Screw This Fic: KIKEN Pt. 2

It hurts.

Note: Turns out the guy who wrote this is named EPIC, no really.

Why is it that people have ideals that go against reality?

Why is it that you write like someone having a stroke in a freshman Philosophy class?

Reality is where we live. People are born here in reality.

HOLY S**T! People live in REALITY! What an amazing bit of insight!

Reality is science and religion to some, yet people still fight for a perfect world. That's when ideals are born, and they are born out of the perceptions that there will be a perfect, if not acceptable world to live in. Currently, people known as realists, or cynicals believe that humans care about themselves and prefer to believe as they see and nothing more, while people known as romanticists, or idealists say that humans are good and believe that the realist perception of the Earth itself can change.

If you said this tripe out loud in a Philosophy class, the instructor would ask you how much vodka your mother drank when she conceived you.

And some say that we don't need ideals nor reality because we can make use of a malleable future.

KIKEN: CHIKYUUGAOWARUHANASHI

CHAPTER 2: Questioning Reality

"Aahhh, alright, I'm up." A teen woke up.

Thank you for specifying something that was made obvious in the dialogue.

He took a bath, went out the door with wet blonde hair, a towel on his waist and lower back, nothing else, and he got started putting on his uniform.

SUCH BEAUTIFUL PROSE

His name was Derani Terasuma, 16-years old and ready to hit the campus. He boarded the train headed for Kanagawa-ku, Yokohama, where Hikariyama Academy was. "Hmm, looks like another crime involving Hubspace."

This game is responsible for enough death to get in the news repeatedly and people still play it. Just pointing that out.

Derani said, as he read the newspaper detailing an incident involving an online game called Hubspace.

You just specified something made obvious in the dialogue again. Stop that.

"Gah, reclusive b******s."

"Oh, sorry, I think I heard a statement just now-do you think I can expand on it?" A girl asked as Derani's statement was pretty interesting.

No it wasn't.

"Ohh, you're realistic too? Ahh, sure!"

Gotta love how he never bothers to answer her question.

Derani let her. Her name was Aria Tsubasajima, jaded towards ideals.

His name was EPIC, jaded towards competent writing

"Reality also doesn't have much choice, and humans only want themselves to be happy."Aria explained.

That doesn't explain s**t. That sounds like something a 12 year old says when he's trying to be smart.

She was skeptical of how ideals can only last a short time. "My special person was found dead right after investigating some sort of game..." She sighed. "...that's pretty much why I'm jaded from ideals anymore."

She is jaded because a video game killed her love interest and thus doesn't believe in 'ideals'. This is totally how people deal with loss.

Derani felt like he and this Aria had this connection, and was about to say something. "I guess I-" Derani was interrupted. "Oh, gotta go! I may as well see you sometime again!" Aria left, and her pigtails were barely caught by the train door. "Ooh, silly me! hahah!"

"I nearly got my head torn off! Teehee!"

Derani still looked on, holding on to the train bar. "Well, looks like the next stop's Nishi-ku," Derani looked at the train route. "Well, at least I didn't space out there." But Derani was actually more happy than before. It turns out that he considers people who share his opinions actually think better.

Maybe he had a bit of a crush on Aria.

Thank you for pointing that out. I wouldn't have known because they act like lobotomy patients acting out their favorite anime.

---

Much later, Derani came out of third period, waiting for a conversation.

Hikariyama Academy was like say, a park crossed with an academy crossed with a 5-star restaurant. It was actually a prestigious private elevator school, one which lasted until senior year of high school.

So they go to a fancy-pants private school that is sooo awesome. Got it.

Even now, its senior students rival freshmen of Keio Daigaku, another prestigious school. "Ahh, Hikariyama. Why do you continue to amaze me in such a world?" Derani asked himself.

Bullshit. No student is ever that happy or amazed at their school.

He was in awe, even when he considered the world to be such a demented place without any choice at all.

This sentence is so hamfisted and meaningless that it might as well be gibberish. "He was in awe, even when he discombobulated the doorbell to lemon shafted grassy times."

But he didn't care, Derani was just happy he was alive.

"Oi, Derani-sempai! Hey, you investigating on Hubspace?" Yuuichi Minagawa was walking across the hall. Yuuichi's dark brown hair was caught in some sort of beanie, while his medium-fair face had a white smile on it. "You know it, brosen! I'm still pretty much digging into the internal framework right now, so yeah!"

