABSOLUTE DICK!”
Then Takumi walked right up to Eito, who was still a bit too stunned to react with his normal visceral disgust at a human approaching him, up until Takumi put both hands on his shoulders, immediately making him shudder.
“Eito. You were right about everything,” Takumi Sumino said, his voice echoing as he spoke the five most vindicating words Eito had ever heard in his life. Then he exploded.
Eito blinked. He stared. He blinked again. His mouth had been open. There was blood soaking his clothes and staining his glasses. He was pretty sure there was a rib in his hair.
Then a retrieval drone came from the infirmary, picked Takumi’s cooling corpse up, and brought him over to the revive-o-matic as Eito continued to stare forward, his mind trying its damnedest to figure out what in the hell just happened.
“....what.”
“Okay, I’m back,” Takumi said as he reentered the gym, brushing a hand through his hair as he walked. Not that it did much to fix the mess that was his hair, but still. “Oh, good, you’re still here.”
Eito was still there. He was definitely still there, sitting on the floor, staring at the bloody stain where Takumi had been while the blood drenching his body started to dry. “...”
“Come on, we should get you changed out of those. Darumi is probably the only one still awake right now, but I don't want to have to explain what happened before I have everything ready,” Takumi said, reaching down to help Eito up, only for the scythe-wielder to pull back.
“You…what are you planning?” Eito asked, confused wonder and instinctive disgust warring in his mind as he tried his best not to vomit. Again. Tried his best not to vomit again while ignoring the pool of vomit he’d left on the floor earlier.
“Well, that involves a whole explanation that's probably gonna take a few hours, so I'd prefer to do it once when everyone is together, but I know you’re going to need to know some stuff so you don’t decide to kill someone.” Eito was pretty sure he was much better at restraining his murderous impulses than the lunatic in front of him. “My main two goals are this: make sure everyone survives all one hundred days that we’re stuck here, and to kill the leaders of humanity for making us into genocidal weapons of war.”
“....Excuse me?”
“Look, I get it, humanity sucks, but also most people on the Artificial Satellite don’t know what's going on down here. Heck, I’m pretty sure most of them don’t even know they’re in space. We didn’t! But now we do, so yeah. The people in charge definitely knew exactly what they wanted us to do when they sent us here though, but since I don’t have any way of getting onto the satellite at the moment, making sure everyone survives is the only goal I can focus on. That includes you, despite how much you hate all of us,” Takumi explained, as if Eito was easily following along.
Takumi didn’t seem to register the reason for Eito’s confusion though as he continued. “Oh yeah, I know about your eyes and how you view us all as monsters. I understand it influenced your worldview, but I'll do my best to help you when we have everything settled.”
Eito narrowed his eyes at Takumi, the fleshy monster before him twitching as if he was smiling. “You realize you sound insane, right?”
“Oh trust me, I know I do. But I do have someone to back me up,” Takumi said, before looking up. “Shion, are you still here?”
Eito’s eyes widened as undying flames began to collect, forming a charred figure before him. Still corpse-like, this new mass of flesh looked like it was actively burning even as it spoke, tufts of white hair spilling out from burnt crags in this bizarre freak of nature.
“Hello there, you must be Eito,” said the horrific monstrosity in a disconcertingly soft voice, “Takumi says I'm Shion.”
“Who…?”
“Shion here is what's behind the defense door,” Takumi explained, gesturing to the flaming boy, “What you see here is just an avatar, not his physical body. He's also what powers the undying flames, so keeping him alive is a big, big important thing that none of us should screw around with.”
“Yes, that is an accurate summation of our situation. I must admit, this isn't quite how I imagined meeting any of you would go, but Takumi explained things to me. How he is actually from the future, and that he wants to not only help everyone, but me as well,” Shion explained, the flame boy glancing between Eito and Takumi. “I'm not really happy about what happened to Sirei, but Takumi assured me that we might be able to repair him if we can figure out how to make sure he can't hurt any of you.”
“Thanks for backing me up, Shion,” Takumi said, giving him a smile and a thumbs up, which Shion shyly returned before dissipating again.
“...hm.” Eito took a slow breath and tried to ignore the reek of blood that tried to invade his nose. “So you have knowledge from the future, and that's why you claim to know so much about me.”
“Yep, because you either tell me after I manage to actually grow closer to you, or you reveal several things in a monologue,” Takumi explained, before crossing his arms as he frowned at Eito, “You really like to monologue.”
