Chapter 10:

The Decision

The Time Capsule - Part 1


  It took us a while to call the others and for them to come down to the ground floor. Haru-kun insisted he went. Under protest I accepted, and so I was left to guard our two 'prisoners'. I asked him not to move fast or he might get dizzy and collapse, and due to the darkness he might even tumble down the stairs. He complied.

  After half an hour or so we were all gathered at the ground floor. The two teenage psychos were still unconscious. I hit them hard enough to remain unconscious for at least two hours without being revived externally. Of course that applies to 'normal people'. I have no idea if the pollen gave us faster revival and recuperating properties as well. These two might just be the first gifted 'subjects' to test that. 

  I decided to maintain a neutral stance, kind of like a judge; neither a prosecutor nor a defense attorney but something in between. I was still unsure whether to vote  for or against letting them live, but if everyone else gave a thumbs down sign I planned to give one as well. I was no 'veto leader'.

  "As you must have probably guessed these two are complete psychopaths. They love killing not in order to survive or out of self-defense but simply because they enjoy it. It appears that 'babe-chan' here is the ringleader and Dai-kun follows her lead. She said she wanted to gut you all girls out like pigs and take cute little trophies from your entrails. And she meant it.

Oh, and that would happen after having Dai-kun rape all four of you, which she would love to watch", I explained. It was almost midnight and it was as dark as it could get. We had started a little fire to see each other and the psychos, and our own footsteps.

  Yuki-chan moved closer to Akira-kun and I think she trembled a little bit. Akira-kun looked furious. Our other three girls looked angry as well, particularly my Fumiko-chan. Hinata-kun did not show too much emotion, but his body language suggested he was rather nervous.

  "So my question to you is this: do we let them live to kill the next group of young girls they find or do we kill them ourselves, right here, to spare any more victims?", I asked.

"Please do not take this lightly, this is a very important decision for us. If we take a life, even if it is a toxic life like theirs, we can never untake it. And next time we are faced with a similar moral dilemma we will probably hesitate much less to kill. The first one is always the hardest. Are these two psychos worth darkening our souls like that?", I made my case in as much a neutral way as possible.

  "Are we going to hold a vote on this?", Fumiko-chan asked. "If that's the case I vote we kill them to put them out of their misery. Mad dogs need to be put down". She sounded even darker than usual.

  "Do not be hasty luv, and no we are not voting, not yet. I want to hear the opinion of everyone first. We will vote later, but I want consensus. If even one of us objects to killing them then we will not. Period.", I explained.

  "Shouldn't we wait for them to wake up to see for ourselves what kind of character they have?", Midori-chan -our 'Londoner'- asked.

  That.. was a very good idea actually.

  "We can do that, but they are both very dangerous, so you will need to stay quite far way from them. Even that would not completely protect you from her, only from Dai. Dai-kun here is telekinetic and 'babe-chan' is a telepath who loves to inflict intense pain with her mind", I realized right after uttering those words that I also laid them our raw, without any foreplay, just like Fumiko-chan earlier. I saw a mix of worried and puzzled faces.

  "That... is only a thing in manga and anime, right? Surely... you are joking, right? Please tell me you are joking!!", Asuga-chan, our youngest girl, pleaded.

  "We are not", Haru-kun replied. "My head was almost cracked like an egg by our boy Dai here. And he never laid a finger on me - not a physical one I mean. In just a few days you will also develop powers. Perhaps your senses have already become a bit more acute. It is quite dark here, we only have this little fire, but I can see you all clearly, as if the sun has just set. I can also hear a needle falling ten meters away if it's quiet enough. Oh, and I can do... that", Haru-kun lifted a small piece of concrete and levitated it with his mind, before throwing it far away at high speed.

  The others were all startled; a couple looked scared. While Haru-kun was very low key, he wasn't very subtle about some stuff, particularly in social interactions. He was still a boy in that domain.

  "So... super powers do exist. I was always a skeptic but I just saw telekinesis with my own freaking eyes. And you say we will all develop them. That is both exciting and scary, since everyone will have them, both the good and the bad guys", said Akira-kun.

  I noticed that Fumiko-chan looked stunned. Not quite lost for words though. Since I know her I think she was running equations and calculations in her mind to come up with a plausible explanation. One within the bounds of the laws of physics rather than.. magic. That could... take a while.

  It was Hinata-kun's turn to speak. He was a kind of 'subleader' of our three newest additions, and his two girls looked up to him.

  "Look, I have no real problem with killing them but like you said, that's a slippery slope. We might be 'corrupted'  and turn dark and evil. It's a bit of a step too far. I would support killing someone only while in self-defense. But these two are tied all up like sausages and on top of that they are unconscious. I would never kill an unconscious person. That would be utterly unethical".

  So we poured some water on them to wake them up. An hour or so had passed, which meant it should work. Dai-kun woke up first. He glared at us with fury, saw his still sleeping girlie beside him, and when he realized he was tied up tried to break his duct tape. In vain. When that didn't work he tried using his telekinetic power. But his hands with which he guided his power were tied up behind his back, and it looked like he didn't even know where to start.

