#his all caste training was cool he can have that one take the crowbar away and give him his guns and the kriss back

[wastinawaaay]

jason todd does not need new friends new team new costume new romantic plot he just needs a fucking decent writer

[aconitemare]

[jaydick fic] Before That, And Colder

Chapter One

Summary:  It's been over a year since Dick left Spyral. He's finally settling back into his old life, but his time undercover has unsettled the dust that once collected over the past. Now Dick has a barrage of untouched memories to sort through and yet another Batman case summoning him away from the 'Haven. And while Dick is catching up to his past, Jason's is catching up to him.

AO3

Next Chapter 

The Batcave has a myriad of underground tunnels leading to it from miles around, but Dick as usual enters through the same trapdoor in the study he used as a kid. This library is more modest than the others Bruce keeps, with tenfold the ambiance. The books flaunt their withered spines and yellowed pages, elders of an erudite community, and intrigue emanates from the very dust collecting atop shelves and between pages. This is not a room Alfred obligates himself to maintain quite so keenly. His neglect may be strategic, some emergency deterrent to wandering guests with sensitive allergies. Not that a guest has ever, at least to Dick’s knowledge, made it this deep into the Manor. 

This particular room also features in a long-standing, recurring dream Dick has had since he was ten years old. The dream has aged with him; the details are softer, more nebulous — his subconscious could once recall the exact titles on each book’s spine, the precise pattern of the red and gold rug on the floor — but the dream’s accuracy eventually faded with the real-life furniture. The quiet terror that possessed him, however, intensified. The worsening fear is probably not specific to the dream though; the world itself is scarier to Dick than it was fifteen years ago.

The dream begins with Dick in this study, the burning sconces casting shadows and providing dim light. In the real world, the sconces are electronic; man-made, ordinary, and only on if he flicks the switch. But in his head, they are made of real fire. They burn regardless of him, entirely independent of his actions, ignited long before he arrives. As the scene progresses, Dick opens the trapdoor by pulling out the correct books in the correct order; putting them back in a different, correct order; waiting for the middle shelf to retract into the wall behind it; staring unblinking into the retinal scanner until he was cleared. 

This process quickened as Dick got older until the door would open without him lifting a finger. The door immediately reveals a steep, stone staircase that plunges into infinite darkness. The wordless terror, the fear that calls distantly as if from the other end of a tunnel, grips him here. He must descend the stairs; that is the dream’s one imperative. Sometimes he takes the first step himself, allowing the unknown to swallow him by increments. Sometimes he falls, a blameless mistake, and slips innocently into the open mouth of night. Sometimes he is pushed, a comforting hand on his back turned treacherous. Dick never does look behind his shoulder or acknowledge the betrayal; he doesn’t need to. He knows who the man is and trusts him even as he plummets. 

 But that is all a dream. The trapdoor doesn’t really open unto a staircase — not right away, at any rate. Dick has to make the trek through a dimly lit corridor first, which is murder on the legs after just patrolling Bludhaven. He hasn’t had time to relax the muscle, having coming straight here after a text from Bruce. The door makes a loud sound when it finally shuts, which Dick remembers used to freak the bejeezus out of him when he was ten. The temperature also drops rapidly, although this doesn’t unsettle him anymore. Robins fear neither dark nor enclosed spaces. They revel in the creepy-crawly. Flourish, even, once training has been completed. 

Dick takes the stairs two at a time. The elevator, accessible through a strangely grandiose walk-in storage closet, wasn’t added until much later in Dick’s adolescence. He still prefers the stairs; they feel quicker. Cement gives way to rock. The air dramatically cools halfway down the stairs. Moisture clings to the walls, the ceiling, the floor. A few feet from where he stands, the Batcave is bathed in blue light. Dick spots Bruce down below, ant-like from here, bowed before a colony of busy monitors. Dick leaps over the last ten steps or so, flitting towards the hunched exoskeleton of the Batman. 

“You summoned?” Dick greets and thinks about how ants communicate through pheromones and stridulation. An ant can disclose its role within the group by injecting pheromones into food, which they then directly feed another ant. Dick pictures Bruce rapidly rubbing his legs together, finds this funny, and then imagines Damian spitting chewed-up falafel into Tim’s open mouth. This is no less funny for its grossness. 

