Aqua was sick to his stomach.[1]
It wasn't the case that he was actually sick. Though it had been that time of year again. It was more of a mental process, a recurring thing that happened year after year on the exact same day, and it was that exact same day again. Today marked the 15th anniversary of his and Ruby's mother's death.
While Ruby's condition had steadily gotten better over the years, his fell more rapidly as time went by. 'I have to end this soon. The more time goes by, the less evidence will be left,' or something along the lines of this went through his head at that moment. However, deep down, he knew; he knew that there was nothing left for him to look into. Every possible lead he had thoroughly looked into at least thrice, yet they always led to the same point: nowhere.
He was even still acting, actively searching through the industry. 'A few more years and I will have gone through all of them,' he thought, referencing the Japanese big-shot movie producers, as he desperately held onto the sterilized DNA kit in his hand, the only thing he had left to hold onto.
Even today, even on the day of his mother's death, he was searching. To be honest, it being that day was probably the exact reason why he forced himself to do it. Thus, he was on a movie set right this moment. Or to be more precise, he was in the dimly lit bathroom stall, hanging over the toilet while puking his guts out.
I have to admit, I lied earlier. While it was true that he hadn't caught any physical illness one might diagnose, his state of mind had an impact on his bodily health that might as well have counted as one.
"Is everything okay in there?" A knock on his stall, followed by a concerned voice. It was one of his co-actors whom he hadn't felt any obligation to remember his name. "The director told me I should go and get you. We are just about to shoot the final shot of the day."
"Sure. Sure, I'm fine. Just give me a moment. I'll be right out," Aqua mouthed back.
He had expected his co-star to press him at least a bit further. Instead, he just heard the door to the bathroom shut a moment later. Where others would've felt hurt since their co-star didn't actually care about them, Aqua felt a deep sense of gratitude.
Another dud. This director isn't my father either.
I wish there were a faster way to cross them out.
I can't make any progress for the next 3 whole months since he only accepted me as the lead for his movie.
I hate egotistic people like him.
If everyone were like that, I'd be done with the DNA tests at the ripe age of 45.
But no amount of thinking could have made the circumstances he found himself in any better. He was caught in contract after contract, one longer than another. Rarely ever complaining about it, though. And not complaining was what he did now as well. Still a bit light-headed, he picked himself up from the floor and went back to work.
…
'According to my calculations this leaves just about another 50 producers with a likelihood of over 0.1%.' He thought as he sat outside a quiet cafe. His earlier traumatic episode, as well as the day of work, had long since passed, and the sun had settled as well. Needless to say, it was cold, and he grew more tired from the waiting by the minute.
Ruby was the one he had been waiting for for the last 36 minutes. She had insisted on meeting today, and now she was a no-show? It was more than just a bit unusual for her. She was careless and silly from time to time, but insensitivity was not one of her traits (and not appearing at such an event after you yourself organized it was more than just a bit insensitive)
Aqua felt no hard feelings towards her, though. If he had felt anything, it would've probably been concern. Yeah, he should've been filled with it. I mean, his sister wasn't like that. She would've at least texted him or anything, but there was nothing. So why didn't he feel the least bit of concern? It was quite simple. There was nothing left in his stomach for him to spew out.
And so he just waited. He still hoped something would happen, but he knew the chance that Ruby would still show up grew smaller and smaller. *BBzzz* *BBzzz* The feeling of his phone vibrating in his pocket filled him with new hope. He quietly pulled it out and glanced at the screen. Just as fast as his face was filled with hope, it was also drained of it again. The message wasn't from Ruby; instead, it was from some unknown number with a message that read, "69 35 11".
Probably just someone who accidentally put my number instead of theirs when verifying for an app.
I wonder what app he was signing up for…
I never thought a coincidence like this would happen to me.
These thoughts were the only thing that kept him entertained as he once again waited, waiting as countless people, none of whom were Ruby, passed by him. Most spoke, some looked, none stopped — none but one. "Kukuku. What a wonderful day it is today. Speak to me. Are you Aqua Hoshino?" a male voice asked.
Aqua looked up, sluggishly. Before him was a man who looked to be about his age, but that was already where the similarities had stopped. He was taller but thinner, while his hair was darker and his skin paler. Yet none of this stood out like the white lab coat he wore; an odd fella, to say the least.
"Are you talking to me?" Aqua asked.