  Random small objects moved around but none even got close to us. He was a bad shot before, now he was a lousy one. His girlfriend looked like she was reviving though. And her power did not require to be precise at all. It appears that anyone within a certain range around her (except Dai-kun or did he develop tolerance?) fell victim to her.

  I warned the others to move far back and only I and Haru-kun stayed close. They moved back ten meters or so; they would still feel her mad pain but hopefully it would be quite softer.

  When she was fully awake and realized she was captured beside Dai she started, er, screaming. That was.. odd. She screamed, howled basically, like a hyena which just all of her puppies. She used no power on us at first. Then she started threatening us :

  "We went easy on you before, but if you do not release us right now we are going to unleash hell on you. Particularly on your four little sluts right there. We will slice them open while they are alive and play with their internal organs! We will remove their entrails and hang them around our necks like necklaces and they will still be conscious enough to see us do it!", she nodded behind us to where the rest of us were.

  "That is not going to happen psycho girl. You are both too dangerous, too unstable and too blood thirsty. You are basically a walking talking public health hazard. We were now debating whether to slice both your throats open or do something else with you", I said. I provoked her on purpose. I wanted her to wear her out by using her power on me so that the others were spared most of the pain. And it worked.

  I think this time she focused all of her power on just me. She looked at me furiously and kind of scared at the same time. Oh... I almost passed out from that pain. It reached me deep, too deep. Not just my head but all my bones were attacked. I think her power worked from the inside out, kind of like a microwave oven.

  I felt dizzy, stumbled, almost collapsed, but I didn't. I saw it as a challenge. It was a mental attack, not a physical one. Thus I could develop a mental resistance to it. I knew plenty of tricks from my long departed  Hideo-sensei. The man taught me almost everything he knew, and he would have taught me all the rest had Naturecaust not be unleashed on us all.

  I imagined that her power was not a single awl this time, but multiple smaller ones that pierced me wherever I felt pain. I controlled my breathing and then my heart rate. I meditated (I learned how to meditate on-the-fly, even when standing up, during my third year of kendo training) and tried to picture removing these multiple awls slowly from my body.

  The awls resisted but I kept pulling them out. This lasted for a couple of minutes, when they finally let go. I think she used too much of her power on too short of time, since right after that she almost lost conscience again, and some blood dripped from her nose.

  I nodded to the others to approach. Dai-kun saw his love almost fainting from the effort and shedding a bit of blood and went crazy.

  "I will kill you! I will kill everyone of you! I will kill all of you and I will rape your four sluts in any way possible to man and then some!"

  Haru-kun seemed to enjoy it. "Yeah yeah, we got it, you are a tough guy Dai-kun. But if you didn't have that power you would have been face down on the floor within seconds before. And I would have done it without using my power, just my hands. What happened, did your mommy not love you enough or something or did your daddy hit you a bit too hard?"

  Either of these taunts appeared to have struck a nerve, so Dai tried to direct all of his power on Haru-kun. He went almost utterly mad with rage. He didn't focus, it felt like he released all of it. A kind of force field pushed both of us back a few meters, hard. I managed to remain upright somehow but Haru-kun fell down; fortunately he landed soft. The others were barely affected since they were not within the power's range. Yuki-chan was about to fall but Akira-kun helped her remain upright.

  However Dai-kun's unfocused power did not just work toward our direction. It worked in a kind of bubble all around him. We had tied them up in a radiator, and directly above them there was a horizontal steel pipe for natural gas. Dai-kun's power hit it hard and snapped it in two. When Dai-kun stopped using his power -and thus the 'pressure'  from it was released- the loose half of the steel pipe fell down directly on him. Perhaps he might have survived had he been hit with the blunt side of the pipe, but it was the crudely shattered rough side that hit him.

  The pipe went through his head, almost completely vertically, like a hot awl going through butter. The pipe didn't just crack his head like an egg, it went all the way through his head, neck and even rib cage. Dai-kun died instantly, and probable felt no pain at all. He was dead before even his psycho girlfriend realized what happened.

  Yuki-chan and Asuga-chan screamed almost in unison at the sight, but our psycho girl (who, by the way, was dazzlingly attractive - by far the hottest girl of all five present) just remained there, in complete shock, glaring in horror at what used to be Dai-kun, who now had a steel pipe for a head.

  Then.. she fainted. It appears that what happened was a bit too much and she shut herself down to protect what was left of her sanity; assuming there was any sanity left in her.

  Our team was also in a bit of shock, particularly the girls - except Fumiko-chan, who I think looked kind of relieved. If we excluded the multiple skeletons we had encountered this was both the first death and first dead body to witness with our own eyes. For all of us.

  "So.. our two problems just became one as you can see. It's.. er.. unfortunate or fortunate what happened to Dai-kun, depending on our point of view. What matters is that we did not stain our hands with his blood, he basically committed seppuku by telekinesis, which must certainly be the first in human history. If the Guinness records guys were still around I am sure they would be thrilled", I said trying to lighten up the mood a bit. It did not work.