Bruce glances at him, a miraculous feat that nearly sends Dick stumbling backward in shock. “What’s that face for?” Bruce asks in the same second he quickly returns his focus to his research. Dick consciously relaxes his wrinkled nose, courtesy of Ant-Damian. 

“No reason,” answers Dick breezily. “How’s Gotham hanging?”

Bruce’s chosen screen, a small tablet-sized rectangle built into the desk, mirrors the information on the much larger main screen on the wall. Dick cranes his neck to look at it, but not before catching the upward tug of Bruce’s lips. “From the belfry, as usual,” he quips. 

“Ha!” Dick exclaims and pokes Bruce’s shoulder once. “That was funny. I knew you had it in you, B.”

“Thank you.”

Dick continues, “Everyone told me, ‘that man is as dry as a raisin,’ but I insisted that you’d make a joke pun-day.”

“I already said thank you, Dick,” Bruce reminds. Across the giant screen is a slowed-down video reel of a man — a boy, really, judging by the way he holds himself despite his grown height — being tied to a streetlamp. 

“Who’s that?” Dick asks. 

Bruce zooms in on the victim’s face. “Terry Weind. Sixteen years old. Badly beaten, but stable. General Hospital released him this morning. There are two other young men — both aged sixteen, both from low-income households — discovered in the same fashion in downtown Gotham the past month.”

“So I’ve heard,” admits Dick. No pictures of the victims have been released, either through mainstream news channels or the bat-vine. Dick recognizes the background instantly as Park Row where Bruce had taken the liberty of installing his high-tech spycams. Bruce keeps Crime Alley well-monitored even as a memorial. For good reason, as it turns out, because it’s suddenly become volatile again after years of dormancy. 

Bruce switches to the next tape. “Devin White, fifteen years old. He’s the third victim and was admitted last night. According to Oracle, hospital records list him with internal bleeding, a cracked skull, two shattered kneecaps, a fractured scapula, and a broken arm.”

Devin looks up on the screen and Dick automatically pauses the tape, hand darting across the keyboard, to take in the boy’s fear-blown brown eyes. He resumes the video. 

“I can’t identify the assailant,” Bruce informs, keying into Dick’s intent. “He wears a red hood and keeps his head down at all times. According to Gordon, the victims are all certain it was a man but none can remember his face.”

That surprises Dick. “They would’ve been looking right at him. And there’s street lamps,” he says.

Bruce grunts his assent, eyes glued on his screen. Devin struggles futilely on the screen as the man steps back and raises his arm above his head. Moonlight glints on metal.

“Wait,” says Dick, throat tightening, “is that —”

Before he can finish his sentence, the gleaming crowbar cracks against the boy’s skull. And then his face. His left shoulder. His right. His kneecaps then. Face again, other side. Dick’s jaw clenches. He doesn’t look away. At the end, the man removes his phone from his pocket and holds it over the boy — either taking a picture or sending a text, or both, from the angle and the time it takes before he’s pocketing the object again. 

“One of the Joker’s goons,” Dick decides, punch-to-the-gut quick, when the attacker finally walks away, crowbar tucked into a duffle bag and the boy a crumpled piece of paper beneath a weakly flickering light. Dick changes his mind. “But no, he wouldn’t care anymore. It’s been, god, six years.” Out loud, six doesn’t sound very long at all. Dick sees Jason’s death like a black-and-white photograph, forever ago and therefore impossible today. But the pictures of Jason back then are in color, his visage spread out on the front pages of newspapers dating within the decade. “The joke’s been played out,” Dick declares anyway because it would be for the Joker. 

“Maybe not. He’s unpredictable and historically not above recycling old material. That’s why the hoodie bothers me,” Bruce confesses. He pauses the video and faces Dick. The glow from the monitor limns the severe cut of his cheekbone as it casts his face into extremity: the heavy brow pulls farther down, the wide lips weld into one shut line, and his austere eyes sink towards a deeper, darker blue. Dick sees himself in the pupils, a distant figure peering out from a dark well. 

Bruce pushes his chair away from the desk so he remains seated yet notably detached from Devin White. Dick can feel the heat emanating from the computers, warming one side of his body, as Bruce rests his chin atop his palm. Aloud, Bruce contemplates the question, “Is the color coincidental, or a nod at the Red Hood?”

