For a moment, the room remained unchanged to Yumi’s eye. Then all of the exposed walls flipped to become flat. A well polished shine reflected across their surface as the chairs disappeared and she found herself standing on her own. ‘This isn’t like before at all… Yuki and her really must have made drastic changes…’

Yumi stepped out from her corner to look around at the room. Even though it was the room that they were in before Phoibe was missing, even more of a sign of the change in reality. “Is everyone feeling okay?”

“I thought we were going into your mind,” complained Seiji, noting the lack of change, “This is just the same room.”

Projecting into the room as a hologram, Phoibe appeared before them. “That’s not accurate. This is just the staging room while Yumi’s mind is being scanned.”

“You’re here too?!”

“I’m monitoring all of you from the terminal. This is just a projection from my voice altered into a digital avatar.”

“…err…right… So the real shit is happening soon then?” Seiji jumped straight to the part that he had better grasp on rather than dwelling.

“That’s right. The space you’re in should alter based on feedback from Yumi’s mental state. From there, you should be able to find and interact with the personalities that exist in her mind.”

“Hope it’s not a repeat of last time…”

A nod came from Yumi as she agreed with Seiji. The whole thing presented a risk to her. Being this close could allow them more control over her, but she had to take it. ‘I haven’t truly been face to face with them before. Maybe not being suppressed by them will give me more control.’ It was mere theory and hope for her more than anything. She didn’t want to endanger everyone, but she had already passed that up. Now all Yumi could do was take an active stance against them.

Phoibe wasn’t wrong either. In moments, the room altered itself once more, however it expanded and disappeared into a white void. Any sense of ground reality evaporated away. An endless blank space lacking any detail stretched out before them.

“Is this your mind, Yumi?”

“It’s similar to a place I saw,” commented Yori.

“Hey man, you can see?!”

“Would appear that while in this virtual space I’m not using my eyes to see.”

“But I’m still not seeing anyone else other than us,” Yumi noted as she started to walk around. The sense of being in a confined space previously left her a little apprehensive about wondering too far. Despite that, the void had no boundaries that she could find. She explored beyond what she felt was the limits of the room and nothing stopped her. “So we’re in my mind now…”

In the distance, a new scene approached, rapidly rewriting the space. They found themselves within a city, not one that they found familiar. It could easily be any Japanese city as vaguely non-descript as it was. ‘A city?’

“Hey, what the hell?!”

Yumi turned around to Seiji, alerted. She hadn’t noticed everyone being dragged away from her by some invisible force. “Everyone!” Her feet pushed herself as fast as she could, but she was used to her superhuman body. Within the virtual world she didn’t seem to have that power. Once more she was just a normal girl.

Out of her reach, a house sucked everyone up through the front door. When she arrived it was already closed behind them. Pounding and kicking on the door did nothing once she discovered that it would not open. It was locked and firmly shut.

Her friends were locked away from her.

“Are they coming?” An uneasy feeling overcame her heart. Something told her that she should be on edge. Yumi stepped away from the house in the direction of the feeling she got. There was nothing she could do for her friends. It seemed like she had to face her demons alone. That was what she thought it was telling her.

And she might have been right.

Before her, down the street appeared three figures masked in shadows. Their entire forms were black barely even reflecting light. She knew nothing about them, but inside her heart it told her that they were the ones that she sought. “So you’ve come for me…”

Chapter 386 – Captured Reality

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Yet to Yumi’s surprise Yuki and Yori suddenly popped up in the street in front of her. “Yuki? Yori? What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know…”

Yuki looked over at the house that he had been in a moment before. “We were inside just before trying to find a way out and then I got sucked out through a black portal.”

“Yeah...it’s them!” Yori immediately seemed to pick up on the three figures staring them down across the street. He went into a defensive stance ready for a fight.

Yumi expected to run out ahead of them and try to ease the rising tensions, but something stopped her. A force pulled her away, dragging her up into the sky. Green light wrapped around her, sealing her away behind a barrier. She pounded her fists against the unmoving field unable to break through. “I thought they wanted me! This is supposed to be my fight!”

It wasn’t until he saw the black figures start moving towards them in an aggressive charge that Yuki took to defense as well. “I think they’ve got it in for the two of us…”

Grinding his teeth together, not looking forward to having to fight three at once when one was hard enough. “You seem to be right… One of them I know already has it out for me. Perhaps they see us as a threat to them.”

“You might be right about that!” Drawing up his Field, mist appeared around him as he received the charging blade of one of them. The force of the swing was enough to blow away all of his mist completely exposing him. Only the bit he could keep around his hand to grab the sword managed to keep him from losing a hand.

Calling out his two dark energy blades, Yori roughly blocked the spearhead of a jumonji yari. He fought with the cross blades near the base of the spear as they desperately wanted his flesh. However, he wasn’t prepared for a focused beam of energy to shoot him through the shoulder. “Behind?!” he growled in pain as he tried to figure out where the third had gone.

Yuki tried to summon back his mist, but the swings of the person came too fast. Each blow blasted away his mist with effortless ease and drew up blood. He could barely manage the Field around him to keep himself protected. ‘I can barely even hold my own against one of them…’ There were three and two of them were attacking Yori directly with him being unable to help.

