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On the worst day of Takumi’s life, he finds himself in a losing battle against what had formerly been his best friend. Despite how poorly it’s going, he’s able to convince himself that it’s manageable for a while. All he has to do is keep fighting, and maybe things can turn out okay. Even as his allies drop one by one, either to use their final attacks or by Eito’s scythe, it’s not over yet. As long as Takumi wins, none of this matters. Everyone will come back. As long as he beats Eito into the ground-
His thoughts screech to his halt as his katana is wrenched out of his hands, clattering at his feet before an invader steps on it, effectively disarming him. He looks around, adrenaline slowly draining, out of him as he realizes not a single ally is still standing. There’s only an army of invaders, their horrible commander, and the walls of fire surrounding them.
He’s…lost.
Eito slowly approaches him, and Takumi braces himself for the end. It’ll hurt, but he’ll die defiant. May Eito never be able to forget the look of hatred in his eyes as he breathes his last.
But instead of stabbing him and ending his life, Eito hits Takumi’s stomach hard with the blunt edge of his scythe, knocking the air out of him and sending him skidding across the floor. Takumi tries to scrabble back to his feet, only for invaders to grab hold of his arms and legs, effectively pinning him down. He cranes his neck to look up at Eito. “Wh-what are you-“
“I’m saving the best for last,” Eito responds calmly, voice full to the brink with sadistic glee. “Be sure to watch.”
Takumi has a moment of confusion, only to realize with dawning horror exactly what Eito’s referring to as he leans down over one of his friends bodies, infuser in hand. He’s going to drain them, just like he did Hiruko and Eva. Takumi struggles harder, trying hard to dislodge the invaders from him. “No, get away from them, don’t-“
Eito ignores his cries as he brings down his infuser, reducing Shouma from a person to a small, blackened mummy with a sickening slurping noise. Takumi stares in disbelief. That’s…it, then. He’s gone for good. There’s no way for Takumi to possibly fix or undo this.
And he doesn’t get time to grieve-this is only just the beginning. The process repeats with each of Takumi’s friends as one by one they’re drained by Eito. He tries to stop him-demands that he stops, begs, pleads, bargains, anything to spare some of his friends, but to no avail. At somepoint as his friends dwindle down to nothing, he switches tactics, begging him to kill Takumi first or trying to taunt or needle him to provoke him into killing Takumi first. Anything so he doesn’t have to watch this. Anything to end the pain of his failure.
His attempts yield almost no fruits. Almost. Eito only looks back at him once, with an expression he’ll never forget. “That’d defeat the point,” he says as though Takumi’s stupid. He just might be. “Takumi, my dearest beloathed…you deserve only the worst I could give you. Why would I ever spare you this suffering?”
Takumi swallows hard, trying to blink tears out of his eyes. He watches on in horrified silence from then on. Eventually, there’s no one left to absorb but Takumi. His heart feels worn and beaten at the end of its life, but at least it’ll be over soon. That’s what he keeps telling himself as the invaders holding down his arms and legs move, propping him up so he’s ripe for the stabbing, like a piece of meat being presented to eat.
That’s what he’s expecting, at least. It’ll hurt, and so will the feeling of his hemoanima being taken, but…it’ll be brief. All of his pain and regret will drain out of him, and…he’ll get to see Karua again. See everyone again. So, he puts the fear out of his heart as best he can and shuts his eyes, waiting for the end…
…The end that is taking a long time to come. Eventually, the tension gets to him, and he opens an eye to see Eito leaning over him, infuser in shaking hand, glaring down at him. Why is he drawing this out? Is he really getting that much out of the anticipation?
Eventually, he closes his eyes, before he moves. Takumi braces himself for the end as Eito drives the infuser down…but not into Takumi, into the floor beside him. After a long moment, he lets go of the infuser and turns away from Takumi, wordlessly getting up to leave.
What the hell was that? Why didn’t he just kill Takumi? “Why wait?” he calls after Eito, perhaps against his better judgment. “Weren’t you going to kill me?!”
Eito turns back for a moment right before he leaves, fixing Takumi with a cold glare. “Are your ears as broken as your brain? I told you. Someone as despicable as you deserves to suffer as much as possible.”
With that, he leaves. Even in his absence, though, it’s not like Takumi can escape now. He’s still awkwardly propped up by the invaders, who are dead still with their master gone. His stomach churns. He’d hoped for a quick death, but he’s starting to realize that was naive. Whatever Eito’s doing, it can’t possibly be good.
Eventually, Eito comes back with a chain in hand— a chain he reaches down to loop around Takumi’s neck, then both his hands, one wrist at a time. “I realized something,” he says as he works. “Killing you would be a mercy you don’t deserve. Letting you join Nozomi so easily would be far too much of a kindness for a vile beast like you.”
“Keep her name out of your mouth,” Takumi hisses, trying to keep his eyes dry at the mention of her. The idea that this is what she sacrificed herself for is too horrible to imagine.
Eito ignores him as he tugs on the chains, making sure they’re taut. “No, for you, for the most vile human I’ve had the displeasure of interacting with…death’s too good for you. The rest of humanity should have a witness to their inevitable demise, don’t you think? You can watch from the front row seat as your kind dies one by one.”