Dick barely even registered the color, but once he does, his heart drops into the pit of his stomach. His stomach drops to his feet. His whole body has capsized, the world itself hurrying to reorient itself to his new right-side-up. “That would mean the Joker knows Red Hood was a Robin.”

“It would, wouldn’t it,” Bruce says flatly. 

Dick follows the train of thought. “Then — what? He knows you watch the Park Row Memorial? He’s — baiting you? What does he want with this stunt?” Dick looks, frustrated, away from the broken kid on the screen towards the sturdy man in front of him. Bruce is quiet for a few moments, moments where Dick can feel his own heartbeat in his chest, his ears, his fingertips. He waits Bruce out, a red gash of a smile widening behind his eyes meanwhile. Then, finally:

“I met Jason on Park Row.” The statement is more utterance than response, spoken to the floor in a low tone. Dick’s mind immediately presses against whatever anxiety Bruce is brewing for himself. 

“A lot of events have happened on Park Row,” says Dick. “If you think this person — the Joker, or whoever — knows that much, ah, they’d have to be psychic.” Internally, Dick’s profile of Jason and Bruce makes room for another detail. Twenty-five years old, out of the house for seven years, and still Dick collects his mentor’s unnecessary, painful secrets. Dick is a recordkeeper of other people’s wounds. 

Bruce leans back. Dick knows he means to reset himself; change the angle of his thoughts with the angle of his body. “Maybe so,” Bruce grants, “but I’m willing to bet they know that street hits close to home.”

Dick purses his lips and thinks of scattered pearls. “Everything that happened on Park Row happened to Bruce Wayne, not Batman,” he reasons. “If the Joker knew who you were, and what this memorial meant to you, he wouldn’t lead with a Robin. Even one he,” here, Dick falters. “Even Jason,” he neatly amends. “His obsession is wholely with you.”

Bruce considers this. “Then either it’s not the Joker at all, or the Joker only knows that Red Hood was Robin, without knowledge of Jason Todd, or —”

“Or the ski-mask is purely coincidence,” Dick finishes. “For that matter, Bruce, it could all be coincidental — the victimology, the weapon —”

“Except that Jason contacted Tim the other day,” Bruce interrupts. His tired eyes seize Dick, seem to shake him by his very arms. “The day following Weind’s attack, photographs of the victim were left on his patrol bike. Photographs of Leland’s attack were delivered to the Red Hood through a series of messengers switching hands until the envelope got to him. The latest victim, as of two nights ago, had photographs attached to his bike again.”

Dick’s eyebrows have raised by this point. “Jason told Tim all this?” 

“More or less. Not enough to satisfy, but Jason is hardly cooperative as a general character trait. Tim compiled his notes for me; I’ll forward them to you.”

Dick bites the further questions that taste like metal on his tongue, demanding to know why Jason would go to Tim first. It’s not essential. It’s reached Dick, at any rate, as all family matters do.

“Whomever our perp is, we can safely assume they know the details of Robin’s death and know that he came back as Hood.” Dick waits for Bruce to contribute more information, some other detail Tim afforded him, and continues when Bruce gives the slightest nod. Bruce is already on his computer, retrieving Tim’s file on the case and mailing it to Dick. “That’s a lot of baseline knowledge on their part,” Dick muses. “And a lot of patience. This is a long-con, no question.” 

Dick rambles about Jason’s enemies — mostly ordinary gangbangers who likely wouldn’t have the connections or patience to sleuth Hood’s previous alias — as well as Batman’s historic opponents, who have never exhibited an equivalent fixation with any of the Robins before. Bruce rubs his chin, eyes on his computer, while Dick consolidates their shared thoughts. 

“Not to get technical here, but we have a whole boatload of equally implausible possibilities here, Bruce,” Dick concludes.

“No more so than we usually start off with on a case,” Bruce replies immediately.

Dick laughs, low and tired. He can feel exhaustion creeping into his bones at the same steady pace all his needs do. Hunger, fatigue, thirst, rest — these sensations rarely overwhelm him, but instead stalk him with restraint like prowling predators. 

