Destroyer

[Craftyatom]

Of all the times to get this one-shot finished... What can I say, I work faster during wee morning hours. Anyways, hello, my name is Crafty, I write other stuff but this is a one-shot piece that I came up with the idea for over a year ago. The premise is kind of simple (and originally revolved around a one-liner that isn’t even in the story anymore), but it requires a character very unlike any in Katawa Shoujo in addition to two in particular who are in KS, so I made an OC. He’s not very well-explored, but you should be able to learn everything about him that you need to in this short story. That aside, let me say something important:

WARNING: This fic features some very uncomfortable moments, which are (hopefully) at a horror-movie level of disturbing. If you’re squeamish or don’t like gore/violence, you should probably sit this one out, just saying. I did include a happy ending, because I don't write stories without happy endings, but it may be a rather empty or bittersweet consolation.

Anyways, with that out of the way, I hope you enjoy!

Destroyer
Part 1: Journey
Takato stared forwards, his eyes trained on the empty seat in front of him. It was not usually an empty seat; in fact, he sat where he did only because of the person who usually occupied the seat in front of him. But for now, the space he usually stared at with a mixture of curiosity and lust was instead being stared at with annoyance bordering on rage. Takato knew that today was going to be a particularly boring day in class, given that he already knew most of what was going on in this chapter. Since he wasn’t going to learn anything, he had to occupy himself somehow, and that usually meant staring at the blonde girl in the seat in front of him.

But today, even as the bell rang, there was no Emi.

The teacher had noticed this absence too, but thought little of it; Emi wasn’t the kind of girl that the old, glasses-wearing woman had come to expect promptness from. So, with a sigh and a quiet grunt that would have suggested to any keen observers that this particular teacher was perhaps a bit closer to retirement than the rest, she got up and began to write on the board, the class growing quiet as the lesson for the day began.

Takato scribbled curses on the paper in front of him, damning the world for making Emi late, or maybe even absent, on today of all days. It would’ve been easy to direct the curses at Emi herself; after all, it didn’t take a genius to realize that most of Emi’s tardiness was attributable to her poor scheduling skills and carefree attitude. In fact, even as the time Takato spent scribbling on the notebook laid flat on his desk wound into the minutes, Emi was sprinting to class after her morning run, all because she had underestimated the amount of time it would take her to shower. But Takato still would not blame her. To him, Emi was a paragon of righteousness, stopped by what could only have been a happenstance of divine proportions.

So he doodled idly until the door to the room burst open, and the fastest thing on no legs skidded in, at which point he became only one of many to be staring up at Emi. “Oh, sorry I’m late!” she exclaimed at the teacher, who stopped teaching for a moment to rub her temples between her fingers. Emi took this as a chance to justify her offbeat arrival. “I’m really sorry, I started a new running routine today and I didn’t realize it would take me so long to shower afterwards, and on top of that I spent too long in between talking to-“

“Ibarazaki!” cried the teacher in a desperate attempt to halt Emi’s stream of consciousness.

“Y-yes?” Emi responded.

“It’s okay, just take your seat and I’ll talk to you later, alright?” Emi nodded, realizing that the whole class was looking her way, but thought nothing of it as she strode over to her seat and sat down.

At last Takato’s eyes received the feast they had been longing for. He spent a while taking in what Emi looked like today. Her uniform looked to be the usual, but her hair was wet, and on top of that, a few beads of sweat from her frantic sprint to class were still visible on her neck. He could make out the straps of her bra through her shirt. Here, here was what he had been waiting for. Finally, class would be bearable, so long as Emi’s lithe form remained posed in front of him.

Later that day, Takato walked into the cafeteria, his eyes scanning the room for any sign of Emi. It didn’t take long to find her; she tended to sit in the same place every day. Today, however, Takato was going to change things. This was going to be the first step in a long journey, the beginning of something wonderful. Today, he would finally sit down across from Emi. At long last, he would talk to her, after over a year of simply watching. First, though, he was going to get his lunch. He strode over to the counters where assorted food was placed, and grabbed something light before turning back around and heading over to the table where Emi always sat, his prosthetic right leg stepping in time with the flesh and bone of his left.

When he reached the row of tables where Emi’s seat resided, however, he noticed something odd. There, across from Emi, was a boy, a third-year by the looks of it, with his own lunch on the table in front of him. This was surprising. Nobody usually sat there. Takato had never seen this boy before. It didn’t even look like he had anything particularly wrong with him, either; a careful glance at his hands confirmed that he even had all his fingers. Yet here he was, at a school for the disabled, and worse, sitting across from Emi. As Takato walked past, not daring to take a seat next to this strange new variable, Emi told a joke, and the tall, brown-haired boy laughed.

