Chapter 3: The Status of the Future
Chapter 3: The Status of the Future
In repelling the army of giant robots that had suddenly appeared, we successfully defended my hometown for the time being. But if left alone, more and more enemies would continue to come from the future. In light of that, the doctor invited me to return to the future with her via the time translocator... in order to save the abducted heroines and, if possible, to catch the mastermind behind their kidnapping.
According to the doctor, the mastermind of this so-called radical faction might have some kind of connection to the War of All...
The War of All. In a way, it was the root of everything. Well, R had once said the real root of everything was me, but...
Anyway, a fight over me between the heroines had apparently erupted into a full-on war that spanned all known worlds and dimensions.
Really thinking about it, it just sounds so unrealistic.
Especially the “over me” part. I honestly couldn’t process the idea of being so valuable that so many heroines would seriously fight over me. I guess I shouldn’t say “me,” though... We’re talking about my future self here—future Rekka.
And as the doctor had just informed me, future Rekka had apparently been missing ever since the War of All first started. Who knew where I was or what I’d been doing? Especially at a time when everyone needed me the most...
It felt a little weird kicking myself for something I personally hadn’t even done—again, we were talking about future Rekka here. But whatever.
Future Rekka’s absence was actually what was causing the War of All to drag on. After all, the War of All was pretty explicitly about me. In essence, the whole reason for the war and the desired spoils from said war had gone missing. If this were a race, you could say the goal had up and vanished. And so the race would keep going forever... meaning ceaseless war with no end in sight.
Apparently, several of the future heroines believed I’d been captured and confined by another heroine. They all suspected each other, of course, making the fight between them even more complicated. All of that tension had reached a head, and that was how we ended up with the War of All.
“The time leap will be over soon,” the doctor suddenly announced, pulling me out of my thoughts.
Right now, we were inside the flow of time, where sensory perception was altered in a strange way. I could hear the doctor’s voice even now, but I had no idea where she was.
“And then we’ll be in the future?” I asked.
“Yes. It’s a little weird to say this while we’re inside the flow of time itself, but in another minute or so.”
“So, where will we come out in the future?”
“Agency headquarters.”
“I see.”
We were in the mountains just outside of town when we entered the flow of time, so apparently the time translocator could leap through more than just time? Or were we simply returning to agency HQ because that’s where the time translocator was located? Well, as long as we knew our destination, it didn’t matter to me.
“L, are you worried?” the doctor asked, now turning to her daughter.
L, however, only answered with silence. After helping us repel the giant robots, she’d followed me and the doctor back to the future.
Come to think of it, L must have mixed feelings about going back to the agency.
L was originally part of the agency too. She and R were both artificial lifeforms called Kiklim that were created by the doctor. L came first and was designed to be dispatched to me in the past, but when it was determined that more functionality was necessary for the mission, R was created to replace L. L was then decommissioned and put into society to live a normal life, but she wasn’t satisfied with that. She ended up defecting and worked with the radicals to try and assassinate me under orders from whoever is behind the hardliner faction. No matter how you looked at it, she’d betrayed the agency. It was safe to assume that her continued silence now wasn’t just because she was nervous about going home.
“It’ll be all right, L,” the doctor said to reassure her.
“...What will?”
“I’ll protect you, L. No matter what anyone else says, you are my daughter.”
“D-Don’t say such embarrassing stuff! Not while Rekka Namidare’s here!”
Is she feeling shy?
I listened to their rather heartwarming exchange as I waited for the time leap to end.
▽
At the end of the time leap was a rainbow explosion of color. I was dazzled and blinded for a moment, leaving me feeling a little dizzy.
“Whoa...”
It was bad enough that I staggered and kind of tripped over my own feet... Wait, my feet? Before I even realized it, I could feel them again. And that wasn’t all. I could feel the warmth of my palms which I’d reflexively pressed against my eyelids, so it seemed I’d recovered the feeling in my body altogether. My perception was back to normal, meaning...