Up in the sky, Yumi clawed her fingers in frustration over the barrier. “This is my fault… I brought them here…” A spark jumped down her arm quickly disappearing.

Thinking that he started to get some sort of pace against the swordsman, Yuki suddenly sensed a disturbance in his mist, the bulk of which was cast off him. He couldn’t even look behind himself feeling that he should. If he did, the blade he struggled to keep from cleaving him in two would succeed. And because of that it wasn’t until the figure disappeared into thin air that he could look behind him.

It was clearly for a reason and one he could do nothing to avoid or stop. “Crap!” he yelled as a stampede of women crashed into him. The force of them picked him off his feet dragging him away from Yori and likely the swordsman as well fighting him. “What the hell is this?!” he managed once he got some sense of himself back.

And what’s more, he felt something off about it. They didn’t just look like a random crowd running through out of nowhere. Each of them looked at him with unsettling eyes. They all wanted him. They started to paw and claw at him. There were too many for him to fight back against. “Get off me!” No matter what he did they had his arms locked down along with his legs. He was helpless.

Then through the women came the black blade cleaving nearly a dozen of them in half, spraying blood all over him while also cutting a horizontal wound into his chest. The force blasted him out of the women and in the air.

A full minute of tumbling and flying passed before he recovered. Once under his own control again, he could check the depth of the wound he took. “It wasn’t as deep as I feared, but I can’t let another like that through. Those women were taking away my barrier piece by piece so that the swordsman could land a decisive blow on me. This is really dangerous…”

Blocking the spear blade again, Yori kept having to play specifically to their pace. “They’re extremely skilled…” The exact position that they forced him to block set him up for the range attack again. He was slightly better prepared for it with his barrier, but even that wasn’t enough. They knew exactly how much force was needed to penetrate his barrier. Another wound carved out in his arm. “They’re slowly picking me apart…”

From Yumi’s view, she could only watch as the two were being cut up and dragged out. She knew that they couldn’t win. The outcome had already been determined from the start. Neither was a match. And she sat up locked away. “I can’t…” Another spark jumped over her fingers.

Before long Yuki crashed into the street next to Yori a bloody mess. The Field around him disappeared. Yuki was exhausted. Yori slipped up in his attempt to anticipate and took the spear blade to his gut. It dropped him to the ground almost immediately as he began to bleed out.

Both were defeated.

“NO!!” Yumi shouted seeing them go down and their foes going in for the killing strikes. She rammed her fingers into the barrier wanting out now. “I won’t…let you…! NO!!!”

Sparks suddenly jumped all over Yumi’s body erupting into a mass of light exploding and destroying the barrier. As she fell out of the sky, white energy rapidly materialized around her. Growing out of her back like wings, Yumi drew back her arm as a spear of white energy amassed rapidly.

Flung at all three figures, everything was obliterated into white light. Yumi charged into the light going after Yuki and Yori. “I won’t let you kill them!” She grabbed a hold of someone’s arm completely blind in the light and searched out for the other. There wasn’t going to be anyone that would take them away from her.

Energy erupted rapidly from Yumi fueling the white void in strength as the space quaked. All of reality shook under Yumi until it shattered. An empty sightless void filled her vision now.

From outside the simulation, Phoibe scrambled around to keep up with the overflowing data. “Damn, her mental capacity is insane. This is far exceeding any of our plans.” She began to lose control of the system like before and all of the countermeasures in place meant nothing. It was just an inevitability now. “Looks like you were right after all. Quite the typical outcome, but we’re playing with reality. Things won’t be as perfect as a book. It’s all on you now. Yumi’s mind has completely taken control of the system and now you’re stuck in there at her whims…”

“Ugh…it hurts…” Yumi muttered as she suddenly came to forgetting what happened. Her mind still hung in a fog about the events. She then jerked up off the ground as she remembered everything. “Yuki! Yori!” Turning her head rapidly, she sought them out hoping that they would be next to her, but only found Yuki. “Yuki!”

At least one of them was with her, she smiled a little with relief. “Can you hear me, Yuki? Are you alright?” She poked and pushed on him trying to see if he was alive. Everything seemed to indicate with the way his body reacted that he was. He was just slow in moving.

A groan came from his lips as he woke up. “…yeah…but I’m injured…” he said without thinking, but popped up quickly with a strange blink in his eyes. He examined his arm and then his chest. “It’s gone! I’m not hurt at all…”

Yumi immediately wrapped her arms around him, hugging him tightly so happy that he was alive and even unharmed now. “Yuki…”

“Ouch, ow, ow! You’re hurting me, Yumi! You’re stronger than me!”

“Sorry! I’m sorry!” She jumped away getting embarrassed as she saw what she was doing as well. A moment after she jumped to her feet needed some space and air from him. It was only supposed to be a moment away from him, but her eyes stopped on her surroundings. “Umm…Yuki…”

“Huh?” Taking a long moment to get caught up on things, Yuki slowly looked over to Yumi and then scene. “…this is…”

Yumi took a step back away from the villagers that were pointing their farming tools at them, scared at their sudden arrival. The modern city they were in was gone, replaced with an ancient era Japan out of paintings and myth. And their friends were nowhere in sight. “What’s going on?!”