The Prop Room
My first sight in the Corridor of Memories - is a broad chest in a striped sweater-vest that nearly collides with me. "Bwah!?"
The man wearing it swerves out of my way, dodging as I stagger past him. "So that's the entrance," He says.
"That won't help you, you've gotta find the exit," The thing wearing Louis Arneb's face says.
"I know," the tall blond man says, his biker jacket fluttering as he continues past me - and then he pauses and glances back.
His eyes, a dull purple, seem to stare right through me, but he addresses me nonetheless. "-Natsuki Subaru, right?"
"...Y-yeah?" I reply.
He closes his eyes for a moment. "Alright, I've remembered it. I don't have any time to spend on listening, but I'll give some advice as your Senpai. Just avoid the tengu, they're too tough to handle without a servant. You've got a little over two weeks until sunrise, so take your time. If you find Romani or Hinako, you should be fine."
Huh? "What do you-"
He starts walking again without listening. "Pepe, I'm going ahead. If there's a hell, I'll see you there."
"Hahaha!" Another man sitting next to not-Louis laughs. "I guess so, honey!"
-Then, the man crosses an invisible boundary of some type and disappears.
"-Wait, I need to-!" But as I reach the same spot he disappeared, nothing happens.
"You don't need to go that way, Master of Chaldea," Louis says. "You've got your own way out."
…
"WOULD SOMEONE EXPLAIN WHAT'S HAPPENING TO ME ALREADY!?" I scream.
"Yoohoo," Says the other man near Louis. "Subaru-chan, why don't you come over here and have a little talk with me"
I turn and look at him - whitish-purple hair with buzzed sides, bright blue lipstick and eyeliner… wait, haven't I seen this guy's photo? Yeah, the other guy called him- "You're… Scandinavia Peperoncino?"
"Thaaaat's right! The blooming flower of Chaldea, the prettiest lady of the A-Team right here in the flesh - er, disembodied spirit," He starts to pose, before losing momentum and frowning. "It seems like I'm dead, though. Honestly, my Shugendo said I had months to go. How was I supposed to know I'd spend it all as a popsicle?"
…Just like that, I'm struck by it. The first of my failures. Already, I'm confronted with a dead member of Chaldea. "I'm… shit. I'm so…"
"Honey, you don't have to apologize to me. There's no point in keeping anything beyond its time. If anything, I'm the one that should be sorry! It seems like my loose lips are going to make things a bit tough for you!" He replies, waving his hand flippantly. "It seems like this singularity manifests gossip and fears, and of course this lil' me went and blabbed all about my past as I was bleeding out!"
"-Manifests gossip and fears!?" I reply, my eyes widening. So, that train - no, to start with, was I the trigger for [Hell's Snipe]?
"Geez, just give it all away, will you? I was looking forward to watching him struggle a bit more.," Not-Louis complains, twirling some kind of wooden ring on her finger. "-Oh, right. I've come into a new weapon, you want it? I'll trade it for one of your Witch Factors." She grins, waving the ring back and forth.
"You don't want that, Subaru-chan," Scandinavia says. "Only Daybit could use something like that effectively."
I blink. "Daybit… so was that guy before Daybit Sem Void?" Another of Chaldea's A-Team… No, he also mentioned a 'Hinako', so- "Wait, are all of the A-Team-!?"
"I didn't see anyone other than Daybit and me," He replies. "But if he says Hinako's here too…"
He glances at Not-Louis, and I find myself doing the same.
"Ah, sure. I'll give it away," She says. "You already saw the tower, so I'll connect the dots for you - that's your reward for this time, so don't go expecting anything else from me until your next visit. Anyway, the quick and dirty is, the library in that tower killed and devoured every member of Chaldea whose name was known. Scandinavia Peperoncino, Daybit Sem Void, Akuta Hinako, and Romani Archman - are all using aliases, so they were spat into the singularity directly instead. There might be one or two others, but I don't know 'em, so I can't tell you who they are." She grinns as she gives a big shrug and shakes her head. "-Anyway, instant death by a sort of 'GM fiat' like that doesn't sit right with me, so like I said - I'll bring anyone who died to the library back to life if you finish this in time."
"-But Daybit, Hinako, and I were all in critical condition, so we bled out and died - isn't quite what happened," Scandinavia says. "Daybit and I definitely died, but…"
"Akuta Hinako isn't here," Not-Louis smirks. "Isn't that strange?"
"...You know something," I say. It's not a question.
"You already got your freebie. If you want more, you gotta pay up," She says, rubbing her fingers together. "I also accept Command Spells."
"What the hell would you even do with Command Spells!?" I ask.
"Give 'em to someone else, obviously," She says. "The arms trade is what makes the world go round. Oh, on that note, I'm also selling Pepe's Command Spells if you've got something to trade for 'em!"
"...I guess a deranged arms merchant is still preferable to the actual Louis Arneb," I mumble - and then I blink once or twice as my vision starts to smear.
"-Oh, you're returning now," She says. "See you next time, then, Master of Chaldea."
"Wait, I still-" I say, turning towards Scandinavia.
"I'll be here if you come back, honey," He says with a wry grin.
"Four more times. Two command spells, his Master Authority, and his Rayshift Compatibility," Not-Louis says with a grin. "Let those give you some ideas, okay? Destroying/resetting the world is only gonna interest me so many times."
Then, the world fades into smoke, and-
***
Backstage
"Hm? Hmmmmm? What's this?" A nondescript man says as he runs his fingers through a silhouette seared into the sidewalk. Grinning, he lets his gaze glide over a dozen like it, all pointing away from a single point in the center. "Pfffthahaha! Okay, I've solved it! That's hilarious!" He leaps to his feet, pirouettes on his toes, and turns to point at a black-haired woman soaked in blood. "Hey, Hinako, can you take a look at these? I need to know if they're still alive."
"...Of course not. Those are ashes." She says, casting a dessicated corpse to the side, onto a pile of tengu-masked bodies in the same state. "I'm back in shape now, so let's leave."
"That's right, they're ashes! This place doesn't have the energy to keep them living all the way to the heat death of the universe, after all - which means that what activated here was a fake!" The man says, chuckling. "-Yup, there's some real playing around to be done here! I can't wait!"
-But, there is only room for one playwright in this performance. Which is why, ███, alias Francois Prelati, alias John Marcus - I will have you leave the theater now.
"Come on, really? The guy?" A young man in a plain white shirt and jeans says with a shake of his head as he strolls into the alleyway. "He's so plain, I can't get into it at all. The girl on the other hand… she reminds me of my sister."
"Hm? Hmmmm? Now who on earth- oh crap," Prelati recognizes the man in front of him, and takes a step back. "Hinako, you take care of this, byyyyeee!" And then he starts to sprint away , leaving a Prelati-shaped dust cloud in his wake.
But He won't escape. Neither will. The culmination of the Nanaya clan's efforts will not be evaded so easily.
"So she's fine too? That's great. Her looking like Akiha is a real turn-on," Nanaya Shiki says - and then he moves.
Akuta Hinako raises one hand, readying some sort of attack - but he's already gone, springing down behind her after launching himself from a wall. And then, she's in thirteen pieces on the ground, amid a growing pool of blood-
"Wait, wait, waitwaitwait!" Francois Prelati screams.
The Mystic Eyes of Death Perception-
"I won't wait."
-cannot be escaped.
Francois Prelati dies a final death where no one will see, or ever know.
And so, with the final distractions out of the way, my dear audience, with the players on their path-
Let the second Act begin.
"Ah, on second thought, she doesn't look like Akiha at all. Damn, that's annoying."
Act 1: End