When Dick laughs, Bruce glances up at him with a small smile. For a moment, Dick thinks of spending the night in his old bedroom. But he has a life in Bludhaven. His life. 

Dick’s work phone buzzes. He slides it out, unlocks it, to skim over Tim’s notes. “So, should I put in a request for time off at the station?” he checks, half-joking. The BPD had been graciously flexible during his first year as a beat cop, but his stint in Spyral has reset any seniority he might have accumulated. Plus, he’s reluctant to coast on the “aren’t you jazzed I’m not actually dead” card. Half his coworkers entered after Dick’s time in Bludhaven, and only a quarter of the ones who remember him appreciated the cleaning-out he did on the dirty cops. 

Bruce quirks an eyebrow. “Can you afford to?” he asks. 

Dick translates the question in his head: Would you let me help with your bills in the meantime? “Probably not. I don’t need time off. I’m used to not sleeping — seriously, I think if I had a full eight hours, it would actually shock my system and land me in a hospital,” Dick answers. He looks around the cave in the overpowering light that somehow manages to always feel dim. Is there a comfortable chair he can settle into? He’s getting too big to perch on the computer desk without pressing fifty buttons, some of them possibly red and ominously labeled things like “EJECT” and “DO NOT TOUCH.” 

“Are you equating sleep deprivation with drug addiction?” Bruce asks, amusement lightening his voice, draining some of the dark from the room. 

Dick locates an ultra-cozy office chair shoved near a map table. He sets his sights on the coffee-stained throw pillow atop heavy black leather. “I’m just saying, that would be a strange ER story: man jittery from insomnia withdrawals. Why risk the news headlines?” he muses, wheeling the office chair towards Bruce. 

Bruce does not agree. Instead, he points out, “You assume in a city hounded by masked villains and mini apocalypses that ‘son of billionaire sleeps pretty okay at night’ would catch people’s attention?”

Dick quietly blooms when Bruce says son . It’s a warm word like sun . How badly he always wants to hear that word; he stretches towards it, leafy limbs unfurling. He tries not to preen and instead seats himself, beginning the process of getting comfortable. This position, and then that position, around and around. 

“You look like a dog circling its tail when you do that,” remarks Bruce. 

Dick scrolls to the top of the file on his phone, having figured out how to spend the next few hours. “Dogs have the right idea. How else can you know for sure you’re using the cushion to its greatest potential unless you sample seating arrangements?” The file is far from lengthy, he’s gathered while skimming, but there are details Bruce hasn’t covered in their conversation. For example, all the victims were attacked downtown, but Trey Leland lives in Bludhaven and was only passing through. Opportunistic, Dick characterizes the attacker. 

“Are you comfortable?” Bruce asks. Dick grunts affirmatively, trying to focus. He hears Bruce say something about how Dick never stays in one spot anyway, but the words are more like ideas, like something transmitted through playscape talk tubes. 

There’s a zone Dick wants to reach where details of a case will absorb him so fully he doesn’t register hunger, exhaustion, or his bladder for that matter. Everyone in the masked business knows the zone, but it’s harder to access when he’s tired, which he is — a bad start for this mission, so he will try to sleep after tomorrow’s shift if he can. It occurs to him that he might not be able to, considering he doesn’t have a gauge on how long until this criminal will strike again, or escalate from teenagers to their actual target. 

He looks up from his phone and, from where his head spills out over the chair’s arm — noticeably hard and plastic beneath the cushion, already chafing the back of his neck — scrutinizes Bruce. Bruce must be tired, too, because he actually breaks away from his computer to return Dick’s stare.

“Yes?” prods Bruce after a moment. 

Dick answers immediately. “We’re going to have to work with Jason.”

Bruce’s expression reveals no challenge with this. “Yes,” he replies, neutral.

“Like, close-up. Face-to-face. We might have to — guard him,” he finishes, lamely, hoping he’s getting his point across. 

Luckily, Bruce does seem to understand finally the monumental undertaking of convincing Jason to accept their full help. “He’ll insist he has his own safehouse,” Bruce says. 

“Or that he has his own team,” Dick adds. 

“That team is haphazard at best with little in the way of deductive skills,” Bruce argues.

“It’s none of our business, he’ll say,” Dick counters.