After blinking a few times, I opened my eyes to see the interior of a room. It was unfamiliar to me, as I’d expected, but it had sort of the same feel that the interior of Shirley’s and Iris’s spaceships did. It was definitely futuristic—technological, but with a metallic luster that was unlike anything I’d ever seen back home.
“Is this your headquarters?” I asked in awe as I looked around the room.
“That’s right. Welcome to the agency,” the doctor replied with a smile as she exited the time leap too.
“Hmm...”
So this was agency HQ... It was honestly smaller than I had imagined. Really, it was only about as big as my room at home. And when I looked around, it was pretty messy... Did someone live here? It certainly didn’t look like some important facility. In fact, it looked more like someone’s personal bedroom...
“Argh, good grief! You left your room a terrible mess again! Why are you so terrible at managing your own life?!”
L took one look at the tragic state of the room and suddenly started to yell angrily. The target of her anger was none other than the doctor.
“Ooh! It’s been so long since I’ve gotten to hear one of L’s lectures!”
“Don’t call it a lecture!”
In the face of L’s vicious rage, the doctor grinned from ear to ear. I see... Judging from their conversation, this was the doctor’s room. Well, considering she was an important figure in the agency, it wasn’t strange to think she had a residential space at their HQ. After getting to know scientists like Shirley, I kind of just assumed they were all diligent, fastidious people in all aspects of their life... But that apparently wasn’t so with the doctor. L began to clean up the doctor’s room as she continued fuming.
“Honestly, this is just... Ugh! You’ve just left your underwear on the floor after taking it off!”
“...!”
I restlessly shuffled my feet as I avoided looking.
“Uh... So, why did we come out in the doctor’s room? Isn’t there somewhere, um, more appropriate for the people of the agency to gather?”
If we were going to discuss our plans, a meeting room or something seemed like it would’ve been a better option.
“Well, let me start by explaining everything from the beginning,” said the doctor. “First, headquarters—that is, where we are now—was attacked by the radicals roughly 30 hours ago.”
Apparently it was a surprise attack with no sign of warning. There was some damage to the facility and a few people were injured, but thanks to the doctor’s defense system, the attacking radicals were driven away.
“But thanks to their attack, the agency was in complete disarray. Right up until the moment I departed for the past, the damage assessment had yet to be completed.”
Even though the agency had fended off the attack, it was seriously compromised in the process. It could no longer function normally now, and its normal functions mostly centered around me. Like monitoring me to see if I was handling the heroines properly, which stories I was involved in, how any decisions I made affected the past, my general health, and... Wait, huh?
“What about my privacy?!”
“Well, to us, you’re something of a historical figure. The facts of your daily life are simply research material to us.”
“Aaaaah!”
It’s true that historical figures like the great war generals of the Warring States period had all their habits and hobbies listed in textbooks only to be treated like light trivia by modern-day people, but still! Seeing me clutch at my head, a troubled look crossed the doctor’s face.
“I-It’s all right. It’s not like we keep tabs on you while you’re in the bathroom or right before you go to bed.”
“If you did, I’d end myself right here!”
That didn’t make me feel any better.
“All right already... Just keep going,” I urged her to continue, my head still spinning.
“Okay. An emergency transmission from R indicated to me there was trouble in the past. Said emergency transmission, however, came over a private channel rather than an agency one.”
“So...? Is that a problem or something?”
“Well, it meant that the only one who knew you were in trouble was me.”
On top of that, the agency was under attack by radicals at the time.
“Naturally, I couldn’t share information like that freely. Moreover, the agency was expending most of its resources just defending itself, which forestalled any decision to act on what was happening in the past.”
I’ve heard people say that organizations become inflexible when they get too big. So, yeah, in the heat of the moment with that much chaos going on, I can see how it would’ve been near impossible for them to make a move.
“But, Doctor... You weren’t actually all that late when you showed up, you know?”
