Daily Life : Not Available

Chapter 16

Posted: 23/04/2021

Status: Ongoing

Author's note: "amki why did it take you so long to update????"

i have no excuse lol

Namie still remembered it very clearly. After all, it was kind of hard to forget such a sight. She remembered seeing the helicopter belonging to Kishitani Shingen, her new employer since she had been offered that position at Nebula, flying over the laboratory. She had simply scowled at it in annoyance at the noise it had made, but otherwise hadn’t thought much of it. Until one of the doors opened, and from it jumped a harbinger of death, riding a bike made entirely of shadows.

Now, that , had been a sight to behold. It hadn’t been the first time the Headless Rider had made such a grand gesture in public, but Namie certainly hadn’t expected to see it a second time. In America .

Before the goddess of death could land in a splatter of shadows on the ground, a gigantic flower of darkness bloomed below her, slowing her fall until her bike landed gently, as if on a pile of soft pillows.

Namie couldn’t help but think it was unnecessarily dramatic, and crossed her arms as the Black Biker, known also as Celty Sturluson, approached her specifically. All the while, security was panicking, her fellow scientists were overcome with either fear or delight at experiencing a supernatural event, and Shingen’s incredibly annoying voice could be heard coming from the helicopter’s speakers, telling everyone to remain calm.

“I hope you have a good reason for causing such a ruckus, miss dullahan.” Namie didn’t beat around the bush. She wanted answers, right here, right now. And she got them, in the form of a package and a PDA, both being offered to her at the same time.

[I have been tasked with delivering this to you.] The PDA said, with no explanation as to why she was on another continent, escorted by Shingen, of all people.

“As in, Nebula? Or me specifically?” Namie took the package wrapped in shadows and looked at it curiously.

[I was asked to bring this to Nebula, so I gave it to Shingen, but when he saw the contents, he said it would be better if you were the one to have it.]

“And you went all the way to America for that.” Namie deadpanned. “What’s so important in this package that you had to drop down from a helicopter?”

Celty stiffened, typed on her PDA, then showed it to Namie again.

[I think you should open it.] It said simply, and Namie couldn’t help but wonder about the dullahan’s strange attitude. She could see a certain anxiousness in her body language as well. She thus decided to open the small box, now free from Celty’s shadows, and blinked at the contents.

Inside the box was a simple, innocent-looking USB drive, and nothing more.

…

“So, these people…why’d they take us anyway?” Shizuo was still sitting near Izaya’s unconscious, freezing form, trying to warm up that unmoving hand with his.

“Simple.” Namie said. “You two are exceptional, in the worst sense of the term.”

“Wh—” Shizuo bristled. “What does that mean?”

“It means just that. Like it or not, the two of you are freaks of nature, albeit in different ways. Who wouldn’t want to experiment on you?” She said casually, with a small smile that made him incredibly uncomfortable.

“I get wanting to experiment on me ! I mean, my body isn’t exactly normal .” He cringed at that last word. “But what’s so special about the flea? He’s just a bastard who doesn’t know when to quit.”

“I find it ironic to hear you say that as you cradle his hand oh-so-lovingly.” She quipped, and earned herself some undignified sputtering from the man in front of her, who immediately released the hand as if it had burned him. “But anyway, perhaps you never noticed because of your own lack of working brain cells, but while you have an exceptional body, he has an exceptional brain. His ability to retain and understand information is incredibly rare and valuable, among his other skills.”

Shizuo could see the cold woman scowl in annoyance at having to admit her previous employer had any qualities. Shizuo could certainly understand the feeling, but he refused to sympathize with her after she had pretty much called him stupid. Yes, he was going to be petty like that.

“So, what. They wanted to experiment on my body and his brain. Okay. What’s with the brainwashing thing?”

“That—” Namie had begun, but was interrupted by a sudden loud beeping. “Crap.”

She jumped up from her chair, not caring about the noise it made as it fell over, and ran to Izaya’s bedside, pushing Shizuo out of the way. “Fuck.” She swore, pushing the red button sitting on the bed to alert her colleagues.

Shizuo had taken some distance from the scientist, mostly out of surprise from being pushed around like that, holding himself up with his crutches. He could only look out helplessly at the scene as a group of people all hurried inside the room with various medical equipment.

Izaya’s heart had stopped beating.

It took a while to bring back Izaya. At some point, Shizuo was sure he had died definitely, his heart just refusing to start back up no matter how many times he was shocked with electricity. But then, after one last shock, a short beep resounded. Then another. Then another. Until, finally, the slow rhythm stabilized.

Izaya was alive.

For some reason, Shizuo felt immense relief.

After doing some basic checkups to make sure Izaya was stable, the medical staff left the room to go back to what they were previously doing. Shizuo was left alone with Namie, who heaved a sigh of relief. That relief was short-lived, however.