Brosen?

Derani loosened up after his cynical state, in which he hated many humans for their own greed and power.

Cynicism, like human interaction and good pacing, is another thing EPIC has no understanding of.

He thinks humans only live to fulfill their own happiness, and contentment of the surrounding people, like a relative or a friend.

I'm not even going to dignify this by mocking it.

Next thing you know, Derani saw Kakeru, cramming homework in the Math classroom. Derani knew there was something with the boy his age, whom he knew was more tan than Derani was. The blonde bombshell walked over to Kakeru and asked him, "Hey, what you doing?" Kakeru igonred Derani, concentrating on his unfinished worksheets. "Math homework, nice! I always thought you were good at Math." Derani said, but Kakeru's true skills at calculating was contradictory to Derani's statement. "Oh, sorry. I almost forgot. You aren't good at all."

I'm sorry, was that a joke? Seriously, EPIC is such a goddamned hack that he has a character say something sarcastic, explain the sarcasm, and then explaining the joke again. That is incompetence on a biblical scale.

"Dude, what were you gonna say to me?" Kakeru asked, his red brown hair shining under the light. "Well, at least one person knows two siblings who are available 24 hours a day,..." Derani whispered into Kakeru's ear. "Remember the mission...?" Derani and Kakeru looked like a couple who were on the verge of kissing, one person peering straight into the other's eyes.

Except couples don't insult each other in extremely stupid ways.

"What mission?" Kakeru asked, as he suffered from a brief period of his chronic amnesia. "Remember, logging into Hubspace without an NDE?" Derani asked. "Oh, right," Kakeru recalled that time.

But unusually, he didn't disappear. And yet, Kakeru didn't even recieve a near-death experience.

Again, why hasn't this game been shut down if it kills people?

Of course, Derani knew there just had to be something wrong with his registration.

"Well, anyway, got to go down. You just reminded me about some Hubspace-high 8th Graders." Kakeru remembered. Derani waved goodbye to Kakeru, but Kakeru just ignored the wave. "I have a feeling that..." Derani thought about Aria, but he remembered something else. He had a feeling that even kids younger than Derani and Kakeru were even into Hubspace themselves.

You'd think the fact that Hubspace is known to kill people would cause parents to keep their children away from it, but nope... that wouldn't be anime enough.

"But then again," Derani denied the thought and decided to go down himself. "Well, I dunno about Kakeru, why not just go?" Derani told himself, and talking to himself was one of Derani's habits.

I feel my braincells dying as I read this.

Derani went down to the park-like area of the campus, where the park was a blanket of green with properly-placed trees.

Even the scenery is lifeless and bland. The trees were not grown or cultivated, they were placed as if some bored designer stuck them there to pad out a backdrop. What makes the trees 'properly placed'? This story is so set on spewing out anime cliches that everything else is a bland slurry with no character.

But on the open field, two boys who looked younger than Derani stood, and those boys were the subject of Derani's worrisome behavior. "Wow, looks like those two boys really are disturbed. Its unusually bizzare to like, talk privately in a place where everyone can see you, though." Derani drabbled off. "Besides, its self-contradictory, talking alone in a place where you stand out like some sorta sore thumb."

But just as Derani was thinking...

"Ahh, hi! I'm Mila Jonessy, nice to meet you! I heard from a boy named Tsugumu Minagawa that you might know something." A 12-year old girl introduced herself with the use of interruption. 

This line is so f*****g terrible that I can't even look at it without getting a headache.A non-s****y way of writing that would be "a girl said" The fact the last sentence cut off int he middle is enough information for the reader tot ell that he was interrupted. This has gone beyond bad writing.This is the opposite of writing. This is anti-writing.

Her name was Mila Jonessy, a Sweet Gothic Lolita who was skilled in IT.

God forbid we get any characters that aren't piles of anime cliches stapled together. If the most important thing about a character is that they're GOTHIC LOLITAS then you need to rethink the way you come up with characters.

"Oh, hi, Mila! I'm Derani. Might you be one of my fangirls?" Derani remembered that he had an unwanted harem-esque fanclub,

Oh look, another cliche so soon. Also, what the f**k has Derani done to deserve a fanclub? He's just another bland fuckwit with anime tropes in place of a personality. Even if he's supposed to be popular in this school, high school kids do not form fanclubs for the popular students.

which was girls-only.