This was a problem.

Takato decided that he needed to act, and so instead of sitting where he had sat for months before, a seat off to the side with a good view of Emi, he circled around and sat with his back to her. He closed his eyes, trying to drown out the rest of the cafeteria and listen to the conversation taking place behind him. It took a while to get used to the boy’s voice, but eventually he picked up on it. “You looked really good at the track today, Emi. I’d say you’re looking like a strong favorite for the track meet.”

Emi giggled, and Takato was almost stunned by how light and pretty it was. “You haven’t even seen any of the other runners yet, how do you know they’re not all faster than me?”

The boy’s deeper tone returned. “There’s no way they can beat the kind of speed you were putting on this morning!”

Another tiny giggle. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Hisao!”

Hisao.

The war was on.

Takato spent the rest of lunch picking at his food and trying to tune out the voices behind him, or at least, their words. The sound of Emi’s voice still comforted him, but it pained him to hear the replies of this ‘Hisao’, his new enemy. Still, with nothing better to do, he ate what little food seemed appetizing and waited for lunch to end.

As the sun set near the end of that day, Takato entered the boys’ dorm, taking extra care not to make eye contact with any of the boys sat around the television in the common room. They were watching something, probably a sporting event. He couldn’t have cared less. He made his way to his room, quickly unlocking and jumping through his door, then locking it again from the inside. At last, he felt safe.

He picked up his phone and scrolled to the only contact he had bothered to look up in weeks - Takato wasn’t sure what the man’s real name was, or even what he looked like, he simply went by ‘Bullet’. Takato opened up the message screen and began typing.

<Hey, bullet, I need a favor.>

Only a few seconds later his phone buzzed.

<Need something on Emi?>

<No, another student. Hisao.>

He hoped that the first name would be enough. It wasn’t.

<Gonna need some more detail, man.>

<He’s fairly new here, but he’s a third-year, probably a transfer.>

The next response took a while, but Takato smiled when he got it.

<Hisao Nakai, third-year, class 3-3. Want the whole package?>

<Yes please. I’ll leave you something by the spot.>

<Gotcha. Fly safe.>

Takato put his phone down and chuckled quietly to himself - life had all sorts of mysteries, all sorts of strange problems that threw a wrench into the works, and it was often tempting just to give up. But Takato was not the giving up type. He followed through on his plans. Even when something got in the way, he knew how to get around it. This latest something had been a boy named Hisao Nakai - but not even that could stop him.

The next day, safely back in his room, Takato pulled out the envelope that he had traded a medium-sized bag of candy for - It was small, but then, the best presents always came in small packages. Carefully opening it up and setting the envelope aside, he unfolded the sheets of paper and began to read through the school’s collected files on Hisao Nakai. He was a new student, transferred in less than a week ago. His parents paid his tuition. He didn’t have much of a record with the school so far - a listed “medical incident”, but nothing scandalous, which wasn’t a surprise. Takato knew that he could be up against any manner of perfection.

But this boy wasn’t perfect - he suffered from ‘arrhythmia’. A quick internet search revealed that this was a heart condition, and Takato smacked himself on the head for not having seen it before.

“Of course!” he muttered to himself. “She’s not looking for a similar mechanism - she’s looking for an opposite! She’s found someone who, despite looking perfect on the outside, is-” He stopped. Another internet search confirmed his suspicions: people with arrhythmia couldn’t handle intense physical exercise. Intense physical exercise like running. Running, like Emi did so well. The pieces were beginning to fit together, and Takato kept speaking quickly but quietly to himself. “She’s not about the strength, she’s about the weakness! She’s found someone so weak they can’t even enter her craft, and now she has the upper hand, now she’s in first - right where she wants to be! I can’t believe I never thought of this!”

Now all he needed was time, resources, and a plan - a plan to be just what Emi had found in this ‘Nakai’.

[Craftyatom]

Part 2: Remedy
It had been two months, and although Takato had initially tried to pay off a contact of his to ‘remove Hisao from the picture’, nothing had worked - probably because the chosen subcontractor had been incredibly inept. But everyone has their failures. Besides, Takato knew that there were other ways around this delicate scenario than just stabbing his opposition in the back. There were cleverer, more satisfying ways into a puzzle like this - and over the past few weeks, parts from different electronics providers all over Japan had been arriving in packages addressed to him.

