A work currently being created by Kazegen
The main character is Saigi Elsee, a young man who is bored of humanity. To him, all people are walking cliches. He has consumed so much literature, and read so many books that he thinks that he could predict anyone's entire life after just spending a day with them. He lives off of people's "twists", and once he gets the twist he loses all interest in them, friend or not.
He wakes up one night with a man, his mirror image, leaning against his window, casting a black shadow across his bed. He says, "Are you the real me?".
From there begins the events of the War. Not that war, but a War fought by people that possess Shadows, which are the manifestations of the innermost part of the owner's soul. They all take on a human shape, and all have the powers of ancient monsters from humanity's past. The War takes place within the Hour, a stretch of time right after 11:59 but before 12:00 each night. This war, of course, has rules that the combatants fight by. The catch is, none of them know all the rules. Some of them don't even know that they're supposed to fight.
Done in visual novel format. It'll get here eventually.
This series contains examples of:
- Abandoned Hospital: The hospital in which Saigi and Michi stayed during their childhood closes soon after they leave, due to "criminal activities". Late in the second loop, Saigi has to visit it to find #1, and finds out that those activities never stopped, not even after everyone had left the hospital. The behavior of #1's cronies act as a clue to the discovery of the cult in the third loop.
- Abusive Parents: Saigi's parents were dicks. Not only did they neglect him, when they did pay attention to him, it was to tell him that he wasn't smart enough to understand why Mommy and Daddy faught constantly. The good news is that the neighbors were not stupid and found out about the abuse, leading to Saigi being adopted by his older brother.
- Apocalypse How: (Class 2) What Saigi's grandfather thought Saigi would wish for after the events of the first loop, after he manipulated the events to happen as such.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: Near the end of the first loop, Michi gives a very heartfelt one to Saigi. Saigi's response is to RUN. This is understandable, because not only is she holding a gigantic chain-axe, she just used it to murder Naya, who Saigi was in love with at the time. Not only that, but Michi immediately begins to chase after him, but begins to spout lines that wouldn't be out of place in a porno, making her the worst kind of Cloudcuckoo Lander.
- Artificial Riverbank: The only river in town has one of these, and it's Hidora's favorite place to visit during the Hour. This is because in his life as the Lerneaen Hydra, he lived in a river.
- Ax-Crazy: Michi, literally.
- Barrier Warrior: #4's Shadow's powers.
- Bungled Suicide: As a child, Saigi tries to "understand death" after being abused by his father. Naturally,he's too scared to do it directly, so eventually he runs straight into an electric fence. This leads to his hospitalization. See the Scars Are Forever example for more.
- Corrupt Church: The antagonists of the third loop and on, and the antagonists of the entire game.Saigi's Grandfather: Religion is like a science experiment. You cannot expect to get the same results without first replicating the conditions used in the initial experiments. Therefore, eliminating 2/3 of the world's population should produce the Messiah, yes?
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Moment of Awesome:- The climax of the first route, where Saigi uses the fact that Michi's eyes are blurry to pull a switcheroo between him and his shadow to get her to stop long enough to enter her mind.
- About a third of the way through the second route, Saigi has to fight one of Michi's fragments almost immediately after the 3rd hour begins. He takes his grandfather's advice and activates the Hand of Aksakov, annihilating the fragment.
- At the middle of the second route, Saigi has to defend Yamatarou while he hacks into the network to get the password to access the asylum. Unexpectedly, Michi and Naya show up, and Saigi has to fight off a crazed Michi with his telekinesis while #4's shadow has to stop Naya's assault.
- Disposable Vagrant: It's unclear exactly what Michi's childhood was like before she was taken off the street by the Hospital, but it's almost certain she was an orphan.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: At the end of the second loop, Saigi learns that the only way to get out of the "Groundhog Day" Loop is to stop the war from happening. The only way to stop it is to destroy the organization responsible. Unfortunately, Saigi knows next to nothing about these people, and has to spend entire loops gathering information, since he is the only one that retains his memory between loops. The third loop would be more accurately called the third through tenth loop, since 7 loops is the bare minimum to have enough information to go after the cult.
- Not only that, but even then there are tons of choices thrown at you. Any fuck-ups will send you back to start another loop, and there are even bad ends that stop being bad ends once you have certain pieces of information. Those ones are required to finish the game. Then, there are the choices that pop up when you get pieces of information, scattered down routes you've already been on, leading to new routes, so on and so forth. Needless to say, the third loop is the meat of the game.