Though she hadn’t arrived with the kind of perfect timing you’d expect in a movie, she’d still showed up in time to help us all out.
“It was plenty late,” L said in a huff as she turned away.
The doctor then grimaced a little before continuing, “L’s right. I should’ve acted with all swiftness. But if I had gone through the proper procedures, I still probably wouldn’t have made it to the past even now.”
“Proper procedures? What do you mean?”
I had a feeling already, but asked anyway. The doctor then replied...
“It was my decision to bring you here to the future.”
“Whaaat?! You didn’t have permission to do that?!” L yelled in surprise.
“Legally, I’m probably in a lot of trouble.”
“Wait, wait, wait... How is this okay?”
“It’s not, but I made the call. As far as I’m concerned, this was the only option,” said the doctor. “The fact that the radicals attacked the agency and sent their minions after Rekka is already enough to completely distort the future.”
“That’s true...”
“On top of that, they’ve abducted the heroines of the past. No... If their move here was a distraction, their real goal was kidnapping the heroines, and they’ve likely brought them here. But I can’t predict what they intend on doing next or what’s going to happen now,” the doctor said, turning to me. “It’s possible that this moment is an important crossroad of fate. If there’s anyone who can lead us in the right direction at this juncture, it would have to be a very special crossroads keeper. Like you, Rekka.”
“...”
Her grandiose wording made me a little uneasy, but in the end, the doctor and I shared a goal. We wanted to save the heroines. If that so happened to be part of an even bigger, fate-deciding story... Then I’d just solve that too. I had no objection to getting involved. But one question still remained...
“That aside, why did you bring me to your room of all places, Doctor?”
“Well, to put it simply, I’ve been acting on my own without the agency’s knowledge. So if they found out now, it’d be a bit of a hassle.”
“I see.”
“That being said...” Here, the doctor’s tone of voice turned rather serious. “I don’t believe we can accomplish much with just the three of us, so I’ve called in someone trustworthy to help out.”
Come to think of it, while L was cleaning up her room, the doctor had been messing around with some kind of device.
“Okay, who is it?” I asked.
“Someone you know well, technically,” the doctor replied.
“Someone I know?”
There shouldn’t be anyone that I know in the future... Wait, was this going to be like what happened with the doctor? The doctor was the king of Laputa in the past, so maybe this was just the future version of someone else I knew in the past?
“Your life is already starting to take a different shape than that of the Rekka I know—future Rekka, if you will—thanks to the agency and R’s interference. But sort of like with the king of Laputa and myself, it isn’t entirely different. There are lots of commonalities, and plenty of heroines you both saved. The person I called here is one of those heroines.”
“So it’s a heroine that both me and future me have saved before?”
There were so many possibilities that that didn’t really help narrow the options at all... But just then, there was a sharp knock at the door.
“Doctor! Let me in!”
That voice... It was a little different, but there was no mistaking it.
“Entry permitted. Come in, Satsuki.”
At the doctor’s order, a light above the door turned green, and the door slid open. On the other side of the it was a mature-looking woman who resembled Satsuki.
“...Rekka!”
“Wah!”
She ran over to me and embraced me tightly, giving me a bit of a startle. S-Something soft was...!
“Rekka! Oh, Rekka!”
“Is that you... Satsuki?”
“It is! It’s me, Satsuki!”
So this was future Satsuki, huh? Honestly, I was surprised. She’d really grown into herself as a woman... Even though I knew it was just Satsuki, my heart refused to stop pounding nervously.
“Hey, Satsuki. Don’t you think that’s enough?”
“Oh!”
She hadn’t let go of me even after quite a long minute there, but the doctor’s friendly reminder spurred her into finally releasing me in a hurry.
“S-Sorry. It’s just been so long since I’ve seen him,” Satsuki apologized with a red face.
“N-No, that’s fine...”
I shook my head and told her it was all right, though my heart was still racing.
