Chapter Text
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“Himiko, it’s time to wake up.”
That voice felt like it echoed across a huge hall where she stood, facing a girl with long red hair sitting in a throne. They locked eyes, her and the girl, and she felt a cold chill run down her spine as the girl stepped down from the throne, coming closer to her. She seemed to glare at her, before speaking in a voice that echoed just as clearly.
“I suppose it’s your turn.”
Himiko’s eyes slowly opened, and she saw Shuichi looking over her. He was wearing some fancy suit, though it looked like he hadn’t been very careful with it. “Huh-? Shuichi, what are you wearing?” She almost wanted to laugh. It looked so unlike him to be so… fancy.
But, before she could say anything about that, she started feeling cold again. She didn’t quite register why until her vision focused on what should have been an impossible sight. A ghost-? God, Kaito would hate being a ghost, but there he was, saying something she could barely hear over the pounding in her own head.
Was this a sick joke? Another dream? She just stared in disbelief before the scream rising up in her throat couldn’t be held back any longer.
“A-Aaah!” She jumped up, grabbing the pillow and holding it in front of her face. “D-don’t come any closer, ghost!”
She looked around the room. It looked similar to her Talent Development place, but the decor was all off. This was the kind of stuff someone into crystal healing and fortune telling would have, not a true Mage like her! And on top of it being a mockery with an undead Kaito, she saw another person who should definitely be dead in the corner, and he confirmed his presence with a laugh.
Her eyes narrowed. “Jeez, if someone had to be a ghost, why you?” she asked Kokichi, taking a few hesitant steps back. “Couldn’t you at least have been Tenko or An- gaah!”
She fell onto a desk behind her, practically landing on top of Maki. She looked weird too, her long pigtails chopped off and wearing greens and blues instead of reds and blacks. “Ow… nice haircut, Maki, but what’s going on?”
Maki moved out of the way and then looked to Shuichi, and then to Kaito. She seemed far too calm to have been seeing her dead best friend alive, so she must have seen him at some point while she was out. “Kaito, weren’t you there when Shuichi got sick yesterday? Kaede said it was like that, right? Like he was disoriented and didn’t know why people were there?”
“I wasn’t there, we just went to check on him when Kaede said he was sick! I dunno what’s going on with her!” Kaito exclaimed. Ugh, wait, Kaede? She was dead too, was she a ghost too? Ugh, but he looked way too solid to be a ghost! Was he a zombie? A vampire? A jiangshi?
“L-leave my blood or my qi or my brains or whatever alone!” Himiko demanded. “I… I’ve…” She took her shoe off, finding to her shock and horror she was wearing a high heel. “I’ll stab your eyes out!”
Shuichi rushed to stand in front of her. “H-Himiko, it’s okay!” He exclaimed. “So you remember too, right?”
“Remember what?” Himiko asked, still gripping tight to her heeled shoe. “How did we get here, anyways? Those two are supposed to be dead…”
“Exactly!” Shuichi’s eyes lit up. “No one else remembers! This world is some sort of like, alternate world where no one’s dead or something! I- well, I would be glad it’s not just me, but I can’t exactly be happy that you remember so much awful stuff.”
Himiko didn’t loosen her grip, or let down her guard. How could she trust Shuichi any more than her own eyes? “How do I know this isn’t just another sick part of your stupid game!” She yelled at no one in particular. “If you’re all so not dead, then where is Tenko? Where’s Angie? Where’s everyone!”
“Probably in the dining hall?” Kaito answered hesitantly. “I’m really sorry, I don’t follow this at all. Uh- wait, did the spirit move on to possess Himiko?”
“There’s not a spirit, I told you, it’s another timeline thingy!” Kokichi insisted very loudly.
“Shut up, snake,” Himiko said, resisting the urge to throw one of her shoes at him just to see if he was solid or not. “The only people I wanna hear from here are Maki and Shuichi! At least I know they don’t want to eat my soul!”