"Who else would I be talking to? Now tell me, are you Aqua Hoshino?" The man replied, his voice sounding so fake, Aqua almost found something in his stomach to barf up. He acted like he was auditioning for a role in some theatrical play.
Aqua shook his head and sighed, already having enough of these shenanigans. "Yes, I am Aqua Hoshino. Look, man, I don't have much time. I can sign something for you, but please be on your way then."
"Why would I want to have signed anything from you?" he retorted.
"If not that, what is it that you want? I am waiting for someone here." Aqua said, more than a bit agitated now.
"Kukuku. In that case you can wait for a long time. Fate seems to have different plans." A sinister-looking smile stretched across the man's face.
"What did you do?" Aqua growled as he jumped up from the bench he sat on, taking a determined step towards the frail-looking man. "You're going to tell me right now what you did to her." Aqua's voice was dangerous, filled with enough venom to kill an elephant.
"I? Nothing! It was fate," he proclaimed." And there's nothing any of us can do against fate. Trust me, I've tried."
"I don't believe in fa-" 'fate,' that was the word Aqua was just about to say as he felt a blunt object hit the back of his skull. He didn't even have enough time to break his fall before the world around him turned black.
The bustling street had, without Aqua noticing, emptied. Only he, the mad scientist, and whoever knocked the wind out of him remained, and not for long at that. Just as quickly as his lights were turned off, he was dragged away from the lit-up street and into a dark alley. Not that he would've noticed any of that in his current predicament.
—
"I don't understand it. What would they want from us?"
"Our money, of course, dummy. They hope they can earn a quick buck from this."
"No need to be so rude to her. I also think that it might not be about the money."
Before he saw again, before he smelt again, and before he felt again, Aqua heard again. However, at the moment, the voices he heard sounded like nothing more than distant babbling.
My head hurts…
Where am I?
Why can't I see?
Thoughts like these swirled around in his head aimlessly as he slowly began to regain his senses.
The second sensation he got back was his smell. The room he was in didn't have a strong or distinct odor, but compared to the nothingness he smelled before, it might've smelled a bit cold-musty, like an old basement.
The third sensation he regained was his sense of touch. However, this one was even less telling than the last, since he virtually couldn't move anyway.
Lastly, he regained his sight, and what he saw made his sense of touch useful after all. Sending a cold shiver down his spine, he felt all too well.
The room he was in was just dimly lit. He couldn't quite make out where the light came from, though, since there was neither a window nor a light bulb in sight. The walls of the place were red brick, uninviting at best, and the only way in and out was a thick-looking wooden door. Yet, none of this was the cause of the shiver that had just subsided near his tailbone.
Ruby,
Kana,
Akane.
All three were, just like he was, tied to a chair, a thick rope spanning around their ankles and wrists to keep them from even moving a single inch.
"Ruby, Kana, stop arguing. I think Aqua woke up." Akane was the first one to notice Aqua's uncoordinated bobbing, and she didn't keep it a secret.
"I thought you'd never wake up," Ruby exclaimed.
Kana remained mum.
"W-Where are we?" Aqua croaked, his voice raspy from god knows how many hours he had been unconscious for. Was it even still the same day? Didn't matter since there was no real way to find out anyway.
"Oh, yeah, as if we would know that." Kana spoke up after all, snippy as ever. "All I can remember is how this weird doctor approached me. After that, I was here."
"How about you two?" Aqua asked Ruby and Akane.
"Same here," they replied in unison.
Aqua's head pulsated like it was his heart as he tried to take in all the information as best as he could. This, however, was a far more difficult task than one might believe. Not only did his head feel like he had been concussed, but the thought of these crazy people coming back before he could come up with something added another layer of pressure to the mix.
"One thing's for sure, we have to get out of here… Fast," he said, voice firm.
"Well, what don't you say? Mr. Obvious," Kana replied. "These people are massive creeps. They put me in here like 12 hours ago and didn't let me use the bathroom even once. Am I supposed to pee myself or what?"
"Calm down, Kana, I'm sure they aren't just going to leave us to rot here," Akane said, trying to up the mood.
"Fuck this." Upping the mood didn't work. "This is probably one of these creepy dark web streams… A humiliation room or something."
"Don't be so pessimistic," Akane said.
"Hey," Ruby tried to intervene.
"No, you don't be so stupidly optimistic," Kana retorted.
"Guys," Ruby tried again, still no luck.
