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Rio Ranger had sooooo good. So good! Amazingly good, spectacularly, fantastically, whimsically good. The way he had been made enabled him to feel nothing in terms of remorse or regret, just pure unfiltered jealousy and consequently hatred towards humans. He was able to swing an axe at their heads and steal their clothes without a second thought in his ravaging desperation to be like them, to know what it was like to be one.
Of course, unlike Ranger, Midori loved humans. He adored them! Like a little girl adored her dolls, taking them apart and putting them back together again; that was Midori’s favourite pastime. Part of him often wondered when this had started, had he been born this way, or had it been something programmed into him after he died? He knew himself from long talks with the AI system that it was entirely possible to completely change a person’s... personality before inserting them into a doll. All he had to go on was the memories of who he was before his little incident with Yubasame; but he had firsthand experience with memory altering himself, too.
Being locked away on the fourth floor until the others reached him gave Midori a lot of time to be alone with his thoughts. Spending five hours in a coffin wasn’t exactly the most fun activity in the world but hey, he was a doll, not like he could get cramps or anything. That was good. He thought. Maybe.
And when he had finally been let out and loose to play his little game, that Sara had called him... Green. Literally. What kind of name was that!? He would’ve been happier to be called Sou the First, Rattail, anything at least a little more interesting than simply just “green”. Though, Shin taking his name sort of ruined it for him - he would’ve introduced himself as Sou had it not been for that. How annoying! Ah, it was alright in the long run... not like he would last long anyway.
Midori blinked slowly at the monitor (not that blinking was necessary), his entire being rigid as he watched Maple run rampant and attack the current survivors. There was no sound on the tape but he knew how it would sound, the sickle blades that unfolded neatly from her petite body slicing slickly through the air and damaging his oh so precious fourth floor. Maple! Don’t do that!
Eh... he didn’t really care. This would all be over soon anyway. It was either him or Sara, in the end... it was ironic really, how he had to have hope that he would be the one to survive. His fingers absent mindedly brushed the collar around his neck, hidden by the scarf he wore to torment Shin - not his fault that Shin had been such a pain in his... shins. Aha! Midori, you sure are funny. Why thank you Midori, so are you! Oh Midori, you flatter me too much.
He forced a daunting smile at the monitor as if the Maple sneering into the camera at the other end could see him. He didn’t like Maple. He didn’t understand her obsession with him either. Who exactly had programmed her that way? He had to assume it was Gashu, because Safalin didn’t have the balls to oppose him, but Meister and Miley didn’t really care about him enough to taunt him. Damn. If only Gashu hadn’t gone and made that transgression, and then took his own life at the end of it! How rude.
His smile faded without him allowing it, that horrible feeling bubbling up inside his porcelain body again - ahaha, was he running out of charge already?
...No, no, that wasn’t it. This was a strange emotion, one that he could only combat when he was entertained or otherwise distracted; since Sara and her entourage were having trouble running away from Maple to reach the fifth floor, he was bored. Very bored. So bored that he would rather take his own hands off, just to have something to do.
“You seem stressed!” A voice chirped somewhere behind him. His eyes flickered before he forced that smile again, wide and vacant, threateningly sweet. Midori slowly turned in his chair to face the Shin AI, his only salvation through this whole charade; Shin beamed back at him and he hated it. He hated it! I hate you I hate you why did I ever make you why did I ever agree to any of thi-
“You have that scary look on your face again…” Shin looked rather perturbed, in all his pixelated glory – Midori beamed right back at him.
“If I seem stressed…” he giggled, “why would you speak to me, Shin? You know your voice infuriates me at the best of times.”
“I- I’m-“ Shin couldn’t sweat, being a computer and all, but he looked close. “I’m sorry, I just thought-“
“Wrong! Make yourself useful and cycle the cameras for me, would you? The fact that our little miss Sara has managed to escape Maple for this long is rather odd.”