Circuitry had never really been his favorite pastime - he preferred pure science, physics equations and mathematics. Still, assembling the small device that lay on the table in front of him had been quite the entertaining experience, and since the whole thing was his design, nobody could take this from him. This small piece of wiring, stuffed into a small plastic box with only a few ends peeking out, was his path to finally being the man that Emi longed for. That Nakai fool had only gotten closer to Emi in the past few months, but once Takato implemented this final phase of his plan, there wasn’t a single thing left on this planet that Hisao could possibly hold over him.

But there was one tiny little step left, one more connection to make - the circuitry worked, the wires and transistors and capacitors worked, and worked beautifully, but there was one more very, very important electrical element that still needed to be hooked up.

Takato took off his shirt, and placed an array of tools on his bed - the circuit, some suture, a suture needle, a hypodermic needle with some clear fluid in the syringe attached to it, a scalpel, and lastly, his cellphone. Before he set the phone down he typed in a number that did not reside in his contacts, but rather, in his mind - he had taken great care to memorize Emi’s number, and made sure that not a single trace of it existed in his room, on his computer, in his phone - only in his head. Only where he could find it. Having entered all the digits, the phone anxiously waited for Takato to hit ‘call’, but he didn’t - he just set it down and left it for later.

Having prepared everything, he lay down on his bed, looking up at the ceiling, and tried to relax, reducing his pulse. His heart was going to need the rest. He reached over and picked up the hypodermic needle - a marvel of science. A wonderful instrument so small that it threaded between the nerves that would usually throw out pain signals. He carefully positioned it over his bare chest, mirroring the images he had seen, and carefully inserted the tip into his skin, then pressed on the head of the syringe, and the fluid vanished into his chest.

He waited for a few moments, knowing that this effect would take time - anything more powerful might inhibit his left arm. Finally, after a few minutes of waiting, he flicked, then smacked his chest - but felt nothing. The anesthesia was working perfectly. He reached over next to himself and grabbed the scalpel.

He was not a big fan of blood, but to fear it was far too irrational, in his opinion - all humans had blood in them all the time, and to be scared of it was a folly. Still, he winced a little as the scalpel began to cut a red line into his chest, feeling the touch of the blade but not the pain. But this was how it had to be. He continued, making the gash just long enough to serve as an opening into his chest. His first instinct was to crane his head forward and look, but he knew that that could be fatal - he needed to keep his body calm and relaxed, not moving anything he didn’t need to.

Next, he took his index finger, which he had prior washed thoroughly in rubbing alcohol, and slowly dropped it into the hole on his chest, feeling around, searching for-

Yes. A pulse. The heart. The muscle that kept on pumping, every second of every day for as long as anyone lived. The irony that this had been considered the organ of love in ancient times was not lost on him, but he continued his work, knowing that the sooner he got this done, the better. He grabbed the small circuit with its exposed ends and carefully lowered it into the hole in his chest, wiggling it past bits of flesh and in between two ribs until it came to rest on top of his heart.

Well, not quite his heart; he knew that opening up the pericardium to get a direct contact with the heart would’ve been the kind of thing a surgeon should do, not a tech-savvy high school boy. But he had engineered around this fact - the increase in voltage on his circuit was more than enough to make the pericardium no stronger a barrier than a piece of paper.

Having nestled the device into place, he felt around it, eventually finding the switch he had worked in - it was in the ‘off’ position, of course. He smiled again, then grabbed this suture tools and began to sew up the hole in his torso, still feeling no pain thanks to the earlier injection. After a few laborious minutes, all of the stitches were in place, the only remaining barrier being that they needed to be pulled taut and tied off - but not before he finished his plan.

He picked up his phone with one hand, and put one finger of the other on the tiny switch embedded in his flesh. Shaking for the first time during this whole procedure, he hit call, and put the phone to his ear.

One ring. Nothing.

Two rings. Nothing.

Three rings. He knew that Emi wasn’t doing anything at the moment, she always kept this time slot open, so she would pick up eventually.

Four rings. Sure that Emi would pick up, Takato flipped the tiny switch, and instantly convulsed, the hand that had been buried in his chest flying out and spraying droplets of blood across his wall. But as he yelled, his body in pain and the sutures still loose, he heard Emi’s sweet voice, and began to speak, frantically, hopefully, victoriously.

“Emi, it’s Takato, it’s me, and it took me a while but I finally did it,” he exclaimed, out of breath, the pain having stopped, “I finally realized how to be who you want me to be, and I’ve done it, I’ve changed, I made myself-” His speech ceased as more pain shot through his body. Regular 10 second intervals, just like he had designed. Finally stabilizing himself again, though his bed was now absorbing a fair amount of blood that had been thrown about by his antics, he croaked out a few more painful words. “I made myself who you wanted me to be, Emi, so now we can be together, I can love you like I was supposed to, and you can love me, and-” Another convulsion, and his hand, sweaty after grasping the phone so tightly, let the small object slip away from him and onto the floor.