This is kind of weird. I know her, but this is the first time we’ve ever met. I have no idea what kind of relationship we have here...
She seemed to know, however. She did hug me out of the blue and all...
“Ahem, now...” the doctor said, forcefully clearing her throat. “I’m sure you don’t really need me to introduce her to you, but this is the Satsuki Otomo of this time line. She’s also a part of the agency like me.”
“Um... It’s nice to meet you?” I said, politely bowing my head.
“Likewise... Sorry about earlier. I know you’re basically a different person, but seeing you conjured up so many emotions that I just...” Satsuki explained, hiding her blushing cheeks behind her hands. “It’s been so long since I last saw you...”
“...!”
My heart stopped pounding and skipped a beat altogether. I knew she wasn’t really talking about me me, but still...
The slightly awkward mood lingered in the room until the doctor cleared her throat again and got us back on topic.
“So what do we do now?”
“Let’s see...” The doctor paused there to think for a bit. “Before anything else, it might be best to give Rekka a simple explanation of this time period.”
“Oh, good point. Actually, I’ve been wondering this for a while now, but how many years in the future are we?” I asked.
“Stop right there!”
“Mrgh?”
The doctor suddenly threw her hand over my mouth, muffling my words. Contrary to my idiotic appearance, the doctor was dead serious.
“I almost forgot about that. First and foremost, there’s something you must be warned of.”
“Mrrrghgh?”
“Wait a minute.”
The doctor then turned and began rummaging through her room for something. As she did, L lectured her about cleaning up again, but about five minutes later...
“Here it is!” she exclaimed, pulling out something that looked like half a set of wireless earphones. “Here, Rekka. Put this in your ear.”
“Sure. What is it? A transmitter?”
“Nope. It’s a type of noise canceller that can block out certain information.”
“Noise canceller?”
That seemed rather restrictive... Not to mention the “certain information” part. But for now I listened to her and put the device in my ear. It fit perfectly, making it rather comfortable to wear.
“This device will automatically block out any audio data that mentions the year, whether by the Earth calendar or the Galactic one, as well as any other information pertaining to the current date.”
“I can’t know anything about that?”
All I’d asked was how far in the future we were...
“What gives?”
“Hmm, it’s kind of hard to explain...”
“Well, for my sake, please make it as simple as possible.”
“Let’s see...” The doctor pensively tapped her finger against her chin. “I know it’s weird to say this after bringing you here yourself, but the future is indeterminate to you, right?”
“Indeterminate? You mean, like... in the sense that we don’t know what’s going to happen?”
“Exactly. The future is always changing. And we here at the agency were attempting to change the future by changing the past—your past—based on that logic.”
“Hmm, I see.”
I could only just barely get my head around that, but I sort of got the idea.
“But that can only be done on the condition that the future remains indeterminate for you, Rekka.”
“Huh?”
“In other words, if this future—specifically this one where the War of All is taking place—is rendered in definite terms, then the future would no longer be indeterminate for you. It would go from an abstract idea to concrete knowledge.”
“Huh? But I already know that the War of All occurs.”
I had just come to the future where it was happening, after all.
“You only know that a war will occur in the future, not specifically when or where or what have you.”
“Is that how this works?”
“Yes. ‘The future’ could mean a year, ten years, or several hundred to you as long as you don’t know exactly when.”
Apparently, the War of All could remain indeterminate other than “possibly happening at some point in time” if we played things this way.
“O-Okay?”
I didn’t really get it, though...
“So what this means for me is that I’m not allowed to know what year it is right now, right?”
“Right.”
Even if I didn’t understand what was going on or why, I figured I could probably manage that much.
“Oh, and for the record, that canceller affects the electric signals of your brain, so any visual or tactile information that’s date-sensitive will also be imperceptible to you.”
“It can do that too? This device is incredible.”
“Hardly. But you need to watch yourself, Rekka. Make sure you don’t go asking how old Satsuki is or anything like that.”