"Just stop it, Kana. Arguing won't lead us anywhere useful."
"Please listen-" The third time wasn't the charm for Ruby either.
"Then why are you even talking to me? Just get off my ass," Kana snapped back at Akane.
"Could you two PLEASE shut up?" Aqua growled, his voice far louder than the others; scarier, too. "Ruby clearly wants to speak, and all you two are doing is fighting like two clucking chickens… Come on, Ruby, what is it?"
"My ties… I think they are loose. Perhaps I could slip out of them," said Ruby as she audibly fought against her restraints. Before another moment had passed, she already had her right wrist untied, and the left followed just a moment later."
"Great job, Ruby," Akane cheered her up, momentarily forgetting about her dispute.
"Yes, you got this," Kana agreed, also putting their differences aside.
The ties that bound her feet were a bigger challenge. They were not the least bit loose. However, with her hands at her own disposal now, eventually they became undone, too, and she managed to slip out of them.
A tad bit lost, she looked around the room. The decision of who she should free next was quite a hard one for a split second, then she leapt towards Aqua. "Come on, come on," she muttered under her breath as the entire rest of the room held theirs. She pulled and tore at Aqua's rope; however, his one was even tighter than the one that had been wrapped around her own ankles. It was messy. Aqua's wrist, which was already bruised from the rope, was bruised further by Ruby's fingernails scraping away at his flesh in the heat of the moment.
Then, there it was; midway through breaking the first of Aqua's four bonds, she heard the distinct sound of a key turning in the lock of the door. Ruby's body froze while her mind raced.
"What's that grim expression, everyone? You doubted that I'd come back? Typical," the man, looking exactly like Aqua had remembered, scoffed. "Humans are always so ignorant of the world around them. You all could run into the abyss, and you wouldn't even notice it. But not me, not the great-"
"Cut it out-" Aqua barked before the man could end his monologue.
"Hohoho, Kukuku," the man laughed as he stepped closer to Aqua, his gaze resting only on him. "No need to be so hostile. I am not your enemy."
Exactly what he wanted. Ruby had managed to slip back into her chair just before the door swung open. However, if he had paid mind to her instead of Aqua, he would have definitely seen it, seen the bond broken and the loose rope sloppily thrown over her wrists.
"I decide who's my enemy," Kana snapped at him, "and you are definitely on the list right now."
"The human ego is probably the only thing that is bigger than their ignorance," he said without turning to face Kana. "I was not talking to you. Wait your turn."
But she didn't have to wait, and there wasn't a next turn either. For a man who preached so much about the ignorance of humanity, he himself seemed to be pretty ignorant of his surroundings. Without him noticing, Ruby had managed to stand up from her chair and creep up behind him. "So, where wa-" was all he brought out before Ruby jumped onto his back and put him into a merciless headlock while she wrapped her legs around his stomach.
The struggle began. Ruby was merely 5 '1 and no man. Under normal circumstances, that would've already been enough for the man to just pick her off and throw her like a sack of sand against the wall. But luckily for her and the rest of the crew, she had two advantages. 1. The lab geek wasn't much of a man either, and 2. her idol training over the past years had been nothing short of brutal. Meaning, she held her own; even more than that, she choked him good. Jon Jones would've been proud of her.
The man tried to grab back as he gasped for air, scraping and scratching across Ruby's head and upper arms as he did. "I won't let you go," she groaned under effort. Yet, no matter how much he tried, Ruby didn't let go. With each try of his, her grasp turned even tighter. Her hair flew through the air as they ripped around wildly like this was a rodeo before it came down like a silk veil in front of her eyes, blinding her, but she couldn't let go to fix this; she had to continue without her vision.
In one last attempt, the man tried to back up against one of the brick walls with full force. "Ahhh," Ruby gasped out as her back hit it, sending a jolt of pain down her spine, yet even then, she didn't let go of him. A moment later, it was done. Ruby felt how she, as well as the man who had finally lost his balance, fell and tumbled towards the ground.
"Argh," the air was forced out of Ruby's lungs as she fell onto her shoulder. Thankfully, her head had more luck and didn't get to meet the concrete floor. She quickly tried to regain her composure and get her far-too-long hair out of her face to finally be able to see again. When she did, her heart sank. The man got up as well, tumbling for a short moment before standing upright.
"How dare you attack me, the greatest scientist on this earth, from behind?" he asked. "After I proclaimed that I am not your enemy at that."
