𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕼𝖚𝖊𝖊𝖓'𝖘 𝕷𝖎𝖔𝖓: 𝕮𝖔𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖙

Fate Beyond 'The End'

Everyone was silent for a moment. Those who were not familiar with Reapers and their terminology were stunned into a confused pause. But those who did understand what the Undertaker was getting at when he spoke of a desire for a future were appalled by what that indicated. Before, all the Bizarre Dolls, excluding Y/N, were unable to speak and moved only because of additional footage added to their Cinematic Records by the Undertaker. This additional footage had revived the husks and they became starved from the lack of a soul, so they sniffed out any living thing near them and mercilessly devoured it. And while their dead stomachs became full of blood, guts and bones from the hundreds of passengers they had feasted upon on the Campania, the only way to stop these monsters had been to destroy their heads. Those monsters had moved with one purpose alone: to devour the living in hopes of attaining their souls. The only noise that left their wretched mouths had been the groans and howls of the dead.

But Derrick Arden had been able to speak. It was only one sentence, on repeat over and over again. But it was a coherent sentence. He had repeated "Hullo, I detect the wonderful aroma of tea," until Sebastian and Y/N had cut and tied him up to silence him. Until this point, Y/N was the only version of the Bizarre Doll that had been capable of speech of any kind. Yet her precise origins and the reason behind why she was so different that the other reanimated corpses had remained a mystery. An advancement such as speech meant that the Undertaker was only getting closer and close to defying death. He was rapidly approaching the ability to make a doll that surpassed even Y/N. And it appeared that the key to doing so lay in the ability to tamper with not just what was laying beyond the ending credit of the Cinematic Record, but perhaps what was before it as well.

The Undertaker let that horrifying thought mellow in the heads of his enemies before he continued to explain his new theory. "Humans recall their pasts in their final moments. That is their Cinematic Record," he reminded Y/N, Ciel and Sebastian. The rest of his audience likely thought him to be beyond insanity, but that mattered not. All that the Undertaker cared about was the sheer terror that was in the eyes of the three who understood fully what he was going to tell them. "At the same time, they crave the futures they were to have had... Although those futures are incomplete. The fragments of those futures comprise their episodes."

Y/N's throat and mouth felt dry as she spoke. "So these episodes could be comparable to premonitions?"

The Undertaker's smile somehow managed to grow as he realized just how badly she was hanging onto his every word. Because that meant, as much as she wanted to kill him, she desperately wanted to know why and how she came to be even more. "Not quite, but not far off," the Undertaker admitted with a wag of his finger. "See, I began to ask myself: what if those episodes could be extracted? What if several tens of thousands of cuts can be had? What if the total length of the linked episodes was longer than their Cinematic Records? As it was noted, this is akin to a future forecast. A premonition," he giggled, "of a future lost by the dead. They are memories of the future... Nothing like my counterfeit memories. If I connect such a thing to a Cinematic Record-do you not agree that what will be perfected... Is a reanimated corpse..." The Undertaker chuckled darkly, "infinitely approaching a living human!"

There was a stunned silence for a moment before Y/N broke it again. Though now, Y/N's tone was far less afraid and significantly more demanding. "What about me, then? If this technique is new, and it wasn't until after the Campania that you began to fiddle with these episodes, then how was I able to walk and talk, thinking for myself indefinitely?"

"All good questions," the Undertaker waved her off. "Some I may know the answers to, others I may not. Such as why you possess a soul and yet my beautiful creatures do not desire it. Curious, isn't it?" He giggled. "Nevertheless, the probability of success with this new technique is still very low, as it is dependent on the quantity and quality of the episodes."