"My head…"

John awoke to the sound of dripping near his cheek. He frowned, trying to blink to wash out the water dripping onto his cheek, but there was too much liquid. He raised his arm in an attempt to wipe his face, only to hear the rattling of chains, followed by a tugging sensation at his wrist. Frowning, he sat up to find his arms chained to the ground.

"...where am I?"

Suddenly, the previous day's events came rushing back to him. Draco. The hooded men. That big dude, Breaker.

And Doctor.

Doctor. That energy. It was incredibly weak, but it was there. That much was certain. It seemed there was someone besides the Demon King with that logic-defying power. But then why hadn't he recognized John the way Diaboli had? Maybe… maybe he'd somehow gotten hold of the energy but not the memories? Or perhaps the number of memories granted was so few that they were incomprehensible?

"Hungry," John muttered as he looked around.

There wasn't much to see.

The entire place was pitch black. Despite the lack of light, it wasn't very quiet. There was a lot of sobbing and moaning, a few screams and pleas for help, as well as the constant sound of rattling chains. He usually wouldn't have cared, but his aching head, combined with his sour mood due to hunger and fatigue, was pushing him to the edge.

"Shut up!"

This accomplished nothing.

Suddenly, a blinding light appeared as a door swung open, the silhouette of Doctor's thin frame casting a long shadow. Somehow, that light commanded total silence. Not a single sound was heard as the man in the lab coat stepped through the halls, his stride easygoing, steps echoing down the rows of cells. An involuntary shudder went down John's spine. It wasn't so much a feeling of fear as uneasiness. This kind of reaction was never a good thing. Still, at least John could now see what he was in.

There were rows and rows of cages, each with two to three people. They were mostly naked, not because they'd been stripped but mainly because their clothes had been torn or worn down to shreds. It wasn't unlike what he'd seen in the lab he'd rescued Danjo from. In his cell were a young adult elf woman and an old dwarf, both of whom had blank eyes.

Those eyes looked strangely familiar.

"...I see," John muttered.

They were something similar to his own eyes.

"Oh, coreless boy!" Doctor sang out. "I can't wait to play with you."

There was the sound of jingling keys as he opened John's cell door, followed by the rough scraping of metal and a click as the lock unlocked. His two cellmates began to tremble as Doctor came into the cell, but thankfully for them, the man was only interested in John.

"You'll be coming with me," Doctor said, unchaining John's cuffs.

Time. John could reach into his pocket dimension, pull out a shotgun, and—

"Ah, ah, ah," Doctor warned, tentacles shooting out of his lab coat. "Don't try anything. We'll beat that out of you soon enough."

John grit his teeth. He'd let his intent show. His restlessness had gotten the better of him. His captor closed and locked the door, carrying a helpless John out of the room. They wound up in a well-lit room with a surgical table and various instruments, none of which looked inviting. However, that wasn't the surprising thing. What was surprising was the fluorescent lights and modern surgical equipment.

This wasn't supposed to exist.

"Oh, my. You seem familiar with all of this. Might you be from another world?" Doctor said casually.

"Yeah," John shrugged. "What about it?"

Doctor was momentarily stunned by the bluntness of John's response.

"Wonderful! How interesting. To see another of my kind here."

"So-" John started.

"Yes. I'm also from Earth. Much like yourself."

"...the goddess summoned someone like you?" John was momentarily intrigued.

Was this a story where the goddess was secretly evil? That would be something new.

"Goddess? Oh, no, no, my dear friend. It was the Demon King who invited me here."

John tensed up. Demon King. His memories. His energy. There were too many similarities for this to just be a coincidence. His whole "evil goddess" theory flew out the window. This was far, far worse. Even if this man was meant to be here, it didn't change the fact that his memories were interfering with the [Plot] far more than he'd thought. And if Doctor had his memories, then wasn't it possible that others could have them too?

"Now. It's quite surprising that you're coreless, but that just makes me want to test you out even more. Surely you must've already experienced despair in your life. Being weak. Being different. I presume you were bullied, isolated, ignored… so I'll start with the usual, just for now, but eventually, we'll get to the better stuff."

Doctor tied John down and hummed as he got to arranging his tools. Just as he was about to start, he got a good look at John and found something unseen in any of his other toys.

"Oh. Oh, my. How interesting! Your eyes!"

"What eyes?" John grumbled, but he already knew.

John had never cared whether he lived or died. Just like Prota, just like everyone who'd bothered to pay attention to him, Doctor had noticed those empty, soulless eyes of John's. Those eyes that said there wasn't anything left to live for.

"You don't want to live anymore, do you? Has your life been that bad till now? I must say, it makes sense. Is that why you're on this mission? Because you know you're expendable? I'm surprised you haven't killed yourself by now. Or maybe you don't even have the will to manage that?"