“Then he should not have contacted Red Robin,” Bruce dismisses easily. 

 Dick is reevaluating his decision to remain on duty at the BPD. He’s almost not even tired anymore with this new, shiny, family-resistant case. “His safehouse is still functional,” Dick tosses into the ring. 

Bruce’s voice turns grave, eyes suddenly weighing onto Dick like stones on his chest. “No house is safe,” Bruce criticizes, “and the only people he can trust are the people whose identities may be equally compromised by this situation.”

Dick purses his lips and thinks. “He won’t like that,” he warns.

Bruce’s voice regains that darkness Dick tries so hard to lighten. It’s no use, though, not during cases like these, not when Jason is present. And he is always present, in the style of phantoms, but particularly now. Bruce flexes his jaw. “But he will heed it,” he states. 

Dick knows, if his and Jason’s situations were reversed, if Jason was the one putting barriers on whom Dick could trust, Dick would not listen. Dick would push back and then pull away from Jason, from Bruce and his untrusting brood. He has before. 

Dick watches Bruce who has fixed his attention concretely on the screen. He’s excruciatingly tense and it fills up the cave, tightening the muscles in Dick’s shoulder. The tendons in Bruce’s jaw flex and Dick can feel Bruce’s teeth grinding in his own head. He wants Bruce to turn around and meet his gaze. He wants to know if he’ll see himself in Bruce’s eyes again. But it’s no use; Bruce isn’t looking at him. He’s been dismissed without a word. 

Next Chapter

[osmw1]

Crowbar Nurse  Chapter 12 — The Lamer the Technique, The Stronger the Kiryū

My consciousness resurfaced from the depths of a deep dreamless slumber, similar to the feeling of waking from anesthesia… or so I’ve been told by my patients.

My tongue squirmed, trying to rehydrate the dryness in my mouth. I surveyed my surroundings while still lying down… I knew where I was.

Uptown — the second stage of the Emergency Partition Plan and lovingly nicknamed Safehouse by fans of the game.

We managed to make our way here at last…

A sigh of relief trickled from my lips was followed by another deep lungful in, but the dry air cut my trachea as if I were breathing in razor blades.

Glimpses of the bare, windowless room peeked through the impenetrable red iron door. Where I had lain wasn’t a bed, but something closer to a bench you’d find in the waiting area of a hospital. The air in here was musty, evident that this room has long since seen visitors. And it was also dry because the air conditioning units lack a humidification feature?

Though glad as I was to make it here safe and sound, equal amounts of bitterness welled up in me, cursing the reality of the situation: This was no dream.

I’m not sure how we got in. Normally, you’d need to find a hidden NPC or the key in a secret room… well, I suppose I should count my blessings.

Lying here all day wouldn’t do us any favors. I sat up while taking another large breath.

“Finally awake, I see. It’s a shame that you are not dead.” “… Oh, it’s you, Elizabeth.”

Some distance away, the voice emanated from an office chair that looked to be built by the lowest bidder. The sour look on her face indicated the fruit she was munching on might have been as well.

“You fainted as soon as things had settled down. Kiryū turned pale as a ghost, fearing that he had pushed you too hard.” “Oh, jeez… Sorry about that. That was poor timing though, seeing things haven’t settled down. Not until we reach the safehouse, at least.” “We were fine. Sure, we might have taken a few wrong turns, but we managed to stumble our way here alright. It was nothing we couldn’t handle on our own… so he said. You have been running on fumes and working long hours, haven’t you? Adrenaline only gets you so far before your body clocks out.”

With her hand clutching her temple, Elizabeth looked just as poorly. More jarring was how tied around her ankles was a makeshift rope fashioned from bedsheets.

“Speaking of which, where is Kiryū anyway?” “Him? He took two NPC’s with him to the supermarket in search for more food. … look at this. All this just to make sure I wouldn’t kill you.” “Hmm? What about it?” “These sheets are all part of Kiryū’s contraption. He tied my ankles to the lever that opens the door so that if I were to force my way towards you, the zombies would all rush in.” “Wow.” “He even went around confiscating any objects large enough to be a weapon and tucked it underneath the bed you’re sleeping on.

