Warning! The last man standing….

A familiar phrase catches my attention, follow up with gunshots and another familiar phrase

Defusing the bio-container now…

I then realize that the sounds came from a rainbow 6 game, one of the many games that I have heard of and read about on a gaming magazine.

As I painfully groan, trying to sit up straight, I then hear footsteps traversing down to my position. Knowing that I’ve died the second time, I fear for the purgatory that awaits me when I’m confronted by judgment.

“Oh, you don’t need to be afraid…We won’t send you to Cthulhu or something like that.”(Adam)

A familiar voice calls out to me, reassuring me from my wrongful hypothesis. As I open my eyes, I stumble upon a young girl with a mocha complexion, her face flustered with a reddish hue and her eyes as white as the outer layer of a birch tree, beautiful majestic and breathless to the observer.

Upon seeing that I’m looking at her, the blushes become even redder, and thus she runs away to hiding under the kotatsu that lays in front of me, creating a loud bam!

“Hey, stop with the ruckusing, I’m about to win…”(Adam)

Adam says as she violently hit on the floor with the controller’s handle.

After a brief moment of silence and intense button mashing, the silence finally got broken with a disappointing sigh as Adam carefully put down the controller, readjust her robe which keeps falling down either way and make her way to the kotatsu where we reside.

“Pu-wah! That was a very dumb match…who knew that Ash-player was a pro at dropshooting..Kah! I was aso close at defusing the bomb!”(Adam)

Adam says, gargling down a large bottle of Kombucha, raging over a losing video game match.

“Well, life is like kenjutsu you know? You win some, you lose some…”(Mitsuha)

“Yeah but I’m at level 20, and losing to a level 8 is discouraging you know?”(Adam)

…

And then on, we have a short talk for about 10 minutes till I manage to change the subject. Shifting the subject over to my recent demise, I ask her.

“So what now?”(Mitsuha)

“It’s kinda funny that you have to come and bug me twice today, my lounging day to be exact.”(Adam)

She lays flat on her back, eyes still looking at me, playfully tease my unfortunate death, whilst the robe slowly unroll off her chest and shoulder.

I look away for a slight second and address her to fix her clothes back again unless she wants her naked body to be conveyed by me.

“Hey, mind you sit back carefully again, it’s kinda hard to have a conversation with your clothes seemingly going to slip off and show all of your glory to me…”(Mitsusha)

“Hey now…Pfft!..Are you getting turned on by lil ol’ me…”(Adam)

And as she finishes that sentence, the robe falls off her shoulder and thus leading me to slam my face down to the kotatsu table, which resulted in me biting my tongue and unable to talk.

“Ah, bit your tongue eh?”(Adam)

I use sign language to raise a “yes”. Furthermore, I then ask her to put on some more decent clothes that doesn’t show much skin using a long and complicated sequence of hand gestures and signals.

“Hey, slow down…I’m not that good at sign language anymore. Put…some…thing…more…decent…on…Hey! I have you know this is a robe created by the best priestess of As Gard!”(Adam)

“Furthermore, I can read your mind so stop with the sign language…Plus how did you know that I knew sign language?”(Adam)

“You are a god are you not? Gods are described as high and knowledgeable beings, so such simple signs for languages should be viable for them no?”(Mitsuha)

“Y…Yeah…Kinda.”(Adam)

Still keeping my face glued to the table, I telepathically converse with Adam.

“Well, is this where I’m spending most of my days or am I going back to Purgatory?”(Mitsuha)

“Heh?!Purgatory?! You call my beautiful fantasy a purging hole?! What’s wrong with you?!”(Adam)

She slams the table and lashes out at me in a violent manner, causing me to bump my nose down to the hardened wood surface.

“Kurgh…hah!!”(Mitsuha)

I grab hold of my bruised nose, leaning backwards and let out a creaking groan.

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“That’s what you get!”(Adam)

“What’s wrong with you!?” (MItsuha)

I yell at her, kicking the table left and right and thus accidentally injure the little girl hiding under it.

“Ouch! Watch it!”

She leaves her enclosure and such revealing her silver hair colour that I wasn’t able to make out earlier and giving me a better look at the young maiden. She seems to be in a young age, starting from the fact that she’s quite small in size, but seems to be larger a wee bit taller than Adam. Though this only adds more to her charms.

“eep!”

She runs back to cover again, hiding away from me.

“Hey, I’ve gotta ask. What’s with the girl there, I know you’re a very old loli-baba…”(MItsuha)

Adam then lunges at me and violently slap me twice with a shiny light stick.

“Don’t you dare finishes that sentence! HMph! I’m not that old…and the girl, she’s kinda afraid of how you look like right now.”(Adam)

“hmm?!”(Mitsuha)

“here’s a mirror, take a look.”(Adam)

I receives the mirror from Adam, upon looking at the reflection, I see a horned demon with blood shot eyes and a wounded left eye.

“What the?”(Mitsuha)

I raise an eyebrow, questioning the profound portrayal of me in the mirror. I inspect the image, looking up down as it follows my actions. The demon portrayed in the mirror has two spiked horns, a monstrously long tongue, a spiked tail and somewhat have quite an alluring charisma that kinda somehow makes me question my gender preference.