Doctor opened John's eyes wide, peering into them as if he were examining a strange specimen.

"Oh, I apologize. You do have something to live for. It's weak, but it's there… no matter!"

Doctor unstrapped John and picked him up again.

"Wh- hey! Where are we going?" the coreless boy protested.

"You're already at a desirable state. You don't care to live. You don't care if you die. You won't try to escape. You won't plead for death, even if I torture you. That's the annoying part, when they think they can escape… no matter. I just need to beat the life out of you a little more."

Doctor paused in his tracks.

"It's strange, though. Everyone else always begs to be let go. You're rather calm, despite the situation."

John just shrugged. "You can't possibly do anything that bad to me."

"You've seen my other lab, haven't you?"

"Yeah?"

"And yet you remain calm?"

John just rolled his eyes. "Yeah. I've seen worse. You'd be surprised at what people can come up with. Imagination's the limit, right?"

"Hm… very true. Regardless, let's keep going, then!"

John closed his eyes as he was carried off. The floor wasn't very comfortable, and yet here he was, getting dragged along.

At a surface level, it was bad. He'd been kidnapped. He could die. Fate, the [Protagonist], would have to come and rescue him, probably leading to some kind of fight with Doctor and the end of the current arc. They'd be done with adventuring, and they could move on to going to school. Finally, might he add. This had been going on for way too long.

But then why had he been captured? Why him? He wasn't meant to be in the [Story], he wasn't meant to be someone important to Fate. There was only one thing he could think of.

He was being forcefully removed. He'd been the solution to too many problems. The [Characters] were being forced to move without an external guiding source, without someone who could see the bigger picture.

"Seriously…"

~~~

"John!"

Prota sat up with a jolt, reaching out in front of her, but the person she was looking for was nowhere to be found.

"...John?"

Her memories were still blurry. She practically fell out of her bed, stumbling, but she managed to pick herself back up. Her belongings were in the corner of the room. She didn't have any clothes, but her hospital gown seemed good enough, so she draped her cloak over her shoulders and slung her staff onto her back.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Oh, you're up? How are you feeling?"

Prota turned as a nurse came into the room. She froze up. She didn't want to talk. That was what John did. Come to think of it, where was John? Usually, he'd be in the same room as her, even if injured. Maybe he'd gone out?

"Mm… are you feeling alright?" the nurse asked, putting some tools on a table nearby.

Prota gave a small nod.

"Alright, I'm just going to check that there are no adverse side effects, okay? Someone used a magic nullification weapon on you. You should be fine, but magic nullification is rare. Sometimes it has adverse effects, so we just need to ensure nothing goes wrong."

Prota nodded again, but she was starting to grow worried. What was this checkup going to entail? The nurse motioned for Prota to return to the bed, and she slowly complied. The nurse took something out of her pocket and approached Prota.

That was it. She couldn't take it anymore. Her subconscious fear of others was growing to be too much. She scurried away from the nurse, huddling up.

"...are you alright?" the nurse frowned.

Prota rocked back and forth, eyeing the nurse cautiously. Thankfully, the lady seemed to understand. She put her equipment away with a sigh.

"Haah… well, you seem to be mobile enough. You can leave whenever you want."

The nurse left the room, muttering to herself, but Prota didn't care. She was alone. Her heart slowly calmed down as she was left alone once more. She held her head, thinking. What had happened? Why had an anti-magic tool been used on her? What had she done to end up in the hospital?

"...awake, but she seems to be distressed."

The nurse's muffled voice came from the other side of the door.

"All right, it's ok. Just let me talk to her."

The door opened once more, revealing a familiar mask.

"Hey, Prota. You… you good?"

Suddenly, it all came rushing back. The cave. The ambush. The noble boy, the spy, everything.

Then John—

"Where?" she demanded in a quiet voice.

The word was sharp and harsh, almost as if she were commanding something rather than asking a question.

Fate looked down. "...they took him. I'm sorry. There was nothing we could do."

Prota didn't react much, surprisingly. She just curled up and sat still. Fate didn't want to interfere. Prota was probably going through a lot.

"We'll be going on a rescue mission in a week," he said quietly.

Prota's head came up. "Where?"

"...you're not coming with us, Prota."

Fate had been looking away out of guilt. He didn't want to do this. He, too, understood what it meant to save someone you loved, but Albert was right. Prota couldn't go on this mission. He turned back to comfort her. He knew this wasn't easy to handle, but when he looked at her face, he was stunned to the point that his words left his mind. The light in her eyes was so dark that even he could see what only John normally was able to see.

Prota's face was normally blank and emotionless, but she made up for it with the emotion she conveyed in her eyes. If you looked close enough or knew enough about her, you could tell how she was feeling. Her eyes, at the moment, were conveying nothing at all. She wasn't sad. She wasn't angry.

There was simply nothing. And that was worse than pain or sadness.

Fate tried to reason with her. "Prota. It's too risky. If they use John as bait, what are you going to do? Are you going to be able to react properly?"

"...alive?"

Fate paused. "We don't know. However, if they meant to kill him, they probably would've done it in front of us. So… probably. That's good news, right?"

Prota's head suddenly snapped up. She did have a way of checking. The health system. She could-

[The [System] cannot be used to bypass aspects of the [Plot]. Once you have confirmed the status of your target, the health system will be reimplemented.]

Prota's head dropped again.

"Danjo?" she muttered.

"He's coming with us. He's, uh… he's not as volatile as you, Prota," Fate said awkwardly. "I mean, don't get this the wrong way, but he can't really… he's not as strong, you know?"

She didn't have an argument for that. Had she been a little more vocal, she would've tried to fight back, but in her current state, all she could do was agree.

"Get some rest, Prota. I'll… I'll leave you alone for a bit, ok? Don't do anything stupid."

Fate got up quietly and left the room, leaving Prota alone with her thoughts.

Again. In the moments it mattered most, she couldn't protect John, and this time, they'd gone up against opponents that John couldn't win against. What kind of protector was she? It didn't matter if John wouldn't leave her side. Even if he didn't want her to go, they'd never get anywhere as long as she was a burden. She'd continue to drag him down, and no matter how good of a swimmer he was, they'd eventually sink.

Why couldn't life be simple? She was supposed to just be a [Character] in a [Story], right? So then, why couldn't her life just be easy? Why couldn't she just get what she wanted? Just once? Just once. She wanted something to go her way, just once. A freebie, something she could enjoy without having to pay the price. She just wanted to be happy without her world falling apart first. If there really

She felt cold. Cold and alone. Despite the blanket wrapped around her, the warmth wouldn't reach. What was she supposed to do now? John wasn't there to tell her what to do.

Now that she thought about it, she realized she had relied on John for everything. For talking, for support, for advice, for warmth… he was her pillar. He was the thing she could grab onto if she started drowning, a shelter in the middle of a storm. And now he was gone. The tides were rising. The storm was closing in.

"What do I do?" Prota said in a small voice, unheard by anyone. "What… do I do now?"

There was nobody to answer her question.

