Nimbus Try I: Arpeggio of Hurt Steel [English Version]

Chapter 52

Vanisher seethed with rage.

Brokencore had been dealt with quickly and punished even more quickly, Mizuki had been warned accordingly, because although she would like to, she couldn't punish Mizuki for not hurting her sister.

Zeitwächter stared at the ground in front of her, trying to busy herself with Kongou to keep from exploding, successfully so far, but she was beginning to lose the feeling in her hands from clutching her own dress so tightly. 

The design of Vanisher's concept communication system was intriguing, in its own way even fancier than Zeitwächter's: the pillars of the pavilion were so far in the background that they weren't really noticeable, looking like illusions from a dream, the table at which they sat was the standard one, but larger to hold those present and behind Vanisher's back, who sat in front of them all, was a weeping willow in a large raised bed of reddish-brown stones on a hilltop. 

"Actually, I wanted to tell you differently, but then we'll just do it now." 

Vanisher had removed her mask and her eyes pierced them all equally as they passed over them. 

"Hah," she sighed with a hand to her head, "how am I supposed to start this now? Zeitwächter," she opened her eyes again and put her hand down and Zeitwächter froze, because instead of blue eyes, she was looking into eyes the color of hair that the silhouette had worn, "Brokencore proved what we've all known for a long time-"

"Don't make me battleship- er, flagship!" She'd jumped to her feet, slamming her palms on the table to lean forward as far as she could. 

"You're already doing all the chores that Broken was supposed to do because she doesn't. Stop whining."

If she weren't so insecure about the change in character and appearance, Zeitwächter would probably have openly protested and whined instead of making a whimpering noise and letting her wife pull her back into the chair.

"Ordnung, is Youkai disabled?"

"Put to sleep as ordered," from Order's, or more precisely defined and concretized, Tenshi's voice, one could tell that she didn't trust the "new" Vanisher any more than the rest of those present.

"Good, because that's none of her business. All of you- well, almost all of you, have had dreams or flashes of memories over the past few weeks or months that you can't explain, correct?"

"Correct," said Ordnung, Musubi, Monogatari, Parasite, and Zeitwächter, only Kongou gave them a sideways glance.

"After you had begun to see these images, how did your feelings change, hm?"

"...It felt like a missing part had returned", Ordnung answered for all of them, a hand on her chest and face sour, as if she was angry for feeling lonely in her own body, her own head, when it was occupied by two consciousnesses, "but when it returned, it didn't bring the relieve we hoped for, it just brought us knowledge we could have used sooner, so stop talking with these empty words, created by a soul as full and empty as ours, and spill the truth about this Try!"

"Well, alright: I built you and my own body," she ignored the questioning face of Kongou, "a fish who pulls the strings of fate, the twin who sees life passing by, the demon who is nothing half and nothing whole, mask number 11 who understood how this world works and the demon who didn't fall to insanity but merely to madness."

It sounded like absolute bullshit to Kongou, like grand speeches out of a fantasy novel or weird metaphors, but the others made faces like the flagship had hit the bull's eye with vengeance. 

"Jūni," Twelve, said Parasite.

"It's striking on the hour, huh?" Zeitwächter stated as she planted a leg on the chair, the anger draining and only cold calculation and tactics taking its place.