#dr:os execution

[dr-originalsin]

EXECUTION | Kio | Chapter Three | Trial 3

Much like the previous executions, Kio's podium began to move toward his door. It would not be long until the popular musician would face his doom - his final chance to be on camera. With a click, the podium would send him careening past his door and to his final fate...

Kio’s vision adjusts to the dim light. He turns on the spot, slowly. Mirrors. Mirrors all around him. Dingy, dirt-streaked mirrors, but mirrors all the same. The floor is scuffed, tiles peeling, streaked with something that might be old blood. He sees himself, reflected into infinity. Sees his own eyes, looking back at him. He looks like hell. Tired, hollow, and angry.

He’s going to die looking like shit. One final injustice.

It takes Kio a second to notice that there’s a way forward, through the mirrors. There, around a corner, above, a cartoon goat with deer antlers.

“Hello, Kio,” Yagi-chan’s voice crows through the space, “Most become bad by degrees. But you seem to be able to let all goodness fall from you in a single moment as if dropping a coat.”

Kio grits his teeth, almost shouting back at the goat to just kill him and get it over with.

“You destroyed two lives to polish your image as an idol. One with a push. The other with a whisper.”

“Your salvation awaits at the end of this maze. If, of course, you can look beyond yourself.”

“The Countdown is on, Kio. Your fans are watching.”

EXECUTION BEGIN: HUNT DOWN [♫♫♫]

The hall of mirrors seems like a labyrinth, but the thought occurs to Kio as he stomps around this corner and that corner that he might just be going in circles. Was that the same streak of dirt he’d already passed, or just a really similar one? 

The hall is, of course, filled with the sound of his own music. He knows the songs, of course - this is the last album he put out, only a few short months ago. His own voice sings back to him, his very own swan song. Overlaid is the sound of the ticking of a clock. A countdown, indeed.

He dekes around a corner, a flash of his own eyes, the back of his hair, the glint of his earrings. He sees himself from every angle, every facet of his carefully-maintained appearance on display. His face is setting into a very un-idol-like expression. He tries not to look at himself but it’s literally impossible.

Where is he? Is this dead end where he started? Is that mirror familiar? He only sees himself, hears himself, hunts himself down.

Wait, what’s that? Out of the corner of his eye. Something purple. That’s not him. He turns, and it’s gone. He goes that way.

He keeps seeing it, just out of reach. Is he going crazy? He grinds his teeth. His pace is quickening, from a walk, to a jog, and now he’s running. He hits a mirror, pushes off of it, dekes around it, chasing his prey.

He’s going in circles, but he hardly notices now. He has no idea how small the cage he’s in really is. How small it always has been. His adrenaline is high, his breath is heavy, and the goat is taunting him. He’s going to rip that fucking deer apart with his bare hands.

Killing Shou didn’t feel like this. That was just business. A cold, emotionless fuck-up. Sloppy. Too tired. Too elaborate. The countdown pounds in his ears. The beat of his own music matches the rhythm of his heart.

The others, though. Flashes of anger, flashes like this. He tries so hard to maintain control and when he loses that control, something bad happens. But he’s always gotten away with it. He’s destroyed careers and gotten away with it. The first time he tries to plan something, though?

A new sound. “Kio!! Kio!! Ganbatte Kio!! Kio fighting!!” His fans? Audio from a concert, probably. His music, his name, his face, and that flash of purple at the edge of his vision. He’s a fox on the hunt. He wants to find whoever’s behind Yagi-chan and-

There. The goat with the stupid antlers. The deer. The music is almost drowned out by the screams of encouragement. 

Something in the back of mind protests. It’s a trap. Smash the mirrors. Run. Don’t play the game. 

Kio has never backed away from a challenge in his life.

He reaches forward, ready to pull the stupid plastic deer from where it’s mounted on the mirror. His foot steps down on a tile, and he hears a click.

That’s not good.

Glass explodes around him. Mechanical hands, clacking grabbers, shoot out. He tries to back away, but they’re faster than he is. They grab onto him, hooking his clothes, his limbs, his skin.

Such is the life of an idol, he thinks. Everyone wants a piece of him.

His own music is the last thing Kio will hear. Oh well. Everyone has to lose eventually. At least he’ll leave a good legacy. Through that music he’ll live forever. 

He lets out a rueful laugh, a bizarre smile on his face. And then, in a shower of blood, Kio Kodama is ripped apart.

