The day passes by without much else happening. Classes go by, introductions by teachers and students alike are made, and orientations are executed. At lunch, some make the attempt to look for Yukihira and Fuuka; however, when people ask around, all inquiries point to them being unavailable on account of helping out the staff with some sort of school activity. This leaves you unable to figure out what the hell is going on. Kotaro, similarly, also vanishes somewhere, presumably to do something else.
You go home without seeing Yukihira or Fuuka again that day. Despite your best attempts, Brain Burst can neither be found in the menus in the Neuro Linker, nor activated by manual execution. Internet searches lead you nowhere; it seems the program, whatever it is, is a tightly held secret. Ultimately, you decide that asking Yukihira about it tomorrow is the best idea; after all, it doesn’t seem to have done any harm yet, and it seems a waste to uninstall it after all that effort to get it in the first place.
However, as you drift off to sleep, you have the oddest dream….
Hiroki
You stand on a stage, with all the spotlights pointing at you. The eyes of faceless masses stare down upon you, waiting for you to take up the microphone in front of you. Slowly, you do, but as you open your mouth to sing, the people laugh and laugh again, chortling and heckling you every time you open your mouth. You try to make a sound in vain, for your voice is gone, unable to speak.
Your anger builds, and tears well up in your eyes, as your loving audience taunts you to the point of breaking, and you keep on trying to take up the microphone to no avail, as they refuse to give you the time of day. Before you can do anything, your will breaks, as the sound of metal forming around you begins to fill your ears, and metal parts obscure your sight.
The last thing you can do is reach out in the desperate hope that the crowd won’t leave you to be consumed by metal to no avail, your voiceless cries for help drowned in the whirring of metal.
Midori
You stand at the bottom of an impossibly tall mountain, a light shimmering down towards you from the summit. All you know is that you must get up there, somehow. All else is irrelevant. You begin to climb upwards, your legs feeling like lead weights attached to your body and your torso feeling like frayed fabric, but nonetheless you persevere on.
As you climb, however, it becomes increasingly clear that this is an impossible climb. With every step, your body feels heavier, you feel more frayed and the light seems to draw upwards more and more. Your destination seems insurmountably high, but still you struggle and struggle, as you see shapes staring down at you.
Eventually, you take to pulling yourself up by your fingers, pushing yourself onwards, but you find that you cannot anymore, for the earth has begun to swallow you. You scream and struggle upwards, as the shapes take form; they are your parents, Kotaro and other friends, looking down upon you scornfully. They turn away, ignoring your efforts as the last thing you see is the earth covering your head, dragging you into darkness.
Makoto
You are surrounded by faceless creatures, swirling around in the shadows and prowling about you like wolves awaiting their prey. You ready yourself for battle, raising your fists as the only weapons you possess to struggle against these creatures, as one lunges at you, swiping a limb of formless darkness at you.
You counter by grabbing the beast with your hands, dragging it to the ground, but another leaps at you from behind, slashing your back up. Enraged by the wound and the adrenaline, you whirl around and throw the newcomer aside, but to no avail. Eventually, you are overwhelmed by these shadow beasts.
You are forced to the ground, unable to fight further as your hands are held down by the beasts upon you. The last thing you see is their faceless eyes, red as blood, staring down at you as more and more and more pile upon you.
Ruy
You stand with naught but a sword and a shield, fighting an immense black dragon, just like one of your stories. Filled with a sense of purpose, you strike at it, attempting to slay the beast, looking around you to see a crowd watching your every move. You know what you are here for.
You fight long and hard, and the beast equally so. The crowd waits with bated breath, and you fight on; you know their eyes are on you. With a leap, you climb onto the dragon’s head, planting your sword firmly into its skull. The dragon roars, falling limp, then still. The feeling of glory and victory swells within your chest.
But the crowd shares your interest not. They, disinterested, leave you alone with your victim. They ignore your cries, ignore your pleas and dismiss all that you have done. You kneel down, unable to understand why such a glorious act was ignored, your eyes brimming with tears as you close them to curl up in a ball to sleep.
Giallo
You stand with the finest clothes money can buy with you, perfectly poised and ready to roll. You strut your stuff, showing off your finesse and your style. You are the man about town, the big man, and nobody can take that from you. You feel invincible, like nobody and nothing can touch you.
However, as swiftly as you feel the stares of admirers upon you, just as swiftly do theirs shift as you feel a punch at the back of your shoulder. Raring for a fight, you spin around to see yourself, in better clothing and with better looks, glaring down at you.
You are shoved roughly to the ground by your doppelganger, your hands put up to protect yourself. However, your doppelganger is far stronger, his punches piercing your defense, and you feel each blow as it comes. A final punch slugs you straight in the face, knocking you out cold.
Yuzuki
You sit in a room, with a piece of paper in front of you and a pencil. Nothing else is in sight. You sigh, knowing what you’re here for. It’s nothing difficult, nothing you can screw up. It’s all going to be easy, right?
You start writing something on this blank piece of paper. A loud, dissonant voice pours out from somewhere, screeching “WRONG!” almost as if the speaker was in your ear. You flinch, uttering a quick apology, before erasing what you wrote, and writing over it. The voice comes again; scared, you almost drop the pencil on the floor.
Each change you make, each thing you erase and each little action you make is decried as wrong, wrong and wrong again. Your eyes well with tears, as you clasp your hands to your ears and close your eyes, hoping for the voice and everything else to go away.
Vite
You run across a stretch of road. Behind you, an oncoming tornado rages, houses, cars and buildings caught in the cyclone. The winds whip at your back and legs, but you don’t mind. This is what you do, this is how you escape; by running. You’ve outrun worse things.
With each step, however, your legs feel heavier and heavier, and your body feels less and less energetic, as the tornado approaches behind you. You attempt to keep running, but to no avail, as your legs begin to feel heavy enough that even walking becomes impossible.
As you are forced onto your belly, you attempt to crawl away, but the tornado is too close. Breathing heavily, you desperately take hold of the tarmac, before the whirlwind rips you from the ground, and the last thing you see is the rapidly descending ground, disappearing from your sight into the whirling cloud of wind and debris.
The Next Day
Neo Tokyo City
You wake up. It is two hours before school, and you’re wondering what just happened; what that dream was, what Brain Burst is, and perhaps what Brain Burst had to do with it.
Perhaps calling or messaging the others who were present when you got Brain Burst could help you. Or maybe heading to school to get answers from Yukihira or whoever could. Either way, it ends today.
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Topic: Accel World: Rebel Impulse [IC Thread]: Initiation (Read 11905 times)