"And Tsugumu is..." "The boy who keeps breaking pencils yet still maintains a boisterous facade, then yes! That Tsugumu!

This sentence does not work on any f*****g level, how does the fact he 'still maintains a boisterous facade' conflict with pencil-breaking? And why talk about the character's personality without showing the character doing anything? Saying this story is s**t is an insult to s**t.

Mila finished Derani's sentence for him.

But after the brief conversation, Derani decided to interrogate Mila just for a while, because if he got too deep, it'd scare her.
"She's just a kid, Terasuma!" Derani thought. "Get a grip!"

"Anyway, might you know anything about Hubspace?" Mila asked Derani, as she knew about Derani and Kakeru's investigation. "Well, yeah! I was actually going to ask you that question. I'm highly interested in it, you know."

Let me reiterate.... Hubspace is a game THAT CAN KILL YOU and there are people still trying to play it and it still has a userbase. Either this story takes place in a world where everyone is terminally stupid or EPIC did not give anything a second thought on this story. Either one seems perfectly likely.

Derani followed. "Ohh, I'm pretty much skilled in Information Technology, so about Hubspace..." Mila answered with a bit of a smile, ready to show off her skills in computers. "...the data that revolves around the game's rules is Read-Only and can't be changed in any way at all."

Yeah. That's totally how Read Only works. There aren't forums dedicated to hacking ROMs

"Any way at all?" Derani asked. Mila nodded, and walked away.

"Bye, might be late for class!" Mila said, leaving as she was a bit late.

It's so important to the plot that she be late for class that it was stated twice in the same line.

"Well, umm, bye! I hope to see you later, then!" Derani wanted to further inquire Hubspace's internal structure, yet Derani even registersed an account onto the game itself. "At least I can ask her more about it later. And I may as well go back to class." Derani noted. He went up and left for Humanities, a class which was akin to that of an expanded Social Studies.

HUMANITIES

IS

NOT

ONE

SUBJECT

IN

ANY

CURRICULUM

He saw Yamato-sensei rambling on about Ancient India, while Kakeru was late as usual, probably due to his amnesia.

---

Later that day, everyone was at Hikariyama's covered court, filled with students playing sports and cramming homework.

"The Conflict of Tin and Brass..." A boy said, writing down everything there is to know about the Conflict. He was Hichou Amagami, his black hair shining under the afternoon sun, his pale skin not as bright as the flourescent bulbs. It was the play half of the Lunch period, so Hichou actually had some time to talk about the Conflict. "I'll lead the Brass Kites, Shouhei leads the Tin Herons..." Hichou was also describing how the Conflict was structured. "Hey, Shouhei!" Hichou also asked for a schedule of the Conflict, planning daily battles between each group.

"Okay, where's the schedule?" Hichou asked, ready to plan the battling schedule, but not plan the battles themselves. "Its with me, right here." Shouhei gave the schedule to Hichou, and Hichou got started. "Shou-kun, just send me a list of members to my email, and you're good!" Hichou instructed, and Shouhei always agreed with Hichou. "Oh, hey, what are you guys doing?" Derani walked in on the two. "Oh, Hubspace? I'd like to get something out of you." Just then, Derani decided to interrogate the two best friends, and Shouhei and Hichou were like brothers.

"Why is it that you guys are planning a Conflict like this, huh?" Derani grilled the two. "The goal of the Conflict is to see who is the victor, and the victor will initiate a plan to reform Hubspace."

'The goal of the Conflict is to see who is the victor'... This story just keeps reaching new depths of stupidity.

Hichou started. "There are two teams-the Tin Herons, who are reformists, and the Brass Kites, who are revolutionaries." Derani actually saw something that made sense for once. "So you're saying that the victor will either reform the rules of Hubspace or destroy Hubspace itself? But what effect will it have on the world? What about the controversial stimulus-response theory?"

GUYS WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE STIMULUS-RESPONSE THEORY?

But everyone was asked to line up, and the eight graders were the first to go to lunch.

"Well, may as well finish up later. See you!" Hichou calmly told Derani.