She looked helpless all tied up like that. … Kiryū sure is cautious. But that makes it even weirder for someone so cautious to run out on his own, leaving behind me and Elizabeth, a potential threat. I guess I should first check the place where a rifle should be… Wait, what?! There’s only a pistol and a shotgun here!

“… I wonder if he’d be alright with just two NPC’s…”

I mumbled as I sat up from the leather bench. Why did he go and do that? I mean, you can have up to five soldiers in your—err, survivors following you at the same time.

“He said he was going to recruit the NPC’s that he left behind at the start of the game. I suppose he is also going to take the chance to level up as well.” “Why is he in such a… Oh, maybe he’s worried about the seven-day limit.” “What limit?” “So, after seven days pass in this game, an endless amount of zombies will come and overrun you and that means game over.” “How awful.” “I know, right? Such a shame, especially because it’s such a fun game.”

I awkwardly chuckled before taking a sip of water from a plastic bottle underneath the bench, instantly dissolving the parchedness from before.

“… Sorry that we left you just lying there.”

Her words slowly stumbled out,

“That Kiryū really wanted to help, but besides you, none of us knew how to use syringes. Stuffing your mouth with herbs couldn’t wake you up either.” “Yes, I suppose Medicinal Herbs don’t help with fainting.” “Right…”

Elizabeth’s response marked the end of the topic. I looked towards her to see the remainder of half-eaten fruit resting on her lap and her lips sucked in. She must have been fraught, nervous.

Shoot. How do I break this awkward silence…?

My nursing training can come into play here. Hark, thee! … Umm, I learned this technique called assertive communication in class… What was the trick to it again?

“… The air in here sure is dry.”

Panic beset me and the words that came out were nothing but unengaging small talk.

“Yes… I suppose powering down the air conditioning would help.”

Elizabeth followed up with the pointless topic I offered, perhaps similarly hoping to cast away the awkwardness.

“I already tried doing so with the controls on the wall but to no avail. Perhaps the cooling system is centrally controlled. The air conditioning in the lecture halls at my university were just as annoying too.” “Oh, maybe, yeah… Speaking of which, what did you study in university?” “If we know too much of each other, it would just be awkward if either of us dies. … I mean, if you really want to know, I suppose I do not mind telling you that I am licensed for early childhood education, elementary school education, and childcare—where I currently work.” “Wow! That must’ve been a lot of hard work.” “It certainly was… and I was frequently rewarded with unlawful overtime. Hard work sure pays off.”

She turned her gaze upwards and unto the ceiling; I couldn’t help but to sigh too.

“It’s tough before and after graduating, hey? I guess I’m in the same boat as you. Being thrown into this world sure is scary, but also, being torn away from my super overworked lifestyle isn’t the worst thing either. I mean, it’d be bad if we were trapped here forever though.”

At the very least, I was able to share a laugh in agreement with Elizabeth.

“I wholly understand you. There really isn’t too much you can do with your own powers to escape the confines of a terrible job. Perhaps this world was created as… something like respite care. Less than likely though…” “Hey, Elizabeth?”

Though interrupting the girl deep in thought, I managed to find resolve and approached Elizabeth.

“I’m wondering if you could tell me a little about what you know about this world.” “…” “I don’t see myself surviving if we continue on like this. More importantly, though, someone important to you died so that you could return to the real world, am I right…?” “What makes you think so?”

Her voice strained and wavered.

“Gamer sense,” I said with a shrug and a smile, and continued.

“I’m sorry if I’m wrong, but that’s probably the reason why that a know-it-all like you is hurting. But even then, you’ve experienced something very painful, haven’t you?” “You’re…”

Her voice trailed off and the safehouse sunk back to a silence. Not an awkward like before, but a silence for scrambling thoughts.

“… it isn’t as if I know more than the very basics.”

There was another good length of time before Elizabeth expanded on her thoughts.

“There’s seemingly an administrator in this game.” “An administrator?” “At the very least, that is what they called themselves. Perhaps it would be more prudent label them as the creator of this world. Someone or something with a twisted sense of purpose. We stand no chance of overcoming that being for as long as we share the same world.”

An overpowered being.