Maki stared blankly at her. “Weird selection but okay,” Maki said. “Uh… look, you know I hate to admit this, but if both Shuichi and Kokichi say that something is happening, and Himiko’s actions corroborate it, then, loathe as I am to say it, I think Kokichi was right.”
She looked back at Shuichi. He just nodded. “I… I don’t really know how I can prove it to you all, but I’m not the Ultimate Butler Shuichi, and I’m pretty sure she’s not the Ultimate Princess Himiko. You’re the Ultimate Magician, aren’t you?”
“I’m the Ultimate Mage!” she insisted. “And you’re the Ultimate Detective! I dunno what you’re talking about with this Ultimate Princess and Butler thing.”
“See, exactly!” Shuichi exclaimed. “We both woke up here, me yesterday and her a few minutes ago. We remembered a completely different world, where everyone else had died and everyone’s talents were different.”
Why did Maki look so confused by this? Three survivors, all three should be on the same page, right? But she looked every bit as bewildered as the dead purple guys. “...Maki, don’t you remember too? We- we escaped together…”
Maki just shook her head in disbelief. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean. I’m just the regular Ultimate Gamer Maki, I don’t really remember anyone dying.”
“Ultimate Gamer?” Somehow that seemed weirder than even Ultimate Princess or whatever Shuichi said she was supposed to be here. Ugh, none of this made sense… “Fine, so just me and Shuichi remember. I have no idea what’s going on, but please, if everyone’s alive here, can I please see Tenko and Angie? I… I miss them so much!”
Her precious friends… She wanted them to know how much stronger she was. Even if they had no clue what she meant like Maki and Kaito, that was fine. She still missed them, and if whatever the heck was going on meant she got to see them, then she’d gladly accept that.
“I can, uh, do that,” Kokichi volunteered. “Seems that you’re not exactly my biggest fan so I’ll just…” He ran towards the door and straight on out of it. Himiko felt uneasy entrusting him with such an important task, but if this was another world, then maybe he was better. Besides, no one else was stepping up to offer to help, so whatever.
Kaito raised his hand, like he was waiting for a teacher to call on him. After a moment, she realized he was probably asking for permission to speak after she told everyone but Maki and Shuichi to shut up, so she pointed at him. “Talk, now.”
“So you’re a fellow Magician?” Kaito asked. She could hear Maki facepalming beside her, but that wasn’t her concern.
“I’m a Mage,” Himiko insisted. “I do real magic, not like the cards and crystals and candle stuff in here.”
His face fell for a moment before he then lit back up. “Ah, I see! So you are my superior in the art! Please, teach me-”
“Kaito, is this really the time?” Maki interrupted. “She’s clearly very disoriented, you shouldn’t be asking her about magic stuff.”
“No, I am more than happy to take an apprentice under my wing,” Himiko insisted. “Maki, don’t ruin this for me! Another world or not, this is still an important opportunity!” Ah, she’d never had an apprentice before! This was so exciting! She could teach him everything she knew that wasn’t bound by a magician’s code- were there any guilds here that he could join up with?
“So you’re not at all confused about this world having everyone’s talents being different?” Shuichi questioned. “I mean, Kaito being the Ultimate Magician confused me.”
Himiko wasn’t sure how to answer that except with a shrug. “I am confused, yes, but confusion isn’t going to help right now. If I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole, I need to figure out what the cake and potion do before I question how I fell so far, you know?”
Shuichi’s expression indicated he did not know. “Uh… well, I mean, you have a lot of questions, surely…”
Did she? Well, certainly she wondered how she and Shuichi got here, or what this world was, but she was willing to accept whatever was going on if it gave her a chance to say goodbye. “Yes, I do, but none of them are as important as seeing everyone again,” Himiko decided. Well… almost everyone. She might find it hard to resist punching Korekiyo or Tsumugi.
