“What’s up with Shirley?” I leaned over to R and whispered. “Yuuhi’s explanation just now seemed perfectly reasonable to me. Was there something I missed?”
“How ignorant you are, Rekka,” R spat back with her usual verbal abuse. “Didn’t Rosalind just say you shouldn’t be so trusting of others?”
While I was whispering with R, Hibiki spoke up and entered the conversation.
“Yuuhi Namidare, in the end, we just don’t have any reason to believe you won’t pull a fast one on Rekka.” With folded arms, she continued, “Originally, you were trying to kill our... past Rekka, would you call him? Leaving him alone with you, much less letting you take him to a world where no one else can reach you... I’m afraid I can’t agree to that.”
“...”
“H-Hey, Hibiki...” Between Hibiki’s argument and Yuuhi’s silent staring, I was at a bit of a loss. “I mean, I get why you’re worried, but it’ll be fine.”
“How can you be sure of that?”
“Hmm...” I fumbled for the right words. “How should I put this...? Yuuhi reminds me of you, Hibiki.”
“Of me?”
“Yeah. Back when we first met, you were tense all the time too.”
“...!”
Hibiki’s Banjo bloodline was very similar to mine. She also got caught up in all kinds of stories, and a dear friend of hers had accidentally been hurt in the middle of one once. Hibiki took it pretty hard, and in an attempt to make sure it never happened again, she started pushing people away and keeping her distance. It wasn’t exactly the same as Yuuhi’s case, but she was similarly determined not to accept anyone’s help. She was convinced she needed to do everything on her own.
“That’s why, well... Yeah, that might be why I wanted to save her. Though I also want to save both worlds too, of course.”
There, Hibiki went quiet for a moment and sullenly turned away before saying, “Just because she reminds you of me... Don’t do this over something so trivial, stupid.”
“Sorry for being stupid. But that’s—”
“That’s just who you are,” Hibiki said, hitting me in the chest before stepping back a little.
Wait, did that mean she’d accepted it?
“Hey, now hold on just a minute!” Tsumiki shouted, stamping her foot. “Hibiki’s not the only person you have to convince! And besides, the biggest issue here still hasn’t even been addressed!”
“That’s right! Why are you apologizing for being stupid? We already know you are!” shouted Lyun in turn.
Tsumiki and Lyun both clearly had their objections, but so did Tetra and Mio, who were standing behind them. They looked at me with silent, pleading expressions that were practically begging me not to go. On behalf of all four worried girls, Tsumiki pointed a furious finger towards Yuuhi.
“So, lady, why were you trying to kill Rekka in the first place?!”
Instead of answering Tsumiki directly, Yuuhi turned to me and said, “The reason I tried to kill you was, naturally, in order to stop the pacifists’ plan.”
“But if you’d killed me, wouldn’t that have prevented the War of All from ever happening?”
“No, it still would have happened.”
“How? Even if you were pulling the strings from the shadows, the War of All is really a fight over my future self. So if you cut me out of the picture, then there wouldn’t have been anything to fight about in the first place, right?”
That was something I’d been wondering about for a while now. Though they had different methods, both the pacifists and the extremists shared a goal in wanting to put an end to the War of All. Or so it seemed, but here we’d found out Yuuhi’s real goal all along was to keep the war going. Something clearly didn’t add up.
“Normally, a regular human would be unable to change the past on any significant scale.”
“Huh? But the doctor said if you kill someone from the past, it has repercussions on the future... That’s why the future heroines couldn’t fight their past selves, right?”
“That’s a misunderstanding on behalf of the scientists of this world. Allow me to reiterate: a normal human cannot change the past.”
“But... Then what about when I went back in time to save the people of Atlantis?”
“You’re no normal person. You’re a Namidare.”
“What...?”
“The corrective power of time is something no normal human has the power to stand against. Even if someone, let’s say, went to the past and attempted to alter the course of history, the world would self-correct by moving itself back to the course it was set to follow. Think of it as fate.”
According to Yuuhi’s explanation, even if a normal person went back in time and killed their parents, it wouldn’t change the fact that they’d been born. That was because time travels a fixed course once passed, and that course cannot be retroactively altered. So, in the example that someone went back in time and killed their parents, the hand of fate would sweep things forward in a way that brought about the same results. That person would still—somehow—be born, and the world would thusly be back on track. That was the self-corrective power of time.
“But like I said, you’re no normal person. We Namidares have the power to make real changes. The king of Laputa and the others had the right idea. Instead of trying fruitlessly to alter the past themselves, they made you aware of the future so that you could do it. It gave them a real chance at quelling the tempest of fate that is the War of All.”