He leans in close, cruel smile across his face. “Your suffering’s only just beginning.”
Takumi’s heart drops. He sees no trace of mercy or kindness or anything of the person he knew before today that’d make Eito stay his hand. It’d been naive to think that he’d just get to die. Here, powerless to do anything against Eito and bound in chains, he feels true fear.
Eito drags him by the collar out of the room and down the hall, walking at a brisk pace that Takumi has to almost jog to keep up with. He tries once to bolt, hoping either that the chains will break or he’ll snap his own neck and that’ll be that, but Eito notices and puts a stop to that quickly. For someone who spent all his life in a hospital, he sure is strong enough to pick Takumi up, throwing him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
He locks Takumi up in the cage opposite the one where the prisoner used to stay, wrapping the end of his chains around the door. “You can stay there for the rest of our time here. A cage fitting for a beast like you.”
Takumi glares back up at him, irony clear. “If there were any justice in the world, a killer like you would be here instead.”
Eito raises an eyebrow. “History is written by the victors — one lesson humanity taught very well. He who wins gets to decide the narrative. And in my eyes, every one of you deserves to be caged if not worse.”
This isn’t getting him anywhere, so he refuses to deny Eito with a response, looking away as his anger simmers. Eito prods him a few more times, before realizing he’s not going to get any more reactions and finally leaving to do god only knows what. With Eito really and truly gone, the tension leaves Takumi and he lets himself break, tears finally falling as he thinks of each of his friends, lost forever. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to get the sound of their dying screams out of his head, nor the horrible noise of their hemoanima being stolen.
…There was one more lost friend he finds himself mourning. The one he thought he’d had. The snake he hadn’t seen until too late. It still feels like a bad dream to have lost everyone in the span of little more than a day, but he has a sinking feeling that it’s reality. The Eito he thought he’d known…would’ve let him out in a heartbeat, would’ve sat with him as he cried instead of being the reason for it. But that Eito was dead and gone, and a horrible monster was in his place. …A monster that refused to give Takumi any rest.
It wasn’t fair that Takumi was alive when the rest of his friends weren’t. That he can’t even atone for his failures by joining them. He finds himself wishing once more that he’d been first-that he’d fallen in battle with Eito and he’d had no choice but to take Takumi’s hemoanima to win, that the commander had targeted him instead of Karua-hell, even that Nigou hadn’t found him in the desert. Anything so he wouldn’t have to keep this horrible existence alone.
The remaining four days are slow and dull. Eito brings him meals-not good meals, better than what the Tsukumos would make, but certainly not good food-but food regardless. At first, Takumi refuses to eat, hoping that if he can’t die any other way, he can die of starvation. Unfortunately, his body betrays him before the day is done, pain from thirst too intense to ignore for long.
(He tries to ignore the despicably smug look on Eito’s face as Takumi drinks the water he brings dry. Same for the feeling of a gloved hand combing through his hair-a gesture that could be mistaken as fond instead condescending and cruel. He’s been reduced to a caged animal.)
Eito himself spends a lot of time outside of Takumi’s cage. With nothing else to sabotage, he takes to tormenting Takumi with words, having apparently stolen any data he could find from the command room. He goes over every awful detail of the project-every way humanity didn’t care for them, every cruel bit of it, even something about it not being Earth they’re on? All to break Takumi’s spirit. Takumi lies on his bed and trying to cover his ears with a pillow. He refuses to believe anything Eito’s saying.
Whenever Eito looks over to see Takumi do this, he almost seems frustrated, as though he wanted Takumi to listen. It doesn’t make any sense. This is psychological torture for him, and it’s working. He hates every bit of this, every attempt to justify why killing his friends was fine. Eito’s petulance only strengthens Takumi’s resolve to endure. Even if he is having a terrible time, even if he has to gouge out his ears, he refuses to listen to anything Eito’s saying. Nothing could possibly warrant this. There’s no way his friends ever could have deserved this.
(He finds himself, a day or two in, almost wishing that Eito would’ve tortured him physically instead. The Revive-o-Matic hadn’t stopped working to his knowledge-there’s a lot that could’ve been done there. It’d almost be better for him if Eito had done it, killing Takumi again and again in every way he can think of. It’d hurt, but at least it’d make sense. It’d be what he’s earned. Being left alone like this with only words to torment him when he’s the only one left alive is almost worse. As it is now, the guilt and fury only build and build within him endlessly, each day worse to deal with than the one before.)
Day 100 comes soon enough, and to his surprise, an escape pod comes. That detail of what Eito had read aloud had been true after all. Eito drags him out to it by his chain the moment it opens, and for a split second, Takumi sees an opportunity. As the door starts to close, he pulls back against his chains as hard as he can. The pod door has to be strong-if he’s caught in it, it likely won’t stop. It’d be strong enough to cut through chain. Cut through bone.
He knows there’s a good chance he’ll be cut clean in half, but he can’t bring himself to feel bad over it.
