Date A Live: Red Crown Chaplain

14 - Illustrious Siren

"This seems... peculiar. I think that's enough of her for now."

From a fractal scene of iridescence and abstraction, she extends her hand to the screen.

"The event is done, I suppose. Until the time comes, good night, Natsumi Kyouno," she mutters before closing her hand.

-/-

I once read in one of the books I borrowed from the library, one that I borrowed for entertainment. The main character has given up his useless pursuit with humanity in an apocalyptic world-a world with no king, a maze with no prize.

"There is no justice, only strength," was what he said, as he lowered the head of the child he'd so desperately tried to protect, only to realize in the end that said child was the calamity that dooms the world.

Back then, I used what I had because I couldn't make sense of the situation properly. Back then, I thought, 'Hey, I don't want anything but excitement,' instead of asking the real questions that kept me from reality.

'Who am I? Why am I here? Did someone send me here? Who truly owns the power of the Crown?'

I thought I had learned that lesson after waking up from that eternal sleep, but I guess fate needed to remind me. Was I regressing back to my old self by hoping I could get some excitement through "justice" and "power"?

Those are the desires of someone who rejects reality!

And my reality, now, is...

I have no freedom.

Something is allowing me to keep going. Someone is allowing me to keep my powers. Someone is the schemer that keeps this pawn from moving nowhere but forward.

And perhaps I'm fated to end up like this-alone.

After all, Natsumi faded away, maybe returned to her pocket dimension, after seeing me like this. She must've thought me pathetic and not worth being associated with again. Once more, I stand with no ally.

I can't deny that I was hoping to work together with her. I know I can't do everything on my own, and I can't rely on the Red Crown; I don't deserve it.

She...

Nevermind.

-/-

Things didn't go so well for Shido that day. He had one chance to get to talk to her again and he couldn't. Origami knew the perpetrator wasn't the true Shido, and she informed him about this. Ratatoskr had also come to a conclusion thanks to the help of Reine.

Reine: "Approximately three weeks ago, there was a spacequake that didn't come under our radars because of the damages caused by Laura's escape from the Fraxinus. We only found out about it after recently reviewing the logs and debug records of the systems, as well as the recent deployments of the AST."

Reine displayed a giant map on the screen, highlighting a part of that map as everyone in the Fraxinus looked on, including the Spirits.

Reine: "A spacequake and, likely, a Spirit was there, in this large and abandoned countryside part of this prefecture. And according to the footage that barely captured the event..."

The screen played the AST firing through a giant cloud of smoke and/or dust with their guns, showing a few bright sparkles here and there, but mainly freeze-framing on a silhouette of what looks like a mature onee-san on a broomstick.

Reine: "We have our Spirit, but aside from that..."

The camera pans over to a man wearing a suit and tie with a black dagger running from building to building.