“...I don't monologue.”
“You were about to start before I kicked Sirei. You're lucky I moved before Sirei removed you from the revive-o-matic, or else you'd be walking on thin ice for the rest of our time here.”
“Hm. So what now? Are you going to expose my plans and let everyone else decide what to do with me?”
“No, not at all,” Takumi bluntly replied, “The closest I managed to get to my goal of everyone surviving was when I lied about not being from the future. Telling the truth rarely helps me much, though lying at the wrong time can cause problems too, so yeah, it’s messy. Either way, as long as you can keep your urge to murder people under control, we should be good!”
“And if I can’t?” Eito asked, more to provoke him than out of any real curiosity.
“That depends on if you succeed in killing anyone. If you do, I’ll kill you and see how things go from there. If you don’t succeed, I can just put you in the cage again. And honestly, between the two, I’d prefer to capture you instead of killing you since cannibalizing you tends to lead to bad things.”
Eito blinked. “‘Cannibalizing’?”
“Oh, right, I meant ‘absorb your hemoanima’. Futurans refer to it as cannibalism–oh, and Futurum is actually the planet we're on that we were sent to colonize,” Takumi explained as if he was talking about the weather, “That’s who I was referring to when I said the leaders of humanity wanted us to be genocidal weapons of war. Since we’re on an alien planet, and not Earth, and we’re supposed to kill all the people here. But we’re not doing that, so…no doing that either. Oh, right, that’s also my third objective. Ugh, that was dumb of me, can’t forget to turn off the missiles or else the whole planet gets burned and then we all die horrifically just when I thought we were finally safe.”
“...”
“Yeah, like I said, I have a lot to explain. Lucky for you, we’ve got some time!”
Eito held up his hand. “Please stop explaining things to me.”
“Huh? Uh, why? Don’t you want to know–”
“Not right now. Your voice grates on my ears, you smell awful, and I can still taste–You look repulsive to me. I’m at my limit. So please, let me have some time so I can understand what you already explained to me.”
“Oh, okay. Yeah, alright, I get it, gotta try to accommodate your problem.” Takumi nodded, before giving him a bright smile that, to most people, would look manic. To Eito, it looked like a gruesome rictus spread across a visage of rotting meat. So about the same level of creepy, really. “Once you do though, it’s gonna be you and me, Eito! Together and saving everyone!”
“Do I have a choice?”
“You can say yes.”
“Or you’ll cage or cannibalize me?” Eito asked, trying not to stare at Takumi’s teeth, which were starting to look sharper than the normal mass of decaying enamel.
“No? I just told you, I’m trying to keep everyone alive. You count as part of everyone.” Eito wasn’t sure how to feel about that statement. “Hm, maybe I can blind you? That seemed to help that one time.” He felt a lot less conflicted about that statement. He didn’t like that one at all. “Or maybe I can just get you dark-tinted glasses? It’s all your senses that react badly to people, right? So sight, hearing, touch, smell…taste? What do people taste like to you?”
Eito wished he didn’t have an answer to that question, but sadly his mouth had been open when Takumi exploded.
“I have no idea.” He still lied though. “Should I ask you what they taste like?”
“Uh, no? Besides, I haven’t actually absorbed hemoanima from a human since they don’t naturally have that.”
“But we have hemoanima,” Eito pointed out.
“Yeah, and we’re not human.”
“...excuse you?”
“Yeah, that's an entire other story. Long story short, we're like test tube babies created so we’d have hemoanima, we just couldn't awaken it properly until we were given the infusers,” Takumi explained, leaving out a few details since he didn’t want to go into a full explanation at the moment. That and something weird in his brain was telling him that he shouldn’t, but he could examine that later. “I'll explain more when you’re feeling up to it.”
Eito felt like the revelation that he wasn’t human, had never been human–the very fact that he was an artificial being created for genocide–should have shook him to his core. But there were so many revelations currently taking up his brain at this point that, quite honestly, he just wanted to crawl in bed and sleep away from this awful-smelling lunatic and his bizarre boyfriend made out of fire. Who truly was a lucky bastard for being able to leave this conversation when he wanted.
“Right…” Still, he had to ask one more question. “And just how exactly do you plan to do that?”
“Don't worry, I have the perfect plan!”