~~~

Breaker and Doctor were sitting at a table preparing their last countermeasures.

"A rescue mission in a week? That was fast. And how do you know this? We lost our man." Breaker's voice was bitter.

"I have my sources, Breaker. You worry like an old granny. Calm down. Relax. Do some stretches."

The man just grunted. "I'm calm, thank you very much. And you're sure about this? No men? No monsters?"

"Men? No. Monsters? Mm, maybe."

Doctor's mouth curved upward into a small grin. Surprisingly, at the table was also John, who was bound and tied to a chair.

"Why am I here?" he frowned.

"You're amusing," Doctor said simply. "Do you need anything, by the way? A drink? Food?"

"I thought you were trying to get me all depressed and shit."

"So that's a no?"

John just sighed. "You have any water?"

Doctor snapped his fingers, and a small child appeared with lifeless eyes, carrying a cup of water.

"Here you go," he said, picking up the glass.

"...is that what I think it is?" John said, raising an eyebrow at the child.

"Oh, I didn't mean for this particular thing to come. Any of them would've done."

"That's not relevant to my question."

"Oh, yes. It's a doll. See?" Doctor lashed out and pierced the child through the stomach.

John stared blankly as blood spilled out, but the child didn't react or scream. It just fell to the ground like a doll. Doctor's tendrils swept the body away as if nothing had happened.

"What did you do?"

"What do you mean?" Doctor frowned.

"I'm curious. Is that a human body powered by some magic source? Or is that a human so completely dead that it just does whatever you tell it to?"

"Both wrong!" Doctor said, clapping his hands together. "Finally, someone who's interested in my work! And I'm surprised. You didn't react in the slightest! You really don't care, do you?"

"I'm leaving," Breaker muttered, getting up.

His chair scraped against the rough stone floor as he silently walked out of the room, leaving the two oddities to themselves.

"You see, I extract the soul. But I break it and tweak it a little. Inside that doll is still a boy. Well, not anymore, though. That boy can very well see, hear and feel everything. He just has no control. I don't know if he's crying to be let out, still. He might've given up by now, although most of them give up before they're put in that state."

"You might just be a little… ah, how do you say… off."

"Me? No, that would be everyone else."

"Everyone… else?"

John sighed. A long-winded speech was about to come, and he didn't really feel like listening to it. He'd been looking for a short answer, not a jerk-off session. He just tuned out Doctor's monologue, something about a superiority complex and his position as one superior to everyone else.

John's frown grew deeper. He now understood the type of person—no, the type of [Character] he was dealing with.