Ruby tried to speak, but the air that had been forced out of her lungs seemingly hadn't returned yet, so the words she wanted to form were not even gasps as the man took a step towards her.
"I think that's more than enough now." Before he could take another step, Aqua, who had managed to free himself in the meantime thanks to Ruby's groundwork, emerged from behind him. He wrapped his arms around the man. One he used to keep the man's arms still, and the other one to cover his mouth. "Ruby, quick, get Kana and Akane," Aqua ordered as he easily contained the already battered lab rat.
Ruby didn't waste even a single second. She was closer to Akane, so she freed her first. It took no more than a minute before she was also able to slip out of her involuntary BDSM nightmare. Next up was Kana. Since four hands worked quicker than two, for her it took no more than 40 seconds, give or take 5.
When the last two were freed, in a firm voice, Aqua ordered, "Let's get out of here," before he pushed the self-proclaimed scientist to the other end of the room, away from the door to freedom. Kana was the first to disappear into the hallway, followed by Akane a second later. Ruby waited till her brother crossed the distance to her before they left through the door together.
In the distance, on the other end of a comically large hallway, they saw another door. "That is our way out," Aqua stated the obvious.
"I know who killed Ai Hoshino." Kana and Akane ran; Aqua and Ruby didn't. "That's right… I know who killed her." The man, still battling with the beating he just received, said as he leaned against the doorway. "And I need the help of you four to stop it from happening.
Akane and Kana had also stopped by now, not because of what he said (they probably haven't even registered that the man had said anything to begin with), but because they had reached the door: locked. "Kukuku. We five definitely got off on the wrong foot. So I, the mad scientist Hououhin Kyouma, will give you another chance to listen to my brilliant mind and even more brilliant plan," he said as he walked closer.
Aqua took a step back towards him, shielding Ruby from any possible harm. "What are you doing?" Akane shouted after she and Kana had noticed what went down on the other end of the hallway. Yet, Aqua didn't pay any mind to them. He had eyes only for the man, who might not be so useless after all.
"Stop right where you are and speak." Aqua's tone was harsh, but there was an undeniable underlying curiosity.
Okabe Rintarou did as told and stopped right where he stood, about 5 meters in front of Aqua. "As I, the mad scientist Hououin Kyouma, have already proclaimed, I know who killed your mother, and my genius isn't limited to that… That's right, I know how to bring her back as well… For mere mortals to understand this, however, I will have to start from the beginning."
"Then I will hear you out," Aqua said, not changing his defensive stance the slightest bit.
"Your mother, Ai Hoshino, wasn't killed by your father. At least he wasn't the mastermind behind the plan. Also, he is long dead, something Hououin Kyouma found out years ago, so you taking this long to find out does nothing but prove my own crazy intellect. Regardless, your mother was killed by nobody other than the current president of the United States of America, Kanye West. He strove to be the biggest musician of all time, and to achieve his goal, he had to get rid of the eternal number one.
"But if you thought that this couldn't possibly get worse. You'd be abso-fucking-lutely wrong, because it can and did. When Hououin Kyouma first heard of this, Hououin Kyouma believed it to be just another rumor of humanity, but eventually, even I had to face reality, something humans are notoriously bad at.
"Right this moment, Kanye West is building an army of devils. That is for once no metaphor. Devils are as real as you and me, and each of them is the embodiment of a concept… For example, look at this." He pulled a pen out of his lab coat and held it out like it was the embodiment of Christ. "This is a pen, so somewhere out in this world is a pen devil. The strength of these devils is based on how feared they are, and well, since nobody fears pens, the pen devil is relatively weak… And well, Kanye West has not only the pen, but almost all of them in his control."
"Now this is where the four of you come into action. You must travel back to before Kanye West killed Ai Hoshino and take care of him and his three generals. To even out the odds, I, Hououin Kyouma, have gone to unbelievable lengths to steal away four devils right from under his nose. With these devils, you can enter a contract and therefore gain a part of their strength.
"So, when will the four of you begin?"
"That is… That is…" Aqua stuttered out, "Absolute bullshit. This isn't funny. I know, pranking actors on TV always gets a good laugh out of the audience. But on the death day of my mother? I want to speak to your superior."
Kana and Akane, who had midway through the monologue returned to Aqua's side, nodded in agreement, "This is not funny." Ruby just stood there; she was the only one who didn't speak her mind, but instead silently watched.
