"Sophie," Star cried out, tugging on her sleeve. The two of them rested soundly on a couch in Sunlight HQ, yet Sophie was far from sound. She was locked in a comatose state, caught in the void between reality and past, and forced to dwell in it for unknown reasons. Sophie's eyes twitched and throbbed left and right, discerning reality as a temporary vision. Star grew increasingly impatient, going from tugging to shoving. "Sophie! Wake up!"
Sophie's head slumped forward as she broke free from her trance. Her neck shot toward Star's attention, pretending as if she had never experienced her drastic shift in behavior. A single drop of drool leaked from the side of her mouth, and she sipped it up before returning to normal. "Hm? Sorry, did you say something?" She nonchalantly replied.
Star's eyebrows slanted downward as her pupils thinned, seeing past Sophie's ruse. "You always do that," she said. Her voice trailed off in disappointment. "Why?"
"I just think a lot about things," Sophie said. "Good things and bad things."
"Are you lying to me?" Star asked.
"Yeah." Sophie admitted, looking away as she stood up. She caught Chiaki moving toward the entrance of their headquarters, hoping to approach him to break their conversation apart, but Star pressed onward.
"Are you thinking about your old friend again?" Star asked.
Sophie stopped in her tracks and slowly turned her head back to face her. She swallowed before taking on the question. "I was," She admitted. "But I'm trying not to."
"So don't," Star said. "And think about me and everyone else."
"It's easier said than done," Sophie said, sitting back on the couch. "I never fixed it. So it is never going to stop until I do."
"You won't stop?" Star asked.
"No. I won't stop."
Star sighed and rotated her body until her feet extended to the opposite side of the couch. She crossed her arms and pouted. "If you really cared about me, then you would stop." She muttered incoherently like a spoiled child.
"Starrosa!" Sophie scolded. "That's not a very nice thing to say!"
"And you're not a very nice person!" Star exploded in rage, shouting at the top of her lungs. She stood up and stomped her feet after every sentence she finished. As she clenched her fists in bitterness, her face rose to beet red. "Who are you? Acting like my mommy and all that, but you're just a stranger! And who am I? I don't even remember!"
"Star, calm down-"
"You're not the boss of me!" Star cried, pointing at Sophie's face. "Am I even Star? Or am I Ash, just like you keep accidentally calling me! Just like now!"
"But, I just called you Star." Sophie said.
"Stop playing around with me! You just said it again!"
"I... did...?" Sophie whispered, bringing both of her palms up to her face, obscuring her vision of Star. Her vision began to blur as reality around her distorted once again. Furniture and other objects around Sunlight HQ began to warp and wriggle before phasing out of existence one by one. Shallow, low breaths from Sophie was interrupted by an increasingly dangerous warp out of existence. The headquarters eventually shifted in setting, replacing it with Ash Meguro's apartment complex the night before she was kidnapped.
Picture frames with Ash, Sophie, and Shibusawa decked the living room in nothing but joyous memories. The early glory days when the inseparable trio would marvel for the future to come, journeying together to discover what their lives had in store for them. It was all coming back to her, only to waste itself away after the unbearable truth returned.
She dropped her palms down. Starrosa vanished. Sophie scanned the area, but found herself in her distorted reality of Ash's apartment complex, stunned at what was happening. She approached the picture frames one by one, gently caressing them while reminiscing about the times that the trio had together.
One of them was their first day hiking an impossible trail to where Ash's inhumane stamina pushed her to the end while the other two slogged midway. The picture depicted them taking a selfie at the end of the trail, cheery eyed and peace signing to celebrate their victory. Another one was a picture of Shibusawa passing out on a couch on a movie night, and the two girls drew sharpie childish imagery on his face. Another was a museum trip, and another was a family reunion.
Sophie giggled to herself after revisiting each picture frame. Her amusement was interrupted by a stout and sharp voice from behind.
"How do you expect to save her, when you can't even save yourself?" A young red-haired child asked, standing still gazing into Sophie's eyes.
"Save myself?" Sophie said. "You're just a kid. What do you know about me?"
"Look closer," The child said. "You are blind to the truth. And that is what makes you weak."
Sophie examined closer. The red pigtails. The pink backpack. The eyes of a furious child. "You're me." She concluded.
"And I'm stronger than you ever were," Sophie's younger version bluntly stated. "Stronger than this version of you, a weak and pathetic version who runs away from everything. All of her mistakes. All of her failures. All of it."
"Stop it." Sophie pleaded.
A gust of wind blew through Sophie's body, startling her in the hallway behind her. She turned back, catching the high school version of herself standing ominously with her hands by her side. "You're in denial," She said. "You're always running away from everything, hoping it will be better, but it won't. How can you possibly stand yourself?"
"I said, stop it." Sophie repeated.
A final gust of wind blew past her into the living room once more, revealing the current version of Sophie standing in the center before she underwent a drastic appearance change. It was the AIL version of her, working eternally hoping to rebuild the one that she had lost dearly. The depressed and sadistic version, who worked without a purpose, stared at her with judgmental eyes. "So you build a robot of that one you lost, hoping to fill that void in your heart. How pathetic can you be?"
"Stop it!" Sophie screamed, covering her eyes with her palms. "I get it, all right? I get it!"
All three versions of Sophie chuckled maniacally as they gathered around her in a triangle formation. They raised their right palms outward, trapping Sophie in an inescapable rainbow-colored barrier from their unknown energies combined. Sophie gasped as she removed her hands from her face, pressing against the barrier in an attempt to escape.
"Why not just stay here?" The child version asked.
"You won't fix anything." The teenage version said.
"You will live your life as a delusion." The AIL version said.
"Every"
"Single"
"Day."
Sophie shook her head. "No," She rejected. "I won't do this. I refuse to stay here!"
The child version of her cackled enthusiastically, reaching far levels of insanity that Sophie had never seen before. "HAHAHAHA! And what would you do even if you left?"
"You wouldn't be able to deal with yourself, even if you tried!" The teenage version of her continued.
"Why not stay here and rest forever? You will always be in the place you call home, comfortably sitting without a single worry in the world. And you can live in your fantasy, which you deem your reality." The AIL version of her bargained.
"You... you would let me do that?" Sophie asked, releasing her grasp on the barrier with her fingers.
"Of course," The child version of her said. "While you're careening into nothingness..."
"You always have a choice..." The teenager version of her continued.
"To remain and to see the ones you love, forever." The AIL version finished.
"I... I..." Sophie stammered. She examined her current life on the surface, and it was no better than anything she had ever experienced. Ash. Shibusawa. Her family. Her happiness. It was all there for here, in this one bubble that contained pure solace. The thought of it made her smile. She lived for nine years waiting for this moment, and it would all be there if she had just said yes.
"I..."