“Okay. We got to put you back under.” She said.

“Woah, what? Where the hell did that come from?!” He protested. Not too long ago, she had said it would be too much of a hassle to put him back into artificial sleep, and now she changed her mind? Shizuo really didn’t want to go back to that weird simulation world, thank you very much.

“This is where it came from.” She snapped, pointing to the pale, but still breathing (for now) Izaya. “His state has been worsening since you left the DCAE. We weren’t sure of it before, but this is proof, we must quickly put you back in, or he’ll die, for good this time.”

Shizuo’s head was swimming. Too much was happening at once. Too much information to process. What the heck was DCAE? How the heck was his absence from whatever this was linked to the flea’s current state? Also, why the fuck were all those scientists so concerned about keeping that bastard alive?!

He realized he must have been rambling aloud because Namie gave him an exasperated look.

“I’ll explain what I can on the way, so come on, we’re going back to your room.” She said and pretty much pushed him out of the room and towards their destination. His own surprise at being so fearlessly manhandled was the only thing allowing her to even move him. He’d certainly be strong enough to at least resist her, even in his weakened state.

Eventually, she started power walking in front of him while he did his best to match her speed with his crutches.

“First things first : DCAE is an acronym of Data Collection and Alteration Environment , it’s the name of the simulation we put you into. The aim of this program is, as its name says, to collect data, mainly memories, and alter them in order to remove the brainwashing. It seems to have worked like a charm on you, but the treatment is incomplete, so you’re still missing many memories.”

She kept going in a steady stream of words, not letting Shizuo so much as react because she quickly went to the next bundle of information.

“At first, we put you both in separate simulations, which worked fine for you , but because of how Izaya’s own brain functions it didn’t work correctly for him. We’re in a hurry, so I’m not going to explain the technicalities right now. All you need to know is that we managed to stabilize him by merging both your simulations, but you leaving removed that stability.”

“As for why we want him alive…” She trailed off, her aura of confidence faltering for an instant. “Something terrible will happen if he dies. We’re here, lie down and don’t fight back unless you want to be knocked out again.”

He wanted to ask her more details, especially about her last, extremely vague answer, but he wasn’t given any time to think as he was brought to his bed. Around it, a few members of staff were ready, some holding syringes, others familiar-looking cables. They were looking at him warily, as if afraid he would blow up. He’d be offended if he didn’t think their reactions were perfectly reasonable considering his track records. Lucky for them though, he had already angered himself out some time ago.

Also, he really didn’t want to anger the flea’s ex-secretary. She was scary enough as she was.

As he felt his consciousness gradually fade, he noticed his own reflection in the metal parts of his bed for the first time since waking up.

“I look like shit” was his last thought, mumbled aloud, before everything went dark.

…

“Subject R0-alpha has entered the Data Collection and Alteration Environment. Merging current instance with already running instance. Please wait.”

…

When he opened his eyes, Shizuo was in his own bed, back at his apartment. The unnatural quiet of his surroundings was just as uncomfortable as he remembered. He stayed lying there a few minutes as he was gradually feeling more like a person and less like some kind of…ghost, or conscience, or whatever thing that didn’t have a physical form.

Shizuo wasn’t much of a philosopher.

Suddenly, he heard a ring coming from his left. When he turned towards the sound, he found his own phone, ringing.

Wait, wasn’t there supposed to be no signal in this place? Why the fuck was his phone ringing? He took the offending piece of technology in his hands and answered the call, not even bothering to look at the number of his screen.

“What.”

” Oh good, so it worked. ” The familiar, yet strange-sounding voice of Yagiri Namie answered him. It sounded like she was directly in his head, rather than speaking through his phone. Shizuo didn’t like it.

“What the fuck.” He answered eloquently.

” You must be confused, so I will explain things to you. Since the simulation has now stabilized, I have time to answer most, if not all, of your questions without having to worry about any of you two annoyances dying on me. ” She casually insulted both him and Izaya, which pretty much gave him proof that she was the real Namie and not some figment of his imagination. ” The main reason we didn’t force you back into the simulation immediately, aside from the risks of you breaking everything, was that we were working on a small program that would allow us to communicate with you while you’re inside the DCAE. I am pleased to see it works, though I would expect nothing less from the person who coded it. ”

“How come you couldn’t talk to us before?” He asked, sitting up on the messy bed. “Didn’t you make that weird simulation thing?”

” I certainly didn’t. We are an entire team working on this project. Not only that, but the person who made both programs is…well, I suppose we could call him freelance. We were in quite a hurry, so he only implemented the basics in order to launch the project as soon as possible. You two were quite a handful .”

“You’ve said that before. That we were ‘wrecking havoc’. What did we do?” It had sounded serious, serious enough to mobilize an entire team. Did they…did he …?