Doctor, in a sense, was just like John. Neither of them saw people as 'people.' There were only 'things.' The difference was that while John saw them as [Characters] that could be used if needed, Doctor saw them as objects that were free to use. Additionally, Doctor had no intent to restore. There was no intent to have any form of respect. He simply wanted to destroy.

But most importantly, [Doctor] was not aware that he, too, was a 'thing.' A [Character].

And that made him the ultimate hypocrite.

"Souls are such fascinating things." Doctor suddenly leaped forward, putting a knife to John's throat. "And you will be my masterpiece."

John felt a shiver run down his spine. He himself wasn't exactly sane, but this man—

No, this monster. Doctor wasn't a man. A monster.

There was no fixing this. There was no persuading, no redemption. This thing was born this way. Doctor was evil not because he'd been made that way, but because it was just how he was. There was no tragic backstory. No excuse. Just pure malice. Pure evil. In some ways, John hated how one-dimensional the man was, but on the other hand, there was something interesting to be had about someone so unapologetically-

What was he doing? A literary analysis of someone in this situation? What was he, in English class? At this point, he should analyze why walls are grey or why grass is green.

"Oh. Your water. I apologize." Doctor lifted the glass and casually poured its contents over John's head. "Now, why'd you do that? Spilling water all over yourself. Especially after I made the effort to bring it here."

"...are you stupid?"

"What was that?" Doctor said, raising an eye.

"You might just be a monkey. Like, do you have a brain? Were you dropped on the head as a baby? Consider killing yourself."

"...how interesting."

Doctor sat back down, crossing his legs, drumming his fingers on his knees like a child uncontrollably hyped up on sugar and caffeine.

"You're not afraid," he observed.

John snorted. "Of what? You?"

"Most of the toys are. You are far weaker than they are. So why do you not cower?"

To Doctor's surprise, John began to laugh. It started off as a small snicker, then a giggle, then fully blown laughter.

"Is this situation amusing?"

"Of course it is!" John said, still laughing. "Toys. You see these people as toys. You think you're some kind of god, sitting above everyone else, because what? You're smarter?"

"I am a god!" Doctor yelled, slamming his hands on the table like a child throwing a tantrum. "You dare to doubt me? Everyone- no, everything else is just tools to be used! I am the only one who knows how to use them! They should be honoured that I use them at all!"

John didn't react. He just stared at Doctor, a mask of neutrality plastered onto his face.

"Yeah, sure, they're all tools. You're right. A lot more than you think."

Doctor frowned. He slowly sat down, staring at John curiously.

"What do you mean?"

"Everything's a tool, right? You. You're probably one of the most useful tools of all."

"Me? I am not a tool!" Doctor roared. "Don't you mess with me, boy. Don't you-"

"Tool says what?" John said quickly.

"What-" Doctor sputtered.

"What're you gonna do? Kill me? I thought you couldn't do that yet."

Doctor sat back down and began to take some deep breaths.

"You're right. But I'll break you. I'll break you yet. So enjoy this while you can."

"There's nothing to enjoy. You think I'm all depressed and shit? Boo fucking hoo. The world isn't even real. I'm not depressed- well, maybe I am. Doesn't matter. What I think, what I want, doesn't matter. Coping isn't going to change anything."

Doctor frowned. There was something different about the boy's babble. Some sense in the insanity.

"...what are you talking about?"

"This, me, you, everything! It's just a [Story]! Maybe it's written by a bot, maybe it's the work of some kinda team, but it's most likely some loser who has no friends and no life, sitting in their room alone in the dark, typing away at a keyboard. The [Author's] identity doesn't matter, though. You, me, we're the [Characters]! Puppets, dancing on a stage!"

John looked down, a smug grin on his face as he looked at Doctor.

"You think you're some kinda puppet master? Sure, maybe that's what you are. But your main purpose is more than that. You're a villain. A stepping stone for the [Protagonist], an element of a [Story] that exists to propel the [Plot]. You exist to be killed! That's all you'll amount to!"

"Then you, too, are nothing but a slave! In fact, you're a puppet in a puppet world, are you not?" Doctor exclaimed.

John looked up at Doctor with an indescribable expression.

"Yeah, I am. Isn't that ironic?"

"Then your despair-"

"Yeah? I don't care. You're the one coping, struggling to deal with the fact that you're an incel who gets no bitches and sits in a little dark cave underground, getting off on torture and despair. Doesn't that just make you the ultimate-"

Doctor couldn't take it anymore and lashed out with a tendril, knocking John out.

"I'm… not a god? You'll see. I'll prove you wrong. I don't know what you think you're sprouting, but I'll kill your precious friends in front of you. I know they want to rescue you. They won't. And you won't get to die with them. They don't know. They don't know there's another spy. Buried so deep in their group. I am not a tool. No, no…"

The madman quietly giggled to himself as he dragged John back to his cell.

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