Hichou was one of the more calmer of the two, while Shouhei was a lot more hot-headed. "Well, bye then." Derani waved. "But will the Conflict be resolved? And where's Kakeru?" Derani asked himself. "I bet he's still at the college," He decided to go back to the cafeteria, where Kakeru never missed a bite. Today's special was melonpan and kitsune udon with kara-age, and Derani knew Kakeru always caught up with the daily lunch menu. "I bet he knows someone," Derani whispered.

But as Derani ate, he started dreaming. And in the dreamscape, he saw nothing but darkness.

Who the f**k falls asleep as they eat?

"If I were you, I would rather that I run." A voice suggested. It was feminine, polite, and it caught Derani's ears. "Run to where?" Derani had to ask, as he had no idea where to go. "Your acquaintance in anticipating such information, pertaining to your quest." The woman finished. "I leave with you one clue: Kurumi Souchou." Derani woke up and realized that he was in Hikariyama's university campus. "So I subconsciously went here, huh? But that possibly couldn't have happened. Someone probably knocked me out and brought me here!" Derani thought.

As Derani walked in the Hikariyama dormitory building's corridors, he still remebered one name. "Kurumi Souchou, Kurumi Souchou, who's she?" Derani asked himself. "Her name sounds archaic. Is she some sort of ghost? But are ghosts even real?"

Her name sounds old, therefore she is a ghost. Great logic there, Skippy.

He knew that the Souchou clan died out after the Meiji Era, and Derani was skeptical of someone bearing the Souchou family name. "And to think ghosts are real... real my foot!" Derani doubted Kurumi. And as she might have been a ghost, Derani was of course, skeptical about the existence of ghosts alone.

HEY GUYS THIS GUY IS SKEPTICAL LET ME TELL YOU THAT HE IS SKEPTICAL AFTER HE SAYS HE DOES NOT BELIEVE IN GHOSTS.

Derani saw Kakeru come out of the room, his face a lot paler than normal. "Was it the price of love there, or did she tell you something about the mission?" Derani asked Kakeru, who simply walked away, ignoring the question. "You can at least tell me something about what happened there!" Derani yelled from one part of the hallway, but it was to no avail. Kakeru started running, and Derani thought that someone was actually watching them. "What the hell...?" Derani thought. "I have a feeling that it was something alright. Pretty significant."

"Its Hubspace, I'm sure of it, I can sense the boy's feelings..." A man whispered.

Fun fact: Switching to the perspective of a mysterious man all of a sudden is considered terrible storytelling that disrupts the flow.

"Huh? Who's there?" Derani didn't know who the man was, and he walked out of the wall where he hid. Out came a man of Nanako's age, wearing glasses, a faint stubble and clean-cut hair. A brown trenchcoat, light green dress shirt and jeans came out. And even when he was said to be a former hikikomori, his hygeine was better than all the other otaku. "Is... is that guy some detective?" Derani thought. "Nope, I don't work for the government. I'm a former hikikomori who was just cutting class, that's all." The man started introducing himself.

So many Japanese words slapped down with the expectation that you magically know what they mean.

"Rukao Minami, nice to meet you. I know about Nanako Shichijima and her association to Hubspace. And its not just her thesis." Rukao explained. "Nanako...? Associated with Hubspace in more than one way? Other than her thesis? What's happening?" Derani wanted to ask questions. "As you may know, there is a conflict going on. "As you may know, there is a conflict going on. And if you want to know what I am, I'm an esper who is still researching the stimulus-response theory associated with Hubspace." Rukao explained. "What's the association?" Derani asked.

"As you may know, there is only a finite combination of words in any sort of language," Rukao explained, "But please bear with me."

What the f**k does that even have to do with anything...

Derani nodded, ready to accept any information which was about the Conflict. "Of course," said Derani, "I'd love to know what the hell caused the whole thing." That's Terasuma for the students of Hikariyama. Always having a knack for information, anything involving knowledge, and boy-oh-boy, he's oh-so-jaded! You could think that he's really a pretentious emo freak with a tendency to score lines down his wrists with his fingernails.

Oh for f**k's sake, the writing couldn't get more stiff and artificial if a malfunctioning robot was writing this.

"Hubspace, Herons, Kites... this is danger, for the panicking world! Kiken-na sekai da!"

---

Later that day, an ice cream parlor was playing 50's music in the background.