  "But what are we going to do about her?", asked Fumiko-chan, "she is arguably even crazier than him and potentially more dangerous. Her power is.. interesting, though creepy. A telepath who loves to inflict pain.. She is quite a piece of work. What a waste, really, since she is one of the most beautiful girls I've ever seen. We all faintly felt her pain before, even from way back there. How on Earth did you endure being the sole focus of her rage?"

  "If I was unable to endure and resist her mental attack Hideo-sensei would have been very disappointed in me. Above all I did not want to let him down, even though he died seven decades ago", I explained with a 'You already know that, don't you?' tone.

  "I say we kill the bitch", Midori-chan intervened, "In the UK there was a saying : 'Mad dogs need to be put down' "

  "Great, but who is going to do it? Do you volunteer?" I asked her, "Have you ever taken a life?"

  Midori-chan looked the other way and bit her nail a bit. A clear 'No, no way'. 

  "Do you think we could, er, reform her or something?", Yuki-chan said. "I realize she is a complete psycho that would murder all of us the first chance she gets. But there must be some reason for that. People are not born evil after all".

  "Ah.. the old 'nature vs nurture' argument. I am with you on that. I think 'nurture' us quite more significant than nature, despite being a biologist. If we let her go she will probably torture and kill the first soul she meets just out of pure rage for losing Dai, which I feel she knew for quite a long time.
We will also not be safe from her, since she will almost certainly try to attack us again, perhaps blaming us for the death of her psycho sweetheart; and with her power she could easily find us, even if we moved away. Particularly if she mentally 'tagged' us - if that is even a thing".

  "I see where are you going with this Asahi-kun", Akira-kun noted, "but if we manage to reform her, at least in part, she could be an asset. And we could use her power to warn us of other hostiles, since she is basically an alarm system with flesh and blood. I get that, but can she be reformed?"

  "On top of that we could use her for when killing is absolutely necessary, and thus keep our own hands clean. I realize that is very cynical of me, and that it would probably conflict with her potential reformation. But desperate times call for desperate measures. Like I said before, unless we all agreed we are not going to kill either of them. But we also need to all agree to keep psycho-chan here with us. So, what say you? Everyone who wants to keep her with us raise your hand", I asked all of them while looking at their eyes and body movement.

  This was the moment of truth. I saw plenty of hands being raised. It might have been a bit cowardly but I wanted to see what the others decided, so I did not yet raise mine. As a leader I was kind of an 'impartial judge' like I mentioned before, so I did not want to influence them. By not raising my hand I also influenced them but I could not help that. Only two did not raise their hands, Haru-kun (as expected) and my own Fumiko-chan.

  "Please state your case, both of you", I asked them "Haru-kun speak first please".

  "She is, quite obviously, a security threat. She is unstable and thus unpredictable. We will not be able to have her guard us, since she might kill her guard buddy and then call a group of hostiles from the roof to kill all of us, pretending she is an abducted innocent princess who we is being kept hostage or something. That would work, on 9 out of 10 males or more.

On top of that she is yet another mouth to feed. Even if she uses her 'alarm power' to warn us of hostiles I doubt we can trust her. She might instead call hostiles with her power to have us all killed", Haru-kun was quite, er, thorough. He covered almost every security threat she could pose.

  It was now my girl Fumiko-chan's turn.

  "I do not and will not ever trust psycho bitches. I used to know one like her, back in high school. She was not a killer -as far as I knew- but she was an evil bitch, a bully who enjoyed tormenting other girls just to have fun. I heard that her step-father had raped her and she hated and envied normal, happy-looking girls. She feels the same way to me.

On the other hand, I subscribe to the maxim 'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer'. She is not worth staining our hands and souls with her blood, and if we release her she might return with ten gifted imbeciles -dragging them all by their nose with her beauty- to kill us all. I also want to test her power. So, I am reluctantly agreeing to keep her with us", she said while raising her hand.

  Only I and Haru-kun were now left. I did not want to apply pressure on him by raising my own hand, so I said to him :
"Haru-kun, I realize it is going to be hard but we are not going to take our eyes off her. Her power is not lethal anyway, and in time as you must have also felt you develop resistance to it. I agree with Fumiko-chan that releasing her is a far greatest risk.

And I do not want to put her down like a rabid dog. Not because she is hot (I said that impulsively without even thinking, and I literally felt Fumiko-chan's glare on me) but because I fear the effects on us are going to be dark and irreversible. This could break us".

  Haru-kun grumbled a little bit and then said,

  "Fine, you both made a good case. The pros of keeping her with us are greater than killing her or letting her go. However I am not going to take my eyes off her", he said while raising his hand. I finally also raised mine.

  Our dear descendants from the next century, this was a chapter where our morals were put to the test. For now I think we passed that test, but what is going to happen during the next month or so when the food and resources are going to dwindle? Will our morals conflict with our need for survival or will they co-exist? Read on to find out!