“Wha?!”
Satsuki fell into a fluster when her name suddenly came up, her face reddening by the second.
“Don’t bring up my age in front of Rekka!” she yelled in rather genuine anger.
“What does it matter? It’s not like I said the number or anything. And what do you have to be worried about? I was several hundred years old when I first met him, remember?”
“You might not care about things like that, Doctor, but I do! And this Rekka is still a high school student, you know?! He absolutely doesn’t need to know!”
“Ah, by the way, Rekka... Satsuki can look up all kinds of magic with her Magic of Omniscience, so her appearance might not reflect her actual age. Sort of like me.”
“KYAAAAAH!” Satsuki grabbed the doctor, her face now as red as a tomato. “Y-Y-You...!”
“Wait, my neck! You’re strangling me... I’m just doing my job, you know? We can’t have Rekka guessing your age and then fixating on that knowledge. It’s date sensitive,” the doctor explained as she tapped at Satsuki’s arm.
The thought did kind of cross my mind...
She appeared to be roughly university age, or maybe in the “young working adult” bracket. Anyway, Satsuki continued to glare and fume at the doctor for a while before finally letting her go.
“A-Ahem, just for the record,” the doctor said after coughing a little. “There’s a plethora of anti-aging technologies in outer space, not to mention things like elixirs of life created from the sacred beasts of other worlds, as well as personality transfers involving clones—like what I did. With so many tricks out there, make sure you don’t try and guess the age of any heroine, okay?”
“G-Got it.”
Despite being rather overwhelmed by this conversation, I nodded readily. It was a scene I’d seen plenty of times in manga, but I guess asking a woman her age really was a bad idea... If R was here, she’d probably have some smart aleck comment right about now.
“...”
But instead, I had L, who was currently glaring at the three of us with an exasperated expression.
“Now, what were we talking about?” the doctor asked, rubbing the back of her neck.
“Something about the current situation of this time period, I think?”
“Ah, that’s right. I was briefing you on this time period.”
And so the conversation finally got back on track.
“If I’m to explain the current situation, after all, then I have to tell you a little bit about the start of the war.”
“The start of the War of All...”
“Yes, although it’s not like there was some large-scale event or single trigger that incited it.”
As the doctor began explaining things, Satsuki stood silently next to her, taking it all in with a grave expression. The doctor continued...
“At first, I thought it was just the standard catfight over you. You had a lot of assertive girls around you, so scuffles were something of a daily occurrence.”
I was more than familiar with that myself.
“Usually you—and I mean future you, of course—would intervene and that would be the end of it, but... the heroines started to clash with each other more and more. It was just so gradual that no one realized anything was wrong.”
“...”
When I looked back on my own experiences, like with Satsuki and Iris, for example... They were always arguing. And I’d heard future Rekka had saved hundreds of heroines, so trying to imagine the chaos in my daily life on a much larger scale was kind of mind-blowing. I could see how genuine tension might have fallen under the doctor’s and Satsuki’s radars.
“And while the bickering was increasing, so too were disputes under the table. A present that one of the heroines had prepared for you would go missing and other such nonsense that was clearly someone’s dirty work.”
“...!”
Shocked into silence, I was speechless. I never thought that... Well, there’s no way to mince words. I didn’t think that there were any malicious people around me who would sneakily try and sabotage others like that.
“Er, allow me to clarify that this sort of foul play was unprecedented. It had never happened before,” the doctor quickly added.
She must have seen through my worry.
“Now, at any rate... Such incidents began to increase tensions to the point that the heroines were becoming hostile with each other without you realizing it.”
Future Rekka would always step in on conflicts between the heroines, but it got kind of out of control, huh? If future Rekka didn’t see what was going on, he wouldn’t have known to step in.
“And so tension continued to mount until two big things happened,” the doctor explained.
“What were those?” I asked.