Derani was looking at a legal pad, and he ordered a chocolate-caramel brownie parfait. "This is all of the information recieved," Derani was writing down all of the information he had on the Conflict of Tin and Brass. His writings described the structure of the conflict. "Scheduled battles... reformists and revolutionaries... Kurumi Souchou... Rukao Minami.." Derani wrote down on a set of legal pad papers. The information was full of a few phrases that only Derani, Kakeru, and those in the Conflict knew about. But someone came into the store, and her presence seemed pretty familiar.

"I'll have a Hazelwhut Crepe, please. With extra Nutella? Thanks!" A girl handed the money to the cashier. "Ohh, its you again!" Derani started to blush. "You don't mind if I sit beside you, do you?" She asked. Her glasses rested on her nose as Derani shook his head. "Sure, fine! Very nice to um... see you again! Oh, and I didn't catch your name, by the way. I'm Derani Terasuma, 2nd year student at Hikariyama High." Derani introduced himself. "I'm Aria. Aria Tsubasajima, the girl you met on the train! I'm a freshman in St. Florence High. Both our academies are sister schools."

Do they even have Nutella in Japan? Plot-wise this is just a summary of the key words, which this story loves repeating over and over like a brain-damaged parrot.

"So... you're taking down information on the Conflict?" Aria asked. "Sure! I'm a kid that's interested in current events!"

See KIKEN, why can't you be like this all the time? You'd still be terrible but you'd be terrible in an entertaining way.

Derani was going through his parfait. "Do you want one?" Aria was eying the stack of ice cream and brownies. "Well, maybe just a bite." She told Derani, him feeding her. "So, about the Conflict, how do you know about it?" Derani asked Aria. "Well, my boyfriend was a Hubspacer before his death. He decided to make a game like Hubspace, so he investigated and played around with it's files. Then suddenly, the program just killed him!" Aria recalled.

"Are you by any chance, aligned with anyone?" Derani asked her. "Well, I do know-thank you!" Aria recieved her crepe, moving the white melting ice cream on the Nutella-filled crepe. "I know some people who are involved. Good friends with some. Hubspace is how I met them." Derani thought something. "Wait, so you ARE part of the Conflict?" He asked her, ready to interrogate her. "Well, technically, yeah. My cousin Shouhei actually leads my group, and I never get to spend any time with him. He's like a brother to me, you know?" Aria told Derani everything.

Now we have a girl who's Boyfriend was killed by Hubspace and yet she plays it. She's playing a game that killed someone dear to her and isn't forcing her to play it.

"So you joined the Herons?" Derani knew Aria was with them, with the relation between Shouhei and her as evidence! "Pretty much, yeah." Aria began eating her crepe. "All due to the death of my special one..." Derani wrote down everything. "Aria Tsubasajima... Shouhei Tomogawa... COUSINS... Death of a loved one..." He whispered. "Oh, anyway, do you like chronicling things?"

NOBODY USES THE WORD 'CHRONICILING' ANYMORE. ESPECIALLY NOT A HIGHSCHOOL KID.

Derani asked Aria. "Of course! I'm a die-hard fan of taking down notes. Well, you ARE chronicling Hubspace after all, and I'd do the same." Aria told him. "Wait, speaking of Hubspace...

...I'd like to ask you something." Derani asked. "So anyway... do you think these groups question reality?"

What the f**k does that even mean?

I think I might review something else next time... this story is almost physically exhausting to read. It's like wading through a chest-deep river of s**t.

Reviews

[StarNinja]

"Sure! I'm a kid that's interested in current events!"
Best line of the whole thing. Hands down. It neatly sums up what kind of story KIKEN is. You know, I'm tempted to write a story using all the cliches this guy used just to prove a point to myself. Cliches became cliches for a reason. They worked! It's because of people like this that things become cliched, because they throw in whatever they want into a story without any thought whatsoever. None. It's like this guy transcribed an anime episode and he hopes oh so dearly that we can picture it like he does. Can't you just see the huge eyes and small mouths and crazy hair?
Great review like always, J.R. Keep it up!

[YouoweYoupay]

StarNinja efficiantly spoke for me. My attention-span becomes painfully short everytime I pass by bland prose to politely return favors. But this time I honestly, earnestly tried my best to keep up with this mingled, god-knows-what plot. Seriously, what is this guy trying to say or convey through all the stitching?? Great logic, and observation. It's obvious that you read alot, not as in hide inside boring-to-tears books, but read as in genuinely learn and discover. And, as always, you have not failed to make me laugh! Great episode, man. Keep me updated.