-3: 108
Since the Outpost was prepping for Halloween, everyone was busy. Because of that, it was pretty boring on the surface... at least, according to Indi.
And so, like every girl dad ever, I was dragged along to her whims and convinced to take her to the Ark since they were having a giant celebration all day.
Indi looked smug, carrying a giant plastic pumpkin bin while dressed as a mummy.
And by dressed as a mummy, I mean wrapped in medical bandages pinned together by shiny golden buckles because she wanted to look spooky AND regal.
I watched Indi impatiently tap her feet on the elevator floor as we descended to the Ark and said, "You really want to go trick-or-treating that bad, huh?"
Indi looked at me and said, "Of course! It's a once in a lifetime opportunity to get free offerings from witless humans!"
"...So, you're saying you just want to pig out on sugar and chocolates."
Indi blushed and averted her gaze. "N-No! Of course not, Daddy. I would never... I mean, if I so happen to get a lot of them... It would be fine. Right?"
I laughed.
Indi huffed and then walked over to kick my shin. But then she winced and rubbed her toe. "Ow! That hurt!"
I laughed harder and said, "Indi, darling. You should know by now. Your Daddy doesn't go anywhere without wearing armor."
Indi pouted and said, "You should let me hurt you! You were making fun of me!"
"And I'm sorry. But you shouldn't hurt people just for making fun of you. Now, if they HIT you, then you should definitely stab them. But if it's just words, it doesn't matter."
Indi paused. Then her eyes lit up and said, "So... if a meanie punches me or hits me, I can stab their ankles?"
"Yes." I nodded. "Absolutely. In fact, let Daddy know and I'll break their legs."
"Yay!" Indi ran over and hugged me. "Best Daddy ever!"
I chuckled and ruffled her electric blue hair. "I think I'm your 'only' Daddy, right?"
"So that makes you the best by default!" Indi looked up, clearly pleased with her logic.
I smiled and said, "That's right."
Indi smiled and leaned against me, happy and content for once.
It was to the point where you would easily mistake her for a normal kid and not, you know, a deadly humanity-eradicating robotic automaton that was hellbent on murdering everything in sight only a few weeks ago.
Though I guess dying technically three times would do that to you. After all, if she was a Nikke, she died once already to become that, another time to Absolute and Matis after she became Indivilia, and then a third time to Chatterbox before he became Vanitas.
At this point, she really was basically just a reincarnated soul than the 'mature woman' she kept insisting herself to be.
I was fairly sure that it was a case of a childish mind and body having access to like a super cool tv show in her head of the past Indivilia while 'Indi' herself was a different person now...
But it seemed like Indi hadn't realized it yet.
And I had a feeling it would be hilariously funny to wait until she did since right now she was basically just in the delusional childhood phase of liking cool and dramatic edgy women.
For a while, we just stood in the elevator, waiting to descend into the Ark.
Indi leaned against me, letting me braid her hair while she hummed.
But after a bit, she said, "Daddy?"
"Yes, Indi?"
"...Do you really love us? Me, Libby, and Nile?"
I paused and then gave her a soft smile. "Of course I do."
Indi turned around and looked at me with her violet eyes. Then she bit her lips and said, "...But we aren't human. And we hurt humans too. So... Why?"
I placed my hand on her head and said, "Indi. Listen to me carefully, okay?"
Indi paused. But she looked up at me with an uncharacteristically serious expression and nodded. "Okay, Daddy. What is it?"
"What makes humanity isn't just a fleshy body. It's not even the thoughts, mind, or personality that a person has."
Indi furrowed her brow, confused. "Then what does, Daddy?"
"Will. Volition." I smiled and gently patted Indi's head. "As long as you live, you have the right to make a choice. And as long as you keep taking that right and making choices while taking responsibility for the actions that unfold from them, you're human. No matter how you look."
Indi frowned and said, "...What if we choose to hurt people?"
"Then that just makes you an evil human. But you're still human. And you can always choose to be good. Just like you're choosing to be good now."
Indi's breath hitched. And then her eyes teared up before she hugged me. "...Daddy's mean. You're making me feel things Mommy never did."
"Well." I brushed her tears aside and said, "Your 'Mommy' isn't a human, so that makes sense."
Indi smiled at me, looking every bit a sweet young girl. And then she said, "...I like you better than Mommy anyway."