"I already knew that this would be your answer. Therefore, let me show you the undeniable proof that I, Hououin Kyouma, have the ability to manipulate the flow of time at my will."
"No chance." Aqua shook his head.
"You are a fool… Or rather just such a basic normie. You are willing to give away decades of your life to find the killer of your mother, but when I present him to you on a silver tray, you reject."
"I know that you are playing a joke at my expense. I don't need any proof to know that."
"And even if this is nothing but a mere joke, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain, fool."
With that, Hououin Kyouma looked away for a moment before he searched through his lab coat once again, this time through another pocket than the one he had taken the pen out of. After a moment, he had it. Without any hesitation, he tossed the keys to the door over to Aqua, who quickly caught them. "Make your choice."
Aqua stood still as if he had just looked at Medusa instead of the mad scientist Hououin Kyouma.
"Come on, let's go," Ruby urged as she pulled his sleeve. "We won't let him do this to us."
"She is right, Aqua. Let's leave," Akane agreed.
Kana just nodded.
"No," Aqua shook his head. "I will see what he has to show me. If it doesn't prove to me that there is at least a bit of truth in his story, then we can still leave."
The three girls sighed, yet none of them fought against his decision.
"Wise choice, and an unexpected one at that. At least for me, since you already knew the outcome before you even entered this room."
"What do you mean?" Aqua asked as Hououin Kyouma passed by him and walked towards the door that led out of the hallway.
"There is no point in telling since I don't know it; only you do. Follow me."
Aqua had a really bad feeling, so he was obviously the one who walked ahead of his three friends. The narrow hallway didn't really leave much room for constellations other than the five of them walking like a mother duck with her ducklings, anyway.
As if he already knew that Aqua wouldn't just hand them back, Hououin Kyouma pulled another set of keys out of his lab coat (damn, this man has some literal deep pockets. It's a wonder nothing fell out during his altercation with Ruby.)
The room they found themselves in looked like a plain old kitchen. There was a fridge, a sink, a trash can, a dishwasher, and something else, a microwave. And that microwave was exactly what Hououin Kyouma was heading for. Once there, he stopped and turned.
First, he faced Ruby, a smile crossing his face. "Could you please say a number between 1 and 99?"
"Uh-"
"Are you for real?" Aqua interrupted before Ruby could speak, "What are you going to do now? Guess her number?"
"Just watch and learn, peasant." Hououin Kyouma turned back to Ruby. "I need the number."
Ruby thought for a moment, then said, "I choose 69." A goofy smile crossed her face.
Hououin Kyouma smiled, too, before he turned to Kana. "Now it's your turn."
"Whatever. Just so you know, I still hate your guts. I'm doing this for Aqua… 35"
Lastly, he turned to Akane. "Your turn," he said.
"I think I'll pick the number 11 then."
Hououin Kyouma smiled as he turned back to Aqua. "Now all I need is your phone, and I will show you the true power of the one and only mad scientist."
Aqua sighed before he reluctantly handed it over, already regretting the decision to follow along with this.
"69 35 11," Kyouma proclaimed as he wrote the numbers into a text message he addressed to Aqua's own number. "And now be amazed," he said as he sent the text and threw the phone into the activated microwave.
Aqua looked baffled, as he could do nothing but accept the fact that this crazy prankster had just thrown his brand new phone into a microwave. He was done with the day, done with the world, and done with his life. He just waited to hear the explosion, but it never came. Instead, the faint *ding* of the microwave echoed through the kitchen.
Without a single care in the world, Hououin Kyouma opened the microwave and grabbed Aqua's undamaged phone, handing it back to him. It wasn't even warm. 'Is this guy's microwave broken?' is what Aqua thought as he felt his phone, which was room temperature at best.
"So your broken microwave is supposed to be proof that you can travel through time? Should I call an ambulance? Do you have other signs of carbon monoxide poisoning?" Kana asked, and with this also spoke out the exact thing all of them thought.
"Aqua… I want you to remember." A smile that could only belong to the main villain of a cartoon stretched across Hououin Kyouma's face as he spoke. "Did you perhaps receive a message that contained these exact numbers just earlier today?"
Aqua thought for a moment, then every bit of color drained right out of his face. He couldn't breathe as the realization struck him like Truck-Kun strikes the Isekai protagonists. 'Just before I met this guy… The message I got… It wasn't some verification code… It was… It was… It was a message from the future. His unyielding proof he spoke of.'
