Chapter Text
As I look at the ceiling of my hospital room, I can't help but wish the clone with no sense of identity had ended up here, and I had gotten to experience the sunny beach where my future rolls would be going.
I can't help but feel weighed down when I think of all the problems in front of me, not to mention the baggage of this new life.
I mean, even my blurry memories of my last life are enough to give me some distance, thank god. But damn, was I such a bad person in my last life, to end up as the protagonist's helpless little sister?
We've got all the tropes, abusive parents, a whole world full of adventure, and a sibling with a hopelessly optimistic outlook and weirdly overpowered abilities.
Well, maybe not overpowered, exactly, but 9 is the highest rating in a single category out of anyone in the entire state, much less the Bay.
So maybe she’s not one of the world's most powerful, but my big sister is, at minimum, second-rate in terms of powers, and that assumes we're putting people like Armsmaster and Miss Militia as third-rate.
But that gets back to me.
I’ve got all the same problems as the person most likely to be the Bey’s protagonist, except, until this Isakai crap, none of the advantages.
I can definitely tell how I ended up in this situation.
With no powers and not even the vague memories of my past life to lean on, I guess I’ve gotten this far on sheer inertia and little else. Still I…
It’s at this point in my pity-session that the protagonist herself runs in and takes approximately zero seconds flat to glomp me.
Vista.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, ’m sorry, ’m srry, m-srry. mrry”
And now she’s crying.
Right, I guess this one is my fault. It was just Christmas. Important, yeah. But it’s not like I don’t live with them more than her.
I know EXACTLY why she’d prefer the stupid PR stuff to actually spending time together… again.
I even agree with my younger self that Vista, without a sister, would have no reason not to just cut the baggage loose and continue on her heroine's journey.
Really I’m just a weight dragging her down…
I hug her, because I’m not a monster, but I don't say anything, because… What is there even to say?
I’m sorry it didn’t work?
Well, if I’m not in a padded room yet, saying that is the best way to end up there.
I’ll just play along for a bit, I guess.
Hopefully, the Celestial Grimoire will give me something to make people forget I exist.
Then I can find a way into the little tropical island that I have in place of a warehouse, and be zen until Scion comes to kill us a… Huh, Scions dead. Along with Eidolon, Tohu & Bohu, and most of London.
It’s been like this since I was 2, why would I think?
Oh, huh.
So this isn’t an isakai, does that mean it's CYOA then?
I got sent to the world of a book I read.
Except it seems like the majority of my memories of who I was or what I had done, and the accuracy of my metaknowledge, were sacrificed for the points to boost the setting up from its grimdark canon to the grim but not straight up doomed world I can actually remember growing up in.
Or I’m just crazy.
Occam's Razor says that’s the answer.
Honestly, I probably am. But acting as if my perception of reality is accurate is the best option I’ve got, so for the nonce, I guess I’ll just assume I'm in a setting with some kind of plot, where apparently Vista ends up as the hero who somehow saves the world from an Evil version of the first Hero.
That doesn’t feel right, but I can’t put my finger on how.
Either way, the big bad is both dead and not evil in this timeline anyway, so what now?
I guess I just... be?
I mean, there are definitely issues, but…
Oh, she’s sleeping on me now.
Yeah, that seems like a plan.
Sleep now, figure out what a world that still has its protagonist and most of its issues but has no big bad to symbolically defeat is like, later.