“First was a terrorist attack on the central council of the Greater Galactic Federation.”
“A terrorist attack?!”
I was shocked to hear something so violent had happened.
“But you said the Galactic Federation... Was Iris okay?”
“Iris herself is safe. But her father...” Satsuki answered in a low voice.
Though she didn’t finish her sentence, I could guess the end of it based on the look on her face. I had met Iris’s father once myself. He represented planet Finerita in the Galactic Federation. I didn’t know much about the central council, but if there was a meeting, I’m sure he would’ve been there. So in the terrorist attack...
“Of course, that was a huge incident in and of itself.” Though I was speechless, the doctor continued, “However, by unfortunate chance—or perhaps by some design—future Rekka was also participating in the council meeting that day.”
“Wha?! Wh-Why would I do that?”
“Iris took you along forcefully so she could show you off to her father and, well... try to get you to make a future commitment to her. Those are her words, mind you. I have no further comment on the matter.”
“Yeah, that does sound like something Iris would do...” I said with a sigh and a nod.
But seriously, how unlucky for me. Or... was it as the doctor suggested? Perhaps it was by some kind of design.
“As for the second incident, you—future Rekka—went missing in the middle of everything.”
“So that’s when my future self disappeared...”
Was I kidnapped? Or was I obliterated without a trace? I didn’t really want to think about the latter.
“This is where things get complicated,” said the doctor.
“I can imagine...”
“After your disappearance, rumors quickly began circulating among the heroines.”
“Rumors?” I parroted.
“Yes. That someone had kidnapped you to keep you all to themselves.”
“!”
Come to think of it, she’d mentioned something like that during the time leap here. Something about the heroines of the future suspecting one of them was hogging me all to themselves, which had caused a lot of infighting.
“It wasn’t like everyone believed it without even questioning it, but it led to the tensions that had been building between the heroines all blowing up at once.”
And so a trivial catfight exploded into an all-out war. They each suspected one another, multiplying their suspicions exponentially. And, according to the doctor, a good portion of that suspicion fell on the grieving Iris.
“Why Iris?” I asked.
“Because she was there when you disappeared. Moreover, she’s the one who forced you to go to the council meeting that day. If someone had been plotting something, she was in the best position to do so.”
“That can’t be! That terrorist attack...! Her father...!”
“Indeed... And so I’m sure you can imagine Iris’s rage.”
Iris had flown into a fury when the other girls pointed fingers at her. She started to suspect the heroines who were trying to pin the blame on her and grew obsessive about searching for the real culprit. However, the heroines under Iris’s suspicion didn’t take that lying down either. And so the fight between the heroines hit the point that it was no longer any laughing matter. It was deadly serious.
“Wait...”
That was when something dawned on me, and my eyes drifted over to the so-far quiet Satsuki.
“Hold on. If you’re looking for someone, then don’t you have Satsuki and her Magic of Omniscience?”
The Magic of Omniscience was Satsuki’s heirloom magic that could access the Akashic record of this world—a record of everything that had ever happened here, from the dawn of time up until the present day. She should be able to locate me easily.
“About that... Well, you see...”
“Um...”
Both the doctor and Satsuki had strange looks on their faces.
“Huh? Did I say something wrong?”
“No, no. You’re not wrong. But...” Satsuki said bashfully.
As it turned out, Satsuki at the time had had the same thought I did and tried to mediate the peace in my place. However...
“Even with my Magic of Omniscience, I couldn’t find your location.”
“What?” I asked, my brow furrowed. “Is that even possible?”
“It shouldn’t be. But that was of no comfort to the distraught heroines.”
If future Rekka had saved hundreds of heroines, that meant he’d been involved in just as many stories. And with that many stories intertwining, I can see how things might get a little complicated. Planets from every corner of the universe, numerous other worlds, underworlds that people on Earth were wholly unaware of, lost civilizations, crazy technologies, ancient magics, and so on... There were all kinds of tremendous powers at play. And it wasn’t hard to imagine that something out of all that had the ability to hide future Rekka from the Magic of Omniscience.