"I-Impossible-" Aqua stuttered out, much to the shock of the three girls who had believed that Kyouma's little trick had failed.
"And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the sheer brilliance of Hououin Kyouma, a mad scientist under mad scientists."
…
Aqua had by now gone through every possibility of how he could've done this without having to travel through time and space. However, none came to mind. Well, actually one, but that one didn't count. It was that Kana, Akane, and Ruby were involved in this elaborate scheme. The thought of either one of them, much less all three, doing something like that to him on the day of his mother's death was definitely far more bizarre than the thought of simple time travel.
"So let me get this straight," he muttered. By now, all five of them had sat down on a set of couches placed around a small table. "We have to travel back in time, make a contract with the devil, kill Kanye West, and save the planet?"
"Well, it's not 'the devil'; it's 'a devil', or to be more precise, 4 of them. You don't even know how hard it was to get to them. The NHK had them locked up tight."
"The Nippon Hoso Kyokai (Japanese Broadcasting Corporation)?" Kana interrupted, confused.
"No, no, no, no, wrong, wrong, wrong," Kyouma replied, "That is only their 'official name.' Among people of my intellect, they are known as the Nippon Hikkikomori Kyokai. A group of evil scientists under the direct command of Kanye West himself."
"And this is how I can save Ai… Right?" Aqua made sure.
"Right."
"But aren't there rules or such?" Ruby chimed in, "I have seen a lot of movies, and they always say something like:" Ruby changed her tone of voice to better mimic them. "'Under no circumstance can you change the past. It will carry terrible consequences."
"Don't worry, kid," Kyouma, who looked a bit beat up all of a sudden, said to Ruby, who was just as old as he was. "This is something made up by the movies. 99% of actions won't change the future that drastically, and the other 1%... Whoever decided upon these 1%..." He fell quiet for a moment before he gulped. "Let's just say you wouldn't be able to change them even if you tried."
"There is still a problem, though," Akane said. "Let's say I believe what you're saying. Then why were you the only person that was unaffected by Kanye West's great memory wipe you mentioned earlier, the one where he used the memory devil to wipe everyone's mind, and make them forget about the existence of devils?"
"I wasn't the only person… The guy that knocked all of you unconscious was unaffected, too… But to answer your question… Sheer luck, we happened to be in another time the moment Kanye West activated the Memory Devil's power. Hence, we remained unaffected."
"Who exactly is that person?" Aqua asked, a hint of distrust in his voice, "And where is he?" he added.
Before Hououin Kyouma could answer that question, an elderly man, who came out of a door that led into another dark room, peeked his head in and spoke. "That would be me, kiddos… Wanna go for a ride in my car?" he, Dr. Emmett Brown, asked.
Once outside the house, they saw what he meant. By now, night had fallen over Tokyo, and nobody was out on the streets anymore.
"What are we supposed to do with this old thing?" Kana asked as she looked at the doctor's car. It was at least as old as he was, so that meant ancient.
"This… This you will use to travel through time."
'Bullshit,' Aqua replied. Or at least he would've liked to say that he did. His words didn't seem to like leaving his throat equally as much. He had just seen a microwave send a text message back in time, so applying that logic, everything was in the realm of possible now. The way Kana didn't drop another witty comment, Akane didn't ask a question everybody else would've missed, and Ruby didn't complain that she wanted to leave, only strengthened his belief in this, too.
"W-When will we leave?" Ruby asked the question everybody wanted to ask, but nobody dared to.
"As soon as possible. So that means now. We can't lose any time." Hououin Kyouma said, "The NHK and Kanye's generals could already be releasing the devils into the wild as we speak."
"Then let's do this." Aqua took initiative. "Let's go on mission 1: 'Rescue Mom and kill Kanye West.'"
All four of them got into the car. While technically none of them were currently in possession of a valid driver's license, Aqua had one in another life. So he drove while Ruby was the quickest at calling shotgun.
His hands on the steering wheel. That was a sensation Aqua had long forgotten. But it felt good. He felt free. "Hey, kiddo," Dr. Emmett Brown leaned into the driver's side window. "All you need to do is accelerate to 88 mph. Once you hit that, you will travel to where you need to be… When the job is done, you must return to the car and fill the Mr. Fusion Reactor with trash," he said as he pointed at the hood of the car. "Anything will do."