” You destroyed multiple buildings belonging to one of our sister branches…well, ex-branches. There weren’t any survivors. ”

His breath itched at the casual revelation of him murdering people. How could she say this in such a calm tone?!

” Calm down, Heiwajima, I can see your heart rate going haywire. Anyway, yes, you were responsible for the death of hundreds. The same hundreds who programmed you and rival dearest to do just that, might I add. They wanted to make obedient super soldiers, but they botched the ‘obedience’ part, and it ended up exploding in their faces. Literally. ”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” He yelled at the phone. “Those people died! Don’t you have any sympathy?!”

” Not for them, no. ” She answered coldly. ” I have never met them, and they were working against the main branch’s direct orders by experimenting on you. Believe me when I say this : if you and Orihara hadn’t killed them yourselves, they would have died anyway, whether it be at the hands of our agents or of their other experiments’. ”

”…You Nebula people are fucked up.”

A laugh resonated in his mind.

” Of course. You have to be ‘fucked up’ to be in our profession. Now, come on, let’s get down to business. I have some instructions for you. ”

Shizuo sighed, resigned. No wonder she had worked for the flea, she was just as insane as he was.

“Fine. I’m listening.”

” Good. First things first, I need you to find Orihara. We don’t have direct visuals on the simulation, all we know is that he is in there. ”

“Great. So I have no idea where the fuck I’m supposed to look?” He grumbled.

” I’m sure finding him will be no challenge to you, who claims to be able to smell him from all the way to Shinjuku, right? ” Her statement sounded casual, yet it had a hint of challenge in it.

So she doubted his abilities? Well he’d show her.

With newfound motivation that was mostly fueled by spite, he left his bedroom, then his apartment, not even bothering to stop for a smoke or take a shower, or even get dressed. Now that he knew this was all some program, he didn’t really care about such things anymore. When he looked down at himself, he noticed he was wearing his hospital robes. He shrugged and exited the apartment complex.

Where was he supposed to start looking? Tokyo, even virtual, was huge… He supposed he could start with his own usual haunts, Izaya did have a tendency to show up wherever Shizuo was just to annoy him into another chase.

First, he walked to his workplace using his usual path. Finding everything empty of the flea’s presence, he kept going. He visited a few places, going from the various places he would stop at with Tom and Vorona to eat lunch, to the houses of recurring debtors, to the supermarket. Izaya was nowhere to be seen.

He took his phone to call that woman again, but stopped. He had no idea which number to type in. In the end, he simply pressed the call button without entering any number.

It went through.

” So you learned to call from your side. That’s one less thing I’ll have to teach you. Did you find the walking headache? ”

“Ah, no, I’ve been looking in the places I usually meet him, but he’s not anywhere. You sure he’s in here?”

” Positive. His consciousness hasn’t left the DCAE. He’s in there somewhere. Try going back to the places you met him while you were first in the simulation. ”

“Uh? Why would he even come back there?”

” In his case, it wouldn’t be going back, so much as simply arriving there. ”

He made a confused sound. Honestly, the way that woman talked was so confusing sometimes.

” I’ve said earlier that the program worked differently with him because of how his brain functioned. One of those differences is the fact that time in his simulation appears to be off. In simple words : while you were going through life in reverse, the program gradually suppressing recent memories until your brainwaves were back to normal, his own instance worked differently. ”

… Was that really simple?

”…”

” … You didn’t understand a word I said, didn’t you. ” She said matter-of-factly, knowing very well the answer.

”… No.”

A sigh.

” I’ll try and make it simpler then. Forgive me, but I am a woman of science, simplifying things so that they’re understandable to idiots isn’t really a habit of mine. ”

“Hey!”

She continued, ignoring his offended outburst.

” Basically : in your version of the simulation, we got rid of the memories you had that caused the brainwashing, starting from the most recent ones in order not to give you total amnesia. We tried to do the same for Izaya, but found that it didn’t work correctly with him. Random memories were ‘removed’, recent and old alike, and the program would give us many errors. His vitals were all over the place too. Whenever things like that would happen, we noticed a spike in his brain activity. ”

“So, he was…fighting against the program? And it caused all that weird stuff?”

” That’s right. You’re not as stupid as you seem, Heiwajima. There might still be hope for you. ”

“Hey.” This Namie woman certainly didn’t miss any opportunity to insult his intelligence, even when ‘complimenting’ him, didn’t she? “Oh well. I’ll check, uh… I guess I can start with that hospital. Lots of weird stuff happened in there.”

” You do that. ” And with that, the call was cut short.

Well , Shizuo thought, to that hospital we go.

Author's note: I'll try to update more often, but no promises. :')

In the meantime, feel free to yell at me (gently pls) on tumblr/bluesky, my username on both websites is ikam177!