She continues,

“I don’t know of what it wants. What I do know is that all the people who get summoned here are always exhausted and one of them are designated as the ‘core’.” “What happens if you get picked to be core?” “Nothing comes from it… No, actually, they get to bring an electronic device, like a phone or a laptop. With it, you can check who is in which game and to travel between game worlds. You know that already though.” “Right, I remember.” “The games available are… Well, last time, they were all games which the core had played lots. It may be the same this time around. We also never have successfully charged the device last time, so use your phone with great caution.” “Argh… I’ll try my best not to check my phone. Let me actually just turn it off…” “A sage idea.”

Elizabeth concurred with a nod.

“Till this day I have no idea what it… the Administrator wants. Maybe it’s some sort of alien with unfathomable technology, or maybe it’s some time traveler hoping to destroy all wage slaves. Or maybe, it’s the vengeful spirit of someone who was worked to death. I don’t know.” “…” “You’re thinking it sounds ridiculous. But honestly, that is all I know. From the two times I have been through this, the bastard is possibly recreating these game worlds with an emulator or something. Our consciousnesses is then pulled over to this side then assigned to the physical bodies of characters from various video games. And then…” “If the core dies, does that mean… everybody else gets liberated?” “… Yes, there is that as well.”

Her assent was marked with discomfort, but I was only looking for the facts. I assured her that was the case and there was no need to feel guilty for it before further probing her.

“Just for reference, when was the first time you were brought to this side?” “The spring of 2014. The second time was… autumn in 2016. I truly have no luck with workplaces.” “Was it the first or the second time that you witnessed the death of the core?” “The second. First time around, I had returned before I knew what was going on. I suppose the core was killed, but I have no idea. For both cases though, I ended up simply losing conscious for about a week in the real world.” “I see. And have you beaten the world, like, as a game before?” “No.” “Okay. Have you ever been chosen as the core?” “No… The core for my second time here was someone who I got to know well. A good friend.” “That… that must’ve been tough.” “Yes, I suppose.”

In a sense, discomfort, but more so a mournful pain marked her confirmation this time. No doubt that it was an excruciating experience.

“She told me she worked at a bank and that she liked games. Perhaps people who like to game are more likely to be chosen to be the core… Or perhaps not. I mean, I game quite a lot too.” “Ya boy’s a hardcore gamer himself too.”

A third voice interjected and joined our conversation. I looked up without thinking; Elizabeth whipped around in a startle. Behind her stood Kiryū and the unstoppable hellish army in tow. He’s… really looking like something else. The buggy was filled to the brim with supplies. Various weapons and ammunition were dangling from each soldier, tied on with the makeshift rope. Among everyone else, though, Kiryū was carrying the heaviest load: Nick. The frozen protagonist was cradled to his back with what seems to be a baby sling made with the same reused bedsheets.

“Sounds like liking video games is the requirement for being transported to this dimension and not for being chosen as the core. There’s probably ‘nother factor we’re missin’.”

How can someone be so cool when he speaks but look so lame cradling an adult baby?

“Since when did you return?!”

Elizabeth couldn’t hide the fact that he took her by surprise. There’s something else though. She looks tenser than she was before. Being threatened to be eaten by zombies and being held prisoner would do that you. Conscious of that, I interrupted the two of them.

“Hey, Kiryū! Hey! We were in the middle of a serious conversation just now. Which part did you start listening in from?” “Pretty much from the beginning.”

He severed the connection between Elizabeth’s ankle and the door lever with a knife. His knot seemed to be too tight to be untied by hand. Kiryū’s really not going easy on her, huh? No, it’s more than that. Look closely—isn’t he gritting his teeth like he’s Harry Callahan?

“It must’ve been really hard for you to hold back from ridiculing her theories, I bet.” “… you don’t know the half of it! How the hell would an emulator be capable of recreating worlds, let alone transferring consciousnesses?! That’s too much fiction to your science. What, do we all have electrodes sticking into our brains or somethin’ right now? No, wait, you’re right. We’re in the middle of an alien abduction because that’s totally what it is.” “Yeesh, okay, I get you. Jeez. We were just chatting, y’know? Just wondering about the what ifs. Smiling and nodding can be the key skill to good communication, Kiryū.” “That’s a skill I couldn’t care less about. Unfortunately, I can’t help but to call you two out on your scientific inaccuracies. I’m in too deep with machines both as work and as a passion to care about interpersonal relationships.” “In too deep with machines? Are you some sort of inventor?” “In a sense… Like, I do a lot of benchmarking. I love running benchmarks on every video card that comes on the market.” “… Where’s the fun in that?”

