In that strange virtual space, Thousand Faces - with barely a scrap of consciousness left to him - ground his teeth as he stared at Tsukishiro Yanagi, his eyes all but spitting fire.
"Tsukishiro Yanagi! What did you do!"
"I didn't do a thing. You brought all of this on yourself."
A smile curved at the corner of Tsukishiro Yanagi's mouth, and the moment her words faded, several other familiar figures walked out to join her.
"Ugh, staging a whole play like that is exhausting. Deputy Section Chief, you'd better sign off on my leave when we get back."
"Yanagi, I want melon later."
"Hehe, Sis Yanagi, I did pretty well out there, didn't I!"
Section Six standing there again left Thousand Faces frozen where he was. The scene in front of him was a nightmare, and he couldn't accept a second of it.
"No. No, no, no, this is impossible! All of you were clearly-"
"Clearly killed by you, is that it?"
Tsukishiro Yanagi finished the sentence for him, pushing up her glasses, her face perfectly calm.
"Sorry to disappoint you. Everything up to now was a lie, and its only purpose was to make you start seizing our bodies a little sooner."
Their goal had been simple from the very beginning. They wanted Thousand Faces to believe he had successfully killed every last one of them, so that he would swagger straight into preparing to take their bodies in the real world.
"Impossible! I finished rewriting the permissions for this entire system! How could something like this happen!"
The answer to that question stepped forward at once - the one who had engineered all of it.
A Bangboo done up in prim English style.
"You only believe you finished rewriting them. It cost us a great deal of effort, I'll admit, but we still managed to take back a portion of the permissions - enough to fool your senses and lock down your stream of consciousness."
Little Geno crossed to the front of Section Six with elegant little steps and laid the whole thing out for Thousand Faces.
It was exactly as he said. He and Fairy had slipped inside the system, yes, but rewriting the ownership of every permission without Thousand Faces noticing a thing was simply an impossible task.
And the instant they made an open grab for control, Thousand Faces would know something was wrong and start preparing to run.
That wasn't the outcome any of them wanted. They wanted Thousand Faces caught, completely and finally, with nothing left over to come back and haunt them.
"So we set this little scheme for you. While you thought you were taking the initiative and going out to meet Section Six, we were already finishing every last piece of preparation."
Once Thousand Faces' movements were confirmed, Little Geno and Fairy got word to Tsukishiro Yanagi and the others and had them play their parts in the performance, all so that Thousand Faces would let his guard down completely.
When 'everyone' died earlier, it had been Little Geno and Fairy driving the data, faking the appearance of their deaths and then moving them here.
"Damn you! Damn Section Six!!!"
Feeling his consciousness thin out and drift away, Thousand Faces could only glare at Little Geno and the rest in impotent rage.
He could no longer alter his own consciousness process. All that was left was to be transferred, piece by piece and without a say in it, into a new body in the real world.
The thought pulled his gaze back to Tsukishiro Yanagi.
"Tsukishiro Yanagi! You monster, you were that cruel to yourself - you used your own body as the bait!"
Thousand Faces was no idiot. He worked it out fast enough: his hatred for Tsukishiro Yanagi ran deep, so when it came time to choose a body, hers would be the first one he reached for.
What he couldn't believe was that she had been willing to gamble away her own body to spring a trap on him. That was the act of a lunatic.
"Let me correct you. I'm not quite that daring. The truth is that whichever body you picked, the result would have been identical, because every one of those bodies leads to the same container."
Tsukishiro Yanagi smiled, and there was a thread of mockery in it. She was bold, certainly, but not insane.
Little Geno and Fairy had disguised the outward connections, so no matter which one he chose, it was always the same choice.
At that, Thousand Faces' expression turned uglier still. If he had been capable of sweating, he would have been drenched by now.
"...Where am I going?"
He had a very bad feeling about it, and Little Geno's answer sank him into despair.
"Mm, I've prepared a nice roomy space for you. An old-model computer, old enough to count as an antique. The kind with no network connection, naturally."
Little Geno wore a wicked little grin. Once Thousand Faces was transmitted into the cage he had prepared in advance, there would be no escaping it, ever.
For a data lifeform, a device cut off from the network is nothing less than an eternal prison - the same way Fairy once slept in a storage unit of the Rosetta Data. Lightless dark would wrap around Thousand Faces forever.
"No! You can't do this to me! You can't-"
His voice slid toward pleading. For a creature that craved freedom, this was too cruel - cruel enough that he wanted to end his own life on the spot.
And he couldn't even manage that anymore.
Soon the final fragment of his consciousness finished transferring, and all that remained behind was the demon-shaped husk stitched together from the data of Hoshimi Miyabi and the others.
"All right, that's that. Let me send you all out!"
Little Geno clapped his hands and teleported the group back to the open ground where it had all started, ready to send them on their way.
"Wait. Where's Geno? Why hasn't he turned up this whole time?"
An instant before Little Geno could send them off, something clicked for Tsukishiro Yanagi. She looked around and found no sign of Geno anywhere.
"Ah, him? He's already outside."
"Outside... wait. Don't tell me you-"
Some possibility seemed to occur to her. Tsukishiro Yanagi stared at Little Geno in disbelief, then let the look dissolve into weary resignation.
"This... never mind. It should be fine. We'll trouble you to send us out, then."
"You got it! Off you go!"
White light flashed, and Section Six vanished from in front of Little Geno.
With them gone, he clapped his hands again and called over Fairy, who had stayed hidden the whole time, so the two of them could deal with the wreckage.
After all, they had turned the entire Virtual Dive System upside down. Tidying up after themselves was only polite, wasn't it?
[Query: why did you preserve that strange mass of data?]
"I have a use for it. Relax - I'll download it onto my own carrier and delete it the moment it's done. There won't be a trace left."
[I have no intention of interfering with your decision. I merely believe Geno has a right to know about this matter.]
"What's that supposed to mean?"
[I am hinting that you should bribe me.]
Angels of Delusion - how is a faction allowed to be this adorable! Shui, you did great! You did great!!
____
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🔥 New history: DanMachi: Collecting Goddesses Right from the Start! — posted on The_Mikudayo