“Cool right? This mirror reveals the true characteristics of the souls that it reflects. And that’s one of my little sister’s powers as well.”(Adam)

“Little sister?”(MItsuha)

“Yes. Mako, come out!”(Adam)

So her name is Mako,

“Come on! You’re embarrassing our guest!”(Adam)

“…No…”(Mako)

The girl responds to her sister with a whisper.

“Come on! And besides don’t you have something to say to him?”(Adam)

Adam softly kicks the exposed bottom of the girl head stuffed in the Kotatsu.

“Alright, stop bothering her. If she wishes to not speak with me then you can just read her mind and tell me yourself.”(Mitsuha)

I say, putting down the mirror on the Kotatsu table.

“She is Mako, the god of deception and lies. She deemed you worthy and thus was going to give you the all Seeing Eye…”(AdaM)

“…”(Mako)

“Mako also says that you’re a kind and lovely soul who would help anyone in need…and…pfft! So that’s why she’s so afraid of meeting you! HAhA! Come on! Imouto-san…imouto-san you had the gut to played and stand up to even more serious and judgmental people, but you can’t accept the rage of a 15 year old boy?”(Adam)

“Why would I be mad at her?”(Mitsuha)

“oh yeah, I forgot to tell you…”(Adam)

Adam tries to tell me something before Mako throw a barrage of kicks at her sister, knocking Adam down face first to the floor.

“She…ugh…”(Adam)

Adam faints right after that, a small hand then reaches out and pull the unconscious body of this so called “god” into the Kotatsu. As Adam’s body is no more to be seen, the young girl from before releases herself from the confinement of the Kotatsu, hiding her face with a Kabuki mask and turn my way.

“Noble swordsman Mitsuha Akatsuki, or also known as Mitsuha Suzuki, you’ve managed to passed through our “trials by fire”, as such we hereby grant you the All-seeing Eye of Eldegard.”(Mako)

“What do you mean “trial by fire”? I was only given second chance from Adam as a pity.”(MItsuha)

“But in the end, you lose that second chance in life to save a stranger you barely knew, though you didn’t know who she was nor if her body was full of lies or no? Or if she would lead you to your painful demise like Yuki, she could have been a good bait for you to escape the pursuit of the possessed but you risked your life to save her anyway and further more on the fact that you use the medical restoration bed for her and not yourself, seems quite unethical for a person who cares not for anyone but his own ideas.”(Mako)

“It’s true that the ideals I held in my previous life weren’t ethical. However, If I had left that sweet girl to die in a rut like this then there’s no question of me going to hell.”(Mitsuha)

“You are worthy, thus we will send you down once more to punish the devil that plagues the peace and to rid those who are wicked.”(Mako)

As she finishes a loud turbine-like sound accompanied with a brightly shined light illuminate around me.

“…”(Mako)

Mako seems to be saying something, seeing how her lips move as I teleport out of “heaven”.

…

I open my eyes once more, to see the 100% sign in the medical restoration bed with Emily soundly resides in it. Acknowledging that she’s safe, I stand up and walk around checking the perimeter, seems like this base has been abandoned for quite a long time, evidently from all the broken down or unpowered restoration bed of which a few corpses still reside in them.

Judging from the cluster of push bed and wheelchairs outside seems like they were in a battle of some sort and this atrium was their final stand, evidently from the crates of weapons laying around. Suspicious enough though is that there are no UN soldiers nor civilians bodies lying around here, except for the ones already enclosed in their metal and glass coffins.

I pull over the wheelchair, take out a new pair of military fatigues to put on over the ones that have been rinsed with the blood of the knights I killed prior. Looks like my wounds have healed, I thought to myself, looking over the two layers of Kevlar and ACU uniform.

“At this rate, I won’t have any more clothes to wear, I should be more careful from now on.”(Mitsuha)

I take off the shirt and replace it with a UN woodland camo uniform, still keeping the pants and boots due to them still durable enough to be used, though the Kevlar can’t be used anymore, but hey, it’s molle cover is still usable as a carrier vest, so I don’t plan to discard it.

After finishing changing my clothes, I walk outside to pay tribute to the knights and the soldiers whom I killed.

Getting a UN helmet outside, I then lay in on an IV pole and crouch down and pray to it, after a bow, two claps and another bow, I leave to oversee Emily in her recovery.

I plug the laptop into the medical bed and look through the medical wheel. Morphine administered, plasma administered,…etc. Confirming that she’s still breathing and is still being treated, I then divert my attention to the guns and the data on the laptop.

But as I was preparing to go through the contents of the laptop, a loud bang follow up with a long “ding” sound comes to follow through my ears. I turn around to the direction of the loud bang. A dark shadow looking like figure pulls out its m9 and shoots me, in which I retaliate back with a few shots from the PDW strapped on to my hip.

After exchanging a few shots, as its pistol runs out of ammo, the shadow rushes towards me, knife in hand and with killing intent, pushes me against the floor. After which the assailant tries to shove the 20 centimeter cold steel knife into my chest. I try blocking the push of the knife, and manage to stop it’s for a short while. As I struggle to keep the knife from reaching my chest, the figure suddenly hammers the knife down deeper and deeper and thus lodging the knife deeper into my chest. I try yelling out for help, but I couldn’t speak, I try yelling out loud to at least tone down the pain, but nothing can be heard.

And as I bleed out from the wound, the shadows overlapping the figure slowly disappears, revealing a mirrored distorted image of myself, smirking as it walks away from my lifeless body.