Work Text:
The future can always be so confusing. Time itself is confusing, at least when you have the ability to peer beyond it.
Akane was someone who had learned the ability to, at opportune moments, tap into the morphogenetic field and gaze through someone else’s eyes, or speak to someone, or simply peer into their mind to an extent.
It was an ability that was confusing to her as a child, as well as a bit scary.
Truth be told, while it wasn’t confusing anymore, not much at least, it still very much was scary. Gazing upon the future, or even multiple futures, was daunting. Knowing that things depend on someone else, that your life or death depends on the input of some other person, and you know what they have to do to reach the optimal outcome, but having no option besides going along with things. To know what is required, but having to be a passive observer. It was scary. Completely frightening, and it almost froze her to her core.
But she was nothing if not determined. Determined to reach those optimal futures, to reach the goal she wanted, no, needed to achieve. That’s what she did during the Nonary Project, and then spent the next nine years chasing the one future she needed to survive through the Nonary Game.
…And now, despite her thinking it was done, that she would be able to rest, maybe live a life of her own, she was thrown for a loop right into another future to work towards.
Life had a funny way of torturing Akane Kurashiki.
Perhaps this was God’s punishment for Akane. Something she had done had upset Him enough that he thrust a new challenge onto her, to test her.
If that was the case, she wouldn’t fail. She hadn’t failed before, she wouldn’t fail now. She didn’t know how to fail. It wasn’t a possibility for her.
She would succeed. Whatever trials were put in her path, she would come out on top.
That is the way Akane did things. That is the side of her that was awakened when she had to become Zero.
She was Zero now, forever. That side of her would likely never leave. A part of her might always be three steps ahead, scheming, planning, trying to desperately keep everything in her control.
But the problem is, some things can’t always be in her control.
Perhaps this next trial would be one of the first times she wasn’t in control, or perhaps she’d be just as much in control as she was before.
…No, she wouldn’t be. Not as much as before.
She had every detail to work with before. She had seen the entire game, not only through her own eyes, but through the eyes of Junpei, time and time again, through every outcome possible.
This time? She was working with rough outlines. Something that had, quite literally, come to her in a vision, and with barely any details. How was someone supposed to work with that? At least, if anyone was able to work these basic details into a full plan of action, it would be Akane, along with the help of her brother, or at least as much as he could manage to help.
She would do it. She would win.
She would survive.
She had to.
Santa had given her the present she wanted, her own life, and now, it was up to herself to free it.