- Saigi starts the loop at 11:30 at night, in his bed. He has to jump out of bed and literally fly to the other side of town, 30 miles away in less than half an hour to prevent Michi from being molested. Otherwise, she will go on to fuck up any attempt at going on anybody else's route.
- Exploited Trope: Saigi tries to use several tropes and stereotypes to his advantage in the War. It almost never works, because he relies on people doing things that fit their stereotype. He learns his lesson when he's blindsided by Michi's killing of Naya at the very end of the first loop.
- Genre Savvy: Deconstructed. Life, and especially people, have a way of defying stereotypes and cliches. Some people may seem like cliches, but oftentimes there's a hidden side to them that you wouldn't expect. Saigi learns this the hard way, when all of his plans that rely on people acting to their stereotypes fail horribly, because people just aren't that simple.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: When Saigi wins the original War, he unintentionally wishes to "start over at the beginning". The main conflict then kicks in: He's stuck here until he can prevent the War from occuring at all.
- Have a Nice Death: Played with, since in the third loop some Bad Ends turn into actual routes that Saigi can gain information from once he triggers certain flags.
- Heroic BSoD: Two happen in the first loop: One when Saigi witnesses Michi completely slaughtering Naya with a chain-axe, and another after she commits suicide at his hands. This leads to the end of the first loop.
- Heroic Safe Mode: After Saigi goes to school again at the beginning of the second loop, it's understandable that he would be confused and afraid, his best friends being killed in front of him and all. So when he sees Michi in the hallway, who runs up to him with the exact same smile she killed Naya with, he FREAKS OUT and runs away as fast as he can. This leads to the Woman Scorned example below.
- Improbable Weapon User: Michi uses a Chain-Axe, and has the strength to blow doors off with it.
- Journey to the Center of the Mind: The basis of the entire first route. Saigi enters the other participant's minds, usually parodies of other genres or scenarios, and rips them apart. Although he eventually finds out that doing this is not the only thing you can do...
- Kaiju: What the Shadows transform into when one person's ego is broken. The shadows then duke it out, and whoever wins gets to live.
- #1: A rather large cockroach, which can change the physical properties of anything it is touching.
- #2: A snake, a really really big snake. Can change any material to stone upon touch.
- #3: The Black Death, for real. You know, a billion bacteria everywhere you step. Also, this strain is horribly lethal and kills within seconds.
- #4: A giant angel, dressed in the robes of the Valkyrie from legend. She summons mythical heroes to fight for her.
- She summons Heracles when she fights the Lernaean Hydra, creating what is possibly the most awesome lines in the game for Hydra.Hydra: HERAKLES, I FELLED YOU ONCE WITH MY DEADLY POISON, EVEN AFTER DEATH OVERCAME ME! MY REVENGE DOES NOT DIE WITH ME!
- She summons Heracles when she fights the Lernaean Hydra, creating what is possibly the most awesome lines in the game for Hydra.
- Magnificent Bastard: Saigi is this as long as his plans are not based around predicting what people will do based on arbitrary actions.
- #s 3 + 1 are also this.
- Mind over Matter: Saigi's Hand of Aksakov
, which is a giant translucent hand that moves independently of Saigi's own hand. It causes him horrible pain to use it at first, but eventually he can start making multiple hands, bigger and smaller hands, and all sorts of shit. The second route culminates in fighting off an asylum's worth of zombies with 6 submachine guns at once. - Meaningful Name: When Saigi asks his shadow to name himself, he says his name is Hidora. This is the Romanization for the word Hydra.
- Niger Sol = Black Sun in Latin.
- Multiple Endings: All of them are canon, since the "Groundhog Day" Loop enables Saigi to retain knowledge between loops. Some of this knowledge is required to finish the game, and even then the player will miss out on extra content if they try to speed through it. Every participant has an ending, even the evil ones.
- Mythical Motifs: Each of the Shadows is actually an ancient beast resurrected inside of a human heart, and brought into being inside the Hour.
- Saigi's shadow is the Lernaean Hydra. It manifests as a double of Saigi, with the ability to sprout gigantic hypodermic needles from his wrist, which vacuum up anything they pierce.
- #1's Shadow is the essence of all Computer Viruses: an Eldritch Abomination that enters all technology it can get to, watching everyone and everything, and can even infect humans!
- #2's Michi's Shadow is a Succubus. It manifests as Naya.
- #3's Shadow is The Black Death, packed into a gothic loli. It manifests as itself, #3 is the only one immune.