KIO KODAMA HAS BEEN EXECUTED

[dr-originalsin]

EXECUTION | Yoshiko | Chapter One | Trial 1

The tense, melancholic atmosphere of the room is shattered by the shrill, heavy sound of rusted metal on metal. Before anyone can even so much as register the source of the noise- the door behind Yoshiko Ura, the Ultimate Architect, slams open. The woman lets out an ear-splitting cry of fear as her own terminal suddenly locks her in place, a spring-loaded metal belt shooting forth and tightening painfully around her hips. She tries, desperately, to grab onto whatever object she can… but, as if in a nightmare, the whole podium moves with her. Closer and closer, she is pulled to that black void and the unknown fate within it.

Eventually, the podium comes to a stop just as it crosses the threshold, and a piston extends beneath the floor to dump her out.

.

.

.

But- just before that can actually happen- her fingers manage to lock around the door’s frame in a death grip.

“NO-!”

(CW: Death, Blood)

“Yoshiko Ura-” The corrupted voice of Yagi-Chan rings out insistently over the intercom, clearly annoyed by the Architect’s insistence against her demise. An unknown mechanism seems to pull at her- harder and harder- as the automated pulley system strains to finish the job.

But she still won’t budge.

In fact, the other students look on as, miraculously, Yoshiko actually seems to pull herself back through the door- the muscles in her arms bulging as she manages to twist, contort, and eventually even wrap her legs around the podium that brought her there. She screams, defiant, her face twisted in agonized determination as she very literally fights for her life… and, for one brief moment, it almost seems as if she’s going to win.

“NO!” she howls. “PLEASE…! I-I CAN’T DIE-!”

“How embarrassing,” Yagi-Chan confesses, “Typical of an architect to make things unnecessarily complicated.”

“JUN-...IORI-...“ Yoshiko cries, her face sloppy with sweat and tears as she looks for her knights. Her heroes. “P-PLEASE… H-HELP-”

“Have it your way...” The exasperated voice finally relents. “You may take it all with you, Yoshiko.”

And before anyone can even make a movement to the contrary, the entire terminal is ejected from the ground.

The students all watch, bearing helpless witness as Yoshiko’s resistance is suddenly without foundation. Time itself seems to slow as a look of shock stretches across her visage, frozen in adrenaline-

before she and the podium are dragged unceremoniously into the dark.

The door slams shut… and, in all of the commotion, a torn slip of bloodied paper falls gently to the ground in front of it. The first student bold enough to pick it up will find the following written:

This person has miniatures of everyone close to them and plays with their lives. They actively stalk people to get this information.

“...And that wasn’t even the execution.” Yagi-chan chirps.

EXECUTION BEGIN: OZYMANDIAN ARCHITECTURE!

Before long, the visual of the cyber-goat’s sarcastic smile is replaced on the screen by a new one: of Yoshiko being dragged, rapidly and mechanically, into an entirely new room.

Wires and pulleys yank and tighten, their slack audible as she comes to be slammed into place, the wind visibly knocked out of her as she’s splayed out on the floor. Shackles emerge from the floor below, seizing her trembling limbs and locking each joint in motionless confinement.

Panicked, her wide eyes search around- somehow growing even more fearful with recognition as the camera pans out to show exactly where she’s been brought.

"Hello, Yoshiko,” The metallic voice of Yagi echoes out.

“You built a world to act as god with the lives of others. Now, you’ll die inside it.”

Surrounding her on all sides are numerous small models, all built to meticulous scale, all bearing her own signature. The camera pans further to highlight the miniature 3d-printed residents within, and the student council is treated to some grimly familiar sights.

Akira in his room, leaning in to shout at a game on his computer.

Stella in her own dormitory, standing in nervous anticipation by her door.

Mafuyu in the library bathroom, delicately applying some kind of product to his hand.

Every student here is represented, if only for a fraction of a second, but long enough to get the message across:

These little models are far, far too accurate… and each seems to carry its own implication.

““This is your masterpiece- every life, every flaw, perfectly to scale. All without them ever knowing. I ask you: does that sound like ‘good faith’?”

There, at the center of it all, lies Yoshiko, splayed out like a religious icon- a ruler and protector of her own world.

What love she must have put into every one of these.

How deeply she must have adored her citizens.

“Let’s see how well you scale."

A heavy, angular shadow lowers over her head, and the feed transitions to show an architect’s compass- massive, sharp, and fashioned from scrap metal. It dangles, swaying rhythmically, almost playfully-

until it lowers further. Lower. Faster. Heavier. And with nothing to stop its path to cut the woman down to a more fitting size for the world she cherished so much.

Back on the trial grounds, the screen captures in grotesque detail as Yoshiko’s models take on an almost Venice-like quality, a utopia connected by rivers of fresh, crimson blood. A miniature of the artist herself comes briefly into focus, her posture frozen in a happy gesture of prayer before being washed away in the growing tide of viscera.

YOSHIKO URA HAS BEEN EXECUTED.