"Good. Because I'm definitely going to murder her."
Indi's eyes widened in shock. Then she paused and laughed. "...Yeah. Mommy is bad. Daddy should kill her."
"Mmhm. She's the enemy to humanity. And by that, I mean free will. If she wins, everything will just be under her control... so we can't allow that."
The elevator came to a stop, the doors sliding open.
Seeing that, I smiled and said, "But that's something that Daddy and the others will worry about." I held her hand and said, "For you, Indi. You just need to worry about being a kid and having fun. Okay?"
Indi gave me a bright smile and said, "Okay!"
"Good. Now, since we're here... and since it's Halloween..."
I remembered the first high-end bakery that I visited with Rapi and Marian. The one that refused us at first until I pulled rank.
"...How about we go trick or treating? Daddy knows just the place."
===
Back at the Outpost. Syuen's house, an apartment build that she had claimed about a block from Maxwell's lab.
The moment Syuen entered, she tossed her visor to the side and flopped onto her couch. After grabbing a cushion, she immediately let out a muffled scream.
"I can't believe I did that. WHY DID I DO THAT?! I'm Syuen! The former Missilis CEO! I'm dignified! A genius!"
Syuen's own voice echoed from a speaker nearby, "Is it really that bad?"
Syuen sat up, her face feeling hot as she glared at herself looking smug on a nearby monitor. "Shut up-! Huh?"
It wasn't her. No, it WAS her. Literally 'was.'
Because the Syuen in the monitor was her younger self. The same one who had continuously called Syuen a monster all these years for what she did to Maxwell.
"Surprised?" The Syuen in the monitor giggled, looking amused. "I'm still you. And you're still me. But I get to be cute again while you're the monster~"
Syuen gave herself... her past self?
Either way, she glared at the younger Syuen in the monitor and said, "Don't play cute with me! We're the same damned person!"
The younger Syuen nodded. "We are. But... I dunno. It feels kind of nice. Here, I'll sync with you."
Before Syuen could respond, she suddenly got an update of memories.
Her, looking at herself from a third person perspective.
And seeing how ridiculous that Syuen was...
"...Okay. It's kind of funny."
"See?" The smaller Syuen nodded. "The only one who gets to make fun of me is me."
"...God, I'm insane." Syuen let out a helpless laugh as she stared at the smaller version of herself-
No.
It was still her.
Both of them were her.
Syuen was just, literally, talking to herself. It was just her own intrusive thoughts finally having the space to be loose instead of echoing in her head.
Realizing that, Syuen shook her head. "...How did I even stay alive until now?"
The smaller Syuen shrugged and said, "You've always been good at playing pretend. Right? First at being a hero. Then being a monster. But now..."
"...It's just me." Syuen let out a wry smile.
The smaller Syuen in the monitor matched her expression. And then she faded.
Because it was always ever just Syuen.
Even if she wanted to run away and say it wasn't.
Syuen sighed, the room now quiet since her 'energy' self and her Nikke self were in sync again. As she did, the research that she'd done while her Nikke self was playing around like a damned child filled her head.
"...I see. So that's how Hoopa teleported out of the Ark." Syuen murmured as the information settled in her mind.
Her father, Enme, had been the one to both pioneer using Alva particles for communication as well as set up the entire network across the surface to allow for communication from the Ark to anywhere that Alva particles existed.
...Although he was undoubtedly a monster, Syuen couldn't deny the man's brilliance.
But it seemed that Hoopa had taken it a step further, building actual faster than light travel by using Alva particles as a shortcut and leveraging the existing infrastructure.
"...That bastard. He already knew that 'I' was possible."
An artificial fifth dimension.
Instead of folding space or digitizing objects, the way that Hoopa used teleportation via Alva particles was to construct an artificial spatial overlay, briefly making spacetime 5D instead of 4D by adding a second space dimension over the intwined spacetime dimension.
After that, he just remapped space, bypassing time entirely.
"...A cheat. Not a genius, a cheat. That's who that ridiculous guy is."
Syuen let out a wistful sigh as she thought about that commander.
"You liiike him~"
Syuen flinched and glared at the monitor only to see her younger self again. "Would you quit that?!"
"Why should I? I'm just you. And I hate lying to myself."
Syuen felt her face heat up, unable to refute the words. "E-Even so! You don't need to say it out loud!"