"And good luck," he wished as he stepped back.
Aqua breathed in once. The night was calm and cold. Exactly like the night he had originally died in as Gorou Amamiya, almost two decades back now. It brought up mixed feelings within him. On one hand, he didn't care, yet on the other, he did.
"Hey, don't you drive off just yet." Hououin Kyouma leaned into the same window the Doc had just left. In his hand were 5 pills. One was pink, one was red, one was midnight blue, and one was aquamarine. One for Ruby, one for Kana, one for Akane, and one for Aqua himself. However, there was another one, a black one. "I said earlier you would make contracts with the devils, but that isn't entirely the case. Kanye managed to compress the abilities of some devils into capsules. Taking them will grant you their ability. You just feel that it worked.
"But why are there 5? What is that black one for?" Aqua went out on a limb here and guessed that the black pill was the odd one out.
"The black one? That is the most important one. But it's really dangerous, so only take it in utter danger… Life or death, that is. Its ability-" A loud noise screamed through the night, then another, and another… Aqua had enough time to duck away; Kyouma hadn't. Blood splattered through the air, into the car, and even onto Aqua's face as a bullet struck Hououin Kyouma right through his temple. He slumped away as the pills fell into the leg space area of the car.
"YOU HAVE TO GO!" Dr. Emmett Brown screamed as he pulled out a flamethrower and began to spray at the dozens of NHK henchmen that had appeared out of the dark of night.
What followed could only have been described as hell. A rain of bullets commenced, blowing out the windows of the car as Aqua floored it. The engine of the DeLorean screamed almost as loud as the bullets, which had by now also ripped through the Doc.
50 mph…
60 mph…
70 mph…
Aqua turned his head as he held the steering wheel straight. He couldn't help but want to see what had happened for himself.
At this time, the DeLorean was already quite far away. However, Aqua could see the true extent of the massacre as clear as day. Hououin Kyouma and the Doc lay in a puddle of their own blood while a handful of burning soldiers, screaming in agony, ran through the streets. However, amidst all this were two figures that didn't quite fit into the picture. They stood still, perfectly still, as they looked after the crew that drove off towards yesterday.
'That must be them… Those must be two of the three generals,' Aqua thought to himself as he looked at them. The one on the left looked to be a blond man who was about as tall as Aqua. Honestly, Aqua and he shared many similarities (at least from 100 meters away). However, there were two striking differences. 1. He was dressed far nicer than Aqua, like the average salaryman, just… far better. However, the second thing was what scared the living shit out of Aqua. It made him want to look away so badly that it hurt. It was his sheer aura. Even from all this distance away, it screamed one thing and one thing only: 'Killer'
The person to his right was shorter, and she stood with a slight hunch. Dressed in bright colors from head to toe, it looked like she was a high schooler on her way home, accidentally caught up amidst all of this by sheer misfortune. But that wasn't the case. She looked too unshaken, too certain. There was also something big strapped to her back, perhaps a weapon, yet Aqua was too far away to get a good look.
"AQUA! LOOK AHEAD!" Akane screamed. When Aqua did, his palms turned sweaty. Not even 100 meters away now: a massive brick wall. "YOU HAVE TO SLOW DOWN!" Akane screeched, while Ruby and Kana were completely unresponsive. Hopefully, they were just out cold.
Aqua shook his head and shut his eyes as he floored it even harder. His foot felt like either it or the pedal below was about to snap in half, but he didn't care.
75 mph, 75 meters.
80 mph, 45 meters.
85 mph, 15 meters.
86 mph, 10 meters.
87 mph, 5 meters.
88 mph, *BANG*
A sound that could only be described as that of an atomic explosion ripped around the car as it was engulfed by some kind of white void that seemed to stretch everywhere and all at once. But it only lasted a second. Then all the sounds disappeared, and they were back in the real world. It wasn't Tokyo anymore; there was a thick forest around them.
A thick forest from 15 years ago.
[1] This story will incorporate various elements from works other than Oshi no Ko, such as characters or concepts. But it is not necessary to have watched/read all of these works (it would be somewhat unreasonable if it were necessary, tbh). Everything important will be explained along the way, so don't worry. Honestly, it is probably even better if you are not familiar with the lore of these other works, since that will bring a better “wow” effect with it when I do something that they had already laid the groundwork for.(There will be no spoilers for anything other than the first episode of Oshi no Ko.)