Part 87: Keitaro Miura 7

Chapter 87: Keitaro Miura 7

Music: LONER (Azusa Chiba)




Consider Ei Sekigahara

(No point in trying to make sense out of his story. It’s still too early to say anything for sure. …But a scout unit from the future? And it possesses my consciousness?)

Consider Beejay

(The footage he showed us is allegedly from the future. If it’s real, then how am I still alive 200 years from now? …… All I know for certain is that it’s no ordinary scout unit.)

Consider Natsuno Minami

(Natsuno-san… …… Get it together, Keitaro. She certainly is quite… yes. I admit, she’s bright, cheerful… attractive. B-But right now… I have more urgent matters to tend to.)

Consider Chihiro

(Chihiro… She was acting like a completely different person. Design engineer… Controlling the system… What was she talking about? …… Chihiro…)

Consider Chihiro

Yes, we can Consider Chihiro again here.



(Chihiro… Morimura? She’s the original Chihiro? Is there no going back to the way she used to be? …… Chihiro…)

Consider Natsuno Minami

We can also re-Consider Natsuno Minami, now that we’ve Consider-ed Chihiro.



(I’m not sure why… but I really want to hear her voice right now. Could she still be at school?










Miura-kun…

Music: The Plot Thickens (Rikako Watanabe)

BJ’s gone. I’m pretty sure he’s lost somewhere by himself. If he’s caught, we’ll never see him again…



Let’s split up and find him.
O-Okay. He couldn’t have gone too far. Maybe he’s inside one of the school buildings.
Okay, then you search the buildings. I’ll search the campus perimeter.
Okay, I’m on it! Thanks!






It went back behind the north school building. Think it belongs to the radio club?
It was all boxy and weird-shaped. Didn’t look like a helicopter to me.




Behind the north building… That’s where the old school building is.






Miura is more familiar with what a helicopter sounds like than I was expecting.





Natsuno-san’s worried about you.
Keitaro Miura… I’ve been scanning for you from overhead.
……



I’ve been looking for you, too.

Use Ei Sekigahara on BJ




…… That’s correct.

Music: STAGNATION (Yoshimi Kudo)





…Nothing I hear should surprise me anymore.

No, Miura! Don’t! Those are the words of cursed power! You’re invoking the ancient ritual that’s going to cause the next absurd plot twist!

……

Use BJ on BJ



When the world was destroyed… I died.
……
I had to take your place and fight in the Sentinel. In order to do this, I was resurrected… as an AI.

Use Sentinel on BJ



That’s what you’re looking for, right?
Correct.
Then how did your AI end up in this scout unit?
…There was a malfunction in the Sentinel.



However, 72% of me… is still locked inside the Sentinel.



That you’re… me?
We didn’t get a chance to meet in the previous world.



Awwwwww…

It’s best that she doesn’t know.

Use Time Travel on BJ



What’s going to happen?



Oh, here it comes! Miura, you’ve doomed us all, you stupid bastard!

…Past events?
Time is relative.



…Oh noooooooooooooo!



Jesus fucking christ, game

But… you’re Keitaro Miura from the future, right?
I’m an entity that used to be Miura… before you.



I can now access all logs.
So the rest of the footage is available…
Promise me…
Hm?
Before the final invasion begins… you’ll research the logs and figure out a solution.




Chihiro’s… plan?
Promise me.
Why are you asking me this?
Because…



What the fuck!?



Oh, great, more of this 2188 nonsense, just what the doctor ordered!

Is all going as planned?
All issues have been resolved on my end. Four sectors are ready for the final phase. The remaining one is at roughly 70%.
Sectors?
Their structures are similar to these colonies. So that’s what I’ve been calling them.
So we’ll have five Sectors, then.
I’ve chosen not to divide them based on orbital positions. Instead, I’ve separated them by historical eras. I’ve been meaning to ask. Why don’t we create a residential district of the present day?
The decision was made to start over… from a time before the world took such a terrible turn.
Before the nanomachine incidents?
…Perhaps humanity tasted the fruit of knowledge too early. When it was being decided how far we should go back… we couldn’t come to an agreement. So we ultimately settled on preparing residential districts by era.
I’ve always wanted to live in the 20th century before the war… So this works out perfectly.

Yeah Miura, we know, you’re very strange.

However, some resources of the era are quite old. Accurately reproducing them might pose a difficulty. I don’t think I can do it with confidence.
That’s fine. As long as our civilization survives… I’ll be happy.
Once it’s completed, just one district will be the size of a city. It’ll have a bustling population of 1.2 million people.
We have more residential areas than we originally planned. Ms. Kurabe’s hands are going to be awfully full.
I’m sure everything will be finished on time. I have to get back to work.
Understood.




…God dammit, I hate this fucking game sometimes. Well, let’s go see what the damage is.



Morimura mentioned something about preserving civilization… seems like things on Earth are in a bad way.






Oh, now the “Time Travel” file is useful, when we actually know it isn’t time travel!









Here’s all the Sectors, in case you were still confused about which one is which.



If we head over to the Event Archive, an aspect of Analysis I’ve shamefully been neglecting up to this point because I was worried about the presentation spoiling things, we’ll notice something new…



Why, now that we know that time travel is complete bullshit, they’ve added a handy-dandy timeline tracker to each event in the game showing which Sector it takes place in! That’s nice!



All of the non-2188 events (for obvious reasons) now display that big square on the timeline showing the respective Sector.

Pretty much the entire reason I didn’t show much of the Event Archive previously was because of potential spoiling of the 2188 stuff being first in the timeline. Now, granted, when you actually play the game it’s just kind of a weird curiosity that that stuff is all seemingly out of order (and also that none of the playable characters are listed in the “appearances by” section of 2188 stuff) because you’re presumably playing it over a matter of days or weeks where you can just constantly absorb new information and push it aside. However, in the context of an LP where there’s just a lot more time to ruminate between story beats, I thought it would be a lot more obvious what was going on there, so I intentionally avoided showing that. Maybe I’ll show the Event Archive more in the future, but unless you guys really want a breakdown of the general timeline so far, I kind of doubt it (especially because I already have a full timeline breakdown planned for when the LP is finished).



Miura’s locked, no surprise there.



But Hijiyama is finally open!



But it’s of course time for more board updates now! We never put Ryoko’s fucking stone-cold murder of Ida on the board, so let’s label that one with purple/violet/lavender/what-have-you.





We also add “time travel is impossible,” “Sectors made to recreate Earth,” “not the future, but the past,” and “civilization on Earth is dying?” to the 2188 segment of the board.



And here’s the whole thing so far.