Shin quietened down and reluctantly did as he was told, watching Midori mournfully turn back to the monitor; with his intentionally limited ability to develop reasoning for himself, Shin couldn’t really figure out why Midori would be stressed. Hell, neither could Midori himself. That was the thing about being dead, technically at least, nothing ever compared to the feeling of the last breath leaving your body.
Maple was busy destroying the shutters to the cemetery; Q-Taro and Mai were prancing around like imbeciles trying to figure out a way to escape, and that Keiji was stood there looking dumbfounded. As irked as Midori was that he had escaped, he had to give credit where it was due; it was rare to see the amount of trust put into your friends to save you from cremation while you could only sit and do nothing. He would play it off, he supposed – when it came to the final game, he would pretend to know nothing about it… yeah… see how Sara likes that…
Shin opened his mouth again, unsure as to why, only that his programming forced him to care about Midori the same way he did when he knew him as Sou – their friendship was – had been – ponderable, for better or for worse. Midori seemed to enjoy toeing the line between upsetting and manipulating him, only to turn around and be the nicest person imaginable five minutes later. It was an emotional rollercoaster, but Shin didn’t have many friends, and Midori had been about as good as he felt he would get.
“Sou?” the AI blurted before he could help himself, causing Midori to freeze and clench his fists. To Shin’s horror, instead of turning in his chair like he had done before, Midori took an excruciatingly long time to turn his whole head 180° to look at him.
“…What have I said about calling me that? Why would you call someone something that isn’t their name, hm?” His voice still had that childish, fun-loving ring to it but his expression didn’t match – wide eyes tinted with true insanity, mouth a thinly pressed together line, brows pointed in such a way that implied a mother catching her child with their hand in the cookie jar.
The Shin AI head bobbed about on the screen thoughtfully, working up courage – Midori was his friend, he wouldn’t hurt him, right?
Right…?
“Sorry. I’m just worried,” he mumbled. “You really don’t seem yourself, you used to be so excited to play games with these guys.”
“Don’t seem myself?” Midori sneered, his body now turning to catch up with his head. He scooted the chair closer to Shin, camera monitoring forgotten. “What would you know? You’re nothing but a few lines of code, I could delete you with a single click and you’d be none the wiser.”
Shin frowned. “But I was taken from the original Shin. So I do know how you usually are.”
Midori tucked his scarf over his mouth thoughtfully. Alright, he supposed. It had a point. “Hmph. Then what do you think might be wrong, Shin?”
Shin blinked. “I-I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking. Won’t you just talk to me, S- Midori?”
Midori’s eyes narrowed, and he grinned slyly. “Alright, I’ll tell you. I’m in love with Maple, but we can never be together. I’m also in love with Sara, I consider it to be a love triangle, and also, I’m very sad that Rio Ranger died, because I considered him a son.”
It was a while before Shin said anything. “You’re lying.”
“Well yes, obviously.” Midori swung in lazy circles on the chair. “Not like I’d ever confide in you. You’re just that useless, you know?”
“H-Huh?” Shin looked genuinely hurt – this sent a twinge of happiness searing through Midori. “Oh. Oh… okay. I’ll- I’ll just switch off right away, I don’t want to distur- “
“Wait!” Midori cried suddenly, leaning forward, his eyes full of fake regret. “I didn’t mean it, Shin. I’m sorry.”
Shin ducked his head. “Really? So… you don’t want me to switch off?”
“Leave me if you want,” Midori spat, suddenly indifferent, folding his arms. “It’s your choice.”
“W-wait, no! Please don’t be sad! I’ll stay, I will!” Shin looked as teary as possible, panic streaming across his features. “I wish I could do more, Midori, but I’m stuck in this monitor, so…”
Midori smiled then. “Apology accepted.” His grin cracked the very edges of his mouth, forcing his eyes into an unnatural shape; everything he did made Shin question whether or not he was being truly honest about his current state of existence. Midori claimed to be a doll, murdered in cold blood by someone who placed their trust in him; but the thing was, his smile, so heavily laden with unspeakable levels of malice and cruel intelligence, was simply not something that could be recreated by the hands of whoever made these dolls. Midori’s smile was so unique, and not in a good sense, that it struck fear into little Shin AI’s non-existent heart. But still, he had made his good friend smile, so that was something positive at least.