The younger Syuen in the monitor giggled and said, "What's wrong? It's not like your a kid anymore. He was right, you know? You are a lolibaba. Over 60 years old and still look like a brat~"
"STOOOOOP!"
Syuen tried clamping her hands over her ears.
But, just like after she ran away to that break room when Maxwell woke up as a Nikke, her younger self's words... her own guilty conscience cut through to her anyway.
"There's nothing wrong with finding a man attractive~ He's just your type too, right? Tall, muscular, heroic, smart... And he doesn't think you're a monster. Plus, he believes in you. Right?"
Syuen slowly lowered her hands, still feeling her face burning with shame and mortification. But...
"...Shut up."
Her younger self- No, her guilty conscience.
It giggled at her and said, "If you ask nicely, maybe you can finally graduate from being a virgin~"
*CRACK*
Syuen let out a ragged breath as she glared at the pot sticking out of the broken monitor.
Then she paused, rationale kicking in. And she groaned, flopping back on her couch. "...I'm crazy. I'm actually crazy. I just threw a pot at the monitor while having a conversation with my own thoughts. Ugh..."
Syuen loved it and hated it at the same time.
She loved it because Syuen was damned sure that no matter what happened she'd definitely still be alive unless all computers were instantly wiped out.
But she hated it because that meant her own damned thoughts that she'd worked so hard to repress all these years were absolutely unfiltered now and were also absolutely here to stay.
Syuen groaned. "And it WOULD be on Halloween that all of this is happening too..."
"Spoooky."
"Kill yourself."
"We couldn't if we wanted to at this point, me. Sorry~"
"Ugh." Syuen let out a helpless laugh and shook her head. "Whatever."
After taking a bit to collect her thoughts, Syuen sat up straight and stretched. "Okay. Enough play time."
It had been fun (as much as she would never ACTUALLY admit it) to play Hero with Laplace against Drake and Chatterbox... or Vanitas as he had renamed himself.
But there were more important things to focus on.
Syuen tapped her mechanical right arm against her legs and said, "Hoopa can't officially deploy anymore since he's at a real risk of bleeding out on the field. It's probably making him stircrazy, so we should probably do something for him before he decides to make something crazy."
Commander Hoopa, as much as he wouldn't admit it, was a genius.
But he was a MAD genius. The sort that didn't understand his own brilliance while also pulling outlandish things out of thin air whenever something didn't go his way.
And Syuen had a feeling that guy might just get annoyed enough to do something ridiculous like make spare bodies just so he could fight.
All while not considering the potential ramifications of multiple versions of himself running around.
So...
Syuen hummed and said, "A universal blood transfusion is probably a good thing to make anyway, right?"
In hindsight, it was a bit archaic that they had Evergreen to maintain longevity forever while still not having an all-purpose synthetic blood-
"Wait."
A thought came to mind.
"...Why DON'T we have synthetic blood for transfusions?"
With how often Commanders were shot or wounded by Raptures on the field, you would think that at some point in the past decades SOMEONE would have put that as a priority.
Sure, you could argue that blood donations... willingly or not, were more efficient.
But that required having a person on hand. If you could synthesize it from something like Splendamin, then surely it would be more efficient? It'd be shelf-safe too.
"...Ugh." Syuen wrinkled her nose. "...Don't tell me the reason no one bothered is because the Central Government bigwigs are freaks who get off on killing people and using their bodies-"
Syuen froze.
Then she quickly did a mental calculation on the number of Nikke conversions done every year, as well as the metrics on stored bloodtypes, organ donations, and more among the upper class in the Ark.
"...Ew, ew, ew... I did NOT need to know that. Ugh. But that makes sense. Damned bastards..." Syuen grumbled and stood up. "...Might as well fix that. And other things. I don't have to worry about those idiots on the board while I'm here, so I guess I'll make the things I've been wanting to."
Proper prosthetics, synthetic organs, medical procedures...
There were a lot of 'heroic' things that Syuen wanted to do when she was younger. Things that she had let fall to the wayside as she started to cling to her role as the CEO of Missilis after Maxwell turned into a Nikke.
Now that she had the opportunity...
"I might as well look into it. I'd be wasting my genius if I didn't, right?"
At that time, her younger voice echoed again. "Ooh! Look into womb force too. You wanted to see if that was possible, remember? Nikkes should be able to have babies too, so-"
"STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!"