Fed up with our conversation, Elizabeth heaved a sigh. Kiryū untied his sling and threw Nick off of his back and onto the ground.

“Kiryū! There’s only one Nick in the game, so treat him better!” “As if. More of him popped up at the beginning of the level. I also took the chance to secure a large batch of unlimited ammo rifles too.” “Uh… what?!” “I explored a bit of the map we’re in right now… Just a bit ahead in the game is the Shooting Range, right?” “Um, yes, that’s right.” “I found a really rudimentary bug there.”

He had a smug smile as he looked around at our army.

“So, you know how when you’re at the range, you can shoot your guns dry, leave, and come back to them at max ammo, right?” “Oh… that’s right. It was like that in the game as well.” “I tried it out with the pistol first. I shot it until I was out of ammo, left the gun on the ground, and then left the range… What do you think happened?” “… What happened?” “A fully loaded pistol appeared in Nick’s hand. I went back inside, and the empty gun was still just lying there.” “… Whoa, no kidding! That means you can generate endless guns like that!” “Bingo! Awesome, right? Just like you said, we can do that to get as many guns as we want. But it seems like we can only duplicate guns available at the range, so I couldn’t get any more combat knives. I’ve seen similar bugs in other games, so that got me thinkin’ if I could get it to work here… but there you have it.”

There were no other words other than “smug” to describe Kiryū’s face. I took a careful look and noticed all of the soldiers were wielding assault rifles with unlimited ammo. Not only that, but every soldier had a bedsheet baby sling and a Nick on their backs. We had more in our army than I could count. There were at least twenty of them in the room.

“Wait, what about the five-follower limit… Oh, I get it! Nick’s a player character too!” “That’s exactly it. Each Nick we have, we get five more soldiers.” “Awesome! We’re duplicating everything!” “Pretty good thinking, eh?” “Oh, boy, this is going to be so much fun!” “I hate to admit it, but I’m getting a little excited too.” “… What in heaven’s name are you talking about…?”

Left behind in our excitement was Elizabeth, who didn’t understand any of it. Someone who doesn’t even know who Sera is of course wouldn’t know anything about zombie games. It took a thorough explanation of the game’s system for her to finally follow along.

“I see. Well, in any case, it’s plain to see you have accomplished something incredible. Still, why has Nick multiplied?” “When I began to take Nick away from start of this level, the game kept wanting to return Nick to the proper spawn location for the level change. And since there wasn’t a limit, I just kept doing it until I had about twenty Nicks.” “How curious. Nick would disappear from your hands and be returned to the spawn area… is that not a little weird?” “Well, it’s a bug. Normally in the game, it’s neither possible to leave a gun at the range nor is it to take the protagonist away before the game even starts. Can’t say I’ve expected any of this to happen the way it did.” “This world is very curious indeed. Kinda makes you wish that the creators made up their mind whether they wanted a survival horror or a sci-fi game. Oh, right! Let’s dupe the grenade launcher afterwards. We shouldn’t have access it to it just yet, but I’ve got an idea how to get our hands on one.” “What are you planning on doing with all this firepower…?”

After seeing the sly smiles on our faces, Elizabeth was utterly fed up with us. However, seeing where we were now, what other choices did we have? We’re gamers after all.

“First, let’s go and beat this game. You don’t know what that’s like though, right, Elizabeth? We’re going to take total control of this zombie-infested world with our superior firepower. Maybe on your first time here, someone else went and cleared the game and that’s how you got out. You never know.”

As soon as I said that, a terrible roar echoed in the background.

■Kiryū, II

A software engineer who is… supposedly very cautious. Nevertheless, he lets his guard down around Sera, but that should prove to be fine. Thirty years of age but acts like a smug twenty-three-year-old when he discovers bugs. Kiryū may seem to be too cruel towards Elizabeth, but perhaps he is normally this suspicious towards women—or rather, anybody. Though it may be inevitable due to personal reasons, nevertheless, it does not detract from the fact that he is too wary.

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