Midori had already turned back to the monitor, now displaying Sara and her comrades entering into the fourth-floor elevators… his gaze was fixated on Sara’s determined, eye-bag riddled expression.
The simulations they ran of the participants of the death game displayed Sara Chidouin as a bloodthirsty, ruthless person who only cared for her own survival. Something that stuck out in Shin’s mind is when she snuck up on him and backstabbed him, quite literally, in every single stimulation they ran, thus producing his 0% survival rate. He frowned at the back of Midori’s head, wondering… why, exactly was he so fixated with Sara, when in the simulations he couldn’t care less about her?
Logically it was because she was acting differently, of course – that had to have instilled some sort of confusion in Midori. Perhaps he was scared? No, no, that was silly… Midori didn’t feel fear. Not even when faced with death, he laughed and joked in the faces of his adversaries; Shin tilted his head and observed Midori a little more. The tight grip he had on the front of his scarf suggested tension, but the tapping of his foot in an unrhythmic fashion on the floor suggested boredom – the fiddling with the hem of his jacket suggested nerves.
It would be unusual, Shin surmised, for Midori to feel fear (if he could, which he couldn’t), especially concerning someone as irrelevant as Sara. She was little more than a high school girl capable of nothing more than gaining popularity using her frail and innocent status; and yet they all trusted her above anyone else. Perhaps Midori wasn’t confused, but rather he admired her? After all, one of his greatest prides was his ability to manipulate people, like he spoke of so often.
“…Almost…”
Shin blinked. He had been scowling into space, running along his own train of thought – Midori muttering through clenched teeth brought him back.
“Huh? What’d you say?”
“It’s almost… impossible…” the wheels on the chair squeaked as he pushed it out and stood tall, slightly hunched over as he did – Shin could no longer see his face. “Why…? Why are they all still alive? They shouldn’t have even reached this floor… Sara should have killed them all by now.”
Shin was silent for a few seconds. “But, Midori – that doesn’t matter. Even when we ran the simulations for your floor, they never won against you anywa- augh!” His head sizzled as a flying fist caught the monitor screen he was on; even though he was an AI this monitor acted as his body, and now, the screen was almost destroyed. His expression glitched out as he stared up at Midori’s crooked grin, squealing as the fist was extracted from the glass and reattached to Midori’s wrist. “M-M-… S-Sou… why…?”
“I didn’t say I wanted your input,” Midori breathed. His breath shuddered, eyes widening as the repercussions of his action just now seemed to hit him – when Sara and the others arrived, they would know he had been here… it didn’t matter.
“I’m going to win. This is my game, and I won’t let these idiots show me up… especially not Chidouin. She appears stronger when she has allies, which unfortunately is something we never prepared for, but…” He beamed down at the fading Shin AI again, as though to ensure at least someone heard his monologue. “She’s going to lose. Hah… yeah… I won’t let this slip through my fingers. I’ll take her hope and crush it, after crushing every last one of her precious allies...” he giggled breathlessly, beads of sweat appearing on his forehead as he loomed over the broken monitor – Shin would’ve questioned it but, he was having trouble as his vision was going foggy.
Midori cleared his throat as his expression snapped back to as neutral as he could make it, adjusting his scarf. “I have to go, sorry. And uh, sorry about that.” He gestured vaguely to Shin’s dying form, absolutely making a mockery of him. Shin squeaked something out but Midori didn’t care to understand, eyes lazily rolling as he quietly opened the door to the monitoring room and left.
So that was it…? After all that? Shin truly thought they were friends… he supposed he had been wrong. He couldn’t even be sure of himself, in his last moments. How cruel.
Something he could be sure of though, with his last few moments, was that he had seen something unthinkable in Midori’s eyes then – something that didn’t even show when he was alive. Fear. Fear about what Sara was capable of. He was scared, and Shin had seen it.
Sou Hiyori had finally displayed fear, and had shown that nobody who saw it would live to tell the tale.