Hiruko Shizuhara let out a yawn as she woke up. While this bed wasn't up to the standards of the one she had before in the TRC, she had to admit, it was certainly nicer than she expected when she arrived at this academy. Granted, she was aware that the people in charge were probably just trying to ply her with gifts to make sure–
She was brought out of her thoughts as a rapid set of knocks came from her door.
Frowning, she sat up, wondering just who was trying to bother her this early. Getting out of bed, she dressed quickly before walking over and pulling the door open.
“You better have a good reason for why you're bothering me before the morning announcement,” she stated, glaring at the unexpected duo standing before her, which consisted of Takumi and Eito.
“Hey, Hiruko! Sorry to come by so early, but Eito and I really need to talk to you,” Takumi said, sounding unexpectedly serious yet also smiling with a strangely manic energy.
“Takumi, are we sure we should be coming by so early?” Eito asked, his gentle tone tinged with a hint of confusion.
“Eito, you can cut the act. Hiruko is gonna know all about you as soon as she remembers,” Takumi said with a huff.
“Remember what exactly?” Hiruko asked, quirking an eyebrow.
“About you and me being time travelers.”
Hiruko’s brow furrowed in confusion, before her eyes went wide and she stumbled from a sudden shock going through her brain. “Gh–Ah…” She closed her eyes, took a slow breath, then sighed as she frowned at Takumi. “So it didn’t work then.”
“No, sorry. We got close. Really, really close, but we screwed up at the last second.”
“It’s not quite coming to me yet…I recall holding you in my arms as you died though.”
“Ah, we might’ve gotten different ones then…we made it onto the escape pod, it’s just that the missiles went off and Eva snapped the second her brainwashing broke and she realized we’d indirectly killed Kamyuhn.”
“Pardon me,” Eito interjected, holding up a hand, “Could you two please explain who ‘Eva’ is?”
“Oh, are you up for more info now?” Takumi asked, which made Eito cringe for some reason.
“I would prefer to hear it from Hiruko.”
“Hm. And why should I tell you anything?” Hiruko questioned, turning her skeptical gaze on the man she now knew to be a violent, genocidal lunatic masquerading as their ally. The fact that he was the one to murder her of his own volition in multiple timelines certainly didn’t help.
“Oh, don’t worry, he’s on our side now,” Takumi explained, “I killed Sirei with him last night so things should be good between us.”
Hiruko’s eyes went wide. “You what?”
“Killed Sirei. He’s too much of a problem to leave alive right now so I just went for it,” Takumi explained, completely shameless, “If he sticks around, the chances of him brainwashing somebody go up way too quickly to be safe, especially since I know all about the Exodus Project, our nature as clones, and how going along with him means we’d be genociding the native people of this planet.”
“...those are better reasons than I expected,” Hiruko admitted, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning against the doorway. Which wasn’t just to look cool; her brain was currently getting flooded with information from multiple different timelines and it was a little disorienting, not that she would show it. The ‘clone’ part had especially thrown her off, but then that knowledge slotted into place like it was natural so she could keep her face neutral. “So what’s your plan for getting everyone on our side now that Sirei isn’t around to explain his ‘World Death’ justifications?”
“That’s easy. You’ll do it,” Takumi replied.
Hiruko raised an eyebrow. “I don’t recall saying I would do that.”
“Sure, but it makes the most sense if the info comes from you since you’re mysterious and already seem like you know what’s going on,” he explained, “I’m not sure what exactly we should say just yet, but we’ll have to come clean about Sirei being dead.”
“Mostly clean,” Hiruko replied, before tilting her head in thought, “Hm…Eito wanted to talk with Sirei last night about the secrets he was keeping from us. He wasn’t satisfied with the lies Sirei was feeding him, and tried to push for more answers. Sirei grew belligerent and threatened Eito, which is when you ran in and impulsively…?”
“Oh, uh, kicked him as hard as I could?”
“Hm, that works. Not a bad way of killing him either, since it signals to everyone that it was an act of impulse to protect your friend and not premeditated murder.”
“Oh good, I’m glad it works! Heh, I really wasn’t thinking about that at all, I just really wanted to kick him.”
Hiruko sighed. “You truly are an impulsive idiot.”
Eito, meanwhile, continued to watch this byplay between two apparent time travelers with a growing sense of confusion and dread. “You two are horrifying.”