“R-Right...”
This conversation had reached critical mass in my head. I could feel the smoke coming out of my ears. But the short of it was that only we Namidares could change the past. Only we could change fate. Fate... Fate, huh?
What is fate, anyway?
I had never looked up the word in a dictionary before, but... was fate just the course that some god had predetermined? No, not some god... the goddess of our world. And in order to meet with her, I was about to travel to a parallel world.
When I see her, I should ask her what fate really is.
“So, okay... To summarize, it wouldn’t matter if someone went back to the past and killed me. You’re saying the corrective power of time would mean the War of All still happened anyway?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Yuuhi confirmed.
“I see. So that’s why you sent L and those giant robots instead of coming yourself. You’re a Namidare too, so you coming to the past could’ve really screwed things up.”
“Well, yes... You sure don’t mince words, do you?” Yuuhi looked momentarily conflicted, but pulled herself together. “Similarly, I cannot kill Rekka with my own hands now. That much I can assure you of.”
“Grr... Even so!” Tsumiki grumbled, looking like she still had her objections.
And she wasn’t the only one. My instincts told me to trust Yuuhi, but the girls’ instincts were telling them differently. To talk this out with each one of them could take days, and that was time I didn’t have. I’d already made up my mind to follow Yuuhi back to her world. And so...
“Tsumiki.”
I turned to her.
“Lyun, Tetra, Mio...”
I turned to the girls behind her, too.
“Satsuki, Iris, Harissa, Lea, Hibiki, Rosalind, Suzuran, Chelsea...”
I then turned to the girls on my left, looking each of them in the eye.
“Shirley, Fam, Rain, Ellicia, Corona, L...”
Same with the girls on my right.
“Rachelle, Zeta, Kiri, Chirika, Sherlyn, Nyanyan, Touko...”
I called out to all of them and thumped my chest with conviction.
“Believe in me. I’m going to see this through,” I vowed. “I’m going to do what it takes to save our future.”
I then turned to the future heroines who’d helped me get this far. Although Iris was still busy holding off the Greater Galactic Federation fleet, I was thinking of her too.
“I’m going to Sith’s world with Yuuhi, and I’m going to save both worlds to ensure a happy ending for all of us.”
When I said that, everyone reacted in their own way. There were sighs of both resignation and acceptance. There were tears. There was even laughter. It was almost as if they’d all been prepared for this moment. Like it was only inevitable that I was going to do something reckless. But yeah, I guess that was my MO. With a laugh, I finally turned to Yuuhi.
“Then let’s be on our way now.”
“Wait.”
Someone else called out to me. To my surprise, this time it was R.
“What, R? Are you going to try and stop me too?”
“As if. I wouldn’t do something so pointless,” she said with a shake of her head. “I’m going with you.”
“What?! But Yuuhi said only the two of us can cross over to Sith’s world.”
“Yuuhi,” R said, turning to question her. “Earlier, you stated that only people with power like yours could cross the barrier. But what about people who aren’t people at all? And by that, I mean have no physical body.”
“No physical body?”
“That’s right.”
“...!”
The lightbulb came on for me when I heard those words. The same went for L and the doctor.
“R, don’t tell me...” L said skeptically.
“Do you intend on returning to your demi-material state in order to follow Rekka?” asked the doctor.
“That’s right,” R answered, confirming both of their suspicions. “In my demi-material form, my existence almost overlaps with Rekka’s. I am restricted to a certain radius around him and I am only perceptible by him. In such a state, I should be able to circumvent this barrier and the power needed to bypass it, no?”
“While there’s a possibility, I cannot guarantee it will work,” Yuuhi replied cautiously.
That was enough to satisfy R.
“If it’s possible, then let’s give it a try. With me tagging along, the doctor and the other heroines won’t have to worry so much.”
“R, if this fails...” the doctor said nervously.
But R was determined.
“Doctor, even if you attempt to stop me, this is something I must do,” she said flatly. “This is my story as well. I have a duty to follow it to its conclusion.”
“Even so... Fine. I suppose there really is no stopping you.”
The doctor was ready to argue at first, but relented. She could tell there was no way R would bend on this.
“All right, Yuuhi. If you were the one who reprogrammed R to be material, that must mean you have the facilities to work on her.”
“I do.”
“Then lead the way and lend me a hand in returning her to normal. I need you to tell me exactly how else you modified R, too.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Good. Okay, R. Let’s go.”
“Very well.”
And so the three of them walked off together.