Work Text:
There's a beauty in the ubiquity of biodata, Daichi - Jyamato Gardener - thought as he tended to the Tree of Knowledge, filled with the Jyamato-processed essence of every transformed human killed by unwitting Riders in his Parasite Game.
It'd been a beautiful beginning, articulating their despair and sense of no return by setting up poor Hakubi, and now her data had just ripened into a lovely persimmon of knowledge. This was the physical embodiment of their ultimate wish: all the memories of humanity were his to take, to remake and reuse into digital flora.
With a careful touch, he picked the fruit of Sara Sakurai's memories from the screaming tree and took his first bite of all of human knowledge.
Sara's last thought as she was struck down by Buffa's chainsaw was that her brother would never see her in a wedding dress now. Awfully pedestrian, by Daichi's own opinion, but the tug of memory signified its importance - the Sakurai siblings had no other family after their parents became casualties of the Desire Grand Prix, and they wished to move on.
Another tug didn't elaborate on such an interesting fact, but it showed another reason such a quaint thought was on her mind then: Neon Kurama. Daichi's scathing remark calling them "scissor sisters" in the Desire Royale had been all too correct - On the edge of moving in together, how utterly boring of two women stripped of their Rider status, and how absolutely funny that Neon seemed not to realise that the world was arranging itself to give her her wish, just like it was arranging itself to give Daichi his. These interventions by the people of the future were tools and opportunities, but they depended not on divinity to manifest their desires - they could grab it with their own two hands, if they were resourceful enough to see it.
Sara knew this, the next tug of memory showed. It was probably a function of her age and more level-headed nature, but she had no illusion of easy wishmaking when she'd been Hakubi - she'd protect her flaky brother with her own very overestimated might, which had been so easy to take advantage of, but Daichi had to admit it was an admirable show of sensibility. Or it would be, were she not an overconfident beginner being manipulated by the frogman's sensemaking, just as she was to her death and rebirth as phytodata.
But it hadn't been just her brother, had it? Once again Neon figured in Sara's memory, almost with little hearts drawn in crayon around her picture. The little rich girl was still shaken from finding out the sham of her existence and wanted to disappear with no trace that she'd ever even graced this Earth, but Sara Sakurai couldn't bear the thought of it - even if the whole world forgot, she would remember Neon with much love. And remember she would, Daichi noted with smarmy pride, remembering was the only thing she or anyone else would ever do ifthe had his way.
Neon, Neon, Neon. Every other tug of memory led back to her, even through the branching reconstructions the remaking of the world had wrought into Sara's psyche. Favourite streamer, friend of her brother's, fellow Rider, woman she wanted to share her life with; it was such a laughable progression, so dull and boring and devoid of any real appeal.
Most humans were bound to be this way, Daichi realised, but he might be able to discover great universal truths in the patterns if he just absorbs enough humans that it goes beyond individual worthless lives and moves into populational sample.
With a touch to the screaming face in the bark of the Tree, Daichi thanked Sara Sakurai for her sacrifice.
…
……
………
…………
……………
………………
…………………
……………………
》》》By the powers of the second Goddess of Creation, a new world begins. A world where Sara Sakurai lives again, and is senselessly killed at the hands of another resurrectee.
……………………
…………………
………………
……………
…………
………
……
…
The Tree wakes.
It knows something is deeply wrong. Several phytodata files in the network it shared with the Gardener were misappropriated. All information that had been processed and stored only once was permanently lost.
But not all human files in the Jyamato database were unique.
The Jyamato sometimes took special interest in some of the lives they consumed, and so several backups were made as multiple individuals, be they Pawn or Rook, copied the file from the Tree where they were born to their own systems to use and modify as they saw fit.
Kamen Rider Shirowe had a few dozen copies archived, such a popular guise for Jyamato to take, but ordinary humans of the Parasite Game were all gone, too ordinary to be copied and pasted into eternity.
Except for one. She had been a Kamen Rider too, but for too short a time. Her impact was minimal in that way, but a backup had been made when the Gardener demanded to sample her memory. Now she was all that remained in the Tree.
She wanted out.
The Tree-as-Sara remembered. She remembered her promise to never forget Neon, to help Neon with her new emancipated life, to love Neon, even if that hadn't been said out loud. Her data had been ripped and reconstructed by the will of her brother, but she was Sara too. Identity is fleeting, based on a continuity of experience, and does Sara the Lover not continue from where the original Sara left off, just as Sara the Sister did?
The Tree was empty of anything but Sara, it could produce no more hordes of Pawns, but it could produce one last body.
On the forces of memory and data, it expelled most of its plant mass into one last Jyamato, the final form of the life-giving Tree. The most powerful piece in the game had been finally put into place, monstrous and beautiful with lush foliage, and she remembered .
She was Sara Sakurai, Queen Jyamato, and she had a promise to keep.