“I understand what you mean, but they won’t be the same as you remember,” Shuichi warned. “I haven’t met this world’s Angie yet, but Tenko was really different.”
“So? She’s still Tenko!” Himiko objected. “And I still wanna see her again. There’s so many things I never got to tell her… Even if this world is fake, I still want to say everything!”
Shuichi frowned a bit. “I… don’t know if this world is fake. There’s definitely a connection between the two worlds, but I have no idea what it is yet. I’ve been investigating with Kokichi for a day, but I don’t know yet much beyond that there is a connection and Rantaro is also aware of the other world.”
“Rantaro is in on this?” Maki questioned. “Kaito, can I borrow your phone?”
“Unconnected thought, but sure, why?” Kaito handed his phone to Maki. He had a really cute case on it, looked like a spellbook. He should add some dangly little charms to it though, that would be the first lesson of his Mage Apprenticeship.
Maki put in a password easily and Himiko leaned over to see who she was texting once she heard a keyboard clicking noise. Someone whose name was put in as “🍇🏳️🌈🍇” who she could only assume was Kokichi. He was the only gay grape she could think of. Maki was sending a text to ask him to grab Rantaro too if he could.
“Why did you need Kaito’s phone for that?” Himiko asked. “He has you blocked?”
“No, I have him blocked and I didn’t feel like undoing it,” Maki answered. Made sense enough. “We need to question Rantaro about this if he also knows, so I asked Kokichi to do so.”
Shuichi frowned. “He… won’t be happy about this- he got upset just when I told him Kokichi had cornered me into telling him, seemed like he’d been keeping it secret for a while and was frustrated I didn’t even make it a conscious hour. But, at least this time it isn’t my fault!”
Himiko huffed. “What’s the point in keeping it secret? Cause they don’t know they died? Well, both of us know they did, so if we’re gonna figure anything out, we should just tell everyone.”
His eyes widened a bit. “You do have a good point… If three people cooberate a story, they’re a lot more likely to believe that. The force of the entire class would be a lot more helpful in that case.”
“Maybe I should be the Ultimate Detective too,” Himiko joked. “You’ve gotta employ all in your arsenal to crack a case and stuff…”
Maki nodded. “It might be difficult to believe, but you’re both acting so strangely that it’s impossible to not believe something highly unusual is taking place. After all, I would never expect in normal situations for you to-”
A frantic knocking attacked the door before Maki could say what she didn’t expect Himiko to ever do. “Oh, that’s probably Kaede!” Kaito exclaimed. “She was going to join us back when this was a seance… wow, she’s going to be quite confused, isn’t she?”
Himiko braced herself for a weird Kaede to enter, but instead, it was Tenko. She was wearing pink and braids and glasses, but it was definitely her Tenko. She couldn’t stop herself- she leapt off the desk to hug her.
“Tenko! You’re okay…” Himiko mumbled into her shoulder. She was a lot less muscular, but she was still nice to hug. This world’s Tenko must be more nerd than jock, but it was still Tenko, right? “I missed you so much…”
“I- I came as soon as I heard something was wrong, Lady Himiko!” Tenko exclaimed. “I… I didn’t realize you missed me or were worried for me… Are you hurt?”
Himiko sighed into her arms as she returned the hug. “No, I’m wonderful,” she assured her. “And no need to call me Lady. I’m just your Himiko.” Maybe she could convince herself that it had all been a bad dream. If this world had Tenko, it couldn’t be too bad, right?
She’d chosen to reject the fiction and reject the game, and yet here she still was. Whatever this was, she had to be honest with herself, and with Tenko. She had to say all she’d never gotten to.
“Tenko, I adore you,” she said, eyes burning a bit. “It took me until you were gone for me to realize it, but… I love you so much!”
Tenko squeaked like a boiling kettle. “L-love me? I- I don’t know where I went, but I love you too? I’m very confused right now, but you’re the most wonderful girl in the universe?!”
“...okay, maybe I should have started with the explanation…”