The Puppeteers

Chapter 7: Investigation, curiosity and my future

"The fragment SEKAI's?" Rui turned to her, surprised.

"Miku, do fragment SEKAI's still exist here? If they do, we can..."

"Woohoo! A round of applause to Nene-chan!" Miku cheered, "They do exist, I just don't really know where."

Mizuki sighed, "Aaaand we're back to square 1." They grapped their hip, "Seriously, is there nothing else we can do?!"

"Wait, it's not quite over yet." Nene corrected them, "We do know that they exist, which means our first objective should be finding these fragment SEKAI's."

"How do we that?" Ena questioned.

"We are 8 people here, right? We should all go in groups of 2 to look around this place and then meet up back here," Nene explained, "If any of our feelings are willing to open up, they should create a door like that one over there and lead us into that persons' fragment SEKAI."

"How can you be so sure?" Mafuyu questioned, a bit suspicious, "You seem to know so much about the Overlapped SEKAI even though we've only just got here."

"Yeah, it's a bit weird," Kanade agreed with a bit of a stern facial expression, but then changed her face to a softer smile, "But it won't hurt to try, will it? I don't think Nene's the type to harm us."

Mafuyu stared at the latter, and then nodded, "Okay then."

They agreed for Wonderlands x Showtime to explore the Wonderland SEKAI and for Nightcord to explore the Empty SEKAI. Both groups headed to their own place, and began exploring...

And so, Wonderlands x Showtime and Nightcord at 25:00 became two seperate groups, exploring the same terrains with the same goal: to escape.

Although the trust between the two bands had not yet broken the walls between them, a few of the musicians had an interest in one another, creating a few new bonds while still maintaining that distrust inbetween.

The reason they were so untrusting of others? It's nothing more than the fact that one of them could be the traitor that they would have to find and get rid of in order to get out of here, and since Nene randomly came up with solutions on a lot of the problems, half of their suspecting eyes went over to her, but for one girl, despite seeming curious of Kusanagi, had her eyes on the bright star Tsukasa Tenma.

And the reason for that, was nothing but the words she had heard from Miku before waking up in this place.

As she hears the star talk, the memories appear back in her head, the ominous words uttered by one of the figures she trusted the most.

"I knew it, you can sense it too, right?" Miku continued, "You already know what's going to happen, you've been through this exact scenario thousands of times already. And yet, you still choose to ask dumb questions and act like you don't know a thing."

"What are you talking about? Been through this exact scenario thousands of times? And, sense what exactly?"

"The answer is infront of you, Mafuyu." She replied simply, "Perhaps it's time to stop ignoring it."

...

"After all, you've heard of the name 'Tsukasa Tenma', right?"

(After all, I have heard of the name Tsukasa Tenma.) Mafuyu thought, leaving with the rest of Niigo to explore.

(There's no reason she would've told me his name for no reason, right? That guy definetly has something going on.)

(Then maybe, just like Nene, I need to take matters into my own hands aswell.)

...

"Nene?" The pink haired girl uttered her name, "Don't you think we'll have to do a little more than just exploring to find the Fragment SEKAI's?"

Nene paused and turned to her curiously.

"Do a little more? Like what?" She questioned and stared at the others for a bit.

Rui nodded, "I agree with Emu. We've been exploring for a while, but there definetly isn't anything here that could possibly lead us to one of our Fragment SEKAI's."

"Yeah, and might I say, theres something really eerie about this place." Tsukasa added, "This definetly looks like our usual meeting place, but it's like theres something off..."

(Something off?) Nene observed her surroundings. The place was almost identical, even the smallest leaf was in the right place inside this realm.

"Maybe the reason we feel off is because we know that this isn't our SEKAI?" Nene answered, "Like, it's completely the same, without even the slightest difference, but Miku told us it's not real and we're only seeing it because the SEKAI is present in our feelings, right?"

"I suppose you're right." Rui agreed, holding his chin, "If that's true, then we can't ever find anything just wandering around like this."

They all thought for a minute, and Emu thought this was just the time to jump in:

"Then, there's only one more thing left to do, isn't there?" Emu smiled cheerfully, clearly having a plan in her mind.

"Emu, do you have an idea? You're looking very optimistic right now..." Tsukasa said.

"Mhm!" She replied, "It's very simple, actually!"

They all stared at the girl curiously.

"Let's do a show here!"

...

"There's nothing here either..." Ena sighed, "What do we do now?!"

"Ena, it's fine, I'm sure we'll find something soon..." Mizuki forced a smile.

"You've been saying that for the past 20 minutes! How are you so sure when we've been running around this place back and forth and not noticing the slightest change?" She complained, then stared at Kanade and Mafuyu, "And those two aren't helping at all! Atleast say something...!"

"Well, Mafuyu's been quiet much since Miku's explanation..." Kanade replied.

"Okay, guys, cmon, why don't we calm down a bit and try to make a plan? Let's try to communicate our issues and find an answer for each one of them." Mizuki attempted to get rid of the cold atmosphere.

"I think we should go back through that door to the other SEKAI and see what their group is doing." The quiet girl(Mafuyu) replied.

"Good idea. Maybe they've found something." Kanade agreed.

They went through the door...

Authors Note: Not me coming back after months just to leave y'all on a cliffhanger again LMFAOO but i felt bad about not updating so i kinda rushed this chapter for u guys... I forgot where I was going with this story so I reread the whole thing and realized it's a bit like danganronpa(and one person even commented about it too!) so im going to try to make it a bit like that while still keeping the original theme. I reallyy hope this isn't disappointing!! Love yall bye<33