Unfortunately for him, Eito notices just in time, tugging his chains so savagely that Takumi loses his footing, toppling over inside the pod. He tries to get up, but by the time he does, the door’s already closed, the final chance of freedom gone.
The air on the escape pod is…tense, to put it mildly. It almost doesn’t matter that Takumi’s in chains anymore—there’s nowhere left to escape to. He looks up at his captor to see him pacing as he waits for the pod to reach its destination.
…This is the last chance for him to turn back. The odds that Eito is going to listen to him on the verge of complete victory are almost nothing, but…he has to at least try. “…It’s not too late to stop,” he says. “You’ve already ruined any chance humanity has by sabotaging the project. They’ll likely all die out in space anyways. Couldn’t that be enough?” He swallows hard, words burning his throat on their way out. “You could stay here and be a king on earth.”
Eito stares at him like he’s stupid for a long second, then shakes his head. “Why would I ever stop when humanity’s still alive? As long as there’s a single human left, there’s no reason for me to ever back down. …Just having your hideous and vile presence around keeps me from ever forgetting why humanity needs to die, after all.”
Takumi glares back as best he can. “…I should’ve known,” he says quietly. He’d known, but…he also owed it to every human left to try to get Eito to stop one last time. “If you’re not going to stand down, then I hope you get what you deserve.”
“So do I,” Eito responds, barb clearly not hitting him. “After a lifetime of toil, the day of judgment is finally at hand. Why would I ever want to stop?” He stares almost into Takumi’s soul. “And you get to witness it.”
Then, something strange happens. Eito takes a step closer to him. “I could return your offer to you, you know. It’s never too late to turn your back on humanity and do the right thing. You may be ugly, stupid, and hideous, but if your single brain cell finally wakes up at this late date, then I would be willing to tolerate your hideous presence for the sake of destroying humanity.”
…He sees now. Of course Eito was never going to listen to him-they had come too far for that. He musters up all the venom he can feel as he responds. “You should’ve killed me back in the defense room.”
The carnage starts from the second they touch down. The landing crew that meets them doesn’t have time to react as they’re torn apart. Takumi watches on stunned as the bodies hit the floor, not having even had the time to warn them to run. There are a few people who were far enough away not to get caught immediately and look on in horror, and Takumi snaps out of it just long enough to beg them to run-
Before lightning comes from the heavens, striking them dead where they stand. Takumi remembers entirely late. Jury. Eito wasn’t that easy to outrun.
Silence falls once more, and Eito calmly pushes up his glasses before walking past the corpses he made, dragging Takumi along too fast to process or mourn. He beelines for Kamukura hospital, not satisfied with the amount he’s sabotaged the project yet. Takumi internally braces himself for yet another sea of blood he’s going to have to wade through as they approach.
Eito barges through the door and then-
And then…nothing. In the blink of an eye, he’s gone, body bursting apart from the inside. Takumi stares blankly, unable to comprehend what just happened. It’s only the feeling of Eito’s blood hitting him and the loud clatter of his scythe on the floor that brings him to his senses.
It was the bomb. The bomb within Eito had been set off. Of course, if this is the place where Sirei came from, then…it follows that they’d have the detonators too.
Staring down at Eito’s corpse, Takumi can’t quite put a name to the feelings he has. Of course he’s relieved to be free of Eito—he was a rotten bastard to his core. That said, his insides aren’t any easier to behold because they belonged to an evil person. Takumi doesn’t want his blood on him any more than he wants anyone else’s. At least, if nothing else, this means the fight is ove-
“I didn’t think there’d be another one here,” someone says, distracting him. Takumi looks up to find the first new face in ages, belonging to a scientist in the corner of the room, huddled together with another cowering scientist.
“God, we’re so gonna lose our grant funding,” the other one groans. “What are we supposed to do with it?”
“Better just get rid of it,” the first one sighs as they pull out their own detonator-
“Wait, please!” Takumi begs, survival instinct pushing him forward. Surely they wouldn’t. He hasn’t done anything-well, he’s failed in every way he could have, but still. “I have a life to go back to!”
They stare at him for a long second before turning back to each other. “There aren’t any upsides to keeping it around, and we’re going to be in so much trouble if news about it gets out.”
The other scientist agrees, as though deciding to kill Takumi is the easiest thing in the world. “I mean, it didn’t serve any purpose it was supposed to. If we kept every failed prototype, we’d have to buy more storage space and be in more debt than we already are.”
Takumi’s heart sinks. It feels like the last week or so has just been a long, constantly worsening bad dream. He can’t even deny that he’s failed, but…faced with his own pointless death, he finds himself hesitating. “I had…a family to get back to,” he pleads quietly. “Mom and Dad are going to be worried about me. You can’t just…”
One of them faces him with something almost like sorrow in their eyes. “Poor thing…we really are sorry. At least you can find peace in ignorance.”
With that, they hit the button, and Takumi feels a searing pain as his bomb goes off, tearing him to bits. In his last seconds of consciousness, staring blankly into nothing as his blood mixes with Eito’s on the hospital floor, he wonders if this story had a good guy at all.