“The Magic of Omniscience is magic, first and foremost. There are plenty of ways to protect yourself against magic, and even more to shield yourself from divination magic specifically—either with technology or other magic. That is to say, if someone had thought about it ahead of time, it shouldn’t have been all that hard to come up with a way to avoid the Magic of Omniscience.”
So basically we had a Devil’s Proof situation on our hands. Satsuki could potentially look up every way she knew how to avoid the Magic of Omniscience and who could use it, but there were too many ways and too many heroines from too many different stories for that to be feasible. Moreover, there could be ways we didn’t know about. And so, with the one thing that could put an end to the conflict missing, the conflict escalated and escalated... Heroine versus heroine became faction versus faction became world versus world.
“I see... I get it now. So that’s how it became the War of All.”
It was a real heavy story... Especially the part about me being the cause.
When R said I caused a war, she must have tried to make it sound like a joke to soften the blow...
I finally understood that, despite sounding like a jerk, she was being considerate. Yanking my chain a bit made it a little easier to take than dumping all the gory details on me. I’m sure it being our first meeting had something to do with it too, but I was sure now that R was being thoughtful in her own way to avoid causing me too much stress.
“Yes. That was the start of the War of All, which brings us to where we are now.”
“The agency was established to stop the War of All, causing conflict between the pacifists and extremists?”
“Yup,” the doctor said with a nod. “So there’s one thing... No, four things I’d like you to take away from this: the four factions that exist in this world.”
“Factions? Like the pacifists and extremists?”
“That’s right. Actually, those are two of the four factions. What I want to brief you on is each faction’s view of you and the War of All.”
“Their view of me?”
It sounded like we were in for another complicated discussion...
“There’s no need to be so tense. It’s not that difficult. First are the pacifists, who, as you know, wish for you to live and resolve the War of All by your own hand.”
I assumed she meant for me to make up my mind and settle down with a heroine.
“Next are the extremists, who you may know refer to themselves as hardliners. They are the radical faction set on preventing the War of All by killing you. They’re a faction that branched off from the agency, which is why they have the means to travel to the past, but they’re not very well known outside of here.”
The extremists had caused me enough grief already, so I wasn’t very fond of them. Not only had they targeted my life, they had tricked L, destroyed my hometown, and on top of that, kidnapped Satsuki and the others (which was a little confusing to say with future Satsuki standing right in front of me). But still... If their real goal was ending the war to achieve world peace, I couldn’t say they were all bad.
“Now come the two factions you don’t know, the first of which is the hawks. As you might guess by their name, they want the War of All to continue until it reaches its natural conclusion.”
“Why would anyone want the war to continue?”
“In a way, you and future Rekka are different people. There are heroines who don’t want the fate of their love to be decided by someone else.”
I see... That did make sense in a way. Future me wasn’t me me, after all. We had different personalities and had lived different lives. If I chose a heroine and settled down in the past, that would keep future me from even meeting a good deal of the heroines he’d saved. There must have been some of them who weren’t too thrilled with that idea. I didn’t think it was right to continue the war, but I wasn’t in much of a position to criticize their way of thinking. I had no idea what it was like to go through what they were.
“Last but not least is the doves. They’re ideologically similar to us pacifists, but they don’t necessarily support the agency’s methods. They do want an end to the conflict, however. You could say they’re rather close to a neutral faction, but even they have pawns in the war.”
Pacifists and extremists. Hawks and doves. With the War of All going on, all sorts of principles, people, and ideologies had come into play. But over time, they’d largely settled into those four factions.
“But there are those who have joined the war without affiliating themselves with a faction. Those who have no idea that the war really started with a struggle over you. With everyone across all worlds embroiled in this conflict, there are surely some who have no idea why they’re fighting.”