“No!” he cried, and he leaned over the edge, frantically pawing, trying to grip onto the one object he needed most, his one channel through to Emi.

As his hand at last reached the small black object, more pain sent him writhing off of the side of the bed, and although he had technically gotten closer to his mishandled phone, every 10 seconds he seemed to get much, much farther away.

[Craftyatom]

Part 3: Ecstasy
Hisao lay on the bed, breathing heavily, though his own checks on his pulse seemed to show that he was doing okay. No, he thought, much, much better than okay. On top of him, Emi leaned down, her bare chest rubbing against his, and she gave him a long, drawn-out kiss, running her hands down his body. Indeed, significantly better than okay.

Finally pulling away from the ragged-looking boy beneath her, Emi smiled. “So, what do you think, still up for running tomorrow morning?” Hisao, bereft of the energy needed to speak, simply rolled his eyes and chuckled. Emi giggled a little as well. “I’ll take that as a ‘maybe’, then.”

It was at this point that she looked down at her phone, which was frantically trying to tell her that she had a message. Whoops. It had probably vibrated earlier, but she must have missed it, what with, you know, Hisao, and... stuff.

Deciding not to just let it sit, Emi grabbed the phone and flipped it open to find that she had “1 New Voicemail”, though she didn’t recognize the number. She frowned, not sure who could possibly have her number, but eventually shrugged and deleted it.

“Something wrong?” asked Hisao.

“No,” she replied quickly, “just a voicemail from some random number.”

“Probably a telemarketer,” Hisao considered aloud.

Emi tossed her phone back down to the floor. “Yeah, probably. Oh well.” With that, she leaned in close to Hisao’s neck, burying her head in between his chin and his shoulder, and he ran his fingers through her hair, the two of them comfortable and content.

[brythain]

Pure anthracite comedy, to me. I like your writing, especially this particular piece.
Does that mean something's wrong with me? Perhaps my heart needs... adjustment.

[azumeow]

Hardly a bittersweet or empty consolation. The problem seems to have taken care of itself, and none of the people we've come to know and love were hurt. Considering where I thought this was going, this ending is much...much better in how it leaves matters settled.

[AntonSlavik020]

I didn't think it was bittersweet at all either. It ended about as well as it reasonably could. Overall, I thought it was fun.

[Munchenhausen]

Certainly quite an interesting read
Nothing like a bit of twisted self-improvement to make the lunch hour go by faster
nice job mate!

[griffon8]

Let’s see what we got here.

Dogged Nice Guy? Check.
Hard Work Fallacy? Check.
Stalker With A Crush? Check.

Yeah, this wasn’t ending well for Takato no matter what, unless you took the story really, really dark. Because ending well for Takato means it doesn’t end well for anybody else. A good summation of how people like him work is here.

[Craftyatom]

Certainly quite an interesting read
Nothing like a bit of twisted self-improvement to make the lunch hour go by faster
nice job mate!

Pure anthracite comedy, to me. I like your writing, especially this particular piece.
Does that mean something's wrong with me? Perhaps my heart needs... adjustment.

Gotta admit, anthracite is not a word I've ever heard before, and it took a little bit of thinking to realize how it applied given the dictionary definition. But hey, you learn something new every day, right?
I'm glad that people found the humor in this - that was kind of the intention. (Oh, and thank you very much for the praise )

Hardly a bittersweet or empty consolation.

I didn't think it was bittersweet at all either.

I suppose that's a good way of looking at it, from the perspective of the story we know best.

Yeah, this wasn’t ending well for Takato no matter what, unless you took the story really, really dark. Because ending well for Takato means it doesn’t end well for anybody else. A good summation of how people like him work is here.

Yeah, honestly, as the offspring of a medical professional and a biological researcher, gore never bothered me much, but the idea of this character is what made me classify this as "extremely spoopy". His mindset, just the way he thinks through and about things, is clearly one that, eventually, was going to get someone hurt - maybe this was indeed the best ending we could've hoped for.
I felt very strange writing this piece because although I obviously don't think like Takato, I kind of understood where he was coming from - I think I was like him as a kid. Needless to say, I've repressed quite a lot of said childhood.

Anyways, glad I could give y'all a nice little something to pass the time, this was kind of liberating to write because I don't usually get to write pieces this short. (Don't worry, I'm not giving up on the longer stuff )