- #4's Shadow is the Valkyrie. It's main power is to change fate through the Butterfly Effect; this takes the form of Beehive Barriers. It manifests as #4's older sister, who is a Big Brother Mentor mixed with a bit of Tsundere as her interpretation of what the real #4's sister was like.
- #5's Shadow is a Wight. Since there isn't a clear definition on what wights can do, this wight has the ability to "shift" whatever it chooses in a 200 ft radius to another dimension filled with purple fog. It's only limitation is that it also must shift itself. Anything that is shifted except for itself loses its bearings for at least 2 seconds, which is enough time for it to kill you. It manifests as an exact duplicate of it's owner. This can lead to identification confusion.
- #6's Shadow is the Phoenix, which has the ability to make stuff explode. It manifests as a Sociopathic Soldier that follows its owner around, shooting at anything it sees.
- Saigi's shadow is the Lernaean Hydra
- Nightmare Fuel: Plenty.
- Phony Veteran: Jason Veli is one of these, and is extremely insecure about it. He escaped from the base during the night before the soldiers were shipped out of Boot Camp because he was afraid.
- Police Are Useless: Averted. You'd think the police would investigate you when DNA evidence of you being at the scene of a suicide is evident, and look! There they are now!
- Psychic Powers: All of the participants of the war have them, though they only start to show up in the second loop. Since experience with psychic powers carries over between loops, the secondary characters only begin to really show off their powers from the third loop on.
- Rules of the Game: It is explicitly stated that there are 7 rules to the War that carry the Death Penalty if broken. However, nobody supposedly knows all the rules by default.
- Rule 1: There are 7 Participants, and 7 Shadows in this War.
- Rule 2: Humans can only be permanently killed by entering their mind, and destroying the source of the Shadow's power. Shadows cannot be killed except by disabling their masters. Any Human or Shadow not killed in this way will re-spawn at the end of the Hour, with all knowledge intact.
- Rule 3: Objects cannot be manipulated in this game during the Hour. However, any object carried by a Participant upon the coming of the Hour will be available for use during the hour.
- Rule 4: Shadows cannot exist outside of the Hour, nor can Humans not participating in the War come into the Hour.
- Rule 5: Upon a Participant's death, the killer shall learn of all Rules that the victim knew.
- Rule 6: Each Participant enters the hour in the same place each night: the location where they first entered the hour.
- Rule 7: The winner may receive one wish from God.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers!: Each Participant can break 1 rule each, although they might not know it.
- Saigi can break rule 2, Michi can break rule 4, #1 can break rule 7(!!!), #3 can break rule 1 (Shadow can copy itself onto other people, thereby bypassing rule)), #4 can break rule 3, #5 breaks rule 5(knows all rules from start), #6 breaks rule 6(He is placed into a random place in the town each night.)
- Saigi's rule breaking is unique, because while he can eliminate people outside of mind breakage, he is also the only person that can be permakilled outside of mind breakage. At least, until the third route in which he gets killed deliberately in order to gain information.
- Scars Are Forever: After Saigi's "run-in" with the electric fence, he is hospitalized for 4 months for both suicide watch and to treat the burns on his chest. There, he meets Michi, who escaped from the second basement, and quickly becomes friends with her. From then on, they are inseparable. She becomes a person to talk to when he needs to, and he becomes her emotional crutch.
- Shout-Out:
- Stalker with a Crush: Michi is one of these, but until the third loop she's so screwed up that she can't tell that her behavior isn't love, just obsession.
- Taken for Granite: This is Naya's power... kind of. She sucks the life force from whatever she touches, so touching an arm would render it useless until the Hour ends. This power is used to gruesome effect when she shuts down Saigi's heart and lungs in one of the bad ends.
- Tsundere: Michi is one of these HAHAHA no. Actually, she acts like this to try to attract Saigi, who otherwise ignores her. She drops this pretense after she is found out.
- Woman Scorned: After Saigi runs screaming from Michi, she slowly turns around, and says, "Who did this? WHY IS HE RUNNING?! " Her eyes are empty, and she's gone into Yandere mode.
- Yandere: Michi. Oh dear lord, Michi.
- As a better explanation, Michi is completely obsessed with Saigi, since he is the first friend that she ever made in the hospital. Therefore, she based her entire life around him, from stalking him constantly to hiding under his bed so she can watch him sleep. Ironically, this is her starting point in the Hour, every night. During the climax of the first route, when Saigi goes to meet Naya at the school to discuss future plans, Michi finds out that Saigi has fallen in love with Naya. Naturally, she goes completely batshit.