“What’s with that? That’s so...”
“It’s a terrible thing, certainly. But as its name suggests, the War of All grew so big it encompassed everyone and everything with no end in sight. Of course it would lead to such tragedy...”
I couldn’t say anything to that. All I could do was clench my fists. The War of All that I had been hearing about since day one... To me, it had always been something far off in the future. Uncertain, almost unreal. Hearing the details of what had happened—what was happening—changed that. It was now very, very real to me. But here I was in the future, unable to leave the doctor’s room... Maybe that was for the better. If I went outside and saw the damage with my own eyes, everything I’d heard so far would probably weigh on me even heavier.
“...”
After everything the doctor had said, I had a much better grasp of the War of All. But...
“Well, that’s enough about the war. Let’s move on to talking about what happened in the past that needs to be rectified,” she suddenly declared, drawing a hasty conclusion to the topic.
If she was bringing up the past now, she must be talking about how my hometown was attacked by the extremists who’d kidnapped the heroines. Satsuki had already been filled in on that much because the doctor had messaged her about it when we arrived.
“For now, let’s try to do what we can. Satsuki, can you find out where Rekka’s heroines are in this time period using your Magic of Omniscience?”
“I’ll give it a try,” Satsuki said, activating her magic.
Her blue mana glowed softly, filling the room with light that formed a pillar up through the ceiling, reaching for the heavens. That was how her magic connected to the Akashic record. After a while...
“It’s no use. Just like back then, the Akashic record doesn’t yield any results for their location.”
“I see. I had my suspicions, but this must mean the mastermind behind the extremists is involved too. We haven’t been able to find out anything about the mastermind via the Magic of Omniscience, so we can assume they have some way to hide from it or block it out...” the doctor explained to me with a quiet sigh.
“But you said yourself this practically confirms they’re involved with the kidnappings too, right? So why don’t we start by marching into the extremists’ headquarters?”
“We don’t have any other leads right now, though. And that’s no easy task, you realize? We only have the four of us.”
Okay, the doctor had a fair point there. Against an organization with giant robots at its disposal, it was reckless to go march on their base with just four people—three of which weren’t even really combat trained. But I wasn’t fazed. In fact, being at a huge disadvantage was the norm for me. And if I was lacking strength, then the first thing I needed to do was...
“Let’s increase our numbers,” I suggested.
“Increase our numbers?”
The doctor and Satsuki both cocked their heads at my suggestion.
“I don’t know how it is for future Rekka, but I’m generally powerless. I can’t do anything without someone else’s help. That’s why the first thing we should do is get some friends together.”
I knew that what had just come out of my mouth was ultimately pretty pathetic, but I couldn’t help it. It was the truth.
“Do you have any friends in mind?”
“Well, the only people I know I can rely on are the girls... So I’ll seek out their future selves here in this time line and make friends.” I continued, “I don’t know whether I’ll be able to get them on board or not, though, so it’s probably best to start with the heroines I know I’ll most likely be able to convince.”
I looked slowly at L, the doctor, and Satsuki in turn.
“There are common heroines between my story and future Rekka’s, right? I mean, Satsuki’s right here, and you guys mentioned Iris earlier.”
“Well, yes. There are others,” the doctor confirmed.
“Then let’s start with them. I know their stories, and we might have some sort of connection.”
My best shot here was probably to make the most of the fact that I was “the same but different” from the Rekka they knew. Tugging at their heartstrings a little would probably be the best way to recruit them.
“Let’s see... To start with, are there any common heroines that belong to the pacifist or dove factions you mentioned earlier?”
“Hold on. I’ll bring up a list for you from the agency database,” the doctor said, fiddling with a computer terminal in the room.
As I was waiting for her, I felt someone’s gaze fall on me... and I turned to see Satsuki with a faint smile on her face.
“You really are Rekka... I knew you’d come through for us all. I’m so touched I could just cry,” she murmured with misty eyes.