“Yes, yes, humanity scares you, we know,” Hiruko grumbled, fully missing his point, “By the way, would you like to have that aversion of yours removed? If Takumi didn’t break it, there should be a device that will cure your condition, as long as we also do some reconditioning.”
“That sounds horrifying. No thank you, never bring it up again,” Eito requested.
“It probably wouldn’t work anyway,” Takumi commented, scratching his cheek a little awkwardly, “I kind of, uh…smashed the reconditioning chair.”
“What? How?” Hiruko asked, confused, “There’s literally a gun in the infirmary.”
“Yeah, I smashed it with the gun,” Takumi explained, “Ripped it right from the mounting and smashed it against the chair until it was dead. The chair, I mean. Well, not the chair, since chairs can't die, but I did still destroy it completely before throwing it into the Wall of Fire, so yeah, it’s dead.”
“That’s why it took you so long to get back to the gym?” Eito asked, bewildered.
“Pretty much. Still, we should make sure to get our stories straight. That way, if anyone questions us, we can make sure we don't slip up. For example, I’m sure we can bluff about Sirei mentioning the second academy students when threatening Eito. Something about having backups in case we don't want to fight?”
“...You two are being remarkably open about your conspiracy with me.”
“Welll yeah, I already know I can kick your ass, and I'm pretty sure Hiruko can too,” Takumi said with a shrug, “Fact of the matter is, you won't be able to do anything to humanity unless you work with us, or try your chances with the Futurans, who might just eat you if they feel like it.”
“It wouldn't be the first time for V’ehxness.” Hiruko pushed up her glasses as she studied Eito, “Frankly I would prefer to cage you, but it seems Takumi is veto-ing me.”
“Well if you want to do that, you'd have to come up with a completely different story,” Eito pointed out, “One that I could easily argue against.”
“Guys please, let's not argue. I'd really rather not call this entire timeline a wash and try again with the next one,” Takumi huffed.
Hiruko’s eyebrows raised. “That's a surprise to hear coming from you.”
“Well I'm sorry, but when we get that close to escaping only to have it ripped from us, I'm not exactly in the best of moods,” Takumi responded, sounding a fair bit annoyed. “It doesn't help that I started remembering a bunch more timelines where we failed and died. Like that ‘coming of age’ timeline you talked about.”
“Oh? I don't remember that one ending poorly.”
“Well I do! Multiple ways, in fact! I was locked in a cage with Nozomi who died from her rejection symptoms! And then the time she died because I wasn’t willing to kill Shion to keep her alive, oh, and let’s not forget the time I had to absorb Nozomi's hemoanima because Eito tricked a bunch of you into betraying us!”
“I would like to note that I don’t know who Nozomi is,” Eito remarked, earning him an annoyed glower from Takumi.
“Yeah, you would say that…”
“Because it’s true. I’m the only non-time traveler here.” Eito paused. “In this group, I mean. I would like to know ahead of time if there are any other time travelers.”
“Time loopers,” Hiruko corrected, “And no, I think Takumi and I would have noticed if anyone else was trapped in the loop as well. We should be the only ones with future knowledge.”
As she said that, two doors down from her dorm, a certain pale, blue-haired girl woke up in her regular human body. Her eyes opened to find herself back in her bed at the academy instead of on the escape pod going to the artificial satellite, and, understandably, she only had one thing to say: “...bweh?”
Of course, none of the students gathered at Hiruko’s room had any idea that was happening, so it wasn’t relevant to them. Yet, at least.
“UP AND AT ‘EM TROOPS! TIME TO RISE AND SHINE!”
“Hm. There goes the morning announcement,” Hiruko remarked, tuning out the recording’s usual spiel, “I suppose we’ll have to continue this later. Unless you two would like to explain to everyone why you’re hanging out outside my room.”
“No, we can talk more later, but I think we're good for now.” Glancing over at Eito, Takumi frowned, “I don't know if you want to keep up your act or not, but I swear, we want you to live alongside everyone else.”
“I'll keep that in mind,” Eito said as he walked away. He had to admit, part of him was playing along so he didn't have to deal with more nonstop grating noise as they tried to convince him to go along with their nonsense. The rest, however…well, if they did come from the future, he couldn't really ignore that fact. Nor could he ignore that this Takumi was apparently willing to murder the leaders of humanity. Something he hadn’t mentioned to Hiruko.
So Eito would keep the act going, if just for a while. Who knows? Maybe Takumi really would be useful.