Questions and Answers

Night of the final challenge

December 11th, 2050

Heaven’s Reach Shrine

“If you knew the world would end, would you spend the rest of your life trying to save it?”

The black box housing Daiki Tennojima’s Artificial Intelligence was activated under the watchful gaze of the cherry blossom tree. Its monitor displayed the same question the night before, while a robotic voice read the line for all the bronze heaven to hear.

Four participants stood before the machine.

Rei.

Souichiro.

Lucia.

Hidenori.

“Yes.”

“Hell yeah.”

“I will.”

“Of course. It’s not even a question worth considering.”

The computer acknowledged their answers for the first question, then switched to the second one.

“If history could be changed, and the ascension could be undone, would you make that choice?”

“No.”

“Hell no. Are you kidding me? Life would be sooo boring.”

“That depends. Hypothetically speaking, some of us might not even exist. Paradox aside, even if we remain the same except not have our powers, how much would the world benefit or lose? Without these variables I cannot give a definitive answer.”

“Yes for me… my father chose the ascension over his family. It was… regretful.”

The computer confirmed their answers, then moved on to the third question.

“If the world could fully ascend and everyone becomes an exalt, would you make this choice?”

“…”

“Yessir! Easiest choice of my life! Contrary to what people might think, I don’t want to hog all the ascension to my exalted brethren. The more people have powers, the more exciting life would be. Simple as that.”

“Same answer as the last. It depends. When will it occur? Right now? Fifty years ago? Without enough details to consider, I cannot give a definitive answer.”

“No… that would simply be chaotic, I think. No.”

The computer waited. Keisuke perked up. “Reiji? Please answer the question.”

“If I really had to choose now,” Rei said, “the answer would be no.”

The computer acknowledged his answer, though Keisuke seemed somewhat disappointed by it. The computer then displayed the final question. It read: ‘What color is the moon tonight?’

“…”

“Is this a joke? I mean it’s supposed to be grey or something, right? From old pictures.”

“There’s no such answer, as the moon doesn’t exist. At least not anymore.”

“I don’t understand the question, but… if we’re going by history, it’s usually shown as white in movies. So, white.”

“Reiji?” Keisuke pushed for an answer again.

“I don’t know,” Rei said. He tried his darndest not to look up and summon aether into his eyes. If it was simply to look at the moon for a couple of seconds, it wouldn’t even take that much power. But something about this whole thing felt off.

Why was the fourth question so inconsistent with the other three? It wasn’t even voiced. In fact, the computer the night before had a bit of lag when displaying the question, announcing the end of the questioning and displaying the task.

Which was another issue. One of the four participants did not even meet their condition.

“That concludes the question-and-answer portion of the challenge,” the lawyer said.

The monitor showed a loading circle as if the Artificial Intelligence was calculating their answers, but Jirou simply turned the monitor off and reviewed the results on the tablet computer attached to the black box. After some time, his eyebrows twitched and he looked slightly perturbed. He called Keisuke over, and the two discussed whatever results there were from the machine.

“This is a bit surprising,” Jirou said after some time. He wiped his face of sweat, then stepped forward again. “All four of you are viable to move forward to the final challenge. Under normal circumstances we would spend more time to calculate who is more eligible to continue, but considering the state the city has been and the danger posed against us, we decided to have you all proceed to the final challenge instead.”

“What?” Souichiro looked furious. “I don’t even care how stupid the questions are or how the answers are magically calculated. You’re all just winging this crap for all I care, but him?” He pointed an accusing hand at Hidenori. “He didn’t even fulfill his task! Are we not going to talk about that next?”

Jirou paled under bronze light. He looked confused for a moment, then his eyes lit up. “Ah! I get it now!”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Souichiro swore under his breath. “This whole thing is a farce.”

“My mistake. Truly.” Jirou bowed in deep apology. “I simply made the assumption that you all discussed your tasks last night before the, um, the incident.” He cleared his throat. “Moving on… All four have completed the tasks assigned to each of them. Souichiro Miura successfully allowed only exalts to reach the final challenge. Reiji Shimomura made certain Souichiro reached the shrine. Ana Lucia Armstrong made certain Reiji reached the shrine. And last, Hidenori Matsumoto made certain Ruby did not reach the shrine. Congratulations to you all.”

What?

All eyes fell on Hidenori.

The man shook his head and raised his hands defensively. “I-I simply lied!” he said. “I was playing the game! You understand, right? I didn’t even need to do anything because we were all attacked by members of the Humanist Consortium! I, um, I apologize if I offended anyone!”

The silence that followed was deafening.

So, Ruby wasn’t the only one with that kind of task. But why even have it? Some people were meant to win this game, and some weren’t? Rei was somehow one of them, but Ruby and Lucia were not? The game was rigged. That had always been a possibility, but he needed to know why. What was the goal here?

That was when Souichiro started cackling wolfishly. “I gotta hand it to you, pretty boy, you had me going for a while there. I knew I never liked you from the start!”

“I could say the same to you!” Hidenori spat. “You’re chaos! I just—I wanted to win!”

“Yeah, yeah… your daddy issues and all that crap.” Souichiro turned back to the lawyer. “Well, out with it. What’s the final challenge?”

“Oh, yes,” Jirou said with a nod. “The final challenge is perhaps the simplest one and will be determined here tonight. Ahem. All remaining participants, that is the four of you, are tasked with utilizing your strongest abilities using aether to best one another!”

“Combat is the easiest option, as that is how most exalted are tested against each other. But simply demonstrating your best abilities—and we do mean the best you got—will suffice so long as everyone is in agreement with this method. Communication between participants is highly encouraged.”

“Needless to say, serious physical harm or attempt to kill another participant is strictly prohibited and will cause disqualification.” Jirou gestured at the security team surrounding the shrine as if to say they’ll be watching. “The goal is to simply make the other two, in this case other three, submit defeat in whichever way possible.”

Jirou looked at the participants, then sighed in relief.

“Well, then. You can begin. Good luck to you all.”